US Supreme Court allows Trump to shrink Education Department
In a 6-3 emergency ruling, the Supreme Court lifted the district judge's order to reinstate employees terminated in mass layoffs, Xinhua news agency reported.
On May 22, Boston-based US District Judge Myong Joun ordered the Trump administration to reinstate nearly 1,400 workers affected by mass layoffs at the department.
US District Judge Myong Joun in Boston stated that the layoffs "will likely cripple the department."
This marks the second significant victory for Trump from the Supreme Court within a week. Last week, the Court paved the way for Trump's extensive plan to reduce the federal workforce, overturning lower court rulings that had temporarily blocked the initiative.
The dismantling of the education department is part of the US President's plan to reduce the federal government's role in education and increase state control.
A group of 21 Democratic attorneys general, along with school districts and unions, has filed two legal challenges, asserting that Trump's efforts to shut down the Department of Education could hinder its ability to fulfill its essential responsibilities.
Established by Congress in 1979, the Department of Education has several key roles, including administering college loans, monitoring student performance, and enforcing civil rights in schools. Additionally, it provides federal funding to support underfunded districts and assist students with disabilities.
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The Print
6 minutes ago
- The Print
CJI's involvement in selection of CBI director is a safeguard, not a subversion
The insertion of judicial oversight was neither accidental nor theoretical. Vineet Narain v. Union of India (1997) emerged from the public shock of the Jain Hawala diaries, its essence was doctrinal, not defensive. The Supreme Court held that the need of the hour is to insulate the CBI from extraneous influence. It insisted on structural measures, not temporary decrees. Parliament listened: the Lokpal and Lokayuktas Act, 2013 entrenched a tripartite panel for the selection of the CBI director — the PM, LoP, and the CJI or his nominee — forming a legal bond between democratic design and historical necessity. The CJI's statutory presence in appointing the head of the nation's premier investigative agency is not a fluke of legal drafting, it is a structural feature. It is a successor to experiences where power went unchecked: the Emergency's weaponisation of law, the Hawala scandal's institutional paralysis. 'Republics are formed, not found,' wrote Philip Bobbitt in The Shield of Achilles , capturing the intentional craftsmanship behind modern constitutionalism. They are not gifts of history, but acts of memory, of caution, of design. Constitutions are not accidental artefacts, they are blueprints of humility, instruments to channel and control power. When the Vice President raises concern over the Chief Justice of India's role in appointing the CBI Director, he touches not on privilege, but on architecture. This is not abstract theory; it is the grammar of a functioning republic. India did not choose the American isolation of powers or the British concentration. We chose a tensioned architecture, where each power leans against the other, not to destabilise, but to steady. Perception and principle If anyone doubts the continuing vitality of that design, recent jurisprudence confirms it. In Common Cause v. Union of India (2021), the Supreme Court upheld statutory requirements for fixed tenure, noting that transparency in appointment and continuity in office are 'constitutional imperatives that flow from independence.' It struck down executive efforts to circumvent the panel. In Dr. Jaya Thakur v. Union of India (2023), the SC further condemned post-tenure extensions as injurious to public perception: where 'perceived capture' prevails, institutional legitimacy collapses. This is not unique to India. Across democratic orders, judicial participation in appointments to sensitive public offices is a safeguard, not a subversion. In the United Kingdom, the Judicial Appointments Commission includes judges in appointments beyond the bench, extending into review boards for oversight bodies. In Canada, judicial members sit on selection panels for integrity commissioners, privacy regulators, and national security review boards. South Africa's Chief Justice serves as the chairperson of the Judicial Service Commission, which advises on prosecutorial oversight. In Israel, the Attorney General, akin to the CBI Director, emerges from a multi-stakeholder process that includes judicial members. Indeed, to place entire control of coercive institutions within the executive is not an act of democracy, it is Hobbes without honesty. It is a rehearsal of Leviathan, cloaked in constitutional formalities but stripped of institutional conscience. The CJI's seat at the table is not a throne, it is ballast. It prevents the investigative state from drifting toward political shores. As constitutional scholar Aharon Barak noted in the Israeli context, 'Judicial participation in public appointments is not to blur the boundary between powers, but to clarify their mutual restraint.' Concerns around post-retirement appointments of judges are not frivolous. They strike at the heart of perceived impartiality. 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His presence is not a counter majoritarian triumph, it is a quiet reminder that public power must not be shaped behind closed doors. To deride that presence as judicial intrusion is to forget the very scandals that demanded it. Yes, constitutions evolve, but they do so by memory, not amnesia. The appointment structure being criticised was crafted after inquiry committees, court orders, and parliamentary deliberation. It came not as an innovation but as an inheritance. To question it casually is to misremember our own institutional biography. As John Emerich Edward Dalberg-Acton warned, 'The danger is not that a particular class is unfit to govern. Every class is unfit to govern.' That includes the Bench, the executive, and the legislature. Which is why the framers, and later Parliament, placed each beside the other, not to dominate, but to co-discipline. This is not the judiciary conquering executive space, nor the executive retreating into symbolism. This is equilibrium earned through political pain, preserved through constitutional memory. The author is an advocate practicing before the Supreme Court of India. Views are personal. (Edited by Aamaan Alam Khan)
Indian Express
6 minutes ago
- Indian Express
How Maharashtra ‘Urban Naxal' Bill targets Property Rights
Written by Prashant Randive In the name of public order and national security, the line between legitimate state interest and authoritarian overreach is often blurred. The recently enacted Maharashtra Special Public Security Bill (MSPS), 2024, is a troubling example of this phenomenon. While the State justified the bill as a necessary response to threats posed by 'unlawful organisations', several provisions, particularly those that empower police to seal, seize or restrict the use of private property, pose a grave challenge to the constitutional right to property under Article 300A. Article 300A of the Constitution stipulates that 'No person shall be deprived of his property except by authority of law.' Though the framers left it to the legislature to define the contours of the lawful deprivation, Indian courts have consistently held that this power must be exercised fairly, non-arbitrarily and with due process. 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The Hindu
6 minutes ago
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U.S. Senate passes aid, public broadcasting cuts in victory for Trump
The U.S. Senate, early on Thursday (July 17, 2025), approved U.S. President Donald Trump's plan for billions of dollars in cuts to funding for foreign aid and public broadcasting, handing the Republican president another victory as he exerts control over Congress with little opposition. The Senate voted 51 to 48 in favor of Mr. Trump's request to cut $9 billion in spending already approved by Congress. Most of the cuts are to programs to assist foreign countries suffering from disease, war and natural disasters, but the plan also eliminates all $1.1 billion the Corporation for Public Broadcasting was due to receive over the next two years. Mr. Trump and many of his fellow Republicans argue that spending on public broadcasting is an unnecessary expense and reject its news coverage as suffering from anti-right bias. Standalone rescissions packages have not passed in decades, with lawmakers reluctant to cede their constitutionally mandated control of spending. But Trump's Republicans, who hold narrow majorities in the Senate and House, have shown little appetite for resisting his policies since he began his second term in January. The $9 billion at stake is extremely small in the context of the $6.8 trillion federal budget, and represents only a tiny portion of all the funds approved by Congress that the Trump administration has held up while it has pursued sweeping cuts, many ordered by billionaire Elon Musk's Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE. As of mid-June, Mr. Trump was blocking $425 billion in funding that had already been appropriated and previously approved by Congress, according to Democratic lawmakers tracking frozen funding. However, Mr. Trump and his supporters have promised more of the "rescission" requests to eliminate previously approved spending in what they say is an effort to pare back the federal government. The House of Representatives passed the rescissions legislation without altering Mr. Trump's request by 214-212 last month. Four Republicans joined 208 Democrats in voting no. But after a handful of Republican senators balked at the extent of the cuts to global health programs, Russell Vought, director of the Office of Management and Budget, said on Tuesday that PEPFAR, a global program to fight HIV/AIDS launched in 2003 by then-President George W. Bush, was being exempted. The change brought the size of the package of cuts to $9 billion from $9.4 billion, requiring another House vote before the measure can be sent to the White House for Trump to sign into law. The rescissions must pass by Friday. Otherwise, the request would expire and the White House will be required to adhere to spending plans passed by Congress. Republican 'No' Votes Two of the Senate's 53 Republicans - Lisa Murkowski of Alaska and Susan Collins of Maine - joined Democrats in voting against the legislation. "You don't need to gut the entire Corporation for Public Broadcasting," Ms. Murkowski said in a Senate speech. She said the Trump administration also had not provided assurances that battles against diseases such as malaria and polio worldwide would be maintained. Most of all, Murkowski said, Congress must assert its role in deciding how federal funds were spent. Republican Senate Majority Leader John Thune of South Dakota called Mr. Trump's request a "small, but important step toward fiscal sanity." Democrats scoffed at that, noting that congressional Republicans earlier this month passed a massive package of tax and spending cuts that nonpartisan analysts estimated would add more than $3 trillion to the nation's $36.2 trillion debt. Democrats charged Republicans with giving up Congress' Constitutionally-mandated control of federal spending. "Today, Senate Republicans turn this chamber into a subservient rubber stamp for the executive, at the behest of Donald Trump," Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer of New York said. "Republicans embrace the credo of cut, cut, cut now, and ask questions later," Mr. Schumer said. The cuts would overturn bipartisan spending agreements most recently passed in a full-year stopgap funding bill in March. Democrats warn a partisan cut now could make it more difficult to negotiate government funding bills that must pass with bipartisan agreement by September 30 to avoid a shutdown. Appropriations bills require 60 votes to move ahead in the Senate, but the rescissions package needs just 51, meaning Republicans can pass it without Democratic support.
