3/6/2025

My Dear Friend & POTUS, DJT,

            Tom Ambrose reports in the G that you are instructing “Linda McMahon to close the department (of Ed) by taking all the available steps “permitted by law”. What exactly does that mean? Are you getting creative with Congressional mandates? If so, please do everything you can to ensure that students with IEPs get the education that they deserve.

If you aren’t familiar with an IEP, it’s an individual education plan for students who are not thriving under typical schooling conditions. It’s possible that you needed one for your inability to sit still & follow directions. If you had one, you might have developed greater respect for teachers. Private schools aren’t required to write IEPs & tend not to. If the school can’t accommodate a child, the parents send them somewhere else. I suspect that your aversion to boredom was not acute enough to require drastic action. Instead, you suffered in restrictive classrooms where you didn’t have the freedom to be yourself. On behalf of your former teachers, I apologize!

Just because your teachers failed to bring out the best in you, doesn’t mean all educators are evil. Perhaps you don’t think that, but your decision to eliminate the DoE makes it seem that way. The DoE does important work by uplifting the critical role of education in making our country strong!

I encourage you to call WI mom, Amanda Sherman. She’s worried that if the DoE’s oversight of IDEA disappears, she will have to navigate a patchwork of unreliable services that would hinder her autistic son. She’s just one of the many parents of SPED kids who will be affected by your proposed change. They need to know you care.

On the Burma front, I was interested to read in the VOA today that Sec of State Rubio has made it clear that he understands the need to keep an eye on what China is up to in Burma. Has he come up with any new ideas on what you can do to cultivate peace there?

BYBS,