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** OPINION
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** A dizzying week continues with more Trump cuts
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President Donald Trump holds up a signed executive order alongside Secretary of Education Linda McMahon at the White House on Thursday. (AP Photo/Ben Curtis)

The past week has felt like a month. And the past month has felt like a year. And 2025, so far, feels like many weeks and many months and many years.

Thursday marked exactly two months since Donald Trump became president for the second time. In his 60 or so days, he and his right-hand man Elon Musk have taken a machete to the federal government. Along the way, Trump has continued his assault on the media and free speech.

He gutted the longstanding and well-respected Voice of America, which has promoted democracy and transparency across the world since World War II. Trump, through social media posts, and White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt, through press conferences, have insulted individual reporters and news outlets, including The Atlantic, The Associated Press and even Fox News.

That all happened in just the past week alone. Based on history, there might have been even further verbal attacks between the time I wrote this and the time you’re reading it.

Then Thursday, perhaps worn out from his media attacks, Trump decided to do his best to dismantle the Department of Education. Trump signed an executive order with that purpose on Thursday, although it cannot be completely closed down without the approval of Congress.

“But,” The New York Times’ Michael C. Bender, Zolan Kanno-Youngs and Zach Montague report ([link removed]) , “the Trump administration has already taken steps to narrow the agency’s authority and significantly cut its workforce while also telegraphing plans to try and shutter it.”

Even CNN’s coverage of the events seemed to settle on this main point: We don’t know for sure what will happen next and how this will all play out. Contributor David Axelrod referenced a joke about a man who jumped from a high-rise. As he passed the 20th floor, someone asked how he was doing, and the man replied, “So far, so good.”

We’ll just have to wait and see how the story ends. Frankly, if the department is essentially shut down, we might not see all the impacts until Trump is well out of office.

Here’s a good breakdown from PolitiFact’s Grace Abels and Amy Sherman: “Trump wants to close the Education Department. Here's what to know.” ([link removed])

And here’s The Washington Post’s Laura Meckler with “What to know about Trump’s plan to abolish the Education Department.” ([link removed])

So as we try to put the past week behind us and brace ourselves for the next, maybe this weekend would be a good time to check out some college basketball as March Madness cranks up. See you next week.

A MESSAGE FROM POYNTER
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In the meantime, here is more media news, tidbits and interesting links for your weekend review …
* Reuters’ David Shepardson with “Conservative groups urge FCC to end probe into '60 Minutes' Harris interview.” ([link removed])
* Jason Rezaian, the director of Press Freedom Initiatives, writes for The Washington Post, “These 10 jailed journalists worked for U.S. outlets that Trump silenced.” ([link removed])
* A terrific piece by America’s best sports columnist. The Washington Post’s Sally Jenkins with “Voice of America brought light to dark places. Just ask Martina Navratilova.” ([link removed])
* The xxxxxx’s Will Sommer with “A Crack in Ben Shapiro’s Daily Wire.” ([link removed])
* The Guardian’s Michael Savage with “Exiled Russian journalists left ‘high and dry’ after US cuts radio funding.” ([link removed])
* The Atlantic’s Kaitlyn Tiffany (and photos by Zack Wittman) with “Why Aren’t Women Allowed to Play Baseball?” ([link removed])
* The Hollywood Reporter’s Steven Zeitchik writes about Federal Communications Commission chair Brendan Carr in “Trump’s Media Pit Bull Is ‘Off the Leash.’” ([link removed]) Zeitchik writes, “Ever since Donald Trump bumped Carr up to chair of the FCC in November (after naming him a commissioner during his first term), Carr has attacked the country’s media, entertainment and even tech giants with a cool fury, threatening their business and, critics say, attempting to bully them into more favorable coverage of the president.” Just as ominous, Zeitchik writes, “If Carr has his way, the decades-long rise of Fox News and other right-wing media will now be accompanied by the diminishment of plenty of moderate, centrist and liberal ones.”
* The Verge with “We ran the wrong headline about Trump firing the FTC commissioners.” ([link removed])
* As my colleague Rick Edmonds wrote in Thursday’s newsletter, the financially troubled Chicago Sun-Times announced this week that 23 staffers took buyouts — including longtime sportswriter and columnist Rick Morrissey, who has spent 43 years in the business. He wrote his final column for the Sun-Times: “What’s a berm? And other thoughts from a departing Sun-Times sports columnist.” ([link removed])
* The Boston Herald’s Rick Sobey with “NBC10 Boston’s Pete Bouchard under fire for saying SpaceX splashdown had ‘strong hints of AI.’” ([link removed])
* The New York Times’ Brooks Barnes with “Snow White and the Seven Kajillion Controversies.” ([link removed])
* Writing for Poynter, Nicholas Reynolds, who covers the South Carolina statehouse and politics for The (Charleston, South Carolina) Post and Courier, with “I learned my hometown paper died from Facebook. That’s the future we’re facing.” ([link removed])
* The New York Times’ Joe Drape with “In Sports-Crazed Boston, a Fight Over a Women’s Soccer Stadium.” ([link removed])


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