Bless his heart, Nevada Attorney General Aaron Ford seems to think that hollering “unconstitutional” is the same as making it law, much like a rooster believing his crowing brings up the sun. Ford has hitched his wagon to a group of like-minded legal luminaries to stop Donald Trump from downsizing the Department of Education—a noble cause if one assumes the federal government must be ever-expanding and never subject to a trim.
With all the grace of a man clearing brush with a scythe, the Trump Administration recently announced plans to send half the department’s workforce packing, which has sent Ford into a fit of righteous indignation.
“I was a public school math teacher!” he declared, as though that alone makes him the sole authority on education policy.
He then went on to inform that removing government employees from their chairs is not just a bureaucratic shift but an “attack on Nevada’s students”—never mind that education is a state responsibility or that entire nations have managed to educate their youth without a sprawling federal apparatus.
In his fervor, Ford has been scrawling his name on a pre-drafted lawsuit, ensuring his signature appears in the mix of fine print while insisting that “This plan is unconstitutional. It’s illegal. It’s dangerously reckless.”
That is his opinion—a fine and fiery one—but as any schoolchild knows, merely declaring something unlawful does not make it so. The lawsuit, making way to the federal courts, seeks to block Trump’s attempts to wield his budgetary axe.
If successful, Ford and his fellow litigators may ensure that not a single bureaucratic chair is left unoccupied, or if not, some of those soon-to-be-displaced officials can take up the noble profession of teaching math.
The Old Blog in the Desert 
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