"The Department of Education is a big con job."

That's just one of the things President Trump has said about one of the most high profile departments in federal government — a department Trump says he wants to eliminate.

Trump says he wants to save money, and kill policies he doesn't like. Trump and Elon Musk's DOGE has already started cutting funding from the department.

The Trump administration wants the Department of Education gone. But can they get rid of it, and what could be lost in the process?

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Earlier this week, President Donald Trump accused Ukraine of starting the war with Russia.

Three years ago Russian troops poured over Ukraine's border, and Russian missiles and drones continue to bombard Ukrainian cities.

Besides being untrue, the comments echoed a popular Kremlin talking point. And Trump's comments signaled a seismic shift in decades of U.S. foreign policy. Supporters of Ukraine and its allies, both here and abroad, were left shaken.

NPR's Joanna Kakissis and Greg Myre discuss Ukraine's future as Russia-U.S. relations thaw.

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Is the United States headed toward autocracy?

That's a question prompted by a steady stream of executive orders seeking to consolidate power in the White House and upend long held policies and norms.

New York Times Opinion writer M. Gessen lived through much of Russia's slide into autocracy, and wrote a book about it.

They argue that one of the ways Vladimir Putin consolidated power... was by making a series of arguments that seemed outrageous at the time — like the idea that the LGBT population was a threat to Russian sovereignty.

President Donald Trump's second term has been marked by a string of policy proposals that would have been unthinkable in any other administration.

Even if they don't go anywhere, they're reshaping the boundaries of our democracy.

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New York Governor Kathy Hochul, along withother top officials spent much of Tuesday weighing whether to use her power to remove New York City Mayor Eric Adams from office.

It's a power that no New York Governor has ever used before.

Adams faces growing calls to step down over allegations of corruption - and criticism that Adams' deepening ties with the Trump administration have compromised his ability to govern independently.

The nation's biggest city has been all but paralyzed by the legal and political problems of its Mayor. What's next for Eric Adams, and what does the scandal tell us about the Trump Justice Department?

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An Israeli delegation is in Cairo to hash out details for the second phase of a ceasefire deal with Hamas.

Under the first phase of the deal, Hamas agreed to release a total of 33 Israeli hostages – and Israel said it would free around 1,900 Palestinian prisoners and detainees.

NPR's Jerome Socolovsky looks into why Israel has long accepted lopsided deals to bring back abducted citizens.

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Across the country and around the world, tens of thousands of federal workers face uncertainty amid an unprecedented reduction and restructuring of the federal workforce.

President Donald Trump has signed a flurry of executive orders — freezing hiring, ordering teleworkers back to the office, reclassifying employees and dismantling wide-ranging DEI programs.

What will mass layoffs mean for federal workers and the government services they provide?

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There are at least two million people in America who have thoughts and ideas they can't put into words.

People who have had strokes or traumatic brain injuries often live with aphasia: difficulty using language, both written and spoken.

But music mostly originates in the undamaged hemisphere of the brain, and people with aphasia can often sing. Today in our bonus episode, in partnership with the podcast Rumble Strip, we meet a member of The Aphasia Choir of Vermont.

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President Donald Trump is now chairman of The Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in Washington, D.C. Trump replaced 18 members of the board with allies who then elected him into the position.

There is no precedent for this move – most presidents have been hands-off with the cultural center since it opened in 1971 – including President Trump himself during his first term.

Already, artists affiliated with the center have departed and performers are canceling shows.

For a decade, Deborah Rutter served as President of the Kennedy Center. This week, she was ousted from that position. In her first interview since then, she speaks with NPR's Mary Louise Kelly about the abrupt end to her tenure.

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Panama has been looking for solutions to a long-term problem. Every time a ship passes through the Panama Canal, more than 50 million gallons of fresh water from Lake Gatun pour out into the ocean.

Nobody ever thought Panama could run out of water. It is one of the rainiest countries in the world. But a couple years ago, a drought got so bad that the canal had to reduce traffic by more than a third - which had a huge impact on global shipping.

The Panama Canal needs more water. Authorities have decided to get it by building a dam in a spot that would displace more than 2,000 people along the Rio Indio.

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The Gaza Strip – ground zero of Israel's war with Hamas – is only about twice the size of Washington, DC. It has about 25 miles of coastline along the Mediterranean Sea, with a population of about 2 million people.

Last week, President Trump proposed relocating those people to other countries in the region, like Egypt and Jordan.

Trump has said the Palestinians would not be allowed to return: UN officials and others say Trump's plan would amount to ethnic cleansing. Despite domestic and international concerns that the U.S. is empire building, Trump continues to double down on his plans for the U.S. to "own" Gaza.

Trump says the U.S. is going to take over Gaza, though he offers few specifics. What could the proposal mean for Palestinians and the broader Middle East?

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President Trump's blizzard of executive orders has run into a snowplow of legal challenges. There are dozens of cases challenging the White House's actions. Judges all over the country have found that the White House acted illegally.

The challenges, and the rulings, continue to pour in.

But Trump's team is punching back. After a judge blocked Elon Musk's DOGE team from accessing personal data and other Treasury department systems, Musk referred to him as "a corrupt judge protecting corruption" and called for his impeachment.

Vice President JD Vance made the controversial claim on Sunday that quote, "judges aren't allowed to control the executive's legitimate power."

Comments like these suggest Trump's circle may be willing to ignore court orders and defy judicial authority.

So what happens if the executive branch ignores the judicial branch? Is that a constitutional crisis? Is the United States already in one?

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