After he won the Nevada Republican caucuses in 2016, the current president crowed about his victory. “We won with young. We won with old. We won with highly educated. We won with poorly educated. I love the poorly educated,” he said. Congressman Bobby Scott, D-Va., reflected on this comment as he called on Republicans to join Democrats in preserving the Department of Education.

The 47th president loves the poorly educated because he knows how to manipulate them, and because the less you know, the more susceptible you are to false rhetoric. The cuts in education, including reductions in services for those with physical and intellectual disabilities, will likely have a long-term negative effect on the state of education in the country.

The president justifies the cuts to the Department of Education with claims of poor test scores, but the first phase of cuts, which will separate at least 1,300 workers from their jobs, will also likely reduce the amount of educational data available.

As a result, we may not be able to determine from the Survey of Doctorate Recipients which academic fields need improvement, and we won’t be able to track graduates over time to analyze career trends. Fewer employees collecting data could also impact its accuracy.

Given this president’s anti-DEI stance, we may not measure achievement gaps properly. Many of my colleagues in research are concerned that this president and his administration, which includes people with limited attention to detail, prefer aggregate numbers over disaggregated ones. This could mean reporting an overall unemployment rate without highlighting changes in Black, Latino and Asian unemployment. Data collection costs money, and the president’s aim is to cut budgets, including more than $600 million in grants, many of which benefit the “least and the left out.”

Further, many are concerned that the Office for Civil Rights has become less effective due to staff cuts. The office lost at least 240 employees, including 180 staff attorneys. Regional offices have been closed, making it more difficult for people to file civil rights complaints.

People aren’t taking this lying down. The National Education Association (NEA), the NAACP, and the American Federation of Teachers are all suing the Department of Education to prevent its closure. According to the NEA,

“If the Education Department is broken apart, the rights of students, particularly our most vulnerable — to an education that imparts academic lessons, civil rights protections, and prepares them for their future — will be undercut.”

In addition, with fewer worker protections and an indifference to safety net supports, people will be pushed into low-wage work instead of workforce development activities that would better prepare them for good jobs in the future. This president loves the poorly educated because they are more easily exploited. 

We are heading into a dystopian nightmare unless Democrats take action. This president and his allies, assisted by a woman who once led Worldwide Wrestling (great preparation to lead the Department of Education), will reorganize or eliminate many critical functions of the department. Our young people will be the ones to pay.

This year, 3.9 million young people are set to graduate from high school. About 62% of them will enroll in two- or four-year colleges. What will the atmosphere on campuses be like this fall? Unless some lawsuits are successful, lower-income students, students with disabilities, and those needing extra services will be sidelined. DEI programs that offered counseling and support to some students are likely to be dismantled. Tens of thousands of students, if not millions, will be disadvantaged by the transformation of the De-partment of Education into the Department of MisEducation.

This is the era of the MisEducation of the Marginalized. Scrubbing our history books of references to Black, Brown, and other patriots is just the first step toward dismantling any notion of critical thinking. This president and his administration are dedicated to ignorance, and indeed, they love the “poorly educated.” What does this mean for our nation’s future?

The writer is a Washington economist and author.