Eyal wrote:biochem, I think the effect is rather more insiduous here.
On the face of it, the American system of checks and balances involves the three branches of government. At the moment, however, Congress isn't really giving any indications of acting as a check on Trump (see the latest vote for SoE - despite numerous Republicans stating she was unfit, almost none of them broke ranks over it in the end*). So at least at the moment it's left to the courts. More broadly, I doubt the GOP-controlled legislature will act as a check on Trump until their failure to do so threatens their seats, which will only happen if some of his base grows disillusioned. One things that could lead to that is information on failures or missteps by his administration.
Actually the problem with the SOE is more complicated than that. It is really an argument over a worldview shift.
In the US, the education system is dominated by the teacher's unions. Their goal is their members first, kids second, parents last. It tends to work at least some-what well in most places because people who tend to become teachers are people who like kids and like to teach kids. But it doesn't work everyplace and this system is a huge problem when a bad, lazy etc teacher comes up. Such teachers can't be fired without enormous difficulty due to tenure rules negotiated by the unions. So they tend to be left in the classroom to damage the education of children. Parents whose kids are unlucky enough to get such a teacher have little choice in the matter. They're stuck with them unless they leave the public school system. There aren't a lot of these teachers but they do outsized damage relative to their numbers particularly in low income school districts.
The new SOE is a huge supporter of charter schools and has spent her career setting them up. Charter schools are public schools with different rules than the norm. The schools don't have to follow the rigid one size fits all policies some school districts like to impose, so they tend to have themes: some art/music focused, others science/math focused, others focus on latin and other old school ideas, others are Montessori based etc. Not all children learn in the same way, so the variety helps the parents find something suited for their children. And most importantly they are allowed to choose to keep or get rid of teachers i.e. they're not stuck with the bad ones.
The downside is that not all charter schools are better than the regular schools. This shouldn't be a surprise, not all ideas are good ones after all. However, it has proven problematic in some districts in which mechanisms to close down poorly performing charter schools were not in place.
In general charter schools are supported by Republicans (self-determination) and African Americans (desperation, they get the worst teachers). They are hated by teachers unions (their members are afraid tenure will disappear if charter schools become dominate) and opposed by Democrats (teachers unions are the biggest single campaign contributor to Democrats) and the African American leadership (they split with normal African Americans on the issue). Ideology i.e. a genuine belief everyone should be the same also plays a role with some of the far left Democrats.
She also supports school vouchers which is where parents in low quality school districts can take the money the district would have spent educating their child and use it for private school tuition. This makes the Democrats turn purple because the majority of parents choose a religious based schools, often times because those are the best quality schools they can get for the money. Vouchers are constitutional because the parents have the option to choose any qualified school religious or secular.
The 2 Republicans who called her unqualified have also received large campaign contributions from the teacher's unions so the sincerity of their opposition is questionable. Are they genuinely concerned about her qualifications or just staying bought? It could be either. Telepathy hasn't been invented yet.
So know Trump is sowing distrust of the courts, on the one hand, and discrediting the media to his followers on the other - which means said followers will be insulated from any information which might make them less enchanted with him. Yes, he's not throwing judges in jail, but he is trying to defang them. And it gets even worse if parts of the executive outright ignore the courts - which there were some indications of it happening during the early parts of the immigration EO mess (I'm willing to extend them the benefit of the doubt and assume they were unclear what to do, given that the people on the ground had no guidance from higher authority, since it was done on the weekend with no preparation, but if it recurs you have a major problem)
A subgroup of end justifies the means leftist lawyers and judges have been trying to legislate through the courts for years and the mainstream media openly hates him. So Trump isn't saying anything his supporters don't already believe. But it's a huge step from skepticism/distrust to destroying constitutional checks and balances.
*And I'm somewhat skeptical that Collins and Murkowski didn't make sure in advance that there would be sufficient votes for her to pass before dissenting, given that they could have blocked her in committee**
**Incidently, it's curious how all the people screaming "pay to play" at Clinton are suddenly silent when DeVos seems to have bought a Cabinet seat...
DeVos is extremely popular with conservative Republicans because of her pro-charter schools work. President Cruz for example would have also picked her, solely on the issues not for her $$$. Why Trump picked her since he is not a conservative Republican, I don't know for certain. My guess is that she is Pence's choice and that since she speaks money Trump is also comfortable with her i.e. they speak the same language.
The conservative Republicans behind the scenes in Trump's white house seem to have been fairly successful to date in getting Trump to support their agenda, which is why Trump is polling at an about 80-90% approval rating in this demographic, much higher than his overall approval rating which is about 45% (the overall rating is being pulled down by such groups as liberal Democrats who give him a 5-10% approval rating and would never vote for him anyway). The true test will be if he can keep his high level of support in the rust belt swing voters i.e. those in the rust belt who voted for Obama but then switched to Trump. I haven't seen a poll on that subgroup.
