The U.S. is already 67.3% dumber

WASHINGTON – A recent study conducted by the Stamford Technical University of Pseudoscience & Incomplete Data (STUPID) has discovered that the United States population is, on average, 67.3% dumber today than it was yesterday.

The dramatic drop in American mental acuity comes just hours after President Donald Trump signed an executive order to dismantle the Department of Education, sending a devastating ripple effect through the American education systems.

“I don’t think I’m technically supposed to say this, but fuck it, a huge swath of our population is now legally mentally retarded as a result of this executive order,” said Doug Hoffstetter, headmaster of STUPID. “We knew dismantling of the Department of Ed[ucation] was going to have catastrophic consequences, but we never anticipated it happening this quickly.”

Education experts presumed there would be a significant drop in test scores and college admittance rates from students attending schools in low-income and rural areas because they were the primary financial beneficiaries of Department of Education funding. However, the widespread endemic of stupidity appears to be more widespread and contagious than anyone could’ve anticipated.

“Doctor Daniel Dumas was our lead researcher and a frontrunner for this year’s Nobel Peace Prize for his groundbreaking work in eradicating Ebola in Africa,” said Dr. Samantha Young, an epidemiologist from Yale University. “But ever since the government cut his research funding through USAID, he’s been spiraling. After the President signed his executive order today, our colleague saw him buying a Tesla. I fear his mind is gone beyond repair.”

Karoline Leavitt, the White House press secretary doubled down on the Trump administration’s decision to gut the department, despite the warnings from top education experts.

“We found billions of taxpayer dollars being wasted at the Department of Education on crazy things like school lunches, books, and frivolous programs designed to make kids smarter,” said Leavitt. “And don’t even get me started on all the DEI our president is protecting our children from with this executive order. If we want to make America great again, which President Trump has very clearly stated he wants to do, it starts here. In our schools.”

Leavitt went on to say that while the intent of imploding the Department of Education was to send the power of curriculum back to the states, she expects the president to sign another executive order in the coming days, mandating that all schools teach an “America First” curriculum.

According to our sources within the White House, this new curriculum is expected to include some questionable changes to well known facts. Here are a few examples from a leaked White House document, highlighting some of those changes.

• The Civil War was basically just a silly argument that ended with Gen. Ulysses S. Grant and Gen. Robert E. Lee hashing things out over a cup of coffee.
• The United States single-handedly won World War I and II without any help from European countries (in fact, they just made things worse).
• The U.S. and Russia have been BFFs since the end of World War II.
• Jackie Robinson was a white guy.
• Martin Luther King Jr. died of natural causes.
• The Trail of tears will be renamed “The Trail of Happy Tears”.
• Everyone loves and respects Donald Trump for his remarkable heroism during the Vietnam War and efforts to unify the world in peace.
• The Gulf of Mexico will be renamed the Gulf of America.

News of the Department of Education’s dismantling has received mixed responses. On the one hand, many people are praising the president’s Norman Bates style of slashing government spending because, up until this moment, they’ve never had an independent thought one way or the other about the department.

Then you’ve got the teachers and school administrators admonishing (for those in the previous group mentioned, this means “to warn or reprimand firmly”) the decision because they understand curriculum decisions were already made at the local and state level and gutting the Department of Education only takes money away from schools to help provide the supplies and resources they need to educate our children.

“Children didn’t even get an education when our great nation was founded,” said Leavitt. “President Trump is simply getting us back to that standard at which our Founding Fathers created our nation. Frankly, I’m kind of disgusted you don’t share in his excellent vision for America.”

*Fact check: schools did exist for children in 1775, but standard education was varied amongst the 13 colonies with education being more common in urban and developed areas. Massachusetts, for example, made school for children required by law as early as 1642*

Thankfully for the Trump administration, facts have never stood in the way of his decision-making process. We’re currently three months into Trump’s second term in the White House. While many people are attempting to remain positive in these discombobulated times, some experts are warning the country’s nosedive in intelligence is showing no sign of slowing down.

“I wouldn’t be surprised if people don’t even remember what the 22nd Amendment is or what it does,” said Hoffstetter. “Hell, our kids may not even be capable of counting that high by then.”