Port: What a strange time to be Kirsten Baesler

MINOT — It’s no big secret that Kirsten Baesler, who has served as North Dakota’s superintendent of public schools since 2012, is not well liked by our state’s MAGA movement.

Baesler has faced challenges from the far-right nearly every time she’s run for reelection. Last year, her latest challenger, religious zealot Jim Bartlett, succeeded in

wresting the North Dakota Republican Party’s state convention endorsement away from her.

(Superintendent is officially a nonpartisan position, but the political parties traditionally endorse candidates at their conventions anyway.)

When Baesler’s nomination to serve in President Donald Trump’s Department of Education

was announced,

most of North Dakota’s Republican statewide elected leaders congratulated her. The holdout?

Sen. Kevin Cramer,

perhaps Trump’s most ardent supporter in state elected office. It’s traditional that the state’s top leaders congratulate a colleague on moving on to federal service, but Cramer had nothing to say, and the silence was meaningful.

Meanwhile, in Washington, Trump’s slash-and-burn approach to downsizing the federal government has reached the Department of Education. His administration

announced Tuesday

that 1,315 of the cabinet department’s employees had been fired in addition to 572 who had previously accepted voluntary separation agreements and 63 probationary employees who were let go.

That’s a 47% reduction in the department’s workforce, and Trump has vowed to eliminate the department entirely, though he’ll need approval from Congress to go that far. As a conservative, I’m not sad to see our bloated federal workforce get downsized, though I wonder if Trump’s manic and chaotic approach to that end will prove salubrious to our nation’s well-being.

Time will tell.

What’s curious is seeing moderate Baesler, who enjoyed

the endorsement of North Dakota’s teacher and public workers union

but not the Republican Party, in a central position to dismantling the federal government’s education wing.

Though, in fairness to Baesler, she’s been clear about that objective, if not as blunt as other Trump administration leaders.

“Yes, I am grateful to have had the opportunity to meet with the Education Transition Team, including Linda McMahon,”

Baesler told me in January

when I was the first to report that she was in talks for a position in Trump’s administration. “We have a shared interest in returning education control back to the states and creating a work-ready focus in education.”

“This is an opportunity to build on the relationships I’ve formed with fellow state education leaders over the past 12 years to implement the changes that will help our students become future-ready citizens,” Baesler said in

a press release

officially announcing her nomination. “I look forward to working alongside Secretary-designate McMahon to deliver on President Trump’s education agenda and return education decisions to the states,”

The U.S. Senate has

since confirmed

McMahon’s nomination to serve as secretary of Education.

I texted Baesler for comment about the Department of Education firings and she did not reply. Dale Wetzel, her state communications director, had indicated that she would have no further comment after announcing her nomination.

Also, it’s worth mentioning that under Baesler’s leadership, North Dakota’s Department of Public Instruction has shrunk. In 2013, the first appropriations bill for the department considered by lawmakers under Baesler’s tenure

listed DPI’s workforce at 99.75 full time equivalent employees,

or FTEs.

A dozen years later, as lawmakers in Bismarck

consider budget questions

during their 2025 session, Baesler’s presentation to the Senate Appropriations Committee lists 86.25 FTEs, a roughly 14% reduction.

In 2013, Baesler’s DPI requested total funding, including state and federal funds, of roughly $2.2 billion which, adjusted for inflation, would be north of $3 billion in the 2025 session.

Currently, her department is asking for $2.9 billion for the 2025-2027 biennium, which is actually a decrease in spending after inflation.

Baesler, at least from a fiscal perspective, has always been more conservative than her populist critics have given her credit for.

Even so, it’s odd to see her heading into the MAGA milieu in Washington, where her more temperate and collaborative approach to education policy sticks out like a sore thumb, though Baesler is hardly the first of North Dakota’s political leaders to track that trajectory.

Former Gov. Doug Burgum went from

weeping exhortations for masking

during the pandemic, from

condemning the Jan. 6 riots

and

attending President Joe Biden’s 2021 inauguration,

to

proclaiming that Trump should win the Nobel Peace Prize.

Strange days, indeed.