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WBUR Podcasts, Boston.

A majority of the justices are apparently quite sympathetic to these really expansive assertions of executive power. We have seen, whether we're talking about funding freezes or mass firings,

or what really amounts, according to the lower courts here, to dismantling an agency created by a statute passed by Congress.

The Supreme Court allows the Trump administration to start mass layoffs at the Department of Education.

It's Tuesday, July 15th, and this is here and now anytime from NPR and WBUR.

I'm Chris Bentley.

Today on the show, what it's like inside the swampy detention camp for immigrants that President Trump is calling alligator Alcatraz.

And states usually revise their congressional maps once a decade. But Republicans in Texas are pushing ahead with a risky and controversial redistricting plan in a special session of the legislature

starting next week.

The 2006 midterm election could be a blue wave. So the Texas legislature could engage in a mid-decade

redistricting to put more Republican voters into those marginal Republican districts to ensure

their re-election.

Before we get to that story, though,

President Trump's plan to gut the Department of Education has the blessing of the Supreme Court.

The justices lifted a lower court ruling that put a pause on mass layoffs,

and now the conservative effort to dismantle the Department of Education is one step closer to

reality. Kate Shaw is our guide to what it all means. She's a law professor at the University

of Pennsylvania and a host of the Supreme Court podcast, Strict Scrutiny. And she tells

Usma Khaled, the decision is consistent with other recent Supreme Court rulings,

allowing mass firings of federal employees.

...