In October 1979, Congress passed and President Jimmy Carter signed into law the Department of Education, consolidating several offices that had been spread throughout the federal government, most notably the old Department of Health, Education, and Welfare. (A new Department of Health and Human Services took the rest of that mission.) Pretty much ever since, Republican presidential candidates have paid lip service to ending it, arguing that education was a function for state and local governments.
It appears that President Trump is about to try to make good on the promise.
WSJ (“Draft of Trump Executive Order Aims to Eliminate Education Department“):
President Trump is expected to issue an executive order as soon as Thursday aimed at abolishing the Education Department, according to people briefed on the matter.
A draft of the order, viewed by The Wall Street Journal, directs Education Secretary Linda McMahon to “take all necessary steps to facilitate the closure of the Education Department” based on “the maximum extent appropriate and permitted by law.”
The order has been in the works since Trump’s transition. In early February, the Journal reported that administration officials were considering such a move.
“The experiment of controlling American education through Federal programs and dollars—and the unaccountable bureaucrats those programs and dollars support—has failed our children, our teachers, and our families,” the draft order reads. The draft viewed by the Journal was labeled as “pre-decisional,” suggesting it could change.
The White House didn’t respond to a request for comment.
McMahon referred to the coming moves in an email to staff Monday night, soon after she was confirmed by the Senate, saying she would “send education back to the states.” She said Trump and the American voters had “tasked us with accomplishing the elimination of the bureaucratic bloat here at the Education Department—a momentous final mission—quickly and responsibly.”
The phrase “the maximum extent appropriate and permitted by law” raises two obvious questions.
Fully unwinding the department would require a filibuster-proof, 60-vote majority in the Senate, legal experts have said. The major programs it administers—including money for students with disabilities and student loans—are codified in law and have significant political constituencies. The draft order doesn’t mention Congress.
“It’s hard to think of functions” of the department that aren’t statutorily required “in large part because most are, or are in service of those functions,” said Julia Martin, an education lawyer at the Bruman Group.
McMahon, during her confirmation hearing, said Trump wasn’t intending to cut federal programs but to make them more efficient. She said Congress would need to go along with scrapping the department.
The Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025, a conservative blueprint for a GOP administration, has laid out a detailed road map for closing the agency, which included placing the Education Department’s Office for Civil Rights in the Justice Department and the student-loan portfolio in the Treasury Department. It calls for phasing out a longstanding funding stream for schools based on how many low-income students they serve.
The Trump administration has already taken a series of steps to weaken the agency. It laid off probationary employees and offered others buyouts. It paused some of its civil rights enforcement work and canceled many grants and contracts related to research and teacher quality.
The administration has also used the agency’s civil-rights arm to attempt to root out antisemitism on university campuses, accommodations for transgender students, and diversity, equity and inclusion programs.
Some of those measures are clearly within the realm of presidential powers; others, likely not—at least as we’ve understood for the last 248 years.
As to “appropriate,” it’s certainly a debatable question. Public schools from K-PhD are mostly run by states and localities but there are all manner of Federal laws that they’re required to follow, not to mention all manner of Federal grants, loans, subsidies, and the like. Somebody has to administer all of that. And the bang for the buck seems reasonable in that regard:
With around 4,500 employees as of last year, the department is the smallest cabinet-level agency.
Further, the politics of this are questionable. Many commenters have noted that Trump has gone after programs and policies—foreign aid, trans girls and women in girls’ and women’s sports, and the like—that are largely unpopular.
Polls show most Americans are skeptical of eliminating the department, and Democrats have rallied in opposition to the idea.
Judging by their track record thus far, Congress is unlikely to do anything in the short term. So, we’ll test this, too, in the courts.
