Trump moved to abolish the Education Department: What comes next

President Donald Trump on Thursday signed an Executive Order directing Education Secretary Linda McMahon to take the steps necessary to close the Department of Education, taking a major step toward fulfilling a longstanding ambition of the GOP. But the order only starts the process, which will ultimately need an act of Congress to complete.

“People have wanted to do this for many, many years, for many, many decades, and I don't know, no president ever got around to doing it, but I'm getting around to doing it,” he said. “So thank you very much.”

Ahead of the signing, an administration official who declined to be identified confirmed to Just the News that it would further require programs that receive the remainder of DOE funding to refrain from supporting gender ideology or diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI). The order will not affect outstanding student loans or students covered under the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA).

Legislative steps

While Trump can effectively hollow out the DOE to the point that exists merely on paper, he cannot formally abolish it without congressional approval. Speaking on the “John Solomon Reports” podcast this month, New Civil Liberties Alliance (NCLA) President Mark Chenoweth said that if Trump’s “trying to, for example, shut down the Department of Education without a vote of Congress, he just doesn't have that power to go that far unilaterally.”

Trump appears to already have a degree of support for finalizing the department’s end within Congress, including in the upper chamber. “There's a proposal in Congress right now to do just that by Sen. Mike Rounds, R-S.D., called the "Returning Education to Our States Act", and it blocked grants using the Treasury Department — the money back to the States,” said American Culture Project Senior Fellow Corey DeAngelis this month on the “Furthermore with Amanda Head” podcast. 

That legislation formally abolishes the DOE and transfers the Federal Pell Grant Program, the Federal Family Education Loan Program, the William D. Ford Federal Direct Loan Program, the Federal Perkins Loan Program, and several others to the Treasury.

“If you're wasting less of that funding on useless bureaucrats pushing paper in DC, then you'll have more of it within your state to go into the classroom, to spend on education,” DeAngelis said. “You'll have more local control. You'll have a constitutional involvement in education, which is at the state level, not at the federal government level, and everybody [would be] better off.”

On the House side, Rep. Thomas Massie, R-Ky., a sometimes Trump adversary, urged Congress to lend its complete support for the effort. “Bravo! Congress should support President Trump’s bold agenda by passing my bill, HR 899 to Abolish the Department of Education,” he posted. “We could also use recisions [sic] and the budget reconciliation process, which only require 51 votes in the Senate, to back him up.”

Half done is well begun

Prior to Trump’s signing of the executive order, McMahon had already moved to drastically cut the department’s staff, slashing personnel by nearly 50%, saying the reduction in force reflects the Department of Education’s commitment to efficiency, accountability, and ensuring that resources are directed where they matter most: to students, parents, and teachers.”

All of the affected employees will be placed on administrative leave effective March 21. The move has DeAngelis excited, viewing it as a jumping off point for the DOE’s full elimination.

“Hopefully Linda McMahon can body slam that unconstitutional department once and for all, and if not like what she's currently doing, she can give [it] a death by 1,000 cuts,” DeAngelis said. “So this is a great start. And why did it have 4,400 useless bureaucrat employees there to begin with? If you abolish it altogether, you'll have more money for education because you'll send it back to the States.”

Education moving forward

“Looks like we're heading towards finally doing what many of us have wanted to do, and that's to send the education issue back to the states and dissolve the Department of Education,” Rep. Marlon Stutzman, R-Ind., said on the “Just the News, No Noise” television show.

“We want to return our students to the states, where just some of the governors here are so happy about this,” Trump said at the signing. “They want education to come back to them, to come back to the States, and they're going to do a phenomenal job.”

“Returning education to the states” will likely mean not just the end of the federal financing schemes, but DOE mandates that have often run afoul of parental rights and pressured schools to allocate resources towards compliance. Some reform advocates with sway in the conservative movement advocate for localizing education to the maximum extent possible.

“We spend about $20,000 per student per year in our government schools, which is about 52% higher than the average private school tuition in this country,” DeAngelis said. “We should abolish the department, but we should also go to the state and local levels and give that money to the parents. That's the most local form of control that we have. Parents controlling the education and upbringing of their own children.”

There appears to be broader momentum toward a general push away from public education more broadly. DeAngelis pointed to the growing school choice movement in the state of Texas and other regions to allow the use of taxpayer funds for parents to send children to private schools or homeschool. At present, 15 states offer at least one, universally available K-12 school choice program, according to Education Week.

“My home state of Texas will be the 16th state to go all in on school choice,” DeAngelis insisted. “We have the votes. I'm here in Austin. We had a hearing on the school choice bill yesterday, and they have 76 co-sponsors in the House. You need 76 votes to pass a bill in the Texas House, and a similar proposal already passed the Texas Senate.”

Funding as a weapon

Whether they remain in the purview of the DOE or not, several programs such as federal student loans and outstanding grants present a form of leverage for the administration to push its decentralization and reform efforts, even at the collegiate level.

“President Trump, on January 20th and 21st, he signed executive orders, one ending DEI in federal programs, federally supported programs,” Dr. Carol Swain said on the “Just the News, No Noise” television show.

“The second one ended 60 years of affirmative action. He overturned Johnson's 1965 executive order instituting race-based affirmative action, and so right now, the colleges and universities are on weak grounds,” Swain continued. “They can engage in what they may see as civil disobedience. Let them go ahead and continue to do what they're doing and trying to keep it under the radar. Some of them have been openly defiant. They will pay the consequences.”

Independent of DEI, Trump has moved to pull funding from universities that fail to comply with his executive orders, including as part of a crackdown on antisemitism on college campuses. At Columbia University, for instance, Trump has vowed to cancel up to $400 million in grants over what he called "the school’s continued inaction in the face of persistent harassment of Jewish students."