Trump mulling future of Education Department
By: Zachary Schermele
and Josy Garrison
USA Today
WASHINGTON - President Donald Trump is considering steps to dismantle the U.S. Department of Education, with potential executive action coming as early as this month. [02/2025]
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A White House official told USA Today that Trump plans to fulfill a campaign promise by reevaluating the future of the agency. That effort includes defending it, according to Reuters. On the campaign trail, Trump pledged to completely close the Department.
..... The Education Department has no say in school curriculum. It administers billions of dollars to schools each year and plays a major role in shielding students for discrimination. It also protects them form predatory colleges and holds higher education institutions accountable for ensuring there lies degrees provide a good return on investment.
..... Trump does not have the authority to abolish the agency by executive order. But experts told USA Today he might still direct the education secretary to come up with plans to weaken its functions.
..... While the Cabinet-level position of education secretary isn't yet f filled, that responsibility could fall to the acting secretary Denise Carter, who led the federal student aid office during the Biden administration. Linda McMahon,a Trump donor whom the president nominated to lead the agency he promised to close, hasn't secure a date for a Senate confirmation hearing because of delays in processing her paperwork.
..... Shuttering a federal agency requires passing laws legislation in Congress, which Trump's directive could urge lawmakers to do.
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Two Republican representatives reintroduced bills to do away with the department in January. [2025] One of them, Representative Thomas Massie, R-Kentucky, proposed the same bill during the first Trump administration.
..... Unelected bureaucrats in Washington, D.C., should to be in charge of our children's intellectual and moral development," Massie said in a news release. "States and local communities are best positioned to shape curricular that meet the needs of their students."
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But the GOP has a slim majority on Capitol Hill, and galvanizing support for such a controversial measure wouldn't be easy. Republicans don't appear to have the votes, thorough that could change, according to Karen McCarthy, vice president of public policy and federal relation at the national Association of Student Financial Aid Administration.
..... Moreover, the department oversees nearly $2 trillion in federal student loans, a figure on par with some of the biggest banks. Moving those funds to a different agency such as the Treasury Department, which Republicans have proposed, would be no small feat, McCarthy said.
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Just two weeks into the second Trump administration, the agency has already shifted direction politically in a big way. it has begun investigating high schools with gender-neutral bathrooms, advocates for the school choice movement and briefly frightened students with the prospect of a massive freeze on federal aid. The administration has also frozen policies, including regulations about student loan relief and college oversight.
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On January 31, [2025] at least 60 Department of Education officials were put on paid administrative leave, their union said, due to Trump's executive order banning diversity, equity and inclusion programs in the federal government.
Contributing: Fernando Ervantes Jr. and Terry Collins, USA Today