Department of Education in Trump’s crosshairs, plan to abolish it being studied

4 Febbraio 2025

(Adnkronos) – The Trump administration is reportedly considering an executive order to dismantle the Department of Education. The Wall Street Journal writes, citing its own well-informed sources and referring to the measures that Elon Musk’s Department for Government Efficiency intends to adopt to reduce federal agencies and government personnel. Specifically, the executive order would strip the Department of Education of all functions not explicitly written into its statute and would move others to other departments. The ultimate goal, sources add, would be to draft a legislative proposal to abolish the Department. The details of the executive order and its timing are still being discussed by advisers, the sources said. 

Already on the campaign trail, among other things, Trump had promised to eliminate the Department, limit federal involvement in education, and give more authority to the states. Under the Biden administration, the Department of Education had come under fire from Republicans, particularly over student loans and protections against gender discrimination against the LGBTQ community. A source cited by the Wall Street Journal said that even before Trump’s inauguration, his transition team had drafted an executive order that would have instructed the education secretary to draw up a plan to eliminate the department and asked Congress to approve it. 

The complete abolition of the Department would, in fact, require an act of Congress. Already during his first term, Trump had tried, unsuccessfully, to merge the Departments of Education and Labor. This time Trump’s advisers could adopt the same approach used to dismantle the main functions of the US Agency for International Development, USAID. In recent days, Musk’s representatives have gained access to sensitive documents at the agency, shut down its website, deactivated email addresses, and told employees not to report to the office. 

Eliminating the Department of Education, or cutting its funding, could be politically risky, however. A recent Wall Street Journal poll found that 61% of registered voters oppose its elimination and that most Americans prefer to protect funding for education. The Department of Education was created in 1979 by then-President Jimmy Carter at the request of the National Education Association, the nation’s largest teachers’ union. In terms of personnel, it is the smallest of all cabinet-level agencies. Its core activities include providing grants for low-income students, regulating students with disabilities, and enforcing civil rights laws. 

Meanwhile, Trump has already signed executive orders to instruct the education secretary to develop plans to ”clean up schools” from what he has described as “radical indoctrination,” to expand school choice, and to combat anti-Semitism within universities. Analyzing these executive orders, Randi Weingarten, president of the American Federation of Teachers, said that what appears to be the case is that “the federal government is more involved, not less, in education.” 

At least 60 Department of Education employees, along with an unspecified number of supervisors, were suspended from work Friday night, said Brittany Holder, a spokeswoman for the American Federation of Government Employees, a union representing federal employees. Many federal employees had participated in voluntary diversity training or served on a community board, Holder added, quoted by the Wall Street Journal. A notice informed the affected employees that they had been placed on administrative leave with full pay and benefits, the newspaper said. 

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