President Donald Trump is moving forward with plans to abolish the Department of Education.
Trump is expected to sign an executive order following through on a campaign promise to disband the department, claiming on the campaign trail that the department was full of “radicals, zealots and Marxists.”
A White House fact sheet states that the move will “turn over education to families instead of bureaucracies.”
The directive comes after the Senate voted to confirm Linda McMahon, former CEO of World Wrestling Entertainment (WWE), to lead the agency March 3. McMahon issued a memo later that day outlining her support for the Trump administration’s plans for the department and that she would oversee a “new era of accountability” in the agency’s final days.
“The reality of our education system is stark, and the American people have elected President Trump to make significant changes in Washington,” McMahon said in the March 3 memo. “Our job is to respect the will of the American people and the President they elected, who has tasked us with accomplishing the elimination of bureaucratic bloat here at the Department of Education — a momentous final mission — quickly and responsibly.”
Following reports that Trump planned to sign the executive order, the American Federation of Teachers issued a statement imploring Congress to oppose the executive order and will not “abdicate its responsibility to all children, students and working families, who deserve a future full of promise and possibility, not diminished dreams.”
The teacher’s union pointed to an NPR/PBS News/Marist Poll conducted in February that found more than 60% of Americans “strongly oppose” eradicating the agency.
“The Department of Education, and the laws it is supposed to execute, has one major purpose: to level the playing field and fill opportunity gaps to help every child in America succeed,” the American Federation of Teachers President Randi Weingarten said in a statement March 5. “Trying to abolish it — which, by the way, only Congress can do — sends a message that the president doesn’t care about opportunity for all kids. Maybe he cares about it for his own kids or his friends’ kids or his donors’ kids — but not all kids.”
Despite Trump’s order, the president needs Congress to sign off on eradicating the agency, under Article II of the U.S. Constitution. Such a measure would require 60 votes to pass in the Senate, and there are only 53 Republicans currently.
Still, there is some appetite in Congress to eliminate the department. For example, Rep. Thomas Massie, R-Ky., introduced a measure Jan. 31 to nix the Department of Education by December 2026.
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“Unelected bureaucrats in Washington, D.C. should not be in charge of our children’s intellectual and moral development,” Massie said in a Jan. 31 statement. “States and local communities are best positioned to shape curricula that meet the needs of their students. Schools should be accountable.”
Trump told reporters Feb. 4 that even though he’d nominated McMahon to lead the Department of Education, he eventually wanted her to lose her job.
“What I want to do is let the states run schools,” Trump said Feb. 4. “I believe strongly in school choice. But in addition to that, I want the states to run schools, and I want Linda to put herself out of a job.”
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White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt also signaled that the American people could count on Trump to move forward with such plans to disband the department.
“President Trump campaigned on that promise, and I think the American people can expect him to deliver on it,” Leavitt told Stuart Varney on “Varney & Co.” Feb. 4.
The Department of Education, established in 1980, seeks to improve coordination of federal education programs and support state and local school systems, according to its website. The agency received a budget of $79.1 billion in fiscal year 2024.
Trump said at a rally in September 2024 that he wanted to reduce the “government education swamp and stop the abuse of your taxpayer dollars to indoctrinate America’s youth with all sorts of things that you don’t want to have our youth hearing.”
Critics of the Department of Education also have pointed to the “Nation’s Report Card,” the 2024 National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) released every two years, published Jan. 27. The exam tests fourth and eighth-grade students, and found almost stagnant math scores for eighth-graders in comparison to 2022, and reading scores dropped 2 points at both grade levels.
“In report card language, what was a D- is now an F,” former Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos wrote in a Feb. 5 op-ed for Fox News Digital.
As a result, the U.S. needs a “complete reset” that prioritizes students, she said. That starts with shuttering the Department of Education, an agency that has focused more on diversity, equity and inclusion mandates than the foundations of education, she said.
Meanwhile, Democrats pressed the Department of Education for more information about its future in February amid concerns that the Trump administration would shutter the agency.
“We will not stand by and allow this to happen to the nation’s students, parents, borrowers, educators, and communities,” the lawmakers wrote in a letter to Acting Secretary of Education Denise Carter Feb. 5. “Congress created the Department to ensure all students in America have equal access to a high-quality education and that their civil rights are protected no matter their zip code.”
The Associated Press and Fox News’ Kayla Bailey contributed to this report. This is a breaking story, check back for updates.
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