The Trump administration on Tuesday slashed staff at the Department of Education – firing roughly 1,300 staff – as a part of its long-planned effort to eliminate the company totally. The transfer leaves the division with 2,183 employees, down from greater than 4,000 in the beginning of the 12 months.
The cuts additionally comply with latest leaks that President Donald Trump was planning to sign an executive order calling for the division’s dismantling, primarily based on drafts first obtained by The Wall Street Journal.
Though the president has broad executive authority, there are lots of issues he can not order by himself. And a type of is the dismantling of a Cabinet agency created by law. However he appears decided to hole the company out.
As an education expert, who has written and spoken widely on the push to denationalise U.S. academic providers, I see this newest effort as a residual marketing campaign promise to abolish the division. It’s additionally a part of the wave of executive actions creating authorized and coverage uncertainty round funding for youngsters in native faculties and communities.
The draft order, in 2 elements
On the floor, a requirement to finish the Schooling Division is nothing new.
Trump’s campaign platform included a name to abolish the division. It’s a name that actually started Project 2025’s training chapter as effectively.
What’s completely different now’s Trump’s obvious technique of doing what he can to remove the division on his own authority whereas in search of the congressional approval he legally wants.
The drafted new order has two elements that comply with this logic.
The primary directs Education Secretary Linda McMahon to create a plan for eliminating regardless of the administration can by itself. Underneath that part, McMahon is to pay particular consideration to any applications that may fall afoul of the administration’s earlier orders on diversity, equity and inclusion – or DEI – initiatives.
The second half notes that these actions ought to comply with present legislation and administrative steerage. That quantities to an assertion of authority for Trump’s Office of Management and Budget.
Principally, it seems Trump is reminding everybody that he controls the Division of Schooling’s operational finances. On the identical time, I imagine he’s implicitly calling on Congress to complete McMahon’s job by eradicating any lingering authorized obstacles to the company’s remaining dismantling.
Whether or not Congress will accomplish that is only speculative, particularly within the present political surroundings.
In 2023, a bipartisan majority of U.S. Home members voted down a proposal to eliminate the Education Department. However Joe Biden was president then. He virtually actually would have vetoed any such invoice that handed anyway.
It’s a special calculus to ask what the Home would do beneath stress from Trump. However even now, the Senate additionally will get its say. And it might take 60 votes to interrupt any Democratic-led filibuster and remove the division.
A ‘remaining mission’
So, in a single sense, a Trump order would simply reinforce what he’s already performed: gut agency staff and halt activity, whereas calling on Congress to complete the job.
However that brings the main target again to the primary a part of the order: directing the brand new training secretary to establish locations within the division Trump can reduce on his personal – or a minimum of switch to different companies.
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As the March 11 mass layoffs show, it’s not even clear such a plan is required for McMahon to attempt to start dismantling the company.
Even earlier than these cuts, by means of Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency, the administration all but froze a key piece of the Schooling Division: the Institute for Education Sciences, its nonpartisan analysis arm.
And on her first full day on the job, McMahon despatched a directive to division staff calling the dismantling of their company a “final mission.” To that finish, the administration may resolve to freeze hiring and a few funding applications inside the division.
The Trump administration tried a model of this with the federal Head Start program, which helps low-income households put together their pre-Okay youngsters for varsity. However it rescinded that plan in January alongside a pause on extra basic spending freezes throughout the federal authorities.
The March layoffs are telegraphing an excessive transfer: a wholesale decimation of the Schooling Division, as Musk’s crew did to the U.S. Company for Worldwide Improvement. That motion effectively shut down most of USAID, with a plan to accommodate what stays beneath the State Division.
Authorized and coverage uncertainty
Whether or not any such actions are authorized, even beneath a Trump govt order, is one other query.
They may all be challenged in court docket, including to the flurry of lawsuits towards the administration, lots of which have prompted federal judges to pause Musk’s efforts specifically.
Then the query turns into whether or not Trump’s crew will even take heed to any judicial calls for to cease no matter plans they draw up for the Schooling Division. The administration is openly questioning such judicial authority. And in a minimum of one occasion – when ordered to release billions of dollars in federal grants – it has refused to conform.
In different phrases, a Trump govt order to dismantle the Schooling Division will create appreciable authorized and coverage uncertainty.
It’s well-known that Trump and allies wish to remove the division and that he can not accomplish that legally with out Congress.
The draft govt order appears to point that the Trump administration acknowledges those limitations – a minimum of formally. However the draft order and the division’s mass layoffs elevate the likelihood that Trump would possibly proceed anyway.
About the one factor clear in the meanwhile is that billions of dollars in public academic applications throughout the nation are at stake within the end result of those choices.
And the extent to which Trump’s newest directive has actual penalties for that funding shall be decided by the extent to which Congress voluntarily surrenders its personal duty and authority on this area.
