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Trump Appears to Take First Steps Towards Dismantling Dept. of Education

Trump Appears to Take First Steps Towards Dismantling Dept. of Education

“preparing an executive order aimed at eventually closing the Education Department and, in the short term, dismantling it from within”

Trump is taking steps towards reform at the Department of Education, perhaps with the goal of dissolving it, a thing he talked about on the campaign trail last fall. This is something that conservatives have been talking about since the days of Ronald Reagan.

If Trump were to do this successfully, control over education would be returned to the states.

The Washington Post reports:

Trump preps order to dismantle Education Dept. as DOGE probes data

President Donald Trump is preparing an executive order aimed at eventually closing the Education Department and, in the short term, dismantling it from within, according to three people briefed on its contents.

The draft order acknowledges that only Congress can shut down the department and instead directs the agency to begin to diminish itself, these people said, speaking on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak publicly about internal issues.

That work is underway already. The new administration has been trying to reduce the workforce by putting scores of employees on administrative leave and pressuring staff to voluntarily quit.

And roughly 20 people with Elon Musk’s “Department of Government Efficiency,” known as DOGE, have begun working inside the Education Department, looking to cut spending and staff, according to three people familiar with the situation and records obtained by The Washington Post…

A White House official confirmed the White House is preparing for executive action later this month that will fulfill Trump’s campaign pledge to defund the department.

Peter Doocy of FOX News mentioned this on the air last night.

Politico provides a little more inside baseball on this:

It would direct the department to craft a plan to wind down its functions using its existing administrative authority. But the order was also expected to call for the agency to inventory a complex set of laws needed to delegate the department’s powers to other agencies and then close the department, an acknowledgment that some of conservatives’ biggest desires for change hinge on congressional approval. Such an order would launch a complex initiative. Some conservatives concede they currently lack enough support for legislation to close the department and farm its core functions out to other federal agencies…

According to a third person granted anonymity to discuss sensitive information, representatives from the so-called Department of Government Efficiency were working at Education Department headquarters Monday and seeking access to agency records.

A representative for DOGE did not respond to a request for comment.

Trump was clear that he intended to do this. I imagine many people on the left didn’t believe him or did not believe he would be able to do it.

If it looks like Trump is going to pull this off, I would expect a Kavanaugh level meltdown from Democrats and the media.

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TargaGTS | February 4, 2025 at 11:14 am

They’re working with the precision and reliability of a Swiss or German watch. Almost every day Trump is signing EOs from the Oval Office while he makes the media look like simpletons. I’m convinced that this methodic, relentless dismemberment of the Deep State has also served the purpose of firing shots across the bow of Senate republicans. Organized, deliberate and unrelenting Trump 2.0 is almost certainly why Patel, Kennedy, Hegseth & Gabbard have been/will be confirmed. Republicans are too afraid to cross him right now, particularly those who might stand for reelection.


     
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    Paula in reply to TargaGTS. | February 4, 2025 at 1:33 pm

    Trump has done so much the last two weeks it seems like two years. Democrat’s heads are spinning — half of them wondering what’s going on and the other half crying so hard they haven’t had time to wonder.

    When historians look back they will call this the “Wonder Years”.


 
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E Howard Hunt | February 4, 2025 at 11:31 am

Without an education department who will encourage children to mutilate their genitals? Who will teach white children to hate themselves? Who will make children yearn for a family with 5 daddies, a tranny and a personal security hog?


     
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    kshea in reply to E Howard Hunt. | February 4, 2025 at 11:38 am

    Hilarious!!! Sad but true. Thanks for the belly laugh this morning! And God Bless President Trump.


     
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    Milhouse in reply to E Howard Hunt. | February 4, 2025 at 10:50 pm

    The same people who’ve been doing it till now. The push has not come from the DOE. That has just come along for the ride, cheering and supporting the work that others far to its left have been doing. And those people would remain in place, because they don’t work for the fedgov so Trump can’t fire them.

    The damage is only starting to be reversed, but it will be a long process and may not succeed.


 
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Ghostrider | February 4, 2025 at 11:39 am

“…in the short term, dismantling it from within…”

This is the key driver of the action plan. Make the Department of Education a shell of its former self does not require Congressional approval. A reduction in workforce means less overhead in terms of occupancy and FTEs. decision making and tax revenues are reallocated to the states, At that point the DOE budget is drastically reduced. Whether it is abolished or permitted to remain it will only exist going forward as an abbreviated, diminished administrative entity.


 
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Joe-dallas | February 4, 2025 at 11:56 am

I agree with gutting the Dept of Ed, along with most every Fed govt agency.

That being said, these departments and agencies were created by laws passed by congress and signed into law by a president. therefore, Trump cant eliminate the agency by executive action.


     
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    BobM in reply to Joe-dallas. | February 4, 2025 at 12:22 pm

    Biden had no problem not spending money on border protection or any other legislated action he didn’t agree with. Congress can allocate the funding, but the administration can decline to spend it apparently.


       
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      Milhouse in reply to BobM. | February 4, 2025 at 10:54 pm

      No, it can’t decline to spend it. That’s long-established law. Biden did spend the money, every penny of it. He just didn’t spend it on the things he was supposed to. But he stayed within the letter of the appropriations, so Congress couldn’t ding him for it. Money for border security went for electronic measures and suchlike, which are border security, just not nearly as effective as a wall.


     
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    Rupert Smedley Hepplewhite in reply to Joe-dallas. | February 4, 2025 at 12:39 pm

    You are correct but with the momentum he has even RINOs are skittish about crossing Trump.


     
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    DaveGinOly in reply to Joe-dallas. | February 4, 2025 at 8:15 pm

    Trump can withdraw his delegation of authority to an agency or department. The unit will continue to exist, the employees will still be paid (those who aren’t RIF’d for there not being any work to do), but they won’t so much as be allowed to enter their offices nor log in to a government computer network.

    Congress can establish an agency or department. Congress can’t force a POTUS to delegate any of his authority to anyone in the agency or department.


       
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      Milhouse in reply to DaveGinOly. | February 4, 2025 at 10:56 pm

      The authority the DOE exercises is not Trump’s to delegate or not. It’s authority granted by Congress, and Congress says the Secretary shall do this, that, or the other.


 
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JohnSmith100 | February 4, 2025 at 12:34 pm

DOE has $79 billion budget, we will not save all of that. Still promising.


 
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BigRosieGreenbaum | February 4, 2025 at 12:46 pm

I think the meltdown will be greater than the Kavanaugh one and I hope the rinos are afraid of Trump and will cooperate. And the teachers union, what becomes of that?

What I would like to see is a breakdown of what power exactly Congress has given the Dept of Education. Not “What does it do?” but “What did Congress give them explicit authority to do?” And was it authority or a law demanding they do it?

Then you could do a breakdown of things that it might have appropriated to itself or interpreted, and you can shut all that down. Then you attack the harder part.

Again, I don’t want a more efficient gov’t, I want a smaller, less powerful gov’t. If you make it small enough, the efficiency matters much less.


     
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    jakebizlaw in reply to GWB. | February 4, 2025 at 1:18 pm

    Trump is taking the creeps out of mission creep!


       
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      henrybowman in reply to jakebizlaw. | February 4, 2025 at 11:30 pm

      Well, no.
      With one hand, he’s trying to dismantle the DOE.
      With the other hand, he has DOE battling antisemitism at colleges.
      Playing 4D chess with both hands may tie you in knots.


     
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    stevewhitemd in reply to GWB. | February 4, 2025 at 2:33 pm

    Further: let’s use this exact thought on EVERY agency, bureau, department and center.

    “What did Congress give you explicit authority to do?” is a great ice-breaker in a meeting with any of their leaders. Follow with, “Let’s purge all the regulations and pages in the Federal Register that your agency has filed that are NOT based on that explicit authority.”

    Just do that and you’re a long ways down the road to a smaller, less powerful federal government that then has a fighting chance to succeed in its core missions.


       
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      Milhouse in reply to stevewhitemd. | February 4, 2025 at 11:00 pm

      All those regulations are based on statutory authority. That’s the only source of the executive’s authority to regulate in the first place.


         
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        henrybowman in reply to Milhouse. | February 4, 2025 at 11:32 pm

        Funny… the courts, including SCOTUS, have struck down many a regulation for exceeding delegated authority. Imagine how many remaining invalid ones they have not had brought before them.


           
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          Milhouse in reply to henrybowman. | February 5, 2025 at 3:55 am

          Not that many have been struck down. Now that Chevron is gone there will probably be more. But that’s not the point. The point is that regulations are always based on statutory authority granted by Congress, not on unilateral executive action. Where a regulation is inconsistent with that authority it is indeed struck down.


     
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    DaveGinOly in reply to GWB. | February 4, 2025 at 8:18 pm

    Congress has no authority to bestow executive authority to any of its creations-it has no executive authority to lend. They can only authorize the creation of the office. Only the POTUS has executive authority, per Article II, and only he can delegate that authority to an agency or department to enervate it.


       
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      Milhouse in reply to DaveGinOly. | February 4, 2025 at 11:02 pm

      The president has no authority to issue regulations or to do almost any of the things the executive actually does in his name. Congress grants all of that. And it directs which secretary shall do it.


         
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        Dean Robinson in reply to Milhouse. | February 7, 2025 at 8:11 am

        Follow that argument to its conclusion and you have removed the Executive Branch of government. Congress establishes, funds and runs things as they see fit, and the President is simply a figurehead with no discretionary authority. Governance by committee results, and we all know how effective that is.


 
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smalltownoklahoman | February 4, 2025 at 12:51 pm

Shrinking and eventually getting rid of the Dept of Ed would be huge. And once education is back in the control of individual states we should soon start seeing which ones really care about educating children.


     
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    OwenKellogg-Engineer in reply to smalltownoklahoman. | February 4, 2025 at 1:03 pm

    Shrink it down to where its only function is to administer block grants to the states, and have the power to turn off the spigot when the state education bureaucrats do stupid woke leftist crap, rather than educating their students appropriately.

      I would like to see the DOE also serve as a “clearing house” for educational ideas that work.

      There are some (a few) districts / cities / towns that are actually reaching and teaching kids.

      Let the ideas that work be disseminated through the states / cities / towns as well as documenting the ideas and methods that don’t work.

      We shouldn’t keep paying for ideas that don’t work but supporting ideas and methods that do work.


         
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        DaveGinOly in reply to gitarcarver. | February 4, 2025 at 8:24 pm

        There are already places where the States can see what works and what doesn’t – their fellow States. Each State was supposed to be a nominally sovereign experiment in governance, education, law, etc. When the feds started imposing standards and requirements on everything, making each State toe a line, those separate experiments stopped and the entire country became one big experiment. The problem is that when the feds make things worse, there are no good examples to point to, because all of the States have been similarly wrecked by one-size-fits-all government.

          The states are places where they can see what works and what doesn’t. The issue is communicating that information across the country.

          One central depository is better than 50.

          I am not for any central regulation or standards and frankly, that would defeat the purpose.

          I would suggest something like a school board that is the middle of farm country. They “report” what is working and isn’t working in education given their special needs of kids on farms. That way another another school district in farm country can log in, see what the other state has done, and go from there.

          Another example is inner city schools where we keep trying the same things hundreds of times in various states and it isn’t working. But school districts are spending big money to find that out on their own.

          A clearing house of data and plans could help schools know what works and what doesn’t in schools with the same demographics, location, economic situations, etc.

          The DOE would not have any input as to what is going on. In essence, they would be a “library” for schools.

          Such as system would also help defeat the insidious influence of the NEA. It would also allow charter schools that are successful to say what is working for them.


           
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          artichoke in reply to DaveGinOly. | February 5, 2025 at 4:45 pm

          “What works” is up to interpretation. A left wing city would say it’s something than what I would say. I will not try to impose standards on other people’s kids, because then I am responsible for getting them to that level. That’s for their own parents, their own state to do.

          Let each state fight it out, and don’t expect a lot of cross-fertilization between lefty and righty states. Raise your kids in a state you feel best about all things considered.

          Other people’s kids are not my problem, beyond my responsibility not to hurt them. If I choose to do more, it’s my generosity not my responsibility.


     
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    AF_Chief_Master_Sgt in reply to smalltownoklahoman. | February 4, 2025 at 2:53 pm

    You act like it’s a bad thing to line the pockets of Democrat sycophants through money laundering!

    /s

> The supposed best ratio of uni teaching staff to admin staff is 3:1.
In US unis it’s commonly 1:3.
Many admins only there to meet DOE regs.

> Under the leadership of our DOE, tuition costs have outpaced inflation for decades, whilst RTI for the students has shrunk.

> Some prestigious Unis with huge endowments, like (say) Harvard could theoretically enroll the majority of their student bodies tuition free on the interest alone. A not for profit charity that doesn’t charity can be forced to start charity-ing. Why should (say) Harvard be held to a lesser standard?

> Unis have no “skin in the game”.
Once you graduate, if you can’t get a good job or pay off your student debt, it’s NMJ. The student and possibly govt get screwed.
If Unis had to serve as co-signers on their student loans, they wouldn’t have questionable students enroll in questionable degree programs where they benefit but the students don’t.

> FGS fix pre-college education. One definition of insanity is doing the same stupid over and over whilst expecting THIS TIME it’ll work. Many Public grade and high schools with better funding that other local private alternatives still fail at Job One, teach the kids. So it’s not the funding, it’s how it’s used.

> The worst “racist” barrier to many minority students flourishing isn’t something nebulous like “endemic racism” it’s toxic schools that either fail to graduate them or churn out functionally illiterate “graduates”. This is happening in school distracts where the teachers, the principals, the admins, the school boards, and the local govt are majority minority.

> The job of public schools should be to teach kids what they need to adult, not to indoctrinate the latest political fad, not help unions funnel donations to buy pols, not even provide job security to teachers.
Teach The Kids.
If you can’t do that, what’s the point?
If you can’t do that, stop fighting working alternatives like charter, for-profit, or home schooling even when they outperform public schools.
Teach The Kids.


     
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    GWB in reply to BobM. | February 4, 2025 at 2:09 pm

    If Unis had to serve as co-signers on their student loans
    Or, just don’t co-sign anything and get the gov’t out of it. If they want to take out a loan, they can darn well make the decision to take a course of study that can repay it. Now, if you put the people loaning the money (NOT the gov’t) on the hook for it, they might start asking things like “Whatcha studying, Gomer? How do you plan on paying back this loan with a job in the industrial service industry (janitors)?”

    All of which goes to: NOT every child must go to college. We’ve turned college into the end goal.

    Teach The Kids.
    Someone really needs to do a filk of Another Brick In The Wall with that as the cri de coeur at the end, replacing “Beat the kids.”


     
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    artichoke in reply to BobM. | February 4, 2025 at 3:37 pm

    Regarding college tuition, it’s the greatest wealth transfer scam in the country. What other business gets to charge some students $100,000 per year tuition room and board, and give all that to other students free, even with a stipend? Sometimes for academic reasons, but more often that relates to nonacademic factors like family income.

    Giving it to some students free seems unfair. Making other students subsidize their classmates they didn’t choose (and often won’t respect academically — full-ride scholarship kids are often poor academic performers) is a kick in the teeth.

    The current FAFSA process is a disaster, even worse than the last one. Dept. of Education should stop providing it.

    With respect to your “racist” bullet point, Carl Jackson, who is guest hosting on the Dennis Prager, made the point that the poor education in these groups is purposeful. The purpose is to keep them in perpetual victimhood. If they were educated the students could avoid being victims.


 
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gonzotx | February 4, 2025 at 1:03 pm

I dont think you can actually trust the teachers in the classroom

Or the administrators

This is generational and will take decades to turn around


 
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Ironclaw | February 4, 2025 at 1:04 pm

What would be nice is not having to pay to educate my kids twice. Once for the public option that is, to be kind, inadequate to the task in most cases. Then once again for the education where they actually learn the things that help them prepare for life and to think for themselves.


     
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    artichoke in reply to Ironclaw. | February 4, 2025 at 3:42 pm

    We put our kids in the local public school. It was declining already due to increased percentage of illegal alien kids, who are academically behind and may be incompetent relative to grade level in Spanish, let alone English. Tremendously expensive to educate these kids, their parents NEVER pay property taxes, then they get affirmative action in college admission. Really a kick in the teeth, but a lot of people are in denial or it’s un-PC to say that.

    Fortunately PC seems to be reversing. But the district has gotten worse in the past 8 years and we might not send the kids there in its current state, or even move to this neighborhood knowing the condition of the public schools. Parents say they’ve given up and are moving their kids out to private schools.

    Anyway if Trump moves some of the illegal alien families out, other families will have to rethink their lawn service plans, but our schools will improve. Now if only we could get a superintendent willing to CUT the budget rather than grow it as fast as possible for a declining student population …


 
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gonzotx | February 4, 2025 at 1:08 pm

> FGS fix pre-college education. One definition of insanity is doing the same stupid over and over whilst expecting THIS TIME it’ll work. Many Public grade and high schools with better funding that other local private alternatives still fail at Job One, teach the kids. So it’s not the funding, it’s how it’s used.”

My grandkids go to private religious school and the parents are not millionaires so there is much lacking that the public schools have access to with their unending taxpayer monies

I remember one year our school system Round Rock ISD had 25,000.000 excess, what did they do?
They built a 25 million dollar school for drop outs and pregnant girls

Couldn’t believe it.

I’m still pissed 20 years later


 
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CommoChief | February 4, 2025 at 1:14 pm

Good first steps towards winding down Dept ED. Gonna take time along with vast Public support to generate the Congressional support to do the job fully.


 
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henrybowman | February 4, 2025 at 1:52 pm

In other news, Hawaii’s state health system is investigating a mysterious new malady that placed 26 judges in comas after brief but painful convulsive episodes.

Every other President has been afraid of the bureaucracy or complicit. Trump should spend his whole entire term reforming or abolishing every agency and department.


 
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The Gentle Grizzly | February 4, 2025 at 2:34 pm

If only Jimmuh could have lived another few months to see his payoff to the NEA destroyed.

Man, these last two weeks have been one long year.


 
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Milhouse | February 4, 2025 at 10:16 pm

If Trump were to do this successfully, control over education would be returned to the states.

This is not true.

The Department should be closed down; that has been a Republican goal since it was first established under the Carter administration, and if Trump finally does it it would be a very good thing.

But the effect would merely be symbolic. It would represent a beginning on rolling back the expansion of the federal government under Democrat administrations going back to the New Deal. But it would have no effect on the degree of federal control of education.

The Department’s establishment did not increase federal control of education at all, so closing it would not decrease that control.

Many of us are old enough to remember when Education was split from the Department of Health, Education, and Welfare, and made its own department. And we remember that all the federal laws concerning education, primarily Title 9, remained exactly as they were. The change was purely symbolic. If the department were to be closed those laws would have to be administered by some other department, just as they were by HEW. Whichever department that task ended up with would be the new HEW, and would do all the same things that the current DOE does.

If Congress wants to end federal control of education it has to repeal those laws; and if it were to do so federal control would be ended even if the department were to remain.


 
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Milhouse | February 4, 2025 at 10:19 pm

But the order was also expected to call for the agency to inventory a complex set of laws needed to delegate the department’s powers to other agencies and then close the department

Exactly. That is what would be required in order to close the department. And that means federal control would remain the same.

That’s not a reason not to do it. But let’s not pretend doing it will achieve more than a symbolic win.


 
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Voco Veritas | February 5, 2025 at 11:45 am

Like many of his actions, dismantling the DoE is a good start, but the follow through will determine whether the ideologues in control at federal, state, and city level will be entirely and permanently removed from power, which is essential for tis to succeed. All vestiges of marxist ideology MUST be eradicated from America.


 
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chaggard | February 5, 2025 at 1:11 pm

Joseph Sobran — ‘In 100 years, we have gone from teaching Latin and Greek in high school to teaching remedial English in college.’


 
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CaptTee | February 5, 2025 at 3:35 pm

To anyone who thinks we need a Federal Department of Education:

How many full-time people does it take to send checks to 50 State Departments of Education and a few territories’ departments?

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