Roving Periscope: Now, Trump plans to shut down US Department of Education!

Virendra Pandit

New Delhi: US President Donald Trump, who has time and again derided the Department of Education as “wasteful” and “polluted by liberal ideology” plans to shut down the department, the media reported on Thursday.

However, the dismantling of the US department is likely impossible without an act of US Congress, which created it in 1979 during the Jimmy Carter administration. It is a Cabinet-level department of the United States government, started in 1980.

President Trump’s order is unlikely to get Congressional approval or lead to real action, as its shutdown would need the support of at least 60 votes in the US Senate, while Republicans only have 53 seats.

Reports said he plans to sign an executive order on Thursday calling for scrapping the department, a White House official said, adding it advanced a campaign promise to eliminate an agency that’s been a longtime target of conservatives and Republicans as it is believed flooded by the Democrats and Liberals.

A White House report  said the order would direct Secretary Linda McMahon to take all necessary steps to facilitate the closure (of) the Department of Education and return education authority to the States, while ensuring the effective and uninterrupted delivery of services, programs, and benefits on which Americans rely.

The Trump administration has already been downsizing the agency through layoffs and program cuts. The department is working to cut in half its workforce and reduce the Office for Civil Rights and the Institute of Education Sciences, which gathers data on the nation’s academic progress.

Trump has long promised to scrap the department, calling it part of a bloated federal bureaucracy. “And one other thing I’ll be doing very early in the administration is closing up the Department of Education,” he said in September 2023.  He took the decision within two months after taking office on January 20.

On February 4, 2025, he reiterated his goal, saying of Secretary Linda McMahon “I want Linda to put herself out of a job.”

What could be the reasons behind shutting down a government department that oversees USD 268 billion in federal funding and handles key programs like student loans and special education? The answer lies in four major themes that have become central to President Trump’s political agenda:

• Fighting ‘wokeness’ in schools: The President and his supporters argue that public education is being overtaken by a “radical woke agenda,” including diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) initiatives, and policies supporting transgender students. White House spokesman Harrison Fields said the order “will empower parents, states and communities to take control and improve outcomes for all students.”
• Claims of Marxist indoctrination: Trump supporters claim that public education is part of a larger Marxist plot to indoctrinate students. He has issued orders aimed at combating what he calls “Radical Indoctrination in K-12 Schools” and “campus anti-Semitism”.
• School choice and parental rights: Trump’s focus on ‘parental rights’ is another key reason for the push. His administration supports school vouchers and Education Savings Accounts, allowing parents to use public funds for private or religious schools, or home-schooling. Critics argue this would weaken public schools by diverting resources away from them.  On January 29, Trump signed an order promoting “Educational Freedom and Educational Opportunity for Families,” encouraging alternatives to traditional public education.
• Cutting red tape and shrinking government: To Trump and his MAGA (Make America Great Again) supporters, the Education Department stands for too much government control and waste.

Despite making promises, however, Trump faces serious legal hurdles ahead. Closing the department without Congressional approval would likely face immediate lawsuits. Even his attempts to cut programs like DEI funding are already under legal challenge, such as a lawsuit filed on February 3.

The Department of Education  currently oversees vital programs like Title I (USD 18.4 billion for low-income schools), IDEA (USD 15.5 billion for special education), and the federal student loan system (USD 1.6 trillion in loans). While a senior administration official said these programs “will NOT be touched,” it’s unclear how the department could be shut down without disrupting them.

National Education Association President Becky Pringle warned that Trump’s actions “will hurt all students by sending class sizes soaring, cutting job training programs, making higher education more expensive, taking away special education services, and gutting student civil rights protections.”