President Donald Trump wants to eliminate the federal Department of Education, but that’s not to say he won’t use it while it’s still around.
“We’re going to shut it down and shut it down as quickly as possible,” Trump said at a White House signing ceremony on Thursday with a host of GOP governors in attendance. “It’s doing us no good.”
Trump has already cut the agency’s workforce in half, reducing it from roughly 4,200 to 2,100 employees through a combination of layoffs and deferred resignations.
Despite the president’s pledge to gut the department, the White House nonetheless clarified that the agency will continue to exist, albeit “much smaller,” press secretary Karoline Leavitt said.
Leavitt initially said that functions like Pell Grants and student loans “will remain” under the Education Department’s purview, though Trump announced Friday that student loans will be handled by the Small Business Administration instead.
But Trump is still doing a lot with the slimmed-down Education Department, regardless of his pledge to shut it down.
The Trump Education Department is investigating colleges over alleged race-based programming, warning schools that they must do better in fighting antisemitism, launching a portal for parents and students to report race- or sex-based discrimination, and making an example out of Columbia University by canceling $400 million in grants over its handling of pro-Palestinian protests.
Those actions and others outline an aggressive strategy for Trump to utilize a department he’s nominally trying to shut down.
Race-based programming
Just a week ago, the department announced it was investigating 45 colleges, including some of the nation’s most prestigious institutions, over their alleged refusal to end racial preferences in Ph.D. programming.
It sent notice to each of the institutions that they might be violating Title VI of the Civil Rights Act by partnering with “The PhD Project,” an organization that gives doctoral students insight and networking opportunities toward obtaining a Ph.D. but limits eligibility based on race. The investigations signal an aggressive role for the department even as Trump pledges to cut it.
While schools were given a March 31 deadline to detail their relationship with the organization, several colleges have already moved to cut ties with The PhD Project, wary of running afoul of Trump.
The PhD Project released a statement saying its vision is to “create a broader talent pipeline of current and future business leaders” while clarifying that its membership application is now open to anyone. Even if unwittingly, that stance would bring the program into compliance with Trump’s anti-DEI push.
Tiffany Justice, a co-founder of Moms for Liberty, was present at Trump’s executive order signing. She argues that while civil rights enforcement could be handled more effectively at other agencies, such as the Department of Justice, it should be used by the Education Department while it exists “to protect the rights of American citizens.”
Cutting funding for individual schools
Trump is also cutting funding for individual schools, another way he is using the department to advance his policy goals.
Columbia, a high-profile Ivy League school located in New York City, saw $400 million in federal grants cut after portions of the school were taken over by anti-Israel protesters last spring. That move fulfilled a Trump campaign promise to remove funding from schools that fail to take action against antisemitism.
The Columbia cuts likely got the attention of other schools across the country, almost all of which rely on federal funding and will not want to do anything that threatens it. Further signaling its focus on antisemitism, the Education Department’s Office for Civil Rights issued warnings to 60 colleges and universities that there would be consequences if they failed to protect Jewish students on their respective campuses.
A Columbia University spokesperson told the Washington Examiner earlier this month that the school is working with the federal government to restore its funding.
Though private, Columbia holds $5 billion in federal grant commitments, money it will want to keep flowing, giving the Trump administration significant leverage to force compliance with its policy goals.
Trump hit another Ivy League school, the University of Pennsylvania, with a $175 million funding pause over its policy on transgender athletes, even though the school is his alma mater.
The Trump administration is already mixing its efforts through various agencies as it looks toward a post-Education Department future. The move to cut Columbia’s funding was a collaboration between the Department of Education and the Departments of Justice, Health and Human Services, and the General Services Administration, which could make it easier to continue those efforts if the Education Department was no more.
Anti-DEI portal
Another way the streamlined Education Department is being utilized is through an anti-DEI portal the Trump Education Department launched in late February. The portal, which can be found at EndDEI.Ed.Gov, reads, “Schools should be focused on learning.”
Reports submitted through the portal will help the Education Department identify areas for investigation.
The portal was launched just before a Feb. 28 deadline that the Trump administration set for K-12 schools to end DEI practices or run the risk of losing federal funding.
“The U.S. Department of Education is committed to ensuring all students have access to meaningful learning free of divisive ideologies and indoctrination,” the portal reads. “This submission form is an outlet for students, parents, teachers, and the broader community to report illegal discriminatory practices at institutions of learning. The Department of Education will utilize community submissions to identify potential areas for investigation.”
Those investigations will presumably be handled out of the Education Department for now, but theoretically could be handled at the Justice Department in the future.
Similar moves have been made in the past both at the federal and state levels. Gov. Glenn Youngkin (R-VA) set up a “divisive concepts” tip line soon after taking office in 2022 after winning an upset victory by campaigning on support for parents rights in education and opposition to critical race theory.
In the waning days of the first Trump administration, it set up a campus free speech complaint tip line as a way for students to file free speech complaints. That effort was scuttled by the Biden administration, but it appears this one will remain even as Trump moves to shut down the Education Department.
Back to basics
“We need to get back to the basics of public education,” Justice said. “That means less money spent in Washington and more to local public school systems.”
That’s a common view on the political Right, and Education Secretary Linda McMahon has said as much herself, arguing that a shuttered Education Department will mean education policy is set closer to the students and parents it serves.
“Better education is closest to the kids, with parents, with local superintendents, with local school boards,” McMahon said on Fox News’s The Ingraham Angle. “I think we’ll see our scores go up with our students when we can educate them with parental input as well.”
Trump has been promising for years to send education “back to the states,” empowering each state’s department or agency that oversees public education.
“We’ll be able to cut [federal spending on] education in half and get much better education in some of the states,” Trump said last June in Philadelphia. “We’ll have the best education anywhere in the world.”
Trump noted that the United States spends more per pupil than any other country, yet “we’re at the bottom of every list.” He asked, “What the hell do you have to lose?”
But if the Education Department’s financial and civil rights functions remain, does it matter if they’re housed within the Department of Education or at another agency?
“There’s a potential tension here between addressing antisemitism at universities or toxic, race-based dogmas at certain colleges, while downsizing the staff at the department who handles those things,” said Frederick Hess, a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute. “If you took down the website and took the name off the building tomorrow, and Congress voted to abolish it, all of the various programs would still be there. Those functions would simply operate somewhere else.”
However, Hess argues that shutting down the Education Department is worth it because of the function it typically serves under Democratic presidents.
“The only reason the DoE itself is significant is because it has operated as a one-stop shop for Democratic interest groups,” Hess said.
Rep. Nancy Mace (R-SC) is on board with eliminating the department, describing it as a slush fund for teachers unions.
Jim Blew, co-founder of the Defense of Freedom Institute, acknowledged there’s an open question as to whether moving the Education Department’s core functions to other agencies amounts to “shuffling chairs around on the Titanic.”
“That’s not what’s happening here,” he said. “Because we’re also talking about changing the way the federal government handles its role.”
The 50 state-level departments of education will handle the money in fundamentally different ways than a national-level agency regardless of who’s in charge, Blew argues, and will be more productive with that funding as well.
Yet even if all of these functions can be handled elsewhere, closing the department permanently would require an act of Congress, which will be a very tough climb even with Republicans controlling both chambers at the moment. House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) says he’s “fully in support” of shutting down the Education Department, but the GOP would need Democrats to join it in order to overcome the Senate filibuster, which will be a tough sell no matter what.
TRUMP EDUCATION DEPARTMENT INVESTIGATES 45 COLLEGES OVER ‘RACE-BASED’ PROGRAMS
If Trump does not fully shutter the Department of Education, it could be ramped right back up to full strength by a Democratic president as early as January 2029.
“There are limits — and appropriately so — to what executive action alone can accomplish,” Hess said. “To the extent that all of this is about executive or DOGE [Department of Government Efficiency] doings, with Congress sidelined, long-term change is likely to be much more modest than it might be otherwise.”
