Months before the election, Donald Trump promised to shut down the Department of Education. Now that he has the trifecta – Republican control of the House, Senate and presidency – what are the odds that he’ll be able to close it down completely? After Republicans have screamed and cried about the Department of Education for decades, it looks like they don’t actually know what to do now that the dog caught the car. One thing’s for sure, they’re going to try to make public schools into white nationalist and Christofascist sanctuaries.
President-elect Donald Trump has vowed to remake education in the U.S., pledging to exert more control over funding and classroom lessons, to curb what he views as left-leaning tendencies at universities and even to dismantle the Department of Education. If his White House delivers on those promises, more families could get money to send kids to private school. Schools would face pressure to limit accommodations for transgender students and to end some initiatives aimed at addressing racial disparities. The goals are at once ambitious and controversial.
“There are a lot of very smart people who are very excited to get into positions where we can actually start making change happen,” said Tiffany Justice, a Trump ally and the co-founder of the conservative parents group Moms for Liberty.
Trump has promised to close the Education Department and has criticized U.S. school spending.
In his first term, he proposed merging the education and labor departments, but Congress didn’t proceed. It isn’t clear whether lawmakers would go for the idea in a second term, nor how the department’s functions—such as protecting students’ civil rights, providing funding for students with disabilities and distributing student loans—would be handled if it were closed.Some Republicans have been reluctant to eliminate the department or cut federal funding that flows to schools in their constituencies. An Associated Press poll last year found that nearly two-thirds of Americans said the federal government spends too little on education.
Because states control so much of public education, the bulk of what the Dept. of Education does is oversee federal funding for programs like Pell Grants, special education and, you know, student loans. The thing is, business and industry don’t want further cuts in education – there have been many employers, especially in the southern states, who fight for public education because they want a future workforce to be able to read and do math. Not that any of this matters at this point (America is f–ked), but I do feel sorry for those special-ed teachers who are going to see their already meager budgets slashed.
Trump's 10 point plan for education:
– eliminate the Dept. of Education
– cut federal funding
– promote Christian Nationalism
– attack teacher's unions
– give public money to for-profit private schoolsHe warned us, and you voted for him anyway.pic.twitter.com/pMTU6rdMVj
— Melanie D'Arrigo (@DarrigoMelanie) November 10, 2024
Photos courtesy of Avalon Red.
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- Former President, Donald Trump visits Fox News broadcaster Harris Faulkner for a town hall event in Cumming, GA,Image: 921931274, License: Rights-managed, Restrictions: , Model Release: no, Pictured: Former President Donald Trump, Credit line: Phil Lewis / Wenn / Avalon
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- Former President, Donald Trump visits Fox News broadcaster Harris Faulkner for a town hall event in Cumming, GA,Image: 921931275, License: Rights-managed, Restrictions: , Model Release: no, Pictured: Former President Donald Trump, Credit line: Phil Lewis / Wenn / Avalon
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- Former President, Donald Trump visits Fox News broadcaster Harris Faulkner for a town hall event in Cumming, GA,Image: 921931284, License: Rights-managed, Restrictions: , Model Release: no, Pictured: Former President Donald Trump, Credit line: Phil Lewis / Wenn / Avalon
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- Former President, Donald Trump visits Fox News broadcaster Harris Faulkner for a town hall event in Cumming, GA,Image: 921931288, License: Rights-managed, Restrictions: , Model Release: no, Pictured: Former President Donald Trump, Credit line: Phil Lewis / Wenn / Avalon
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- Former President, Donald Trump visits Fox News broadcaster Harris Faulkner for a town hall event in Cumming, GA,Image: 921931295, License: Rights-managed, Restrictions: , Model Release: no, Pictured: Former President Donald Trump, Credit line: Phil Lewis / Wenn / Avalon
It never ceases to amaze me that people vote against their own best interests. The modern Republican party has been slowly defunding public education for decades – at the local, state, and national levels. They want a permanent underclass of people who are only qualified for low wage jobs, because they lack, or can’t afford, an education.
As a former educator, I can tell you that the rural areas of the country will be hurt the most since they have smaller tax bases and depend on those federal dollars most. I don’t think that they understand that things like provisions for special education are federal law and you have to provide those services even if the federal government does not fund it. That means a lot of cuts and larger classroom sizes. There is already a shortage of teachers. This is going to make it much worse. But I can’t feel to sorry for them because this is what they voted for.
Education workers comprise much of the workforce in many rural counties–lunch ladies, bus drivers, teachers, janitors, etc. I’m also wondering what will happen to all the children with special education IEDs.
This will be catastrophic to schools in rural areas with a poor tax base. A mainly rural county in my region has 7 k students. Most of the schools are in rural areas/small towns. One school has about 100 kids in an isolated mountainous area with dangerous roads. Weather could be comfortable in the 50s in the lower elevation and roads could be totally clear for 6,900 students, but school would close for the entire country because the county refused to only cancel school for that one and lose federal funds for 100 students. This county is one of the reddest in the state and I am amazed any of them survived the pandemic. The level of magat, evangelical blowhard energy is off the charts. The country needs a reboot and it isn’t fair that the rural areas are deliberately sabatoging the blue states that pay the vast majority of federal taxes. Rural areas claim way more than their fair share of taxes and have been poisoned by racist and sexist magat bull@#$%. They voted for it and will have to live with the consequences.
Rural areas generally also really dislike the school choice movement because it pulls money from their own schools, and their districts have so few students, it’s not like new schools will open to give them a “choice.”
Well if you’re a public employee and you applied for Public Student Loan Forgiveness Program (passed by a Republican btw), prepare to not be approved. Biden cleared the path for many of us. If you voted for Trump you are truly screwed. I posted this on another thread. I fully expect for them to reprogram funds to the deportation effort. If he has a Republican House and Senate, it will be a rubber stamp. Higher Education is going to be really mad. Stadiums and new dorms don’t pay for themselves you know. They need that sweet sweet student loan money. It’s going to get interesting. Not sure that Republicans planned on this.
I think that’s a good point about the student loan money. Universities today are built on the idea of free flowing student loan money – its part of why college is so freaking expensive these days. If that money is reduced/restricted, that’s going to have a negative effect on universities.
Now we all know that’s what Republicans want because the college educated populace doesn’t vote for them, and its easier to control a less educated electorate. But it would have huge economic consequences if colleges could not operate, especially in towns that are built on student populations (like the big state schools in some red states.)
I think I heard that Trump and the GOP plan to take endowments from private universities to use to create what he’s calling “American Academy” (a free online national university) that I suspect will deliver the same quality that Trump University did with the bonus of a bunch of Christofascist indoctrination
You’re right. Trump and Vance have had their eyes on Harvard’s endowment in particular, and both have spoken openly about seizing it.
Trump first mentioned this back when the Supreme Court was deliberating affirmative action. He said something like he would “just take it”—referring to Harvard’s endowment—as a penalty for using affirmative action in admissions.
The video below gives a background on the right’s attempts to shut down universities. Just after the 4min mark you can hear JD Vance talk about seizing Harvard’s endowment as punishment for the university “being on the wrong side of the culture wars”.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=1v9ek-84zaU
Just an apolitical point of order: Canada does not have a federal ministry of education. It’s a provincial responsibility and that is a good thing, because it prevents the feds from monkeying around with it. It means education is stable in each province. There is consistent policy run by experienced personnel with the permanent bureaucratic staffing of the ministries. Discounting charter schools, etc, you may be surprised at how much less controversy results in public areas which are most schools. The biggest issues in education here in actual years was a sex ed book that was too advanced for its grade level (and it was, I’m a liberal and even I was hell to TF no on it), and swimming lessons being mandatory. And that’s even with parental feedback. It’s hard to swing too far either way when the federal ideologies find themselves locked out. And before you say it: we have provincial clashes over it but it’s literally about funding not about culture because at the not-federal level, it’s hard to insert culture into a conversation about math scores.
i think you are severely underestimating how much conservatives work to find controversy in anything. i live in a red state and work in children’s book distribution. we can’t sell books on seahorses to conservative states because it promotes the trans agenda. i was at an ELA/Math joint conference earlier this year, and the tales I heard from educators surprised me. groups like moms for literacy work hard to get anything they deem controversial banned. people in charge here don’t care about scores. at all. they say they do and tie funding to it. but they literally don’t care. i live in a state where the attorney general literally said he wants to get rid of the morning after pill so we can increase the state’s population through teenage pregnancy. do you think anyone in charge honestly cares about education? in theory, i understand what you’re saying, and think it sounds great. i just don’t see it working that well here. the education disparities between red and blue states will only continue to increase. as kaiser says, there are states where business owners want the population to be educated so they can work, but that still doesn’t get them to vote for the people that would actually allow that to happen.
Trump’s actions will create a lot of subpar “Christian” private schools that don’t provide a decent education. We will have a dumb populous that will be workers in Amazon warehouses (before they are totally automated). They will have children at a young age and keep the lowest level workforce highly populated and desperate. It’s so ghoulish, I can’t believe voters fell for it. Missouri actually put the words down on paper, and they still vote red.
We need a federal level department of education because red states historically have tried to discriminate against minority children. It’s sad that we need federal oversight to maintain basic standards, but that’s who we are in America.
@mblates you’re 100% correct. Red voters -especially in red states- DO NOT CARE about education. Blue state dems cannot fathom how anti-education they are unless they’ve spent months living around these people. I’ve heard moms criticize kids who go to college and become too worldly. Fathers convince their sons to become welders and electricians over getting a degree. These people are anti-intelligence and despise higher living and learning. They only care that their kids and neighbors aren’t gay, Muslim, or liberal.
@ Tiffany–you’re spot-on.
Semi-related: I think a lot of people have the misperception that abortion was the issue that led to the creation of the Religious Right and religious influence on politics in general when really it was the Green v. Connally decision. That was when the court declared that neither IRC 501(c)(3) nor IRC 170 provided for tax-exempt status to private school that discriminate in admissions on the basis of race.
It wasn’t until 1979—a full six years after Roe—that evangelical leaders and activists like Paul Weyrich, seized on abortion as a wedge issue to deny Carter a second term.
I’m curious what province you are in. Because in Ontario I can tell you a sex-ed book has not been the only education controversy in recent years. And as someone who works at a university, the inconsistency in education of incoming first year students is a very real problem.
I think that well-meaning US conservatives are thinking along these lines. We didn’t have a federal department of education until the 1970’s so…? But as a Texas resident, I fear that federal protections for vulnerable students (disabled kids, impoverished kids) are effectively on the chopping block. The legal protections will be in place on paper, but without funding or accountability, it’s not going to happen. Parents of special needs kids have to go through real ordeals to get services for their kids as it is. I’ll never forget when a charter-school board member vented to me about how public education worked great until people got the idea it was “for ALL children.”
LOL, come to my county if you want to see how easy it is to insert culture into a conversation about math scores.
@snoopmary you seem to be speaking for all Canadians but I think you might be missing some important perspective in other provinces. E.g. in Alberta and sex Ed governmental interference as part of the UCP and Take Back Alberta anti trans movement. It’s very sad the reality doesn’t match what you wrote and we need to be vigilant in Canada as there is a winning playbook from the U.S. that many groups are employing in Canada.
I have so many thoughts on education. I work in HE. My biggest concerns, in no particular order:
-IDEA and SpEd (IEPs, 504s, etc.)
-Student loans/PELL
-Student loan forgiveness
-Rural school support
-Tenure (HE and K12)
-School choice
-Curriculum and learning outcomes
-Overall competitiveness
-Reading programs
-Head Start
-Focus on workforce development
-A democratic citizenry (one who engages in the government, not the political party)
We are well and truly screwed. All of us. We NEED an educated population.
Uh Snoopmary, I live in Ontario and teach in HE and education in this province is inconsistent and, overall, poor. Also, thanks to Dougie Ford, in part, has had quite a bit of instability. I long for federal regulations that would pull the standards up in this province.
I mean… politics in most states are just as toxic as they are at the federal level. Our Department of Ed isn’t really making curriculum decisions. The feds hand out money and the states decide how to spend it. There are strings attached to the money sometimes (equal rights and such) and states can refuse the money.
I too am wondering what province you are in because here in BC according to my various family members that work either in admin or in the union, provinces are not great when it comes to education. The money is never enough and there is a racism/misogyny endemic currently happening with no resources or plans on how to tackle it and no one provincially wants to support or hear it. So we are not doing much better up here.
Will Henson or at least try. YES the answer isnalwaysnyesnans 74 million asshats voted for it anyway
Hell, let’s not stop at education…. It’s the tip of the iceberg.
Yup just wait until they dismantle the Affordable Care Act even though it works and citizens on both sides of the aisle use and like it.
He won’t. He will get rid of everything that he doesn’t like. For no reason other than he doesn’t like it. Gonna be a lot of unemployed people.
He’s vowed to get rid of the Environmental Protection Agency, too.
As a teacher, there are so many things that trouble me about this Donald Trump video. I don’t doubt that this is his agenda. That said, are we sure this is real and not AI? Has that been verified? A friend sent this to me, I questioned the veracity, and my friend said later her husband read that this IS actually AI.
Just read the section on education in Project 2025. It’s all there.
Yes, I know that it’s all Project 2025 stuff, but is the video actually real? I am no Trumper, but don’t realize the importance of not accepting AI as truth. Think of the outcry from our side if people blindly believed some AI video of Harris or Walz or Biden, etc. We can still believe he will enact the Project 2025 and be afraid, but I think we also should be smart consumers of social and mass media.
Apparently I don’t realize the importance of proofreading. That should say I’m no Trumper, but don’t WE realize the importance of not accepting AI as truth.
It’s just a scary new world with what AI can do, and how easily swayed people are by things posted on the internet. I am personally most afraid of what Trump could let RFK Jr. do to public health.
The video is real. It was also posted on the Politico website in January 2023. Here’s a link: https://www.politico.com/video/2023/01/26/trump-unveils-culture-war-education-policy-821873
It’s frustrating, too, that many news outlets are just now finding it pertinent to cover this.
I think the video is AI. He can’t get through sentences that smoothly or quickly. And he loses his train of thought too frequently to get through a 10 point list that coherently. I saw another video of him months ago that I’m sure was an AI deep fake. Same situation where he was speaking way too well for it to be real. I have a feeling we’ll be seeing way more as his brain further deteriorates.
The video is real and it’s on Trump’s campaign website. Maybe the quality isn’t great because the campaign spent most of its funds on legal fees!
https://www.donaldjtrump.com/news/da7f3c42-76b5-42c0-9beb-475d649030ae
It depends on how soon Trump fixes it so no one has to vote anymore.
The electorate has no leverage over him now. Either he upholds the Constitution and leaves office in four years – in which case he doesn’t need to appeal to voters – or he doesn’t, in which case he also doesn’t need to appeal to voters.
In the former situation though, he needs Congress. He may not be running again in 2-4 years, but a lot of the Republicans that he swept in with him will be (or another round of senators will be up for re-election.)
If he does what he says he’s going to do, and guts the DoE, guts Social Security, guts Medicare – a lot of Republicans in seemingly safe districts may not be so safe IF the Dems can win on messaging (which is a big IF.)
I doubt very much whether he cares what happens after he goes. If he goes.
oh I don’t think he gives two craps what happens after he goes (I mean, he’s going one way or another, right?) but the R votes he needs in Congress may care, especially if the Dems have a good showing in 2026. If there are elections in 2026.
Sigh. This is all so depressing.
Lord, wake me up from this nightmare! I’m in Texas, which I anticipate to be Ground Zero for all of Trump’s odious policies to take effect.
Let’s also remember how federalism works, blue states by and large pay for red states as tax dollars are redistributed through the federal agencies like the department of Ed. So poor states are going to have fewer resources.
This is something else I keep telling myself. If he guts some of these federal programs, a lot of blue states already have state agencies and programs in place to help. Federal funding is important, of course, and I’m not trying to negate that, but my state has a lot of local protections as well (that M4L absolutely hate, hahahaha.)
The red states will be the most affected. EVERY state will feel it, dont get me wrong, but some will be less affected than others.
Becks1, there are 17 states that have a blue Gov, House & Senate. They will be filing lawsuits to stop whatever they try to do wherever possible. I live in Washington State and my state was a leader in that movement when Trump was in office last time. Trump may think that he can do what he wants, but he can’t. The best thing that the blue states have are left leaning federal judges and circuit court judges.
You’re right that most of the red states will be affected much more than blue states. So many are already poor, and this is going to make it worse.
I think he probably won’t close it entirely.
Last time, he put Devos in charge, and she loosened the student loan regulations so that private loan companies could make more money.
And those of us who were finally going to get our loans off of our shoulders after decades, thanks to Biden’s forgiveness program, are screwed.
My grad school loans turned 25 last summer, and if conservative judges hadn’t blocked Joe’s plan, they would have been forgiven.
Yes, he will close it down. He told us who he was.
The only possible way to avoid it is if someone in his inner circle talks him down (EXTREMELY unlikely). He is not susceptible to any pressure at all from voters (his or otherwise) because he will not run for office again. There are no guardrails.
I don’t want to freak anyone out, but I’m already starting to see tweets from either bots or MAGA that he can and should run for a 3rd term. (Someone said it was in the “Declaration of Dependence” – but not sure if that’s a Russian bot or MAGA. Both are possible and it’s hard to tell the difference!)
Of course, that assumes that he lives to do so, but the fact that the groundwork is already being laid is terrifying.
I think this is because the constitution allows a person to serve for 10 years as president, but thats to allow someone to finish out a term. So this is why LBJ, for example, could have run in 1968 even though he had served a year of Kennedy’s term and then a full term of his own. He would have been in office over 9 years had he run/won in 68.
But that’s a nuance that I think is probably over a lot of MAGA heads.
I’m fact-based. The facts are, he’s spoken admiringly about how Putin, Viktor Orban and Kim Jong Un have installed themselves into life terms, saying in one case that the U.S. “might have to try that.” (yes, there are “elections,” but they don’t mean anything.)
It’s also a fact that Trump has often stated his real intentions in a way that gets passed off as hyperbole, part of his patter or as a “joke.” Later, those statements turn out to have been true all along, see: mass deportations and denaturalization.
It’s also a fact that the Heritage Foundation and its fellow travelers have been working toward this tipping point of governmental control to advance their agenda for years. They had a plan for a candidate like Trump; they certainly have a plan beyond Trump. And they have many allies in Congress.
We may not have voted for the last time, but there’s a not-zero chance we voted for the last time that matters.
I think that everything about our system of government—by the will of the people — is something that can be changed. With a MAGA dominated Supreme Court, Executive branch and Legislative branches, I think it’s at least possible that anything and everything could change — including amendments to the Constitution. We’re no longer a nation of laws — or rather, I think laws will be for the little people, and can be changed to support those in power.
I’m hoping that it will be obvious that the MAGAs will own everything that happens going forward. I’m also hoping that soon-to-be President Vance gets reined in to avoid backlash in the next sets of elections. This, though, is probably overly optimistic on my part. I’m really hoping that as the majority of voters — who really are not MAGA — realize what’s planned, and that as the voting results get questioned, we still have a chance to shape a different result. I realize though that the chance of that happening is infinitesimally small.
I just retired in June. I’ve always worked in the preschool world and not for a school district, so no pension (I do have 401k and IRA).
I’ve been consoling myself that if they stop Social Security, I could go back to work (speech pathologist) to hold off on depleting my investments but all the funding comes from federal law through the department of education…
I am glad to live in a blue state because I think we will take care of education.
I may be a Pollyanna, but I am hopeful that things are happening behind the scenes and a recount will reveal skullduggery.
JanetDR, it’s my hope there will be a recount, too. I read somewhere that Kamala Harris is asking for funds for recounts. I haven’t looked for it, but that’s something people can do. Just make sure you have the real site. Too many scammers out there.
I have worked in federal TRIO grants for the past 20 years. These grants focus on low-income, first-generation or students with disabilities and helps them earn college degrees, from Associate degrees all the way to a doctorate. Our funding is administered by the Dept of Education and Project 2025 has proposed eliminating all 29 individual competitive grants along with the Dept. So there goes my livelihood, my vocation and my student’s futures. I am devastated and my only hope is red tape and Trump turning his attention elsewhere. I hope he gets mired in the morass of his ambitions and stops making headway. This comment is brought to you by nicotine, who I have recently become reacquainted with, since I am barely keeping it together.
I have a child going to college next year. I have a son with an IEP. And I have a daughter who has special needs. Thankfully I am in a blue state. But this shit is literally worst case scenario. My two oldest will finish school under this imbecile. Sadly, the one that needs the most protection will be in school far past him. I genuinely don’t know what this looks like. Again, thank god I am in a blue state with a high tax base.
You can’t have an educated population voting if trump and the fascists want to continue to win elections, of course trump will defund the DOE and leave education up to individual states.
A president can’t shut down a federal agency without congressional approval and he would need 60 votes in the senate.
Yeah I was just wondering about the logistics of that. My thoughts on a lot of these things (abortion ban, repeal ACA, etc) are that it’s going to be a slow death rather than a big obvious announcement. The Dept of Ed can still exist on paper, but if nobody works there and they have no money, well, it’s effectively closed.
They didn’t elect a president. They elected a dictator.
💯, @tuesday
As a mom to 2 autistic boys who have IEPs and have flourished in school so far (1st and pre-k) because of said IEPs, I’m terrified. I already have to fight to get them what they deserve and need. I live in a red state, so that’s no help, I hope if this goes south, I can lobby for funding at the county level, because at least my county is blue! This was the biggest part I brought up and the push back I got from trumpers was maddening.
Not just dept of education, social security, Medicare, for sure the affordable care act that provides health access to millions of Americans. And most likely they want to crash the USD in favor of crypto.
I’m glad I’m Living in CA , which keeps turning blue the past few days
(it’s been at least good news that the house election results have been in favor of the Dems winning). And Newsom is bluntly telling everyone CA will be Trump proof esp if he goes crazy at us.
What a nightmare, my kid in special Ed graduated in June.
I am so thankful that we’re done with highschool before this crap starts.
Now I just have to worry about his healthcare, luckily we are in California.
I hate all the assh*les that voted for trump
I don’t think special education will be slashed. That is an unpopular thing to do, and parents of special needs students will fight this hard. Other federal programs (Title) will be slashed, making funding tight for schools and special education will have people’s hands in its pocket if it isn’t cut. It remains to be seen whether Congress will have the appetite to get rid of the USDOE – but the federal laws underpinning federal funding programs would require congressional support to undergo significant change. It is unlikely that the special education federal funding law would be dramatically changed. Even if the USDOE is dismantled, which would likely take years of lawsuits to make happen, there are many functions that education federal staffers need to administer and these would be subsumed under another agency. As they were before Carter became president. None of this is great regardless, but trying not to catastrophize.
Xiolablue – I agree that formal dissolution of the departments would take longer and more work than time Trump will have in office. What doesn’t take any time, and can be done this year – is budget reconciliation. No super majority needed for that. Simple majority vote and it’s done. Trump can cripple USDOE and funding for special education and TRIO grants, etc. – by just funding them at zero. They would still exist on the books, but in effect, they are done. The ONLY way to protect these vulnerable programs is by lobbying your House Rep and Senators to vote against zero funding. Congress has issued a continuation of the FY 2025 Federal Budget funding to await Trump’s input, so you can take a guess how that’s going to go. We expect to find out some time in March.
My second grader is autistic with an IEP. Explaining how Trump’s policies would harm him didn’t stop my dad and stepmom from voting MAGA. Guess I don’t need to think about them on Thanksgiving and Christmas now…