Trump Moves To Axe Education Dept

The Trump administration is finally taking a real swing at the federal education establishment by shifting billions in programs out of Washington’s Education Department and closer to states and local communities.

Story Snapshot

The Education Department is signing deals to move management of major K–12 and college programs into other federal agencies, with the goal of proving the department itself is no longer needed.^[1]^[5]^[6]^[8]
Key grant programs and whole offices, including elementary and secondary education and many college-access grants, are being run day to day by the Departments of Labor, Health and Human Services, Interior, and State.^[2]^[5]
The White House says these moves “break up the federal education bureaucracy” and help return control of education to the states, as promised to voters.^[8]
Democrats, unions, and left-leaning groups claim the transfers are “illegal” and warn of lawsuits, but legal experts agree only Congress can decide whether to fully shut the department down.^[1]^[3]^[8]

Trump’s Strategy: Shrink the Education Bureaucracy from the Inside

President Trump’s second-term team at the United States Department of Education is using a simple, hard‑to‑reverse strategy: move the work out, then show Congress the agency is no longer necessary.^[1]^[6] Under new “interagency agreements,” entire lines of work and big grant programs are now managed by other cabinet departments, while Education keeps only the legal shell.^[5]^[8] This lets the administration honor the Constitution’s silence on education and push power back toward families, states, and local school boards.^[7]

The White House set the tone in a 2025 executive order titled “Improving Education Outcomes by Empowering Parents, States, and Communities,” which directed Secretary Linda McMahon to take “all necessary steps” to close the department and return authority over education to states. The order also told agencies to expand school choice, end ideological “indoctrination,” and use existing funding streams to support parents instead of bureaucrats. The message to the woke education class was clear: their days of unchecked Washington control are numbered.

What Is Moving, and Where the Money Is Going

On paper, the Education Department still “owns” the programs, but in practice, the muscle is moving elsewhere.^[5] The Office of Elementary and Secondary Education, which oversees about $28 billion in K‑12 grants, is shifting its day‑to‑day work to the Department of Labor, including Title I funds for students from low‑income families.^[1]^[5] Labor will also manage many postsecondary institution‑based grants, while Indian education work is going to the Interior Department and campus child‑care support is moving to Health and Human Services.^[2]^[5]

International and foreign language programs are being managed by the State Department, and career and technical education programs were already sent to Labor earlier in the year.^[5] Internal tallies suggest roughly $31 billion in K‑12 and higher‑education spending is affected by these transfers, a major share of the department’s active portfolio.^[1] Administration officials say this “proof of concept” will show Congress that permanent transfers can work smoothly, clearing the way to finish the job of shutting the department and cutting Washington out as a middleman.^[1]^[6]

Supporters See a Constitutional Course‑Correction

Limited‑government scholars and many conservative parents see this shift as long overdue. Analysts at the Cato Institute argue that the federal Department of Education is unconstitutional because the Constitution never gave Washington power over schools and curriculum.^[7] In their view, sending day‑to‑day work to agencies that already handle labor, health, or tribal affairs is at best a small first step, and the real goal should be to end federal micromanagement of local classrooms altogether.^[7]

The department itself is now openly embracing this framing. In a formal press release, Education said the new interagency agreements are meant to “break up the federal education bureaucracy” and “return education to the states.”^[8] Officials stress that partnering with Labor, Interior, Health and Human Services, and State will streamline services, cut red tape, and “refocus programs and activities to better serve students and grantees,” not the bureaucrats.^[5]^[8] For conservatives who have watched test scores stagnate while spending soars, that focus on students over systems is a welcome change.

Critics Cry ‘Illegal’ and Predict Chaos

Democrats in Congress, public‑sector unions, and progressive advocacy groups are already lining up to stop the effort. A statement from Senator Angus King and colleagues claims that moving major grant programs and offices without new legislation “dismantles” the department and may violate appropriations law, which usually bars shifting money between agencies without explicit approval. A federal reform group warns that transferring core college‑access programs and child‑care partnerships to other agencies could “undermine education and create confusion” for families and schools.^[2]

The Trump administration plans to transfer several core Education Department responsibilities, including its civil rights and special education programs, to other federal agencies as part of its efforts to dismantle the department.https://t.co/jMaDV9rf9n

— POLITICO (@politico) June 16, 2026

Left‑leaning think tanks are also leaning on the courts. Brookings Institution experts argue that since Congress created the Department of Education, only Congress can truly eliminate it, and any unilateral executive action that “eliminates” the agency would clearly break the law.^[9] At the same time, they concede that some duties can be reorganized inside existing legal bounds, and that even if the department closed, federal education laws and funding streams would live on in other agencies.^[9] That acknowledgement undercuts claims that every transfer is automatically illegal.

What It Means for Parents, States, and the Next Fight

For parents and taxpayers, the stakes are simple: who decides what happens in your child’s classroom, and who controls the money you send to Washington. Today, federal law already says Washington cannot direct or control local school curriculum, yet decades of guidance and regulation have pressured states on everything from testing to discipline and diversity training.^[9] By stripping staff and operations from the department and sending work to agencies with narrower missions, the Trump team is trying to make it harder for future presidents to use education as a lab for social experiments.

None of this ends the legal fight. Courts will likely be asked to decide how far interagency agreements under the Economy Act can go, and Congress will still have to vote if the department is ever to be formally shut down.^[1]^[9] But for conservatives who have spent years battling federal overreach, this restructuring is more than symbolism. It is a real, measurable rollback of the Washington education machine and a step toward what many see as the proper order: families and states in charge of schools, with the federal government guarding civil rights and staying out of lesson plans.^[7]^[9]