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President Donald Trump’s desire to dismantle the Department of Education continues to face congressional resistance, even as conservatives have championed efforts to roll back federal oversight of the public education system.
A year ago, Trump signed an executive order directing Education Secretary Linda McMahon to begin steps to close the department and return authority to the states, fulfilling a long-held GOP goal.
McMahon has repeatedly claimed her “final mission” is to, in Trump’s own words, “put herself out of a job.”
“We have made unprecedented progress on this mandate, a long-standing goal of those who believe education is best when it is situated closest to students and families,” McMahon said in a statement to the Washington Examiner.
“Under President Trump’s leadership, we have secured the largest national school‑choice expansion in history, increased state leaders’ freedom and flexibility to innovate, and broken up the education bureaucracy by partnering with agencies better positioned to manage critical support and programs.”
But nearly a year after the executive order was signed, congressional lawmakers sent Trump a bill that allocated $78.9 billion to the Department of Education, roughly the same amount Congress had allocated the previous year.
Trump signed the bill into law last month, even though it defied his request that Congress cut funding to the department by 15%, equating to $66.7 billion.
The bill also marked the limits of Trump’s executive order. By law, Congress ultimately has the power to close the department, though actually dismantling the agency is not as easy.
Sen. Mike Rounds (R-SD) reintroduced the Returning Education to Our States Act in April 2025, stressing that it wouldn’t cut education funding and instead send funds directly to states.
The legislation has stalled in Congress and is unlikely to come to a vote as the chamber struggles to even muster a second reconciliation package.
“I would have loved Congress to have already passed it. I think they should have,” said Erika Donalds, CEO of the Education Freedom Foundation. “They should have done this early on, and then given time for it to be carried out. That would give a lot more juice to the administration to just go ahead and be done with it.”
The parental rights movement significantly gained power among Republicans as frustration grew under former President Joe Biden’s handling of education during the COVID-19 pandemic. It also increased pressure among the GOP to close the Department of Education.
Parents were incensed by the long-term school closures and their effect on children’s learning. Intense battles spread around transgender policies in schools and the increase in diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives, all leading to Trump’s campaign promise in 2024 to do away with the agency.
Efforts to shut down the department have faced outcry from Democrats, teachers unions, school districts, and families reliant upon the programs it administers, including student loans, special needs programs, and funding for K-12 education.
“Make no mistake, it is public education that is under attack by the Trump administration,” said Sen. Chris Van Hollen (D-MD) at a press conference last week marking the one-year anniversary of reduction-in-force notices at the Education Department. “And so when they come after public education, they are coming after the foundational idea of equal opportunity in the United States of America.”
CONGRESS RE-FUNDS THE EDUCATION DEPARTMENT
Conservatives, however, have championed interagency agreements that shift some of the Education Department’s responsibilities to other federal agencies, helping to dismantle the agency. They’ve also championed the symbolic victory of the Trump administration’s efforts to show the agency is unnecessary.
In the event Congress passes legislation closing the agency, “then these programs will already be shared operations with other agencies. The department can then sunset, and the various programs that need to keep going can remain with these other offices,” said Jonathan Butcher, acting director of the Center for Education Policy at the Heritage Foundation.
Long division
In November, McMahon announced six agreements with the Departments of Labor, Interior, Health and Human Services, and State.
The Labor Department will “co-manage” the Office of Elementary and Secondary Education and help manage the Office of Postsecondary Education. The Department of Health and Human Services manages the Child Care Access Means Parents in School grant program and foreign medical school accreditation. The Department of the Interior manages and administers Indian education programs, while the State Department oversees international education and foreign language studies programs.
McMahon announced two more interagency agreements last month. The agency and State Department will work together “to improve the accuracy and transparency of foreign gift and contract reporting for certain domestic public and private institutions of higher education.” It will also work with HHS to improve the safety and physical security of educational institutions, with HHS administering the School Emergency Response to Violence, School Safety National Activities, Ready to Learn Programming, Full-Service Community Schools, Promise Neighborhoods, and Statewide Family Engagement Centers.
“The interagency agreements matter partly because the next Democratic president would then have to cancel them, and then they would have to spend a lot of time and energy unwinding them and moving people back. So in that sense, defanging the department is a significant thing,” said Frederick Hess, senior fellow and director of education policy studies at the American Enterprise Institute.
By law, McMahon can’t stop implementing Title 1, part of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act, which allocates federal funding for K-12 education in school districts, nor can she end the federal student loan program.
Yet on Thursday, the agency announced it was handing off a portion of the student loan portfolio to the Treasury Department, with the goal of having Treasury handle all student loans. This marks the largest step so far in closing the agency.
Butcher called Congress’s funding of the Education Department “appropriate policy” because they are required to by law, and “it shows that the Trump administration understands that they are going to have to, even if they want to shut this down, it is prudent to save these programs, especially the big one like Title I.”
“This is what it takes to abide by the rules, regulations, and federal laws that are in place,” Butcher added about Congress and the interagency agreements. “And if they simply decided to close the department and walk away, there would inevitably be a lawsuit.”
A coalition of advocacy groups, unions, and educators sued the Education Department in November over the interagency agreements, claiming they were unlawful. The case known as Somerville v. Trump was consolidated with another case, New York v. McMahon.
The Government Accountability Office, an independent government watchdog, launched an investigation into the agency’s transfer of responsibility of grant programs to Labor this month after a request led by Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA), with ranking member on the Senate education committee Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT), Sen. Patty Murray (D-WA), and Sen. Tammy Baldwin (D-WI).
The Trump administration has also received approval for halving the education department’s workforce as part of the Department of Government Efficiency’s efforts last year. Before the layoffs, the agency employed more than 4,000 employees.
However, employees in the agency’s Office for Civil Rights were brought back, which cost the government approximately $28.5 to $38 million for the nine months of paid leave, according to the Government Accountability Office.
The White House claimed “the federal government has failed America’s students for far too long,” in a statement to the Washington Examiner.
“President Trump and Secretary McMahon are successfully returning education back to the states and empowering local communities to innovate, adapt, and meet the unique needs of their students and improve overall academic outcomes,” said Liz Huston, a White House spokesperson.
Conservatives are urging Congress to dismantle the agency, but in a tough midterm cycle, the odds of that happening are little to none.
“Congress has done an extremely poor job on issues of very basic … accountability,” said one Republican. “When was the last time they passed a budget?”
If Democrats win either the House or the Senate in November, it will essentially guarantee that no bill to shut down the Department of Education will pass. If a Democrat wins back the White House in 2028, conservatives have fretted that they could undo the interagency agreements and return the agency to its full power.
“One of the challenges is, if (Gov.) Gavin Newsom (D-CA) won in 2028 and he was so inclined, they could not only undo the interagency agreements, move everybody back to the department,” said Hess. “But if the department is still slotted by approps for something like 4000 staff, they could have a free hand to hire 2000+ Democratic loyalists into the professional bureaucracy.”
A spokesperson for Sen. Rounds’ office did not respond to the Washington Examiner’s request for comment on the status of his bill to close the Department of Education. That has not stopped conservatives from urging Congress to take action.
“I understand them waiting to allow time for these interagency rooms to take hold and for these mechanisms to be in place, but the president ran explicitly on dismantling and eliminating the Department of Education,” said Donalds. “And the people voted for it. And so I think Congress should listen to the people and should carry out what the president promised in his campaign.”
