After questioning some inside sources, the Wall Street Journal reported that, by the end of the day, President Donald Trump would have signed an executive order to begin dismantling the Department of Education. The news was denied by White House spokeswoman Karoline Leavitt, who called it “fake news” but gave no further clarification on the matter.
🚨More Fake News! President Trump is NOT signing an Executive Order on the Department of Education today. https://t.co/oicgkJw3uI
— Karoline Leavitt (@PressSec) March 6, 2025
In one of the drafts of the measure, published by the Wall Street Journal, Trump ordered Secretary of Education Linda McMahon to “take all necessary steps to facilitate the Department’s closure.” According to the New York Times, another provided that no federal funding would be allocated to programs supporting low-income students with disabilities (IDEA), but did not specify how the initiatives would be replaced.
The U.S. Department of Education is the federal agency responsible for overseeing education and ensuring equal access to educational opportunities for all Americans. It focuses on several key areas, including programs, grants, laws and policies, and special student populations.
The annual budget allocated by the government amounts to $80 billion and covers mainly public elementary schools (K-12), colleges, and student loans. The federal school debt is nearly $1.7 trillion, $30,000 to $40,000 on average per person, considering that at least 40 million people have yet to pay off their loans. Some are already graduates and out of the system.
Nonprofit organizations, research labs, and state-level offices also receive different types of funding as needed. There are Title I for the poorest, Title II for teachers, and the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) initiatives that support education to 7.5 million children with disabilities (spending about $14 billion), according to the Department of Education’s National Center for Education Statistics (NCES).
The Trump administration aims to dismantle the Department of Education to give more control to individual states to manage and save “excess” funding. If this were the case, not only would thousands of people be relocated or lose their jobs, but also millions of children would see their right to education erased.
The New York Times reiterated that a draft of the executive order had been circulating in Washington offices for weeks, but that the president’s signature was delayed because the Senate had not yet confirmed Linda McMahon as Secretary of Education (it did so only last Monday) and, more importantly, only Congress, with a majority vote, can eliminate a Department. Opponents have repeatedly criticized Trump for overstepping the bounds of executive power with the hundreds of orders signed in his first 60 days in office. Just as many lawsuits have been filed throughout the United States precisely challenging the unconstitutionality of some measures. So far, 41 rulings have been issued temporarily suspending the administration’s measures.
No one so far has succeeded in dismantling the Department of Education. Only a year after its creation under Jimmy Carter, then-Republican President Ronald Reagan tried to dismantle it in 1980 without success. Since then, there have been other attempts—the most recent being former Secretary of State Betsy DeVos, Trump’s choice for his first administration—but Congress has always saved it.
