Trump maintains commitment to Project 2025 to dismantle Education Department

In its continued effort to circumvent federal law and fulfill the goals outlined in Project 2025, the Trump administration this week announced six new “interagency agreements” that offload duties and oversight entrusted to the U.S. Department of Education to other government agencies.

This new effort will:

• Transfer oversight of elementary and secondary education and postsecondary education to the Department of Labor.
• Transfer education and vocational rehabilitation grants for Native Americans to the Department of the Interior.
• Transfer accreditation oversight of foreign medical credentials to Health and Human Services.
• Transfer on-campus child care oversight to Health and Human Services.
• Transfer full oversight of the Fulbright-Hays grant and foreign language initiatives to the State Department.

The first two, which represent the largest impact of this change, are explicitly called for in Project 2025, and the others remain in alignment with the Heritage Foundation and the president’s desire to eradicate the Department of Education. Although eliminating the department has been a long-term goal of Republicans, the Education Department was established by Congress as a Cabinet-level agency and, as such, its elimination without congressional approval is unlawful. The failure to step in and halt these efforts suggests the Republican-led Congress remains amenable to ceding its oversight authority.

Prior efforts in Trump’s second term have already gutted the department’s Office of Special Education, including the firing of all of its staff during the government shutdown. Overseeing state and local district compliance with the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act — which provides students who have special needs with Individualized Education Programs and 504 plans — has been an essential role of the department in the effort to provide students with the academic accommodations they are entitled to by law.

Prior efforts at causing injury to the department have already included gutting the budget for the Institute of Education Sciences — an effort spearheaded by Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency. IES was the division of the Education Department that tracked student progress/achievement, crime and safety statistics, and demographic data that not only provided the federal government and states with invaluable data but also data to researchers. Eliminating data collection is on brand with Trump’s approach, considering he advocated for a decrease in COVID testing during his first term, noting “by having more tests, we find more cases,” and not only placing lackeys in the Department of Labor but altogether eliminating job and labor statistic reporting that does not paint his administration in a good light. Without unbiased data, demagogues can spin any narrative they wish.

This new announcement extends the prior efforts even further as they represent the Trump administration’s “final mission” to unilaterally eliminate the Education Department.

T. Jameson Brewer is an associate professor at the University of North Georgia.

As noted in Project 2025 and by Education Secretary Linda McMahon in this announcement, the bumper-sticker slogan attached to Republican efforts to dismantle the department revolves around “returning education to the states.” While feeding familiar catchphrases to its political base, the mantra relies on people not understanding the role of the federal Department of Education and what powers already — and always have — reside with the states. It is important to remember that the creation of the department in the first place came as a result of states not fully complying with integration orders after the Brown v. Board of Education decision in 1954.

The primary responsibilities of the department are funding research and new approaches to improvements in education, ensuring equal access and civil rights protections, overseeing and protecting educational opportunities for students with disabilities as well as all students, and support for access to higher education. Dismantling the department to satisfy the goals of Project 2025 will exacerbate educational inequities along socioeconomic, racial and ability lines, which is seemingly the point.

The Education Department has long served as the federal watchdog against such injustices and ensured state-level compliance with efforts to provide all students with access to an equitable education. The slow hamstringing of the agency has been a heavier chain on this watchdog and, unfortunately, if Trump and Project 2025’s goals are not challenged, this will result in the euthanasia of the watchdog and a return to a disjointed state-by-state approach where inequities are not only overlooked but celebrated under the banner of “states rights.”