Trump Delivers on Reagan’s Promise To Dismantle Education Department

“Reagan wanted to do it, but he faced resistance from Congress, and in a way, even Reagan didn’t quite have the political capital that Trump has right now after his comeback,” said Matthew Continetti, director of domestic policy studies at the American Enterprise Institute and author of “The Right: The Hundred-Year War for American Conservatism.”

The White House is making the most of that mandate. In a roundabout way, the president is also proving right his old rival, former Vice President Kamala Harris, who warned on the campaign trail: “Imagine Donald Trump with no guardrails.”

Trump has hollowed out one agency and department after the other, beginning with USAID and the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau before arriving at the Education Department. “This is part of a larger message that Trump is sending,” Continetti told RealClearPolitics, “which is that he is the populist, conservative president who can achieve the results that conservatives and populists have long wanted. He is not waiting on anybody.”

This includes Congress. The department was created by law and cannot be eliminated entirely by executive order. Trump has, instead, instructed Secretary of Education Linda McMahon to dismantle it from within, transferring as much authority as possible back to the states while maintaining a skeleton crew to continue enforcement of civil rights laws and oversight of student loans and Pell grants.

“Hopefully Linda will be our last secretary of education,” he quipped before seeming to acknowledge the limits of his executive authority. He called on Democrats to codify action into law and eliminate the department entirely: “I hope they’re going to be voting for it because ultimately it may come before them.”

“Hope springs eternal,” said Gary Bauer, who served as under-secretary of education in the second Reagan administration and who has advised Trump on the issue. Democrats, and some Republicans, he recalled, opposed the effort back then. Trump isn’t likely to do much better in Congress today with narrow GOP majorities.

But with his executive order, Trump has chosen a different path and brings “a different spirit to the fight,” Bauer told RCP. “Reagan was ‘Morning in America’ and really wanted to find common ground; Trump understands that the country has been on the road to ruin here unless we can cut the government down to size and get the left out of our schools.”

Republicans argue that the department with a $268 billion budget has failed to improve education standards while miring schools instead in a sea of red tape and pushing liberal social policy from on high. Trump’s executive order takes aim at so-called diversity, equity, and inclusion policies within the department as well as those concerning what the White House calls “gender ideology.”

Democrats aren’t having it. Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer condemned the move, calling it “one of the most destructive and devastating steps Donald Trump has ever taken,” and predicted that the order “will hurt kids.” The White House response? The Education Department isn’t helping them.

Citing poor test scores, Trump said Thursday that two stats define the current education paradigm: the most money spent per pupil and the worst test scores. “That’s where we are,” he said, “like it or not.”

The stated goal is to now turn over funds and responsibility to the states. State and local governments already fund most of public education through taxes, while the federal government contributes around 10% through the Education Department, which makes funds conditional to certain rules and regulations.

Legal challenges are almost certain to follow. Closing the department permanently, Minnesota Sen. Tina Smith reminded the White House, requires “60 Senate votes” and “You can count me as a hell no.” The Democrat added, “See you in court.”

Almost since Inauguration Day, the White House has been haunted by injunctions from federal judges. U.S. District Judge James Boasberg blocked Trump’s plan to invoke the Alien Enemies Act to swiftly deport suspected members of Tren de Aragua, a Venezuelan gang. On the education front, a similar court challenge is expected.

Complained White House Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller during a Fox News interview Thursday, “Under the current intolerable system, a single district court judge can pick an issue, can pick a cabinet secretary, and declare him or herself to be in charge of that issue and that cabinet secretary for an indefinite period of time.”

Trump has long argued that eliminating the Department of Education entirely would lead to better results, a promise he has repeated more than a dozen times since entering politics. During his second term, and to the delight of the right, he is beginning to deliver on the Reagan promise.