Trump was ready to reduce the education department; Fate of financial support, equity provides uncertain

President Trump signaled his plans on Tuesday to reduce the US Ministry of Education and said he has told secretary-designed Linda McMahon that he wants her to “put yourself out of jobs to turn education over to the states.

“I strongly believe in school choice, but beyond that, I want the states to run schools and I want Linda to get out of a job,” Trump said at an oval office press briefing.

He has not issued an executive order that is doing well with a campaign lift to eliminate the department, rather than indicating that the process would develop with Congress. When asked if he is looking to issue an order, Trump said, “I think I would work with Congress … We should work with the teachers ‘union because the teachers’ union is the only one who is against it.”

McMahon, A previous pro-wrestling mogul And master of small businesses has not yet been confirmed.

The prospect of settling the Ministry of Education has led to questions and fears of potentially chaos on how central responsibilities and billions in federal funding – including handling federal financial support, subsidies for disadvantaged students and enforcement of civil rights – would be affected.

The department has authority over financial lifelines that so many campuses and students depend on. The department’s K-12 programs serve more than 50 million students attending 130,000 public and private schools; Federal Grant, Loan and Work-Study Assistance benefit more than 13 million post-secondary students.

Student loans also fall under the department’s authority. Conservatives have criticized the student loan process, with Republican States successfully suing the Biden administration over its several attempts to cancel broad cuts of the nation’s balloon of federal student loan debt. According to the education department, the government is due to more than $ 1.5 trillion in student loans with more than 43 million Americans.

California’s dependence on federal means

California has a massive proportion of how the department is operated. The state receives More than 2.1 billion dollars In Title I Grants to counteract the effects of poverty-more than any other state-with-$ 417 million, according to the country’s second largest school system, according to California’s education department.

More than 200,000 low-income students in California’s State University System, the largest and most diverse four-year higher education system in the nation, are annually dependent on $ 1 billion in federal Pell grants available. At the University of California, more than 80,000 bachelor students received about $ 454 million in Pell Grants in the study year 2023-24.

But Trump and many Republicans have long written against the federal ward as wasting and ineffective, arguing that education should be handled at the state and local level closest to families.

Opponents have promised to fight any executive order that would eliminate the department.

“If it became a reality, Trump’s Power Grab would steal resources for our most vulnerable students, explode class sizes, cut job education programs, make higher education more expensive and out of reach for middle -class families, remove special education services for students with students with disabilities and intestinal student civil rights protection,” National Education Assn. Americans did not vote for and did not support, and ended the federal government’s obligation to ensure equal educational opportunities for each child. “

What role does Congress play?

Changing or redirecting the ward’s countless functions that affect each school district, university and university receiving federal funding would be a huge and complicated task.

Many people question whether Trump has the authority to dismantle a department established by Congress or refuses to provide funding allocated by federal legislators. Legal issues also arise as to whether the president can unilaterally transfer functions from one branch of government to another. If there is a need for congressional approval, Republicans have only narrow majorities in parliament and the Senate, and a potential democratically led filibuster in the Senate can block off the speed.

Michael Petrilli, president of the right-wing Thomas B. Fordham Institute Think Tank, said the closure of the department was “pretty hypothetically.”

“It would take a congressional action to dismantle the department, and Republicans simply do not have the votes, what so much what the fact would be an unpopular feature of many Republican districts,” he said.

In 2023, 60 Republicans-Inclusive five of 11 Californiere-205 Democrats joined in voting against a change that would have expressed congress support to end the Authority of the Ministry of Education to administer K-12 programs. The change, which was considered a precursor to the abolition of the department, failed.

The debate over the role of the federal government in education is not new.

The Department of Education was first established in 1867 by President Andrew Jackson, but abolished a year later, and its functions were merged into other parts of the federal government. Democratic President Jimmy Carter asked Congress to restore an independent department in 1979; His Republican successor, Ronald Reagan, tried to eliminate it, but was not successful. The efforts that the ax has continued since, including a bill introduced last month by the US rep. David Rouzer (RN.C.).

Rick Hess, a senior fellow and director of Educational Policy Studies at the American Enterprise Institute, said it was “quite reasonable” to abolish the department – or at least cut it – because of what he called wasting spending, political parties against teachers’ union and misplaced responsibility. For example, he and Petrilli have questioned why educational bureaucrats should steer a trillion dollar student loan portfolio rather than financial experts in the Treasury-a shift advocating Project 2025, the conservative policy partly written by many members of the first Trump -Administration.

But Liz Sanders, a spokesman for California’s education department, expressed unrest over any attempt to abolish the department.

“We are incredibly concerned about what seems to be a thoughtless approach to changing important federal programs that support our children every day – and support our most vulnerable children every day. We are talking about important academic support services,” said Sanders . “We want to make sure that these services are able to have a level of continuity for our teachers and our families and our students. Simply a hatchet job with a sentence is not how we should make changes that affect our children.”

Currently, education leaders are waiting for clearer signs of what Trump is intending.

“If this is about cutting down on costs and programs, the move would have a huge impact,” said Pedro Noguera, Dean of the USC Rossier School of Education. “If it is about moving tasks and the people who carry them out in other agencies, it’s hard to see costs reduced.

“It’s hard to know exactly what will happen or why it happens because they haven’t really been really aware of the strategy if there is one.”

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This story originally appeared in Los Angeles Times.