The reason why Mr. Trump wants to close the US Department of Education

"I want it closed immediately. The Department of Education (DOE) is a big scam," President Donald Trump declared at a press conference at the White House on February 12. He announced that he had assigned this task to Ms. Linda McMahon, her nominee for Secretary of Education awaiting Senate confirmation.

This is a commitment Mr. Trump made in September 2023, during the presidential campaign. He and his Republican allies have repeatedly accused the DOE of "promoting racist, sexist, and politically inappropriate ideologies to young people."

The U.S. Department of Education was created from the U.S. Department of Health, Education, and Welfare (HEW) under the Department of Education Organization Act passed by the U.S. Congress in 1979 at the initiative of Democratic President Jimmy Carter. After the DOE was split, HEW was renamed the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.

The DOE is the smallest in the U.S. government, with just over 4,200 employees and a budget of about $238 billion for fiscal year 2024. The DOE is responsible for administering federal student aid, ensuring equal access to education, and a number of other issues.

For MAGA supporters, the DOE is a prime example of waste and bureaucracy in government. They argue that DOE's functions should be delegated to other agencies, such as the Treasury Department, which oversees loans, or the Justice Department, which handles civil rights.

Project 2025, a series of policy proposals for a Republican administration drafted by dozens of conservative organizations, said the DOE had become “oversized and dominated by special interests” since the Carter era. Project 2025 recommends shifting federal programs and DOE funding to other agencies and state governments.

Cutting waste is one of the priorities of the Trump administration. Trump established the Office of Government Efficiency (DOGE) shortly after taking office, putting billionaire Elon Musk in charge of streamlining the apparatus and increasing the efficiency of federal agencies.

DOGE has already cut staff and budgets at the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) and is targeting the DOE as its next target. DOGE recently cut $900 million from the DOE’s Institute of Education Sciences, the agency that tracks federal student progress, saying the spending was unnecessary.

Mr. Trump and his allies also want to “expand school choice,” allowing students and parents to use federal funding to attend private or religious schools, instead of enrolling in designated public schools.

Republicans have recently accused the DOE of promoting what they call “woke political ideology” to children, rather than actually caring about education. They argue that the federal government should not fund curriculum that contains “inappropriate racial, gender, or political content.”

This is also a driving force behind the Trump administration's move to abolish the DOE, said Alex Hinton, a professor at Rutgers University in Newark, New Jersey.

Trump also announced that he would close the DOE to “bring real education back to the state level.” In fact, most decisions about curriculum from kindergarten through high school in the US are made by state or local governments. That’s why Republican politicians often use local regulations to eliminate inappropriate instruction based on DOE recommendations.

"President Trump wants to make American education the best in the world, move education policy back to the states where it belongs, and free American students from the educational bureaucracy of school choice regulations," Ms. McMahon said on February 13, when testifying before the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee.

President Trump is not the first Republican politician to want to abolish the DOE. But to do so, he needs congressional approval, since the DOE was created by a bipartisan law. Trump proposed closing the DOE during his 2017-2021 term, but the House of Representatives did not agree.

Ronald Reagan campaigned in 1980 on a pledge to abolish the DOE, but abandoned the idea when he realized he could not change it due to lack of congressional support.

Several Republicans have also tried to dismantle the DOE, but have been unsuccessful. In 1995, Representative Steve Gunderson of Wisconsin introduced a bill to merge the DOE with the Department of Labor, saving the government billions of dollars and creating an agency that “aligns the federal government’s responsibilities for education and the workforce in the 21st century economy.”

In early February, Kentucky Rep. Thomas Massie introduced a bill to “close the DOE by December 31, 2026” for consideration in the House. Massie made a similar move in 2017.

In the Senate, a bill to abolish the DOE would need the support of 60 of the 100 senators. Republicans hold a 53-47 majority in the Senate, so it would require votes from at least seven Democrats, which observers say is unlikely.

Additionally, not all Republicans support closing the DOE. The House of Representatives considered a bill to close the DOE in 2023, but 60 Republicans joined Democrats in opposing it.