Is Trump about to pull the plug on the Department of Education?

It’s important we get that fact cleared up first because both sky-is-falling sorts on the left and hail God-Emperor Trump types on the right have a vested interest in acting like an upcoming executive order—expected today—means curtains for the Department of Education.

What Trump’s executive order reportedly will do is tell Secretary of Education Linda McMahon to take “all necessary steps to facilitate the closure of the Department of Education and return education authority to the States,” while ensuring “uninterrupted delivery of services, programs, and benefits on which Americans rely.”

During Trump’s first term, former Education Secretary Betsy DeVos sought to dramatically reduce the agency’s budget and asked Congress to bundle all K-12 funding into block grants that give states more flexibility in how they spend federal money. It was rejected, with pushback from some Republicans.

But what if the Department of Education is abolished? What would that mean, in practical terms?

For K-12 students in U.S. public schools, it’s unclear how much difference it would make.

“Federal funding makes up a relatively small portion of public school budgets—roughly 14%,” according to the Associated Press. “The money often supports supplemental programs for vulnerable students, such as the McKinney-Vento program for homeless students or Title I for low-income schools.”

Some of these programs could be preserved even without a department of education. At McMahon’s confirmation hearing, she “said she would preserve core initiatives, including Title I money for low-income schools and Pell grants for low-income college students,” notes A.P.

Besides, the order itself is expected to mention “the effective and uninterrupted delivery” of an unspecified spate of “services, programs, and benefits.”

This should calm the nerves of some skeptics of federal education programs who still worry about drastic steps. But for those who truly want to get the federal government out of education decisions, it isn’t enough.

“It’s a good idea to cut the Department of Education,” but more importantly to “scrutinize federal funding of education at all levels, because we spent a lot of money on education before the [Department of Education] existed,” said Reason Editor at Large Nick Gillespie on this week’s The Reason Roundtable podcast.

Does Trump even want to get the federal government out of education? Even as he and other Republicans bash the department and sing the importance of leaving decisions up to state and local governments, Trump has been using the Education Department and threats to withhold federal funding to target college policies and programs with which the administration disagrees.

The Department of Education is investigating colleges over diversity, equity, and inclusion programs, pausing funding over a transgender woman competing on a women’s swim team, and financially punishing schools over pro-Palestinian protests.

This sort of thing isn’t unique to the Trump administration, of course. The specifics differ—for recent Democratic administrations, it was more about pushing more expansive notions of sex and gender, defining sexual misconduct in an expansive way, and using Title IX to push for campus administrators to adjudicate sexual assaults with little due process. But the through line is using the Department of Education to accomplish political or cultural goals not directly related to education at all.

Whatever you think about a particular administration’s goals, it surely isn’t ideal for presidential administrations to attempt to shape ideology on college campuses, or for the federal government to have this much power over campus affairs around the country.

The Department of Education is the “poster child” for having Washington issue “one size fits all diktats” for things that should be handled at a more local level, said Reason Editor at Large Matt Welch on The Reason Roundtable this week. Decentralizing education should be the goal, added Welch. But Trump “wants to influence behavior,” and this makes Welch skeptical that Trump will decentralize education in ways that diminish his ability to have this control.

It’s a step? To the extent that Trump’s order sparks a serious discussion about the federal government’s role in education, it could be a good thing.

Because the Department of Education has been around for several decades (it was created in 1979), many Americans assume it’s always been around or imagine that K-12 public schools couldn’t function without it these days, at least. But most of what the department does has nothing to do with running or funding these schools. And most of what it does in other realms—dreaming up new ways to enforce Title IX, imposing ideological agendas of whoever is in power, managing the federal student loan program that has contributed to skyrocketing tuition costs—we could do without.

Trump can’t kick transgender service members out of the military, a federal judge has ruled. The suit, in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, concerns Trump’s January 27 executive order on “Prioritizing Military Excellence and Readiness.” The order declared—sans evidence—that transgender people “cannot satisfy the rigorous standards necessary for military service” as their gender identity “conflicts with a soldier’s commitment to an honorable, truthful, and disciplined lifestyle.” Under its dictates, openly transgender individuals would be barred from military service.

“The President has the power—indeed the obligation—to ensure military readiness,” wrote Judge Ana C. Reyes in a March 18 opinion. “At times, however, leaders have used concern for military readiness to deny marginalized persons the privilege of serving.”

A group of transgender plaintiffs challenged the executive order and the Department of Defense order that resulted from it. Together, these plaintiffs “have provided over 130 years of military service” and “earned more than 80 commendations,” said Reyes, going on to note the lack of evidence, analysis, or data provided by the Trump administration to declare transgender people unfit to serve. Here’s the money paragraph from the decision:

Scenes from Ohio:

S.B. 1 would also make public colleges post course syllabuses and more information about each course instructor, “declare that it will not endorse or oppose, as an institution, any controversial belief or policy (with an exception for endorsing “the congress of the
United States when it establishes a state of armed hostility against a foreign power”), and “post prominently on its web site a complete list of all speaker fees, honoraria, and other emoluments in excess of five hundred dollars for events that are sponsored by the state institution.”

The bill has now passed the House and the Senate.

QUICK HITS

• The Trump administration won’t provide a federal judge with details about flights carrying deported Venezuelan immigrants, saying that providing the information would infringe on executive authority.
• Israeli ground forces have seized part of the Gaza corridor, in what The New York Times is calling “the most significant ground operation since the collapse of the cease-fire with Hamas.” It follows “wide-scale Israeli aerial bombardment in Gaza that began early on Tuesday morning, ending the fragile truce between Israel and Hamas that had held since mid-January.”
• Why was a Brown University surgeon deported to Lebanon?
• A new bill in Arkansas provides more evidence that conservatives’ crusade against transgender people is going to wind up in more gender policing for everyone.
• Why are states suddenly exonerating long-dead “witches”?
• Is this…federal prosecutors admitting they were wrong about something?
• “The Social Security numbers and other private information of more than 200 former congressional staffers and others were made public Tuesday in the unredacted files related to the assassination of President John F. Kennedy,” The Washington Post has discovered.
• How Biden enabled Trump’s censorship.

Senior Editor, Reason

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