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Editor’s note: The following column was first published in City Journal.
There is a tingle of fear in any corporation whenever the words “restructuring,” “merger,” “acquisition” or “hostile takeover” spread through the office. Employees work on their resumes, whisper about projected layoffs and assess their options.
We’re seeing the same phenomenon unfold right now in our nation’s capital. Since taking over last month, President Donald Trump has promised to blitz through federal departments to roll back waste, cut ideological programs and return fiscal sanity to American governance. While Republican presidents have long promised to “reduce the size of government,” they have usually failed to do so — the bureaucracy always wins. This time might be different.
The second Trump administration has been surprisingly aggressive in its efforts to reform federal agencies, including a controlled demolition of USAID and an audacious buyout plan for government employees. And Elon Musk, leader of the president’s Department of Government Efficiency, has a long track record of successful, and sometimes extreme, cost-cutting. When Musk took over Twitter, for example, he fired 80% of the employees, and at the same time managed to improve the product and increase its profitability.
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The next stage of the conflict between Trump and the bureaucracy looks to be the Department of Education, which the president has correctly identified as a hotbed of left-wing ideologies. Almost every Republican presidential candidate since 1980 has promised either to shrink or abolish the department, but its budget has only grown.
If the Trump administration is really going to dismantle the Department of Education, then it needs to understand the best way to do it. (Jose Luis Magana)
When Trump made the same promise on the campaign trail last year, I was skeptical. But Musk changes the calculation: the tech entrepreneur has already routed USAID and, as I can confirm from my own reporting, dispatched his DOGE engineers to investigate the DOE. While the department, as a public entity, does not have the same kind of balance sheet as a corporation, it must nevertheless be broken apart and ultimately shut down.
What is the best way to proceed? The administration must first understand that the Department of Education administers three primary activities: college student loans and grants; K-12 funding; and ideological production, which includes an array of programs, grants, civil rights initiatives, and third-party NGOs that create left-wing content to push on local schools. It is not possible or desirable to shut down all three functions at the same time. Rather, Secretary of Education nominee Linda McMahon, in partnership with Musk and DOGE, should handle each separately.
First, the department should spin off all college student loans and grants to an independent financial entity. The federal government currently backstops $1.6 trillion in student loans and issues another $110 billion in student aid each year. This is an enormous portfolio that will require a devoted set of administrators, risk analysts and cost-cutters. These professionals should reform the student-loan portfolio, shifting as much of it as possible back to the private market and restricting the total number of loans, which is partially responsible for administrative bloat and the student-debt crisis.
Second, the administration, in cooperation with Congress, should block-grant the Department of Education’s K-12 funding programs to the states. The department sends about $100 billion to state governments and local school districts around the country every year, often with onerous restrictions and Draconian ideological conditions.
The Biden administration, for example, attempted to use this federal largesse to push race and gender politics into local school districts. Rather than legitimize the department’s coercive power, the administration should simply tally up all departmental K-12 expenditures, divide by state population, and disburse the result to each state with few or no strings attached. States can continue to use this funding for meals, low-income schools and special education, but they will have the flexibility to do so in a way that best meets their local needs.
Third, Trump must shut down the Department of Education’s centers of ideological production and terminate the employment of the bureaucrats who run them. The department maintains a sprawling network of ideological centers through its research programs, as well as a vast array of NGOs, which survive on department funding and promote left-wing identity activism.
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These groups have become hotbeds of progressive identity politics, promoting theories of “systemic racism” and the idea that men can turn into women. Such activities do not serve the public good and do not deserve public subsidy, especially under a conservative president who promised to put an end to critical race theory and gender ideology in the federal government.
Likewise, the Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights, while ostensibly serving a noble purpose, has been used as a battering ram to promote left-wing ideologies. The office’s core civil rights functions can easily be folded into the Department of Justice, where the administration can provide needed oversight without the Department of Education’s left-wing ideologues and civil rights apparatchiks.
While the department, as a public entity, does not have the same kind of balance sheet as a corporation, it must nevertheless be broken apart and ultimately shut down.
There is an open question about authority. Some members of Trump’s inner circle believe that the president can dismantle the Department of Education solely through executive action, as they have done with USAID. It is unlikely, however, that the Department of Education can be terminated without specific legislation, or, at minimum, an agreement by Congress to delegate reorganization authority to the president, as it did regularly between 1932 and 1984.
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In enacting any bold reform, public support is a crucial consideration. To maintain Americans’ approval, the Trump administration must explain that college students will still be able to receive loans, K-12 schools will still receive funding for special education programs, and civil rights will still be protected by the Department of Justice. This ensures that the argument can be focused on eliminating deeply unpopular and divisive left-wing ideologies, much as Musk has already done with USAID.
The time is now. The president is in his first 100 days, and major change is best enacted when an administration enjoys high public approval. Musk, too, understands that hesitation signals weakness. Abolish the Department of Education — and don’t look back.
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