Donald Trump riled up the Indiana, Pennsylvania rally crowd with a promise to shut down the U.S. Department of Education, saying he would “move education back to the states” much as he boasts that the Supreme Court’s scuttling of Roe v. Wade returned abortion legislation to the states.
Trump spoke of the shutting of the Department of Education as if it were a top priority, saying “we’re gonna do it fast.”
The post below, promoted by Libs of TikTok, a far-right social media operation, features Trump on the stump, vowing to abolish the DOE.
Trump promises to shut down the Department of Education pic.twitter.com/F1F8kq72iA
— Libs of TikTok (@libsoftiktok) September 24, 2024
During his term in office, Trump — unable to scratch out the Education Department with a Sharpie — tried what he saw as the next best thing: installing Betsy DeVos as the Secretary of Education, appointing a person who believed the department she was charged with leading should not exist.
Cancelling the DOE has long been a popular idea among Republicans, and MAGA has turned up the volume on the initiative: In 2017, Rep. Thomas Massie (R-KY) introduced a bill in 2017 to abolish the department. And back when Trump had ostensible competition for the GOP nomination, his challengers Mike Pence and Vivek Ramaswamy both said they, too, would shutter DOE. Ramaswamy said he would “take that $80 billion, put it in the hands of parents across this country.”
[NOTE: The DOE, with more than 4,000 employees, handles a range of initiatives from student loans to tracking education progress across the country. Even its detractors admit that abolishing the DOE would move many of these initiatives to other departments, though they insist money would be saved nevertheless.]
Trump himself admits just seconds after promising he’d abolish the DOE “fast” that it’s “not too easy.” Zealous Trump supporter and former U.S. Congressman Lee Zeldin (R-NY) was in the Pennsylvania audience — and Trump suggested he might bring Zeldin into a second Trump administration to get the Education Department cancelled.
Conservative groups that routinely accuse the DOE of fostering progressivism and Liberalism in schools — at the expense of religious education — have long had the department in their sites as a target in the culture wars.
Project 2025 — the controversial Heritage Foundation presidential transition document — predictably spells doom for the DOE, another instance of Project 2025’s initiatives and Trump’s aligning, despite the former President’s distancing himself from the plan.