(March 21): US President Donald Trump signed an executive order to largely dismantle the Education Department — an organisation created by Congress and tasked with sweeping responsibilities that involve billions in funds that impact millions of American students.

The move is part of Trump’s vision to overhaul the US government. 

“We are going to eliminate it, and everybody knows it’s right,” Trump said at a White House event on Thursday, moving to deliver on a campaign promise and a long-sought goal of conservatives. “We have to get our children educated. We are not doing well with the world of education in this country, and we haven’t for a long time.”

The order directs Education Secretary Linda McMahon to “take all necessary steps to facilitate the closure” of the department, according to a White House fact sheet. It follows an effort to slash its workforce of more than 4,000 employees by nearly half.

The move portends a clash with powerful labour unions and risks roiling parents and students at all levels of education who rely on the department’s programmes. The president’s attempted demolition of a Cabinet-level department is in many ways unprecedented and faces legal and logistical hurdles. 

Cabinet entities have been reorganised in the past with different functions being combined or reassigned. But the last time a department was taken apart was the replacement of the Post Office Department by the US Postal Service more than 50 years ago. 

Trump’s push to do the same to the US government’s educational authority faces an uncertain path, with no clear blueprint for how to carry out his goal. The administration has already acknowledged that because Congress created the department, lawmaker approval will be needed to close it down entirely. White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt said critical functions would remain within the department, though its size would be greatly reduced.

Trump on Thursday vowed to preserve some of the department’s programmes, citing funding for children with disabilities and special needs, as well as Pell Grants, which are the largest source of undergraduate financial aid for low-income students.

“They are going to be preserved in full and redistributed to various other agencies and departments that will take very good care of them,” Trump said, referring to what he called the department’s core necessities.

While Trump has said his goal is to transfer the department’s functions to states — which he claims will help improve educational outcomes for Americans — and McMahon has floated shifting some programmes to other parts of the federal government, many of the details about what duties, if any, could be offloaded remains unclear.

The moves also come as Trump has wielded his powers in a bid to bring US higher education into line with his worldview, taking a more adversarial approach to the nation’s top academic institutions over conservative complaints that schools are promoting leftist ideologies.

Earlier this month, the administration suspended US$400 million (RM1.77 billion) in grants at Columbia University following accusations by Jewish students of antisemitism at the school stemming from the protests over the Israel-Hamas war. The administration has moved to deport students who participated in the demonstrations, including Mahmoud Khalil, a Palestinian activist who led protests at Columbia.

The administration has also targeted schools over their diversity, equity and inclusion practices and policies on transgender athletes, including freezing US$175 million to the University of Pennsylvania, citing policies over who is allowed to compete in women’s sports. Trump is set to attend the NCAA wrestling championships this weekend in Philadelphia.

Atop that list is the department’s role overseeing federal loans held by roughly 43 million Americans — or about one in six US adults. Trump’s moves to hollow out the Education Department have already sparked anxiety among student borrowers, who collectively hold more than US$1 trillion in debt, about how changes may affect loan collection or forgiveness programmes.

Trump previously floated moving the loan portfolio to other agencies such as the Treasury, Commerce Department or Small Business Administration, but Leavitt earlier on Thursday said student loans and Pell Grants would continue to be administered by the Education Department. 

During the school year that ended in 2024, nearly US$121 billion in federal grants, loans and work-study payments were distributed to almost 10 million students, according to a 2024 fiscal year report. The department also administers the Free Application for Federal Student Aid, or FAFSA, which about 17 million prospective students complete annually to help determine their eligibility for funding.

McMahon has said the department will fulfill obligations mandated by Congress. The Education Department touted this week that more than eight million 2025–26 FAFSA applications have been processed.

Conservatives have also floated moving the department’s assistance programmes for students with disabilities to Health and Human Services, making the State Department responsible for the Fulbright-Hayes Program, which provides grants to study abroad, and having the Interior Department take on administrating grants to schools in indigenous communities.

It is uncertain how much authority and responsibility Trump can transfer to the states. Much of the money controlled by the Education Department is dispersed according to federal laws, which would presumably still be in effect even if the department’s functions are eliminated. 

Local and state officials, not the federal department, already have primary control of school curricula, testing and other priorities across the US. Other agencies also have a role in federal education policies; the Department of Defense oversees military schools and schools on tribal lands are overseen by the Bureau of Indian Education, which is part of the Interior Department.

While conservatives have long sought to dismantle the department, the push received new impetus in recent years with the right criticising Covid-19 pandemic school closures and teachings on race, gender and sexuality in schools. 

“The key to improving education is empowering parents and students and reducing the role of Washington bureaucrats,” House Education and Workforce Committee chairman Tim Walberg, a Michigan Republican, said in a statement.

The president also sought to deflect criticism from teachers unions, calling educators “among the most important people in this country”.

“We are going to take care of our teachers. And I don’t care if they are in the union or not in the union, that doesn’t matter,” Trump said.

Trump’s move is also likely to spur another round of legal challenges, with controversial elements of Trump’s second-term agenda already facing judicial scrutiny. Trump’s efforts to scale back the government, particularly through his Department of Government Efficiency effort spearheaded by billionaire Elon Musk, have drawn lawsuits from contractors, public-sector unions and others. 

“This executive order is nothing more than an illegal overreach of executive power designed to unemploy dedicated civil servants and decimate the critical services they provide to millions of Americans across this country,” Sheria Smith, the president of the American Federation of Government Employees Local 252, which represents over 2,800 workers at the department, said in a statement.

Trump has also moved to limit student-debt relief for public servants, a move that could also draw lawsuits. 

Still, the administration has effectively managed to gut other federal agencies established by law, including the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau and the US Agency for International Development, and efforts at the Education Department are already underway.

As part of the recent reduction in force the department fired hundreds of personnel in the Federal Student Aid Office and the Office of Civil Rights, according to a department-compiled list seen by Bloomberg News. Entire teams were eliminated, a senior department official told reporters. 

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