The U.S. Department of Education will start to be dismantled on Tuesday, with some parts of the agency moving to offices in the Department of Labor and elsewhere, according to the Washington Post. It’s a wildly unlawful move, since a president can’t unilaterally decide to destroy an agency created by Congress. But President Donald Trump chose a pretty convenient day to do it.
The Washington Post reports that it’s still unclear what offices from the DoE may be salvaged, but it could include the Office for Civil Rights, the Office of Special Education and Rehabilitative Services, the Office of Elementary and Secondary Education, and the Indian Education program.
Social media accounts for the Department of Education and the Secretary of Education, Linda McMahon, shared a video with the caption “The clock is ticking…” The video features clips of Presidents Ronald Reagan and George H. W. Bush talking about how they wanted to abolish the agency.
Just because previous presidents wanted to abolish the agency doesn’t mean that Trump is allowed to do it without approval from Congress. The fact that other presidents were unable to do it should give some hint at how far outside the law Trump is operating.
Why is Trump making his move on the Department of Education today? As it happens, the House of Representatives is scheduled to vote Tuesday on releasing the so-called Epstein Files—the documents held by the U.S. Department of Justice about the late sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein, who died in jail in 2019. Trump has fought tooth and nail to keep the files from being released—perhaps because he was a close friend of Epstein—though he changed his tune Sunday after it became clear the House vote is likely to pass.
“As I said on Friday night aboard Air Force One to the Fake News Media, House Republicans should vote to release the Epstein files, because we have nothing to hide,” Trump wrote on Truth Social, rambling on further.
It’s not true that Trump said the files should be released on Friday while he was on Air Force One. In fact, when Trump was asked about the files by a Bloomberg reporter, he snapped back, “Quiet! Quiet, Piggy.”
Trump also said on Air Force One that Democrats are the ones who should be investigated. The president had previously tweeted that he ordered Attorney General Pam Bondi to look into connections between Epstein and Bill Clinton, along with other Democrats.
The White House reportedly believes they’ve found a workaround when it comes to the illegal move to dismantle the Department of Education. Federal law requires all of these programs to be housed at the Department of Education. But the Washington Post reports they’re going to try making other government agencies run the Education Department programs “under a contract with the Education Department.”
Nobody knows if this is going to be allowed to stand, but USAID was similarly dismantled in late January and early February, just after Trump started his second term. Dozens of lawsuits were filed, but the judicial system is clearly not equipped to handle a president who breaks things and just deals with the fallout, as the New York Times recently noted. President Trump’s decision to destroy the East Wing of the White House in a surprise move is a perfect example of that.
The House is currently discussing the vote over the Epstein files, but even if they vote to release the files, it still needs to be taken up by the Senate. After that, it also needs to be signed by the president. And even after that, there’s a question of what Trump will actually allow to be released. Again, the president doesn’t see himself as bound by the law. Congress can pass all the laws it wants to compel the release, but that doesn’t mean it’ll necessarily happen.
It seems like a given that dismantling the Department of Education will attract plenty of lawsuits. Whether those lawsuits actually accomplish anything is another question. Experts have pointed out that even if courts found the dismantling of USAID to be unlawful and ordered it reconstituted, it’s not something you could necessarily accomplish. Most people who worked at USAID have looked for new jobs and moved on with their lives.
It’s a lot easier to destroy something than it is to build it back up. And that’s not just true of USAID, the Department of Education, and the East Wing. It’s true of everything being dismantled in the U.S. right now. And if you zoom out to the broadest historical view possible, it will likely take generations to rebuild the things being broken right now.
