by WorldTribune Staff, February 3, 2025 Real World News

As part of Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) campaign, the Trump administration is examining how it can dismantle, or even eliminate, the Department of Education, a report said.

The Wall Street Journal in a report on Monday, cited sources as saying an executive order may be in the works that would “shut down all functions of the agency that aren’t written explicitly into statute or move certain functions to other departments.”

The order would call for developing a legislative proposal to abolish the department, the sources said.

During the 2024 campaign, Trump vowed to eliminate the department and give more authority to the states.

The Education Department is among the agencies that Musk’s DOGE is looking at as part of its efforts to overhaul federal bureaucracy, the sources told the Journal.

“Some of Musk’s representatives were working out of the main Education Department building in Washington,” the report said.

Eliminating the Department of Education would require an act of Congress.

Trump’s nominee to head up the department, Linda McMahon, has not yet had her Senate confirmation hearing scheduled.

The Education Department was created in 1979 under President Jimmy Carter with strong backing from the National Education Association, the country’s largest teachers union.

Trump has signed separate executive orders that instructed the education secretary to work on plans to purge schools of what he described as “radical indoctrination,” to expand school choice, and to combat antisemitism within universities.

At least 60 employees at the Education Department, along with an unknown number of supervisors, were placed on administrative leave Friday night, said Brittany Holder, a spokeswoman for the American Federation of Government Employees, a federal employee union. Holder said many of the federal workers had participated in voluntary diversity training or had served on a voluntary community or diversity council within the workplace.

Last week, Kentucky Republican Rep. Thomas Massie introduced a bill to abolish the Education Department by the end of 2026.

“Unelected bureaucrats in Washington, D.C. should not be in charge of our children’s intellectual and moral development,” Massie said. “States and local communities are best positioned to shape curricula that meet the needs of their students.”

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  Report: Trump and DOGE aim at dismantling Dept. of Education, WorldTribune.com