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California Department of Education urges school districts to resist Trump’s threats over transgender athletes
Flanked by fourth-place winner Ellie McCuskey-Hay, left, and first-place winner Loren Webster, right, second-place winners AB Hernandez, center right, and Brooke White share the podium during a medal ceremony for the long jump at the California high school track and field championships in Clovis.

Credit: AP Photo / Jae C. Hong
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California Department of Education vows to protect “all students’ access to participate in athletics in a manner that is consistent with their gender identity.”

Sixteen-year-old transgender athlete AB Hernandez shared three medals with cisgender competitors under newly rejiggered rules at California’s track and field championships last weekend, sparking controversy.

The U.S. Department of Justice warned California schools they may be held in violation of civil rights protections for girls.
The California Department of Education on Tuesday weighed in on the escalating controversy over transgender athletes in school sports, advising schools to hold the line in the wake of threats from the federal government.

The U.S. Department of Justice on Monday issued a letter warning California school districts they will face legal trouble if they don’t pledge to bar trans athletes from competition by June 9, citing civil rights concerns. The CDE countered Tuesday, advising schools to hold fast and let it respond to the Justice Department regarding matters of gender identity on behalf of the state.

“Let’s be clear: sending a letter does not change the law,” said State Superintendent of Public Instruction Tony Thurmond in a statement. “The DOJ’s letter to school districts does not announce any new federal law, and state law on this issue has remained unchanged since 2013. California state law protects all students’ access to participate in athletics in a manner that is consistent with their gender identity. We will continue to follow the law and ensure the safety of all our athletes.”

Last weekend’s fracas over California’s track and field championships in Clovis has become a flashpoint in the Trump administration’s campaign to target transgender athletes in girls sports, a divisive hot-button issue that conservatives have pushed aggressively of late.

President Donald Trump has threatened financial penalties for California public schools after a 16-year-old trans athlete, AB Hernandez, won three medals in last weekend’s California Interscholastic Federation State Track and Field Championships. Hernandez placed first in the high jump and triple jump and finished second in the long jump.

In the wake of a key last-minute rule change, Hernandez shared the podium with her cisgender competitors. The hastily rejiggered rules allow girls to receive medals based on where they would have finished if a transgender athlete had not been allowed to compete.

This compromise did not mollify the president.

“Biological Male competed in California Girls State Finals, WINNING BIG, despite the fact that they were warned by me not to do so,” Trump wrote in a 12:56 a.m. ET post on June 2. “As Governor Gavin Newscum fully understands, large scale fines will be imposed!!!” he added, referring to Newsom.

Harmeet Dhillon, assistant attorney general for the Department of Justice’s Civil Rights Division, argues that letting transgender athletes into girls sports competitions constitutes sex discrimination, violating the Equal Protection Clause of the 14th Amendment.

“Scientific evidence shows that upsetting the historical status quo and forcing girls to compete against males would deprive them of athletic opportunities and benefits because of their sex,” Dhillon has said. “Therefore, you cannot implement a policy allowing males to compete alongside girls, because such a policy would deprive girls of athletic opportunities and benefits based solely on their biological sex.”

The Civil Rights Division has also announced investigations into the University of Wyoming and Jefferson County Public Schools in Colorado for allegedly allowing males to live in intimate and communal spaces earmarked for females.

Town leaders in Clovis, the largely conservative city in Central California that hosted the track and field championships, called it unfair to include a transgender athlete in girls sports, The Fresno Bee reported. Chino has also filed a lawsuit on the issue.

California is among 22 states with laws that allow transgender athletes to compete with girls. Amid the state’s nearly 6 million TK-12 public school students, experts say, the number of active transgender student-athletes is estimated to be in the single digits.

Newsom, a potential 2028 presidential contender who has often jousted with Trump on social issues, shocked many on the left when he admitted that he felt allowing transgender athletes to compete against girls was “deeply unfair” during a recent interview with conservative commentator Charlie Kirk.

While Newsom himself has not as yet weighed in on this specific controversy, Izzy Gardon, a spokesperson for the governor, has praised the new rules as “a reasonable, respectful way to navigate a complex issue without compromising competitive fairness — a model worth pursuing.”

For her part, Hernandez, a junior at Southern California’s Jurupa Valley High, has been characterized as poised and unruffled amid the heated controversy.

“We could not be prouder of the way this brave student-athlete conducted herself on and off the track,” said Tony Hoang, executive director of Equality California, the state’s LGBTQ+ civil rights organization.
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04/06/2025
Federal Judge Blocks Shutdown of Department of Education

When Trump promised to shut down the U.S. Department of Education during his campaign, he must have known that he couldn’t close down a department without Congressional approval. Everyone else knew it. He brought in wrestling entrepreneur Linda McMahon as Secretary of Education to preside over the Department’s demise. He never sought Congressional approval.

Elon Musk’s DOGS team did the dirty work, laying off half the Department’s employees, some 1300 people.

The most severely affected offices were the Federal Student Aid office, the Office for Civil Rights, and the Institute for Education Sciences (which oversees federal research and NAEP). The IES was eliminated, leaving future administrations of NAEP in doubt and disemboweling the government’s essential historic role in compiling data about education.

But today a federal judge ruled that the shuttering of ED was wrong and that everyone laid off should be rehired. Bottom line: a President can’t close a Congressionally authorized department by executive order.

WASHINGTON (AP) — A federal judge on Thursday blocked President Donald Trump’s executive order to shut down the Education Department and ordered the agency to reinstate employees who were fired in mass layoffs.

U.S. District Judge Myong Joun in Boston granted a preliminary injunction stopping the Trump administration from carrying out two plans announced in March that sought to work toward Trump’s goal to dismantle the department. It marks a setback to one of the Republican president’s campaign promises.

The injunction was requested in a lawsuit filed by the Somerville and Easthampton school districts in Massachusetts and the American Federation of Teachers, along with other education groups.

In their lawsuit, the groups said the layoffs amounted to an illegal shutdown of the Education Department. They said it left the department unable to carry out responsibilities required by Congress, including duties to support special education, distribute financial aid and enforce civil rights laws.

In his order, Joun said the plaintiffs painted a “stark picture of the irreparable harm that will result from financial uncertainty and delay, impeded access to vital knowledge on which students and educators rely, and loss of essential services for America’s most vulnerable student populations.”

Layoffs of that scale, he added, “will likely cripple the Department.”

Joun ordered the Education Department to reinstate federal workers who were terminated as part of the March 11 layoff announcement.

The Trump administration says the layoffs are aimed at efficiency, not a department shutdown. Trump has called for the closure of the agency but recognizes it must be carried out by Congress, the government said.

The administration said restructuring the agency “may impact certain services until the reorganization is finished” but it’s committed to fulfilling its statutory requirements.

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23/05/2025
Trump Plans Deep Cuts to Interior Department, National Parks Service

Government Executive describes the deep cuts that the Trump administration and the DOGE team intend to impose on the Interior Department, with the collaboration of Secretary of the Interior Douglas Burghum, former Governor of North Dakota.

The Interior Department is finalizing reduction-in-force plans expected to target thousands of employees, including 1,500 at the National Park Service, with notices going out to employees within 10 days.

The anticipated layoffs follow the departure of thousands of Interior employees leaving the department under various incentives. Interior earlier in May initiated a consolidation of several functions currently conducted by each bureau individually by rolling them up into the department’s headquarters, where they will report directly to Secretary Doug Burgum. Some of the employees who were part of that consolidation—such as those in IT, communications, finance, human resources and contracting—are eventually expected to feel the impacts of workforce downsizing.

NPS is expected to issue around 1,500 RIFs, while the U.S. Geological Survey will lay off around 1,000 employees—focused on its Ecosystems Mission Area, according to a person familiar with the plans—and the Bureau of Reclamation will target around 100 to 150 employees, according to another employee there briefed on the details. Other components, such as the Bureau of Land Management and the Fish and Wildlife Service, are also expected to experience layoffs. Four sources confirmed the first round of RIFs are expected on or around May 15.

Reclamation already lost about one-quarter of its 5,800 employees through incentivized departures, according to an employee briefed on the details, so it is expecting a smaller RIF of 100 to 150 employees. At NPS, meanwhile, just 5% of employees have so far opted into the “deferred resignation program”—which has enabled them to take paid leave through September, at which point they must leave government service—leading to a more significant expected RIF for the agency.

In addition to NPS headquarters and regional offices, NPS’ Cultural Resources Stewardship, Partnerships, and Science Directorate and Natural Resource Stewardship and Science directorates are expected to be heavily impacted, with the vast majority of staff being laid off. Those divisions are made up of hundreds of biologists, archaeologists, geologists, historians and other scientists and specialists who help preserve and understand resources within the parks.

While NPS staff were originally told the RIFs would focus on Washington and regional staff, wiping out those directorates would mean individual parks would also see direct impacts. Some of the functions of those offices are statutorily required, said Kriten Brengel, the National Parks Conservation Association’s senior vice president for government affairs, who added groups like hers would sue Interior if it follows through on its plans….

Government Executive first reported on Interior’s plan to consolidate functions across the department earlier this month, which Interior Secretary Doug Burgum subsequently confirmed in a memorandum. Burgum tapped the assistant secretary for policy, management budget—a role currently being filled by Tyler Hassenm—to lead the effort. Hassen previously served in the Department of Government Efficiency….

The cuts come on top of a significant exodus across Interior as employees have flocked to the deferred resignation, buyouts and early retirements all while a hiring freeze is in place. NPS has already lost around 13% of its workforce, according to NPCA, complicating Burgum’s order to keep parks open without reducing hours.

The mandate—park superintendents will need a sign off from agency leadership to close even a trail or visitor center—already raised concerns with agency stakeholders even before the layoff plans were made clear. NPCA’s Brengel suggested Burgum was “setting up the Park Service for failure” as it aims to carry out the same level of operations without the requisite staff to do so.

She added the expansion of NPS RIFs to the science teams means the cuts are “larger and more directly attacking the Park Service.”

A USGS employee in the Ecosystems Mission Area said the cuts will likely spell the end of fish survey work, in which agency staff go out on ships to inform states of fish stocking and harvest rates.

“The states do not have the funds or staff to take over,” the employee said. “There are few people in the US with these skills.”

Mary Jo Rugwell, a long time BLM executive who now leads the Public Lands Foundation, said her former agency has lost more than 1,000 employees since President Trump took office, or about 10% of the workforce. The agency has long suffered from understaffing, Rugwell said, an issue exacerbated in Trump’s first term when he moved the agency’s headquarters to Grand Junction, Colorado. Now, she said, as employees head for the exits and more RIFs are expected, BLM will struggle to carry out the Trump administration’s priorities to approve oil and gas leasing, grazing permits, drilling and timber sales, work that requires significant experience.

“The very people you need to get this work done, they’re sending them packing,” Rugwell said. “And it doesn’t make any sense….”

“Morale is at an all time low,” one employee said. “People are worried about RIFs, contracts being cut and so many changes coming at once. Consolidation at the department is seen as a hostile takeover of bureau level functions, and a way to group people to make RIFs easier.”

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11/05/2025
Maybe we should get rid of the U.S. Department of Education

Credit: Carlos Kosienski/Sipa via AP Images

In 1994, I was the press secretary for the U.S. Department of Education when Republicans took over Congress and threatened to shut us down. My then boss, Secretary Dick Riley, would joke in almost every speech he gave that each morning his wife would open the newspaper and say, “Hey! looks like they’re trying to fire you again!” He regularly talked about it because it quickly became clear to us that people deeply believed in the Education Department’s mission and that the threats against us were bad politics.

I was thinking of this when I watched Donald Trump’s 10-point plan for education. I was struck by its contradictory nature of wanting to dismantle federal involvement in schools, while simultaneously trying to dictate curriculum and impose ideological policies. The department was established in 1979 to ensure resources were being spent on our nation’s poorest children.

Now, three decades after my time at the department, the same battle is resurfacing with a new twist. At its heart, what Trump’s really proposing is a hollowing out of the department’s founding mission — not a true decentralization of power to states, but a reimagining of federal oversight as a tool for ideological control instead of a protection for our nation’s most vulnerable.

But here’s the paradox: Without a Department of Education and federal resources, there’s less leverage to enforce his ideological agenda. As a result, we may be in a bizarre quandary of having to choose between these two opposite visions. Given the choice between a Department of Education that no longer champions equity and no department at all, perhaps it’s time to consider the latter.

The plan, as I understand it, is to move higher ed funding (Pell Grants and student loans) and education research to other agencies while providing equity-driven K-12 federal funds as block grants to be spent however states want.

In California, the Local Control Funding Formula (LCFF) ensures that schools serving students with the greatest needs — low-income students, English learners and foster youth — receive additional resources. With LCFF, we’ve built a system that both works and meets this moment (though we may also need to codify our clear commitment to special education). As someone who has spent decades in education policy, I don’t say this lightly — in fact, it breaks my heart. But this moment calls for different thinking. The U.S. Department of Education has been a force for good in countless lives. But it should not stand if it’s dictated by ideological agendas. Quality education for all children must remain our North Star in California, because when we center our most vulnerable students, we all succeed.

•••

Rick Miller is the CEO of CORE Districts, a collaboration of nine large California urban districts. He previously served as press secretary for the U.S. Department of Education and as deputy state superintendent at the California Department of Education.

The opinions expressed in this commentary represent those of the author. EdSource welcomes commentaries representing diverse points of view. If you would like to submit a commentary, please review our guidelines and contact us.

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03/05/2025
Memo Leaked about Cuts to State Department, Slashing Africa Offices, Climate and Human Rights Agencies

The New York Times published a leaked plan to reorganize the Trump State Department; Rubio disowned it. Its goal is to align the State Department and foreign policy with Trump’s “America First” agenda. It’s a very scary vision of Fortress America, cut off from the rest of the world, with no concern for democracy, climate change, human rights, or Africa.

The Times reported:

A draft of a Trump administration executive order proposes a drastic restructuring of the State Department, including eliminating almost all of its Africa operations and shutting down embassies and consulates across the continent.

The draft also calls for cutting offices at State Department headquarters that address climate change and refugee issues, as well as democracy and human rights concerns.

The purpose of the executive order, which could be signed soon by President Trump, is to impose “a disciplined reorganization” of the State Department and “streamline mission delivery” while cutting “waste, fraud and abuse,” according to a copy of the 16-page draft order obtained by The New York Times. The department is supposed to make the changes by Oct. 1.

Some of the proposed changes outlined in the draft document would require congressional notification and no doubt be challenged by lawmakers, including mass closures of diplomatic missions and headquarters bureaus, as well as an overhaul of the diplomatic corps. Substantial parts of it, if officials tried to enact them, would likely face lawsuits.

Elements of the executive order could change before final White House review or before Mr. Trump signs it, if he decides to do so. Neither the State Department nor the White House National Security Council had immediate comment on the draft order early Sunday.

Secretary of State Marco Rubio wrote a short comment on social media after this article was published calling it “fake news…”

Major structural changes to the State Department would be accompanied by efforts to lay off both career diplomats, known as foreign service officers, and civil service employees, who usually work in the department’s headquarters in Washington, said current and former U.S. officials familiar with the plans. The department would begin putting large numbers of workers on paid leave and sending out notices of termination, they said.

The draft executive order calls for ending the foreign service exam for aspiring diplomats, and it lays out new criteria for hiring, including “alignment with the president’s foreign policy vision.”

The draft says the department must greatly expand its use of artificial intelligence to help draft documents, and to undertake “policy development and review” and “operational planning.”

The proposed reorganization would get rid of regional bureaus that help make and enact policy in large parts of the globe.

Instead, the draft says, those functions would fall under four “corps”: Eurasia Corps, consisting of Europe, Russia and Central Asia; Mid-East Corps, consisting of Arab nations, Iran, Pakistan and Afghanistan; Latin America Corps, consisting of Central America, South America and the Caribbean; and Indo-Pacific Corps, consisting of East Asia, Southeast Asia, India, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, Nepal, Bhutan and the Maldives.

One of the most drastic proposed changes would be eliminating the bureau of African affairs, which oversees policy in sub-Saharan Africa. It would be replaced by a much smaller special envoy office for African affairs that would report to the White House National Security Council. The office would focus on a handful of issues, including “coordinated counterterrorism operations” and “strategic extraction and trade of critical natural resources.”

The draft also said all “nonessential” embassies and consulates in sub-Saharan Africa would be closed by Oct. 1. Diplomats would be sent to Africa on “targeted, mission-driven deployments,” the document said.

Canada operations would be put into a new North American affairs office under Mr. Rubio’s authority, and it would be run by a “significantly reduced team,” the draft said. The department would also severely shrink the U.S. embassy in Ottawa.

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23/04/2025
Trump’s nominee says she may break apart, not shut down Education Department

Linda McMahon, Trump’s nominee for secretary of education, answers questions from senators during her confirmation hearing while surrounded by family members in Washington, D.C., on Thursday.

Credit: Allison Bailey/NurPhoto via AP

The nominee to become the next and, President Donald Trump vows, last secretary of education assured U.S. senators on Thursday that there are no plans to shut down the Department of Education or to cut spending that Congress has already approved for the department.

Linda McMahon, however, said she would be open to moving programs to other departments, such as sending the Office of Civil Rights to the Justice Department.

Sen. Bill Cassidy, R-La, who chairs the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions, brought up funding early in the two-hour hearing on the nomination.

“If the department is downsized, would the states and localities still receive the federal funding that they currently receive?” he asked.

“Yes, it’s not the president’s goal to defund the programs. It’s only to have it operate more efficiently,” she said.

Closing the department, a longtime goal of conservative Republicans, was one of Trump’s campaign promises. Calling the department a “con job” this week, he has said repeatedly that McMahon’s goal should be to shrink the department, to “put herself out of a job.”

But Trump also acknowledged that only Congress can dismantle what it established in 1980 during the Carter administration. At the hearing, McMahon affirmed that she would work with Congress to follow the law.

With husband Vince, McMahon, 76, founded a successful sports entertainment company that later became World Wrestling Entertainment, and served as its president, then its CEO for 30 years. McMahon served as Trump’s administrator of the Small Business Administration in his first administration. She also served for a year on the Connecticut State Board of Education in 2009 and is a longtime trustee of Sacred Heart University in Fairfield, Connecticut, but otherwise has had little involvement in education.

Democratic senators did not press her on her lack of education experience, although Sen. Patty Murray, D-Washington, did push her to name a requirement for schools to show improvement under the Every Student Succeeds Act, the principal law determining accountability for K-12 schools. She could not.

Instead, they questioned her on Trump’s plan to ship federal funding to states as block grants without federal oversight, his intention to expand parental school choice, and his threats to cut funding for colleges that allow transgender athletes to participate in women’s sports and for schools that continue policies for diversity, equity and inclusion, known as DEI.

‘Invest in teachers, not bureaucrats’

McMahon made clear in her opening statement she is in sync with the president’s assessment of education.

Calling the nation’s schools a “system in decline,” she said, “we can do better for elementary and junior high school students by teaching basic reading and mathematics; for the college freshmen facing censorship or antisemitism on campus, and for parents and grandparents who worry that their children and grandchildren are no longer taught American values and true history.”

“So what’s the remedy?” she asked. “Fund education freedom, not government-run systems. Invest in teachers, not Washington bureaucrats.”

McMahon expressed support for continuing federal funding for Title I in support of low-income students, and for students with disabilities under the Individuals With Disabilities Education Act (IDEA). However, she will investigate whether IDEA should remain in the department.

“When IDEA was originally set up, it was under the Department of Health and Welfare. After the Department of Education was established, it shifted over there,” she said. “I’m not sure that it’s not better served in Health and Human Services, but I don’t know. If I’m confirmed, it is of high priority to make sure that the students who are receiving disability funding (are) not impacted.”

Sen. Maggie Hassan, D-New Hampshire, called her commitment to continued funding “gaslighting.”

Even as the hearing was happening, Republicans in the House were working on “reconciliation” bills that called for possibly balancing massive continued personal income tax cuts with hundreds of billions in funding cuts for Medicaid and education.

This week, Elon Musk’s budget-cutting SWAT team known as DOGE, cut $881 million in research contracts without notice. Other education grants associated with DEI received termination notices, too.

McMahon said DOGE’s “audit” of the department was appropriate. “I believe the American people spoke loudly in the election last November, to say that they want to look at waste, fraud and abuse in our government.” Trump recently fired the Department of Education’s independent inspector general, Sandra D. Bruce, whose job was to root out waste, fraud and abuse.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hm9QfK8zDU0
Watch: Linda McMahon said DOGE’s “audit” of the department was appropriate.

“I understand an audit,” Murray said. “But when Congress appropriates money, it is the administration’s responsibility to put that out, as directed by Congress who has the power of the purse. So what will you do if the president or Elon Musk tells you not to spend money Congress has appropriated to you?”

“We’ll certainly expend those dollars that Congress has passed,” McMahon responded. “But I do think it is worthwhile to take a look at the programs before the money goes out the door. It’s much easier to stop the money before it goes out the door than it is to claw it back.”

Sen. Chris Murphy, D-Conn., said schools across the nation are “scrambling because they have no idea what DEI means” and are worried they will lose funding. He presented two scenarios that pointed to ambiguities in the executive order.

If a school in Connecticut celebrates Martin Luther King Day events and programming teaching about Black history, does it violate or run afoul of DEI prohibitions? he asked.

“Not, in my view, that is clearly not the case,” McMahon said. “That celebration of Martin Luther King Day and Black History Month should be celebrated throughout all of our schools.”

Murphy continued, “What about educational programming centered around specific ethnic and racial experiences? My son is in a public school. He takes African American History. Could you perhaps be in violation of this executive order?”

“I’m, I’m not quite certain,” McMahon said. “I would like to take a look at these programs and fully understand the breadth of the executive order and get back to you on that.”

As with all of Trump’s nominees so far, McMahon is expected to win a majority vote in the Senate, possibly along party lines, later this month.

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20/04/2025
Department of Homeland Security Demands Harvard Turn Over International Student Disciplinary Records

CNN reports that Kristi Noem sent a stern letter to Harvard, demanding the disciplinary records of all international students or lose the right to enroll any international students.

Trump is turning all his dogs loose on Harvard. He can’t believe Harvard is standing up to his threats, and he is determined to crush the nation’s most prestigious research university.

Whatever happened to small government? Republicans used to believe that the federal government should leave the private sector alone. Trump believes in big government, big enough to interfere in every institution, even into private medical decisions. He wants to be the emperor.

Clearly, he never read the U.S. Constitution. He knows nothing about checks and balances. Nor did he read Dr. Seuss’s Yertle the Turtle; Yertle wanted to be the master of all he could see. Read it to see what happened to him.

CNN reports:

Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem is threatening to strip Harvard University of its ability to enroll international students if it doesn’t turn over records on international students’ “illegal and violent activities,” the agency said Wednesday.

Noem “wrote a scathing letter demanding detailed records on Harvard’s foreign student visa holders’ illegal and violent activities by April 30, 2025, or face immediate loss of Student and Exchange Visitor Program (SEVP) certification,” DHS said in a news release.

The certification allows universities to issue forms to admitted international students that they can then use to apply for visas to enter the United States, according to DHS.

CNN has reached out to DHS for additional information.

A Harvard spokesperson said in a statement that the university is aware of the letter, but they stand by their previous statement that they “will not surrender its independence or relinquish its constitutional rights.”

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17/04/2025
Trump signs executive order to dismantle Department of Education

President Donald Trump, left, holds up a signed executive order as young people hold up copies of the executive order they signed at an education event in the East Room of the White House in Washington on March 20, 2025.

Credit: Ben Curtis/AP Photo

President Donald Trump signed an executive order Thursday directing U.S. Secretary of Education Linda McMahon to work toward eliminating the Department of Education, pushing forward a campaign promise to dismantle an agency that has long been maligned by conservatives.

With a group of students as a prop busily working on school desks behind him, Trump said, “My administration will take all lawful steps to shut down the department.”

The order instructs Education Secretary Linda McMahon to “take all necessary steps to facilitate the closure of the Department of Education and return authority over education to the States and local communities while ensuring the effective and uninterrupted delivery of services, programs, and benefits on which Americans rely.”

The federal government funds less than 10% of public school budgets, though much of that money supports especially vulnerable students. The department also oversees programs that help students pay college tuition, including Pell grants for low-income students.

The White House has already taken steps to gut the Education Department by roughly halving its workforce of 4,100, but officially eliminating the Cabinet-level agency would require congressional action.

The administration has also vowed to ship other critical functions to other federal departments — services for students with disabilities and low-income students to the Department of Health and Human Services and student loans to the Treasury Department.

“Closing the Department does not mean cutting off funds from those who depend on them — we will continue to support K-12 students, students with special needs, college student borrowers, and others who rely on essential programs,” McMahon said in a statement. “We’re going to follow the law and eliminate the bureaucracy responsibly by working through Congress to ensure a lawful and orderly transition.”

Children’s advocates were skeptical. The executive order “could result in a catastrophic impact on the country’s most vulnerable students and cutting much-needed funding will specifically impact students of color, students with disabilities and students in low-income communities,” the Association of California School Administrators said in a statement.

Over the decades, Republicans have repeatedly called for shutting down the department, although doing so would require 60 votes in the Senate — unlikely because Republicans now hold only 53 seats.

Nonetheless, Sen. Bill Cassidy, R-Louisiana, chairman of the Senate education committee, said in a statement, “Since the Department can only be shut down with congressional approval, I will support the President’s goals by submitting legislation to accomplish this as soon as possible.”

House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-Louisiana, praised the order in a post on X “President Trump is keeping his promise and returning education to the states,” but didn’t pledge to bring the issue to a vote. David Cleary, who worked on education issues on Capitol Hill for two decades, indicated he wouldn’t be surprised if Johnson didn’t.

“Leaders don’t like to spend time on things they know can’t get over the finish line,” he told the Washington Post.

California Attorney General Rob Bonta, who has sued the administration over the wholesale firing of federal employees and abrupt cancelation of research contracts, said he would monitor how the executive order is carried out.

While acknowledging the obligation to go through Congress, “the Administration continues to do everything it can to destroy the department’s ability to carry out its most vital, congressionally mandated functions — with the clearly stated ‘final mission’ of shuttering the Department for good,” he said in a statement. “My office will be looking at what this executive order actually does — not what the President says it will do.”

Trump used the executive order to continue his attack on equity-focused education programs. The Secretary of Education will ensure that Department of Education funds will follow federal law and administration policy, it states, “including the requirement that any program or activity receiving Federal assistance terminate illegal discrimination obscured under the label ‘diversity, equity, and inclusion’ or similar terms and programs promoting gender ideology.”

In response, Jessie Ryan, president of the Campaign for College Opportunity, said the continued attacks on diversity, equity, and inclusion and dismantling of the department “will leave millions of students and their families vulnerable to discrimination and deny them the opportunity to succeed in school, achieve their individual potential, and prepare for the future workforce. We cannot allow this administration to steamroll students and communities to achieve its agenda.”

Guillermo Mayer, President and CEO of the nonprofit Public Advocates, attributed the executive order to the Administration’s larger aim.

“Nobody should be fooled,” he said. “While this order purports to reduce federal bureaucracy, it’s part of a longer-term plan to eliminate federal oversight in education and give states free rein to redirect billions of dollars away from public schools and towards private school vouchers. The ultimate goal is to erode the public’s trust in our system of public education.”

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14/04/2025