President Trump returned to office last January with a pledge to shrink the federal bureaucracy, and one of his biggest targets was the Department of Education. And frankly, it’s hard to think of a more justified target. There is no constitutional authority whatsoever for the federal government to be involved in education. None. For most of our nation’s history — all the way up until 1980 — America managed perfectly well without a federal education department. Many would argue we were doing better before Washington inserted itself into local classrooms.
Schools have always been a local responsibility — run by cities, counties, boroughs, and the parents and communities that actually know the students they serve. That’s how it should be. Education should be close to the families, not buried under layers of federal red tape and ideological mandates crafted by bureaucrats who have never met the children whose futures they’re tinkering with.
Now the Trump administration is moving further down the path toward dismantling the Department of Education. On Tuesday, officials announced that the department is signing agreements to transfer several of its responsibilities to other federal agencies — a major step toward shutting the department down entirely:
The Trump administration announced Tuesday that the Department of Education signed a series of interagency agreements to shift power from a handful of its offices and programs to other federal agencies as it works to dismantle the federal department for good.
“The Trump Administration is taking bold action to break up the federal education bureaucracy and return education to the states,” Secretary of Education Linda McMahon said in a Tuesday press release. “Cutting through layers of red tape in Washington is one essential piece of our final mission. As we partner with these agencies to improve federal programs, we will continue to gather best practices in each state through our 50-state tour, empower local leaders in K-12 education, restore excellence to higher education, and work with Congress to codify these reforms.”
On this point, I’m reminded of Barry Goldwater’s famous line: “I have little interest in streamlining government or in making it more efficient, for I mean to reduce its size.” That’s exactly the spirit of what’s happening here. The goal isn’t to rearrange the deck chairs at the Department of Education — it’s to shrink it, strip it down, and ultimately get Washington out of the business of micromanaging schools.
If this move helps move that ball forward, all the better. At the very least, it clears out some bureaucratic dead wood and brings us one step closer to restoring local control where it belongs:
The Department of Education announced six interagency agreements (IAAs) Tuesday with the Department of Labor, the Department of Health and Human Services, the State Department and the Department of the Interior to co-manage or take a growing role in managing certain offices and programs, according to a background call with the media.
“We at the Department of Ed have engaged with other partner agencies over 200 times through IAAS to procure various services of other partner agencies over the years,” a senior Education Department official said Tuesday during a call with the media. “Even the Biden administration did it to help implement the First Step Act, entering into an IAA with the Department of Justice. And so this is a tool that’s frequently used.”
I think we can safely call this “a good start.”
Now let’s see the Trump administration truly get this ball rolling. Don’t stop with the Department of Education — that’s just the opening act. Congress needs to get serious about defunding and shutting down every federal agency that has zero constitutional grounding. And that list is long: the Departments of Environment, Commerce, Energy, Labor — sprawling bureaucracies that grew simply because Washington never says no to itself.
It’s time to take a page from Argentina’s President Milei. Don’t bring a scalpel to this fight — bring a chainsaw. Cut through the bureaucracy, slash the budgets, and drag this government back to its constitutional borders. Defund it. Starve it. Shut down the imperial behemoth the federal government has become.
If Trump could accomplish that, what a history maker he would be.
