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Rep. Thomas Massie is suggesting that Republicans may dismantle the Department of Education (DOE) if the GOP wins management of each Congress and the White House in November.
“Would [former President Trump] follow through with it? Honestly, I think it depends on who controls Congress and who his Cabinet secretary is,” the Kentucky Republican advised Fox News Digital on Tuesday.
The Kentucky Republican made the feedback the day after Trump’s interview on X with proprietor Elon Musk through which Trump instructed doing the identical.
“What I’m going to do, one of the first acts – and this is where I need an Elon Musk; I need somebody that has a lot of strength and courage and smarts – I want to close up the Department of Education, move education back to the states,” Trump stated Monday evening.
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Rep. Thomas Massie, who’s main the push to finish the Education Department within the House, stated he was “pleasantly surprised” to listen to Donald Trump assist such an effort. (Getty Images)
Massie launched a invoice late final 12 months that will do exactly that, and it at present has greater than 30 House GOP co-sponsors, together with vocal Trump allies like Reps. Marjorie Taylor Greene, R-Ga., and Byron Donalds, R-Fla.
While he has not had conversations with Trump or his marketing campaign concerning the invoice, Massie stated it’s a difficulty he’s mentioned with the Trump-aligned Republican lawmakers “all the time.”
It alerts that the hassle, lengthy pushed by conservatives, may probably materialize if Trump and Republicans take over the levers of energy in Washington in November.
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The DOE was established below former President Carter in 1979 when he break up it from the Health and Human Services Department. It’s charged with regulating federal pupil assist funds and making certain equal entry to schooling, amongst different duties.
It confronted conservative backlash virtually immediately, with former President Reagan threatening to dissolve it, although he was in the end unsuccessful.
“Reagan promised that he would try to eliminate it, and he never did. And then [people] became comfortable with [the] Department of Education, and it started seeming like a radical notion just to do what Ronald Reagan said he would do, so I felt the need to reintroduce this bill,” Massie stated.
Betsy DeVos, Trump’s former Education secretary, advised the Detroit News she would return to the position if requested. (Yuri Gripas)
The Kentucky Republican, who has been at odds with Trump previously, stated he was “pleasantly surprised” to listen to him talk about it on Monday.
He argued that the funding that goes towards managing the DOE and its 14,000 Washington, D.C., staff “could be distributed to the school systems instead of burning … on extra red tape.”
Massie additionally stated that different core aspects of educational coverage like pupil lunches and the Head Start program are run by the Department of Agriculture and HHS, respectively.
More than 160 Republicans voted for an modification by Massie to dismantle the DOE in March 2023, although it in the end failed.
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But regardless of its foundations within the Reagan period, the push to dismantle the DOE has been used as a political cudgel by Democrats after its inclusion in Project 2025, a Heritage Foundation-backed set of insurance policies and proposals for a brand new Republican administration.
Trump and his allies have distanced themselves from Project 2025, which Democrats have forged as a far-right and repressive imaginative and prescient for the nation.
Massie equally stated he had no data of Project 2025’s particulars, stating that he’s pushed to finish the DOE earlier than the initiative was fashioned.
Rep. Byron Donalds, a Trump ally, is a co-sponsor of Massie’s invoice. (REUTERS/Mike Segar)
“I would just say, regardless of any other initiatives, this stands on its own. Organizations like the Heritage Foundation [and FreedomWorks] have been for getting rid of the Department of Education … since they were created, and Reagan was for it,” Massie stated. “So, I don’t think it’s a radical notion. I think what’s radical is having a federal school board. And I think education is better without it.”
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Massie indicated he would assist former Education Secretary Betsy DeVos – who has advocated for phasing out the division she ran – to go it once more.
The Trump marketing campaign didn’t remark straight on Massie’s invoice however advised Fox News Digital when requested, “As President Trump has repeatedly stated on the campaign trail, he is committed to cutting the Department of Education and returning important decisions about education back to parents, teachers and educators at the state level. The DOE has been failing America’s students for too long, and it’s time for serious change.”
When requested for remark, the DOE referred Fox News Digital to Vice President Harris’ marketing campaign, which didn’t instantly return a request for remark.
