Advocates decry upcoming executive order from Trump to gut Department of Education

The anticipated order would achieve a campaign promise Trump made during the 2024 campaign.
President Donald Trump and White House officials are reportedly drafting an executive order that would essentially defund the U.S. Department of Education and begin the process of achieving a campaign promise to eliminate the federal agency altogether.
According to The Washington Post, the upcoming order, which is expected to be signed later this month, seeks to dismantle the Education Department “from within” by ordering agency officials to “diminish itself.” By law, the Trump administration cannot unilaterally eliminate the department without Congress passing a law to do so; therefore, it is seeking to effectively starve the agency in the meantime.
The Trump administration has also sought to significantly reduce the workforce at DOE and other federal agencies by placing many on administrative leave and pressuring others to quit voluntarily. The Washington Post also reports that billionaire Tesla and SpaceX owner Elon Musk, serving as Trump’s lead on the newly formed Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), has moved a team of about 20 people to work inside the Education Department in an effort to cut spending and staff.
DOGE has used its broad Trump-endorsed authority to cut government “waste” to obtain access to the department’s sensitive information within internal systems, such as financial aid data, which includes the personal information of millions of students enrolled for federal student aid.
Advocates quickly slammed the news of President Trump’s pending executive order, cautioning that it will adversely impact on students, particularly students of color.
“Most of us believe every student deserves opportunity, resources, and support to reach their full potential no matter where they live, the color of their skin, or how much their family earns,” said Becky Pringle, president of the National Education Association. “Students across the country benefit from programs run by the Department of Education, especially lower-income students in rural, suburban, and urban communities, students who qualify for federal grants or loans to receive career training or attend 2- and 4-year colleges, and students with disabilities.”
Pringle said Trump’s “power grab” of the Education Department would “steal resources for our most vulnerable students” and result in several negative outcomes, including exploding class sizes, cutting job training programs, making higher education more expensive and “out of reach for middle-class families.” The education advocate said the administration’s plan to starve the agency would also “take away special education services for students with disabilities and gut student civil rights protections.”
The anticipated executive order from Trump comes just a week after he signed a separate order directing the DOE and other agencies to end “radical indoctrination” in K-12 schools and allocate significant federal funding for expanding school choice.
As Democratic strategist Ameshia Cross previously told theGrio, if Trump is successful at eliminating the Department of Education, or at the very least, gut its most vital resources, Black students who rely on federal programs like Pell Grants would be disproportionately impacted.
“Many of those students will go on to HBCUs and other institutions, and they would not stand a chance without being able to have some of the grant funding support that comes out of the Department [of Education],” said Cross.
Another function of the DOE is investigating claims of racial, gender, or religious bias via its civil rights division under Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Project 2025, the conservative policy blueprint that spells out many of the actions the Trump administration has already taken, calls for the civil rights arm to be moved to the Department of Justice. However, given President Trump’s recent actions, like rescinding an executive order enforcing the Civil Rights Act on the executive level and calling on the DOJ’s Civil Rights Division to freeze all pending civil rights cases, it is unlikely any such attempts will be made to address discrimination in education.
Jamarr Brown, executive director at Color of Change PAC, told theGrio that the upcoming executive order is “another clear escalation in Trump’s ongoing war on DEI.” He continued, “And, like many of his actions, this move directly follows the blueprint laid out in Project 2025.”
“Trump is on a quest for unilateral and total control. His actions by executive order have created chaos and a constitutional crisis,” Brown added. “He, alongside his unelected billionaire frontman Elon Musk, knows that without federal oversight, state governments will have free rein to slash opportunities for Black students, widen racial disparities in education, and roll back decades of progress.”
The civil rights leader said the president is “once again leaning into neo-segregationist ideals” and attempting to “reinstate segregation-era discrimination at every level of society.”
On Tuesday, Trump was asked about his plans to eliminate the DOE. He told reporters in the Oval Office that the nation’s education system should be left to states instead of the federal government.
Brown said that as local school boards and state governments begin to take an outsized role in “shaping education policy,” Color of Change PAC will “mobilize to elect local leaders who will fight to protect the civil rights of Black students and other marginalized communities,” adding, “upholding the Department of Education’s original mission of equal access and opportunity for all.’
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