Rep. Thomas Massie has spearheaded the effort to dismantle the Department of Education.
Rep Thomas Massie speculates that if the Republicans take over Congress and the White House in November, they may Abolish the Department of Education (DOE).
The Kentucky Republican told the media on Tuesday, “Would [former President Trump] follow through with it? I think it depends on who controls Congress and who his Cabinet secretary is.”
The Kentucky Republican’s comments came after Trump suggested doing the same in an interview with Elon Musk on X (formerly Twitter).
Trump made a statement on Monday night, “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.”
That’s precisely what Massie’s late-year bill to submit would accomplish, and it currently has over 30 House GOP co-sponsors, including prominent Trump supporters like Rep Byron Donalds, a Republican from Florida, and Marjorie Taylor Greene, a Republican from Georgia.
Although he hasn’t spoken with Trump or his campaign over the bill, Massie stated that he discusses with Trump-aligned Republican lawmakers “all the time.”
It suggests that if Trump and the Republicans take over power in Washington in November, the long-pushed initiative may succeed.
The Department of Education was created when former President Carter divided it from the Department of Health and Human Services in 1979. It is in charge of overseeing federal student aid funds and ensuring everyone has access to education.
Conservatives quickly reacted negatively to it, and former President Reagan even threatened to dissolve it, though he was ultimately unsuccessful.
Massie stated, “Reagan promised to 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.”
The Kentucky Republican, who has previously disagreed with Trump, said he was “pleasantly surprised” to hear him discuss the issue on Monday.
He claimed that the funding for operating the Department of Education and its 14,000 staff in Washington, D.C., might be transferred to school districts instead of wasting it on unnecessary red tape.
Massie also stated that the Department of Agriculture and HHS oversee other core aspects of the academic policy, such as student lunches and the Head Start program.
More than 160 Republicans voted for Massie’s amendment to dissolve the DOE in March 2023, which eventually failed.
Despite its foundations in the Reagan period, the effort to dismantle the DOE has been exploited as a political tool by Democrats since its inclusion in Projects 2025, a Heritage Foundation-backed list of policies and proposals for a new administration.
Trump and his allies have distanced themselves from Project 2025, which Democrats regard as an afar-right and oppressive vision for the country.
Massie stated that he needed to gain more knowledge of Project 2025 details, noting that he had advocated for the termination of the DOE before the initiative was established.
Massie said: “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.” “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.”
Massie suggested that he would support former Education Secretary Betsy DeVos, who has advocated for eliminating the department she led, to head it again.
The Trump campaign did not respond to Massie’s bill directly but told the media that, “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.”
