It is predicated on false logic.
By Lukas Roybal
Managing Editor
Columbia Political Review
As Donald Trump continues another campaign for the U.S. presidential election, many have speculated what another four years of the candidate mean for America. Though it is impossible to know every way former President Trump would act if elected, he has repeatedly joined several prominent Republicans in promising to gut and eventually eliminate the Department of Education (DOE). To appeal to increasing, right-wing concerns of diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) education becoming popularized in K-12 public schools, the Republican Party is convinced that eliminating the federal education agency is the solution voters desire. Despite the policy’s popularity on the right, defunding the Department of Education would harm Trump’s base due to their disproportionate dependence on its resources.
The American conservative movement’s goal to abolish the DOE is not new, but the effort has gained new enthusiasm in recent years due to the strong GOP push against diversity initiatives in classrooms across the country. The policy’s ascent in right-wing discourse is in no small part Trump’s own doing. At the 2022 Conservative Political Action Conference, Trump proudly exclaimed, “If federal bureaucrats are going to push this radicalism, we should abolish the Department of Education.” Trump cited “indoctrination” efforts by department bureaucrats that allegedly skew toward liberal values.
Should he prevail in 2024, Trump’s plan for the Department of Education involves reallocating the department’s funding responsibilities to individual states, offering vouchers for children to attend private schools, and cutting funding to federal education programs, like Federal Work-Study. This agenda aligns closely with far-right legislative proposals like the Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025 and the current House Republican plan to massively cut DOE funding. The underlying philosophy for shuttering the Department of Education is rooted in false perceptions of the department as responsible for designing and enforcing curricula supposedly based on liberal topics like LGBTQ+ identities, Critical Race Theory, and socialist ideology. Regardless of the validity of their claims, proponents of defunding the Department of Education are incentivized to continue their efforts due to the policy’s popularity within the Republican base.
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