Trump Is Weaponizing the Department of Education After Pledging To Kill It

When he ran for a second term in 2024, President Donald Trump pledged to abolish the U.S. Department of Education. More than 18 months into his term, not only is the department still very much alive, but it’s carrying out ill-informed and seemingly politically motivated investigations of school districts.

For example, the administration has targeted transgender girls—born biologically male but presenting outwardly as female—who compete in women’s sports.

“Under Title IX of the Education Amendments Act of 1972 (Title IX), educational institutions receiving Federal funds cannot deny women an equal opportunity to participate in sports,” according to a February 2025 presidential order. “Therefore, it is the policy of the United States to rescind all funds from educational programs that deprive women and girls of fair athletic opportunities,” as well as “to oppose male competitive participation in women’s sports more broadly.”

Since then, the Trump administration has sued school districts around the country for allegedly violating the order, including Jeffco Public Schools, the school district of Jefferson County, Colorado.

In March of this year, the Department of Education charged that Jeffco Public Schools had violated Title IX “by permitting male students to access female bathrooms, locker rooms, and overnight accommodations, and to compete in female sports.” In June, the department threatened “a potential referral to the U.S. Department of Justice and the termination of federal funding.”

The district’s written policy says transgender students’ use of facilities and sleeping arrangements should “be assessed on a case-by-case basis” but in general should match “their gender identity consistently asserted at school.”

The district said its policies simply followed the Colorado Anti-Discrimination Act, which includes “gender identity” and “gender expression” on the list of criteria by which someone may not be denied “the full and equal enjoyment” of “a place of public accommodation.”

“Providing equal access to programs and services for all Jeffco students, including those who are transgender, does not violate Title IX,” the district said in a March statement.

One relevant detail in the school district’s favor is that despite the government’s claims to the contrary, Jeffco apparently doesn’t have any transgender girl athletes.

“A key data point [for the administration] was that 61 boys were participating on girls’ athletic teams,” Michael C. Bender wrote this week at The New York Times. “The figure startled even district officials, mostly because, they said, there were no transgender girls competing on girls’ teams. The district said the Trump administration had misinterpreted the information. Though the records show male participants on girls’ teams, they were team managers and mascots, not athletes.”

Not that the government seems particularly concerned about getting the facts right: “Asked about the discrepancy,” Bender added, “an Education Department spokesperson repeated that federal investigators determined male participants had ‘at least 61 roster spots on girls’ sports teams.'”

In July, the district sued the Department of Education and Secretary Linda McMahon over threats to withhold $50 million in federal funding. “Because the new federal guidelines and State law conflict, Jeffco has asked the court to provide clarity about which direction the district must follow,” interim superintendent Rob Stein wrote in a statement. “This lawsuit is a procedural legal step that seeks guidance from the courts on how to resolve that conflict.”

It’s unfortunate that the administration is expending so much effort pursuing half-baked investigations against school districts that don’t toe the federal line—especially when Trump came into office pledging to kill the department altogether.

The Department of Education opened in May 1980, during Jimmy Carter’s presidency; immediately, Republicans called for its closure. Ronald Reagan, who would win the presidency later that year, called it Carter’s “new bureaucratic boondoggle.”

“The budget plan I submit to you on February 8th will realize major savings by dismantling the Departments of Energy and Education,” Reagan said in his 1982 State of the Union address. The Republican Party platforms in both 1996 and 2024 pledged to abolish the department and return its funding to state and local authorities.

Yet no Republican ever came close, and President George W. Bush even bragged about increasing education spending. (Despite Reagan’s pledge, the Department of Energy is also very much still around.)

At the outset of his second term, Trump looked like he would get closer than anyone else, firing half the department’s staff and issuing an executive order to “take all necessary steps to facilitate [its] closure.”

But completely abolishing a Cabinet department would require an act of Congress, which Trump seemingly never pursued.

Instead, earlier this year, he signed a budget bill giving it $79 billion.

“That’s a larger budget (by about $200 million) than the department had in fiscal year 2025, and it is $12 billion more than the Trump administration requested in its budget proposal for the year,” Reason‘s Eric Boehm wrote at the time.

To be sure, it’s not as if the Department of Education is crucially important—in fact, far from it. “The vast majority of K-12 educational funding comes from state and local sources,” Emma Camp wrote last year for Reason. “Instead, the Department of Education is primarily concerned with running the federal student loan program.”

In the absence of a federal education department, most of its tasks would simply revert to the “state and local sources” that already provide its funding, while the rest of its purview can be shifted to other departments.

And it’s not as if Title IX investigations haven’t been weaponized in the past, in ways that conservatives should find troubling.

Sadly, instead of abolishing the department, Trump appears to be weaponizing it to his political ends.