Instead of eliminating the department, the president chose to expand its budget. It is now pursuing investigations into school districts for reasons that appear politically motivated.
When he ran for a second term in 2024, President Donald Trump vowed to dismantle the U.S. Department of Education. More than a year and a half into his term, not only has the department survived, but it is also engaging in ill-considered and seemingly politically charged probes of school district practices.
For instance, the administration has gone after transgender girls—individuals assigned male at birth but who present as female—who participate in girls’ 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 filed lawsuits against school districts nationwide for alleged breaches of the order, including Jeffco Public Schools, the district serving 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 policy states that the use of facilities and sleeping arrangements by transgender students should be evaluated on a case-by-case basis but generally aligned with “their gender identity consistently asserted at school.”
The district argued that its policies simply complied with the Colorado Anti-Discrimination Act, which includes “gender identity” and “gender expression” among the 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 asserted in a March statement.
A notable point in the district’s favor is that, contrary to the government’s assertions, Jeffco apparently does not 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 observed this week in The New York Times. “The figure surprised district officials, who noted there were no transgender girls competing on girls’ teams. The district said the Trump administration had misread the data. Although records show male participants on girls’ teams, they were team managers and mascots, not athletes.”
Yet the government does not seem particularly concerned with getting the facts straight: “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 filed suit against 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 is regrettable that the administration expends so much energy pursuing half-baked investigations into school districts that resist the federal line—especially given Trump’s campaign promise to abolish the department entirely.
The Department of Education opened in May 1980 under Jimmy Carter; immediately, Republicans demanded its closure. Ronald Reagan, who would win the presidency later that year, labeled 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 platforms in both 1996 and 2024 pledged to abolish the department and return its funding to state and local authorities.
Nevertheless, no Republican came close, and President George W. Bush even boasted about increasing education spending. (Despite Reagan’s pledge, the Department of Energy remains in operation as well.)
At the start of his second term, Trump appeared to be on track to move closer than anyone else, dismissing half of the department’s staff and issuing an executive order to “take all necessary steps to facilitate [its] closure.”
However, abolishing a Cabinet department would require an act of Congress, something Trump seemingly never pursued.
Earlier this year, he instead signed a budget bill that allotted $79 billion to the department.
“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,” wrote Reason‘s Eric Boehm at the time.
To be fair, the Department of Education isn’t critically indispensable—indeed, it’s far from it. “The vast majority of K-12 education funding comes from state and local sources,” wrote Emma Camp last year for Reason. “Instead, the department’s primary role is managing the federal student loan program.”
In the absence of a federal education department, most of its functions would revert to the state and local authorities that already provide funding, while the remainder could be shifted to other agencies.
And it’s not as if Title IX investigations have never been weaponized in the past, in ways that conservatives should find troubling.
Sadly, rather than abolishing the department, Trump appears to be using it as a tool for his political objectives.
