Trump Plows Ahead With Plans To Dismantle Department Of Education

Summary

Summary of "Trump Plows Ahead With Plans To Dismantle Department Of Education"
The NPR Politics Podcast
Release Date: July 17, 2025

In this episode of The NPR Politics Podcast, hosts Tamara Keith and Domenico Montanaro delve into President Trump's ongoing efforts to dismantle the U.S. Department of Education. Joined by NPR education reporter Sequoyah Carillo, the discussion unpacks the implications of these moves for federal education policies and local school districts across the nation.

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Understanding the Department of Education

[02:12]

Sequoyah Carillo begins by clarifying the roles and responsibilities of the Department of Education, addressing common misconceptions. "One thing that it does not do is it does not tell schools what to teach or how to teach. There's a federal mandate preventing that," Carillo explains. She outlines the department’s primary functions, including managing student loans, overseeing federal funding for K-12 schools (such as Title 1 and IDEA funding), and enforcing civil rights protections in education. Additionally, the department handles complaints related to discrimination based on race, sex, or disability, with significant involvement from the Office for Civil Rights.

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Supreme Court Ruling and Department Layoffs

[03:38]

The conversation shifts to a recent Supreme Court decision that permits the Trump administration to proceed with layoffs at the Department of Education. Carillo details the impact of these layoffs: "The layoffs were for about 1,400 staff, and they were primarily from three groups...the Office for Civil Rights...student loan service...and education research teams." She emphasizes the potential slowdown in student loan processing and the reduction in oversight and enforcement of civil rights within education.

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Administration's Goals and Proposed Changes

[04:47]

Domenico Montanaro connects the administration's actions to broader governmental restructuring efforts. He notes, "The Department of Education has been a GOP target for a very long time," highlighting ideological motivations behind reducing government intervention in education. The discussion touches on the administration's intent to shift responsibilities and funding directly to states, eliminating federal oversight and specific programmatic constraints.

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Legislative Response and Senate Actions

[11:58]

Tamara Keith brings attention to a significant legislative reaction where 24 states are suing the administration over the withholding of more than $6 billion in federal education grants. She cites a letter from 10 Republican senators urging the release of funds, emphasizing that "this funding goes directly to states and local school districts where local leaders decide how this funding is spent." Montanaro responds by explaining the political challenges in altering the administration’s plans, noting potential filibusters and the complexity of bipartisan cooperation.

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Impact of the "Big Beautiful Bill" on Education

[13:31]

Carillo discusses President Trump’s comprehensive tax and spending legislation, referred to as the "big beautiful bill," and its effects on education funding. While not directly offsetting the department's cuts, the bill introduces shifts in funding priorities: "There’s student loan changes, Pell grant changes, and a new K-12 school voucher program." She highlights concerns over cuts to Medicaid and SNAP, which indirectly affect schools by reducing funding for health professionals and free school lunch programs.

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Local Level Impacts and School Responses

[14:39]

The conversation turns to real-world implications for local schools. Carillo shares insights from interviews with superintendents in various districts facing budget shortfalls due to federal funding cuts. For instance, an interim superintendent in a rural Illinois district struggles with the loss of just $10,000, a significant amount for a small school. Another example includes Hardin Public Schools in Montana, where cuts to Medicaid threaten the staffing of school clinics, compromising student health services.

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Political Perspectives on Education Funding

[16:05]

Montanaro explores the ideological divide between conservatives and liberals regarding the role of schools. He explains that conservatives advocate for reducing government involvement, emphasizing family responsibility for education and related services. In contrast, liberals support a more comprehensive, "whole person" approach, where schools provide not only academic instruction but also essential services like healthcare and after-school programs to address students' broader needs.

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COVID-19's Impact on Schools and Future Challenges

[17:32]

Carillo reflects on how the COVID-19 pandemic has transformed the perception of schools' roles. The pandemic necessitated schools to become centers for meal distribution and internet access, highlighting their critical role in supporting students beyond traditional education. She warns that ongoing cuts could undo these expansions, leaving vulnerable populations without essential services that were established during the pandemic.

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Conclusion: The Road Ahead

The episode concludes with an acknowledgment of the urgent challenges facing education at both federal and local levels. The hosts and Carillo emphasize the need for public pressure and bipartisan efforts to address the funding crises and protect the multifaceted role schools play in supporting communities.

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Notable Quotes:

• Sequoyah Carillo [02:12]:
  "They [the Department of Education] do not tell schools what to teach or how to teach. There's a federal mandate preventing that."

• Domenico Montanaro [07:36]:
  "Conservatives just believe that there shouldn't necessarily be those nanny state, quote, unquote things that the government does."

• Sequoyah Carillo [08:50]:
  "Superintendents are kind of like CEOs of their districts. They know exactly what money is coming in and what's going out."

• Domenico Montanaro [12:40]:
  "There's a lot of Republicans who just don't wanna cross Trump and they wanna give him a win."

---

This episode provides a comprehensive analysis of the Trump administration's strategies to reshape the Department of Education, exploring the ripple effects on federal policies, state funding, and the daily operations of local schools. By featuring expert insights and real-world examples, the podcast offers listeners a nuanced understanding of the intersection between federal governance and education.

Transcript

[Domenico Montanaro]

This summer on Planet Money Summer School, we're learning about political economy. We're getting into the nitty gritty of what government does with things like trade, taxes, immigration and healthcare. So politics and economics, which are taught separately, they shouldn't be separated at all. I think you have to understand one to really appreciate the other. So what is the right amount of government in our lives? Tune in to Planet Money Summer School from npr, wherever you get your podcasts. Hi, I'm Duke from Orange County, California, and we're getting ready to go to New York to watch the Angels take on the mets for my eighth birthday.

[Tamara Keith]

This podcast was recorded at 1:08pm on Thursday, July 17.

[Domenico Montanaro]

Things may have changed by the time you hear it, but hopefully the Angels will have swept the Mets. Enjoy the show.

[Tamara Keith]

Oh, well, happy birthday, Duke. And now I will turn it over to our resident Mets fan for some thoughts.

[Domenico Montanaro]

Also, by the way, great name.

[Tamara Keith]

Yes.

[Domenico Montanaro]

Like Duke Snyder. I mean, great baseball player. I think it's really cool that, you know, people are interested and want to go with their parents. My daughter recently got into the Mets, which I had already crossed out the idea that either of my kids would be interested in sports whatsoever, but she's super into it. But she's never seen a game at Citi Field because we're basically away people now because we live in D.C. yeah. And we may go at some point. So, you know, good luck to the Angels as well, because I feel like the Angels similarly have like a in the shadows thing to that other LA team.

[Tamara Keith]

You mean my team.

[Domenico Montanaro]

Like we have a in the shadows thing of that other New York team.

[Tamara Keith]

Hey there. It's the NPR Politics podcast. I'm Tamara Keith. I cover the White House.

[Domenico Montanaro]

And I'm Domenico Montanaro, senior political editor.

[Tamara Keith]

And correspondent and NPR education reporter. Sequoyah Carillo is here with us. Hello, Sequoia.

[Sequoyah Carillo]

Hello. Happy to be here.

[Tamara Keith]

Great to have you. And listeners, you may have heard President Trump talking about wanting to eliminate the Department of Education. Today on the show, we're diving into what it means in the classroom as the Trump administration seeks to reshape the federal government's role in public education. So, Sequoyah, I wanna start at the very beginning with a simple question that I am pretty sure has a complicated answer. What does the U.S. department of Education actually do?

[Sequoyah Carillo]

Oh, I mean, this actually is a great question that a lot of people don't understand correctly. So one thing that it does not do is it does not tell schools what to teach or how to teach. There's A federal mandate preventing that. Primarily, they deal with a lot of money. They normally kind of deal with two big pots of money. We have student loans, and they're dealing with that from when you apply to student loans to when you're paying them off decades later. And also federal funding for K12 schools, and that includes like Title 1 funding for lower income students as well as IDEA funding, which is for students with disabilities. So they deal with money and then also they deal with civil rights. And these are mostly attorneys who are like fielding completely complaints from parents, let's say, who would say, hey, a school discriminated against my child because of their race, sex or disability. And so then these attorneys get on it, they go through that case. Also what we've been seeing with colleges a lot recently with anti Semitism, all of that is going through the Office for Civil Rights in the Education Department. So that is also a huge part of what the department does.

[Tamara Keith]

That was really helpful. So there was a Supreme Court decision earlier this week that lets the administration move forward with layoffs at the Department of Education. What does this ruling mean for local school districts around the country?

[Sequoyah Carillo]

Oh, it's a great question, and it's one I can't quite answer yet. We can kind of just look at where the clues are pointing us. So the layoffs were for about 1400 staff, and they were primarily from three groups. That was from, like I said, the Office for Civil Rights, which is one of the big functions of the department, were mostly attorneys that were put on leave. And then also there was a big chunk of the office that oversees financial aid for students that got hit, which is terrible news for borrowers. They will be upset to hear things might slow down even more, which is not great because student loan service is already not very fast. And then also we saw some education research teams really gutted with these layoffs. And so likely those are the areas where we'll see the hardest problems coming up. But almost every office in the department got hit with these layoffs.

[Tamara Keith]

Earlier today, the director of the White House Office of Management and Budget, Russell Vogt, was at this event I went to to cover in Washington. It was a breakfast hosted by the Christian Science Monitor. And he was asked about the administration's goals.

[Domenico Montanaro]

We are trying to eliminate the Department of Education. That does not mean we're going to take all of the education spending the department is doing and just send it straight to the states. Obviously, we're going to maintain Title 1 funding and special ed funding, but there's a lot of educational programs that American people would expect to be downsized English language acquisition programs that don't actually prioritize the teaching of English, but in fact, multilingualism.

[Sequoyah Carillo]

This is the first time that I'm hearing someone in the administration kind of try to temper the expectations of states around education funding, which is a little bit of a departure from what I've heard the education secretary, Linda McMahon do when talking about the President's proposed budget in front of the House and the Senate, where they were really trying to take away all the strings that come with federal money. In doing so, they're hoping to eliminate staffing, reduce costs there, kind of eliminate all of these different programs, and instead give block grants to states. And part of that messaging has been that then the states will get more money due to the fact that they're kind of cutting out the middleman, that they're getting rid of all of these parameters.

[Tamara Keith]

So, Domenico, how do these moves fit into the administration's broader efforts to remake the federal government?

[Domenico Montanaro]

Yeah, I mean, first of all, taking a step back, the Department of Education has been a GOP target for a very long time. Ideologically, you could hear there from vote, not really getting into the nuance of what some of these programs do, but sort of the more superficial idea of what it looks like the conservatives will say that these programs do. But I think to Sequoyah's point here, that there are a few things that the Department of Education does that also fits into the broader restructuring goals ideologically of this administration. First of all, when you think about something like civil rights and having attorneys, field complaints, there's a degree of accountability and a place for parents to turn. And it reminds me of a little bit of what the administration is doing with the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, because if you had an issue with customer service for whatever company that you have and you just can't seem to get through to figure out how to fix that problem, you know, the CFPB was a place that people could go to, then rectify that issue without having to hire a team of lawyers yourself. So that's the kind of thing that ideologically, conservatives just believe that there shouldn't be necessarily those nanny state, quote, unquote things that the government does. If you ask any question to people about how they feel about government, nothing is a brighter line distinction on where people come down on their views politically. But whether or not you think the government should do more or you think the government's doing too much, well, I.

[Tamara Keith]

Think that it also fits with something else that developed this week which is there's this separate court fight where 24 states are suing the administration over its decision to withhold more than $6 billion in grants that should have gone out to local school systems. And I'm wondering, well, where does that money go? But also, does that fit in with what Vaude is saying about. Well, not all this money needs to go to the states.

[Sequoyah Carillo]

Yeah, I mean, he's directly referencing one of the programs that they're withholding the money for right now, which is for English language acquisition for English language learners. And there's not really a through line between the programs that they've cut, other than the fact in their proposed budget, all of the programs, they're not requesting funding for them. So you're looking at things like funding teacher development, migrant education, English language learning programs, after school programs, and adult education. And these are programs that impact rural, urban, suburban districts. Like, these are programs that a lot of people like and that a lot of states are very upset to lose, especially without really any say in the fact. And just a sweeping executive motion, what.

[Tamara Keith]

Is the department's justification for withholding these funds?

[Sequoyah Carillo]

Well, typically, these funds are dispersed on July 1, and we see a lot of school districts going back to school during the summer. There was one in Arizona that is back this week. They started yesterday on the 16th. So on June 30, one day before the deadline, states received a short email saying that they were under review and there was really no timeline on when they would be released. And that's the biggest problem. It's the timing. Superintendents are kind of like CEOs of their districts. They know exactly what money is coming in and what's going out. And when you're this close to the start of a new fiscal year and someone else blows your budget and it's out of your control, but you're still on the hook for contracts that you've already signed, for teachers that you've already hired. A lot of these teachers are heavily unionized. Also. It's not as easy as just firing someone. And so I think that that's why we saw such a swift response here, first from Democrats, but also from Republicans and 24 states.

[Tamara Keith]

All right, we're going to take a quick break, and we'll have more in a moment.

[Domenico Montanaro]

At Planet Money, we know that economic jargon can sometimes feel like speaking another language. Yeah, like arbitrage, alpha, otarchy. That's just what's in the news these days. There's also absolute advantage.

[Tamara Keith]

Aggregate demand, aggregate supply.

[Sequoyah Carillo]

And this is just the A's.

[Domenico Montanaro]

Oh, animal spirits.

[Tamara Keith]

That's a pretty good one. Planet Money from npr. We help you translate the economy so you can understand the world. Wherever you get your podcasts, you're listening.

[Domenico Montanaro]

To NPR because you're curious. You want to know what the world is like beyond the surface. NPR feeds that curiosity with stories from real people, with real experiences and all the perspectives that come with them. It's our right to be curious and our prerogative to listen. So keep your curiosity alive. Hear the bigger picture every day on npr. You know those things you shout at the radio or maybe even at this very NPR podcast. On NPR's Wait, Wait, don't tell me. We actually say those things on the radio and on the podcast. We're rude across all media. We think the news can take it. Listen to NPR's Wait, Wait, don't tell me. Wherever you get your podcasts, there have.

[Tamara Keith]

Been many Supermans, super men. And now, after much anticipation, there is another. And the new Superman movie is pretty great. And it's bringing exactly what we are looking for. Hope. We'll tell you why on Pop Culture Happy Hour. Listen on the NPR app or wherever you get your podcasts. And we're back. And we're talking about $6 billion in federal education grants that the White House is withholding. Yesterday, 10 Republican senators sent a letter urging the White House to release the money. That letter includes these lines. This funding goes directly to states and local school districts where local leaders decide how this funding is spent because we know local communities know how to best serve students and families. So they sent a letter. But Domenico, this is funding that was approved by Congress as senators. Couldn't they do more than just send a strongly worded letter to the budget.

[Domenico Montanaro]

Office, not just as 10. And, you know, even if you included all the Democrats, that wouldn't be enough to overcome a filibuster, let's say, to be able to get this legislation passed. But more immediately, this is a need within these communities. I mean, there are headlines all around the country that are about the millions of dollars school districts and states are losing. There are attorneys general in many of these states that are suing to have this money unfrozen. So it is more of an urgent issue than just saying, let's maybe try to come up with something that restructures the federal government and considered it for many months. That's not something that's likely to happen. And frankly, there's a lot of Republicans who just don't wanna cross Trump and they wanna give him a Win?

[Tamara Keith]

Yeah. I mean, they've been giving him win after win after win. It doesn't seem like they've had a lot of will to do anything that he doesn't want done.

[Domenico Montanaro]

Right. And you could even argue that there are people who wrote this letter that may not go along with that because they don't wanna wind up being in Trump's crosshairs. So in order to really get any change on this, there's likely gonna have to be a kind of public pressure and outcry. And I think that that's some of what you're seeing with so much of the local focus on this and with some of the Republicans and maybe even some of what you're hearing from vote walk a different kind of line than the strict ideological line that we'd heard previously from the Sequoia.

[Tamara Keith]

I do want to ask you, President Trump recently signed his massive tax and spending bill this month, the so called one big beautiful bill. Did that include any funds that offset the cuts that the White House is making?

[Sequoyah Carillo]

No, not directly. When you look at the big beautiful bill, most education programs, if they didn't see direct cuts, which a lot did, they at least saw some shifting money. There's student loan changes, Pell grant changes. There's a new K12 school vouch program, which is like the first ever of its kind on a national scale. But the biggest challenge to schools from the new legislation is going to be the cuts to Medicaid and snap. People often don't really think about it, but Medicaid helps fund school health professionals and other services at schools for students. And if a student qualifies for SNAP benefits, they also immediately qualify for free school lunch. So the cuts to those programs are going to hit schools really hard when they go into effect.

[Tamara Keith]

Hmm. You're laying out a bunch of different areas where school leaders might be facing budget shortfalls and concerns. Can you sort of walk us through some of the examples that you've learned from talking to school officials about how all of these various cuts and changes related to the Department of Education might play out at the local level?

[Sequoyah Carillo]

Definitely. I've talked to a lot of superintendents at different times throughout this process. This funding landscape, it's changing, like, every week for these people. So, I mean, I talked to an interim superintendent of a rural district out in Illinois. She only has 200 students, so her budget is very small compared to a lot of the districts in the country. And she says, like, even the loss of $10,000, like, something that would be so easy to write off if you were in, I don't know, even a big district like Fairfax county in Virginia or obviously like in New York City, she can't deal with that. That's a huge deal for her. So she's looking into supplemental federal grants to fill the gaps. But a lot of those have stipulations that she wasn't comfortable with. One of them she had to be okay with allowing federal ICE agents on the premises of the school if they ever came knocking. And she wasn't ready to do that. There's also a district in southeastern Montana that I've kept up with called Hardin Public Schools, where the superintendent there has been really worried about the cuts to Medicaid. I mean, he said this past year was the first since he's been there that he was able to fully staff their school clinic with nurses and health professionals. And so losing that funding in the future will put his kids health at risk. And schools are just this huge ecosystem far beyond the classroom. And I think that's what's hard to know when you're not interfacing with one every day.

[Domenico Montanaro]

I also think that it has a lot to do with how conservatives view the role of schools and how liberals view the role of schools. Because there has been this growing movement to take a whole person approach to schools because parents work long hours, they need after school care so that those kids don't get in trouble and that there's homework help, things like healthcare, for example. Teachers only have, you know, some 40 minutes or so, depending on the school that they're in, to work with kids to be able to teach the subject matter that they're teaching. But kids come into those classrooms, as we know, with a whole lot of other, you know, issues, influences, things that are happening in their lives. And it can be powerless for a lot of teachers. And that's why there had been this movement and has been this movement to try to address all of those issues, or at least more of those issues than just the reading, writing and arithmetic, things that they could be getting outside of school, that maybe they aren't like healthcare, food and things like that. And you know, when it comes to the most vulnerable populations, like special education students, for example, any disruption to the funding mechanism and the fact that there's already a shortage in special ed teachers, it makes it that much more difficult for an administrative administrator in a school and for parents in those schools to know what to expect, to be able to get done what they want to get done. But what conservatives will say is that the family is where this needs to start and that it's a family's role to be able to take care of the things outside of the reading, writing and arithmetic.

[Sequoyah Carillo]

Absolutely. And we've also seen a lot of this change since schools closed for the COVID 19 pandemic. I mean, that really shifted what people saw a school as responsible for. When I talked to superintendents, now a lot of them still talk about in 2020 and 2021, when their kids weren't able to get meals at home, they had to come to school to, like, get their bagged lunches every day. They had to come sit in the parking lot of their school to get on the Internet to do this virtual schooling that for so many is a given. But it's not for everyone. And it's those margins that are really going to suffer under losing a lot of these programs that are held up right now, as well as just cuts to the department in the future.

[Tamara Keith]

All right. Well, we have to leave it there for today. Sequoyah Carrillo, thanks for being with us.

[Sequoyah Carillo]

Thank you for having me.

[Tamara Keith]

I'm Tamara Keith. I cover the White House.

[Domenico Montanaro]

And I'm Domenico Montanaro, senior political editor and correspondent.

[Tamara Keith]

And thank you for listening to the NPR Politics podcast.

[Domenico Montanaro]

Hey, everybody, it's Ian from How to Do Everything. On our show, we attempt to answer your how to questions. We don't know how to do anything, so we call experts. Last season, both Tom Hanks and Martha Stewart stopped by to help. Our next season is launching in just a few months, so get us your questions now by emailing howtopr.org or calling 1-800-424-2935. You have your job, but you also have a life. And you're not just one thing. Neither is the Here and Now Anytime podcast. Every weekday, we break down the biggest story of the day and something else like a new trend everyone's talking about. It's Here and Now Anytime, a daily podcast from NPR and wbur.

[Tamara Keith]

This summer, ditch Land with shortwave's Sea.

[Sequoyah Carillo]

Camp, because when's the last time you.

[Tamara Keith]

Had an ocean getaway? Every Monday, we bring you insights from a different ocean zone, starting with the sunlit surface until we hit the deep sea floor, where there's marine snow, weird critters, carbon sinks and so much more. But first, you gotta take the plunge.

[Sequoyah Carillo]

Follow NPR's Short Wave.

[Tamara Keith]

Wherever you get your podcasts.