Will Trump Actually Close the Education Department?
Plus: Cuomo has a hard time taking no for an answer, a pro-party manifesto, Trump's about-face on Ukraine, and more...
The gutting gets the green light: When President Donald Trump took office, the federal Department of Education had about 4,000 employees, some of whom seemingly did things that the taxpayers found useful (but whose roles were always kind of unclear to me). Trump quickly took a pickaxe to the agencies and found that at least 1,300 of those employees were not actually needed.
The legality of those firings had been percolating through the courts. But yesterday, the Supreme Court ruled that the administration may continue with its plans to fire vast numbers of Education Department employees. "We will carry out the reduction in force to promote efficiency and accountability and to ensure resources are directed where they matter most—to students, parents, and teachers," said Education Secretary Linda McMahon in a statement. The administration would "return education to the states," but would "continue to perform all statutory duties" while "reducing education bureaucracy."
The Department of Education, according to The New York Times, "manages federal loans for college, tracks student achievement and enforces civil rights laws in schools." We don't actually need any of those functions as currently done. Let me explain.
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Stats compiled by the Education Data Initiative indicate that "1.402 million (86.7%) of first-time, full-time undergraduate students attending public institutions receive financial aid in some form." (Some of this is merit-based, but most is need-based.) Some 70 percent of students fill out the FAFSA, the Free Application for Federal Student Aid. For the last school year, the "average aid per full-time equivalent (FTE) student in 2023-24 was: $16,360 per undergraduate student, $28,420 per graduate student," according to the College Board. (This can take the form of both grants and loans.) But vast swaths of the degree-seeking American public aren't poor; so why are federal dollars subsidizing them at all?
The entry of the federal government into the student loan business has massively, criminally driven up the cost of college over the last few decades. But not every student needs to go to a four-year college, and not every college needs to charge $70,000 a year; we have to begin to reel it all back in and ask tough questions related to what the value of a college degree truly is and why the federal government is backing this.
Nor does the Education Department track student achievement very well—if it had, it would have realized the reading crisis the nation's grade schools have been enduring at the hands of Lucy Calkins and the many school districts that have shifted away from phonics instruction. (And did the department handle the tracking of COVID spread in schools, to see whether/how schools could safely reopen? No, that was Brown economist Emily Oster.)
And enforcing civil rights laws? Do you mean campus kangaroo courts that routinely violated due process for students accused of sexual misdeeds?
"The Education Department's budget has ballooned from $14 billion to around $100 billion.…Similar increases have occurred at the state and local levels, which provide over 90 percent of K-12 funding," writes Veronique de Rugy. "In 1980, total per-pupil spending (from local, state, and federal sources) was around $9,000 in today's dollars. Today that figure is $17,277, with $2,400 coming from federal funding. The biggest question, of course, is what the investment is delivering. The department was originally created to raise educational standards, promote equity, and improve national competitiveness. After all that time and money, have we seen much progress? Not really."
"Functional illiteracy rates, for example, have not changed much since 1979 and remain as high as 20 percent by some measures," continues de Rugy. "Since the late 1970s, eighth grade reading and math scores have remained virtually unchanged, showing no meaningful progress. High school seniors' math scores have barely improved." What exactly are we getting for all this investment?
"Calls to abolish the department aren't nearly as radical or threatening as much of the media coverage suggests," wrote Frederick Hess of the American Enterprise Institute back in January. "The Department of Education doesn't educate anyone or run any schools or colleges. It's a collection of 4,000 bureaucrats who mostly manage student loans, write rules, oversee various grant programs, and generate paperwork." It's not like such functions were ever constitutionally authorized or added any practical value. If Trump can scrap it, more power to him!
Scenes from New York: Our handsy Italian (but I repeat myself!) has announced that, following his defeat in the Democratic primary for mayor, he will simply not accept no for an answer (when has he ever?) and will instead enter the race as an independent.
In it to win it. pic.twitter.com/1pr5obsVAu
— Andrew Cuomo (@andrewcuomo) July 14, 2025
QUICK HITS
- I love Emma Camp's pro-party manifesto, useful reading for all Zoomers who are afraid of drinking and other people. Read here.
- Pirate Wires on the future of logistics: What if "thing pipes" completely transform delivery?
- Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent says that Jerome Powell should step down and that there's already "a formal process to identify the nominee to become the next Fed chair," at the president's behest, per Bloomberg.
- Oh no, the influencers are coming for Congress.
- Anthropic, the artificial intelligence company founded by ex-OpenAI employees, unveils "Claude for Financial Services," which is "designed to help analysts conduct market research, handle due diligence and make investment decisions," according to Bloomberg.
- Somewhat unexpectedly, President Donald Trump yesterday "announced new weapons for Ukraine on Monday, and threatened sanctions on buyers of Russian exports unless Russia agrees a peace deal, a major policy shift brought on by frustration with Moscow's ongoing attacks on its neighbor," per Reuters.
- What exactly is Trump's foreign policy approach? Did the neocons get to him after all? Can he be considered an antiwar president? New Just Asking Questions just dropped.
- Maybe retvrning wouldn't be so great after all:
There is a reality show on HBOMax where people forced to live like 1880s homesteaders and it takes 20 minutes for someone to start crying lol
— Ben Dreyfuss (@bendreyfuss) July 11, 2025
