In Response to Reported Executive Order, School Defenders Vow Uprising as Trump Targets Public Education

With the Trump administration reportedly preparing an executive order aimed at shutting down the Department of Education, the head of the union the American Federation of Teachers has vowed to fight any gutting of agency programs "tooth and nail."

According to Wednesday reporting from The Wall Street Journal, a draft text of the executive order compels Secretary of Education Linda McMahon to "take all necessary steps to facilitate the closure of the Education Department" based on "the maximum extent appropriate and permitted by law."

The Journal and other outlets reported that the order could come as soon as Thursday, though Karoline Leavitt, the White House press secretary, said in a statement on X that Trump will not sign an order Thursday.

AFT president Randi Weingarten and Becky Pringle, the president of the teachers union the National Education Association (NEA), cast the latest news as an attack ultimately aimed at public education.

"Don't use a 'war on woke' to attack the children living in poverty and the children with disabilities, in order to pay for vouchers and tax cuts for billionaires," Weingarten said in a Wednesday statement.

Pringle said Thursday that U.S. President Donald Trump and billionaire Elon Musk "have aimed their wrecking ball at public schools and the futures of the 50 million students in rural, suburban, and urban communities across America, by dismantling public education to pay for tax handouts for billionaires."

The Trump administration and congressional Republicans are currently pursuing trillions in tax cuts that would primarily benefit the wealthy.

While education policy and funding in the U.S. are largely handled at the state and local level, the Department of Education provides money for districts that serve lower income-income communities, as well as funding to help districts better serve students with disabilities. The agency is also responsible for managing federal college financial aid and federal student loans and also makes sure schools comply with a variety of federal laws, such as Title IX.

Getting rid of the Department of Education would ultimately empower the "the extremist anti-public education agenda" that is already being implemented in parts of the country, according to NEA. A key part of that agenda is vouchers for private schools, per NEA.

Vouchers siphon funding away from public schools. In 2024, the majority staff of the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions, then chaired by Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), authored a report detailing how right-wing billionaires have bankrolled coordinated efforts to privatize U.S. public education by promoting voucher programs.

Vouchers are often the mechanism at play when conservatives talk about advancing "school choice"—which was one of the key education goals put forward by the far-right policy blueprint Project 2025. The cornerstone education policy in Project 2025 is getting rid of the Department of Education.

In January, Trump issued an executive order asking the Department of Education to spend time coming up with guidance to help states apply federal funding to school choice initiatives.

While education union voices and Democrats have vowed to resist attacks on the Department of Education, those attacks have already begun. Probationary employees there have been laid off and the agency has paused some civil rights enforcement, among other actions, per the Journal. 

While the draft executive order reviewed by the Journal makes clear the ultimate aim is to get rid of the department, the Trump administration needs Congress' help to unwind the agency, according to legal experts.

The order doesn't mention Congress, which created the Department of Education in 1979, and fully dismantling the department would require a filibuster-proof majority in the Senate.

"You can't just drop a bomb on the Department of Education and turn it into rubble," Jonathan E. Collins, a professor of political science and education at Teachers College, Columbia University, told Time in February. "Legally, it has to start with Congress, not the president."