Trump to Sign Order Abolishing Education Department Soon, Reports Say

from Inside Higher Education

The Trump administration appears to have called off a planned signing of an executive order that would have directed Education Secretary Linda McMahon to “take all necessary steps” to close the agency.

After The Wall Street Journal and other media outlets reported on the White House's plans, President Trump's press secretary called those reports “fake news” and added that an order to shut down the Education Department wouldn’t be signed Thursday.

The reported order would be the first step in carrying out Trump’s controversial campaign promise to abolish the 45-year-old department. A draft of the order provided to Inside Higher Ed criticizes the department for spending “more than $1 trillion without producing virtually any improvement in student reading and mathematics scores.”

Education advocates quickly shown staunch opposition to the executive action after the initial news reporters. The American Federation of Teachers, a key higher ed union, called the order a government attempt to “abdicate its responsibility to all children, students and working families.”...

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Young Aides Emerge as Enforcers in Musk’s Broadside Against Government

from the NYT

At the end of his third week bulldozing through the federal government, Elon Musk sat down to give Vice President JD Vance a 90-minute briefing on his efforts to dismantle the bureaucracy. Mr. Musk was not alone.

Invited to join him on Thursday morning in Mr. Vance’s stately ceremonial office suite in the Eisenhower Executive Office Building, next to the White House, were a clutch of young aides whose presence at federal agencies has served as a harbinger of the upheaval that would follow them.

Across the federal government, civil servants have witnessed the sudden intrusion in the last two weeks of these young members of the billionaire’s team, labeled the Department of Government Efficiency. As Mr. Musk traipses through Washington, bent on disruption, these aides have emerged as his enforcers, sweeping into agency headquarters with black backpacks and ambitious marching orders...

Elon Musk's next DOGE targets? Pentagon and Education Department, Trump says

from USA Today

After dismantling the U.S. foreign aid office, Elon Musk's Department of Government Efficiency will be coming for the Pentagon and Department of Education, President Donald Trump said Friday.

“He will be looking at education pretty quickly and he will be looking at military, too," Trump said, discussing Musk at a news conference at the White House with the prime minister of Japan.

The Education Department has long been a target for conservatives who want to see it abolished, and it was clear before Trump's comments that Musk was going after the agency. A top official at the department told staffers in a meeting Tuesday that DOGE was examining its operations...

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