Three months into U.S. president Donald Trump’s second term, a conflict has arisen: Trump vs. the Department of Education.
The department, established in 1979 by former President Jimmy Carter and Congress, provides federal funding for universities and schools nationwide as well as services for students with disabilities, without homes or from low-income families.
If Linda McMahon, Trump’s secretary of education, dismantles the department, all educational authority would return to local and state governments. Education advocates argue this would harm civil rights protections for students, especially those from low-income communities. They believe that discrimination would increase without the department’s protections.
Although almost every school in the U.S. would feel the impact, dismantling the department would most affect public schools.

“A very small percentage of the [Department of Education] funding goes to private schools. However, it means that we would no longer have protections against discrimination…[against] trans kids and…people with disabilities,” sophomore Iris Luther-Suhr said. “Because that’s what the federal government does. It sees injustice and it … enforces civil rights.”

It would be difficult to dismantle the department altogether. Congress would have to act by passing a law, which is unlikely even though conservatives and right-leaning individuals have long advocated to get rid of the department.

“Ronald Reagan tried to close it legally with Congress. Donald Trump is using executive orders as a loophole…[But] none of this is legal. This is not how the government is supposed to function,” Luther-Suhr said.

The Trump administration has been working to dismantle the Department of Education for most of Trump’s current term. So far, Trump has signed an executive order calling for eradicating the department, allowed Immigration and Customs Enforcement raids on public schools, made many cuts to the department’s staff and stripped some schools of critical funding.

In the past, even as recently as last year, bipartisan support in the U.S. House has overturned calls for the department’s elimination.

In March, student advocate Ayaan Moledina spoke at a news conference in Texas alongside many Democratic lawmakers to criticize the idea. Multiple lawsuits have also been filed. A coalition of advocacy organizations, like the NAACP and the National Education Association, has sued Trump for attempting to dismantle the department.

So what can non-politicians do? “[People can] spread awareness about the issue, reach out to lawmakers, [and] aggregate to get Congress to intervene and … provide protections for the Department of Education,” Luther-Suhr said.

While the future of the Department of Education is uncertain, lawmakers and government officials are continuing to discuss possible solutions.