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Can Trump dismantle the Department of Education? It won’t be easy, experts say
President-elect Donald Trump promised during his campaign he’d shut down the Department of Education, complaining that the agency’s budget is too large and that its staff is filled with “people that in many cases hate our children.” In a September 2023 campaign video he accused schools of “indoctrinating young people with inappropriate racial, sexual and political material.”
“One thing I’ll be doing very early in the administration is closing up the Department of Education in Washington, D.C., and sending all education and education work it needs back to the states,” Trump said in the video.
Dismantling the department has been an unfulfilled, decades-long goal for some Republicans, dating back to its founding in 1980. It’s the first goal listed in the education section of Project 2025‘s “mandate for leadership,” a book that lays out a plan for Trump’s new administration. Trump has publicly disavowed the project, but its goals — and the people behind it — remain influential in his orbit.
The smallest of all Cabinet agencies, the Department of Education is responsible for distribution of federal financial aid for education, collecting and disseminating data and research related to schools, and prohibiting discrimination in schools. Its funds account for less than 10% of the nation’s public school funding, which is primarily driven by state and local taxes.
Shuttering the agency won’t be easy, according to Michigan State University professor Joshua Cowen.
“This is a real thing. They really want to do this,” said Cowen, a professor of education policy. “It’s more realistic than ever, but I don’t want to overstate the possibility. It’s going to be hard.”
Cowen said even though Republicans control both houses of Congress and the presidency, a wholesale closure of the Department of Education might not be palatable to some of the party’s legislators.
“They realize some of the things that the education department oversees and funds are popular,” said Cowen, adding that the Senate would need a 60-vote filibuster-proof majority to push through a bill to close the department.
Instead, he said, Republicans are likely to focus on rolling back funding for programs geared toward “equity, inclusion, or programs that could be particularly beneficial toward migrant communities” — lightning rod issues for conservative politicians.
Another target would likely be Title I funding, which provides school districts with funding geared toward low-income students, according to Columbia University professor Aaron Pallas.
“One thing that Project 2025 called for that is perhaps most doable and, and most threatening perhaps to local education agencies is a proposal to phase out federal funding for Title I, shifting that to be the responsibility of states and and local governments,” Pallas said.
Pallas said that plan also calls for many of the department’s responsibilities to be shifted to other federal agencies.
“It’s really just kind of rearranging in order to continue to provide congressionally mandated services to students. Even if the functions get moved to other agencies, there’s going to have to be people available to administer them,” Pallas said.
Trump also promised in the campaign video to “give all parents the right to choose another school for their children if they want.” But part of the calculus GOP legislators might need to consider is that enthusiasm for dismantling the Education Department may not be as widespread as they think. On Nov. 5, three states — including two where Trump won handily — rejected ballot measures that would’ve shifted money away from public education.
Voters rejected efforts in Kentucky, Colorado and Nebraska to strengthen school choice and voucher programs, in which state funds help foot the bill for parents who choose to forgo their local public schools.
“Rural Republicans have long resisted school choice schemes, especially vouchers, for the simple reason they just don’t have very many private schools in their districts,” said Cowen, whose book “The Privateers” examines the role of wealthy donors in politicians’ push for school voucher programs.
He said politicians who serve rural school districts might have one other big reason to avoid supporting legislation that strips away funding.
“I’m no Karl Rove or James Carville, but I know that you don’t get reelected by voting against the biggest employer in your district,” Cowan said.
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Democratic senators ask Pentagon and DOJ to investigate any Elon Musk contact with Putin and other top Russians
Two top Democratic senators are asking the Pentagon and the Justice Department to investigate billionaire Trump ally Elon Musk’s reported contacts with Russian President Vladimir Putin and other top Russian officials in recent years.
Sen. Jack Reed, chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, and Sen. Jeanne Shaheen, a top member of the Senate Armed Services and Foreign Relations Committees, wrote a letter to Defense Department Inspector General Robert Storch and Attorney General Merrick Garland Friday, urging them to determine whether Musk’s reported contacts with the Russians should force a review of the federal government’s contracts with his company, SpaceX. Reuters was first to report the request.
The Wall Street Journal reported in October that Musk has been in regular contact with Putin since late 2022, and that Putin asked Musk to activate his Starlink satellite internet program over Taiwan for Chinese President Xi Jinping. SpaceX did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Shaheen and Reed expressed concern that giving a security clearance to someone with a reported history of Russian communications could pose a national security risk.
“These relationships between a well-known U.S. adversary and Mr. Musk, a beneficiary of billions of dollars in U.S. government funding, pose serious questions regarding Mr. Musk’s reliability as a government contractor and a clearance holder,” the senators wrote.
The world’s richest man has become a close ally of President-elect Donald Trump in recent months, giving over $130 million to help elect him, campaigning and traveling with him, and weighing in on Cabinet picks. Trump announced earlier this week that he’s tapping Musk and businessman Vivek Ramaswamy to lead a new Department of Government Efficiency.
CBS News also reported Friday that Musk recently met with Iran’s ambassador to the U.N., Amir Saeid Iravani, at the ambassador’s residence in New York, according to two sources familiar with the meeting. The U.S. does not have diplomatic relations with Iran.
The senators also sent a separate letter to Air Force Secretary Frank Kendall, expressing their concern that the Space Force’s reliance on SpaceX could also affect national security.
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CBS News
Man accused of killing Georgia nursing student Laken Riley “went hunting for females,” prosecutor says
A Venezuelan man “went hunting for females on the University of Georgia’s campus” earlier this year and ended up killing nursing student Laken Riley after a struggle, a prosecutor said Friday. The man’s lawyer, though, said the evidence is circumstantial and doesn’t prove his client is guilty.
Jose Ibarra, who entered the U.S. illegally, is charged with murder in the February killing, which helped fan the immigration debate during this year’s presidential campaign. Ibarra waived his right to a jury trial, meaning his case is being heard and decided by Athens-Clarke County Superior Court Judge H. Patrick Haggard.
Prosecutor Sheila Ross told the judge that Ibarra encountered Riley Feb. 22 while she was running on the University of Georgia campus in Athens. Riley, 22, was a student at Augusta University College of Nursing, which also has a campus in the city that is about 70 miles east of Atlanta.
“When Laken Riley refused to be his rape victim, he bashed her skull in with a rock repeatedly,” Ross said, adding that the evidence would show that Riley “fought for her life, for her dignity.”
As a result of that fight, Ibarra’s DNA was left under her fingernails, Ross said. Riley called 911 and, in a struggle over her phone, Ibarra’s thumbprint was left on the screen, she said.
That forensic evidence is sufficient to prove Ibarra’s guilt, but digital and video evidence also prove that Ibarra killed Riley, the prosecutor said.
Augusta University
Defense attorney Dustin Kirby called the evidence in the case graphic and disturbing, but he said none of it proves that his client killed Riley.
“The evidence in this case is very good that Laken Riley was murdered,” he said. “The evidence that Jose Ibarra killed Laken Riley is circumstantial.”
The killing added fuel to the national debate over immigration when federal authorities said Ibarra illegally entered the U.S. in 2022 and was allowed to stay to pursue his immigration case.
Republicans, including President-elect Donald Trump, blamed Democratic President Joe Biden’s border policies for her death. As he spoke about border security during his State of the Union address weeks after the killing, Biden mentioned Riley by name.
ELIJAH NOUVELAGE/AFP via Getty Images
Riley’s mother, Allyson Phillips, and other family members packed the courtroom Friday morning but didn’t return after lunch. Phillips put her face in her hands and cried frequently, especially when photos of her daughter were shown and during descriptions of what happened to her.
Ibarra, dressed in a plaid shirt and dark slacks and with his feet chained, wore headphones to hear a Spanish-language interpreter. He appeared attentive, sometimes looking up when photos or video were shown and other times looking down at his lap.
During her opening statement, Ross laid out a timeline using doorbell and surveillance camera footage, as well as data from Riley’s phone and watch, to piece together her final moments.
Riley left home at 9:03 a.m. and headed for wooded trails where she often ran. Data from her watch shows that at 9:10 a.m., she was running at a fast pace when something happened that made her “stop dead in her tracks.” She called 911 at 9:11 a.m.
A 911 dispatcher answered but no one responded when she repeatedly sought a response, and then the call was ended by the caller. The dispatcher immediately called back, but no one answered.
“Her encounter with him was long. Her fight with him was fierce,” Ross said, noting that Riley’s watch data showed her heart was still beating until 9:28 a.m.
Ross also played security camera video that shows a man she said is Ibarra at 9:44 a.m. in a parking lot at his apartment complex. The man tossed something in a recycling bin and then appeared to throw something in nearby bushes. In the recycling bin, officers found a dark hooded jacket with blood that turned out to be Riley’s on it and strands of long dark hair caught on a button. In the bushes, they found black disposable kitchen gloves, one of which had a hole in the tip of the thumb.
Another video from about 35 minutes later shows what appeared to be the same man wearing different clothes and walking toward a trash bin with a bag and then walking back empty-handed. That bin was emptied before police were able to search it.
One of Riley’s three roommates testified that she became worried when Riley didn’t return from a run. The four friends used a phone app to track each other’s whereabouts, and Lilly Steiner testified that she became more worried when she saw that Riley’s phone showed her in the same location for a long time.
Riley often talked to her mother by phone when she ran, and her mother also became concerned that morning when her daughter didn’t answer her calls.
Steiner and another roommate, Sofia Magana, walked to the trail where the phone app indicated Riley was located. They found what they believed was one of Riley’s earbuds on the trail and returned home to call police.
One of the officers who responded found Riley’s body partially covered by leaves, 64 feet off the trail. Although her shirt had been pulled up and her underwear was showing above the lowered waistband of her running tights, Ross said there was no evidence that Riley had been sexually assaulted.
Police arrested Ibarra the day after the killing.
Before Ross played video from the body camera of the officer who found Riley, she warned Riley’s family that her dead body would be shown. Riley’s mother left the courtroom, but other family members and friends remained, some of them crying or covering their faces during the video.
Ibarra is charged with one count of malice murder, three counts of felony murder and one count each of kidnapping, aggravated assault, aggravated battery, hindering an emergency telephone call, tampering with evidence and being a peeping Tom.
Prosecutors say that on the day of Riley’s killing, Ibarra peered into the window of an apartment in a university residential building, which is the basis for the peeping Tom charge.
