The former president of the United States, Donald Trump, joined calls from a former cabinet secretary in his administration to advocate for the abolishing of the Department of Education. Yahoo News reported that Trump made the remarks while attending a major conservative political conference.
In July, former Trump cabinet secretary for the Department of Education, Betsy DeVos, called for the elimination of the federal education agency because she believed the agency was not doing its job.
Trump, at the Conservative Political Action Conference (known as CPAC) in Dallas, Texas, told attendees, “If federal bureaucrats are going to push this radicalism, we should abolish the Department of Education.”
He also pushed for prohibiting “inappropriate racial, sexual and political material” to school-aged children in the country.
It is not out of the political mainstream to call for the elimination of a federal agency. During the 2016 presidential campaign, then-GOP candidate and former Texas governor Rick Perry said he would eliminate several federal agencies, such as the Department of Education.
Republican congressional representatives proposed at least one bill to abolish the federal education agency, with names such as Arizona Rep. Andy Biggs, Colorado Rep. Lauren Boebert, and Florida Rep. Matt Gaetz being the more noteworthy backers. Kentucky Rep. Thomas Massie, in remarks made in 2021, said that “unelected bureaucrats” should not be in charge of children’s education.
Conservatives were livid during the Obama presidency, when Obama’s political appointees weaponized the agency’s Office of Civil Rights to impose kangaroo courts on college campuses against students accused of misconduct or other actions.
