Many of America’s global competitors — and adversaries — are no doubt cheering President Donald Trump’s plan to dismantle the U.S. Department of Education. They know that countries who out-educate the rest of the world will out-compete it. And now brand new Education Secretary Linda McMahon and Trump want to neuter, if not completely shutter, the entity that helps give all children in the United States access to the great public school education they deserve. On Tuesday, the department announced plans to cut nearly half of its staff. McMahon says these catastrophic firings, alongside hundreds of so-called “buyouts,” are about “efficiency, accountability, and ensuring that resources are directed where they matter most: to students, parents, and teachers.” The reality is far more cowardly.

The president claims he wants the states to run education — but states and local school districts already operate schools and make curriculum decisions. Nobody wants that to stop. Similarly, nobody wants more red tape or unnecessary, inefficient bureaucracy. But here, too, there are ways to achieve “efficiency” without betraying the promises made to America’s children.

Nobody wants more red tape or unnecessary, inefficient bureaucracy.

The department in its modern form was establishedhed by Congress in 1979 to level up access to education, to help working families pay for college, to boost student achievement and to pave pathways to good middle-class jobs.

According to its 2025 fiscal year budget summarydepartment grants help close to 26 million children from poor families get extra support to reach their full potential.

It helps meet the individual needs of around 7.5 million children with disabilities. It provided tens of millions to help the over 5 million English learners in U.S. classrooms improve their proficiency and assimilate into our communities. And it provided nearly 9 million students with the financial aid they need to attend college or trade programs, including work-study programs.

Why would anyone allow Elon Musk to steal that money, which Congress appropriated for children, to pay for tax breaks for the rich and corporations?

Indeed, much of the department’s total annual budget helps Americans trying to secure a college education. Why does Trump want to make it even harder for the children of low-income and middle-class families to cover skyrocketing college and university costs?

A gutted department would mean fewer teachers, more crowded classrooms and increased mental health and behavioral challenges for students. We’d most likely see increased absenteeism and decreased graduation rates. Fewer students would be able to obtain the degrees or credentials they need for well-paying jobs, meaning more students would have to settle for low-wage work or simply drop out of the workforce. And many cities and states would have to increase school budgets to make up for these cuts, resulting in higher state and local taxes.

Instead, this move sends a clear message that, in Trump’s America, only kids from wealthy families are entitled to opportunity. How does that help make America great?

Of course, opportunity comes in many forms. The world is a complicated place, and we need to prepare students for an increasingly complicated workforce. And yet, just days after the president signed a proclamationdeclaring February “Career and Technical Education Month,” Career and Technical Education, or CTE, programs are on the chopping block.

Secretary McMahon and I agree that high school can’t just be college prep. We both back the engaged, hands-on learning that students receive through CTE. We both believe in the Swiss apprenticeship program I had the honor of visiting last month. In the United States and Switzerland, students graduate from CTE programs ranging from construction and plumbing to manufacturing and health care with the skills, credentials and real-world experiences they need to secure good jobs, often right in their backyards.

I taught in a CTE high school and saw firsthand the potential of these programs, but states don’t have the resources to scale such transformational pathways alone. The federal government should and could turbocharge CTE to support millions of future electricians, EMTs, coders, plumbers, automotive technicians, early childhood educators and workers in countless other professions. But that won’t happen if Trump eliminates the department.

These changes will inflict tremendous harm on kids’ futures. If Trump follows through with an eventual executive order demolishing the department, his actions may also be illegal. I’m a civics teacher and a lawyer, so here’s a bit of Civics 101: Congress created the Department of Education, and only Congress can abolish it. Neither the president nor Musk has the right to appropriate or eliminate funds or ax entire federal departments — only Congress does. Many legal experts agree with me.

The American people did not vote for chaotic and reckless attacks on public schools.

The American people did not vote for chaotic and reckless attacks on public schools. Even in Nebraska and Kentucky, states that Trump won overwhelmingly, voters rejecteden masse, measures to defund and privatize their public schools. Ironically, the funds Musk wants to take away go disproportionately to supporting children in rural red states.

My union will continue to fight to protect our kids and to fund their future, because it is both the smart and the right thing to do. Last Tuesday, we held over 100 events across the country to protect our kids.

Diverting billions from our children to pay for tax cuts that primarily benefit the wealthy is a callous decision that short-changes everyone. If we want to engage kids, if we want America to be a nation of “explorers, builders, innovators [and] entrepreneurs,” as Trump said in his inaugural address, then logically it follows that we should be investing more in education, not less.

The dreams of millions of kids, and the promise of America, depend on it.

Randi Weingarten

Randi Weingarten is a high school social studies teacher and president of the 1.7 million-member American Federation of Teachers.

The House narrowly passed a spending bill on Tuesday, clearing the first hurdle to avert a government shutdown as the bill now moves to the Senate for a vote.

The six-month continuing resolution passed 217-213, with all Republicans — except Rep. Thomas Massie of Kentucky — voting for the bill at the urging of President Donald Trump and House Speaker Mike Johnson. Rep. Jared Golden of Maine was the only Democrat to support the bill.

Although House Democrats have historically voted to support such stopgap measures, Democratic leaders have said that this time around the spending bill would only help Trump and billionaire Elon Musk continue to enact sweeping cuts across the federal government.

A handful of House Republicans were tight-lipped on how they were leaning ahead of the vote. Massie was the only one among his GOP colleagues who publicly refused to support the measure, criticizing such short-term extensions to keep the government open.

“It amazes me that my colleagues and many of the public fall for the lie that we will fight another day,” he wrote on X.

Massie ultimately remained the lone Republican to defy Trump and Johnson by opposing the bill.

Clarissa-je Lim

Clarissa-Jan Lim is a breaking/trending news blogger for BLN Digital. She was previously a senior reporter and editor at BuzzFeed News.

On Friday, Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins bragged on social media platform X about the cancellation of a $600,000 grant for Southern University in Louisiana, touting that her department had revoked funds for a study into “menstrual cycles in transgender men.” The only problem? According to the department’s website, that’s not what the grant was intended for.

According to reporting from CBS News, citing the project’s publicly filed documentation posted on the USDA websitethe goal of the study, titled “Farm to Feminine Hygiene,” was to examine the potential health risks posed by synthetic feminine hygiene products and to develop alternatives using natural materials.

In her social media post, Rollins thanked the American Principles Project for the “tip.” The conservative think tank flagged the grant as part of its database of federal spending on what they call the “Gender Industrial Complex.”

Critics pointed to a single sentence in the grant document that referenced “transgender men and people with masculine gender identities, intersex and non-binary persons.” In a statement to CBS News, a USDA spokesperson said the grant was revoked because it “prioritized women identifying as men who might menstruate.”

“This mission certainly does not align with the priorities and policies of the Trump Administration, which maintains that there are two sexes: male and female,” the spokesperson said.

But, as a statement from Southern University’s Agriculture and Research Center made clear, “The term ‘transgender men’ was only used once to state that this project, through the development of safer and healthier [feminine hygiene products]would benefit all biological women.”

Throughout the grant document, the authors made repeated references to women and young girls, including explicitly stating that one of the study’s major objectives was to “educate young women and adolescent girls about menstrual hygiene management through an extension outreach program.”

Southern University is a public, historically Black land-grant institution located in Baton Rouge, Louisiana. As part of the project, researchers planned to establish the first fiber processing center in the state, according to Dr. Samii Kennedy Benson, who oversaw the program. In July, she told Louisiana First News the center would be especially beneficial for “local farmers who often grow fibers on a smaller scale.”

USDA’s decision to revoke the grant is part of a much wider effort within President Donald Trump’s administration to slash government spending, often with little consideration for the actual consequences of those cuts. USDA also recently cut more than $1 billion in funding for programs that help schools and food banks purchase food from local farmers and has fired nearly 10% of the United States Forest Service workforce ahead of wildfire season.

Allison Detzel

Allison Detzel is an editor/producer for BLN Digital.