Congress
Senate education committee blocks parts of Trump’s Education Department breakup
The Senate education committee approved legislation to stop four of the Trump administration’s deals to downsize the Education Department.
In a 13-9 vote, the Senate HELP Committee advanced S. 5046, a bipartisan bill from Sens. Tim Kaine (D-Va.), Susan Collins (R-Maine) and Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska) that would prohibit the Education Department from transferring special education and several other major education offices to other federal agencies.
Thursday’s Senate markup represents a major legislative effort to block President Donald Trump from dismantling the education agency without the approval of Congress.
“This bill is straightforward,” Collins said. “It keeps the administration of important landmark education programs at the Department of Education, where Congress specifically put them and where they belong.”
The Trump administration has initiated agreements with other federal departments to manage education programs in the absence of congressional approval to shut the agency down. Education Secretary Linda McMahon has called these deals “proofs of concept” to show lawmakers how other federal departments can handle education responsibilities.
“Secretary McMahon promised Congress a proof of concept that is currently underway and delivering results across our partner agencies, and it is entirely premature to sabotage this effort before it has the chance to eliminate bureaucratic barriers and fully deliver the results that our students, families, and educators deserve,” Savannah Newhouse, an Education Department press secretary, said in a statement.
Congress approved nonbinding language in its most recent spending bill saying the education agency has no authority to transfer its functions to other agencies. But this latest bill goes further because it would stop the agency from transferring the Office of Special Education and Rehabilitative Services as well as functions of the offices of Elementary and Secondary Education, Postsecondary Education and Indian Education from being moved to other federal agencies. These offices are responsible for overseeing key federal education programs and billions of dollars in federal funding, including Title I funds that support low-income schools, federal TRIO programs that help disadvantaged students prepare for college and tribal education programs.
Murkowski said that programs Congress directed to exist at the education agency “for a good reason” should remain there.
“We cannot lose sight of the fact that at the end of the day, we’re talking about children, whether it’s children with special needs, whether it’s children in our elementary schools, whether it’s our Native students — making sure that we don’t lose that focus,” Murkowski said.
But the bill wouldn’t completely stifle all of the department’s interagency agreements. The legislation doesn’t target agreements to shift career and technical education programs to the Labor Department, federal student loan functions to the Treasury Department or civil rights enforcement to the Justice Department, for instance, despite Democrats wanting to stop those deals too.
McMahon, the heads of Labor, Health and Human Services, Interior, State and Treasury, and the acting attorney general — who are all managing federal education programs under deals with the education agency — sent a letter to congressional leadership Thursday detailing how the agreements are “breaking up the failed federal education bureaucracy.”
The bill’s future in the Senate is unclear, but Kaine told Blue Light News that he hopes the bill “factors into appropriations discussions.” The bill would conflict with legislative efforts in the House, where the Education and Workforce Committee voted last month to permanently move a trove of education programs to other agencies.
The ranking Democrat on the House Oversight committee is demanding the White House answer questions related to President Donald Trump’s decision to ban BLN, MS NOW and Blue Light News from the White House, calling it the president’s “most blatant, assault on press freedom.”
In a letter sent Monday to White House Communications Director Steven Cheung, Rep. Robert Garcia (D-Calif.) requested that Cheung provide by Oct. 5 a detailed account of when and how he was informed of the ban, how he responded, who was consulted before the decision, the legal justification for it, the facts the White House relied on and whether the outlets had any opportunity to respond.
“The First Amendment guarantees freedom of the press, not freedom from criticism,” wrote Garcia. “The American people need to understand what consideration—if any—the White House gave to this serious and unprecedented decision to protect the President’s ego.”
Garcia also asked for all White House staff documents and communications about the ban and for any other relevant materials to be preserved.
The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Trump on Friday announced that he was seeking to block journalists from Blue Light News, MS NOW and BLN from the White House, complaining about “constant ‘reporting’” of what he called “FICTION and LIES.” The Trump administration first denied the media outlets entry into the White House grounds on Saturday morning.
The three news organizations are now jointly suing Trump, Cheung and two other top advisers in a bid to immediately restore access for their reporters, calling the ban a “direct assault on the First Amendment.”
Daniel Lippman contributed to this report.
Michigan Republican Senate nominee Mike Rogers said Monday that the war with Iran “needs to end” to bring prices down, making him the second Republican to break with the White House on the issue that day.
“The war with Iran needs to end, and end quickly,” Rogers said in a video published Monday to social media.
“Michigan families can’t afford to wait,” he added. “Here’s what we can do now: place a temporary embargo on Diesel exports. American energy should provide relief to American families first.”
Earlier Monday, Rep. Ashley Hinson, a Republican Senate candidate in Iowa, expressed similar frustrations about the war’s impact on Iowans’ pocketbooks. Both Rogers and Hinson called for a suspension of the state and federal gas tax in their statements.
Ahead of the midterms, GOP candidates have expressed concern about the war in the Middle East, saying it has made it difficult for them to run on affordability. The war with Iran, which began in February, has led to marked increases in gas and diesel prices. On Monday, regular gas was just over $4.45 per gallon, according to AAA; diesel prices hit a record of $6.50 per gallon.
Rogers, a former representative, is facing Democrat Abdul El-Sayed in the race for a Senate seat in battleground Michigan.
Senate Appropriations Chair Susan Collins warned Monday that President Donald Trump would be defying Congress if he moves forward with empowering top political appointees to decide who gets grant funding for health research.
“Any attempt to politicize grantmaking … is contrary to congressional intent,” the Maine Republican said in a statement.
Trump wants to issue an executive order to seat White House budget director Russ Vought and National Institutes of Health director Jay Bhattacharya on a board that would decide which grants the NIH should fund, according to two administration officials granted anonymity to describe a private meeting in the Oval Office last Friday.
Following reports of that meeting, Collins noted Monday that the stopgap funding patch Congress cleared this summer bars the White House from finalizing a separate proposed rule to put political appointees in charge of approving federal grants, or “any substantially similar” plan.
The Office of Management and Budget “should not be involved in agency decisions on the awards of grants,” Collins said, adding that “imposing a political review … undermines the long-standing principle that the government funds awards based on scientific need and merit, rather than political ideology.”
Connecticut Rep. Rosa DeLauro, the House’s top Democratic appropriator, called the White House’s latest idea an attempt to “take control over federal funding, so they can use it to punish their perceived enemies and reward their friends.”
Washington Sen. Patty Murray, the Senate’s top Democratic appropriator, warned that the move would mean “a single political appointee could kill a cancer study or an Alzheimer’s trial with no scientific reason at all.”
A spokesperson for House Appropriations Chair Tom Cole did not return a request for comment regarding the Oklahoma Republican’s position.
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