Trump Tells Musk He Plans to Close the Department of Education
rump vowed to shut down the Department of Education Monday night, telling billionaire CEO Elon Musk during a livestream conversation on X that moving education back to the states will be one of his first acts as president.
The former president shared his plan after praising Argentine President Javier Milei, who has set his country back on a path to prosperity after slashing government spending.
“What I’m gonna do, one of the first acts, I want to close up the Department of Education and move education back to the states,” Trump said.
Trump acknowledged potential drawbacks to his plan, predicting that poorly run Democrat states like California would, at least initially, struggle.
“If you moved education back to the 50 [states], you’ll have some that won’t do well. But they’ll actually be forced to do better, because it’ll be a pretty bad situation,” he said.
“You look at Gavin Newsom, the governor of California, he’s terrible—he does a terrible job. So he’s not going to do great with education, Trump said. “But out of the 50 states, I would bet that 35 would do great, and 20 of them would be as good as Norway.”
The Harris campaign seized on these comments, posting on X that Trump said “I want to close the Department of Education.”
In a subsequent post, Harris HQ inaccurately wrote: “This is a key goal of Trump’s Project 2025,” although Project 2025 is a Heritage Foundation plan that Trump has disavowed.
Eliminating the Department of Education is a long-held Republican goal, and one that was shared by several other 2024 GOP candidates during the primary.
In a campaign video promoting his Agenda 47 last September, Trump first announced that he would have state governments “run the education of our children.”
“We’re going to end education coming out of Washington, DC. We’re going to close it up – all those buildings all over the place and people that in many cases hate our children. We’re going to send it all back to the states,” Trump said.
The former president shared his plan after praising Argentine President Javier Milei, who has set his country back on a path to prosperity after slashing government spending.
“What I’m gonna do, one of the first acts, I want to close up the Department of Education and move education back to the states,” Trump said.
Trump acknowledged potential drawbacks to his plan, predicting that poorly run Democrat states like California would, at least initially, struggle.
“If you moved education back to the 50 [states], you’ll have some that won’t do well. But they’ll actually be forced to do better, because it’ll be a pretty bad situation,” he said.
“You look at Gavin Newsom, the governor of California, he’s terrible—he does a terrible job. So he’s not going to do great with education, Trump said. “But out of the 50 states, I would bet that 35 would do great, and 20 of them would be as good as Norway.”
The Harris campaign seized on these comments, posting on X that Trump said “I want to close the Department of Education.”
In a subsequent post, Harris HQ inaccurately wrote: “This is a key goal of Trump’s Project 2025,” although Project 2025 is a Heritage Foundation plan that Trump has disavowed.
Eliminating the Department of Education is a long-held Republican goal, and one that was shared by several other 2024 GOP candidates during the primary.
In a campaign video promoting his Agenda 47 last September, Trump first announced that he would have state governments “run the education of our children.”
“We’re going to end education coming out of Washington, DC. We’re going to close it up – all those buildings all over the place and people that in many cases hate our children. We’re going to send it all back to the states,” Trump said.
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