The Trump administration faces a noon ET deadline today to answer a judge’s questions about whether it flouted his order blocking deportations last weekend under a wartime law.
White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said today that “critical functions” of the Department of Education — specifically student loans and Pell grants — will remain under the department’s purview — will be “much smaller” but stopped short of saying they will be eliminated.
This contradicts what Trump said earlier this month in the Oval Office — when he suggested that student loans and federal grants would be moved to a different department — specifically suggesting the Small Business Administration, Treasury or Commerce.
“That would be brought into either Treasury or Small Business Administration or Commerce, and we’ve actually had that discussion today,” Trump said to reporters earlier this month. “I don’t think that Education should be handling the loans. That’s not their business. I think it’ll be brought into Small Business, maybe.”
White House press secretary says loans and grants will remain at Education Department, continued
Leavitt on Thursday said, “The Department of Education will be much smaller than it is today … when it comes to student loans and Pell grants, those will still be run out of the Department of Education.”
Her remarks come as Trump is set to sign an executive order later Thursday that would aim to close the federal Department of Education, though formally eliminating the department would require an act of Congress.
NAACP President Derrick Johnson criticized Trump’s plans to try to dismantle the Department of Education, saying in a statement that Trump is “deliberately dismantling the basic functions of our democracy, one piece at a time.”
“This is a dark day for the millions of American children who depend on federal funding for a quality education, including those in poor and rural communities with parents who voted for Trump,” Johnson said ahead of Trump signing the executive order. “Don’t be fooled, Trump doesn’t have your back — he only cares about the billionaire class who will profit from the privatization of essential services, including education.”
Trump does not have the power to unilaterally abolish a department. Congress would need to act.
