Among the encouraging elements of the second Trump administration are more serious efforts to pare back the size and role of government than we've seen in decades. Whether everything the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) is doing is by-the-book and likely to come to fruition depends on the outcome of political tussling and court challenges, but at least there's a shot at shrinking Leviathan. And while it will almost certainly take an act of Congress to succeed, plans to deep-six the Department of Education, a useless bureaucracy born as a political payoff, would be an important step in the right direction.
A Department Born as a Political Favor
"As a presidential candidate in 1976, [Jimmy] Carter promised the National Education Association that he would push for a separate education department, a goal the NEA had sought for a century," Mark Walsh detailed for EducationWeek in December 2024 after the death of the 39th president. "In return, the nation's largest teachers' union made the first presidential endorsement in its then-117-year history."
