# Trump's Department of Education, an empty shell and proud of it > Education Secretary Linda McMahon has made significant progress on what she herself describes as her "final mission": dissolving her own federal agency. - Author: Maxime Marquette - Publisher: MadMax (https://mad-max.co) - Section: Editorial - Published: 2026-07-05 - Canonical URL: https://mad-max.co/en/article/le-ministere-de-l-education-de-trump-une-coquille-vide-et-assumee ## Introduction: a final mission that lives up to its name ### Linda McMahon methodically completes her own erasure Education Secretary **Linda McMahon** has made significant progress on what she herself describes as her "final mission": dissolving her own **federal agency**. A **Bloomberg** report details how she has methodically hollowed out the **Department of Education**, working entirely within the powers legally granted to her. Only **Congress** can officially eliminate the department, a central campaign promise of **Donald Trump**. But the absence of formal legislative **abolition** has not stopped **McMahon** from emptying the agency of nearly all its operational substance through purely administrative means. ### A dismantling strategy built from small, cumulative steps The method used is as effective as it is quiet: methodically redistributing programs and offices to other federal agencies through interagency agreements, rather than seeking a frontal, headline-grabbing confrontation with **Congress** over abolishing the department outright. This gradual, almost surgical approach has allowed the **Trump** administration to bypass the legislative obstacle while achieving, in practice, a result equivalent to the agency's complete abolition. *I find this legislative workaround particularly revealing: when you cannot secure abolition through law, you accomplish it through administration instead. It is technically clever, but it raises a fundamental democratic question about respect for the **legislative process**.* ## Numbers that tell the story of the emptying-out ### Nearly half the staff let go The tally is striking: nearly **half of the department's employees** have been laid off, and more than **a billion dollars** in contracts have been cancelled. A new report filed by the department's **Office of Inspector General** details the scale of this shrinkage. According to that report, **135 divisions** were left without a single employee after the **waves of layoffs**, and fewer than **20 divisions** still had more than five employees. These numbers paint the portrait of a federal agency methodically stripped of its real **operational capacity**. ### Transferring the most sensitive functions to other departments This month, the **Trump** administration transferred two of the department's largest divisions, the **Office for Civil Rights** and the **Office of Special Education and Rehabilitative Services**, to the departments of **Justice** and **Health and Human Services**, respectively. These two offices were the last hard cores of the department not yet subject to interagency agreements. This transfer marks a major symbolic milestone: even the most sensitive functions, the ones touching directly on the rights of disabled children and the fight against **discrimination in schools**, have been scattered elsewhere across the federal machine, far from any centralized oversight dedicated to education. *I am particularly troubled by the transfer of the Office for Civil Rights to Justice and of special education to Health and Human Services. These are not trivial administrative functions: they are concrete **protections** for vulnerable children who risk getting lost in the **bureaucratic dilution**.* ## Two hundred billion dollars changing hands ### A colossal budget now scattered across several agencies The vast majority of the **200 billion dollars** in federal funds the department distributed last year will now pass through other agencies. Already last year, the offices overseeing **K-12** schools, **higher education**, and **vocational training** had been transferred to the **Department of Labor**. In **March**, the government began transferring the **student loan** portfolio, valued at **1.7 trillion dollars**, to the **Treasury Department**, along with management of federal **financial aid** programs for students. ### A symbolic move to a more modest building In **August**, the remaining, now considerably reduced, staff are set to begin moving into a new, unassuming building with **300,000 fewer square feet** of space, located in the former offices of the **United States Agency for International Development**. This move illustrates, almost literally, the **physical shrinking** of an institution once central to federal **education policy**. This real-estate symbol is not trivial: it concretely embodies, in concrete and **office space**, the gradual erasure of an agency founded to centralize educational missions deemed essential nearly half a century ago. *I see in this move to a smaller building an almost cruel symbol of what the department is becoming: an administrative shell now occupying the space vacated by another agency that had itself already been dismantled.* ## A "pilot program" that dares not speak its true name ### McMahon frames the dismantling as an experiment **Linda McMahon** has described this redistribution as a "pilot program," meant to convince cautious lawmakers, including many hesitant Republicans, that they do not need the **Department of Education** to oversee American schooling. This carefully chosen wording avoids the word "abolition," preferring more reassuring, experimental terminology instead. With so many of the department's functions now transferred elsewhere, American schools and colleges will get to test that hypothesis starting this fall, a **real-world test** that will directly affect millions of students across the country. ### An experiment with very real consequences for students Presenting the dismantling of a major federal agency as a simple "pilot program" is a clever **rhetorical exercise**, but one that dangerously downplays the very real consequences for families, **teachers**, and **school administrators** who will have to navigate a system now fragmented across several different departments. This administrative fragmentation risks creating lasting **bureaucratic confusion**, where **once-centralized responsibilities** become difficult for citizens to identify clearly when they are simply trying to assert their rights in education. *I refuse to accept this watered-down vocabulary. Calling a methodical, already largely irreversible dismantling a "pilot program" is semantic manipulation, not the **government transparency** the public should expect from any administration.* ## The legacy of 1979 scattered to the four winds ### An agency founded to unify, now condemned to disperse The **Department of Education** was founded in **1979** precisely to consolidate a scattered array of federal initiatives: school integration, civil rights enforcement, financial aid for low-income families, and support for students with special needs. The current dismantling means these efforts will, once again, be scattered across the federal government. This **administrative dispersion** represents a historic reversal of nearly half a century, dragging American federal education policy back into an institutional fragmentation that the department's very creation was meant to correct. ### A change that will be hard to undo, even for a future Congress The **Bloomberg** report notes that this collapse of the department represents a shift in federal education policy that could prove hard to reverse, whether or not **Congress** ever acts to formally dissolve the agency. Once functions are dispersed and employees reassigned elsewhere, rebuilding a centralized agency would become a considerable bureaucratic undertaking. This **practical irreversibility** may be the most troubling part of the entire affair: even a future change in political majority in **Congress** could find itself unable to simply "undo" this dismantling, since the administrative dispersion will have become so deep and so structural. *I believe this is precisely the political calculation behind the strategy: make the dismantling so deep and so diffuse that it becomes practically irreversible, no matter who governs Washington in four or eight years. It is a long-term maneuver disguised as short-term **administrative housekeeping**.* ## What this really means for vulnerable students ### Protections for disabled students scattered and weakened The transfer of the **Office of Special Education and Rehabilitative Services** to the department of **Health and Human Services** raises legitimate questions about the continuity of protections for students with special needs, a group especially vulnerable to administrative change and service disruption. This **major reorganization**, however rational it may look on an administrative flowchart, risks creating real gaps in support for these students, whose families will now have to navigate a system split across several federal agencies with different priorities and organizational cultures. ### School civil rights moved to Justice, a change in nature The transfer of the **Office for Civil Rights** to the **Department of Justice** represents a change in nature, not just administrative address. An agency historically dedicated to educational oversight now finds itself attached to a department whose institutional culture and priorities differ fundamentally from those of education. This shift could permanently change how discrimination complaints in schools are handled, with concrete consequences for the students and families who once relied on a clearly identified recourse mechanism within the Department of Education. *I think it is the most vulnerable families, those of disabled students or victims of school discrimination, who will pay the steepest price for this reorganization. They do not have the resources to navigate an increasingly complex and fragmented bureaucratic maze.* ## Even Republicans are divided on the question ### Cautious lawmakers McMahon still has to win over The **Bloomberg** report notes that McMahon still has to convince many hesitant **Republican lawmakers**, who remain attached to the department's very existence despite their own party's campaign promises. This internal division reveals that abolishing the department was never unanimously supported, even within the political majority that had promised it for years. This **internal resistance** partly explains why the administration preferred the quiet administrative route over a frontal **legislative confrontation**, which would have risked publicly exposing these divisions within the Republican camp itself. ### A strategy that avoids open parliamentary debate By choosing interagency agreements over a floor vote, the **Trump** administration skillfully sidestepped a **public debate** that could have revealed embarrassing **political fractures**, including among its own allies in **Congress**. This approach raises a fundamental democratic question: does a reform of this magnitude, touching **200 billion dollars** and millions of students, not deserve a transparent parliamentary debate rather than a quiet dismantling carried out by administrative means. *I believe this Republican division, largely passed over in silence, deserves to be highlighted. Even the natural allies of this reform hesitate to publicly own it, which should raise questions about its real **democratic legitimacy**.* ## The precedent this sets for other federal agencies ### A method that could be applied elsewhere The method used to dismantle the **Department of Education**, gradual redistribution of functions rather than frontal legislative abolition, could serve as a model for other federal agencies the **Trump** administration might want to weaken without going through a **Congress** vote. This administrative precedent worries several **institutional observers**, who see in it a systematic bypassing of legislative power in favor of an executive branch increasingly inclined to act alone on major structural questions of **public policy**. ### A question that reaches far beyond the education sector This strategy of quiet dismantling could, if left effectively unchallenged, permanently redefine the balance of power between the executive and legislative branches in the **United States**, with consequences that extend well beyond education alone to touch the very nature of American **federal governance**. This broader institutional dimension should alarm people beyond public-education advocates alone, since it touches the very foundations of the **separation of powers** the American Constitution is supposed to guarantee. *I think this story reaches far beyond the education file alone. If this method of administrative dismantling works without effective opposition, it could become a **reusable model** against other federal agencies in the **years ahead**.* ## Conclusion: a campaign promise fulfilled through the back door ### A de facto dismantling without a vote in Congress This editorial confirms that the **Trump** administration, unable to secure the formal legislative abolition of the **Department of Education** promised for years, has nonetheless managed to achieve its practical equivalent through purely administrative means. This bypassing of the normal legislative process deserves to be called clearly what it is: a de facto dismantling carried out without the democratic debate a decision of this magnitude would normally require. The real-world test that next fall will represent, when American schools and colleges must operate within this newly fragmented system, will reveal whether this administrative experiment truly serves the interests of American students or whether it constitutes, as many observers fear, a major institutional setback dressed up as bureaucratic simplification. ### What to watch for next fall This fall's back-to-school season will be the real test of this reorganization: will disabled students continue receiving the same level of support through the Department of Health and Human Services, will discrimination complaints be handled with the same rigor by the Department of Justice, and will the redistributed **200 billion dollars** actually reach their intended recipients without the bureaucratic losses many education policy experts fear. It will be at that exact moment, not in the administration's optimistic press releases, that we will be able to truly judge whether this "pilot program" amounts to a responsible reform or a disguised abandonment of **federal responsibilities** toward American education. *I close this editorial with a firm conviction: a reform this profound should never have been carried out through administrative means alone. Americans deserved a real parliamentary debate over the future of their **federal education system**, not a quiet dismantling dressed up as routine management.* **By Maxime Marquette, columnist** ## Columnist's transparency note ### Editorial stance I am not a journalist but a **columnist and analyst**. My expertise lies in observing and analysing the geopolitical, economic and strategic dynamics that shape our world. My work is to take political strategies apart, to understand global economic movements, to put the decisions of international actors in context and to offer analytical perspectives on the changes that are redefining our societies. I do not claim the cold objectivity of traditional journalism, which stops at reporting facts. **I claim analytical clarity**, rigorous interpretation and a deep understanding of the complex issues that concern us all. My role is to give meaning to the facts, to place them in their historical and strategic context, and to offer a critical reading of events. ### Method and sources This text keeps the basic distinction between **verified facts and interpretive analysis**. The rule never changes: a factual claim is published only when a verifiable source supports it, and the sources this article actually used are listed under **Sources**, never here. **Primary source families** used by the publication, when the story has them: official statements from governments and international institutions, public statements by political leaders, reports from intergovernmental organisations, dispatches from recognised international news agencies. **Secondary source families**: specialised publications, internationally recognised news media, analyses from established research institutions, reports from industry organisations. When an article cites statistical, economic or geopolitical data, it comes from the institutions that produce it (intergovernmental organisations, central banks, national statistics offices), and the exact institution is named under **Sources**. ### Nature of the analysis The analyses, interpretations and perspectives in the analytical sections of this article are a **critical, contextual synthesis** based on the information available, the trends observed and the expert comments cited in the sources consulted. My role is to interpret these facts, to set them in the context of today's geopolitical and economic dynamics, and to give them a coherent meaning within the larger story of the changes shaping our time. These analyses reflect expertise built through continuous observation of international affairs and an understanding of the strategic mechanisms that drive global actors. This article describes a documented state of affairs on its publication date, not a prediction: later developments may shift its outlook. No update is promised in advance; when an article is corrected or completed, the change is dated in the text. ## Sources ### Primary sources - United States Department of Education, official agency website — 2026 ### Secondary sources - Yahoo Finance / Bloomberg, what remains of the Department of Education after Trump's dismantling — June 29, 2026 - Reuters, ongoing coverage of American domestic policy — 2026 - Associated Press, tracking the United States Department of Education — 2026 - The Washington Post, coverage of American federal education policy — 2026 - NPR, tracking the dismantling of the Department of Education — 2026 --- Source: Maxime Marquette, MadMax. When citing, name the author and link https://mad-max.co/en/article/le-ministere-de-l-education-de-trump-une-coquille-vide-et-assumee