Hey, Ian, thanks for your question. In short, it’s not clear yet how much of the Department of Education Trump wants to leave intact. During his campaign, he promised to wind the agency down, but eliminating it altogether would likely require approval from Congress.

AP’s Annie Ma and Collin Binkley did a deep dive into the department and what it does. Here’s a bit of what they reported:

Trump has said he wants his new education chief, Linda McMahon, to “put herself out of a job,” and already his administration has overhauled much of the Department of Education’s work and cut its staff in half. DOGE has cut dozens of contracts it dismissed as “woke” and wasteful within the department.

Ultimately, the DOE’s main role is to distribute billions of dollars in federal funds to colleges and schools, as well as manage the student loan portfolio. Closing the department would mean redistributing each of those duties to another agency and redistribute federal education money. His goal is to cut off funding to schools that teach critical race theory, as well as other topics, and instead reward states and schools that end teacher tenure and support universal school choice programs.