The Department of Education is reportedly eliminating 50% of its workforce. Washington Post writer Laura Meckler talks about the fallout, from the enforcement of civil rights laws in schools, to student loans and grants.TV critic David Bianculli reviews A Thousand Blows, the new historical drama series from Peaky Blinders creator Steven Knight.Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy
Chapter 1: What is the current state of the Department of Education?
This leaves the department to roughly half of its workforce, which is responsible for enforcing civil rights laws in schools, supplying student loans and grants, and tracking student achievement. These new layoffs come as President Donald Trump calls to eliminate the department altogether.
At the heart of Trump's effort is a plan to consolidate what he describes as waste within the government, vowing to cut federal funding for schools and colleges that promote, quote, Earlier this week, the U.S. Department of Education also sent letters to 60 colleges and universities.
It says are under investigation for violations relating to alleged anti-Semitic harassment against Jewish students during pro-Palestinian protests on campuses nationwide. Joining us to talk about all of this is Laura Meckler, a national education writer for The Washington Post, who covers news, politics, and the people shaping American schools.
Her book, Dreamtown, Shaker Heights, and the Quest for Racial Equity, is an examination of the ideals and realities of racial integration in her hometown of Shaker Heights, Ohio. Our conversation was recorded yesterday. Laura Meckler, welcome to Fresh Air.
It's so nice to be here.
Let's start with the backstory behind the letter that was sent this week to the 60 colleges by the Department of Education for alleged violations relating to anti-Semitic harassment. Remind us of what this stems from.
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Chapter 2: How are recent protests affecting colleges and universities?
Well, all of this stems from protests that broke out on campus following the October 7th, 2023 Hamas attack on Israel, which was then, of course, followed by the war between Israel and the Palestinians in the Gaza Strip. And Of course, there were, you know, very, very passionate, strong, angry protests at campuses all over the country.
So there's been this tension that colleges have been facing, especially last academic year, to be honest, but to some extent this year, too, about how to balance the free speech rights of the protesters against racism. the rights of other students to be on campus and to be on campus in an atmosphere that's free of harassment, for Jewish students to feel safe. In some cases, they did not feel safe.
And all of that was sort of stirring and quite active as President Trump was running for his second term. And then once he took office, he's taken a very strong step to try to essentially clamp down on colleges and force them, they would say, to take anti-Semitism seriously.
You've actually been reporting on how the Trump administration pulled last week. It's $400 million in federal grants and contracts from Columbia University. And just to remind people, Columbia was sort of the epicenter of the protests last spring. Can you tell us more about the accusations that happened there on that campus as well as the cuts to funding?
I mean, $400 million sounds like an incredibly large amount and what that actually impacts.
Well, we don't have the full scope of what it impacts. But yes, $400 million is a lot of money for a university, for any university, and for Columbia University. This unfolded very quickly at Columbia. About a week and a half ago or so, the
Trump administration told Columbia that it was under investigation for how it was treating Jewish students and whether it was safeguarding them against anti-Semitism. And then just four days later, they concluded that they weren't and pulled this $400 million by their calculations in grants and contracts. This is not normally how things are done.
Normally, there's a long investigation and there's a process by which universities can sort of come into compliance, which is what almost always happens. In this case, they just said, you haven't upheld your duty under federal civil rights law, and therefore, we're pulling this federal funding. So it was quite dramatic.
And a lot of people read it as a real shot across the bow, not just to Columbia, but to other universities around the country, too.
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Chapter 3: What are the implications of federal funding cuts to universities?
Right, because 60 other universities received a letter just on Monday. I would assume there probably is fear around funding cuts for those universities as well.
You know, absolutely. I mean, everybody is fearful. And I think we should put this into some really broader context here, which is that universities have been on their heels really since the start of this administration.
There have been a series of actions that have been taken and that have been threatened in terms of funding and sort of general control over what they do from the Trump administration. And so universities are already feeling very frightened, unsure, and And, you know, frankly, scrambling about what they will do if they lose all this federal funding.
Some of these schools are very dependent on federal funding through NIH research grants and other means. And the Trump administration is going about this, you know, quite aggressively, as we saw with Columbia on Friday. And now this threat to, as you said, 60 other universities to say, yes, you know, you are also on our radar and we could do the same to you.
So the Office of Civil Rights within the Department of Ed sent that letter to the colleges and universities. And that office, which under a larger proposal to dismantle the education department, would fall under the jurisdiction of the Department of Justice. Can you share the latest of what we know about this draft executive order to dismantle the department that has been circulating?
Have you seen it?
I have seen it. Of course, President Trump campaigned on a promise to close the Department of Education. And when he showed up on his first day, there was a draft executive order waiting for him, actually, that would have called on Congress to do such. We should note that the administration does not have the power to simply close the Department of Education.
Only Congress would have the ability to do that. Congress created the agency and only they can dismantle the agency. But what this executive order, the initial version of this executive order would have said was, ask Congress, come up with a plan to get Congress to eliminate the department. And in the meantime, do what you can to dismantle it, to diminish it.
And then we saw another version of the executive order floating around that did not have the part about calling on Congress to act, but did say that you should do what you can to to diminish the agency on your own. So it's not entirely clear what the administration's thinking is right now. But we do know two things. Ultimately, they would like to eliminate the department.
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Chapter 4: What are President Trump's plans for the Department of Education?
Some of it's from a program called Title I. which aids high poverty schools. Some of it's from a program called IDEA, which helps cover the costs of educating students with disabilities. And then the department also has, as you mentioned, the Office for Civil Rights.
And the goal of the Office for Civil Rights is to enforce, it's more than the goal, its task, its mandate is to force federal civil rights laws, which say you cannot get federal funding if you discriminate on students or others on campus on the basis of sex, race, national origin, and other factors as well. So that's their job. So those are the major functions of the Department of Education.
Going back to what you said about how it would take an act of Congress to dismantle, I do want to talk with you about the ways that the administration can change the function without Congress. One of the ways is by taking some of what the Department of Education does and then having other departments handle that. Can you give us some examples of that?
Well, there has been an aspiration for them to do that.
For instance, there's been talk, and Linda McMahon, the education secretary, during her confirmation hearing kind of floated these ideas of moving, for instance, the Office for Civil Rights to the Justice Department or moving, say, the Title I program to the Department of Health and Human Services or moving the federal student loan program to the Treasury Department.
However, all of these programs in statute are said to be housed at the Department of Education. So it isn't really clear at all to me or the experts I've talked to that they can just, on their own, try to move it. Now, maybe they will try, in which case, as you said, I think we'll likely see court action.
But I also think there's another path that's possible, which is rather than try to move these pieces around the government—
is change how they're used, either try to diminish them through unilateral canceling of grants and contracts, through reducing the staff, which we've already seen, the significant reduction in the staff at the Department of Education, and through changing how they use the powers of the Department of Education itself, including the Office for Civil Rights.
There was an executive order that Trump put forth in February where he demanded the secretary of education to deliver recommendations to him for eliminating funding for K-12 schools that engage in the indoctrination, as he puts it, over race and gender topics. And schools are typically a reflection of their communities.
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Chapter 5: How would transferring responsibilities affect the Department of Education?
It's pretty interesting that Linda McMahon has taken this role as the head of the Department of Education to dismantle it. Can you kind of give us a sense of is she working herself out of a job? Is she there just for that explicit purpose? What can you tell us about her?
Well, it's interesting. She's not somebody who has a strong background in education. She has a little bit of education experience. She's served on a state board for about a year, and she's been a trustee of a college in Connecticut. She's obviously best known as being the CEO of World Wrestling Entertainment with her husband, Vince McMahon.
But the other thing you need to know about Linda McMahon is she's very close to Donald Trump. And she served as the administrator of the Small Business Administration in his first term. And she worked on his reelection. and she co-chaired his transition, and now she has this job. So, you know, she is not somebody who has to really – she's a billionaire.
She doesn't have to worry about a paycheck if, theoretically, the Department of Education went away. I think that, again, it's going to be very difficult, if not impossible, to close the Department of Education. So that's really much more of a talking point. I think that one thing we should be looking for is –
At what point do they start pivoting away from really talking about closing the education department? Because the more they talk about it, if it doesn't happen, does that look like a failure on the part of President Trump? I don't think he would like that much. So I think we're much more likely to see her come in there. She's really... She's kind of a grown-up.
Before she got there, it felt like the 20-something dozers were running the place. Now she's coming in, and the people who opposed her didn't so much oppose her for who she was, but more because of what the agenda was.
It's also pretty interesting because when Betsy DeVos was sworn in, it was pretty clear – her ideology around education. I mean, she was just such a big proponent of school choice. With McMahon, what did she indicate during her confirmation hearings would be sort of her focus around education, understanding her background?
You know, she basically parroted the Trump lines about education. She spoke about being in favor of school choice, which, as you said, was a Betsy DeVos priority. She talked about wanting to decrease the footprint of the Department of Education. She did acknowledge that only Congress could close it.
She talked about, you know, equity and gender ideology and needing to get rid of those out of schools. She said she would look into what Doge was doing and make sure it didn't go too far. So, you know, she had a fairly as expected confirmation hearing.
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Chapter 6: What role does Linda McMahon play in the education department's future?
different orientation where they very much, I don't think they would have any trouble banning the 1619 Project.
In fact, it's banned on the state and local level in many places.
Right. But that's one thing, to ban it on the local level. The local and state governments, that is their job to set curriculum. It isn't the federal role to decide what students learn, what students have to do to graduate, what books people read. Those are not federal roles traditionally.
But under this new way of looking things under the Trump administration is that they're defining things like this as being essentially akin to racial discrimination, that this is essentially discriminating against white people if they're forced to to see American history through the lens of slavery.
Those are the sorts of arguments that are being made that essentially if you are pushing so-called critical race theory, if you're trying to say that the country is systemically racist, if you're saying that white people have privilege— that other people don't have.
All of these things gear you into the territory of a definition of racial discrimination that is very different than what we've seen in the past, essentially using the civil rights laws to try to stop what their proponents would see as efforts to try to eliminate racism. So that is a very different orientation, a much more muscular federal role that we've already seen rolled out
just in these opening weeks of the Trump administration. So it's a stark contrast to the first Trump administration.
Our guest today is Washington Post national education writer Laura Meckler. On Tuesday, the Education Department announced it was firing more than 1,300 department workers. We'll be right back after a short break. I'm Tanya Mosley, and this is Fresh Air.
Hi, I'm Morgan Sung, host of Close All Tabs from KQED, part of the NPR network, where every week we reveal how the online world collides with everyday life.
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Chapter 7: How is DOGE impacting the Institute of Education Sciences?
And this includes programs that were touted under the first Trump administration that then Education Secretary Betsy DeVos herself founded. was a supporter of.
So essentially, if you just participated in something like the Diversity Change Agent program, which was a program to essentially help try to change the culture at the department, if you were just an everyday participant and you went to like a one-day training or a two-day training, you know, a few years ago, you might have been put on administrative leave. So Doge has been quite active.
Why is Trump doing this? What is his vision for education?
Well, it's interesting because when you listen to President Trump talk about education, he really talks about two different things. And they're somewhat in tension. The first thing he talks about is, quote, returning education to the states. which is somewhat of a puzzling thing to say because education is already run by the states and local governments to a very large effect.
Now, there was a time not that long ago, you probably remember the No Child Left Behind Act that was passed under President George W. Bush, where the federal government did have a much bigger role. But that was actually rolled back near the end of the Obama administration. So really, the federal footprint today is somewhat light. education to the states.
And the second thing we hear about from him is getting essentially wokeness and gender ideology and equity and race conversations essentially out of the schools. So he wants to use the power of the federal government to influence the way that schools talk about those subjects and the policies that they use. You can see how these are somewhat in tension with one another.
You have the federal government on one hand saying, well, this should be run by the states, on another hand saying, yes, except for this, that, and the other.
Mm-hmm. Can you remind us, as it pertains to the culture war issues and anything related to DEI, some of the origins of that? I know a few years ago, we were really talking about critical race theory within K-12 education. I've also heard President Trump talk about the mothers, the parents who have really been pushing like sort of this lobby to push against DEI in schools.
What can you tell us about that?
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