How Democrats could make Trump’s Education Department overhaul much harder

Democrats are preparing to use all the tools at their disposal to halt the dismantling of the Education Department (ED) if they win the House or Senate in November.

President Trump, like many other Republicans, has long called for the department to be abolished, and his administration has slashed its workforce and created interagency agreements (IAAs) to move programs to other federal agencies, such as the student loan portfolio to the Treasury.

Those moves have been deeply unpopular with Democrats, who have struggled to counteract them or even get more information about the department’s actions while in the congressional minority.

But Republicans are considered likely to lose the House and potentially the Senate in next month’s midterms, putting the administration at the mercy of oversight powers that could force education officials into hearings and put a pause on interagency agreements.

“I do think they’d throw sand in the gears of the Trump administration’s efforts to move responsibilities from ED to other agencies. I’m sure we’d see some oversight hearings on what’s been happening at ED, and my understanding is that they could put language in appropriations bills that attempts to prevent the administration from using interagency agreements to offload responsibilities from ED,” said Jon Valant, director of the Brown Center on Education Policy at the Brookings Institute.

Sen. Chris Van Hollen (D-Md.) said in a press conference his colleagues would put language in a 2027 spending bill that to prevent the use of “any of these funds to shut down the Department of Education.”

“If we hear the right result from the voters, if the voters want a majority in the House and the Senate to protect public education, and I think they do, then we will be able to move forward on that front,” Van Hollen said.

A House Democratic aide told The Hill oversight hearings and accountability would be a top priority since all the information known about the dismantling of the department has been “surface level.”

“I assume there will be a lot of letter writing requests for information just to get a sense of the lay of the land. I think that’s kind of the first step, and once we have that kind of moving forward with all the tools we have. You could see oversight hearings, you could see staff reports, you could see official reports of the committee, all of which to paint the picture that we have a sense of right now, but we have not gotten the concrete data because the department doesn’t have to engage with us,” the aide said.

During Trump’s second term, the Department of Education has fired thousands of employees , entered over a dozen interagency agreements to move programs solely out of its purview and significantly downgraded its facilities in Washington, D.C.

The IAAs also include moving special education to the Department of Health and Human Services and civil rights complaints to the Justice Department.

Democrats have sent letters and raised concerns over the workforce cuts, particularly regarding the Office of Civil Rights and Federal Student Aid.

“The next Congress has an enormous job to repair public education, which is now teetering on the verge of collapse after Republicans treating it like a game of Jenga. This administration has spent untold taxpayer dollars to break up the Department of Education, only to make it less efficient and deprive students of the services they need to succeed,” said Randi Weingarten, president of the American Federation of Teachers.

“Congress has to stop this madness and make sure public school districts receive the money that students need and deserve. We should be investing in the public schools that teach the majority of children–not funneling money into vouchers for a select few,” she added.

In a Democratic House, lawmakers might vote on articles of impeachment against Education Secretary Linda McMahon that were previously introduced by Rep. Suzanne Bonamici (D-Ore.).

There could also be legal routes to explore if Congress and the ED are officially opposed to the ongoing changes.

“I think there is an open question about whether they pass something which signals an opinion of Congress that directly contravenes how the administration has used IAAs. Potentially, that winds up in court, and you then find the courts wrestling with whether or not what the administration has done is consistent with statute,” said Rick Hess, senior fellow and director of education policy studies at the American Enterprise Institute.

Even a unified Democratic Congress, however, could struggle to reverse some of the Trump changes.

“The rush to shield a broken bureaucracy over the future of our nation’s children perfectly illustrates a deeply failed set of priorities in Washington. It is policy malpractice to defend a status quo where roughly 70 percent of students have fallen behind in reading and math,” said Savannah Newhouse, press secretary for the department.

“Yet, instead of answering for these failures, Congressional Democrats would rather plot to prematurely sabotage Secretary McMahon’s ongoing efforts to put students first and parents back in the driver’s seat. This should tell American families everything they need to know,” she added.

The Education Department would need approval from Congress to completely close its doors, a move opposed even by some Republican lawmakers.

And polls have showed a majority Americans are not a fan of the idea, either.

“A rhetorical goal based on a promise that the Republicans have had out for 40 years since the presidential platform in 1980 that they wanted to abolish the Department of Education, and now they were in power and had a president who’s willing to kind of take those steps. They’ve done it, but in the aftermath, you have to ask what was gained from it other than just saying you did it, and I think that’s going to be comfortable ground for House Democrats to engage with the department on over the next two years,” the Democratic aide said.