With the U.S. Supreme Court’s recent ruling to proceed with Department of Education cuts, President Trump has kept another campaign promise: death to the DOE.
Trump’s attorney in the High Court, the Missourian D. John Sauer, has set a record for quickly and repeatedly prevailing.
Sauer wrote in his emergency application in this case of Linda McMahon v. New York, “For the second time in three months, the same district court has thwarted the Executive Branch’s authority to manage the Department of Education despite lacking jurisdiction to second-guess the Executive’s internal management decisions.”
The court held in Sauer’s favor and authorized Trump to proceed with his firing 1,378 employees at the Education Department, which will gut this harmful federal agency as Trump promised. Within two hours of this unsigned decision by the court, agency employees received the equivalent of pink slips.
“The Federal Government has been running our Education System into the ground, but we are going to turn it all around by giving the Power back to the PEOPLE,” Trump posted on Truth Social while thanking the Supreme Court for his latest win.
President Jimmy Carter established the Education Department nearly 50 years ago, and conservatives, led by Phyllis Schlafly, have been trying to shut it down ever since. Local school boards and state legislators need the flexibility to adopt the best standards and curricula for students, based on families’ input and accountability in local elections.
The Education Department has continued to interfere with local control over schools for six terms of Republican presidents since Carter. Every federal initiative for education, even those by Republican presidents, has been a failure, as evident in the plummet of reading and math test scores.
In recent years, liberals have used the Department of Education to require schools to embrace transgender ideology and woke indoctrination. For decades, this federal agency and liberal judges have imposed a misinterpretation of Title IX to require colleges to cancel men’s sports teams to satisfy senseless numeric quotas relative to women’s sports, and to deny men due process when subjected to women’s accusations.
The disbanding of the Education Department began with Trump’s executive order issued March 20, 2025. He correctly and boldly explained that “closing the Department of Education would provide children and their families the opportunity to escape a system that is failing them.”
“Today, American reading and math scores are near historical lows. This year’s National Assessment of Educational Progress showed that 70 percent of 8th graders were below proficient in reading, and 72 percent were below proficient in math. The Federal education bureaucracy is not working,” Trump added.
I]In her lengthy dissent, Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor complained that the court’s decision in favor of Trump “hands the Executive the power to repeal statutes by firing all those necessary to carry them out.” But she excluded the facts that the election of Trump last November gave him the authority to do this, and that, until 1979, education was under local control.
Sotomayor quoted from Trump’s campaign last year, during which he promised (as slightly edited by the court) to “close up the Department of Education” and “send all education and education work … back to the states” … “early in the administration.” Promises made, promises kept.
Some staff at these agencies are needed to reverse the liberal weaponization of the federal government, but that is already being accomplished. Linda McMahon, Trump’s Education Secretary, has declared that the “final mission” is to return authority to the states.
John and Andy Schlafly are sons of Phyllis Schlafly (1924-2016) and lead the continuing Phyllis Schlafly Eagles organizations with writing and policy work.