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........

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