Republican states are embracing the idea of a future with no federal Department of Education, preparing plans for its Trump-promised demise and voicing confidence their own agencies can pick up the slack.

President Trump has long called for the dismantling of the Education Department, and he's reportedly eyeing executive actions to gut its major functions while simultaneously pushing lawmakers to perform the coup de grâce.

The heads of the education departments in multiple GOP-led states describe the move as a potential opportunity to get rid of red tape around funding and burdensome reporting requirements on their schools.

The Trump administration is “providing states greater control over the education of the children in their states,” said Frank Edelblut, the Republican commissioner of the New Hampshire Department of Education.

Each state has “different needs in order to serve our communities, to meet the educational objectives and needs of our children in our state,” Edelblut said. “And so, we may have to do things differently. And so, I think, really, the conversation around providing states greater control over education is a really important and a healthy one.”

Megan Degenfelder, Wyoming’s GOP state superintendent of public instruction, said that Trump following through on the promise to eliminate the department "really aligns with my belief that education policy should be returned to the States, allowing for more localized and effective decision-making."

The long-running fight over the federal department exploded last week after reports of Trump’s plans came to light and Democratic lawmakers were

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