DeLauro: Education Powers the American Dream, Trump and Musk Want to Tear it Down
Last night, Elon Musk terminated more than 100 education contracts and awards supporting special education, teacher recruitment, and other topics.
WASHINGTON — House Appropriations Committee and Labor, Health and Human Services, and Education Subcommittee Ranking Member Rosa DeLauro is raising the alarm on President Trump’s reported plans to sign an illegal Executive Order to dismantle public education – a move right out of the Project 2025 playbook. Elon Musk has already taken the first step to dismantle the Department of Education by canceling more than 100 education contracts and awards supporting special education, teacher recruitment, and other topics. This move from Presidents Musk and Trump will hurt children, students, families, and parents in every corner of the country.
“When I was a kid, my mother took me to work with her, to the sweat shops in New Haven where she was a garment worker. The conditions were horrific: dangerously hot in the summer and cold in the winter, unsanitary with no ventilation. She would say to me, ‘Get an education. Go to school and work hard so you won’t have to live like this.’ And I did. Like so many other Americans, access to public school was the key to living a life that was different than my mother’s,” said House Appropriations Committee and Labor, Health and Human Services, and Education Subcommittee Ranking Member Rosa DeLauro. “Presidents Trump and Musk and their billionaire buddies are so detached from how Americans live that they cannot see how ending public education and canceling these contracts kills the American Dream. This is not about Democrats versus Republicans. This is about billionaires versus the middle class. If kids from working class families do not have access to schools, how can they build a future?”
“Last week, I sent a letter with education leaders in the House and in the Senate warning the Trump administration against sweeping Executive Orders to broadly and unlawfully freeze federal financial assistance or unilaterally dismantle the U.S. Department of Education. This critical agency supports all stages of student learning, from the 25 million elementary and secondary students who have teachers in their classrooms thanks to Title I funding to the 7 million students that rely on Pell Grants to pay for college. While President Trump and Republicans want nothing more than to abandon our obligations to America’s children and families through his Project 2025 schemes to eliminate the Department of Education one program at a time, they must confront reality—no President or member of the executive branch has the authority to end public education, violate the law, and unilaterally steal dollars promised to students,” DeLauro continued.
For years, Republicans have made it clear they are opposed to public education and seek to destroy it. Last Congress, 161 House Republicans voted to eliminate all elementary and secondary education funding at the Department of Education in the Massie Amendment to HR 5.
In 2022, former Secretary Betsy DeVos called for eliminating the Department of Education; the Heritage Foundation’s Budget Blueprint includes a proposal to eliminate the Department of Education; and past and likely future Office of Management and Budget (OMB) Director and Project 2025 author Russ Vought pushed massive funding reductions to “thwart” a public education system he views as an “existential threat to the American Republic.” This Executive Order is straight out of Project 2025, page 319, “the federal Department of Education should be eliminated.”
The 2025 House Labor-HHS-Education bill, which House Republicans are still fighting to pass, also set the stage for this moment by proposing to kick 72,000 teachers out of classrooms; eliminate services for 5.5 million English learners; slash Federal Work Study in half for 330,000 students who need it to help finance a postsecondary education; take away need-based financial aid for 833,000 students; eliminate youth employment opportunities for 134,000 youth who face barriers to finding a good paying job; and slash adult employment opportunities for 250,000 adults who face barriers to finding a good paying job.
Here are previously released fact sheets on the impacts proposed House Republican funding cuts would have on each state.
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