Fact Check: Yes, Project 2025 Wants To Kill US Department of Education

Anna Rascouët-Paz
·3-min read
Getty Images
Getty Images

Claim:

Project 2025, a proposed conservative blueprint for the next U.S. Republican presidential administration, has called to shut down the U.S. Department of Education.

Rating:

Rating: True
Rating: True

Context:

This education proposal has become a campaign promise of Republican candidate and former U.S. President Donald Trump.

 

A rumor that Project 2025, a conservative coalition's plan for a future U.S. Republican presidential administration, had called for the closure of the U.S. Department of Education spread online in the summer of 2024 (archived):

The claim in this X post, which had more than 1.3 million views and 27,000 likes as of this writing, was echoed in several other posts on the social media platform.

This claim is true. Furthermore, shutting down the Department of Education has become a campaign promise of the 2024 Republican presidential candidate, former U.S. President Donald Trump.

Looking at the official Project 2025 webpage that seeks to quickly confirm or debunk information circulating about the program, we found the following paragraph:

Shut Down the Department of Education: TRUE

Project 2025's Mandate for Leadership calls for the end of the Department of Education. Since the Department was created, educational outcomes have not improved, and the American school system has increasingly fallen behind other countries. Giving more control back to state and local governments, and expanding school choice, would improve education outcomes for all Americans, especially underprivileged communities. Some functions of the Department of Education would be moved to other departments including Labor, Justice, and Commerce.

This education plan has become one of Trump's campaign promises, something he mentioned several times in the summer of 2024. In early June, in an extensive interview on the Fox News program "Fox and Friends," he said: "We're going to cut the Department of Education, let it be run locally." On Aug. 12, in a conversation with Tesla founder and X owner Elon Musk, he said, "I want to close the Department of Education." The presidential campaign of Democratic Vice President Kamala Harris shared a clip of the conversation in which he says this quote:

This is not the first time Republicans have advocated for the closure of the Department of Education in their campaigns. In fact, they've talked about closing the agency since then-President Jimmy Carter opened it in May 1980, according to The Chronicle of Higher Education.

In July 2024, Snopes published an in-depth report on Project 2025, confirming that it planned on shutting down the Department of Education.

Sources:

Bauman, Dan, and Brock Read. 'A Brief History of GOP Attempts to Kill the Education Dept.' The Chronicle of Higher Education, 21 June 2018, https://www.chronicle.com/article/a-brief-history-of-gop-attempts-to-kill-the-education-dept/. https://archive.is/xW7RI.

'Full Exclusive Interview With Former President Donald Trump | Will Cain Show | Fox News Video'. Fox News, 3 June 2024, https://www.foxnews.com/video/6354224797112.

Ibrahim, Aleksandra Wrona, Nur. 'Project 2025: What To Know About the Pro-Trump Plan To Overhaul US Government'. Snopes, 8 July 2024, https://www.snopes.com//news/2024/07/08/project-2025/.

'Project 2025: The Truth'. Project 2025, https://www.project2025.org/truth/.

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