Latest from the White House (April 1)

COSSA continues to follow the flurry of executive actions taken by the Trump Administration and the impact those actions are having on the social and behavioral science community. Below are some of the latest developments coming out of the White House. Past updates are available here.

Eliminating the Department of Education

As promised on the campaign trail, President Trump issued an Executive Order (EO) on March 20 that instructs the Education Secretary to begin the process of closing the U.S. Department of Education. The order, Improving Education Outcomes by Empowering Parents, States, and Communities, directs the Secretary to “facilitate the closure of the Department of Education and return authority over education to the States and local communities while ensuring the effective and uninterrupted delivery of services, programs, and benefits on which Americans rely.” (emphasis added)

The order does not provide a timeline for the process, nor does it include any additional guidance. Education policy experts and advocates are raising serious concerns about the order, including, importantly, the ability to ensure “effective and uninterrupted delivery” of current services, especially in light of recent, massive layoffs at the Department.

Federal agencies can only be created and therefore eliminated by an act of Congress. The Executive Order does not guarantee the closure of the Department of Education. However, the Administration can use its authority to effectively close the agency by eliminating staff, making it practically impossible for the agency to meet its mission.

Visit COSSA’s Action Center to see our alerts related to the Department of Education and threats to education data.

“Restoring” American History

On March 27, the President issued an Executive Order aimed at reversing “a concerted and widespread effort to rewrite our Nation’s history, replacing objective facts with a distorted narrative driven by ideology rather than truth.” The EO, Restoring Truth and Sanity to American History, criticizes the Biden Administrations for reconstructing American history in a way that portrays the Nation as “racist, sexist, oppressive, or otherwise irredeemably flawed.” He cites specific examples of exhibits from the Smithsonian Institution, National Museum of African American History and Culture, and the Smithsonian American Women’s History Museum.

In response, the EO establishes a policy to “restore the Smithsonian Institution to its rightful place as a symbol of inspiration and American greatness” by:

• Seeking to remove ideological content from Smithsonian properties, including museums, education and research centers, and the National Zoo; and
• Ensuring that future Congressional appropriations for the Smithsonian prohibit funding for exhibits and programs that “degrade shared American values…”

In addition, the order addresses the removal of confederate and other controversial statues and monuments in recent years, calling on the Interior Secretary to reinstate monuments that have been removed from federal government jurisdiction since January 1, 2020.