Donald Trump is attempting to abolish the Department of Education. The U.S. Congress created the Department of Education and Congress is a coequal branch of government. The president can’t just simply wipe away a congressionally mandated federal agency by wishing it were so, even if he scribbles a signature on the wish.
If you read AU President and CEO Rachel Laser’s statement on Trump’s pending order, you’ll know that we don’t think it has any teeth. Here’s how she explained it to the press, “Every public school district in the country relies on this agency. Among its many important functions, the Department of Education ensures that millions of American students receive financial aid for higher education and that public schools respect students’ civil rights, including their religious freedom. The stroke of a magic marker cannot take away those important functions and rights from American students.”
The text of the leaked order (which could change) contains a telling clause: “The Secretary of Education shall, to the maximum extent appropriate and permitted by law, take all necessary steps to facilitate the closure.” The point being, Trump does not have the power to shutter the Department of Education.
While we at Americans United don’t think the order will do exactly what Trump proclaims, that’s not going to stop him from trying to realize this longstanding dream of Christian Nationalists. We know that the order actually advances a goal that many others might miss: toppling public education and plunging schools and families into a chaos that drives them into the arms of private Christian schools. Several of the executive orders Trump has signed all work toward that same goal.
AU has been defending America from the Christian Nationalist assault on public education for nearly eight decades. One spark that first fired the Christian Nationalist rage against our public schools was the U.S. Supreme Court decision in Everson v. Board of Education in 1947. The decision didn’t quite go our way, but the court made it clear that our public schools were to be a bastion of church-state separation.
This early case spurred the formation of Americans United for Separation of Church and State and, in turn, one of AU’s first cases challenged a private Christian school that had captured a rural public school district — a case AU won when the New Mexico Supreme Court struck down the religious takeover of public schools as unconstitutional (something the U.S. Supreme Court looks set to reconsider in a few months). Americans United was, quite literally, made for moments like this.
The other spark that fired the Christian Nationalist rage against public education was desegregation. Specifically Brown v. Board of Education, the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision requiring mandatory desegregation of public education.
Everson and Brown effectively mandated public schools that are open and welcoming to all. No longer could they be used to impose and propagate a white Christian Nationalist vision of America. That’s probably why Jerry Falwell wrote back in 1979 in his book America Can Be Saved! (which was published by Sword of the Lord Publishers) that he “hope[d] to see the day when … we don’t have public schools. The churches will have taken them over and Christians will be running them.”
The Department of Education has become a lightning rod for Christian Nationalist ire precisely because it brings us closer to the ideal of more inclusive, welcoming schools. Meanwhile private Christian schools can and do discriminate against students based on religion, disability, gender, sexual orientation, income, and, if they had their way, so much more.
Gutting the Department of Education will not end public education, nor will it suddenly take America back to the 1940s again — to a time when rights were extended not to all people, but to the select few: straight, white, conservative Christian men. But that’s the goal of this order.
Even if the Department of Education weren’t around to defend the rights of students and families to a welcoming, inclusive learning environment that serves all children and families, regardless of their religious beliefs, Americans United is. And we’re not going anywhere.
AU will fight for those rights, even if Trump and his Christian Nationalist allies would prefer to trample them. Students and families can reach out to us, any time, day or night, and AU attorneys will respond. Americans United will continue to fight for the rights of students, families, and public education in the absence of a robust Department of Education. And we’ll never stop fighting against the Christian Nationalist assault on public education.
