During an interview on X Spaces with Elon Musk on Monday, former President Donald Trump expressed his intention to abolish the Department of Education and grant greater authority to individual states if he secures reelection. The 45th president highlighted the decline in U.S. education performance relative to other developed nations, despite the fact that the United States allocates “more per pupil than any other country in the world.”
“I want to close the Department of Education — move education back to the states…” Trump told Musk.
Listen to the full exchange below:
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) August 13, 2024
Trump argued that granting states exclusive authority over their educational systems would lead to reduced expenses and foster increased competition among the states.
“But if you moved education back to the 50 [states], you’ll have some that won’t do well…But they’ll actually be forced to do better because it’ll be a pretty bad situation,” he said. “But if you think about it, you’ll have some of these states — I’ll bet you’d have 30, 35 states [where education] will be much better. And you know what? It’ll cost less than half what it is in Washington. And these people don’t care about the students in these far away states.”
“It would be unbelievable,” he emphasized.
Musk told Trump he was “making a good point” and appeared to agree that such a policy would enable Americans to more easily choose where they live and where they could have better opportunities.
“Yeah. I think you’re making a good point in that if…each individual state has to compete against other states, then people will naturally move to states where it’s better,” Musk said.
“That’s right,” Trump replied.
Donald Trump has previously advocated for the dissolution or reduction of the Department of Education. In 2016, he stated that the department “can be largely eliminated.” Betsy DeVos, who held the position of U.S. Secretary of Education during Trump’s administration, has similarly expressed support for the elimination of the Department of Education.
🧵 Last night Trump endorsed the idea of eliminating the Department of Education!
On February 7th, 2017, the US Senate confirmed Betsy DeVos as Trump’s Secretary of Education.
Purposefully, on that same day, I introduced HR 899, a bill to terminate the Department of Education. pic.twitter.com/57x3jeWkkS
— Thomas Massie (@RepThomasMassie) August 13, 2024
Today, for the 1st time since the Department of Education was established, the House of Representatives will vote on whether it should be able to tell parents, teachers, and school boards what, and how, children should learn. pic.twitter.com/QkX4LrgzbP
— Thomas Massie (@RepThomasMassie) March 24, 2023
