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Could the Department of Education (DOE), a massive boondoggle that has done nothing but oversee a decline in the quality of American education and the substitution of wokeism for readin’, writin’, and ‘rithmetic, really go away? If Donald Trump wins yet another victory, it will.

Fox News reported Wednesday that reporters asked Trump how soon he wanted the department closed. “Oh, I’d like it to be closed immediately,” the president replied. “Look at the Department of Education. It’s a big con job. They ranked the top countries in the world. We’re ranked No. 40, but we’re ranked No. 1 in one department: cost per pupil. So, we spend more per pupil than any other country in the world, but we’re ranked No. 40.” Trump also “said the last time he looked at where the U.S. ranked in education, it was 38th, but then he looked two days ago, and the country had fallen to No. 40.”

Trump also noted that China’s educational system appears to be in fine condition: “As big as it is, it’s ranked in the top five, and that’s our… primary competitor. So, if we’re ranked No. 40, that means something’s really wrong.”

Yes. And it has been wrong for a very long time. Jimmy Carter established the Department of Education, and one of Ronald Reagan’s campaign promises was that he would close it, as it was an unnecessary centralization and bureaucratization of an educational system that had been getting along fine without a Cabinet-level federal agency. When Reagan took office, he appointed Terrel Bell to be his secretary of education, with the explicit task of dismantling the department. In this case, however, the swamp beat the Gipper, and the Education department stayed open.

All these years later, however, the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) is proving to be up to the task it was given. Fox noted that “DOGE announced Monday that $881 million related to 89 DOE contracts was being cut. Of that $881 million, DOGE identified $101 million that was being used for DEI training, including teaching educators to ‘help students understand/interrogate the complex histories involved in oppression, and help students recognize areas of privilege and power on an individual and collective basis.’” Elon Musk pointed out what was no less outrageous for being obvious: “Your tax dollars were spent on this.”

Trump has also “signed two executive orders on education, one to remove federal funding from K-12 schools that teach critical race theory (CRT), and another to support school choice.” Nature abhors a vacuum, however. One hopes that Trump will also eventually mandate that American education be focused upon fostering a sense of patriotism, pride in one’s country, culture, and heritage, and the importance of national unity over identity politics and the Balkanization of America into a multitude of mutually hostile racial and ethnic identity factions.

Whatever happens, however, the decline in the quality of American education makes it abundantly clear that the Department of Education has been a massive failure. Reagan was right in his initial determination to close it down, and now it’s better late than never. If the DOE continues, far-left, green-haired, nose-ringed “educators” will continue to push their socialist internationalist agenda of gender delusion and hatred of America upon a new generation of schoolchildren. A nation that teaches its own children to hate it will not long endure.

Still, Trump and DOGE face an uphill battle in trying to slay this particular dragon. Ever since the days of the New Deal, the federal government has been growing, and growing, and growing. It has been an iron law that no matter how useless or wasteful a government program is, it never goes away. Numerous politicians have been elected on pledges to cut the out-of-control growth of government spending, but all any of them have managed to do was to slow the rate of growth, not stop it altogether, much less reverse it.

Now, however, Donald Trump is taking real action to end fraud and waste in government, and those who have benefited all these years from that fraud and waste are howling. Much more than just the Department of Education is at stake.