- Former President Donald Trump called for the abolition of the US Department of Education on Saturday.
- He spoke at the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) in Dallas, Texas, on Saturday.
Former President Donald Trump called for the US Department of Education's abolition during his Saturday speech at the Conservative Political Action Conference in Dallas, Texas.
Trump told a crowd that prohibitions need to be brought in on teaching "inappropriate racial, sexual and political material" to American schoolchildren.
"If federal bureaucrats are going to push this radicalism, we should abolish the Department of Education," he continued.
This part of the speech, a video shows, appeared to receive rapturous applause.
—Acyn (@Acyn) August 7, 2022
Last month, former Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos, who served in Trump's administration, told a conservative education summit that the department she once led for four years should be abolished.
"I personally think the Department of Education should not exist," said DeVos at the Moms for Liberty summit, per the Florida Phoenix.
DeVos argued that the federal department should be abolished to leave education policy decisions to state and local boards. According to the Florida Phoenix, this was also met with cheers.
Indeed, the calls for abolishing the federal agency precede DeVos. Rep. Thomas Massie, backed by Reps. Last year, Lauren Boebert, Matt Gaetz, and Andy Biggs introduced a bill to abolish the US Department of Education.
"Unelected bureaucrats in Washington, D.C. should not be in charge of our children's intellectual and moral development," said Massie in February 2021.
Massie introduced a nearly identical bill in 2017. And even President Ronald Reagan, back in the 1980s, said he wanted to close it down.
According to the Chicago Tribune, Republicans have long wanted to eliminate the department because they see education policy as falling within the remit of states and local communities and not the federal government.