Public Education’s ‘Final Mission’ and the Dismantling of a Democratic Institution
The United States is in the midst of a fascist uprising — and democratic institutions like public education are being targeted by an administration determined to install an authoritarian regime. It can feel contradictory to associate fascism with a nation that claims to uphold democracy, but the United States has a long history of fascist tendencies, ideals, and practices, both domestically and abroad. From white supremacist movements of the early 19th century to early citizenship and antimiscegenation laws helping to inform Nazi Germany’s Nuremberg Laws, to U.S.-backed coups of democratically elected governments, fascism is not a foreign commodity.
The history of fascism and education
The current administration should be understood as a culmination of this history, and its attack on democratic institutions like public education is in line with a fascist strategy to strip back protections from its citizens. Globally fascist governments of the past have targeted institutions that support an informed and mobile public sector; this strategy is critical to maintaining power. An oppressed, uneducated citizen is much easier to control. President Trump’s attacks on diversity, equity, and inclusion policies and curricula that teach the complexities of race in America, are part of a larger strategy to demonize education content that disrupts a fascist myth of national “purity” and strength.
Public education in the United States in its many functions, funding, and regulations has long been a target of anti-democratic movements determined to shift control away from the public sphere. From the Scopes trial of 1925, to segregation movements of the 1950s and beyond, to the swath of anti-civil rights efforts over the past century, education remains a key battleground. Over the past few weeks, we have seen a surge in these efforts, targeting both the Department of Education and schools themselves.
Opposition to the Department of Education (ED) is as long as its history. In 1867, during the Reconstruction Era, President Andrew Johnson signed into law the first ED, which had been pushed for by abolitionists, and would have been used to track the implementation of schooling for newly emancipated students in the South. Unfortunately, Congress shut down the nascent department only a year after its birth in rejection of those efforts. Over a century later President Jimmy Carter reinstalled the ED in 1979 with the Department of Education Organization Act, which immediately became a target for a renewed effort to strip back regulatory powers and federal funding. The disingenuous argument for limited federal oversight continues to this day.
The Trump administration’s onslaught of federal policies that threaten educational offices and state funding, as well as the continuing defunding schemes and legislative efforts to roll back equity programs and civil rights-informed curricula, prove that often those most vocally opposed to“regulation” are actually those most in support of federal control — albeit a particular kind of control.
The strategy to demolish regulatory systems and consolidate executive power was portended by Project 2025, an over 900-page policy blueprint for the Trump administration that detailed a Christian nationalist agenda that would amount to a coup of the federal government. One agency among many on the chopping block in Project 2025 was the Department of Education.
What’s happening now
On March 11, 2025, the Department of Education, under the direction of the Secretary of Education Linda McMahon, laid off nearly half its workforce, with the Office of Civil Rights facing partially steep cuts. McMahon’s earlier memo, which signaled her clear alignment with the President’s agenda to abolish the department, claimed that it is the department’s ‘final mission’ to “restore the culture of liberty and excellence that made American education great,” a bleakly nationalistic overture to what will amount to be a striping of vital resources for communities most in need.
The ED is often misunderstood as the controlling force for state curriculum, a responsibility that lies with states and local districts. What it does oversee are student loan programs, the disbursement of Pell Grants, as well as other funding programs that support students with disabilities and students living in poverty. It also enforces civil rights laws that protect against race or sex-based discrimination in federally funded schools. This is the critical element that is being targeted by this administration.
The complete abolishment of the department would take an act of Congress, one that President Trump is unlikely to attain given it would require a supermajority in the Senate. However, the ongoing gutting of the department works towards the same ends. When paired with the ongoing attacks on universities and student protestors’ First Amendment rights, what we are seeing is a fascist takeover of public education in real-time.
