Trump order to close Education Department sparks congressional action, lawsuits

Lawmakers, school advocates and teachers’ unions are taking swift action after President Donald Trump’s executive order to begin dismantling the Department of Education, one of his most controversial moves yet.

Opponents of Trump’s action responded with promises of legal retaliation. But supportive lawmakers may beat them to the chase, with U.S. Sens. Bill Cassidy, R-La., and Mike Rounds, R-S.D., each planning to introduce legislation to completely eliminate the department.

“I agree with President Trump that the Department of Education has failed its mission,” Cassidy said. “Since the Department can only be shut down with Congressional approval, I will support the President’s goals by submitting legislation to accomplish this as soon as possible.”

Rounds said he is already discussing legislation with Secretary of Education Linda McMahon “that would return education decisions to states and local school districts while maintaining important programs like special education and Title I.”

Trump already shrunk the department’s workforce to half its size last week. His executive order Thursday directs McMahon to “take all necessary steps to facilitate the closure of the Department of Education and return authority over education to the States and local communities while ensuring the effective and uninterrupted delivery of services, programs, and benefits on which Americans rely,” as far as legally possible.

For now, that means the department like enforcing Title IX and civil rights laws, funding special education and disability programs, and overseeing student loans and Pell grants, Trump said. On Friday, Trump said the Small Business Administration would take over the nation’s student loans.

But the ultimate goal is to redistribute these programs among other federal departments and agencies, which would require congressional approval.

School choice organizations are praising Trump’s plan to eventually eliminate the Education Department as a necessary development that will save taxpayers’ money and return power to states, local governments, and parents.

“These are the first steps towards reforming an American education system that should have always been a state and local proposition,” Parents Defending Education Vice President Sarah Parshall Perry said. “We are looking forward to continuing our mission to empower parents and students in educational environments that are once again value-neutral, and devoid of radical ideologies”

Supporters also point to how the department has spent $3 trillion taxpayer dollars since its creation by congressional legislation in 1979. Meanwhile, U.S. students rank 28 out of 37 member countries in the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, and standardized test scores have remained flat for decades.

ACE Scholarships, which provides aid to lower-income K-12 students, said in a statement that the Department of Education’s efforts have been “a wasteful distraction” and that the president’s “new approach” to education “puts children first by increasing choice and empowering parents instead of Washington bureaucrats.”

But public school advocacy organizations and teachers unions are already preparing lawsuits against what they say is an unconstitutional move.

Randi Weingarten, president of the American Federation of Teachers, which represents 1.8 million pre-K through 12th-grade teachers, had a simple message for Trump after the executive order: “See you in court.”

The New York-based United Federation of Teachers stated that “we are working with our partners to file lawsuits to stop this executive overreach.”

Democracy Forward, a legal services nonprofit, is also planning to join the fight.

“We will be filing litigation against this action and will use every legal tool to ensure that the rights of students, teachers, and families are fully protected,” President and CEO Skye Perryman stated. “Since Inauguration Day, the Trump-Vance administration has been taken to court more than 100 times, and we will do it again this time.”

Trump opponents argue that dismantling the department will cause property taxes to spike nationwide, strain public school resources and could cause struggling schools to close, expanding class sizes in the remaining schools.

“Beyond the obvious issue that the Education Department can’t be eliminated without an act of Congress, Trump’s order is yet another wild and illicit power grab,” Co-President of Public Citizen Lisa Gilbert said. “Attempting to destroy the cabinet agencies tasked with promoting and improving education isn’t just irresponsible, it is immoral, and will hurt the very fabric of our nation, as we keep generations of students from achieving their full potential.”

The Education department provides roughly 10% of funding for public education, with the vast majority of funding coming from state and local taxes.

The majority of Americans also appear opposed to ending the department, with a Marist poll in early March showing 63% of U.S. residents either oppose or strongly oppose getting rid of the U.S. Department of Education, while 37% of residents either strongly support or support abolishing the department.

Thérèse Boudreaux

Related Topics:#TheCenterSquare DepartmentOfEducation ThereseBoudreaux TrumpClosingEducationDepartment

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Cutting Red Tape Could Help Solve Canada’s Doctor Crisis

Published on October 17, 2025

Todayville

From the Frontier Centre for Public Policy

By Ian Madsen

Doctors waste millions of hours on useless admin. It’s enough to end Canada’s doctor shortage. Ian Madsen says slashing red tape, not just recruiting, is the fastest fix for the clogged system.

Doctors spend more time on paperwork than on patients and that’s fueling Canada’s health care wait lists

Canada doesn’t just lack doctors—it squanders the ones it has. Mountains of paperwork and pointless admin chew up tens of millions of physician hours every year, time that could erase the so-called shortage and slash wait lists if freed for patient care.

Recruiting more doctors helps, but the fastest cure for our sick system is cutting the bureaucracy that strangles the ones already here.

The Canadian Medical Association found that unnecessary non-patient work consumes millions of hours annually. That’s the equivalent of 50.5 million patient visits, enough to give every Canadian at least one appointment and likely erase the physician shortage. Meanwhile, the Canadian Institute for Health Information estimates more than six million Canadians don’t even have a family doctor. That’s roughly one in six of us.

And it’s not just patients who feel the shortage—doctors themselves are paying the price. Endless forms don’t just waste time; they drive doctors out of the profession. Burned out and frustrated, many cut their hours or leave entirely. And the foreign doctors that health authorities are trying to recruit? They might think twice once they discover how much time Canadian physicians spend on paperwork that adds nothing to patient care.

But freeing doctors from forms isn’t as simple as shredding them. Someone has to build systems that reduce, rather than add to, the workload. And that’s where things get tricky. Trimming red tape usually means more Information Technology (IT), and big software projects have a well-earned reputation for spiralling in cost.

Bent Flyvbjerg, the global guru of project disasters, and his colleagues examined more than 5,000 IT projects in a 2022 study. They found outcomes didn’t follow a neat bell curve but a “power-law” distribution, meaning costs don’t just rise steadily, they explode in a fat tail of nasty surprises as variables multiply.

Oxford University and McKinsey offered equally bleak news. Their joint study concluded: “On average, large IT projects run 45 per cent over budget and seven per cent over time while delivering 56 per cent less value than predicted.” If that sounds familiar, it should. Canada’s Phoenix federal payroll fiasco—the payroll software introduced by Ottawa that left tens of thousands of federal workers underpaid or unpaid—is a cautionary tale etched into the national memory.

The lesson isn’t to avoid technology, but to get it right. Canada can’t sidestep the digital route. The question is whether we adapt what others have built or design our own. One option is borrowing from the U.S. or U.K., where electronic health record (EHR) systems (the digital patient files used by doctors and hospitals) are already in place. Both countries have had headaches with their systems, thanks to legal and regulatory differences. But there are signs of progress.

The U.K. is experimenting with artificial intelligence to lighten the administrative load, and a joint U.K.-U.S. study gives a glimpse of what’s possible:

“… AI technologies such as Robotic Process Automation (RPA), predictive analytics, and Natural Language Processing (NLP) are transforming health care administration. RPA and AI-driven software applications are revolutionizing health care administration by automating routine tasks such as appointment scheduling, billing, and documentation. By handling repetitive, rule-based tasks with speed and accuracy, these technologies minimize errors, reduce administrative burden, and enhance overall operational efficiency.”

For patients, that could mean fewer missed referrals, faster follow-up calls and less time waiting for paperwork to clear before treatment. Still, even the best tools come with limits. Systems differ, and customization will drive up costs. But medicine is medicine, and AI tools can bridge more gaps than you might think.

Run the math. If each “freed” patient visit is worth just $20—a conservative figure for the value of a basic appointment—the payoff could hit $1 billion in a single year.

Updating costs would continue, but that’s still cheap compared to the human and financial toll of endless wait lists. Cost-sharing between provinces, Ottawa, municipalities and even doctors themselves could spread the risk. Competitive bidding, with honest budgets and realistic timelines, is non-negotiable if we want to dodge another Phoenix-sized fiasco.

The alternative—clinging to our current dysfunctional patchwork of physician information systems—isn’t really an option. It means more frustrated doctors walking away, fewer new ones coming in, and Canadians left to languish on wait lists that grow ever longer.

And that’s not health care—it’s managed decline.

Ian Madsen is a senior policy analyst at the Frontier Centre for Public Policy.

Alberta

Alberta taxpayers should know how much their municipal governments spend

Published on October 16, 2025

Todayville Content Team

From the Fraser Institute

By Tegan Hill and Austin Thompson

Next week, voters across Alberta will go to the polls to elect their local governments. Of course, while the issues vary depending on the city, town or district, all municipal governments spend taxpayer money.

And according to a recent study, Grande Prairie County and Red Deer County were among Alberta’s highest-spending municipalities (on a per-person basis) in 2023 (the latest year of comparable data). Kara Westerlund, president of the Rural Municipalities of Alberta, said that’s no surprise—arguing that it’s expensive to serve a small number of residents spread over large areas.

That challenge is real. In rural areas, fewer people share the cost of roads, parks and emergency services. But high spending isn’t inevitable. Some rural municipalities managed to spend far less, demonstrating that local choices about what services to provide, and how to deliver them, matter.

Consider the contrast in spending levels among rural counties. In 2023, Grande Prairie County and Red Deer County spent $5,413 and $4,619 per person, respectively. Foothills County, by comparison, spent just $2,570 per person. All three counties have relatively low population densities (fewer than seven residents per square kilometre) yet their per-person spending varies widely. (In case you’re wondering, Calgary spent $3,144 and Edmonton spent $3,241.)

Some of that variation reflects differences in the cost of similar services. For example, all three counties provide fire protection but in 2023 this service cost $56.95 per person in Grande Prairie County, $38.51 in Red Deer County and $10.32 in Foothills County. Other spending differences reflect not just how much is spent, but whether a service is offered at all. For instance, in 2023 Grande Prairie County recorded $46,283 in daycare spending, while Red Deer County and Foothills County had none.

Put simply, population density alone simply doesn’t explain why some municipalities spend more than others. Much depends on the choices municipal governments make and how efficiently they deliver services.

Westerlund also dismissed comparisons showing that some counties spend more per person than nearby towns and cities, calling them “apples to oranges.” It’s true that rural municipalities and cities differ—but that doesn’t make comparisons meaningless. After all, whether apples are a good deal depends on the price of other fruit, and a savvy shopper might switch to oranges if they offer better value. In the same way, comparing municipal spending—across all types of communities—helps Albertans judge whether they get good value for their tax dollars.

Every municipality offers a different mix of services and those choices come with different price tags. Consider three nearby municipalities: in 2023, Rockyview County spent $3,419 per person, Calgary spent $3,144 and Airdrie spent $2,187. These differences reflect real trade-offs in the scope, quality and cost of local services. Albertans should decide for themselves which mix of local services best suits their needs—but they can’t do that without clear data on what those services actually cost.

A big municipal tax bill isn’t an inevitable consequence of rural living. How much gets spent in each Alberta municipality depends greatly on the choices made by the mayors, reeves and councillors Albertans will elect next week. And for Albertans to determine whether or not they get good value for their local tax dollars, they must know how much their municipality is spending.