On Wednesday, July 15, 2026, a U.S. House committee voted to start taking the Department of Education apart, piece by piece.

The man holding the gavel was Tim Walberg, the Republican who represents Michigan's 5th District and chairs the House Committee on Education and Workforce.

He wasn't quiet about what he was doing. He called the package the "first step toward ending the Department of Education's reign over our nation's education system."

Reign. That's the word he used for the federal agency that helps pay for special education, enforces students' civil rights, and runs the student loan program that millions of families depend on.

What the committee actually did

Walberg's committee approved a package of 10 separate bills, nearly along party lines. Together they would permanently break up the Education Department and scatter its jobs across the government.

Here's where the work would go:

• The Department of Labor would take over programs for elementary and secondary education, higher education, and career, technical and adult education.
• The Treasury Department would take over federal student aid — a nod toward Treasury eventually absorbing Education's roughly $1.7 trillion federal student loan portfolio.
• The State Department would take international education and foreign language programs.
• Health and Human Services would take accreditation for foreign medical schools, child care access for low-income parents in college, and family engagement programs for K-12.
• The Interior Department would take tribal education and job training programs.

If you're a parent trying to figure out who to call when something goes wrong at your kid's school, that list should worry you. The answer is now: it depends which of five departments happens to own that piece this year.

Walberg said the bills advance Trump and Education Secretary Linda McMahon's "vision for an education system that empowers families, students, workers and local communities."

But there's a problem with the sales pitch. The stated goal is returning education "back to the states" — except most oversight and funding of schools already happens at the state and local level. This isn't handing power back to Michigan. It's moving federal power from one agency that specializes in education to five agencies that don't.

The two pieces they left out — and why that's the tell

Look closely at what the package doesn't touch.

The 10 bills leave out two things: special education programs and civil rights enforcement.

Rep. Bobby Scott of Virginia, the top Democrat on the committee, offered a blunt explanation for the omission. He suggested it was possibly because "even my colleagues recognize how politically unpalatable such transfers would be."

He has a point. Telling voters you're moving international education programs to the State Department is boring. Telling parents of disabled kids you're moving their child's protections is not.

But here's the part that matters most, and it's the reason leaving them out of the bill changes nothing:

The administration is already doing it anyway. In June, the Education Department announced that HHS will administer the programs under its Office of Special Education and Rehabilitative Services, and that civil rights enforcement under its Office for Civil Rights will be handed to the Department of Justice.

So the protections for students with disabilities, and the office that investigates discrimination against students, are being moved regardless. Walberg's committee just declined to put its name on those two.

What Walberg's own colleagues say he's really doing

Rep. Suzanne Bonamici of Oregon made an argument on the committee that cuts to the heart of it.

She said the bills "demonstrate that Republicans in Congress know that the Department of Education lacks the authority to transfer offices and programs to other federal agencies without congressional action, and are now trying to cover for the unlawful actions already taken."

In plain English: the administration started dismantling the department without asking Congress. Now Walberg's committee is passing bills to retroactively make it legal.

Bonamici, who introduced an impeachment resolution against McMahon in June, added that the secretary "has said that it is her mission to shut down the Department of Education, something she does not have the authority to do, but that is exactly what she is doing, disguised as a series of interagency agreements."

Scott put the human cost more directly. He said it's "difficult to articulate how impractical these proposals are, to say nothing of the pain and suffering they'll inflict on students, educators and their communities, if they were to become law."

And he pointed out the irony in the Republican pitch. Rather than cutting bureaucracy, Scott argued, splitting one department into five "will actually contribute to the creation of miles of bureaucratic red tape, inconsistent education policy and enforcement across the federal government and a significant waste of the taxpayers' money."

That's the thing about this plan. It is sold as shrinking government. What it actually does is take one agency's job and spread it across five agencies that have never done it.

Why this may be about the message, not the law

Here's what makes Walberg's enthusiasm worth noting: this package is unlikely to become law any time soon.

Even if the full House passes it, it faces steep odds in the Senate. Getting past a filibuster takes 60 votes. Republicans hold 53 seats.

Walberg knows exactly how that math works. He chairs the committee. Counting votes is the job.

So the most likely outcome is that these 10 bills go nowhere — while the actual dismantling continues through administrative agreements that were never voted on at all. The bills serve mainly to bless what's already happening and to give members a talking point.

That's the record Michigan's 5th District now has to weigh. Their congressman didn't just go along with taking apart the Department of Education. He ran the committee that did it, and he called the agency's work a "reign" he was proud to end.

Source

• Shauneen Miranda, "US House Republicans take 'first step' toward dismantling Department of Education", States Newsroom / Florida Phoenix, July 16, 2026. Photo of the Lyndon Baines Johnson Department of Education Building by Shauneen Miranda/States Newsroom.