[Congressional Record Volume 171, Number 201 (Tuesday, December 2, 2025)]
[House]
[Pages H4971-H4972]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




        TRUMP ADMINISTRATION DISMANTLING DEPARTMENT OF EDUCATION

  (Ms. Bonamici of Oregon was recognized to address the House for 5 
minutes.)
  Ms. BONAMICI. Mr. Speaker, I rise today to condemn in the strongest 
possible terms the illegal and unconstitutional dismantling of the 
Department of Education by the Trump administration.
  Congress created the Department of Education. Only an act of Congress 
could eliminate it. The administration knows this, so they are trying 
to circumvent the separation of powers by chipping away at the 
Department until it is gone. What a sad and terrible message that sends 
to the country and the world.
  The administration's latest attack on the Department of Education is 
with six interagency agreements that will move critical programs and 
services out of the Department of Education to other agencies without 
the needed expertise, funding, or staff.
  The programs this administration illegally reassigned to other 
departments include Title I, which provides funding for schools with 
high populations of low-income students; the McKinney-Vento grant 
program for youth experiencing homelessness; grant programs for English 
learners, rural schools, literary initiatives; and more.
  Programs like TRIO and GEAR UP help underserved students access and 
succeed in higher education, and they moved those, too. They moved 
programs that support HBCUs and other minority-serving institutions.
  These are statutory responsibilities that Congress directed the 
Department

[[Page H4972]]

of Education to fulfill. Instead of fulfilling those legal 
responsibilities, Secretary McMahon decided to follow the Project 2025 
playbook by outsourcing the work as part of the Trump agenda to abolish 
the Department of Education.
  These actions will make it more difficult for local schools to get 
the funding they need. Now, they will have to navigate multiple Federal 
agencies instead of one. It is inefficient, unnecessary, and unpopular.
  Poll after poll shows that the majority of parents support the 
Department of Education, and that is especially true with parents of 
students with disabilities. These parents know what is at stake if 
schools lose the Federal resources they rely on to educate every 
student, no matter their background or ability.
  Unfortunately, the Trump administration has endangered these 
resources by intentionally burying them behind additional layers of red 
tape and bureaucracy.
  There is a lot we could be doing to improve public education. To 
prepare future students, they need a well-rounded education that 
inspires critical thinking, confidence, communication, creativity, and 
a love of learning. Students need arts and music education, hands-on 
project-based lessons that teach teamwork, and a wide range of career 
and technical education classes. We must invest in, not cut, 
educational research, and we need to promote, rather than politicize, 
family, parental, and community engagement.
  To fully learn and thrive, students need to have enough food to eat, 
and they deserve the best physical infrastructure in which to learn. 
They need access to behavioral healthcare, and they need to be safe and 
feel safe.
  Unfortunately, right now, many students across the country are 
terrified to go to school because ICE is in their community. In Oregon, 
ICE agents are stalking school parking lots and school routes and 
detaining parents in front of their children. In one instance, ICE 
agents surrounded two high school students at a coffee shop and pointed 
rifles at them. This is beyond unacceptable.

  Students as young as 9 years old know these actions are wrong. A 
fourth grade student gave me a handwritten letter, saying she is 
worried that ICE will take her friends away and that her friends will 
go home and their parents won't be there because they got deported. How 
is a student supposed to focus on learning if they are afraid that 
armed, masked agents are going to take their family and friends? These 
are children.
  Unfortunately, House Republicans are taking their cues from Donald 
Trump, Stephen Miller, and others who do not grasp the damage they are 
causing to children as they try to close the Department of Education 
and slash education funding, food assistance, and health insurance but 
somehow manage to find and give $170 billion to the Department of 
Homeland Security to carry out an inhumane mass deportation agenda. It 
is tragic, and it is pathetic.
  This administration has declared war on public education, but we are 
not backing down. We will not stop fighting against the dismantling of 
the Department of Education and the weaponization of immigration 
enforcement.
  House Democrats understand how much better our country would be if we 
had a mass education plan instead of a mass deportation plan.

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