During the football season, ESPN’s Dan Graziano each week pens a column that gauges the popular hot takes. It’s a useful device that I’ve occasionally borrowed. Well, President Trump’s executive order (EO) regarding the fate of the Department of Education (ED) has produced a bonfire of hot takes, hand-wringing, and hyperbole. But all the cable news chyrons, triumphant tweets, and anxious email blasts have yielded more heat than light.

So, let’s take a deep breath, pause the rhetorical fireworks, and try to sort things out, Graziano style.

Trump’s executive order effectively abolished the U.S. Department of Education. After all, Section 2 of the EO is titled “Closing the Department of Education and Returning Authority to the States.” Trump’s boosters have been celebrating the closure, his detractors have decried it, and cable news panels have discussed the consequences. So, it’s gone, right?

Verdict: OVERREACTION. The Department of Education is still there. It hasn’t been abolished. The EO was essentially a memo telling Secretary of Education Linda McMahon to continue trying to downsize ED and asking Congress to dismantle it. How do we know? Because it said McMahon should proceed “to the maximum extent appropriate and permitted by law.” On paper, at least, the administration showed an admirable respect for the law, which means things are pretty much where they were before the EO. As McMahon has noted, abolishing ED requires legislation, which would take 60 votes in the Senate—where there are only 53 Republicans. Since abolishing a federal agency isn’t the sort of thing Congress can do via reconciliation, ED isn’t going away unless Republicans decide to kill the filibuster. The EO’s primary import is that it puts Trump personally in this fight, energizing both sides of the debate.

Even if the department isn’t getting abolished, Trump has moved key programs to other agencies. The day after Trump signed his EO, the administration announced that it would start dismantling ED by moving student lending to the Small Business Administration (SBA) and special education to Health and Human Services. That’s a big deal, isn’t it?  

Verdict: OVERREACTION. Hypothetically, it could be a big development, but let’s slow down a minute. For starters, Trump hasn’t actually moved special ed or student lending. He didn’t even propose a timeline or process for doing so. Meanwhile, existing statute makes clear that both programs are to be housed in ED. This means that either Congress needs to revise the law (not likely, since there won’t be 60 “yes” votes in the Senate), or Team Trump needs to find a path around it. Such a move would assuredly wind up in court. Of course, even if the administration can clear these hurdles, nothing has yet been said about how this hand-off would work in practice. While I’m sympathetic to the possibility that the SBA, for instance, could conceivably do a better job with student lending than a department that has failed a series of audits and fumbled the FAFSA, it’s tough to speculate about any potential risks or benefits absent a clearer way forward (and it’s worth noting that the SBA has issues of its own).

Okay, but slashing the department staff by 50 percent means huge cuts for IDEA, Title I, and Pell Grants. There’ve been a slew of furious social media posts and PR blasts detailing just what these cuts mean for states. This is going to have a big impact on schools, students, and educators.

Verdict: OVERREACTION. Staffing cuts at ED don’t affect the funding levels for programs like IDEA, Title I, or Pell. Such claims deserve to be filed under “fake news.” The Department of Education staff has been dramatically shrunk. That’s absolutely true. But, for good or ill, those job cuts don’t have anything to do with actual program funding. It’s like reading that your auto insurance company laid off half the staff at its headquarters: It’s noteworthy, but it doesn’t necessarily impact your premium or deductible. So far, there’s been no move to cut spending on the major education programs like IDEA, Title I, or Pell and no sign that such cuts are forthcoming. This means that spending on students and schools will not be affected. If this surprises you, it’s probably because the partisan back-and-forth has been so hyperbolic, and much of the coverage has followed suit.

The cuts to ED staff could have deleterious impacts on programs. Even if layoffs don’t translate to cuts in program funding, they could affect loan servicing, FAFSA, special education services, or the like.

Verdict: NOT AN OVERREACTION. Yup. Cutting the department by 50 percent certainly could impact its ability to answer questions or manage operations. Indeed, some media accounts have suggested it’s already happening. Of course, it’s also possible the cuts could make way for a more agile, efficient department. But the administration hasn’t yet explained the rationale for the cuts it made, articulated a vision of how a leaner ED will work, addressed the various practical concerns, or offered evidence to support its logic. Until it does, confidence in the efficacy of the cuts is mostly a matter of faith.

While the president says he’s seeking to empower the states, dismantling ED won’t necessarily accomplish that. Heck, it sounds like downsizing ED could even complicate efforts to slash red tape or shift authority out of Washington. It might make it tougher to streamline rules or issue waivers.

Verdict: NOT AN OVERREACTION. The inefficiency at ED is less about the people than the morass of rules and regulations that have accumulated over decades. This is widely misunderstood. Look at Title I, for instance. Cutting staff (or even dismantling ED) won’t resolve the issues with the program’s “time and effort” reporting, “supplement not supplant” strictures, or “maintenance of equity” mandates. Similarly, the boggy bureaucracy that suffuses special education is less about the ED staffers who operate it than the stacks of case law and accompanying rules that complicate it. Reducing the federal payroll is fine but doesn’t really solve these problems. Slashing red tape and returning power to the states requires rewriting rules, issuing waivers, convincing state and school leaders that it’s safe to act autonomously, or passing legislation that can reboot the system. And it’s possible that a lack of knowledgeable staff or the loss of institutional memory could make these things harder to do.

There’s a political risk here for the White House. Given the high-profile attempt to break up the department, the Trump administration could leave itself open to blame for all manner of familiar problems in K–12 and higher education.

Verdict: NOT AN OVERREACTION. When President George W. Bush contemplated invading Iraq in 2002, Secretary of State Colin Powell famously warned him against doing so. Why? “You break it, you’ve bought it,” he said.  That caution is apropos here. DOGE has painted a bright target on ED, and President Trump’s White House signing ceremony means he’s publicly and viscerally involved. The administration’s “move fast, break things” approach will make it tough to dodge responsibility if problems emerge with FAFSA, student lending, or special education, regardless of the culprit. If Team Trump fails to make a convincing case that things are under control, it will be easier for Democrats to blame the EO for all sorts of frustrations—no matter how tenuous the claim. Musk waving his chainsaw, Trump signing that EO, and then a series of suburban moms blaming Musk and Trump for special ed headaches could provide indelible images for Democratic campaign ads in 2026.

Frederick Hess is an executive editor of Education Next and the author of the blog “Old School with Rick Hess.”