President Donald Trump’s early months in office have featured an unprecedented burst of executive activity. Amid all the directives, cuts, and pyrotechnics, it’s been tough to make sense of what it all means. Well, I recently offered my two cents. But I was curious to get a second opinion from a veteran insider. I can think of few better equipped to do that than David Cleary, a principal with the lobbying firm theGroup and previously the longtime Republican staff director of the U.S. Senate’s education committee. Cleary has worked in the U.S. Department of Education and the House as well as the Senate, and he played a lead role in steering the Every Student Succeeds Act and confirming John King and Betsy DeVos to serve as secretary of education. Here’s what he had to say.
–Rick
Rick: David, you’ve been working on federal education policy for nearly three decades. How unusual have these first 100 days been?
David: This is a pretty unusual start. But it’s hardly surprising. The frenetic pace is intentionally exhausting to keep the establishment in reaction mode. The COVID lockdowns fundamentally reshaped the national education conversation, and the attitude—certainly among Republicans but also among parents—is that our system is fundamentally damaged and major change is needed. Trump is addressing that. Executive orders were going to be the primary order of business in the first 100 days because Congress is intentionally designed to move slowly. So, executive action by the White House and the secretary of education makes operational sense as the first line of action.
Rick: I don’t recall this same degree of activity early in Trump’s first term. What’s changed?
David: This time, perhaps unlike in 2016, the Trump team had confidence they would win, so they spent more time developing a plan of action. That’s why Linda McMahon built the America First Policy Institute—to be ready. They learned from the first term and knew what they could do, who they could trust, and what they wanted to tackle. Education is also a target-rich environment post-COVID and after Secretary Miguel Cardona’s tenure. Parents are still justifiably angry over lockdowns and devastating learning loss. In addition, the moral hazard of President Joe Biden’s unconstitutional student-loan forgiveness schemes, the FAFSA fiasco, and the antisemitic protests on college campuses left Trump with a lengthy to-do list and lots of ideas from allies on how to get it done.
Rick: When it comes to education, what changed most from Trump’s first term to his second?
David: COVID exposed all the layers of failure in our schools. When congressional Republicans tried to reopen schools early on during the pandemic and were blocked, it sent the wrong signal that kids were less important than adults—that reopening schools was not important. The poor educational results we see now are the direct result of putting kids last during the pandemic. Also, when parents saw firsthand what was being taught in many classrooms, it increased awareness of shoddy teaching and what many view as “woke” ideology throughout schools. So that makes the Trump-McMahon argument on the department pretty straightforward: After four decades and a trillion dollars in total spending by the Department of Education, we aren’t better off. It’s time to try a different approach.
Rick: Why the flood of executive orders? And how much do they really matter?
David: Executive orders can be signed quickly, set the tone for an administration, and direct agencies to take action while they are still getting staffed. Remember, we only have one Senate-confirmed person at the Department of Education now. I think many of the orders will matter. We’ve particularly seen this with the orders related to DEI and antisemitism, where investigations have been opened that would never have been started otherwise. Columbia University has already had to make some dramatic changes. I think we’ll see college leadership use the orders to start pushing back on some of the cultural things they had acquiesced to buy peace from a small group of activists on campus, even if many colleges choose to take a more adversarial stance against the Trump administration. So, the orders will matter, and in four years, I don’t think people will necessarily want to go back.
Rick: How unusual is DOGE and the push to downsize the department?
David: DOGE isn’t really new. Remember Al Gore’s “reinventing government” initiative and the Government Performance Results Act? Under President Bill Clinton, 377,000 federal employees were let go. President Barack Obama talked about inefficiencies in government fairly often, even mocking how multiple agencies regulate salmon in one State of the Union Address. What’s different now is the speed and depth at which cuts are happening. President George W. Bush certainly wasn’t interested in closing or shrinking the Department of Education; his belief in a robust federal role gave us No Child Left Behind. Trump 1.0, I think, would have liked to do this, but it was the failures of the COVID era and contentious moves by the Biden administration that allowed the antipathy toward the department to transform into action.
Rick: The secretary of education says she wants to cut red tape and shift authority to the states. What do you make of her chances?
David: Well, to be fair, Congress already dramatically cut back on red tape when it passed the Every Student Succeeds Act. The challenge has always been that state and local folks come to Washington and ask for “cover” to do hard things. Trump and McMahon are positioned to say, “Own these decisions yourself.” I think we could see waivers granted on testing, accountability, and whatever remnants of unnecessary bureaucracy remain. Just a few things can’t be waived or modified without Congress changing the law, including how the money gets to states and school districts, private schools’ equitable share of funding, and parental involvement. Anything else is fair game for a state waiver.
Rick: I’m struck that we’re talking about executive orders, not legislation. Most of this has unfolded without much input from Congress. How unusual is that?
David: Biden’s student-loan-forgiveness scheme was pursued without congressional authorization—something even former Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi recognized exceeded his authority. So, no, it’s not unusual for the president to act without Congress. It’s all a question of whether the underlying laws are written in ways that allow them to do what the administration wants, whether the courts will agree now that we no longer have the Chevron deference standard, and whether the president will listen to the courts if they rule against the administration. Trump has said that he’ll follow rulings from the Supreme Court—I’m pretty sure it was Biden who said he wasn’t going to let the Supreme Court prevent him from forgiving student-loan debt in some way.
Rick: Much has been said about the cuts at the Department of Education. You used to work there and you’ve interacted with ED for two decades. What’s your take?
David: Truthfully, I’m mixed on this. Overall, I think the drama is overblown from a public policy perspective. I wish the terminations had a more apparent strategy to them or that there was a public-facing explanation as to why this all makes sense. McMahon has a lot of good arguments that the department doesn’t need as many people as it had—that she’s basically in charge of a check-writing organization more than anything and can do the same job with fewer people. Although it’s been politically effective to argue that cutting the department hurts education, the reality is that the department doesn’t teach anyone, doesn’t train anyone, doesn’t write curriculum, and doesn’t run any schools or colleges, so cutting or closing it—with some limited exceptions—won’t change an education received out in the real world one iota.
Rick: What’s your take on the cuts to the Institute of Education Sciences? Any worries about the status of the National Assessment of Educational Progress?
David: I am concerned about cuts to NAEP. I hope the secretary does everything she can to get NAEP back on track. NAEP is one of the objectively good things the federal government does in education. Heck, I’d even argue that we should spend more on NAEP tests, especially in U.S. history. But the rest of IES? I like the data gathering and statistics—that seems like a useful federal role—but too often, the department would add data mandates just because they could, or because Congress would add a mandatory reporting requirement to buy off a member, or to prevent some worse policy from being put into law. I often explained that data-reporting requirements had a financial cost and administrative burden, but more often than I like to admit, I lost those battles.
Rick: When we look back in four years, how much staying power will these first 100 days have in education?
David: That’s tough. What is done by executive order can be undone by executive order. Although many, if not almost all, Republicans support what McMahon is doing, that doesn’t get to 60 in the Senate, so lasting legislative change will be hard to come by. Reconciliation can do a lot, especially on school choice, student loans, and higher ed. accountability, but most everything else needs to go through the normal legislative process. And, unless Congress cuts the department’s salary budget, a new president can hire 1,300 people immediately. But I hope smart leaders at the state, local school district, school, and university levels will use this as an opportunity to take ownership of their decisions. They should use the Trump administration as the rationale to reclaim some authority over their campus or school, curriculum and teacher training, and institutional culture. If they get out of the culture wars by getting back to the fundamentals, the seesaw of our nation’s politics will be less of an imposition.
