by Zach Geller ‘25

President Donald Trump’s announcement on March 20 to command new Secretary of Education Linda McMahon to dismantle the Department of Education has sent waves of shock throughout the country and local community, but this declaration was just formalizing something that’s already been going on since Trump took office on January 20. This can be seen through Trump’s various executive orders and the actions taken by members of his cabinet. One major example of this is the Trump administration’s elimination of the Office for Civil Rights’ (OCR) Book Ban Coordinator at the department, who was put in charge by the Biden Administration in 2023 of making training and planning guidance to deter schools from banning books, specifically related to sexual orientation or racial diversity.

In late January, a Trump appointee at the Department of Education officially called a series of major book ban allegations being investigated by the OCR under the Biden administration a ‘hoax’. Following this the Acting Assistant Secretary for Civil Rights, Craig Trainor, officially eliminated the position of a Book Ban Coordinator outright, explaining that it’s an example of how “the department is beginning the process of restoring the fundamental rights of parents to direct their children’s education.”

Without the position of a Book Ban Coordinator, the OCR is left powerless in fighting back against school book bans on the national level. This could lead to some states or school districts choosing to restrict books and curriculum that has material that is deemed as controversial or inappropriate. The message being sent by the Trump administration is that it will not stand in the way of censorship of material related to gender, sexual orientation, and race.

In fact, the federal government itself might be the entity that ends up banning books in schools. Trump signed the Ending Radical Indoctrination in K-12 Schooling executive order, which includes fiery demands towards Department of Ed. staff, such as stopping teachers from calling a student a different name than their birth name or using altered pronouns.

The dangers of the executive order come from its vague infringements on what is taught in schools, as it claims it will cut funding for schools that teach subjects about ”gender ideology and discriminatory equity ideology.” This creates the framework for the Trump administration to order and bully states to stop teaching topics like racial inequality and LGBTQ+ struggles, topics that aren’t fully endorsed by conservatives. Unlike removing the Book Ban Coordinator this order isn’t limiting the national government’s power to prevent information suppression, it’s actively contributing to that suppression.

Removing the Book Ban Coordinator goes to show how removing national guardrails opens the door for states to ban books in schools, and Trump’s executive order demonstrates an attempt to dry up the flow of information on controversial topics in K-12 schooling. Both of these actions further polarize citizens, leading people to become further set in their beliefs. Red states stay red and blue states stay blue, thus the country stays divided. These actions, as well as Trump’s new order to dismantle the Department of Ed., have a flurry of negative consequences and ill-intentions throughout them. It’s necessary to acknowledge the actions big and small that have been taken towards a mutual, counterintuitive goal that’ll leave Americans uneducated, stubborn, and lied to.