Rep. Matt Gaetz, R-FL, says that the United States Department of Education should be done away with.
The comments came via Twitter in response to Rep. Mark Green’s tweet about a proposed “Parent’s Bill of Rights”
This is far from the first call to dismantle the Department of Education. Doing away with the main federal entity that governs education has been a fringe conservative push for years. Other republican Representatives like Marjorie Taylor Greene and Lauren Boebert have echoed a similar sentiment. Even when they have controlled the office many conservatives have still expressed a desire to scale back the role the federal department plays in national education, particularly the Office for Civil Rights.
The debate about LGBTQ+ protections and critical race theory based curriculum has led to renewed criticism of the department. Republicans who see education as a winning issue during this election cycle, in general, believe that individual states and parents should have more say in education.