Report to Congress on consolidating ED and trimming staff

Partially done

Printed page 359 11. Department of Education

“The next President should issue a series of executive orders requiring: … The release of a report to Congress on how to consolidate the department and trim nonessential employees”

What has happened

Apr 3, 2026 Partially done
No executive order requires this report, and no standalone report exists — Executive Order 14242 tells the Secretary to facilitate the Department's closure and asks for nothing in writing to Congress. What Congress has received instead is the substance, in the President's Budget. The FY2027 Budget's Department of Education chapter, transmitted to Congress on 2026-04-03, sets out the consolidation program by name and number (seventeen programs totalling $6.5 billion folded into MEGA grants, twelve totalling $2.1 billion eliminated, the Office of Career, Technical, and Adult Education transferred to Labor) and says in terms that the Budget "advances efforts underway to dismantle the Federal education bureaucracy, including reducing ED's staff and transferring programs to other agencies". Achieved by other means, and so a piece delivered rather than the whole ask: it is a budget request, not the report on how to consolidate the Department that the Quote asks an executive order to require.
- Budget of the U.S. Government, Fiscal Year 2027 — Department of Education chapter (consolidation, program eliminations, staff reductions)
  Primary Executive branch Apr 3, 2026
- Executive Order 14242 — Improving Education Outcomes by Empowering Parents, States, and Communities (no report requirement)
  Primary Executive branch Mar 20, 2025

Research log

What was searched, and what didn’t count as evidence

Research notes

The staffing half of the ask has been carried out without a report: the 2025-03-11 reduction in force took the Department from 4,133 to roughly 2,183 employees (see #803), and the Department announced on 2026-03-26 that it is leaving the Lyndon B. Johnson building.
A search of presidential documents in the Federal Register and White House presidential actions for “report to Congress” and “consolidat-” found no education entry; the ed.gov sitemap has no report to Congress on consolidation.
Boundary: a reviewer could hold this at not started on the ground that a Budget is not the report the Quote asks for.

Action: issue
Object: Report to Congress on consolidating the Department of Education
ID: 912