If appointed by Donald Trump to be America’s next education secretary, Erika Donalds has made it clear that one of her top priorities would be to effectively eliminate her job by backing one of the president-elect’s more controversial plans: abolishing the U.S. Department of Education.
Donalds, an education entrepreneur who’s been named in published reports as a possible Trump cabinet pick, hit the interview circuit after the election to push for killing the DOE, a move that would halt Pell Grants and end funding for the popular Head Start program, among other real-world consequences.
“[The Department of Education] has completely failed and therefore it should be eliminated,” Donalds said on Fox News Radio last week. “And I think it should be [the newly formed Elon Musk-led Department of Government Efficiency’s] first order of business, if you ask me.”
It’s an unsurprising stance for Donalds, who is best known as the wife of Congressman Byron Donalds (R-Naples), himself a close Trump ally widely considered the frontrunner to be Florida’s next governor. As an advisory board member for the right-wing group Moms for Liberty and Heritage Foundation fellow, Erika Donalds hasn’t been shy about her mission to upend public education in favor of charter schools, which are taxpayer-funded but privately owned.
