AMY GOODMAN: This is Democracy Now!, in the midst of Black History Month. I’m Amy Goodman, with Nermeen Shaikh.

NERMEEN SHAIKH: As President Trump and Elon Musk attempt to dismantle the federal government, we end today’s show with Trump’s plans to issue an executive order to abolish the Department of Education, even though the agency can only be shut down through an act of Congress.

The Department of Education was established by President Jimmy Carter in 1979 to oversee public school funding, administer student loans and run programs to help low-income students.

On Friday, dozens of longtime Education Department staffers who had attended a diversity training course during the first Trump administration were put on paid leave. Trump has accused the agency of, quote, “indoctrinating young people with inappropriate racial, sexual, and political material.” The confirmation hearing has yet to be scheduled for Trump’s education secretary nominee, billionaire pro-wrestling magnate and Republican megadonor Linda McMahon.

On Capitol Hill Tuesday, education groups joined with labor unions as the Alliance to Reclaim Our Schools to protest against Trump’s Education Department plans. And students have held protests and walkouts nationwide over Trump and to oppose attacks on mixed-immigration status families.

AMY GOODMAN: Meanwhile, as the Department of Defense has canceled many so-called identity months, some wonder if Black History Month will continue to be taught in schools.

For more, we’re joined by Jesse Hagopian, longtime educator, high school teacher in Seattle, Washington. He has a new book. It’s titled Teach Truth: The Struggle for Antiracist Education. Jesse is on the leadership team of the Zinn Education Project, which draws on historian Howard Zinn’s seminal book, A People’s History of the United States. He also serves on the national steering committee of Black Lives Matter at School. His recent article for The Nation, “The Far Right’s Plan to Force Teachers to Lie About Race.”

Jesse Hagopian, welcome back to Democracy Now! Why don’t you start off by talking about the significance of Trump very openly talking about the dismantling of the Department of Education? What would that mean?

JESSE HAGOPIAN: Good morning. Hello, Amy and Nermeen. Happy Black History Month, and happy Black Lives Matter at School Week of Action. Thanks for having me back on the show.

You know, Trump’s array of executive orders have been so blatantly unlawful that I would say he should enroll in a high school American government class to learn the basics of the Constitution, except I don’t know a teacher that would allow him in their classroom, given his record of boasting about sexual assault.

And his plan to abolish the Department of Education isn’t about local control, as he claims. We know that, because he’s issued so many federal edicts about what kids are allowed to learn. But let’s call this what it is: an extremist, authoritarian power grab to dismantle public education and enforce ideological conformity.

And we know that only Congress has the legal authority to completely end the Department of Education, but he’s already begun dismantling it. He doesn’t have to fully abolish it in order to stop it from functioning, right? He can appoint a secretary who dismantles protections from the inside, like he’s planning to do with Linda McMahon, and he can gut its funding and staff, as you pointed out.

Already, he has ended the department’s tracking of book bans — right? — effectively giving states a green light to erase history. The American Library Association has documented over 4,200 book titles that were banned in 2023 and over a thousand more last year, right? And a staggering, like, 60% of these books are children’s books featuring characters of color. They’ve been banning books like The Ruby Bridges Story; Maus, the Pulitzer Prize-winning graphic novel about the Holocaust; books about Martin Luther King and the civil rights movement.

And this isn’t about protecting children. We know that dismantling the Department of Education is really about imposing what professor Henry Giroux has called “the violence of organized forgetting” — right? — erasing history and replacing knowledge with state-based propaganda.

And I’ll just say, if the order is successful, if he’s able to either gut or completely abolish the Department of Education, it would end some $18 billion in Title I funding, which provides crucial support to high-poverty schools, like many that I’ve taught in throughout the country. I began teaching in Washington, D.C., and I would pass the White House on my way to school in Anacostia, in one of the most impoverished neighborhoods. And my Title I school had a hole in the ceiling of my classroom, and it would just rain in. It destroyed — the rain destroyed the first project I ever assigned as a teacher, before the kids could even present it. And that’s why the schools desperately need this funding, that he is getting ready to gut, as well as students with accommodations, IEP plans. Special education funding is crucial. Some $15 billion from the Department of Education goes to that. This isn’t an education reform plan. This is really educational arson that he’s proposed.

NERMEEN SHAIKH: And explain, Jesse: Who is his nominee, Linda McMahon?

JESSE HAGOPIAN: I mean, it is breathtaking. She fits the profile of so many of his appointees, in that she is completely unqualified, very little background in education. She was CEO for WWE wrestling and, like many of his nominees, is also under investigation for allowing sexual assault to run rampant in her organization. She would be a disaster for the public schools in this country. We need someone with a real vision for what the public schools can be and for keeping our children safe, not another privatizer.

AMY GOODMAN: Jesse Hagopian, we want to thank you for being with us. We’re going to do Part 2 of this conversation and post it online at democracynow.org. Jesse is a high school teacher in Seattle, Washington. His new book is called Teach Truth: The Struggle for Antiracist Education. Before we end this segment, do you think your book, Teach Truth: The Struggle for Antiracist Education, will be allowed to be taught in the public schools of the United States?

JESSE HAGOPIAN: Well, with the rampant book banning, I’m worried about that. But I hope that educators take a look at it, because this is really a story about how they’re trying to revive the worst of the McCarthy era, the Red Scare and the Lavender Scare, to attack teachers who teach the truth about U.S. history, about Black history, about Indigenous history, about trans history and LGBTQ+ history, and we need these lessons desperately today to defend our schools.

AMY GOODMAN: And we’re going to talk about them in Part 2 of this discussion. “Jesse Hagopian” rhymes with “utopian.” I’m Amy Goodman, with Nermeen Shaikh.