First, most education commentary seems to miss the yawning, venomous split between the New Right and Reagan-Buckley conservatives—a clash that the New Right NatCons appear to be winning in a rout. Accounts of Project 2025 or a possible Trump agenda feature much talk about deregulation and small government conservatism. That seems oddly off-key. Those themes would indeed loom large if Nikki Haley, Tim Scott, or Mike Pence were the nominee. But that’s not today’s GOP. Back in 2016, when Trump still had to win over skeptical social conservatives and a hostile establishment, he felt obliged to pick Mike Pence, a classic Reaganite, as his VP. This time around, Trump’s selection of MAGA uber-convert J.D. Vance underscored that the GOP is his party now. As The Dispatch’s Nick Catoggio put it, “Tapping J.D. Vance as Trump’s heir apparent extinguished whatever hope remained that [Nikki Haley] and conservatives like her will continue to have a meaningful role in the party.”
Why does this all matter? Well, as the Manhattan Institute’s Brian Riedl has noted, the new Republican platform is “not remotely conservative” in any familiar sense. It abandons talk of fiscal discipline and pledges to protect entitlements from reform. It swaps measured policy language for the wild prose and punctuation of Trump’s Truth Social account. It’s a stew of proposals and doesn’t put much of a premium on consistency or coherence. When it comes to education, Riedl notes, there’s a “lengthy package of demands for Washington to micromanage America’s 100,000 public schools—regulating teacher tenure, salaries, the school curriculum, school discipline, even sports teams” and then a vague call to “close the Department of Education in Washington, D.C. and send it [sic] back to the States.” Any assumption that a Trump-Vance administration is going to be worried about deficit spending, bent on trimming programs, or committed to reining in regulation is questionable, at best. More likely is a concerted focus on using executive authority to promote parental rights, push back on DEI, hold higher education’s feet to the fire, and support school choice.
Second, it’s probably a mistake to imagine that the staffing of the first Trump administration will tell us much about the staffing of a second. In 2016, Trump was a political neophyte surrounded by amateurs. As a result, he had to lean on the establishment when it came to staffing and running his administration. This time, Trump has a professional team, a coterie of MAGA diehards, and no need to placate the GOP’s Mitch McConnell–Paul Ryan wing. Also, keep in mind that Trump’s upright, unflinching (but much-maligned) Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos resigned in the wake of January 6, while firmly voicing her disappointment in Trump. Given that Trump has shown he’s a man who holds grudges with critics who haven’t bent the knee, and that I’ve seen no sign that DeVos has done so, I tend to suspect those who served under her will suffer for that association.
DeVos is a civically minded traditional conservative and attracted a like-minded team. Her senior staff largely came from her preexisting circle, the conservative establishment, and the bipartisan world of school choice. That made sense for a Department focused on traditional conservative concerns like trimming the bureaucracy, reducing regulation, and promoting choice. Well, in a second Trump term, if the goal is to go after left-wing accreditors, DEI, or colleges that have turned a blind eye to Chinese espionage or Iran-funded anti-Semitic advocacy, there may be less call for traditional education wonks than for hard-charging NatCon activists.
