President Donald Trump has spent years promising to get rid of the federal Department of Education. Now he is going further, openly musing about selling off the agency’s buildings for private development and urging that “somebody else get rich” from the real estate. The comments strip away any pretense that his campaign against the department is only about philosophy or efficiency, and they collide directly with a Congress that is moving to lock key education protections into law.
Trump’s remarks come as his administration continues to dismantle the department’s internal structure and shift its work across the federal government, even as lawmakers from both parties try to keep core programs intact. The clash is no longer just over how Washington should oversee schools, but over whether public assets and civil rights enforcement will be treated as a policy responsibility or a property deal.
Trump’s real estate pitch in the Cabinet Room
In a recent Cabinet meeting, Trump talked about the Department of Education less as a guardian of student rights and more as a portfolio of buildings that could be flipped. Video from the session shows him urging advisers to “sell the buildings off,” describing the department’s physical footprint as an opportunity for “real estate” and saying the government should “let somebody else get rich” instead of keeping the properties in public hands. In that exchange, he framed the department’s headquarters and related facilities as underused assets that could be turned into profit, treating the agency’s presence in Washington as a kind of distressed property listing rather than the nerve center of federal education policy, a posture captured in the Sell the footage.
In a separate clip from the same conversation, Trump leans into the idea that others should cash in on the department’s footprint, saying “let somebody else get rich” with the “real estate” instead of the federal government. That phrasing, preserved in another Let recording, is unusually blunt even by his standards, because it treats the department’s dissolution as a chance for private enrichment rather than a debate over the proper size of government. For critics who have long warned that his business background shapes his public decisions, the Cabinet-room comments read less like an offhand joke and more like a mission statement.
A long campaign to dismantle the Department of Education
Trump’s real estate talk did not emerge in a vacuum. President Trump has repeatedly pledged to abolish the Department of Education outright, even though Congress controls the agency’s formal authority. Earlier in his term, the Trump Administration began moving to shrink the department’s footprint, signaling that if lawmakers would not erase it on paper, the White House would hollow it out in practice. That strategy culminated in an executive order that Trump signed to “gut” the Department of Education, a moment captured as cameras rolled and a correspondent identified as Selena Wang described President Trump just then signing the order targeting the department.
On the same day, Trump appeared in a separate event where he signed what was described as an executive order to dismantle the department, telling supporters that “we would love to see that come to an end” and that he believed the administration was “doing pretty well in that regard,” language preserved in a FULL recording of the signing. Earlier coverage from Washington noted that Trump planned to sign an executive order shuttering the Education Department, with reporters Michael, Kanno, Youngs and Zach Montague chronicling how his push to eliminate the agency dated back to the 1980s in a Pinned dispatch from Washington.
From one agency to four, and the chaos in schools
As the White House has moved from rhetoric to restructuring, the practical effect has been to scatter the Education Department’s work across the federal bureaucracy. Instead of being housed in a single agency, much of the Education Department’s responsibilities are now slated to be spread across four other federal departments, a shift that has left school systems bracing for confusion about who will handle grants, civil rights complaints and data collection, according to reporting that described how Instead of one clear point of contact, districts may soon be dealing with four. For superintendents already juggling state mandates and local politics, the prospect of navigating multiple federal departments for what used to be a single program office is not an abstract worry, it is a logistical nightmare.
Civil rights advocates have warned that this fragmentation is not just a paperwork problem. In a public discussion of the attempt to dismantle the department, speakers highlighted how the agency has historically enforced protections against discrimination and pushed back on “disinformation” about what those laws require, promising to spotlight “concrete actions” that civil rights groups are taking in response, as seen in a recording titled Jan. A second version of that event, also labeled Jan, underscores how central the department has been to enforcing civil rights in schools and how much uncertainty surrounds that role if its functions are carved up among agencies that do not specialize in education.
Congress pushes back with funding and guardrails
While Trump talks about liquidation and restructuring, lawmakers are quietly building legal walls around the department’s core responsibilities. In a three bill funding package for the 2026 fiscal year that covers Labor, Health and Human Services, Education, Defense, and Transportation, Housing and Urban Development, appropriators spelled out how they intend to limit the White House’s room to maneuver. Where President Trump and Budget Director Russ Vought sought broad discretion over federal spending, Congress on a bipartisan basis moved to assert its own priorities, including directing money to build more affordable housing and preserving education programs that the administration has tried to shrink.
Another bill moving through Capitol Hill is even more explicit. Lawmakers have drafted language that would prohibit the U.S. Department of Education from transferring any education funding to another federal agency unless an agreement is in place to ensure that the same services are being maintained, a safeguard aimed squarely at the administration’s plan to scatter programs across the government. The measure, described in detail in coverage of how Department of Education funding for special education and disability programs would be protected, is designed to keep services for students with disabilities from becoming collateral damage in a bureaucratic reshuffle. It is a reminder that even as Trump talks about selling buildings, Congress still holds the power of the purse and can dictate how far his restructuring can go.
Restructuring plan, civil rights worries and what comes next
Inside the administration, officials have framed their effort as a massive restructuring rather than an outright abolition, but the end goal has often been described as eliminating the agency entirely. A detailed plan circulated in late 2025 laid out how the Trump Administration would dismantle the Congressionally created U.S. Department of Education, prompting critics to call it a “ploy” that would have the effect of entirely eliminating the agency, as described in coverage of the Trump Administration blueprint. That plan dovetails with earlier reporting that President Trump had pledged to abolish the department, even if he had not previously pursued serious action, a pattern traced in an analysis of how President Trump has moved from promises to concrete steps.
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*This article was researched with the help of AI, with human editors creating the final content.
Elias Broderick specializes in residential and commercial real estate, with a focus on market cycles, property fundamentals, and investment strategy. His writing translates complex housing and development trends into clear insights for both new and experienced investors. At The Daily Overview, Elias explores how real estate fits into long-term wealth planning.
