President Trump said Friday he is “immediately” moving the handling of federal student loans to the Small Business Administration (SBA), and shifting programs for students with disabilities to the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) as his White House seeks to wind down and eventually eliminate the Education Department.
“I’ve decided that the SBA, the Small Business Administration, headed by Kelly Loeffler, will handle will all of the student loan portfolio,” Trump told reporters in the Oval Office, noting it is a “pretty complicated deal, and that’s coming out of the Department of Education immediately.”
“And also, Bobby Kennedy, with the Health and Human Services Department, will be handling special needs and all the nutrition programs and everything else,” he continued.
“I think that will work out very well. Those two elements will be taken out of the Department of Education,” the president added.
The announcement comes a day after Trump signed an executive order for Education Secretary Linda McMahon to dismantle the Education Department as far as is legally allowed.
While the department can’t be completely eliminated without an act of Congress, the Trump administration has made it clear it will seek to abolish any programs not in statute and move congressionally mandated requirements to other federal agencies.
The move to send student loans to the SBA came the same day the administration announced a 40 percent cut to that agency’s workforce.
Student loans are one of the largest programs the Education Department handles.
Advocates for students with disabilities have forcefully pushed back against the idea of those programs going to HHS, especially under this administration and Kennedy, who has a long record of anti-vaccine rhetoric and false claims that vaccines cause autism.
The declaration by the president to move these programs out of the Education Department will almost certainly be challenged in court, as well his actions against the department more broadly.
