September 27, 2026

"Cutting through layers of red tape in Washington is one essential piece of our final mission," Education Secretary Linda McMahon has said.Mark Felix/Bloomberg via Getty Images

The Trump administration took control of Washington last year with plans to shut down the Education Department, in the name of efficiency and to honor a longstanding conservative goal.

“Cutting through layers of red tape in Washington is one essential piece of our final mission,” Education Secretary Linda McMahon has said.

However, NPR Ed’s Jonaki Mehta and Cory Turner found that changes over the last 18 months have cost an unknown amount of taxpayer dollars and made the agency's work more complex and potentially inefficient.

They spoke to five Education Department employees to understand how the administration’s publicly stated goals are unfolding inside the agency. They all asked not to be named because they are not authorized to speak publicly about the moves and fear professional repercussions for doing so. The Education Department staff said the changes McMahon has overseen have made it more difficult for them to serve states and schools who rely on billions of dollars of federal money to educate students who need the most support, including low-income students and those with disabilities.

The administration has also made costly changes around where staffers work, scattering them across several federal agencies. Some employees say those changes don't seem to have been made with particular improvements in mind.

“A lot of the frustration we feel is from the fact that they came up with a solution for a problem they have not identified,” one Education Department staffer says.

Read and listen to the story

Research funding is also being fundamentally altered by the Trump administration: Over the decades, National Institutes of Health grants to researchers have helped decipher the human genome, eliminate the polio virus in the U.S. and turn AIDS from a death sentence to a survivable illness. But experts say this kind of fundamental science is coming up against an administration that has delayed funding and rerouted billions of dollars in research, resulting in chaos for researchers and patients alike. Trump officials say the administration's practices serve to further the agency's goals. These 6 charts show how NIH research funding has been reshaped under Trump.

Newsletter continues after sponsor message

Good reads and listens...

Stacia Bourne (left) and her mother, Mary Jo Galusha, spend time with Bourne's children at Galusha's home in Newark, Delaware. Galusha, a retired schoolteacher, moved from Idaho to assist her daughter's family. With rising childcare costs in the U.S., grandparents are offering increased support.Lianne Milton for NPR

A college embraces DEI in the Trump era: When NPR Ed’s Elissa Nadworny visited Sacramento State, she found that rather than shying away from serving previously underrepresented communities, given the Trump administration’s war on all things DEI, the college is highlighting its recently established Black Honors College — which welcomes all students, regardless of their race.

Money for teen pregnancy prevention goes unspent: Congress passed $101 million in funding for teen pregnancy prevention, and President Trump signed that into law as part of his budget bill. But with less than a week to go in the 2026 fiscal year, about $100 million of that funding remains unspent. What gives? NPR’s Selena Simmons-Duffin explains in this exclusive piece.

More families are turning to grandparents for childcare to save money: Grandparents helping to take care of their grandchildren is nothing new. But the surging cost of childcare in the U.S. has made familial support even more critical for some parents who need childcare and may not otherwise be able to afford it, NPR’s Joe Hernandez reports. Families that are unable to shoulder those expenses — the average annual cost of childcare for children under 5 in the U.S. in 2025 was $13,184 — or find open seats at daycare facilities are increasingly leaning on older generations for help. Joe spoke to one grandma who gave up her job and life in Idaho to care for her grandchildren in Delaware.

Something to feel hopeful about: Persistent feelings of sadness or hopelessness among high school students have fallen from 42% in 2021 to 33% in 2025, NPR’s Rhitu Chatterjee reports. New data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention also found improvements in the number of students who ate fruits and vegetables compared to a previous survey. The latest Youth Risk Behavior Surveillance Survey focused on nutrition, exercise, sleep, screen time and mental health but left out things like teen smoking and vaping and exposure to violence. The data also leaves out discussion of health disparities among ethnic groups, which was a feature of past reports.

A troubling pattern has emerged in immigrant communities: staying away from medical care out of fear. A new national survey, conducted between April and June 2026 by the American Academy of Pediatrics, found that 40% of pediatricians have noticed families staying away from care due to immigration concerns. Thirty percent said they've seen families who are hesitant to apply for public health services and support, such as Medicaid. NPR’s Jasmine Garsd reports that doctors say there are families in their practices who are avoiding sending their children to school.

She lost her Harvard tenure. Now she’s taking the university to court: Francesa Gino, a former Harvard Business School professor, built a reputation studying honesty and dishonesty, decision-making and ethics, workplace dynamics and productivity. Then, in 2021, she was accused of research misconduct. After a years-long investigation, Harvard formally revoked her tenure in May 2025. Gino is now suing Harvard, and Harvard has countersued. The case raises broader questions about trust in academic research and universities, GBH’s Kirk Carapezza reports, at a time when Harvard and higher education are facing intense scrutiny.

What would be the nation's first publicly funded religious school is closer to becoming a reality: A federal judge ruled that Oklahoma cannot exclude the Ben Gamla Jewish Charter School from its charter program while its lawsuit moves forward, StateImpact Oklahoma’s Beth Wallis reports. In 2024, the Oklahoma Supreme Court struck down an application the board approved for the St. Isidore of Seville Catholic Virtual School. The case went to the U.S. Supreme Court, which tied, allowing the lower court's ruling to stand.

We, the people, decide what’s next for this free press.

Public media is a check on power. We’re accountable only to you, the public, not special interests.

But a free press doesn’t just happen. Together, we decide whether this service will merely continue…or thrive.

It takes all of us to power our collective right to know.

Especially heading into our second year without federal funding, now is the time to join the people who power this work by donating now.

Donate Now ➔

Can making a podcast, even just one, change your life?

Mar Hernandez for NPR

Yes! That’s according to several past participants of the NPR College Podcast Challenge. For our first-ever winner Anya Steinberg, it led to a career in radio, she wrote. Miriam Colvin reconnected with family. Bunmi Omisore learned her parents' native language.