President Trump said he’s “immediately” shifting the management of federal student loans to the Small Business Administration.
Mr. Trump also announced he’s moving programs for students with disabilities to the Department of Health and Human Services.
Both changes are happening as his administration dismantles the Education Department.
“I’ve decided that the SBA, the Small Business Administration headed by Kelly Loeffler, terrific person, will handle all of the student loan portfolio,” Mr. Trump said Friday. “We have a portfolio that’s very large, lots of loans, tens of thousands of loans.”
He added that the SBA is waiting to take up the task and “that it will be serviced much better than it has in the past. It’s been a mess.”
The Trump administration has already slashed the Education Department’s staff by 50% and overhauled much of the agency’s work.
Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency has cut numerous contracts it labels woke and wasteful.
Additionally, Mr. Trump said HHS under Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. will “be handling special needs and all the nutrition programs and everything else.”
“Those two elements will be taken out of the Department of Education, and then all we have to do is get the students to get guidance from the people that love them and cherish them,” the president said.
Mr. Trump’s announcement comes on the heels of his executive order for Education Secretary Linda McMahon to limit her department’s authority over states’ control of schools.
The order directs Ms. McMahon to “facilitate the closure of the Education Department” by using “the maximum extent appropriate and permitted by law.”
“The experiment of controlling American education through federal programs and dollars — and the unaccountable bureaucrats those programs and dollars support — has failed our children, our teachers and our families,” the order said.
