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In March, President Trump signed an executive order to begin shutting down the Department

of Education, though it would take an act of Congress to actually close it.

In the meantime, the department is taking dramatic steps to work fulfilling

a conservative vision of a reshaped system of primary and secondary education. Jennifer Smith-Ritchards

is the co-author of a pro-public investigation looking into all of this. Jennifer, what is the

Department of Education doing? What steps are they taking? Yeah. So they've been very,

very clear since Trump took office that the idea was to shut down the department. Linda McMahon,

the Secretary of Education, has called it her final mission. And Donald Trump, of course,

has called the department a big con job. So that part has been clear, this desire to phase out many

of the functions of the department and close it down. What's been less clear is why Linda McMahon

has brought in a number of political strategists and, you know, ultra-conservative activists

into the office, even as it's supposed to be

shutting down and winding down. Those people have been quiet, frankly, about what they are doing

behind the scenes at the department. Is there a common thread running between, through these

appointments, and are they all have similar goals or similar

things they've talked about in the past about education? They have. My colleague and I at ProPublica

went through, you know, hundreds and hundreds of hours of speeches and podcast interviews

...