How to delete a government agency without asking Congress first

Officially, shutting down a cabinet-level federal agency requires a vote from Congress. But why wait for lawmakers to debate when you can just use interagency agreements to quietly parcel out the entire department like a liquidating retail store?

Education Secretary Linda McMahon announced the "Final Mission" to employees, which basically translates to moving different pieces of the agency into other buildings. Special education is going to the Department of Health and Human Services, career training is heading to the Department of Labor, and civil rights complaints are being dumped onto the Justice Department.

Naturally, critics and lawyers are pointing out that there is zero legal authority for a secretary to just outsource their entire job. Plus, the logistics are a beautiful mess. After losing half its staff to DOGE cuts, the agency is now on a massive hiring spree because they realized they don't actually have enough people left to perform their basic, legally mandated duties. They are also ditching their free, custom software system to pay for a clunky multi-system replacement used by other departments.

Shuffling offices around to prove a point about efficiency, only to end up paying more for software and hiring back the people just fired, is peak government performance.