Education Secretary Linda McMahon is expected to move quickly now that the Supreme Court has cleared the way for the Trump administration to continue unwinding her department.

The justices on Monday paused a lower court order that had halted nearly 1,400 layoffs and had called into question the legality of President Donald Trump’s plan to outsource the department’s operations to other agencies.

Now, Trump and McMahon are free to execute the layoffs and break up the department’s work among other federal agencies. Trump had campaigned on closing the department, and McMahon has said the department has one “final mission” to turn over its power to the states.

“The Federal Government has been running our Education System into the ground, but we are going to turn it all around by giving the Power back to the PEOPLE,” Trump said late Monday in a post on Truth Social. “Thank you to the United States Supreme Court!”

Department lawyers have already previewed McMahon’s next steps in court filings.

What happens with student loans, civil rights cases

Trump and McMahon have acknowledged only Congress has authority to close the Education Department fully, but both have suggested its core functions could be parceled out to different federal agencies.

Among the most important decisions is where to put management of federal student loans, a $1.6 trillion portfolio affecting nearly 43 million borrowers.

Trump in March suggested the Small Business Administration would take on federal student loans, but a June court filing indicated the Treasury Department is expected to take over the work. The Education Department said it had been negotiating a contract with Treasury but paused discussions when the court intervened. That work is now expected to proceed in coming days.

Under a separate arrangement, nine Education Department workers already have been detailed to Treasury, according to a court filing.

The department had also recently struck a deal to outsource the management of several grant programs for workforce training and adult education to the Department of Labor. The Education Department agreed to send $2.6 billion to Labor to oversee grants, which are distributed to states to be passed down to schools and colleges.

Combining workforce training programs at Education and Labor would “provide a coordinated federal education and workforce system,” according to the agreement.

Additional agreements are expected to follow with other agencies. At her Senate confirmation hearing, McMahon suggested that enforcement of the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act could be handled by the Department of Health and Human Services. Civil rights work could be managed by the Justice Department, she said.

Democracy Forward, which represents plaintiffs in the lawsuit, said it will pursue “every legal option” to fight for children. The group’s federal court case is proceeding, but the Supreme Court’s emergency decision means the Education Department is allowed to downsize in the meantime.

“No court in the nation — not even the Supreme Court — has found that what the administration is doing is lawful,” said Skye Perryman, president and CEO of the group, in a statement.

Trump campaigned on a promise to close the agency, and in March ordered it to be wound down “to the maximum extent appropriate and permitted by law.” McMahon had already started a dramatic downsizing, laying off about 1,400 workers.

Education Department employees targeted by the layoffs have been on paid leave since March, according to a union that represents some of the agency’s staff. The lower court order had prevented the department from fully terminating them, though none had been allowed to return to work, according to the American Federation of Government Employees Local 252. Without the lower court order, the workers would have been terminated in early June.

The absence of those staffers already had caused problems in the office that handles student loans, said Melanie Storey, president and CEO of the National Association of Student Financial Aid Administrators. College financial aid staffers reported delays and breakdowns in federal systems — such as an hours-long outage on StudentAid.gov the day after departmental layoffs. Communication with the Education Department eroded, Storey said.

“It is concerning that the Court is allowing the Trump administration to continue with its planned reduction in force, given what we know about the early impact of those cuts on delivering much-needed financial assistance to students seeking a postsecondary education,” Storey said.

Gutting the Education Department will hinder the government’s ability to enforce civil rights laws, especially for girls, students with disabilities, LGBTQ+ students and students of color, said Gaylynn Burroughs, vice president at the National Women’s Law Center. Laid-off staff in the Office of Civil Rights were handling thousands of cases.

“Without enough staff and resources, students will face more barriers to educational opportunity and have fewer places to turn to when their rights are violated,” Burroughs said in a statement. “This is part of a coordinated plan by the Trump administration to dismantle the federal government and roll back hard-won civil rights protections.”

House Republicans were grasping late Thursday to formulate a response to the Trump administration’s handling of records in the Jeffrey Epstein sex trafficking case, ultimately putting forward a resolution that carries no legal weight but nodded to the growing demand for greater transparency.

The House resolution, which could potentially be voted on next week, will do practically nothing to force the Justice Department to release more records in the case. Still, it showed how backlash from the Republican base is putting pressure on the Trump administration and roiling GOP lawmakers.

The House was held up for hours Thursday from final consideration of President Donald Trump’s request for about $9 billion in government funding cuts because GOP leaders were trying to respond to demands from their own ranks that they weigh in on the Epstein files. In the late evening they settled on the resolution as an attempt to simultaneously placate calls from the far-right for greater transparency and satisfy Trump, who has called the issue a “hoax” that his supporters should forget about.

Yet the House resolution was the latest demonstration of how practically no one is moving on from Attorney General Pam Bondi’s promises to publicly release documents related to Epstein. Since he was found dead in his New York jail cell in August 2019 following his arrest on sex trafficking charges, the well-connected financier has loomed large among conservatives and conspiracy theorists who have now lashed out at Trump and Bondi for declining to release more files in the case.

“The House Republicans are for transparency, and they’re looking for a way to say that they agree with the White House. We agree with the president. Everything he said about that, all the credible evidence should come out,” House Speaker Mike Johnson said Thursday afternoon.

Democrats vehemently decried the resolution’s lack of force. They have advanced their own legislation, with support from nine Republicans, that would require the Justice Department to release more information on the case.

Rep. Jim McGovern, who led the Democrats’ debate against the Republican resolution Thursday night, called it a “glorified press release” and “a fig leaf so they can move on from this issue.”

Under pressure from his own GOP members, Johnson had to demonstrate action on the Epstein files or risk having Republicans support the Democratic measures that would force the release of nearly all documents.

“The American people simply need to know the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth,” House Democratic Leader Hakeem Jeffries said at a news conference. “Democrats didn’t put this into the public domain. The conspiracy theory provocateur-in-chief Donald Trump is the one, along with his extreme MAGA Republican associates, who put this whole thing into the public domain for years. And now they are reaping what they have sown.”

Still, Democrats, who hold minorities in both chambers, have relished the opportunity to make Republicans repeatedly block their attempts to force the Justice Department to release the documents.

Trump in recent years has suggested he would release more information about the investigation into Epstein, especially amid speculation over a supposed list of Epstein’s clients.

In February, the Justice Department released some government documents regarding the case, but there were no new revelations. After a months-long review of additional evidence, the department earlier this month released a video meant to prove that Epstein killed himself, but said no other files related to the case would be made public.

A White House spokeswoman said Thursday that Trump would not recommend a special counsel in the case. But later Thursday, the president said he had asked Bondi to seek the release of testimony from grand jury proceedings in the case.

California’s challenge of the Trump administration’s military deployment in Los Angeles returned to a federal courtroom in San Francisco on Friday for a brief hearing after an appeals court handed President Donald Trump a key procedural win.

U.S. District Judge Charles Breyer put off issuing any additional rulings and instead asked for briefings from both sides by noon Monday on whether the Posse Comitatus Act, which prohibits troops from conducting civilian law enforcement on U.S. soil, is being violated in Los Angeles.

The hearing happened the day after the 9th Circuit appellate panel allowed the president to keep control of National Guard troops he deployed in response to protests over immigration raids.

California Gov. Gavin Newsom said in his complaint that “violation of the Posse Comitatus Act is imminent, if not already underway” but Breyer last week postponed considering that allegation.

Vice President JD Vance, a Marine veteran, traveled to Los Angeles on Friday and met with troops, including U.S. Marines who have been deployed to protect federal buildings.

According to Vance, the court determined Trump’s determination to send in federal troops “was legitimate” and he will do it again if necessary.

“The president has a very simple proposal to everybody in every city, every community, every town whether big or small, if you enforce your own laws and if you protect federal law enforcement, we’re not going to send in the National Guard because it’s unnecessary,” Vance told journalists after touring a federal complex in Los Angeles.

Vance’s tour of a multiagency Federal Joint Operations Center and a mobile command center came as demonstrations have calmed after sometimes-violent clashes between protesters and police and outbreaks of vandalism and break-ins that followed immigration raids across Southern California earlier this month. Tens of thousands have also marched peacefully in Los Angeles since June 8.

National Guard troops have been accompanying federal agents on some immigration raids, and Marines briefly detained a man on the first day they deployed to protect a federal building. The marked the first time federal troops detained a civilian since deploying to the nation’s second-largest city.

Breyer found Trump acted illegally when, over opposition from California’s governor, the president activated the soldiers. However, the appellate decision halted the judge’s temporary restraining order. Breyer asked the lawyers on Friday to address whether he or the appellate court retains primary jurisdiction to grant an injunction under the Posse Comitatus Act.

California has sought a preliminary injunction giving Newsom back control of the troops in Los Angeles, where protests have calmed down in recent days.

Trump, a Republican, argued that the troops have been necessary to restore order. Newsom, a Democrat, said their presence on the streets of a U.S. city inflamed tensions, usurped local authority and wasted resources.

The demonstrations appear to be winding down, although dozens of protesters showed up Thursday at Dodger Stadium, where a group of federal agents gathered at a parking lot with their faces covered, traveling in SUVs and cargo vans. The Los Angeles Dodgers organization asked them to leave, and they did.

On Tuesday, Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass lifted a downtown curfew that was first imposed in response to vandalism and clashes with police after crowds gathered in opposition to agents taking migrants into detention.

Trump federalized members of the California National Guard under an authority known as Title 10.

Title 10 allows the president to call the National Guard into federal service when the country “is invaded,” when “there is a rebellion or danger of a rebellion against the authority of the Government,” or when the president is otherwise unable “to execute the laws of the United States.”

Breyer found that Trump had overstepped his legal authority, which he said allows presidents to control state National Guard troops only during times of “rebellion or danger of a rebellion.”

“The protests in Los Angeles fall far short of ‘rebellion,’ ” wrote Breyer, a Watergate prosecutor who was appointed by President Bill Clinton and is the brother of retired Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer.

The Trump administration argued that courts can’t second-guess the president’s decisions. The appellate panel ruled otherwise, saying presidents don’t have unfettered power to seize control of a state’s guard, but the panel said that by citing violent acts by protesters in this case, the Trump administration had presented enough evidence to show it had a defensible rationale for federalizing the troops.

For now, the California National Guard will stay in federal hands as the lawsuit proceeds. It is the first deployment by a president of a state National Guard without the governor’s permission since troops were sent to protect Civil Rights Movement marchers in 1965.

Trump celebrated the appellate ruling in a social media post, calling it a “BIG WIN” and hinting at more potential deployments.

Newsom, for his part, has also warned that California won’t be the last state to see troops in the streets if Trump gets his way.