The U.S. Department of Education posted a doctored photo of its own Washington, D.C. headquarters on the day before Halloween, slapping a giant Spirit Halloween banner across the building and captioning it with a joke about the seasonal retailer's tendency to pop up in empty storefronts everywhere. The timing was hard to miss: the gag landed just as the agency itself faces the prospect of disappearing entirely.
The department shared the image on X with the caption “These things are just popping up everywhere!” according to The Hill. The post arrived as President Trump and Education Secretary Linda McMahon work toward their stated goal of closing the agency altogether, the outlet reported. Fox40 News, which first circulated the story under reporter Lexi Lonas Cochran's byline, noted the image dropped the day before Halloween, timed to the holiday but landing amid a much more serious institutional unraveling.
Education Department spokesperson Sabin Sidney defended the stunt by pointing to taxpayers footing the bill for a federal building that sits 70% underutilized, per the same Hill report. It's a pointed jab aimed at critics, but it also underscores just how far the department's actual footprint has already shrunk, even before any formal closure takes effect.
A Department Already Being Hollowed Out
The joke lands against a backdrop of real structural change. The Education Department has made more than a dozen deals with other federal agencies to outsource its responsibilities, including shifting the federal student-loan portfolio over to the Treasury Department, The Hill reported. The agency has also fired thousands of employees as part of the broader downsizing effort.
Those interagency deals aren't new. Between May 2025 and this past June, the department announced 14 interagency agreements with six other federal agencies, according to Higher Ed Dive. The Congressional Research Service describes these arrangements as agreements under which the department splits the tasks required to run its own programs with other federal executive departments, per Congress.gov.
More than 100 K-12 and higher-education programs have already been moved to outside agencies through these partnerships, according to The Nevada Independent. Separately, NPR found that at least four Education Department staffers it interviewed are now among hundreds of employees scattered across at least nine other federal agency buildings in Washington.
Confusion Behind the Scenes
The administration frames the overhaul as a way to cut bureaucracy and boost efficiency, but NPR reported that the changes so far have actually made the department's work more complicated, not less, according to employees who spoke with the outlet. Department staff told NPR that two separate attempts to use Labor Department systems to distribute Title I and other large grants were halted after states pushed back — a real-world snag for a funding stream worth roughly $18.4 billion a year, per NPR's reporting.
Higher Ed Dive reported that critics say splitting K-12 programming among multiple federal agencies creates confusion as core education oversight becomes splintered. The department itself has pushed back on that framing, telling Higher Ed Dive that its interagency partnerships will bolster coordination among agencies and improve academic and career outcomes for students.
Nevada Reaction and Disability Concerns
The fallout is landing hardest, critics say, on vulnerable student populations. The Nevada Independent reported that the changes affect roughly 7.5 million children covered by the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act. The Nevada State Education Association said the department formerly protected, fed and supported students with specific needs, and warned that its dismantling — backed by Trump, McMahon and Nevada Gov. Joe Lombardo — will hurt Nevadans, per The Hill.
Opponents of the overhaul broadly believe the department's recent moves will negatively affect schools and students, a concern echoed across multiple accounts of the restructuring. Higher education expert Daniel Collier posted criticism on Bluesky concerning trust in federal student-loan repayment guidance and said he planned to email the department's Spirit Halloween post to reporters, underscoring how the stunt has become a flashpoint far beyond its original joke.
What Remains Unresolved
Congress holds the authority to formally close the Education Department, and a bill in the Senate, S.5046, is specifically aimed at prohibiting the transfer of certain department offices and functions to other federal agencies, according to the bill's text on Congress.gov. Whether the executive branch can legally keep reassigning the department's functions without that congressional sign-off remains an open question, with no court ruling cited in current reporting settling the matter.
The Hill reported that it reached out to the Education Department for comment on the broader fallout from the Spirit Halloween post. For now, the image stands as a strange bit of institutional gallows humor from an agency whose own future is still, by most accounts, very much up in the air.
