Florida lawmakers brainstorm new ways to save Floridians money on their property taxes, and President Trump follows through on a controversial campaign promise.

Trump orders a plan to dismantle the Education Department but keeps core functions

President Donald Trump signed an executive order Thursday calling for the dismantling of the U.S. Education Department, advancing a campaign promise to take apart an agency that’s been a longtime target of conservatives.

Trump has derided the Education Department as wasteful and polluted by liberal ideology. However, completing its dismantling is most likely impossible without an act of Congress, which created the department in 1979. Republicans said they will introduce a bill to achieve that.

The department, however, is not set to close completely. The White House said the department will retain certain critical functions.

Trump said his administration will close the department beyond its "core necessities," preserving its responsibilities for Title I funding for low-income schools, Pell grants and money for children with disabilities. The White House said earlier it would also continue to manage federal student loans.

The president blamed the department for America’s lagging academic performance and said states will do a better job.

"It’s doing us no good," he said at a White House ceremony.

Already, Trump's Republican administration has been gutting the agency. Its workforce is being slashed in half, and there have been deep cuts to the Office for Civil Rights and the Institute of Education Sciences, which gathers data on the nation’s academic progress.

Advocates for public schools said eliminating the department would leave children behind in an American education system that is fundamentally unequal.

“This is a dark day for the millions of American children who depend on federal funding for a quality education, including those in poor and rural communities with parents who voted for Trump,” NAACP President Derrick Johnson said.

Democrats said the order will be fought in the courts and in Congress, and they urged Republicans to join them in opposition.

Trump's order is “dangerous and illegal” and will disproportionately hurt low-income students, students of color and those with disabilities, said Rep. Bobby Scott of Virginia, the top Democrat on the House Committee on Education and the Workforce.

The department "was founded in part to guarantee the enforcement of students’ civil rights,” Scott said. “Champions of public school segregation objected, and campaigned for a return to ‘states’ rights.’”

Supporters of Trump's vision for education welcomed the order.

“No more bloated bureaucracy dictating what kids learn or stifling innovation with red tape,” Tiffany Justice, co-founder of Moms for Liberty, said on social media. “States, communities, and parents can take the reins — tailoring education to what actually works for their kids.”

The White House has not spelled out formally which department functions could be handed off to other departments or eliminated altogether.

Bill would exclude some home improvements from property taxes

The Florida House Ways & Means Committee approved today a bill that would provide some future tax relief to Floridians who harden their homes.

House Bill 1039 would ban tax collectors from considering “any change or improvement made to homestead property to mitigate flood damage.”

That means improvements that potentially increase a home’s value will not increase its tax burden.

State. Rep. Kimberly Berfield (R-Clearwater) backs the bill.

“I generally seek out and support policy changes that are designed to assist homeowners with efforts they undertake when they're mitigating these types of properties that are at risk of flood damage,” she said.

Lake City resident Sally Sluder wonders if the proposal would benefit wealthy Floridians more than ordinary families.

“I don't know if we want to go right away with giving tax breaks for it without seeing if there's other ways to mitigate the danger,” she said.

The bill comes amid a push by Gov. Ron DeSantis and Florida Republicans to brainstorm ways to eliminate property taxes in the state altogether. Florida would be the first state to do so.

State. Rep. Ryan Chamberlain (R-Ocala) says it won’t happen overnight.

“I think it's going to take several years' discussions, and there's things we can do along the way to create some relief. And that's what we're working on now,” he said.

If approved by the legislature, it will appear as a constitutional amendment on the November 2026 ballot and require 60% approval to pass.