President Trump was poised Thursday to order the elimination of the federal Department of Education although the move would likely face fierce opposition from Congress and in the courts.
A draft of an executive order reportedly instructs newly confirmed Secretary of Education Linda McMahon to take all available steps “permitted by law” to close the sprawling department, which has more than 4,000 employees and an annual budget of $240 billion.
“The federal bureaucratic hold on education must end,” Trump’s planned orders says, according to ABC News. “The department of education’s main functions can, and should, be returned to the states.”
The order calls for an end to the agency that it calls an “experiment of controlling American education through Federal programs and dollars” that has “failed our children, our teachers, and our families.”
Trump has long argued that the DOE is unnecessary and wasteful, calling it a “con job” on the presidential campaign trail last year.
It’s unclear whether Trump has the legal authority to eliminate the education department, since it is funded by Congress, which controls the power of the purse under the Constitution.
Democrats and education advocates quickly slammed the proposed move on moral, political and legal grounds.
Rep. Madeleine Dean (D-Pennsylvania) said Trump wants to eliminate the DOE so he can keep a tighter grip on an uneducated electorate.
“Donald Trump and his cult-like members … want citizens who are not educated,” Dean told CNN.
The Department of Education has been a cabinet-level department in the federal government since the 1860s. It took on its current form in 1980 in a reorganization engineered by former President Jimmy Carter.
McMahon, who won Senate confirmation on Monday, said during her confirmation hearing that she believed eliminating the department would require congressional approval.
Hours after being confirmed, McMahon sent a message to staff titled “Our Department’s Final Mission,” in which she invited staff to embrace the phasing out of the agency.
“This is our opportunity to perform one final, unforgettable public service to future generations of students,” she said. “I hope you will join me in ensuring that when our final mission is complete, we will all be able to say that we left American education freer, stronger, and with more hope for the future.”
Republicans control both houses of Congress and the White House, but there could be significant resistance within the GOP to a vote to eliminate the DOE.
It’s unclear what would happen to some of the programs overseen by the DOE if it were eliminated, such as educational plans for special needs children and federal funding programs for K-12 schools that help support the education of students from low-income families and children with disabilities.
Trump claims he has the right to shut down agencies via executive order. But critics say only Congress can do so because lawmakers have the power to fund the departments.
Trump has been hit with a blizzard of lawsuits over similar executive actions seeking to shutter USAID, the main federal agency funding American foreign assistance.
Courts have yet to definitively rule on the issue.
