President Trump Signs Executive Order to Dismantle Department of Education: Remarks

President Donald Trump speaks ahead of signing an executive order to reduce the size and function of the US Education Department. The order directs education secretary Linda McMahon to take steps to dismantle the department and is the first step towards its elimination.

President Donald Trump signed an executive order to largely dismantle the Education Department — an organization created by Congress and tasked with sweeping responsibilities that involve billions in funds that impact millions of American students.

The move is part of Trump’s vision to overhaul the US government.

“We’re going to eliminate it, and everybody knows it’s right,” Trump said at a White House event on Thursday, moving to deliver on a campaign promise and a long-sought goal of conservatives. “We have to get our children educated. We’re not doing well with the world of education in this country, and we haven’t for a long time.”

The order directs Education Secretary Linda McMahon to “take all necessary steps to facilitate the closure” of the department, according to a White House fact sheet. It follows an effort to slash its workforce of more than 4,000 employees by nearly half.

The move portends a clash with powerful labor unions and risks roiling parents and students at all levels of education who rely on the department’s programs. The president’s attempted demolition of a cabinet-level department is in many ways unprecedented and faces legal and logistical hurdles.

Cabinet entities have been reorganized in the past with different functions being combined or reassigned. But the last time a department was taken apart was the replacement of the Post Office Department by the US Postal Service more than 50 years ago.

Trump’s push to do the same to the US government’s educational authority faces an uncertain path, with no clear blueprint for how to carry out his goal. The administration has already acknowledged that because Congress created the department, lawmaker approval will be needed to close it down entirely. White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt said critical functions would remain within the department, though its size would be greatly reduced.

Trump on Thursday vowed to preserve some of the department’s programs, citing funding for children with disabilities and special needs, as well as Pell Grants, which are the largest source of undergraduate financial aid for low-income students.

“They’re going to be preserved in full and redistributed to various other agencies and departments that will take very good care of them,” Trump said, referring to what he called the department’s core necessities.

While Trump has said his goal is to transfer the department’s functions to states — which he claims will help improve educational outcomes for Americans — and McMahon has floated shifting some programs to other parts of the federal government, many of the details about what duties, if any, could be offloaded remains unclear.

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