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WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump signed an executive order Thursday directing Education Secretary Linda McMahon to start dismantling the Department of Education.
“It sounds strange, doesn’t it? Department of Education. We’re going to eliminate it,” Trump said while speaking in the East Room of the White House at a ceremony where he was flanked by children seated at school desks. Before signing the order, Trump turned to the children and asked, “Should I do this?”
Introducing McMahon, Trump said that “hopefully she will be our last secretary of education.” He vowed “to find something else for you, Linda.”
Congressional approval would be needed to fully abolish the department. Trump said that he hoped Democrats would vote in favor of legislation to do that.
“I hope they’re going to be voting for it,” Trump said of congressional Democrats, “because ultimately it may come before them.”
Immediately after the signing, Sen. Bill Cassidy, R-La., the chair of the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee said in a post on X that he will “submit legislation” to accomplish Trump’s goal of shutting down the Department of Education “as soon as possible.”
Congress established the Department of Education in 1979 during President Jimmy Carter’s administration, and any effort to abolish the department would face major obstacles from Democrats in the Republican-controlled Senate, where 60 votes are required to overcome a filibuster and advance a measure to a final vote.
The House Education Committee’s top Democrat, Rep. Bobby Scott, D-Va., called the executive order “reckless” and argued it would put “low-income students, students of color, students with disabilities, and rural students at risk.”
White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt told reporters Thursday morning that the department would not be completely eliminated under the executive order, saying its “critical functions” would continue, including the enforcement of civil rights laws and oversight of student loans and Pell grants.
“The Department of Education will be much smaller than it is today,” Leavitt said, adding that the order directed McMahon “to greatly minimize the agency. So when it comes to student loans and Pell grants, those will still be run out of the Department of Education.”
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The executive order also will not affect department activities aimed at meeting the educational needs of students with disabilities or Title I funding, which goes to school districts with a high proportion of students from low-income families, a senior administration official told NBC News on Wednesday.
The text of the order was not immediately published after the White House signing ceremony, where several Republican state attorneys general and governors were in attendance. Trump publicly acknowledging Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, Iowa Gov. Kim Reynolds, Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton and others.
Polling on eliminating the Department of Education shows the move is broadly unpopular, due in large part to opposition from Democrats and independents. A Quinnipiac survey conducted March 6-10 found that 60% of registered voters opposed the plan, while 33% were in favor of it. Among Democrats, just 1% are in favor of the move, while 98% oppose it. The survey had a margin of error of plus or minus 2.8 percentage points.
At her Senate confirmation hearing last month, McMahon acknowledged the need to coordinate with Congress to close the department.
“Certainly President Trump understands that we’ll be working with Congress,” she said in response to a question from Cassidy. “We’d like to do this right. We’d like to make sure that we are presenting a plan that I think our senators could get on board with and our Congress could get on board with that would have a better functioning Department of Education, but certainly does require congressional action.”
With Trump’s executive order, however, it appears the administration to some extent is sidestepping lawmakers. McMahon said on SiriusXM’s “The David Webb Show” on Tuesday that as they “wind down” her department, administration officials want to ensure they are providing states with best practices and the tools they will need.
In her justification for eliminating the department, McMahon added, “I think it’s important to note what the Department of Education does not do. The Department of Education doesn’t educate anyone. It doesn’t hire teachers. It doesn’t establish curriculum. It doesn’t hire school boards or superintendents. It really is to help provide funding so that the states themselves can help with their own programs. But that creativity and innovation has to come from the state level.”
McMahon and the administration have already taken steps in recent weeks to gut the department by cutting the workforce nearly in half.
NBC News recently reported that state officials and lawmakers have said they’re not prepared to take on the full responsibility of education policy, and Trump’s latest order will likely be met with more legal challenges.
Labor and civil rights groups issued statements Wednesday blasting the administration for the move. National Education Association President Becky Pringle said Wednesday that the administration’s actions “will hurt all students by sending class sizes soaring, cutting job training programs, making higher education more expensive and out of reach for middle class families, taking away special education services for students with disabilities, and gutting student civil rights protections.”
NAACP President Derrick Johnson called the order “unconstitutional,” adding that “the rule of law doesn’t seem to matter” to Trump.
“Only Congress can establish or abolish an executive agency,” Johnson said. “Trump is not just seeking to shut down an agency, he is deliberately dismantling the basic functions of our democracy, one piece at a time. 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.”
Rebecca Shabad is a politics reporter for NBC News based in Washington.
Garrett Haake is NBC News' senior White House correspondent.
Katherine Doyle is a White House reporter for NBC News.
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