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WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump signed an executive order Thursday directing Education Secretary Linda McMahon to start dismantling the Education Department.
“It sounds strange, doesn’t it? Department of Education. We’re going to eliminate it,” Trump said in the East Room of the White House at a ceremony where he was flanked by children seated at school desks. Before he signed 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 he hoped Democrats would vote in favor.
“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 Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee, said on X that he will “submit legislation” to accomplish Trump’s goal of shutting down the Education Department “as soon as possible.”
Congress established the Education Department in 1979 during President Jimmy Carter’s administration, and any effort to abolish it would face major obstacles from Democrats in the Republican-controlled Senate, where 60 votes are required to overcome filibusters and advance measures to final votes.
The House Education Committee’s top Democrat, Bobby Scott, of Virginia, called the executive order “reckless” and argued in a statement that 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 high proportions 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, which several Republican state attorneys general and governors attended. Trump publicly acknowledged Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, Iowa Gov. Kim Reynolds, Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton and others.
Polling on eliminating the Education Department shows the move is broadly unpopular, large part because of opposition from Democrats and independents. A Quinnipiac University survey conducted March 6-10 found that 60% of registered voters opposed the plan, while 33% were in favor of it. Just 1% of Democrats 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 Tuesday on SiriusXM’s “The David Webb Show” 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 said: “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 its workforce nearly in half.
NBC News recently reported that state officials and lawmakers have said they are not prepared to take on the full responsibility of education policy, and Trump’s latest order is likely to 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 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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