(The Guardian) Donald Trump signed an executive order on Thursday that instructs the US education secretary, Linda McMahon, to start dismantling the Department of Education, seemingly attempting to circumvent the need to obtain congressional approval to formally close a federal department.
The administration may eventually pursue an effort to get Congress to shut down the agency, Trump said at a signing ceremony at the White House on Thursday, because its budget had more than doubled in size in recent years but national test scores had not improved.
The federal government does not mandate curriculum in schools; that has been the responsibility of state and local governments, which provide 90% of the funding to schools. Nevertheless, at the White House, Trump repeated his campaign promise to “send education back to the states”.
The executive order targeting the education department, which has been expected for weeks, directed McMahon to take all necessary steps to shut down key functionalities. Trump added at the signing ceremony that he hoped McMahon would be the last education secretary.
“My administration will take all lawful steps to shut down the department. We’re going to shut it down and shut it down as quickly as possible. It’s doing us no good,” Trump said.
McMahon appeared to smile in acknowledgment as she sat in the front row at the signing event in the East Room. Trump spoke from a stage in front of a row of state flags, and flanked on each side by a group of schoolchildren sitting at small desks.
The bulk of the education department’s budget is made up of federal grant and loan programmes, including the $18.4bn Title I programme that provides funding to high-poverty K-12 schools and the $15.5bn Idea programme that helps cover the education costs for students with disabilities.
The White House said those programmes, as well as the $1.6tn federal student loan programme, would not be affected by the order. It was not immediately clear what spending cuts the administration would be able to achieve without cutting those initiatives.
The move comes after the administration has already taken steps to undercut the department’s authority by instituting a round of layoffs that has reduced its workforce by nearly half and cancelled dozens of grants and contracts.
The idea of shutting down the education department dates back to efforts by Republicans in the 1980s. But the push has become increasingly mainstream in recent years as pro-Trump grassroots activists took aim at agendas that promoted education standards and more inclusive policies.
Representative Thomas Massie, a Republican from Kentucky, has separately introduced a one-sentence bill on Friday that would terminate the education department at the end of 2026. Similar efforts have failed to get enough votes to pass in previous years.
The Trump administration’s efforts to shutter the education department have largely followed the playbook in Project 2025, the Heritage Foundation’s rightwing manifesto to remake the federal government, which envisions the department as a “statistics-gathering agency that disseminates information to the states”.
Democrats on Capitol Hill denounced the executive order and warned it could leave in jeopardy millions of low-income families, who rely on federal funding in schools.
“Shutting down the Department of Education will harm millions of children in our nation’s public schools, their families and hardworking teachers. Class sizes will soar, educators will be fired, special education programs will be cut and college will get even more expensive,” Hakeem Jeffries, the US House minority leader, said in a statement.
