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Trump set to sign executive order shuttering the Education Department [1]
['Https', 'Media-Cldnry.S-Nbcnews.Com Image Upload Newscms', 'Garrett Haake', 'Nnamdi Egwuonwu', 'Tyler Kingkade', "Garrett Haake Is Nbc News' Senior White House Correspondent.", 'Nnamdi Egwuonwu Is A Politics Reporter At Nbc News.', 'Tyler Kingkade Is A National Reporter For Nbc News', 'Based In Los Angeles.']
Date: 2025-03-20 13:44:16.702000+00:00
President Donald Trump is expected to sign an executive order Thursday to close the Education Department, fulfilling a yearslong pledge to dismantle the federal agency, the White House confirmed.
Trump will hold an event at the White House to sign the order directing Education Secretary Linda McMahon to “take all necessary steps to facilitate the closure the Department of Education and return education authority to the States, while continuing to ensure the effective and uninterrupted delivery of services, programs, and benefits on which Americans rely.”
USA Today first reported that Trump will sign the order Thursday.
White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt shared the story Thursday morning in a post to X, writing in all-capital letters that the signing was "happening today at 4pm ET."
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Formally closing the department requires an act of Congress. But even without formally shutting it down, the Trump administration could effectively make it nearly impossible for employees to carry out their work, as it has done with the U.S. Agency for International Development.
President Jimmy Carter established the department in 1979 after Congress passed the Department of Education Organization Act in bipartisan votes.
McMahon recently moved to drastically reduce the size of the Education Department by cutting its workforce in half. She called the job terminations the first step toward shutting down the department.
"That was the president’s mandate," McMahon said last week in an interview with Fox News. "His directive to me, clearly, is to shut down the Department of Education, which we know we’ll have to work with Congress, you know, to get that accomplished."
McMahon similarly vowed at her Senate confirmation hearing to work with Congress to advance Trump’s plan to dismantle the department. She telegraphed in an email to employees this month that major changes were coming.
“Our job is to respect the will of the American people and the President they elected, who has tasked us with accomplishing the elimination of bureaucratic bloat here at the Department of Education—a momentous final mission—quickly and responsibly,” she wrote, according to a copy obtained by NBC News.
The Senate confirmed McMahon in a 51-45 vote. No Democrat voted for her.
Trump has suggested that he could garner enough congressional support to formally close the department, characterizing teachers unions as more of a threat to the plan than lawmakers.
“I think I’d work with Congress,” Trump said last month in the Oval Office. “We’d have to work with the teachers union, because the teachers union is the only one that’s opposed to it.”
It is unclear whether Trump has secured the support of any Democratic lawmakers, many of whom have balked at his efforts on that front.
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[1] Url:
https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/trump-administration/trump-set-sign-executive-order-shuttering-department-education-rcna197191
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