President Donald Trump is expected to sign an executive order today that will close down the Department of Education, something he’s vowed to do for months.
White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt confirmed that today at 4 p.m. EST, Trump will hold an event in which he signs the order.
Expected to attend is Education Secretary Linda McMahon, who will be directed in the executive order 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,” according to the White House.
While the department may not be formally closed down, as it requires an act of Congress, Trump could effectively put restrictions on it, making it all but impossible for employees to do their work.
He’s done something similar with the U.S. Agency for International Development.
The Department of Education Organization Act was passed in 1979 with bipartisan support under President Jimmy Carter. That law created the Department of Education.
However, support for the department didn’t last long among Republicans, as during Carter’s predecessor’s term, President Ronald Reagan, the abolishment of the department was first discussed and has since been a goal for numerous Republicans.
The news of Trump’s upcoming executive order comes after the DOE moved to lay off thousands of workers last week, something McMahon said was a first step while appearing on Fox News. She also acknowledged that closing the Department of Education has been a long-time goal of not just Trump but the Republican party as a whole.
“Actually, it is, because that was the president’s mandate,” McMahon said. “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.”
The department cut around 1,315 federal workers last Tuesday as a part of McMahon looking to put herself out of a job, as Trump has quipped he wanted her to do.
“But what we did today was to take the first step of eliminating what I think is bureaucratic bloat,” she said.
Trump said last month that he thinks he could gain the support needed in Congress to formally shut down the department, but said they’d “have to work with the teachers union, because the teachers union is the only one that’s opposed to it.”
However, at least 21 Democratic attorneys general have sued the Trump administration over its efforts, arguing that he is unlawfully attempting to shut down the department.
“Because neither the President nor his agencies can undo the many acts of Congress that authorize the Department, dictate its responsibilities, and appropriate funds for it to administer, the President’s directive to eliminate the Department of Education—including through the March 11 decimation of the Department’s workforce and any other agency implementation—is an unlawful violation of the separation of powers, and the Executive’s obligation to take care that the law be faithfully executed,” the lawsuit reads.