President Donald Trump signed an executive order to begin dismantling the US Education Department in front of a dozen students sitting at staged desks.
Trump delivered remarks on why he is ‘eliminating the federal Department of Education once and for all’ and then walked past more than a dozen young children in East Room of the White House.
‘Good looking people here,’ he said, gesturing at the students, and patted one of them on the shoulder.
Trump then asked the students sitting at both sides of his desk if he should do it, and some of them nodded and smiled.
The president took a seat and joked if anyone was superstitious. He used his usual, thick black marker to sign his name on the document, as the students signed replica papers on their desks simultaneously.
Trump held up the document and smiled widely, and the students followed suit. One of the older students signed his document with a heart. A boy wrote on his, ‘You’re the best president ever! MAGA!!’ A girl wrote, ‘Thank you for all you are doing for ISRAEL’ and included a heart.
Most of the students smiled, but one young boy was pictured yawning during the dedicated event on Thursday afternoon.
Speaking at a podium moments earlier, Trump said, ‘We’re going to shut it down and shut it down as quickly as possible.’
‘We want to return our students to the states. Governors are so happy about this, they want education to come back to them,’ he said.
His order directs Education Secretary Linda McMahon, who is co-founder of World Wrestling Entertainment, to start shrinking the $100billion department. But critical programs it has been overseeing will be taken over by federal departments, including Pell Grants federal student loan payments, Title I funding for low-income schools and money for students with disabilities.
‘They’re going to be preserved in full and redistributed to various other agencies and departments that will take very good care of them,’ Trump said.
Trump thanked McMahon for ‘presiding over something that’s so important’.
‘Hopefully, you won’t be there for too long,’ he said.
‘But we’re going to find something else for you, Linda.’
Trump acted on his campaign promise to undo the department which he has called wasteful, and send education work back to the states. The president said the US spends the most per pupil but ranks near the bottom in education compared to other countries.
His administration had already cut the department’s workforce in half.
The Education Department was created in 1979 when Democratic then-President Jimmy Carter signed legislation to form it as a Cabinet-level agency. In doing so, Carter fulfilled a campaign promise to the National Education Association, which was the nation’s biggest teachers’ union.
Republican presidents have sought to get rid of it since the 1980s, and many parents who were against the coronavirus pandemic shutdown and other federally dictated school policies got behind it.
‘That was 45 years in the making,’ Trump said.
Trump is the first modern president to move to shutter a federal department.
Completely dissolving the department requires an act of Congress.
Republican Senator Bill Cassidy, who is chairman of the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee, said he would introduce legislation to back the shutdown.
‘I agree with President Trump that the Department of Education has failed its mission,’ said Cassidy.
‘Since the Department can only be shut down with congressional approval, I will support the President’s goals by submitting legislation to accomplish this as soon as possible.’
The union representing the Education Department, the American Federation of Government Employees, stated it was ‘outraged’ at Trump’s directive.
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And the nonprofit legal organization Democracy Forward vowed to challenge the order.
‘We will be filing litigation against this action and will use every legal tool to ensure that the rights of students, teachers, and families are fully protected,’ stated the organization’s CEO, Skye Perryman.
A Quinnipiac poll in March found that six of 10 registered voters were against Trump’s then plan to do away with the Education Department. Almost all Democratic voters opposed it, compared to only two of 10 Republican voters.
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