Trump Mass Accretes in Order to ‘Eliminate’ U.S. Education Department

Donald Trump on Thursday signed an order announcing his goal of “eliminating” the Department of Education, a decades-long goal of the American right to have individual states run schools untainted by federal oversight.

Trump smiled as he held up the order after signing it with schoolchildren sitting at desks arranged in the East Room of the White House during a special ceremony.

The order would “begin eliminating the federal Department of Education once and for all,” Trump said.

“We’re going to close it down and we’re going to close it down very, very quickly.” It’s no good for us,” Trump said. “We are going to reestablish education back to the states where it rightly belongs.”

The Education Department, which was established in 1979, can’t be closed down without congressional approval — but Trump’s directive will have the ability to starve it of funds and personnel.

The action fulfills one of Trump’s campaign pledges and represents one of the most extreme measures so far in the savage transformation of the government that Trump is achieving with the assistance of tech billionaire Elon Musk.

It instructs Education Secretary Linda McMahon to “take all necessary steps to facilitate the closure of the Department of Education and return education authority to the States.”

The move has drawn condemnation from Democrats and educators.

The Senate’s top Democrat, Chuck Schumer of New York, called it a “tyrannical power grab” and “one of the most destructive and devastating steps Donald Trump has ever taken.”

The signing ceremony was attended by Republican leaders, including the governors of Florida, Ron DeSantis, and Texas, Greg Abbott.

Trump has framed the move as a needed cost-saving measure and called it an effort to improve educational standards in the United States, which he argues is falling behind Europe and China.

Education, however, has long been a front in the culture wars in the United States, and Republicans have long sought to take control of it away from the federal government.

‘Beautiful day’

Trump’s decision to appoint McMahon — the former chief executive of World Wrestling Entertainment — to head the department was widely viewed as a sign the department’s days were numbered.

“Hopefully she’ll be our last secretary of education,” the president said at the signing ceremony.

In Washington, McMahon, who last week cut the department’s staff in half after taking the office, told reporters that Trump “wants to get those dollars back to those states without the bureaucracy of Washington.”

On the campaign trail, Trump has said he will abolish the department and return authority over its functions to US states — as has happened with abortion rights.

But the White House said earlier that an education department — a greatly reduced one — was likely to remain in place to handle “critical functions” including loans and some grants to low-income students.

“The Department of Education is going to be a fraction of its size,” Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt told reporters before the signing.

The Heritage Foundation — a right-wing think-tank whose “Project 2025” recommendations have already found their way into Trump’s executive orders — welcomed the move.

“It’s a beautiful day to abolish the Department of Education,” it said on X.

With about 13 percent of funding for primary and secondary schools coming from federal coffers, the rest coming from states and localities, the US government has traditionally played a limited role in education.

But federal money is critical for low-income schools and students with special needs. And the federal government has played a pivotal role in enforcing vital civil rights protections for students.

Trump, his billionaire advisor Musk and Musk’s Department for Government Efficiency (DOGE) have already gutted several other government agencies, crippling them, effectively, by cutting programs and workers.

Earlier this week, a federal judge stopped a similar attempt to shutter the US Agency for International Development, saying the effort probably violated the US Constitution.