Trump Axe Falls on Department of Education, But Will It Be Fatal?

At a time when controversial executive orders have been literally raining since his inauguration as the 47th president of the US on January 20 this year, President Donald Trump, as part of his campaign to Make America Great Again, signed yet another executive order—to begin dismantling the US Department of Education—on Thursday. 

The order seeks to fulfill decades of conservative ambition to get rid of the agency, raising new questions for the country’s millions of public schools, student-loan holders and parents.

https://x.com/i/status/1902826832052793794

"Closing the Department of Education would provide children and their families the opportunity to escape a system that is failing them," President Trump said. 

But no president in modern history has tried to close down a Cabinet-level agency, CNN reported. Shutting down the department wholesale would require an act of Congress, which created the agency in 1979. Trump officials acknowledge they don’t have the necessary votes to dissolve the department that way; instead, the order Trump signed on Thursday instructed 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.”

Accusing the agency of "breath-taking failures", the Republican president vowed to return the money it controls to individual states, BBC reported.