United States President Donald Trump has reportedly paused the signing of an executive order to abolish the Department of Education.
The order was prepared to be signed on Thursday, according to the Wall Street Journal, but has now been pulled. It would have directed newly-confirmed Secretary of Education Linda McMahon to “take all necessary steps to facilitate the closure of the Education Department” allowed by law.
“The experiment of controlling American education through Federal programs and dollars — and the unaccountable bureaucrats those programs and dollars support — has failed our children, our teachers, and our families,” a draft of the order said.
“More Fake News! President Trump is NOT signing an Executive Order on the Department of Education today,” White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt wrote on X.
The Department of Education manages federal funding for schools and universities, as well as regulating services for students. McMahon, the former CEO of World Wrestling Entertainment, was confirmed as Secretary of Education this week.
McMahon said in her confirmation hearing that the department under her leadership “will certainly expend those dollars that Congress has passed”. However, she told employees on Monday that she planned “to send education back to the states”.
Abolishing the department would also require an act of Congress, which McMahon acknowledged at the hearing.
Trump said on the campaign trail he hoped to dismantle the Education Department, with an executive order first being drafted in early February. This order would have ended or moved all agency functions that are not written into law, and called for legislation to abolish the department.
The Trump administration’s Department of Government Efficiency initiative has also fired many employees at the department. The organisation cut US$900 million in funding from its Institute of Education Sciences, which collects statistics on students’ learning progress, last month.
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