Surrounded by schoolchildren sitting at desks set up in the East Room of the White House, Trump smiled as held up the order after signing it.
Trump said the order would “begin eliminating the federal Department of Education once and for all.”
“We’re going to shut it down and shut it down as quickly as possible. It’s doing us no good,” Trump said.
“We’re going to return education back to the states where it belongs.”
The Education Department, created in 1979, cannot be shuttered without the approval of Congress, but Trump’s order will likely have the power to starve it of funds and staff.
The move is one of the most drastic steps yet in the brutal overhaul of the government that Trump is carrying out with the help of tech tycoon Elon Musk and his Department for Government Efficiency (DOGE).
Democrats and educators have slammed the move.
The top Democrat in the Senate, Chuck Schumer, called it a “tyrannical power grab” and “one of the most destructive and devastating steps Donald Trump has ever taken.”
Trump has cast the move as necessary to save money and improve educational standards in the United States, saying they are lagging behind those in Europe and China.
But education has been a battleground for decades in America’s culture wars, and Republicans have long wanted to remove control of it from the federal government. (AFP)
