President Donald Trump is set to sign a long-anticipated executive order Thursday that seeks to eliminate the U.S. Department of Education, delivering on a signature campaign promise to try to dismantle the agency, according to senior Trump administration officials.
Trump is expected to sign the order, which has been in the works for weeks, at a White House ceremony attended by several Republican governors and state education commissioners.
Trump will direct his 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,” according to a White House summary of the order reviewed by USA TODAY. It also calls for the “uninterrupted delivery of services, programs, and benefits on which Americans rely.”
Trump’s order, which is almost certain to invite legal challenges from the left, sets up a new test for the bounds of presidential authority after the Trump administration’s efforts to shut down the U.S. Agency for International Development were blocked this week by a federal district judge in Maryland.
The department, established as a Cabinet-level agency by Congress in 1979, will not close immediately with Trump’s signature. Eliminating it in its entirety would require action from Congress.
Although Trump has reduced the agency’s workforce dramatically in recent weeks, the agency still exists and continues to oversee vital federal funding programs for schools.
