White House Plans Executive Order Closing Education Department

The Trump administration is reportedly preparing a new executive order to either close the Department of Education or merge it with another department.

President Donald Trump, who has long made his plans clear to dismantle the U.S. Department of Education, could sign the order as early as Thursday. The move is a part of the president’s larger strategy to significantly downsize the federal government’s workforce.

The draft order directs the Education Secretary Linda McMahon, the wife of Vince McMahon and co-founder of World Wrestling Entertainment (WWE), to “take all necessary steps to facilitate the closure of the Education Department” while operating to the “maximum extent appropriate and permitted by law.” It goes on to say that, “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.”

After appointing Linda McMahon as the Secretary of the Department, Trump told her, “I hope you do a great job in putting yourself out of a job.”

President Trump also intends to push for Congress to pass legislation aligned with this executive order.

According to CNN, if Trump’s plans come to fruition, “it’s possible some programs and funding could be retained and shifted to other agencies,” as they were before the U.S. Department of Education was created in 1979.