President Donald Trump will sign an executive order to abolish the Department of Education
White House has prepared an executive order directing Education Secretary Linda McMahon to begin the process of dismantling the department but fully eliminating it will require Congress to act.
March 8, 2025
President Trump will sign an executive order to abolish the Department of Education as early as Thursday, The Wall Street Journal reported.
Earlier this week the Senate voted 51-45 to confirm Linda McMahon as the 13th Secretary of Education.
President Trump vowed to wage war with Education Department and give power back to the states.
“On Day 1, I will sign a new executive order to cut federal funding for any school pushing critical race theory, transgender insanity, and other inappropriate racial, sexual or political content onto the shoulders of our children,” President Trump has said. “And I will not give one penny to any school that has a vaccine mandate or a mask mandate.”
President Trump said he wants to strip the entire department.
“We’ll have one person plus a secretary, and all the person has to do is, ‘Are you teaching English? Are you teaching arithmetic? What are you doing? Reading, writing and arithmetic, and are you not teaching woke?’ Not teaching woke is a very big factor, but we’ll have a very small staff,” President Trump said on the campaign trail in October.
“For the past four years, as the Chair of the Board at the America First Policy Institute (AFPI), Linda has been a fierce advocate for Parents’ Rights, working hard at both AFPI and America First Works (AFW) to achieve Universal School Choice in 12 States, giving children the opportunity to receive an excellent Education, regardless of zip code or income. As Secretary of Education, Linda will fight tirelessly to expand ‘Choice’ to every State in America, and empower parents to make the best Education decisions for their families,” President Trump said in November after he won the election and nominated Linda McMahon.
According to The Wall Street Journal, President Trump will direct Secretary McMahon to close down the Education Department.
“A draft of the order, viewed by The Wall Street Journal, directs Education Secretary Linda McMahon to “take all necessary steps to facilitate the closure of the Education Department” based on “the maximum extent appropriate and permitted by law.”” The Wall Street Journal reported.
Draft of Trump Executive Order Aims to Eliminate Education Department
“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,” the draft order reads.
It’s not clear when President Trump would sign the order, but White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt wrote on X that it would not be Thursday.
GOP Sen. Bill Cassidy, who chairs the panel that has oversight of the Department of Education, expressed support for letting states have more jurisdiction over education systems, but said he needed to see more details of the Trump administration’s plan to cut the federal agency.
“I think you need to define what is meant by ‘winding down,’” the Louisiana Republican told CNN’s Manu Raju. “Returning control to the states and localities is, I think, technically, a good idea,” he added.
On the campaign trail, President Trump repeatedly pointed to the department as a sign of federal overreach and tied it to culture war issues.
“We will drain the government education swamp and stop the abuse of your taxpayer dollars to indoctrinate America’s youth with all sorts of things that you don’t want to have our youth hearing,” he said.
“I told Linda (McMahon), ‘Linda, I hope you do a great job in putting yourself out of a job.’ I want her to put herself out of a job – Education Department,” President Trump said last month.
Even if President Trump succeeded in ending the department, it’s possible some programs and funding could be retained and shifted to other agencies, which is where they were housed before the department was created in 1979.
Federal funding programs for K-12 schools that help support the education of students from low-income families and children with disabilities, for example, predated the creation of the Department of Education.
‘Final mission’
Hours after being confirmed, McMahon sent a message to her staff titled “Our Department’s Final Mission,” in which she invited employees to “join us in this historic final mission on behalf of all students.”
“This is our opportunity to perform one final, unforgettable public service to future generations of students,” she said.
“I hope you will join me in ensuring that when our final mission is complete, we will all be able to say that we left American education freer, stronger, and with more hope for the future.”
In coming months, the agency will work with Congress and other federal departments on next steps, she said.
A review of the department’s programs “long overdue,” McMahon told staff, noting the agency has received $1 trillion in federal funding since its establishment but that student outcomes have “languished.”
But she warned that these actions will “profoundly impact staff, budgets, and agency operations here at the Department.”
The task is “the elimination of bureaucratic bloat” at the agency, she said.
“Millions of young Americans are trapped in failing schools, subjected to radical anti-American ideology, or saddled with college debt for a degree that has not provided a meaningful return on their investment,” she said.
“Teachers are leaving the profession in droves after just a few years—and citing red tape as one of their primary reasons.”
Under her leadership, the agency’s three principles will be:
Parents are the primary decision makers; education should concentrate on math, reading, science and history, and postsecondary education should prepare students for well-paying careers.
This story has been updated with additional developments.
Morgan Rimmer and Ali Main contributed to this report.
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