Trump Signs Order Aiming To Close the Education Department

President Trump signed a long-expected executive action on Thursday calling on U.S. Education Secretary Linda McMahon to 'take all necessary steps to facilitate the closure of the Department of Education and return authority over education to the States and local communities.' From a report: 'We're going to be returning education, very simply, back to the states where it belongs,' Trump said. 'And this is a very popular thing to do, but much more importantly, it's a common sense thing to do, and it's going to work, absolutely.'

The move has been expected since early February, when the White House revealed its intentions but withheld the action until after McMahon's Senate confirmation. It now arrives more than a week after the Trump administration has already begun sweeping layoffs at the Education Department. According to the administration's own numbers, Trump inherited a department with 4,133 employees. Nearly 600 workers have since chosen to leave, by resigning or retiring. And last week, 1,300 workers were told they would lose their jobs as part of a reduction in force. That leaves 2,183 staff at the department -- roughly half the size it was just a few weeks ago.

The order instructs McMahon to act 'to the maximum extent appropriate and permitted by law,' an acknowledgement that the department and its signature responsibilities were created by Congress and cannot legally be ended without congressional approval. That would almost certainly require 60 votes in the U.S. Senate to overcome a Democratic filibuster.

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