On Thursday, President Donald Trump is expected to sign a new executive order intended to shutter the Department of Education. But like many of Trump's other executive orders, it's almost certain to be decided in the courts.
NBC News reported Wednesday that Trump's order would instruct Education Secretary Linda McMahon — a former professional wrestling magnate — to "take all necessary steps to facilitate the closure the Department of Education and return education authority to the States, while continuing to ensure the effective and uninterrupted delivery of services, programs, and benefits on which Americans rely." McMahon previously told Fox News that she understood her role as ushering in the agency's destruction.
"That was the president’s mandate," McMahon said. "His directive to me, clearly, is to shut down the Department of Education, which we know we’ll have to work with Congress, you know, to get that accomplished."
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As McMahon noted, Trump cannot simply dismantle a federal agency authorized by Congress with the stroke of a pen. States Newsroom reporter Kelsie Moseley-Morris wrote on Bluesky that journalists should "include in reporting that he cannot do this by executive order." And Veronica Goodman, who works on education and workforce policy at the Center for American Progress, also observed that "only Congress has the authority to shutter the Department of Education."
"Imagine thinking a president can just sign away an entire federal department like it’s a gym membership," software engineer Alex Cole tweeted in response to the announcement. "Congress created the Department of Education, so unless Trump has a magic pen that overrides the Constitution, this isn't happening."
If Trump aims to officially abolish the agency — whose $286 billion in appropriations represents roughly 4% of the federal budget — it would require both a majority vote in the House of Representatives and 60 votes in the U.S. Senate to bypass a filibuster. Republicans only have 53 seats, and it's unlikely that seven Democrats would join them in voting for a bill to get rid of the Department of Education. This means that Trump's only remaining option is to get the courts to back his executive order, which is also an unlikely scenario. Tristan Snell, who is a former prosecutor at the Office of the New York Attorney General, reminded his followers on X: "Even the Trump-aligned Heritage Foundation (which released Project 2025) concluded the president lacks unilateral power to kill a department without Congress."
"Every day would be a great day for Article I and III [Congress and the courts, respectively] to wake up and push back on the reckless speedrun into autocracy that Trump II is perpetrating," American University assistant professor David Ryan Miller posted to Bluesky.
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Click here to read NBC's full article.