Two people with knowledge of the proceedings informed NBC News that the White House is drafting an executive order to abolish the Education Department.
A federal agency cannot be abolished by President Donald Trump on his own without Congress’s consent.
The proposed order is the culmination of Trump’s campaign pledges to dismantle the Education Department, which was founded in 1979 under President Jimmy Carter.
“One other thing I’ll be doing very early in the administration is closing up the Department of Education in Washington, D.C.,
And sending all education and education work and needs back to the states,” Trump said in a video he shared on social media in September 2023.
Earlier in the video, he said, “American society spends over $1 trillion annually on public education systems, but we are literally right smack — guess what —