Donald Trump: The Education Department in America has been locked down. Donald Trump has also put his pen to that order. Yes, US President Donald Trump signed an order on Thursday with the aim of ‘abolishing’ the Education Department.
This has been a decades-old goal of the American right wing. They want different states to be free from the federal government and run their own schools. Donald Trump, surrounded by school children sitting at a desk in the East Room of the White House, was smiling while showing the order after signing it in a special ceremony.
According to news agency AFP, Donald Trump said that this order will begin to end the federal education department forever. We are going to shut it down and close it as soon as possible. It is not doing anything for us. We are going to hand over education back to the states, where it should be.
While it is also true that the US Department of Education, created in 1979, cannot be shut down without congressional approval, Trump’s order is likely to have the power to strip it of funds and staff. The move fulfills one of Donald Trump’s election promises. It is one of the most drastic steps yet in the brutal overhaul of government that Trump is carrying out with the help of tech tycoon Elon Musk. The order directs Education Secretary Linda McMahon to “take all steps necessary to facilitate the closure of the Department of Education and the return of education authority to the states.”
Democrats and academics have criticised the move. Chuck Schumer, the top Democrat in the Senate, called it a tyrannical power grab and one of the most disastrous and destructive steps taken by Donald Trump. Republican leaders including Florida governors Ron DeSantis and Greg Abbott of Texas were in the audience for the signing ceremony. Donald Trump has described the move as necessary to save money and improve educational standards in the United States, which he claims are lagging behind standards in Europe and China. But education has been a battleground in America’s culture wars for decades, and Republicans have long wanted to strip control of it from the federal government.
