Trump Signs Executive Order Dismantling Department Of Education, Tasks Newly Confirmed Secretary With Eliminating The Job She Just Got

The Filing

WASHINGTON. President Donald J. Trump signed an executive order Thursday directing the Department of Education to begin the process of dismantling itself, fulfilling a long-standing Republican promise to abolish the agency by appointing as its leader a former professional wrestling executive whose first official task would be to close the office, switch off the lights, and pull the door shut behind her.

The order, signed approximately three weeks after the Senate confirmed Education Secretary Linda McMahon to run the department, directs McMahon to "take all necessary steps" to facilitate the closure of the agency she had spent her entire confirmation process pledging to lead. Sources within the administration confirmed that McMahon had understood her role from the outset, noting that the President had been "very clear" about wanting her to do nothing, to do it quickly, and to do it on camera.

"The Department of Education does not educate anyone," the President said at the East Room signing ceremony, which featured school-aged children seated at small wooden desks arranged behind him for photographic purposes. "It just sends money. We can have the money sent by other people. People who do not work at the Department of Education."

White House officials clarified that the order does not, on its own, abolish the cabinet department, which can only be eliminated by an act of Congress, but said it represented a meaningful first step toward redirecting authority over American public schools to state governments, where it would be exercised by elected officials whose own constituents had been educated by the very system they were now responsible for replacing. The administration emphasized that civil rights enforcement, Title I funding for low-income districts, and the federal student loan portfolio, totaling more than $1.6 trillion, would continue under the supervision of agencies that had not been designed to supervise them.

A senior administration official, asked which agency would assume responsibility for the loan portfolio, said the question was "being studied," and that the President remained "deeply committed to making sure students get whatever they are owed, eventually." The same official noted that the executive order also directed the department to wind down its enforcement of disability protections under the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act, an enforcement function the administration described as "the kind of thing the states are going to want to handle themselves."

At press time, Secretary McMahon was reportedly weighing several leadership styles appropriate to her remaining tenure, including delegation, absenteeism, and resignation.

Who Benefits

§Donald J. Trump, who fulfills a 46-year conservative campaign promise that previous Republican presidents had been afraid to enact for fear of what it would do.
§Linda McMahon, who acquires a cabinet title and a place in presidential history without the burden of actually administering a cabinet department.
§State governors and legislatures opposed to federal civil rights oversight in schools, who reclaim authority to decide which students require legal protection and which do not.
§Private and for-profit education vendors, who anticipate easier access to a federal student loan portfolio that has been newly stripped of consumer protection enforcement.
§The Heritage Foundation and the architects of Project 2025, who watched a marquee policy goal cross from white paper to executive order in under three months.
§Right-wing donors and PACs that have spent four and a half decades financing the campaign to abolish the department and may now redirect those funds toward their next target.

Sourced to the public record · presented without editorial embellishment