U.S. Senators Chuck Schumer and Kirsten Gillibrand are blasting President Trump’s executive order that would dismantle the Department of Education.
No president in modern history has tried to close down a Cabinet-level agency. Shutting down the department wholesale would require an act of Congress, which created the agency in 1979. Trump officials acknowledge they don’t have the necessary votes to dissolve the department that way. Instead, the order Trump signed Thursday instructed Education Secretary Linda McMahon to take “all necessary steps to facilitate the closure of the Department of Education and return education authority to the states.”
How precisely the components of the Education Department would be dismantled wasn’t precisely clear.
CNN reports White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said ahead of Thursday’s signing that the order would move to “greatly minimize the agency,” but that certain “critical functions” like student loans and administering grants for at-risk students would remain under the agency’s umbrella.
Senate Minority Leader Schumer released a statement calling the attempt to dismantle the department “one of the most destructive and devastating steps Donald Trump has ever taken.”
He said, “This. Will. Hurt. Kids.” and added that this will cause “property taxes to go up while the quality of many schools will go down.”
Senator Gillibrand also issued a statement that said, “By gutting the Department of Education, he will defund critical teacher training programs, forcing schools to operate with fewer teachers, counselors, social workers, and behavior specialists. He will deprive children with disabilities of the specialized education to which they have a right under federal law. And he is killing the dream of a college education for students who can’t afford it without federal assistance.
She added that individual states don’t have the “funding, personnel, or expertise to provide this same level of support to millions of students. President Trump is prioritizing minimal cost savings from cutting a small federal department at the expense of the literacy and math skills that will allow our kids to secure high-quality, good-paying jobs in the future.”
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