# Trump orders Education Secretary Linda McMahon to start dismantling the Education Department
*Event date: 2025-03-20*
By IO Digest Desk
President Donald Trump signed an executive order on March 20, 2025, directing Education Secretary Linda McMahon to start dismantling the Education Department, a move that would shrink one of the federal government's central education agencies even though full abolition would still require Congress. The supplied NBC News report says the administration framed the order as the beginning of a wind-down rather than immediate elimination.
The ceremony in the East Room was designed to underline the political message. Trump stood with children seated at school desks and said the department would be eliminated, then asked the children whether he should do it. He also suggested that McMahon might be the last secretary of education. The pageantry was unmistakable: this was both a policy announcement and a symbolic attack on the department itself.
But the legal reality is more complicated. Congress created the department in 1979, and the report says abolishing it outright would require congressional approval and would face major obstacles in the Senate, where 60 votes are needed to overcome a filibuster. Sen. Bill Cassidy said he would submit legislation to carry out Trump's goal, while Democrats called the move reckless and warned that low-income students, students of color, students with disabilities and rural students could be hurt.
The White House has also tried to narrow the practical significance of the order. Press secretary Karoline Leavitt said the department would not be completely eliminated and that its critical functions would continue, including civil rights enforcement and oversight of student loans and Pell grants. A senior administration official said Title I funding and services for students with disabilities would also remain. That means the administration is describing the order as a reduction and reorganization, not a total shutdown.
McMahon herself had already signaled that any full closure would need Congress. Her confirmation-hearing comments, quoted by NBC, said the administration would work with lawmakers and present a plan that senators and representatives could support. The executive order therefore appears to push beyond that legislative path and toward an aggressive executive strategy, even if it cannot, on its own, erase the department.
The backlash was immediate. The National Education Association said the administration's actions would hurt students by increasing class sizes, cutting job training and making higher education more expensive. The NAACP called the order unconstitutional. Polling cited in the report showed most registered voters opposed eliminating the department, which suggests the political argument for abolition is weaker than the White House may have expected.
The broader stakes are clear enough. The order does not itself abolish the Education Department, but it does set up a fight over the federal role in schools, loans, civil rights enforcement and aid to poorer districts. Whether Trump's order becomes a lasting policy shift or another legal and political battle will depend on what Congress, the courts and the states do next.
The order does not end the department overnight, but it does put pressure on Congress, the courts and state officials to define how far the administration can go. The fight now is over whether the White House can hollow out the agency by executive action before lawmakers decide whether to abolish it outright. That is why the order matters beyond the ceremony: it starts the real political battle over federal education policy. The longer the order remains in place, the more the legal and legislative questions will matter.
