The administration of the United States (U.S.) President Donald Trump is preparing an executive order to abolish the U.S. Department of Education, according to media reports in the country.
According to the information, this is a plan Trump had during his first term, which has the support of the more conservative wing of the Republican Party.
However, since the Department of Education was established in 1979 by a decision of the U.S. Congress, legal experts in the U.S. say that such an executive order would be unconstitutional.
Nevertheless, according to U.S. media, Trump will still sign this order and attempt to eliminate one of the younger departments within the U.S. government.
It should be noted that the “war” against the Department of Education has been waged for years by the more radical parts of the Republican Party. Trump has joined this effort, claiming that “a trillion dollars is being wasted for nothing” and that the U.S. education system is “at the bottom of the world.”
The Republican idea is to redirect federal funding to the state level, giving individual states full responsibility for maintaining their education systems.
Besides the questionable legality of this decision, critics argue that such a move would be an even greater obstacle to the advancement of U.S. education, considering that the system would become entirely dependent on how much funding each state could allocate.
It is also worth noting that abolishing this department is nearly impossible, even if the Republican Party pursued it through Congress.
Namely, a Senate vote on such an issue requires 60 votes, and even if all Republicans voted in favor, they would have only 53 votes for such an endeavor.
It is highly unlikely that the Democratic Party, which opposes this move, would allow even seven of its senators to vote alongside the Republicans and support the abolition of the Department of Education, Klix.ba writes.
