Washington (AP) – President Donald Trump is preparing for the US education department in the full extent of his power and directs his administration to reduce the expenses and suppress the employees to terminate. However, his promise to close the department collides with a different reality: most expenses – and their existence – are arranged by the congress.
An executive regulation to prepare the White House seems to recognize the limits of the power of the president. The planned order would instruct his educational manager to handle the agency, but ask the congress to say goodbye to a measure that it abolished in accordance with the sources familiar with the plan.
Trump has not yet signed such an order. At a press conference of the White House on Tuesday, Trump joked the first task for Linda McMahon, his candidate for education secretary.
“I want Linda to get out of a job,” said Trump.
Trump campaigned for a promise to close the department and said that it had been infiltrated by “radicals, zealers and Marxists”. In the almost five decades since the agency was founded, conservative attempts have undertaken to complete them. Critics said they wasted taxpayers and inserted the federal government into local educational decisions.
It is expected that Trump gives his educational manager a deadline for the agency’s course for the agency. But some of his allies also wonder how far he can go without the congress. Some of the most crucial programs in the department are required according to federal legislation, including the money of title I for low -income schools and student loans.
That was a source of frustration while Trump’s first office, when his educational manager repeatedly sought budget cuts, but instead increased the expenditure of the agency every year.
In addition, Trump’s striving to close the department could be complicated by his own agenda. He has already created modern work for the department, including plans to promote “patriotic” training and the efforts to pursue schools that convey controversial lessons about breed and gender. The agency has also opened modern investigations into universities after Trump ordered a procedure against campus anti -Semitism.
What Trump can actually do to reduce expenses could be confined to small bactions of the budget with knowledge of the plan. It would hardly be the annual budget of the department of 79 billion US dollars.
The sources spoke about the condition of anonymity because they were not entitled to publicly discuss the plan.
The support of the congress would provide another test for Trump’s fluctuations. Some Republicans have raised doubts about the popularity of closing the department or the veiling of their programs that support Republican and Democratic States alike.
The house considered changing a law to close the agency in 2023, but 60 Republicans closed the Democrat against them. MP Thomas Massie, R-Kentucky, made last week against the introduction of legislation to close the agency. In the one-and-point proposal, it says to end the educational department “on December 31, 2026”.
However, there is signs that Trump is determined to give his promise.
Dozens of employees of the educational department were paid on Friday in response to an executive regulation, in which diversity, equity and inclusion efforts in the federal government were banned. Most workers do not work in Dei, but, according to a union, had attended an optional course for diversity course that represents the department staff. Trump’s command demanded that the government be released that government officials are released in “legally permissible maximum permissible”.
The White House has also put federal work under pressure. The employees of the educational department were among those who were offered to leave their work by February 6th and to receive a buy out worth seven months.
The agency enveloped a fresh wave of fear when a team of Elon Musk’s so -called Ministry of Government Efficiency appeared this week in the department’s offices. A spokesman for the educational department confirmed that a team was on site on Monday, but did not provide any details about the type of work. Musk’s colleagues have already tried to close the US Agency for International Development and to receive access to sensitive payment systems in the financial department.
Trump’s comments at his press conference triggered alarms among schools and states that rely on federal money. Bundes financing makes a diminutive part of the public school budget off-round and 14%, among other things, targeted support for faint schools and special education.
In Minnesota, the Democrats warned of the potential effects of Trump’s command on Tuesday. Senator Mary Kunesh said that she was concerned that the order could disrupt financing and demanded more clarity of the plan.
“Imagine we have billions of dollars that are frozen at the federal level,” said Kunesh at a press conference. “How will we make sure that you have the curriculum you have to learn?”
Some Republicans in Minnesotas said that there was no reason to panic without the full details of the order.
It is expected that these details are sorted out by Trump’s educational manager, and the president did not immediately say whether he would try to preserve the core work of the department.
A potential model can be found in Project 2025, a blueprint for Trump’s second term of office of the conservative Heritage Foundation. The proposal stipulates that many of the department’s largest programs are transferred to other agencies.
As part of the 2025 project, the financing of Title I, the largest source for federal money for public schools, is moved to the Ministry of Health and Human Services and is given as block subsidies to states that you can issue as you want, without strings are . The office of the education department for civil rights would contact the Ministry of Justice.
Trump was looking for a distance from project 2025, although he hired some of the employees behind it, and in some questions there is a considerable overlap with its own platform.
Democrats in the congress quickly jumped on Trump’s plan. Senator Edward Markay, D-Mass., A member of the Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions, called it an “attack on educators, families and students”. He swore to fight it.
Trump’s plan could make the hearing for confirmation for McMahon, a billionaire professional wrestling -mogul and a long -time Trump allied. Some consultants had asked the White House to keep the order tranquil to avoid thorny questions, and others urge it to be signed after their confirmation. No date has yet been set for your hearing in the Senate.
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Steve Karnowski, Associated Press Writer, contributed from Minneapolis.
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