In a shocking twist, reports making the rounds online reveals that President of the United States of America, Donald Trump is set to shut down the US department of Education.
This comes after a fact sheet provided by the white house made the rounds online.
Trump will hold an event at the White House to sign the order directing Education Secretary Linda McMahon to “take all necessary steps to facilitate the closure the Department of Education and return education authority to the States, while continuing to ensure the effective and uninterrupted delivery of services, programs, and benefits on which Americans rely.”
The Education Department was founded in 1979 by President Jimmy Carter after Congress passed the Department of Education Organization Act in bipartisan votes. According to the administration’s own figures, Trump inherited a department with 4,133 employees. Since then, nearly 600 employees have resigned or retired, and 1,300 employees were informed they would lose their jobs as part of a reduction-in-force last week, leaving 2,183 employees, or about half the department’s size just a few weeks ago. McMahon recently moved to drastically reduce the Education Department by halving its workforce, calling the job terminations the first step toward closing the department.
“That was the president’s mandate,” McMahon said last week in an interview with Fox News. “His directive to me, clearly, is to shut down the Department of Education, which we know we’ll have to work with Congress, you know, to get that accomplished.”
McMahon similarly vowed at her Senate confirmation hearing to work with Congress to advance Trump’s plan to dismantle the department. She telegraphed in an email to employees this month that major changes were coming.
“Our job is to respect the will of the American people and the President they elected, who has tasked us with accomplishing the elimination of bureaucratic bloat here at the Department of Education—a momentous final mission—quickly and responsibly,” she wrote, according to a copy obtained by NBC News.
The Senate confirmed McMahon in a 51-45 vote. No Democrat voted for her.