On March 20, President Donald Trump signed an executive order to start toppling the US Department of Education in an attempt to privatize federal student loans, schooling, and other matters the agency handles. Trump says his administration is taking “all necessary steps to facilitate the closure of the Department of Education and return education authority to the states.” 

This unprecedented move comes just days after the Education Department announced on Tuesday that it would lay off more than 1,300 workers, stripping the agency of the necessary staffers to operate federal loan management for colleges and oversee civil rights enforcement in schools. 

As CNN points out, this move is unheard of in modern US presidential history. His attempt to shut down the agency completely can’t happen without the signoff from Congress, which the right doesn’t have the necessary votes to carry out. Alternatively, the right takes strategic steps to remove all resources needed to keep the agency operational. 

“We’re going to shut it down, and shut it down as quickly as possible,” Trump said in a recent address in the White House’s East Room to students in uniform. 

The White House administration has said it plans to “greatly minimize” services the US Department of Education handles, such as student loans and administering grants for at-risk students. These will now be “redistributed to various other agencies and departments that will take very good care of them.”

In the address, Trump said several times that control of education should be returned to the states, and this move will ultimately put the US on par with other countries like China. 

“I really believe that they’ll be as good as any of them,” he said. “And then you’ll have some laggards and we’ll work with them. And we can all tell you who the laggards will be right now.”

White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt said on Thursday: “When it comes to student loans and Pell Grants, those will still be run out of the Department of Education, but we don’t need to be spending more than $3 trillion over the course of a few decades on a department that’s clearly failing in its initial intention to educate our students.” 

Opponents of the move point out the gross implications and decry the actions of President Trump and Elon Musk, two entrepreneurs with no experience dealing with federal education administration or policy. 

“Donald Trump and Elon Musk have aimed their wrecking ball at public schools and the futures of the 50 million students in rural, suburban, and urban communities across America, by dismantling public education to pay for tax handouts for billionaires,” National Education Association President Becky Pringle said in a statement.

“If successful, Trump’s continued actions will hurt all students by sending class sizes soaring, cutting job training programs, making higher education more expensive and out of reach for middle class families, taking away special education services for students with disabilities, and gutting student civil rights protections,” she said.