No, Trump can't close down or defund the Department of Education or any other Agency or Department set up by legislation in Congress
He can't do it. This requires a bill in Congress. But his majority in the House is 218 : 215 right now. Will go down to 217 : 215 temporarily soon. Even when back up to strength only 220 : 215.
It just takes 3 moderate Republicans in the House to vote with all the Democrats and it can't happen. Trump is going to have major challenges getting even his core promises across the line in the maximum of 3 budget reconciliation bills a year. This one is just impossible.
Many moderate Republicans would join likely all Democrats in opposing it.
Also if he tried to close it down with a separate bill, it would be stopped in the Senate by Democrat senators, a filibuster of 41 needed to stop it and there are 47 Democrats.
The only way to avoid the filibuster is to try to pass it using the process called "reconciliation" in one of a maximum of 3 big budget bills a year. That makes it even harder because with many Republicans opposed on principle to anything adding to the debt, he probably won't even get the bills passed without Democrat votes and certainly doesn't want to add anything to reduce the number of Republican votes. .
BLOG: Trump won’t be able to pass anything except blandest partisan laws or bipartisan with Democrats — with only a 220 : 215 majority in House and 47 Democrats can filibuster to stop most laws in Senate READ HERE: https://robertinventor.substack.com/p/trump-wont-be-able-to-pass-anything
He also can't reduce the funding without support from Congress. He is required by law to spend all the funding allocated by Congress on the department. If he tries to just not spend the money this is illegal impoundment.
See the section on impoundment in BLOG: Elon Musk's Department of Government Efficiency is advisory only and ends July 4th — Can't stop funding from Congress — $2 trillion of saving is impossible — and a president can't close departments READ HERE: https://robertinventor.substack.com/p/elon-musks-department-of-government
It took 20 years to shut down the Board of Tea Examiners whose job was to sniff, touch and taste imported tea to see if it was good enough to sell in the USA.It was established in the nineeenth century when it made more sense and was the only way to check the quality of tea - and never closed down.
It was completely useless by the 1970s, but only closed down in the 1990s. https://katv.com/news/nation-world/how-tough-is-it-to-dissolve-a-federal-agency-department-of-education-rep-thomas-massie-r-ky-new-legislation-new-bill-congress-house-senate-education-departmet-schools-children-grants-loans-low-income-
TEXT ON GRAPHIC:
Trump will NOT be able to close down the Department of Education which has wide support.
It took 20 years to close down this Federal board of Tea tasters.
Long after everyone agreed it served no purpose.
Image from: https://reason.com/2024/03/17/after-a-century-the-federal-tea-board-is-finally-dead/
This is another image of a Federal tea taster at work.
https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/fda-used-have-people-whose-job-was-taste-tea-180967545/
He would have to convince all the moderate Republicans or most of them and at least some Democrats that the US doesn't need a department of education.
The closest example here is when Congress closed down the Board of Tea Examiners whose job was to sniff, touch and taste imported tea to see if it was good enough to sell in the USA. It was established in the late 1800s but by some time in the 20th century it no longer served any useful purpose. Government officials had been trying to shut it down from the 1970s onwards. It took them 20 years and they finally shut it down in the 190s.
QUOTE For example, the Board of Tea Examiners was a seven-person board created in the late 1800s to sniff, touch and taste tea to see if it was good enough to be sold in the U.S. It cost around the equivalent of $400,000 in today’s economy. Government officials had been trying to shut it down for around 20 years and finally did in the 1990s when the House and Senate voted to get rid of it. https://katv.com/news/nation-world/how-tough-is-it-to-dissolve-a-federal-agency-department-of-education-rep-thomas-massie-r-ky-new-legislation-new-bill-congress-house-senate-education-departmet-schools-children-grants-loans-low-income-students-board-regulations-biden-administration-doe
It was closed down with the Federal Tea Tasters Repeal Act of 1996
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tea_Importation_Act_of_1897
So it can be done but it is really really hard to do because you have to convince many legislators that it needs to be closed down. Given how hard it was to close down the department of tea tasters it's surely impossible they could close down the department of education when it just takes 3 Republicans to vote against it along with all the Democrats and it's sunk.
The Democrats will have a fair bit of power on budget matters because of the debt limit crisis coming in March.
47 Republicans are sure to vote against any debt limit rise so Trump will have to rely on Democrat support in the House to raise the debt limit. They are sure to request quid for pro concessions of some sort from him in response.
And the Republican party in the House is divided into 5 different factions and the Freedom Caucus MAGA Republicans additionally have an aim to disrupt the normal processes of government. It is going to be very hard to get them to agree on anything much.
We haven't seen so much of this yet with so much focus on executive orders but when he starts to try to get his legislative priorities underway it will be very hard indeed. And Trump has no personal experience as a legislator and unlike Biden is not noted for his abilities to get legislation passed when his own party has divisions on it or it's polarized with the other party and can be fillibustered.
BLOG: Trump won’t be able to pass anything except blandest partisan laws or bipartisan with Democrats — with only a 220 : 215 majority in House and 47 Democrats can filibuster to stop most laws in Senate READ HERE: https://robertinventor.substack.com/p/trump-wont-be-able-to-pass-anything
Trump didn't get the leader of the Senate he wanted.
Trump even lost the first vote for Mike Johnson as speaker on Jan 06 with three voting against, and got one vote against Mike Johnson in the final vote.
QUOTE STARTS
During the initial votes, three of those undecided Republicans voted for other lawmakers over Johnson, preventing him from reaching the 218 votes he needed.
Three lawmakers - Massie, South Carolina Congressman Ralph Norman and Texas Congressman Keith Self - named other options to serve as the next speaker.
That led Johnson to flee the House floor and lobby members to back him. Some 45 minutes later, he returned to the House chamber.
Both Norman and Self changed their votes to back Johnson.
Massie never changed his vote even for that important choice of speaker on Jan 03.
Trump is clearly headed for a difficult term with many problems getting the legislation he wants through Congress. Even things that almost all Republicans agree on may be impossible for him to pass.
He has to spend the same amount of money. He could change the focus. He's mainly interested in trying (likely unsuccessfully) to cut Federal funding for schools that teach kids that there is anything else except two bioloigical sexs, and for schools that teach various things like "critical race theory" - a Republican umbrella term much broader than the academic term, and in trying to enforce a reinterpretation of history that plays down America's role in slavery.
He can't cut off the funding to a school by himself. He proposes to do that by using civil laws through the courts. But that then would depend on a judge upholding his reasoning and would surely be challenged in the courts.
QUOTE STARTS
His order on K-12 schools declares that federal money cannot be used on the "indoctrination" of children, including "radical gender ideology and critical race theory." It says civil rights laws barring discrimination based on sex and race would be used to enforce the order, calling critical race theory an "inherently racist policy."
Examples cited in the order include a policy at Harrisonburg City Public Schools in Virginia requiring teachers to use students' preferred names and pronouns. Another policy at Madison Metropolitan School District in Wisconsin says schools should "disrupt the gender binary" by teaching students to embrace different gender identities, according to the order.
The Education Department's Office for Civil Rights investigates allegations of civil rights violations and can impose sanctions up to a total loss of federal money, though that penalty has almost never been used and must be approved by a judge. ...
The term "critical race theory" is sometimes used by conservatives as a catchall for subjects they don't want to be taught in the classroom, though, in reality, it refers to a complex academic and legal framework centered on the idea that racism is embedded in the nation's systems. ...
The White House on Wednesday also reinstated an order from Mr. Trump's first term establishing the 1776 Commission to promote "patriotic education" in U.S. schools.
Biden revoked the order and the commission's guide for teaching history. The guide played down America's role in slavery and argued that the civil rights movement ran afoul of the "lofty ideals" espoused by the Founding Fathers. It was widely panned by historians, who said it was outdated and ignored decades of research.
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/trumps-orders-critical-race-theory-college-protests/
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