Trump signs order aimed at dismantling US Department of Education

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Updated 21 March 2025
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Trump signs order aimed at dismantling US Department of Education

  • The order is designed to leave school policy almost entirely in the hands of states and local boards
  • The department oversees some 100,000 public and 34,000 private schools in the United States
  • Democrats acknowledged on Thursday that Trump could effectively gut the department without congressional action

WASHINGTON: Flanked by students and educators, US President Donald Trump on Thursday signed an executive order intended to essentially dismantle the federal Department of Education, making good on a longstanding campaign promise to conservatives.
The order is designed to leave school policy almost entirely in the hands of states and local boards, a prospect that alarms liberal education advocates.
Thursday’s order was a first step “to eliminate” the department, Trump said at a signing ceremony in the East Room of the White House. Shuttering the agency completely requires an act of Congress, and Trump lacks the votes for that.
“We’re going to be returning education, very simply, back to the states where it belongs,” said Trump in front of a colorful backdrop of state flags.
Young students invited to the event sat at classroom desks encircling the president and signed their own mock executive orders alongside him.
The signing followed the department’s announcement last week that it would lay off nearly half of its staff, in step with Trump’s sweeping efforts to reduce the size of a federal government he considers to be bloated and inefficient.
Education has long been a political lightning rod in the United States. Conservatives favor local control over education policy and school-choice options that help private and religious schools, and left-leaning voters largely support robust funding for public schools and diversity programs.

 

But Trump has elevated the fight to a different level, making it part of a generalized push against what conservatives view as liberal indoctrination in America’s schools from the university level down to K-12 instruction.
He has sought to re-engineer higher education in the United States by reducing funding and pushing to eliminate diversity, equity and inclusion policies at colleges and universities, just as he has in the federal government.
Columbia University, for example, faced a Thursday deadline to respond to demands to tighten restrictions on campus protests as preconditions for opening talks on restoring $400 million in suspended federal funding.
The White House also argues the Education Department is a waste of money, citing mediocre test scores, disappointing literacy rates and lax math skills among students as proof that the return on the agency’s trillions of dollars in investment was poor.
Local battles over K-12 curricula accelerated during the coronavirus pandemic, which saw parents angrily confront officials at school board meetings nationwide. It was a discontent that Trump, other Republican candidates and conservative advocacy groups such as Moms for Liberty tapped into.
Trump was joined at the ceremony by Republican governors such as Greg Abbott of Texas and Ron DeSantis of Florida.
Democrats acknowledged on Thursday that Trump could effectively gut the department without congressional action.
“Donald Trump knows perfectly well he can’t abolish the Department of Education without Congress — but he understands that if you fire all the staff and smash it to pieces, you might get a similar, devastating result,” US Senator Patty Murray said in a statement.

Seeking closure
Trump suggested on Thursday that he will still seek to close down the department entirely, and that he wants Education Secretary Linda McMahon, who attended the White House event, to put herself out of a job.
The department oversees some 100,000 public and 34,000 private schools in the United States, although more than 85 percent of public school funding comes from state and local governments. It provides federal grants for needy schools and programs, including money to pay teachers of children with special needs, fund arts programs and replace outdated infrastructure.
It also oversees the $1.6 trillion in student loans held by tens of millions of Americans who cannot afford to pay for college outright.
For now, Trump’s executive order aims to whittle the department down to basic functions such as administering student loans, Pell Grants that help low-income students attend college and resources for children with special needs.
“We’re going to shut it down and shut it down as quickly as possible,” Trump said. “It’s doing us no good.”
Though Republicans control both chambers of Congress, Democratic support would be required to achieve the needed 60 votes in the Senate for such a bill to pass. At the event, Trump said the matter may ultimately land before Congress in a vote to do away with the department entirely.
Trump has acknowledged that he would need buy-in from Democratic lawmakers and teachers’ unions to fulfill his campaign pledge of fully closing the department. He likely will never get it.
“See you in court,” the head of the American Federation of Teachers union, Randi Weingarten, said in a statement.
A majority of the American public do not support closing the department.
A Reuters/Ipsos poll found last month that respondents opposed shuttering the Department of Education by roughly two to one — 65 percent to 30 percent. The Reuters/Ipsos poll, which was conducted online and nationwide, surveyed 4,145 US adults and its results had a margin of error of about 2 percentage points.
Federal aid tends to flow more to Republican-leaning states than Democratic ones. It accounted for 15 percent of all K-12 revenue in states that voted for Trump in the 2024 election, compared with 11 percent of revenue in states that voted for his Democratic rival Kamala Harris, according to a Reuters analysis of Census Bureau data.
Two programs administered by the Department of Education — aid for low-income schools and students with special needs — are the largest of those federal aid programs.


Canada and China agree to ‘regularize communications’

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Canada and China agree to ‘regularize communications’

MONTREAL: Canada and China have agreed to regularize channels of communication, the office of Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney said Thursday, after a period of strained diplomatic relations between the two countries.
“Mark Carney, spoke with the Premier of China, Li Qiang. The leaders exchanged views on bilateral relations, including the importance of engagement, and agreed to regularize channels of communication between Canada and China,” it said in a statement.
They also discussed trade and “committed their governments to working together to address the fentanyl crisis.”
Ties between Beijing and Ottawa have been tense in recent years following the arrest of a senior Chinese telecom executive on a US warrant in 2018.
Li told Carney that “in recent years, China-Canada relations have faced unnecessary disturbances and encountered serious difficulties,” Chinese state news agency Xinhua reported.
He added that China is “willing to work with Canada to jointly uphold multilateralism and free trade” in the face of growing unilateralism and protectionism, Xinhua reported, noting that the call came at Carney’s request.
Both countries have been targeted by US President Donald Trump’s tariff hikes and have condemned them.

UN rights chief demands US withdraw sanctions on ICC judges

Updated 23 min 20 sec ago
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UN rights chief demands US withdraw sanctions on ICC judges

  • Volker Turk: ‘I call for the prompt reconsideration and withdrawal of these latest measures’
GENEVA: The United Nations human rights chief on Friday demanded the United States lift sanctions it imposed on four International Criminal Court judges, saying they were contrary to the rule of law.
“I call for the prompt reconsideration and withdrawal of these latest measures,” Volker Turk said in a statement to media. “Attacks against judges for performance of their judicial functions, at national or international levels, run directly counter to respect for the rule of law and the equal protection of the law – values for which the US has long stood.”

Lufthansa to restart Tel Aviv flights on June 23

Updated 30 min 8 sec ago
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Lufthansa to restart Tel Aviv flights on June 23

  • Lufthansa suspended its flights to Israel’s main airport following a May 4 rocket attack launched by Yemen’s Houthi rebels, and extended the suspension several times since

BERLIN: Germany’s Lufthansa airline group said Friday it would restart flights to and from Tel Aviv on June 23, having suspended them early last month amid the ongoing regional conflict.

The group said in a statement that the decision would affect Lufthansa, Austrian, SWISS, Brussels Airlines Eurowings, ITA and Lufthansa Cargo but that “for operational reasons,” the individual airlines would only resume services “gradually.”

“The decision is based on an extensive security analysis and in coordination with the relevant authorities,” it added.

The group suspended its flights to Israel’s main airport following a May 4 rocket attack launched by Yemen’s Houthi rebels, and extended the suspension several times since.

The missile landed near a car park at Tel Aviv’s Ben Gurion International Airport and injured six people, the first time a missile had penetrated the airport perimeter.

The Houthis have repeatedly launched missiles and drones at Israel since the war in Gaza began in October 2023 with Palestinian militant group Hamas’s attack on Israel.

The Iran-backed Houthis, who say they are acting in solidarity with Palestinians, paused their attacks during a two-month Gaza ceasefire that ended in March, but began again after Israel resumed its military campaign in the territory.

The Israeli army has reported several such launches in recent days, with most of the projectiles being intercepted.


Japan allows longer nuclear plant lifespans

Updated 40 min 5 sec ago
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Japan allows longer nuclear plant lifespans

  • The world’s fourth-largest economy is targeting carbon neutrality by 2050 but remains heavily reliant on fossil fuels
  • Many of the country’s nuclear reactors were taken offline after the 2011 Fukushima meltdown

TOKYO: A law allowing nuclear reactors to operate beyond 60 years took effect in Japan on Friday, as the government turns back to atomic energy 14 years after the Fukushima catastrophe.

The world’s fourth-largest economy is targeting carbon neutrality by 2050 but remains heavily reliant on fossil fuels – partly because many nuclear reactors were taken offline after the 2011 Fukushima meltdown.

The government now plans to increase its reliance on nuclear power, in part to help meet growing energy demand from artificial intelligence and microchip factories.

The 60-year limit was brought in after the 2011 disaster, which was triggered by a devastating earthquake and tsunami in northeast Japan.

Under the amended law, nuclear plants’ operating period may be extended beyond 60 years – in a system similar to extra time in football games – to compensate for stoppages caused by “unforeseeable circumstances,” the government says.

This means, for example, that one reactor in central Japan’s Fukui region, suspended for 12 years after the Fukushima crisis, will now be able to operate up until 2047 – 72 years after its debut, the Asahi Shimbun daily reported.

But operators require approval from Japan’s nuclear safety watchdog for the exemption. The law also includes measures intended to strengthen safety checks at aging reactors.

The legal revision is also aimed at helping Japan better cope with power crunches, after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine sparked energy market turmoil.

Japan’s Strategic Energy Plan had previously vowed to “reduce reliance on nuclear power as much as possible.”

But this pledge was dropped from the latest version approved in February, which includes an intention to make renewables the country’s top power source by 2040.

Under the plan, nuclear power will account for around 20 percent of Japan’s energy supply by 2040 – up from 5.6 percent in 2022.

Also in February, Japan pledged to slash greenhouse gas emissions by 60 percent in the next decade from 2013 levels, a target decried by campaigners as far short of what was needed under the Paris Agreement to limit global warming.

Japan is the world’s fifth largest single-country emitter of carbon dioxide after China, the United States, India and Russia.


Three Serbs charged over paint attack on France Jewish sites

Updated 47 min 16 sec ago
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Three Serbs charged over paint attack on France Jewish sites

  • France’s Holocaust memorial, three Paris synagogues and a restaurant were vandalized with paint in the night of Friday to Saturday

PARIS: A French judge has charged three Serbs with vandalizing Jewish sites with paint at the weekend “to serve the interests of a foreign power,” a judicial source said Friday.

A source close to the case said investigators suspect Russia is behind the attacks for which the men were charged on Thursday evening.

They had exchanged messages on Telegram with other individuals not yet apprehended, it added.

France’s Holocaust memorial, three Paris synagogues and a restaurant were vandalized with paint in the night of Friday to Saturday, in what the Israeli embassy denounced as a “coordinated anti-Semitic attack.”

The source following the case described the three suspects, two born in 1995 and one born in 2003, as having completed a task motivated by financial compensation, but without being aware of any geopolitical implications.

They were two brothers and a third person who had lived in France for several years, the source said.

They were arrested on Monday in southeast France as they tried to leave the country.

French Interior Minister Bruno Retailleau said he was “deeply disgusted by these heinous acts targeting the Jewish community.”

Israeli’s President Isaac Herzog said Saturday he was “dismayed” by the Paris vandalism, noting that his great-grandfather had been a rabbi at one of the synagogues.

In the run-up to the Summer Olympics in Paris last year, several high-profile stunts intended to influence French public opinion led French officials to point the finger at Moscow.

They included red hands tagged on Paris’s main Holocaust memorial in May 2024.

In October 2023, soon after the Palestinian militant attack on Israel that sparked the latest Gaza war, stars of David were tagged on buildings in the Paris region, with two Moldovans suspected of working for the Russian FSB security service later arrested.

Russia has previously denied any involvement in any of the plots attributed to it by French officials.