Donald Trump Wants to Eliminate that Department of Education; Can He Do It?

During the 2016 Presidential election season, Donald Trump has made a lot of threats and promises. While his outrageous claims might not have seemed legitimate his pending term has certainly made them, at the very least, all the more palpable.

And one of the claims made by now-President-elect Donald Trump is that the Department of Education should be completely abolished. Actually, in his book “Great Again: How to Fix Our Crippled America,” he said: “A lot of people believe the Department of Education should just be eliminated. Get rid of it. If we don’t eliminate it completely, we certainly need to cut its power and reach.”

But what, exactly did he mean by that?

Well, lets take a brief look at the history of the United States Department of Education.  The Department of Education Organization Act passed in Congress in 1979. At the time of the ratification, the Department had the main function of administering federal assistance to schools and to enforce federal education laws.

That doesn’t sound too bad, does it?

Well when you look at what has become of America (or, rather, the students who are still in debt from student loans thanks to this law) it might make you do a double take.  Indeed, a college education does not necessarily get you what it used to—and, more importantly, it sure doesn’t cost what it used to.  And, Trump argues, this is part of the reason the country is in such debt (both financially and spiritually).

But does he actually have the power to completely eliminate the Department of Education?

Well, according to Harvard legal scholar Laurence Tribe, “It would of course require another act of Congress to eliminate the United States Department of Education [but] there is no constitutional obstacle to the enactment of such a law.”

Tribe, who is among the most prominent constitutional scholars in America, asserts that this is certainly something Trump could do, legally, as president, but he also assures that he could not do it on his own.

As such, it remains unclear exactly what Donald Trump plans to do. However, in the outline of his first 100 days, Trump does describe, at the very least, an intention to bring educational supervision to local communities.