(CNN/Gray News) – President Donald Trump will not sign an executive order Thursday to dismantle the Department of Education, according to White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt.
Sources said Trump could decide this week to take the first steps to eliminate the department.
EN ESPAÑOL: Casa Blanca descarta que Trump firme hoy una orden ejecutiva para desmantelar el Departamento de Educación
White House officials have drawn up an executive order directing Education Secretary Linda McMahon to start the process of breaking up the department.
Trump was expected to sign it as early as Thursday, but Leavitt said it won’t be happening then.
Trump has long indicated that he wants to close the department, but McMahon said during her confirmation hearings that fully eliminating it would require congressional approval.
She was confirmed Monday.
Trump also plans to push Congress to pass legislation to end the department, a move that’s historically failed to get congressional support.
Even if the Education Department went away, some programs and funding could stay and be shifted to other agencies, where they existed before the department was created in 1979.
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