President Donald Trump signed an executive order aimed at shutting down the Department of Education. This has been a decades-long goal of the American right, which wants individual states to run schools without the influence of the federal government.

Surrounded by students sitting on desks set up in the East Room of the White House, Trump smiled as he held the order after signing it, AFP reported.

The Republican said the order "will begin to eliminate the federal Department of Education once and for all."

"We're going to shut it down and we're going to shut it down as quickly as possible. It does us no good," Trump said. "We will bring education back to the states where it belongs."

The Department of Education, created in 1979, can't be shut down without congressional approval - but Trump's order would likely have the power to strip it of funds and staff. 

The move is one of the most drastic steps in Trump's brutal reform of government, which he is carrying out with the help of tech tycoon Elon Musk and his Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE).

Democrats and educators condemned the move.

Top Senate Democrat Chuck Schumer called it a "tyrannical power grab" and "one of the most destructive and devastating steps Donald Trump has ever taken."

Republican leaders, including Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis and Texas Gov. Greg Abbott, attended the signing ceremony.

Trump described the move as necessary to save money and improve education standards in the USA, saying they lag behind those in Europe and China.

But education has been a battleground in America's culture wars for decades, and Republicans have long wanted to remove control of it from the federal government. | BGNES