Mods you can move this to P&E if you think it fits better there
On my uncles face book which is just a pipe to a certain candidates asshole one of the clips was trump saying that when he wins one of the first things he’s doing is dissolving the us dept of Education to “give back education rights to the states and parents”
Can he legally do that with out congress’s or anyone ok ?
It was set up by an Act of Congress so would require another Act of Congress to dissolve.
He has just as much authority to abolish the Department of Education as he does to no longer tax tips or abolish the Internal Revenue Service.
I thought so …
My understanding of the US system is that, given POTUS appoints the executive, he can effectively disable any department.
Obviously the whole confirmation of appointments kicks in, but in the end, this is what the system is and how, by design, executive power is separated from the legislature.
One would imagine that it would not be trivial, and legal challenges would arise. But it may be hard to stop an effective shutdown of function.
But would the department’s employees go on being paid for doing nothing, or would there be umpteen lawsuits if they’re just sacked?
That is an implementation problem. Give HR the task. Last one to leave turns out the lights.
Reality would be guaranteed to be messy to an extraordinary degree. But effectively shutting down operations as seen from the outside is unlikely to be hard.
It’s real easy to vandalize stuff that works. It’s far harder to clean up after vandalism and restore normal functioning. Doesn’t matter if we’re talking a payphone, a car, or a Federal Department.
That is the entire story of the first trump term and will be the entire story of the second should we be unlucky enough to experience it.
Do civil servants in the USA have any job security or separation pay rights?
Closing down a large organization in Canada can get very expensive in terms of separation pay for long-tern employees. My understanding is that this does not exist for US employees in general. I assume there would be a Department of Litigation for a few years, simply to fight the higher up employees on wrongful termination and compensation?
Take a lesson from the “reorganization” of the Post Office leading up to the last election. the question would be “what does the DoE do?” and simply stop spending money on the more expensive things.
As I understand it, Congress can allocate money (or not) to set the limit on how much a government department can spend, and on what, but it cannot force the executive to actually spend it. OTOH, if they are grant programs mandated by the laws passed by congress, people who were not getting grants the law says they should, could probably sue to get those grants - thus implying the people who administer the program would have to stay on, or a judge would order the executive to provide the functions needed to fufill the grant program?
(I.e. let’s pretend the DoE will give any program to help “challenged” children’s education; then the qualifying local school boards looking for that money can demand it?)
They do as long as they are not political appointees. Trump and his backers are threatening something they call Schedule F, which will allow the president to reclassify many thousands of currently non-political jobs into political appointments (and therefore serving at the will of the president) if they are even remotely involved in setting policy. They push something called the “unitary executive theory” which claims that the president has far more power under the Constitution than is currently accepted. All summarized in something called “Project 2025”, which is a published plan (they have a web site) developed by the Heritage Foundation in cooperation with many other right-wing groups.
One thing they want to do is to ban medication abortions by using Schedule F to replace enough of the FDA so that the president can instruct the FDA to rescind approval of the drugs. They also want to eliminate NOAA because NOAA is the source of the fake climate change scare. Eliminating the Department of Education is also part of the plan.
What they need is a Supreme Court which will back their unitary executive theory. That’s likely the real reason the Heritage Foundation has chosen all the Republican SCOTUS nominees, overturning abortion rights was just a red herring.
The Impoundment Control Act of 1974 prohibits the executive from refusing to spend funds (i.e. “impounding” funds) that have been appropriated by Congress. The Supreme Court likewise held impoundment to be impermissible in Train v. City of New York.
Of course, but not appointees.
Which is another thing that is in the Heritage Foundation’s target, I believe.
Maybe not in the way you mean. I am certain that most Federal civil servants in the US have protections against being fired in the way a political appointee can be but they probably are not protected if their position/function/unit/department is eliminated - for example, if the federal government decides to eliminate all mechanic positions and enter onto contracts with private companies for vehicle maintenance.
The Feds have to try and find them an equivalent position.
The union contract(s) — American Federation of Government Employees is the big one — would, at a minimum, delay dissolution. Even if legal to do, the administration has to bargain in good faith over what is called “impact and implementation” should the union request it. And they would. This forces delays and gives opportunities for lawsuits that will succeed if the Trump people are incompetent or even just make reasonable mistakes.
There also must be regulations this would violate. It takes years to go through the process of changing them. There would be lawsuits claiming violations of the Administrative Procedures Act because it is hard to follow all rules.
Another way to ask the thread question: can the dissolution of the Department of Education be completed in four years? Hard to say, but I’m sure it would take years, not months, and could easily fail.
I am going to answer the thread question again at a higher level.
The answer is no. There are laws that require the Department to take various actions, such as producing periodic releases of public data, as seen here. If orders came down to stop doing that, or even to move the functionality to a different Department from that specified in the law, without new legislation, that’s illegal.
These are not generally the kind of laws with criminal penalties attached. But I’m confident that the President cannot legally dissolve a Department in absence of enabling legislation.
If the President, Congress, and the Supreme Court agree upon an action, then it would be legal. Nevertheless, the results of doing some particular actions would break down the structure of democracy as we know it. What practical difference between such a ruling triumvirate and an authoritarian dictatorship would there be?
But, if we’re going to be practical at all, there is practically no possibility whatsoever that a President Trump would have control of both houses of Congress. Or that his justices would decide to give up democracy to please his cult. Or even that some Republicans in Congress wouldn’t balk at destroying the country?
So the answer to questions like these depend entirely on one’s belief whether legality will no longer have a meaning in the future. As an FQ it was answered in the first response. Any further argument becomes a political squickfest.
Rephrase “His justices decide to give up their lifetime secured power to please his cult.”
Apologies as this is veering off topic. One thing potentially limiting an unbridled 2nd Trump term is that IMHO a majority of the justices don’t want to give up their political power by turning into Trump lapdogs.
[Moderating]
I think we’ve addressed all of the factual content to this question. Further discussion seems better suited for P&E. Moving.