Shutting down the U.S. Department of Education was one of President Donald Trump’s most noteworthy campaign promises — one which he has now resolved to make due on. On March 20, he signed an executive order directing Secretary of Education Linda McMahon to “take all necessary steps to facilitate the closure of the [DoE] and return authority over education to the States and local communities.” The justification for the order is that the DoE has existed for less than a fifth of the nation’s history, is not beneficial to American families and costs taxpayers too much money without justifiable returns.

Whether the DoE is functional or not is a long-standing debate, but the way Trump has approached the situation borders on unconstitutional.

The DoE was created by Congress in 1979 during the presidency of Jimmy Carter, and a president does not have the authority to dismantle it at a whim. Completely abolishing the DoE must, by law, be an act of Congress. Such a process is too lengthy and potentially failure-bound for the Trump administration who would rather enter into yet another court-riddled conundrum by the signing of yet another legally dubious EO.

The EO acknowledges the limitations of the executive branch in Section 2, stating that McMahon’s work to close down the DoE must operate under “the maximum extent appropriate and permitted by law.” This extent is not very broad on paper; nevertheless, attempts to destabilise the DoE were put in place even before the EO was signed. This includes massive layoffs and the instigation of resignations to cut down the department’s work force and spending.

Federal workers and American constituents that rely on the services of the DoE deserve better than a rapidly signed order that dismisses the DoE’s positive contributions, highlights its failings and the people’s education to the states to fix. If indeed the DoE must go, it should be after Congress follows due process and strikes it down in the same way it established it 46 years ago.

This latest Trump order is nothing more than a problematic, sensationalist political stunt to destabilize the American education system with no clear agenda to fix the issues Trump asserts currently plaguing it.