From the New York Times, I'm Kim Severson. This is the Daily.

In the coming days, President Trump is expected to sign an executive order that would, at least

on paper, follow through on one of his major campaign promises, to abolish the U.S. Department of Education.

The catch is he still needs it to impose his vision on American schools.

Today, my colleague Dana Goldstein, on how Trump is balancing a desire to both dismantle

and weaponize the Education Department.

It's Monday, March 10th.

Dana, over the past few days, we've been hearing that President Trump has plans to abolish the Department of Education.

And even for an administration that's been dismantling agencies across government, this felt pretty big.

You're a veteran education reporter. Talk to us about what's happening.

So a draft executive order attempting to dismantle the federal

Department of Education has been circulating in Washington, and we have seen it. And it's no

surprise to us that this draft is out there. We've been hearing for many weeks now that

President Trump will sign an order like this. In fact, several times we were sort of poised

watching video of him sitting at the Resolute desk in the Oval Office with executive orders

that he was about to sign thinking, is this the day, is one of these pieces of paper, the one

that will attempt to abolish the agency? And so far, he hasn't done it. But it does seem

that this is something that is in very serious consideration for him. Okay, this all sounds

pretty drastic, eliminating the entire Department of Education. And I want to understand why he

wants to do that. But before we get there,

it might be helpful to understand, and I hate to admit that I don't know this, what exactly

is the Department of Education responsible for? Well, I think it's important to step back and understand

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