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A majority of voters are against President Trump’s plans to close the Education Department, according to a new poll from Quinnipiac University.
The survey released Thursday found 60 percent of voters oppose such plans, while 33 percent support the president’s goal of abolishing the federal agency.
Democrats strongly oppose the dismantling of the department, with 98 percent against the idea; among independents, 64 percent oppose the initiative, while 31 percent support it.
However, among Republicans, 67 percent are in favor of nixing the department and 18 percent oppose.
Men are more in favor of the abolishment than women, but a majority of both genders are against the idea.
The disapproval comes as the Trump administration has begun downsizing the Department of Education, cutting its workforce in half this week.
Education Secretary Linda McMahon said those layoffs were the first step towards a total shutdown of the agency.
“Actually, it is, because that was the president’s mandate,” McMahon told Fox News’s Laura Ingraham on Tuesday. “His directive to me, clearly, is to shut down the Department of Education, which we know we’ll have to work with Congress, you know, to get that accomplished.”
“But what we did today was to take the first step of eliminating what I think is bureaucratic bloat, and that’s not to say that a lot of the folks you know, it’s a humanitarian thing to a lot of the folks that are there. … They’re out of a job,” she added.
A group of Democratic states have already sued the department over the layoffs.
Congress would have to pass a law to completely eliminate the department, which is unlikely given the 60-vote filibuster threshold Republicans would need to overcome in the Senate.
But Trump allies are urging the department to become as small as it can and to move Congress-mandated programs to other federal agencies.
The poll was conducted between March 6 to 10 and surveyed 1,198 self-identified registered voters. The margin of error was plus or minus 2.8 percentage points.
