\n<\/p>\n
It seemed as if the president just needed a little reassurance.<\/p>\n
He was in the East Room of the White House, which was packed with jittery children, conservative activists, influencers and six Republican governors, from Florida, Texas, Virginia, Indiana, Ohio and Iowa. All had come to watch him sign an executive order to gut the Education Department, something conservatives have dreamed of doing for decades. No other president had done it, not even this one the first time he was in office.<\/p>\n
Now he was back, and there was the order, sitting atop a small desk at the front of that grandiose room, waiting to be signed.<\/p>\n
All around his desk were lots of other little desks, the kind you sit at in grade school. Children of varying ages, dressed in school uniforms, sat swinging their legs under their desks. They looked up expectantly as Mr. Trump approached.<\/p>\n
He turned to one small boy and said, \u201cShould I do this?\u201d The boy nodded eagerly. The president spun around and looked at a young girl. \u201cShould I do it?\u201d he asked. She nodded, too.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
Encouraged, he sat down, pulled out his power pen and scrawled. The governors and the children and their parents burst into applause.<\/p>\n
In some sense, Thursday\u2019s executive order signing was on-brand for Mr. Trump. Whether he\u2019s releasing files related to John F. Kennedy\u2019s assassination, purging the board of the Kennedy Center to appoint himself its head, or carving up the Education Department, this president takes pride in doing what none of the others would dare do.<\/p>\n
But otherwise, this signing session was an odd one, as even he had to admit. He lacked that fiery conviction he usually brings to such affairs.<\/p>\n
He kept emphasizing that what he was doing was not as radical as it might have seemed: \u201cIt sounds strange, doesn\u2019t it? Department of Education. We\u2019re going to eliminate it.\u201d<\/p>\n
In fact, only Congress can abolish a cabinet agency, but Mr. Trump\u2019s order basically called on the Education Department to come up with a plan for shutting itself down.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
He insisted that \u201ceverybody knows it\u2019s right,\u201d and he reminded the room that when the department was established, by President Jimmy Carter in the same room<\/a> in which Mr. Trump was now destroying it, many Americans opposed the idea \u2014 even the \u201cfamed Democrat senator\u201d Daniel Patrick Moynihan and the editorial board of this newspaper<\/a>.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n Mr. Trump recognized that he was putting his education secretary, Linda McMahon, out of a job, which was maybe a bit awkward. \u201cWe\u2019re going to find something else for you to do, OK?\u201d he told her.<\/p>\n He often describes people who make up the federal work force as being part of a shadowy cabal that he is all too happy to pulverize. Not so in this case. \u201cThey\u2019re good people,\u201d he said of the Education Department\u2019s 4,200-person work force, many of whom he was effectively firing.<\/p>\n \u201cI want to just make one little personal statement,\u201d Mr. Trump said at one point. Teachers, he said, are among the most important people in the country and everyone ought to \u201ccherish\u201d them. At another point, he promised that money for the federal Pell Grant was not going to vanish. \u201cSupposed to be a very good program,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n What was interesting about Mr. Trump\u2019s seeming ambivalence over this thing he was about to do was that everybody around him was so overwhelmingly ecstatic about it. The person who appeared least excited about what was happening was the one who was making it happen.<\/p>\n \u201cI never thought we\u2019d get any serious major education reform done, let alone dismantling the Department of Education,\u201d said Terry Schilling, a 38-year-old father and activist from Burke, Va., a Washington suburb. He was there with his wife and six of their seven children. \u201cIt\u2019s a beautiful day,\u201d he said, bouncing a baby boy named Tucker on his shoulder, \u201cand I\u2019m just so happy to be here.\u201d<\/p>\n There were activists in the room like Chaya Raichik, the creator of the influential Libs of TikTok account, and Tiffany Justice, a co-founder of Moms for Liberty, a parents rights group that worked hard to help elect Mr. Trump<\/a>. This was exactly how they hoped a Trump restoration might go.<\/p>\n \u201cYou had a lot of Republican presidents promise this,\u201d observed Penny Nance, the president of Concerned Women for America. Mr. Trump didn\u2019t have the temerity to tear up the Education Department the last time he was president.<\/p>\n What changed?<\/p>\n \u201cHe had four years to think about it and plan,\u201d Ms. Nance said. \u201cAll of us did, frankly.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n