One way to get around constitutional concerns about eliminating an entire federal agency without congressional approval is to claim you’re not really eliminating an agency – just reducing it in size and redistributing much of its functions to other agencies. That’s what the Trump administration has done with USAID and is currently doing with the Department of Education: They’re deliberately breaking the agencies beyond repair, leaving them mere shells of their old selves. It’s the Humpty Dumpty downsizing strategy, if you will:

Humpty Dumpty sat on a wall
Humpty Dumpty had a great fall
All the king’s horses and all the king’s men
Couldn’t put Humpty together again

WBUR reports that dozens of DOE positions in Massachusetts have already been eliminated.

Update – Speaking of kings, good for AG Campbell et gang, via the Globe: “‘The president is not a king’: Mass. joins nearly two dozen states suing Trump for dismantling US Education Department.”