Department of Education’s ‘final mission’ starts with laying off nearly half its workforce, secretary says
“As part of the Department of Education’s final mission,” the new education secretary, Linda McMahon, announced on Tuesday evening, “the Department today initiated a reduction in force (RIF) impacting nearly 50% of the Department’s workforce.”
On social media, McMahon, the former chief executive officer of World Wrestling Entertainment, shared posts praising the move, including one by a founder of Moms for Liberty, a conservative activist group that has called for the banning of books it calls pornographic, curtailing the teaching of LGBTQ+ experiences and restricting discussions of race in schools.
After Tuesday’s layoffs of about 1,300 workers, the department’s staff will be roughly half of its previous 4,100, the agency said in a statement. According to the department, another 572 employees had already accepted “voluntary resignation opportunities and retirement” over the last seven weeks. The newly laid-off employees will be placed on administrative leave at the end of next week.
The department is also terminating leases on buildings in cities including New York, Boston, Chicago and Cleveland, officials said.
Department officials said the agency would continue to oversee the distribution of federal aid to schools, student loan management and oversight of Pell grants.
Trump campaigned on a promise to close the department, claiming it had been overtaken by “radicals, zealots and Marxists”. At McMahon’s confirmation hearing, she acknowledged that only Congress has the power to abolish the agency but said it might be due for cuts and a reorganization.
On Monday, McMahon wrote to 60 universities to warn them that they were under investigation for supposed violations of the Civil Rights Act because of protests against Israel’s war on Gaza that the Trump administration defines as “antisemitic harassment and discrimination” of Jewish students.
As the department pushes ahead with cuts, a federal judge in Boston blocked the Trump administration’s plan to cut hundreds of millions of dollars for teacher training, finding that cuts were already affecting training programs aimed at addressing a nationwide teacher shortage.
The US district judge Myong Joun sided with eight states that had requested a temporary restraining order. The states argued the cuts were likely driven by Trump’s drive to eliminate diversity, equity and inclusion programs, which the president seems to believe is a form of racism against white Americans.
