The Department of Education drastically trimmed its staff on Tuesday night, laying off roughly half of its workforce as President Donald Trump and DOGE head Elon Musk aim to reshape the federal government and allegedly cut spending.
In an interview with Fox’s “The Ingraham Angle,” Education Secretary Linda McMahon stated that this action marks the first step toward fulfilling the president’s objective of completely dismantling the agency, which manages federal loans for college and enforces civil rights laws in schools, among other responsibilities. Rumors circulated last week that Trump intended to sign an executive order that would have eliminated the agency, but he backed out at the last moment.
“That was the president’s mandate,” McMahon said in the Tuesday interview. “His directive to me, clearly, is to shut down the Department of Education which we know we’ll have to work with Congress to get that accomplished.”
Despite his posturing, Trump is not a king and lacks the authority to dissolve the Education Department on his own. Congress would need to approve a complete shutdown and some of the most far-right lawmakers are already taking steps to axe the agency. In the meantime, Trump can reduce the department’s impact, effectively rendering it ineffective, and then ask his allies in Congress to deliver the final blow.
According to Axios, which cited a source familiar with the firings, the affected employees—approximately 1,300 out of nearly 4,100 total—began receiving “reduction in force” notices on Tuesday evening, after many had already left work for the day. Those dismissed were informed they would be placed on administrative leave starting on March 21.
Notably, before Tuesday, roughly 600 workers with the department had already agreed to resign or retire in recent weeks, even if doing so may further jeopardize their own situations.
In addition to abruptly severing ties with many of its workers, the federal agency also canceled leases on buildings in cities such as Boston, Chicago, Cleveland, and New York.
Somehow, despite the reduced resources, the remaining department workers will still be expected to deliver on the programs that fall under its jurisdiction, such as formula funding and funding for special needs students, Pell Grants (federal need-based financial aid), and student loans, Axios reported.
In her interview with Fox News’s Laura Ingraham, McMahon admitted to having no idea what IDEA, or the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act, meant. The president’s deeply unqualified Cabinet pick also defended the cuts by claiming that the department under her leadership had removed bad actors—whatever that means in a Trump administration.
“We wanted to make sure that we kept all of the right people, the good people, to make sure that the outward-facing programs, the grants, the appropriations that come from Congress, all of that are being met, and none of that is going to fall through the cracks,” she said.
Trump has long sought to dismantle the department and instead empower states and individual school districts to oversee the education of America’s youth. The president once falsely asserted that the Education Department had been infiltrated by “radicals, zealots, and Marxists.”
In her interview with Ingraham, McMahon suggested that she shares this vision.
“Better education is closest to the kids, with parents, with local superintendents, with local school boards,” she said. “I think we’ll see our scores go up with our students and we can educate them with parental input as well.”
However, it remains uncertain what Trump’s next moves will be. According to The New York Times, the president has considered transferring some of the agency’s functions to the Treasury Department. It’s unclear who would be tasked with delivering funding to students with special needs, another function of the Education Department, if the agency gets axed.
But it’s typical of the president and his team to act rashly without considering how his decisions might have negative consequences.
For one, voters might turn on Republicans even more than they already have. A survey from The Economist/YouGov, released on Wednesday, found that a majority of adults (52%) were opposed to dismantling the Education Department, compared to 29% who said they wanted it gone. Republicans were more supportive than Democrats (54% to 5%) of eliminating the agency.
Gutting the Education Department has bigger implications than affecting elections, though. Becky Pringle, the president of the National Education Association, the nation’s largest teachers’ union, told The Times that these cuts could both cause higher education costs and deplete job training programs.
“The real victims will be our most vulnerable students,” she said.
