The Department of Education announced on Tuesday that it has triggered more than 1,300 workers, effectively launching the organization that manages federal college loans, monitors students’ achievements and imposes civil rights laws in schools.
The redundancies mean that the department, which began the year with 4,133 employees, will now have a workforce of about half -size after less than two months with President Trump on office. In addition to the 1,315 employees who were fired on Tuesday, 572 workers received separation packages offered in recent weeks and 63 workers finished last month.
The cuts could make an additional move by Mr Trump to substantially disassemble the department, as he said he wanted to do, even though he cannot close without Congress’s approval.
Linda McMahon, the Secretary of Education, described the redundancies as part of an effort to make more effective service performance and stated that changes would not affect student loans, Pell grants, funding for special needs or competitive grants.
“Today’s power reduction reflects the Ministry of Education’s commitment to efficiency, accountability and ensuring that resources are addressed where they are more important: students, parents and teachers,” Mrs McMahon said in a statement.
Senator Bill Cassidy, a Republican of Louisiana and chairman of the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions, wrote in the social media that he had spoken to Mrs McMahon and received the assurance that his cuts would not “affect him”.
Sheria Smith, president of the US Federation of Government Workers Local 252, which represents more than 2,800 training workers, said the Trump administration had no “respect for the thousands of workers who have dedicated their careers to serve them”.
The Department’s Civil Rights Office had particularly steep cuts, with regional centers shaken or reduced in a skeleton crew, including those in New York, San Francisco and Boston. The office, which has not already, regularly struggled to work through long political rights investigations. He had gathered a heavy delay in Biden’s administration after protests wandering campuses across the country last year.
“We will not remain inactive, and this regime pulls wool over the eyes of the American people,” Ms Smith said.
Becky Pringle, president of the National Education Union, the largest association of the Nation Teachers, said the changes would drain training programs and increase the cost of higher education.
“The real victims will be our most vulnerable students,” Ms Pringle said.
Mr Trump has repeatedly stated that he wants to close the education department and instead rely on states and local school areas to fully oversee America’s education system. The President adopted the strict position during the 2024 campaign to align with the Parents’ Rights Movement evolved from the reaction to school finishes and other restrictions during the pandemic crown.
This movement gained steaming by organizing opposition to leftist ideas in the curriculum, especially in LGBTQ and race. Activists claimed that these priorities undermined parental rights and values.
In an interview last week at FOX News, Mrs McMahon said Mr Trump intended to sign an executive order with the aim of closing its department, but refused to give details on the timetable.
An executive order to disassemble the department will question the power of Congress, which created the Department with statutes and legally must sign any move to close it. In a narrowly divided Senate, it is unlikely that the administration will find enough support to do so, especially as polls over the past two months have shown about two -thirds of the Americans over the closure of the department.
But Mr Trump can be forged ahead anyway. He has talked about moving some of the organization’s work with student loans to the Ministry of Finance. Education officials visited the Treasury on Monday to prepare for the displacement, a person said familiar with planning.
At the hearing of confirmation last month, Mrs McMachon discussed the movement of civil rights to the Ministry of Justice and services for students with special needs in the Department of Health and Human Services.
Project 2025, a conservative plan for the second Trump term, also set a detailed plan to eliminate the department. The proposal envisioned to move much of the service project to other federal government weapons. Student aid, for example, will be treated by the Treasury. Vocational training from the Department of Work. and disability training by the Ministry of Health and Human Services.
Rumors of possible redundancies began to circulate around the education department, as employees received an email around 2 pm announcing that the organization’s offices in the Washington area will close on Wednesday and reopen on Thursday. The email did not provide a reason for the closure, but the administration provided similar cryptographic announcements about temporary closure offices before serious cuts last month to the US Service for International Development and the Financial Consumer Protection Office.
Employees later told reporters that the closure of the building was related to redundancies and was made by an abundance of attention to protect the safety of workers who maintain their jobs.
Employees who lost their jobs were informed of emails sent after 6 pm On Tuesday, after they were gone for the day. They will remain in payroll for 90 days, receive full pay and benefits, and will be paid a week for each of their first 10 years of service and two -week pay for each year of service over 10 years.
They will also be given time in the coming weeks to return to the department and collect their possessions, officials from the service said.
About 75 former employees in the organization had gathered outside the department’s central offices in Washington on Tuesday morning to gather their opposition to the cuts that the administration prompted.
At the end of the race, Dorie Turner Nolt, one of the organizers, called on the crowd to face the building and build their former colleagues inside whom he said they did their best to support democracy. Many workers inside the building were pressing on the windows, shaking their hands and blinking a thumb between the spawning.
Later that night, a woman left the building that brought a stack of laptops to a group of colleagues waiting for the kiosk so they could check their emails to see if they had left. The woman, who refused to give her name for the fear of punishment, said she had worked for years in the office that oversees payments from the department.
Mr Trump was radically federally raised at the beginning of his second term, based on a group supervised by Elon Musk, the richest man in the world, to shrink and disrupt the federal government. Mr Musk’s team has targeted more than 20 organizations, while gaining access to sensitive government data systems.
Mrs McMahon told Fox last week that she had held regular meetings with Mr Musk. “I am very grateful for the things that have shown us, some of the waste, and we react to it,” he said.
Brent McDonald; Zach Montague and Erica L. Green They contributed reports.
