Senator Patty Murray, a top Democrat on the Budget Committee, accused Trump and Elon Musk, de facto heads of the government’s Department of Efficiency, of “stolen critical funds on students and their families.”
“The impact of the Trump and Mask Slash and Burn Campaign is felt throughout our state. Students suffering from the loss of undergraduate staff who work to secure their rights under federal law, school districts that require teachers to be fired, students who do not need to get financial assistance, and students who are not being deprived of their guards because of fired, said in a statement Wednesday night. “This issue is personal to me and for all my families. I can’t tolerate this fight.”
A coalition of 21 Democrats attorney generals filed a lawsuit last week claiming that Trump’s attempt to remove the department was illegal.
“The appropriate funds to administer the President’s directive to eliminate the administrative division are violations of violations of violations of enforcement, including a reduction on March 11th, including the implementation of the department’s labor and other agencies, as neither the president nor his agency can revert to many Congressional laws that approve the department and direct its responsibility. The lawsuit reads.
The Education Division is one of the smallest cabinet-level divisions. Last year’s $268 billion budget accounted for 4% of the US budget.
The department does not direct the curriculum used in the classroom. It is primarily fundraising and civil rights enforcement agencies, distributing money to schools with a high proportion of poor students and supporting children with disabilities.
We also have a public student loan program. This means lower consumer protection and lower interest rates than private education loan programs.
Trump’s executive order directs McMahon to ensure that institutional funds do not go towards programs or activities that promote diversity, equity, inclusion goals, or gender ideology.
Last week, the Education Bureau released a survey of more than 50 universities accused of “engaging in racial existence practices in graduate programs.”
Diversity, equity, inclusion, or DEI is a widely used label that is applied to efforts to improve workplace culture and create more opportunities for underprivileged groups, and is not inherently discriminatory.
National Education Association President Becky Pringle said in a statement Wednesday that Trump’s efforts to close the education sector could have disastrous implications for students across the country.
“If successful, Trump’s ongoing actions will hurt all students, take away special educational services for students with disabilities, and block civil rights protections for students with disabilities by surge in class size, cuts down vocational training programs, and keeping them expensive and out of reach for middle-class families,” Pringle said in a statement.
She accused Trump and Musk of “targeting the future of 50 million students across America, suburban and urban communities to pay for their destruction balls in public schools and billionaires’ tax handouts.
McMahon said last week that at least three Doge staff members were auditing their education department.
Keri Rodriguez, president of the National Pro-Coalition, said the department would disproportionately affect the most vulnerable communities.
“Let’s be clear. Before federal oversight, millions of children, especially children with disabilities and children from the most vulnerable communities, denied the opportunity they deserved,” Rodriguez said in a statement Wednesday night. “The Ministry of Education was created to ensure that every child has access to public education, regardless of background or zip code, preparing them for the future. If we eliminate it, we will repeat decades of progress and leave countless children behind in a historically unstable education system.”
Trump has long pledged to dismantle the education sector, first referring to the idea during his previous term, and campaigning extensively through the 2024 election. He suggests that states should take over management of education policies and that other parts of the federal government can absorb current institutional responsibilities, including overseeing federal student loans.
“Your state is trying to manage your child’s education, and we’ll move it from Washington soon,” Trump said at a campaign event last year in Saginaw, Michigan. “We’re going to make it very fast and it’s going to be great.”
