A day after the Department of Education announced deep cuts expected to gut the agency, President Trump was dismissive of the fired workers, initially saying he felt “very badly” before suggesting many were of little use. “Many of them don’t work at all,” Trump said, sitting in the Oval Office next to the visiting Prime Minister of Ireland, Micheál Martin. “Many of them didn’t show up to work unfortunately.”
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The Department of Education announced Tuesday that it was cutting 1,300 workers, its latest move toward Trump’s plan to shrivel the federal government’s role in education. The agency’s workforce, which had 4,100 workers at the end of the Biden administration, has been cut roughly in half between recent layoffs and those who have taken buyout offers. The department is also cancelling leases in buildings in Boston, Chicago, Cleveland and New York. The Education Department announced its headquarters building would be closed on Wednesday and reopen the following day.
“When we cut, we want to cut the people who aren’t working,” Trump said. “We want to keep the best people.” Trump said the cuts are part of his “dream” to “move education to the states.” State officials already determine the education curriculum in public schools. The Department of Education is in charge of running the college loan programs, administering Pell grants, and dispersing some funds to states for certain education programs. The rapid downsizing at the Education Department is part of cuts across the federal government pushed by Trump and Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency, which has recently targeted the Social Security Administration and Department of Veterans Affairs.
Trump campaigned on eliminating the Education Department entirely. In a memo to the Education Department issued March 3, the same day she was confirmed by the Senate, Education Secretary Linda McMahon wrote that Trump had “tasked us with accomplishing the elimination of bureaucratic bloat.” Her memo was titled, “Our Department’s Final Mission.”
William Bennett, who served as Education Secretary under Ronald Reagan, said on Fox News Wednesday that McMahon’s cuts should not be so sweeping and should have been more targeted and specific. “It’s hard for me to believe she knows who the best people are. It may be right you can probably get by with 20% of that staff, but you got to carefully do it by going through who’s working and who’s not.” While he was President, Reagan had promised to dismantle the Department of Education, but was blocked from doing so by a House of Representatives controlled by the Democratic Party.
