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american federation of teachers
'Project 2025 in Action': Trump Administration Fires Half of Education Department Staff
"Trump and Elon Musk have aimed their wrecking ball at public schools and the futures of the 50 million students."
Mar 12, 2025
The Trump administration on Tuesday took a major step toward dismantling the U.S. Department of Education by firing roughly half of the agency's workforce, a decision that teachers' unions and other champions of public education said would have devastating consequences for the nation's school system.
The department, now led by billionaire Linda McMahon, moved swiftly, terminating more than 1,300 federal workers on Tuesday including employees at the agency's student aid and civil rights offices.
Sheria Smith, president of AFGE Local 252, which represents Education Department workers, pledged in a statement to "fight these draconian cuts." The union toldNPR minutes after the statement was issued that Smith, an attorney with the Education Department's Office for Civil Rights, was laid off.
The Education Department said the mass staffing cuts would affect "nearly 50%" of the agency's workforce and that those impacted "will be placed on administrative leave beginning Friday, March 21st."
In a press release, McMahon declared that the workforce cuts reflect the department's "commitment to efficiency, accountability, and ensuring that resources are directed where they matter most: to students, parents, and teachers."
But critics, including a union that represents more than 3 million education workers nationwide, said the firings underscore the Trump administration's commitment to gutting public education in the interest of billionaires pushing tax cuts and school privatization.
"Trump and Elon Musk have aimed their wrecking ball at public schools and the futures of the 50 million students in rural, suburban, and urban communities across America by dismantling public education to pay for tax handouts for billionaires," said Becky Pringle, president of the National Education Association.
"The real victims will be our most vulnerable students," Pringle added. "Gutting the Department of Education will send class sizes soaring, cut job training programs, make higher education more expensive and out of reach for middle-class families, take away special education services for students with disabilities, and gut student civil rights protections."
"We will not sit by while billionaires like Elon Musk and Linda McMahon tear apart public services piece by piece."
Randi Weingarten, president of the American Federation of Teachers, said in a statement that "denuding an agency so it cannot function effectively is the most cowardly way of dismantling it."
"The massive reduction in force at the Education Department is an attack on opportunity that will gut the agency and its ability to support students, throwing federal education programs into chaos across the country," she continued. "This move will directly impact the 90% of students who attend public schools by denying them the resources they need to thrive. That's why Americans squarely oppose eliminating the Education Department. We are urging Congress—and the courts—to step in to ensure all students can maintain access to a high-quality public education."
The Education Department purge came days after news broke that President Donald Trump was preparing an executive order aimed at completely shuttering the agency—a move that would legally require congressional approval.
Lee Saunders, president of the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees, said late Tuesday that the Education Department firings "are Project 2025 in action, and they have one goal—to make it easier for billionaires and anti-union extremists to give themselves massive tax breaks at the expense of working people."
"Today's announcement from the Department of Education is just the beginning of what's to come," Saunders warned. "These layoffs threaten the well-being and educational opportunities for millions of children across the country and those seeking higher education. The dedicated public service workers at public schools, colleges, and universities deserve better. Elections may have consequences, but we will not sit by while billionaires like Elon Musk and Linda McMahon tear apart public services piece by piece. We will keep speaking out and finding ways to fight back."
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Trump Attacks Public Service Workers With 'Blatantly Illegal' Loan Forgiveness Order
"Threatening to punish hardworking Americans for their employers' perceived political views is about as flagrant a violation of the First Amendment as you can imagine," said one critic.
Mar 10, 2025
Criticism of U.S. President Donald Trump's executive order intended to limit a program that forgives the federal student loans of borrowers who take public service jobs has grown since he signed it on Friday.
Opponents frame the order as yet another attempt by Trump to quash dissent. The Republican president directed Education Secretary Linda McMahon to propose revisions to the Public Service Loan Forgiveness (PSLF) Program, in coordination with Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, to exclude "organizations that engage in activities that have a substantial illegal purpose."
The order targets employers "aiding or abetting" violations of federal immigration law and the administration's definition of illegal discrimination, engaging in a pattern of violating state law such as disorderly conduct and obstruction of highways, "supporting terrorism," and "child abuse, including the chemical and surgical castration or mutilation of children or the trafficking of children to so-called transgender sanctuary states for purposes of emancipation from their lawful parents."
Student Defense president Aaron Ament said in a statement that "when PSLF was created by a bipartisan act of Congress and signed into law by [President] George W. Bush, it was a promise from the United States government to its citizens—if you give back to America, America will give back to you."
"In the nearly two decades since, across administrations of both parties, Americans have worked hard and made life decisions under the assumption that the U.S. keeps its word," Ament continued. "Threatening to punish hardworking Americans for their employers' perceived political views is about as flagrant a violation of the First Amendment as you can imagine."
Nadine Chabrier, senior policy counsel at the Center for Responsible Lending, similarly highlighted "serious" First Amendment concerns, saying that "by penalizing individuals seeking loan forgiveness for their associations and the expressive conduct of their employers, new rulemakings could infringe on fundamental rights to speech and association."
"The executive order also undermines the very purpose of PSLF, which Congress established to encourage careers in public service across a broad range of fields," she said. "Stripping PSLF eligibility from nonprofit employees based on the nature of their work will deter skilled professionals from pursuing careers that benefit the public good, weaken critical services for underserved populations and hamper efforts to strengthen vulnerable communities."
American Federation of Teachers (AFT) president Randi Weingarten explained that "PSLF is based on the idea that borrowers who make 10 years of repayments, and who often forgo higher wages in the private sector, can avoid a lifelong debt sentence."
The teachers union sued the Trump's first-term education secretary, Betsy DeVos, "and rogue loan servicers for their failure to administer the program—and we won," Weingarten noted. "This latest assault on borrowers' livelihoods is a cruel attempt to finish the demolition job that DeVos started. The goal is to sow chaos and confusion—separately, the PSLF application form has already been taken offline, making it effectively inaccessible."
The Economic Policy Institute pointed out Monday that "since the creation of the PSLF program, more than 1 million borrowers have received student loan forgiveness, largely due to fixes made under the Biden administration."
"More than 2 million individuals currently qualify for the PSLF program, according to the Department of Education," the think tank added. "The executive order could potentially narrow which organizations qualify for the program."
Student Borrower Protection Center executive director Mike Pierce blasted the order as "blatantly illegal and an all-out weaponization of debt intended to silence speech that does not align with President Trump's MAGA agenda."
"It is an attack on working families everywhere and will have a chilling effect on our public service workforce doing the work every day to support our local communities," Pierce warned. "Teachers, nurses, service members, and other public service workers deserve better than to be used as pawns in Donald Trump's radical right-wing political project to destroy civil society. This will raise costs for working people while doing nothing to make America safer or healthier."
In addition to scathing critiques, some groups threatened to challenge the order. Weingarten vowed that "the AFT won't stop fighting, in court and in Congress, until every single public service worker gets the help the law affords them."
Ament declared that "if the Trump administration follows through on this threat, they can plan to see us in court."
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In Response to Reported Executive Order, School Defenders Vow Uprising as Trump Targets Public Education
Elon Musk and U.S. President Donald Trump "have aimed their wrecking ball at public schools and the futures of the 50 million students in rural, suburban, and urban communities across America," said one union leader.
Mar 06, 2025
With the Trump administration reportedly preparing an executive order aimed at shutting down the Department of Education, the head of the union the American Federation of Teachers has vowed to fight any gutting of agency programs "tooth and nail."
According to Wednesday reporting from The Wall Street Journal, a draft text of the executive order compels Secretary of Education Linda McMahon to "take all necessary steps to facilitate the closure of the Education Department" based on "the maximum extent appropriate and permitted by law."
The Journal and other outlets reported that the order could come as soon as Thursday, though Karoline Leavitt, the White House press secretary, said in a statement on X that Trump will not sign an order Thursday.
AFT president Randi Weingarten and Becky Pringle, the president of the teachers union the National Education Association (NEA), cast the latest news as an attack ultimately aimed at public education.
"Don't use a 'war on woke' to attack the children living in poverty and the children with disabilities, in order to pay for vouchers and tax cuts for billionaires," Weingarten said in a Wednesday statement.
Pringle said Thursday that U.S. President Donald Trump and billionaire Elon Musk "have aimed their wrecking ball at public schools and the futures of the 50 million students in rural, suburban, and urban communities across America, by dismantling public education to pay for tax handouts for billionaires."
The Trump administration and congressional Republicans are currently pursuing trillions in tax cuts that would primarily benefit the wealthy.
While education policy and funding in the U.S. are largely handled at the state and local level, the Department of Education provides money for districts that serve lower income-income communities, as well as funding to help districts better serve students with disabilities. The agency is also responsible for managing federal college financial aid and federal student loans and also makes sure schools comply with a variety of federal laws, such as Title IX.
Getting rid of the Department of Education would ultimately empower the "the extremist anti-public education agenda" that is already being implemented in parts of the country, according to NEA. A key part of that agenda is vouchers for private schools, per NEA.
Vouchers siphon funding away from public schools. In 2024, the majority staff of the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions, then chaired by Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), authored a report detailing how right-wing billionaires have bankrolled coordinated efforts to privatize U.S. public education by promoting voucher programs.
Vouchers are often the mechanism at play when conservatives talk about advancing "school choice"—which was one of the key education goals put forward by the far-right policy blueprint Project 2025. The cornerstone education policy in Project 2025 is getting rid of the Department of Education.
In January, Trump issued an executive order asking the Department of Education to spend time coming up with guidance to help states apply federal funding to school choice initiatives.
While education union voices and Democrats have vowed to resist attacks on the Department of Education, those attacks have already begun. Probationary employees there have been laid off and the agency has paused some civil rights enforcement, among other actions, per the Journal.
While the draft executive order reviewed by the Journal makes clear the ultimate aim is to get rid of the department, the Trump administration needs Congress' help to unwind the agency, according to legal experts.
The order doesn't mention Congress, which created the Department of Education in 1979, and fully dismantling the department would require a filibuster-proof majority in the Senate.
"You can't just drop a bomb on the Department of Education and turn it into rubble," Jonathan E. Collins, a professor of political science and education at Teachers College, Columbia University, toldTime in February. "Legally, it has to start with Congress, not the president."
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