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american federation of teachers
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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'Another Unqualified Billionaire': Senate Confirms McMahon as Education Secretary
"The more the president stacks his administration with eccentric billionaires, the further the system gets rigged against working people, seniors, and students," argued one critic.
Mar 03, 2025
Continuing what one watchdog called "their pattern of rubber-stamping deeply flawed and unqualified" Cabinet nominees of President Donald Trump, Senate Republicans on Monday confirmed sports entertainment billionaire and prolific GOP fundraiser Linda McMahon to head the U.S. Department of Education—an agency the president has repeatedly vowed to abolish.
Senators confirmed McMahon in a 51-45 vote. The loyal Trump ally and top fundraiser previously led the Small Business Administration during the president's first term. However, other than serving one year on the Connecticut Board of Education and as a trustee for Sacred Heart University, she has little experience in the field.
Republicans—many of whom share Trump's desire to end the Department of Education—didn't seem to care, with Sen. Chuck Grassley of Iowa asserting that "education is still mostly a state and local responsibility."
BREAKING: Senate Republicans just confirmed Linda McMahon as Education Secretary—another unqualified billionaire who doesn't understand the Department she's tasked with leading and who is ready to grab the hatchet and help Trump destroy the Department of Education altogether.
— Senator Patty Murray (@murray.senate.gov) March 3, 2025 at 3:29 PM
McMahon gained a more dubious reputation for what one campaigner called her "documented history of enabling sexual abuse of children and sweeping sexual violence under the rug" during her tenure as World Wrestling Entertainment CEO.
The 76-year-old finds herself in the position of being simultaneously tasked with dismantling the DOE and ramping up attacks on diversity, equity, and inclusion programs; "woke" education; transgender students; and other right-wing bugaboos. She is also expected to promote expanded voucher programs, which supporters call "school choice."
Randi Weingarten, president of the American Federation of Teachers—which is leading a "Protect Our Kids" nationwide day of action Tuesday—said in a statement that "we know we will disagree with Secretary McMahon on a host of issues, including her stance on using public funds for private school vouchers."
"We're deeply concerned that her boss, Donald Trump, wants her to take a wrecking ball to the Department of Education and this nation's public schools," Weingarten added. "We want to work with her on strengthening public schools and ramping up high school career and technical education and workforce development efforts across the nation. We ask that she respect the hardworking and amazing educators of this country who are helping young people every day."
National Education Association president Becky Pringle said in a
statement that "every student—no matter where they live, how much their family earns, or the color of their skin—deserves the opportunity, resources, and support they need to grow into their full brilliance."
"Linda McMahon has pledged to dismantle public education and take away resources students need by hollowing out the Department of Education, destroying programs that support students with disabilities, making higher education less accessible, and gutting civil rights protections," Pringle continued.
"While educators and parents would hope McMahon will reflect upon the enormous responsibility she has to our nation's students, sadly there is no evidence to believe she will use her position to focus on strengthening public schools so every student can thrive," she added.
Tony Carrk, the executive director of the watchdog Accountable.US, argued that "every senator who confirmed McMahon is now complicit in the Trump-Project 2025 scheme to abolish the Education Department and jeopardize billions in federal funding needed to strengthen public schools and support special education programs."
"The one-two gut punch of the administration's plans to starve states,
especially conservative ones, of critical federal Medicaid and education money to pay for another wasteful tax break for billionaires like McMahon will leave millions of Americans behind for decades to come," Carrk added. "The more the president stacks his administration with eccentric billionaires, the further the system gets rigged against working people, seniors, and students."
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Teachers Sue Trump Administration for Trying to Weaponize Civil Rights Laws
"This vague and clearly unconstitutional memo is a grave attack on students, our profession, and knowledge itself," said one union leader.
Feb 25, 2025
A coalition of educators and sociologists filed a lawsuit on Tuesday challenging the U.S. Department of Education for threatening to withhold funding from schools that don't comply with the Trump administration's radical revision of long-established federal civil rights law.
The lawsuit, filed in a Maryland federal court by the American Federation of Teachers (AFT), AFT Maryland, and the American Sociological Association (ASA), comes in response to a February 14 directive from the Department of Education's Office for Civil Rights prohibiting U.S. schools at all levels from "race-based decision making, no matter the form."
This directive followed President Donald Trump's executive order calling diversity, equity, and inclusion "discriminatory" and banning DEI programs and practices across the federal government. Trump subsequently signed another orderrevoking civil rights protections for people of color and women enacted during the Lyndon B. Johnson administration and yet another targeting what he called "radical indoctrination"—which includes racial justice, LGBTQ+, and other topics—in K-12 education.
Last week, a federal judge in Maryland granted a preliminary injunction blocking portions of Trump's anti-DEI orders on grounds they "likely" violate the First Amendment.
Critics have slammed Trump's DEI ban as a rollback of hard-fought rights for historically marginalized people under false civil rights pretexts.
"This vague and clearly unconstitutional memo is a grave attack on students, our profession, and knowledge itself," AFT president Randi Weingarten said of the February 14 missive in a statement Tuesday.
Democracy Forward represents @aftunion.bsky.social, @aftmaryland.bsky.social & @asanews.bsky.social, in lawsuit challenging the Dept of Ed's new policy threatening to withhold federal funding for education institutions that do not comply with its weaponization of civil rights laws. (1/2)
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— Democracy Forward (@democracyforward.org) February 25, 2025 at 2:46 PM
Weingarten continued:
It would hamper efforts to extend access to education, and dash the promise of equal opportunity for all, a central tenant of the United States since its founding. It would ban meaningful instruction on slavery, the Missouri Compromise, the Emancipation Proclamation, the forced relocation of Native American tribes, the laws of Jim Crow, Brown v. Board of Education, the internment of Japanese Americans during World War II, and the Civil Rights Act and the Voting Rights Act. It would upend campus life. Federal statute already prohibits any president from telling schools and colleges what to teach. And students have the right to learn without the threat of culture wars waged by extremist politicians hanging over their heads. Our suit exposes these harms and shows how this memo's arbitrary and capricious reasoning flies in the face of both American values and established law.
AFT Maryland president Kenya Campbell said: "Trump's Department of Education is undermining the freedom of every student in Maryland and across the country to learn honest history, stoking more fear and division in the classroom. In a country where there should be no barriers on education, this broad-reaching and unlawful attack threatens the functionality of our public schools."
"We cannot meet the needs of every student, if we cannot teach the diverse and complex history of every student, and that is why AFT Maryland has joined this lawsuit—to ensure the honest education of all who learn in Maryland and across the country, from K-12 schools in our most vulnerable communities to our higher education institutions," Campbell added.
ASA president Adia Harvey Wingfield noted that "sociologists examine society and group behavior, including race and racial inequality."
"Studying and teaching about social movements like the civil rights movement, economic disparities caused by redlining, or immigration policies is impossible without acknowledging the central role of race in these and many other social phenomena," Wingfield argued. "This memo doesn't just hinder sociologists from doing our jobs or merely violate our right to free speech— it inflicts a profound disservice upon students who gain from a more comprehensive understanding of the world and upon society as a whole that benefits from our discoveries about human behavior."
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