‘Reckless, foolish and vicious’: Education Department cuts slammed by critics

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Democratic lawmakers and higher ed groups voiced concerns that the firings would leave the agency without enough people to carry out key functions.

Published March 12, 2025 Natalie Schwartz's headshot

Natalie Schwartz Senior Editor A close-up short of Linda McMahon in a crowded room.

Secretary of Education Linda McMahon arrives at President Trump's joint address to Congress on March 4, 2025, in Washington, D.C. McMahon framed the Education Department's workforce reductions as the first step toward eliminating the agency altogether. Tierney L. Cross via Getty Images

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Higher education groups and Democratic lawmakers have slammed the Trump administration’s move to cut the U.S. Department of Education’s staff roughly in half, voicing concerns that the agency won’t have enough workers to carry out core functions.

Education Department leaders announced late Tuesday that they were firing more than 1,300 workers, leaving 2,183 personnel at the agency. Nearly 600 Education Department employees had also accepted voluntary buyouts before the terminations were announced.

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The move brings the Trump administration closer toward its goal of eliminating the Education Department. President Donald Trump ran on the promise to abolish the 46-year-old agency, though getting rid of it altogether would require congressional approval.

U.S. Education Secretary Linda McMahon confirmed Tuesday during a Fox News interview that the terminations were the first step toward eliminating the agency. “That was the president’s mandate. His directive to me clearly is to shut down the Department of Education,” McMahon told television host Laura Ingraham.

Education Department officials said it will continue to carry out the programs required by law, including Pell Grants, student loans and competitive grantmaking. However, higher education experts voiced concerns that the terminations will undermine these very programs.

"Claiming that eliminating half the Department won’t affect its services — without any clear plan to redistribute the workload — is, at best, naive and, at worst, deliberately misleading,” Beth Maglione, interim president and CEO of the National Association of Student Financial Aid Administrators, said in a Wednesday statement.

Although the Education Department is the smallest cabinet-level federal agency, its responsibilities are vast. Its Federal Student Aid office issues billions of dollars each year in loans and Pell Grants, its Office for Civil Rights investigates complaints of discrimination, and its research divisions compile and analyze key student achievement data.

Maglione expressed concern about how the cuts could impact the Free Application for Federal Student Aid, noting that the Education Department hasn’t made clear which units have been cut and why.

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“The Department’s work is greater than the sum of its parts, and decimating entire teams within the agency could lead to unintended but dire consequences for critical systems — like the FAFSA — that depend on the work of multiple teams,” Maglione said.

Sameer Gadkaree, president of The Institute for College Access & Success, voiced similar worries.

“Core functions of the Department could experience outages or breakages, leaving students struggling to get or renew financial aid or campus-based aid,” Gadkaree said in a statement Tuesday. “Student loan borrowers, meanwhile, will struggle to access the benefits current law provides. And they can’t be sure they will get reliable, accurate advice on student loan repayment.”

Liberal lawmakers also pushed back against the decision.

House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries on Wednesday called the terminations “a reckless, foolish and vicious act designed to rip away high-quality education from our most vulnerable children.”

Jeffries noted that only Congress can close the Education Department and accused the Trump administration of breaking the law.

“Democrats will continue to aggressively push back in Congress, the Courts and across our communities,” the New York Democrat said.

Sen. Patty Murray, a Democrat from Washington, said students and their families would suffer from the staff reduction.

“When you fire the people who hold predatory for-profit colleges accountable and who help students get financial aid, it is students who pay the price for years to come,” Murray said in a statement.

Conservative groups, meanwhile, lauded the move.

“A 50 percent workforce reduction is sizeable and could very well be a good thing,” said Neal McCluskey, director of the Center for Educational Freedom at the Cato Institute, a libertarian think tank. “We don’t know how many people are actually needed to execute US ED’s jobs, and it’s time to find out if it’s been a bloated bureaucracy all along.”

Praise also came from the Heritage Foundation, the conservative think tank that spearheaded Project 2025, the conservative policy blueprint that calls for eliminating the Education Department.

“Reductions such as this are a great start and are long overdue,” said Lindsey Burke, the director of the foundation’s Center for Education Policy, and Jonathan Butcher, a senior research fellow. “Ultimately, Americans will see that the Department of Education is not necessary for students to succeed, and the entire agency should be eliminated.”

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‘Reckless, foolish and vicious’: Education Department cuts slammed by critics

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