Donald Trump promised his rightwing followers who want to dismantle public schools that he would eliminate the federal Department of Education, and yesterday, Linda McMahon, the wrestling entertainment billionaire Trump picked as Education Secretary, took a big step toward gutting the agency, announcing the firing of more than 1,300 workers. When combined with previous firings of “probationary” workers and calls for people to resign, that leaves Education with roughly half the 4,133 employees it had when Trump took office.
McMahon insisted the firings would make the department more “efficient” and claimed the mass firings wouldn’t harm services like Pell grants, student loans, special education funding, or Title I grants to schools in areas with high poverty. Then she told reporters to stop staring at her nose, which had suddenly grown to the size of a standard two-by-four from a lumberyard.
In a statement, McMahon said that the firings reflect the department’s “commitment to efficiency, accountability, and ensuring that resources are directed where they matter most: to students, parents, and teachers.” Although if you want to get all nitpicky about it, no money will actually go from the Ed. Department budget to any of that, since it all has to help offset some of the costs of the $3 trillion tax cut Republicans intend to give the very wealthy and corporations.
And despite closing her statement with “I appreciate the work of the dedicated public servants and their contributions to the Department,” McMahon could hardly wait to go on Fox News to tell Laura Ingraham the people she’d fired had it coming for being little more than “bureaucratic bloat.” Besides, nobody will miss those fired yesterday anyway, since she explained that
“We wanted to make sure that we kept all of the right people, the good people, to make sure that the outward-facing programs, the grants, the appropriations that come from Congress, all of that are being met and none of that’s going to fall through the cracks.”
Look, don’t take any of it personally, people with outstanding evaluations who got fired. There was no attempt to actually evaluate anyone; they just hacked away at the payroll, and they’re looking forward to firing the people who still have a job after yesterday as soon as they can get away with it.
McMahon said that she was simply following through on Trump’s plan to abolish the department altogether, although she again acknowledged, as she has before, that an act of Congress would be necessary to actually eliminate the department.
The 1,300 staffers were told in an email that their services were no longer needed, and we’ll just assume that as with other mass firings, they were also lied to and told their performance was lousy. CNN reports that they’ll actually get paid a little longer before being terminated sometime in the next 90 days,
according to senior agency officials. Those fired will begin teleworking starting Wednesday and go on paid administrative leave starting March 21, the officials said, adding that the employees will receive severance pay based on the length of their service.
Prior to the announcement of the mass shitcannings, a separate email told Education Department personnel their offices would be closed Wednesday because of “security reasons” that the bosses never actually identified. In reality, the department officials explained to CNN that the layoffs were the security reason.
The fucking fuckers even continued that lie after the real news broke, insisting to CNN that those laid off will have to telework “for safety reasons to protect the 2,183 employees that are going to remain after” all the layoffs. You know, in case any of the fired Education staff decide to go postal, which is a different federal office altogether.
Presumably they’ll be allowed at some point to clean out their cubicles/offices, though we won’t be surprised if they’re required to do so while running a gauntlet of Twitter users who’ll yell at them that they’re deadwood, traitors, groomers, and America haters.
In an op-ed at MSNBC yesterday, National Education Association President Randi Weingarten wrote that she’s certain that America’s adversaries would cheer the move, and while she meant foreign countries who wish us ill, she may as well have been honest, since that includes homegrown Christian nationalists who believe education just ruins people’s faith in God and turns innocent little girls into feminist lesbian witches.
Weingarten noted that Education Department grants “help close to 26 million children from poor families get extra support to reach their full potential,” and that the agency
helps meet the individual needs of around 7.5 million children with disabilities. It provided tens of millions to help the over 5 million English learners in U.S. classrooms improve their proficiency and assimilate into our communities. And it provided nearly 9 million students with the financial aid they need to attend college or trade programs, including work-study programs.
And we’ll repeat ourselves, because it’s important: for all the empty claims about “shifting” Education Department funding to states and to local schools, and to “empower” parents to be more active in their kids’ education, neither Trump nor congressional Republicans have actually presented a proposal to transfer a single penny to those purposes. Don’t let the fuckers lie.
And now, as with other mass firings and attempts to act beyond Trump’s constitutional authority, bring on the lawsuits. And hey, maybe send a nice note and a gift card to your kid’s favorite teacher. If you don’t have a kid in school, we know an elementary school in Detroit that has to sell pizzas to keep its services going, too!
OPEN THREAD!
[NYT (gift link) / CNN / New York Post / MSNBC]
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