WASHINGTON—Students, educators, and supporters gathered outside the Department of Education building on Friday morning to protest the Trump administration’s plan to dismantle the agency.
The event, billed as a “study-in,” began at 10 a.m. with students reading and doing homework at desks lined up in front of the building, followed by a rally in the afternoon.
The protest was scheduled for the morning after President Donald Trump signed an executive order directing Education Secretary Linda McMahon to return education authority to the states and, “to the maximum extent appropriate and permitted by law, take all necessary steps to facilitate the closure of the Department of Education.”
McMahon told reporters on Thursday after the signing of that order, that some of the department’s work, such as its Office of Civil Rights, may be taken up by other agencies like the Department of Justice.
She said Trump’s goal was to disburse schoolhouse-bound tax dollars to the states with “as few strings and regulations as possible.”
“Right now for about every dollar of funding that goes to the states, one statistic that’s shared with me is that 47 cents is spent on regulatory compliance. The President would clearly like to see that money used to educate our students, and that’s the goal,” McMahon said.
The protest, organized by climate political action group Sunrise Movement, drew a modest crowd, but former educator Emily Griswold told The Epoch Times she expects public outcry to gain steam.
Griswold also said she was concerned about how funding would be reallocated under the new system.
“What I’m most scared about, and why I came down today, is the potential cuts to special education. I’m very scared that we will go back to when children were institutionalized when they had disabilities,” she said.
Griswold’s concerns echo those of other critics of Trump’s plans.
Becky Pringle, president of the National Education Association, said in a statement Wednesday that shuttering the department would “hurt all students by sending class sizes soaring, cutting job training programs, [and] making higher education more expensive and out of reach for middle-class families.”
McMahon issued a statement on Thursday saying the government would continue funding programs for “K-12 students, students with special needs, college student borrowers, and others who rely on essential programs.”
Adah Crandall, a 19-year-old freshman at MIT and organizer with Sunrise Movement, shared Pringle’s view that the closure was a net negative and said she felt the Trump administration’s efforts to cut government spending were not helpful to the general public.
“I also really want to bring light to the fact that, you know, it’s the Department of Education today that’s getting cut, but tomorrow it could be anything else,” she told The Epoch Times.
“I also really want to bring light to the fact that, you know, it’s the Department of Education today that’s getting cut, but tomorrow it could be anything else,”
Yes; tomorrow any government agency that is wasteful, fraudulent, or unnecessary should be cut or eliminated.
In the past corrupt Democrats would create thousands of unnecessary government jobs and pay them by taxpayers money, to create the illusion that the economy is great, when the economy was actually in trouble.
The ones who object to these cuts are those who have the high paying useless jobs or are just Democrat Idiots.
” EDUCATION IS A WEAPON WHOS EFFECTS DEPEND ON WHO HOLDS IT IN HIS HANDS AND WHO IT IS AIMED AT.” AUTHOR UNKNOWN.
Stalin said that iirc.
” IT’S NOT MUCH GOOD BEING WISE AMONG FOOLS…”
ROBERT GREEN, 48 RULES OF POWER.”
The great B.B. King had a popular song called “Paying the Cost to be the boss.” And should be required study at all these Universities where deadbeat social and government tuition dependent student deadbeats think they have a right or say on how to control the money that other actual contributing taxpayers earn.
“As long as I’m workin’, baby
And payin’ all the bills
I don’t want no mouth from you
About the way I’m supposed to live
But I tell you, I’m gonna have all the money
And I don’t want no back talk
If you don’t like what I’m doing, baby
Pick up your things and walk”
Only those students who are paying/WORKING their own way through college should be allowed a voice to protest ANYTHING regarding the Department of Education. Allowing the deadbeats to have a voice on how honest tax dollars are spent is like allowing illegals who are born overseas and break into the country to have the right to vote. First pay the costs of being the boss, then you become equal in rights and privileges to those who do.
All one needs to know is that this is the “Department of No Education”. Wokeness personified!!!!! Of the developed nations, the United States is one of the worst in the three “R’s and the sciences. The “DEI” of education, the Department of No Education!!!!!!