Education Secretary Linda McMahon on Wednesday sought to use the government shutdown as leverage in the Trump administration’s battle to dismantle her department.
President Donald Trump and McMahon have been working together since March to gut the Education Department while acknowledging it would take congressional action to eliminate it altogether. They believe education would be better handled by state and local leaders who are closer to students and families, contending that the federal government has systematically failed in its stated mission to fuel educational excellence in the United States.
This week, McMahon used the government to further perpetuate such arguments. While the Education Department has now been shuttered for more than two weeks due to the government shutdown, “millions of American students are still going to school, teachers are getting paid, and schools are operating as normal,” she said.
“It confirms what the President has said: the federal Department of Education is unnecessary, and we should return education to the states,” McMahon wrote in a statement to X.
“The Democrat government shutdown has forced agencies to evaluate what federal responsibilities are truly critical for the American people,” she added.
Since Trump took office, the Education Department has cut around half of its workforce. On Wednesday, McMahon referenced the latest cuts, which were made during the shutdown through a reduction in force, or RIF.
“No education funding is impacted by the RIF, including funding for special education,” she said, adding that the continuing resolution Republican lawmakers hope to use to open up the government “will provide states and schools the funding they need to support all students.”
The Education Department’s workforce cuts during the shutdown are part of broader efforts by the Trump administration to use the government gridlock to reduce the size of the federal bureaucracy and eliminate perceived waste, fraud, and abuse.
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Trump’s budget director announced on Wednesday that he expects 10,000 federal workers to be laid off during the shutdown, noting 4,000 have already been sent RIF notices. The majority of layoffs thus far have hit the Treasury, Health and Human Services, and Commerce departments.
“We’re going to keep those RIFs rolling throughout the shutdown because we think it’s important to stay on offense for the American taxpayer,” Office of Management and Budget Director Russell Vought said. “We want to be very aggressive where we can be in shuttering the bureaucracy, not just the funding, but the bureaucracy, that we now have an opportunity to do that.”
