Prime Home Democrats urged Training Secretary Linda McMahon and the Trump administration to reverse a Thursday transfer to start dismantling the Division of Training.
“Students, teachers, and schools across the country rely on the Department’s important work to ensure that all people are able to access and grow through education, and we have serious doubts the remaining staff at the Department have the capacity to fulfill this mission,” Reps. Gerry Connolly (D-Va.) and Bobby Scott (D-Va.), rating members on the Home Oversight Committee and Home Committee on Training and the Workforce, stated in a Thursday letter to McMahon.
“We urge you to reverse these short-sighted decisions before they cause any more damage to America’s students, families, and educators,” continued the letter.
On Thursday, President Trump signed an govt order to facilitate his purpose of eliminating the Division of Training. The order acknowledges that it will take congressional motion to utterly shut down the division, however Trump ordered McMahon to do all she will to lead to its abolition.
“Today, we take a very historic action that was 45 years in the making,” Trump stated throughout a White Home signing ceremony Thursday. “I will sign an executive order to begin eliminating the federal Department of Education.”
“The department’s useful functions … will be preserved, fully preserved,” the president added in reference to Pell Grants, Title I funding and packages for college kids with disabilities. “They’re going to be preserved in full and redistributed to various other agencies and departments.”
Amongst different requests that Connolly and Scott made within the letter to McMahon had been paperwork permitting for “a reduction in” the workforce of the division and “every statutory responsibility entrusted to the Department that” McMahon “considered in announcing your illegal mass terminations.”
“To ensure that education across the country can continue without disruption, the Trump Administration must rescind this unlawful executive order, abandon these illegal reductions in force, and restore all employees improperly terminated,” the Democrats wrote.
McMahon stated Thursday that Trump is dedicated to doing “everything legally” in his efforts to dismantle the Division of Training.
The Hill has reached out to the White Home and the Division of Training for remark.
