Trump administration officials are planning to fire nearly half of the staff at the Education Department, according to two people familiar with the announcement, which could come as soon as Tuesday and would gut the agency that manages federal loans for college, tracks student achievement and enforces civil rights laws in schools.
The cuts could portend an additional move by the Trump administration to essentially dismantle the department, as President Trump has said he wants to do, even though it cannot be closed without the approval of Congress.
Rumors about potential layoffs began circulating after department workers received an email about 2 p.m. announcing that the agency’s offices in the Washington area would be closed on Wednesday and reopen on Thursday.
The email from the department’s security office did not provide a reason for the closure. But the administration gave similarly cryptic notices about temporarily closing offices before severe cuts last month at the U.S. Agency for International Development and the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.
The Education Department had about 4,200 employees at the end of last year, the smallest work force among the 15 cabinet-level executive departments.
Mr. Trump has said he wants to rely on states and local school districts to fully oversee America’s education system. The president adopted the stringent position to align himself with the parents’ rights movement that grew out of the backlash to school shutdowns and other restrictions during the coronavirus pandemic.
That movement gained steam by organizing around opposition to left-leaning ideas in the curriculum, especially L.G.B.T.Q. issues and race. Activists contended that these priorities undermined parental rights and values.
In an interview last week on Fox News, Education Secretary Linda McMahon said that Mr. Trump intended to sign an executive order aimed at closing her department, but she declined to give details on the timing.
An executive order to dismantle the department would challenge the authority of Congress, which created the department by statute and legally must sign off on any move to close it. In a closely divided Senate, it is unlikely the administration could find enough support to do so, particularly as public opinion polls during the past two months have consistently shown roughly two-thirds of Americans oppose closing the department.
