Heartland states sue Trump admin over education cuts

On Thursday, the attorneys general of Illinois, Michigan, Minnesota and Wisconsin joined 16 other Democratic state attorneys general to signal they are taking legal action against President Donald Trump’s gutting of the Department of Education. This week, the administration announced it would be firing of some 1,300 federal workers at the department.

The suit, which was submitted just hours after two federal judges overturned similar federal worker firings, argues that Trump’s halving of the department’s workforce will undermine key services like student loans, aid for disabled or low-income students and the protection of civil rights. Indeed, the department’s Office of Civil Rights saw some of the most significant reduction in unionized staffing, alongside the Office of Federal Student Aid and the Institute of Educational Sciences. 

“It is a bedrock constitutional principle that the president and his agencies cannot make law. Rather, they can only—and indeed, they must — implement the laws enacted by Congress, including those statutes that create federal agencies and dictate their duties,” the suit reads. 

“The executive thus can neither outright abolish an agency nor incapacitate it by cutting away the personnel required to implement the agency’s statutorily-mandated duties.”

Such cuts come just days after Secretary of Education Linda McMahon told Fox News that Trump had explicitly commanded her to “shut down the Department of Education.” And earlier this month, a draft of an executive order declaring the end of the Department of Education was leaked to the press, but the administration has not yet formally announced it. 

“The experiment of controlling American education through Federal programs and dollars — and the unaccountable bureaucrats those programs and dollars support — has failed our children, our teachers, and our families,” according to the leaked draft published by the Wall Street Journal. 

The fallout of a total shutdown can not be understated. On the same day the lawsuit was announced, Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker (D) outlined the potential damage while speaking at the Illinois Education Association conference, saying it would cost his state $3 billion in education funding. 

“When Donald Trump and the people that he appoints tear down the Department of Education, when they take away funding … from kids across this nation who deserve to be able to get a good public education,” Pritzker said. 

“They are damaging what we can do for our people here in the state of Illinois.”