Workers inside Department of Education say Trump’s latest bid to dismantle agency ‘makes no sense’

Donald Trump’s bid to gut the US Department of Education “makes no sense”, according to workers inside the federal agency, who accuse the administration of trying to make their lives “as difficult and traumatic as possible”.

Three employees inside the department spoke to the Guardian, with one warning that morale has been “completely lost”, 10 months after Trump returned to the White House. All requested to remain anonymous for fear of retaliation.

On Tuesday afternoon Linda McMahon, the education secretary, held an all-staff meeting and announced plans to press ahead with dismantling the department.

Key operations are set to be handed off to a string of other agencies, including the departments of interior, health and human services, labor and state. While the move is technically temporary, the administration intends to seek approval from Congress to make the changes permanent.

“Not one person applauded,” said one employee who attended the meeting. “Morale is completely lost,” they added. “Staff are furious about the way we are being treated.”

The administration has moved fast to dismantle the agency, which had more than 4,000 employees when Trump took office in January, and now has about 2,700. Trump signed an executive order in March calling for its shutdown, and the supreme court upheld mass firings in July.

The president had signaled he would do so on the campaign trail, suggesting all power and oversight over education should be returned to states. Project 2025, the rightwing manifesto for a second Trump administration, called for the department to be dismantled and many of its funds and programs eliminated.

“The Department of Education is a fairly awful place to work right now,” said a second employee at the agency. “But what is being done to the systems that support kids, students, families, adult learners and our country’s future is worse than anything they can do to us.”

The employee received a so-called reduction in force notification during the shutdown, informing them of plans to eliminate their role, which was later rescinded due to a court order.

A third employee, outside Washington DC, said they’ve received no notice since the government reopened, and they and others have remained locked out of their work accounts.

“Our group has received absolutely no communication from the Department of Education since the government reopened. No rescinded notices, no clarification as to our status, and we, largely, do not have access to our accounts,” they said. “I’ve been waiting and calling IT trying to get back to work to no avail.”

They explained it’s been “disheartening” to have been brought back and working on cases again for a few weeks, then for the shutdown to happen and then be locked out of their account. it feels “as though the administration is mad about its inability to get rid of” the education department as easily as it had wanted to, “and so it is making it as difficult and traumatic as possible for us”.

The latest plan to transfer functions to different federal agencies “makes no sense”, they added. “It will only create more chaos and confusion, the complete opposite of efficiency. It’s not giving a single thing ‘back to the states’, and only creating more red tape and cost to the American people.”

The worker said: “There has been zero transparency, so no one knows what is actually being redistributed versus shut down.”

Where operations have been earmarked to be moved to different departments, “it’s unclear whether staff are also moving, or just the work”, they added. “If it’s just the work, who will staff it? So while the technicality is unclear, the practical effect is the work cannot, and will not, be done in the manner necessary or required to serve the people.”

The union representing workers at the education department called the latest efforts “unlawful” and harmful to US students, educators and families.

“This latest ploy by the Trump administration to dismantle the congressionally created US Department of Education is not only unlawful – it’s an insult to the tens of millions of students who rely on the agency to protect their access to a quality education,” said Rachel Gittleman, president of AFGE Local 252 and a worker at the agency. “Students, educators and families depend on the department’s comprehensive support for schools, from early learning through graduate programs.

“This move comes as the administration has attempted to fire large numbers of career public servants in these very offices – and is now trying to shift their critical work to agencies with no educational expertise. Breaking apart the Department of Education and moving its responsibilities elsewhere will only create more confusion for schools and colleges, deepen public distrust, and ultimately harm students and families.”

Angela Hanks, chief of policy programs at the Century Foundation, who worked at the Department of Labor under the Biden administration, questioned the logic of transferring the Title I program, which serves 26 million children in the US by providing federal funding to schools, to a Department of Labor program that serves 130,000 children.

“Linda McMahon has said this move will ‘peel back the layers of federal bureaucracy’, but the reality is that it will, at best, unleash chaos on school districts, and ultimately, on our kids,” Hanks wrote on social media. “Trump and his allies aren’t returning education to the states or taming bureaucracy, they’re laying a bureaucratic mess at the feet of states and district leaders.”

Teacher unions also excoriated the latest moves by the administration. “Donald Trump and his administration chose American Education Week, a time when our nation is celebrating students, public schools and educators, to announce their illegal plan to further abandon students by dismantling the Department of Education,” said Becky Pringle, president of the National Education Association, which represents 3 million educators around the US.

“This move is neither streamlining nor reform – it’s an abdication and abandonment of America’s future,” said Randi Weingarten, president of the American Federation of Teachers, which represents 1.8 million workers, including educators and other school-related personnel. “Rather than show leadership in helping all students seize their potential, it walks away from that responsibility.”

The White House deferred comment to the Department of Education, which did not respond to multiple requests for comment.

On social media, the administration has repeatedly touted its efforts to dismantle the department.

“We heard our Out of Office emails got some attention during the government shutdown. Time for an update,” said one post by the Department of Education’s official X account.

The post included an email screenshot with the headline “OOO: Hopefully for good soon.”