President Trump on Wednesday said that Education Secretary Linda McMahon was behind the mass layoffs at the agency, not mentioning tech billionaire Elon Musk while defending the overhaul.
“When we cut— we want to cut— but we want to cut the people that aren’t working or not doing a good job. We’re keeping the best people. And Linda McMahon is a real professional, very, actually very sophisticated business person. She cut a large number, but she kept the best people, and we’ll see how it all works out,” Trump told reporters in the Oval Office.
“The Department of Education, maybe more so than any other place, has a lot of people that can be cut. They’re, number one, not showing up to work. Number two, they’re not doing a good job,” he added.
The Department of Education announced Tuesday it was firing nearly half of its workforce, slashing 1,315 staffers who received notification earlier that day.
Just last week, Trump stressed that Cabinet secretaries take the lead on making cuts to their agencies and staff, insisting that officials are empowered to make decisions before Musk an step in.
McMahon late Tuesday said that the mass layoffs are the first step toward shuttering the Education Department, which Trump said he would do while on the campaign trial.
The president repeated his argument on Wednesday that cutting the department and moving education to the states would improve the U.S. school system’s ranking globally.
“The dream is we’re going to move the Department of Education, we’re going to move education into the states, so that the states, instead of bureaucrats working in Washington, so that the states can run education,” Trump said. “We think when you move it back to Iowa and Indiana and all of the states that run so well…30, maybe almost 40, those will be as good as Denmark, those will be as good as Norway.”
The president also said that his administration will continue to push school choice programs, after Trump moved to boost programs in January by freeing up federal government spending towards it.
Complete abolishment of the Education department can’t happen without an act of Congress, which is unlikely due to the 60-vote threshold needed in the Senate to overcome a filibuster. But, the administration and McMahon can make changes to significantly weaken it.
