WASHINGTON — Rep. Melanie Stansbury (D-N.M.) on Tuesday sounded the alarm that Elon Musk and his surrogates are “actively dismantling” the U.S. Division of Training, as staffers together with his Division of Authorities Effectivity are on-site on the company’s headquarters in Washington, D.C., poring over federal contracts and packages.
“It’s our understanding that today, they’re inside the building, they’re on the sixth floor, they’re canceling grants and contracts,” the New Mexico congresswoman informed HuffPost. “They’re literally dismantling and shutting down programs as we speak.”
“We expect that the Department of Education is going to potentially be dissolved in the coming days,” warned Stansbury, who’s the highest Democrat on a Home oversight subcommittee targeted on DOGE and Musk’s actions.
A spokesperson for the Division of Training didn’t reply to a request for touch upon what DOGE is doing on the division’s headquarters or if leaders count on their division to be eradicated. A White Home spokesperson didn’t reply to a request for remark.
Some recipients of federal training grants informed HuffPost on Tuesday their contracts had been abruptly terminated within the final 24 hours.
One one that works at a analysis firm that contracts with the Institute of Training Sciences, the nonpartisan analysis arm of the Training Division, stated their contracts had been all canceled Monday night time, “effective immediately.” One other grant recipient stated their group’s Supporting Efficient Educator Growth grant, or SEED grant, was canceled Monday night time. SEED grants are used to assist educators develop and increase finest practices that may function fashions for others.
“Everything you are posting about the Dept of Ed being dismantled appears true from my vantage point,” this grant recipient stated in an electronic mail.
This particular person stated their group has additionally been barred from drawing down federal cash due for already-incurred bills.
If true, that may be unlawful beneath the Impoundment Management Act, which prevents the president and different authorities officers from unilaterally substituting their very own funding selections instead of what Congress has directed them to do.
“Yes, this violates the Impoundment Control Act. But how are we supposed to fight it? How do you keep staff on with no funding?” fumed this grant recipient, who was granted anonymity to talk freely. “It’s infuriating!
President Donald Trump tapped Musk, the richest man in the world and a Trump loyalist, to lead DOGE, an entity with the stated goal of cutting costs across the federal government and rooting out fraud. But so far, DOGE, which Trump designated as a replacement for the U.S. Digital Service, has been proceeding recklessly, politically and, to many observers, illegally.
Musk’s team of tech workers has operated in secrecy, potentially gained access to millions of federal workers’ sensitive records and triggered numerous lawsuits. It appears intent on gutting entire federal agencies, starting with the U.S. Agency for International Development, which provides tens of billions of dollars in foreign aid for global health and disaster relief. DOGE essentially declared all of USAID’s heywork to be wasteful spending — without input from Congress, which controls federal funding.
With Trump’s endorsement, DOGE now appears focused on eliminating the Department of Education. Musk said last week that the department “no longer exists.” In a televised interview on Sunday, simply forward of the Tremendous Bowl, Trump prompt it’s superb with him if Musk needs to do this.
“It’s not legal. They know it’s not legal. But they’re doing it anyway,” Stansbury stated. “The only recourse we have right now is to go to the courts. I can tell you, we will absolutely be in the courts immediately as they’re dismantling the Department of Education.”
Invoice Clark through Getty Photos
Stansbury has been notably apprehensive about what’s going to occur to tribal education schemes in Native American communities if Trump and Musk proceed with attempting to eradicate the Division of Training.
She stated she’s heard that the Trump administration has been “running drills” for weeks in preparation of shifting tribal packages funded by the Training Division on an “emergency basis” to the Division of Inside’s Bureau of Indian Training, or to easily ending these packages solely.
That may be unlawful on a number of ranges, stated Stansbury, noting it will violate statutory legal guidelines and appropriations legal guidelines and probably breach federal belief and treaty obligations. Past that, she pointed to a clause in Trump’s govt order on training that “rang all the alarm bells” for anybody targeted on tribal training, because it echoed the so-called termination period of the Nineteen Fifties, when the U.S. authorities enacted insurance policies aimed toward terminating its obligations to tribes.
Throughout this period, as Sen. Joseph McCarthy (R-Wis.) led his notorious investigations to show supposed communist infiltrators of the U.S. authorities, Republican officers tried to dismantle all federal recognition of tribal sovereignty — or recognition of the tribes themselves — and finish federal packages for Native American communities.
Stansbury stated Trump’s govt order principally says the Bureau of Indian Training, which oversees federal education schemes for roughly 46,000 Native American college students at 183 faculties throughout the nation, ought to have a look at faculty alternative ― a euphemism for insurance policies that redirect college students and funding in the direction of non-public faculties. Besides there isn’t any “school choice” for faculties funded as a part of tribal and treaty tasks, resulting from the distinctive method through which they’re funded and operated, she stated. All this raises issues about plans to dismantle the Bureau of Indian Training itself.
“It smacked of tribal termination and McCarthyism,” Stansbury stated of Trump’s govt order on training. “That’s part of why we’re trying to raise consciousness about this. We want to make sure that is not the direction that the Trump admin is headed.”
“They know it’s not legal. But they’re doing it anyway.”
– Rep. Melanie Stansbury (D-N.M.)
She wrote to Inside Secretary Doug Burgum on Tuesday to share her issues.
“We are gravely concerned that the January 29th Executive Order is part of a larger set of actions in recent days that are intended to unilaterally delay, cancel, or dismantle programs vital to Tribal communities and students and dismantle the BIE and Department of Education,” Stansbury stated in her letter to Burgum. “Any unilateral attempts to disrupt existing services administered or funded by the BIE would directly violate the trust and treaty obligations of the United States and the fundamental separation of powers.
An Interior Department spokesperson did not respond to a request for comment on whether Burgum is committed to preserving the Bureau of Indian Education in its current form or at all.
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Linda McMahon, Trump’s nominee to be the next education secretary, is set for her confirmation hearing on Thursday before the Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions committee. Some Democratic senators have already sent her questions about the fate of the department she hopes to lead.
“Do you support President Trump’s calls for [the Department of Education] to be abolished?” Sens Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) and Andy Kim (D-N.J.) requested McMahon in a Tuesday letter. “If that’s the case, why?
