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What do Trump's Education Department cuts mean for Americans?
What do Trump's Education Department cuts mean for Americans? | The Excerpt On Thursday's episode of The Excerpt podcast: USA TODAY Education Reporter Zach Schermele takes a closer look at President Donald Trump's move to slash the Education Department in half. Canada and the European Union strike back at Trump tariffs. The EPA will roll back regulations on power plant emissions and tailpipe pollution. USA TODAY Senior National Political Correspondent Sarah D. Wire discusses a Thursday deadline surrounding more federal layoffs. See the federal layoffs so far. SpaceX cancels a launch to bring astronauts home. Have feedback on the show? Please send us an email at podcasts@ Hit play on the player below to hear the podcast and follow along with the transcript beneath it. This transcript was automatically generated, and then edited for clarity in its current form. There may be some differences between the audio and the text. Podcasts: True crime, in-depth interviews and more USA TODAY podcasts right here Taylor Wilson: Good morning, I'm Taylor Wilson. And today is Thursday, March 13th, 2025. This is The Excerpt. Today, what do Trump's Education Department cuts mean for Americans? Plus, a tit-for-tat fight over tariffs continues as markets plunge. And there's a new deadline today for more federal layoffs. ♦ President Donald Trump this week cut the Education Department in half. So what does that actually mean for American educators and students? I spoke with USA TODAY Education Reporter Zach Schermele for more. Zach, thank you so much for making some time on this busy, busy week for you. Zach Schermele: Thank you, Taylor. I appreciate it. Taylor Wilson: So let's just get to some of the basics, Zach. Tell us about these layoffs announced at the Education Department this week? Zach Schermele: The Education Department said, late Tuesday, right after a notice was given to workers across the country not to come in on Wednesday, that the agency was going to be cut by roughly half. So according to estimates that we have seen, preliminary tallies from the union that represents federal workers in the Education Department, some of the biggest hit offices include the Federal Student Aid Office. That office oversees federal student loans, makes sure that students have the ability to pay for college, helps to ensure that folks can fill out the FAFSA, that type of stuff. That's the Free Application for Federal Student Aid. And the Office for Civil Rights, which makes sure that students and teachers are not discriminated against, saw entire regional offices across the country be entirely dismantled, and folks laid off in those places. Taylor Wilson: We'll get to some of those potential implications in a second, Zach. But, first, President Donald Trump defended the decision yesterday. Let's take a listen. President Trump: We have a dream, and you know what 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. Taylor Wilson: So, Zach, what's your reaction here, listening to that? Zach Schermele: The role of the Federal Education Department is not to control what teachers teach in the classroom but, in fact, what the Federal Education Department does is it ensures that students can get to school, that they can stay in school, and that they can feel safe in school. And that they can graduate and finish from school, be that kindergarten through 12th grade, or an apprenticeship, or a bachelor's degree, or a graduate program, and have a valuable credential that leads to success later in life. So this whole idea of getting education out of the hands of the federal government isn't entirely accurate. Taylor Wilson: While on the Linda McMahon front, of course, this is Secretary of Education, she's stressed that congressionally-appropriated money that includes financial aid won't be affected by the Trump administration's plans to downsize this Education Department. Zach, how did those comments land with you? You're an education reporter who's covered a lot of these financial aid rollout issues in particular. Zach Schermele: Yeah, I think, potentially, Taylor, a lot of our listeners could maybe sympathize with issues that they, or people that they know, had with filling out the FAFSA, which if you want to get help paying for college from the federal government, you have to fill that out. It took quite a while for the Biden administration to figure out how to fix the problems with that form. And in many ways, the problems there were a function of the fact that the Federal Student Aid Office and the Education Department has struggled with staffing. And has to rely on contractors and vendors in order to deliver the things that Congress mandates it to deliver. I think that there are a lot of staff members within the Federal Student Aid Office, or those who have left, and other offices across the Education Department, who now say they don't see a way in which this agency can deliver on the mandates from Congress with a smaller workforce. In fact, the smallest workforce that this agency has ever had. Taylor Wilson: What else might be impacted in the short to medium term after these cuts? Zach Schermele: The Office for Civil Rights ensures that students and staff within schools, K-12 schools, colleges across the country, are not discriminated against. And one of the things that we saw from the department immediately was a freeze on all sorts of investigations into discrimination-related complaints, disabilities was one. There was a large scale pause into that immediately implemented when Trump took over, which that's not something that doesn't happen when presidential administrations turn over, but the degree to which things were paused was unprecedented, according to civil rights attorneys that I spoke with. They've unpaused those investigations. But if attorneys that families were interacting with to try and mediate their complaints instead of bringing costly lawsuits against school districts, if those attorneys are now gone, how does that work continue? I don't know. And I think a lot of these attorneys don't know. And they are dealing with frantic messages from parents about where they go next. Taylor Wilson: I'm just curious, we've had this rhetoric around dissolving the Education Department altogether. Is that something Trump could actually do? Is that legal, Zach? Zach Schermele: On paper, the Education Department is a federal agency, and a president doesn't have the unilateral authority to abolish federal agencies. That is something that only Congress has the power to do. If you assess the politics of Capitol Hill right now, it doesn't seem as though a bill to abolish the department would be likely at all to pass because Trump would need the support of Democrats in the Senate, which he certainly is not going to have. Taylor Wilson: All right, great breakdown for us as always. Zach Schermele covers education for USA TODAY. Thank you, Zach. Zach Schermele: Thank you, Taylor. Taylor Wilson: For a closer look at some of the issues at play surrounding these Education Department cuts, tune into a special deep-dive episode on Sunday with Zach and my colleague, Dana Taylor. You can find that episode right here on this feed. ♦ Canada and the European Union quickly unveiled retaliatory tariffs against the US yesterday. The moves came hours after Trump's sweeping tariffs on steel and aluminum imports took effect. And the US will respond to Europe's levies with additional tariffs on imports from the European Union. For her part, Mexican president Claudia Sheinbaum, said her government will wait for a possible resolution in the coming weeks before deciding on retaliation. Trump's global tariffs of 25% on all imports of the metals also extend the duties to hundreds of products made from the metals. Trump defended the tariffs in remarks yesterday, and hinted at the possibility of higher levies in the future. US stocks were mostly higher in afternoon trading yesterday, but have fallen dramatically in recent days, amid constant news of tariffs and job cuts. J.P. Morgan's chief economist, Bruce Kasman, says that there is a 40% chance of a US recession this year. ♦ The Trump administration has announced a wave of regulatory rollbacks. They include a repeal of emissions limits on power plants, reduced protections for waterways, and a reversal of limits on tailpipe pollution. The changes come as part of Trump's energy dominance agenda. The Environmental Protection Agency is moving to unwind dozens of Biden-era regulations to align with Trump's vows to cut red tape. But the administration's actions are also set to weaken environmental, US air, and water protections. ♦ For some federal workers, action surrounding a deadline today for the next wave of layoffs might be the most significant moves of the week from the administration. I caught up with USA TODAY's Senior National Political Correspondent Sarah D. Wire for more. Sarah, thanks for coming on to talk through layoffs. Sarah D. Wire: Thanks for having me. Taylor Wilson: Just reset this for us, if you would. What have we seen on layoffs so far during the Trump administration? Sarah D. Wire: So, first, there was the buyout offer, and about 750,000 employees took that. It was much less than what the Trump administration had been hoping for. So then, in mid-February, the layoffs began. And we're still not sure how many. The White House has not been willing to tell us how many people have actually been laid off, but we can see that it's probably in the tens of thousands. And these layoffs have occurred across the country. Everything from the National Park Service, to the Department of Agriculture, Veterans Affairs, IRS, you name it. Taylor Wilson: So we now have a new deadline for today. Sarah, what is this deadline, and what's expected for this next round of slashing? Sarah D. Wire: So this deadline is for the agencies to give the White House their plans for reducing the workforce. So we're going to start to see some numbers for each agency that we don't already know, perhaps even the location where the layoffs are occurring, or maybe their topics of focus. Taylor Wilson: And were any of these layoff plans already underway ahead of today's deadline? Sarah D. Wire: We've started to see some trickle out. Half of the Department of Education employees were laid off on Wednesday. Earlier in the week, we learned that the Department of Veterans Affairs was laying off about 16% of their staff, that's 76,000 people. NOAA laid off about 1,000 people, or 20% of their staff. And even NASA told employees that they're shuttering several offices, including the Office of the Chief Scientist. Taylor Wilson: So what are some potential downstream impacts to all this that you're keeping an eye on, Sarah? Sarah D. Wire: The biggest thing is, what services are getting cut? Americans interact with the federal government daily, whether they realize it or not. And workers are involved in food safety, workplace safety. Thousands of people call Veterans Affairs, the IRS, and the Social Security Administration every single day. And less bodies means less services. Taylor Wilson: Can you help put this in context for us, Sarah, in terms of the broader effort from both Trump and Elon Musk to get just greater control generally over federal employees? I know you have a new piece out on this. Sarah D. Wire: President Trump, during the campaign, promised massive cuts to the size of the government. He demonized federal employees, really placed a lot of blame on them. And he promised less regulation, less restrictions for everyday life. And he has spent the first two months of the administration dramatically overhauling federal workforce, and the federal government. And he's moved to close some smaller agencies. And he's placed Elon Musk, and some of his DOGE allies, as liaisons in most of the major agencies, looking for ways to automate and use AI. Taylor Wilson: Well, Sarah, at the heart of all this, really, is Trump's claim that the federal workforce is bloated. So I guess it really just begs the question, is the federal government actually bloated? What can the numbers tell us on this? Sarah D. Wire: The size of the federal workforce has not substantially changed since the late 1960s, when employment hovered around two million federal employees. And that's according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. The government has consistently employed between 1.8 million and 2.4 million people over the last 60 years. But during that same time span, the US population grew from 203 million to 331 million people. So you have the same number of people serving in the government with over 100 million more Americans to serve. Taylor Wilson: All right, Sarah D. Wire is a senior national political correspondent with USA TODAY. Thank you, Sarah, as always. We'll be keeping an eye out for the rest of your coverage on all this. Sarah D. Wire: Thanks for having me. ♦ Taylor Wilson: SpaceX and NASA called off plans to launch four people into orbit last night as part of a mission to bring back two crew members from the International Space Station. They decided against launching over a ground issue on the hydraulic system, and the teams will assess when is the next safest time for the launch to proceed. Astronauts Suni Williams and Butch Wilmore, you may have heard from on our special deep dive episode from the Space Station a few weeks ago, have spent nine months in orbit. They could have returned to Earth as early as Sunday had the launch gone as planned. ♦ One of President Donald Trump's closest advisors is Elon Musk, the richest man on the planet. He also wields power like a chainsaw in service of his Department of Government Efficiency. Kara Swisher: I've talked to various people close to him, and most people are terrified of him, of retaliation, if they speak out in any way. Taylor Wilson: That was journalist, Kara Swisher, the host of podcasts, Pivot, and On with Kara Swisher, who has covered Musk for decades. I recently sat down with Kara to get her take on who Elon really is. You can hear that episode right here on this feed today, beginning at 4:00 PM Eastern Time. ♦ And thanks for listening to The Excerpt. You can get the podcast wherever you get your audio. And if you're on a smart speaker, just ask for The Excerpt. I'm Taylor Wilson, and I'll be back tomorrow with more of The Excerpt from USA TODAY.
