Past secretaries, union leader call for probe into Education Department slashing

Filed 2h ago · Via Michigan Advance · The Buffoon Desk

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News of Sorrow

Kevin MacLeod · incompetech.com · CC BY 4.0

Photo: Anefo · CC0 · via Wikimedia Commons

Three former Education Department secretaries and the union representing agency workers formally asked the department's acting inspector general to investigate the cost and impact of mass firings that hit roughly 1,000 employees in August 2025, after the Supreme Court cleared the way. They also want scrutiny of a follow-up push to fire nearly 500 more employees, which Congress and the courts stopped, and of the subsequent rehiring of hundreds of workers.

A department spokesperson dismissed the request by attacking the former secretaries' records rather than addressing the specifics, calling the RIF lawful and 'implemented carefully.' Lawmakers including Sens. Alsobrooks and Van Hollen and Rep. Scott criticized more than a dozen interagency agreements shifting Education's responsibilities to other departments as an effort to dismantle the agency piecemeal.

The full dispatch is available from the source below.

✒ FROM THE EDITORIAL DESK

Firing a thousand people, getting told by a court and Congress to knock it off on the next round, then rehiring hundreds of the same workers is not a reform, it's a fender-bender in slow motion. The department's response to being asked for a receipt was to insult the people asking for it. If the numbers really add up the way they claim, an inspector general's report should be the easiest thing in the world to welcome.

Source: Read the original at Michigan Advance → Scored: News of Sorrow · Kevin MacLeod · CC BY 4.0

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