The Trump administration's layoffs of federal employees completely decimated an office within the Department of Education that helps support children with disabilities, NPR reported on Monday, adding to the list of people Trump has needlessly hurt with his cruelty.
According to NPR, every employee in the Office of Special Education and Rehabilitative Services, including the Office of Special Education Programs and the Rehabilitative Services Administration—was axed by the Reduction in Force Trump began implementing. These offices help not only distribute $15 billion that helps educate roughly 7.5 million children with disabilities across the country, but also to conduct oversight to ensure that states are complying with federal law that protects those students.
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They are some of the roughly 4,200 federal employees who were let go in Trump’s mass culling that was a key goal of Project 2025—the right-wing roadmap Trump lied that he had nothing to do with during the 2024 campaign.
"If this RIF notice is carried out, the Department of Education can no longer administer IDEA," an Education Department source told ABC News, referring to Individuals with Disabilities Education Act grants that help schools afford special education needs. "I have no staff to put the money out and to monitor the states."
Trump and the goons in his administration blamed the government shutdown for the mass firings—even though a shutdown did not necessitate any layoffs.
“No one is making Trump and Vought hurt American workers by conducting mass firings—they just want to,” Democratic Sen. Patty Murray of Washington said in a statement, referring to Project 2025 mastermind turned Office of Management and Budget Director Russell Vought. “A shutdown does not give Trump or Vought new, special powers to cause more chaos or permanently weaken more basic services for the American people, and the simple fact is this administration has been recklessly firing—and rehiring—essential workers all year. This is nothing new, and no one should be intimidated by these crooks.”
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In fact, Trump has been trying to shut down the Department of Education for years, and announced he was doing so when he took office.
Trump already fired more than a thousand of the department's employees, and is now using the shutdown as cover to avoid blowback for the additional layoffs he is choosing to carry out—no matter how much they'll harm students.
Decimating the offices that help students to learn and attend school is evil. But it’s just the latest way Trump is hurting kids with disabilities. Already, Trump cut funding for grants that help students with hearing and visual impairments.
And it's yet more evidence that Trump doesn’t care about children, as these firings will likely lead students to lose services or protections that kept them from being discriminated against.
"There is a risk that the money to educate their children will not be given to the state, and that their access to support and advocacy for their children with special needs will no longer continue because there is no staff available to administer IDEA," a Department of Education leader who was granted anonymity to speak freely told ABC News.
