Students protest Education Department closure in ‘Hands Off Our Schools’ rally
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(WASHINGTON) — Hundreds of college and high school students representing student governments from some of the largest schools in the Washington, D.C., area will rally outside the Department of Education on Friday to oppose the administration’s gutting of the agency.
The “Hands Off Our Schools” rally is expected to turn out over 500 students, according to a spokesperson, who added that the rally has been working to increase its permit size to accommodate north of 1,000 participants.
The demonstration is organized by the student governments representing over 130,000 students at several colleges in the region, including Georgetown University, American University and Howard University, as well as along the Interstate 95 corridor up to Temple University, according to the organizers.
The coalition is a “historic alliance” standing against the “assault on education,” including campus free speech and student financial aid programs, according to a release by organizers.
It has a list of four demands for congressional leaders: preserve and strengthen the department; ensure all students are protected; oppose anti-diversity, equity and inclusion actions that restrict classroom autonomy; and reject the targeting of individual students and academics for expressing their political views.
“The recent executive orders undermine the bedrock of our nation and limit opportunities for children of all backgrounds to learn and achieve their full potential,” the organizers wrote in a statement. “By making educational spaces more restrictive and unwelcoming, these policies are set to leave lasting, harmful impacts on our generation and those who follow.”
President Donald Trump signed an executive order directing Education Secretary Linda McMahon to abolish the department and return education control to the states. The department has already let go of nearly half its workforce to start downsizing the agency.
Critics say college students will especially be affected if the president follows through with rehoming the Federal Student Aid Office’s responsibilities, such as the $1.6 trillion student loan portfolio, and terminating the federal workers who administer funds for higher education.
The rally is expected to run from 4 p.m. to 5:30 p.m. and have about a dozen speakers. Organizers are also expecting Washington, D.C., high school state board of education representatives and former progressive Rep. Jamaal Bowman, a former principal, among the list of speakers. Organizers said they have reached out to additional lawmakers and are working to confirm the final list of speakers.
The event follows about a month’s worth of Friday demonstrations taking place at the department, including an “ED Matters” rally, “study-ins” and “clap-outs” for terminated federal workers.
More recently, lawmakers on Capitol Hill have been condemning the changes at the department. Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., launched a “Save Our Schools” campaign this week against the administration’s attempt to dismantle the department. Her campaign will include investigations, oversight, community engagement and lawsuits, according to the senator.
“The federal government has invested in our public schools,” Warren said in an exclusive interview with ABC News. “Taking that away from our kids so that a handful of billionaires can be even richer is just plain ugly, and I will fight it with everything I’ve got.”
Meanwhile, McMahon shocked about a dozen House Democrats on Wednesday when she crashed their press conference outside the department after she met with them in a closed-door meeting at the agency.
(WASHINGTON) — Dozens of Department of Education employees received letters as business hours closed Friday placing them on administrative leave, according to a copy of one letter obtained by ABC News.
While no specific reason was given, some employees told ABC News they believe the only common thread among them is that they attended a voluntary training called the “Diversity Change-Agent Training Program.”
The letter states that the administrative leave notice is not for disciplinary purposes. Rather, it’s being issued under President Donald Trump’s executive order on diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) and “further guidance” from the U.S. Office of Personnel Management, according to the letter.
Per the letter, employees will receive full pay and benefits through the end of the administrative leave. They are not required to do work-related tasks during this time, nor are they required to come into the office. Employees who were placed on leave also had their government email access suspended as they received the letters. There’s no set time for the leave period, according to the letter.
The letters have caused a frenzy throughout the department, as some employees had been locked out of their accounts and had to check their private email addresses for the notice, according to Sheria Smith, president of the American Federation of Government Employees (AFGE) Local 252.
Smith told ABC News more than 50 employees in “extremely diverse roles” within the department received the email notices to their government email addresses or their private email accounts after regular business hours over the weekend.
ABC News spoke with three Department of Education employees who received the letters and described their leave as “paid administrative hell” since Friday evening.
“It’s very, very, unsettling,” one department employee of over 20 years, who works in Washington, D.C., told ABC News. “I don’t get it. What’s my crime? What have I done?”
Smith said the positions of Department of Education employees placed on leave run the gamut, from senior civil rights attorneys to attorneys for borrower defense to press specialists. She said she feared more letters would be sent in the coming days.
An attorney who works for the department in Washington, D.C., said they were put on leave from their “dream job.” The employee has two children and received the notice after putting them to bed on Friday night, they said. The person said Friday was tough and the news was shocking to receive, but now they’re feeling “different levels” of sadness.
“My mood felt a little bit different just waking up knowing that I wasn’t going to be working,” the employee told ABC News.
“But I just feel like there’s a lot of information that I’m trying to process and, with small kids, it’s like you’re trying to balance a lot,” the employee added.
The letters came as the Trump administration worked to scrub the federal government’s DEI policies and programs. The president issued an executive order during his first week in office calling on agencies to “combat” private-sector DEI programs.
Trump’s rhetoric — including threatening for months to shutter the Department of Education — has created fear throughout the department, according to Smith.
“People took these jobs because they care about the mission,” Smith told ABC News. “And so it absolutely impacts us. You know, the very thing that brought us to these jobs we’re unable to do.”
The department employee with two small children has worked for the department for just over four years and comes from a family of educators. The employee said education is the “great equalizer,” and the Department of Education benefits everyone.
“I believe in the department,” the department attorney said, adding: “I always wanted to work here.”
In a statement to ABC News, Department of Education Deputy Assistant Secretary for Communications Madi Biedermann said the president was elected to enact “unprecedented reform” that is merit-based and efficient at serving the interests of the American people.
“We are evaluating staffing in line with the commitment to prioritizing meaningful learning ahead of divisive ideology in schools and putting student outcomes above special interests,” Biedermann wrote.
ABC News has reached out to the White House for comment.
Meanwhile, the three department employees who spoke to ABC News said they’re completely stumped on why they were issued administrative leave notices. The department employee with decades of experience in Washington also said it’s puzzling, in part, because during Trump’s first term, managers were evaluated on upholding DEI standards via a department performance rating system.
“We were expected to do DEI,” the employee said. “That’s what Trump and [then-Education Secretary] Betsy DeVos wanted us to do. They wanted to do that. They put it in our [performance] plans. We did not put that in our plans. And not only that, it is in every manager’s plan in the department, not just people that are on administrative leave.”
“Every single person in the Department of Education that’s a supervisor or a manager right now has [DEI] in their performance plan — that is programmed in by the department,” the employee added.
The administrative leave notices may have been tied to a two-day “Diversity Change-Agent Training Program,” a facilitator-led training, according to training document slides obtained by ABC News. The training took place over two days dating as far back as March 2019, under DeVos and during Trump’s first term, according to a February 2019 email obtained by ABC News with the subject “Diversity Change Agent Course.”
The training program aimed to create specific action plans to “drive diversity and inclusion” and increase creativity and innovation. The program also challenged employees to achieve greater results by championing the diversity of its workforce while creating and sustaining an inclusive environment, according to the training document slides.
Another department employee, who took the 2019 training and works remotely out of the New York offices, called the notice “bizarre,” especially since the 2019 training occurred during the president’s first term.
“The whole thing is bizarre,” the department employee told ABC News. “Betsy DeVos — and [Trump’s] prior administration — was a decent champion of these programs, and they didn’t come with any warning to me to say, ‘Hey, taking this training might lead to an adverse personnel action one day,’ right? So it’s just strange how they can retroactively apply something.”
The department employees on leave who spoke to ABC News said they have no official DEI responsibilities in their roles. All three department employees who spoke with ABC News also confirmed the only DEI-like program that would potentially be barred under Trump’s executive order would be the change-agent training sessions.
However, to their knowledge, the three employees on leave said there’s no official list or way of matching the employees on administrative leave with the training programs. Even though they’re convinced these trainings link them to the Trump administration’s definition of DEI, the employees haven’t confirmed why they’re on leave, according to the ones who spoke to ABC News.
The employee who works out of New York has more than a dozen years of experience in administering federal programs. Multiple other employees on administrative leave that this employee spoke to over the weekend said they also took the 2019 training, according to the employee.
“That’s the only thing we can think of that any of us did,” the employee said.
After reaching out to other colleagues with the same titles, the employee in New York said, they “pieced it together.” This employee said they took at least three training programs like the diversity change-agent training program since the initial training.
Republican Sen. Markwayne Mullin said Sunday that President Donald Trump is the only one who has the ability to pressure Russian President Vladimir Putin to negotiate to end the war with Ukraine.
“Putin knows the one person that can truly change the war is the United States,” Mullin told co-anchor Jonathan Karl on ABC News’ “This Week.” “If we went all-in for Ukraine, if we went all-in with the resources we have, from air superiority to the weapons that we can deploy to Ukraine, Putin knows at that point he would be in an extremely negative position.”
“I think that being the opportunity for President Trump to talk to Putin and say, ‘Listen, we want to end the war. We don’t want to have to engage more, but we’re not going to allow you to move forward. So let’s negotiate a peace deal here, or you’re going to force our hand to be farther involved.'”
Trump announced via social media on Wednesday that his team would begin negotiations with Putin to end the nearly 3-year-long war. Trump said he and Putin discussed an end to the war in which Ukraine cedes territory captured by Russia and gives up its ambitions to join the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), two major concessions for Ukraine.
Many world leaders argue Trump has given into Putin’s demands before negotiations begin. Trump added that he informed Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy about his call with Putin after it concluded.
Trump originally made no mention of whether Ukraine would be involved in negotiations, but later said that they would “of course” be involved.
National security adviser Mike Waltz, Secretary of State Marco Rubio and special envoy Steve Witkoff will travel to Saudi Arabia this week, a source familiar with the matter told ABC News.
Waltz, Rubio and Witkoff are expected to meet with top Russian officials, multiple sources familiar with the matter told ABC News. The specific timing of the trip is not clear, and it is unclear whether Ukraine will be involved in the talks.
Mullin said he is looking for a scenario in which both parties are present at the negotiating table.
“I know the negotiations are moving forward, and we want to have Ukraine and Russia both at the table, and I think the negotiations go better if both sides are looking for a peace deal, because they’re at a neutral position,” Mullin said.
“What President Trump is doing here is actually really smart. He’s meeting with Zelenskyy. He’s having conversations with him. You’re seeing [Secretary of State Marco] Rubio. You saw, you saw that the senators and representatives both met with Zelenskyy while they were in Munich, and you’re seeing them also meeting with Putin in Saudi Arabia,” Mullin said. “What that is doing, Jon, is, that’s putting both people, getting them in separate rooms, talking about what they will accept, and then finding out a negotiation path forward before you bring them to the table. A lot of times, bring people to the table too fast, Jon, it’ll blow up.”
Mullin also defended Elon Musk’s efforts to overhaul the federal government.
The Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) began directing mass layoffs after their deferred resignation program ended on Feb. 12. Initially, DOGE has its sights set on probationary employees, individuals with only a couple of years of service, which is nearly 200,000 government workers.
“Anytime you take over a situation, like Elon Musk has had many opportunities and many experiences with taking over businesses, you have to start cutting some of the fat. And unfortunately, the number one expense we have in the United States government right now is payroll,” Mullin said.
Karl noted that the largest expenses in the federal budget are for entitlement programs like Medicare and Social Security.
Musk has promised transparency in his actions, and many Democratic lawmakers have called for him to testify in front of Congress. Whether he does should be left to Trump, Mullin said.
“That’s up to President Trump. Keep in mind, President Trump put in Musk to be a consultant, just like many successful corporations around the world, including myself, that have hired consultants to come in and look at it from an unbiased perspective,” Mullin said.
(WASHINGTON) — As Democrats continue to express frustrations over Elon Musk’s outsized role in reshaping the federal bureaucracy, a new effort on Capitol Hill takes aim at the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) while proposing guardrails to reassert congressional oversight authority over the executive branch.
California Democratic Rep. Sydney Kamlager-Dove is proposing the Defending American Diplomacy Act, which would prohibit the executive branch from reorganizing the State Department without Congressional consultation and approval.
“They are gutting foreign assistance, and I’m not going to be complicit in that,” Kamlager-Dove, who sits on the Foreign Affairs Committee, told ABC News in an exclusive interview ahead of the bill’s release Wednesday. “It is unfortunate that they are crushing USAID — What that means is American farmers are not going to have contracts that they would normally have to produce crops to sell them to other countries. By crushing foreign assistance, it also means that people in other spaces are going to get sick.”
The measure, which has more than 20 Democratic original cosponsors, requires any major reorganization of the State Department to be passed into law by an act of Congress and calls for the secretary of state to submit a detailed plan to Congress about the administration’s intended reorganization and an assessment of any impacts to the U.S. diplomatic toolbox.
“We have three pillars: defense, development and diplomacy,” Kamlager-Dove said. “All of those things are very important when you are trying to stop us from going into war. And if we are going to get rid of those tools in our toolbox because of some dodgy thing called DOGE that is using taxpayer dollars to actually hurt taxpayers, I feel like I have a responsibility to step up and say no.”
The bill has consequences for noncompliance built into the legislative text, directing Congress to cut funding for DOGE and even prohibit travel for President Donald Trump’s political appointees, including every member of his cabinet, if the administration initiates a reorganization that circumvents Congress.
“DOGE has been operating in the shadows,” Kamlager-Dove said. “So part of the noncompliance elements of the bill is about bringing in a little sunlight so that we have a sense about what is actually going on.”
While the administration has signaled that some eliminated jobs could be potentially absorbed by other federal agencies, the bill also prohibits that from happening without Congressional say-so.
Kamlager-Dove explained that her gripe with DOGE “is not about efficiencies.”
“It is about unlawfully accessing our systems and our codes and stealing taxpayer dollars and doing things in the shadows,” the representative said.
“The American people deserve to know what is happening, and if what DOGE is doing is so great, then I would think they would be more than willing to come to Congress and share with us and the American people all that they are doing,” she added. “But the reality is they are not willing to share that information.”
With narrow Republican majorities in both chambers and a Trump White House — there is virtually no chance the bill becomes law in this session of Congress. But at a minimum, it gives Democrats who are powerless on the legislative front another messaging tool to campaign alongside their hopes to seize congressional majorities.
Still, Kamlager-Dove argues the measure is more than a messaging bill.
“There is a lot of dysfunction with this Republican Congress right now, and the reason why we probably won’t have this come up for a vote is because Republicans are too afraid of the bill. If it does come up for a vote, then they would have to put their cards on the table,” Kamlager-Dove said. “They would have to say, I recognize that Congress is being complicit in self-neutering itself and yielding all of its power to Donald Trump.”
Despite the long odds, Kamlager-Dove maintains optimism that her bill won’t be lost among thousands of other bills as Democrats toil in the minority.
“My hope is that having this bill, having other bills like this, talking about these issues in committee, will rattle their brains and clear out the hypnotic fog that they’re in,” she said. “If you continue to beat the drum, you do make headway, and that’s what this bill is about: Beating the drum.”
