WASHINGTON — U.S. Senate Democrats and education advocates Wednesday marked one year since the U.S. Department of Education initiated sweeping mass layoffs.

Those layoffs set the stage for more unprecedented efforts from President Donald Trump’s administration over the past year to wind down the 46-year-old agency as part of his quest to return education “back to the states.” 

Meanwhile, a new report from the nonpartisan Government Accountability Office found that the staffing reductions affected the government’s ability to determine how well student loan servicers are doing their jobs.

Hawaii Sen. Mazie Hirono hosted the press conference outside the U.S. Capitol, joined by fellow Democratic Sens. Dick Durbin of Illinois and Chris Van Hollen of Maryland, along with advocates, to underscore the impact of the mass layoffs and other major cuts on students and families across the country. 

The U.S. Supreme Court in July 2025 temporarily greenlit the mass layoffs, along with Trump’s plan to dramatically downsize the agency, which he had outlined in an executive order signed later in March 2025. 

Rachel Gittleman, president of American Federation of Government Employees Local 252, which represents Education Department workers, said the administration “has shown it will stop at nothing, even ignoring court orders and violating federal law to dismantle the department and sow chaos for students, families, communities and my coworkers.” 

“They will continue to undermine the careers of thousands of dedicated public servants who work every day to support our students and families,” Gittleman added.

The March 2025 Reduction in Force, or RIF, effort, hit wide swaths of the agency, taking heavy hits to units such as the Office for Civil Rights and Federal Student Aid. 

Student loans

Two Government Accountability Office reports — including the one released Wednesday — underscored the impact of the staffing reductions at these two units on the department’s abilities to carry out its key responsibilities. 

In February 2025, FSA “stopped assessing student loan servicers on accuracy and call quality due to lack of staff capacity,” the government watchdog reported.

Between January and December 2025, the department saw a drop in 656 staffers at FSA, according to the report.  

“By not assessing servicer accuracy and call quality, FSA lacks assurance that borrower records are correct and that servicers are giving borrowers quality information,” according to the GAO report.

Civil rights

Another GAO report, released in February, found that the Education Department spent between roughly $28.5 million and $38 million on the salaries and benefits of the hundreds of OCR employees not working between March and December 2025, who were put on paid administrative leave while legal challenges against the administration unfolded. 

The government watchdog found that despite the department resolving more than 7,000 of the over 9,000 discrimination complaints it received between March and September, roughly 90% of the resolved complaints were due to the department dismissing the complaint.

The agency later moved to rescind the RIFs against the OCR employees in early January while legal challenges proceeded. 

“So they wasted taxpayer money while they also tried to undermine the laws of the United States that guarantee civil rights to every student,” Van Hollen said during Wednesday’s press conference.  

Interagency agreements 

Members of Congress and advocates also pushed back against the Education Department’s several interagency agreements with other departments, which transfer many of its responsibilities to Labor, Health and Human Services, Interior and State.

The department has clarified in fact sheets regarding the agreements that it would “maintain all statutory responsibilities” and oversight of the programs involved. 

The effort has drawn strong backlash from Democratic members of Congress, labor unions and advocates.

“Trump is setting these programs up to fail,” Hirono said, adding that by “shoving these programs to departments that do not have the experience or wherewithal to run these programs, he is setting these programs that our kids rely on (up) for failure.” 

Funding increase

Meanwhile, Congress earlier this year rebuked a request from the president to dramatically slash funding for the department as he and his administration seek to dismantle it. 

Trump signed a measure in February that funds the department at $79 billion this fiscal year — roughly $217 million more than the agency’s fiscal 2025 funding level and a whopping $12 billion above what Trump sought.

The spending package does not provide ironclad language to prevent the outsourcing of the department’s responsibilities, but it does direct the department and the agencies part of the transfers to provide biweekly briefings to lawmakers on the implementation of any interagency agreements.

The department did not respond to a request for comment Wednesday. 

WASHINGTON — Senate Democrats sent a letter to Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent on Friday demanding the administration refund businesses that paid tariffs to import goods into the United States under authority the Supreme Court has ruled the president never held. 

“The American people — small business owners, importers, manufacturers, and the consumers who ultimately bore the cost of these illegal taxes — deserve better than this stonewalling,” the group wrote. “This money does not belong to the federal government. It belongs to the businesses and individuals you illegally taxed.”

The Supreme Court ruled on Feb. 20 that President Donald Trump wrongly instituted tariffs under the International Economic Emergency Powers Act, writing “that IEEPA does not authorize the President to impose tariffs.” 

Trump held a press conference later that day declaring he would institute tariffs under other authorities that he and members of his administration believe Congress has granted the president. But he didn’t give a clear answer about whether the federal government would refund the businesses that paid IEEPA tariffs.

“They take months and months to write an opinion, and they don’t even discuss that point,” Trump said at the time. “I guess it has to get litigated for the next two years.”

Senate Democrats’ letter says the Trump administration “collected over $130 billion in illegal taxes and then refused — with a smile and a shrug — to give it back.”

Democrats wrote in the letter the administration must tell U.S. Customs and Border Protection “to begin processing automatic refunds for all tariffs and customs duties unlawfully collected under IEEPA since January 20, 2025.”

The Trump administration, they wrote, should release a timeline within 90 days for when it would begin those refunds. 

The letter was signed by Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, Whip Dick Durbin, Maryland Sen. Angela Alsobrooks, Connecticut Sen. Richard Blumenthal, Delaware Sens. Chris Coons and Lisa Blunt Rochester, Illinois Sen. Tammy Duckworth, New York Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand, Colorado Sens. Michael Bennet and John Hickenlooper, Hawaii Sen. Mazie Hirono, Virginia Sens. Tim Kaine and Mark Warner, New Jersey Sen. Andy Kim, Minnesota Sen. Amy Klobuchar, New Mexico Sen. Ben Ray Luján, Oregon Sens. Jeff Merkley and Ron Wyden, Rhode Island Sens. Jack Reed and Sheldon Whitehouse, Nevada Sen. Jacky Rosen, California Sens. Adam Schiff and Alex Padilla and Georgia Sen. Raphael Warnock.

The Treasury Department did not respond to a request for comment.

WASHINGTON — U.S. Senate Democrats threw a spotlight Thursday on President Donald Trump’s attempts to yank funds away from minority-serving institutions, as the administration tries to end diversity, equity and inclusion policies in schools.

Hawaii U.S. Sen. Mazie Hirono hosted an unofficial hearing that gathered advocates, leaders, experts and students to sound the alarm on the consequences of cutting funding for the more than 800 MSIs, as they are known, that enroll millions of students of color. Many are from low-income households or are the first in their families to attend college.

Hirono blasted the administration’s broader efforts to end DEI efforts in schools, as well as larger ongoing actions to axe the 46-year-old U.S. Department of Education.  

Trump “has been attacking these programs and is now working to illegally eliminate the programs entirely, not to mention they would like to eliminate the entire federal Department of Education,” she said. 

In September, the department decided to gut and reprogram $350 million in discretionary funds that support minority-serving institutions, over claims that the programs for Black, Asian, Indigenous and Hispanic students and more are “racially discriminatory.”

Soon after, the department moved to redirect $495 million in additional funding to historically Black colleges and universities as well as tribal colleges.

Adding fuel to the fire, the Justice Department issued an opinion in December finding several grant programs for minority-serving institutions to be “unconstitutional.” 

Education Secretary Linda McMahon concurred with that opinion, and the agency said later that month it was “currently evaluating the full impact” of the opinion on affected programs.

‘Plainly cruel’

Mike Hoa Nguyen, associate professor of education and principal investigator for the MSI Data Project at the University of California, Los Angeles, said MSIs are “the backbone of American higher education.” 

Nguyen said these institutions “provide critical pathways to academic opportunity and achievement for millions of students of color, particularly those from low-income households and those who are often the first in their families to go to college.” 

He noted that as a result of the funds being reprogrammed, MSIs have been left “struggling to figure out how to explain the continuity of vital services — services that have been empirically demonstrated to improve student learning, boost academic performance in the classroom and ultimately lead them to graduate.” 

Nguyen added that “these funds are about providing the basic resources so students can learn, grow, succeed and contribute to our society and our economy, and eliminating these resources in general — and in such an abrupt manner — isn’t just misaligned and misguided, it’s plainly cruel.” 

Rowena Tomaneng, president of Asian Pacific Americans in Higher Education, said “essential programs nationwide have been shuttered or destabilized” as a consequence of the yanked funding.  

“These programs are not supplemental — they are essential to closing equity gaps for first-generation and low-income students,” said Tomaneng, whose organization advocates for Asian American and Pacific Islander students, faculty and staff across higher education. 

“Their loss will reverse hard-won gains, widen disparities and weaken institutions that serve as gateways to opportunity,” Tomaneng said. 

Senators send letter to McMahon

The hearing came a week after Hirono, along with Sens. Alex Padilla of California, Bernie Sanders of Vermont, Dick Durbin of Illinois, Cory Booker of New Jersey, Ben Ray Luján of New Mexico and Raphael Warnock of Georgia, led nearly two dozen colleagues in urging McMahon to reverse her department’s decision to unilaterally halt federal funding for MSIs.

“This decision is yet another example of this Administration attempting to circumvent Congress and its obligations to follow the law,” the senators wrote. “Unilaterally deciding that long-standing programs are unconstitutional, absent a ruling from the judiciary, sets a dangerous precedent and disrupts needed support that colleges and students rely on.” 

Meanwhile, Trump signed into law earlier in February a spending package that funds the Education Department at $79 billion this fiscal year.

The measure also “increases funding for all Title III and V programs that support HBCUs, Hispanic Serving Institutions, Tribal colleges, and other minority-serving institutions,” per a summary from Senate Appropriations Committee Democrats. 

Hirono noted that “only Congress can eliminate these programs, and Congress has decided not to do so,” during the hearing. 

“In fact, we provided additional funding for these programs in the fiscal year (20)26 spending bill reiterating our support for them, but of course, the Trump regime doesn’t care about Congress’ priorities,” she said. 

The Education Department did not immediately respond to a request for comment Thursday.