March 11, 2026
Media contact: Dorie Turner Nolt, dorie.turner@gmail.com, 404-861-1127
NOTE: AFGE Local 252 President Rachel Gittleman will join U.S. Sen. Mazie Hirono, members of Congress, and other education advocates at the U.S. Capitol on Wednesday, March 11, at 11:00 a.m. ET for a press conference about the anniversary of the historic mass firing at the U.S. Education Department. You can watch the press conference live on Senator Hirono’s YouTube and Twitter accounts.
Washington, D.C. — On the one-year anniversary of the unlawful mass firing of more than 1,400 federal workers at the U.S. Department of Education, the union for the agency’s employees, American Federation of Government Employees (AFGE) Local 252, calls on Congress to stand up for all federal workers, including those wrongfully terminated, those forced into retirement, and those still fighting.
“The U.S. Department of Education and its hardworking staff deliver vital resources and support to tens of millions of students and families across the country, from early learning through graduate programs. The Trump 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, and communities,” AFGE Local 252 President Rachel Gittleman said at a press conference at the U.S. Capitol. “We need Congress to step up on behalf of students and families by holding the administration accountable for following the law.”
On March 11, 2025, U.S. Secretary of Education Linda McMahon announced she was chopping the Education Department staff in half by delivering reduction-in-force notices to nearly 1,400 hardworking public servants and accepting buyouts and early retirements for another 572 employees. This historic mass firing hobbled the agency’s ability to follow federal laws and continue safeguarding taxpayer dollars from fraud, waste, and abuse, according to the agency’s Inspector General and the Government Accountability Office.
Since then, a court case by AFGE and other key partners forced McMahon to bring about 300 Office for Civil Rights employees back to work after keeping them on paid leave for nine months, causing a massive backlog of cases to pile up due to understaffing and wasting up to $38 million in taxpayer dollars. McMahon also recalled another 60 Federal Student Aid workers when she realized the agency couldn’t perform its duties without them.
In October, McMahon tried to unlawfully fire nearly 500 workers, but the new round of staff cuts were paused by the courts and then halted by Congress in its Continuing Resolution to reopen the government. Throughout all of these unlawful firings, McMahon and her leadership team continue to harass, threaten and abuse remaining Department employees who are simply trying to do their jobs and follow the law.
“Between gutting staff and moving Education Department functions to other federal agencies, Secretary McMahon is creating confusion for schools and colleges, eroding public trust, and harming students and families. This is an insult to the tens of millions of students who rely on the Department to safeguard access to quality education and to the taxpayers who depend on federal oversight to prevent waste,” Gittleman said.
In addition to trying to decimate the federal workforce at the Department, McMahon has:
- Unlawfully transferred 112 discretionary and 13 formula grant programs that support career, technical and adult, Pre-K-12 and higher education grant programs worth $35 billion to other federal agencies, ignoring clear directions from Congress that she does not have the authority to do so and layering even more federal bureaucracy on states, communities, and schools;
- Slashed billions of dollars in federal grants to states, communities, school districts, schools, and colleges, including canceling $12 billion in K-12 funding that Congress already allocated and terminating 4,000 grants to more than 600 colleges and universities, touching every state;
- Refused to allow Office for Civil Rights employees to do their jobs, wasting up to $38 million in taxpayer dollars while allowing a 25,000-case backlog to develop;
- Canceled more than 120 government contracts at the Institute of Education Sciences, effectively decimating the Department’s research and data collection abilities;
- Gutted the Department’s ability to perform the critical function of preventing waste, fraud, and abuse of taxpayer dollars for its programs, including, the GAO said, abandoning key oversight of the companies that run the government’s $1.7 trillion student loan program;
- Ignored the will of both Congress and the majority of the public by continuing to decimate the only federal agency focused on helping states and communities educate their students.
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The American Federation of Government Employees Local 252 is the labor union representing more than 2,000 dedicated public servants at the U.S. Department of Education employees—fired, retired, and still fighting.
AFGE Local 252 