By Bo Erickson
WASHINGTON (Reuters) –
President Donald Trump’s administration fired almost all 60 staff at a college-preparation program for low-income students in a wave of shutdown layoffs, two people familiar with the cuts told Reuters, targeting a service Republican lawmakers defended earlier this year.
Trump promised last week to cut “some very popular Democrat programs that aren’t popular with Republicans,” during a federal government shutdown in its 14th day on Tuesday. The permanent layoffs disclosed on Friday also targeted education programs supported by Republicans, including the federal Education Department’s TRIO programs that assist around 900,000 students across all 50 states from middle school onward to prepare for college.
Almost all of the approximately 60-person staff overseeing the programs were cut, said the two people, who asked for anonymity to share details the administration did not reveal in a legal filing that disclosed more than 4,200 layoffs across the federal government.
“The whole crux of the support staff is to ensure that taxpayer money is spent appropriately and we are not there anymore to do it,” said one of the people familiar with the layoffs.
The White House and Education Department did not respond to a request for comment.
This move follows the administration’s goal of dismantling the Education Department and its 2026 budget request to cut the $1.2 billion in funding approved by Congress for the multiple TRIO programs, including Upward Bound for high school students and Talent Search to identify promising younger students for eventual post-secondary opportunities.
Six Education Department offices were targeted, impacting dozens of programs, according to Rachel Gittleman, the head of the local AFGE union that represents 2,700 department employees.
REPUBLICANS SPOKE OUT AGAINST BUDGET CUTS
Republican lawmakers, who earlier this year had defended the program, were not informed of the decision to cut staff, aides told Reuters.
Republican senators, including Susan Collins of Maine and Shelley Moore Capito of West Virginia, defended the program at a hearing in June, after the administration proposed eliminating it in the fiscal year that began October 1.
“I strongly disagree with the president’s proposal,” Collins, chair of the Senate Appropriations Committee, told Education Secretary Linda McMahon at the hearing.
“I have seen the lives of countless first-generation and low-income students, not only in Maine but across the country, who often face barriers to access a college education, changed by the TRIO program,” Collins said, wearing a pin dedicated to her state’s program.
McMahon responded by saying, “I know that these programs are very near and dear to your heart.”
Capito, the top Senate Republican overseeing Education Department funding, has previously led bipartisan legislation meant to strengthen the TRIO programs through a slate of administrative changes that would have been carried out by the staff now facing permanent elimination.
In September, two other Republican senators, Chuck Grassley of Iowa and Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, joined more than 30 Democrats in a letter demanding the disbursement of TRIO funds after months of delay.
The federal government has gone through 15 shutdowns since 1981, most lasting a few days, but in the past workers were temporarily furloughed, returning to their jobs once Congress agreed on a plan to reopen agencies. Unions representing federal workers have challenged the legality of the cuts.
TRIO funding was eventually awarded to grantees by the end of September, but dozens of other recipients were notified by the department that their funding would be discontinued, according to a lawsuit by the Council for Opportunity in Education, a TRIO advocacy group.
Senator Tammy Baldwin of Wisconsin, the top Democrat overseeing education funding, in a Tuesday statement criticized the Trump administration’s move, saying “their choice is ripping the hopes and dreams away from deserving Americans just trying to get a good education and build a good life.”
(Reporting by Bo Erickson; additional reporting by Jeff Mason, Andy Sullivan, and Andrew Goudsward; editing by Scott Malone and Aurora Ellis)
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