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linda mcmahon
'You Don't Thank a Burglar for Returning Your Cash': Trump Admin Finally Releases Education Funds
"This administration deserves no credit for just barely averting a crisis they themselves set in motion," said one Democratic senator.
Jul 25, 2025
While welcoming reporting that the Trump administration will release more than $5 billion in federal funding for schools that it has been withholding for nearly a month, U.S. educators and others said Friday that the funds should never have been held up in the first place and warned that the attempt to do so was just one part of an ongoing campaign to undermine public education.
The Trump administration placed nearly $7 billion in federal education funding for K-12 public schools under review last month, then released $1.3 billion of it last week amid legal action and widespread backlash. An administration official speaking on condition of anonymity told The Washington Post that all reviews of remaining funding are now over.
"There is no good reason for the chaos and stress this president has inflicted on students, teachers, and parents across America for the last month, and it shouldn't take widespread blowback for this administration to do its job and simply get the funding out the door that Congress has delivered to help students," U.S. Senate Appropriations Committee Vice Chair Patty Murray (D-Wash.) said Friday.
"This administration deserves no credit for just barely averting a crisis they themselves set in motion," Murray added. "You don't thank a burglar for returning your cash after you've spent a month figuring out if you'd have to sell your house to make up the difference."
🚨After unlawfully withholding billions in education funding for schools, the Trump Admin. has reversed course.This is a massive victory for students, educators, & families who depend on these essential resources.And it's a testament to public pressure & relentless organizing.
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— Congresswoman Ayanna Pressley (@pressley.house.gov) July 25, 2025 at 1:42 PM
Skye Perryman, president and CEO of Democracy Forward—which represents plaintiffs in a lawsuit challenging the Trump administration's funding freeze—said Friday that "if these reports are true, this is a major victory for public education and the communities it serves."
"This news following our legal challenge is a direct result of collective action by educators, families, and advocates across the country," Perryman asserted. "These funds are critical to keeping teachers in classrooms, supporting students in vulnerable conditions, and ensuring schools can offer the programs and services that every child deserves."
"While this development shows that legal and public pressure can make a difference, school districts, parents, and educators should not have to take the administration to court to secure funds for their students," she added. "Our promise to the people remains: We will go to court to protect the rights and well-being of all people living in America."
Democratic Arizona Attorney General Kris Mayes—a plaintiff in a separate lawsuit challenging the withholding—attributed the administration's backpedaling to litigatory pressure, arguing that the funding "should never have been withheld in the first place."
They released the 7 B IN SCHOOL FUNDS!! This is a huge win. It means fighting back matters. Fighting for what kids & communities need is always the right thing to do! www.washingtonpost.com/education/20...
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— Randi Weingarten (@rweingarten.bsky.social) July 25, 2025 at 11:46 AM
Becky Pringle, president of the National Education Association—the largest U.S. labor union—said in a statement: "Playing games with students' futures has real-world consequences. School districts in every state have been scrambling to figure out how they will continue to meet student needs without this vital federal funding, and many students in parts of the country have already headed back to school. These reckless funding delays have undermined planning, staffing, and support services at a time when schools should be focused on preparing students for success."
"Sadly, this is part of a broader pattern by this administration of undermining public education—starving it of resources, sowing distrust, and pushing privatization at the expense of the nation's most vulnerable students," Pringle added. "And they are doing this at the same time Congress has passed a budget bill that will devastate our students, schools, and communities by slashing funds meant for public education, healthcare, and keeping students from their school meals—all to finance massive tax breaks for billionaires."
While expanding support for private education, the One Big Beautiful Bill Act signed by President Donald Trump earlier this month weakens public school programs including before- and after-school initiatives and services for English language learners.
"Sadly, this is part of a broader pattern by this administration of undermining public education."
Trump also signed an executive order in March directing Education Secretary Linda McMahon to begin the process of shutting down the Department of Education—a longtime goal of Project 2025, the Heritage Foundation-led roadmap for a far-right takeover and gutting of the federal government closely linked to Trump, despite his unconvincing efforts to distance himself from the highly controversial and unpopular plan.
Earlier this week, the nonpartisan Government Accountability Office determined that the U.S. Health and Human Services Department illegally impounded crucial funds from the Head Start program, which provides comprehensive early childhood education, health, nutrition, and other services to low-income families.
"Instead of spending the last many weeks figuring out how to improve after-school options and get our kids' reading and math scores up, because of President Trump, communities across the country have been forced to spend their time cutting back on tutoring options and sorting out how many teachers they will have to lay off," Murray noted.
"It's time for President Trump, Secretary McMahon, and [Office of Management and Budget Director] Russ Vought to stop playing games with students' futures and families' livelihoods—and end their illegal assault on our students and their schools," the senator added.
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Sotomayor: Supreme Court Expedites Trump 'Lawlessness' With Education Department Decision
"That decision is indefensible," the justice wrote. "It hands the executive the power to repeal statutes by firing all those necessary to carry them out."
Jul 14, 2025
U.S. Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor on Monday delivered a blistering dissent to an emergency decision that enables President Donald Trump to plow ahead with laying off nearly 1,400 employees at the Department of Education while a case challenging the plan plays out.
"This case arises out of the president's unilateral efforts to eliminate a Cabinet-level agency established by Congress nearly half a century ago," wrote Sotomayor, joined by her liberals, Justices Elena Kagan and Ketanji Brown Jackson. "As Congress mandated, the department plays a vital role in this nation's education system, safeguarding equal access to learning and channeling billions of dollars to schools and students across the country each year."
"Only Congress has the power to abolish the department," she continued, calling out Trump's executive order and Education Secretary Linda McMahon's subsequent move to fire half the agency's workforce. "When the executive publicly announces its intent to break the law, and then executes on that promise, it is the judiciary's duty to check that lawlessness, not expedite it."
Sotomayor explained that "two lower courts rose to the occasion, preliminarily enjoining the mass firings while the litigation remains ongoing. Rather than maintain the status quo, however, this court now intervenes, lifting the injunction and permitting the government to proceed with dismantling the department."
"That decision is indefensible," she argued. "It hands the executive the power to repeal statutes by firing all those necessary to carry them out. The majority is either willfully blind to the implications of its ruling or naive, but either way the threat to our Constitution's separation of powers is grave. Unable to join in this misuse of our emergency docket, I respectfully dissent."
If a Democratic president declared his intention to unilaterally shut down the Department of Homeland Security, then attempted to transfer or shutter its key offices and decimate its workforce, does anyone seriously think this Supreme Court would let him?
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— Mark Joseph Stern (@mjsdc.bsky.social) July 14, 2025 at 3:51 PM
The high court's right-wing majority—which includes three Trump appointees—did not write an opinion, as is customary for shadow docket decisions. The administration responded by pledging to proceed with its efforts to eviscerate the department.
"It is a shame that the highest court in the land had to step in to allow President Trump to advance the reforms Americans elected him to deliver using the authorities granted to him by the U.S. Constitution," McMahon said in a statement. "We will carry out the reduction in force to promote efficiency and accountability and to ensure resources are directed where they matter most – to students, parents, and teachers."
Supreme Court says the president can’t abolish student debt, but he CAN abolish the Department of Education.This isn’t hypocrisy. It’s end times fascism—a fatalistic politics willing torch the government and incinerate the future to maintain hierarchy and subvert democracy.
— Astra Taylor (@astra.bsky.social) July 14, 2025 at 4:32 PM
McMahon and Trump's mass firing effort—part of a broader effort to shutter the department—had been blocked by a U.S. district court in Massachusetts and the 1st Circuit Court of Appeals in response to a lawsuit in which Democracy Forward is representing a coalition that includes the American Federation of Teachers and Service Employees International Union.
"We are incredibly disappointed by the Supreme Court's decision to allow the Trump-Vance administration to proceed with its harmful efforts to dismantle the Department of Education while our case moves forward," the coalition said in a Monday statement. "This unlawful plan will immediately and irreparably harm students, educators, and communities across our nation."
"Children will be among those hurt the most by this decision," the coalition stressed. "We will never stop fighting on behalf of all students and public schools and the protections, services, and resources they need to thrive."
The Associated Press reported that "separately on Monday, more than 20 states sued the administration over billions of dollars in frozen education funding for after-school care, summer programs, and more."
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Warren Leads Call for Education Department Watchdog to Probe DOGE 'Infiltration'
"We are concerned that ED undermined its own mission to 'protecting student privacy' in its collaboration and arrangements with DOGE."
Jun 09, 2025
U.S. Sen. Elizabeth Warren on Monday urged the Department of Education's Office of Inspector General to investigate an "infiltration" by President Donald Trump's government-gutting entity that, until recently, was spearheaded by billionaire Elon Musk.
In February, the Musk-led Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) "initiated a 'takeover' of the Education Department," Warren (D-Mass.) and nine other senators wrote to René L. Rocque, the ED's acting inspector general. "Soon afterwards, we opened an investigation into the matter."
"Throughout the course of this investigation, ED revealed a limited set of new information about the extent of DOGE's access
to ED's internal databases, but refused to disclose whether and to what extent DOGE had access to student loan borrowers' data, specifically," the letter details.
"Because of the department's refusal to provide full and complete information, the full extent of DOGE's role and influence at ED remains unknown," the letter continues. "This lack of clarity is not only frustrating for borrowers but also dangerous for the future of an agency that handles an extensive student loan portfolio and a range of federal aid programs for higher education."
"Because of the department's refusal to provide full and complete information, the full extent of DOGE's role and influence at ED remains unknown."
The senators wrote that "we are concerned that ED undermined its own mission to 'protecting student privacy' in its collaboration and arrangements with DOGE," and urged Rocque to "conduct a review as to whether ED adhered to the Privacy Act, 5 U.S.C. § 552a, and 'all applicable laws and regulations concerning management of borrower data' and institutional data when it allowed DOGE access to its databases."
In addition to Warren, the letter is signed by Sens. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.), Cory Booker (D-N.J.), Tammy Duckworth (D-Ill.), Ben Ray Luján (D-N.M.), Ed Markey (D-Mass.), Jeff Merkley (D-Ore.), Tina Smith (D-Minn.), Chris Van Hollen (D-Md.), and Ron Wyden (D-Ore.).
The letter was first reported by ABC News. While the ED didn't respond to the outlet's request for comment, Harrison Fields, special assistant to the president and principal deputy press secretary, said that "the president's success through DOGE is undisputed and legal, and this work will continue to yield historic results."
Warren—who is set to meet with Trump Education Secretary Linda McMahon on Tuesday—struck a much different tone.
"The department is refusing to tell Americans who's digging through their personal data and if their data is safe," Warren told ABC. "I'm pushing for an independent investigation into what the Department of Education is hiding from us."
The letter comes amid a public feud between Musk and Trump—who ultimately aims to disband the Education Department—and after the U.S. Supreme Court on Friday sided with the administration in a legal battle over DOGE access to Social Security Administration data.
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