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project 2025
'Project 2025 in Action': Trump Administration Fires Half of Education Department Staff
"Trump and Elon Musk have aimed their wrecking ball at public schools and the futures of the 50 million students."
Mar 12, 2025
The Trump administration on Tuesday took a major step toward dismantling the U.S. Department of Education by firing roughly half of the agency's workforce, a decision that teachers' unions and other champions of public education said would have devastating consequences for the nation's school system.
The department, now led by billionaire Linda McMahon, moved swiftly, terminating more than 1,300 federal workers on Tuesday including employees at the agency's student aid and civil rights offices.
Sheria Smith, president of AFGE Local 252, which represents Education Department workers, pledged in a statement to "fight these draconian cuts." The union toldNPR minutes after the statement was issued that Smith, an attorney with the Education Department's Office for Civil Rights, was laid off.
The Education Department said the mass staffing cuts would affect "nearly 50%" of the agency's workforce and that those impacted "will be placed on administrative leave beginning Friday, March 21st."
In a press release, McMahon declared that the workforce cuts reflect the department's "commitment to efficiency, accountability, and ensuring that resources are directed where they matter most: to students, parents, and teachers."
But critics, including a union that represents more than 3 million education workers nationwide, said the firings underscore the Trump administration's commitment to gutting public education in the interest of billionaires pushing tax cuts and school privatization.
"Trump and Elon Musk have aimed their wrecking ball at public schools and the futures of the 50 million students in rural, suburban, and urban communities across America by dismantling public education to pay for tax handouts for billionaires," said Becky Pringle, president of the National Education Association.
"The real victims will be our most vulnerable students," Pringle added. "Gutting the Department of Education will send class sizes soaring, cut job training programs, make higher education more expensive and out of reach for middle-class families, take away special education services for students with disabilities, and gut student civil rights protections."
"We will not sit by while billionaires like Elon Musk and Linda McMahon tear apart public services piece by piece."
Randi Weingarten, president of the American Federation of Teachers, said in a statement that "denuding an agency so it cannot function effectively is the most cowardly way of dismantling it."
"The massive reduction in force at the Education Department is an attack on opportunity that will gut the agency and its ability to support students, throwing federal education programs into chaos across the country," she continued. "This move will directly impact the 90% of students who attend public schools by denying them the resources they need to thrive. That's why Americans squarely oppose eliminating the Education Department. We are urging Congress—and the courts—to step in to ensure all students can maintain access to a high-quality public education."
The Education Department purge came days after news broke that President Donald Trump was preparing an executive order aimed at completely shuttering the agency—a move that would legally require congressional approval.
Lee Saunders, president of the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees, said late Tuesday that the Education Department firings "are Project 2025 in action, and they have one goal—to make it easier for billionaires and anti-union extremists to give themselves massive tax breaks at the expense of working people."
"Today's announcement from the Department of Education is just the beginning of what's to come," Saunders warned. "These layoffs threaten the well-being and educational opportunities for millions of children across the country and those seeking higher education. The dedicated public service workers at public schools, colleges, and universities deserve better. Elections may have consequences, but we will not sit by while billionaires like Elon Musk and Linda McMahon tear apart public services piece by piece. We will keep speaking out and finding ways to fight back."
Elon Sinks Our Ships to Assure There Will Be No Going Back
As Musk and crew gleefully erase 250 years of accomplishment—by turns, glorious and imperfect—they are creating a seemingly irreversible path to their own ends by reducing to rubble the institutions that might save us.
Mar 09, 2025
A 500-year-old conquistador, hellbent on winning at any cost, has much to teach us about America today. If we have the stomach to see it.
Hernán Cortés led the expedition from Spain to the New World that resulted in the fall of the Aztec Empire and its leader, Montezuma II. Arriving on the shores of Veracruz, Mexico in 1519, Cortés saw that his men were exhausted and dispirited. There were calls to turn back, whispers of mutiny. Cortés, it is said, responded by burning and sinking his ships, thus stranding his crew, and giving them little choice but to fight and vanquish the Aztecs.
As Elon Musk demolishes the systems, institutions, and infrastructure that support and sustain America, I am reminded of the rapid fall of the Aztec empire, and the deliberate ruination that precipitated it. Like Cortés, Musk’s goals are destruction and assurance that there can be no going back.
People are overwhelmed and exhausted by the magnitude of consistent, determined, and effective resistance against the conquistadors who, having skuttled the ships, seek now to become overlords. Yet we have no choice but to act, to push back.
And another once-great empire falls.
Each day, the nascent “Mump” Regime—allegedly helmed by U.S. President Donald Trump, but clearly commandeered by Musk—razes more American foundations, moving us ever closer to the tipping point where far-right authoritarianism replaces an admittedly flawed, but principled, democracy.
If our president hasn’t the historical awareness, focus, or intellectual capacity to formulate and execute a complex plan, his surrogates and henchman do, and they are reveling in the dual promises of destruction and personal gain.
As Elon Musk, the Project 2025 architects, their accomplices, and enforcers gleefully erase 250 years of accomplishment—by turns, glorious and imperfect—they are creating a seemingly irreversible path to their own ends by reducing to rubble the institutions that might save us.
Department of Education? Burn it.
FEMA? Burn it.
USAID? Burn it.
NATO? Burn it.
Climate science? Burn it.
Medical research? Burn it.
Alliances, treaties, promises? Burn them.
The Republicans who control Congress daily demonstrate their own gullibility and culpability. And the Democratic minority wrings its hands, wavering among unorganized resistance, outrage, and a dawning awareness not only that it can happen here, but that it is happening here.
For the most part, the American people mirror Congress. Many outraged and resistant. Some condoning much of what they see, cherry-picking actions they consider laudable, while refusing to scrutinize the ones that cause their stomachs to clench. And others naively hoping thugs who have cheated their way through life will suddenly begin playing by the rules, i.e., the Constitution, the courts, existing laws, and the checks and balances of a three-branch government. Rules, the thugs sneer, are for suckers and losers. Meanwhile, they set fire to and sink ship after ship. There will be no going back, they assure themselves with a smug grin and a not-so-clandestine Nazi salute.
They may be right.
I’d like to believe that the best and brightest minds among democracy’s defenders and patriots are huddled together crafting solutions that will save America from the evil unleashed upon us by corrupt, would-be dictators, but with each day’s atrocities, lies, deliberate distractions, and concealments, my hope for my country fades.
America is burning. People are overwhelmed and exhausted by the magnitude of consistent, determined, and effective resistance against the conquistadors who, having skuttled the ships, seek now to become overlords. Yet we have no choice but to act, to push back. As British statesman Edmund Burke famously said, “Nobody made a greater mistake than he who did nothing because he could do only a little.”
This is what it looks like when a once-great country is dismantled.
Do not look away.
'Unite and Resist': Women's Day Rallies Against Trump Held From Coast to Coast
"This is our day to stand together, make our voices heard, and show the world that we are not backing down," said Women's March.
Mar 08, 2025
Women and their allies took to the streets of cities and towns from coast to coast Saturday for a "Unite and Resist" national day of action against the Trump administration coordinated by Women's March.
"Since taking office, the Trump administration has unleashed a war against women driven by the Project 2025 playbook, which is why, more than ever, we must continue to resist, persist, and demand change," Women's March said, referring to the Heritage Foundation-led blueprint for a far-right overhaul of the federal government that, according to the Guttmacher Institute, "seeks to obliterate sexual and reproductive health and rights."
"This is our day to stand together, make our voices heard, and show the world that we are not backing down," Women's March added. "Women's rights are under attack, but we refuse to go backward."
Women's March executive director Rachel O'Leary Carmona asserted that "the broligarchy that owns Trump is working to 'flood the zone' with hateful executive actions and rhetoric, trying to overwhelm us into submission."
"But we refuse to lose focus," she vowed. "We refuse to stand by."
In San Francisco, where more than 500 people rallied, 17-year-old San Ramon, California high school student Saya Kubo gave the San Francisco Chronicle reasons why she was marching.
"Abortion, Elon Musk, educational rights and trans rights, LGBTQ rights, climate change—all of these things, I am standing up for what I believe in," she said.
Her mother, 51-year-old Aliso Kubo, said that "we came out here specifically to support my daughter and women's rights."
Thousands rallied down the coast in Los Angeles, where protester Pamela Baez toldFox 11 that she was there to "support equality."
"I think I mostly want people to be aware that women are people. They have rights," Baez said. "We just want to show everybody that we care about them. People deserve healthcare. Women deserve rights."
Thousands of people rallied on Boston Common on a chilly but sunny Saturday.
"We are the ones who are going to stand up," participant Ashley Barys toldWCVB. "There is a magic when women come together. We can really make change happen."
Boston protester Celeste Royce said that "it was really important for me to be here today, to stand up for human rights, for women's rights, to protect bodily autonomy, to just make myself and my presence known."
Sierra Night Tide toldWLOS that seeing as how Asheville, North Carolina had no event scheduled for Saturday, she "decided to step up and create one."
At least hundreds turned out near Pack Square Park for the rally:
Today at the Women's March in Asheville, NC pic.twitter.com/BPAIZORSUd
— Senior Fellow Antifa 101st Chairborne Division (@jrh0) March 9, 2025
"As a woman who has faced toxic corporate environments, living with a physical disability, experienced homelessness, and felt the impact of Hurricane Helene, I know firsthand the urgent need for collective action," Night Tide said. "This event is about standing up for all marginalized communities and ensuring our voices are heard."
Michelle Barth, a rally organizer in Eugene, Oregon, toldThe Register Guard that "we need to fight and stop the outlandish discrimination in all sectors of government and restore the rights of the people."
"We need to protect women's rights. It's our bodies and our choice," Barth added. "Our bodies should not be regulated because there are no regulations for men's bodies. Women are powerful, they are strong, they're intelligent, they're passionate, they are angry, and we're ready to stand up against injustice."
In Grand Junction, Colorado, co-organizer Mallory Martin hailed the diverse group of women and allies in attendance.
"In times when things are so divisive, it can feel very lonely and isolating, and so the community that builds around movements like this has been so welcoming and so beautiful that it's heartwarming to see," Martin toldKKCO.
In Portland, Oregon, protester Cait Lotspeich turned out in a "Bring On the Matriarchy" T-shirt.
"I'm here because I support women's rights," Lotspeich
said in an interview with KATU. "We have a right to speak our minds and we have a right to stand up for what is true and what is right, and you can see that women are powerful, and we are here to exert that power."
The United States was one of dozens of nations that saw International Women's Day protests on Saturday. In Germany, video footage emerged of police brutalizing women-led pro-Palestine protesters in Berlin.
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