July 17, 2025

After Supreme Court Greenlights Mass Layoffs at ED, New Warren Report Reveals Impact of Trump Administration’s Attacks On Public Education

11 national organizations warn of dangers from dismantling the Department of Education. 

Warren: “If President Trump succeeds in completely eliminating the Department of Education, millions of students, teachers, and families will pay the price.”

Text of Report (PDF)

Washington, D.C. — U.S. Senator Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) released a new 23-page report, “Education At Risk: Frontline Impacts of Trump’s War on Students,” highlighting warnings from 11 major national education and civil rights organizations on the impact of the Trump administration’s dismantling of the Department of Education (ED), slashing support to millions of American students, primary and secondary school teachers, administrators, parents, and student loan borrowers. Since the Trump Administration took office, President Trump, Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), and ED Secretary Linda McMahon have:

  1. Eliminated hundreds of millions of dollars in federal funding for ED programs that serve America’s students, families, and educators. 
  2. Fired nearly half of the department’s employees, severely limiting its ability to support public education around the country.
  3. Attempted to further dismantle ED by illegally transferring core ED functions to other agencies. 

In April 2025, Senator Warren asked leading national organizations representing teachers, parents, students, student loan borrowers, and administrators to collect firsthand accounts of the impacts of the administration’s policies. 

Key findings of Senator Warren’s report include:

  1. Cuts to the Office of Federal Student Aid staff and student loan programs will limit college attendance and delay borrower access to loans and debt relief.
    • According to the American Council on Education, “delayed funding, especially in the instances of student financial aid, can result in the inability of students to enroll for classes and persist through to completion in a timely fashion, causing them to take on more student loan debt to complete their degrees.”
  2. Dismantling the Office of Civil Rights will impede ED’s ability to ensure that students receive an education free from discrimination.
    • According to the National Parents Union, this “leaves 46.413 million students in 27 states and territories without dedicated civil rights investigators in regional offices.”
  3. Cuts to the Institute of Education Sciences threaten the collection and dissemination of critical federal data.
    • ED collects data that helps students and parents get a comprehensive evaluation of the quality and financial cost of colleges and secondary schools. Without this data, the Institute for Higher Education Policy says, “Families would be left without the only reliable federal resource to help them make informed choices about one of the most significant financial and personal decisions of their lives.”
  4. Plans to transfer responsibilities to other agencies are wasteful and will increase the cost and complexity of performing essential department functions that America’s students and families rely on.
    • For example, the National Center for Youth Law notes that President Trump’s proposal to move special education services into the Department of Health and Human Services risks “stripping away decades of hard-won progress for students with disabilities, returning to an outdated medical model that treats disabilities as pathologies to be contained rather than differences to be accommodated.”

The report reveals that this damage will continue to worsen if the Department of Education is further defunded and dismantled, harming over 62 million students across the country. 

The organizations that were cited in this report include the American Council on Education (ACE), National Parents Union (NPU), National Education Association (NEA), American Federation of Teachers (AFT), Student Borrower Protection Center (SBPC), Council of Parent Attorneys and Advocates (COPAA), National Center for Youth Law (NCYL), National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), National Women’s Law Center (NWLC), Institute for Higher Education Policy (IHEP), and the Association for Institutional Research (AIR).

Senator Warren launched the Save Our Schools campaign in a coordinated effort to fight back against President Trump’s attempts to abolish the Department of Education:

  • On July 15, 2025, Senators Warren and Sanders, along with Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer, sent a letter to Secretary of Education Linda McMahon, urging her to reverse the interest hike on student loan borrowers in the SAVE forbearance. 
  • On July 14, 2025, Senator Warren joined a letter to the director of the Office of Management and Budget, Russ Vought, and Secretary of Education, Linda McMahon, demanding that the Department of Education stop blocking nearly $7 billion in funds for K-12 schools, including for afterschool programs.
  • On July 3, 2025, Senator Warren led her colleagues in submitting an amicus brief for NAACP v. US, arguing to the United States District Court District of Maryland that President Trump’s attempts to dismantle the Department of Education violate separation of powers and lack constitutional authority.
  • On June 10, 2025, Senator Warren met with Secretary of Education Linda McMahon and delivered over 1,000 letters to McMahon that the senator had received from people in all 50 states who were worried about the Secretary’s efforts to dismantle the Department of Education.
  • On June 9, 2025, Senator Warren led her colleagues in pushing the Acting Inspector General of Department of Education to open an investigation into new information obtained by her office, revealing that DOGE may have gained access to two FSA internal systems, in addition to sensitive borrower data.
  • On May 20, 2025, Senator Warren and 27 other senators pushed for full funding for the Office of Federal Student Aid.
  • On May 14, 2025, Senator Warren led a Senate forum entitled “Stealing the American Dream: How Trump and Republicans Are Raising Education Costs for Families,” highlighting the consequences of Secretary Linda McMahon’s reckless dismantling of the Department of Education and President Trump’s “big, beautiful bill” for working- and middle-class students and borrowers.
  • On May 13, 2025, Senator Warren agreed to meet with Education Secretary Linda McMahon and promised to bring questions and stories from Americans across the country to highlight how the Trump administration’s attacks on education are hurting American families.
  • On May 6, 2025, Senator Elizabeth Warren highlighted the consequences of President Trump and Secretary Linda McMahon’s reckless dismantling of the Department of Education for American families in a Senate forum.
  • On April 24, 2025, Senator Warren launched a new investigation into the harms of President Trump’s attacks on the Department of Education, seeking information on the impact of the Trump administration’s actions from the members of twelve leading organizations representing schools, parents, teachers, students, borrowers, and researchers.
  • On April 10, 2025, following a request led by Senator Warren, the Department of Education’s Acting Inspector General agreed to open an investigation into the Trump administration’s attempts to dismantle the Department of Education.
  • On April 2, 2025, Senators Elizabeth Warren and Mazie Hirono, along with Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer, sent a letter to Secretary of Education Linda McMahon regarding the Department of Government Efficiency’s proposed plan to replace the Department of Education’s federal student aid call centers with generative artificial intelligence chatbots.
  • On April 2, 2025, Senator Elizabeth Warren launched the Save Our Schools campaign to fight back against the Trump administration’s efforts to dismantle the Department of Education and highlight the consequences for every student and public school in America.
  • On March 27, 2025, Senator Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) led a letter to Acting Department of Education Inspector General René Rocque requesting they conduct an investigation of the Trump Administration’s attempts to dismantle the Department of Education.
  • On March 20, 2025, Senators Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders led a letter to Secretary of Education Linda McMahon regarding the Trump Administration’s decision to slash the capacity of Federal Student Aid to handle student aid complaints.
  • On February 24, 2025, in a response to Senator Warren, Secretary McMahon gave her first public admission that she “wholeheartedly” agreed with Trump’s plans to abolish the Department of Education.
  • On February 11, 2025, Senators Elizabeth Warren and Andy Kim sent Linda McMahon, Secretary-Designate for the U.S. Department of Education, a 12-page letter with 65 questions on McMahon's policy views in advance of her nomination hearing.

###