Attorney General Kris Mayes joined a lawsuit with 20 other Democratic attorneys general on Thursday to stop the layoffs of half of the U.S. Department of Education employees. The lawsuit comes on the heels of a broader lawsuit she joined last week with her Democratic colleagues, suing over the layoffs of probationary federal employees at nearly two dozen agencies, and a lawsuit filed last month over Trump cutting the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.
Mayes has pushed back aggressively against the Trump administration since January, including filing nine lawsuits.
A press release from the Department of Education announcing the cuts said it was “part of the Department of Education’s final mission,” implying the agency is going to be shut down, which Secretary of Education Linda McMahon has called for.
Mayes claimed in a press release, “It is about tearing down public education by those who want to privatize it for profit.” However, she didn’t explain how it would shut down public education since the agency doesn’t oversee schools, which are all run on the local level. Nor did she or the lawsuit explain why local governments can’t take over any functions deemed vital. Although the agency is under the executive branch, the lawsuit claimed that only Congress can shut it down.
Superintendent of Public Instruction Tom Horne disagreed with Mayes, stating that his agency could take over any necessary functions cut in the federal education agency. In a written statement on Thursday, he referred to her as “incompetent.”
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