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PBS News Hour - Segments

Education Department to cut nearly 1,300 employees as Trump vows to eliminate agency

PBS News Hour - Segments

PBS NewsHour

News, Daily News

4.11K Ratings

🗓️ 11 March 2025

⏱️ 4 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Tuesday afternoon, the Department of Education announced plans to cut nearly half of its employees, more than 1,300 people. It’s the latest move by the Trump administration to dramatically reshape the size and scope of the federal government. Lisa Desjardins reports. PBS News is supported by - https://www.pbs.org/newshour/about/funders

Transcript

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0:00.0

Late this afternoon, the Department of Education announced plans to cut nearly half of its employees, more than 1,300 people.

0:08.0

It's the latest move by the Trump administration to dramatically reshape the size and scope of the federal government.

0:15.0

Lisa Desjardin has been tracking these late changes, and she joins me now.

0:19.0

So, Lisa, we know this is a huge cut for a department.

0:21.7

The president has said that he actually wants to try to eliminate altogether. Where are those

0:25.6

cuts happening and what's the impact? That's right. Department of Education officials spoke to

0:29.2

reporters a short time ago. This is major news. Now, these are going to be the largest cuts that

0:34.5

the Department of Education has experienced since it was created.

0:38.3

So let's take a look at what we know. We are expecting 1,300 people to be fired, reduction

0:43.8

in force, that's a termination. Now that is in addition to more than 500 people who took

0:49.3

different offers, for example, the fork offer to leave early so we put all that together on now what

0:54.8

you have as a Department of Education that we'll see a total workforce cut of about

0:59.0

50% now this is it looks to be one of the largest cuts we've seen in reduction

1:05.1

of force in federal history for one agency of course the US AID also having a

1:10.2

major cut workers today didn't find out

1:13.7

about this directly. Some of them may be learning about it right now as I speak to you, but what they

1:18.3

did receive was an email telling them that they had to leave their offices in the Washington

1:22.6

area by 6 o'clock, that the doors would be shut, and that for security reasons, the email said,

1:28.0

they were not allowed to return tomorrow.

1:30.8

Offices here in the Washington area will be closed tomorrow for the Department of Education.

1:35.6

The official on the call with reporters said that's for safety reasons.

1:39.0

Now, they didn't take any questions, so we don't really understand.

...

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