Teachers-Turned-Democratic Governors Blast Trump for Gutting The Department of Education

On the heels of Donald Trump effectively gutting the U.S. Department of Education, former teachers-turned-Governors Tony Evers of Wisconsin, Matt Meyer of Delaware, and Tim Walz of Minnesota condemned Donald Trump’s attacks on public education and his ultimate goal of dismantling this critical agency.

Read more about Democratic Governors’ fight to protect public education:

USA Today: ‘A catastrophe’: Democrats sound off on Trump’s cuts to Education Department

• Wisconsin Gov. Tony Evers, a Democrat, did not hold back the morning after the Trump administration announced deep cuts to the U.S. Department of Education workforce: about half its employees will be terminated.
• “I’m sorry, but that is bulls–t,” Evers said, in a press call Wednesday.
• “I know Wisconsin kids and our schools – getting rid of the U.S. Department of Education and making devastating cuts to public education would be a catastrophe, as simple as that,” he continued.
• “Don’t get me wrong, I’m all for cutting bureaucracy, but we cannot cut bureaucracy on the backs of our kids and their families,” Meyer said.
• “Linda McMahon might be the most unqualified person to ever speak about public schools in this nation’s history,” said Walz, referring to Trump’s recently confirmed Secretary of Education.

Bring Me The News: Walz slams Department of Education cuts, says it will undermine schools and children

• The governor also made the following comment during a Democratic Governors call on Wednesday:
• “This is undermining our economic wellbeing for the future, it’s undermining our competitive advantage, and it’s undermining the moral authority that every child truly matters. So what Donald Trump continues to do is the idiocy of whatever he thinks at the time is a good talking point. Linda McMahon said she fired half the [staff at the Department of Education] but only the bad ones. She missed one. She missed one for sure, and that’s herself.”

News Talk 830 WCCO: Trump’s dismantling of the Department of Education sends states scrambling for funding

• In Minnesota, Governor Tim Walz (D) is outlining how students and families will be impacted by the potential dismantling of the Department of Education. Walz says Minnesota relies on federal funding to provide students with teacher training, disability resources and early learning programs.
• “The detrimental impact on children, individual children that it will have, it will undermine our ability both from innovation in this country to economics by undermining the very principle that set America apart from the rest of the world, the idea of an equal education,” Walz said at a press conference Wednesday.
• Over a thousand jobs within the department have already been cut. Walz stresses that the move could leave schools in low income neighborhoods in a difficult position.
• It isn’t just Minnesota either. Both Wisconsin’s Governor Tony Evers and Delaware Governor Matt Meyer chimed in, with a blunt assessment from Evers.

CBS 58: Department of Education layoffs: What it means for Wisconsin schools

• “This is a clown show. It must end,” Evers said during a press call with Democratic governors. “This is bad for our kids, bad for our schools, and bad for Wisconsin.”
• Evers estimates K-12 schools could lose $1.2 billion in federal funding if the Education Department is dismantled, a key goal of President Trump.
• “We’re headed in the wrong direction,” Evers said. “We’re going to come up with 50 sets of expectations for kids and that’s not going to help us on the world stage.”