House Speaker Mike Johnson claimed Monday he had no idea that President Doanld Trump’s sweeping layoffs of federal workers had gutted the department overseeing special education.
During a press conference, Johnson was asked if he was “comfortable” with cuts that had reportedly decimated special education services at the Department of Education.
“I haven’t seen the specifics of that and I don’t know,” Johnson said.
“I do know that each of the Cabinet secretaries were asked to assist OMB to determine what the most essential programs are, and what the priorities are for the policies and all of that. And I’ve been so busy on all this I’ve not had a chance to dig into the details of each division, and how it’s happened,” he said.
But those so-called “details” Johnson overlooked are quickly coming to light—and they’re a huge problem.
Rachel Gittleman, the president of the American Federation of Government Employees released a statement Monday saying: “We believe that all remaining offices in Office of Special Education + Rehabilitative Services (OSERS), incl. the Office of Special Education Programs (OSEP) + the Rehabilitation Services Administration (RSA), have been eliminated.”
The Education Department laid off practically every employee responsible for administering funding through the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act, which authorizes grants to states, schools, and nonprofit organizations, one agency staffer told USA Today. The Biden administration had requested $14.4 billion for these grants for FY2025, including $545 million for the Grants for Infants and Families program.
Secretary Linda McMahon, who presumably directed the cuts, has previously suggested that the office would be better positioned in the Department of Health and Human Services, where Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. recently said he hopes to manufacture proof of his outlandish claims about the causes of autism.
It’s still unclear how many positions were terminated within the special education office. The Education Department fired 466 employees as part of Trump’s broader reduction in force of some 4,200 jobs amid the ongoing government shutdown.
Johnson seemed content Monday to defend Trump’s massive cuts, purportedly without even knowing what they are. He claimed that federal agencies were “in a triage situation” as a result of the government shutdown and blamed Democrats for the massive layoffs executed by the executive branch.
But in past government shutdowns, including in the previous Trump administration, federal workers were furloughed, not laid off en masse. It seems clear that Trump is simply using the shutdown as an excuse to carry out a long-planned reduction in force and obliterate essential programs he doesn’t like.
The post “I Don’t Know”: Mike Johnson Ducks Key Question About Shutdown Layoffs appeared first on New Republic.
