WASHINGTON — Rep. Melanie Stansbury (D-N.M.) on Tuesday sounded the alarm that Elon Musk and his surrogates are “actively dismantling” the U.S. Department of Education, as staffers with his Department of Government Efficiency are on-site at the agency’s headquarters in Washington, D.C., poring over federal contracts and programs.
“It’s our understanding that today, they’re inside the building, they’re on the sixth floor, they’re canceling grants and contracts,” the New Mexico congresswoman told HuffPost. “They’re literally dismantling and shutting down programs as we speak.”
“We expect that the Department of Education is going to potentially be dissolved in the coming days,” warned Stansbury, who is the top Democrat on a House oversight subcommittee focused on DOGE and Musk’s activities.
A spokesperson for the Department of Education did not respond to a request for comment on what DOGE is doing at the department’s headquarters or if leaders expect their department to be eliminated. A White House spokesperson did not respond to a request for comment.
Some recipients of federal education grants told HuffPost on Tuesday their contracts had been abruptly terminated in the last 24 hours.
One person who works at a research company that contracts with the Institute of Education Sciences, the nonpartisan research arm of the Education Department, said their contracts were all canceled Monday night, “effective immediately.” Another grant recipient said their organization’s Supporting Effective Educator Development grant, or SEED grant, was canceled Monday night. SEED grants are used to help educators develop and expand best practices that can serve as models for others.
“Everything you are posting about the Dept of Ed being dismantled appears true from my vantage point,” this grant recipient said in an email.
This person said their organization has also been barred from drawing down federal money due for already-incurred expenses.
If true, that would be illegal under the Impoundment Control Act, which prevents the president and other government officials from unilaterally substituting their own funding decisions in place of what Congress has directed them to do.
“Yes, this violates the Impoundment Control Act. But how are we supposed to fight it? How do you keep staff on with no funding?” fumed this grant recipient, who was granted anonymity to speak freely. “It’s infuriating!
President Donald Trump tapped Musk, the richest man in the world and a Trump loyalist, to lead DOGE, an entity with the stated goal of cutting costs across the federal government and rooting out fraud. But so far, DOGE, which Trump designated as a replacement for the U.S. Digital Service, has been proceeding recklessly, politically and, to many observers, illegally.
Musk’s team of tech workers has operated in secrecy, potentially gained access to millions of federal workers’ sensitive records and triggered numerous lawsuits. It appears intent on gutting entire federal agencies, starting with the U.S. Agency for International Development, which provides tens of billions of dollars in foreign aid for global health and disaster relief. DOGE essentially declared all of USAID’s heywork to be wasteful spending — without input from Congress, which controls federal funding.
With Trump’s endorsement, DOGE now appears focused on eliminating the Department of Education. Musk said last week that the department “no longer exists.” In a televised interview on Sunday, just ahead of the Super Bowl, Trump suggested it’s fine with him if Musk wants to do that.
“It’s not legal. They know it’s not legal. But they’re doing it anyway,” Stansbury said. “The only recourse we have right now is to go to the courts. I can tell you, we will absolutely be in the courts immediately as they’re dismantling the Department of Education.”
Bill Clark via Getty Images
Stansbury has been particularly worried about what will happen to tribal education programs in Native American communities if Trump and Musk proceed with trying to eliminate the Department of Education.
She said she’s heard that the Trump administration has been “running drills” for weeks in preparation of moving tribal programs funded by the Education Department on an “emergency basis” to the Department of Interior’s Bureau of Indian Education, or to simply ending these programs entirely.
That would be illegal on several levels, said Stansbury, noting it would violate statutory laws and appropriations laws and potentially breach federal trust and treaty obligations. Beyond that, she pointed to a clause in Trump’s executive order on education that “rang all the alarm bells” for anyone focused on tribal education, as it echoed the so-called termination era of the 1950s, when the U.S. government enacted policies aimed at terminating its obligations to tribes.
During this era, as Sen. Joseph McCarthy (R-Wis.) led his infamous investigations to expose supposed communist infiltrators of the U.S. government, Republican officials tried to dismantle all federal recognition of tribal sovereignty — or recognition of the tribes themselves — and end federal programs for Native American communities.
Stansbury said Trump’s executive order basically says the Bureau of Indian Education, which oversees federal education programs for roughly 46,000 Native American students at 183 schools across the country, should look at school choice ― a euphemism for policies that redirect students and funding towards private schools. Except there is no “school choice” for schools funded as part of tribal and treaty responsibilities, due to the unique way in which they are funded and operated, she said. All this raises concerns about plans to dismantle the Bureau of Indian Education itself.
“It smacked of tribal termination and McCarthyism,” Stansbury said of Trump’s executive order on education. “That’s part of why we’re trying to raise consciousness about this. We want to make sure that is not the direction that the Trump admin is headed.”
“They know it’s not legal. But they’re doing it anyway.”
– Rep. Melanie Stansbury (D-N.M.)
She wrote to Interior Secretary Doug Burgum on Tuesday to share her concerns.
“We are gravely concerned that the January 29th Executive Order is part of a larger set of actions in recent days that are intended to unilaterally delay, cancel, or dismantle programs vital to Tribal communities and students and dismantle the BIE and Department of Education,” Stansbury said in her letter to Burgum. “Any unilateral attempts to disrupt existing services administered or funded by the BIE would directly violate the trust and treaty obligations of the United States and the fundamental separation of powers.
An Interior Department spokesperson did not respond to a request for comment on whether Burgum is committed to preserving the Bureau of Indian Education in its current form or at all.
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Linda McMahon, Trump’s nominee to be the next education secretary, is set for her confirmation hearing on Thursday before the Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions committee. Some Democratic senators have already sent her questions about the fate of the department she hopes to lead.
“Do you support President Trump’s calls for [the Department of Education] to be abolished?” Sens Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) and Andy Kim (D-N.J.) asked McMahon in a Tuesday letter. “If so, why?