Trump fires 1,300 at Department of Education; programs expected to suffer with staff gutted

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Really, really, really happy to have you here. Man, there is so much to get to today.
It has been such an incredible news day. There's so much to get to, and a lot of it is really terrible.
To buoy ourselves for that, to get ourselves ready for that, you want to start with something funny?

Let's just do it.

Let's start with something funny.

Okay.

I know there's a lot of terrible things to talk about.

I want to start with something funny from the 80s.

So it's 1987.

A real estate developer in New York City named Donald Trump takes his first trip to Moscow

in what is then the Soviet Union.

By all accounts, he kind of falls in love with the place. He decides he wants to build a hotel there or something.
Who knows? Following year, 1988, Donald Trump is back in New York and the leader of the Soviet Union, Mikhail Gorbachev, is going to come to New York. He's coming to New York to participate in the United Nations General Assembly.
And on the occasion of that visit, Mikhail Gorbachev coming to New York City, Donald Trump decides to invite him over because he's going to be in town. You know, even though Mikhail Gorbachev is the leader of the Soviet Union and Donald Trump is real estate guy in New York City, Donald Trump apparently convinces himself that Mikhail Gorbachev is going to do this.
They're going to hang out. That yes, Gorbachev has to go to the United Nations to do head of state things, but also, sure, since he's around, he'll drop by Donald Trump's apartment.
Donald Trump is so convinced of this that when a Mikhail Gorbachev impersonator comes to Trump Tower to make fun of the whole situation, Donald Trump himself comes out of Trump Tower onto the sidewalk and greets the Mikhail Gorbachev impersonator as if he is the real Gorbachev who's really there to come see him, the real leader of the Soviet Union.

Because sure, yeah, that guy would just pull up outside your apartment and beep, beep, come say hi.

Heedrill of cash, the home of hyperbole and mansion to the master himself, Donald Trump,

who made a special effort to whiz down from his penthouse office and greet our guest. Mr.
Trump is coming now. He's just come down very briefly.

We were on our way.

You wanted a couple of minutes.

I like your time.

I like my time.

Great honor.

Thank you.

Thank you.

I hope we didn't disturb your schedule.

No, it was beautiful, and I heard, and I couldn't have been happier.

Very good.

I couldn't have been happier.

Good luck with everything.

Great people.

Thank you very much.

Thank you.

Thank you.

I'm very glad.

Great time.

Thank you.

I'll see you soon.

Thank you very much. I'm sorry to disturb you.
I just wanted to pop in. Dasvidaniya.
Okay, thank you. Goodbye.
Dasvidaniya. Dasvidaniya.
Hey! Hey! I like your tie. Oh, you like my tie? Spasibo! Spasibo! Hey! Hey! So there you have it.
That is a thing that happened. Lest anyone tell you that we should trust Donald Trump on dealing with the Russians.
Not getting played by the Kremlin. Him definitely having lots of savvy when it comes to dealing with Russia.
Lest you hear that argument. You can just think of that beautiful moment of Donald Trump enthusiastically pumping the hand of the Gorbachev impersonator.
I like your tie. Oh, you like my tie? Donald Trump later said he totally didn't fall for it at all.
He definitely knew that was an impersonator. Sure.
Sure he did. Judge for yourself.
So there's that. We'll come back to that in a moment.
But the news today really has just been astonishing. After yesterday's massive trillion dollar dive in U.S.
stock markets because of Trump's tariff chaos, today he was not at all chastised by yesterday's market reaction. His pronouncements and mumblings on tariffs got even more chaotic and incoherent.
And the Dow dropped yet another 500 points today. And then at the end of the day today, after two days of that, Republicans in Congress did something truly amazing.
Republicans are facing this political situation now, right, where the markets are tanking. Economists are forecasting a Trump recession.
Literally, he inherited an economy that was the envy of the world. And in less than two months, Wall Street's in a tailspin and economists are upping their predictions of a U.S.
recession by double digits per day. So Republicans are facing a political situation in which their party appears to be doing this, right? The U.S.
economy looks like it's being destroyed for fun by Donald Trump because someone once told this guy a thing he didn't understand about tariffs. And so now he's doing this and real people are feeling the pain.
But here's the thing. The way Trump is able to put these tariffs on, off, on, off, up, down, postponed exceptions, no exceptions, on, off, on, off, the reason he's able to change these ruinous policies as quickly as he can pronounce them is because he declared an economic emergency that gives him the power to unilaterally declare these tariffs.
That kind of emergency, though, it also has kind of an eject button. When you declare that kind of emergency, Congress also gets the power to call the emergency off to stop the president from doing this.
So Congress could just vote and declare this so-called emergency to be over, and then Trump would no longer have the power to single-handedly destroy the U.S. economy in the way that he has been.
So because of that, because Congress has the power to call off the emergency, taking away Trump's tariff power, Democrats in Congress planned to make Congress vote on that exact thing. They planned to force a vote.
So Republicans, who mostly say they don't like tariffs, Republicans would be forced to either go along with the tariffs anyway, because Trump is doing them, or they'd cast their vote to stop Trump from doing these tariffs. What would Republicans do confronted with the need to make up their mind on a vote like that, right? How would they deal with not just the prospect of opposing Trump, which inherently makes them cry and hide immediately, but then on the other side of it, the other side of that vote is this very real pain and loss of money and, you know, they and their constituents and the businesses in their

district are all feeling and facing. It's real.
So Republicans in Congress have the power to stop

Trump from doing what he's doing on tariffs. What will they do with that power? The Democrats are

going to force them to take a vote on this. What are they going to do with that power?

Headline. Republicans quietly cede power to cancel Trump's tariffs, comma, avoiding a tough

Thank you. Headline, Republicans quietly cede power to cancel Trump's tariffs, avoiding a tough vote.
Cede power. They literally had the power to stop Trump from doing something that is hurting the country materially every single day.
They have the power to stop him from what he's doing. And so what did they decide to do with that power?

They decided to give that power away so they no longer have that power,

so they don't have to decide what to do with it.

Quote, House Democrats had planned to force a vote on resolutions to end the tariffs on Mexico and Canada,

a move allowed under the National Emergencies Act,

which provides a mechanism for Congress to terminate an emergency like the one Trump declared when he imposed the tariffs on February 1st. That would have forced Republicans, many of whom are opposed to tariffs as a matter of principle, to go on the record on the issue at the time when Trump's commitment to tariffs has spooked the financial markets and spiked concerns of reigniting inflation.
But Republican leaders today, on Tuesday, slipped language into a procedural measure that would prevent any such resolution to end the tariffs from receiving any vote this year. They're literally ceding their power, giving it up.
We don't want that power. And it gets better.
In order to give up their power, in order to save themselves from the terrible dilemma of whether or not to cast a recorded vote on whether or not Trump should be allowed to keep hurting the country on purpose, in order to avoid having to cast a vote on that, Republicans had to figure out some way out of this trap.

They had to come up with some way out of the provisions of this national emergency law. I mean, the national emergency law says Congress can end the emergency.
He declared a national emergency in order to give himself the ability to proclaim these tariffs. The national emergency law says if a resolution to end the emergency is introduced in Congress, Congress must consider that.
They have to start the process of voting on it within 15 days. So now we know Democrats are introducing that resolution that starts the clock ticking.
That means Congress is going to have to vote on this 15 days, tick tock, in order to get around that binding requirement in the law. What did Republicans do? They proclaimed that between now and the end of this Congress, that is just one long day.
That's just one day. The whole rest of the Congress.
I am not kidding. Quote, each day for the remainder of the 119th Congress shall not constitute a calendar day for the purposes of this emergency declaration.
The New York Times tonight called it a, quote, particularly unusual contortion. Republicans in Congress, quote, essentially declared the rest of the year one long day

so that 15 days will never elapse and they will never have to vote.

And that is how the Republican led Congress voted to give away its own power to Donald Trump.

So hopefully no one would know that they were actually responsible for not stopping him when they could have. Think it's going to work? Think nobody's going to notice what they did? I mean, with what Trump is doing right now, whatever happens to the markets and to your retirement account and to prices in the stores and the weakening of the dollar and failing small businesses where you live and failing large businesses, the longer this goes on.
I mean, just remember, Republican members of Congress had the power, very simply, to stop him from doing this. And they explicitly gave that power away so they wouldn't have to do it.
Courage. One of the places where Trump is getting stopped every day, and now with increasing frequency, is in the courts.
You might remember one of the very first court challenges to Trump that we covered here on this show in recent weeks. One of the very first people who Trump tried to fire, and she challenged it in court saying, you don't have the legal right to fire me.
I don't work for you. I'm taking you to court.
One of those first early cases you might remember from the show was Gwynne Wilcox. She's a member of the National Labor Relations Board.
And Trump announced right away, as soon as he was sworn in, that he was firing her from the National Labor Relations Board. And she said, oh, no, you aren't.
You do not have that right. She immediately took him to court.
Came to us here on the show to talk about it when she filed that case against him. Well, that case just a few days ago became one of the many court cases that Donald Trump has lost and that the people challenging him have won.
And in the case of Gwyn Wilcox, that led to Gwyn Wilcox going back to work yesterday in Washington at the headquarters of the National Labor Relations Board, where she has been reinstated because she fought him and she won.

And when she got reinstated and she went back to work yesterday, the whole dang office came out to cheer for her and clap and celebrate that she beat Trump and she's therefore back at, and that agency is therefore back at work.

I feel wonderful. This is where I belong.
I belong here at the National Labor Relations Board after she sued Donald Trump and won to challenge her firing and get reinstated. Today was another day of just loss after loss after loss for Donald Trump in court.
Today, one federal judge ruled that DOGE, the austerity and government demolition force run by the president's top campaign donor, DOGE must disclose its records. They had structured DOGE in such a way that they thought they'd be able to keep everything they're doing secret from the public, that no records would have to be shown to the public about their work.
A judge today said that they must hand over all records of their work and right away. The judge said it was because of the, quote, unprecedented power and, quote, unusual secrecy of the group thus far.
Also today, a federal appeals court again cited against Trump on his effort to defy and thereby change the part of the U.S. Constitution that says if you're born here, you're an American.
Federal judges, one after another, have ruled against him on this. Today, it was a U.S.
appeals court, just one level below the U.S. Supreme Court.
Also today, a federal judge blocked Trump's cuts to hundreds of millions of dollars for teacher training. That ruling came in response to a lawsuit that was brought by eight attorneys general, who are Democrats from Democrat-run states.
Yesterday, a federal judge blocked Trump from deporting a young man who is a lawful permanent resident of this country. He has a green card.
Trump sent immigration agents to arrest him, and they said they were taking away his green card, revoking his legal status in this country because he has been an outspoken critic of the war in Gaza. A federal judge will hear his case tomorrow and, in the meantime, has ordered Trump to not deport this young man., in the USAID case that had gone all the way up to the Supreme Court, where Trump lost in the Supreme Court and then it came back down, in that lower court that it came back to last night, Trump lost again.
That federal court judge in that case ruling that Trump is not allowed to just unilaterally undo things that Congress has done by law. It's an important constitutional ruling.
This is the case that's about funding for foreign aid programs, funding for services that have already been provided. In the form of foreign aid, the judge now says the Trump administration has to start paying those outstanding invoices at a rate of at least 300 invoices per day.

They must do it.

The National Endowment for Democracy has now announced that its funding has started up again,

thanks to that court order that stopped the Trump administration from blocking those funds.

So, I mean, that's not even all of them.

It's just like a slice.

There's a zillion ongoing court cases trying to stop the most blatantly illegal things

that Trump is doing.

And every day, what we're seeing is that those proceedings are mostly cutting against him.

And yeah, we don't know how all of these cases are going to work out in the end.

But for now, he's being stopped in court one way or the other every single day of the week and sometimes twice on Saturdays.

The American people continue to show up and say no to what he's doing in significant numbers.

Yesterday, we saw a bunch of protests at VA medical centers all over the country.

People protesting against Trump's huge cuts to the VA already and the larger cuts that he has planned.

That includes this protest in Eugene, Oregon at the VA medical center there.

Thank you. protesting against Trump's huge cuts to the VA already and the larger cuts that he has planned.
That includes this protest in Eugene, Oregon, at the VA Medical Center there. Also, there was a protest yesterday at the VA in Parma, Ohio, in Northeast Ohio.
We're expecting a relatively big protest, a big march for veterans and by veterans in Washington, D.C., this Friday, March 14th. Today, federal workers who Trump has fired were at the Senate office building in Washington protesting against what Trump and his top campaign donor, Elon Musk, are doing to the government.
A number of Democratic senators supported them today in this protest on the Hill. Today in New Jersey, people protested against Trump's immigration policies and against a proposed site for a new prison, a new detention center for immigrants that they want to put in at Delaney Hall in Newark, New Jersey.

Big crowd of people turned out today to protest against that.

Today there was a very large protest in Tennessee at the Tennessee State Capitol.

A lot of young people turning out there to protest against legislation in Tennessee that would block kids from schools based on their immigration status. We continue to see ongoing protests in Republican congressional districts, like this one in Salisbury Township in Lehigh County, Pennsylvania, where constituents of Republican Congressman Ryan McKenzie are demanding, in this case protesting outside his office,

demanding that Congressman McKenzie meet with his constituents, that he come back to his district and hold a town hall with them. So far, he is refusing to do so.
And that dynamic is getting really interesting now as Democratic members of Congress and even Democratic candidates are starting to hold town halls in Republican districts because Republicans themselves are too scared to meet with their own constituents. And so Democrats are filling the gap.
Democrats are holding constituent meetings for Republican districts, people who are represented by Republicans but can't get their Republican representatives to meet with them. And that dynamic, we've got more on that story coming up in just a moment.
That one, that's getting really interesting in terms of Democratic versus Republican politics. This was the scene today outside the headquarters of the U.S.
Department of Education as people protested against Trump's effort to dismantle and ultimately abolish the Department of Education. This protest today was this morning.
You know, I think Republicans have convinced themselves that this is a winning issue, closing the Department of Education, even though poll after poll shows that big majorities of the American public don't want the Department of Education to be abolished. Nevertheless, they apparently are going through with it.
This protest in Washington, again, was this morning. This afternoon, the Education Department told its employees that they should not come to work tomorrow.
And then thereafter, they publicly announced that they're going to try to fire basically half the people who work at the Education Department tomorrow. More than 1,300 people they're going to try to fire out of their jobs at the Department of Education tomorrow.
We're going to have more on that story in a moment. We'll be speaking with a civil rights lawyer at the Department of Education.
She's also the president of the local union that represents people who work at the Education Department. With the attempted shuttering of the Education Department tomorrow, which again is a wildly unpopular idea with the American people, With Trump now going back again to the National Nuclear Security Administration for more cuts to that agency, more cuts to the people who keep our nuclear weapons from accidentally blowing up.
With the shambolic, now just disastrous mishandling of this big measles epidemic in Texas by the vaccine conspiracy theorist who Trump put in as health secretary, as that measles epidemic now is over 250 cases and two deaths. With the increasingly bizarre news of the cuts that they're making to food safety, of all things, under the leadership of Donald Trump Jr.'s hunting buddy, who Donald

Trump thought was the best person to put in charge of food safety in this country, with all of these wildly unpopular things that they are doing every single day. Even before you get to the president turning the South Lawn of the White House into a used car lot today to try to sell cars for his top campaign donor with, I mean, with all of these just vile and unpopular and embarrassing things that they are doing.
I think it's safe to say that more protesting against Donald Trump is probably to be expected. But you know, I think even if the opposition to Trump keeps growing and spreading and deepening the way it has been, I'm not sure we're going to see a crowd like this anytime soon.

This was the crowd that turned out.

Look at this.

This was the crowd that turned out in Mexico City the day before yesterday, on Sunday,

to cheer for the president of Mexico, who is experiencing a huge upsurge in popularity in her own country since Trump started attacking Mexico with this tariff stuff, and she started standing up to him. It is making her way more politically powerful than anybody thought she could be at this moment, as her country absolutely rallies in her patriotic defense.
Similarly, the president of Ukraine is going through a huge boost in his own domestic popularity. His own popularity in Ukraine absolutely spiking as the people of Ukraine consolidate their support for him in the wake of Donald Trump and J.D.
Vance embarrassing themselves by haranguing President Zelensky in the Oval Office. Today, there was a monumental, hugely important, just historic meeting of the military chiefs of what are now the most important countries in the West.
It was a meeting, basically, of the army chiefs of the whole free world today. We naturally were not invited.
This is the lead from Reuters about that meeting today. Quote, more than 30 army chiefs among Washington's closest allies met in Paris today without their U.S.
counterparts, seeking to take on more responsibility over the Ukraine war, given President Donald Trump's unpredictability and rapprochement with Moscow.

The closed-door gathering of 34 army chiefs, including NATO alliance and EU members, as well as Japan and Australia, was a rare and possibly unprecedented convening without the United States.

The free world is still standing up for Ukraine. They are just doing it now without us.
Today in Saudi Arabia, the Trump administration announced a plan for a ceasefire in Russia's war in Ukraine. Secretary of State Marco Rubio meeting for some reason in Saudi Arabia.
I don't know. Secretary of State Marco Rubio said this's this plan is all good to go.
As far as he's concerned, he just has to go run it by Russia now. You know, sit tight here for a second.
I got to go check with my manager. I'm sure it'll all be fine.
Apparently, the way the Trump administration is running their deal by the big guy, running the deal by the boss, is that they're sending Donald Trump's real estate friend, Steve Witkoff, to go meet personally in Russia with Vladimir Putin to get his okay, to run the whole end the war plan by Putin. Steve's going to do it.
Steve's great. You know, I mean, Steve's a real estate guy.
So I'm sure it's going to go great. I mean, if there's anybody who has consistently proven themselves to be really savvy, really on top of things, really unfoolable.
When it comes to the Russians, it's these New York real estate guys, right? Am I right? They're so savvy. They never get fooled.
So I'm sure this will all be fine. They never get played.
They're so savvy. Those Russians will never know what hit them.
Nice tie. You like my tie? Dasvidanya.
Got lots of news to get to tonight. Congressman Mark Pocan is here.
We've got the latest on the news that they're going to try to close the Department of Education tomorrow. We've got lots to come.
Stay with us. Nice tie.
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Eastern on MSNBC. In politics, a long line of people usually means a long line of voters waiting to cast a ballot.
But this long line, this is constituents who are actually waiting their turn to speak to one person. They're waiting in line to try to speak to their member of Congress, who is Republican Kevin Kiley.

They are waiting in line in Congressman Kiley's office in Nevada City, California, so they can each, one by one, ask him to please hold a town hall with them. We haven't seen him in person.
We have so many things, so many issues. Of course, the economy, social security, the environment, veterans concerns, education, the education department, Department of Education, the tariffs.
ABC 10 asked Kylie if he plans to have a town hall anytime soon. He says because his district is so large, teletown halls have been more convenient for him and his constituents and that one is in the works.
So I think we have our next one scheduled pretty soon, within the next week or two, something like that. We'll do them once a month or something like that through the rest of this year.
But Kylie's congressional website shows there are no scheduled upcoming teletown halls or in-person meetings. ABC 10 reached out to his office to get a comment regarding town hall meetings and a response to the criticism, but his spokesperson did not provide an update.
I'm sure we've got one scheduled. I'm sure it's...
Don't look at my website. Can we schedule something? Don't schedule something.
With no official town hall on the schedule, the local Indivisible chapter plans to hold their own town hall for Congressman Kiley's constituents. They're going to do that on March 20th.
Perhaps Congressman Kiley will teleport in or something. Meanwhile, check out what's happening in New Jersey.
For several weeks now, people in the congressional district represented by Republican Congressman Tom Kane have been asking him to hold a town hall as well. So far, no joy, but somebody's going to fill that vacuum.
Now that the Democratic former congressman who used to hold that seat, who lost that seat to Tom Kane in 2022, he says he's ready to go and he'll do it. Former Democratic Congressman Tom Malinowski has now announced that he will hold an in-person town hall in his very competitive former district on Thursday night this week, because the Republican who represents that district now is apparently too afraid to do it.
Consider also what's going on in Wisconsin. Republican Congressman Derek Van Orden has been refusing to hold a town hall with his constituents as well.
This weekend, Democratic Congressman Mark Pocan, who represents a neighboring district, he stepped in to hold one this weekend essentially to take in the slack. Congressman Pocan arranged to hold the town hall that he had this weekend way over in the corner of his district, about as close as he could get to the neighboring Republican district that's represented by Derek Van Orden.
He invited Congressman Van Orden to show up. The congressman did not, but his constituents did.
Karen and Mark Essex live in Van Orden's district and say that they're upset at the representative for not being transparent with them. He doesn't do any town halls and very disappointed in that.
He's not listening to us. He's not representing us.
He didn't show up and he's unwilling to talk about the basic issues that we have. The local news station WKOW wrote up the event like this, quote, in a town with just over 1000 residents, hundreds of people packed the village of Belmont's community building Saturday.
The building was filled to capacity with people even waiting outside

and peeking through the windows to hear Congressman Mark Pocan.

Congressman Pocan may have inspired more than a huge turnout in that corner of his district.

Today, the Democrat who narrowly lost to Republican Congressman Derek Van Orten,

today she announced that she's going to go up against him again this November. Rebecca Cook is her name.
As Congressman Mark Pocan put it this morning, quote, I think Derek Van Orden's morning just got bad. Joining us now is Congressman Mark Pocan, a Democrat of Wisconsin.
Sir, it's nice to see you. Thanks for making time to be here.
Well, thanks for the invite, Rachel. Tell me about the decision process that you went through about holding this somewhat unusual town hall in a corner of your district that's definitely a more Republican leaning county, very close to the Republican represented district that's held by Congressman Van Orden.
Yeah, the bare minimum you should do as a member of Congress is listen to your your constituents. And Derek Van Orden, to best of my knowledge, has never done an open public town hall in the over two years he's been in office.
So I just thought people should hear from a member of Congress, especially if you're about to cut their Medicaid and their food assistance and education funding and parts of the Affordable Care Act. So we organized one at the edge of my district, knowing that it crossed about seven minutes away was a city of 10,000 people in his district.
But Rachel, people from two hours away drove down from La Crosse and Tomah and Potosi and Platteville. People wanted to hear from a member of Congress.
And if Derek Van Orden's not going to listen to his constituents, I felt at least I could lend an ear and make sure we're talking about what Derek's voting on. He's voting to cut Medicaid.
That's one out of three kids in Wisconsin, 55 percent of seniors are nursing homes. It's some really bad stuff.
I read some local press accounts of what was discussed at the town hall that you held and what kinds of issues people were raising with you. A lot of people were focusing on fears about those potential Medicaid cuts, given how many people in Wisconsin use Medicaid as their health insurance.
And that's kids, that's old people, that's everybody in between. What would you say emerged as the sort of themes that people were most concerned about and that would have talked to the Republican congressman about had he shown up.
Cuts for Medicaid was huge, right? That's health care, long term care for people in Wisconsin, especially in rural parts of Wisconsin, like the third congressional district that Derek Van Orden supposedly represents is. Also, I think people are really concerned about veterans affairs, you know, in the VA hospital people because so many people have been fired who are on probationary employment that when you call, you can't always get an appointment right now.
And that's starting to affect the service of health care. But, you know, one issue that wasn't even part of that Republican budget bill that really rose to the surface was Social Security, Rachel.
You know, the reason it did is you got Elon Musk calling it a Ponzi scheme. You've got them cutting employees at Social Security, making it harder to get your benefits.
But during the State of the Union, an awful lot of real estate was used by Donald Trump to repeat lies over and over and over again about people over 110 years old, up to 360 years old, supposedly getting Social Security, when even by law, they don't write a check to anyone over 115. And it's been disproven by two different inspector generals, everything he said.
Well, that tells a lot of people what they're really after is Social Security. And I think the biggest set of questions we had on Saturday was about that.
Yeah, people are smart. They can say, oh, we're not going to touch it at all.
We're only going to deal with the fraud. We're only going to, but people are smart.
And when they realize that all the supposed fraud evidence is all lies, it just—it means their skirt is showing a little bit here. Democratic Congressman Mark Pocan of Wisconsin, thanks for talking to us about this, and I'd love to stay in touch with you.
I imagine this is going to be unsettling for your neighbor in that Republican district. I'd love to hear how things proceed there.
Yeah, I might stop back and visit next week with him. Indeed.
Let us know. Let us know.
All right. We've got more news ahead tonight.
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Sign up for MSNBC Daily at MSNBC.com. started with a sort of mysterious notice this afternoon a reference to security concerns

that went out to all employees at the U.S. Department of Education.
Quote, beginning today at 6 p.m., all education department offices will be closed for security reasons. Employees must vacate the building by that time.
This notice also said all education department offices would be closed tomorrow and no employees would be allowed in. Now, this notice had no details about what these security reasons were, but it was pretty clear what was coming.
After all, we've been through this a couple of times already now. It was just over a month ago when people who work at USAID got an email saying their office would be closed the next day and they shouldn't come to work.
That was right before Trump set about completely dismantling that whole agency. Employees at the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, same thing, sent a very similar note saying their office would be shut for the following week, just as the White House ordered the entire agency to stop all of its work.
And sure enough, tonight, just after the 6 p.m. deadline for Education Department workers to vacate their offices because of some security concern,

Trump Education Secretary, the billionaire pro-wrestling executive Linda McMahon, announced that her department is cutting its workforce in half.

They will begin firing more than 1,300 people from the Education Department tonight.

And then, of course, she went straight to Fox News. That was the president's mandate.
This directive to me clearly is to shut down the Department of Education, which we know we'll have to work with Congress, you know, to get that accomplished. But what we did today was to take the first step of eliminating what I think is bureaucratic bloat.
And that's not to say that a lot of the folks, you know, it's a humanitarian thing to a lot of the folks that are there. You know, they're out of a job.
But we wanted to make sure that we kept all of the right people, the good people. You know, if you find yourself starting to feel a little tug on your heartstrings for those 1,300 people who are out of a job tonight at the education department, don't worry.
We kept all the good people. We kept all the good people.
The 1,300 people who are getting fired tonight, they just aren't, they're not, they're not good. They're not good.
Who is this for? The vast majority of the American people do not want this. A poll earlier this month, Reuters Ipsos, earlier this month found that fully 66% of Americans oppose abolishing the education department.
Nearly half of Americans strongly oppose it, while only 16% are strongly in favor of it. This is not something Americans want, but Donald Trump is trying to do it anyway, apparently starting with firing fully half the people who work at that agency tonight.
One of those people fired tonight, a union leader at the education department joins us live here next. Stay with us.
This is from NPR on the Trump administration's announcement tonight that they're firing 1,300 people from the U.S. Department of Education.
Quote, AFGE, American Federation of Government Employees Local 252, a union that represents Education Department employees, released a statement in which its president, Sharia Smith, said we will fight these draconian cuts. Minutes later, AFGE Local 252 told NPR that Sharia Smith was laid off, along with all five of the chapter's other union officers.
Joining us now is Sharia Smith. She's president of the union, representing 2,800 employees at the Education Department.
She served our country as an attorney for the Education Department's Office for Civil Rights until this evening. Ms.
Smith, thank you so much for being here on tonight of all nights. I am sorry for what you're going through.
Thank you so much, Rachel. My co-workers and I from all over the country really appreciate the platform you're giving us to talk about this.
Is it the case that your whole office is being closed and your colleagues, all of your colleagues at your office are being fired as well, the whole thing?

You know, that's so interesting that you asked the question about our whole office. So we've reviewed the list of people who are set to be laid off.
And I also listened to Secretary McMahon's statement about how they're keeping the good people. The people that they seem to be keeping are white men who happen to have graduated from

a very conservative schools. Not to say that they're not good.
I think all of my co-workers are excellent. Many of them are members.
But the co-workers that are being laid off as well are also good. What is curious in the U.S.
Department of Education is that the layoffs, the mass terminations, the administrative leaves are seeming to affect and impact disproportionately women and people of color. And the Department of Education should be a model employer.
And I want American people to think about, do they want their employer to follow this model, where the only people that are deemed good enough to keep their jobs and their ability to support their families are people who are from a certain race and are of a certain gender? I know that this has all just happened in the last few hours, but with what they've been telegraphing about their plans for the education department, I know that you and your union colleagues and your colleagues at work more broadly have to have been expecting the worst. Do you believe that your union or that the employees more broadly have recourse to fight these firings and have recourse to fight their efforts to abolish the department? Well, absolutely, because their efforts are illegal.
Again, since the new administration came into office, we have experienced mass terminations and unchecked unprofessionalism. And people just not going by the rules, even this layoff, is not something that should have occurred.
The layoff was not because of a budget shortfall. The president can't just lay people off because he does not agree with them or he does not like the color of their skin or their gender.
So, we are availing ourselves of all recourse to challenge this and talking with attorneys. And we have been since the first round of layoffs on January 21st.
And so, you know, we'll be fighting, and we hope the American people will fight with us. You know, Linda McMahon, in explaining what she's doing here, has also said that the American people should expect that there will be no interruption to any of the programs that the Education Department administers.
I have to ask you if that is possible with what they're—even just what they're planning tonight, with half the workforce gone overnight. Absolutely not possible.
Since January 21st, our entire agency has been interrupted. We've been told not to work.
We've had people who have been forced from working, even though they've been high performers. There's no way—we were already understaffed.
There is no way we can continue operations at the levels that we had been when you have half the workforce and you have fired great people, you have fired high performers. There's no way.
If you believe that, I have a bridge to sell you in Brooklyn. Sharia Smith is the president of the AFGE union that represents Education Department employees.
She's an attorney for the Education Department's Office for Civil Rights. She was fired this evening, but as she says, she believes that she and her colleagues have absolute recourse

to fight back against these firings as illegal. Ms.
Smith, again, I am sorry for what you and

your colleagues are going through tonight. Thank you for taking the time to talk us through it,

and please stay in touch with us as this proceeds. I know this won't be the last we'll be hearing

from you. Thank you, Rachel.
All right. Good luck to you.
We'll be right back. All right.
Thanks for being here with us tonight. I will see you again tomorrow and every night this week at nine o'clock Eastern.
In the meantime, you can find me on Blue Sky. I don't know if you have Blue Sky yet, but I'm there and I like it.
I think you should try it. I'm on bluesky at matto.msnbc.com.
I had complained previously about the fact that if you wanted to post a video clip on Blue Sky, you could only post up to one minute because that was the restriction they had. You can now post up to three minutes, which makes it way more useful for circulating news clips and stuff that's happening in the news that you want people to see in a journalistic capacity.
So I'm very grateful to Blue Sky for upping that time limit to three minutes. It makes it even more useful for reading the news.
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