Democratic Senator Elizabeth Warren Save Our Schools Campaign It is launching an integral investigation into the effort of the Trump administration to close the Department of Education.
“I am opening this research to listen directly to students, parents, teachers and borrowers who are being affected by Trump’s dangerous agenda,” Warren wrote in a statement first obtained by ABC News.
“His stories matter, and it’s why I’m in this fight,” he said.
Warren said that from Trump’s movement to effectively abolish the agency, Americans have told him how public education has shaped and strengthened their lives. He sent a letter to a dozen education and civil rights groups, looking for answers to how to abolish the department will affect millions of students and families.
Senator Elizabeth Warren questions the Jamieson Greer trade representative during a Senate Finance Committee hearing in the Dirksen Senate Office building, April 8, 2025.
Kayla Bartkowski/Getty Images
The letters went out to NAACP, NEA, AFT and several other groups. In them, Warren called Trump’s plan to close the department and apparently return the power and decision of education to the states an “reckless crusade.”
“I request your help to understand if the efforts of the Trump administration to dismantle the department will endanger students to affordable, accessible and high quality public education,” Warren wrote in the card series.
Warren requests details on how students and families will be affected by any cut to financing or services if the Department of Education is abolished or their functions are transferred to other federal agencies. The groups have until May 22 to respond.
The Massachusetts Democrat and the former public school teacher describe what she calls the key functions of the Department of Education in each letter, including the protection of students’ civil rights, providing funds for students with disabilities, financing of research that help educators and students, and distribute federal financial aid so that students reach higher education.
“The school districts are already preparing for possible delays in funds or cuts caused by the dismantling of the department, with the states that smile the alarm on the impact of these interruptions of funds on programs such as free school lunches for low -income students,” Warren wrote.
The Secretary of Education, Linda McMahon, does a television interview at the White House, on April 16, 2025, in Washington.
Alex Brandon/AP
But the Secretary of Education, Linda McMahon, previously told ABC News that “none of the funds will stop” for mandatory programs, arguing that more funds could go to the United States if the department is eliminated. It would also take 60 votes of “yes” in the Senate to overcome a democratic filibuster and completely dismantle the agency that created the Congress.
The president of the national parents, Keri Rodrigues, denounced the president and McMahon’s mission to close the agency, qualifying it as a “constitutional crisis on almost every front.”
Naacp president Derrick Johnson said the administration is deliberately dismantling the basic functions of our democracy, one piece at once. “
Warren’s integral research also comes immediately after approximately 2,000 employees in the Department of Education be officially separated of the agency. The Department of Education was cut almost halfway, including hundreds of federal student aid (FSA) employees whose Warren stressed jobs are important for needy students. In addition, Warren said that reducing the size of the agency will have “serious consequences” for the more than 40 million borrowers of student loans in the country.
An exterior view of the building of the Department of Education, March 13, 2025, in Washington, DC
Alex Wong/Getty Images
Run in April, her Save Our Schools campaign promised to fight against the executive order of the administration entitled Improvement of educational results by empowering parents, states and communities.
Through a combination of federal investigations, supervision, narration of stories and demands, Warren said that he will work with the community, including legislators in Congress, to do everything possible to defend public education.
“The federal government has invested in our public schools,” Warren said in an exclusive interview with ABC News.
“Remove that from our children so that a handful of billionaires can be even richer is simply ugly and I will fight with everything I have.”
