Trump Eliminates Special Education Office, Bioterrorism Defense. Good Luck!

Ed Dept's civil rights office also slashed, but Trump sent it to end 'DEI,' so maybe that's a wash?

Definitely not safe to come out yet. Photo by Eunkwang Choi on Unsplash

Donald Trump threatened to use the government shutdown as an excuse to eliminate “Democrat agencies,” and now he and Budget director Russell Vought have launched new rounds of layoffs that presumably fit the bill, even if you might foolishly think that “special education” or “bioweapons defense” are wacky liberal ideas. If Great Leader says they’re Democrat agencies, that’s what they are. You must know that by now, or you’ll get the hose.

Among the “reductions in force” (RIF), the administration is eliminating all but a few management jobs in the Education Department office that makes sure states get funding for special education to states. The administration also slashed 1,300 jobs at Health and Human Services, then realized it had fucked up again by firing people in jobs it wanted to keep. But only about half the layoffs were reversed, meaning the dipshits in charge really did decide to get rid of virtually everyone in the HHS agency that monitors nuclear, biological, and chemical threats to the US, including from terrorists.

You might think that’s a big deal, but the only “terrorism” the US cares about now is from people in frog costumes protesting mass deportations, and they don’t have any bioweapons other than sage and patchouli, which are shipped to them by George Soros.

We Don’t Need No Special Education (Or The Regular Kind Either)

The administration on Friday fired almost everyone but top officials in the Education Department’s “Office of Special Education and Rehabilitative Services,” which administers roughly $15 billion in funding for special education services and other disabilities, according to the union that represents those workers.

As the AP explains, states are responsible for distributing special education funding to their schools, but they rely on federal officials to make sure their programs actually meet federal requirements for providing a public education to kids with physical and developmental disabilities.

If upheld, the cuts will make it impossible for the government to fulfill its duties carrying out special education laws, according to a statement from the National Association of State Directors of Special Education.

The layoffs will reduce the department’s special education office from roughly 200 workers to about five, said Katy Neas, CEO of The Arc of the United States, which advocates for people with disabilities. Neas, who helped lead the office under former President Joe Biden, said families rely on those teams to make sure states and schools are following complex disability laws.

Then again, now that the administration has decided “accessibility” is every bit as bad as diversity, equity, and inclusion, states can probably slide on compliance with federal law if they wanna. It’s not like anyone at the federal level gives a damn about Useless Eaters now.

Education Secretary Linda McMahon has insisted repeatedly that Trump’s planned elimination of the Department of Education wouldn’t interrupt services for special needs students, which are required by federal law. Nobody in her department has said how the congressionally approved funds will actually get out to the states, although McMahon says that job could be shifted to Health and Human Services. Any such move would require Congress to pass a law, at least under the old US Constitution that may or may not still be in effect. Gosh, what could possibly go wrong with having RFK Jr. decide which students are really disabled?

Additional staffing cuts at Education shitcanned an unidentified number of employees in the department’s Office for Civil Rights, which is supposed to investigate complaints of discrimination in both public K-12 schools and in universities. Under Trump, that office has been refocused on eliminating anything that might be labeled “DEI,” but maybe that job will be handed to ICE, which along with the Pentagon is the only federal agency Republicans want to fund anyway.

Other staffing cuts will eliminate the people who oversee Title I funding to schools that serve low-income students — the majority of which are in rural areas — as well as employees who handle grants for after-school and summer school programs. Trump supporters will be delighted by that, since they’re all convinced that only “urban” schools serve kids in poverty. Imagine their surprise when leopards show up to eat their children’s faces. (Before you get too schadenfreudey, please remember the leopards are looking hungrily at your face, too.)

Still other cuts will gut staff in programs that help low-income students get into college and that handle federal funding for historically Black colleges and universities, which is fine, since educated people of all races vote for Democrats.

Labor unions representing government employees are already challenging these and other layoffs in court, arguing that under federal law, layoffs aren’t allowed during a shutdown. They may even ultimately win, although we won’t be surprised if the Supreme Court decides to let Trump finish laying everyone off and selling the Education Department’s computers, office furniture, and coffeemakers while the cases move through the courts.

You Don’t Need Protection From Bioweapons If It Means Someone Might Mandate Masks, Ever

The already-decimated Department of Health and Human Services saw another huge round of layoffs Friday, with about 1,300 staff being shitcanned. As the Washington Post reports (gift link), the administration quickly realized it wanted to keep some of the workers at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, like those leading the responses to measles outbreaks here in the US, and to an Ebola outbreak in Africa, since we still allow some international travel. They also reinstated people working on suicide prevention (as long as they aren’t trying to prevent suicides of LGBTQ people, we assume). Roughly half the reduction in force was rescinded, but the administration let hundreds of the firings stand, including analysts in the “Administration for Strategic Preparedness and Response,” which, its webpage explains, “leads the nation’s medical and public health preparedness for, response to, and recovery from disasters and other public health emergencies.” That translates to monitoring and preparing responses to threats from what your experts call NBC weapons — not mean skits on Saturday Night Live, but nuclear, biological, and chemical weapons.

As WaPo explains, the fired ASPR staff included dozens of “individuals with top-secret clearance who work with intelligence agencies on biodefense issues such as pandemics and weaponized pathogens,” according to a former HHS official who’s been talking to the recently shitcanned workers.

Those threats could come from “state actors, any type of threat, whether it’s intentional or accidental,” the source said. Other shafted ASPR staffers included people who

help coordinate biodefense exercises and drills; its legislative affairs team; and staff members who monitor data on natural disasters, infectious diseases outbreaks and cyberattacks on hospitals for the main operations center at HHS headquarters[.]

But let’s be real here: Some assholes in the administration probably just saw the word “pandemic” and decided the whole agency needed to be killed, lest someone, anyone, ever recommend that Americans ever wear a face mask or get a vaccine. HHS Secretary Bobby Brainworms doesn’t believe in the germ theory of illness, so the government mustn’t pretend that infectious diseases are a threat anymore. Drink more carrot juice and exercise, and a little anthrax, nerve gas, or dirty bomb attack will just bounce right off you, America!

Besides, HHS explained, the only people being fired work for “wasteful and duplicative entities” in the agency. HHS spokeperson Andrew Nixon insisted that any HHS staff being RIFfed were “designated non-essential by their respective divisions,” which in normal times would only mean they should be furloughed during a government shutdown, not fired altogether, but these are not normal times.

In addition to the ASPR staffers fired for good (until the lawsuits work their way through the courts in a million years), around 100 staff at the National Center for Health Statistics got the ax, because if you don’t count the cases the numbers don’t go up and nobody is sick. As the Post notes,

That includes a team that is part of the day-to-day operations for the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey. That survey assesses the health and nutritional status of adults and children in the United States, she said. It helped to identify rampant consumption of ultra-processed foods, which Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has decried as a major health threat to Americans.

But you people just don’t understand: RFK Jr. doesn’t really care about data anyway, so there’s no need to bother collecting it. If the administration needs numbers, it can just make them up.

The Post story details other cuts you might want to know about if you think medical data and science are important, including more than 100 staffers in the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration, which is supposed to get funding out to states and nonprofits to deal with the addiction crisis. Again, not a problem, since all we need to do to end substance abuse in the US is to blow up every boat that comes out of any port in Venezuela, USA! USA! USA!

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[AP / USA Today / WaPo (gift link) / The Fucking News]

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