Conservative nonprofits name Trump’s top Education Department officials

FIRST ON FOX – The American Accountability Foundation, a nonprofit government research organization, has compiled a “watch list” of top officials at the Department of Education that it recommends President-elect Donald Trump should fire.

The non-profit organization, funded by the conservative think tank The Heritage Foundation, published the list on its website. The AAF compiled 19 “documents” titled “America’s Most Obnoxious Education Bureaucrats.”

AAF President Tom Jones, a former Republican congressional staffer, told Fox News Digital that the “public-facing” list was not put together at the behest of Trump’s team, but because the civil rights organization believes it is important for the American people to “understand it. that there are a number of public servants within the federal government, and particularly within the Department of Education, who are not impartial experts implementing the president’s agenda, but rather ideologues with an agenda they are determined to implement despite the clear direction of the voters in November.”

“At the end of the day, it’s not really democratic. What you’re getting is a group of people who don’t represent the will of the American people who are carrying out their agenda over what the American people said was their will in November. At the end of the day, what it means is that you’re getting a left-wing approach to education, especially higher education,” Jones told Fox News. Digital. “I America’s higher education system is broken. I think the events of last summer, where you saw left-wing terrorist groups taking over American campuses, and the faculty and administration supporting them, really should have been a campaign for all Americans. And I think this would be a wake-up call for this administration. ”

Jones said those on the list include “serial donors” to Pete Buttigieg, Elizabeth Warren and President Biden, as well as other “hardliners” who will advance their progressive goals, such as promoting Biden’s student loans, “increasing the rules of class cooperation in effective Internet, and conducting “witch hunts” against Christian colleges and services through the Student Financial Aid Office of Enforcement.

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Jones identified one person in the Office of Enforcement who “had spent his career in the Maryland Attorney General’s Office investigating career colleges and Christian colleges.” He pointed to another person who said he would work to turn the DOE into a “mini-CFPB,” a reference to the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, which Jones described as “essentially a witch-hunt industry used to investigate people’s organizations that the administration doesn’t like.” The nonprofit described one DOE general counsel listed as “a leading transgender rights advocate in the debate over religious exemptions for certain universities.”

“These people aren’t going to say, you know, ‘I hated Trump last week, but on January 22nd, I’m going to be more than happy to carry out his education agenda.’ “Unless these people are removed from their positions in the Department of Education, they will continue to work behind the scenes to attack other four-year institutions,” said Jones.

Others on the list include an employee of the DOE’s Federal Student Aid (FSA) office, a nonprofit organization that says it spearheaded “a $6.1 billion student loan forgiveness program for liberal arts students.”

“They call it a relief, but it’s a huge donation to people pursuing college degrees who can’t afford it,” Jones told Fox News Digital. “And look, that’s totally unacceptable for the federal government to pay back somebody’s student loans and put that burden on the back of a plumber or a welder, you know, a teacher who takes care of their education or doesn’t take care of it. Go to college, now they have to pay for some guy with a degree in women’s studies. from Columbia and $150,000 in debt That’s just, fundamentally wrong and wrong, But look, if you want to go get those degrees, you should be prepared to pay for them.

Students prepare for a lecture at the University of Texas at Austin on February 22, 2024, in Austin, Texas. President Biden announced an additional $1.2 billion in student loan forgiveness, adding to the $138 billion forgiven. (Brandon Bell/Getty Images)

The list includes another DOE employee the nonprofit says helped the Biden administration “arm student aid policies against faith-based higher education.”

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The nonprofit accuses the man of playing a key role in the DOE levying a $37.7 million fine on Grand Canyon University, the nation’s largest Christian college, for allegedly lying about the cost of its doctoral programs, accusing the Biden administration of “bullying.” “The college has paid off student loans.

Everyone on the list makes six figures, Jones said, adding that some even earn more than $200,000 a year, while American teachers’ salaries hover around $50,000 to $60,000.

“This administration raised the Department of Education by cutting $200,000 to attack alternative education,” Jones said. “The Bureau of Enforcement is attacking things like career colleges and Christian colleges, and they’re getting rich doing that. And that’s just a shame. So I hope the administration says, look, this is, you know, paying people $200,000 a year to attack opportunities for, you know, welders, nurses and and such people to get higher education is not acceptable.

Linda McMahon, former director of the US Small Business Administration and nominee for secretary of education, on Capitol Hill, Wednesday, Jan. 8, 2025. (Valerie Plesch/Bloomberg via Getty Images)

“At the end of the day, the American people have to understand that the people we’re talking about here are not experts,” Jones said. “This is not a pipeline they’re doing. It’s a policy job. This is a basic job. And ultimately, these people are like political appointees who can be fired at the start of an administration.”

“I hope that the administration will really get the opportunity to treat them as political appointees and ask them to move forward because if they don’t do that, they will get the political views of the left wing in the administration of the next four. years,” he added. “And unfortunately, we saw some of that happen in the first administration. I really hope the administration learns the hard lesson, first and foremost, that they can’t allow a bunch of unelected officials to get in the way of their agenda during this program.”

Jones said he supports President-elect Donald Trump’s nominee for Education Secretary, Linda McMahon, who is still facing the Senate confirmation process.

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“I’m glad that he’s going to have the ability and the freedom to do the hard work that’s needed to shake up the Department of Education, because you know, it’s the Carter administration that got stuck in the 1970s, the world has moved on to different ways of education, whether it’s in, you know, high schools or post-secondary education,” Jones said. .

Fox News Digital has reached out to the Department of Education’s press office, as well as the individual employees listed, for comment.

The AAF has put together a similar “watch list” of Department of Homeland Security (DHS) officials that the Trump administration has recommended for clarification. Responding at the time, DHS Secretary Alejandro N. Mayorkas condemned “in the strongest terms any attempt to harass or intimidate public servants.”

“What Alejandro Mayorkas has done is use the power of the Department of Homeland Security to silence the speech of groups like the American Accountability Foundation,” Jones told Fox News Digital. “There were no examples of anyone feeling threatened, but there were examples of him ordering departments within the Department of Public Safety to open an investigation into the AAF. You know, that kind of US government weaponry that we’ve seen for four years under the Biden administration… So the idea that some people feel targeted is nonsense and a red herring and a tool for the Mayorkas and Biden administration to shut down speech that they don’t agree with.”