FIRST ON FOX – The American Accountability Basis, a conservative authorities analysis nonprofit, assembled a “watch-list” of high bureaucrats on the Division of Training who it recommends President-elect Donald Trump ought to hearth.
The nonprofit, which is funded by the conservative suppose tank The Heritage Basis, printed the listing on its web site. The AAF assembled 19 “dossiers” naming “America’s Most Subversive Education Bureaucrats.”
AAF President Tom Jones, a former Republican congressional staffer, informed Fox Information Digital that the “public-facing” listing was not compiled on the behest of the Trump transition workforce, however reasonably as a result of the conservative group believes it is vital that the American individuals “understand that there’s a lot of civil servants within the federal government, and particularly within the Department of Education, who are not impartial technicians executing on the agenda of the president, but rather are ideologues who have an agenda that they’re willing to implement despite the clear direction from the voters in November.”
“At the end of the day, it’s fundamentally undemocratic. What you get is a group of people who don’t reflect the will of the American people implementing their agenda over that of what the American people said was their will in November. At the end of the day, what it means is you get a left-wing approach to education, particularly higher education,” Jones informed Fox Information Digital. “The higher education system in America is broken. I think the events of last summer, where you saw left-wing pro-terrorist groups take over American campuses, and the faculty and administration support them, really should have been a wake-up call for all Americans. And I think this could be a wake-up call for this administration.”
Jones mentioned these on the listing embody people who’re “serial donors” to Pete Buttigieg, Elizabeth Warren and President Biden, in addition to different “hard core ideologues” who will prioritize their very own progressive agendas, equivalent to selling Biden’s scholar mortgage “bailouts,” growing laws on profitable on-line class partnerships, and conducting a “witch hunt” in opposition to Christian and profession schools by the Pupil Monetary Assist Workplace of Enforcement.
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President Biden in Madison, Wisconsin, on Monday, April 8, 2024. (Daniel Steinle/Bloomberg by way of Getty Photographs)
Jones recognized one particular person on the Workplace of Enforcement who “had spent his career at the Maryland Attorney General’s Office investigating career colleges and Christian colleges.” He pointed to a different one that acknowledged that he would work to show the DOE right into a “mini-CFPB,” a reference to the Client Monetary Safety Bureau, which Jones described as “essentially just a witch hunt factory that’s used to investigate organizations of people that the administration doesn’t like.” The nonprofit described one normal lawyer for the DOE included on the listing as “a leading legal advocate for transgender rights in the debate over religious exemptions for certain universities.”
“These people are not going to say, you know what, ‘I hated Trump last week, but on January 22nd, I’m going to be super excited about implementing his education agenda.’ Unless these folks are moved out of their positions within the Department of Education, they’re going to continue to work behind the scenes to attack alternatives to traditional four-year institutions,” Jones mentioned.
Others named on the listing embody a civilian worker inside the DOE Workplace of Federal Pupil Assist (FSA) who the nonprofit says spearheaded a “$6.1 billion student loan forgiveness scheme to art institute students.”
“They call it relief, but it’s really a huge giveaway to people who pursue college degrees that are just unaffordable,” Jones informed Fox Information Digital. “And look, that’s completely unacceptable to essentially have the federal government repaying the student loans for someone and putting that burden on the back of a plumber or a welder, you know, a teacher who is taking care of their education or who didn’t go on to college, they’ve now got to pay for some guy who’s got a feminist studies degree from Columbia and $150,000 in debt. That’s just simply, fundamentally unfair and wrong. But look, if you want to go get that degree, you should be prepared to pay for it.”
College students put together for a lecture on the College of Texas at Austin on Feb. 22, 2024, in Austin, Texas. President Biden has introduced one other $1.2 billion in scholar mortgage forgiveness, including to a complete of $138 billion forgiven. (Brandon Bell/Getty Photographs)
The listing consists of one other DOE worker who the nonprofit says helped the Biden administration “weaponize federal scholar support insurance policies in opposition to faith-based increased training.”
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The nonprofit accuses the particular person of taking part in a key position within the DOE levying a $37.7 million wonderful in opposition to Grand Canyon College, the nation’s largest Christian faculty, for alleged misrepresentation of the price of its doctoral diploma applications, accusing the Biden administration of successfully having “bullied” the school into wiping out scholar debt for them.
Everybody named on the listing is making six figures, Jones mentioned, including that some are even incomes an annual wage of greater than $200,000, whereas the common American trainer’s wage sits at round $50,000 to $60,000.
“These woke bureaucrats at the Department of Education are pulling down $200,000 to attack alternatives to education,” Jones mentioned. “The Office of Enforcement is attacking things like career colleges and Christian colleges, and they’re getting rich doing it. And that’s just shameful. So I’m hopeful that the administration says, look, this is, you know, paying people $200,000 a year to attack opportunities for, you know, welders, nurses and folks like that to get a higher education. It’s just unacceptable.”
Linda McMahon, former administrator of the U.S. Small Enterprise Administration and training secretary nominee, on Capitol Hill, Wednesday, Jan. 8, 2025. (Valerie Plesch/Bloomberg by way of Getty Photographs)
“At the end of the day, American people need to understand that the people we’re talking about here are not technicians,” Jones mentioned. “This isn’t plumbing that they’re doing. This is policy work. This is fundamentally ideological work. And at the end of the day, these people are just like the political appointees that can be fired at the beginning of the administration.”
“I’m hopeful that the administration really takes the opportunity to treat them like political appointees and ask them to move on, because if they don’t, they’re going to get left-wing political ideology in the administration for the next four years,” he added. “And unfortunately, we saw some of that happen in the first administration. I’m cautiously optimistic that the administration learned their lesson the hard way, the first time that they can’t let a bunch of unelected bureaucrats run roughshod over their agenda during this administration.”
Jones mentioned he supported President-elect Donald Trump’s nominee to turn into Training Secretary, Linda McMahon, who nonetheless faces a Senate affirmation course of.
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“I’m excited that she’s going to have the ability and the latitude to do the hard work that it takes to really shake up the Department of Education, because it’s, you know, it’s a Carter administration agency that’s stuck in the 1970s, when the world has moved on to different approaches to education, whether it’s in, you know, high schools or whether it’s in post-secondary education,” Jones mentioned.
Fox Information Digital reached out to the Division of Training press workplace, in addition to the person staffers listed, searching for remark.
The AAF assembled an analogous “watch-list” of Division of Homeland Safety (DHS) staff who it beneficial the Trump administration filter out. In response on the time, DHS Secretary Alejandro N. Mayorkas condemned “in the strongest terms any effort to harass or intimidate our public servants.”
“What Alejandro Mayorkas did was use the force of the Department of Homeland Security to chill speech by groups like the American Accountability Foundation,” Jones informed Fox Information Digital. “There were no examples of anyone feeling threatened, but what there were examples of was him ordering departments within the Department of Homeland Security to open investigations of AAF. That’s, you know, that’s the kind of weaponization of the U.S. government that we saw for four years under the Biden administration… So the idea that some folks are feeling targeted is just nonsense and a complete red herring and really a tool for Mayorkas and Biden administration officials to shut down speech that they don’t just don’t agree with.”
