The Lyndon Baines Johnson Constructing, which homes the U.S. Division of Training, in Washington, D.C.
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A brand new report from a authorities watchdog suggests the Trump administration’s efforts to fireplace employees on the U.S. Division of Training price taxpayers tens of thousands and thousands of {dollars}.
The reportfrom the nonpartisan U.S. Authorities Accountability Workplace (GAO), focuses on the division’s Workplace for Civil Rights (OCR), which investigates complaints of discrimination in faculties primarily based on college students’ intercourse, race, nationwide origin, incapacity and extra.
In March, the administration tried to fireplace greater than half of OCR’s civil rights attorneys and employees. On the time, Training Secretary Linda McMahon stated the cuts mirrored the division’s dedication to “effectivity” and “accountability.”
However, when that reduction-in-force (RIF) was blocked by the courts and the Training Division was compelled to retain and proceed paying these employees, the division prohibited them from returning to work.
For practically 9 months, from March 21 to mid-December, “there have been 247 individuals on administrative go away from OCR who had been being paid whereas not being allowed to work,” says Jackie Nowicki, lead investigator of Ok-12 points at GAO, “and that call got here with a value.”
A price of between $28.5 million and $38 million, in accordance with GAO.
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How GAO got here to those numbers
Nowicki says the Training Division didn’t share an entire accounting of the RIF’s prices and/or financial savings, leaving GAO investigators to reach at their very own tough calculation utilizing employees’ salaries and advantages. The report recommends that the division do a full accounting now.
Kimberly Richey, who was appointed by President Trump to run OCR, rebuffed that suggestion in a written response to GAO’s report.
Richey argues, as a result of the Training Division finally rescinded its RIF notices to OCR employees and returned attorneys to lively obligation in December, the subject is “moot.” “We don’t concur with the advice,” Richey writes.
The report factors out the division was presupposed to have finished this math already. Steering from the Workplace of Administration and Price range (OMB) and the Workplace of Personnel Administration required that the division doc the complete prices and financial savings of its employees cuts. GAO investigators write that the Training Division “couldn’t display that it included all potential prices and financial savings” and that it had not documented its evaluation.
Training officers instructed GAO they’d finished the evaluation however relayed its outcomes to OMB “orally,” in accordance with the report.
The division is anticipated to report back to Congress inside 180 days on whether or not it agrees or disagrees with the advice. What to do past that will likely be as much as lawmakers.
The division is dismissing many instances and issuing fewer decision agreements
In accordance with GAO, from March to September, OCR resolved greater than 7,000 discrimination complaints, however about 90% had been resolved by the division dismissing the grievance, which means employees acquired info from complainants however didn’t proceed to research. Dismissals are usually not a direct purple flag and have lengthy been a typical device at OCR. However how frequent?
GAO presents two factors of comparability, primarily based on accessible knowledge: Within the 2019-20 faculty 12 months, throughout Trump’s first time period as president, 81% of OCR complaints had been resolved via dismissal; in 2010-11, the dismissal price was 49% underneath the Obama administration. The GAO report didn’t present knowledge for different administrations.
Public knowledge tells a extra nuanced story of OCR’s work underneath the second Trump administration:
- After Trump’s 2025 inauguration OCR reached a decision settlement in simply two racial harassment instances the remainder of the 12 months. In 2017, the primary 12 months of the primary Trump administration, it resolved greater than 30.
- In 2017, the Trump-led OCR reached agreements in roughly ten occasions as many incapacity discrimination instances because it did in 2025.
- And at last, OCR resolved practically 60 sexual harassment instances and 15 sexual assault instances in 2017. After Trump’s second inauguration, the workplace didn’t attain a decision settlement in a single case of school-based sexual harassment or sexual assault for the remainder of the 12 months.
“I am actually befuddled by that,” says Beth Gellman-Beer of the sexual harassment and assault decision numbers. She ran OCR’s Philadelphia workplace till it was closed in March and she or he acquired her RIF discover. Gellman-Beer spent 18 years at OCR and says stopping sexual assault and harassment “was a precedence space underneath the primary Trump administration.”
NPR reached out to the Training Division for touch upon the 2025 decision numbers and didn’t hear again.
In accordance with GAO’s findings, which mirror earlier reporting by NPRif the Trump administration is finally allowed to chop each OCR staffer who initially acquired a RIF discover, 62 employees would stay – simply 10% of the workplace’s measurement when the Trump administration started.
