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Arizona joins 20 states suing Trump administration over Education Department layoffs • Arizona Mirror [1]
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Date: 2025-03-13
Democratic Arizona Attorney General Kris Mayes told reporters in Phoenix Thursday morning that the U.S. Department of Education cuts would be devastating to Arizona’s public school students, but especially to those who live in rural areas and who have learning disabilities.
“This is part of a deliberate effort to dismantle public education in this country,” Mayes said. “It is going to hurt students, families and schools, especially in rural areas that rely on federal support. And, let us be clear, there is absolutely no way that the Department of Education can perform its legal obligations with half the workforce.”
Mayes described the Trump administration’s actions as sabotage rather than streamlining, claiming that the ultimate goal was to destroy the nation’s public school system and then privatize it.
“The Department of Education isn't just some office building in Washington, D.C.,” Mayes said. “It helps keep Arizona's public schools running. It ensures students with disabilities get an education and helps families afford to send their kids to college. Defunding it and indiscriminately firing half of its employees doesn't fix problems, it creates a whole lot of new ones.”
Arizona’s Republican Superintendent of Public Instruction Tom Horne wrote in a social media post last week that he supports the dismantling of the U.S. Department of Education and shifting its responsibilities to the Arizona Department of Education, which he heads.
Mayes called the idea that the state Education Department could handle all the responsibilities of the national department “absolutely utterly absurd.”
“I couldn't believe it,” Mayes said of Horne’s comments. “Literally, my jaw dropped and I almost fell on the floor.”
Mayes pointed out that Horne’s agency recently had to automate its approval process for purchases under $2,000 made through the universal school voucher program because of a huge backlog of reimbursement Empowerment Scholarship Account requests. When the change was announced in December, there was a backlog of nearly 90,000 payment requests.
“I don't know why he said that, Tom Horne knows better,” Mayes said.
Horne provided a written statement that attacked Mayes but did not respond directly to her comments or criticisms.
"When my department found fraud in the ESA program, we sent the case to the Attorney General. Mayes is so incompetent that someone who should have been convicted was acquitted," he said, referring to a former ESA employee who was acquitted last month. "Our department has more than 600 people who do nothing but work on education. The Governor’s office as perhaps 3 or 4 people, but Mayes’ office has zero."
Mayes said that, even before the cuts, the U.S. Department of Education only had about 4,000 employees to administer all of the programs it runs for college and K-12 students across the nation. Mayes pointed out that the Arizona Attorney General’s Office has about 1,000 employees.
Arizona’s K-12 schools receive about 19% of their funding from the federal government, and Mayes said the Grand Canyon State relies more heavily on federal funding than most other states.
This lawsuit is the seventh that Mayes joined with other states’ attorneys general to challenge the actions of the second Trump administration.
“Is this my preference to have to be suing the Trump administration, now seven times?” Mayes said. “No. I wish the president of the United States would follow the Constitution and the law, but I took an oath…I promised to the people of this state to uphold the United States and the Arizona Constitution and to protect them. And that's what all of these lawsuits have been about.”
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[1] Url:
https://azmirror.com/2025/03/13/repub/arizona-joins-20-states-suing-trump-administration-over-education-department-layoffs/
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