US judge blocks Trump’s plan to dismantle Education Department

BOSTON — A federal judge blocked U.S. President Donald Trump’s administration from carrying out his executive order to dismantle the U.S. Department of Education and ordered it on Thursday to reinstate employees terminated in a mass layoff.

U.S. District Judge Myong Joun in Boston at the behest of a group of Democratic-led states, school districts and teachers’ unions issued an injunction blocking the department from moving forward with a mass termination announced in March of over 1,300 employees, which would cut its staff by half.

“The record abundantly reveals that defendants’ true intention is to effectively dismantle the department without an authorizing statute,” wrote Joun, an appointee of Trump’s Democratic predecessor, Joe Biden.

Lawyers with the U.S. Justice Department argued that the mass terminations were not an effort to shutter the agency but a lawful effort to eliminate bureaucratic bloat while fulfilling its overall statutory mission more efficiently.

But Joun said the cuts were having the opposite effect, as the “massive reduction in staff has made it effectively impossible for the department to carry out its statutorily mandated functions.”

He ordered the administration to not just reinstate the workers but also to halt implementation of Trump’s March 21 directive to transfer student loans and special needs programs to other federal agencies.

The administration swiftly appealed the decision, which Education Department spokesperson Madi Biedermann said came from “an unelected judge with a political axe to grind.” White House spokesperson Harrison Fields called the ruling “misguided.”