education department

WASHINGTON — Republican Speaker Mike Johnson predicted Monday the federal government shutdown may become the longest in history, saying he “won’t negotiate” with Democrats until they hit pause on their health care demands and reopen.

Standing alone at the Capitol on the 13th day of the shutdown, the speaker said he was unaware of the details of the thousands of federal workers being fired by the Trump administration. It’s a highly unusual mass layoff widely seen as way to seize on the shutdown to reduce the scope of government. Vice President JD Vance has warned of “painful” cuts ahead, even as employee unions sue.

“We’re barreling toward one of the longest shutdowns in American history,” Johnson of Louisiana said.

With no endgame in sight, the shutdown is expected to roll on for the unforeseeable future. The closure has halted routine government operations, shuttered Smithsonian museums and other landmark cultural institutions and left airports scrambling with flight disruptions, all injecting more uncertainty into an already precarious economy.

The House is out of legislative session, with Johnson refusing to recall lawmakers back to Washington, while the Senate, closed Monday for the federal holiday, will return to work Tuesday. But senators are stuck in a cul-de-sac of failed votes as Democrats refuse to relent on their health care demands.

Johnson thanked President Trump for ensuring military personnel are paid this week, which removed one main pressure point that may have pushed the parties to the negotiating table.

At its core, the shutdown is a debate over health care policy — and particularly the Affordable Care Act subsidies that are expiring for millions of Americans who rely on government aid to purchase their own health insurance policies on the Obamacare exchanges. Democrats demand the subsidies be extended, Republicans argue the issue can be dealt with later.

With Congress and the White House stalemated, some are eyeing the end of the month as the next potential deadline to reopen government.

That’s when open enrollment begins, Nov. 1, for the health program at issue, and Americans will face the prospect of skyrocketing insurance premiums. The Kaiser Family Foundation has estimated that monthly costs would double if Congress fails to renew the subsidy payments that expire Dec. 31.

It’s also when government workers on monthly pay schedules, including thousands of House aides, will go without paychecks.

The health care debate has dogged Congress ever since the Affordable Care Act became law under then-President Barak Obama in 2010.

The country went through a 16-day government shutdown during the Obama presidency when Republicans tried to repeal the Affordable Care Act 2013.

Trump tried to “repeal and replace” the law, commonly known as Obamacare, during his first term, in 2017, with a Republican majority in the House and Senate. That effort failed when then-Sen. John McCain memorably voted a thumbs down on the plan.

With 24 million now enrolled in Obamacare, a record, Johnson said Monday that Republicans are unlikely to go that route again, noting he still has “PTSD” from that botched moment.

“Can we completely repeal and replace Obamacare? Many of us are skeptical about that now because the roots are so deep,” Johnson said.

The Republican speaker insists his party has been willing to discuss the health care issue with Democrats this fall, before the subsidies expire at the end of the year. But first, he said, Democrats have to agree to reopen the government.

The longest shutdown, during Trump’s first term over his demands for funds to build the U.S.-Mexico border wall, ended in 2019 after 35 days.

Meanwhile, the Trump administration is exercising vast leeway both to fire workers — drawing complaints from fellow Republicans and lawsuits from employee unions — and to determine who is paid.

That means not only military troops but other Trump administration priorities don’t necessarily have to go without pay, thanks to the various other funding sources as well as the billions made available in what’s commonly called Trump’s One Big Beautiful Bill Act that’s now law.

The Pentagon said over the weekend it was able to tap $8 billion in unused research and development funds to pay the military personnel. They had risked missed paychecks on Wednesday. But the Education Department is among those being hard hit, disrupting special education, after-school programs and others.

“The Administration also could decide to use mandatory funding provided in the 2025 reconciliation act or other sources of mandatory funding to continue activities financed by those direct appropriations at various agencies,” according to the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office.

The CBO had cited the Department of Defense, the Department of the Treasury, the Department of Homeland Security, and the Office of Management and Budget as among those that received specific funds under the law.

“Some of the funds in DoD’s direct appropriation under the 2025 reconciliation act could be used to pay active-duty personnel during a shutdown, thus reducing the number of excepted workers who would receive delayed compensation,” CBO wrote in a letter responding to questions raised by Sen. Joni Ernst, R-Iowa.

Mascaro writes for the Associated Press.

WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court signaled again this week that it believes the president has the full power to control federal agencies, including by sharply cutting their staffs and their spending.

It’s the latest example of the court’s conservative majority intervening to rule for President Trump and against federal district judges. They have done so in brief orders with no explanation, prompting further criticism from Democrats and progressives.

But Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. and his conservative colleagues have made clear over many years that they believe the president’s “executive power” includes controlling agencies and firing officials, even those who were deemed “independent” by Congress.

On Monday, the court issued a one-line order setting aside the decision of a federal judge in Boston who said the Education Department must rehire about 1,400 staffers who had been laid off.

Trump’s attorneys had appealed in early June, arguing the administration was “streamlining” the department while “acknowledging that only Congress can eliminate” it.

Democratic state attorneys had sued to stop the layoffs, arguing Trump was effectively “dismantling” the department, and the judge agreed the layoffs were illegal.

The week before, the conservative majority set aside the decision of a federal judge in San Francisco who blocked Trump’s plans for laying off tens of thousands of employees at more than 20 departments and agencies.

Democrats and progressives condemned the decisions and the majority’s refusal to explain its reasons.

Michael Waldman, president of the Brennan Center, said the justices “have let Trump amass vast new power, and they have done so without putting their names on it. They are proving willing accomplices to a constitutional coup, all without leaving a trace.”

In May, Roberts and the court upheld Trump’s dismissal of Democratic appointees to the National Labor Relations Board and the Merit Systems Protection Board, both of whom had fixed terms set by Congress.

“Because the Constitution vests the executive power in the President, he may remove without cause executive officers who exercise that power on his behalf,” the court said. “Both the NLRB and MSPB exercise considerable executive power.”

The three liberals dissented.

Peter M. Shane, a New York University law professor, has written extensively on the so-called “unitary executive theory” and said it explains why Trump has been winning since he returned to the White House.

“Trump’s use of executive power is not a distortion of the Roberts court’s theory of the presidency,” he said. “It is the court’s theory of the presidency come to life.”

Still pending before the court this week is an appeal from Trump’s lawyers that seeks the firing of three Democratic appointees to the Consumer Product Safety Commission.

The commissioners have seven-year terms, but in May, the Trump White House told the three Democratic appointees they had been “terminated.”

They sued and won a reinstatement order from a federal judge in Baltimore.

The recent rulings from the court have come on emergency appeals at the early stage of a lawsuit. The court’s majority said Trump’s initiatives may go into effect while the litigation continues. But at some point, the justices will have to hear arguments and issue a written ruling on the underlying legal issue.

In ruling for the three officials the CPSC, the judge in Baltimore pointed to the Supreme Court’s 1935 decision which protected the constitutionality of “traditional multi-member independent agencies.”

The court’s opinion in the case of Humphrey’s Executor vs. United States drew a distinction between “purely executive officers” who were under the president’s control and those who served on a board “with quasi-judicial or quasi-legislative functions.”

But that precedent has been endangered in recent years.

Five years ago, Roberts spoke for the court and ruled the director of the Consumer Finance Protection Bureau can be fired by the president, even though Congress had said otherwise.

But since that case did not involve a multi-member board or commission, it did not overrule the 1935 precedent.

WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court on Monday gave President Trump the authority to dismantle the Education Department and to fire about half of its staff.

In a 6-3 decision, the court’s conservatives set aside a Boston judge’s order and cleared the way for Education Secretary Linda McMahon to carry out her plans to shut down much of her department.

The court issued a brief order with no explanation, followed by a 19-page dissent by Justice Sonia Sotomayor that spoke for the three liberals.

“Only Congress has the power to abolish the Department. The Executive’s task, by contrast, is to ‘take Care that the Laws be faithfully executed,’” she wrote.

“Yet, by executive fiat, the President ordered the Secretary of Education to ‘take all necessary steps to facilitate the closure of the Department’ … Consistent with that Executive Order, Secretary Linda McMahon gutted the Department’s work force, firing over 50 percent of its staff overnight. In her own words, that mass termination served as ‘the first step on the road to a total shutdown’ of the Department.”

McMahon called the decision a “significant win for students and families. … It is a shame that the highest court in the land had to step in to allow President Trump to advance the reforms Americans elected him to deliver using the authorities granted to him by the U.S. Constitution.”

The Department of Education was created in 1979 under President Carter, and it has been a favorite of Democrats since then. It sends funds to school districts across the nation to support extra help for students, including those with disabilities, and it administers programs for grants and loans for students in colleges and universities.

Republicans have been anxious to dismantle the Education Department for decades. They say education policy should be left mostly to states and argue that the teachers unions have too much sway in Washington.

But they also say they would not change or block the federal funding that now goes to support schools and higher education students.

Last week, the court upheld the Trump administration plans for mass layoffs in the more than 20 departments and agencies.

Attorneys for California and 10 other Democratic-led states had sued to block the planned layoffs of about 1,400 Education Department employees, and they won before a federal judge in Boston and the 1st Circuit Court.

Those judges said Congress could reduce or redirect funding from the Education Department, but the president was not free to do it on his own.

But in last week’s order as well as Monday’s, the court’s majority sided with Trump and his broad view of executive power.

Trump’s Solicitor Gen. D. John Sauer said the administration decided it can “carry out its statutorily mandated functions with a pared down staff” at the Education Department.

Democracy Forward, a progressive group that sued on behalf of educators, said it was “incredibly disappointed by the Supreme Court’s decision to allow the Trump-Vance administration to proceed with its harmful efforts to dismantle the Department of Education while our case moves forward. This unlawful plan will immediately and irreparably harm students, educators and communities across our nation.”

WASHINGTON — President Trump’s administration on Friday asked the Supreme Court to pause a court order to reinstate Education Department employees who were fired in mass layoffs as part of his plan to dismantle the agency.

The Justice Department’s emergency appeal to the high court said U.S. District Judge Myong Joun in Boston exceeded his authority last month when he issued a preliminary injunction reversing the layoffs of nearly 1,400 people and putting the broader plan on hold.

Joun’s order has blocked one of the Republican president’s biggest campaign promises and effectively stalled the effort to wind down the department. A federal appeals court refused to put the order on hold while the administration appealed.

The judge wrote that the layoffs “will likely cripple the department.”

But Solicitor General D. John Sauer wrote Friday that Joun was substituting his policy preferences for those of the Trump administration.

The layoffs help put in the place the “policy of streamlining the department and eliminating discretionary functions that, in the administration’s view, are better left to the states,” Sauer wrote.

He also pointed out that the Supreme Court in April voted 5-4 to block Joun’s earlier order seeking to keep in place Education Department teacher-training grants.

The current case involves two consolidated lawsuits that said Trump’s plan amounted to an illegal closure of the Education Department.

One suit was filed by the Somerville and Easthampton school districts in Massachusetts along with the American Federation of Teachers and other education groups. The other suit was filed by a coalition of 21 Democratic attorneys general.

The suits argued that layoffs left the department unable to carry out responsibilities required by Congress, including duties to support special education, distribute financial aid and enforce civil rights laws.

Education Department employees who were targeted by the layoffs have been on paid leave since March, according to a union that represents some of the agency’s staff. Joun’s order prevents the department from fully terminating them, but none have been allowed to return to work, according to the American Federation of Government Employees Local 252. Without Joun’s order, the workers were scheduled to be terminated Monday.

Trump has made it a priority to shut down the Education Department, though he has acknowledged that only Congress has the authority to do that. In the meantime, Trump issued a March order directing Education Secretary Linda McMahon to wind it down “to the maximum extent appropriate and permitted by law.”

Trump later said the department’s functions will be parceled to other agencies, suggesting that federal student loans should be managed by the Small Business Administration and programs involving students with disabilities would be absorbed by the Department of Health and Human Services. Those changes have not yet happened.

The president argues that the Education Department has been overtaken by liberals and has failed to spur improvements to the nation’s lagging academic scores. He has promised to “return education to the states.”

Opponents note that K-12 education is already mostly overseen by states and cities.

Democrats have blasted the Trump administration’s Education Department budget, which seeks a 15% budget cut including a $4.5 billion cut in K-12 funding as part of the agency’s downsizing.

Sherman writes for the Associated Press. AP writer Collin Binkley contributed to this report.