{"id":5086,"date":"2025-03-20T09:39:35","date_gmt":"2025-03-20T09:39:35","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/firearmman.com\/?p=5086"},"modified":"2025-03-20T09:39:37","modified_gmt":"2025-03-20T09:39:37","slug":"warren-tells-mcmahon-firing-workers-means-dire-consequences-for-students-financial-aid","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/firearmman.com\/?p=5086","title":{"rendered":"Warren tells McMahon firing workers means ‘dire consequences’ for students’ financial aid"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Sen. Elizabeth Warren is urging Education Secretary Linda McMahon to reinstate former Department of Education employees who were critical to the nation\u2019s federal student aid process or else borrowers will suffer \u201cdire consequences,\u201d according to a letter Warren sent to McMahon on Wednesday.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe Department of Education (ED) appears to be abandoning the millions of parents, students, and borrowers who rely on a functioning federal student aid system to lower education costs,\u201d Warren and a group of Democratic senators wrote in a letter to McMahon.<\/p>\n

\u201cED should immediately restore all fired [Federal Student Aid] employees responsible for reviewing student aid complaints and refrain from taking any measures to deter the submission of complaints,\u201d the senators added.<\/p>\n

The Education Department intended to remove the \u201cSubmit a Complaint\u201d button from FSA\u2019s website, according to the letter. It found a senior employee at the department called the move an \u201coverall win\u201d as the change would decrease the volume and number of complaints. But more than 90% of the office\u2019s complaints were submitted online last year.<\/p>\n

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Ranking member Sen. Elizabeth Warren attends a Senate Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs Committee confirmation hearing in Dirksen building on Feb. 27, 2025.<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

Tom Williams\/AP<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

\u201cED\u2019s actions will hurt parents trying to understand how to submit the FAFSA correctly so that they can afford to send their child to college, veterans whose loan repayment status has been processed incorrectly due to their deployment, and students whose aid is being improperly withheld by predatory for-profit schools,\u201d the letter said.<\/p>\n

The letter alleges the FSA website changes — like moving the submit a complaint function — weakens FSA\u2019s capacity to resolve complaints and puts borrowers at risk of loan scams. Warren, D-Mass., and the senators demand answers about the agency\u2019s complaint backlog, why the department fired the civil servants, and how much influence Elon Musk and the Department of Government Efficiency had on the firings.<\/p>\n

\u201cDonald Trump is telling students that if you’re scammed by your student loan servicer or have a problem getting the aid you need to go to college, he doesn\u2019t care,\u201d Warren said in a statement to ABC News. \u201cSecretary McMahon is helping Trump rip opportunities away from kids who just want a good education, and as a result, real people will get hurt. Democrats in the Senate are not going to roll over and give up on our kids — we\u2019re fighting back,\u201d Warren added.<\/p>\n

This comes as President Donald Trump is expected to sign an executive order to gut the U.S. Department of Education at the White House on Wednesday, multiple sources familiar told ABC News. The president\u2019s order will direct McMahon to take all necessary steps permitted by law to dissolve department, according to the sources familiar. It would take 60 votes in the Senate to dismantle the agency that Congress created.<\/p>\n

The education department took its first steps to eliminate nearly half the agency’s workforce last week through a massive reduction in force, deferred resignations and retirement buyouts, according to the agency. After a federal judge ordered that former probationary employees be reinstated, dozens were rehired. A source familiar told ABC News that most of the reduction in force impacted the offices for Civil Rights and Federal Student Aid. FSA civil servants are tasked with helping the nation’s students achieve higher education, including overseeing a $1.6 trillion portfolio of student loans.<\/p>\n

FSA received nearly 300,000 complaints in Fiscal Year 2024, according to the letter. The office had about 1,400 employees before the layoffs and hundreds will be lost after last week\u2019s cuts.<\/p>\n

Still, the department will continue to administer its statutory functions that students from disadvantaged backgrounds rely on, including grants, formula funding and loans, McMahon stressed recently.<\/p>\n

“We wanted to make sure that we kept all of the right people, the good people, to make sure that the outward-facing programs, the grants, the appropriations that come from Congress, all of that are being met and none of that is going to fall through the cracks,” she said on “The Ingraham Angle” on Fox News.<\/p>\n

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Linda McMahon, President Trump’s nominee to be secretary of Education, testifies before a Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee confirmation hearing on Capitol Hill in Washington, Feb. 13, 2025.<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

Tierney L Cross\/Reuters<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

FSA\u2019s operations have already been impacted, according to a source familiar. The federal student loan website was down briefly last week. Less than 24 hours after being fired, IT employees were called frantically to join an hours-long troubleshooting call, according to the source.<\/p>\n

Throughout President Joe Biden\u2019s tenure there were widespread issues<\/u><\/a> with the Free Application for Federal Student Aid, or FAFSA, form. During a House Committee on Appropriations hearing last spring former Education Secretary Miguel Cardona said the department was working on fixing the botched rollout of the form \u201caround the clock.\u201d McMahon\u2019s department touted a 50% increase on the number of FAFSA applications<\/u><\/a> submitted compared to this time last year.<\/p>\n

Warren and Sen. Bernie Sanders, the ranking member on the Senate\u2019s Health, Education, Labor and Pensions committee, were among the 11 lawmakers who signed the letter. The deadline for the administration to respond is March 25.<\/p>\n

A former FSA attorney, who did oversight and enforcement in the borrower defense unit, said they were heartbroken when they were let go from their dream job on Valentine’s Day.<\/p>\n

Since the checks stopped coming in last month, the former employee said it\u2019s been difficult living on unemployment benefits. The former employee described making about a fifth of what they brought in before being fired.<\/p>\n

However, they said the letter to McMahon gives them renewed hope.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf I could get my job back I would take it in a heartbeat,\u201d the former FSA attorney told ABC News, adding, \u201cI loved the work that we did.”<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Sen. Elizabeth Warren is urging Education Secretary Linda McMahon to reinstate former Department of Education employees who were critical to the nation\u2019s federal student aid process or else borrowers will suffer \u201cdire consequences,\u201d according to a letter Warren sent to McMahon on Wednesday. \u201cThe Department of Education (ED) appears to be abandoning the millions of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":5087,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5086","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-us-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/firearmman.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5086","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/firearmman.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/firearmman.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/firearmman.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/firearmman.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=5086"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/firearmman.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5086\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5088,"href":"https:\/\/firearmman.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5086\/revisions\/5088"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/firearmman.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/5087"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/firearmman.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=5086"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/firearmman.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=5086"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/firearmman.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=5086"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}