SPRINGFIELD — Gov. JB Pritzker delivered more harsh criticism against President Donald Trump’s administration over attempts to drastically downsize, and possibly eliminate, the U.S. Department of Education.
His remarks on Thursday came just two days after the agency abruptly laid off 1,300 employees, or about half its workforce, including an estimated 50 workers in its Chicago regional office, as well as persistent reports that the president is preparing to issue an executive order to dismantle the agency entirely, a move many say the president cannot make without congressional approval.
The remarks also came days after the U.S. Department of Agriculture terminated a $26.3 million grant to the Illinois State Board of Education that helped Illinois schools and child care facilities buy locally grown fresh produce from Illinois farmers for use in meals and snacks.
In a campaign-style speech before a friendly audience of about 1,200 representatives of the Illinois Education Association, the state’s largest labor union, Pritzker lashed out at the president and his supporters, whom he called “bootlickers” and “DOGE-bags,” a reference to the Trump’s unofficial Department of Government Efficiency, led by billionaire Elon Musk.
Pritzker, who is often mentioned as a potential presidential candidate in 2028, also leveled specific criticism at Trump’s secretary of education, Linda McMahon, a former president and CEO of World Wrestling Entertainment, Inc.
“Now wrestling can be entertaining. I’ll admit, I don’t watch much of it,” Pritzker said. “But that’s not the kind of expertise that most Americans are looking for when it comes to carrying out good public policy for our families. Education is either the foundation of our nation’s future success or, if we fail, it can be our nation’s undoing.”
In the nearly two months since Trump’s inauguration for a second term, Pritzker and the state of Illinois have been engaged in a series of legal and political battles, many stemming from Trump’s early executive orders to freeze large categories of federal spending or cut off funding for various programs.
In a related announcement Thursday, Illinois Attorney General Kwame Raoul said he had joined yet another multistate federal lawsuit against the Trump administration — one of several he has joined — this time as part of an effort to block Trump from dismantling the Department of Education.
That agency has existed in its present form only since 1980, when it was split off from the former Department of Health, Education and Welfare. The remainder became what is now the Department of Health and Human Services.
The agency administers several federal laws that deal with education, ranging from the Every Student Succeeds Act, which mandates the testing of students every year in reading, writing and math, to Title IX and other civil rights laws that prohibit discrimination in educational settings.
It also distributes large amounts of federal funds to states and local schools, including Title I funds, which supplement the funding of schools in the nation’s poorest communities.
In addition to the Department of Education, the U.S. Department of Agriculture also provides significant federal funding to schools, primarily through the National School Lunch Program.
It also administers federal programs for higher education, including student financial aid programs such as Pell grants and guaranteed student loans.
Although those federal funds are important for schools, they make up a relatively small percentage of overall spending on public education. Local property taxes and state funding make up the vast majority of public school budgets.
According to state figures, in Fiscal Year 2023 in Illinois, the most recent year for which figures are available, federal funds for schools totaled $4.7 billion, or just 12% of all spending for public schools. Local revenues, at $25 billion, accounted for 64% while the remaining 24%, or $9.3 billion, came from state funds.
For the upcoming fiscal year, which begins July 1, the state expects to receive about $4.5 billion in federal K-12 education funds.
In a statement March 11, McMahon said the mass layoffs were aimed at “ensuring that resources are directed where they matter most: to students, parents, and teachers,” giving no indication they were a step toward eliminating the programs that the Department of Education administers.
But speaking to reporters after his remarks to the IEA gathering, Pritzker brushed aside suggestions that the Trump administration only wants to do away with the agency’s bureaucracy, not the programs or funds that it administers.
“If you listen to members of Congress, they’re fine with taking away the funding from the Department of Education,” he said. “But if they don’t, great. Send us the dollars. We’ll make sure that our kids are receiving the kinds of programs that are necessary. But I think every child in the United States should have a standard by which we all live by.”
“One of those standards is that every disabled child should be able to get an education, that every one of the kids who qualify should be able to go to college. And it looks to me like they’re trying to at least diminish it by a significant amount if not do away with it altogether,” he said.
Capitol News Illinois is a nonprofit, nonpartisan news service that distributes state government coverage to hundreds of news outlets statewide. It is funded primarily by the Illinois Press Foundation and the Robert R. McCormick Foundation.