Conservative group reveals how Trump can clean house at Department of Education, lists top bureaucrats to fire

FIRST ON FOX - The American Accountability Foundation, a conservative government research nonprofit, assembled a "watch-list" of top bureaucrats at the Department of Education who it recommends President-elect Donald Trump should fire. 

The nonprofit, which is funded by the conservative think tank The Heritage Foundation, published the list on its website. The AAF assembled 19 "dossiers" naming "America's Most Subversive Education Bureaucrats." 

AAF President Tom Jones, a former Republican congressional staffer, told Fox News Digital that the "public-facing" list was not compiled at the behest of the Trump transition team, but rather because the conservative organization believes it's important that the American people "understand that there's a lot of civil servants within the federal government, and particularly within the Department of Education, who are not impartial technicians executing on the agenda of the president, but rather are ideologues who have an agenda that they're willing to implement despite the clear direction from the voters in November." 

"At the end of the day, it's fundamentally undemocratic. What you get is a group of people who don't reflect the will of the American people implementing their agenda over that of what the American people said was their will in November. At the end of the day, what it means is you get a left-wing approach to education, particularly higher education," Jones told Fox News Digital. "The higher education system in America is broken. I think the events of last summer, where you saw left-wing pro-terrorist groups take over American campuses, and the faculty and administration support them, really should have been a wake-up call for all Americans. And I think this could be a wake-up call for this administration." 

Jones said those on the list include individuals who are "serial donors" to Pete Buttigieg, Elizabeth Warren and President Biden, as well as other "hard core ideologues" who will prioritize their own progressive agendas, such as promoting Biden’s student loan "bailouts," increasing regulations on successful online class partnerships, and conducting a "witch hunt" against Christian and career colleges through the Student Financial Aid Office of Enforcement. 

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Jones identified one individual at the Office of Enforcement who "had spent his career at the Maryland Attorney General's Office investigating career colleges and Christian colleges." He pointed to another person who stated that he would work to turn the DOE into a "mini-CFPB," a reference to the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, which Jones described as "essentially just a witch hunt factory that's used to investigate organizations of people that the administration doesn't like." The nonprofit described one general attorney for the DOE included on the list as "a leading legal advocate for transgender rights in the debate over religious exemptions for certain universities."  

"These people are not going to say, you know what, 'I hated Trump last week, but on January 22nd, I'm going to be super excited about implementing his education agenda.' Unless these folks are moved out of their positions within the Department of Education, they're going to continue to work behind the scenes to attack alternatives to traditional four-year institutions," Jones said. 

Others named on the list include a civilian employee within the DOE Office of Federal Student Aid (FSA) who the nonprofit says spearheaded a "$6.1 billion student loan forgiveness scheme to art institute students." 

"They call it relief, but it's really a huge giveaway to people who pursue college degrees that are just unaffordable," Jones told Fox News Digital. "And look, that's completely unacceptable to essentially have the federal government repaying the student loans for someone and putting that burden on the back of a plumber or a welder, you know, a teacher who is taking care of their education or who didn't go on to college, they've now got to pay for some guy who's got a feminist studies degree from Columbia and $150,000 in debt. That's just simply, fundamentally unfair and wrong. But look, if you want to go get that degree, you should be prepared to pay for it." 

The list includes another DOE employee who the nonprofit says helped the Biden administration "weaponize federal student aid policies against faith-based higher education." 

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The nonprofit accuses the person of playing a key role in the DOE levying a $37.7 million fine against Grand Canyon University, the nation’s largest Christian college, for alleged misrepresentation of the cost of its doctoral degree programs, accusing the Biden administration of effectively having "bullied" the college into wiping out student debt for them.

Everyone named on the list is making six figures, Jones said, adding that some are even earning an annual salary of more than $200,000, while the average American teacher's salary sits at around $50,000 to $60,000. 

"These woke bureaucrats at the Department of Education are pulling down $200,000 to attack alternatives to education," Jones said. "The Office of Enforcement is attacking things like career colleges and Christian colleges, and they're getting rich doing it. And that's just shameful. So I'm hopeful that the administration says, look, this is, you know, paying people $200,000 a year to attack opportunities for, you know, welders, nurses and folks like that to get a higher education. It's just unacceptable." 

"At the end of the day, American people need to understand that the people we're talking about here are not technicians," Jones said. "This isn't plumbing that they're doing. This is policy work. This is fundamentally ideological work. And at the end of the day, these people are just like the political appointees that can be fired at the beginning of the administration." 

"I'm hopeful that the administration really takes the opportunity to treat them like political appointees and ask them to move on, because if they don't, they're going to get left-wing political ideology in the administration for the next four years," he added. "And unfortunately, we saw some of that happen in the first administration. I'm cautiously optimistic that the administration learned their lesson the hard way, the first time that they can't let a bunch of unelected bureaucrats run roughshod over their agenda during this administration." 

Jones said he supported President-elect Donald Trump’s nominee to become Education Secretary, Linda McMahon, who still faces a Senate confirmation process. 

"I'm excited that she's going to have the ability and the latitude to do the hard work that it takes to really shake up the Department of Education, because it's, you know, it's a Carter administration agency that's stuck in the 1970s, when the world has moved on to different approaches to education, whether it's in, you know, high schools or whether it's in post-secondary education," Jones said. 

Fox News Digital reached out to the Department of Education press office, as well as the individual staffers listed, seeking comment. 

The AAF assembled a similar "watch-list" of Department of Homeland Security (DHS) employees who it recommended the Trump administration clear out. In response at the time, DHS Secretary Alejandro N. Mayorkas condemned "in the strongest terms any effort to harass or intimidate our public servants." 

"What Alejandro Mayorkas did was use the force of the Department of Homeland Security to chill speech by groups like the American Accountability Foundation," Jones told Fox News Digital. "There were no examples of anyone feeling threatened, but what there were examples of was him ordering departments within the Department of Homeland Security to open investigations of AAF. That's, you know, that's the kind of weaponization of the U.S. government that we saw for four years under the Biden administration… So the idea that some folks are feeling targeted is just nonsense and a complete red herring and really a tool for Mayorkas and Biden administration officials to shut down speech that they don't just don't agree with."