New Hampshire’s Maggie Hassan, whose adult son has cerebral palsy, has defined her political career around advocating for students with disabilities. Another round of federal firings has her worried.
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WASHINGTON – For New Hampshire Sen. Maggie Hassan, it felt personal watching more than 120 jobs tied to special education disappear during the U.S. government shutdown.
President Donald Trump ordered massive layoffs across the federal workforce, which critics see as part of an effort to pressure Democrats like Hassan into voting to end the ongoing budget crisis that now stretches into its third week. The firings included roughly a fifth of the U.S. Department of Education – and nearly everyone in its special education division, per court documents and the agency’s union.
That’s particularly painful to Hassan, a second-term lawmaker and former governor with a son, Ben, who was born almost four decades ago with cerebral palsy, a neurological condition that affects movement and posture. While in school, the senator’s son needed some of the very programs she says now have an uncertain fate without people to manage them.
“This is a real blow to children and families all across the country,” Hassan told USA TODAY in an interview. “I don’t have constituents asking me to shut the door on kids with disabilities.”
Her concerns echo those of many families nationwide while underscoring the real-world stakes and complicated politics of a federal government shutdown. The special education layoffs, which were paused temporarily by a federal judge on Oct. 15, have prompted a wave of anxiety that washed over parents and teachers in the last week. Special education advocacy groups say they were inundated with questions.
“It’s outrageous,” Sen. Tim Kaine, D-Virginia, told USA TODAY. “I was sort of surprised they did it in such a high-profile way.”
Education Secretary Linda McMahon, the Trump Cabinet secretary who in March split in half her department’s ranks, has been largely quiet about the firings since they were announced. Her office didn’t officially confirm the move until an Oct. 17 court filing. Two days earlier, in McMahon’s first public statement on the issue, she asserted that special education funding wouldn’t be impacted by any staffing changes.
Several weeks into the shutdown, “millions of American students are still going to school, teachers are getting paid, and schools are operating as normal,” she said. “The Department has taken additional steps to better reach American students and families and root out the education bureaucracy that has burdened states and educators with unnecessary oversight.”
During her confirmation hearing in February, McMahon agreed with several senators, including Hassan, about the need for special education services. While she suggested they could be better overseen by an agency other than hers, namely the Department of Health and Human Services, she still stressed that she “wanted to make sure that students with special education needs had those needs met,” Hassan recalled.
McMahon continues to insist special education is a priority of hers. But Hassan said she feels lied to. “By taking the actions they have, it indicates to me that she wasn’t being truthful in her testimony,” she said. “Or she didn’t understand the full scope of special education services.”
Staffers in legal limbo; IDEA funding threatened
Between 7 million and 8 million students receive special education services in public schools, according to government data. They’re eligible for those programs through the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act, or IDEA, the main federal law that protects the rights of students with disabilities.
Passed 50 years ago, IDEA doles out billions of dollars annually to states, and then to school districts, which use the money to help pay for special education services.
In the case of Hassan’s son, that funding and its requirements made it possible for his school to connect him with the right resources, specifically an occupational therapist and alternative communications devices. By fifth grade, those tools helped his teachers realize he could raise his hand to respond to multiple-choice questions. Even though he couldn’t speak, they finally began to better assess his learning progress.
“Those are the kinds of things that allowed him to be a much more fully participating student,” she said, “and really have a quality of life that he wouldn’t otherwise have had.”
Though almost all of IDEA funding was already disbursed this school year, nearly everyone in charge of its oversight and administration was laid off, USA TODAY has reported. More than 120 workers were let go from the Office of Special Education and Rehabilitative Services, the Education Department stated in recently filed court documents. Should states or schools have issues in the coming weeks and months drawing down the money they need, they’ll be turning to staffers whose jobs are now in legal limbo.
Same goes for schools that have questions about the technicalities of IDEA, or, in many cases, parents looking to file a civil rights complaint. Nearly 140 employees in the Office for Civil Rights were fired, too. (Most investigations in that office are about disability-related discrimination.)
“The idea that we’re undercutting those people is unacceptable,” Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vermont, told USA TODAY. Sanders is a senior member of the Senate’s main education committee, on which Hassan and Kaine also serve.
Already, most of the laid-off staffers aren’t doing their usual work to help schools, as is mandated by the Education Department’s shutdown contingency plan. Due to the crisis, they were indefinitely furloughed, along with most of the agency, until the government reopens.
The GOP view
Hassan isn’t the only senator with strong personal ties to special education.
Sen. Markwayne Mullin, a Republican from Oklahoma, sits on the Senate’s education panel with her. He comes from a long line of special education teachers, including his mother, his sister and his grandmother.
He told USA TODAY he supports the latest Education Department layoffs.
“Special ed isn’t working like it should,” he said. “The definition of insanity is doing the same thing and expecting different results.”
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Other Republicans have emphasized similar points in recent days. Rep. Tim Walberg, R-Michigan, the chairman of the education committee in the House of Representatives, underscored that the GOP wants to remove bureaucracy from the education system.
“While the Department of Education has downsized, schools remain unaffected – proof that returning power to the states works,” he said in a statement.
Both Walberg and Sen. Josh Hawley, R-Missouri, laid the blame for the layoffs on Democrats – not the White House.
“The answer to all that is to reopen the government as soon as possible,” Hawley told USA TODAY.
Yet unlike furloughs, which typically leave workers off the job without pay during shutdowns, layoffs are permanent. Though the recent firings have come under legal scrutiny, and will likely remain paused for the foreseeable future, the Supreme Court has given broad deference to Trump over federal hiring so far in his second term.
Neither the White House nor the Education Department has specifically stated that reopening the government would prompt a change of heart about any layoffs, even in the special education office.
A ‘long-term trend’
The complicated political dynamics of the shutdown have left senators like Hassan, who voted with Republicans to keep the government funded in March, in a difficult position.
The president has vowed to use the shutdown as an opportunity to eliminate programs he doesn’t like, regardless of the pain for Americans who rely on them. He promised to “terminate” a long-planned multibillion-dollar commuter rail project underneath the Hudson River in New York, the home state of the two top Democrats in Congress. He’s targeted infrastructure projects in other blue states and cities, too, most recently including San Francisco and Massachusetts.
And he’s ordered layoffs at the Education Department that don’t just affect special education; they hit programs for homeless students, gifted and talented students, historically Black colleges and universities, tribal colleges and college access services for low-income students.
Hassan and other Senate Democrats are holding firm. They’re refusing to pass a funding bill unless the GOP takes steps to improve Americans’ health care. Primarily, they’re concerned health insurance subsidies through the Affordable Care Act, also known as Obamacare, that are set to expire at the end of the year, raising premiums for millions.
The seemingly intractable situation has resulted in one of the longest shutdowns in American history. If it lasts another three weeks, it will surpass the record set in Trump’s first term. There’s been no movement as of yet on either side of the aisle: Senators have failed on nearly a dozen votes to reopen the government. Though bipartisan back-channeling continues among the moderate factions of both parties, it’s not clear how far those talks have progressed, or if they’ll result in an agreement that can garner enough support to turn the lights back on.
In the week after the special education layoffs were revealed, Hassan stood her ground. She voted down a Republican funding bill three more times.
“Nobody should buy the administration’s excuse that somehow they’re doing this because the government is shut down,” she said. “This is part of a long-term trend.”
Zachary Schermele is a congressional reporter for USA TODAY. You can reach him by email at zschermele@usatoday.com. Follow him on X at @ZachSchermele and Bluesky at @zachschermele.bsky.social.