Sen. Elizabeth Warren: Shutdown Does Not Give Trump More Power to Fire People

VITALI: “I am sort of interested if that ends up being something that comes out of this lunch that they’re doing at the White House today, because in my conversations with sources, it has been clear that Trump can come in as a linchpin. And he often does read the political tea leaves and say, ‘Okay, I think this could be good for me.’ I do think that’s an open question of if we see that. But while we are in this shutdown posture, the White House has used it as a pretense to cut programs and jobs that they don’t like. As part of those layoffs, they’ve gotten rid of most of the special education staffers within the Department of Education. I want to read something, according to The 19th. It says more than 7 million children across the country rely on special education services that are partially funded and enforced by the federal government. And quite frankly, they don’t care if Trump would deem this a Democrat program or not. So if these firings are upheld in court, what’s the impact of those cuts?”
Warren: “So, let me just say two things. First, these firings are illegal. They were illegal before the shutdown and they are illegal after the shutdown. The shutdown gives Donald Trump no more power to lay people off en masse like this than he had before. He had no power to do this. But the second is please observe the cruelty of what they’re doing. You know, I was a special ed teacher long before I ever got into this job, and understanding what access to opportunities for those kids mean and how those kids can’t wait, they need their help so they can be in a classroom, they need that wheelchair, they need that extra teacher’s aide, they need the additional speech therapy, they need those extra opportunities so that they will also have a chance to succeed alongside the other kids in the classroom. And Donald Trump wants to just take that away. And the Republicans are willing to just stand by and watch him do that. That is a form of cruelty that no leader of a nation anywhere should impose on the people that he supposedly represents.”