Bulwark Takes - Dems Fight for Dept of Education as DOGE Locks the Doors

Episode Date: February 7, 2025

Sam Stein is joined by Congressman Maxwell Frost to discuss Democrats’ denied entry to the Department of Education as DOGE targets their next department takeover.

Hey guys, it's me, Sam Stein, back again. I am joined graciously by Congressman Maxwell Frost. Thank you, Congressman, for coming on. Congressman, we had you on today because something happened this morning and it kind of blew up. You and a bunch of your colleagues attempted to get into the Department of Education building in Washington, D.C., and you were stopped from doing so. Can you walk us through what happened? But start with why you decided to go there and why today? Yeah, I appreciate the question.

I mean, this week, a lot of House Democrats have been just pulling up to a lot of these agencies to, you know, trying to work and demanding to provide congressional oversight over what's going on. You know, speaking with these doge bros who no one really knows who they are and trying to figure out what they're doing, how they're doing it, and provide congressional oversight. And so at the beginning of the week, I led about two dozen Democrats who were in the Treasury Department.

We couldn't get in. And then we had a rally outside with 1,000 people with MoveOn and the Visible and Working Families Party. We're here because an unelected billionaire has access to the private information of our constituents, but we want answers. This morning, we went with about a dozen members of Congress, the Department of Education, to speak with folks there. We went up to the doors and the doors were completely locked. Walked around the building, tried all the doors, they locked all the doors, which is crazy because usually the Department of Education lobby is open

and anyone can access it. Like not even just members of Congress, anybody. You can go to the front desk and speak with someone at the desk. But the doors were completely locked. If you want to advocate on behalf of your children, you are not allowed to come into this building where you pay taxes. You are not allowed to come into this building where you pay taxes.

We are not allowed to advocate on behalf of America's children. And then we had a guy come out who we couldn't identify who he was. And now we've come to learn he's an employee at Department of Education. And he was just standing in front of the door saying, we're not gonna let you in.

And then we saw just a bunch of DHS federal officers pull up that were armed and they were in the building. And so we stood up there for a little bit questioning this guy, asking him, who ordered you to lock the doors? I mean, if you go on the website, the building's open, right? We're in the hours of operation, Department of Education. And it just goes to show that these guys talked a big game about transparency during the campaign. But it's complete BS. This whole thing has nothing to do with transparency. These guys talked a big game about transparency during the campaign, but it's complete BS.

This whole thing has nothing to do with transparency. So now the guy turned out to be an actual employee of the Department of Education, presumably predating Trump coming into power. Yeah. I think he was involved in sort of the security and facilities management there. Did he ever give you an explanation for why he was restricting access? Nope, he didn't. And I asked him, I said, are you doing this on your own accord as an employee deciding to shut down this entire agency, which is a huge problem? Or were you told to shut down the agency, which is also a huge problem?

I think it's the second one. But he was just standing there. And that was it. I don't even know why he came out. The doors were locked. I mean, there's a lot of people online that were saying, why don't you push him and walk in? The doors were locked. The doors were locked. Yeah. I mean, yeah. If the doors were open, I probably would have gotten in there and went inside, but the doors were completely locked. What were you going to, if let's say you had gotten inside and gotten to the lobby, what were you going to do? Exactly what we did at the Department of Treasury or what we wanted to do is we want to go in. We want to go and speak with the Doge representatives that are working in the building.

As you know, the Doge team has been sent to a lot of different agencies. They're in buildings in the IT departments, essentially hacking into the systems, talking with people, talking about firing people, changing systems, all these different things. So we either wanted to speak with the Doge representatives or the current secretary of education. And that's what we wanted to do as members of Congress. But of course – Normally you don't have to show up literally at their door. No, you can try. Yeah. you don't have to show up literally at their door um yeah yeah have you have you tried actually

calling and emailing and encouraging them to come to the hill to testify i mean obviously you're not in power but um yeah i mean that's why we pulled up i mean and and usually even if you're in the minority and you request a meeting with an agency or somebody from the agency they accept the meeting and they come to the hill they come to your office and you speak with them. We've been requesting these meetings since the 20th, since January 20th, when he was inaugurated, absolute crickets. And then when we got- Is that because they put a blanket prohibition on communication, as you understand it? I don't know if that's confirmed, but that's what I'm feeling. Yeah. I mean, we have not been able to get in contact with anybody from a lot of these different agencies. Once the doge enters the doors, it's like everything is silent and no one knows what's going on. And that's the problem, right? There's no oversight. There's nobody looking over these guys' shoulders, looking at what Elon Musk is doing with this information and being that independent watchdog. That's why the one of the first things Donald Trump did was he fired pretty much every single inspector general in the federal

government. Those are the independent watchdogs. They're no longer there. There's like only, I think, one or two left. So it's a huge issue. And it's something everyone should be concerned about. Like, even if you voted for Donald Trump, you should be concerned because it's Elon Musk and his guys that are in here completely eviscerating everything. You know, obviously you're not going to reveal too much, but I am just kind of curious as a general matter. Are you hearing privately from people at these agencies who are worried about what's happening? Are they back channeling to you through secure channels?

Yes, I have. I've spoken with many different people who work at these agencies. I've spoken with many people who have been laid off or people who were kind of forced to resign. And it's just really grim picture what's going on. I just was on a plane with, don't reveal who it is, but I just was on a plane with somebody who's now been promoted to a pretty high ranking position in one of these agencies. And they told me everything is chaos. Like no one knows what's going on. We're kind of awaiting Doge to come to our place.

And we have no idea who's going to leave because of the whole kind of them enticing people to resign. We have no idea what's going to happen. We're just kind of floating, which is funny because the whole point of this is to make things more efficient. So right now, a ton of employees to be like, what's going on, right? Like, and so the way they're doing this isn't efficient either. And what they're doing, I believe is illegal. I mean, if a hacker were to do, were to hack into this information, it would be a felony. They'd be put on bars. So the other thing that I'm kind of interested to hear about is, you know, last weekend,

it was chaos was surrounding USAID. Elon Musk was tweeting incessantly about it. And he said something kind of interesting that I actually think was not insightful, but it did illuminate something, which is that he's like, well, I work on the weekends and members of Congress go back home. And frankly, he did a lot of damage to USAID over the weekend. And by the time members of Congress came back on Monday, they were at USAID. You know, it seemed at that point that the cast was died. Have you guys adjusted at all to the pace do you think yeah i

think so um and and to be clear just because members of congress leave washington dc doesn't mean we're we're uh not no i don't i don't want to besmirch you you are away yeah oh yeah i know idea i know you i know you you know that but um but you know the work we do at home with our constituents like i have a bunch of round tablesables, town halls, things like that. That's important, too, because that's how we educate our people, the people we represent. We're representatives, right, on what's going on, how they can be involved. And that's what we do when we're home. But to be honest, you know, there's a lot of energy right now.

There should be. But we also need people to be reaching out to these Republicans and these moderate Republicans and these sweet districts because it's like, dude, we only need three. Three of those people grow a spine and say, you know what? This is not right. And we can pass a bill that could essentially keep Elon from doing what he's doing. But there does seem to be a bit of like whack-a-mole going on here because like even as we're talking now, I'm just literally on Elon's Twitter feed and his last tweet CFPB RIP. So Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. Yeah, I guess they're going to eliminate it.

And it's like you're here and obviously you needed to protect the Department of Education, which was also supposed to be in the crosshairs. USAID, their future is being decided in court. There was just a temporary restraining order against all the layoffs, but it's just a limited one. And now he's out there tweeting about the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. It does feel like whack-a-mole, honestly. The thing I'll tell people is the situation is really bad, like period. Also, I think we also have to realize their limitations because part of what

they're trying to do here is get everyone to be like all hope is lost and then stop fighting resisting and obstructing and what we have to realize is they cannot just delete the uh consumer fight uh financial protections bureau they can't that's a congressionally mandated bureau they can't get rid of department education Education. And people have to really pay attention to what they're saying, because they said Donald Trump will sign an executive order that will begin the process of getting rid of the DOE, begin the process of yada, yada, yada. And I think what they're actually doing is they're doing what they can do, which is they can fire a lot of people, they can eviscerate a lot of different programming in it, but they can't get rid of it without congressional approval. Republicans only have two-seat majority

in the House. And I'll tell you, there's a lot of these moderate Republicans, I like to think, maybe I'm wrong, that won't vote to completely delete the Department of Education. So we have to look at this on both sides. Things are bad. This neo-fascism and authoritarian government, essentially, that Donald Trump is running is real, and we have to resist, fight against it, obstruct, and do everything we can do. And at the same time, we have to look at it clear-eyed and be able to know when this dude is just saying the first shit that comes out of his mind, and there's not a real plan um to actually do it and that gives us an opportunity in congress to utilize the slim majority to stop them because if you think about

it they can't pass any big big bills um there's like maybe two subjects a few subjects they can if they got them they're gonna try right they're putting together a big reconciliation we're trying to put together right that's the like and if you look at it with reconciliation who knows if they're going to be able to actually get this done and come to a consensus on it if they flub reconciliation and as far as like big bills that they get passed in this congress that that's their chance that is their. I don't see them passing a inflation reduction act or like a chips and science or like all, you know, all these bills that were passed. And the reason I say this is people, we, we have to also recognize the weakness of the president.

He's doing all this stuff with Elon Musk because they can't pass big bills right now. Otherwise we would have already overturned the Inflation Reduction Act and all these other bills that he ranted against during the campaign. So I'm not saying the situation isn't bad, but we do have opportunities. Last question for you. I talked to a lot of people on the Hill about this, and obviously, Democrats have a view of it, Republicans have a different one, but the consensus is that constituents are really alarmed or at least contacting members in high volume around what's happening with Musk. And that it's almost overwhelming the phone lines, and in particular that they're worried about what's happening with the Treasury and the possibility that he and his team have obtained access to personal and confidential information. Is that the case with your office? Can you talk a little bit about what you're seeing and witnessing? Yeah, we've got a lot of different calls. A lot of people are concerned. A lot of people calling and saying thank you.

In the past, obviously this week, we've gotten more thank you calls than anything else. I think of people who have seen our work. And, yeah, people are scared. You know, you're turning on the news, you're seeing a new crazy thing every day. And I get it because I feel the same way. You know, it's easy to feel hopeless in this moment. Like, honestly, I haven't woken up a single day the past few months and automatically felt hope like you do and i usually do i'm a pretty optimistic guy yeah but you haven't been in dc that long you know

yeah but what i tell people is uh you know sometimes hope is a feeling sometimes hope is a choice and like in this moment push yourself to choose hope because we're going to get through this. I'm not going to say everything's going to be okay because there are people that are going to be harmed due to a consequence of this election. But we're going to fight. I always encourage people to break up the next two years into smaller segments. We have a lot of big fights coming up that we have opportunities in because their majority is so slim. And before we know it, we're going to be at the midterms where if we win and when we win, we're going to be able, we will subpoena Elon Musk. We will subpoena these people and provide the accountability that's needed. You sound like a basketball coach saying, you know, win to the next media timeout. Just win to the next media. I mean, I always think back to one of my first jobs i was a bagger at a grocery at public's and when i it was my first time ever working a job and like doing and it was hard for me because i'm such an impatient i was such an impatient kid i was like

god how much is longer so i would break it up in movies so shrek that's the way i i kind of carry that throughout my life. I break things up into – How many more Shreks do we have in the Trump administration? We got a lot of Shreks left in Congress. One day we'll wake up and there will be just a few Shreks left. Yeah, we can – anyone can live through a couple Shreks, like four or five. But there are big checkpoints over the next two years that are coming and we should really hone in on those.

And then, of course, be nimble and fight what's going on. All right. Congressman Maxwell Frost, next time you got to play the drums that are behind you. OK. Oh, yeah. Maybe, maybe we'll make that happen. Thanks a bunch for joining us. Appreciate it. Take care and stay in touch. All right. Yeah, we joining us. Appreciate it. Take care and stay in touch. Okay. All right. Yep. We'll do it. Thank you.