A group of furious House Democrats yelled at a lone security guard standing in front of the Department of Education after Elon Musk’s DOGE team set its sights on the agency.
The angry mob of lawmakers was hoping to meet with senior Department of Education officials to discuss the future of the agency Donald Trump is reportedly planning on eliminating.
But their plan was halted by a lone security guard who calmly stood in front of the building’s public access doors, which were locked.
‘They are blocking members of Congress from entering the Department of Education! Elon is allowed in and not the people? ILLEGAL,’ Rep. Maxwell Frost (D-Fla.) posted on X alongside videos of the contentious standoff.
This week Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) leader Musk has sent his team around to various government agencies to investigate their budgets.
Reports have indicated the Education Department may soon be undone with an executive order, an action the group Democrats were protesting against.
Videos from the incident show the security guard completely swarmed by yelling Democrats.
Repeatedly lawmakers demanded the guard tell them why they were not being allowed in. But the Democrats claimed they were not given a satisfactory answer.
The security guard who blocked lawmakers from entering the Department of Education
Around two dozen Democratic lawmakers visited the agency Friday morning
Videos of the incident shows armed Department of Homeland Scurity guards standing in the building behind the locked doors
‘They’ve called armed federal officers to the scene. We aren’t dangerous. We are here to represent our people. To defend public education. This is an authoritarian regime. You cannot block members of Congress from entering the Department of Education,’ Frost said in another post on X.
Videos show the Democrats harassing the lone security official as he is completely surrounded with nowhere to go.
Rep. Maxine Waters (D-Calif.) identified the guard as the department’s Deputy Assistant Secretary, Office of Security, Facilities and Logistics Services, Jim Hairfield.
‘He’s a federal employee. We pay him. We raise money to make sure that we have a Department of Education,’ Waters says in videos of the scrum.
‘Everybody that’s hired at the Department of Education are here because we pay for them to be here,’ the California Democrat continued. ‘He’s standing here today, locking the door, and he can’t give us a good reason why he’s blocking this door.’
Reports surfaced earlier this week revealing that Trump’s mulling an executive order to get rid of the department.
So Democrats rushed to set up meetings to sniff out what exactly may happen to the agency and its nearly 4,400 employees.
The president has long said he would look into dismantling the Education Department, citing the U.S.’s subpar educational standards when compared to other rich countries around the world.
U.S. Rep. Maxwell Frost (D-Fla.) at a rally outside of the Treasury Department earlier this week
Trump’s nominee to be Secretary of Education Linda McMahon meets with Sen. Tommy Tuberville (R-AL) in his office in the Russell Senate Office Building on December 09, 2024 in Washington, DC. Trump said this week he hops to put her out of a job, indicating that he wants the Education Department shuttered
‘We spend more per pupil than any other country in the world, and we’re ranked at the bottom of the list,’ Trump said this week.
‘Let the states run schools,’ he added.
He also joked that he hopes to put his nominee for education secretary, Linda McMahon, ‘out of a job.’
‘I told Linda, ‘Linda, I hope you do a great job in putting yourself out of a job.’ I want her to put herself out of a job – Education Department,’ Trump told reporters on Tuesday.