Democratic Members of Congress are Denied Entry to the Department of Education

TIME

Democratic members of Congress hold a news conference outside the Department of Education and oppose President Donald Trump's plan to abolish it. Then they attempted to enter the Department of Education building in Washington. A person claiming to be in charge of security prevented the members of Congress from entering the building through the glass doors with "All Access Entrance" signs.

Transcript

00:00We're coming in. Don't lock the door. We're coming in. Who are you?

00:06You're not coming in.

00:07Who are you?

00:08Who are you?

00:09Who are you?

00:10Who are you, sir?

00:11Do you have business here?

00:12Yes, sir!

00:13I have sent the Assistant Secretary a letter alerting her that we would be here today,

00:20and we've asked her for a meeting.

00:23Yeah, I know that that's been accepted, sir.

00:25It doesn't need to be accepted.

00:26Who are you?

00:27What do you do here?

00:29What do you do here?

00:30I have a security responsibility.

00:31Get out of the way.

00:32We pay you.

00:33We pay for your job.

00:34We pay you.

00:35We're members of Congress.

00:36We pay you.

00:37We're members of Congress.

00:38As members of Congress.

00:39You are your children's.

00:40We haven't heard that from the Secretary.

00:41We haven't heard that from her spokesman.

00:42I'm relaying that.

00:43You are not the spokesman for the Department.

00:44You are a security guard.

00:45Can you identify yourself?

00:46We're members of Congress.

00:47Where's your badge?

00:48Where's your badge?

00:49We don't have any identification.

00:50Where's your ID?

00:51Where's your ID?

00:53We're not a threat to security.

01:01They wanted to close the Department of Education.

01:02They wanted to cut back on funding for lower-income areas through Title I.

01:03They wanted to eliminate Head Start.

01:04They want to cut back on school lunches, cut back on access to college,

01:15and we're going to make sure that they recognize that that has to go

01:19to go through Congress and through our committee.

01:22And if we can get three Republicans

01:24to join us on the committee,

01:26we can stop everything they want to do.

01:28And if it gets out of committee,

01:30we need three Republicans in the United States to join us

01:34to block what they want to do

01:36in abolishing the Department of Education.

01:39President Donald Trump has promised

01:41to abolish the Department of Education.

01:44He believes that he can do this through executive order.

01:48And we're here to remind him that he cannot.

01:51Trump and Musk have placed Doge staffers in the building

01:55where they have access to the private data

01:58of millions of students and families.

02:00Already, they have placed dozens of employees

02:04who perform vital services on which our schools,

02:08teachers, and students depend on leave.

02:12So we're here today to follow up on a letter

02:16that 95 of my colleagues and I sent this week.

02:20We asked to meet with the acting secretary,

02:23and we have yet to receive a response.

02:26We are here to ask her,

02:28will you comply with an illegal executive order

02:32to shut down the Department of Education?

02:35We will not cede the responsibility

02:38for our future generations to one man,

02:40his ideology, and his unelected lieutenants.

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