Trump administration reduces staffing at Education Department

In the first move in a plan to demolish a department that right-wing Republicans have long hated, Donald Trump's Department of Education said on Tuesday that it was cutting its workforce by nearly half.

The action is the most recent to rock the US federal government in the six weeks since the president returned to the White House and promised to substantially reduce what he claims is a weak and ineffective bureaucracy, which has already resulted in the firing of thousands of workers nationwide.

Five days after she began her job, Education Secretary Linda McMahon told Fox News that the move to cut her staff was a step in carrying out Trump's directive last month that she "put herself out of a job."