DOGE protesters rally outside key department after employees are told not to report to work Wednesday

After the protest, FOX Business Senior Correspondent Charles Gasparino posted on X that he had reviewed an email from education department officials telling employees they would have to vacate the agency's offices by 6 p.m. Tuesday and that the offices would remain closed Wednesday. 

He also reported that "employees have been receiving multiple emails alerting them of massive cuts in the workforce and opportunities to tap into buyouts and severance."

The draft order says the "the experiment of controlling American education through Federal programs and dollars - and the unaccountable bureaucrats those programs and dollars support - has failed our children, our teachers, and our families."

Trump has long talked about dismantling the Department of Education, saying it has failed America's students. 

However, the protesters, who stood outside the Education Department headquarters in Washington, D.C., claimed dismantling the agency "will lead to children and families being hurt."

"This cut in funding is the opposite of what we should be doing. We should be providing more federal funding for these services for these kids, not less," one protester, a former Education Department employee, told Fox News Digital.

"We're going to be going back to the 1800s, the early 1900s, when special ed kids can't get services, when English learners can't learn English. This is an outrage," she said.

Another former federal employee at the rally told Fox News Digital that "seeing all these employees laid off right now breaks our heart," and "we really have to speak up for what's been done to the federal government."

Pringle told Fox News Digital her group is organizing a series of national walk-in protests for March 19 to hold Congress members "accountable."

Speaking directly to Trump and Musk, Katie Gates, an activist with the political activism group Voters of Tomorrow, told Fox News Digital her message to the administration is, "Please stop. Just don't do it."

"You might think that you're making government more efficient, or you're getting rid of the deep state or whatever. But, like I said, this has far-ranging impacts on kids, on parents, on communities, on schools," she said. "Sometimes efficiency isn't the highest value. Sometimes it's support. Sometimes it's learning."

Fox News Digital reporter Louis Casiano contributed to this report.