House Republicans are demanding the Department of Education forfeit information and records related to its use of taxpayer dollars to conduct partisan get-out-the-vote efforts that benefit Democrats, The Federalist has learned.
In their Tuesday letter to Education Secretary Miguel Cardona, senior Republicans on the House Administration Committee and the Education and Workforce Committee pressed the Biden appointee over the agency’s use of Federal Work-Study (FWS) funds — which are used to provide part-time campus jobs to help students with tuition costs — to “support the Biden Administration’s campaign efforts during the 2024 election cycle.” The letter’s signatories include GOP Reps. Bryan Steil of Wisconsin, Virginia Foxx of North Carolina, Laurel Lee of Florida, and Mary Miller of Illinois. Steil and Foxx chair the House Administration and Education and the Workforce Committees, respectively.
As The Federalist’s M.D. Kittle recently reported, the Education Department issued a memo on Feb. 26, “as a follow-up to a 2022 ‘Dear Colleague’ letter, clarifying that Federal Work-Study (FWS) funds may be used to support ‘broad-based get-out-the-vote activities, voter registration, providing voter assistance at a polling place or through a voter hotline, or serving as a poll worker.’” The agency also released a “toolkit” that includes guidelines for universities on how to increase voter registration and turnout on their campuses.
The recently announced policy is a shift from the agency’s 2022 guidance, which explicitly stated that public universities are prohibited from using FWS funds “for work involving partisan or nonpartisan political activity, including party-affiliated voter registration activities.” It’s worth
