New York Sen. Chuck Schumer called on Sunday for a federal safety board meant to prevent and prepare for school shootings to be reinstated — after it was disbanded last week by President Trump.
The Department of Homeland Security’s school safety board got the ax only a few months after its first meeting and less than a year after it was established.
Acting Homeland Security Secretary Benjamine Huffman said the department was “eliminating misuse of resources and ensuring that DHS activities prioritize our national security,” according to a memo obtained by Education Week.
But Schumer said not so fast. He called on Trump to put the board back together, noting it was created under a 2022 law that passed after mass shootings at a supermarket in Buffalo and an elementary school in Uvalde, Texas.
“The Trump administration cannot bow down, yet again, to the likes of the NRA,” the Senate minority leader said in a statement. “We’ve seen them do it before, but this most recent action of shutting down the school safety board and its work to try and prevent school shootings is just pathetic.”
Though the board was created as part of a 2022 law, the Biden administration didn’t pick its members until July 2024. It was made up of school and security leaders from across the country, along with a couple parents of school shooting victims. The board held its first, and so far only, meeting in October.
Trump’s disbandment of the board largely flew under the radar last week, as the new president made a flurry of headline-grabbing moves in his first week back in office. But Schumer insisted the school safety board deserves attention as well.
“This board was one of the best things we had to combat gun violence in schools,” Schumer told the Daily News. “To just abolish it makes no sense whatsoever.”
However, the senator admitted anyone hoping for the board to reconvene would be relying on the actions of the Trump administration and incoming Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem. Failing that, a lawsuit could be brought to compel Trump to follow the law.
“I think a lawsuit would definitely succeed,” said Schumer, a Harvard Law graduate.
Last Wednesday, a 17-year-old boy walked into his Nashville, Tenn., high school with a gun and fatally shot a 16-year-old classmate. In a personal manifesto, he had written plans to shoot more students but he turned the gun on himself and died by suicide after the first killing.
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