Republican Texas Sen. Ted Cruz urged the inspector general to investigate whether Education Secretary Miguel Cardona illegally engaged in political activity, according to a letter sent Wednesday.
Cruz alleged that a message Cardona sent on July 15 to students benefiting from President Biden’s loan forgiveness plan “was overtly political and may violate Department policy and various federal laws,” according to the senator’s letter, obtained by the Daily Caller News Foundation. Cruz sent the letter to Inspector General Sandra D. Bruce on Wednesday, claiming Cardona’s actions “merit a formal investigation.”
Cruz said Cardona used “taxpayer dollars, Department resources, and his official time and position to aid the Biden-Harris administration’s election efforts and impugn elected officials from another political party,” and that his message “explicitly attacks Republican elected officials multiple times.” (RELATED: Watchdog Says Biden’s Education Secretary Violated Law By Using Office To Attack Republicans)
“In recent weeks, several federal courts have issued rulings in lawsuits brought by Republican elected officials who are siding with special interests and trying to block Americans from accessing all the benefits of the most affordable student loan repayment plan in history – the SAVE (Saving on a Valuable Education) Plan,” Cardona’s message said, according to Cruz.
Cardona said in his message that he and Biden would continue to push student loan forgiveness “no matter how many times Republican elected officials try to stop us.”
U.S. Secretary of Education Miguel Cardona attends a panel discussion with nine outstanding scholars at Claflin University on September 20, 2022 in Orangeburg, South Carolina. (Photo by Colin Myers/Claflin University/HBCU via Getty Images)
Cruz said Cardona’s message may violate the Hatch Act, which prohibits federal employees from engaging in partisan political activity in their official capacity to influence elections, specifically “activity directed toward the success or failure of a political party, candidate for partisan political office, or partisan political group.”
With the presidential election looming near, Cruz said he fears Cardona’s letter amounted to a coordinated political attack on behalf of the Biden-Harris campaign. Biden had not backed out of the 2024 campaign on the day Cardona sent the letter.
“[G]iven that this is a presidential election year, the repeated references to Republican elected officials suggest a call to action for the recipients of the letter—generally voters—to act against those officials either by voting against them at the polls or by contacting their elected representatives to voice opposition to their policy positions,” Cruz said.
Cardona’s July 15 letter was sent after federal judges struck down parts of Biden’s student loan repayment plan in June, ruling it “unconstitutional” and an appeals court later temporarily blocked it. In 2023, the U.S. Supreme Court struck down a previous debt forgiveness plan that would have canceled $400 billion in student debt.
Attorneys General Austin Knudsen of Montana and Kris Kobach of Kansas sent a letter to the Hatch Act special counsel on July 25 alleging “flagrant” violations, Fox News first reported. Kobach helped facilitate the June lawsuit against the Biden administration that blocked the plan.
The letter was signed by Cruz and Republican North Carolina Sen. Thom Tillis.
Cardona’s office and the Department of Education did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
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