Bipartisan pressure forces Trump administration to drop plans to revamp or shutter rural Job Corps centers

The U.S. Department of Agriculture has dropped plans to shutter parts of Job Corps, a Forest Service program that provides vocational training to disadvantaged rural teens and young adults.

"The decision came after weeks of heavy pressure from lawmakers from Montana to Kentucky, including Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.)," Lisa Rein reports for The Washington Post. (Here's a bipartisan letter to USDA and the Department of Labor, which would have taken control of the program.) "The Forest Service had planned to begin layoffs of 1,110 employees by September, believed to be the largest number of cuts to the federal workforce in a decade."

The 25 Job Corps Civilian Conservation Centers, which operate in rural areas, enroll more than 3,000 students a year, but the program was criticized for low performance, inefficiency and high costs. The Labor Department planned to close nine centers and hand off 16 others to state governments or private companies. It would have continued operating urban Job Corps programs. The nine rural centers slated for closure were in Arkansas, Kentucky, Montana, North Carolina, Oregon, Virginia, Washington and Wisconsin.

"But the planned closures quickly ran headlong into political reality: Most were in Republican strongholds President Trump won in 2016," Rein reports. "While the president and his GOP allies on Capitol Hill have put a high premium on downsizing the federal government, lawmakers facing re-election campaigns next year were loath to sacrifice economic drivers back home, however small."