Senate confirms McMahon to lead Education Department as Trump pushes to shut it down
Since the day she was nominated, we have exposed Linda McMahon for who she is and what she will do.
We will unite—educators, parents, and anyone else who cares about public schools.
We will not be silent as billionaires gut the Department of Education—which will lead to larger class sizes and the loss of programs that help students with ADHD, autism, and other disabilities—all to pay for tax cuts that benefit them.
We will lift our voices. We will remind our elected officials that they work for us. We will fight to protect our students and our public schools.
In solidarity,
Becky Pringle President National Education Association
FloridaTeacher♥️🍎 Linda McMahon’s background in education is limited… Her vision will be to unwind the Department of Education…
Maga Republicans fail to advocate for every one of our precious children. All our Precious Children must receive a strong public education that empowers and uplifts them.
And then we wonder why our precious children have issues…
Linda McMahon, President Donald Trump’s nominee to be Secretary of Education, testifies during her confirmation hearing on Thursday in Washington, DC.
Win McNamee/Getty Images
Linda McMahon
Nominated for: secretary of education
You might know her from: Linda McMahon is most well-known for leading World Wrestling Entertainment (WWE) and helping to build it into a multibillion-dollar business. She also led the U.S. Small Business Administration for about two years under President Trump’s first term.
More about McMahon:
McMahon's background in education is limited...
She served for about one year on Connecticut’s State Board of Education. Up until recently, not much was known about McMahon’s policy positions on education. In January, she shared more about where she stands, including that she supports expanding school choice and career and technical education opportunities for students. She held leadership positions at WWE for nearly three decades, including CEO. If confirmed, McMahon would oversee an agency the president has already moved to diminish.
Executive actions
Nearly two weeks before McMahon appeared to lay out her vision for the Education Department, the White House made clear:
Her vision will be to unwind the department…
The White House confirmed that it is preparing to take executive action to shutter department programs that are not protected by law, and will call on McMahon, once confirmed, to draw up a blueprint for Congress to close the department entirely.
During Thursday’s hearing, the committee’s Republican chairman, Sen. Bill Cassidy of Louisiana, asked McMahon to elaborate on these plans.
“We’d like to do this right,” McMahon said, saying she would present Congress with a plan to dismantle the department “that I think our senators could get on board with.”
The department cannot be officially closed through executive action alone. It was created by an act of Congress in 1979 and can only be closed by an act of Congress.
Multiple senators asked whether the department’s dismantling would include cuts not just to the department but to the federal funding for K-12 schools it administers, including Title I (for students in lower-income communities) and the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA, for students with disabilities).
McMahon said repeatedly that she considers the department separate from the funding. The former, she said, can be dismantled without affecting the latter. “It is not the president’s goal to defund the programs. It was only to have it operate more efficiently.”
Later, McMahon elaborated that IDEA funding, for example, is protected by statute and would not be targeted for cuts. But, she offered, it might be more effectively administered by a different agency, perhaps the Department of Health and Human Services.
To that, New Hampshire Democrat Maggie Hassan scoffed: “I just want to be clear, you’re going to put special education into the hands of Robert F. Kennedy Jr.”
Maga Republicans fail to advocate for every one of our precious children. All our Precious Children must receive a strong public education that empowers and uplifts them.
“And one other thing I’ll be doing very early in the administration is closing up the Department of Education.”
President Donald Trump made a promise in a Sept. 13, 2023, campaign statement. Since then, he has frequently repeated his pledge to close the U.S. Department of Education...
Project 2025, the conservative think tank Heritage Foundation’s blueprint for the Trump administration, also provides detailed recommendations for closing the Education Department, which was created by an act of Congress in 1979.
On Feb. 4, 2025, Trump described his plans for Linda McMahon, his nominee for education secretary. “I want Linda to put herself out of a job,” Trump said, according to The Associated Press.
WASHINGTON, DC – FEBRUARY 3: A pedestrian walks by The Lyndon Baines Johnson Department of Education Building on February 3, 2025 in Washington, DC. (Photo by Pete Kiehart for The Washington Post via Getty Images)
Education policies in the U.S. are largely carried out at the state and local levels. The Education Department is a relatively small government agency, with just over 4,000 employees and a US$268 billion annual budget. A large part of its work is overseeing $1.6 trillion in federal student loans as well as grants for K-12 schools.
Don’t let yourself be misled. Understand issues with help from experts
And it ensures that public schools comply with federal laws that protect vulnerable students, like those with disabilities.
Why, then, does Trump want to eliminate the department?
A will to fight against so-called “wokeness” and a desire to shrink the government are among the four reasons I have found.
First and foremost, Trump and his supporters believe that liberals are ruining public education by instituting what they call a “radical woke agenda” that they say prioritizes identity politics and politically correct groupthink at the expense of the free speech of those, like many conservatives, who have different views.
Diversity, equity and inclusion, or DEI, initiatives promoting social justice – and critical race theory, or the idea that racism is entrenched in social and legal institutions – are a particular focus of MAGA ire.
So, too, is what Trump supporters call “radical gender ideology,” which they contend promotes policies like letting transgender students play on school sports teams or use bathrooms corresponding with their gender identity, not biological sex.
Trump supporters say that such policies – which the Education Department indirectly supported by expanding Title IX gender protections in 2024 to include discrimination based on gender identity – are at odds with parental school choice rights or, for some religious conservatives, the Bible.
For MAGA supporters, ”radical left“ wokeness is part of liberals’ long-standing attempt to ”brainwash“ others with their allegedly Marxist views that embrace communism.
One version of this ”American Marxism“ conspiracy theory argues that the indoctrination dates to the origins of U.S. public education. MAGA stalwarts say this alleged leftist agenda is anti-democratic and anti-Christian.
Saying he wants to combat the educational influence of such radicals, zealots and Marxists, Trump issued executive orders on Jan. 29 that pledge to fight ”campus anti-Semitism“ and to end ”Radical Indoctrination in K-12 Schools.“
3. School choice and parental rights
Trump supporters also argue that “woke” federal public education policy infringes on people’s basic freedoms and rights.
This idea extends to what Trump supporters call “restoring parental rights,” including the right to decide whether a child undergoes a gender transition or learns about nonbinary gender identity at public schools.
Diversity, according to this argument, should include faith-based institutions and homeschooling. Project 2025 proposes that the government could support parents who choose to homeschool or put their kids in a religious primary school by providing Educational Savings Accounts and school vouchers. Vouchers give public funding for students to attend private schools and have been expanding in use in recent years.
For the MAGA faithful, the Education Department exemplifies government inefficiency and red tape.
Project 2025, for example, contends that from the time it was established by the Carter administration in 1979, the Education Department has ballooned in size, come under the sway of special interest groups and now serves as an inefficient “one-stop shop for the woke education cartel.”
To deal with the Education Department’s “bloat” and “suffocating bureaucratic red tape,” Project 2025 recommends shifting all of the department’s federal programs and money to other agencies and the states.
Never did I believe…In my thirty-eight teaching career; which began April 1, 1972, retiring ten years ago June 5, 2015…
This latest Presidental Election 2025, Donald Trump would be reelected!!
Had we not been warned!!?? Definitely manifesting a critically detrimental impact on our Precious Children’s future for a Strong Public School Education…
Many of my worst fears are being realized…And this is just the beginning…
We now have a federal government that is promoting; enacting divisive, authoritarian programs…
School choice being one; promoting the privatization of public schools…Taking monies away from public schools, thus giving it to private and charter schools…
We, here in Florida, already have realized book bans and restrictive curriculum. that provide such authoritarian control over our public schools…
We no longer have that Constitutional protection of the separation between Church and State…💔🤍💙🇺🇲
#FloridaTeacher ♥️🍎 May G-d Bless our Precious children’s right to a Strong Public Schools Education…
It takes that caring team Parents and Educators with the aid of a Strong Federal Government to provide that fundamental right
All of our precious children protected and included… #childrensfuture #SeparationChurchState 🙏🏻♥️🤍💙🇺🇲
My Beautiful First Graders… now Seniors in High School…Our Future…
CHARACTER MATTERS… INTEGRITY MATTERS… HUMILITY MATTERS… DECENCY MATTERS… KINDNESS MATTERS…
MORALITY MATTERS…
HUMANITY MATTERS…
Our precious childen are watching…
Donald Trump’s inauguration will be on Monday, January 20, 2025…
Hope for a better future for our precious children’s future…
We must be United..
🙏🏻♥️🤍💙
“If ever a time should come, when vain and aspiring men shall possess the highest seats in Government, our country will stand in need of its experienced patriots to prevent its ruin.” Samuel Adams
Janis Sexton...Teacher...Advocate 