If there was any doubt that Linda McMahon has no intention of protecting our public schools, it was dispelled Thursday during her confirmation hearing. For more than two hours, President Trump’s nominee to be U.S. Education Secretary answered questions from senators on the Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions (HELP) Committee. Anyone who cares and supports public education should be alarmed at her responses.
Just last week, Trump called the Department of Education a “con job” and said he wants McMahon to “put herself out of a job.” The nominee seems prepared to do just that, at tremendous cost to our schools and students. While most decisions around education are made at the state and local level, the federal role—through hugely popular programs such as the Individuals with Disabilities Act (IDEA), Title I and Pell Grants—has been indispensable in supporting our most vulnerable students.
During the questioning about the state of education and her plans for the department, McMahon frequently deployed familiar anti-public education talking points. She laced her responses with phrases such as “back to the states,” “micromanagement,” “bureaucracy,” “freedom” “parents’ rights,” and, of course, “school choice,” while expressing concern for the very programs and priorities the White House had already taken a sledgehammer to with a slew of executive orders.
The whole thing amounted to a “very elegant gaslighting,” said Senator Maggie Hassan, D-N.H.—all to conceal an extreme agenda to cripple public schools across the nation and replace them with a privatized system that benefits very few.
Here are some key takeaways from Thursday’s hearing:
McMahon is Ready to Dismantle the Department of Education.
Abolishing the Department of Education (ED) is the centerpiece of the Trump administration’s education agenda, as laid out in Project 2025 and in countless speeches. During her testimony, McMahon conceded that closing the department is the purview of Congress (legislation to do so has already been introduced) but she also made it clear that dismantling programs and functions that protect our most vulnerable and underserved students is very much on the table.
McMahon voiced her support for folding Title I, the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) and the Office of Civil Rights (OCR) into other departments, including Health and Human Services (now led by Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.) While McMahon claimed such moves would improve efficiency, the obvious intent is to erode all federal education oversight and accountability.
“Before IDEA, before the Department of Education existed, state and local schools did not educate these kids [with disabilities],” Senator Hassan said during the hearing. “They barred them from the classroom. These kids were institutionalized and abused. . . . It takes the national commitment to get it done. And that's why so many people are so concerned about this proposal to eliminate the Department. Because they think kids will once again be shoved aside.”
Federal Education Funding Will Be Slashed.
McMahon said during her testimony that the plan was not to “defund” education, but root out “waste, fraud and abuse.” In his questioning, Senator Ed Markey, D-Mass., dismissed this cliché as a code for slashing education spending and said Elon Musk’s recent announcement that his “DOGE” team had cancelled $900 million in research grants designed to track student outcomes was only the beginning. (DOGE, said Markey, really stands for “Department of Gutting Education.”)
And the White House will look to slash larger programs to pay for the massive tax cuts for the wealthy that will be the centerpiece of its budget proposal. Asked repeatedly by Markey if she would vow not to support cutting the federal education budget, McMahon refused to do so.
The Priority is Private School Vouchers.
School voucher programs take scarce funding away from public schools—where 90 percent of America’s students enroll—and give it to private schools that are unaccountable to the public.
Still, school privatization has been the cornerstone of the right-wing education agenda for decades, and advocates see the second Trump administration as a golden opportunity to turbocharge private school vouchers across the nation. In January, President Trump signed an executive order ordering the Department of Education to prioritize these programs.
When McMahon says, as she did so repeatedly in her testimony on Thursday, that education should be “returned to the states,” the message is school voucher expansion. She has often expressed her support for vouchers (whether they are labelled “education savings accounts” or “scholarships”), which are proven to have negative academic and fiscal impacts in the states that have enacted them.
In her questioning, Senator Lisa Murkowski, R-Alaska, expressed concern that voucher programs could leave rural communities and their public schools behind. “There are no private schools in many parts of my state,” she said. “In these communities, there is no other ‘choice.’”
McMahon Dodges Question About Protecting All Students from Discrimination.
Siphoning off valuable funds from public schools isn't the only cost school vouchers inflict. Most private schools that participate in these programs have minimum, if any, standards of accountability and do not open their doors to all students, often denying them the federal civil rights protections required in public schools. Some participating schools impose religious "litmus tests" for admission and many have policies that allow discrimination against LGBTQ+ students and those with disabilities.
On Thursday, Senator Lisa Blunt Rochester, D-Del., asked McMahon if private schools that receive taxpayer funds have the right to turn children away based on, for example, disability, religion, or race. Pressed for a yes or no response, McMahon refused to provide one.
Teaching African American History May Put Federal Funding at Risk.
In an exchange Senator Chris Murphy, D-Conn., called “chilling,” McMahon refused to say whether a school would still receive federal funding if it offered a class like African American history or supported cultural student groups.
Murphy's line of questioning focused on how the nominee would enforce the administration’s anti-diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) directives. In January, the White House issued executive orders dismantling all DEI programs in the federal government and threatening to withhold federal funding from public schools that teach that the country is “fundamentally racist, sexist or otherwise discriminatory.”
“Is it a possibility that if a school has a club for Vietnamese American students or Black students, where they meet after school, that they could be potentially in jeopardy of receiving federal funding?” Murphy asked McMahon.
Replying that she did not want to “engage in hypotheticals,” Murphy pressed her for an answer. Would running an African American history course be in violation, he asked.
“I’m not quite certain, and I’d like to look into it further and get back to you on that,” McMahon said.
