Linda McMahon made her case to lead the U.S. Department of Education on Thursday amid upheaval that has left staffing diminished, funding in question, and the agency’s very future up for grabs.
For more than two hours, the former business mogul who served in President Donald Trump’s first administration by overseeing the Small Business Administration had to answer for the already charged environment she’d be stepping into if confirmed by the Senate.
McMahon has faced pushback from the nation’s largest teachers’ unions, and protestors disrupted her hearing. Democratic senators who questioned McMahon were concerned with the changes already underway at the department, but Republicans advocated for a change to what they see as an ineffectual status quo.
“If confirmed as secretary, I will work with Congress to reorient the department toward helping educators, not controlling them,” she told lawmakers in her opening remarks. “Outstanding teachers are tired of political ideology in their curriculum and red tape on their desks.”
Here are five key takeaways from the hearing.
McMahon promised to distribute money Congress has approved
Trump’s funding freeze, initiated in his second week in office to align federal spending with a barrage of executive orders he issued in the first days of his second term, sent a flurry of panic through schools last month due to the lack of clarity over which funds were subject to it.
Litigation ultimately halted the order, and Congress chafed at the president overstepping his executive authority.
McMahon said during the hearing that she would distribute money appropriated by Congress, even as Trump and others in his administration have asserted that a 1974 law limiting the president’s authority to withhold money Congress has appropriated is unconstitutional.
But she also defended cost-cutting by Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency team—which has included the cancellation of nearly $900 million in Education Department contracts—saying that it was “worthwhile to take a look at the programs before money goes out the door.”
“It’s much easier—it is much easier to stop the money as it’s going out the door than it is to claw it back,” she told lawmakers.
McMahon wants to expand Pell grants to career certifications
With growing concerns about diminishing the Education Department and slashing its bottom line—something Trump did endeavor to do in his first term—lawmakers pressed McMahon to ensure Pell grants, a federal subsidy that helps students in low-income families pay for college, would not be eliminated, even if the department is.
McMahon said she did not want to defund the department and its functions, but believed its operations could be better executed in other agencies. She said she saw possibilities to expand Pell grants.
“I’d like to see short-term certificates of Pell grants for students who aren’t going on to four-year universities, who could have the opportunity to use Pell grants for skill-based learning,” she said.
Workforce Pell grants, she said, could “stimulate our economy, provide opportunity for those who want to participate in skill-based learning,” and get students into the workforce faster.
McMahon declined to say if Black history courses violated Trump’s executive order on ‘radical indoctrination’
Trump has already delved into leaving a mark on the nation’s public schools, with one particularly far-reaching executive order that threatens to pull federal dollars if schools engage in what he considers “radical indoctrination,” particularly when it comes to classroom discussions on gender identity and racism.
The federal government has no say over what schools teach. But Trump’s effort skirts the line of attempting to influence them.
Sen. Chris Murphy, a Democrat from Connecticut, pressed McMahon to define what the order could halt: a club for Vietnamese American students or Black students? African American history classes? Black history programs? Martin Luther King Jr. Day celebrations?
McMahon declined to interpret it, saying she wants to “take a look at these programs and totally understand the breadth of the executive order” before she makes definitive statements about which programs are and aren’t appropriate.
“That’s pretty chilling,” Murphy replied. “I think schools all around the country are gonna hear that.”
Some of McMahon’s suggestions for rehoming Ed. Dept. programs align with Project 2025
Despite Trump’s efforts during last year’s campaign to distance himself from the 900-page conservative public policy agenda, Project 2025, the president has welcomed a number of its authors into his administration, and has already begun to implement some of the very proposals it lays out.
During McMahon’s hearing, Project 2025’s influence was on the periphery of some of her responses.
Though McMahon stopped short of specifically identifying where certain programs would go if the Education Department ceased to exist, she floated two possibilities: moving responsibility for the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, and moving the Education Department’s office for civil rights to the U.S. Department of Justice.
“I think if I am confirmed to be able to get in and assess programs—how they can have the best oversight possible, how we can really take the bureaucracy out of education and focus on teaching our children to read and to do math and to appreciate our history is certainly my goal, and would be my goal as the secretary of education,” she told lawmakers.
It prompted concern from Democrats that the needs of children would be lost in other departments that are much larger than the Department of Education, the smallest Cabinet-level agency in terms of staffing.
“So I just want to be clear, you’re going to put special education in the hands of Robert F. Kennedy Jr.,” Sen. Maggie Hassan, D-N.H., said in response to McMahon’s suggestion that oversight of IDEA could shift to Health and Human Services, which will be led by the newly confirmed Kennedy.
“There is a reason that the Department of Education and IDEA exists, and it is because educating kids with disabilities can be really hard, and it takes the national commitment to get it done,” Hassan said. “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, and especially kids with disabilities.”
McMahon backed school choice, but dodged a question on strings for a federal voucher program
McMahon’s adamant support for school choice began with her opening statement to lawmakers. Teachers, she told them, are “tired of political ideology in their curriculum and red tape on their desks.”
“That’s why school choice is a growing movement across the nation,” she continued. “It offers teachers and parents an alternative to classrooms that are micromanaged from Washington, D.C., to also emphasize career-focused education, especially in cutting-edge STEM fields.”
Trump has already sought to use his executive power to propel private school choice, signing an executive order that directs the secretary of education to investigate how federal subsidies could be used for such programs, and to prioritize choice programs in competitive grant funding.
Though choice is broadly supported by Republicans, Democrats fear it’ll take money from public schools. McMahon denied that the president, and the Education Department, would seek to diminish public school funding. She said competition would ultimately improve public schools.
She sidestepped a question from Sen. Lisa Blunt Rochester, D-Del., about whether private schools should have to adhere to certain laws if they receive federal funds through vouchers.
“If private schools take federal dollars, can they turn away a child based on a disability or religion?” Blunt Rochester asked her.
“Well, I think that there are also some public schools who are saying that they don’t have…” McMahon said, before Blunt Rochester interjected that it was a “yes or no” answer.
“It’s not for me,” McMahon said.
