There’s Nothing “Final” About McMahon’s Mission to Destroy the Department of Education

Hours after the Senate confirmed her as the U.S. Secretary of Education, embattled professional wrestling executive Linda McMahon sent her staff an email charging them with a “final mission” to destroy the Department from within.

Eliminating the Department is a deeply unpopular idea. A New America poll commissioned in late February found that only one-quarter of adults support the department’s closure. While the Trump administration claims it is acting on an electoral mandate, the poll found that barely half of Republicans want closure in general, and less than a third of Republicans support the specific consequences of shuttering the Department, like moving student financial aid to an agency with no experience helping low-income students afford college.

The McMahon plan is to send education back to an era when states were free to neglect and abuse students with disabilities, segregate schoolchildren by race and economic class, and divert public resources to wealthy private schools.

In her statement, McMahon says, “My vision is aligned with the President’s: to send education back to the states and empower all parents to choose an excellent education for their children.” But 90 percent of K-12 funding already comes from state and local governments, which also control hiring and curriculum in public schools. The McMahon plan is to send education back to an era when states were free to neglect and abuse students with disabilities, segregate schoolchildren by race and economic class, and divert public resources to wealthy private schools. It is nothing less than the wholesale abandonment of public education as a national priority in an era when America is engaged in intense competition across the globe.

Secretary McMahon cites Department-administered test score results as evidence to support her agenda, even as Elon Musk’s DOGE team is illegally shutting down the very Department offices and contracts that administer those tests. The plan is clearly to eliminate all future evidence of the catastrophic learning losses that the McMahon agenda will inevitably create.

McMahon’s agenda is only one part of the Trump administration’s larger war on children, which also includes starving infants to death in countries served by USAID, withholding medicine from pregnant women so their children will die from HIV, and attacking the American childhood vaccination infrastructure in a way that will certainly lead to countless preventable deaths from communicable disease.

Schools and colleges are vital public spaces where students engage in constitutionally protected free speech. Yet President Trump has promised to “imprison” so-called “agitators” who speak out against regime policies on campus, and that “All Federal Funding will STOP” for colleges that allow protests he deems illegal. This is all part of the standard authoritarian playbook for would-be dictators engaged in tearing down democratic institutions. Even while she attempts to illegally shut down Department of Education programs that support teachers and children, McMahon and her political appointees are poised to become key lieutenants in Trump’s plan to crush political dissent.

The fact that McMahon’s statement was edited at the last minute to eliminate explicit references to closing the Department underscores the weakness and unpopularity of the Trump regime. The Department has already been forced to walk back its illegal and extremist plan to persecute schools and colleges that support diversity, equity, and inclusion, showing that Trump education policy is being run by amateurs who will fold as soon as educators stand up against their unconstitutional plans. There is nothing inevitable about the McMahon plan, as long as people who believe in public education, democracy, and the rule of law stand up, speak out, and fight back.

Ultimately, the Trump administration lacks both the legal authority and the political power to actually close the Department of Education. Federal law forbids the administration from impounding funds Congress has appropriated. Civil service protections don’t allow for mass firings of Department employees. The Republican party does not have enough votes in Congress to eliminate the Department by passing a law.

There is nothing “final” about McMahon’s mission. It is only a nihilistic act of civic vandalism, carried out by ideological zealots who don’t understand what they are trying in vain to destroy.

For more on New America’s growing collection of posts and statements on defending the Department of Education, see here.