(NewsNation) — Linda McMahon is in front of the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions to seek approval to lead the Department of Education — which President Donald Trump has said he wants to abolish.
When asked by committee chairman Sen. Billy Cassidy about the plans to eliminate the department, McMahon said she’s “all for the president’s mission to return education to the states.”
“It is not the president’s goal to defund the programs; it is only to have it operate more efficiently,” McMahon said.
In her opening statement Thursday, McMahon said problems in the federal education system are caused by the “excessive consolidation of power.”
“So what’s the remedy? Fund education freedom, not government-run systems. Listen to parents, not politicians,” McMahon said. “Build up careers, not college debt. Empower states, not special interests. Invest in teachers, not Washington bureaucrats.”
Closing the Department of Education is an issue Trump campaigned on in the 2024 election. He has said the department is infiltrated by “radicals, zealots and Marxists.”
“I told Linda, ‘Linda, I hope you do a great job and put yourself out of a job,’” Trump said, adding he would like to end the department through executive order, NewsNation partner The Hill reports.
The Department of Education sends billions of dollars a year to American schools, manages a $1.6 trillion student loan portfolio and enforces civil rights in education. Shutting down the department would require an act of Congress.
Cassidy questioned McMahon about the plan to close the department Thursday, to which she said Trump understands they will be working with Congress.
“We’d like to do this right. We’d like to make sure that we’re presenting a plan that I think our senators could get on board with, and our Congress could get on board with, that would have a better functioning Department of Education, but definitely does require Congressional action,” McMahon said.
Pressed on this by Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., McMahon said the department “clearly cannot be shut down without” Congress.
In their statements introducing McMahon, Republican Sens. Tim Scott and Katie Britt criticized the department.
“For far too long, the Department of Education has catered to far-left bureaucrats at the expense of moms and dads,” Britt said.
Sanders criticized efforts to eliminate the department, saying the same people trying to “privatize Social Security, privatize Medicare, privatize Medicaid (and) privatize the Veterans Administration” are attempting to do the same to public education.
“We must not allow that to happen in America,” Sanders said.
Democrats have been protesting the potential cuts to education. Former Education Secretary Arne Duncan, who served in the Obama administration, was on Capitol Hill Thursday to talk about them as well.
“(It’s) an extraordinarily scary time, and I’m not a scared guy. I’ve never been more concerned for public education,” Duncan said. “I’ve never been more concerned for our democracy. I’ve never been more concerned for our country, so we have to fight.”
Formerly the CEO of World Wrestling Entertainment, McMahon is facing a lawsuit claiming she and her husband, Vince McMahon, ignored rampant abuse of so-called “ring boys” by ringside announcer Melvin Phillips Jr. in the 1980s and ’90s. The alleged assaults were sexual in nature, the lawsuit claims.
McMahon previously headed the Small Business Administration during Trump’s first term.
McMahon pressed on DEI
Sen. Chris Murphy, a Connecticut Democrat who successfully ran for his seat against McMahon, said he wanted to talk to McMahon about the Trump administration’s executive order requiring agencies, including the Department of Education, to eliminate grants to places supporting diversity, equity and inclusion programs.
“As you know, this has a lot of schools all across the country scrambling because they have no idea what that means,” Murphy said.
McMahon answered that DEI has been “tough.”
“It was put in place ostensibly for more diversity, for equity and inclusion,” McMahon said. “And I think what we’re seeing is it is having an opposite effect.”
Murphy pointed out that Department of Defense schools have canceled Black History Month events.
“So if a school in Connecticut celebrates Martin Luther King Day and has a series of events and programming teaching about black history, are they in violation of a policy that says schools should stop running DEI programs?” Murphy asked.
McMahon said, “That is clearly not the case.”
“The celebration of Martin Luther King Day and Black History Month should be celebrated throughout all of our schools,” McMahon said.
When it came to Murphy’s question about clubs at schools having to do with ethnicity and race, McMahon said she would have to see about them once confirmed.
“That’s pretty chilling,” Murphy said in response.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.