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CV NEWS FEED // At her Senate confirmation hearing Thursday, President Donald Trump’s nominee for Secretary of Education Linda McMahon declared that the Department of Education – which Trump has vowed to eventually end – “is not working.” She also emphasized her commitment to school choice and parental rights, and outlined her intention to “fund education freedom, not government-run systems.”
McMahon, a convert to the Catholic faith, is the former CEO of World Wrestling Entertainment (WWE) and served as the administrator of the Small Business Administration (SBA) in Trump’s first administration. She also served on the Connecticut State Board of Education.
During her opening statement, the nominee said Trump has “pledged to make American education the best in the world, return education to the states where it belongs, and free American students from the education bureaucracy through school choice.”
“November proved that Americans overwhelmingly support the president’s vision and I am ready to enact it,” she said.
“Fund education freedom, not government-run systems,” McMahon continued. “Listen to parents, not politicians. …Build up careers, not college debt. Empower states, not special interests.”
“It’s not working,” McMahon said later in the hearing, referring to the Department of Education. Specifically, she was responding to a senator’s question asking her to clarify her support for moving a function of the department to the Department of Health and Human Services – now led by Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.
“The Department of Education was set up in 1980,” the nominee continued, “and since that time, we have spent almost a trillion dollars and we have watched our performance scores continue to go down.”
She added that she believes that the responsibility of providing children with “equal access to excellent education” is best handled at the state level. McMahon also noted the need for parents to “have input into the curriculum” of their children.
Also during her hearing, McMahon confirmed that she agrees with the president’s position that female athletes should not be forced to compete against males in school sports.
“I do not believe that biological boys should be able to compete against girls in sports, and I think now that certainly not only have the people spoken, because that was something that Trump ran very heavily on, but I believe the court has spoken,” she stated.
Terry Schilling, president of the socially conservative American Principles Project (APP), expressed support for Trump’s education pick.
“Linda McMahon is going to do an excellent job protecting our kids, empowering parents and ultimately dismantling the Department of Education,” wrote Schilling, a Catholic. “Let’s get her confirmed!”
Speaking to FOX Business the same day, Schilling said “our education system has been failing us” and “Democrats are stuck.”
“They’re stuck defending the status quo that gave us two-thirds of kids in this country that can’t read or do math proficiently … they’re defending waste, fraud, and abuse too,” Schilling said. “This was a hearing that was absolutely embarrassing for Democrats.”
“I think Linda McMahon is exactly the right person to turn this system around, to get parents back in charge,” Schilling continued, “to where parents are treated as partners in education and not just told to sit down and shut up.”
Tiffany Justice, co-foundress of leading parents’ rights group Moms for Liberty, also praised McMahon, writing on X that “parents support” the education nominee.
McMahon “champions education freedom & getting back to basics in America’s schools,” Justice wrote. She also pointed out that McMahon’s “WWE background adds unique leadership skills,” and that she has “no doubt” McMahon “can take on corrupt union bosses!”
“President Trump is right,” Justice said during an appearance on FOX News Thursday morning. “The education department has been a con job. We only have 30% of eighth-graders in America reading on grade level yet we spend over $850 billion a year on education in America.”
Later that same day, conservative scholar Christopher Rufo posted on X a clip that appears to be from a Zoom call in which a woman explained a pie chart about “whiteness.”
Rufo, who supports McMahon’s nomination, wrote in his post that the Department of Education gave $8 million to a non-governmental organization (NGO) that has called the United States a ”racialized structure of power, privilege, [and] oppression.”
He added that the same group, which “advises public schools in 13 states,” suggests that members of the Republican Party are “violently fighting for the maintenance of white supremacy.” Republicans swept last year’s federal elections in convincing fashion.
Less than an hour later, Rufo posted a colorful diagram titled “Equity Express” and subtitled “Transgender Awareness in Sports: A Choose Your Own Equitable Adventure.”
“The Department of Education funded this propaganda,” he wrote, “which argues that schools must allow men in women’s sports, recruit ‘anti-oppressive coaches,’ and ‘avoid reinforcing values like masculinity’ and ‘Muscular Christianity.’”
