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Linda McMahon’s nomination for U.S. secretary of education advanced Thursday with the approval of the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee, which voted 12-11 along party lines.
“We need a strong leader at the department who will get our education system back on track, and Ms. McMahon is the right person for the job,” said HELP Chair Bill Cassidy, R-La., before the vote.
McMahon appeared before the committee Feb. 13 for a 2 ½ hour confirmation hearing where she spoke of her priorities for expanding school choice and skills-based learning, providing more decision-making power to local schools and parents, and protecting students from discrimination and harassment.
She also talked about her openness to making sweeping changes at the U.S. Department of Education, including moving programs like special education oversight and civil rights investigations to other federal agencies.
“We are failing our students, our Department of Education, and what we are doing today is not working, and we need to change it,” McMahon said at the time. McMahon formerly served as administrator of the Small Business Administration for two yearsin President Donald Trump’s first administration. She was previously president and CEO of World Wrestling Entertainment.
Trump and the temporary Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE, have already made major alterations to Education Department activities, including by attempting to freeze funding to states, canceling research contracts, halting diversity, equity and inclusion funds and programming, and calling for the end of “radical indoctrination” in K-12 schools.
At Thursday’s HELP executive session, which lasted about 15 minutes, Sen. Tim Kaine, D-Va., said he was opposing McMahon’s nomination. “I find areas of agreement [with McMahon], but I can’t vote for somebody who will willfully engage in the destruction of the very agency she wants to lead. That is disqualifying,” Kaine said.
Ranking member Bernie Sanders, D-Vt., also voted against McMahon’s nomination and criticized what he said was a move toward an authoritarian society where “all power is resting in the hands of a few in the White House.”
“It doesn’t really matter who the Secretary will be, because he or she will not have the power,” Sanders said.
Sen. Markwayne Mullin, R-Okla., before voting in favor of the nomination, said U.S. education has fallen in global rankings. “If we really say we’re for the kids, then let’s try something drastic,” Mullin said. “Let’s actually make a change, because we’re doing nothing but going backwards, and our test scores haven’t improved since 1979. They’ve just continued to fall.”
A full Senate vote on McMahon’s confirmation is forthcoming.
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WASHINGTON — U.S. education secretary nominee Linda McMahon told a Senate panel Thursday that, if confirmed, she would not defund public schools but would seek to reform the U.S. Department of Education by reducing federal bureaucracy and bringing schools back to the basics of reading and math.
“We are failing our students, our Department of Education, and what we are doing today is not working, and we need to change it,” McMahon said.
However, when asked about some specific changes she would make to Education Department programming, McMahon said, if confirmed, she would evaluate department functions before making recommendations. She said she would “reorient the department toward helping educators, not controlling them.”
The 2 ½-hour confirmation hearing, held by the Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions, was briefly interrupted five times by people protesting McMahon’s nomination. The Republican-controlled Senate is expected to approve McMahon’s nomination in the coming days.
McMahon’s confirmation hearing comes amid drastic changes at the Education Department. President Donald Trump has already issued various executive orders that severely limit federal funding, prohibit activities related to diversity, equity and inclusion, and call for an end to “indoctrination” in K-12 schools, which he said includes “gender ideology and discriminatory equity ideology.”
Trump is also expected to issue an executive order that would significantly reduce the Education Department’s authority and responsibility in the federal government.
In fiscal year 2024, the Education Department received $79.1 billion from Congress. Lawmakers have yet to approve FY 2025 funding.
Among the Education Department’s responsibilities is managing $1.6 trillion in higher education student loans.
A protester disrupts Linda McMahon, President Donald Trump’s nominee to be U.S. education secretary, as she testifies during her Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee confirmation hearing on Capitol Hill on Feb. 13, 2025, in Washington, D.C.
Kayla Bartkowski via Getty Images
Trump nominated McMahon just weeks after winning the November election. McMahon served as administrator of the Small Business Administration for two yearsin Trump’s first administration. She is also a former president and CEO of World Wrestling Entertainment.
McMahon is also board chair at America First Policy Institute, a nonprofit think tank that supports free enterprise and nationalism. At the state level, McMahon served on the Connecticut State Board of Education. She also served as a trustee at Sacred Heart University, a private Catholic school in Fairfield, Connecticut. She is currently the treasurer on the university’s Board of Trustees, according to the school’s website.
In 2012, she won the Connecticut Republican primary for U.S. Senate but lost to current Democratic Sen. Chris Murphy, who is a member of the HELP committee.
If the Senate approves McMahon’s nomination, she would succeed Miguel Cardona as the 13th U.S. education secretary since the department’s founding in 1979.
Here are three takeaway exchanges from the confirmation hearing.
Antisemitism on college campuses
Several Republican senators asked McMahon about antisemitism on college campuses.
“Will you make sure that Jewish Americans are safe on our campuses, for heaven’s sake?” asked Sen. Josh Hawley, R-Mo., referring to “a wave of antisemitism” particularly since the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas attack on Israel. “Will you make sure that this stops on our college campuses that are getting all of this federal tax money?”
McMahon said she would “absolutely,” or schools would “face defunding of their monies.”
Several senators asked McMahon about the Education Department’s responsibility for the federal student loan program. Sen. Tim Kaine, D-Va., questioned McMahon’s commitment to existing public service loan forgiveness programs passed by Congress.
“Those that have been passed by Congress? Yes, that’s the law,” McMahon said.
Committee Chair Bill Cassidy, R-La., said McMahon’s experience overseeing the Small Business Administration “would be a great asset as the department looks to reform a very broken student loan program.”
During the hearing, McMahon also voiced support for more skill-based learning and dual enrollment in K-12. “I think we have to look at education and say our vocational and skill-based training is not a default education,” McMahon said.
Closing the Education Department
Several Democratic lawmakers probed McMahon about Trump’s push to eliminate the Education Department. On Wednesday, Trump referred to the department as a “big con job” and said he wanted the agency closed immediately.
“The president has given a very clear directive that he would like to look in totality at the Department of Education, and believes that the bureaucracy of it should be closed, that we should return education to our states, that the best education is that closest to the kids,” McMahon said.
She acknowledged that only Congress has the power to shut down the agency. And McMahon noted that programs established by federal statute would need to continue with or without an Education Department.
But she said she was open to exploring whether the Education Department’s civil rights investigation arm could move to the U.S. Department of Justice and whether IDEA responsibilities could shift to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.
When speaking of IDEA, McMahon said, “I’m not sure that it’s not better served in HHS, but I don’t know.” She said that if she’s confirmed, she would make it a high priority to ensure funds for students with disabilities are not impacted.
“It is incredibly important that those programs continue to be funded,” she said.
Sen. Maggie Hassan, D-N.H., said “To be clear here, you’re going to put special education in the hands of Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.,” referring to the newly named HHS secretary who has refused to say vaccines don’t cause autism.
Title IX protections
Sen. Tammy Baldwin, D-Wis., asked McMahon if she would support language in the regulation for Title IX — a federal sex discrimination law — that says schools must address sexual harassment that is either “severe or pervasive.” Currently, Title IX regulation says sexual harassment that is “severe and pervasive” is prohibited, which is a higher threshold for investigations.
“I don’t believe there should be any acceptance of sexual harassment, senator,” McMahon said.
Baldwin replied, “I hope that you will take your position and press for that to be the law.”
Baldwin also raised concerns about McMahon’s support for sexual assault victims, as the nominee is a defendant in a lawsuit filed by former World Wrestling Entertainment employees alleging sexual harassment and abuse.
“If confirmed, you will be responsible with overseeing the Department of Education Office of Civil Rights, charged with ensuring equal access to education through vigorous enforcement of civil rights laws,” Baldwin said. “I am so concerned about whether sexual assault survivors on campus can trust you to support them.”
McMahon replied, “They certainly can trust me to support them.”
Throughout the hearing, McMahon said the Education Department would protect students from discrimination and harassment. One example she gave was prohibiting schools from letting transgender girls and women play on women’s designated sport teams. She also said the Education Department would protect the rights of parents “to direct the moral education of their children.”
Hassan said the hearing felt like “elegant gaslighting” because of McMahon’s ambitions for the Education Department, which is being threatened with closure by President Trump.
“The whole hearing right now feels kind of surreal to me,” Hassan said.
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WASHINGTON — U.S. education secretary nominee Linda McMahon told a Senate panel Thursday that, if confirmed, she would not defund public schools but would seek to reform the U.S. Department of Education by reducing federal bureaucracy and bringing schools back to the basics of reading and math.
McMahon also said her priorities as education secretary would be to expand school choice and skills-based learning, give local schools and parents more decision-making power, and to protect students from discrimination and harassment.
“I’m very hopeful that we will get back to the basics of education so that our children can read when they leave 3rd grade, and that 8th grade students can do math and reading proficiently,” McMahon said. “We are failing our students, our Department of Education, and what we are doing today is not working, and we need to change it.”
However, when asked about some specific changes she would make to Education Department programming, McMahon said, if confirmed, she would evaluate department functions before making recommendations. She said she would “reorient the department toward helping educators, not controlling them.”
The 2 ½-hour confirmation hearing, held by the Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions, was briefly interrupted five times by people protesting McMahon’s nomination. The Republican-controlled Senate is expected to approve McMahon’s nomination in the coming days.
McMahon’s confirmation hearing comes amid drastic changes at the Education Department. President Donald Trump has already issued various executive orders that severely limit federal funding, call for expansion of private school choice, prohibit activities related to diversity, equity and inclusion, and call for an end to “indoctrination” in K-12 schools, which he said includes “gender ideology and discriminatory equity ideology.”
Trump is also expected to issue an executive order that would significantly reduce the Education Department’s authority and responsibility in the federal government.
Federal education funding represents just about 14% of total K-12 spending in 2024, with the rest provided by local and state governments and other sources. Still, education experts say federal investments are important for supporting funding equity and accountability.
In fiscal year 2024, the Education Department received $79.1 billion from Congress. Lawmakers have yet to approve FY 2025 funding.
Among the Education Department’s responsibilities is managing $1.6 trillion in higher education student loans.
District and state K-12 programs also received $189.5 billion over the past five years in federal COVID-19 emergency funds to support pandemic recovery efforts.
A protester disrupts Linda McMahon, President Donald Trump’s nominee to be U.S. education secretary, as she testifies during her Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee confirmation hearing on Capitol Hill on Feb. 13, 2025, in Washington, D.C.
Kayla Bartkowski via Getty Images
Trump nominated McMahon just weeks after winning the November election. McMahon served as administrator of the Small Business Administration for two yearsin Trump’s first administration. She is also a former president and CEO of World Wrestling Entertainment.
McMahon is also board chair at America First Policy Institute, a nonprofit think tank that supports free enterprise and nationalism. At the state level, McMahon served on the Connecticut State Board of Education. She also served as a trustee at Sacred Heart University, a private Catholic school in Fairfield, Connecticut. She is currently the treasurer on the university’s Board of Trustees, according to the school’s website.
In 2012, she won the Connecticut Republican primary for U.S. Senate but lost to current Democratic Sen. Chris Murphy, who is a member of the HELP committee.
If the Senate approves McMahon’s nomination, she would succeed Miguel Cardona as the 13th U.S. education secretary since the department’s founding in 1979.
Here are three takeaway exchanges from the confirmation hearing.
Closing the Education Department
Several Democratic lawmakers probed McMahon about Trump’s push to eliminate the Education Department. On Wednesday, Trump referred to the department as a “big con job” and said he wanted the agency closed immediately.
“The president has given a very clear directive that he would like to look in totality at the Department of Education, and believes that the bureaucracy of it should be closed, that we should return education to our states, that the best education is that closest to the kids,” McMahon said.
She acknowledged that only Congress has the power to shut down the agency. And McMahon noted that programs established by federal statute, such as Title I for low-income schools and services to students with disabilities under the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act, would need to continue with or without an Education Department.
But she said she was open to exploring whether the Education Department’s civil rights investigation arm could move to the U.S. Department of Justice and whether IDEA responsibilities could shift to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.
When speaking of IDEA, McMahon said, “I’m not sure that it’s not better served in HHS, but I don’t know.” She said that if she’s confirmed, she would make it a high priority to ensure funds for students with disabilities are not impacted.
“It is incredibly important that those programs continue to be funded,” she said.
Sen. Maggie Hassan, D-N.H., said “To be clear here, you’re going to put special education in the hands of Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.,” referring to the newly named HHS secretary who has refused to say vaccines don’t cause autism.
Sen. Lisa Murkowski, R-Alaska, asked McMahon about her support for public schools in areas where there are no other private or charter school options, like in small rural parts of Alaska accessible by only boats or planes.
“I absolutely do believe that our public schools are the bedrock of our education,” McMahon said. “I think we have to invest in our public education,” adding that public taxpayer funding can be used for other education supports, such as tutoring, in areas that don’t have school choice options.
Antisemitism on college campuses
Several Republican senators asked McMahon about antisemitism on college campuses.
“Will you make sure that Jewish Americans are safe on our campuses, for heaven’s sake?” asked Sen. Josh Hawley, R-Mo., referring to “a wave of antisemitism” particularly since the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas attack on Israel. “Will you make sure that this stops on our college campuses that are getting all of this federal tax money?”
McMahon said she would “absolutely,” or schools would “face defunding of their monies.”
Several senators asked McMahon about the Education Department’s responsibility for the federal student loan program. Sen. Tim Kaine, D-Va., questioned McMahon’s commitment to existing public service loan forgiveness programs passed by Congress.
“Those that have been passed by Congress? Yes, that’s the law,” McMahon said.
Committee Chair Bill Cassidy, R-La., said McMahon’s experience overseeing the Small Business Administration “would be a great asset as the department looks to reform a very broken student loan program.”
During the hearing, McMahon also voiced support for more skill-based learning and dual enrollment in K-12. “I think we have to look at education and say our vocational and skill-based training is not a default education,” McMahon said.
Title IX protections
Sen. Tammy Baldwin, D-Wis., asked McMahon if she would support language in the regulation for Title IX — a federal sex discrimination law — that says schools must address sexual harassment that is either “severe or pervasive.” Currently, Title IX regulation says sexual harassment that is “severe and pervasive” is prohibited, which is a higher threshold for investigations.
“I don’t believe there should be any acceptance of sexual harassment, senator,” McMahon said.
Baldwin replied, “I hope that you will take your position and press for that to be the law.”
Baldwin also raised concerns about McMahon’s support for sexual assault victims, as the nominee is a defendant in a lawsuit filed by former World Wrestling Entertainment employees alleging sexual harassment and abuse.
“If confirmed, you will be responsible with overseeing the Department of Education Office of Civil Rights, charged with ensuring equal access to education through vigorous enforcement of civil rights laws,” Baldwin said. “I am so concerned about whether sexual assault survivors on campus can trust you to support them.”
McMahon replied, “They certainly can trust me to support them.”
Throughout the hearing, McMahon said the Education Department would protect students from discrimination and harassment. One example she gave was prohibiting schools from letting transgender girls and women play on women’s designated sport teams. She also said the Education Department would protect the rights of parents “to direct the moral education of their children.”
Hassan said the hearing felt like “very elegant gaslighting” because of McMahon’s ambitions for the Education Department, which is being threatened with closure by Trump.
“The whole hearing right now feels kind of surreal to me,” Hassan said.
President Trump’s pick to lead the Education Department, Linda McMahon, will appear today before a key Senate committee to kick off the confirmation process.
The hearing comes at a tumultuous time for the Education Department and higher education, and questions about the agency’s future will likely dominate the proceedings, which kick off at 10 a.m. The Inside Higher Ed team will have live updates throughout the morning and afternoon, so follow along.
McMahon has been through the wringer of a confirmation hearing before, as she was appointed to lead the Small Business Administration during Trump’s first term. But this time around the former wrestling CEO can expect tougher questions, particularly from Democrats, as the Trump administration has already taken a number of unprecedented, controversial and, at times, seemingly unconstitutional actions in just three short weeks.
Our live coverage of the hearing will kick off at 9:15 a.m. In the meantime, you can read more about McMahon, the latest at the department and what to expect below:
Linda McMahon, President Donald Trump’s nominee for education secretary, will appear before the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee next week—a key step in her confirmation process.
And though the former business mogul was originally expected to sail through the confirmation process, she’ll likely have to answer questions at the hearing next Thursday about recent upheavals in the Education Department and the president’s plan to get rid of the agency.
In the last week, news broke that the Trump administration put dozens of department employees on paid leave and is planning an executive order to shut down the department, setting off alarm bells across the higher ed sphere. At the same time, Trump’s attempts to freeze thousands of federal grants and push agency staff toward “deferred resignation” are caught up in court. Education advocacy groups say that halting the grants violates the constitutional principle of separation of powers and that cutting the number of unionized agency staff is not only illegal but also could hinder key operations like the federal student aid program.
But while many of Trump’s executive orders remain in limbo, department appointees who don’t require confirmation are quickly moving behind the scenes to carry out Trump’s education agenda. They’ve opened multiple civil rights investigations into colleges over antisemitism and transgender participation in women’s sports, announced changes to the federal aid application, and removed more than 200 DEI-related webpages from the department’s website.
Trump has yet to announce who will join McMahon and fill other key agency roles, such as under secretary and head of Federal Student Aid, nor has he formally named all the acting officials who will fill those roles in the meantime. The lack of transparency regarding who will lead the department and who is currently serving in temporary roles now has only heightened concerns among higher education officials, policy experts, lobbyists and advocacy groups. The lack of clarity makes it hard to decipher what Trump’s regulatory priorities will be and how colleges, universities, accreditors, students and others should prepare for the next four years. But many are hopeful that McMahon’s hearing will shed some light on the subject.
The secretary-designate, who is best known as the former CEO of World Wrestling Entertainment, has limited experience in education policy aside from serving for one year on the Connecticut State Board of Education and a long-running tenure on the Sacred Heart University Board of Trustees. And to this date, she has made little comment about her views on public education.
She does, however, have some experience working in Washington. McMahon served as director of the Small Business Administration during Trump’s first term. Then, in 2021, as the president reluctantly left office, she helped found the America First Policy Institute, a pro-Trump think tank.
Now, the billionaire is likely to lead the very department Trump has said he wants to see dismantled. The president told White House reporters Tuesday that he told McMahon, “I hope you do a great job and put yourself out of a job.
The Wall Street Journal and The Washington Post reported earlier this week that the new administration is preparing an executive order about the department’s future, though the specifics are still in the works.
Sources told the Journal that the order could “shut down all functions of the agency that aren’t written explicitly into statute or move certain functions to other departments,” but other sources familiar with talks about the order told Inside Higher Ed that the order could direct McMahon, once confirmed, to come up with a plan to break up the department entirely. (The second suggested order, and its resulting plan, would have to include legislative action from Capitol Hill, as the department’s existence is written into law.)
But for now, McMahon is awaiting confirmation and the department still exists. So who’s running the agency and carrying out its statutory duties?
So far, the White House has only formally announced an acting secretary, Denise Carter, who had previously served as acting head of the Federal Student Aid office. A news release from the department several days later listed 10 other appointees, ranging from chief of staff to deputy general counsel. On Thursday, the department shared the names of six more officials, including deputy under secretary and senior adviser of the communications office.
But the department’s announcements about appointees haven’t indicated who is temporarily filing some of the top jobs at the department, such as under secretary. Under federal law, the default acting official is the first assistant to the vacant position or the top deputy for that office, though the president can designate someone else who meets the criteria. Details about who is serving as those acting officials has instead come from other department statements.
For example, James Bergeron—president of the National Council of Higher Education Resources and a Republican former House policy adviser—was named deputy under secretary Thursday. But on Tuesday, the department identified him in a news release as acting under secretary. Before Tuesday’s release, Bergeron had not been listed as an appointee at all. Thursday’s announcement only referred to him as deputy under secretary, not acting.
In another instance, the department named Craig Trainor—who worked under Trump’s attorney general Pam Bondi as an AFPI senior litigation counsel—deputy assistant secretary for policy in the Office for Civil Rights. And then, in later news releases, the agency identified Trainor as the acting assistant secretary for civil rights.
Although the department has yet to announce an acting chief operating officer for FSA, a department official told Inside Higher Ed that Carter is wearing two hats and continuing to lead FSA while serving as acting secretary. Phillip Juengst, a longtime FSA official, they said, is also helping lead the agency.
The Education Department did not respond to Inside Higher Ed’s request for further detail about who is serving in what acting role and why it hasn’t formally been announced. Instead, they pointed reporters back to the news releases mentioned prior.
Most of the appointees so far are unfamiliar faces to D.C. area policy experts and former department staffers.
Bergeron, however, is an exception. He worked at the National Council of Higher Education Resources starting in 2014, advocating for higher education service agencies that work in the student loan space. Some debt-relief groups raised concerns about Bergeron’s appointment. But former department officials described Bergeron as a competent and more reasonable choice than some other Trump appointees. Before serving as president of NCHER, he worked as a staffer on the House Education and the Workforce Committee.
Emmanual Guillory, senior director of government relations at the American Council on Education, said the day after Trump took office that the initial lack of clarity about who was serving in what role didn’t concern him. He didn’t expect Carter or other acting appointees to carry out substantial policy actions before confirmed appointees took control. Guillory said Thursday that his comments haven’t changed, so he remains unconcerned two weeks later.
