A Senate committee voted Thursday to advance Linda McMahon's nomination to serve as President Donald Trump's education secretary, bringing her closer to leading an agency the Republican president wants to shut down.
The Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions voted 12-11 along party lines to send her nomination to be considered by the full Senate.
At her confirmation hearing, McMahon said she wants to “reorient” the Education Department. Since his campaign, Trump has called for the department to be abolished, but McMahon acknowledged that only Congress could shut it down completely.
“We’d like to make sure that we are presenting a plan that I think our senators could get on board with,” she said.
Pressed on the fate of the agency’s core initiatives, McMahon said Trump wants them to be more efficient but isn’t out to defund them. She suggested certain roles could be moved to other agencies, saying the department’s civil rights arm could go to the Justice Department.
She pledged to preserve federal Title I money for low-income schools, Pell grants for low-income college students and the Public Service Loan Forgiveness program, all of which were created by Congress.
At the same time, McMahon promised to cut off federal money from schools that defy Trump’s orders against transgender athletes in women's sports, campus antisemitism and diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives across the country.
Democrats were alarmed by McMahon's response to questions about Trump’s order to ban DEI programs in schools. Asked if African American history classes could trigger a loss of federal money, McMahon said she wasn’t certain and needed to look into it.
McMahon, a billionaire Trump ally and former CEO of World Wrestling Entertainment, brings less experience in education than many others in the role. She was a member of the Connecticut board of education for about a year in 2009, and she’s a longtime trustee at Sacred Heart University. She left the WWE in 2009 and led two unsuccessful bids for the U.S. Senate in Connecticut.
Republicans were mostly unified behind McMahon at the hearing, though Sen. Lisa Murkowski of Alaska raised concerns that Trump would ask McMahon to overstep her authority and interfere with local control of schools.
The White House is considering an order that would direct the education secretary to dismantle the Education Department while urging Congress to fully abolish it.
Even without the order, the Trump administration has fired or suspended more than 100 Education Department employees. Dozens of contracts have been canceled by Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency.
The latest cuts, announced late Wednesday, involve grants totaling $226 million for a program designed to help schools improve outcomes and the quality of instruction, particularly for students with the greatest need. An Education Department news release said the program has been promoting “race-based discrimination and gender identity ideology.”