McMahon’s Competing Priorities

BY MATT BARNUM AND KEN THOMAS

WASHINGTON—Education Secretary Linda McMahon is presiding over a MAGA paradox.

Sporting a red “Make Education Great Again” baseball cap, McMahon this week cracked jokes with staff at the department’s Washington headquarters and spoke about their work to “return education to the states.”

Just moments later, she turned the meeting over to her deputies, who proudly ticked off the ways the department is wielding unprecedented federal authority to pressure Democratic- led states to change their education policies.

The meeting laid bare Mc-Mahon’s competing priorities: closing the department, as President Trump has tasked her to do, while also going after what the administration calls wokeness in K-12 schools and on college campuses. The secretary insists she can make progress on both fronts. But congressional and legal hurdles mean she will more likely refashion the Education Department in a smaller, MAGA image rather than close it completely.

“We’re still in the planning stage,” McMahon said of efforts to do away with the department, noting that Trump’s executive order directing her to close it had been halted, at least for now, by a federal court.

No contradiction

McMahon said she sees no contradiction in her dual mandates. The department’s actions against states and universities are driven by civil-rights enforcement, she said.

“There are a lot of things that we are investigating and looking into at this point, whether it’s K through 12 or whether it’s higher education,” she said. “I think that’s our responsibility.”

McMahon got the job after originally expressing interest in being commerce secretary, according to people familiar with the discussions. She pivoted to education when businessman Howard Lutnick was tapped for the Commerce Department instead, the people said.

She said in an interview from her office this week that she spoke with Trump about “many places” where she might serve.

McMahon, the co-founder of World Wrestling Entertainment, has a long history with the president. Trump attended multiple “WrestleMania” events decades ago, and as his first-term head of the Small Business Administration, Mc-Mahon is one of two cabinet members to serve in both administrations.

McMahon said that she sometimes speaks with Trump a few times a week.

McMahon has garnered loyalty from staff and charmed some outsiders. Inside her Washington office, McMahon displays four glass tumblers, one of which depicts the department’s logo while another bears the words, “Shut it Down.”

Previously, M c M a h o n served briefly on the Connecticut board of education and was for years a trustee at Sacred Heart University in Fairfield, Conn. She also earned a teaching certificate and was a student teacher decades earlier.

“When [Trump] talked to me about Education, one of the things I said to him was, ‘I don’t come from the world of education. So is that absolutely the right fit?’” McMahon recalled telling Trump. “He said, ‘I don’t want someone from the world of education.’” Critics of McMahon have said she is unqualified and seized on early gaffes. At a San Diego conference, she referred to “A1,” when she meant AI, or artificial intelligence. McMahon, in the interview, called it “embarrassing” and a “slip of the tongue,” that prompted teasing from her grandchildren. She added that the company that makes A.1. steak sauce sent her two small bottles after the blunder. In an interview on Fox News, she couldn’t immediately recall the full name of the federal law for students with disabilities. McMahon has also claimed that test scores have been going down since the Education Department formed in 1980. Scores have fallen in the past several years but had, in many cases, been trending upward in prior decades.

Supporters say McMahon has shown an eagerness to learn. “She is an active learner with a great deal of humility about what she knows and doesn’t know,” said Jeanne Allen, head of the school choice advocacy group Center for Education Reform, who has occasionally spoken with McMahon.

Those who helped her prepare for the Senate confirmation hearing were worried about flubs of the sort that nearly derailed Trump’s first education secretary, Betsy De-Vos, according to people familiar with the matter. But McMahon avoided major missteps and, unlike some Trump nominees, won confirmation without any Republican dissent.

McMahon has been the public face of the administration’s moves to penalize Harvard and Columbia, where she has argued more needs to be done to prevent antisemitism and expand “viewpoint diversity.”

In May, Harvard President Alan Garber received a combative letter signed by McMahon.

“Harvard should no longer seek GRANTS from the federal government,” it declared, while scolding the school for hiring former Democratic mayors Bill de Blasio of New York and Lori Lightfoot of Chicago—“perhaps the worst mayors ever to preside over major cities in our country’s history.”

Asked if Trump had any role in the letter, McMahon said a combination of people wrote it. “The president does read some of the correspondence like that, or maybe bits and pieces of it, or offers his suggestions,” she added.

Critics say the administration’s strategy and rhetoric on higher education go against tenets of the First Amendment. “The federal government is retaliating against Harvard because of its institutional speech,” said Tyler Coward, a lawyer with the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression.

Privately even many conservative education leaders believe the letter was a mistake because it suggests Harvard is being targeted for its speech, which might lead to legal problems. McMahon has said her moves aren’t designed to clamp down on speech or protest.

Chief complaint

Under her watch, the department has responded with alacrity to Trump’s other desires on education. After the president posted on social media about a New York policy that barred a Native American mascot—“the Chiefs”—at a Long Island high school, the Education Department launched and completed an investigation within weeks that said this is a violation of civilrights law. McMahon then appeared at the school for a press conference last month.

At the department’s staff meeting, the civil-rights office head, Craig Trainor, touted the “record time” investigation and said he is reviewing a referral to the Justice Department.

JP O’Hare, a spokesperson for the New York State Education Department, said the federal department’s action was inconsistent with the administration’s promise to return education policy to the states and conflicted with the views of local tribes.

Both elements of McMahon’s agenda—closing the department and remaking schools and universities—have faced setbacks. A federal judge recently said that cuts there were likely illegal. Three lowercourt judges have also halted efforts to curtail diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives in schools and universities. Harvard has vowed to battle the administration in court.

Frederick Hess, director of education at the American Enterprise Institute, a conservative think tank, said he agrees with many of the administration’s actions but worries some efforts won’t stick. The work “is not about intention. It’s about execution,” he said.