Linda McMahon has her confirmation hearing this week, and let's be honest-- the Congress that okayed Pete Hegseth, Tulsi Gabbard and Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., is not going to blink twice at McMahon, who at least does a passable imitation of a real grownup. For that matter, she's more qualified than Betsy DeVos was (she's had actual jobs, including jobs leading other people) and she's less inclined to say the kind of stunningly dumb things that made DeVos a late night tv punchline.
She opens with thank you's to friends and families and for Trump's faith in her to lead a department that "was a special focus of his campaign." Yes, "focus" is probably a nicer word than "target." I keep thinking it would be something to one day see one of these nominees bring the same rhetoric they use outside the hearing room into the hearing room. But no, this has to be an all-baloney zone (a balozone).
Now she will recap Trump's bold, baloney-filled promises. "He p[ledged to make American education the best in the world," like he has the faintest idea how to do that or what it would look like and has any reason to say that other than one more way to claim that American education is failing. He's going to "return education to the states where it belongs," as if it were not already there, and "free American students from the education bureaucracy through school choice" much like Kennedy wants to free Americans from disease prevention and the administration wants to free white guys from requirements to show merit. McMahon's preferred privatization is not about freeing students; it's about freeing Americans (particularly wealthy ones) from being responsible for educating Those Peoples' Children. Just remove the promise of a decent education for all American children, and call it freedom.
More butt-kissing, citing November as proof that Americans "overwhelmingly support the President's vision." November was no such thing. Trump's margin was small, and in the few states that got the chance to vote on vouchers (something voucher supporters try to avoid at all costs), the same people who supported Trump rejected his educational vision. But she is ready to enact his vision.
"Education is THE issue that determines our national success" and therefor we should spend as little on it as possible. No, just kidding. It "prepares American workers to win the future," which is a jam-packed phrase. The future is something one wins? Education is only for producing workers?
Now she gets to her qualifications. Sort of. "I've been passionate about education since my earliest college days when I studied to earn a teaching certificate." That would be the mid-to-late sixties. Her passion continued through her business career (she reportedly married Vince McMahon in college and dumped her own career hopes to help him). She will even bring up her brief time on the Connecticut State Board of Education. Also, she was a university trustee and her chairwomanship of the American First Policy Institute, and she just kept being passionate about education through all of that. No mention of how she felt about that passion not being invoplved in the first Trump administration.
She's a "mother and a grandmother" and she also "joined millions of American parents who want better schools for our kids and grandkids." Joined them in what? Being passionate, I guess.
Here's my thing about people who are passionate about education-- if it's a thing you're passionate about, it's really easy to become directly involved. Somewhere near you is a public school, and I feel confident that not one of them has a motto like "That's okay, thanks. We don't need anything right now." Passion that does not convert into actual action is empty posturing. If a suitor told you they were passionately in love with you, but couldn't see you for the next few weeks because they had, you know, errands to run and work stuff to take care of and on weekends they're just tired--that's not a courtship that you would find very compelling.
But sure, Passionate about education.
Then the narrative. American education used to be great, but now it's a "system in decline." with low test scores (by students who in many cases started their education under President Donald Trump). Also, two thirds of public colleges are "beset by violent crime on campuses every year." I'm honestly not sure where that number comes from (and pretty soon it will be exactly the kind of number that we will have no valid way to search) and I'm pretty sure it's made up. Also, student suicide rates are up over last two decades; that's correct (and again, I'm not sure how we'll know once the CDC is fully silenced).
She goes straight from "suicide rates are up" to "we can do better by teaching students basic reading and mathematics." Also, we can do better for college freshmen facing "censorship or anti-Semitism" (freshmen facing other kinds of bias or hate speech are just SOL). And we can do better for "parents and grandchildren who worry their children and grandchildren are no longer taught American values and true history." I have an idea for this one-- we could reduce their worry by reducing the number of inflammatory lies they are told about what's taught in school. But I'll bet that's not what she wants to propose.
"In many cases," she says, not indicating which cases she has in mind, "our wounds are caused by the consolidation of power in our federal education establishment. So what's the remedy?"
Yes, it's the Trumuskian Big Government pretzel with bullshit icing.
"Fund education freedom, not government-run system." Vouchers and charters are government run systems, of course, but they are systems that absolve us all of any collective obligation to make sure that every child has the chance to get a decent education.
"Listen to parents, not politicians." But only some parents. Not the gay ones or the ones with trans kids or the ones with brown skins who are poisoning our blood. Also note that in this formulation, we don't have to listen to taxpayers who don't actually have children in school. Nor will we mention the school board members elected by those taxpayers.
"Build up careers, not college debt" by which they mean if you can't afford go to college without borrowing a bunch of money, don't go.
"Empower states, not special interests." Unless the state or local system makes choices we don't like here in DC, in which case we are going to punish them.
"Invest in teachers, not Washington bureaucrats," except when we are the Washington bureaucrats. Also, teachers are a well-known special interest group out to screw us all, so maybe we'll just hold off on this one.
Now for the "if confirmed as secretary" part where we get to the list of empty promises and action items. She'll work with Congress "to reorient the Department toward helping educators, not controlling them," which is a pretty hilarious promise coming from the administration that has an ever-lengthening list of things educators are not allowed to do or say.
Now we get one of her best non-sequiturs:
My experience as a business owner and leader of the small Business Administration as a public servant in the state of Connecticut, and more than a decade of service as a college trustee has taught me to put parents, teachers, and students, not bureaucracy first.
Yes, the World Wrestling Federation is famous for how it put parents and students and teachers first, likewise the Small Business Administration.
"Outstanding teachers are tired of political ideology in their curriculum and red tape on their desks." Which is why we are creating a bunch of policies and an actual curriculum telling them to put the correct political ideology in their curriculum, or else we'll cut off their funding. But those tired teachers are apparently why "school choice is a growing movement." Because it's a way to escape micro-managing by those stupid bureaucrats and their demands that schools not discriminate or use public funds to finance religious indoctrination or meet certain minimum standards for educational quality.
We should boost career education, especially in STEM. Fair enough. Post-secondary pathways! Career-aligned programs. Internships, "For American companies need high skill employees." More jobs in fields like tech and health-care for non-degree persons. Colleges should be transparent about courses of study that are aligned to workforce demand. None of this silly liberal arts stuff. More meat widgets, please!
"The United States is the world leader by far in emerging technologies like AI and blockchain" is not quite the boast the DOGE intern who inserted it into her speech thinks it is. "We need to invest in American students who want to become tech pioneers." Invest how?
Now pay attention to this next DOGE-approved point--
We should encourage innovative new institutions, develop smart accountability systems and tear down barriers to entry so that students have real choice and universities are not saddling future families with insurmountable debt.
Khan Academy. And remember The Ledger-- training from anywhere and your credentials stored on the blockchain, so that corporations can pick out meat widgets just like shopping at Amazon.
"We must protect all students from discrimination and harassment," she declares. Got an example? Jewish students discriminated against. Trans students in girls sports and bathrooms--no, she's not protecting them, she's protecting everyone else from them. She doesn't bring up DEI here, but it's the same model-- that stuff discriminates against white kids, and that's the discrimination we have to stop. MAGA feels picked on, and by God it's going to stop, because that's the only discrimination that is real or which matters.
Also, she wants to protect the "right of parents to direct the moral education of their children." And the federal government is going to protect that right by deciding what the correct moral education is and silencing anyone who disagrees with them. The Trumuskian Big Government Pretzel-- freeing us from a micromanaging federal government by micromanaging harder than any administration ever has before.
The question period offers more of the same, and I'm not going to wade through all of that here, and honestly, there's little to learn from any of it. She will distribute funds that Congress has authorized and appropriated, and she may want to check with her bosses on that, because that ship has already sailed, and anyway, she thinks President Musk is doing fine. She supports the idea that various ed funding streams can be shifted to other departments, because despite her passion for education, you don't need any interest in or knowledge of education to manage programs like IDEA or Title I.
She dodged the No Right Answer questions. Do Black history courses or student clubs for particular ethnicities or Martin Luther King Day celebrations violate the Trump order on "radical indoctrination"? Of course it does, but she's too smart to say so out loud in this hearing, so she takes a pass on that one, and refusing to pay even lip service to what should be an easy "No, those things are important and shouldn't be wiped out" sends a clear, chilling, and unsurprising message to schools across the country.
So we're going to get what we've known we were going to get-- someone whose agenda is to cut and slash the department, someone who is not knowledgeable about education (just, you know, passionate), someone with a childish faith in market competition, and someone who is fully on board with the right wing goal of getting the government completely out of the education biz. Someone who is not bothered by the conflicting goals of "send education back to the states" and "tell state and local systems what they are not allowed to say or do."
If you want to use up energy opposing her nomination, knock yourself out. There's no universe in which Trump and Musk nominate someone who isn't committed to privatizing education and gutting the federal department. She's going to be awful, and we'll all need to pay attention and watch to see exactly which fumes are given off by this particular dumpster fire.
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