Linda McMahon, the U.S. Secretary of Education, finds herself at the center of a sweeping transformation—one that’s both historic and controversial. Tasked by President Donald Trump with a mission that’s as paradoxical as it is ambitious, McMahon is charged with dismantling the very agency she leads, all while imprinting a MAGA-inspired legacy on America’s public schools. As the nation approaches its 250th anniversary in 2026, the Department of Education is undergoing what many experts call the most significant overhaul in half a century, according to CNN.
President Trump has never been shy about his desire to reduce federal oversight of education. From the outset of his second term, he’s made clear that he wants to return control of schools to the states, trimming the Department of Education’s staff and relocating its core functions elsewhere. McMahon’s role is to execute these directives, but the path forward is anything but straightforward. As one long-serving department employee told CNN, "It’s a weird position to be in to get rid of this agency but also use all the powers of this agency to fulfill all their other goals."
That dual mandate has created a palpable sense of tension within the department. On one hand, McMahon is pushing to decentralize authority, but on the other, she’s using the department’s existing powers to advance conservative cultural priorities. Among the top initiatives: protecting prayer in public schools and tying federal funding to so-called “patriotic” curriculums. According to the Department of Education, these efforts are designed to make the system more adaptable to local needs—though critics argue they amount to federal overreach under a different guise.
McMahon’s leadership style has drawn mixed reviews. Several current and former agency employees told CNN that she is seen largely as an executor of President Trump’s wishes, rarely taking independent initiative or engaging deeply with educational issues. "I can’t tell you what her guiding principle is, she just seems to be more of a direction taker," said one Washington, DC-based employee. Another quipped that the only times they’ve seen McMahon talk about the agency are during news appearances or congressional testimony. Even a rare attempt at staff engagement—an ice cream social—was derailed by a security incident and has yet to be rescheduled.
McMahon herself has acknowledged the unpredictable nature of her role. At a recent event in Michigan, she admitted, "He’s always a step ahead of everybody else in what he’s thinking. You’ll be sitting in a meeting with him, and he will make an announcement to the press about something that suddenly you’re going to be in charge of doing, and you are hearing about it at the same time the press is." This reactive approach, some say, has led to a department that’s more focused on executing Trump’s agenda than on setting its own course for education policy.
Despite the internal criticism, the White House and Department of Education have been quick to defend McMahon, touting her as the fearless spearhead of President Trump’s "bold mission to dismantle the failed Department of Education and hold elite universities accountable for allowing discrimination and harassment to plague their campuses." A spokesperson added, "Secretary McMahon is successfully returning education back to the states where it belongs, restoring fairness, merit, and safety in our schools, and putting the academic needs of students first."
One of the most visible aspects of the department’s new direction is its emphasis on school choice, the resumption of collections on defaulted federal student loans after a five-year hiatus, and intensified efforts to combat antisemitism in educational institutions. The department has also wielded funding as leverage, threatening financial consequences for colleges and universities found to be in violation of anti-discrimination or campus conduct standards. According to CNN, these funding threats have been felt most acutely in higher education, with some universities reportedly losing hundreds of millions of dollars.
Perhaps the most ambitious—and contentious—initiative is the department’s partnership with nearly forty conservative organizations, including Turning Point USA, the America First Policy Institute, and Hillsdale College. The goal: to promote civic education and patriotic values in schools nationwide, culminating in a wave of activities leading up to America’s 250th birthday. The partnership features a 50-state tour, lectures, and summits for teachers, with the Department of Education taking the lead on developing teaching materials and resources for teacher training.
Erika Donalds, co-chair of the initiative at the America First Policy Institute, described the project as "more of an open dialogue than it is a prescription of how to do this," emphasizing that the aim is to deliver "results in policies and curriculum and training" for teachers and grant decision-makers. The department insists it is not setting curriculum—something federal law prohibits—but rather empowering local schools and communities. As Savannah Newhouse, the department’s spokesperson, put it, "Local schools and communities—not bureaucrats in Washington, DC—should decide how to educate their kids and spend their dollars. The Trump Administration is empowering them to do just that by expanding school choice, reducing burdensome requirements, and ultimately returning education to the states."
Yet some education experts see a contradiction in this approach. Jonathan Zimmerman, a professor of education at the University of Pennsylvania, noted, "It’s worth asking why the same government that is cutting the Education Department because it doesn’t think the feds should have a hand in education should at the same time be creating curriculum for schools." For many, the department’s use of funding as a tool to influence educational content—especially around issues like patriotism and religious expression—feels like a workaround of federal restrictions on curriculum control.
The conservative partners in this initiative have made their own philosophies clear. Turning Point USA’s education arm, for instance, is "dedicated to RECLAIMING the education of our children, REVIVING virtuous education focused on truth, goodness, and beauty, and RESTORING God as the foundation of education." Hillsdale College touts courses designed to "give insight into the nature of God and man," while PragerU says it aims to combat "the dominant left-wing ideology in culture, media and education" through its materials.
For McMahon, whose background is more rooted in business and entertainment than education policy—she previously led World Wrestling Entertainment and served as Trump’s Small Business Administrator—the challenge has been to manage both the dismantling of her department and the rollout of these high-profile cultural initiatives. Erika Donalds praised McMahon’s business-like approach, saying, "I’ve observed her to be just very bought in to this mission and the mantle that she’s been given both to dismantle the Department of Education get rid of the bureaucracy… but also in the process of doing so highlight these great things that are happening in education."
Rick Hess, director of education policy studies at the American Enterprise Institute, summed up the moment: "What the Department of Education is today is fundamentally unlike what it was like 12 months ago, and that’s an astonishing statement to make about a half-century-old federal entity. Somehow they’ve managed to push the biggest changes in a half century to the department and get remarkably little blowback on the secretary."
As the United States heads toward its 250th anniversary, the debate over the future of federal education policy is far from settled. Whether McMahon’s tenure will be remembered as the end of an era or the start of a new chapter in American education remains an open question, but there’s no denying the seismic shifts now underway.