Secretary of Education Linda McMahon Is Destroying Her Department
And that was her mission
What the Trump regime is building is a two-tiered education system. One tier is reserved for children whose families can afford private schools, supplemental therapies, elite universities, and carefully guided access to emerging AI technologies. The other is for everyone else: underfunded public schools stripped of federal oversight, special education protections steadily weakened, college access programs eliminated, and an AI initiative rolled out without the funding, safeguards, or support necessary to help the children who need it most.
On May 14, 2026, Secretary of Education Linda McMahon appeared before the House Committee on Education and Workforce to defend the Trump regimes budget proposal. In her opening statement, she told lawmakers exactly what she is there to do:
The American people elected President Trump with a clear mandate: to sunset a 46-year-old, $3 trillion failed federal education bureaucracy in Washington, D.C., and return authority to where it belongs: to parents, teachers and local leaders.
The sitting Secretary of Education called the department she leads a failure. She did not come to defend it, improve it, or fight for the children it serves. She came to bury it without apology under Donald Trump.
The Department of Education has been cut nearly in half, shrinking from roughly 4,200 employees in 2024 to about 2,300 in 2026. The administration has also transferred more than 100 programs to other federal agencies, including moving elementary and secondary education responsibilities to the Department of Labor, as though educating children is primarily a workforce development issue rather than a public good.
The Office for Civil Rights,(OCR), a division within the Department of Education responsible for enforcing students’ civil rights protections, has been gutted. Roughly half its staff, including the civil rights lawyers whose entire job was to protect vulnerable students, have been removed. McMahon’s department then chose to keep 247 OCR staff on paid administrative leave rather than allow them to return to work. A government watchdog found this cost taxpayers between $28.5 million and $38 million.
After Donald’s inauguration in 2025, the Office for Civil Rights reached resolution agreements in just two racial harassment cases for the remainder of the year. By comparison, the office resolved more than 30 such cases in 2017. Even more alarming, after January 2025, the OCR did not reach a single resolution agreement in any case involving school-based sexual harassment or sexual assault for the rest of the year. Not one.
Now consider what this means for the 7.5 million children with disabilities who rely on the federal government to protect their educational rights. The Individuals with Disabilities Education Act, or IDEA, guarantees children with disabilities access to a Free Appropriate Public Education, including accommodations, specialized services, and Individualized Education Programs tailored to their needs.
In October 2025, taking advantage of a government shutdown, the Trump regime quietly gutted the Office of Special Education and Rehabilitative Services, the agency responsible for enforcing IDEA and monitoring state compliance with federal disability law. Nearly the entire staff was laid off, leaving just three employees to oversee protections for millions of children across the country.
NBC News reported that roughly 12,000 pending federal civil rights investigations related to schools are now sitting largely untouched, approximately half of which involve disability issues.
Parents and state agencies are already reporting bounced emails, unanswered calls, and delays in federal guidance. Without staff, there is no longer a clear federal authority to step in when states fail to enforce Individualized Education Programs,(IEP’s), or meet legally mandated timelines. Experts warn the result will be a patchwork, with some states scrambling to fill gaps and others doing nothing at all.
The Individuals with Disabilities Education Act, currently guarantees approximately $15 billion annually to states and school districts. In return, schools must meet strict federal requirements, including providing every qualifying child with an Individualized Education Program, procedural safeguards, and a legally protected right to a Free Appropriate Public Education. These are not bureaucratic formalities. They are the minimum protections meant to ensure that no child with a disability is left behind.
The Trump regimes FY2026 budget proposes consolidating IDEA funding into a single “simplified” block grant. A block grant is not simplification. It is a mechanism for quietly eliminating the conditions that protect vulnerable children. Once the money flows without strings, states may prioritize autism services while disregarding services for blind or deaf populations or redirect the money entirely. A student with a specific learning disability costs an average of $9,000 more per year to educate than a general education student. A student with autism spectrum disorder costs an additional $37,000. The federal government currently provides roughly $2,500 per student with a disability. Wealthier families will find ways to navigate the wreckage. Families without resources will not.
The situation in higher education is equally grim. Since 1964, the federally funded TRIO program has helped low-income, first-generation, and disabled students access, navigate, and graduate from college through tutoring, mentoring, financial aid guidance, and academic support. TRIO serves nearly 875,000 students through more than 3,500 programs nationwide.
Under the banner of eliminating DEI initiatives, the Trump regime gutted major TRIO programs, including Talent Search and Upward Bound. Although a federal court later ruled the cancellation of $40 million in TRIO funding illegal, the damage was already done. Nearly 44,000 students lost access to tutoring, financial aid counseling, and college campus visits, with no clear timeline for when those services will return.
The proposed budget cuts nearly $1 billion from federal work-study, which the regime has called, with breathtaking contempt, a “handout to woke universities.” Only 35 percent of public four-year institutions are currently affordable for the average family. NPR confirmed the regime’s proposed MEGA grants would consolidate 17 existing programs funded at roughly $6.5 billion into a block grant worth less than a third of that.
And then there is AI, which the Trump regime and its billionaire allies are promoting as the great democratizing force in American education. In April 2025, Donald signed an executive order establishing a White House Task Force on AI education and directing public-private partnerships with major tech companies for K-12 classrooms. Eight months later, he signed a second order attempting to block states from enacting their own AI regulations, threatening to withhold federal funding from states that tried.
Brookings has documented the likely result: a new digital divide in which wealthy students have access to AI technology and dedicated teachers to help them utilize it, while students in under-resourced schools have the technology alone with none of the support.
Researchers at the British Educational Research Association were direct:
wealthier schools will use AI as a supplement to high-quality education, while poorer schools will use it as a replacement.
This is not incompetence, fiscal responsibility, or reform. It is a calculated effort to dismantle public education and strip away the civil rights protections connected to it. Donald and the people surrounding him understand exactly what happens when federal oversight disappears: vulnerable students lose protections, children with disabilities lose support, low-income students lose pathways to higher education, and underfunded schools are forced to do more with less while billionaires sell technology as a substitute for actual investment in children and teachers.
A country that abandons vulnerable children while handing more power to billionaires and corporations is not investing in the future. It is deciding who deserves one.
All appointees under Mango's lead are put in place to dismantle the tools of democracy so he can be king.
Think it’s called a total exclusion policy! Horrifying and festering under the surface. Don’t believe older students would accept this??Thanks for your detailed work.