Jonathan Zimmerman: Will Trump’s Education Department pick empower schools

Linda McMahon made a fortune in professional wrestling, where very big people throw each other around the ring — and sometimes, outside of it. But if she becomes secretary of education, she’ll face a much bigger challenge. How do you give more power to schools and parents, even as you place new federal controls on them? That’s what Donald Trump’s incoming administration says it will do.

And I just don’t see how it can perform both maneuvers at the same time, even with a former wrestling executive at the helm. Before he nominated McMahon, Trump repeatedly promised to eliminate the agency she would direct. “I want to close up the Department of Education, move education back to the states,” he told Elon Musk on X.

But Trump has also pledged to establish a host of new federal restrictions on schools. According to his Agenda47 post , published last fall, his administration would cut federal funding for schools teaching “critical race theory” or “gender ideology.” It would also ask Congress to pass a law declaring that there are only two genders, which would effectively bar trans women from participating in sports and also prevent classrooms from addressing transgender experiences.

And this, from the party that wants to reduce the federal footprint in education and send power back to the states? To justify the federal controls, Trump and his allies have their own signature jujitsu move: parents’ rights. Schools are imposing “woke” ideologies on unsuspecting families, or so the argument goes. So we need new measures to protect their rights.

That’s the mantra of Moms for Liberty, the activist group that has tried to block LGBTQ+-themed books, instruction on “divisive issues” and more. It is so closely aligned with Trump that the group’s co-founder, Tiffany Justice, was floated for the secretary of education slot before he nominated McMahon. “Parents were put in the back seat when it came to their kids’ education,” Justice told Fox News last Monday.

“We need to put them in the driver’s seat, and I know that President Trump believes that too.” Never mind the parents who want their kids to learn about sexual minorities or who define “patriotic values” differently than the Trump administration. The new Republican Party doesn’t recognize their rights; instead, it proposes to run roughshod over them.

But these parents are going to fight back. Indeed, they already have. In Bucks County, Pennsylvania, near my home in Philadelphia, a school board that had barred Pride flags from classrooms and “sexualized content” from libraries got voted out last fall .

So did a school board in neighboring Montgomery County, after it prohibited transgender students from using bathrooms that accorded with their identity. Across the country, a similar pattern has emerged. In Iowa, 12 of the 13 school board nominees endorsed by Moms for Liberty went down to defeat in November.

Ditto for most of the candidates in Minnesota and Ohio who were backed by Moms for Liberty and other conservative activist groups. All of these tensions will come crashing down on McMahon, if she’s confirmed. Eliminating the Department of Education is a nonstarter; unless the Republicans eliminate the filibuster, they will never be able to get the 60 Senate votes they would need to get rid of the department.

Nor is it clear whether the Trump administration could take federal money away from schools that don’t follow its dictates. It will almost surely revoke the Biden administration’s interpretation of Title IX , which barred discrimination based on gender identity. That could lead the Department of Education to sue school districts that allowed trans women to compete on women’s teams, for example.

But could it take action against a district that taught classroom lessons about structural racism — another GOP bogeyman — or trans issues? Nobody knows. Unlike many of Trump’s Cabinet nominees, including Matt Gaetz, who withdrew Thursday, and Pete Hegseth, McMahon has administrative experience: She directed Trump’s Small Business Administration during his first term, and she also served on the Connecticut State Board of Education for a year in 2009 before stepping down to run for the Senate. “I don’t come before you today as an educator,” McMahon said at her confirmation hearing in Connecticut.

“I’m just a layperson.” But surely she learned enough to know that Americans are a freedom-loving people. Most of them don’t support book bans , and I doubt they’re going to like it if the federal government tells them how to teach about race or gender.

You can’t proclaim your fealty to state control and parents rights with one hand, then force the hand of states and parents with the other. If McMahon is confirmed, she should get ready for a big-time smackdown. Grab your popcorn and buckle up.

Jonathan Zimmerman teaches education and history at the University of Pennsylvania. He is the author of “Whose America? Culture Wars in the Public Schools” and eight other books. Submit a letter, of no more than 400 words, to the editor here or email letters@chicagotribune.

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