By Bo Erickson
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – President Donald Trump’s choice to run the Department of Education, Linda McMahon, faces a U.S. Senate confirmation hearing on Thursday where Democrats are likely to grill her on the president’s plans to shut the department outright.
Trump on Wednesday reiterated his call to shutter the department, which employs about 4,200 people and had a $251 billion budget in the fiscal year that ended in September.
“I’d like it to be closed immediately,” Trump said. “The Department of Education’s a big con job.”
Shuttering the Cabinet-level department, created in 1979, would ultimately require the approval of Congress, where many Republicans have pushed for years to prioritize local control of the nation’s schools.
Despite calling for the department’s closure, Trump and his fellow Republicans have also pushed for the federal government to scrutinize school districts’ sports programs and investigate cases of transgender athletes competing on women’s teams.
Democrats on the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee are expected to press McMahon on the Trump administration’s moves to undo diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives, and her positions on school choice options, federal spending for high-poverty school districts and funding for the nationwide school lunch program.
While they will have the power to grill McMahon, a former professional wrestling executive who headed the Small Business Administration during Trump’s first term, they do not have the votes to block her confirmation in a chamber that Republicans control 53-47.
So far Senate Republicans have not blocked any of Trump’s Cabinet nominees, including controversial picks such as new Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard and Health and Human Services Secretary nominee Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
Republicans at McMahon’s Senate confirmation hearing could question her approach towards the nation’s powerful teacher unions, her views of religion and prayer in the classroom, as well as on federal student aid relief, which was implemented by the Biden administration and rolled back by Trump last month.
(Reporting by Bo Erickson; Editing by Scott Malone and Marguerita Choy)
