Wrestling CEO/Ed Secretary Can't Wait To Lead 'Final Mission,' Crash Education Dept Into The Sun

Get excited everyone! You're going to lose your jobs!

Burning high school building in Aberdeen, Washington, 2002. Image by Eric Hensley, Creative Commons License 2.5

The Senate confirmed pro-wrestling CEO Linda McMahon as secretary of Education Monday, inspiring Fox News to mark the occasion with the wrasslin’-inspired headline, “WWE legend to lead Education Department after clinching final match in the Senate.” This is misleading at best, since it implies that McMahon fought off a whole bunch of competitors before piledriving the Senate into submission. Then again, considering that the outcome was decided long in advance, perhaps a bit of kayfabe was in order.

McMahon quickly got to work on fulfilling the mandate Donald Trump gave her when he selected her in November: “to put herself out of a job” by overseeing the dismantling of the Education Department. McMahon acknowledged during her confirmation hearings that only Congress can eliminate federal agencies that it established, but that doesn’t mean she can’t start telling everyone to start boxing up everything now, for the eventual liquidation sale. As the song says, we don’t need no education, especially when reality just gets in the way of rightwing truths.

Shortly after her confirmation Monday evening, McMahon sent a letter to all Department of Education employees with the cheerful heading, “Our Department's Final Mission.” The letter repeated the beloved rightwing lie that public schools are drowning in “radical anti-American ideology” instead of providing a useful education, and that they need to be cleansed of “divisive DEI programs and gender ideology.” While she was at it, she also said that because the American people elected Donald Trump, they obviously support every last cockamamie idea he has, so let’s all do our best to gut the Department of Education just like everyone wants.

Mind you, spoilsports like actual American people responding to the latest NPR/PBS News/Marist poll seem not to have heard how much they want to kill the Education Department. Instead,

63% of U.S. residents either oppose or strongly oppose getting rid of the U.S. Department of Education. This includes 87% of Democrats and 64% of independents.

Then again, 65 percent of Republicans favor eliminating the department, and since they are the only Americans whose opinion matters, perhaps there’s no contradiction. Only people who voted for Trump matter, this is just simple mathematics.

In her letter, McMahon didn’t explicitly say that the Ed Department would be closing forever, although the several mentions of its “final mission” were a bit of a hint. But don’t worry, she told the education experts she’s utterly unqualified to lead, “Changing the status quo can be daunting. But every staff member of this Department should be enthusiastic about any change that will benefit students.” No, you will not question whether Trump’s ultimate goal of dismantling public education will benefit students, because that’s what the American People want, weren’t you listening?

Henceforth, McMahon explained, the Education Department will reflect these important “convictions”:

1. Parents are the primary decision makers in their children’s education.

2. Taxpayer-funded education should refocus on meaningful learning in math, reading, science, and history—not divisive DEI programs and gender ideology.

3. Postsecondary education should be a path to a well-paying career aligned with workforce needs.

The final version of the memo eliminated an earlier draft’s statement that students must be “protected from physical violence, racial discrimination, medical tyranny, and gender extremism ideology on campus.” We can see why; people reading the earlier version might miss the point that “protection from racial discrimination” only refers to how straight cisgender white students need to be protected from “DEI.” Worse, that bit about being protected from violence might make some silly libs insist that something should be done to prevent gun massacres in schools, which is dumb because the Constitution specifies everyone has a right to have a gun, but certainly doesn’t say there’s any right to not to be killed in a school shooting.

Besides, even setting that aside, the Great Man knows that a lot of people deserve to have violence directed at them. Most people who get bullied have it coming, don’t they? Needless to say, this does not include Christian nationalists, who are mercilessly bullied by the existence, in public even, of people who are not them.

Not mentioned in McMahon’s letter was Friday’s “one-time offer” to all Education Department employees of a $25,000 bonus if they would please resign or retire by the end of the day Monday. But then, that deadline was already pretty much past by the time McMahon sent her message, so she was writing only to the deadwood still remaining in their jobs. Or maybe nobody told her about the “please quit now” incentive anyway, because this is the Trump administration after all.

Instead, the letter chirpily explains that massive layoffs and elimination of funding authorized by Congress — haha, as if that mattered! — will “mean more autonomy for local communities.” The administration hasn’t said how it plans to shift federal funding for schools to other departments, but chances are that the GOP-controlled Congress will convert programs like Title I, which provides assistance to schools in high poverty areas, into block grants, which usually have less federal oversight. Then the money could, under some GOP proposals, be shifted to private religious schools so it’ll do some segregation academies some good.

In fact, in February, a dozen GOP education officials in red states urged McMahon to just go ahead and distribute federal education funding as block grants on her own, suggesting they could also be given waivers to use the funding as they see fit.

Currently, if private schools receive federal funding, they are at least required to provide basic civil rights protections to students, including the provision of special education services to students with disabilities, but with Republicans in control of Congress, there’s no telling whether they’ll try to weaken or eliminate such protections if they also decide to convert federal education funding to block grants in their big reconciliation bill. Sure, that might violate federal laws guaranteeing a “free and appropriate public education” to all K-12 students, but then, that’s a very old dumb law that can probably be ignored because it sounds socialist. We’ll have to see whether Republicans can manage to pass anything at all.

McMahon didn’t get into any of those weeds in her letter, either, and instead closed by urging remaining Education Department employees to look on the bright side:

The elimination of bureaucracy should free us, not limit us, in our pursuit of these goals. I want to invite all employees to join us in this historic final mission on behalf of all students, with the same dedication and excellence that you have brought to your careers as public servants.

This is our opportunity to perform one final, unforgettable public service to future generations of students. I hope you will join me in ensuring that when our final mission is complete, we will all be able to say that we left American education freer, stronger, and with more hope for the future.

Now let’s get this ship up on the beach so the breakers can start tearing it down for scrap, OK?

Excellent work! Now, on to Social Security!

---

Pop Quiz! Is Knowing Things *Good*, Or Nah F*ck It?

Linda McMahon Wrestles With Tough Question Of Whether Black History Is Even Legal Now

---

[Fox News / Marist Poll / NPR / NBC News / NYT]

Yr Wonkette is funded entirely by reader donations. If you can, please become a paid subscriber, or if a one-time donation is better for you, here is the button to do that!