As Education Secretary Linda McMahon travels across the country trying to sell Trump’s disastrous billionaire-first budget, parents are bracing for an expensive back-to-school season because of Trump’s tariffs. Instead of spending her time helping students, McMahon has been carrying out Trump’s wildly unpopular promise to shut down the Department of Education ahead of the new school year. From trying (and failing) to slash funding for public schools to reckless mass firings, McMahon is taking a wrecking ball to public education across the country. 

Linda McMahon was put in charge of the Education Department just to gut the agency. Since her confirmation, McMahon has: 

• Confirmed her mass firings of nearly half the Education Department’s staff were “the first step on the road to a total shutdown” 
• Rubber-stamped Trump’s 2026 budget — including cuts to critical funding for low-income students to attend college 
• Placed critical programs for more than 50 million K-12 students in jeopardy 
• Threw student loan debt relief into chaos for tens of thousands after firing two-thirds of the staff in the Federal Student Aid ombudsman office

The majority of Americans oppose Trump and McMahon’s mission to shut down the Education Department — instead, Americans broadly support protecting (and expanding) education funding. That’s why, when McMahon froze nearly $7 billion in education funding for low-income communities, summer programs, and ESL students, Democrats fought back and won. 

Let’s not forget that McMahon has almost no experience working in education and even lied about having a degree in education. She bought her way into the Department by donating over $10 million to Trump. and it shows: 

• McMahon admitted during her confirmation hearing that she was unfamiliar with key provisions in the Every Student Succeeds Act and Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) — she didn’t even know what the IDEA acronym stands for. 
• She unleashed chaos on the Department, leaving lifelong public servants “scared” about what the future holds. 
• Least we forget — McMahon famously wants to teach students about the steak sauce A1 instead of artificial intelligence. 

Throughout her short 160-day tenure, McMahon has made it crystal clear that she doesn’t give a damn about the millions of working families that rely on public education. She only cares about lining her and her billionaire friends’ pockets. 

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