Advancement Project Reaction to Education Secretary Confirmation
March 3, 2025
Washington, DC – In response to news that Linda McMahon has been confirmed as the next Secretary of Education, Advancement Project executive director Judith Browne Dianis issued this statement:
“The confirmation of Linda McMahon as Secretary of Education reveals this administration’s end game. Trump and his allies hope to destroy our public institutions in order to make themselves wealthier, leaving working class families and communities of color with fewer resources and support.
Case in point: Linda McMahon plans to carry out the Trump agenda to dismantle public education, threatening the quality of education received by Black, Latine, Indigenous, and other young people of color. Their goal is to replace public schools that serve all students with private schools that select the students they want to educate and segregate students by race and religion – taking us back to the days before Brown v. Board of Education.
To accomplish this, McMahon is intent on destroying the Department of Education, which has the power to protect public school students from discrimination and provide funding to overcome resource deficits in poorer school districts. She will carry out the president’s directive to divert federal education dollars to private schools instead of public schools. And finally, she has asserted her intent to punish schools that teach accurate US and world histories while encouraging white Christian nationalist propaganda in all public schools, universities, and federal programs.
Trump’s vision, as carried out by McMahon, will end public education as we know it and as we have fought for it to be. This will have catastrophic effects for millions of families as well as our country as a whole. We cannot afford to take this lying down. We need public schools and we need them to be fully funded and resourced.”
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Advancement Project is a next-generation, multi-racial civil rights organization. Rooted in the great human rights struggles for equality and justice, we exist to fulfill America’s promise of a caring, inclusive and just democracy. We use innovative tools and strategies to strengthen social movements and achieve high impact policy change. We are a co-convener of the National Campaign for Police Free schools, a formation of 20+ youth-led grassroots organizations fighting to end the criminalization of youth in the classroom, create liberatory educational spaces, and implement an affirmative vision of safety and transformative justice.Visit www.advancementproject.org to learn more.
