U.S. Sen. Chris Van Hollen, a Maryland Democrat, decries President Donald Trump’s recent education initiatives and choice of Linda McMahon to lead the U.S. Department of Education during a press conference Tuesday, Feb. 4, 2025, on Capitol Hill in Washington, D.C. (Photo by Shauneen Miranda/States Newsroom)
WASHINGTON — Maryland Democratic U.S. Sen. Chris Van Hollen, alongside advocates and labor union leaders, on Tuesday lambasted President Donald Trump’s sweeping education initiatives since he took office and his choice of Linda McMahon to lead the U.S. Education Department.
Trump’s vast campaign vision to “save American education” is already coming to fruition after he signed a series of executive orders last week focused on prioritizing school choice funding, ending what the administration sees as “radical indoctrination in K-12 schooling” and taking “additional measures to combat anti-semitism.”
The White House said its executive order regarding school choice funding “recognizes that parents, not the government, play a fundamental role in choosing and directing the upbringing and education of their children,” per a fact sheet.
Reports have also surfaced that the president could soon issue an executive order that would dismantle the Education Department — perhaps his most far-reaching campaign promise in the realm of education.
Demonstrators outside the U.S. Capitol hailed from organizations within the Alliance to Reclaim Our Schools, a national coalition focused on protecting public education.
“If you look at the first two weeks — and my God, it’s only been two weeks since President Trump was sworn in — you can see that there’s a direct attack on our goal of trying to make sure that every child, regardless of ZIP code, gets a quality education,” Van Hollen said.
Advocates also expressed their support for legislation Van Hollen reintroduced in January alongside Nevada Democratic Rep. Susie Lee that would “put Congress on a fiscally responsible path to fully fund Title I and the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) on a mandatory basis.”
The Education Department administers Title I funds, which provide billions of dollars to school districts with high percentages of students who come from low-income families.
The Individuals with Disabilities Education Act, or IDEA, guarantees a free public education for children with disabilities.
Education secretary nominee
Van Hollen also criticized McMahon’s sparse education record and underscored reporting that found she claimed on a questionnaire for a Connecticut education board seat that she had a bachelor’s in education, but in fact had not earned that degree.
McMahon was on the Connecticut Board of Education for just over a year and a member of the board of trustees at Sacred Heart University in Fairfield, Connecticut.
McMahon is a former World Wrestling Entertainment executive, the prior head of the Small Business Administration during Trump’s first administration and a wealthy donor to the Trump campaign.
She has yet to sit before a Senate panel regarding her nomination. If confirmed, McMahon could be pivotal to carrying out Trump’s education agenda.
“I’m trying to figure out what her background has been in education, and you need to search far and wide, and I can tell you, even after you do that, you’re not going to find anything,” Van Hollen said.
Major labor unions speak out
Becky Pringle, president of the National Education Association, the country’s largest labor union, said none of the administration’s “vicious and vengeful and villainous attacks has the power to sway us from our vision and our values, despite the damage and the chaos” created since he took office.
Pringle added that “our students must never pay the price for tax cuts to billionaires who funded this president’s campaign, the billionaires who are positioned to take Cabinet posts they are supremely unqualified for.”
Fedrick Ingram, secretary-treasurer of the American Federation of Teachers, one of the nation’s largest teachers unions, described Trump as a “bully.”
“We would not teach this to our children — if we did this in schools, we would be fired,” he said.
“What we are coming to you to say is, Mr. Trump, we need help in our schools. We don’t need you to dismantle our schools. We don’t need you to strike fear in our schools. We don’t need you to take the money away from our schools.”
“We need you to pour into those teachers who give their life, blood and soul to those kids every single day.”