McMahon Takes Her Case to Gut the Education Department on the Road, and Parents Push Back

Education Secretary Linda McMahon is barnstorming the country to sell Americans on an unusual mission for a Cabinet official: dismantling the very department she runs. Her "Returning Education to the States" tour, which aims to touch all 50 states, has become the public face of President Trump's push to break up the federal education bureaucracy and hand its functions to state governments.

The tour, McMahon says, is a listening exercise, taking her to meet teachers, parents and community leaders and to compile a "toolkit of best practices" to distribute to states. But it doubles as a defense of one of the most contentious pieces of Trump's domestic agenda. In March, the president signed an executive order directing the department to begin winding itself down, arguing that decisions about schools and funding belong closer to families. That same month, McMahon announced cuts of roughly half the department's workforce.

Those moves triggered a wave of lawsuits, with opponents arguing that only Congress can abolish a Cabinet department it created. The legal fight reached the Supreme Court, which in July allowed the workforce cuts to proceed while litigation continues — a significant procedural win for the administration, though not a final ruling on the department's fate. Fully eliminating the agency would still require congressional approval, an unlikely prospect given near-unanimous Democratic opposition and the votes such a step would demand.

The road show has not been uniformly warm. McMahon has drawn pushback on a parallel "History Rocks!" civics tour, pitched as a celebration of the nation's approaching 250th birthday, with some parents accusing the administration of politicizing the classroom under the banner of patriotism. Critics contend the states-first framing masks what is really a retreat from Washington's role in protecting students, from enforcing civil-rights laws to steering billions in aid to low-income and disabled children.

Supporters counter that the department, created in 1979, has spent decades expanding without measurably improving outcomes, and that returning authority to states will cut bureaucracy and let local officials tailor education to their communities. McMahon has leaned into that message on the tour, casting the effort as empowerment rather than abandonment and insisting core funding streams will continue to flow.

The outcome remains far from settled. With courts weighing the limits of executive power, Congress unwilling to formally dissolve the agency, and a presidential campaign season looming, the Education Department exists in a kind of limbo — hollowed out by staff cuts and policy shifts, yet still legally intact. McMahon's cross-country pitch is, in effect, an argument made in advance of a decision that neither she nor the president can make alone.