Senators grill McMahon on Trump education cuts, civil rights reductions
McMahon faced senators over a $76.5 billion education budget that would wipe out TRIO and GEAR UP and slash civil-rights enforcement.
Linda McMahon faced senators on Capitol Hill over a Trump education budget that would cut federal support for college access programs, shrink civil-rights enforcement and push the Education Department further toward the edge of elimination. The hearing, held at 10 a.m. in Dirksen Senate Office Building 124, put the practical effect of the administration’s plan under a microscope: which students lose help first, and who will enforce the rules when schools discriminate.
McMahon appeared before the Senate Labor, Health and Human Services, Education, and Related Agencies Appropriations Subcommittee to review President Trump’s fiscal year 2027 request for the Education Department. In prepared remarks, she said the administration’s goal was to “sunset” a 46-year-old, $3 trillion federal education bureaucracy and hand more authority to parents, teachers and local leaders. It was her first appearance on Capitol Hill this year and another test of a secretary sworn in on March 3, 2025, as the administration’s education overhaul moved through the budget process.
The numbers drew the sharpest scrutiny. The White House plan would trim the department’s discretionary funding by 2.9% to $76.5 billion, eliminate federal funding for TRIO and GEAR UP, and cut the Office for Civil Rights budget by 35%. Those reductions would hit students and schools in very specific ways: low-income and first-generation college students who rely on TRIO, young people in GEAR UP programs trying to get to college, and rural districts that depend on federal support and were a focus of Susan Collins’s questions.
Patty Murray pressed McMahon on what Democrats framed as an effort to dismantle the department and cut investments in students, while Chris Murphy focused on the consequences for civil-rights enforcement. The Education Department says the Office for Civil Rights enforces federal civil rights laws in schools and other recipients of federal funding and operates through five regional offices. Advocates have warned that office is already understaffed and under pressure, making any further cut more than an accounting exercise.
The hearing came after Congress recently rejected a similar Trump administration push to slash education spending and consolidate programs into block grants. That history gave the exchanges added weight: senators were not just debating an abstract budget, but whether Washington would keep paying for college access, rural aid and civil-rights oversight, or leave those decisions to states and local systems already under strain.
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