U.S. Senator Andy Kim, Democrat of New Jersey, likely spoke for many viewers of Secretary of Education appointee Linda McMahon’s Senate confirmation hearing last week when he said, while questioning McMahon, “I guess I’m frustrated . . . . This whole debate we’re having right now, it just feels like it’s untethered from just the reality on the ground.”
Kim’s frustration grew from his exchange with McMahon about President Donald Trump’s efforts to cut and dismantle the Department of Education, in particular, the department’s Office for Civil Rights, and how that squares with the department’s obligation to address what Kim described as “a surge in antisemitism” in schools and on college campuses. McMahon’s ensuing non-answer—she pledged only to examine “what the impact” of the cuts would be—was just one example of her tendency throughout the hearing to obfuscate or respond to questions with platitudes.
During the hearing, McMahon refused to give U.S. Senator Chris Murphy, Democrat of Connecticut, a clear answer to his question about whether schools that have race- or gender-related afterschool clubs are in violation of Trump’s executive order to eliminate federal grants to organizations that support diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI). Murphy called her lack of clarity “chilling.”
When Delaware Democratic Senator Lisa Blunt Rochester asked McMahon if she believed that every school receiving federal dollars should follow federal civil rights laws, McMahon said, “Schools should be required to follow the laws,” but refused to provide a straight answer when Blunt Rochester then asked, “If private schools take federal dollars, can they turn away a child based on a disability or religion or race?”
McMahon stated her resolve “to make sure that our children do have equal access to excellent education,” but said that was a responsibility “best handled at the state level”—even though the failure of states to ensure equal access was a major reason for the Department of Education’s creation in 1980.
While she affirmed that many of the education department’s programs were established by law—though she was unsure of how many—she suggested that legally established education department functions might be relocated to other federal departments. When asked what she would do if Trump ordered her to carry out a policy change that violated congressionally established law, McMahon said, “The President will not ask me to do anything that is against the law,” which hardly seems plausible.
McMahon’s comments at her confirmation hearing left news reporters unclear about exactly how or if McMahon would carry out Trump’s declaration to dismantle the department she professes to want to lead. A reporter for The New York Times described what McMahon did lay out as a “roundabout plan.”
But New Hampshire Democratic Senator Maggie Hassan likely captured the moment best when she said, during her own exchange with McMahon, “The whole hearing right now feels kind of surreal to me—it’s almost like we’re being subjected to a very elegant gaslighting here.”
Gaslighting—a process by which a person is psychologically manipulated through a pattern of comments or actions intended to make them question their perceptions of reality or accurate memories—more or less describes what Republicans have done with education policy for the past forty or fifty years.
If someone following education politics during the Reagan Administration had fallen into a coma and regained consciousness in February 2025, they would wholly recognize—with the exception of some contemporary issues like DEI—the arguments Republicans are still making: Call public education a failure. Check! Cut government funding of the system. Yep! Dismantle the Department of Education. Sure! And privatize everything. You betcha!
It’s clear why arch-conservative Republicans have resorted to gaslighting their opponents on the issue of public education: Because their real agenda for public schools is to get rid of them, or to undermine public education to the extent that it becomes the option of last resort for families. But Republicans can’t openly admit to this agenda, because it is hugely unpopular—even among many Republicans. So they instead are pursuing a death-by-a-thousand-cuts approach, all the while claiming their actions are taken for the sake of students around the country.
Although it’s important to call out gaslighting while it’s happening and to identify the perpetrators, it’s also essential to understand the impact of gaslighting on the victim. In the case of education policy, Democrats have, for years, displayed all the confusion, uncertainty, and dependency that are characteristic effects of the abuse, using the very same arguments that Republicans use for education policy and missing the much bigger picture of why public education is essential to the nation’s social, political, and economic infrastructure.
In their grilling of McMahon, for instance, Democratic Senators chose to challenge her views on educating specific student populations—those who have a learning disability, or who are racial, gender, or religious minorities.
While it’s certainly important to hear McMahon’s opinions on educating student populations that have historically been marginalized, especially in relation to the federal Department of Education, no one challenged her on whether a high-quality system of public education is important for all Americans, even wealthy white ones. Could she even make the argument? Could Trump? Would they agree, for instance, that it’s important to have a high-quality system of public education so voters can tell when politicians are lying to them and playing them for a fool?
Indeed, it was a Republican, Senator Lisa Murkowski from Alaska, who gave a detailed explanation as to why her party’s call for privatizing public education, via “school choice,” can’t work in places like rural Alaska that are challenged to provide any education opportunities at all.
So while rural Republican lawmakers can make that case to their constituencies, why can’t Democratic lawmakers do the same for urban communities?
McMahon cleared the committee she testified before and will likely be approved by the whole Senate, with support likely coming from Murkowski (Republicans have their own intraparty issues with gaslighting) and maybe even a few Democrats. And for the next four years, at least, we’re going to hear a lot of Democratic politicians taking the moral high ground to defend public schools. That’s all for the good. But until Democrats call out Republicans for what their real education policy agenda is, and clearly articulate a positive alternative, the country will keep kicking the education can down the road toward total calamity.