McMahon Testifies at the House Appropriations FY26 Budget Hearing, May 21, 2025
May 21, 2025 · Forbes Breaking News · 2:25:55
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What happened
Education Secretary Linda McMahon testified on the Department of Education’s fiscal year 2026 budget request before the House Appropriations Subcommittee on Labor, Health and Human Services, and Education on May 21, 2025, in Forbes Breaking News’ carry of the hearing — her first budget hearing as Secretary. McMahon opened by naming the mission directly, as she stated it: a department on a mission — its final mission, to wind down the Department of Education responsibly, cut waste, and give education back to the states, parents, and educators, all in a lawful fashion.
She told the subcommittee the department had reduced a workforce she described as overstaffed by thousands of positions, cut old contracts she said were enriching private parties at taxpayer expense, and suspended grants for what she called illegal DEI programs, and that the budget request reduced department funding by more than 15 percent. In questioning, she set out her program as three-fold, in her words: focus on literacy — a return to the science of reading, phonics, understanding, and fluency — increase school choice so children are not trapped in failing schools, and return education to the states. The hearing’s criticism was direct: the subcommittee’s ranking member, Rosa DeLauro, called the administration’s actions lawless and a dangerous dismantling of public education, and said she would never stop fighting against it, as she stated her position.
Why it matters
This is the hearing where the wind-down stopped being a slogan and became a budget line: the Secretary of Education asked the House money committee to fund her department at more than 15 percent less, in service of a stated final mission to give its work back to the states. The exchange with the ranking member fixed the terms of the fight that has followed the department since — lawful reorientation, as McMahon frames it, against unlawful dismantling, as her critics frame it.
Scoreboard watch
Scoreboard watch: Secretary McMahon’s statement to the House Appropriations subcommittee on May 21, 2025 that the fiscal year 2026 request reduces Department of Education funding by more than 15 percent, as she stated it. Flagged for the scoreboard editor; no entry is published from this page.
Sources: Forbes Breaking News, “Education Sec. Linda McMahon Grilled By Lawmakers In The House Appropriations Committee” (carry of the May 21, 2025 hearing, embedded above; testimony as delivered by Secretary McMahon and members of the subcommittee).
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