Democratic senator tells McMahon ‘students will pay price’ for plan to dismantle education department
Baldwin says she is “deeply concerned” the administration is planning to “illegally impound [congressionally appropriated] funds and dismantle the department of education” adding: “It will be students who pay the price.”
“But if the executive branch is allowed to do that and ignore the laws we [Congress] pass, I’m not sure what we’re doing here,” Baldwin says.
Key events
Republican senator Katie Britt asks about funding for charter school programs, which in the budget proposal is raised by $50m to $600m. She asks how these funds will be used to expand options particularly in rural and underserved communities so parents have “more choice” for their children.
McMahon says “no child should be trapped in a failing school”, which led Trump to want to expand funding for charter schools. She says the “freedom of choice” you get with charter schools is important.
For context, as my colleague Marina Dunbar wrote last month: “Charter schools are set up as alternatives to traditional public schools. They typically operate under private management and often feature small class sizes, innovative teaching styles or a particular academic focus.”
Last month the supreme court blocked an attempt led by two Catholic dioceses to establish in Oklahoma the nation’s first taxpayer-funded religious charter school in a major case involving religious rights in US education that challenged the constitutional separation of church and state.
Marina writes: “Opponents have said religious charter schools would force taxpayers to support religious indoctrination. Establishing them also could undermine non-discrimination principles, they argued, because religious charter schools might seek to bar employees who do not adhere to doctrinal teachings.”
Democratic senator Dick Durbin grills McMahon on why they’re cutting the borrower defense branch of the education department, which supports students who have been left “exploited” and struggling to pay off debt after attending for-profit schools.
After stumbling over what the department is doing to address the problem, McMahon points to counsellors in schools who can provide support to those students, before Durbin cuts her off to point out that, as we’ve just heard, the administration is reducing funding for those very counsellors too.
Republican senator, Shelley Moore Capito, asks how they plan to ensure that Jewish students are able to learn in an environment free from intimidation on college campuses given the budget proposes to decrease the office of civil rights.
Education secretary, Linda McMahon, says actions taken on Columbia University and also Harvard illustrate that the administration “will not tolerate antisemitism on campuses or discrimination of any kind”. Those actions include moves to prevent encampments and mask-wearing (a reference to pro-Palestine protests last year).
“We are actively enforcing that and we have defunded [programs at Columbia and Harvard,” McMahon says. “We’re saying we mean business.”
Democratic senator Tammy Baldwin asks McMahon if she does not believe that “increasing students’ access to mental health support is not in the best interests of the federal government”.
McMahon says they’re not looking to eliminate the funding, but plan to allow the states to rebid on a competitive grant basis.
Democratic senator presses McMahon on whether administration plans to spend Congress-appropriated funds
Baldwin says that during her confirmation hearing McMahon had said funds appropriated by Congress “should be disseminated”.
“Now we have a budget request that significantly cuts funding for public schools, students and educators,” Baldwin says, adding that $8bn remains “unallocated”.
“Are you going to allocate all of the funding that Congress appropriated for students and schools … across the country this year?” she asks McMahon.
She interrupts as McMahon begins to answer to say that the question isn’t “nuanced”. “Congress passed a law appropriating this funding, you said in your confirmation hearing that you would spend funding Congress appropriated.
“If the answer isn’t simply ‘yes’, based on all the evidence before us that leads me to believe that you are planning to withhold funding and shortchange students and families across America.”
McMahon says the budget will take a significant step towards the goal of shrinking federal bureaucracy, cutting waste and giving education back to the states.
Democratic senator tells McMahon ‘students will pay price’ for plan to dismantle education department
Baldwin says she is “deeply concerned” the administration is planning to “illegally impound [congressionally appropriated] funds and dismantle the department of education” adding: “It will be students who pay the price.”
“But if the executive branch is allowed to do that and ignore the laws we [Congress] pass, I’m not sure what we’re doing here,” Baldwin says.
For this fiscal year, $13bn remain “unallocated” Baldwin says, calling it “flatly unprecedented and unacceptable”.
“The lack of transparency combined with this budget request raises serious questions about what are you trying to hide and why?” says Baldwin.
“This administration seems focused above all else on dismantling the department of education to score political points regardless of the impact on tens of millions of public school students,” she goes on.
There is a feed at the top of the blog if you would like to follow along.
Education secretary Linda McMahon testifies about education budget in Senate hearing
Secretary of education, Linda McMahon, is testifying before the Senate appropriations committee on the education department’s budget 2026 request. I’ll bring you all the key lines here.
Pentagon to redraw command map to more closely align Greenland with the US – Politico
The Pentagon is poised to shift its oversight of Greenland by putting it under US Northern Command, “a symbolic gesture that would more closely align the island territory with the US”, Politico reports, adding: “The switch is the most concrete step yet in the Trump administration’s months-long effort to gain ownership over the autonomous island.”
The shift in oversight would see Greenland moved from European Command’s jurisdiction to Northern Command, which is responsible for overseeing the security of North America – and could come as soon as this week, a DOD official and two people familiar with the planning told Politico. Denmark and the semi-autonomous Faroe Islands, on the other hand, would remain under European Command, “creating a symbolic and operational split between those territories and Greenland”.
One of the people told Politico:
From the perspective of geography, the move makes some sense. From a political perspective, however, this clearly is going to worry Europe.
Trump privately complains about Amy Coney Barrett and other supreme court justices he nominated – CNN
Donald Trump has privately complained that the supreme court justices he appointed have not sufficiently stood behind his agenda, CNN reports, citing multiple sources familiar with the conversations, with particular ire at Justice Amy Coney Barrett, his most recent appointee.
The president has also expressed frustration about Justices Neil Gorsuch and Brett Kavanaugh, the sources told CNN, and his complaints have gone on for at least a year.
According to the sources, Trump’s private anger at Barrett “has been fuelled by allies on the right who have told Trump privately that Barrett is ‘weak’ and that her rulings have not been in line with how she presented herself in an interview before Trump nominated her to the bench in 2020”.
Causing anger in Trump’s orbit was Barrett’s vote in March to reject the president’s plan to freeze nearly $2bn in foreign aid, her decision that allowed Trump to be sentenced in his New York hush money case last year, and her decision to recuse herself from a high-profile case questioning whether a Catholic charter school in Oklahoma should be entitled to taxpayer funding (she had ties to the attorneys representing the school).
CNN notes:
Much of the criticism from the right has overlooked the fact that Barrett remains a reliable vote for conservative outcomes at the supreme court. She did not dissent in recent cases allowing Trump to enforce his ban on transgender service members, end temporary deportation protections for Venezuelans, fire board members at independent agencies and cut millions in education grants.
And yet Barrett is nevertheless one of the most important justices to watch because she does, at times, break with the more rigid conservativism embraced by [Clarence] Thomas and [Samuel] Alito. A year ago, when the supreme court was hearing arguments about whether to grant Trump sweeping immunity from criminal prosecution, it was Barrett who was at the center of some of the most compelling exchanges with Trump’s attorney. Barrett was one of several justices who prodded Trump’s attorney to agree that a president’s ‘private’ actions would not qualify for immunity.
But when the court’s decision landed in July, Barrett ultimately sided with the court’s conservatives to grant immunity to Trump.
Adam Gabbatt
After Joe Biden revealed his cancer diagnosis, Donald Trump offered an uncharacteristically empathetic and simple response.
“Melania and I are saddened to hear about Joe Biden’s recent medical diagnosis. We extend our warmest and best wishes to Jill and the family, and we wish Joe a fast and successful recovery,” Trump wrote on social media.
But the compassion didn’t last long. Trump soon reverted to type, dabbling in a burgeoning rightwing conspiracy theory about Biden’s health and comparing the former president, who has stage four prostate cancer, to a corpse, as Trump’s hangers-on and acolytes used the diagnosis to attack Biden and his wife.
Trump posted his well-wishing message on 18 May, after Biden’s office announced the 82-year-old had been diagnosed with an “aggressive form” of prostate cancer that has spread to his bones.
The president’s tone changed quickly, however. Trump spent Memorial Day – which the Department of Defense describes as being intended to “honor all those who died in service to the US during peacetime and war”, attacking his one time rival and his time in office. “Happy Memorial Day to all,” the president wrote on Truth Social.
Including the scum that spent the last four years trying to destroy our country through warped radical left minds, who allowed 21,000,000 million people to illegally enter our country, many of them being criminals and the mentally insane, through an open border that only an incompetent president would approve, and through judges who are on a mission to keep murderers, drug dealers, rapists, gang members, and released prisoners from all over the world, in our country so they can rob, murder, and rape again – all protected by these USA hating judges who suffer from an ideology that is sick, and very dangerous for our country.
It was clear that Trump’s “warmest and best wishes” to Biden had been firmly retracted, and that became even more transparent as Trump went on to promote an emerging, fact-free, theory that Biden hid the cancer diagnosis while in office.
“I’m surprised that the public wasn’t notified a long time ago because to get to stage nine, that’s a long time,” Trump said – seemingly conflating the Gleason score, which measures how cancerous cells look compared with normal cells, with Biden’s stage four cancer.
