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AMY GOODMAN: This is Democracy Now!, democracynow.org, The War and Peace Report.
We end today’s show looking at President-elect Trump’s latest nominees. Trump has nominated billionaire Linda McMahon to head the Department of Education, which Trump has pledged to shut down. McMahon is the former CEO of World Wrestling Entertainment. She headed the Small Business Administration during Trump’s first term. She gave at least $15 million to a pro-Trump PAC during this election.
She and her husband Vince McMahon were recently sued for failing to stop a WWE ringside announcer from sexually assaulting young boys. Vince McMahon also has been sued by a former WWE employee who accused him of sexual assault and of trafficking her to other men.
We’re joined now by the education historian Diane Ravitch, who served as assistant secretary of education under President George H.W. Bush.
Diane Ravitch, thanks so much for joining us. In these few minutes we have with you, talk about this latest nomination by President-elect Trump. Talk about McMahon.
DIANE RAVITCH: Well, I had to learn about her, because she is not someone who’s been engaged in the field of education at all. She led the Small Business Administration in the previous Trump term. President-elect Trump has a habit of choosing people who have either a desire to destroy the department or who have no experience. She falls into the latter category: She does not have any experience in education, although she spent one year on a Connecticut state Board of Education, but, otherwise, she’s a businesswoman. She would have been well qualified to head the Commerce Department, and apparently that’s the job she wanted.
But her job now, according to Project 2025 and everything that Trump has said, is to eliminate the Department of Education. She is not qualified to run the department, because she doesn’t know anything about it. And it’s hard to say whether or not Congress will go along with the president’s desire. He cannot single-handedly abolish the Department of Education. This is something that has to be done, if at all, by Congress.
AMY GOODMAN: Well, let me ask you something. She gave more than $7 million to two pro-Trump super PACs in 2016, as well, this year, gave $10 million to the Make America Great Again PAC. President Trump says, “We will send Education BACK TO THE STATES, and Linda will spearhead that effort.” What would it mean if the Department of Education were shut down?
DIANE RAVITCH: Well, what Project 2025 says is that they’re going to block grant all the federal funding. What that means is that they will take whatever money is currently going to the states, send it to the states with no strings. So, right now when a state gets money for Title I, it goes to schools that have a lot of poor children. When they get money for children with disabilities, it goes to schools that have children with disabilities. With the block granting, which is what they have in mind, there would be no strings attached. They could divert that money for other purposes.
So, Project 2025 says that at some point the federal funding would simply stop. And they’re really saying to the states, “We’re going to take away your federal funding. Here it is. You can have it now. But eventually it will dry up, and you’ll have to take care of your own federal moneys — or, not federal moneys, make it up from state moneys.” What that means is basically going back to 1965, where there were vast inequities among the states, which was the reason for passing federal aid to education. It was an equity measure. And that equity measure will be wiped out.
AMY GOODMAN: A final question. This from The New York Times: She’s “played an influential role in laying the groundwork for a second Trump presidency as the chair of the America First Policy Institute,” which “has set out a more immediate list of changes it says could be achieved through vastly changing the department’s priorities. Those include stopping schools from ‘promoting inaccurate and unpatriotic concepts’ [quote-unquote] about American history surrounding institutionalized racism, and expanding” voucher programs. She has always talked about being pro-choice, not in terms of abortion, but in terms of privatizing schools.
DIANE RAVITCH: That’s, unfortunately, continuing a trend that started long ago under, I guess, Reagan, although Reagan was not able to do anything to make it happen. But choice got embedded into No Child Left Behind, with the charter school movement, and then the charter school movement turned into the voucher movement, and now about half of the states — almost all of them red states — do have voucher programs. And these voucher programs enroll children who are predominantly well-to-do. They’re not helping kids who are poor. Most of the kids who take vouchers never attended a public school. So, the voucher program is a subsidy for kids who are already in private and religious schools, and it’s been a tremendous boon for religious schools. And when you add that to the Supreme Court having lowered the bar for religious — for sending public money to religious institutions, we’re heading towards a wipeout for the wall of separation between church and state. I think that when Linda McMahon —
AMY GOODMAN: Education historian Diane Ravitch, I want to thank you — I want to thank you for being with us. We’re going to have to leave it there. We’re going to continue to look at this, former assistant secretary of education under George H.W. Bush.
