President Trump’s nominee for secretary of education, Linda McMahon, said at her confirmation hearing Thursday that she is prepared to work with Congress on a plan to close the “bureaucracy” at the Education Department and return schooling power and the related funding to the states. She conceded that Mr. Trump cannot unilaterally close the department, which several press outlets have reported the president is considering. 

Ms. McMahon was nominated to serve as education secretary after being passed over to lead the Commerce Department in the second Trump administration. During the first term, she led the Small Business Administration. 

Mr. Trump and his allies made education a central part of his 2024 campaign, saying that “divisive” concepts should not be taught in schools, which is part of their larger battle against diversity, equity, and inclusion. The head of the Department of Government Efficiency, Elon Musk, has said that he wants to start digging through the files at the agency to find waste, fraud, and abuse. Ms. McMahond says that Mr. Musk and the president will not be able to close the department, as they did with the U.S. Agency for International Development. 

“President Trump understands that we’ll be working with Congress,” Ms. McMahon said at her confirmation hearing. “We’d like to do this right. We’d like to make sure that we are presenting a plan that I think our senators could get on board with, and our Congress could get on board with, that would have a better functioning Department of Education, but it certainly does require congressional action.”

Ms. McMahon said that the president “has given a clear directive that he would like to look in totality at the Department of Education and believes that the bureaucracy of it should be closed.”

She did promise, however, that congressionally appropriated funds for things like accommodations for disabled students and civil rights investigations by the department will not be defunded. She says that it is still an important mission for the education department to offer baseline support for those students. 

Under questioning from Democrats, however, Ms. McMahon did not have explicit answers about how she plans to dismantle an agency that Mr. Trump wants to use to enforce his anti-DEI policies. 

“The whole hearing right now feels kind of surreal to me,” Senator Maggie Hassan of New Hampshire said. “It’s almost like we’re being subjected to a very elegant gaslighting. … You talked about the need to enforce protections for Jewish students on college campuses, but the very department where the enforcement would take place is the Department of Education, and he wants to eliminate it, and you say you’ll work with him.”

Ms. McMahon was pressed on how she plans to make sure all of the Education Department’s policies are in line with the president’s executive orders banning the teaching of “divisive concepts” related to race or gender. Mr. Trump’s order issued on January 29, titled, “Ending Radical Indoctrination in K–12 Schooling,” states that the education secretary will develop a plan aimed at “eliminating Federal funding or support for illegal and discriminatory treatment and indoctrination in K-12 schools, including based on gender ideology and discriminatory equity ideology.”

“If you’re running an African-American history class, could you perhaps be in violation of this … executive order?” Senator Chris Murphy, who beat the education secretary nominee in the 2012 Connecticut Senate race, asked. 

“I’m not quite certain,” Ms. McMahon responded. “I’d like to look into it further and get back to you on that.”