U.S. Secretary of Education Linda McMahon is taking a victory lap on protecting women’s sports and tackling leftist DEI initiatives and antisemitism on college campuses this year as she looks to further wind down the Department of Education in 2026.
In a broad-ranging interview with Breitbart News before Christmas, McMahon reflected on her victories at the Department of Education and her priorities for the new year, which include continuing to send more power back to states as she waits for Congress to fulfill President Donald Trump’s executive order mandating the elimination of the department.
McMahon said one of her favorite accomplishments is the department’s Title IX work protecting women’s sports from the incursion of transgender-identifying male athletes, and noted that men playing women’s sports “lacked common sense.”
“Title IX was established to give women equality in sports programs, and now to have transgenders participating — we saw things like a volleyball spiked into a woman’s face that broke her nose. We saw a fencer take a knee so that she didn’t have to compete. She was afraid that she was going to be injured.”
The Education Secretary specifically pointed to an agreement reached with the University of Pennsylvania ordering awards to be taken from trans-identifying male swimmer Lia Thomas and given to the female athletes who really deserved them.
“The agreement that we signed with the University of Pennsylvania, those trophies, and ribbons, and accolades that had gone to Lia Thomas were taken from [him] and awarded to those women who would’ve won those, but for that competition,” she said, adding that she is especially proud of the work women’s sports advocate Riley Gaines has done. Gaines notably became outspoken on the issue of men in women’s sports after competing against Thomas in 2022 and sharing a locker room with him.
“I think that was a huge win,” McMahon said.
McMahon also celebrated college admissions being “based on merit, not on race,” after bringing institutions of high education to heel on their diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) policies and ordering compliance with the Supreme Court’s 2023 ruling banning affirmative action.
“I think we’ve done a lot to protect students’ interests across the country, and hopefully, with our institutions of higher education, as we’re looking at merit-based admissions and merit-based promotions and hirings on those campuses,” she said. “This is not an attempt to dictate curriculum. While we have made it very clear that programs involving DEI will not be allowed for federal funding and [have] gotten some pushback on that, I think what we have found most of the time when we’re putting these measures in is that they are welcomed.”
The Department of Education additionally cracked down on antisemitism on college campuses that arose after the horrific October 7 attack on Israel perpetrated by Hamas terrorists.
“I think we made huge gains on university campuses relative to antisemitism and some of the practices that different universities like Columbia [University] had — [that one] certainly comes to mind,” she said, referring to the university’s $200 million dollar settlement with the Trump administration over allegations that school failed to stop antisemitism on campus.
“That was a big agreement that we were able to work out with Columbia, and they knew that they needed to put policies in place for the safety of not only Jewish students, but all students on campuses,” she continued. “There just cannot be any of these kinds of uprisings against any of the students. Antisemitism really did rear its ugly head on our college campuses, and we must make sure that all of our students feel safe.”
“When we first approached Columbia about the antisemitism that had been very flagrant on campus, they simply couldn’t deny it. I mean, it had been covered in the media, when you had students locked in the library and other students banging on the windows saying ‘death to Jews, death to Israel’ and making that campus environment unsafe,” she said. “The university knew that they needed to put stronger measures in place. I don’t think that any university was particularly pleased to have that federal funding being frozen for a while, but [they] realized that the administration was very serious about a change of what was happening on campus. And so the negotiations were thorough and complete, and I’m very happy with the outcome.”
McMahon views the department’s work on college affordability as another victory, particularly the caps on graduate program federal student loans in the “Big, Beautiful Bill,” and the launch of a tool for the Free Application for Federal Student Aid (FAFSA) that informs students and parents about post-graduation earning potential at different institutions before they take on student loan debt.
“One of the goals is to put some downward pressure on universities to make sure that the return on investment [is there] for students and parents who are sending their children to college,” she said.
She said the Department of Education additionally fixed up the FAFSA process after it was “just destroyed under the Biden administration.”
“We revamped it, retooled it, [and] put new bells and whistles in it,” she said. “It launched a month ahead of schedule. This time, two years ago, under the Biden administration, there were zero [applications]. A year ago, there were two million — so we absolutely increased, made it easier and quicker to fill out, and we were getting great responses from parents.”
McMahon said her department also caught major fraud in the Student Aid process and was able to prevent $1 billion in more fraud occurring. Earlier this year, the Department of Education uncovered that $90 million in federal student aid was fraudulently disbursed, including more than $30 million to deceased people and $40 million to companies using bots disguised as fake students.
“There were bots or ghost students, if you will, that had been receiving a lot of this money and never going into class or going to school. And of course, the institution got the portion they were supposed to get,” she said. “So, taxpayers were the ones who were footing this bill. We were able to stop, by this count so far, about $1 billion dollars in fraudulent payments that were going out the door and now are not.”
Besides college, McMahon said she has spent a lot of time emphasizing other career pathways that do not require four-year degrees.
“We’ve been working on changing the culture and the mindset relative to education in that regard because we do have a huge workforce shortage in the country,” she said.
“We need electricians and HVAC technicians, also AI in the world of technology. But all of that — I think we can get people into the workforce faster and reskill and retrain some who’ve already been in the workforce,” she said. “That is going to be a huge boost to the economy to be able to fulfill these jobs.”
McMahon said the new year is a chance to shift a little bit away from higher education and focus on elementary and secondary education.
“Number one is literacy,” she said of her top three priorities for 2026, pointing to abysmal National Assessment of Education Progress (NAEP) scores and learning losses.
“The next one is school choice and investing in school choice,” she said, noting the department’s record $500 million investment this year.
“The third top priority for me is really returning education to the states,” she continued. “That’s what we’re really going to be working on, and that falls in line with the president’s directive to eventually totally move education to the states and to make sure that the bureaucracy of the Department of Education doesn’t exist in Washington anymore.”
McMahon, who did order massive cuts to the Department of Education‘s workforce this year, did not speak to specific discussions with members of Congress about eliminating the department — officially ending the department would take an act of Congress, as it was Congress that created it 45 years ago under President Jimmy Carter. However, she detailed her work on interagency agreements (IAAs), which shift certain responsibilities away from the Department of Education to other departments.
“I think that’s really the first step [toward winding the department down], and we are doing it very methodically, very thoughtfully,” she said.
ED announced six IAAs with four departments in November aimed at “break[ing] up the federal education bureaucracy” after announcing its first one with the Department of Labor in July.
“This is not back of the envelope stuff. This is very thoughtful, and it involves everything down to parking spaces when you are detailing people over to one of the agencies, to the actual work in the department on the different programs,” she said.
McMahon said she sees more IAAs in the future, but the focus now is on smooth transitions with the existing agreements forged this year. The Secretary of Education said the IAAs are “all proof of concept” and will help show stakeholders and lawmakers that the department is not necessary.
“I am keeping Congress apprised through our Office of Legislative Affairs and personal phone calls and meetings, lunches and breakfasts with chairmen of committees, so they have a full understanding of what it is that we are trying to do,” McMahon said.
“I believe everyone wants to make sure that the needs of our students throughout the United States are served. I don’t think anyone can look at the scores that we have seen this year, the NAEP scores that were reported, and [think] that we were not failing our students because we clearly have,” she continued. “We need a hard reset in education in this country. That is the president’s directive, and we are working very hard to implement that [and] working with Congress, because it will ultimately take their vote to make these changes permanent.”
When pressed about the lack of congressional action and the potential for a future Democrat administration to reinstate all of the Biden administration LGBTQ+ and DEI indoctrination insanity she has worked so hard to eradicate, she said, “That’s why it’s just incredibly important to keep [lawmakers] in the loop and keep them informed.”
“The purpose for all of this is to get their comments, what they’re hearing from their constituents, to take their questions, to get their guidance,” she said. “This is not something that we’re doing in a vacuum. I think this is a very interactive process on the part of the Department of Education.”
Katherine Hamilton is a political reporter for Breitbart News. You can follow her on X @thekat_hamilton.