Trump’s Education Pick Refuses to Answer One Very Easy Question

Trump’s nominee for education secretary refused to say whether classes like African American history would be allowed in public schools under his administration.

Former WWE executive Linda McMahon faced questioning from Senator Chris Murphy during her Senate confirmation hearing Thursday regarding the specifics of her anti-DEI enforcement plans.

“West Point has closed down all ethnic clubs. So the Society of Black Engineers can no longer meet because they believe that to be in compliance with this order they cannot have groups structured around ethnic or racial affiliations,” the Connecticut senator began, referring to how the military academy responded to Trump’s executive order striking all diversity, equity, and inclusion programs from the federal government. “Would public schools be in violation of this order, would they risk funding if they had clubs that students could belong to based on their racial or ethnic identity?”

‘Well I certainly today don’t want to address … hypothetical situations,” McMahon said, sidestepping the question. “I would like, once I’m confirmed, to get in and assess these programs—”

“Isn’t that a pretty easy one?” Murphy interrupted. “You’re saying that it’s a possibility that if a school has a club for Vietnamese American students, or Black students, where they meet after school, that they could be potentially in jeopardy of receiving federal funding?”

“Again, I would like to fully understand what that order is and what those clubs are doing.”

“That’s pretty chilling,” Murphy said, in response to McMahon’s spineless attempt to avoid admitting that the Trump administration would regulate cultural clubs and activities. “I think schools all around the country are gonna hear that. What about educational programming centered around specific ethnic and racial experiences? My son is in a public school; he takes a class called African American history. If you’re running an African American history class, could you perhaps be in violation of this executive order?”

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

“So there’s a possibility … that public schools that run African American history classes … a class that has been taught in school for decades, could lose federal funding if they continue to teach African American history?”

“No, that’s not what I’m saying. I’m saying that I would like to take a look at these programs and fully understand the breadth of the executive order and get back to you on that” McMahon desperately tried to backtrack.

She did not expound on exactly what “looking into” African American history programs entailed.

“I think you’re gonna have a lot of educators, and a lot of principals and administrators scrambling right now,” Murphy warned. “My time is expired.”

It looks like Elon Musk’s takeover of the federal government could put people’s lives at risk across the world.

USAID provided, among other things, funding for groups advocating for human rights and democratic reforms in states mired by autocratic regimes, as a form of U.S. soft power in places such as Russia. When Musk gutted the agency earlier this month, he baselessly claimed that USAID was “laundering” taxpayer funds into far-left sources.

Now Russia wants to know exactly where the money was going. Vyacheslav Volodin, speaker of the Russian State Duma, asked the U.S. Tuesday for a list of individuals and opposition groups in Russia who received money from USAID.

“If they recognized the organization as an enemy, let them give us the lists,” Volodin said, according to The Times of London.

“Congress will send us the lists—we will give them to the FSB,” he continued, referring to the Federal Security Service of the Russian Federation.

Volodin bragged that exiled opposition figures would be left “hungry and cold” without funding from USAID. “Those who received money from abroad, now let them publicly confess and repent on Red Square,” he said.

It’s unclear whether Congress, or the U.S. government, will comply with Volodin’s request, but Donald Trump has made it more than clear that he’s not opposed to giving in to every one of Russia’s demands.

The president bragged Wednesday about a friendly phone call with Russian President Vladimir Putin to start negotiations to end its invasion of Ukraine. This week, his secretary of defense ruled out NATO membership for Ukraine, and said that it was “unrealistic” to expect Russia to forfeit all of its illegally claimed territory. (Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth has since sort of walked back the NATO claim.)

If Musk or Trump genuinely believes that the U.S. was wrongly funding these groups, there is no reason why they wouldn’t readily supply this information to the Russian government, which is not only historically hostile to the U.S., but takes extreme measures to stamp out dissent within its borders.

But this U.S. administration is so far notably less hostile to autocrats, and practically uninterested in democracy.

Should Musk comply, there are many others who might be at risk abroad. As Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency sinks its teeth into the far corners of the federal government, it’s clear that there are significant national security risks involved, particularly where its intelligence agencies are involved.

The Senate confirmed Robert F. Kennedy Jr. Wednesday to run the Department of Health and Human Services, primarily along party lines. Fifty-two Republican senators voted in favor of Kennedy, a known conspiracy theorist, to front America’s health policy, while 45 Democrats, one Republican, and two independent senators remained opposed.

Senator Mitch McConnell—a childhood polio survivor—was the singular Republican holdout against Kennedy, marking the third time that the Kentucky lawmaker has voted against one of Donald Trump’s nominees.

“Mr. Kennedy failed to prove he is the best possible person to lead America’s largest health agency,” McConnell said in a statement. “As he takes office, I sincerely hope Mr. Kennedy will choose not to sow further doubt and division but to restore trust in our public health institutions.”

Per Trump, Kennedy will spend his time atop America’s public health agency researching the already thoroughly debunked conspiracy that ties vaccine usage to increased autism rates. But Kennedy’s appointment will also have him oversee a budget of nearly $2 trillion and a staff of 90,000 federal employees, as well as hand him the reins of critical health programs under the fold of HHS, such as the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services.  (Dr. Mehmet Oz, the reality TV host and similarly failed 2024 presidential candidate, has been tapped to lead CMS, though a date for his confirmation hearing has not yet been set.)

The 71-year-old’s “Make America Healthy Again” agenda has not been laid out in specifics, but Kennedy has vaguely promised to tackle the nation’s rising obesity rates, SNAP benefits (formerly known as food stamps), and has claimed he will work the Department of Agriculture to eradicate ultra-processed foods from the American market.

Kennedy’s history in public health is questionable at best. His stances, which include unscientific beliefs that AIDS is not caused by HIV and that a large number of vaccines should be stripped from the market, could have major impacts on the agency designed to protect America’s health, especially as bird flu outbreaks begin to dot the country.

And Kennedy’s conspiratorial policies have been tied to legitimate harm halfway across the world. Preceding a deadly measles outbreak on Samoa in 2019, Kennedy’s anti-vax nonprofit Children’s Health Defense spread rampant misinformation about the efficacy of vaccines throughout the nation, sending the island’s vaccination rate plummeting from the 60–70 percent range to just 31 percent, according to Mother Jones.

That year, the country reported 5,707 cases of measles—an illness that the U.S. declared eliminated in 2000 thanks to advancements in modern medicine (read: vaccines)—as well as 83 measles-related deaths, the majority of which were children under the age of 5.

The virulent vaccine conspiracy theorist faced a slew of criticism throughout his confirmation hearings, including condemnation for making millions of dollars off his dangerous vaccine rhetoric, which included money stemming from speaking fees, dividends from his vaccine lawsuits, and leading Children’s Health Defense. His aggressive, anti-scientific approach to medicine made at least one senator emotional during his hearing before the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions.

New Hampshire Senator Maggie Hassan argued, at the time, that Kennedy’s cashflow from “relitigating and churning settled science” was making it “impossible” for the medical community to move forward with legitimate research into autism and other disabilities.

The hearings also uncovered that Kennedy had paid close to $1 million to settle a sexual misconduct case brought by one of the employees at Children’s Health Defense, despite repeatedly denying what he had described as “frivolous, unfounded allegations” against him. But that wasn’t the only sexual assault claim against him: In 2024, Kennedy was accused of (and sort of apologized for) groping his children’s babysitter, Eliza Cooney, in the late 1990s.

The myriad details of Kennedy’s private life—as well as his virulent anti-vax prerogatives—gave pause to a number of lawmakers on the Hill. Kennedy has publicly admitted to dumping a dead bear cub in Central Park, believed the 2004 presidential election was stolen from Democrat John Kerry, peddled conspiracies that the CIA killed his uncle, chain-sawed off the head of a dead whale (per his daughter Kick Kennedy), and late last month was described by his cousin Caroline Kennedy as a “predator” who is “addicted to attention and power.”

In a late January missive to lawmakers, Kennedy’s 2024 running mate Nicole Shanahan promised to “personally fund challengers” to primary senators who dared to vote against Kennedy.

“I will make it my personal mission that you lose your seats in the Senate if you vote against the future health of America’s children,” the Silicon Valley lawyer and investor said in a video statement at the time. “You’re either on the side of transparency and accountability, or you’re standing in the way.”

Just a reminder before Kennedy’s tenure attempts to rewrite history: Since their invention, vaccines have proven to be one of the greatest accomplishments of modern medicine. The medical shots are so effective at preventing illness that they have practically eradicated some of the worst diseases from our collective culture, from rabies to polio and smallpox—a fact that has possibly fooled some into believing that the viruses and their complications aren’t a significant threat for the average, health-conscious individual.

This story has been updated.

The pseudo-president of the United States is calling for entire government agencies to be “deleted.”

“I think we do need to delete entire agencies, as opposed to leave part of them behind.... It’s kind of like leaving a weed,” Elon Musk told the World Governments Summit in Dubai in a video speech Thursday. “If you don’t remove the roots of the weed, then it’s easy for the weed to grow back. But if you remove the roots of the weed—it doesn’t stop weeds from ever going back, but it makes it harder.”

The tech mogul was asked about the changes he has been making with his Department of Government Efficiency, and he decided to crow on and on about his newest pet project of dismantling the whole federal government.

“So we have to really delete entire agencies, many of them,” Musk said. “And that’s not to say there won’t be an increase over time of bureaucracy in some new administration, but it will be from a much lower baseline. So certainly it’s a step in the right direction.”

So far, Musk has taken a sledgehammer to the U.S. Agency for International Development, setting off alarm bells, and is already axing programs and grants at the Department of Education. His vision aligns with that of President Trump, who promised to wipe out the department while campaigning for president.

Musk’s decisions are having drastic consequences all over the world, with even medical research under threat. Meanwhile, his own conflicts of interest continue, including a $400 million contract for the U.S. government to buy armored Tesla vehicles. It begs the question of how much the tech CEO is personally benefiting from his so-called efficiency crusade.

The State Department was set to buy $400 million worth of armored Teslas from Elon Musk over the next five years. But after a report from Drop Site News on Wednesday exposed the massive conflict of interest, the department quietly deleted the word “Tesla” and changed the $400 million line item to a generic “armored electric vehicles.”

“After @DropSiteNews revealed Tesla was forecast to be given a $400 million contract for “Armored Tesla,” the State Department altered its spreadsheet to obscure Tesla’s role,” Ryan Grim wrote on X. “Metadata shows the spreadsheet was revised several hours after our story published.”

“I’m pretty sure Tesla isn’t getting $400M. No one mentioned it to me, at least,” Musk wrote on X.

The “armored Tesla” notation was made in December 2024, a month after Trump was elected.  

The State Department did not respond to Drop Site News when asked about the sudden edit in the federal contact.

The question then is: Was this just a very dubious mistake? Or a clear cover-up?