Trump Education Secretary Gets Embarrassing Math Lesson in Hearing

The U.S. secretary of education is having issues with basic math. 

Linda McMahon testified on Trump’s 2026 budget before the Senate on Tuesday. While discussing spending on federal grants programs for disadvantaged students—TRIO and the Gaining Early Awareness and Readiness for Undergraduate Programs, or GEAR UP—she made a massive math error. 

“We spend $1.58 billion a year on TRIO?” Republican Senator John Kennedy asked McMahon. 

“Yes,” she replied. 

“That’s one thousand five hundred and eighty million dollars a year? Is my math right?” Kennedy said, spelling out $1.58 billion.  

“I think that’s right, sir.” 

“And how long have we been spending one thousand five hundred and eighty million a year on this program?” he asked.

“I’m not sure the total length and time of the program.” 

“More than 10 years?”

“Yes.” 

“So that’s over a trillion dollars that we’ve spent on this program.... We give this money, as I appreciate it, to colleges and universities to encourage poor kids to go to college,” Kennedy said to no objection from McMahon, before going on to insinuate that the colleges were stealing this grant money from the government for their own purposes. 

Democratic Senator John Reed jumped in to check the math, as both Kennedy and the education secretary were way off.

“I’m not a great mathematician, but I think you were talking about a trillion dollars? I believe $1.5 billion times 10 is $15 billion, and that’s a little bit off from a trillion dollars,” Reed stated, referring to Kennedy and McMahon’s claim.

“I think the budget cuts $1.2 billion,” McMahon responded. 

“Well that would be $12 billion, not a trillion dollars,” said Reed, calmly holding McMahon and Kennedy’s hands through what amounted to a third-grade math lesson. 

“OK,” McMahon said stiffly. 

The hearing was a mess in other ways, as well. McMahon also refused to clarify to Senator Tammy Baldwin whether or not she would distribute congressionally appropriated funds for after-school programs.

“What we have done in putting forward our operating plan, the first operating plan to show where we’re making allocations, and then followed up with the second operating plan—”

“This isn’t a nuanced question,” Baldwin interrupted. “Congress passed a law appropriating this funding. You said in your confirmation hearing 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 short-change schools, students, and families across America.” 

Donald Trump decided to start his Tuesday morning by attacking Republican Senator Rand Paul.

“Rand Paul has very little understanding of the BBB, especially the tremendous GROWTH that is coming,” Trump angrily posted on Truth Social, referring to the budget bill. “He loves voting ‘NO’ on everything, he thinks it’s good politics, but it’s not. The BBB is a big WINNER!!!”

“Rand votes NO on everything, but never has any practical or constructive ideas,” he posted again five minutes later. “His ideas are actually crazy (losers!). The people of Kentucky can’t stand him. This is a BIG GROWTH BILL!”

The attack comes as Trump’s “big, beautiful bill,” which is predicted to make 13.7 million Americans lose health care over the next decade, faces an uphill battle in the Senate. Paul has said he’ll support the bill only if it removes language raising the debt ceiling. The House version of the bill would raise the debt ceiling by $4 trillion, while the Senate version would raise it by $5 trillion—which the Kentucky senator finds outrageous.

“If they were to separate out and take the debt ceiling off that, I very much could consider the rest of the bill,” Paul told reporters on Monday.

Paul also said he “had a lengthy discussion” with Trump this week in which he expressed his thoughts on the bill. But if Trump’s Truth Social rants Tuesday morning are any indication, that call didn’t go exactly as the president planned.

A meteorologist at NBC6 in Miami took time from his weather report to call out the “gutting” federal cuts that have left the National Weather Service understaffed, underinformed, and with a quality of forecast that is considerably lower than it’s been in recent years, making it harder to accurately track hurricanes this upcoming season.  

Veteran meteorologist John Morales opened his segment with a six-year old clip of him accurately reporting on the path of Hurricane Dorian. 

“Confidently, I went on TV and I told you, ‘It’s going to turn. You don’t need to worry. It is going to turn,’” he said, referring to the NWS’s hurricane prediction ability. “And I am here to tell you that I am not sure I can do that this year, because of the cuts, the gutting, the sledgehammer attack on science in general.… This is a multigenerational impact on science in this country.”

Morales first noted that all central and south Florida NWS sites are around 20 to 40 percent understaffed right now. There has been “nearly 20 percent reduction in weather balloon releases, launches, that carry those radio signs. And what we’re starting to see is that the quality of the forecast is becoming degraded because of some of these cuts,” he added. 

“There is also a chance that … NOAA Hurricane Hunter aircraft will not be able to fly this year. And with less reconnaissance missions, we may be flying blind. And we may not exactly know how strong a hurricane is before it reaches the coastline.” 

DOGE made massive cuts to NWS that caused the agency to lose 600 employees, due to layoffs or early retirement. Multiple local field offices had a vacancy rate of over 20 percent as of March, causing anxiety to rise as we enter hurricane season. 

The NWS’s mission is “protection of life and property.” The DOGE cuts are stopping them from doing that. More people will be in harm’s way with less information because of decisions made by Elon Musk and Donald Trump. This, not efficiency, is the real material impact of DOGE. 

“I was asked to talk about this today, I’m glad I was,” Morales concluded, “I just want you to know that what you need to do is call your representatives, and make sure that these cuts are stopped.” 

The U.S. economy is falling apart in front of our very eyes—but you wouldn’t know that to hear Donald Trump tell it.

The U.S. president took to social media in the wee hours of Tuesday morning to claim that his tariffs are the best thing ever.

“Because of Tariffs, our Economy is BOOMING!” he wrote.

Just a few hours earlier, he claimed that if “other Countries are allowed to use Tariffs against us, and we’re not allowed to counter them, quickly and nimbly, with Tariffs against them, our Country doesn’t have, even a small chance, of Economic survival.”

But Trump’s celebratory comments stood in stark contrast to a report released Tuesday by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development. The intergovernmental group slashed its forecast for U.S. economic growth through 2026. America’s growth outlook was revised down to 1.6 percent this year—compared to a March forecast of 2.2 percent—and 1.5 percent in 2026.

The report specifically cited Trump’s tariff policy, which has created economic uncertainty, and his efforts to cut immigration and the federal workforce as reasons for downgrading U.S. economic growth predictions.

In fact, not only is Trump’s tariff policy wrecking the U.S. economy, it’s also dragging down other economies. The OECD predicted that global growth will slow to 2.9 percent in 2025, compared to 3.3 percent the previous year “on the technical assumption that tariff rates as of mid-May are sustained despite ongoing legal challenges.”

“The slowdown is concentrated in the United States, Canada and Mexico,” the report noted.

The future of Trump’s pet tariff policy remains unclear. Since Trump imposed sweeping “reciprocal” tariffs on nearly every other country in April, two separate courts have deemed his plan illegal. The administration plans to appeal at least one of those rulings.