Last week, Penny Schwinn, the former Tennessee schools chief, withdrew her nomination to be Linda McMahon’s number two at the U.S. Department of Education. The news was a shock, given that Schwinn had earned the Senate education committee’s nod in June, got an enthusiastic endorsement from President Trump back in January, and has been active in the department’s business while awaiting confirmation. Yet, facing a coordinated MAGA pressure campaign that threatened her confirmation, she finally hung it up. (She will still serve as a salaried strategic adviser to McMahon).
Many have asked what’s going on. They wonder why a Republican Senate that’s confirmed less-than-impressive characters like Pete Hegseth and Tulsi Gabbard might balk at a former red-state schools chief who likes school choice, made it through the committee, and had Trump’s personal backing.
This episode illustrates the split between Republicans focused on instruction and accountability and those more broadly intent on pushing back against progressive dogma.
For education Democrats and Never Trumpers, Schwinn’s nomination was unexpected and heartening. A former TFA recruit, Schwinn has a Ph.D. and a history of working across the aisle. She’s more focused on curriculum than culture, is an achievement hawk, and is passionate about literacy. She’s the kind of Republican even anti-Trumpers could embrace.
At the same time, the nomination sparked concerns among MAGA activists who’d spent years being smeared as “bigots” and “transphobes” for fighting COVID school closures or woke dogmas—and who wanted to be sure the Trump administration had their backs. This push to reject Schwinn was initially spearheaded by a Moms for Liberty chapter in Tennessee and anti-DEI crusader and social media personality Robby Starbuck.
Schwinn’s critics made her nomination a test case for whether Trump 2.0 would tackle the K–12 culture wars in a way that Trump 1.0 did not. You see, for all the cheap vitriol hurled at Betsy DeVos, one of the many things her critics ignored was how assiduously she tried to avoid getting pulled into culture clashes. Ground zero for the debate over Schwinn was Marsha Blackburn, the Tennessee senator who’s contemplating a run for governor and who really didn’t want to get crosswise with her state’s GOP activist base. (Schwinn still could’ve sailed to confirmation with even modest Democratic support, but the blue team isn’t in the mood to lift a finger to help Trump nominees right now).
As I see it, the MAGA camp raised real concerns but fixated on the wrong target. I think it’s fair to argue that too many putatively conservative leaders hesitated to take on progressive educational excesses over the past decade, while haughtily explaining that they didn’t want to get “distracted by culture wars.” Well, the Moms for Liberty types got sick of that. And I think they have a point: Republican officials really did spend much of this century’s first two decades rolling over on values. Heck, over the past decade, I’ve written repeatedly about the need for Republican leaders to stand up for the principles of merit, rigor, and equality (see, for instance, here, here, here, and here) and, for much of that period, it felt like shouting down a well. So, like I said, I’ve much sympathy for the “no more squishes” stance.
