Dave Davies

His new article is The Executor, How Professional Wrestling Prepared Linda McMahon for Trump's Cabinet.

We'll continue our conversation in just a moment.

This is Fresh Air.

So Linda McMahon becomes head of the Department of Education.

She has 4,000 employees and all of these different programs.

Does she take some time to tour it, learn about what it does?

Doge, Elon Musk's Department of Government Efficiency had already taken a big swing with the axe at Department of Education.

Between those two efforts, what kind of difference did it make to the department just in terms of employment?

And that's because they have civil service protection and there needs to be a cause to fire them.

And that's in dispute.

So they're not working, but they're being paid.

You know, one of the things that the Department of Education does is a lot of research on educational outcomes and achievement.

You know, they track things by state, do a lot of regular reports.

There's a national report card, I think they do.

And this is through the Institute of Educational Sciences.

What was the impact of the cuts on those efforts?

Another function of the department is managing federal student aid.

I don't know exactly what it does, but that's been transferred to the Treasury Department.

You know, I covered government for a lot of years at the local level.

And I always found that whenever I would look into an agency that is the subject of a lot of criticism, you'd often find, yeah, there's valid criticisms, but there's also a legitimate function, you know, a need that it meets for some people and some dedicated people, you know, working to try and help the mission.