Walberg, Tim Rep t p
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IHE
March 05, 2026
McMahon Touts First Year in Office; Dems and Students Push Back
The Education Department says that in just one year McMahon has secured reforms in higher ed that conservatives have championed for decades. Critics say her work is creating barriers to college access.
By Jessica Blakeand Katherine Knott
A year after Education Secretary Linda McMahon took office, two Democratic lawmakers, a handful of students and several laid-off staff members took to the steps of the Education Department to decry her track record of cuts and crackdowns. Their message was clear—McMahon must go.
“Trump put someone in this position that has absolutely no experience and is completely unqualified to run the Department of Education,” said Arizona representative Adelita Grijalva.
The only way the secretary can make up for her wrongs, Grijalva and her fellow speaker, California representative Mark Takano, added, is by stepping down.
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“I’d like her to quit. Resign. Put someone in there that actually knows the job and understands education,” Grijalva said. “There is nothing that she can do other than walk away.”
But the Trump administration and Republicans on the Hill have shown no sign of backing down. In fact, they say things are just getting started.
Over the past year, McMahon has wasted no time in carrying out what she called her “final mission”—ending decades of so-called bureaucratic bloat at the Education Department and ultimately putting herself out of a job.
Within the first 10 days, she fired nearly half of the agency’s employees, setting up a lengthy legal battle that ultimately ended when the Supreme Court gave the green light for the reduction in force. Then she outsourced dozens of programs and relocated many of the staff members that remained, signing nine interagency agreements that parceled operations out to the Departments of Labor, State, Interior and Health and Human Services. She also defunded grant programs that support minority-serving institutions and redirected millions to support the administration’s priorities.
Additionally, McMahon launched a series of high-stakes battles with some of the nation’s wealthiest universities, bringing institutions like Columbia University to heel, vowing to cut off all grant funding for Harvard University and targeting dozens of others through civil rights investigations. More broadly, she also had tough words for higher ed, denouncing the sector as “broken” in a September speech that outlined her vision to improve colleges and universities.
Now, she and her chief higher ed official, Under Secretary Nicholas Kent, are working to carry out a number of monumental policy shifts, including loan caps, expansion of the Pell Grant program and a new earnings test to hold colleges accountable.
The department touted its own accomplishments as McMahon marked her one-year anniversary in the job. Among the highlights included in a fact sheet distributed at the beginning of the Democrats’ news conference were “restoring civil rights, merit and accountability to universities”; “realigning civil rights enforcement with the letter of the law”; and “halting Biden’s attempt to pass debt to every taxpayer and rooting out waste, fraud, and abuse.”
“In the first year of the Trump administration, U.S. Secretary of Education Linda McMahon took significant steps to make college more affordable, increased transparency for students on the value of their education, and restored merit in higher education,” the fact sheet states. “These are reforms that conservatives have championed for decades—and in just one year, we’ve made them a reality.”
‘Year One Was the Tester’
Daniel Collier, an assistant professor of higher education at the University of Memphis, is a longtime fan of the WWE, which McMahon helped to turn into a global enterprise, and has followed her since she served in the first Trump administration. He said her background in wrestling and business was clearly reflected during her first year in office.
“She was a very ruthless executive in WWE with her husband … and they basically ruled the wrestling world with an iron fist for a long time,” he said. “She is applying those lessons there in, saying that ‘I’m going to do what I’m going to do and you can all deal with it.’”
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He expects plans to break up ED as well as work on other key priorities across the federal government will further accelerate as the administration prepares for the midterm elections, when Republicans could lose control of Congress.
“Year one was the tester in seeing what they could get away with and how long they could get away with it and who cares about what issues,” he said. “Whatever you saw in year one will be limited in comparison to what we see in year two, because they need to get it done before the House flips. And I have no idea what that looks like.”
Republicans, including Rep. Tim Walberg of Michigan, who chairs the House education committee, praised McMahon for her work, saying she’s delivered real results.
“She’s helping rightsize the Department of Education, give parents a stronger voice, and hold colleges accountable,” he said in a statement to Inside Higher Ed. “I’m proud to work alongside her to cut red tape in Washington and make sure our education system works for students, parents, and teachers—not the bureaucracy.”
Neal McCluskey, director of the Center for Educational Freedom at the libertarian Cato Institute, said when it comes to dismantling ED and working to transform colleges, McMahon “is doing what her boss wants her to do.”
“Secretary McMahon has done about as good a job as I could hope in the things that I would like her to do,” he said. “I think she’s worked hard to try and get them done to the maximum extent allowed by law.”
McCluskey supports her efforts to shrink the federal role in education, though the use of interagency agreements to outsource various programs and responsibilities isn’t moving as quickly as he thought. He expects to see more in the coming year. (He’s less supportive of the administration’s efforts to change what colleges can teach and whom they can hire.)
He attributes the pace to McMahon’s business background, “where you can’t just snap your fingers and everything falls into place. You have to have plans and processes and thoughtfulness, and so to the extent that things are moving in a more deliberative manner, I think that might reflect her management.”
He added that McMahon also avoided any major controversies or gaffes—other than when she referred to artificial intelligence as “A1,” like the sauce.
“Whenever I’ve seen her, she gives the impression that this is somebody who is calm, in charge of her operation and not trying to draw a whole lot of attention to herself,” he said.
Democratic lawmakers stand with students, former department staff members and union representatives for a photo after their news conference.
But students in attendance at Wednesday’s news conference were not so supportive. To them, McMahon represents a threat to their academic aspirations.
Markie Mathis, a sociology major and member of the John Fylpaa Leadership Institute at Long Beach City College, said it’s “crazy” to even think about dismantling the department—let alone actually doing so. And as long as support and funding for higher ed is on the line, many students’ ability to complete a degree will hang in the balance, she added.
“It’s scary,” Mathis said. “If funding gets cut, I probably won’t be able to continue.”
Olivia McCary, a political science major at the same college, said McMahon’s characterization of higher education as nothing more than a career pipeline and the department as unnecessary are disconnected from the needs of students on the ground. To McCary, college is a chance to engage as a citizen and the department is a critical means of civil rights enforcement.
“I’m an African American who is trying to work in legislation one day,” she said. “But a lot of states don’t support people of color or DEI programs. People at the department were the people who backed us up. Now they’re going away.”
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Walberg enthusiastically embraces the most extreme aspects of the Tea Party—from corporate pandering and vowing to cut social safety-net programs to far-right views on social issues and a predilection for conspiracy theories.
Walberg is perhaps most famous for his unabashed embrace of “birther” theories. Asked by a radio show caller if he thinks President Obama is an American citizen or a Muslim, Walberg responded:
“You know, I don’t know, I really don’t know. [] We don’t have enough information about this President. He was never given a job interview that was complete.
“But that’s not the issue now. [] He is President. Right now, we need to make sure that he doesn’t remain as President. Whether he’s American, a Muslim, a Christian, you name it.”
While other candidates have tried to tiptoe away from their own birther claims, Walberg later doubled down, saying that he would “take [Obama] at his word that he’s an American citizen”…and then suggested that Congress impeach Obama in order to obtain a copy of his birth certificate.
But birtherism isn’t the only right-wing conspiracy theory that Walberg backs. He has
the bizarre—and completely debunked—theory that the Chinese are drilling for oil off the coast of Florida. And he continues to repeat discredited ideas about the origins of the Iraq war. He
that Saddam Hussein funded the Al Qaeda terrorists behind the 9/11 attacks, and
in a debate last month that Iraq “absolutely” had weapons of mass destruction before the American invasion—something that even George W. Bush now admits is not true.
Walberg backs an extreme pro-corporate economic agenda. When Walberg first won election in 2006, the ultra-conservative Club For Growth counted his victory as its own,bragging that its PAC “scored its first-ever knock-out of an incumbent” when Walberg defeat a moderate incumbent in the Republican primary. The Club for Grouth had pouredmillions of dollars into Walberg’s 2006 campaign, spending $1 million in the primary, and then producing vicious attack adds against his Democratic opponent in the general election. This year, American Future Fund, an especially shadowy group with ties to Big Agriculture, spent over $500,000 to run an
attacking Walberg’s opponent with false claims about health care reform and clean energy legislation.
And, it seems, Walberg’s big business backers will get what they paid for. The League of Conservation Votersnamed him to their 2010 Dirty Dozen, the second time he had made that list. During his one previous term in Congress, LCV said, “Walberg opposed every major clean energy reform…earning a 0% LCV score.” LCV continued, “During his two years in office, he was on the wrong side of conservation and clean energy on 32 out of 33 votes. He even voted against the No Child Left Inside Act, designed to help educate children about the natural environment.” Indeed, no clean energy effort is too small to earn Walberg’s disdain: on the campaign trail, he
Michigan Governor Jennifer Granholm for riding her bicycle to work.
Walberg wants to dramatically cut social safety net programs, and directs much of his scorn on Social Security. He’s advocated for privatizing the program, and agreed with a supporter at a Tea Party event who said Social Security is unconstitutional and “a Ponzi scheme.” In 2006, he called Social Security “socialism at its finest,” adding, “That’s defined as socialism when the government is required to take care of us all.”
Walberg’s Religious Right credentials are also stellar. He opposes abortion rights, including in cases of rape or incest. As a member of the House, he cosponsored two bills that, according to NARAL, “would end all legal abortion, most common forms of birth control, stem cell research, and in vitrofertilization”. He voted against a bill that would have provided for stem cell research.
In 2008, Walberg was the only member of the House education committee to vote “no” on extending funding for the Head Start program. He objected to a provision in the bill that prohibited Head Start preschools from discriminating based on religion, warning that a Christian parochial school might have to hire a Muslim or “a Wiccan from a coven in Ann Arbor.”
In the House, Walberg voted against the Employment Non-Discrimination Act and against expanding hate crimes legislation to include gender identity and sexual orientation, andagainst the Employment Non-Discrimination Act. He also opposed equal pay legislation and the 2008 Paycheck Fairness Act.
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dd
Congressman Tim Walberg (R-MI) also sports a 7 percent score from LCV and has been handsomely rewarded by Big Oil. His position on man-made climate change? He thinks an “equal number” of scientists think it’s not happening.
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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tim_Walberg
Committee assignments
Walberg is a member of the Republican Study Committee and the Tea Party Caucus.
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http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Tim_Walberg
out of date?
Tim Walberg, a Republican, represented the Seventh Congressional District of Michigan in the U.S. House of Representatives between 2007-2009. Walberg lost to Mark Schauer in the November 2008 general election.
Contents
Record and controversies
General information about important bills and votes for can be found in Congresspedia's articles on legislation. You can add information you find on how Tim Walberg voted by clicking the "[edit]" link to the right and typing it in. Remember to cite your sources!
Iraq War
For more information see the chart of U.S. House of Representatives votes on the Iraq War.
Environmental record
For more information on environmental legislation, see the Energy and Environment Policy Portal
Fired campaign employee
In October 2006, Walberg fired one of his campaign employees after the the Jackson Citizen Patriot reported that the employee have pleaded guilty to domestic violence in relation to striking his nine year old foster child. After the incident, Walberg expressed his opinion that the child should be returned to the ex-employee's custody. [1]
Record on SCHIP
In 2007, Congress took up the reauthorization of the State Children's Health Insurance Program, which provides health care for about 6 million children and 670,000 adults from families who earn too much money qualify for Medicare but not enough to afford health insurance. Congressional Democrats and many Republicans tried to use the opportunity to dramatically expand the program but were opposed by President George W. Bush and other Republicans. In 2006, 5.4 million children were eligible but not enrolled in SCHIP or Medicaid and 9.4 million total children were uninsured.
Tim Walberg voted against the first House bill, which passed along party lines. It would have added $47 billion over five years to the $25 billion cost of the program and added about 5 million people to the program, including children, some legal immigrants, pregnant women and adults aged 18 and 19. The bill was financed mainly by an increase in cigarette taxes.
House Democrats, with 45 Republicans, later compromised and passed a bill which expanded the plan by $35 billion and would have insured about 3.5 million more children from families generally making between 250% and 300% of the federal poverty line (about $51,000 to $62,000 for a family of four). Most non-pregnant, childless adults were excluded, as were most legal immigrants and all illegal immigrants. Tim Walberg, again, voted against the bill.
After President Bush vetoed the bill, Democratic leaders attempted to override the veto with the same bill but failed. Tim Walberg voted against the bill.
House Democrats then attempted to override it with another bill, which gave into Republican demands for increased checks for citizenship, the quick phasing-out of adult coverage, a hard limit of 300% of the federal poverty level and funding for families that covered their children through private insurance instead. Republicans, angry that the vote was scheduled during massive fires in California, blocked the veto override. Tim Walberg, again, voted against the bill. For details on the bills and the debate, see the main State Children's Health Insurance Program page. [2]
Biography
Born in 1951, Walberg studied at Western Illinois University, Moody Bible Institute, Taylor University, Fort Wayne (formerly Fort Wayne Bible College), and Wheaton College Graduate School. He and his wife Sue have three adult children.[3]
Walberg was a pastor for almost 10 years before being elected to the Michigan House of Representatives, where he served from 1983 until 1999. After leaving the legislature, he served as president of the Warren Reuther Center for Education and Community Impact then as a division manager for the Moody Bible Institute of Chicago. [4]
Walberg was heavily supported in his primary bid by the Club for Growth. The conservative organization had labeled Rep. Schwarz a Republican In Name Only (RINO) and heavily backed Walberg, as it viewed him as more likely to promote fiscal conservatism and social conservatism. [5]
Congressional career
2006 election
Walberg defeated Democrat Sharon Renier in the 2006 congressional elections after defeating Rep. Joe Schwarz (R-Mich.) in the Republican primary.
2008 elections
In his 2008 bid for re-election, Walberg was endorsed by the MAF Freedom PAC, which is associated with the pro-war group Move America Forward. [1] Walberg lost to Mark Schauer in the general election.[2]
Money in politics
This section contains links to – and feeds from – money in politics databases. cid=N00026368&cycle=2006
Links to more campaign contribution information for Tim Walberg from the Center for Responsive Politics' OpenSecrets.org site. | Links to more campaign contribution information for Tim Walberg from the Center for Responsive Politics' OpenSecrets.org site. | Links to more campaign contribution information for Tim Walberg from the Center for Responsive Politics' OpenSecrets.org site. |
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| Fundraising profile: | 2006 election cycle | Career totals |
| Top contributors by organization/corporation: | 2006 election cycle | Career totals |
| Top contributors by industry: | 2006 election cycle | Career totals |
- Revolving door profile for Tim Walberg from the Center for Responsive Politics' OpenSecrets.org website.
- 2006 privately funded travel profile for Tim Walberg from the Center for Responsive Politics' OpenSecrets.org website.
- Personal finance profile for Tim Walberg from the Center for Responsive Politics' OpenSecrets.org website.
Committees and Affiliations
Committees
- House Committee on Education and Labor
- Subcommittee on Higher Education, Lifelong Learning, and Competitiveness
- Subcommittee on Health, Employment, Labor, and Pensions
- House Committee on Agriculture
- Subcommittee on Conservation, Credit, Energy, and Research
- Subcommittee on Livestock, Dairy, and Poultry
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2. Rep. Tim Walberg (R-MI)
Walberg is a former minister in Michigan and to no surprise is a very right-leaning conservative who is a Tea Party member. He has taken issue with suites to stop prayer before meetings on congress and came under fire in his local community for his invocation to Jesus Christ, ending his prayers with “In Jesus name, I pray,” carefully leaving the “I” in there as to avoid upsetting other politicians in the room.
Walberg earned himself a low 5 percent by voting against or sponsoring every bill that the Secular Coalition flagged for removing the separation of church and state. Opposing non theistic chaplains, opposing the overturning of Don’t Ask Don’t Tell, sponsoring a bill to support prayer at school board meetings, a direct violation of the First Amendment, sponsoring a marriage protection act in an attempt to redefine marriage as between only one man and one woman, and he opposed a bill that would teach young people the truth about sexual disease and prevention.
He has fought to remove contraception coverage from the Affordable Care Act and famously quoted Communist leader Joseph Stalin when trying to say bills like the ACA would cause America's collapse by undermining its “spiritual life.”
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Michigan
Great Lakes voters have already elected their fair share of climate zombies. Dave Camp (MI-04) dithers about "a great deal of uncertainty with regard to the scientific evidence regarding climate change," while incumbent
is quite sure we've gone through similar cycles in the past. Mike Rogers (MI-08) wants to investigate "alarming reports of altered data" taken from the manufactured "climategate" scandal. Candice Miller (MI-10)knows that climate has always changed, and Thad McCotter (MI-11) believes it's wrong to look at selected periods of time to prove a manmade global warming.
Likewise, climate zombies are candidates for Congress. Bill Huizenga (MI-02) decries "global warming doomsayers" being driven by "irrational fascism." Andrew Raczkowski (MI-09)believes that the jury is still out. I'm considering Don Ukrainec (MI-14) a denier based on his response to a VoteSmart questionnaire: THE "GREEN" AGENDA IS A JOKE AND CANNOT SUSTAIN OUR LIFESTYLE (caps in original). Rob Steele (MI-15) sneers at Al Gore when asked about warming.
I presume candidates Dan Benishek (MI-01), Justin Amash (MI-03), and John Kupiec (MI-05) are climate zombies because they've signed the AFP/Koch no climate tax pledge, as has incumbent Fred Upton (MI-06). I have no information regarding candidate Don Volaric (MI-12). Candidate John Hauler responded to a questionnaire that he supports environmental regulations aimed at reducing the effects of climate change, but has otherwise been silent. And Rick Snyder (MI-Gov) apparently favors a renewable energy standard but hasn't said anything specifically regarding climate.
Semi-final score: 9 confirmed and 4 presumed climate zombies, 3 without sufficient information.