Just days after winning the 2024 election, Donald Trump made the first major personnel announcement of his second term with the pick of Susie Wiles, his campaign manager, as White House chief of staff. She will become the first woman in history to hold the position.
That is one of many roles the Trump transition team will be looking to fill in the coming weeks and months, and, with Republicans gaining control of the U.S. Senate, the process of securing Senate confirmation for Trump’s various cabinet positions should be more straightforward.
One role of particular interest to many is secretary of education, who will be tasked with reining in the Department of Education and the changes made under the Biden administration and Secretary Miguel Cardona. On Friday’s show, Megyn was joined by Charlie Kirk, founder of Turning Point USA, to discuss what he would like to see happen at the DOE in the next four years.
Redefining the DOE
Since Trump’s win, Megyn said she has heard from number of people who were curious about who might end up at the helm of the DOE, and Kirk said he has been fielding the same question given the fact that he spends the majority of his time on college campuses and is acutely familiar with the shortcomings of the American education and higher education systems.
He told Megyn he is heading to Mar-a-Lago to consult with Team Trump, and he said he plans to make his opinions about the Department of Education known. “I don’t want to say too much, but we are going to have a lot of fun at the Department of Education,” he said. “If I could be helpful, I want to be actively involved in all things education.”
While there have been jokes on social media about whether the next secretary of education will be the last secretary of education due to the desire to streamline government and eliminate bureaucracy, Kirk said there is a lot of work to be done.
Kirk’s Goals
It starts, he said, with rolling back the controversial changes to Title IX rolled out by the Biden administration earlier this year that allowed men into women’s sports and spaces and stripped men of their due process rights on college campuses. “Priority numero uno is we are getting all that Title IX stuff fixed,” he said. “We’re getting that all cleaned up.”
In his view, affirmative action policies must also be put under the microscope. “I will push for… the end of all affirmative action hiring practices in federal government. We are going to make it merit-based,” he explained. “And for these colleges that are still doing affirmative action against the Supreme Court [decision], I hope that the Department Education does some investigations into that.”
While he reiterated that he is “not in charge,” his opinion is that federal funding to public colleges and universities needs to be under increased scrutiny. “There is a lot of DEI and CRT [critical race theory] garbage that has come into the Department of Education,” Kirk said. “DEI, CRT, and black-only dormitories [should] not be tolerated… [or] subsidized by the federal government.”
‘A Return to Common Sense’
Kirk said that he has been encouraged so far by the focus of Trump and his team in the wake of Tuesday’s decisive result. “They are saying this phrase over and over again, ‘Fulfill the mandate,'” he shared. “And boy, there is a team of all-stars coming together that I think is going to make a lot of people happy.”
He believes that will allow the administration “to sprint out of the gate” and into the first 100 days. “There will be a lot of reversals and also a return to common sense, and order, and decency,” Kirk concluded. “And the Department of Education is definitely going to be a focal point of that.”
You can check out Megyn’s full interview with Kirk by tuning in to episode 940 on YouTube, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you like to listen. And don’t forget that you can catch The Megyn Kelly Show live on SiriusXM’s Triumph (channel 111) weekdays from 12pm to 2pm ET.