Linda McMahon says there’s been ‘progress’ from Harvard and Columbia amid Trump’s attacks

“I think the American public is looking at that, is saying, ‘I want my kids to go to college and be safe. They shouldn’t have to worry going from class. That’s not why — that is not why I sent them to campus,’” the education secretary added.

McMahon also said that any foreign students arrested for violence or for antisemitism will have the chance to prove whether the detention is “unjust.”

“If there’s a false arrest made, and that person shows that, that that was an unjust [arrest] and that person is released, OK,” she said. “But how many others are not being arrested because we don’t have the proper vetting in place?”

McMahon also spoke favorably about the Trump administration’s decision earlier Friday to ask the Supreme Court to allow it to continue with mass layoff plans at the Department of Education after a federal judge blocked the move. The layoffs were part of a broader Trump plan to dismantle the department.

“The president made it very clear to me, when he asked me to serve in this job, that he believed that I would be successful in my job once the Department of Education was dismantled, and that the agencies, other agencies, would continue the work of the Department of Education. So I have known what that mandate was from the very beginning,” McMahon said.

The Department of Education, in its budget proposal this week, is also seeking to cut its funding to the department’s Office of Civil Rights, which is tasked with investigating claims of discrimination, from $140 million to $91 million. There is currently a backlog of cases.

“We haven’t missed any statutory deadlines and are performing our tasks because we’re operating more efficiently,” McMahon said. “We have streamlined that department.”