Sen. Markwayne Mullin (R-Okla.) has been grilled online after he repeated incorrect grammar during a hearing on Tuesday.
He asked Education Secretary Linda McMahon, who was testifying at her department’s Senate Appropriations Committee budget hearing for fiscal year 2026, about how the United States ranked nationally in math and reading in 1979.
“What was we ranked in reading and math in 1979?” Mullin asked McMahon.
“I’m sorry, what?” she replied.
He then repeated, “What was we ranked nationally in math and reading in 1979?”
McMahon responded saying the country was “very, very low on the totem pole.”
“We were number one in 1979,” Mullin replied.
Social media users immediately pointed out the grammar issue.
“He actually says TWICE ‘what was we ranked…'” one user wrote.
Another user posted: “I thought he was going to correct himself after saying it incorrectly the first time. I’m no English major, but I cringed when I heard that...both times.”
“Another uneducated dumb—,” a user wrote.
In 1979, Congress created the federal Department of Education under the direction of President Jimmy Carter — and now, several Republicans, including the president, have called for its termination. Trump signed an executive order in March that called for its dismantling, arguing that it is filled with liberal ideology and that education should be decided at the state level.
It says that the education secretary will “to the maximum extent appropriate and permitted by law, take all necessary steps to facilitate the closure of the Department of Education and return authority over education to the States and local communities.”
But it is most likely impossible to discontinue the department without an act of Congress. Rep. Thomas Massie (R-Ky.) promoted a drafted bill, which he authored, to do just that on X on Tuesday, saying it would “save money and return control back to parents, teachers, school boards, and states.” He also tagged House Speaker Mike Johnson and asked, “What are we waiting for?”
According to the most recent data from the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, the United States ranked in eighth place out of 41 countries in educational attainment, and scored fifth in reading and tenth in science among approximately three dozen countries.
Already, Trump’s Republican administration has been gutting the agency. Its workforce is being slashed in half, and there have been deep cuts to the Office for Civil Rights and the Institute of Education Sciences, which gathers data on the nation’s academic progress.
McMahon said she will remove red tape and empower states to decide what’s best for their schools. But she promised to continue essential services and work with states and Congress “to ensure a lawful and orderly transition.”
Part of her job will be exploring which agencies can take on the Education Department’s various roles, she said.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.