Rep. Tim Walberg to Chair House Education and Workforce Committee

Rep. Tim Walberg (R-Mich.) awaits President Joe Biden's State of the Union address in the House Chamber on March 7. Andrew Caballero-Reynolds/AFP via Getty Images

Rep. Tim Walberg (R-Mich.) has been selected as the next chairman of the House Education and Workforce Committee.

In a Dec. 12 post on X, Walberg called it “an honor” to be picked.

“We’ll empower parents, encourage education freedom, combat antisemitism and anti-Americanism on campuses, and bridge the divide between the skills taught and skills required in the modern economy. Finally, we’ll unleash American innovation by returning to core principles: freedom, flexibility, balance, and opportunity,” he said.

Effective Jan. 3, Walberg will succeed Rep. Virginia Foxx (R-N.C.), who was term-limited as the top Republican on the committee.

Walberg will oversee a committee that will work with the incoming Trump administration on education and labor issues.

Trump has said he would eliminate the Department of Education, though that would require an act of Congress and therefore is highly unlikely to occur given the filibuster in the Senate, which requires 60 votes to proceed with most legislation.

He has also vowed to strip funding from “any school pushing critical race theory, transgender insanity, and other inappropriate racial, sexual or political content on our children.”

And Trump has pledged to strip funding and accreditation from colleges and universities that tolerate antisemitism on campus.

The president-elect has announced he will nominate Linda McMahon to lead the Department of Education.

When it comes to labor issues, Trump ran on a platform of supporting the working class.

His nominee to lead the Labor Department, Rep. Lori Chavez-DeRemer (R-Ore.), was supported by the International Brotherhood of Teamsters, whose leader, Sean O'Brien, spoke at the Republican National Convention, though he did not endorse Trump. Chavez-DeRemer has come under fire from conservatives for supporting Democratic labor legislation on the right of employees to organize.

The committee has been in the spotlight this year as members grilled university presidents, criticizing their response to antisemitism on campus since Hamas’s attack on Israel on Oct. 7, 2023.

During an April hearing, Walberg confronted then-Columbia University President Minouche Shafik over her response to antisemitism on the New York City campus. Shafik resigned in August.

Other university presidents who have resigned after appearing before the committee include Harvard’s Claudine Gay, the University of Pennsylvania’s Liz Magill, and Rutgers’s Jonathan Holloway.

Walberg, who represents Michigan’s 5th Congressional District, has been in Congress since 2011 and did a stint between 2007 and 2009.