Madi Biedermann — Education Department Deputy Assistant Secretary for Communications
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Madi Biedermann — Education Department Deputy Assistant Secretary for Communications

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Madi Biedermann — Education Department Deputy Assistant Secretary for Communications

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Agency: Department of Education Role: Deputy Assistant Secretary for Communications Severity: P1

## Quick Navigation

– Bio and Background

– Role and Communications Function

– Messaging Strategy Fit

– Significant Public Statements and Actions

– Controversies

– Overall Veracity Track Record

– Social Media Accounts

– Key Source Links

Bio and Background {#bio}

Madi Biedermann is the Deputy Assistant Secretary for Communications at the Department of Education under Secretary Linda McMahon. She is the primary named spokesperson for the department in media interactions, issuing statements to Education Week, NPR, PBS NewsHour, States Newsroom, EdSource, The 74, and other education outlets.

Before joining the Education Department, Biedermann served as Chief Operating Officer at P2 Public Affairs, a Republican communications firm. Prior to that, she was Assistant Secretary of Education for Governor Glenn Youngkin (R-VA), putting her at the center of the Virginia culture-war education battles during Youngkin’s first term. She also served as a Special Assistant and Presidential Management Fellow at OMB during Trump’s first administration, giving her institutional knowledge of the budget and administrative mechanisms now being used to downsize the Education Department.

Her official Education Department biography describes her as “an experienced education policy and communications professional with experience spanning both federal and state government and policy advocacy organizations.”

Role and Communications Function {#role}

Biedermann is the Education Department’s most visible spokesperson in the press, fielding questions about:

  • Mass layoffs of department employees
  • Rescission of federal guidance documents for schools
  • Transfers of department programs to other agencies without congressional authorization
  • Anti-DEI policy implementation and related litigation
  • The government shutdown’s effect on department operations

She issues written statements to reporters rather than holding regular press briefings — a pattern consistent with the broader administration approach of minimizing real-time press engagement. Her written statements are the primary record of the department’s public communications on major policy actions.

Messaging Strategy Fit {#messaging-strategy}

Biedermann’s communications serve the administration’s strategy of dismantling the Education Department — as called for in Project 2025 — while maintaining the public appearance of business-as-usual service delivery.

Minimizing disruption framing: When courts have blocked mass layoffs or program transfers, Biedermann’s statements consistently emphasize that services continue “without any interruption or impact on students.” This framing deflects from the documented legal and operational chaos caused by unauthorized actions.

Partisan political weaponization through official channels: The most consequential documented communications failure under Biedermann’s watch was the partisan alteration of employee out-of-office emails during the government shutdown — an action a federal court ruled violated the First Amendment. A court finding that a communications official’s department used official channels for illegal political messaging is an extraordinary accountability failure.

Obscuring program eliminations: When the department rescinded English learner guidance (without congressional authorization) and moved IDEA programs to HHS (also without authorization), Biedermann’s statements to press were evasive — not explicitly confirming the scope of changes while simultaneously defending them with political framing (“giving parents and teachers more control”).

Blame-shifting: Biedermann’s response to criticism from 20 states about unauthorized program transfers characterized the legal challenges as evidence that “blue states and unions care more about preserving the D.C. bureaucracy than about giving parents, students, and teachers more control” — a political attack on the legitimacy of state legal challenges rather than an engagement with the statutory questions those challenges raised.

Significant Public Statements and Actions {#statements}

Statement 1: Defending Partisan Alteration of Employee Emails During Shutdown

Action documented: During the September-October 2025 government shutdown, the Department of Education — under Biedermann’s communications leadership — altered furloughed employees’ out-of-office email auto-replies without employee knowledge or consent. The altered messages blamed Senate Democrats for the shutdown in first-person language the employees had not written. Employees who attempted to restore their original messages found them changed back.

Date: October 2025 Context: Biedermann, as the “deputy assistant secretary for communications,” was identified by multiple news outlets as the department spokesperson who acknowledged the email change. Maryland Matters reported she was the spokesperson who responded to press inquiries about the altered messages. Rating: Court-adjudicated First Amendment violation — not a veracity question about a factual claim, but a documented illegal action in which the communications office was complicit. Court finding: On November 7, 2025, a federal judge ruled that the Department of Education violated the First Amendment rights of furloughed employees by replacing their out-of-office messages with partisan political content without their consent. The court ordered the partisan messages removed. The Campaign Legal Center, which filed a brief supporting the employees, framed the ruling as protecting “the importance of a nonpartisan civil service.” Source link: https://campaignlegal.org/update/win-nonpartisanship-court-orders-department-education-remove-partisan-auto-reply-emails

Statement 2: English Learner Guidance Rescinded Because It “Is Not In” [Administration’s Educational Vision]

Exact Quote (partial): Biedermann said the guidance for teaching English learners, which was originally set in 2015, “is not in” [alignment with the administration’s approach — full quote not publicly documented in full]

Date: August 2025 Context: The Trump administration quietly rescinded long-standing 2015 federal guidance directing schools how to serve students learning English as a second language. The guidance was grounded in the Supreme Court’s Lau v. Nichols decision (1974) and Title VI of the Civil Rights Act, which requires schools to take “affirmative steps” to ensure English learners can access educational programs. EdSource and the Washington Post reported the rescission. Rating: Misleading in context — not formally fact-checked by PolitiFact/FactCheck.org; but the framing omits that the guidance reflected existing federal law obligations that remain in force Fact-check source: EdSource, EdWeek; TESOL letter to DOE (September 12, 2025); New America reporting Reasoning: Biedermann’s statement framed the guidance rescission as a policy choice by the current administration. Legal advocates — including TESOL and a coalition of English learner educators — documented that the rescinded guidance operationalized Title VI obligations that remain legally binding on school districts regardless of the department’s guidance. Removing the guidance creates confusion about federal legal requirements without actually changing those requirements, and removes a reference document schools relied on for compliance. The framing of the rescission as simply “not in” the department’s vision elides the legal obligations the guidance addressed. Source link: https://edsource.org/updates/trump-administration-removes-guidance-for-teaching-english-learners

Statement 3: IDEA/Special Education Transfer to HHS “Without Any Interruption or Impact”

Exact Quote: “The department is exploring additional partnerships with federal agencies to support special education programs without any interruption or impact on students with disabilities, but no action is imminent.”

Date: 2025 Context: Reports emerged that the Department of Education was planning to transfer the $15 billion Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) program to the Department of Health and Human Services — without any authorization from Congress. IDEA is a statute; Congress has not authorized the executive branch to move its administration between departments. Rating: Misleading — the framing of an unauthorized program transfer as routine “partnership exploration” minimizes a fundamental governance issue Fact-check source: The 74 Million; States Newsroom; court rulings on program transfers (December 2025 legal challenge) Reasoning: Courts had already blocked previous Education Department program transfer attempts. Biedermann’s statement avoided acknowledging that Congress had not authorized such a transfer, framed the action as “partnerships,” and reassured stakeholders there would be “no interruption” while litigation was actively challenging the legal authority to make the move. The 74 reported that 20 states filed legal challenges to the program transfers; a court issued an injunction (December 2025). The statement’s reassurance about “no interruption” was contradicted by the active litigation and judicial blocks on the department’s transfer attempts. Source link: https://www.the74million.org/article/report-trump-admin-mulling-transfer-of-special-ed-from-us-education-dept/

Statement 4: Dismissing 20-State Legal Challenge as “Caring More About Bureaucracy”

Exact Quote: “It’s no surprise that blue states and unions care more about preserving the D.C. bureaucracy than about giving parents, students, and teachers more control over education and improving the efficient delivery of funds and services.”

Date: December 2025 Context: Twenty states filed legal challenges after the Education Department transferred program oversight to other agencies — moves the states characterized as unauthorized under federal statute. Biedermann issued this response on behalf of the department. Rating: Misleading — political framing designed to delegitimize legal challenges rather than address their statutory substance Fact-check source: EdWeek, December 2025; court injunction record Reasoning: The 20 states’ legal challenges were not about “preserving the D.C. bureaucracy” — they raised specific statutory and constitutional arguments about whether the executive branch can unilaterally move congressionally created programs between departments without congressional authorization. A court subsequently issued an injunction consistent with the states’ legal theory. Biedermann’s response is a documented example of using political framing (“blue states,” “bureaucracy”) to characterize a legal dispute as a partisan culture-war fight, avoiding the substantive statutory questions the litigation raised. Source link: https://www.edweek.org/policy-politics/20-states-push-back-as-ed-dept-hands-programs-to-other-agencies/2025/12

Controversies {#controversies}

First Amendment court ruling (November 7, 2025): The most significant accountability event of Biedermann’s tenure is the federal court ruling that the Education Department violated the First Amendment rights of furloughed employees by inserting partisan political language into their email auto-replies without consent. This is a court finding — not an allegation — that the department’s communications function was used for constitutionally prohibited political coercion of federal workers.

Anti-DEI policy litigation: A federal court also ruled that the administration’s anti-DEI actions violated the First Amendment in three distinct ways (retaliation, unconstitutional conditions, and coercion), failed to follow Title VI due process requirements, and violated the Administrative Procedures Act in multiple ways. The court issued a permanent injunction. Biedermann’s communications defended these actions.

Court blocking mass layoffs: A federal judge (Joun) ordered the Education Department to reinstate federal workers who had been terminated, finding the terminations improper. Biedermann issued a statement following the ruling.

Stealth policy rollbacks: The English learner guidance rescission was done “quietly” — without announcement — and multiple outlets noted that the department did not proactively communicate the change to the school districts and states that relied on the guidance.

Overall Veracity Track Record {#track-record}

Overall rating: Mostly False

Statement pattern: Biedermann’s documented public statements consistently use deflection, political framing, and omission of material legal context to minimize public understanding of the Education Department’s actions. The most serious accountability event is not a misstatement but a court-adjudicated First Amendment violation directly implicating her communications function.

Topic clusters: Misleading statements concentrated in: (1) framing unauthorized program transfers as routine administration, (2) characterizing legal challenges to agency actions as partisan rather than substantive, (3) minimizing the impact of guidance rescissions that affect legal obligations.

Institutional pattern: The Education Department under Biedermann’s communications leadership has been the subject of multiple court rulings finding its actions unconstitutional (First Amendment, APA, Title VI). The communications strategy has consistently downplayed these findings rather than acknowledging them.

Social Media Accounts {#social-media}

Key Source Links {#sources}

First Amendment court ruling:

English learner guidance:

Program transfers and layoffs:

Anti-DEI ruling:

Official bio:

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