The Hard Reset: What Linda McMahon’s Plan to Dismantle Federal Education Means for the Chiropractic Cartel
Originally published: 2025-11-23
A Turning Point in American Education Policy
When U.S. Secretary of Education Linda McMahon walked into the White House press room on November 20, 2025, the message she delivered was blunt, direct, and perfectly aligned with what reformers in chiropractic have been warning about for years. Centralized federal bureaucracies do not improve quality, they entrench control.
McMahon stated that the recent government shutdown had proved beyond doubt that the country does not need the U.S. Department of Education. Schools continued to open, teachers continued teaching, and students continued learning. States, local districts, and community leadership carried on while the federal department sat dormant.
Her message reflected a larger principle. Power concentrated in a single bureaucratic entity does not create excellence. It creates dependency, stagnation and, as chiropractors know all too well, cartel behavior.
“Americans don’t need the Department of Education. The shutdown proved it.”
Linda McMahon, November 20, 2025
Federal Decentralization and the Chiropractic Cartel
What McMahon described at the federal level is the same dynamic chiropractors have been fighting inside their own profession for decades.
The chiropractic cartel, led by the Council on Chiropractic Education (CCE), the National Board of Chiropractic Examiners (NBCE), and the Federation of Chiropractic Licensing Boards (FCLB), built its dominance through federal entanglement. The Department of Education’s recognition of a single accreditor, paired with state statutes requiring NBCE exams tied to CCE accreditation, created a closed loop.
No competition. No innovation. No accountability.
The shutdown and dismantling of the Department of Education reveals just how fragile that structure truly is. When centralized bureaucracies falter, the monopolies that fed off them begin to wobble. The chiropractic cartels power has always depended on Washington. Now that Washington is restructuring, the cartel’s scaffolding is finally weakening.
“When the federal pillar shakes, every monopoly built upon it begins to crumble.”
NACIQI Delays Reveal the System’s Vulnerabilities
The National Advisory Committee on Institutional Quality and Integrity has been paralyzed for months. Meetings cancelled, staff furloughed, reports delayed, accreditor reviews stuck in limbo.
This bureaucratic logjam is not a temporary inconvenience. It is a structural warning sign. Accreditation oversight is grinding to a halt right as the chiropractic cartel faces its most significant challenge in decades.
Ten universities have already applied to a new accreditor while the government rethinks its entire role in accreditation. Federal officials are openly asking whether the Department of Education should even be involved in recognition at all.
The timing could not be more critical for chiropractic. The CCE is up for scrutiny just as the Department of Education is dismantling the very oversight mechanisms the cartel has relied on.
Enter the International Agency for Chiropractic Evaluation
While the old system stalls, a new one is rising.
The International Agency for Chiropractic Evaluation is positioning itself as the first serious alternative to the CCE in half a century. It is structured for transparency, chiropractic centered standards, and accountability. It rejects the medicalization and scope creep that the CCE has used to justify its monopoly.
Schools, students, and state boards are already signaling interest. For the first time, there is momentum behind a competing accreditor that reflects the values of chiropractors rather than the interests of political bureaucrats.
“IACE is not the future of chiropractic education reform, it is the present.”
The CFC and the Growing Movement to Break the Monopoly
The Chiropractic Freedom Coalition has been laying the groundwork for this moment.
For years the CFC has documented the cartel’s anticompetitive behaviors, the weaponization of accreditation, the forced use of NBCE exams through Policy 56, the monopoly’s control over federal and state regulatory structures, and the harm inflicted on students and schools through centralized testing and accreditation mandates.
Now, with federal decentralization accelerating, the CFC’s reform proposals finally have a clear political path. What once seemed impossible is becoming inevitable.
The cartel knows this. Their recent resistance, procedural games, partisan alliances, and misleading public claims are signs of panic, not strength.
One has to consider the ethics of an entire group of people that believe their private corporations should enjoy state sanctioned monopolies because the rest of the profession cannot be trusted. That’s what this boils down to.
Why McMahon’s Press Conference Matters for Chiropractic
When McMahon said that Americans do not need the Department of Education, she unintentionally delivered the most important message to the chiropractic world in fifty years.
If a centralized federal bureaucracy is unnecessary for K 12 education, then it is certainly unnecessary for chiropractic education.
States already license doctors. States already approve educational programs in every other field. States already regulate professions from law to engineering without a federal accreditor dictating curriculum.
The only reason chiropractic is different is because the cartel worked for decades to make it so.
McMahon’s restructuring breaks the spell.
The Bigger Picture: A New Era of Competition and Freedom
The cartel’s model cannot survive a decentralized world. Their power depends on a single recognizer accreditation structure, federally enforced exam mandates, structural reliance on Washington, and lockstep coordination among CCE, NBCE, and FCLB.
As these pillars crack, the path opens for competing accreditors such as IACE, state based or hybrid approval models, a free market in chiropractic education, student empowerment and reduced debt loads, and schools that can focus on vertebral subluxation rather than medical scope creep.
The dismantling of the Department of Education does not just reform federal policy. It shakes the very foundation on which the chiropractic cartel has been built.
Next Steps
Linda McMahon’s press conference was not about chiropractic. But it might be the single most consequential political event for chiropractic education in decades.
Federal centralization is collapsing and accreditation is decentralizing and as a result the cartel is losing its institutional shield. IACE is emerging at the perfect moment and and the CFC’s reform agenda finally has the political oxygen it needs.
The old order is breaking open and the future belongs to those who are ready to build.
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