Trump taps Linda McMahon to lead, and possibly dismantle, Department of Education

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Former professional wrestling executive and billionaire Linda McMahon is President-elect Donald Trump's pick to lead the U.S. Department of Education, an agency Trump has vowed to dismantle.

McMahon would come to office with little educational experience. He led the Small Business Administration in the first Trump administration and also led think tank and pro-Trump think tank before serving as co-chair of the transition team. McMahon was reportedly running for the Commerce Secretary job, but was passed over by Cantor Fitzgerald CEO Howard Lutnick.

McMahon is the co-founder and former CEO of WWE professional wrestling franchise with husband Vince McMahon.

Triumph <a target="_blank" href="https://x.com/TrumpWarRoom/status/1859055584642806010″ target=”_blank” rel=”noopener”>announced the selection Tuesday night on Truth Social after several media outlets reported it. He cited McMahon's administrative and business experience and called her a “fierce advocate” for parental rights and school choice.

And it appeared to refer to a much reduced role for the Department of Education, if not its actual elimination.

“Linda will use her decades of leadership experience and deep knowledge of both education and business to empower the next generation of American students and workers and make the United States number one in education in the world,” Trump wrote. “We will send education BACK TO THE STATES, and Linda will lead that effort.”

In a podcast interview this fallMcMahon said his entry into politics began after reading about how students in the Greenwich, Connecticut, school district were not meeting the expectations outlined in No Child Left Behind. That 2002 federal law, championed by President George W. Bush, held schools accountable for student performance through test scores and other measures. Many Republicans have since moved away from that kind of federal oversight.

“I'm sitting there thinking, 'How could that be possible in Greenwich, Connecticut?'” McMahon said. “It is a very rich community. We pay a large portion of our taxes on education. How can that happen?

She described a period of visiting charter, public and private schools before Gov. Jodi Rell, a friend, invited her in 2009 to fill a vacancy on the Connecticut State Board of Education.

“I said, 'Look… I'm certainly not in the education world,'” McMahon said on the podcast. “I don't know if this is what you're looking for. And she said, 'I'm looking for exactly who you are: someone from the outside who can come in, and I want feedback on that.'”

When McMahon was nominated, she told Connecticut legislators She had originally aspired to be a teacher and said that an interest in education had been “an important constant” in her life. He noted his involvement in the education of his own children. And he highlighted several WWE programs, including one that sent wrestlers to schools to deliver positive messages and another, the WrestleMania Reading Challenge, which featured posters of wrestlers encouraging students to read.

McMahon left the State Board after one year in office to run an unsuccessful Senate bid.

she also served twice on the board of directors of the University of the Sacred Heart, a private Roman Catholic university in Connecticut.

Trump has made a series of surprising choices for his initial cabinet picksoften favor loyalists with little experience either defenders whose objectives are opposite to the agencies he wants them to run.

In choosing McMahon, Trump overlooked Seasoned Republican state superintendents like Louisiana's Cade Brumley and dedicated cultural warriors like Tiffany Justice, the co-founder of Moms for Liberty whose name came up as potential secretary of education.

Trump campaigned in get rid of the US Department of Educationexpanding school choice, reversing Biden-era Title IX changes that expanded legal protections for transgender students, and punishing “woke” schools.

McMahon echoed concerns about “woke” thinking in this fall's podcast interview and also said that diversity is important.

“There's too much of our woke environment,” he said. “There is too much emphasis on DEI. Now, diversity, equity and inclusion matter. I think everyone should have the same opportunities, everyone should be treated equally. There is no place in our society for prejudice, as we are seeing now with anti-Semitism or… the racial inequality that we have seen over the years. But I think we have continued to move forward.”

Getting rid of the U.S. Department of Education would require congressional action and careful management to determine which programs to end and which to transfer to other departments. Most observers expect it to be a substantial task that would divide Republicans and require significant political will to accomplish. The idea was proposed before and never gained much acceptance.

On the other hand, some of Trump's other ideas, such as using federal funds to pressure schools to adopt a more patriotic curriculum or ending diversity initiatives, would require bureaucracy, such as that provided by the Department of United States Education, to carry them out.

He Republican Party platformthat Trump shaped, he also called for better connecting education to job opportunities, an issue that could be a rare point of bipartisan cooperation on education policy. in a September op-ed published in The HillMcMahon supported a bipartisan bill to expand access to Pell grants for short-term credential programs.

The initial reaction to Trump's selection was mixed and followed some expected ideological lines.

Justice, of Moms for Liberty, praised the choice. <a target="_blank" href="https://x.com/4TiffanyJustice/status/1859058358331859380″ target=”_blank” rel=”noreferrer noopener”>post on social media site that McMahon “understands the task.” Rick Hess, director of education policy studies at the conservative American Enterprise Institute, said <a target="_blank" href="https://x.com/rickhess99/status/1859037757382754456″ target=”_blank” rel=”noreferrer noopener”>I was hoping to learn more about her. but otherwise withheld judgment.

In an emailed statement, American Federation of Teachers President Randi Weingarten also said she wants to know more about McMahon and hopes Trump will get serious about improving career and technical education and expanding internships. , even as she urged him not to get rid of the Department of Education.

National Education Association President Becky Pringle took a different tack, calling McMahon “grossly incompetent.”

“By selecting Linda McMahon, Donald Trump is showing that he doesn't care at all about the future of our students,” he said in a statement.

If nominated and confirmed, McMahon would replace Miguel Cardona, President Joe Biden's secretary of education. Cardona oversaw pandemic recovery efforts, a beleaguered student loan forgiveness initiative and the failed renewal of the federal financial aid process.

During his first term, Trump chose Betsy DeVos, a strong supporter of private schools and school choice, as his secretary of education. It had some impact on K-12 education policy.notably scaling back civil rights investigations, rescinding guidelines that detailed protections for transgender students, and installing new rules for how schools should handle sexual assault allegations.

But he failed to achieve his main political objectives.including offering federal tax credits to help families pay for private school tuition and reducing the size of the federal education budget. He lacked congressional support for both proposals, a barrier that the next Secretary of Education may not face.

chalk beat is a nonprofit news site covering educational change in public schools.

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