On Tuesday evening, news broke that Linda McMahon would be President-elect Trump’s pick for US Secretary of Education.
Here’s a rundown of what we know:
McMahon currently serves as Trump’s transition co-chair and has operated in his orbit for years. She is a longtime Republican donor, having chaired America First Action, a Super PAC backing Trump’s 2020 re-election campaign, before co-founding the America
First Policy Institute (AFPI) with former Trump executives in 2021. McMahon is also the former Chief Executive of World Wrestling Entertaining (WWE), which she led with her husband until 2009, when she stepped down to launch her own career in politics.
McMahon’s experience is primarily as a business executive, though she reports that teaching was an early career aspiration. She served a year on the Connecticut Board of Education following her departure from WWE and ran twice for US Senate in Connecticut
-- losing to Richard Blumenthal (D) in 2010, and Chris Murphy (D) in 2012. McMahon also served as a member and Vice Chair of the board of trustees at Sacred Heart University, a private Catholic university in Fairfield, CT, from 2004-2017, before being
appointed to lead the Small Business Administration during Trump’s first term. She returned to her role at Sacred Heart University in 2021.
When it comes to education policy, McMahon has been praised by Trump for her support of school choice and parents’ rights, who wrote in his recent statement that she will, “fight tirelessly to expand ‘choice’ to every State in America, and empower parents to make the best education decisions for their families.” McMahon herself has been vocal about her support for workforce Pell and the Bipartisan Workforce Pell Act, the expansion of charter schools, and apprenticeship programs. The AFPI policy agenda includes, among other things, eliminating degree requirements for public sector jobs and combatting diversity, inclusion, and accessibility programs on campus.
The news of McMahon’s nomination for US Secretary of Education has drawn mixed reviews from members of Congress and from leaders in the education advocacy space. Representative Virginia Foxx (R-NC,) Chair of the House Committee on Education and the Workforce,
applauded McMahon, as, “a fighter who will work tirelessly in service of the students.” Representative Bobby Scott (D-VA,) Ranking Member of the
Committee, said in a statement that he would withhold judgement until after the Senate vets her nomination, but, added that if
McMahon supports Trump’s plan to shutter the Department of Education and “actively dismantle the progress of the Biden-Harris Administration,” he would not support her nomination.
Senate confirmations are scheduled to start in the new year.
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