President-elect Donald Trump named Linda McMahon as his pick for education secretary, who would install a new wealthy backer and confidant in his Cabinet.
“As Secretary of Education, Linda will fight tirelessly to expand ‘Choice’ to every state in America, empowering parents to make the best education decisions for their families,” Trump said in a statement Tuesday. “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 America number one in education in the world.”
“We will send education BACK TO THE STATES, and Linda will lead that effort.”
McMahon, who co-founded World Wrestling Entertainment (WWE) with her husband Vince, is co-chair of Trump’s transition team and chairman of the America First Policy Institute, a pro-Trump think tank.
She headed the Small Business Administration for two years during Trump’s first term before resigning in 2019 to help run his reelection effort.
Trump has promised to close the Ministry of Education and returns authority over primary and secondary education to states and localities. The agency provides only about 10% of its funding to schools nationwide, but that support helps schools in low-income districts and is often used to pay for programs like special education. The agency spends most of its budget about the federal student aid program.
Closing the department would require an act of Congress and a supermajority of senators under current filibuster rules, a high bar.
Hannah Beier/Bloomberg via Getty Images
The McMahons are longtime friends of the president-elect and personally donated millions to his first bid for the White House in 2016. Vince McMahon resigned from WWE in January, shortly after a former employee filed a federal lawsuit charging him and another executive accused of sexual misconduct. He has denied the allegations.
Linda McMahon was reportedly in the running to head the Commerce Department, but Trump chose Wall Street executive Howard Lutnik. Lutnik, another billionaire, has led Trump’s transition team with McMahon.
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Lutnik was a major donor to Trump’s 2024 election efforts and was responsible for more than $75 million in fundraising, according to The New York Times.
McMahon and her husband were recently named in a new lawsuit Accusing WWE of facilitating sexual abuse of young boys by an employee in the 1980s. The address claims the McMahons allowed a former ringside announcer to abuse five former “ring boys,” claiming the couple knew about the WWE’s “rampant culture of sexual abuse.”