President-elect Donald Trump has nominated Linda McMahon to be Secretary of Education, another wealthy benefactor and secretary to the Cabinet.
“As Secretary of Education, Linda will fight tirelessly to expand choice to every state in America and empower parents to make the best education decisions for their families,” President Trump said in a statement. “Linda will leverage her decades of leadership experience and deep understanding of education and business to empower the next generation of American students and workers and make America the No. 1 place in education in the world.”
“We will bring education back to the United States, and Linda will lead that effort.”
McMahon, who founded World Wrestling Entertainment (WWE) with her husband Vince, is co-chairman of Trump’s transition team and chairs the America First Policy Institute, a pro-Trump think tank.
She led the Small Business Administration for two years during Trump’s first term and resigned in 2019 to help Trump’s re-election effort.
Trump has promised to close the Department of Education and return authority over K-12 education to the states and localities. The agency only provides about 10% of its funding to schools nationwide, but its support helps schools in low-income areas and is often used to pay for programs like special education. The institution spends most of its budget on federal student aid programs.
Closing the department would require a bill in Congress and a supermajority of senators under current filibuster rules.
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The McMahon family are longtime friends of the president-elect and personally donated millions of dollars to his first White House bid in 2016. Vince McMahon resigned from WWE in January shortly after a former employee filed a federal lawsuit alleging sexual harassment against him and another executive. He denied the charges.
Linda McMahon was reported to be running for Secretary of Commerce, but Trump chose Wall Street executive Howard Lutnick. Lutnik, another billionaire, co-leads Trump’s transition team with McMahon.
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Lutnik has been a major donor to Trump’s 2024 election effort, responsible for raising more than $75 million, according to The New York Times.
McMahon and her husband were recently named in a new lawsuit accusing WWE of encouraging the sexual abuse of young boys by employees in the 1980s. The lawsuit alleged that the McMahons allowed a former ringside announcer to abuse five former “ring boys” and that the couple engaged in “WWE’s pervasive culture of sexual abuse.”
