Trump Picks Linda McMahon for Education Secretary
President-elect Donald Trump has selected transition committee chair Linda McMahon to serve as education secretary.
The decision, which Trump announced Tuesday evening confirming an earlier CNN report, took shape after it became clear that McMahon would not be commerce secretary. Trump had picked Howard Lutnick, another co-chair of the transition team, to lead the Commerce Department earlier Tuesday after the CEO of Cantor Fitzgerald threw his name into the mix for Treasury secretary, setting off a battle with hedge fund manager Scott Bessent.
“Linda will use her decades of leadership experience, and her deep understanding of both education and business, to empower the next generation of American students and workers, and make America the number one education nation in the world,” Trump said in a statement. “We will bring education back to the United States, and Linda will lead that effort.”
McMahon, a major Republican donor and former wrestling executive, served as administrator of the Small Business Administration during Trump’s first term. She was appointed in 2017 and resigned in 2019 to become chair of the pro-Trump political action committee America First.
She is chairwoman of the board of the America First Policy Institute, a pro-Trump think tank formed in 2021 by McMahon, Larry Kudlow, and other advisers from the first Trump administration.
AFPI has raised millions of dollars since its founding, and has been described as a “White House in waiting,” planning potential policy proposals for a second Trump term.
Trump’s education secretary is likely to be tasked with overseeing the department’s demise after the president-elect repeatedly called for the agency’s abolition during his campaign.
Eliminating the entire department, which provides federal funding to nearly every public elementary and high school in the country and manages the $1.6 trillion federal student loan portfolio, would be extremely difficult. Closing it would require an act of Congress.
Some programs may be more likely to be transferred to other federal agencies. The overarching goal of many Republicans is to reduce the federal government’s role in local education, which could be achieved by keeping funding programs but handing the money to states and schools with fewer strings attached.
Under the new education secretary, the department could use the formal regulatory process to roll back changes the Biden administration made to Title IX that sought to expand protections for lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender students. The new rule could state that Title IX would bar transgender students from playing on girls’ sports teams, something Trump championed on the campaign trail.
Linda McMahon is also the former CEO of the World Wrestling Entertainment (WWE), which she co-founded with her husband Vince McMahon. As president of the WWE, she oversaw its transformation from a small wrestling entertainment company into a public media empire. She stepped down as CEO in 2009.
McMahon ran unsuccessfully for the U.S. Senate in Connecticut twice, losing in 2010 and 2012. She self-funded those campaigns, spending $50.1 million in 2010 and $48.7 million in 2012, according to Open Secrets, a nonprofit that tracks campaign finance. Trump donated $5,000 to her campaign in 2012.
McMahon herself is a major Republican donor. During Trump’s first presidential campaign, McMahon donated more than $7 million to two pro-Trump political action committees, according to Open Secrets.
