President-elect Donald Trump’s selection of Linda McMahon to serve as secretary of education comes after months of campaign promises to broaden families’ access to public money for private school tuition, increase parents’ control over schools, and abolish the U.S. Department of Education.
McMahon, 76, is a wealthy businesswoman who founded and served as CEO of World Wrestling Entertainment. She beat out more public-facing, vocal advocates of Trump’s education causes who have garnered national headlines. But she’s proven herself to be an ideological ally of Trump’s, who has steadfastly supported him since his first run for office in 2016, including as a donor and prolific fundraiser.
As education secretary, McMahon would be tasked with dismantling the department she leads if Trump follows through with his campaign promise. He’s also pledged to cut federal funding to schools “pushing critical race theory” and “transgender insanity.” (During her time leading the Small Business Administration in Trump’s first term, the agency was criticized for the removal of a webpage with resources for LGBTQ+ business owners; the webpage was later restored, the Washington Post reported.)
Here are five things to know about the president-elect’s choice for secretary of education.
1. McMahon was never a classroom teacher, but she says she had ambitions to be one
If confirmed by the Senate, McMahon will come into the nation’s top education job with no K-12 classroom or school administration experience, which is not unusual. Just four secretaries of education had K-12 teaching or administrative experience on their resumes—Miguel Cardona, the current education secretary; John King, the second education secretary under Democrat Barack Obama; Rod Paige, Republican George W. Bush’s first appointee to the role; and Terrel Bell, who served under Republican Ronald Reagan.
But McMahon says she had once anticipated she would become a classroom teacher, before her marriage and career took her in a different direction (more on that in a minute). Her alma mater, East Carolina University, said when she spoke at the college’s commencement in 2018 that she graduated with a bachelor’s degree in French and a teaching certification. (She’s faced scrutiny for inaccurately saying previously that she graduated with an education degree.)
McMahon was appointed to the Connecticut board of education in 2009 by Jodi Rell, then Connecticut’s Republican governor. State lawmakers there confirmed her for the post, but questioned her knowledge of education and whether having a WWE executive serve in the post would send the right message, the CTNewsJunkie reported at the time.
Her time there was short-lived. She left her post early to make the first of two unsuccessful bids to represent Connecticut in the U.S. Senate. At the time, lawmakers there wondered if she’d used the post as a launching pad to build a political career.
2. Yes, Linda McMahon was a pro-wrestling executive
At this point, you’ve probably seen the clips circulating of the president-elect’s pick for secretary of education in the ring.
Ladies and gentlemen, I present your new Secretary of Education MOTHER Linda McMahon 💅 pic.twitter.com/Rx5zwxnlNU
— Dalton🏳️🌈🇺🇸 (@Ariesguy041499) November 20, 2024
McMahon, along with husband Vince McMahon, co-founded and led World Wrestling Entertainment, where she grew the brand for years into a multibillion-dollar enterprise. She left in 2009, when she began to pursue her political ambitions.
Some supporters of McMahon’s, including Trump, have pointed to her business background as an asset for leading the agency with a nearly $80 billion budget.
“Running federal student aid is the biggest Department of Education function, and it has long been decrepit, perhaps because secretaries have never come from financial backgrounds. A good sign for McMahon is that she has had a successful business career, albeit running steel cage matches and not red tape machines,” wrote Neal McCluskey, director of the Center for Educational Freedom at the Cato Institute, a libertarian think tank based in Washington. “But she probably knows something about efficiency and effectiveness.”
McMahon’s tenure as a WWE executive came under fire recently in a lawsuit that alleged the organization’s leaders were aware of and didn’t stop a longtime ringside announcer from sexually abusing young boys who helped the ring crew, The Hill reported last month. The lawsuit named McMahon and her husband Vince, whose attorney called the claims “absurd, defamatory, and utterly meritless,” according to USA Today.
3. She has had an interest in literacy and career preparation
McMahon said previously she was involved with Teach For America and charter schools. She was complimentary of teaching and the profession in an interview with Leaders Magazine in 2014, saying that she watched “masterful teachers” help students gain ground. She said the country had a “very good system with public and private schools.” She also said she was a proponent of charter schools.
In 2000, she launched WWE’s “GET REAL” campaign aimed at delivering positive messages about education and literacy to young adults through public service announcements, posters, and bookmarks featuring WWE stars.
A page on WWE’s site showed McMahon at a Connecticut elementary school at an event promoting literacy after her appointment to the state’s school board.
And on Nov. 19, hours before Trump announced her as his pick to lead the Education Department, she tweeted about apprenticeships as “a pathway to successful careers,” citing Switzerland as a model.
The National Parents Union said in a statement that the group hoped she would focus on literacy and persistent learning loss after the COVID-19 pandemic, rather than get into the political fray on measures Republicans have increasingly taken issue with, such as diversity, equity, and inclusion, critical race theory, and transgender student rights.
4. Linda McMahon is a longtime proponent of school choice
Ahead of the 2016 presidential election, she wrote in a newspaper op-ed about the importance of education policy at the federal level. “One of the issues most important to me is the question of school choice,” she wrote, saying that parents should be able to choose from “neighborhood schools, private schools, religious schools or charter schools.”
“I don’t believe charter schools take anything away from traditional public schools; rather, I think they can be centers for innovation and models for best practices,” she wrote in the August 2015 essay, in which she also fondly recalled her 5th grade teacher, Mrs. Hollister, as someone “who was considered very strict and certainly set a high bar.
“I worked so hard in her class and had tons of homework,” McMahon said. “But when she reviewed a student’s work and said, ‘well done,’ there was an amazing warmth in her eyes. I never wanted to disappoint her.”
“I believe all children deserve teachers who will spark their passions, who will encourage them, who will refuse to let them settle for adequate when they have potential to be great,” McMahon continued. “Too often, kids most in need of a teacher—a role model—to believe in them, to challenge them and to inspire them are stuck in failing schools that do not meet their needs.”
In her first campaign for U.S. Senate, which she lost to Democratic Sen. Richard Blumenthal, McMahon called for more “choice and competition” through the expansion of charter schools, Education Week reported at the time.
Trump prioritized policies intended to expand families’ access to taxpayer dollars for private school in his first term, though made only modest progress in advancing it at the federal level; Betsy DeVos, his education secretary in the first term, has long pushed the issue at both the state and federal levels. In his second term, Trump is likely to double down on that effort.
“Linda will fight tirelessly to expand ‘Choice’ to every State in America, and empower parents to make the best Education decisions for their families,” Trump wrote in his announcement of McMahon’s selection.
5. McMahon’s longtime connection to Trump, and work promoting his public policy agenda, offers a clue to priorities
Trump appeared in WWE programs over the years, and McMahon donated to his first campaign, the Associated Press reported.
And though McMahon’s own political aims faced a roadblock after her losses in 2010 and 2012, she found a political home with Trump. She donated generously to his first campaign, and was later appointed to serve as head of the Small Business Administration during the Republican’s first term.
She stepped down from the SBA in 2019 to lead the America First Action PAC in support of Trump’s reelection. Most recently, she’s served as Trump’s transition team co-chair.
Though not as visibly outspoken as other people who were publicly considered contenders for the education secretary job, McMahon has played a key role in refining a Trump policy agenda. She serves as chair of the board for the America First Policy Institute, an organization formed after Trump’s 2020 loss that has been central to planning for a second Trump administration.
The organization has pushed for increased parental rights and advancing vouchers for private schools, and taken aim at curriculum dealing with race and racism and gender and sexuality. At the state level, the organization advocates for the end of school district boundaries so parents can enroll their children in any school in their state.
