1 of 2 | Linda McMahon attends a Cabinet meeting at the White House on Wednesday before she was confirmed by the U.S. Senate on Monday. Photo by Al Drago/UPI | License Photo
The U.S. Senate on Monday confirmed billionaire and former World Wrestling Entertainment executive Linda McMahon as the secretary of Education, an agency President Donald Trump wants to abolish.
All but one member of the 22-member Cabinet has been confirmed with Lori Chavez-DeRemer the exception in the Labor Department. Advertisement
The vote was 51-45 with all Democrats voting against and every Republican backing her. Two Republicans and two Democrats didn’t vote.
Last month after Trump became president again, he told reporters in the Oval Office that he wants McMahon,76, to “put herself out of a job” in the smallest federal agency with only 4,245 employees.
Only Congress has the power to formally eliminate a federal agency.
At her confirmation hearing Feb. 13, she said: “We’d like to do this right,” she said, adding the agency “clearly could not be shut down without” Congress. Advertisement
The plan is to shift much of the department’s duties to the states.
The agency administers federal funding for K-12 schools, including through Title I for students in lower-income communities and the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act.
Schools have been forced to comply with the Trump administration’s demands to halt diversity, equity and inclusion programs, which have been challenged in court. In addition, employees, like in other agencies, have been terminated or applied for a buyout.
McMahon backs school choice programs, which allow families to use public money to subsidize nonprivate schooling
She is a proponent of expanding Pell Grants but is pushing other options for students than college. But she wants to “build up careers, not college debt.
Her nomination passed the Health, Education, Labor and Pension Committee on Feb. 20 along 12-11 party lines.
The hearings were interrupted with protesters demanding protection for transgender students and agency cuts. They included members of the National Education Association teachers’ union.
“We need a strong leader at the department who will get our education system back on track,” Sen. Bill Cassidy, R-La., said before the committee vote.
In nominating McMahon, Trump said she will “empower the next Generation of American Students and Workers, and make America Number One in Education in the World.” Advertisement
McMahon said the public education “system in decline” and wants to “invest in teachers not Washington bureaucrats.”
Committee member Bernie Sanders, an independent who caucuses with Democrats, told a crowd outside the Capitolv who rallied against her nomination: “We understand that public education is the backbone of American democracy where all of our people come together to learn and to grow. Our job is not to destroy public education, it is to significantly improve it!”
Her background in education is limited.
She went to Havelock High School, a public school in North Carolina, and graduated from East Carolina University with a Bachelor of Arts in French.
McMahon is the co-founder of former CEO of WWE with husband Vince McMahon in 1953. Their combined net worth is $2.6 billion, according to Forbes.
The couple, who are big GOP donors, announced their separation after Linda was announced as Trump’s Cabinet pick.
In 2009, McMahon resigned from her position as CEO of WWE to run as a Republican for a seat in the U.S. Senate from Connecticut that she lost in the general election. She remains a minority owner of WWE.
She served as the Small Business Administrator during Trump’s first term from 2017 to 2019. Advertisement
McMahon was a member of the Connecticut State Board of Education from 2009 to 2010.
Politically, she was chairwoman of the America First Policy Institute and the chairwoman of the America First Policies.
The Education Department was created in 1979 under the Jimmy Carter administration as a result of a spinoff from the Department of Health, Education and Welfare, which also resulted in the Department of Health and Human Services.
