Trump picks business executive Linda McMahon to lead the Education Department

AP

President-elect Donald Trump announced he will nominate Linda McMahon, a former head of the U.S. Small Business Administration during his first term and a co-chair of his transition team, to lead the U.S. Department of Education.

McMahon is a professional wrestling magnate who ran two unsuccessful campaigns for the U.S. Senate in Connecticut. She was selected by Trump to lead the SBA during his first presidency. During her two years in that role, McMahon stayed out of the headlines, steering clear of the churn of controversies that were a feature of Trump's first term in office. She stepped down in 2019 to run the Trump-aligned super PAC America First Action and has remained in Trump's close orbit.

In a statement on Truth Social, Trump said, as secretary of education, McMahon "will fight tirelessly to expand 'Choice' to every State in America, and empower parents to make the best Education decisions for their families."

McMahon's experience working with public schools has been limited. From 2009-2010, she served on the Connecticut State Board of Education. She resigned when she ran for Senate, citing a legal opinion that prevents board members from soliciting campaign contributions.

McMahon is chair of the America First Policy Institute — a think-tank staffed by veterans of Trump's first White House team, which has served as a kind of administration-in-waiting.

She appeared at the Republican National Convention earlier this year, and spoke emotionally about her first time working with Trump, saying, "Donald Trump is not only a fighter, ladies and gentlemen. He is a good man. He has the heart of a lion and the soul of a warrior. And I believe that, if necessary, he would stand at the gates of hell to defend our country."

At the same time, McMahon did not shy away from criticizing Trump's comments about women during his 2016 presidential run. In an interview with Yahoo News, McMahon said, "Those [comments] were just over the top; they were deplorable, objectionable absolutely." She added, "He's not helping, certainly, to put women in the best light. Maybe he regrets them, maybe he doesn't. I realize he punches hard when he punches back, but that's just over the top. I wish that no candidate would make those comments."

McMahon is a former professional wrestling executive. Along with her husband Vince McMahon, she helped build World Wrestling Entertainment (WWE) into a powerhouse.

She's a longtime backer of the president-elect, and donated more than $7 million to two super-PACs that supported Trump in his first campaign for president, according to Open Secrets, a nonprofit that tracks campaign finance.

McMahon's nomination comes at a moment of great uncertainty for the U.S. Department of Education, with much of President Joe Biden's student loan agenda still tied up in legal challenges and with Trump making repeated threats to close the department entirely.

What this pick could mean for the future of the Education Department

In an interview on X, Trump told Elon Musk that, if elected, "I want to close up the Department of Education, move education back to the states."

Could a Secretary McMahon make good on that promise?

No, not on her own. The U.S. Department of Education was created by Congress and "to formally abolish [it], there is no way around needing 60 votes in [the Senate]," says Max Eden, a senior fellow at the conservative-leaning American Enterprise Institute.

How easy is it to find 60 senators willing to abolish the department? "It's next to impossible to see how you get 60 votes on that anytime soon," Eden says.

It's also worth noting that, even if the department were somehow shut down, the many things the department does wouldn't necessarily go with it. For example: The major K-12 funding streams the department administers – including billions of Title I dollars to public schools in low-wealth communities – were created by Congress well before the department even existed.

What's more, there's no sign of bipartisan support for scaling back Title I.

"Some of the schools who rely the most on Title I are schools in poor, rural, white areas," says Rachel Perera, a fellow in governance studies at the non-partisan Brookings Institution. "And congressional Republicans have shown time and time again that they're not interested in hurting their constituents in that way."

That said, the next secretary of education will still have plenty of opportunities – and authority – to influence policy that would have a direct impact on millions of Americans.

What this pick could mean for school choice

In his statement announcing McMahon's nomination, Trump wrote: "Linda has been a fierce advocate for Parents' Rights, working hard at both AFPI and America First Works (AFW) to achieve Universal School Choice in 12 States, giving children the opportunity to receive an excellent Education, regardless of zip code or income."

This suggests Trump intends for McMahon to pick up where his first education secretary, Betsy DeVos, herself a fierce advocate for school choice, left off.

The challenge for McMahon, as it was for DeVos, will be finding ways for the federal government to support and incentivize school choice programs within the confines of the law. Project 2025, a blueprint for the next Republican presidency that included input from Trump loyalists, recommends changing the rules to put parents in charge of those bedrock funding streams the federal government sends to schools to support students in low-income communities and children with disabilities. But that, like closing the Education Department, seems unlikely to get through Congress.

Another possibility: Trump and McMahon could push for the creation of a new tax credit that could, through a roundabout way, allow nonprofits to offer scholarships that families across the U.S. could then use to pay for private school tuition. One such bill has already been introduced in the Senate.

Any expansion of school choice will be fiercely opposed by Democrats and their allies.

"Rather than working to strengthen public schools, expand learning opportunities for students, and support educators, [McMahon's] only mission is to eliminate the Department of Education and take away taxpayer dollars from public schools," said Becky Pringle, the head of the nation's largest teachers union, the National Education Association.

The Title IX rollercoaster would continue

The Biden-Harris administration expanded protections against sex discrimination in schools to include sexual orientation and gender identity, a move cheered by advocates for gay and transgender students.

Donald Trump has railed against these protections, though, and vowed to unwind them – something that's well within his education secretary's power. That's because Biden's protections were not a change in the federal law known as Title IX, but a change in the government's interpretation of the law, through the Education Department.

"So they could stop enforcing Title IX," says Perera – or at least stop enforcing Biden's expanded vision of it. In fact, the courts have already blocked the Education Department from enforcing the new regulations in much of the country after roughly half of all states sued in protest.

This is an old rollercoaster.

In 2016, the Obama administration issued its own Title IX guidance, telling schools that students should be allowed to use the bathroom facilities that correspond with their gender identity.

In early 2017, the nascent Trump administration quickly moved in the opposite direction, abandoning that interpretation of the law.

Now, Trump seems likely to roll back Biden's expansion of Title IX, just as he did Obama's.

What this pick could mean for student loan borrowers

The incoming education secretary will also have big choices to make with the federal student loan program. Biden's second effort at broad loan forgiveness, initiated after the Supreme Court scuttled his first, is now being litigated in court.

This so-called Plan B was challenged by Republican state attorneys general and paused by the courts in September, before the rule could be finished, let alone rolled out. Estimated to cost roughly $150 billion, it would, among other things, cancel the debts of borrowers with older loans and erase accrued interest for the millions of people who owe more than they borrowed.

The courts have so far been skeptical of Biden's efforts to broadly cancel student debt without Congressional approval. And with Plan B's fate still being litigated, the next secretary could simply choose to stop defending it.

Also in limbo is Biden's signature loan repayment plan, the Saving on a Valuable Education (SAVE) Plan, which slashes borrowers' payments (to as little as $0) while also preventing interest from growing. It even offers a fast-track to forgiveness for borrowers with lower balances.

But SAVE's considerable price tag (roughly $455 billion over 10 years, by one estimate) – and the fact that Biden used the rulemaking process to essentially circumvent Congress – likewise opened SAVE to the same legal fight that upended Biden's first big forgiveness pitch.

For months now, 8 million borrowers enrolled in SAVE have been on pause, not being asked to make payments while the courts slowly decide whether the repayment plan is legal.

If SAVE is eventually deemed legal, the new education secretary could still simply phase it out. And if the plan is struck down, again, only a sympathetic secretary would choose to appeal.

Scott Horsley and Deepa Shivaram contributed to this story.