President-elect Donald Trump announced on Tuesday night that he has selected Linda McMahon to serve as secretary of the Department of Education, a department he has pledged to abolish.
The position requires Senate confirmation. McMahon, 76, currently co-chairs Trump’s transition team.
McMahon previously held the role of administrator of the Small Business Administration (SBA) during Trump’s first term. She resigned from SBA in 2019 and chaired the America First Action, a pro-Trump SuperPAC.
Trump said that McMahon will “fight tirelessly” to expand school choice to every state across the United States and empower parents to make right educational decisions for their children.
With her leadership experience and background in education and business, Trump said that McMahon could empower the country’s next generation and “make America Number One in Education in the World.”
Trump stated that McMahon has a “deep understanding of both education and business,” citing her time serving on the Connecticut Board of Education and the Board of Trustees at Sacred Heart University in Fairfield, Connecticut.
He heralded her work with America First Policy Institute and America First Works as instrumental in 12 states adopting universal school choice over the past four years, “giving children the opportunity to receive an excellent Education, regardless of zip code or income.”
“We will ultimately eliminate the federal Department of Education,” Trump said at a September campaign rally in Wisconsin.
He promised to stop the agency from abusing taxpayer money to “indoctrinate America’s youth with all sorts of things that you don’t want to have our youth hearing.”
McMahon and her husband, Vince McMahon, co-founded the WWE professional wrestling promotion company, where she also served as CEO.
McMahon also served as chair of the America First Policy Institute, founded in 2021 to advance Trump’s policies and develop proposals for a second term, including making tax cuts permanent and continuing deregulation.
