Trump’s Education nominee would bring past government experience to the role

When she was administrator of the Small Business Administration during President-elect Donald Trump’s first term, Linda McMahon liked to walk around the agency’s headquarters and pop unannounced into employees’ offices. She said at a leadership event in 2017 that this habit “scare[d] the heck out of people” but was intended to show that she cares. 

For his second term, Trump has nominated McMahon — who is also known for being the president and CEO of World Wrestling Entertainment — to lead the Education Department, an agency that Trump has sworn to eliminate. While any attempt to do so will likely be met with partisan opposition, McMahon ended her tenure at SBA with bipartisan accolades. 

“My hope is that President Trump will nominate a successor who is as committed to advocating for America’s small businesses as Administrator McMahon was,” said Sen. Ben Cardin, D-Md., then ranking member of the Small Business and Entrepreneurship Committee, when McMahon departed in 2019. 

In her first year at the helm, the U.S. experienced three major hurricanes — Harvey in Texas, Irma in Florida and Maria in Puerto Rico. SBA provides low-interest loans to assist businesses, homeowners, renters and nonprofits recover from disasters, and the agency had to move quickly to respond to the trio of storms. 

“[T]he most daunting thing is helping disaster victims” because a new leader “is not given a honeymoon when there’s flooding and people are out of their homes,” McMahon said at the 2017 event.

In a 2020 report, the inspector general for the SBA found the agency was generally able to fulfill its mission despite the pressure of three back-to-back hurricanes. 

“[W]ithin 9 days of Hurricane Harvey, the agency established both disaster and recovery centers. While still helping victims of Hurricane Harvey, SBA established its presence for Hurricane Irma within 20 days. Then, while still assisting hurricane Harvey and Irma disaster survivors, SBA was able to staff disaster recovery and business recovery centers within 13 days in Puerto Rico and 33 days in the U.S. Virgin Islands to help victims of Hurricane Maria,” the OIG reported. 

However the watchdog also said SBA experienced a sizable backlog in loan applications and did not meet its goals for answering calls and responding to emails. 

McMahon is a close ally of the president-elect. She is a co-chair of Trump’s transition team and board chair of the America First Policy Institute, a right-wing think tank with many former Trump administration officials that, much like the Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025, has performed unofficial transition work. (AFPI’s president — Brooke Rollins — is Trump’s nominee for Agriculture secretary.) 

She has limited education experience; McMahon served for less than a year on Connecticut’s Board of Education almost 15 years ago. 

Mirroring his rhetoric on Schedule F, Trump said he would remove Education Department employees who oppose his agenda. 

“On day one, we will begin to find and remove the radicals, zealots and Marxists who have infiltrated the federal Department of Education, and that also includes others, and you know who you are. Because we are not going to allow anyone to hurt our children,” Trump said in a video on his campaign website. “Joe Biden has given these lunatics unchecked power — I will have them fired and escorted from the building. And I will tell Congress that any appropriations bill I sign must reaffirm the president’s ability to remove defiant employees from the job. It’s all about our children.” 

Sen. Mike Rounds, R-S.D., recently introduced legislation that would transfer various functions in Education to other departments. 

Republicans have been trying to eliminate the Education Department since Ronald Reagan was president. Trump’s Education secretary during his first administration, Betsy DeVos, said after her tenure ended that the department she led “should not exist.” 

In a statement announcing her nomination, Trump said that McMahon “will fight tirelessly to expand [school choice] to every State in America, and empower parents to make the best Education decisions for their families.” School choice is an umbrella term for programs that allow parents to enroll their children in schools other than the district public school they are assigned, usually with public money. 

She also has backed bipartisan legislation that would expand eligibility for Pell Grants for low-income undergraduate students to individuals enrolled in eligible workforce programs.