Linda McMahon, the sports entertainment tycoon, whom President Trump has been appointed to run the Department of Education, told legislators on Thursday that he envisioned a very reduced role for the organization in the future and will seek to realize this vision if confirmed.
A former executive director of the World Wrestling Entertainment, Ms. McMahon, was used to run a section in the middle of intense turmoil and whose reasons why they were challenged by the president. Mr Trump has repeatedly stated that he would like to shrink, if not completely eliminated, the department, creating a hearing of the Senate on Thursday with a few parallels in American history.
Mrs McMahon stopped hugging the calls to close the department, which would equate to the elimination of the work appointed to take. Instead, he set a circular intersection plan to return to the period before the establishment of the Department in 1979, during which he stated that state officials and other federal organizations handled the current responsibilities of the Department more effectively.
“I am really all about the president’s mission, which is to return to education in the states,” he said. “I believe, as is the case, that the best education is closer to the child.”
Mrs McMahon walked the legislators through her qualifications to oversee the health of the country’s schools in the middle of open discussions in the White House on whether the department would close. On Wednesday, less than a day before Mrs McMahon was scheduled to appear for the hearing, Mr Trump said he wanted to see the section lean “immediately”, calling “a great job”.
He went from some of the most pressing questions about this rhetoric at first recognizing that the decline in federal funding for schools, which is available from Congress, was neither practical legally nor a goal he would seek.
However, he repeatedly suggested that many of the tasks that the department is currently handling, including disbursements for special education or data collection and research collection of students and teaching methods, could be better treated than other organizations.
“It is my goal, if I am confirmed, to enter and evaluate these types of programs, because I am not yet sure what the impact of all these programs is,” he said.
Mrs McMahon talked about the sad results documented last month in a national examination, the national evaluation of educational progress, which showed pervasive loss of learning in all public schools in the country by the Covid-19 pandemic. Conservative tanks and legislators have pointed out the results as proof that the nation’s education system requires deep changes and as an excuse for policies aimed at expanding access to private and religious schools.
He was introduced during the hearing by Senate Scott Senators of South Carolina and Katie Britt of Alabama, Republicans, who mourned each one who described as long transparency in educational standards. They asked to move away from public schools and traditional college programs.
In her inaugural statement, Ms McMahon took this issue, promoting new ways to train the country’s future workforce.
He also noted the priorities that Mr Trump had already set for the organization through executive orders in recent days. One of the orders focused on school selection, a topic that will probably emphasize. Other administration’s priorities revolve around cultural issues, such as gender, race and sexuality and the fight against anti -Semitism.
Mr Trump’s recent appointments have already taken steps to turn the department into a vehicle to tighten schools and organizations considered hostile to the president’s agenda. On Wednesday, the department began new research on two intra -epitome of sports associations in Minnesota and California, which had marked that they would allow transsexual athletes to continue to compete in groups corresponding to their gender identity.
The president has taken over Elon Musk, the richest man in the world, by reducing the federal government, and his associates have built through the data of the Department of Education, pointing out programs and grants for cancellation. The spectrum of the upcoming staff reductions and the fundamental reorientation of the organization’s functions have left hundreds of more than 4,200 workers in the department to discourage and hear the alarm on the influence on teachers.
Since last week, more than 70 employees in the department have been put on administrative license due to their connection to long -term diversity, shareholders and conclusions. And between Monday and Tuesday, the section canceled dozens of grants that support most of its research activities. At least 50 more workers in a test state have been fired this week, according to a union representing federal workers.
“It is always difficult to reduce. It is always difficult to restructure and reorganize in any section,” Mrs McMahon said of the rallies of the department. “I have faced this, you know, in the business world, because you know that you are affecting people’s lives.”
On Tuesday, Mr Trump signed a mandate that required widespread reductions in the federal workforce through “friction” and the issuance of serious instructions, including services that hire “no more than one employee for every four departing officials”.
Like most candidates for Mr Trump, Mrs McMahon is considered a loyal lieutenant, but one with an unusually long record of supporting the president’s political ambitions and maintaining a place in his orbit.
During his first term, he served as the head of the administration of small businesses until he resigned from 2019 to direct a political action committee that supports Mr Trump. He then became president of America’s First Policy Institute, conservative thinking staffed by former Trump officials, where he arrested policy ideas for a second term Trump.
Mr Trump’s relationship with Mrs McMahon and her husband, Vince McMahon, dates back to the 1980s, a period during which Mr Trump cultivated interest in businesses and their success on television. He served as a sponsor for the WWE Wrestlemania show when he appeared at Atlantic City, NJ, and even presented several times, including a writing against the dispute against Mr McMahon, was invoiced as a “billionaire battle”.
Their relationship has only become more interconnected, as Ms McMachon has emerged as a dedicated Megadonor on Mr Trump’s last three offers for the presidency.
Mrs McMahon and her husband, from whom she is separated, were the six -largest donors to Mr Trump during her offering in 2024, channeling more than $ 20 million to Mr Trump’s re -election campaign and to connected PAC, According to data drawn up with open secrets, a group of transparency of the government. He personally gave over $ 360,000 to assist Mr Trump’s Presidential Campaign in 2020.
Mrs McMahon has also won the attitude and influence through her connection with the president, taking on higher consulting roles in multiple conservative policies and the daily caller, a conservative news area. She also receives a quarterly maintenance of $ 18,400 from Trump Media & Technology Group, Mr Trump Social Platform’s parent company, and received thousands of shares in compensation for her job with the team.
Many who worked with Ms McMahon have noted her political disposition and remain a power in the president’s inner circle. Mr Trump praised her as a “superstar” when he resigned from his cabinet in 2019.
He has promised to give up these positions and assign Mr Trump’s business if confirmed.
Like Betsy Devos, the Secretary of Education during Mr Trump’s first term, Ms McMachon is extremely rich, citing millions of annual revenue from her participation in the professional empire she created, according to a financial revelation that was submitted. before listening.
But the business empire he created that produced that wealth has also raised serious questions about the management of Mrs McMahon and the supervision of moral violations.
Under its leadership, various repetitions of global struggle entertainment have created a stream of complaints that describe ruthless abuse of substances and sexual abuse throughout the business. Mrs McMahon was named as defendant in a pending lawsuit in Maryland, who claims to have failed to take action against employees accused of sexual abuse of minors working for the organization.
Critics have said that the relative lack of experience in education amid a tide of conservative dissatisfaction with the department leaves a little prepared to browse the impact that Mr Trump’s agenda can have in the nation schools. He received a certificate to teach in French and served a short time at the Connecticut Education Council. He is also a university administrator at Sacred Heart University in Fairfield, Conn, for many years.
