On Nov. 19, President-elect Donald Trump named former wrestling govt Linda McMahon, who led the Small Enterprise Administration from 2017 to 2019, to go the Division of Schooling. McMahon served for a yr on the Connecticut Board of Schooling from 2009 to 2010 and spent prolonged time on the Board of Trustees of Sacred Coronary heart College between 2004 and 2017, however general has a relatively restricted schooling background. That alone is more likely to make her nomination controversial, though with a 53-seat majority within the Senate, Republicans could possibly steward all however essentially the most problematic nominees by the affirmation course of.
From wrestling energy couple to politics
A local of New Bern, North Carolina, the 76 year-old married her highschool sweetheart Vince McMahon in 1966. The McMahons based Titan Sports activities, Inc. in 1980 and expanded it right into a multi-billion greenback world empire, now referred to as World Wrestling Leisure. She and Vince McMahon, from whom she is now estranged, have been the topic of a number of sexual assault and sexual trafficking allegations. One go well with, filed by former “ring boys,” alleged that the couple was conscious that one among their staff was sexually assaulting them and did nothing to cease it. That lawsuit “is stuffed with scurrilous lies, exaggerations and misrepresentations,” stated Linda McMahon’s lawyer Laura Brevetti at CNN.
Earlier than her appointment to the Small Enterprise Administration in 2017, McMahon twice tried unsuccessfully to win a Senate seat in Connecticut, first in 2010. She subsequently outran 2012 Republican presidentIal nominee Mitt Romney by 6 factors in her second race however couldn’t overcome the state’s heavy Democratic lean. And in each campaigns, scandals and accusations concerning the McMahons’ wrestling empire had been a significant line of assault. “It was her best power and weak spot on the similar time,” stated Murphy advisor Scott Bates at The Connecticut Put up.
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McMahon spent virtually $100 million of her personal fortune on the Senate runs. Rich self-funded candidates like McMahon “sometimes fade from well-liked reminiscence” after a defeat, stated Michelle Hackman on the Yale Day by day Information, however as a substitute she continued to wield her fundraising prowess and affect. After her second loss, she was “a failed candidate nonetheless engaged within the GOP,” stated Simone Pathé at Roll Name.
The rise of a Trump ally
McMahon was one among Trump’s earliest backers in 2016 and has served on the 2024 Trump transition effort since August, serving to to vet different potential cupboard picks. She’s going to step into an uncommon scenario for a cupboard secretary, since Trump repeatedly promised to abolish the Division of Schooling. McMahon has been “assigned the fraught activity of finishing up what’s broadly anticipated to be a radical and decided dismantling of the division’s core capabilities,” stated Zach Montague and Ana Swanson at The New York Instances. Nevertheless, the president would wish Congress to cross the invoice, a transfer that may be very troublesome to perform given the GOP’s slender majorities.
Trump’s Agenda 47 platform referred to as for a broad number of new schooling insurance policies, a lot of them involving controversial tradition conflict points like trans rights. As president, Trump would “flip again the tide of left-wing indoctrination and as soon as once more respect the elemental proper of oldsters to regulate the schooling, healthcare, and ethical formation of their youngsters,” stated the marketing campaign in its Agenda 47 schooling web page. The marketing campaign referred to as for funding to go to districts that remove tenure for lecturers and provides mother and father the best to elect faculty principals. The marketing campaign additionally stated it will attempt to power faculties and universities to remove their DEI packages and should threaten to ban federal loans to people who will not comply.
McMahon has not stated which facets of the Trump marketing campaign schooling agenda she would prioritize and didn’t handle schooling in her speech on the 2024 Republican Nationwide Conference. She has lengthy been a supporter of faculty selection and vouchers courting again to her transient stint on the Connecticut Board of Schooling. McMahon’s “chief purpose for schooling is to advertise vouchers, which drain assets from public faculties,” stated Amanda Litvinov at NEA In the present day.
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