Linda McMahon on Monday easily secured the votes in the U.S. Senate needed to serve as secretary of education, allowing her to take the helm of an agency President Donald Trump is already trying to significantly downsize and hopes to abolish.
The Senate approved McMahon to lead the U.S. Department of Education in a 51-45 party-line vote.
Though the Trump administration’s early moves to shrink the department and force schools to drop diversity, equity, and inclusion efforts have sparked strident objections from Democrats, McMahon passed with relative ease compared to her predecessor in Trump’s first term, Betsy DeVos, who made history by needing a tie-breaking vote from then-Vice President Mike Pence.
Still, the vote was a far cry from McMahon’s 81-19 confirmation vote in 2017 to serve as head of the Small Business Administration in Trump’s first administration, when most Democrats backed her.
Republicans have championed McMahon as the person needed to fundamentally change a department they feel is bloated with bureaucracy and imposes conditions on schools they find unfavorable. Though the federal government has no say over what schools do and don’t teach, the Trump administration has skirted around the edges of that limitation early into his second term, threatening to pull federal dollars from schools that disobey executive orders seeking to eliminate DEI programming and roll back rights for transgender students.
GOP lawmakers said McMahon’s background in business as the co-founder of World Wrestling Entertainment and her time in Trump’s first administration as head of the U.S. Small Business Association will help her overhaul the department—despite her lack of a lengthy education background.
“Ms. McMahon demonstrated a strong vision for the Department of Education,” Sen. Bill Cassidy, a Republican from Louisiana who chairs the Health, Education, Labor and Pensions committee, said during a Feb. 20 committee meeting. “She committed to empowering parents and returning powers to states and local communities, which, by the way, are best equipped to address students’ needs.”
Sen. Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, on Monday said the role of education secretary is not that of a superintendent.
“The job description of a secretary of education is to manage a bureaucracy that runs a number of funding programs,” he said. “By all accounts, Linda McMahon did a great job running the Small Business Administration in the last Trump administration. I have no reason to believe that she cannot run the Department of Education.”
Democrats, meanwhile, have raised concerns that abolishing the department would hurt the most vulnerable students, as the agency annually funnels billions of dollars earmarked for low-income students and students with disabilities to the schools that serve them. The nation’s largest teachers’ union pressed the Senate to reject McMahon.
“The fact that Ms. McMahon has not opposed Trump’s party’s plan to abolish the Department of Education is not just a red flag to me, it is a blinking, blaring fire alarm,” said Sen. Patty Murray, D-Wash. “It means either she doesn’t fully understand just what the department does and how devastating it would be to abolish it, or she doesn’t care.”
Murray also raised concerns about McMahon’s qualifications.
During McMahon’s confirmation hearing last month, Murray, a key author of the Every Student Succeeds Act, the nation’s main federal education law, pressed the nominee to name a requirement in the law. McMahon didn’t identify one.
“I’m sorry to say my concerns have not been alleviated,” Murray said.
McMahon has said she once thought she would become a classroom teacher, and she graduated from college with a French degree and a teaching certificate. But she went on to co-found and lead World Wrestling Entertainment. She later served a yearlong stint on Connecticut’s state school board, and she’s been a longtime trustee of Connecticut’s Sacred Heart University, a private religious school that bears her name on its student commons building.
After leading the Small Business Administration in Trump’s first term, McMahon headed the America First Action PAC in support of Trump’s 2020 reelection campaign. A longtime financial supporter of Trump’s campaigns, she later became chairwoman of the America First Policy Institute, an organization formed after Trump’s 2020 election loss to propel his social agenda. She was also the co-chair of Trump’s 2024 transition.
McMahon will come to the helm of the Education Department after the agency has already been significantly diminished, with more than 100 employees placed on administrative leave or terminated and scores of contracts canceled.
On Friday, department employees received an email offering them the chance to quit by Monday in exchange for up to $25,000, Politico reported. The department’s top human resources officer said the offer was coming in advance of a significant reduction in force.
The president said recently he hoped McMahon would “put herself out of a job.” Before senators at her Feb. 13 confirmation hearing, McMahon was adamant she would see that vision through—telling them education is “best handled at the state level,” though she agreed it would take congressional action to fully dismantle the agency.
Though McMahon has a light resume in education, she’ll be joined in leadership at the department by two long-time state education chiefs, Penny Schwinn and Kirsten Baesler, whose nominations also require Senate confirmation. No votes on their nominations have been scheduled.
