By admin 
Linda McMahon speaks at the 2024 Republican National Convention in Milwaukee. Image: Matt Rourke/AP Photo
President-elect Donald Trump has announced he will nominate Linda McMahon, a former head of the U.S. Small Business Administration during his first term and co-chair during his term. transition teamto lead the U.S. Department of Education.
McMahon is a professional wrestling mogul who ran two unsuccessful campaigns for the U.S. Senate in Connecticut. She was selected by Trump to lead the SBA during his first presidency. During her two years in that role, McMahon stayed out of the headlinesavoiding the controversies that characterized Trump’s first term. She resigned in 2019 to lead the Trump-linked super PAC America First Action and has remained close to Trump.
In one statement about Truth SocialTrump said that as Secretary of Education, McMahon “will fight tirelessly to expand ‘Choice’ to every state in America, empowering parents to make the best education decisions for their families.”
Although McMahon previously served in Trump’s Cabinet, her experience working with public schools is limited. From 2009 to 2010, she served on the Connecticut State Board of Education, but resigned when she ran for Senateciting a legal opinion that prevents board members from soliciting campaign contributions.
McMahon is chairman of the America First Policy Institute — a think tank staffed by veterans of Trump’s first White House team that has served as a kind of government in waiting.
She appeared at the Republican National Convention earlier this year, and spoke emotionally about her first time working with Trump, saying, “Donald Trump is not just a fighter, ladies and gentlemen. He’s a good man. He has the heart of a lion and the soul of a warrior and I believe if necessary he would stand at the gates of hell defending our country.
At the same time, McMahon did not shy away from criticizing Trump’s comments about women during his 2016 presidential run. In an interview with Yahoo Newssaid McMahon: “Those (comments) were just exaggerated; they were deplorable, absolutely reprehensible.” She added: “He certainly doesn’t help portray women in the best light. Maybe he regrets it, maybe not. I realize he hits hard when he hits back, but that’s just an exaggeration. candidate would make these comments.”
McMahon is a former professional wrestling manager. Together with her husband Vince McMahon, she helped build World Wrestling Entertainment (WWE) into a powerhouse.
She is a longtime supporter of the president-elect and has donated more than $7 million to two super PACs that supported Trump in his first campaign for president. according to Open Secretsa nonprofit organization that tracks campaign finance.
McMahon’s nomination comes at a time of great uncertainty for the U.S. Department of Education, with much of President Joe Biden’s student loan agenda still mired in legal challenges and with Trump repeatedly threatening to shutter the department entirely.
What this choice could mean for the future of the Ministry of Education
In one interview aboutTrump told Elon Musk that, if elected, “I want to close the Department of Education and move education back to the United States.”
Could Secretary McMahon deliver on that promise?
No, not on her own. The U.S. Department of Education was created by Congress and “to formally abolish it would not possibly require 60 votes in the Senate,” said Max Eden, a senior fellow at the conservative-leaning American Enterprise Institute..
How easy is it to find sixty senators willing to abolish the department? “It’s virtually impossible to see how you’ll get 60 votes for that anytime soon,” says Eden.
It’s also worth noting that even if the department were to close down somehow, the many things it does wouldn’t necessarily involve that. For example, the major K-12 funding streams that the department administers—including billions of Title I dollars for public schools in low-wealth communities—were created by Congress long before the department even existed.
Moreover, there is no sign of bipartisan support for rolling back Title I.
“Some of the schools most dependent on Title I are schools in poor, rural, white areas,” said Rachel Perera, a fellow in governance studies at the nonpartisan Brookings Institution. “And Republicans in Congress have shown time and time again that they are not interested in hurting their constituents in that way.“
That said, the next Secretary of Education will still have ample ability – and authority – to influence policies that would directly impact millions of Americans.
The Title IX rollercoaster would continue
The Biden-Harris administration extensive protections against sex discrimination in schools, including sexual orientation and gender identity, a move welcomed by advocates for gay and transgender students.
However, Donald Trump has spoken out against these protections and promised to eliminate them – something that is well within the power of his Secretary of Education. That’s because Biden’s protections were not a change in the federal law known as Title IX, but a change in government law. interpretation of the law, through the Ministry of Education.
“So they could stop enforcing Title IX,” Perera says — or at least stop enforcing Biden’s expansive view of it. In fact, the courts have already prevented the Ministry of Education from enforcing the new regulations in much of the country afterward about half of all states have filed a lawsuit in protest.
This is an old roller coaster.
In 2016 the Obama administration has issued its own Title IX guidancein which schools are told that students should be able to use sanitary facilities that match their gender identity.
In early 2017, the incoming Trump administration quickly moved in the opposite direction and abandoned that interpretation of the law.
Now it appears Trump will reverse Biden’s expansion of Title IX, just as he did to Obama.
What this choice could mean for student loan borrowers
The new education secretary will also have big choices to make regarding the federal student loan program. Biden’s second attempt at broad loan forgiveness, initiated after the Supreme Court sank his firstis now being litigated in court.
This so-called Plan B was challenged by Republican attorneys general and halted by the court in September, before the rule could be abolished, let alone rolled out. The cost is estimated at approximately $150 billionIt would, among other things, cancel the debt of borrowers with older loans and wipe out accrued interest for the millions of people who owe more than they borrowed.
The courts have so far been skeptical of Biden’s efforts to largely cancel student debt without congressional approval. And with the fate of Plan B still being litigated, the next secretary could simply choose to stop defending the plan.
Biden’s is also in limbo signing the loan repayment planthe Saving on a Valuable Education (SAVE) Plan, which reduces borrowers’ payments (to as little as $0) while preventing interest from growing. It even offers a fast track to forgiveness for borrowers with lower balances.
But SAVE’s significant price tag (by one estimate, about $455 billion over ten years) — and the fact that Biden used the regulatory process to essentially bypass Congress — also opened SAVE up to the same legal battle that upended Biden’s first major forgiveness.
For months, 8 million borrowers enrolled in SAVE have been on hold, not being asked to make payments, while the courts slowly decide whether the repayment plan is legal.
If SAVE is ultimately deemed legal, the new education secretary could still simply abolish it. And if the plan is rejected, only a sympathetic secretary would appeal.
Scott Horsley and Deepa Shivaram contributed to this story.