Senate confirms McMahon to lead Education Department as Trump pushes to
shut it down
[March 04, 2025]
By ANNIE MA
WASHINGTON (AP) — The Senate voted Monday to confirm former wrestling
executive Linda McMahon as the nation’s education chief, a role that
places her atop a department that President Donald Trump has vilified
and vowed to dismantle.
McMahon will face the competing tasks of winding down the Education
Department while also escalating efforts to achieve Trump’s agenda.
Already the Republican president has signed sweeping orders to rid
America’s schools of diversity programs and accommodations for
transgender students while also calling for expanded school choice
programs.
At the same time, Trump has promised to shut down the department and
said he wants McMahon “to put herself out of a job.”
The Senate voted to confirm McMahon 51-45.
A billionaire and former CEO of World Wrestling Entertainment, McMahon,
76, is an unconventional pick for the role. She spent a year on
Connecticut’s state board of education and is a longtime trustee at
Sacred Heart University but otherwise has little traditional education
leadership.
McMahon's supporters see her as a skilled executive who will reform a
department that Republicans say has failed to improve American
education. Opponents say she’s unqualified and fear her budget cuts will
be felt by students nationwide.
“Americans believe in public education,” Senate Minority Leader Chuck
Schumer, D-N.Y., said before the confirmation vote. “They don’t want to
see the Department of Education abolished. If the Trump administration
follows through on cuts to education, schools will lose billions in
funding.”
At her confirmation hearing, McMahon distanced herself from Trump’s
blistering rhetoric. She said the goal is to make the Education
Department “operate more efficiently,” not to defund programs.
She acknowledged that only Congress has the power to close the
department, and she pledged to preserve Title I money for low-income
schools, Pell grants for low-income college students, and the Public
Service Loan Forgiveness program. Yet she suggested some operations
could move to other departments, saying Health and Human Services might
be better suited to enforce disability rights laws.
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Weeks before McMahon's confirmation hearing, the White House was
considering an executive order that would direct the education
secretary to cut the agency as much as legally possible while asking
Congress to shut it down completely. Some of McMahon’s allies
pressed the White House to hold the order until after her
confirmation to avoid potential backlash.
Created by Congress in 1979, the Education Department’s primary role
is to disburse money to the nation’s schools and colleges. It sends
billions of dollars a year to K-12 schools and oversees a $1.6
trillion federal student loan portfolio.
Trump argues the department has been overtaken by liberals who press
their ideology on America’s schools.
Schools and colleges have been navigating a demand to eliminate
diversity programs or risk having their federal funding pulled. The
Trump administration gave them a Feb. 28 deadline to comply. The
Education Department addressed questions about its guidance in a
document released Saturday, saying in part that changing program
names that reference “diversity” or “equity” alone is not enough if
they treat students differently by race.
During the presidential campaign, Trump vowed to close the
department and grant its authority to states. Schools and states
already wield significantly greater authority over education than
the federal government, which is barred from influencing curriculum.
Federal money makes up roughly 14% of public school budgets.
Already, the Trump administration has started overhauling much of
the department’s work.
Trump adviser Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency has
cut dozens of contracts it dismissed as “woke” and wasteful. It
gutted the Institute of Education Sciences, which gathers data on
the nation’s academic progress, and the administration has fired or
suspended scores of employees.
Some of the cuts have halted work that’s ordered under federal law.
At her hearing, McMahon said the agency will spend money that’s
directed by Congress, and she played down DOGE’s cuts as merely an
audit.
McMahon is a longtime Trump ally who left WWE in 2009 to launch a
political career, running unsuccessfully twice for the U.S. Senate.
She has given millions of dollars to Trump’s campaigns and served as
leader of the Small Business Administration during his first term.
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