President-elect Donald Trump campaigned on shutting down the Department of Education.

What You Need To Know

  • President-elect Donald Trump nominated Linda McMahon to be the secretary of Education

  • McMahon grew up in North Carolina and is perhaps most known as the co-founder of WWE

  • McMahon previously led the Small Business Administration in Trump’s first term

It’s unclear whether that will happen, but the person he’s nominated to run the department is an education outsider.

Linda McMahon and her husband Vince are perhaps best known as the co-founders of the company now known as World Wrestling Entertainment.

She was raised in New Bern, North Carolina, and graduated from East Carolina University.

Pro wrestling became a springboard into politics.

She unsuccessfully ran for the U.S. Senate in Connecticut in 2010 and 2012. She also led the Small Business Administration in Trump’s first term.

But when it comes to the education field, McMahon’s experience is limited, as are her known policy views.

“She doesn’t have much of a footprint in the world of education,” said education professor Aaron Pallas who works at the Teachers College, Columbia University. “There is some belief she might be very supportive of career and technical education … on the grounds that not everyone needs a college degree to be able to move forward in life. And second, she’s affiliated with an organization that is very supportive of school choice.”

McMahon has said she once planned to become a teacher, but the goal fell aside after marriage. She did spend years on a college board of trustees and briefly served on the Connecticut Board of Education.

But Trump’s first education secretary, Betsy DeVos, also lacked experience. 

“My sense of the kinds of appointments that President Trump is making is many of them are in the service of anti-institutionalism. That is tearing down existing institutions, making government smaller,” Pallas said.

That is what Trump said he would do during the campaign.

“I will shut down the federal Department of Education, and we will move everything back to the states,” Trump said during an event in August.

But Pallas said that’s easier said than done.

“It’s something Congress could do. It’s not something the president could do with a stroke of a pen,” Pallas said. “There are still a lot of stakeholders, constituents of members of Congress that count on the services and funds the federal department provides, and that’s historically why it’s been so difficult for Republicans to eliminate the department. Too many people count on what it’s actually doing.”

Instead Pallas said functions of the department could gradually get passed to other federal agencies and state and local governments, including Title I funding for school districts to assist children from low-income families.

“In the Project 2025 playbook [Title I is] set to be phased out over 10 years, with that responsibility shifted to the states. Now where the states are going to find $18 billion is an open question,” Pallas said.

McMahon’s lack of experience in the education field doesn’t seem to be hurting her. The office of North Carolina Republican Sen. Thom Tillis, a potential swing vote on some of the confirmation hearings, told Spectrum News he will vote for her.

“North Carolina native Linda McMahon earned broad bipartisan support when she was confirmed as administrator of the SBA, and she proved to be an excellent manager, working to keep businesses afloat during a once-in-a-century pandemic. The Department of Education is in need of capable leadership to empower local school districts, teachers, and students and their parents in North Carolina and across the country. I look forward to supporting her confirmation,” Tillis' office said in a statement.

One potential roadblock, though, is a recent lawsuit against McMahon and her husband that alleges they enabled the sexual exploitation of children by a WWE employee. They both deny the allegations.