The Senate has confirmed former World Wrestling Entertainment (WWE) CEO Linda McMahon to serve as President Donald Trump’s Secretary of Education, heading the department that he intends to close “immediately.”
The Senate held a full floor vote on Monday evening, confirming McMahon 51-45, along party lines.
McMahon, who co-founded WWE with her husband, Vince McMahon, served as the administrator of the Small Business Administration (SBA) during Trump’s first term but exited her post early to return to the private sector in 2019.
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In November, the president tapped McMahon to serve in another top post during his second term. But this time, he said he wanted her to “put herself out of a job.”
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“It’s a big con job,” the president said of the Education Department. “They ranked the top countries in the world. We’re ranked No. 40, but we’re ranked No. 1 in one department: cost per pupil. So, we spend more per pupil than any other country in the world, but we’re ranked No. 40.”
In a letter to Democratic members of the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions (HELP), McMahon said that she “wholeheartedly” agreed with Trump’s plan to abolish the department.
“President Trump believes that the bureaucracy in Washington should be abolished so that we can return education to the states, where it belongs. I wholeheartedly support and agree with this mission,” McMahon wrote.
In the opening remarks of her confirmation hearing, McMahon said that “many Americans today are experiencing a system in decline,” but that “the opportunity before us these next four years is momentous.”
“If I am confirmed, the department will not stand idly by while Jewish students are attacked and discriminated against,” McMahon said in her opening remarks, shared first with Fox News Digital. “It will stop forcing schools to let boys and men into female sports and spaces. And it will protect the rights of parents to direct the moral education of their children.”
