President-elect Donald Trump is planning to name Linda McMahon as his pick for education secretary, which could install another wealthy backer and confidant to his Cabinet, according to multiple reports on Tuesday.
McMahon, who founded World Wrestling Entertainment (WWE) alongside her husband, Vince, is the co-chair of Trump’s transition team and chairs the America First Policy Institute, a pro-Trump think tank.
She led the Small Business Administration for two years during Trump’s first term before stepping down in 2019 to help run his reelection effort.
Trump has pledged to close the Department of Education and return authority over K-12 education to states and localities. The agency provides only about 10% of funding to schools across the nation, but that support helps schools in low-income districts and is often used to pay for such programs as special education. The agency spends the bulk of its budget on the federal student aid program.
Closing the department would require an act of Congress and a supermajority of senators under current filibuster rules, a high bar.
The McMahons are longtime friends of the president-elect and personally donated millions to his first bid for the White House in 2016. Vince McMahon resigned from WWE in January shortly after a former employe filed a federal lawsuit accusing him and another executive of sexual misconduct. He has denied the allegations.
Linda McMahon was reportedly in the running to head up the Department of Commerce, but Trump chose Wall Street executive Howard Lutnik. Lutnik, another billionaire, has been co-leading Trump’s transition team alongside McMahon.
Lutnik was a major donor to Trump’s 2024 election effort and was responsible for more than $75 million in fundraising, according to The New York Times.
McMahon and her husband were recently named in a new lawsuit accusing WWE of enabling the sexual abuse of young boys by an employee in the 1980s. The suit claims the McMahons allowed a former ringside announcer to abuse five former “ring boys,” alleging the couple were privy to the “WWE’s rampant culture of sexual abuse.”