Does the secretary of education need to be an educator?
While Linda McMahon, President-elect Donald Trump's pick for education secretary, is meeting with senators who will determine whether she'll be confirmed for that role, her lack of experience in schools is being debated.
The former World Wrestling Entertainment co-founder and president could earn a second stint in a Trump Cabinet if confirmed to run the Department of Education next year. While McMahon has experience running a large government organization -- she led the Small Business Administration from 2017 to 2019 in Trump's first term -- she has not worked in education outside of stints on the board of trustees at Sacred Heart University and serving on the Connecticut state Board of Education more than a decade ago.
According to Trump's Agenda47 policy platform, Trump's top education priorities include eliminating the agency that McMahon would lead and topics that she has championed, like expanding school voucher programs and restoring power to parents in schools. McMahon allies suggest the businesswoman and Trump loyalist will disrupt and reshape the federal agency that's been led by Washington bureaucrats for more than four decades.
McMahon met Tuesday with Oklahoma Republican Markwayne Mullin, a member of the Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee, who predicted Wednesday, "I think she's going to get through pretty easy."
Asked if he had talked about dismantling the Education Department, Mullin said that he wouldn't discuss the details of their meeting.
On the House side, GOP Rep. Virginia Foxx, chairwoman of the Education and the Workforce Committee, called McMahon a fighter who will work tirelessly for students. And Foxx's colleague on the committee, Rep. Tim Walberg, R-Mich., celebrated McMahon's atypical history.
"We've all been educated and some of us know more than these egghead educators," Walberg said. "Certainly [the] bureaucrats who aren't even willing to come into the office now. I don't hold any trust in them."
After being nominated, McMahon defended her record in a post on X.
"I've witnessed the transformative power of education, both in the classroom and also in apprenticeship programs," McMahon wrote, adding, "All students should be equipped with the necessary skills to prepare them for a successful future."
Trump's nominees this cycle have stirred controversy, including defense secretary nominee and former Fox News host Pete Hegseth, Health and Human Services nominee Robert F. Kennedy Jr., and former Rep. Matt Gaetz, who removed himself from consideration for attorney general after just eight days due to being a distraction to the Trump/Vance transition.
The president-elect's pick to run the Department of Education in his first term, billionaire Betsy DeVos, had no qualifications in the education field. It took then-Vice President Mike Pence's tie-breaking vote to confirm her in 2017.
Tiffany Justice, co-founder of the conservative parental rights organization Moms for Liberty, argued the president-elect doesn't need an educator to lead the department so long as parents' rights are on the agenda.
"I think he [Trump] needs to have someone who's unapologetically America-first and who's going to put the power back to people and when it comes to the education of children, that's parents," Justice told ABC News, adding, "I think leading with parental rights is probably the most important thing that he can do."
Walberg told ABC News he believes McMahon will be a tough secretary who will carry out Trump's goal of closing the department. Democratic lawmakers on the House education committee were less thrilled with the selection but not completely opposed to McMahon.
"It seems that there were others that probably could have added more from the perspective of background in education, but we'll see," ranking member Bobby Scott, D-Va., said.
Scott commended McMahon's support for the Bipartisan Workforce Pell Act, which is a bill he co-sponsored that uses short-term Pell grants to align education opportunities with workforce needs. He also acknowledged that teaching in the classroom is not a requirement for holding the top education office.
"Someone good in education policy doesn't necessarily have to be someone who was a teacher, but, you know, somebody who's got some ideas on policy and how to improve access to college, improve academic achievement, how to eliminate the achievement gap, graduation rates -- I mean the kind of things that we're trying to achieve," Scott said.
Education experts suggest shuttering the department could gut public education funding and disproportionately impact high-need students across the country. Reps. Scott and Jahana Hayes, D-Conn., are both opponents of Trump's longstanding pledge to dismantle the department. Hayes, the 2016 National Teacher of the Year, taught in Connecticut when McMahon was on the board of education. Hayes said she is squarely focused on defending public schools.
"I'll just wait for the nomination process," Hayes told ABC News, adding "I believe deeply in public education and I'll always advocate not only for students but for the profession, and I think we need people that care as deeply about that as I do."
But allegations against McMahon and her husband Vince McMahon have clouded the nomination. A recent lawsuit alleges the couple concealed years of sexual abuse of minors who worked as the WWE's ringside crew.
Under Title IX, the federal law that prohibits sex discrimination in education programs, McMahon and the department would be responsible for investigating sexual misconduct complaints in schools.
Linda McMahon's attorney Laura Brevetti said the alleged scandal was investigated by the FBI, which found no grounds to continue the investigation at the time, and called the recent lawsuit "baseless."
Meanwhile, Wil Del Pilar, senior vice president of the advocacy group The Education Trust, labeled the McMahon pick as a "slap in the face" particularly to conservative educators who are more deserving of the job.
"It is an affront to U.S. education," Pilar said. "You're appointing someone, or potentially appointing someone, whose greatest experience was helping co-found the WWE."
