Washington (AP) – Linda McMahon once described himself as an outsider who went into the world of education, a company manager with a “questioning spirit” who would challenge the status quo and ask for more for students.
That was 15 years ago when McMahon started the Connecticut Board of Education. But their supporters describe them in a similar way today when she tries to become the nation’s next educational manager.
She has only a few of the qualifications typical of the job, but the supporters see this as strength. It has a clinical business spirit and only a few loyalities in an industry that President Donald Trump promises – starting with his vows, to abolish the US education department itself.
“Your most important qualification is her experience in the private sector,” said Ed Patru, a friend and former spokeswoman, during her Senate campaign in 2010. “The perception of the public, which is a qualified candidate, has changed dramatically. Americans are more suspicious to the government. “
McMahon’s nomination to lead the department into a rancid political struggle.
The White House weighs an executive regulation that leads the education secretary to shorten the agency as far as possible and ask the congress to close it completely. Trump’s appointments have already brought dozens of employees on a paid vacation and invited Elon Musks Department of Government Efficiency to collect expenses.
Democrats in the congress start a counter -offensive, Trump warns no authority to reduce the department or its core programs that send tens of billions of dollars a year at schools, universities and students. At the hearing of the confirmation of McMahon’s committee on Thursday, the Democrats are in front of Trump’s plan and their willingness to perform it.
Senator Chris Murphy, D-Conn. “Millions of children rely on our public schools for their training,” he said after a meeting with the candidate.
Trump has already granted a number of orders in which the educational department called for modern measures, including plans for the repetition of the federal government for school selection, the aggressive examination of anti -Semitism to College Campus and the reduction of the federal government for schools, the controversial lessons via breed and convey gender.
It could be a puzzle for McMahon that was ordered to carry out a number of modern initiatives and at the same time close the department.
McMahon and her husband Vince became famed for the construction of the wrestling empire, the Weltwrestling entertainment, a mega border that made them stars and billionaires. Linda was CEO until she went in 2009 and gave two unsuccessful bids for the US Senate. Later she became a close ally of Trump, who put her at the top of the Small Business Administration during his first term.
It has a thinner education than most earlier secretaries. She spent a year in the Connecticut Board of Education in 2009 and is a long -time trustee at Sacred Heart University in Fairfield, Connecticut.
With regard to university education, McMahon has expressed support for apprenticeships and other alternatives to conventional degrees. At K-12 level, it has requested an extended school selection and more transparency in the curriculum in the classroom.
There are questions of how exactly the views of McMahon agree with some questions with those of Trump that have scolded diversity, justice and inclusion efforts and believe that America’s schools are overhauled by “wokess”. In the past, McMahon has described himself as a fiscal conservative but socially moderate.
McMahon recently refused the administration of the former President Joe Biden, for which diversity initiatives for apprenticeship training programs are required. But in a radio show in St. Louis last March, she said that some aspects of Dei were “commendable” and “We should make sure that we are diverse.”
McMahon did not respond to interview requests for this story.
In her earlier educational roles, McMahon was seen as a willingness to learn the advantages and disadvantages of the institutions that it served.
In 2004, Anthony Cerna appointed McMahon as the Sacred Heart board of trustees when he was the school president. She studied for every meeting and watched the university finances, he said. “She knew what her job was and she did it,” he said.
In 2009, McMahon was appointed to the Connecticut State Education Board after he had appointed the governor in the middle of the concern that the Greenwich Public School, the district that had visited their two children, could meet a few testing benchmarks of the federal government.
At her hearing in her confirmation, McMahon said that she was amazed that a city as wealthy as Greenwich would fall back in education. It triggered alarms through the expansion of academic achievements by breed and class.
“As an educator, I’m not coming to you today – I don’t make bones about it,” she told the legislators. “I have no answers, but I’m open.”
After she was met regularly for about a year, she resigned for her 2010 Senate. As a self-financed Republican, McMahon was captured by her story with Pro-Wrestling and criticizes himself for violence, sexuality and allegations against steroid utilize under wrestlers.
Last year, modern allegations emerged when a lawsuit accused the McMahons, a long -time WWE announcement newborn “Ring Boys” from the 1970s to 1990s.
Laura Brevetti, a lawyer for Linda McMahon, said that the suit was unfounded and “full of bizarre lies, exaggerations and false representations”.
After McMahon lost its Senate race in 2010 and 2012, he was involved in politics as a donor. As a long -time girlfriend of Trump, she gave 7 million US dollars for his 2016 campaign and another 30 million US dollars in his next two campaigns.
Together with the co-chair of Trump’s transition team, McMahon is also a director of the president’s media company, who has his social platform of truth. If confirmed confirmed, McMahon said that she would leave the board and expire shares that should be awarded to her in the next two years after disclosing her.
At SBA, McMahon was attributed to improve its capacity to award loans according to natural disasters. When she arrived, the agency asked her to be ready for up to three disasters in a single season – just a few months before the United States was beaten up by three vast hurricanes in 2017.
When she stepped down in 2019, she pulled overpartis praise. However, her nomination as an education secretary has caused mixed answers.
Senator Patty Murray, D-Washington, member of the Senate Committee, Education, Labor and Pensions of the Senate, said she had doubts about McMahon’s qualifications. The agency needs someone who “will stand up for students and teachers,” she said.
McMahon stands in front of the two vast teacher unions of the nation and the civil rights groups. The Republicans generally supported their selection and say that she understands how education can recharge the economy.
At the beginning of this year, McMahon Capitol Hill visited to meet senators before her hearing. In social media posts that describe the visits, McMahon said that she would “reform” the educational department.
“I am ready to make the America’s education system great again,” she said on X. “Let us do it together.”
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