Linda McMahon, the co-chair of President-Elect Donald Trump’s transition team, is his pick for education secretary.

Trump decided on McMahon for the role after tapping his other transition team co-chair — Wall Street executive Howard Lutnick — to be his nominee for commerce secretary, CNN reported Tuesday. 

During his first presidential term, Trump selected McMahon to head the Small Business Administration. She filled that role from 2017 to 2019 when she resigned to lead America First Action, a Super PAC started by Trump campaign officials. McMahon chairs the America First Policy Institute, a think tank that works to advance Trump’s public policy platform. 

McMahon has scant experience in education, serving on Connecticut’s state board of education for a little over a year from January 2009 to April 2010. Then-Governor Jodi Rell appointed her to the board, which led to concerns that McMahon did not possess sufficient “depth of knowledge regarding education” for the position. Addressing such criticism, McMahon reportedly said that she had earned a bachelor’s degree in education, which was untrue. Her bachelor’s degree is in French.

Trump has made it clear in his policy proposals and speaking appearances that he plans to try to eliminate the Department of Education, encourage school prayer, advocate for parents’ rights and support “school choice” by giving families access to vouchers that would allow their children to attend private schools. Betsy DeVos, education secretary during Trump’s first term as president, was a major school choice advocate and continues to promote vouchers through her organization, the American Federation for Children. 

Trump has said that he intends to withhold federal funding from K-12 schools that teach what he characterizes as critical race theory or gender ideology. He’s announced plans to target higher education institutions that do the same and retaliate against states that offer in-state tuition to undocumented immigrants. He has vowed to roll back safeguards for transgender students, particularly preventing transgender girls from playing on girls’ sports teams, a protection that President Joe Biden’s administration did not extend to these students under the Title IX guidelines updated in the spring. Title IX is a civil rights law that prevents schools that receive federal funding from engaging in sex discrimination.

In a statement announcing McMahon as his pick for education secretary, Trump said, “We will send Education BACK TO THE STATES, and Linda will spearhead that effort.” His remarks ignore that states already set policies and curriculum for school districts nationwide, while the Department of Education administers federal funding and guarantees students equal access to education, among other responsibilities. 

Before joining the Trump administration in 2017, McMahon ran for public office in Connecticut. In 2010, she lost her bid to become a U.S. senator representing that state despite pouring tens of millions of her own money into her failed campaign. At that time, she ran as a candidate with mixed views on abortion, calling herself “pro-choice” but objecting to federal funding for abortions and the procedures commonly referred to as “late-term abortions,” or those that occur during a late stage of gestation. In 2012, McMahon lost a second senatorial bid. She went on to become a major Republican fundraiser, donating millions of dollars to pro-Trump Super PACs.  

In his statement, Trump said that McMahon has served on the board of trustees at Sacred Heart University in Fairfield, Connecticut, a Catholic institution, for more than 16 years.

Like Trump himself and several of his 2024 cabinet picks, including attorney general nominee Matt Gaetz and defense secretary nominee Pete Hegseth, McMahon has been linked to sexual misconduct. She and her husband, Vince McMahon, founded the company now known as World Wrestling Entertainment Inc. (WWE). He is now the subject of a federal investigation and a lawsuit involving wide-ranging claims of sexual misconduct related to WWE, some of which are discussed in the Netflix docuseries “Mr. McMahon.” 

In October, both McMahons were named as defendants in the “ring boys scandal” lawsuit alleging that multiple WWE staffers sexually assaulted underage boys in the 1980s and ’90s. The lawsuit also claims that the McMahons cultivated an environment that allowed sexual misconduct to thrive at the organization. 

When Betsy DeVos was education secretary, the Title IX guidelines were updated in a manner that made it harder for survivors of campus sexual assault to come forward and easier for perpetrators and schools to avoid accountability, advocates for survivors say. The Biden-era guidelines reversed these changes. It’s unclear if the Trump administration plans to reintroduce them during his second term or how McMahon plans to approach campus sexual assault if she is confirmed as education secretary.