Politics

Senate Confirms Linda McMahon as Education Secretary

Published

9 months ago

March 3, 2025

Senate Confirms Linda McMahon as Education Secretary

The Senate voted along party lines on Monday to confirm Linda McMahon as the nation’s next education secretary, putting the former pro-wrestling executive in charge of an agency that the Trump administration wants to eliminate.

A wealthy Republican donor who served in the first Trump administration, Ms. McMahon has little experience in education. That lack of firsthand knowledge has been framed as an asset by a White House looking to abolish the department she now leads and as a glaring deficiency by her critics.

Ms. McMahon, 76, told lawmakers during her confirmation process that she “wholeheartedly” agreed with President Trump’s “mission” to eliminate the Education Department. During her hearing last month, she argued that most Americans did, too, and that she was ready to make it happen.

But there appears to be significant public opposition to getting rid of the department.

Nearly two-thirds of Americans said last week that they opposed eliminating the agency, according to the NPR/PBS News/Marist poll. In North Carolina, one of seven battleground states that Mr. Trump swept in November, a similar share, 63 percent, also said they opposed abolishing the agency, according to a Meredith College poll last month.

The Education Department has already been a top target of the aggressive government overhaul project overseen by Elon Musk, the world’s richest man and a key Trump adviser. At least 60 employees have been suspended as part of the administration’s purge of diversity efforts, and Mr. Musk’s team has discussed the possibility of an executive order that would effectively shut down the department.

On Friday, employees in the department were given a “one-time offer” of up to $25,000 if they agreed to retire or resign by the end of the day on Monday. The message, sent by Jacqueline Clay, the department’s chief human capital officer, said the offer was being made before “a very significant reduction in force.”

Senator Bernie Sanders, a Vermont independent who caucuses with Democrats and is their top representative on the Senate Education Committee, said the department provides “enormously important resources” to children in high-poverty school districts and those with disabilities.

“We must make the Department of Education stronger and more efficient, not to dismantle it as Trump has proposed,” Mr. Sanders said in a statement.

Among the first 20 Trump nominations confirmed by the Senate, Ms. McMahon is the sixth whom Democrats unanimously opposed. The others were Pete Hegseth, the secretary of defense; Tulsi Gabbard, the director of national intelligence; Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the secretary of health; Russell T. Vought, the White House budget director; and Howard Lutnick, the secretary of commerce.

The Education Department’s primary role has been sending federal money to public schools, administering college financial aid and managing federal student loans. The department tracks student achievement, but does not dictate what is taught in public schools. With about 4,200 employees as of September, the agency’s work force was the smallest of the 15 cabinet-level executive departments.

Ms. McMahon has said she would push for more local control of education programs and to “free American students from the education bureaucracy” by pushing for school choice programs.

Senator Bill Cassidy of Louisiana, the Republican chairman of the Education Committee, said Ms. McMahon would help streamline the department.

“We need a strong leader at the department who will get our education system back on track,” Mr. Cassidy said after the confirmation vote. “Secretary McMahon is the right person for the job.”

Ms. McMahon received a teaching certificate, but she never taught. She has been a member of the board of trustees at Sacred Heart University, a private school in Connecticut with about 8,500 students, for about 16 years. She and her husband, Vince McMahon, from whom she is separated, have donated millions to the Catholic university, where the student commons bears her name.

She also served for about a year on the Connecticut State Board of Education, even though some state lawmakers questioned her experience for the position and said she ran a wrestling company that promoted violent and sexual images to children.

Her nomination to run the Education Department prompted a new round of concerns about her experience, as critics have said she is ill-prepared to navigate the effects that Mr. Trump’s politically charged agenda may have on the nation’s schools.

Mr. Trump told reporters last month that the Education Department was “a big con job” and that “I’d like to close it immediately.” Mr. Musk has said the administration terminated 89 contracts worth $881 million at the agency.

At her confirmation hearing, Ms. McMahon presented a more nuanced version of potential changes. She said the administration planned to “reorient” the department while acknowledging that some of the agency’s largest programs would remain in place. She also said core programs, such as Title I money for low-income schools and Pell grants for the poorest college students, would not be eliminated.

She also agreed that an act of Congress would be required to abolish the department, which was created in 1979 to ensure equal access to education, help parents and local communities improve the quality of education and coordinate federal education programs.

A more likely target for cuts was federal money to schools and colleges that defy Mr. Trump’s orders seeking to bar transgender women from competing in women’s sports, and doing away with diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives.

Responding to a question at the hearing last week from Senator Christopher S. Murphy, Democrat of Connecticut, Ms. McMahon said schools should allow events celebrating the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., but was more circumspect about classes that focused on Black history.

“I’m not quite certain and I’d like to look into it further,” Ms. McMahon said.

During Mr. Trump’s first term, Ms. McMahon served as the head of the Small Business Administration until stepping down in 2019 to run a super PAC supporting Mr. Trump. That super PAC, America First Action, spent more than $185 million ahead of Mr. Trump’s loss in 2020.

During the 2024 election, Ms. McMahon was among the largest contributors to Mr. Trump’s campaign. She and her husband contributed more than $20 million to Mr. Trump’s re-election campaign and associated PACs, according to data compiled by Open Secrets, a government transparency group.

After Mr. Trump was voted out of office in 2020, Ms. McMahon became chairwoman of the America First Policy Institute, a conservative think tank heavily staffed by former Trump officials. She has also taken on roles with other conservative policy organizations and The Daily Caller, a conservative news site.

She is paid $18,400 every three months by the Trump Media & Technology Group, where she is a director, and has received thousands of shares in the company as compensation for her work. The group is the parent company of Mr. Trump’s social media platform, Truth Social.

Ms. McMahon has vowed to resign from those positions and divest from Mr. Trump’s business if confirmed.

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Politics

Video: Epstein’s Emails About Trump

Published

13 hours ago

November 13, 2025

Press Room

new video loaded: Epstein’s Emails About Trump

Our investigative reporter Steve Eder provides context about Jeffrey Epstein’s relationship with President Donald Trump based on information from over 20,000 pages of documents from Epstein’s estate released by the House Oversight Committee on Wednesday.

By Steve Eder, Claire Hogan, James Surdam, Stephanie Swart and Nikolay Nikolov

November 13, 2025

Politics

Rev. Jesse Jackson hospitalized amid health battle with neurodegenerative disease

Published

14 hours ago

November 13, 2025

Press Room

Rev. Jesse Jackson hospitalized amid health battle with neurodegenerative disease

NEWYou can now listen to Fox News articles!

Longtime civil rights activist Rev. Jesse Jackson was hospitalized Wednesday, his organization announced in a statement.

Jackson, 84, was admitted to the hospital and under observation for progressive supranuclear palsy (PSP), a rare neurodegenerative disease for which there is currently no cure.

The Rainbow PUSH Coalition, a progressive organization Jackson formed in 1996 by merging two groups he founded earlier, said he has been managing his PSP condition for more than a decade.

“He was originally diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease; however, last April, his PSP condition was confirmed. The family appreciates all prayers at this time,” the organization said.

JESSE JACKSON ARRESTED AT POOR PEOPLE’S CAMPAIGN MARCH IN DC

Martin Luther King III, Rep. Maxine Waters, Rev. Al Sharpton, Rev. Jesse Jackson, and Rep. Jonathan Jackson cross the Edmund Pettus Bridge to mark the 60th anniversary of “Bloody Sunday,” March 9, 2025, in Selma, Alabama. (Michael M. Santiago/Getty)

Jackson announced his Parkinson’s diagnosis in 2017.

“After a battery of tests, my physicians identified the issue as Parkinson’s disease, a disease that bested my father,” he said at the time. “Recognition of the effects of this disease on me has been painful, and I have been slow to grasp the gravity of it.”

7 KEY BEHAVIORS THAT COULD SHIELD YOUR BRAIN FROM PARKINSON’S DISEASE

Rev. Jesse Jackson Sr. delivers a speech during a presidential campaign stop with Rep. Maxine Waters and supporters at the Los Angeles Hilton Hotel, June 6, 1984. (Bob Riha Jr./Getty)

The longtime political activist and Baptist minister who worked alongside Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. has faced several health challenges in recent years, including gallbladder surgery and hospitalization due to COVID-19.

CLICK HERE TO DOWNLOAD THE FOX NEWS APP

Jackson announced his retirement as president of the Rainbow PUSH Coalition in 2023, naming Rev. Frederick Douglass Haynes III as the organization’s new leader.

Ashley Carnahan is a writer at Fox News Digital.

Politics

Column: Trump’s improv approach to policymaking doesn’t actually make policy

Published

15 hours ago

November 13, 2025

Press Room

Column: Trump’s improv approach to policymaking doesn’t actually make policy

Democrats’ caterwauling this week after a few of their senators caved to end the government shutdown couldn’t completely drown out another noise: the sound of President Trump pinballing dumb “policy” ideas as he flails to respond to voters’ unhappiness that his promised Golden Age is proving golden only for him, his family and his donors.

On social media (of course) and in interviews, the president has been blurting out proposals that are news even to the advisors who should be vetting them first. Rebates of $2,000 for most Americans and pay-downs of federal debt, all from supposed tariff windfalls. (Don’t count on either payoff; more below.) New 50-year mortgages to make home-buying more affordable (not). Docked pay for air traffic controllers who didn’t show up to work during the shutdown, without pay, and $10,000 bonuses for those who did. (He doesn’t have that power; the government isn’t his family business.) Most mind-boggling of all, Trump has resurrected his and Republicans’ long-buried promise to “repeal and replace” Obamacare.

It’s been five years since he promised a healthcare plan “in two weeks.” It’s been a year since he said he had “concepts of a plan” during the 2024 campaign. What he now calls “Trumpcare” (natch) apparently amounts to paying people to buy insurance. Details to come, he says, again.

With all this seat-of-the-pants policymaking, Trump only underscores the policy ignorance that’s been a defining trait since he first ran for office. No other president in memory put out such knee-jerk junk that’s easily discounted and mocked.

In his first term, Trump didn’t learn how to navigate the legislative process, and thus steer well-debated ideas into law. He didn’t want to. Even more in his second term, Trump avoids that deliberative democratic process, preferring rule by fiat and executive order (even if the results don’t outlast your presidency, or they fizzle in court). For Trump, ideas don’t percolate, infused with expertise and data. They pop into his head.

But diktats are not always possible, as the shutdown dramatized when Republicans couldn’t agree with Democrats on the must-pass legislation to keep the government funded.

With Republicans controlling the White House and Congress (and arguably the Supreme Court: see recent decisions siding with the Trump administration to block SNAP benefits), the Democrats were never going to actually win the shutdown showdown — not if winning meant forcing Republicans to agree to extend health insurance tax credits for millions of Americans. Expanding healthcare coverage has never been Republicans’ priority. Tax cuts are, mainly for the wealthy and corporations, and Republicans pocketed that win months ago with Trump’s big, ugly bill, paid for mainly by cuts to Medicaid.

Yet Democrats won something: They shoved the issue of spiraling healthcare costs back onto politics’ center stage, where it joins the broader question of affordability in an economy that doesn’t work for the working class. Drawing attention to the cruel priorities of Trump 2.0 is a big reason that I and many others supported Democrats forcing a shutdown, despite the unlikelihood of a policy “W.” (I did not support the Senate Democrats’ caving just yet, not so soon after Democrats won bigger-than-expected victories in last week’s off-year elections on the strength of their fight for affordability, including health insurance.)

The fight isn’t over. The Senate will debate and vote next month on extending tax credits for Obamacare that otherwise expire at year’s end, making coverage unaffordable for millions of people. Even if the Democrats win that vote — unlikely — the subsidies would be DOA in the House, a MAGA stronghold. What’s not dead, however, is the issue of rising insurance premiums for all Americans. It’s teed up for the midterm election campaigns.

Such pocketbook issues have thrown Trump on the defensive. The result is his string of politically tone-deaf remarks and unvetted, out-of-right-field initiatives.

On Monday night, having invited Fox News host Laura Ingraham into the White House for an interview and a tour of his gilt-and-marble renovations, he pooh-poohed her question about Americans’ anxiety about the costs of living with this unpolitic rejoinder: “More than anything else, it’s a con job by the Democrats.” When Ingraham, to her credit, reminded Trump that he’d slammed President Biden for “saying things were great, and things weren’t great,” Trump stood his shaky ground, sniping: “Polls are fake. We have the greatest economy we’ve ever had.” (False.)

On Saturday, Trump had posted that Republicans should take money “from the BIG, BAD Insurance Companies, give it to the people, and terminate” Obamacare. He told Ingraham, “Call it Trumpcare … anything but Obamacare.” Healthcare industry experts pounced: Such direct payments could allow younger, healthy people to get cheaper, no-frills coverage, but would leave the insurance pools with disproportionately more ailing people and, in turn, higher costs.

As for Trump’s promised $2,000 rebates and reductions in the $37 trillion federal debt, he posted early Sunday and again on Monday that “trillions of dollars” from tariffs would make both things possible soon. On Tuesday night, he sent a fundraising email: “Would you take a TARIFF rebate check signed by yours truly?”

Maybe if he’d talked to Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, who professed ignorance about the idea on ABC News’ “This Week” on Sunday, Trump would have learned that tariffs in the past year raised not trillions but $195 billion, significantly less than $2,000 rebates would cost. Not only would there be nothing to put toward the debt, but rebates would add $6 trillion in red ink over 10 years. That would put Trump just $2 trillion short of the amount of debt he added in his first term.

When Ingraham asked where he’d get the money to pay bonuses to air traffic controllers, Trump was quick with a nonanswer: “I don’t know. I’ll get it from someplace.” And when she told him the 50-year mortgage idea “has enraged your MAGA friends,” given the potential windfall of interest payment for banks, Trump was equally dismissive: “It’s not even a big deal.”

Not a big deal: That’s policymaking, Trump-style.

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