Linda McMahon gained affirmation as U.S. training secretary on Monday, gaining Senate approval in a 51-45 vote alongside social gathering strains.
McMahon’s approval had been anticipated given the Republican majority, albeit skinny, within the Senate. President Donald Trump nominated McMahon to steer his long-promised downsizing of the U.S. Division of Training.
The affirmation got here on the identical day that Training Division workers confronted an 11:59 p.m. ET deadline to voluntarily settle for a $25,000 separation settlement in an effort to downsize the federal workplace workforce. That electronic mail went to company workers on Friday, in line with an Training Division spokesperson.
McMahon, a former administrator of the Small Enterprise Administration and former president and CEO of World Wrestling Leisure, mentioned throughout her Feb. 13 Senate affirmation listening to that she was open to reforming the division however needed to check particular applications earlier than making commitments for change.
“We’re failing our college students, our Division of Training, and what we’re doing in the present day is just not working, and we have to change it,” McMahon mentioned throughout the listening to earlier than the Well being, Training, Labor and Pensions Committee. On Feb. 20, the committee voted 12-11 alongside social gathering strains to advance her nomination for a full Senate vote.
Trump has repeatedly mentioned he desires to shut the Training Division — a transfer that wants congressional buy-in. When requested by Democratic lawmakers if she supported the company closure, McMahon mentioned Trump desires to finish federal forms in training.
For instance, McMahon mentioned education-related civil rights investigations could be housed on the U.S. Division of Justice and that the U.S. Division of Well being and Human Companies may tackle oversight of providers for college kids with disabilities.
Of particular training oversight, McMahon mentioned, “I’m unsure that it’s not higher served in HHS, however I don’t know.” She did say funding for the People with Disabilities Training Act, Title I programming for low-income colleges, and different applications established in statute would wish to proceed even when the Training Division had been shuttered.
In solutions to Democratic senators’ written “questions for the file” about Trump’s purpose of closing the Training Division, McMahon mentioned, “President Trump believes that the forms in Washington needs to be abolished in order that we will return training to the states, the place it belongs. I wholeheartedly help and agree with this mission and can work with each the White Home and Congress to realize it.”
When requested if she would decide to not suspending or reducing federal funding accredited by Congress for scholar monetary help, mortgage applications for traditionally Black faculties and universities, profession and technical training, applications that serve college students with disabilities, and different applications, McMahon wrote: “I’ll comply with the legislation.”
And when requested a couple of proposal in Undertaking 2025 — a blueprint for a Republican administration from the Heritage Basis, a conservative suppose tank — to completely privatize the coed mortgage financing system, McMahon wrote, “I’m not conscious of Undertaking 2025’s proposals on increased training.”
On the affirmation listening to, McMahon mentioned her priorities as training secretary would come with increasing college alternative and skills-based studying, giving native colleges and oldsters extra decision-making energy, and defending college students from discrimination and harassment.
In the course of the affirmation course of, Republican lawmakers and conservative-leaning organizations praised Trump’s training secretary decide.
“In contrast to the Biden Administration, McMahon is not going to attempt to dictate singular, nationwide training insurance policies from on-high in Washington,” mentioned members of the Republican Governors Affiliation in a Jan. 7 letter to Senate Majority Chief John Thune, R-S.D., and HELP Committee Chair Invoice Cassidy, R-La.. “She is going to reverse burdensome mandates and goal inefficiencies within the Division of Training.”
Democratic policymakers, civil rights advocates and public college supporters, alternatively, have voiced issues.
Jacqueline Rodriguez, CEO of the Nationwide Middle for Studying Disabilities, mentioned in a Feb. 14 assertion that throughout the HELP affirmation listening to, McMahon “lacked familiarity” with IDEA and the Each Pupil Succeeds Act.
“What’s most unlucky about Mrs. McMahon’s affirmation listening to is that folks of kids with disabilities are left to marvel if their youngster’s proper to a free, applicable public training is unsure with proposals to eradicate the U.S. Division of Training,” Rodriguez mentioned.
In a Feb. 19 letter to senators from The Management Convention on Civil and Human Rights and signed by practically 100 nationwide organizations, the teams mentioned they “can’t help a nominee who has demonstrated that she seeks to undermine bedrock American rules of equal alternative, nondiscrimination, and public training itself.”
