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U.S. Senate panel on party-line vote approves McMahon’s nomination as Education secretary • Iowa Capital Dispatch [1]
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Date: 2025-02-20
WASHINGTON — Linda McMahon got a step closer in her bid to serve as the next U.S. secretary of Education after a Senate panel on Thursday propelled her nomination to the full Senate.
The wealthy donor and former World Wrestling Entertainment executive breezed through a vote in the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions to advance her nomination — 12-11, along party lines.
Though President Donald Trump tapped McMahon to lead the 45-year-old department, he said he wants the nominee “to put herself out of a job” and could soon issue an executive order that diminishes the agency.
At her confirmation hearing before the Senate panel last week, McMahon clarified that, if confirmed, she would work with Congress “to reorient the department toward helping educators, not controlling them.”
McMahon is likely to be confirmed in the GOP-controlled Senate.
She served as co-chair of Trump’s transition team, led the Small Business Administration during his first White House term and is the chair of the board of the America First Policy Institute — a Trump-loyal think tank.
Meanwhile, the Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights, along with 85 education and civil rights groups, called on members of the panel to reject McMahon’s nomination in a Wednesday letter.
“All parents and students in this country — a majority of whom are people of color or are low-income — want the best education, support, and dignity for their own children,” the groups wrote.
“We are with them and cannot support a nominee who has demonstrated that she seeks to undermine bedrock American principles of equal opportunity, nondiscrimination, and public education itself.”
If confirmed, McMahon would be pivotal to carrying out Trump’s sweeping education agenda, which has already kick-started in the month since he took office.
He’s signed several education-related executive orders that include: banning transgender athletes from competing in women’s school sports teams consistent with their gender identity; prioritizing school choice funding; ending what the administration sees as “radical indoctrination in K-12 schooling”; and taking “additional measures to combat anti-semitism.”
Last updated 10:50 a.m., Feb. 20, 2025
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