Linda McMahon received 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 employees 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 employees on Friday, in response to an Training Division spokesperson.
McMahon, a former administrator of the Small Enterprise Administration and former president and CEO of World Wrestling Leisure, stated throughout her Feb. 13 Senate affirmation listening to that she was open to reforming the division however wished to review particular applications earlier than making commitments for change.
“We’re failing our college students, our Division of Training, and what we’re doing at the moment just isn’t working, and we have to change it,” McMahon stated 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 stated he needs to shut the Training Division — a transfer that wants congressional buy-in. When requested by Democratic lawmakers if she supported the company closure, McMahon stated Trump needs to finish federal paperwork in training.
For instance, McMahon stated education-related civil rights investigations is likely to be housed on the U.S. Division of Justice and that the U.S. Division of Well being and Human Providers might tackle oversight of companies for college students with disabilities.
Of particular training oversight, McMahon stated, “I’m undecided 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 document” about Trump’s aim of closing the Training Division, McMahon stated, “President Trump believes that the paperwork in Washington ought to be abolished in order that we will return training to the states, the place it belongs. I wholeheartedly assist 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 permitted 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 observe the regulation.”
And when requested a few proposal in Challenge 2025 — a blueprint for a Republican administration from the Heritage Basis, a conservative assume tank — to totally privatize the scholar mortgage financing system, McMahon wrote, “I’m not conscious of Challenge 2025’s proposals on larger training.”
On the affirmation listening to, McMahon stated her priorities as training secretary would come with increasing faculty alternative and skills-based studying, giving native colleges and oldsters extra decision-making energy, and defending college students from discrimination and harassment.
Through the affirmation course of, Republican lawmakers and conservative-leaning organizations praised Trump’s training secretary choose.
“In contrast to the Biden Administration, McMahon won’t attempt to dictate singular, nationwide training insurance policies from on-high in Washington,” stated 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’s going to reverse burdensome mandates and goal inefficiencies within the Division of Training.”
Democratic policymakers, civil rights advocates and public faculty supporters, alternatively, have voiced considerations.
Jacqueline Rodriguez, CEO of the Nationwide Middle for Studying Disabilities, stated in a Feb. 14 assertion that throughout the HELP affirmation listening to, McMahon “lacked familiarity” with IDEA and the Each Scholar 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 little one’s proper to a free, applicable public training is doubtful with proposals to remove the U.S. Division of Training,” Rodriguez stated.
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 stated they “can not assist a nominee who has demonstrated that she seeks to undermine bedrock American rules of equal alternative, nondiscrimination, and public training itself.”