United States President-elect Donald Trump has chosen World Wrestling Entertainment (WWE) co-founder and his transition co-chair, Linda McMahon, as his candidate for education secretary.
A longtime Trump ally, McMahon led the Small Business Administration during Trump’s first term as president and donated millions of dollars to his presidential campaign.
Trump has criticized the Department of Education and promised to shut it down — a job that McMahon could be given once Trump returns to the White House in January 2025.
Trump previously selected Mehmet Oz, a prominent physician and former television host whose approach has come under scrutiny, to lead the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS).
Tuesday’s two picks — along with Trump’s pick of Howard Lutnick for commerce secretary — follow a pattern of the president-elect nominating loyal supporters to top positions in his cabinet.
McMahon has a long history with WWE and Trump, who occasionally appear in wrestling matches. She co-founded the wrestling league with her husband in 1980, stepping down as CEO in 2009 to launch a failed bid for the United States Senate.
She has little background in education but served on the Connecticut state board of education from 2009 to 2010.
She is the board chair of the pro-Trump think tank the America First Policy Institute, meaning her confirmation in the Republican-majority Senate is possible. Her job is one of the top jobs that need to be voted for in the upper house of Congress.
When announcing his pick on Truth Social, Trump wrote: “For the past four years, as chair of the board of directors at the America First Policy Institute, Linda has been a fierce advocate for fathers’ rights. Mom”.
He said McMahon would “spearhead” the effort to “bring education BACK TO THE STATE”, in reference to the pledge to close the department.
Republicans accused the education department of promoting what they described as a “woke” political ideology to children, including on gender and race issues. They want the agency’s powers to be returned to the US states, which govern most educational matters.
McMahon was named in a lawsuit filed last month involving WWE.
It alleges that she, her husband and other company leaders knowingly allowed boys to be abused by a broadcaster who died in 2012.
The McMahons deny wrongdoing. An attorney representing the couple told USA Today Sports that the allegations were “false statements” stemming from media reports that were “absurd, defamatory and completely worthless.”
Trump previously selected Mehmet Oz to run the powerful agency that oversees the health care of millions of Americans.
Oz, who was chosen to lead CMS, trained as a surgeon before finding fame on The Oprah Winfrey Show in the early 2000s.
Oz has been criticized by experts for promoting what they call unhealthy advice about weight loss pills and “miracle” cures, and for recommending malaria drugs as a cure treatment for Covid-19 in the early days of the pandemic.
“There may be no doctor more qualified and capable than Dr. Oz to make America healthy again,” Trump said in a statement.
Trump’s transition team said in a statement that Oz “will work closely with [health secretary nominee] Robert F Kennedy Jr will take on the disease industrial complex and all the terrible chronic diseases left in its wake.”
Like McMahon, Oz will need to be confirmed by the Senate next year before he officially takes the helm of the agency.
CMS oversees the country’s largest health care programs, providing health care to more than 150 million Americans. The agency regulates health insurance and sets policies that guide the prices doctors, hospitals and pharmaceutical companies pay for medical services.
In 2023, the US government spent more than $1.4 trillion (£1.1 trillion) on Medicaid and Medicare combined, according to the Congressional Budget Office.
Trump said in a statement that Oz will “cut waste and fraud in our country’s most expensive government agency.” The Republican Party platform pledges to increase transparency, choice and competition, and expand access to health care and prescription drugs.
Oz, 64, trained as a cardiothoracic surgeon – specializing in heart and lung surgery – and worked at New York City’s Presbyterian Hospital and Columbia University.
After appearing in dozens of Oprah segments, he started The Dr Oz Show, where he gave health advice to viewers.
But the line between advertising and science on the show is not always clear, and Oz has recommended homeopathy, alternative medicine and other treatments that critics call “pseudoscience.” ”.
He was criticized in Senate hearings in 2014 for endorsing unproven drugs that he said would “literally push fat out of your body” and “push fat out of your body.” your belly”.
During those hearings, Oz said he never sold any specific dietary supplements on his show. But he has publicly endorsed the products on air, and his financial ties to health care companies were revealed in dental fillings performed during his Senate run. American Institute in Pennsylvania in 2022.
During the Covid-19 pandemic, Oz promoted the anti-malaria drugs hydroxychloroquine and chloroquine, which experts say is ineffective against the virus.
