Former WWE Exec Linda McMahon’s New Job: Destroying the Department of Education

It’s WrestleMania season, meaning it’s the biggest time of the year for WWE fans. And this year they’ve got a lot to be excited about. The Rock’s back, again! And John Cena just turned heel. The two of them have teamed up with rapper Travis Scott (?!?) to fight over Cody’s soul, whatever the hell that means. Who could miss that? There’s also this one guy who says “yeet” a lot. They’ve even got their anti-establishment fans covered, with CM Punk showing the extreme bravery of wearing a shirt in support of public school teachers. And the biggest WWE news of all this WrestleMania season just broke last night: Linda McMahon, the longtime president and CEO of WWE (and current co-defendant in an ongoing lawsuit filed by five men who claim they were sexually abused by an employee while working for the company as minors in the 1980s) was officially confirmed as the next Secretary of Education, with the express goal of shutting the Department of Education down. 

The Rock might be the Final Boss, but his longtime boss Linda McMahon is in charge of what she calls the Department of Education’s “final mission”: laying the smackdown on the whole damn thing. Because the answer to America’s flagging public education system is to scrap all federal guidelines. 

Journalist Marisa Kabas shared an email that McMahon sent to Department of Education staff after her confirmation last night. In it McMahon warns that her plan to “eliminate unnecessary bureaucracy” at the DOE “will profoundly impact staff, budgets, and agency operations.” McMahon ends the email by touting this “opportunity to perform one final, unforgettable public service to future generations of students”—by shutting down the federal department whose goal is to ensure every child in every state has equal opportunity to an education that meets federally-regulated standards and isn’t unduly influenced by local politics and ideology. And even though it’s actually illegal for Trump’s administration to close a cabinet-level department without Congressional approval, they’ll just wreck the place so damn much that it can’t do its job anyway, as McMahon basically says in that email.

So a person whose entire adult life has been spent working in pro wrestling and for a pro-Trump PAC*, who is accused (along with her estranged husband Vince McMahon and the wrestling company itself) of knowingly letting a sexual predator work closely with underaged employees in the ‘80s and early ‘90s, and who has absolutely no professional experience with education, but who has donated millions to Trump’s campaigns, is going to take over the federal department dedicated to overseeing America’s education policies—with the express, stated goal of shutting that department down, even though that can’t legally be done without Congressional approval.

*: A political action committee, not the wrestler known as Pac, “The Man That Gravity Forgot”, who worked for WWE under the name Neville and walked out on the company in 2017.

I love pro wrestling, but I don’t like this world where I wake up every day feeling like the people running America have just smashed me in the head with a steel chair. The Trump Administration is like The Rock at Royal Rumble 1999 and America is Mick Foley, getting hit with 11 unprotected chair shots to the head until we scream “I quit.”

As frequently noted by WWE and its current parent company TKO Group Holdings, neither Linda nor Vince McMahon work for the company anymore, with Linda officially leaving in 2009 for a failed Senate run. Of course they oversaw the company for decades, with Vince only leaving for good in early 2024, after being named in a different (and also still ongoing) sexual abuse lawsuit. And although they no longer have any official roles within WWE, their son-in-law Paul “Triple H” Levesque is currently its Chief Content Officer—and sat right behind Linda McMahon throughout her confirmation hearings last month. The McMahons might not work for WWE, but they’re still inextricably linked with the company, at least one of whose executives openly supports Linda’s political career. (They both also still own significant amounts of stock in WWE’s parent company, TKO.) 

Linda McMahon serving in Trump’s cabinet for the second time (she was the head of the Small Business Administration during his first term) is a pretty minor footnote to the massive, wide scale dismantling of the federal government that Elon Musk and his figurehead Trump are currently overseeing. That doesn’t mean it’s not completely wrong, though—just colossally, unthinkably terrible. Everything is so beyond the pale fucked right now that being sued for letting a known pedophile work closely with minors somehow isn’t shocking for a person serving in Trump’s cabinet. That kind of shit honestly feels like a prerequisite to work for Trump. And Trump’s already just about the worst person you could possibly imagine running the government, but somehow he is, again, and making up for lost time by burning every single part of the federal government to the ground. With so much happening all the time Linda McMahon’s insane appointment isn’t going to spark the outcry it deserves, despite her being manifestly unqualified to run the Department of Education both morally and professionally. And of course the finishing move to this putrid onslaught of embarrassing bullshit is that McMahon’s primary goal is to destroy the department she’s now in charge of, dealing a potentially fatal blow to the already at risk public education system here in America. WWE’s treated its fans like they’re all idiots for decades, and now one of WWE’s founders is going to make Americans even dumber—and there’s apparently no way to stop this from happening.

Linda McMahon, the cofounder and longtime president of WWE, is determined to make America a less educated and thus poorer country. One of WWE’s top executives, a direct family member of McMahon’s, openly supports her getting this cabinet position. And yet so many people who would never in a billion years support McMahon or Trump or their politics still watch WWE every week. So many people who would never support destroying the Department of Education live tweet every episode of Raw and every “premium live event.” So many people willingly belly up to the WWE trough despite the reprehensible actions of the people who ran it for most of the last 40 plus years—and who only had the opportunity to act as reprehensible as they have because of the power and wealth WWE afforded them.

Maybe you’re a WWE fan who doesn’t want to see the worst on-air performer in WWE history gut our educational system. Maybe you genuinely feel dirty watching WWE at this point. But maybe you can’t break that habit. Like, it’s WrestleMania season. The Showcase of the Immortals. How am I supposed to miss that, you might be thinking. I’m sure you’ll make sure to boo Hulk Hogan if he comes out, and act like it means something when CM Punk wears a shirt. Maybe you’ll even be one of the few who boos McMahon family member LeVesque when he makes his inevitable appearances. It sucks about Linda, but seriously, whatcha gonna do? 

It seems pretty clear what wrestling fans should do, now more than ever.

Senior editor Garrett Martin writes about videogames, TV, travel, theme parks, wrestling, music, and more. You can also find him on Blue Sky.