The Cosmic Watchdog

Linda McMahon, the sports entertainment mogul whom President Trump has nominated to run the Education Department, told lawmakers on Thursday that she envisioned a vastly diminished role for the agency in the future, and would seek to realize that vision if confirmed.

A former executive of World Wrestling Entertainment, Ms. McMahon was tapped to run a department that is in the middle of intense upheaval and whose very reasons for being have been challenged by the president. Mr. Trump has repeatedly said he would like to shrink, if not fully eliminate, the department, setting up a Senate confirmation hearing on Thursday with few parallels in American history.

Ms. McMahon stopped short of embracing calls to shutter the department, which would have amounted to calling for the elimination of the job she has been nominated to take. Instead, she laid out a more roundabout plan to return to the period before the department was established in 1979, during which she said state officials and other federal agencies handled the department’s current responsibilities more effectively.

“I’m really all for the president’s mission, which is to return education to the states,” she said. “I believe, as he does, that the best education is closest to the child.”

Ms. McMahon walked lawmakers through her qualifications to oversee the health of the country’s schools in the midst of open discussions in the White House about whether to close the department. On Wednesday, less than a day before Ms. McMahon was scheduled to appear for the hearing, Mr. Trump said he wanted to see the department shuttered “immediately,” calling it “a big con job.”

She headed off some of the most pressing questions about that rhetoric at the outset by acknowledging that slashing federal funding for schools, which is allocated by Congress, was neither practical legally nor a goal she would pursue.

But she repeatedly suggested that many of the duties the department currently handles, including disbursing funds for special education or collecting data and research on students and teaching methods, could be better handled by other agencies.

“It is my goal, if I am confirmed, to get in and assess these kinds of programs, because I’m not sure yet what the impact of all of those programs are,” she said.

Ms. McMahon spoke about the dismal results documented last month on a national exam, the National Assessment of Educational Progress, which showed pervasive learning loss across the country’s public schools since the Covid-19 pandemic. Conservative think tanks and lawmakers have pointed to the results as evidence that the nation’s education system requires deep changes, and as justification for policies aimed at expanding access to private and religious schools.

She was introduced at the hearing by Senators Tim Scott of South Carolina and Katie Britt of Alabama, Republicans who each lamented what they described as a long slide in educational standards. They called for a move away from public schools and traditional college programs.

In her opening statement, Ms. McMahon picked up that theme, promoting novel ways to train the country’s future work force.

She also ticked through the priorities Mr. Trump had already set for the agency through executive orders in recent days. One of the orders focused on school choice, a topic she will most likely highlight. The administration’s other priorities revolve around cultural issues, such as gender, race and sexuality, and combating antisemitism.

Recent appointees of Mr. Trump have already taken steps to turn the department into a vehicle to clamp down on schools and organizations perceived as hostile to the president’s agenda. On Wednesday, the department started new investigations into two interscholastic sports associations in Minnesota and California that had signaled they would allow transgender athletes to continue competing on teams corresponding to their gender identity.

The president has tasked Elon Musk, the world’s richest man, with downsizing the federal government, and his associates have combed through the Education Department’s data, flagging programs and grants for cancellation. The specter of coming staff reductions and a fundamental reorientation of the agency’s functions have left hundreds of the department’s more than 4,200 workers demoralized and sounding the alarm about the effect on educators.

Since last week, more than 70 employees in the department have been put on administrative leave because of their connection to longstanding diversity, equity and inclusion programs. And between Monday and Tuesday, the department canceled dozens of grants underpinning most of its research operations. At least 50 more employees who were on probationary status have been fired this week, according to a union representing federal workers.

“It’s always difficult to downsize; it’s always difficult to restructure and reorganize in any department,” Ms. McMahon said about culling the department’s ranks. “I have faced that, you know, in the business world, because you know that you do impact people’s lives.”

On Tuesday, Mr. Trump signed an order demanding wide-ranging reductions in the federal work force through “attrition” and issuing severe directives, including that agencies hire “no more than one employee for every four employees that depart.”

Like most of Mr. Trump’s nominees, Ms. McMahon is seen as a loyal lieutenant, but one with an unusually long record of supporting the president’s political ambitions and preserving a position within his orbit.

During his first term, she served as the head of the Small Business Administration until stepping down in 2019 to run a political action committee supporting Mr. Trump. She then became the chairwoman of the America First Policy Institute, a conservative think tank heavily staffed by former Trump officials, where she conceived policy ideas in preparation for a second Trump term.

Mr. Trump’s relationship with Ms. McMahon and her husband, Vince McMahon, dates to the 1980s, a period during which Mr. Trump cultivated an interest in their wrestling ventures and success in television. He served as a sponsor for the W.W.E. broadcast WrestleMania when it appeared in Atlantic City, N.J., and even performed several times, including in a scripted feud against Mr. McMahon billed as the “Battle of the Billionaires.”

Their relationship has only grown more intertwined, as Ms. McMahon has emerged as a committed megadonor in Mr. Trump’s last three bids for the presidency.

Ms. McMahon and her husband, from whom she is separated, were the sixth-largest donors to Mr. Trump during his 2024 bid, funneling more than $20 million into Mr. Trump’s re-election campaign and to associated PACs, according to data compiled by Open Secrets, a government transparency group. She personally gave over $360,000 to help support Mr. Trump’s presidential campaign in 2020.

Ms. McMahon has also gained standing and influence through her association with the president, taking on senior advisory roles in multiple conservative policy organizations and The Daily Caller, a conservative news site. She also receives an $18,400 quarterly retainer from the Trump Media & Technology Group, the parent company of Mr. Trump’s social media platform, Truth Social, and received thousands of shares in the company in compensation for her work with the group.

Many who have worked with Ms. McMahon have noted her political acumen and staying power within the president’s inner circle. Mr. Trump praised her as a “superstar” when she stepped down from his cabinet in 2019.

She has vowed to resign from those positions and divest from Mr. Trump’s business if confirmed.

Like Betsy DeVos, the education secretary during Mr. Trump’s first term, Ms. McMahon is exceptionally wealthy, reporting millions in annual income from her holdings in the professional wrestling empire she built, according to a financial disclosure filed ahead of the hearing.

But the business empire she created that produced that wealth has also prompted serious questions about Ms. McMahon’s management and oversight of ethical breaches.

Under her leadership, various iterations of World Wrestling Entertainment have produced a stream of complaints describing rampant substance abuse and sexual misconduct throughout the business. Ms. McMahon was named as a defendant in a pending lawsuit in Maryland that claims she failed to take action against employees accused of sexually abusing minors working for the organization.

Critics have said her relative lack of experience in education amid a tide of conservative resentment directed toward the department leaves her little prepared to navigate the effects that Mr. Trump’s agenda may have on the nation’s schools. She earned a certificate to teach French and served a brief stint on the Connecticut State Board of Education. She has also been a university trustee at Sacred Heart University in Fairfield, Conn., for many years.