‘That is the real Project 2025’: Trump’s Education Department secretary pick may pose a huge threat to America’s education

Call me a traditionalist, but I thought that to qualify for the role of Education Secretary, one would have to have a degree in education? For Linda McMahon, Trump’s pick to lead the Department of Education, that isn’t the case. She once lied about having an education degree though! That has to count for something!

Linda McMahon is a former WWE executive (yes, the pro wrestling organization). Her husband Vince McMahon is currently under investigation for sexual abuse and human trafficking, much like another Trump cabinet pick. Two, actually. McMahon, despite having no classroom teaching experience, also serves as the chair of the America First Policy Institute, an institution dedicated to removing notions of “gender confusion”  from K-12 classrooms. The organization also spends its time campaigning against DEI practices in higher education in a national attempt achieve what Florida governor Ron “Meatball” DeSantis could not in his home state.

According to a former Senate Republican leadership aide, the views of the America First Policy Institute constitute “the real Project 2025.” In case you’ve been living under a rock and covering your ears repeating “thiscan’tbehappening” in a breathless whisper (I don’t blame you) – Project 2025 is a sweeping political initiative created by right wing think tank The Heritage Project that details plan for Trump to expand presidential power and reshape America into an ultra-conservative dystopia. “Those are the people who are really developing what Trump is going to be for” the aide said of the project’s architects.

According to National Women’s Law Center, Project 2025 has devastating plans for American education. The project aims to reverse 2024 Title IX nondiscrimination protections for LGBTQ+ students and women and girls in any and all education institutions that receive federal funding. They have called for the end of  “toxic normalization of transgenderism” in public schools, reducing trans identity to the designation of some sort of fringe ideology, rather than a lived experience. As for DEI, rhe ACLU has warned that Project 2025 intends “eliminate all efforts to acknowledge or support diversity in schools.”

Due to her ties to the American First Policy Institute, McMahon appears to share similar sociopolitical ambitions. She has blasted DEI mandates in apprenticeships, saying that a such mandate ” destroys the opportunity that many businesses would have to train new people.” While she has not spoken publicly about book bans and trans athletes, issues that her Republican colleagues can’t seem to keep quiet about, her status as the America First Policy Institute chair makes her stance on such issues tacitly clear.

Teachers union officials were quick to criticize McMahon’s nomination. National Education Association President Betsy Pringle said in a statement “our students and our nation deserve so much better than Betsy DeVos 2.0.” Meanwhile, DeVos 1.0 has voiced her support for McMahon’s appointment. Fedrick Hess, the education director at the conservative American Enterprise Institute, has told McMahon’s detractors to “take a deep breath” and “wait to see how McMahon talks about her views and approach to the role” before jumping to conclusions about the Trump nominee’s political leanings. Though the fact of her being a Trump nominee in the first place isn’t doing McMahon any favors.