The New Jersey Education Association is slamming President-elect Donald Trump’s selection of Linda McMahon as the next U.S. Secretary of Education.
“This is an unserious choice by an unserious administration that is more interested in stirring up outrage, controversy, and clicks than it is in helping the American people,” said NJEA President Sean Spiller, a candidate for the Democratic nomination for governor.
Vice President Steve Beatty and Secretary-Treasurer Petal Roberson are also on the statement.
The leaders of New Jersey’s largest public employees union said the “consequences of this cynical choice will be tragically serious for America’s students and for the families in every American community that rely on public education as their gateway to the American Dream.”
“They deserve better than an unqualified partisan who will be charged to carry out Project 2025’s anti-education agenda without regard for how it will harm children,” Spiller, Beatty, and Robertson stated.
McMahon, who founded World Wrestling Entertainment with her husband, Vince, served as administrator of the U.S. Small Business Administration during Trump’s first term. She also served on the Connecticut State Board of Education and has spent the last four years as chair of the America First Policy Institute.
“Linda will fight tirelessly to expand ‘choice;’ to every State in America, and empower parents to make the best Education decisions for their families,” Trump said in a statement last night. “We will send education back to the states, and Linda will spearhead that effort.”
The NJEA leaders said that decisions like the nomination of McMahon makes it “clearer than ever that we must do everything in our power to protect New Jersey’s best-in-the-nation public schools from the reckless agenda of the Trump administration.”
“We will continue to push for smart policies and to endorse and support pro-education candidates so that our state and our schools can stand as an example of what is possible when we put children first,” Spiller, Beatty and Robertson said.