Throughout his marketing campaign, President-elect Donald Trump smeared educators and academics who help the LGTBQ+ neighborhood, accusing them of being baby predators. But this week, he nominated Linda McMahon, the previous CEO of World Wrestling Entertainment, to go the Department of Education ― although she is being sued for allegedly permitting the sexual abuse of youngsters.
The lawsuitfiled final month on behalf of 5 unnamed people, alleges that McMahon, alongside along with her husband Vince McMahon, the president of World Wrestling Entertainment, and WWE’s guardian firm, TKO Holdings, knowingly allowed WWE ringside announcer Mel Phillips Jr. to sexually abuse youngsters between the Nineteen Seventies and the Nineteen Nineties.
McMahon is the most recent of Trump’s administration picks to be reportedly concerned in a sexual abuse scandal.
Her nomination comes amid an ongoing Republican-led assault on the nation’s public faculties, in addition to the unfold of baseless claims that legions of public-school educators are grooming and indoctrinating youngsters.
Conservatives have claimed that books with LGBTQ+ themes are literally pornographic materials, and that LGBTQ+ academics, and academics who help their LGBTQ+ college students, are sexualizing youngsters. Declaring themselves the champions of “parental rights,” they’ve fought to have books banned from lecture rooms and censor what academics can say about sexual orientation and gender id. It has turn into a defining challenge for the Republican Party.
The lawsuit in opposition to the McMahons alleges that they knew Phillips was utilizing his energy because the ringside crew chief to lure younger boys to work with the promise of getting to fulfill well-known wrestlers. According to the swimsuit, the so-called “ring boys” could be employed to run duties and errands to maintain the wrestling manufacturing going. The swimsuit claims that the McMahons knew in regards to the abuse within the Eighties, however nonetheless allowed it to occur. Phillips died in 2012.
A lawyer for the McMahons has denied the allegations within the swimsuit.
“More than 30 years ago, the columnist Phil Mushnick tried to make headlines with these same false claims,” Jessica Rosenberg informed NBC News final month, referring to a New York Post columnist who wrote in regards to the allegations within the Nineteen Nineties. “Those allegations were never proven and ultimately became the subject of a defamation lawsuit against Mr. Mushnick. We will vigorously defend Mr. McMahon and are confident the court will find that these claims are untrue and unfounded.”
McMahon’s expertise in training is restricted at greatest. In 2009, then-Connecticut Gov. Jodi Rell (R) appointed her to serve on the state Board of Education. In a questionnaire for the position, McMahon reportedly lied about having a bachelor’s diploma in training.
Still, Trump allies and conservative teams are voicing their help for McMahon, together with Tiffany Justice, the co-founder of Moms for Liberty, a far-right group that has been a pacesetter in the precise’s struggle on public faculties.
“Parental involvement is the number one driver of kids’ success in school and I will help the incoming Secretary any way I can to ensure parents get back in the driver’s seat of their child’s education,” Justice stated in an announcement.
“Linda has a difficult task ahead in fighting the union’s death-grip over the education industrial complex but I am confident in the plans laid out by President Trump to make wholesale change that empowers parents and improves the math and reading scores of our kids too,” she continued.
Project 2025, the conservative blueprint for a second Trump administration, requires the elimination of the Department of Education, which Trump additionally promised to do on the marketing campaign path. Instead, faculties could be funded by native taxpayers and an enlargement of voucher applications that use public cash for personal faculties.
The drastic transfer could be political poison to either side of the aisle, and is unlikely to occur. The risk to the division is born out of Republicans’ insistence that DOE is “indoctrinating” youngsters ― however the company shouldn’t be liable for setting college curricula. Its fundamental duties are to supervise funding for low-income faculties and sources for college kids with disabilities, and to guard the civil rights of scholars.
McMahon, if confirmed by the Senate, is prone to champion the concept the division has pursued a nefarious agenda. She served as the top of Trump’s Small Business Administration in his first time period earlier than resigning to work on his reelection marketing campaign. She additionally started chairing the America First Policy Institute, a conservative suppose tank that drew up a framework for a second Trump time period that rivals Project 2025.
Educators are already sounding the alarm about Trump’s option to put McMahon on the helm of public training.
“By selecting Linda McMahon, Donald Trump is showing that he could not care less about our students’ futures,” Becky Pringle, president of the National Educators Association, stated in an announcement. “Rather than working to strengthen public schools, expand learning opportunities for students, and support educators, McMahon’s only mission is to eliminate the Department of Education and take away taxpayer dollars from public schools, where 90% of students ― and 95% of students with disabilities ― learn, and give them to unaccountable and discriminatory private schools.”
https://www.huffpost.com/entry/linda-mcmahon-sex-abuse-lawsuit_n_673e4a3ce4b09ddca792c4d1