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(WASHINGTON) — WWE co-founder Linda McMahon was confirmed as the U.S. secretary of education Monday night by a party line vote of 51-45.

Four senators — Republicans Cynthia Lummis and Shelley Moore Capito and Democrats Elissa Slotkin and Peter Welch — missed the vote.

Moments after being confirmed, McMahon was sworn in at the Department of Education.

In a post on X, McMahon said she intended to “make good” on President Donald Trump’s promises to make U.S. education the best in the world, return education to the states and free students from bureaucracy through school choice.

McMahon, who previously served as the head of the Small Business Administration during Trump’s first term, will be tasked with shutting down the federal agency she was confirmed to lead.

At a White House event last month, Trump said, “I told Linda, ‘Linda, I hope you do a great job and put yourself out of a job. I want her to put herself out of a job, Education Department.”

“I want the states to run schools, and I want Linda to put herself out of a job,” Trump added.

Sources told ABC News the president is expected to sign an executive order as soon as this week calling for McMahon to diminish the education department and work with Congress to pass legislation that would eliminate it. The move would fulfill Trump’s campaign promise of returning education back to the states.

However, Trump’s directive will not stand without congressional approval, according to experts who’ve spoken to ABC News. Any proposed legislation would likely fail without 60 votes in the Senate.

The Trump loyalist and donor acknowledged she needed Congress to carry out the president’s vision.

“We’d like to do this right,” McMahon said during her February confirmation hearing, adding, “that certainly does require congressional action.”

McMahon, 76, earned her teaching certification from East Carolina University. She is a champion of apprenticeship and workforce training programs, school choice, and parental rights.

McMahon also had two stints serving on the Board of Trustees at Sacred Heart University, where she is currently the Treasurer. She served on the Connecticut State Board of Education in 2009.

She also co-founded World Wrestling Entertainment with her husband Vince McMahon.

McMahon allies believe the secretary will be an agent of change, a disrupter, and the dismantler that the Department of Education needs. Department skeptics also stress that the federal agency spends too much on education without adequate academic results.

House Education and Workforce Committee Chairman Rep. Tim Walberg, who said he met with McMahon last week for roughly 30 minutes, celebrated her victory.

“Secretary McMahon has demonstrated she is a fierce advocate for our youth,” Walberg said in a statement to ABC News. “Her leadership and experience both in education and business will help ensure we are setting our students up for successful futures.”

Across Capitol Hill, there was sobering reaction from opponents to the business executive and wrestling legend’s confirmation.

“I’m highly concerned that her interest in destroying the Department of Education will mean children with special needs will not be able to access individualized education plans, that our lower-income students will be able to afford college and higher education, and that our school districts will lose out on critical funding to meet the needs and well being of their students,” Democratic Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand said after the vote.

Public education advocate Bernie Sanders, the ranking member of the Senate’s education committee, told ABC News that McMahon’s confirmation could be potentially devastating for Americans.

“If you are a working-class person, if you are a low income person, the help that your community is now getting will likely be killed,” Sanders said.

And critics labeled McMahon as a disastrous choice for the students and educators across the U.S. who rely on the statutorily authorized education programs, like the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act and Title I funding for low-income families. Dozens of civil rights groups opposed McMahon’s confirmation, including the NAACP.

“This is an agency we cannot afford to dismantle,” NAACP President Derrick Johnson wrote in a statement to ABC News.

“Her confirmation brings us one step closer to losing our Department of Education — the agency that not only funds public schools, but advocates for our teachers and enforces essential civil rights laws.”

Meanwhile, in her quest to diminish the agency Secretary McMahon assured lawmakers that she is not cutting the public school funding for 50 million American students. McMahon said she is looking into moving the department’s essential functions, like civil rights protections and its non-discrimination laws for students with disabilities, to other agencies.

“Why do you think that it is better to stick the functions dealing with children with disabilities in a huge department that will not have the same priorities,” Sen. Democratic Sen. Lisa Blunt Rochester asked during McMahon’s confirmation hearing.

“The bottom line is, because it’s not working,” McMahon said.

“The Department of Education was set up in 1980 and since that time, we have spent almost a trillion dollars. We have watched our performance scores continue to go down. I do believe that it is a responsibility to make sure that our children have equal access to excellent education. I think that is best handled at the state level,” she added.

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(WASHINGTON) — Senate Democratic leaders stood in support of Social Security benefits on Monday in the wake of the Social Security Administration’s announcement it’s planning to cut 7,000 jobs as part of “significant workforce reductions.”

“Now we know that something we Senate Democrats have feared for a long time is coming true. Social Security is under attack and at risk,” Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer said at a Capitol Hill news conference.

Schumer, Senate Finance Committee’s Ranking Member Ron Wyden, D-Ore., Vice Chair of the Senate Appropriations Committee Sen. Patty Murray, D-Wash., and Sen. Amy Klobuchar, D-Minn., also at the news conference, said that the Social Security workforce cuts are just a pitstop Republicans are making on the road to privatizing the critical benefits system.

“DOGE’s attack on Social Security, in my view, is a first step on the path to privatizing Social Security,” Wyden said, referring to Elon Musk and the Department of Government Efficiency.

The leaders also blasted Musk’s recent characterization of Social Security as a ‘Ponzi scheme.’

“Elon Musk says it’s a Ponzi scheme. The richest man in the world is telling Americans that earned benefits that they depend on and they paid into are a scam. They are not a scam. And if Americans know it,” Schumer said.

Asked about the Biden-appointed former Social Security commissioner Martin O’Malley’s recent prediction that a system collapse and an interruption of benefits could come within the next 30-90 days, Murray responded that the recent cuts to workforce and offices would be a “disaster.”

“Yeah, I mean, when you’re firing this many people, closing that many offices — don’t have people to write the checks, you are looking for disaster,” Murray said.

A government-funding connection?

Asked if Democrats would insist on preventing the cuts as part of a deal to bring a temporary funding (‘CR’ or continuing resolution) bill up for a vote, to keep the government open, Murray said “We are looking at a number of different” things pertaining to a funding deal.

“I’ll just say this. The only one who wants a shutdown right now is Elon Musk … nobody else wants a shutdown. We are all working to get this done,” Murray said.

Murray said that the best way to fund the government and avoid a shutdown would be through a CR.

“In my opinion, the best way to do this is to do a short-term CR. Our committees are capable of getting this done with this short term CR, and ready to go to work.”

She also said the White House sending an “anomalies” list to Congress was “completely inadequate” and then reaffirmed that Democrats were “at the table” and “ready” to pass a short-term CR.

Working with House Democrats to block Social Security cuts

Schumer referenced former President George W. Bush’s proposed cuts to Social Security programs in 2005, likening his current plans to work with House members in order to block any rollbacks to the work he did with Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid 20 years ago.

“We got together. We said we’re going to fight it, and we won. I will tell the American people, we’re getting together, House and Senate Democrats, we’re going to fight it, and guess what? We’re going to prevent the cuts,” Schumer said.

“But we need your help,” he said. “We need every person who’s a recipient or would-be recipient who would like to get this benefit to call their congressmen– their Republican congressman and senators — and give one simple sentence. ‘Hands off my Social Security.'”

President Donald Trump and House Speaker Mike Johnson have insisted that Republicans won’t try to cut Social Security benefits or benefits from other entitlement programs.

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(WASHINGTON) — Conservative legislators are increasingly speaking out against the Supreme Court’s landmark 2015 ruling on same-sex marriage equality.

Idaho legislators began the trend in January when the state House and Senate passed a resolution calling on the Supreme Court to reconsider its decision — which the court cannot do unless presented with a case on the issue. Some Republican lawmakers in at least four other states like Michigan, Montana, North Dakota and South Dakota have followed suit with calls to the Supreme Court.

In North Dakota, the resolution passed the state House with a vote of 52-40 and is headed to the Senate. In South Dakota, the state’s House Judiciary Committee sent the proposal on the 41st Legislative Day –deferring the bill to the final day of a legislative session, when it will no longer be considered, and effectively killing the bill.

In Montana and Michigan, the bills have yet to face legislative scrutiny.

Resolutions have no legal authority and are not binding law, but instead allow legislative bodies to express their collective opinions.

The resolutions in four other states echo similar sentiments about the merits of the Court’s Obergefell v. Hodges decision, which established the right to same-sex marriage under the equal protection clause and the due process clause of the 14th Amendment.

Some legislators behind the resolutions argue that the legality of gay marriage should be left to states to decide, while others argue that marriage should be reserved for one man and one woman.

LGBTQ advocates and allies have criticized the efforts, arguing that the majority of Americans approve of same-sex marriage and say the efforts undermine “personal freedoms.”

A 2024 Gallup poll found that 69% of Americans continue to believe that marriage between same-sex couples should be legal, and 64% say gay or lesbian relations are morally acceptable.

In Michigan, state Rep. Josh Schriver unveiled his own anti-gay marriage resolution on Feb. 25, arguing that restrictions on gay marriage are important to “preserve and grow our human race,” he said at a press conference announcing the resolution.

“Michigan Christians follow Christ’s definition of marriage as a covenant between a man and a woman, an institution established to glorify God and produce children,” said Schriver.

In a press release, he added: “The new resolution urges the preservation of the sanctity of marriage and constitutional protections that ensure freedom of conscience for all Michigan residents.”

Local Democratic leaders denounced the resolution, arguing that it discriminates against the rights of LGBTQ Americans and distracts from more pressing issues facing Michigan residents.

“At a time when Michiganders are looking to their leaders to address pressing issues like lowering costs and protecting our economy, House Republicans are choosing to focus on undermining the personal freedoms of Michigan residents,” state Rep. Mike McFall said.

“This resolution is not only a blatant attempt to roll back the clock on civil rights, but it is also out of step with the values and priorities of our state.”

The Michigan resolution has been referred to the Committee on Government Operations and has not yet been put to a vote.

The handful of resolutions come after Associate Justice Clarence Thomas expressed interest in revisiting the Obergefell decision in his concurring opinion on the Supreme Court’s landmark 2022 decision on the Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization case that overturned the federal right to abortion.

He wrote: “In future cases, we should reconsider all of this court’s substantive due process precedents,” such as Obergefell. “Because any substantive due process decision is ‘demonstrably erroneous,’ we have a duty to ‘correct the error’ established in those precedents,” Thomas said.

Thomas had issued a dissenting opinion in 2015 against same-sex marriage equality.

More than two dozen states have some kind of restriction on same-sex marriage that could be triggered if the Supreme Court one day overturns its 2015 decision, according to legislative tracking group Movement Advancement Project. This is because marriage equality has not yet been codified and enshrined into law nationwide.

However, the Respect for Marriage Law signed by former President Joe Biden in 2022 guarantees the federal recognition of same-sex and interracial marriages in the event of an overturned Supreme Court decision.

It requires all states to recognize legally certified marriages, even if they were done in a state where it is later banned or done in another state entirely.

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(WASHINGTON) — A federal judge wants to hear directly from one of the top officials at the Consumer Finance Protection Bureau to learn if the Trump administration is unlawfully gutting the agency or just trying to streamline it.

U.S. District Judge Amy Berman Jackson — who expressed concern the CFPB might be “choked out of its very existence” — said she plans to hold a hearing next Monday to get testimony from CFPB Chief Operating Officer Adam Martinez and others about the state of the agency tasked with protecting American consumers.

During a lengthy hearing Monday, Jackson grew frustrated with a lack of clear answers from either side about the current state of the CFPB. Lawyers with the Department of Justice argued the relief requested by the federal unions who brought the lawsuit amounted to putting the CFPB into receivership, while the plaintiffs argued the Trump administration was causing irreparable harm by slowly starving the agency.

“According to the plaintiff, the sky is falling. According to the defendant, if I issue the order, the sky will be falling,” Jackson remarked.

Jackson is considering issuing a preliminary injunction to block the dismantling of the CFPB but added she might consider additional relief if the plaintiffs can demonstrate that the government’s actions are causing irreparable harm.

“I think what we’re talking about is interim oversight to make sure that it hasn’t been choked out of its very existence before I get to rule on the merits,” she said.

In a sworn court filing last week, Martinez argued the changes at the CFPB — which has operated under a stop work order for the last month — are simply a “common practice at the beginning of a new administration.” Jackson raised skepticism to the idea that what’s happening at the CFPB is business as usual.

“One of the big defenses of all this is that this is normal, that this is what happens when the new team comes to town, and I’m just not sure that’s true at all, at least not since I’ve been here,” she remarked. “Are you telling me that … when President Reagan took over from President Carter — on top of freezing regulations and enforcement and litigation — fired all provisional employees, shut the building, stopped all work and said the funding should stop?”

Lawyers with the Department of Justice insisted the Trump administration is trying to improve the CFPB, not destroy it.

“You can’t blow it up, but why should you be able to starve it to death?” Jackson asked.

“Acting Director [Russell] Vought wants to have a more streamlined and efficient bureau, not to blow it up,” responded a DOJ attorney.

Elon Musk, however, wrote “RIP CFPB” in a post on X on Feb. 7, the same day workers received termination notices.

The CFPB is an independent agency established by Congress after the 2008 financial crisis under the landmark Dodd-Frank Act. It’s a consumer watchdog aimed at protecting American households from unfair and deceptive practices across the financial services industry.

Its oversight applies to everything from mortgages to credit cards to bank fees to student loans to data collection. By law, the CFPB has the rare ability to issue new rules and to impose fines against companies who break them.

Since its establishment in 2011 through last June, the CFPB said it has clawed back $20.7 billion for American consumers.

ABC News’ Elizabeth Schulze contributed to this report.

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