As Linda McMahon will face a confirmation hearing on Thursday to direct the Department of Education, several former WWE employees, their relatives and two current and previous education officials are raising concerns about whether it is in a form so that the position that supervises more of 50 million students in around 98,000 public schools and 32,000 private schools in the United States.
In question, these people say, it is their commitment to safeguard children and supervise the title IX, which protects students against discrimination, amid accusations in an October demand that it was involved in doing the eye in sight of child sexual abuse at the hands of a worldwide struggle. Entertainment employee during his mandate as an executive at WWE. A McMahon lawyer has denied the statements. McMahon is not accused of sexual abuse.
“I have had many friends who have their own stories and their own traumas with sexual assault that have communicated and said: ‘This is a slap,” said Kristina Ismael, an official of the Department of Education in the Biden Administration. NBC news.
A current employee of the Department of Education who spoke on condition of anonymity for fear of losing his job said he also had concerns about McMahon’s competition to lead the department due to his participation in demand and lack of educational experience.
The lawsuit accused McMahon and her husband, the co -founder of the WWE, Vince McMahon, to enable sexual abuse and the exploitation of children, known as “Ring Boys”, by a WWE announcer decades ago.
“She let a pedophile cross her company,” said the sister of an alleged victim, her voice breaking with emotion. She spoke on condition of anonymity to protect the identities of some of the John. “She knew better. It was his duty to inform the police and arrest that man. ”
If confirmed, McMahon could face a unique challenge, leading an apartment that Trump expects to dismantle. The sources familiar with the plan told NBC News that Trump is preparing an executive order to eliminate the department, a measure that would require the approval of the congress.
The main Senate Democrats who spoke with NBC News seem more focused on policy questions for McMahon than in the controversies surrounding WWE.
Senator Bernie Sanders, i-vt., The member of the classification minor She would support. Salary increases for teachers and if she would support efforts to reduce programs in low -income school districts.
An assistant to a Democratic senator in the Help Committee said that McMahon’s demand is “in our radar, but we are not going to show our cards before the audience.”
McMahon would come to work with very little educational experience. He previously served for a year at the Connecticut Education Board in 2009. He resulted in that role and as WWE CEO before his failed career for the Senate in 2010. He had a second race by the failed Senate in 2012. And he was the boss of the administration of small businesses during Trump’s first mandate and is currently independent director of the Trump media company.
McMahon, mother of two children, promoted being behind the Get Real program of WWE during his confirmation hearing for his seat at the Connecticut Education Board in 2009. The program, which was launched in 2001, used WWE superstars to deliver educational messages to adolescents.
In a statement that denies the accusations against McMahon, lawyer Laura Brieftti said: “This civil lawsuit based on accusations of more than thirty years is full of slippery lies, exaggerations and misrepresentations regarding Linda McMahon. Mrs. McMahon will defend vigorously against this unfounded demand and, without a doubt, she finally succeeds. ”
A lawyer from Vince McMahon told NBC News in a statement that the claims of negligence in the demand are “false and unfounded.” The representatives of WWE and his parent company, TKO, did not respond to the requests for comments. The White House did not respond to repeated requests for comments on the accusations against Linda McMahon.
McMahon is appointed with Vince McMahon, WWE and Tko Holdings in a law Ringside for WWE WWE. , in the 1980s. Demand alleges that McMahon knew about sexual abuse and did nothing to stop him.
It is alleged that Phillips has used its position to recruit adolescents to help establish and eliminate fighting rings in WWE events, just to exploit them later under the appearance of tutoring, according to the demand.
A ring boy who is demanding in demand told NBC News that he suffered physical and sexual abuse by Phillips, who died in 2012.
“It was definitely not a safe place for a child to be,” said the former ring boy, who requested anonymity because the alleged abuse took place when he was a minor.
He said it was exciting to be part of the WWE and “meet the fighters and be on the road and do things that normal children could not do.”
But he said that Phillips “could cross out at any time. It would be forced on us. He would simply throw you to the ground and use wrestling to sexually abuse children.”
Since the claim was filed, other accusers have submitted.
As leader of the Department of Education, Linda McMahon would supervise his civil rights office, which enforces critical child protection policies such as Title IX, a civil rights law that prevents schools financed by the federal government from practicing sexual discrimination.
During the first Trump administration, the Secretary of Education Betsy Devos reviewed the regulations of sexual aggression of the campus to give the accused students more ways to defend themselves, restrict how schools could investigate accusations of sexual aggression and limit schools to Investigate only incidents that occur in school or as parts of school activities.
Last year, during the Biden mandate, the department rescinded the changes of the Trump administration and replaced them with the most favorable for LGBTQ students and for students who present accusations of abuse, but a judge attacked them.
In a letter sent to schools this month, the Secretary of Civil Rights Assistant Education, Craig Trainor, said the department would begin to enforce the first regulations of the Trump era again.
In addition, educational groups and department officials are concerned about what McMahon’s leadership could mean the future of the Office for Civil Rights if the department was dismantled. The National Education Association, a teacher union, explained in an article on its website how to fold the Office for Civil Rights in another agency could damage students.
“Many expect the White House to move the Office of Civil Rights of the Department of Education to the Department of Justice, a measure that would severely weaken their ability to protect students against discrimination based on race, gender and disability,” He wrote the NEA on his website.
The civil rights work of the Department of Justice is carried out mainly through litigation, and the Civil Rights Division of the Department of Justice carries out only one fraction of the administrative investigations of application of the application of the civil rights office of the Department of Education. “That means that he is presenting a lawsuit that will have been for years,” said Sheria Smith, president of the American Federation of Local Government 252, which represents the employees of the Department of Education, as well as a lawyer from the civil rights office of the department. “We are fulfilling. We are not litigants. We don’t have to present the courts. We can lift the phone with the school district. “The Department of Education can reduce funds to a school to refuse to reach an agreement.
While the largest educational unions in the country are concerned about the possible elimination of the department, others say it could be something good in general.
Devos, who for a long time has supported the privatization of schools, echoed Trump’s call to eliminate the department, saying: “Students will be better without”.
In an opinion article in the online publication of Bari Weiss, The Free Press published Thursday, Devos calls an “intermediary” department that only serves to add “cost and complexity.” She said she struggled to make the department “even make the smallest changes to put the needs of the students first.”
The former ring boy who spoke with NBC News said that although he never met Linda McMahon, he was deeply concerned that she could lead the Department of Education because she is not taking any responsibility for what happened to him and others in WWE.
“Until she takes responsibility and shows some remorse and some responsibility, so I shouldn’t have that position,” he said. “She is involved in covering it. So what more will it be covered?
The accusations that McMahon and her husband were aware of the claims against Phillips emerged for the first time in the late 1980 dismissed again in 1992 with compensation of $ 300,000, according to the demand.
In an affidavit reported for the first time by Business Insider, the New York Post columnist, Phil Mushnick, testified that Vince McMahon admitted that both he and Linda McMahon knew what they characterized as the “anti -natural interest and attachment of Phillips. According to the reports, Vince McMahon said: “Linda and I decided that this was wrong”, and the McMahons fired Phillips, just to hire him weeks later. According to Mushnick’s testimony, Vince McMahon said: “He was returned by Linda”, with the condition that “remains away from minor children, stop passing through children and stops chasing children.”
For 1992, accusations against Phillips employees and WWE exploded in a complete public vision, with Ring Tom Cole’s boy presenting a lawsuit against the World Federation of Fight, Mel Phillips and others who allege abuse. Linda and Vince McMahon were not appointed as accused of school demand. Cole said he was fired after he refused to participate in sexual events with another WWE executive. He decided to recover his work with $ 55,000 in subsequent payment, according to the agreement signed by Linda McMahon.
Tom Cole’s brother, Lee Cole, told NBC News that Linda personally contacted her brother over the years. He also thanked him for remaining silent about WWE abuse during his career in the 2010 Senate, according to the current demand.
Lee Cole told him his brother’s last words before he died from suicide in 2021 he still chases him: “You make sure you let them know what they did to me.”
Lee Cole now presents the “Wrestling with the Devil” podcast, in which he amplifies the voices of the old ring children who allege abuse by Phillips.
A Trump supporter, is disturbed by McMahon’s election to direct the Department of Education, and has written to Sanders, of the Senate’s Help Committee, to raise concerns about his nomination.
“I am a great defender of Trump, and I am very disappointed with his selection of Linda McMahon,” Cole said. “It didn’t matter if you were a child, a man, a woman, nobody was safe from sexual abuse in that company.”
