2024 US Election

U.S. President-elect Donald Trump announced late Tuesday his selection of Linda McMahon as his nominee to lead the Department of Education.

McMahon served as the head of the Small Business Administration during Trump’s previous term in office, and was well known for her decades-long role in helping lead World Wrestling Entertainment.

“Linda will use her decades of Leadership experience, and deep understanding of both Education and Business, to empower the next Generation of American Students and Workers, and make America Number One in Education in the World,” Trump said in a statement. “We will send Education BACK TO THE STATES, and Linda will spearhead that effort.”

Earlier Tuesday, Trump nominated Wall Street financier Howard Lutnick as commerce secretary in his new administration.

The 63-year-old billionaire is co-chair of Trump’s transition team, helping to consider and vet numerous people to assume top-level government jobs after Trump takes office on January 20. Lutnick has been an outspoken Trump supporter in recent months.

The CEO and chairman of the Cantor Fitzgerald global financial services firm, Lutnick was reported to be in contention to become Treasury secretary, another top job Trump has yet to fill. But Trump associates say Lutnick fell out of favor for the Treasury job amid conflicts with another leading candidate, investor Scott Bessent.

If confirmed by the Senate, Lutnick could play a leading role in implementing the president’s economic and trade policies.

Trump has proposed widespread increases in tariffs on imported goods, an effort to boost American manufacturing of the same products but one that in the near term threatens to increase prices for American consumers and disrupt the global economy.

The Commerce Department oversees an array of federal business policies, including on semiconductors, cybersecurity and patents, and helps promote new businesses and economic growth in the United States, the world’s biggest economy.

Lutnick has donated to Democrats and Republicans in the past. He also once appeared on Trump’s NBC reality TV show “The Apprentice” before Trump was first elected president in 2016.

The Cantor Fitzgerald firm that Lutnick heads lost more employees — 658 out of 960 — than any other business in the September 11, 2001, al-Qaida terrorist attack on the twin towers of the World Trade Center in New York. Another 46 contractors and visitors who were in the Cantor Fitzgerald offices that day were killed when the towers collapsed.

Lutnick’s brother Gary was among those killed when hijackers flew commercial jetliners into the skyscrapers, hitting the North Tower just below where Cantor Fitzgerald occupied floors 101 to 105. Howard Lutnick would have been there as well but was taking his son Kyle to his first day of kindergarten.

Back at the site, Lutnick survived the collapse of the South Tower by taking cover under a nearby car. He later created the Cantor Fitzgerald Relief Fund to assist families of victims of the attacks and natural disasters.

On Tuesday, Trump also named Dr. Mehmet Oz, a longtime television show host, as administrator of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, the agency that oversees the government’s two key health insurance programs for older Americans and impoverished people. Trump backed Oz’s failed attempt to win a Senate seat in Pennsylvania in 2022.

The U.S. House of Representatives Ethics Committee is set to meet Wednesday to decide whether to release its investigative report on former Representative Matt Gaetz, who was accused of sexual misconduct and illicit drug use before he was picked by President-elect Donald Trump to be attorney general in his new administration.

Several U.S. senators, Democrats and Republicans alike, are demanding that the report be released so they can consider the scope of Gaetz’s background as they undertake their constitutionally mandated role of confirming or rejecting a new president’s Cabinet nominees.

Last Wednesday, Trump named Gaetz, 42, a Republican congressman from Florida for eight years, to become the country’s top law enforcement official. Hours later, Gaetz resigned from Congress, even though he had just been reelected to a fifth term. His resignation ended the House Ethics Committee’s investigation, which had been nearing a conclusion.

But it remained uncertain whether the panel would divulge what conclusions it had reached.

The committee, with five Democrats and five Republicans, had been looking into allegations that Gaetz had a sexual relationship with a 17-year-old girl and used drugs illicitly. Gaetz has denied the allegations. The Justice Department, which Gaetz hopes to lead, investigated the case but declined last year to bring any charges.

House Speaker Mike Johnson, who leads the narrow Republican majority in the chamber, has contended that no ethics report should be made public because Gaetz is no longer a member of Congress. However, there have been instances where that has occurred in the past.

Johnson told CNN on Sunday that senators reviewing the Gaetz nomination as the country’s top law enforcement official will “have a vigorous review and vetting process,” but that they did not need to see the House Ethics Committee’s report. Some senators have suggested they could move to subpoena it if it is not turned over to them voluntarily.

Republican Senator Markwayne Mullin on Sunday told NBC's "Meet the Press" that the panel should share its report with the Senate.

"The Senate should have access to that," Mullin said. "Should it be released to the public or not? That I guess will be part of the negotiations."

Gaetz is one of several Trump appointees to his Cabinet who do not have the credentials normally seen in candidates for high-level government jobs.

Over the weekend, a lawyer for another Trump choice, Pete Hegseth, a 44-year-old Fox News host named to be defense secretary, revealed that Hegseth several years ago paid an undisclosed amount to a woman who accused him of sexual assault in 2017 to avert the threat of what he viewed as a baseless lawsuit becoming public.

Trump has stood by his Cabinet nominees, refusing to withdraw their nominations. But the controversies surrounding Gaetz, Hegseth and others could threaten their confirmations by the Senate to be in Trump’s Cabinet.

The president-elect also has sought — with little success so far — to get the Senate, in Republican control come January when he takes office, to agree to recess at times so he could name and install his Cabinet members without the need for contentious and time-consuming confirmation hearings.