US President-elect Donald Trump announced late Tuesday that he has selected Linda McMahon as his nominee to lead the Department of Education.

McMahon headed the Small Business Administration during Trump’s previous term and was known for her decades-long role in helping run World Wrestling Entertainment.

“Linda will use her decades of leadership experience and deep knowledge 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 lead that effort.”

Earlier Tuesday, Trump nominated Wall Street financier Howard Lutnick as Secretary of Commerce in his new administration.

The 63-year-old billionaire is co-chairing Trump’s transition team and is helping consider and vet scores of people to take 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 global financial services firm Cantor Fitzgerald, Lutnick is said to be in contention to become Treasury secretary, another top job Trump has yet to fill. But Trump aides say Lutnick fell out of favor for the Treasury Department 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 U.S. production of the same products but which in the short term threatens to raise prices for U.S. consumers and disrupt the global economy.

The Commerce Department oversees a range of federal business policies, including semiconductors, cybersecurity and patents, and helps promote new businesses and economic growth in the United States, the world’s largest 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 company during the September 11, 2001 al-Qaeda terrorist attack on the Twin Towers of the World Trade Center in New York. Another 46 contractors and visitors who were in Cantor Fitzgerald’s offices that day were killed when the towers collapsed.

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

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

On Tuesday, Trump also appointed Dr. Mehmet Oz, a former television show host, as administrator of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, the agency that oversees the government’s two main health insurance programs for older Americans and poor people. Trump supported Oz’s failed bid to win a Senate seat in Pennsylvania in 2022.