On today’s show: Linda McMahon led WWE and the Small Business Administration. The U.S. Education Department may be next. NPR’s Jonaki Mehta reports on her background and details how the Trump administration targeted an Education Department research arm in recent cuts. The Washington Post reports that McMahon has a record at odds with Trump’s agenda. As the U.S. battles fentanyl, Mexico is fighting the flow of American guns into the country. The Wall Street Journal’s Zusha Elinson explains why it’s so easy to smuggle weapons across the border. Wired looks at how online maps are handling Trump’s Gulf of Mexico name change. Plus, a judge cleared the way for federal employees to accept the president’s “buyout” offer, Trump FBI pick Kash Patel was accused of orchestrating a staff purge at the agency while still a nominee, and how Trump has reshaped the Kennedy Center. Today’s episode was hosted by Shumita Basu. Correction: A previous version of this episode said Apple Maps had changed “Gulf of Mexico” to “Gulf of America” for all users. At the time of this episode’s publication, that change has only been made for U.S. users.
Chapter 1: Who is Linda McMahon and how might she influence the U.S. Education Department?
But first, President Trump's nominee for education secretary might end up leading a department that's on the administration's cutting block. Linda McMahon's confirmation hearing is today. She'll field questions from senators in the Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee. At the same time, Trump and Elon Musk's Department of Government Efficiency are working to shrink the Department of Ed.
Here's Trump yesterday answering a reporter who asked, how soon do you want the Department of Education to be closed?
Oh, I'd like it to be closed immediately. Look, the Department of Education's a big con job.
Shutting down the department altogether would require congressional approval. It's an idea that's been floated by Republicans for decades, as long as the Department of Education has existed. Many have argued education policy should be handled entirely at the state level. But recent efforts have failed.
Chapter 2: Why is the Department of Education facing cuts?
In a vote last year, 60 Republicans joined every single Democrat in voting against abolishing the department. Janaki Mehta is an education reporter at NPR, and she told us millions of dollars worth of contracts for projects that were already underway have been canceled, including at the Institute of Education Sciences, or IES.
It's one of the country's biggest funders of education research. And slashing this research could mean that the public, so parents, educators, students, policymakers, district officials, they don't have access to key data about things like student achievement, enrollment, school safety, teaching strategies that help students, you name it.
According to Mehta's sources who have insight into these canceled contracts, at least one program was already being used in classrooms to help students make up lost ground in math, which schools have struggled to make progress on since the pandemic. An employee of IES told Mehta they don't understand how Musk can defend the cancellations as being efficient.
The way one of them put it is that by canceling these contracts, they have, in the words of this employee, have wasted millions and millions of dollars.
McMahon could face questions about this from senators today, along with questions about her limited background in education. She is a billionaire best known for leading WWE, World Wrestling Entertainment. But she served on Connecticut's State Board of Education for about a year before joining the first Trump administration as the head of the Small Business Administration.
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Chapter 3: What are the criticisms of Trump's education policy changes?
Mehta spoke with some of McMahon's former colleagues from the SBA who praised her work.
They told me that she was a really sharp leader who had an eye for bringing efficiency to the public sector. So if she's confirmed, we'll wait and see how those skills might translate to what she's stepping into.
McMahon has recently voiced support for expanding school choice at the K-12 level and providing more transparency in curricula. In higher education, she supports alternatives to college degrees like apprenticeships, which has bipartisan support.
And according to The Washington Post, in her previous role on the Connecticut Board of Education, she supported diversity and equity initiatives, which marks a significant divergence from the president's education policy. So far, all of Trump's nominees to cabinet positions have been confirmed by the Senate, including Tulsi Gabbard to lead national intelligence. It was confirmed yesterday.
When President Trump pulled back from his threat of 25 percent tariffs on goods from Mexico, he said Mexico must beef up security along the border to stop the flow of illegal drugs like fentanyl into the U.S. Trump even suggested the Mexican government is allied with drug cartels, a claim Mexican President Claudia Scheinbaum rejected as slander.
She also brought up an issue that often goes overlooked in the battle against drug traffickers, and it's not what flows from Mexico to the U.S., but the other way around. The Wall Street Journal reports a quarter million American guns are estimated to be smuggled into Mexico every year. It happens so reliably and so quickly, in fact, it's been dubbed the Iron River.
As we all know, Americans love their guns.
Zusha Ellenson is a national reporter who covers guns and crime for the Wall Street Journal.
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Chapter 4: How are American guns impacting Mexico?
Gunmakers sold about 87 million firearms on the U.S. commercial market over the past five years. That's a lot of guns. But the problem is not all of them stay here. Quite a few get smuggled out to other countries where it's hard to buy guns. We talked to one former ATF official who described the U.S. as the biggest gun supermarket in the Western Hemisphere.
Mexican officials say this is a longstanding problem. The Journal reports about 70 percent of guns traced from crime scenes in Mexico between 2014 and 2018 came from the U.S. That's led Mexico to take a new approach.
And that's suing gun manufacturers in America and gun dealers. And they allege that these gun dealers and gun manufacturers are turning a blind eye to smugglers because they make so much money off the guns industry.
Ellenson says U.S. gun makers argue they're shielded from responsibility by a 2005 law that says they can't be held liable if their guns are used in a crime. And since they manufacture and sell guns legally in the U.S., they're not responsible for how cartels get them or what they do with them. Ellenson told us smuggling weapons from the U.S. into Mexico is a very easy, very straightforward crime.
The gun traffickers or cartels, they find someone who can pass a background check in the U.S. That means someone who has no criminal record. Sometimes like a single mom who needs some cash, someone with some medical bills who needs some cash. They say, can you go into this gun store and buy me a couple guns and we'll pay you like a thousand bucks. And these people are called straw purchasers.
They at some point give it to the trafficker. The trafficker drives it across the border into Mexico. And you may think that would be a hard thing to do. It is not hard to do.
The Journal reports cars headed into Mexico are rarely screened by border officials, partly because of fears that cartels will retaliate against those officials if the flow of weapons stops. In 2022, Congress passed a law enhancing penalties for so-called straw purchasers, people who buy guns to be trafficked.
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Chapter 5: What is the 'Iron River' and how do guns get smuggled into Mexico?
But Ellenson reports prosecutors are reluctant to go after people in difficult financial situations who don't have criminal records. But Ellenson also says a lot can be done to prevent trafficking on both sides of the border.
People who study this issue, they say that more needs to be done to pay attention to gun dealers along the border to make sure they're keeping a good eye out for people who might be buying guns for traffickers. These folks who study the issue also say it would be good for Mexico to strengthen its criminal justice system so that they could really assist in investigations into gun trafficking.
We spoke to former federal agents who said it's quite difficult to pursue investigations down in Mexico because of the corruption in the ranks of police there.
When President Trump issued an executive order to rename the Gulf of Mexico, which has been called that for more than 400 years, to the Gulf of America, it raised a bunch of questions. Like, is he allowed to unilaterally decide something like that? And do other governments have to follow Trump's lead? Trump has the power to order changes to geographical names as they're used on official U.S.
maps. But he can't force other governments to adopt those changes. There's really no official, agreed-upon system used to name boundaries and geographical features on our planet. In fact, there's a long history of government disputes over how bodies of water in particular are named. NPR cites a few famous examples.
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Chapter 6: How are gun manufacturers responding to legal challenges from Mexico?
There's the Sea South of China, which is known to much of the world as the South China Sea. In Vietnam, it's the Eastern Sea. The Philippines has designated parts of it as the West Philippine Sea. Another example is the water that separates the Arabian Peninsula from Iran, which much of the world calls the Persian Gulf, while Arab nations in the region call it the Arabian Gulf.
But back to the Gulf in question. Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum rejected the name change and encouraged other countries to join her.
To be able to change the name of an international sea,
She said it's not up to one country to decide what to call an international body of water. And she jokingly shot back at the president that she might start calling North America Mexican America, as she stood before a map from the early 1600s that shows North America was once labeled that way. Some Mexican citizens expressed similar takes.
Reuters spoke to one man on the coast shortly after Trump made his announcement.
Honestly, it's wrong, because the Gulf of Mexico will always be the Gulf of Mexico. That's the way it is, and it doesn't need to change.
The AP also went to the Gulf to speak to some locals on the U.S. side. One man said his family had a long history of being out on boats in the area, and he welcomes the change.
I've been spending every Fourth of July just about of my whole life on the Gulf of Mexico, and it would be great to spend Fourth of July on the Gulf of America. Sounds like fun.
Wired has been reporting on how digital maps are handling Trump's order. On Google Maps, users in the United States now see this body of water labeled as the Gulf of America. Google users in Mexico see the Gulf of Mexico. And users outside of those countries see both names listed. Apple Maps renamed it to Gulf of America for all U.S. users.
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