Trump Education Secretary Linda McMahon Follows Flat Earth Account

Linda McMahon, appointed by Donald Trump as Secretary of Education, follows a prominent flat earth account on Twitter while overseeing plans to dismantle the very department she leads. McMahon’s personal account, @linda_mcmahon, which describes her as the “13th Secretary of Education” serving “under the leadership of @POTUS,” follows @FELibrary_, an account called “Flat Earth Library.”

The page, created in May 2024, describes itself as an “awake flat earther, truther and pattern recognitionist” and promotes flat earth and anti-science conspiracies to more than 98,000 followers. McMahon’s decision to follow the page occurred sometime over the past 16 months.

The Flat Earth Library account posts content denying gravity, evolution, and space exploration, insisting the Earth is surrounded by water under a dome and that mountains are enormous, ancient tree stumps. It routinely attacks NASA as a fraud and labels those who accept the Earth’s curvature as “globetards.” 

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Other posts from the account assert that space is fake, satellites don’t exist, and the Sun is inside the Earth’s dome. One recent post, flagged by a Community Note, implied a tourist attraction in Oklahoma, a decorated cement mixer made to resemble a space capsule, was actually the government trying to trick people into believing satellites and space are real.

McMahon’s following of such an account adds to concerns about the administration’s embrace of conspiratorial figures as it seeks to eliminate the Department of Education altogether. Why does the person who Trump has appointed to oversee the federal education effort follow an anti-science, flat earth account?