US President Donald Trump's pick for education secretary, Linda McMahon, testified Thursday before a US Senate committee, decrying an "excessive consolidation of power" in the department she has been named to lead.

Republicans praise her business acumen and say she’s a good pick to change the course of American education. Sen. Bill Cassidy, chair of the health and education committee, met with McMahon in January and said she’s “prepared to return power to parents and reform an Education Department that has lost the plot.”

President Donald Trump would like the U.S. Department of Education closed "immediately," he told reporters while in the Oval Office on Wednesday.