Small Business Administration Headed For Leadership Change

President Donald Trump’s chosen head for the Small Business Administration (SBA) will leave the post and focus on helping Trump’s re-election efforts.

Reports in The Associated Press on Friday (March 29) said SBA head Linda McMahon will leave the position, Trump announced, adding that she has done an “outstanding” job. McMahon will turn to helping “with the very important year and a half that we have coming up: the re-election,” Trump said.

McMahon had been in the position since 2016 — in a statement, she said it was an “honor” to serve. An unnamed source told Politico that McMahon is planning to join America First Action SuperPAC, supporting Trump’s re-election.

Last year, the U.S. Senate passed a bill broadening the SBA’s authority over its Small Business 7(a) loan program that would strengthen its credit risk management office, enhance the SBA’s oversight of lenders and enable full-risk analysis of its small business loan program.

Trump did not indicate who he will nominate to take up the now-open position of Small Business Administration head, nor when he will announce his pick.

News of the leadership change came the day after a federal judge ruled against the small business health insurance plan favored by Trump, declaring the plans as “clearly an end-run” to avoid consumer protection rules under the Affordable Care Act.

U.S. District Judge John D. Bates ruled that key aspects of the Trump administration’s policy on small business healthcare plans are “unlawful and must be set aside.” The ruling applied to plans that enable small businesses to join together “to offer lower-cost coverage that doesn’t have to include all the benefits required by ‘Obamacare,'” The Associated Press stated.

Bates said the policy contradicts established definitions of an employer under federal law. He pointed to the Trump policy that enables sole proprietors to be considered both employer and employee as one that “stretches the statute too far.”