(The Center Square) – A pick for the new presidential administration closest to home for a North Carolina congressman is, he says, exactly what the people want.
U.S. Rep. Dr. Greg Murphy, R-N.C., is a practicing urologist in Greenville. That just happens to be home of the alma mater, East Carolina University, for Linda McMahon. She’s the nomination for secretary of the Department of Education by President-elect Donald Trump.
“We saw the absolute disaster of what’s happened with the Biden administration in every Cabinet secretary’s position,” Murphy said. “Talking with people, talking with patients – what do they want? They want common sense brought back to government.”
And McMahon, he says, will do just that eastern North Carolina style. Her appointment is pending Senate confirmation.
“We saw the wokeness, we saw the far left, we saw the teachers union scream left because they wanted to indoctrinate people – kids rather, the most susceptible of our children, into their way of thinking about politics,” Murphy said in an appearance on the Fox Business television show Maria Bartiromo’s Wall Street. “Take politics out of school, and the best way to do that is to make things local, rather than a partisan government agency of cramming things down kids’ throats.”
McMahon was appointed to Connecticut’s State Board of Education in January 2009. She served 15 months.
The New Bern native was administrator of the Small Business Administration from 2017-19 in Trump’s first term. She’s known for several roles – co-founder with separated husband Vince of Titan Sports that later became World Wrestling Entertainment, twice a former candidate for the U.S. Senate while living in Connecticut, support of Special Olympics, and numerous million-dollar philanthropic efforts including benefitting ECU.
The wrestling arena has led to the harshest critiques, from a federal steroids investigation of the industry 15-plus years ago to last month’s “ring boys” lawsuit accusation of negligence. Her lawyer, Laura Brevetti, is on record saying the civil litigation is “baseless,” without truth, and has been probed by the FBI years ago with no findings to pursue prosecution.
She’s drawn praise from school choice advocates.
According to the website for the department, “the secretary is responsible for the overall direction, supervision, and coordination of all activities of the department and is the principal adviser to the president on federal policies, programs, and activities related to education in the U.S.” This means administering federal funding, students’ access to education, schools complying with law, and issues such as Title IX.
