WASHINGTON — Linda McMahon once claimed an unearned education degree from East Carolina University.

Now the New Bern native is nominated to lead President-elect Donald Trump’s Department of Education.

Trump announced Tuesday that McMahon, best known as a founder of World Wrestling Entertainment, is nominated to be the next education secretary. She is his first nominee to have served in his previous administration.

“It is my great honor to announce that Linda McMahon, former Administrator of the Small Business Administration, will be the United States Secretary of Education,” Trump wrote in a news release.

McMahon now must wait for the Senate to confirm her nomination.

North Carolina roots

McMahon grew up in New Bern. Her parents worked 30 minutes away at Marine Corps Air Station Cherry Point, and she attended the nearby Havelock High School.

It was during high school that she met her now-estranged husband and business partner, Vince McMahon. Together they attended East Carolina University where, in 1969, she earned a degree in French.

After college, they moved away from the Tar Heel State.

But in 2010, McMahon’s ties to North Carolina would be noted in a story by the Hartford Courant, which reported that she received a position on the Connecticut Board of Education after wrongfully claiming to then-Gov. M. Jodi Rell that she graduated from ECU with an education degree.

In response to the allegations, McMahon told the Courant, “she first thought she had been right, because she did a semester of student-teaching, and after state testing, emerged with the certificate to teach — although she never did,” the Courant reported.

Education background

Her college degree was one of several misleading statements the newspaper reported McMahon had made on her application.

McMahon’s opponents had argued her connection to WWE, and its violent, sexual and vulgar content, sent the wrong kind of message. They also criticized her lack of experience in education, though supporters saw that as a win.

She still faces that criticism as Trump’s nominee.

McMahon’s resume also includes serving on the board of trustees for Sacred Heart University in Connecticut.

Despite the opposition, and news of her misidentified degree breaking in the Stamford Advocate a month before her confirmation hearing, the Connecticut legislature approved Rell’s nomination of McMahon. She would serve on the board for around a year.

McMahon took to social media Thursday following the news that Rell died suddenly at 78.

“Her dedication and approach to public service is the gold standard to which we all should aspire to,” McMahon wrote. “I was honored to have her appoint me to serve on the CT State Board of Education and so enjoyed working with her.”

When McMahon resigned from Connecticut’s board in 2010, she told the Courant it didn’t have to do with their pending story. She said it was instead because of the board’s rules wouldn’t allow her to raise money for her Senate campaign while serving. She would go on to lose two separate Senate campaigns.

Political work

But McMahon never walked away from politics.

She became a major donor and fundraiser for Republicans.

During Trump’s 2024 campaign, she donated more than $20 million to the former and future president, NBC News reported.

McMahon supported Trump from the beginning of his political career and it paid off for her when he nominated her to lead the Small Business Administration.

After three years, McMahon resigned to lead America First Action, a Trump super-PAC.

She chairs the America First Policy Institute board. Trump’s news release about her most recent nomination credits her for working on parents’ rights and universal school choice policy at the institute.

She also serves as co-chair of Trump’s transition team.

Education’s future

McMahon is one of several of Trump’s nominees who could face a tough nomination process. For McMahon, she’s accused of allowing one of her employees to use his position to sexually abuse five teenagers 15 and under The accusation is part of a lawsuit filed anonymously by former teenage employees.

If McMahon clears the Senate nomination, she faces a different hurdle.

It’s unclear how long her position might even exist.

And once again, that might be left up to Congress to decide.

One of Trump’s constant campaign promises was to shutter the Department of Education. However, that’s a promise Trump can’t keep without congressional approval. And Trump could face backlash, even from within his own party, since schools rely on federal funding.

Trump also promised to cut funding to schools that teach topics like critical race theory or anything he believes is too sexually or racially inappropriate.

Critics of his plans include Katie Paris, the founder of Red Wine & Blue, a group of 600,000 women that says it’s working to defeat extremism.

“McMahon is entirely unqualified to be Secretary of Education,” Paris said in a written statement. “She has no background in public schools. She lied about having an education degree when she was nominated for the Connecticut State Board of Education. Trump picked her simply because she will follow through on Project 2025’s promise to dismantle the Department of Education.”

Trump, in his statement announcing the nomination, said McMahon “will use her decades of Leadership experience, and deep understanding of both Education and Business, to empower the next Generation of American Students and Workers, and make America Number One in Education in the World.

“We will send Education BACK TO THE STATES, and Linda will spearhead that effort.”

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