Secretary of Education nominee Linda McMahon, if confirmed, will make it her first act to "get our schools back on track," Rep. Jeff Van Drew told Newsmax on Sunday.
But, the New Jersey Republican told Newsmax's "Sunday Report" that the changes will be a "bumpy ride."
"We want to make significant and substantive changes to bring back the America that we all know and love for this great country, and it's not going to happen easily," he said. "They're going to open the bowels of hell against us."
But the changes are important, Van Drew insisted.
"Our scores, every year that goes by, get worse and worse as it relates to the world," he said. "Kids in school should be learning about math and history and civics and computers. There's so much to learn. There's so much that could help them to go forward in their lives, whether they go into a trade, whether they become a professor at a university or a doctor or a lawyer."
Instead, he said, students are learning about changing their sexual identity and "pronouns" and are even allowed, in some districts, to "change their name without talking to their parents," said Van Drew.
"We are so off track, it's so unbelievable," he added. "If America is to lead, if we're to be the shining city on the hill, if we are to be the most powerful nation in the world, it all starts with education. I can tell you education stories up to universities and colleges, where I talk to young people, and they can't write down and say what they believe in a paper because then they get a bad grade. They have to regurgitate the left-wing policies of the professor. It's time to end it."
President-elect Donald Trump has called for eliminating the Department of Education and putting control of schools back to the states, and Van Drew said he agrees.
"They can't do worse than they're doing right now at the federal level," he said. "If they were doing a good job, if they were focusing our students, if they were leading us into the future, then maybe, you know, we wouldn't be thinking about that."
Education shouldn't be "left or right, Republican or Democrat," said Van Drew. "It shouldn't be socialist or libertarian. It should be all ideas are on the table. It should be an area where people can learn and young people can absorb information and look to a brighter future. I am so disparaged and disgusted with what's been going on over the years, and it has to change."
Van Drew also commented on the growing controversy with the Federal Emergency Management Agency, after the firing of FEMA supervisor Marn'i Washington, the supervisor who encouraged hurricane recovery workers in Florida to skip homes with Trump election yard signs.
FEMA Director Deanne Criswell denied to the House Oversight Committee that the agency would have directed anyone to bypass anyone's homes based on their political affiliations.
"I'm on that subcommittee, and I asked her a lot of tough questions," he said. "And I've got to be honest with you, I wasn't satisfied."
FEMA's culture "allows an employee or employees to believe that it's OK to do this," he added. "So it was no big deal, otherwise they wouldn't have put it down. You know, in the form of an email. But they thought it was OK because it's the culture over there at FEMA."
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Sandy Fitzgerald ✉
Sandy Fitzgerald has more than three decades in journalism and serves as a general assignment writer for Newsmax covering news, media, and politics.
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