Trump to prosecute teachers, admins for ‘facilitating’ gender confusion in kids
Attorney general would work with state AGs to crush practices observed nationwide, using student privacy and parental rights laws. Some critics of federal encroachment worry “patriotic education” provision goes too far.
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[More than] Just a dozen days into President Trump’s second term, the federal government has pulled the rug out from a variety of professionals who implemented the most divisive concepts of the day with his predecessor’s encouragement and protection.
The White House broadened its all-out assault on gender ideology Wednesday night by threatening prosecution of teachers and schools for “unlawfully facilitating the social transition of a minor student” to identify and be treated as the opposite sex, part of a broader executive order on “ending radical indoctrination in K-12 schools.”
The potential legal actions against individuals involved in a process flagged in school districts nationwide but officially discouraged in England and in the pioneering “Dutch protocol” for treating gender dysphoria – affirming and reinforcing a child’s oft-temporary gender confusion – went unnoticed in a New York Times feature on school-related orders.
What started on Inauguration Day with replacing gender identity with sex-based language in federal definitions and protections in workplaces, schools and prisons, and followed with orders against medicalized gender transitions for minors and transgender service members in the military, continues with a sweeping federal role in school curriculum and training.
The proliferation of overlapping orders related to gender ideology is a close match to the Biden administration’s strategy of weaving the concept throughout the federal government, from regulatory language to definitions in Title IX, affecting both intimate spaces and First Amendment rights in schools, as well as girls’ sports, prisons and healthcare.
The racial aspects of Wednesday’s order also add redundancy to the first-day mandate against diversity, equity and inclusion in federally funded programs and services, and next-day order on “restoring merit-based opportunity” throughout government and “encourag[ing]” and “deter[ring]” the “medical, aviation, and law-enforcement communities” to do so as well.
“Imprinting anti-American, subversive, harmful, and false ideologies on our Nation’s children not only violates longstanding anti-discrimination civil rights law in many cases, but usurps basic parental authority,” the order says.
Trump pledged enforcement of protections against racial and sex discrimination under Title VI and Title IX of the Civil Rights Act, Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act and Protection of Pupil Rights Amendment.
Wednesday’s order goes perhaps the furthest in Trump’s early term in spelling out consequences in education for affirming a student’s gender confusion.
It gives a lengthy definition of social transition that includes “psychological or psychiatric counseling or treatment by a school counselor or other provider,” changing names and pronouns, “calling a child ‘nonbinary,’” using opposite-sex bathrooms and locker rooms and eligibility for opposite-sex extracurriculars such as athletics.
The secretaries of Defense Education and Health and Human Services have 90 days to devise an “Ending Indoctrination Strategy” to Trump, in consultation with the U.S. attorney general, for eliminating federal funding and support for “gender ideology and discriminatory equity ideology” in K-12 schools and protecting student privacy and parental rights under federal law.
It will sum up federal grants and contracts that “directly or indirectly support or subsidize” the concepts in K-12 curriculum, instruction, programs, activities, teacher education, certification, licensing, employment and training, and lay out each agency’s process to stop or rescind funding for education agencies and schools that violate the prohibition.
The strategy will also lay out the rescission strategy for institutions that use federal funds to aid a minor student’s social transition “through school staff or teachers or through deliberately concealing” such transitions from parents, or interfere with parents’ FERPA and PPRA rights to information on “curriculum, records, physical examinations, surveys, and other matters.”
In a section likely to alarm school districts and teachers unions, especially in blue states and metro areas, the order tasks the AG with coordinating with state AGs and district attorneys to go after teachers and administrators who violate “the law,” without specifying which.
Such actions include “sexually exploiting minors,” also undefined, “unlawfully practicing medicine by offering diagnoses and treatment without the requisite license” or any other action that facilitates a minor student’s social transition “unlawfully.”
The definition of “discriminatory equity ideology” – a rebranding of the DEI concept – has eight parts that boil down to judging individuals by their “race, color, sex, or national origin,” deeming them morally inferior, “racist, sexist, or oppressive,” unworthy of respect or collectively guilty for their group’s past sins, and writing off “virtues such as merit” as racist.
The order drew applause from allied groups such as the Independent Women’s Forum and Alliance Defending Freedom, which praised Trump for ensuring funding “goes toward teaching our nation’s children to love and respect each other – and our great nation – rather than pit kids against each other.”
While the conservative Christian law firm said religion shouldn’t affect how students are treated under the law, an eagle-eyed X observer noted the order doesn’t actually mention religion.
Some skeptics of federal encroachment on education sounded alarms about the scope of the order, especially promotion of “patriotic education” through federal agencies and Trump’s reinstituted 1776 Commission, which President Biden shut down on his first day.
“The right federal stance on education content is NO stance,” Cato Institute Center for Educational Freedom Director Neal McCluskey said, calling the provision unconstitutional.
One critic predicted patriotic education would be forced on homeschoolers, though the order only appears to mention a single mandate tied to existing law for Constitution Day programs each Sept. 17 at federally funded educational institutions.
American expatriate playwright and satirist CJ Hopkins, prosecuted in Germany for comparing COVID-19 mask mandates to Nazi policies, quoted The Party’s slogans from George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four — “War is peace! Ignorance is strength!” – in response to the patriotism section.
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(TLB) published this report with permission of John Solomon at Just the News. Click Here to read about the staff at Just the News
Header featured image (edited) credit: Public open card/org. JtN content . Emphasis added by (TLB)
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