Former Secretary of Labor Robert Reich recently summarized the MAGA regime’s assault on public education: robbing people of their freedom to learn is right out of the fascist playbook. Reich’s analysis puts the regime’s all-out attack on Maine’s education system in a clear light.
Reich posted this on Bluesky on April 17: “Tyrants view educated citizens as their greatest enemy. Slaveholders stopped the enslaved from learning to read. Nazis burned books. Dictators censor media. That’s why Trump is attacking education, science, museums and the arts — to prevent us from learning. It’s Fascism 101.”
That tracks with MAGA’s offensive against the Maine school system.
The commotion started with a manufactured controversy scapegoating two transgender girls playing high school sports. The eagerness of MAGA politicians to bully two vulnerable teenagers should tell us everything we need to know.
Gov. Janet Mills stood up for the rights the two students have under Maine law. The Trump administration retaliated with actions by no fewer than six federal departments and agencies, several having nothing to do with schools. The acting administrator of the Social Security Administration, Will Dudek, admitted he only sought revenge against Gov. Mills for standing up to President Donald Trump.
The latest salvo from MAGA is an announcement from United States Attorney General Pam Bondi that the United States Department of Justice is suing Maine. Just a few weeks ago, Secretary Linda McMahon of the United States Department of Education declared her department would investigate Maine.
Less noticed but telling was who was standing behind the MAGA Cabinet officers when they made their announcements. Appearing with Secretary McMahon was Nicole Neily of Parents Defending Education. Joining Attorney General Bondi was Riley Gaines, the face of the Riley Gaines Center at the Leadership Institute.
Parents Defending Education and The Gaines Center aren’t what they seem. They are cogs in a power grab to decimate our public schools. The far-right umbrella group Council for National Policy set out the goal: replace our public schools with “free-market private schools (intending for-profit businesses), church schools (meaning Christian academies) and home schools.”
Gaines was a college swimmer who closed her career tied for fifth with a transgender woman. She has parlayed her back-of-the-pack loss into a career with the Leadership Institute fomenting anti-transgender backlash.
The Leadership Institute has been a right-wing powerhouse since 1979. It trains militant culture warriors in the dark arts of political campaigning. It is funded by extremist billionaires including the Koch network. The Institute’s founder and president, Morton Blackwell, was a Goldwater delegate at the 1964 Republican National Convention and once led the Council for National Policy.
Neily of Parents Defending Education is a veteran operative in the billionaire-funded Koch network. Her operation is also closely tied into Leonard Leo, a radical Catholic dark money operative who has been credited with picking and shepherding to confirmation Trump’s three Roberts Court justices.
Parents Defending Education, along with its close ally Moms for Liberty, has campaigned to ban books from America’s schools. Trump has been ordering his minions to go after critical news organizations. It all fits with Reich’s insight.
The investigations and lawsuit are politicians bullying teenagers for political point scoring, all to the benefit of their billionaire patrons.
Mills had an apt response to the MAGA lawsuit: “For nearly two months, Maine has endured recriminations from the federal government that have targeted hungry school kids, hardworking fishermen, senior citizens, new parents and countless Maine people.”
Gov. Mills and Maine Attorney General Aaron Frey have been fighting back — and winning.
Book bans, erasing Black and Native American history, disappearing and “stashing away” a legal resident in a foreign prison without due process and targeting minorities are all MAGA priorities.
It’s Fascism 101.
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