Education

Conservative talk show host Dennis Prager founded the organization to counter an educational system he deems too liberal, and the project's videos minimize the role of slavery or controversies about historical figures like Christopher Columbus, but critics say that content has no place in schools. 

"Since its founding in 2009, PragerU has become a juggernaut in the conservative educational media space, with their videos reaching millions of followers across social media," the website reported. "The organization has helped launch the media careers of right-wing figures like Candace Owens. Their popular videos elevate narratives that have been sharply criticized as climate denialist, Islamophobic, and 'misleading' about slavery."

For the White House exhibit, PragerU created AI-generated videos of the Founding Fathers delivering patriotic accounts of the Revolution. In one, an AI-generated John Adams borrows a catchphrase from conservative pundit Ben Shapiro and tells the viewer, “Facts do not care about our feelings.”

"Right leaning doesn't go nearly far enough, but also, this is hell," said history scholar Thomas Lecaque.

"Hell is empty and all the devils are here," agreed cartoonist Tom Tomorrow.

"Parents should be storming their kids' schools and school board meetings," added Bluesky user Beth Jackson. "I have seen the prager ads on YouTube and it's glossy, well packaged white supremacy."

"When MAGA says it wants to replace woke history with the truth, what they mean is burying the uncomfortable facts," said cultural studies professor Timothy Messer-Kruse, linking to a critical essay on PragerU by historian Seth Cotlar.

The executive order is similar to parts of settlement agreements the administration negotiated with Brown University and Columbia University, restoring their federal research funding. The universities agreed to give the government data on the race, grade point average and standardized test scores of applicants, admitted students and enrolled students. The schools also agreed to an audit by the government and to release admissions statistics to the public. Conservatives have argued that despite the Supreme Court ruling, colleges have continued to consider race through proxy measures. 

But in the first year of admissions after the ruling, no clear pattern emerged in how colleges' diversity changed. Results varied dramatically from one campus to the next. Some schools, such as the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Amherst College, saw steep drops in the percentage of Black students in their incoming classes. But at other elite, selective schools such as Yale, Princeton and the University of Virginia, the changes were less than a percentage point year to year.

“But deeming race irrelevant in law does not make it so in life,” Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson wrote in a dissenting opinion in the UNC case. “And having so detached itself from this country’s actual past and present experiences, the Court has now been lured into interfering with the crucial work that UNC and other institutions of higher learning are doing to solve America’s real-world problems.”

The Trump administration has aggressively cracked down on diversity, equity and inclusion-related programs, with the president signing an executive order in his first week directing all departments and agencies to terminate “discriminatory and illegal preferences, mandates, policies, programs” and more. 

In a presidential memorandum, Trump is directing Education Secretary Linda McMahon to revamp a longtime US higher education database called the Integrated Postsecondary Education Data System, which conducts surveys reviewing trends in areas like tuition and fees, admissions considerations, enrollment and financial aid. The memorandum, the senior official said, instructs McMahon to “expand the scope of required reporting for institutions’ admissions data in order to provide adequate transparency” and to “increase accuracy checks” on that data.

In 2012, the assessment evolved into the Youth Fitness Program, which the government said “moved away from recognizing athletic performance to providing a barometer on student’s health.” Then-first lady Michelle Obama also promoted her “Let’s Move” initiative focused on reducing childhood obesity through diet and exercise.

The president “wants to ensure America’s future generations are strong, healthy, and successful,” White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said in a statement, and that all young Americans “have the opportunity to emphasize healthy, active lifestyles — creating a culture of strength and excellence for years to come.”

The Republican president played baseball in high school and plays golf almost every weekend. Much of the domestic travel he has done this year that is not related to weekend golf games at his clubs in Florida, New Jersey and Virginia was built around attending sporting events, including the Super Bowl, Daytona 500 and UFC matches.

The Trump administration has used federal research funding as leverage in its effort to reshape universities that President Donald Trump has described as hotbeds of liberalism. It has presented a crisis for universities that rely on federal grants as a major source of revenue, spurring some to take on debt and find other ways to self-fund research. Duke is the latest institution to have its federal funding held up as the government investigates allegations of antisemitism and diversity, equity and inclusion policies the administration says are unlawful. It follows other probes including at Harvard, Columbia, and Cornell. 

In Monday’s letter to Duke, leaders of HHS and the Education Department accused the university of “vile racism.” It alludes to allegations of racial preferences at Duke, its medical school and its health system that, if substantiated, would make Duke “unfit for any further financial relationship with the federal government.”

“Racism is a scourge when practiced by individuals, but it is especially corrosive when enshrined in the nation’s most eminent and respected institutions,” according to the letter, signed by Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and Education Secretary Linda McMahon.

Saying Duke is unlikely to be capable of an “honest and trustworthy review,” the letter takes the unusual step of requesting a new Merit and Civil Rights Committee that would be approved by the government and authorized by the school’s board of trustees. The panel would be tasked with identifying and ending any racial preferences. If problems remained after six months, the administration would pursue legal enforcement, the letter said.

He has accused public schools of grooming children, while elevating religious indoctrination and political dogma. He tells parents he’s saving their children from depravity, all while ignoring the real crisis in Oklahoma classrooms: his state’s public school ranking was recently lowered to 50th in the nation, just ahead of New Mexico.

In a statement on Sunday, Walters denied the accusations, which he called “politically motivated attacks” as he prioritizes parental rights and rejects “radical” education agendas. 

“Any suggestion that a device of mine was used to stream inappropriate content on the television set is categorically false,” he said on Twitter/X. “I have no knowledge of what was on the TV screen during the alleged incident, and there is absolutely no truth to any implication of wrongdoing.” 

Carson told The Oklahoman that she confronted Walters about what she’d seen, demanding he turn off the television at once, and he complied. 

But this isn’t the first time Walters has leaned on moral outrage to mask deeper failures, once sending graphic images to lawmakers, claiming the pictures appeared in school libraries. Walters has also faced criticism from LGBTQ+ groups for his policies and rhetoric, which came under scrutiny last year when a nonbinary Oklahoma teenager named Nex Benedict died after a physical altercation with classmates. 

According to the U.S. Education Department, the investigation stems from reports accusing Duke of discriminatory practices based on race, color, and national origin in its law journal membership selection. In a letter sent by U.S. Education Secretary Linda McMahon and Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the administration called for a review of the university's policies to resolve purported civil rights violations. 

The investigation stems from reports about Duke Law Journal's 2024 editor selection process. While all applicants submitted standard materials including a 12-page memo and personal statement, the journal allegedly circulated an additional grading packet exclusively to affinity groups. This packet reportedly allowed select applicants to earn up to 10 extra points for describing how their "membership in an underrepresented group" promoted "diverse voices," plus 3-5 additional points for leadership positions in affinity groups.

While Duke University has yet to comment, the situation has ignited discussions over free speech and academic freedoms, especially as the government has also targeted other policies including climate initiatives, diversity programs, and political protests in academic settings.

Harvard is also within the sights of the Department of Education's line of fire.

The policy is meant to help improve attendance rates, but parents have objected, noting that an absence for an illness like the flu could now mean a referral to the Lawrence County Juvenile Court for truancy. 

One parent, Rebecca Sanchez, disagrees with the new policy. She said her 10-year-old daughter got sick a lot last year. She told Nashville's WSMV on Tuesday, July 22:

“Between the strep throat and the flu, I can say she missed about 17 days. I have never been for or against homeschool, but because of this new policy, it has definitely changed my mind."

The new attendance policy says students will simply be marked absent or present, with no options for doctors to verify a child is absent because they are sick or injured, need to stay home to recover or to prevent spreading contagious illnesses to their classmates. The new policy also says schools will start intervention after just three days, and eight or more days marked absent will result in a court referral. There will be exemptions for students with documented chronic illnesses and emergencies out of the student’s control, as well as allowances for deaths in the family and some religious observances.

Director of Schools Michael Adkins addressed the issue during the district’s June school board meeting.:

“We are going to take control of the attendance of our students. You can bring all the doctor’s notes you want, but it is still unexcused.”

Adkins said during the meeting that students need to learn reliability and work ethic. 

“If you have the sniffles, that is fine. You are going to have them when you go to work one day. We have all gone to work sick and hurt and beat up.”

Children who get sick at school or are sent to school sick and sent home by a nurse will be counted as tardy. Three tardies will equal an absence. Other penalties could include failing a class or grade, not being allowed to participate in graduation or get a driver’s license or permit.

We wonder if this will cause an uptake in homeschooling within the state of Tennessee, refusing to give power over their children to administrators who obviously don't have the best interest of the children in mind.

Columbia said the agreement formalized reforms announced in March to address harassment against Jews, including the hiring of more public safety personnel, changes to disciplinary processes, and efforts to foster “an inclusive and respectful learning environment”. The agreement also commits Columbia to maintaining merit-based admissions and ending programs that promote “unlawful efforts to achieve race-based outcomes, quotas [and] diversity targets”. We reported on this yesterday. 

Under the agreement, Columbia will pay the federal government $200m over three years (so while Trump remains in office during this term), in addition to a $21m payment to settle claims by the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission.

Claire Shipman, Columbia’s acting president, said that while the settlement was “substantial”, the university could not continue with a situation that would “jeopardize our status as a world-leading research institution”. Shipman said Columbia did not accept the Trump administration’s findings that it had violated civil rights law by turning a blind eye to the harassment of Jews, but acknowledged the “very serious and painful challenges our institution has faced with antisemitism”.

The settlement marks a victory in Trump’s efforts to exert greater control over third-level education, including campus activism in support of Palestine and other causes. Trump hailed the settlement as “historic” in a post on his Truth Social platform. Columbia University Apartheid Divest (CUAD), a student activist group, slammed the settlement as an effective bribe.

“Imagine selling your students out just so you can pay Trump $221 million dollars and keep funding genocide,” the group said on X.

The Commissioner opens the letter by trying to make the connection of noting that he is a father in addition to those who are receiving the letter. Within the same paragraph he boasts that the Heritage Foundation (the hate group that is the author of Project 2025) "ranked Florida #1 in Education Freedom." 

Further down in the letter, the Commissioner provides a list of items that a parents are to expect from the new institution standards. The second point states that instruction will "not assign guilt or blame based on a student’s background or the way God created them." This point does two things: 

1. Proves that the thought of "not wanting children to be guilty about their past," referencing white individuals being ashamed of their culture holding individuals as slaves, in addition to the reality of the Holocaust; and,

2. Proves the hypocrisy of the far-right that God creates individuals certain ways (including orientation).

The third point notes instruction that is "objective and factual." The current administration is known for whitewashing and providing misinformation. With this in mind, we can't expect that these individuals understand what factual means. Not to mention that their knowledge of objectivity is extremely subjective. Point four is a continuation of the first proof for point two: "protects students from being made to feel inferior or uncomfortable because of their race, sex or religion." It is important to know that concepts such as slavery are not taught to students until their minds are psychologically ready for subjects such as that. This is also a point sought to aim to remove any discussion towards anti-Semitism. 

Point five states that instruction will "build resiliency," which is rather worrisome. This is an administration that states "peace through strength" and encourages children who are in school to work past midnight, and even having children who have not hit puberty to work. This "resiliency" could very well include differing forms of work requirements. (This is a personal author theory - not an official position of the network.)