MFA:

In a video recently released by Donald Trump outlining his education policy plan for his presidential campaign, he appears bathed in darkness and flanked on either side by sagging American flags. "Our public schools have been taken over by the radical left maniacs," he brays. "Here is my plan to save American education, restore power to American parents." He pledges that when he returns to the presidency he'll cut funding for any educational institution "pushing critical race theory, gender ideology, or other inappropriate gender, racial, or political content onto our children." He goes on to promise Justice and Education department prosecutions of "any school district that has engaged in race-based discrimination," especially against Asian Americans, in a frontal attack on the already endangered practice of affirmative action. He declares his intentions "to find and remove the radical zealots and Marxists who have infiltrated the federal Department of Education." His vows include assurances to "keep men out of women's sports," "certify teachers who embrace patriotic values," dismantle "the costly divisive and unnecessary diversity equity and inclusion bureaucracy," and establish "a parental bill of rights."

He's not alone. As Trump fends off a steady barrage of legal prosecutions and sees his support soften among the conservative base, a specter haunts the grounds of Mar-a-Lago: hardcore education demagogue and Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, who has staked out the vanguard position in the right-wing school wars. DeSantis already sought to stamp out the sinister doctrines of CRT in statewide math instruction and signed "Don't Say Gay" legislation to halt gender-inclusive teaching initiatives. Lately, as he eyes his own presidential run, he's gone harder after the designated education bogeys of the right, pulling the plug on AP African American Studies classes and emptying school libraries of their collections, so they can be systematically reviewed for telltale accommodations to less-than-patriotic ideas or suspicious inclinations toward something other than a heroically white and straight message. Trump, now a full-time Florida resident, is no doubt fuming as he sees DeSantis run away with the resentment-filled playbook that he pioneered with his 2020 anti-CRT executive order.

The GOP is gearing up to running on eliminating public education, and all this brouhaha about CRT, "don't say gay" and teachers as "groomers" is the mechanism by which Republican presidential hopefuls aim to win over the suburban soccer mom vote:

But while egomania and affront are reliable driving forces of both Trump and the MAGA movement, this first policy initiative of the former president's second reelection campaign also attempts to fulfill a longtime agenda for right-wing education reformers: the privatization of American public schools. . . . .The overlapping outcries over CRT and gender inclusion are "a delivery vessel for the privatization of public education, a long-held Republican priority," says Victor Ray, the F. Wendell Miller associate professor of sociology at the University of Iowa and author of the recently published On Critical Race Theory: Why It Matters and Why You Should Care. "They're going scorched-earth with this--in Iowa, they recently passed a bill allowing private schools to get public funding. That will be something both Trump and DeSantis run on."