A Note from the Front in the Battle for Parental Rights in America
Things are moving in the right direction, but we still have miles to go
As I enjoyed a pleasantly warm, early-evening hike through the rolling hills of Chester County tonight, I thought about the undeniable vibe shift at the highest levels of culture and politics on the issue of parental rights. President Trump set the tone during his campaign and has followed through so far on many of his promises. As a result, the pendulum has swung so fast that even American Psycho - Gavin Newsom - recently conceded that radical leftists went way too far.
Despite the undeniable cultural shift, there remain a surprising number of Republican officials who are ignoring the issues most important to conservative and independent Christian parents, the very voting bloc that is perhaps most responsible for delivering Republican victories across the country in November 2024.
Trump’s overwhelming support from tight-knit, traditional families is not that surprising. Many of those parents started pushing back against government schools during the Covid debacle, and Christian parents enthusiastically went to the polls for that very reason. As a Christian parent who is politically independent, I can say for certain that people like me are far less loyal to the Republican party than we are to our faith, our family and our cultural values. In fact, many of us have taken note of Republicans who pander for our votes at election time and then ghost us when we actually need their help on matters of policy.
I have an update on my multi-year crusade to expose corruption and violations of law by state and local officials in Pennsylvania, but first I want to highlight some encouraging developments on the national stage that, hopefully, represent a harbinger of positive things to come.
So, first, the good news.
Earlier this month, the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center (UPMC) announced that it was terminating all “gender-affirming care” for children. While that decision might seem like a no-brainer in the current environment, remember that we’re talking about deep-purple Pennsylvania, where a disgraceful 11 of 50 Pennsylvania state senators and 47 of 203 state representatives are sinister enough to have signed a letter condemning UPMC’s decision.
Even still, the good news kept coming this week.
On April 22, David Zweig’s much anticipated Covid opus - An Abundance of Caution - was released, chronicling the “decision-making process behind one of the worst American policy failures in a century.” I am just diving into the book, but the C.S. Lewis quote in the inscription sets exactly the right tone:
Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive….Those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience.
This is a book that had to be published to cement the historical record, and I’m grateful that Zweig and The MIT Press had the courage to do so.
That same day, the United States Supreme Court heard oral argument in Mahmoud v. Taylor, a case involving the battle for parental rights in Montgomery County, Maryland. You can read the transcript or listen to the oral argument here, and I strongly encourage you to do so. Oral argument went so bad for the Zizian-adjacent anti-parent cult that Martha McCallum got the demonic goblin and head of the American Federation of Teachers, Randi Weingarten, to reluctantly admit on Fox News that parents do, in fact, have rights when it comes to the health and education of their own children.
What was particularly encouraging from that oral argument was that all of the conservative justices seem to finally understand what time it is - at least on this issue. Unfortunately, education policy in the United States is still tightly controlled by people like Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson, who let it slip that she thinks Christian parents can either deal with the forced indoctrination of their children or pursue the super-accessible alternatives of homeschooling or private school, while at the same time being forced to fund a public education system that is openly hostile to their religious beliefs. Yet another reminder of how little respect these people have for us.
After listening to Justice Jackson’s condescending remarks, I wondered whether women like her have ever spent a minute homeschooling a child (let alone multiple kids at the same time) or if they ever seriously agonized over the decision to stay home with their children or go back to the workforce just so the family could afford private school tuition. I seriously doubt people like that ever struggled with such things.
So, back to the status of my parental rights case.
When I last wrote about this story, I was riding a wave of momentum in my years’ long effort to expose serious misconduct and violations of law by Pennsylvania school officials and lawyers. But, after an initial flurry of activity, I ultimately hit another bureaucratic wall.
On February 20, 2025, my attorney and I had a meeting with two Department of Education holdovers from the Biden regime - James Forester (Legislative Affairs Specialist) and Frank Miller (acting director of the Student Privacy Policy Office of the Department of Education), regarding my federal complaints. Following that call, the United States Department of Education formally initiated an investigation into the Unionville-Chadds Ford School District’s admitted violations of state and federal family privacy laws, and Miller referred my civil rights complaint to the Department of Education’s Office of Civil Rights. Two weeks later, in what can only be described as a cruelly ironic twist of fate, the Philadelphia branch of the DOE Office of Civil Rights (where my complaint was assigned) was shut down, leaving my case (yet again) in bureaucratic limbo.
My attorneys with Pacific Justice Institute made numerous inquiries with the Department of Education to find out where my civil rights complaint was transferred, but as of today we still don’t have any answers.
On the bright side, the people in Senator McCormick’s office have been steadfast in their support. In addition to facilitating the February 20 meeting with Forester and Miller, the McCormick team recently escalated my civil rights complaint through a formal inquiry with the Department of Education. Nevertheless, it’s been several months since I first contacted my United States Senator seeking assistance, and for some reason his team still can’t get straight answers from anyone. I understand that Mr. McCormick was just recently elected, but something isn’t right when it takes months for a US senator to get a simple response from an executive branch agency.
For example. President Trump’s January 25, 2025, Ending Radical Indoctrination in K-12 Schooling Executive Order directed the Department of Education and the Department of Justice to enforce existing federal laws to the maximum extent necessary to defend parental rights. That same executive order also required the Department of Education and other federal agencies to deliver an Ending Indoctrination Strategy to the President within 90 days of that order. That report is due next week.
During my February 20 call with the senior officials from the Department of Education, I specifically requested an introduction to the team that is tasked with delivering the Ending Indoctrination Strategy to President Trump. I have developed a voluminous trail of public records that demonstrate deeply subversive and unlawful conduct by state and local education agencies that receive millions of federal taxpayer dollars every year, and I simply want an opportunity to present that evidence to the government officials tasked with advising the President on how to fight back against radical indoctrination in public education. I’m still waiting.
In light of the Kafkaesque delays in Trump’s education department, Senator McCormick’s office is currently working on directing my complaint to Harmeet Dhillon, the Assistant Attorney General for the Civil Rights Division of the Department of Justice, who is uniquely qualified to review this matter.
Meanwhile, Pennsylvania Republicans are nowhere to be found. Whether it is feckless clowns like Craig Williams or Dave Argall, or impotent politicians like Scott Martin and Doug Mastriano, Republican members of the Pennsylvania General Assembly seemingly have no interest in standing up for parental rights, while Shapiro and his loyal Democrats hold the line on the leftwing agenda.
So far, Republican AG Dave Sunday has been a major disappointment. During his campaign, he promised to uphold the rule of law, but his behavior thus far suggests that he doesn’t understand that he would not have been elected were it not for the Trump wave that swept Pennsylvania, led by conservative parents who want corrupt officials in Harrisburg and beyond to be held accountable.
The cultural and political winds are blowing in favor of parental rights, but the victories are still tenuous. At this point, any elected Republican who is not aggressively advocating for parental rights (including formal investigations and legal penalties for violations of law over the last few years) does not deserve the vote of conservative, Christian voters.
We’re almost 30-years into our long Slouch Towards Gomorrah, so it’s kind of now or never for elected Republicans to step up - legislatively and in the court room.
I will post an update when Senator McCormick’s office connects me and my attorney with Harmeet Dhillon. Until then, I plan to finish reading An Abundance of Caution and take a look back at what Robert Bork saw coming in 1996.
"Pennsylvania Republicans are nowhere to be found."
Story of the era.