Parents: don't count on Republicans to ride to the rescue on education
Trump's good intentions won't be enough to bring about the fundamental change we were promised
It is obvious, except perhaps to those who choose not to see it, that our major institutions (in government, law, education, healthcare) are morally bankrupt and beyond redemption. In Washington and many state capitols, R and D designations are meaningless because government is controlled by a confederacy of weasels who are committed to perpetuating the status quo. The only logical path forward is to burn it all down and rebuild, but the Guardians of Decay have way too much at stake to let that happen.
At the end of April, I wrote an update on my Quixotic pursuit of truth and justice in Pennsylvania. Less than a week later, I faced yet another attack on my reputation from school officials in my town. But I plowed ahead, and just this week Pennsylvania Senator Dave McCormick’s office wrote to me and confirmed that the Office of Civil Rights of the Department of Education (OCR) and the Civil Rights Division of the Department of Justice (DOJ) are actively investigating my pending complaints.
Good news? Sure. Progress? Yes. But, still, painfully (and inexcusably) slow.
In the first few weeks of his new administration, President Donald Trump issued a series of executive orders aimed at tackling cultural rot in public education, with the stated goal of dismantling the Department of Education and “returning education to the states.” While it sounded great on paper the early results are not promising, especially for voters in blue and purple states who voted for Trump and other Republicans expecting meaningful action in defense of parental rights.
For example, Linda McMahon’s performance before the Senate Appropriations Committee this week is cause for serious alarm, but it is unclear if anyone in the White House is even paying attention. Trump tasked the Department of Education with enforcing the law and rooting out subversive ideologies in public education, but key roles in the agency are still vacant and the “Ending Indoctrination Strategy” that was due at the end of April has yet to be delivered to Vance Haley, the Assistant to the President for Domestic Policy.
The Department of Education is supposed to work directly with the Department of Justice to enforce Trump’s policy, but apparently that isn’t happening either. Assistant Attorney General Harmeet Dhillon recently appeared on The Tucker Carlson Show and explained how entrenched federal employees play games to thwart the President’s agenda. Dhillon is smart and resolute, but if she doesn’t quickly put a team together that is committed to the administration’s policy and enforcement initiatives, the resistance within her own office will undoubtedly prevail.
My ongoing experience with these agencies proves the point. I currently have three active federal complaints: one with the Student Privacy Policy office of the Department of Education (submitted July 2024); one with OCR (initially submitted July 2024, resubmitted February 2025); and a complaint submitted to the Civil Rights Division of the Department of Justice against the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania and the Unionville-Chadds Ford School District (submitted May 2025). Even though these complaints fall squarely within the enforcement mandate in the Ending Radical Indoctrination in K-12 Schooling executive order, I am still fighting headwinds created by an excruciatingly opaque federal bureaucracy.
For example, the Director of the Student Privacy Policy Office is a man called Frank Miller, a Biden era holdover. Miller’s sole purpose is to ensure the enforcement of two federal statutes: the Protection of Pupil Rights Amendment (PPRA) and the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA), which also happen to be cited in the Ending Indoctrination executive order. Yet, in response to my attorney’s request for an explanation for the SPPO’s year-long delay in taking enforcement action in my case, Miller actually said that his “first priority is to work with educational agencies and institutions to achieve their voluntary compliance.”
So, Miller’s boss (the President of the United States) directed him to take strong enforcement action against educational agencies that violate parental rights, but Miller thinks his “first priority” is to treat school officials with kid gloves, and wait for voluntary compliance from the very same people who violated family privacy laws for seven years, destroyed public records and then retaliated against me for blowing the whistle on them. Frank Miller should be fired, immediately, but my guess is Linda McMahon doesn’t even know who he is or what he does (or, more appropriately, doesn’t do).
Things aren’t much better in McMahon’s OCR. My civil rights complaint was initially directed to the Philadelphia office, but that office was abruptly closed in March following a round of DOGE cuts. I was notified this week that my complaint is now being investigated by nameless, faceless federal employees in the OCR Atlanta office. Although Trump appointee Craig Trainor is currently the acting assistant secretary for OCR, the Atlanta office is run by Biden-era employees and lawyers who refuse to correspond directly with me or my attorney.
Trump’s good intentions aren’t going to be enough to combat the obstinance in these agencies, and simply dismantling the Department of Education and sending education “back to the states” isn’t going to do anything for parents in states controlled by soulless Democrats and impotent Republicans.
Which brings me back to Pennsylvania.
During Covid, Pennsylvania agencies and public officials advised school districts in the state to intentionally violate the law, knowing that they were causing systemic harm to thousands of Pennsylvania children in the process. I have evidence demonstrating that those very same Pennsylvania officials are now covering-up violations of family privacy laws in my school district because they know that a fair and impartial investigation of the documented misconduct in this case will also implicate senior state officials in serious violations of law.
This isn’t conjecture. I have provided authorities with a roadmap of public records that support every allegation I’ve made. Even so, Pennsylvania Attorney General Dave Sunday’s office wrote to my attorney and explained that they cannot investigate my state law complaints due to a “conflict of interest” and lack of resources for an independent investigation. Compare that to the way state and federal authorities responded to a 2023 complaint manufactured by the ACLU alleging discrimination against LGBTQ students in Pennsylvania’s Central Bucks School District. Democrats leapt into action and compelled an independent investigation by a former US Attorney that cost taxpayers more than $1 million. Review that case and then convince me that we don’t have a two-tiered “justice” system.
It’s not that Pennsylvania Republicans can’t compel an independent investigation in my case. It’s that those Republicans are afraid of the public education machine, aren’t serious about education reform, and lack the political will to do anything to defend parental rights.
At the federal level, Senator McCormick’s office has been somewhat helpful, but I’m still not convinced that his team shares President Trump’s urgency when it comes to education policy or parental rights. I am in consistent communication with McCormick’s office, specifically Deputy Chief of Staff Kristin Sapperstein, Legislative Director Laura Atcheson, and Deputy State Director for Constituent Services Anna Romeo. Yet, it’s been six months and his senior staff still can’t get clear answers from their legislative liaisons in the Department of Education or Department of Justice, and they can’t even identify the people within those agencies who are supposedly working on the Ending Indoctrination Strategy referenced above. I know this, because in February Laura Atcheson connected me with James Forester, the congressional liaison in the Department of Education and another Biden holdover, who promised to refer me to the Ending Indoctrination team and then promptly disappeared, never to be heard from again. If Forester is still employed by the Department of Education, he should be fired right along with Frank Miller.
Returning education policy to state legislators in places like Pennsylvania will leave far too many parents without any meaningful recourse against a public education institution that is openly hostile to our values. Republicans in those states demonstrate by their inaction that they either don’t share Trump’s goals of ending radical indoctrination and defending parental rights, or they’re too weak and incompetent to do anything about it.
If Trump’s appointees in the Department of Education and Department of Justice don’t step up soon, then things like ending indoctrination and delivering universal school choice in places like Pennsylvania will be a dream once again deferred for millions of families.
McCormick’s office tells me he is interviewing candidates for his education and healthcare policy team, and maybe that person will be able to figure out what is going on with the highly anticipated Ending Indoctrination Strategy. Or maybe someone reading this knows Harmeet Dhillon, or Craig Trainor, or Vance Haley, and can share this with them. They should probably know that “the resistance” is alive and well in the Department of Education and the Department of Justice, and maybe they can do something about it.
I’ll post an update when someone in government answers the call.