The media collectively clutched its pearls when Elon Musk showed up at the Senate with his young son, X, perched on his shoulders. He was headed to meetings on the newly formed Department of Government Efficiency. Critics pounced. The BBC quoted American University professor Kurt Braddock, who called it “a political move to make him seem more personable.” Harvard professor and political strategist Jon Haber dismissed it as inviting “chaos” and distraction.
But strip away the media’s reflexive cynicism, and Musk’s decision makes perfect sense. After publicly condemning gender ideology for destroying another one of his children, it’s hardly surprising that he wants to keep his family close.
Elon Musk knows firsthand what happens when the culture takes too much control. He lost a child to the woke mind virus and now seeks to eradicate it.
Maybe Musk recognizes that protecting one’s children — not outsourcing their values to a broken system — is a fundamental duty. Maybe he sees the cultural rot in American schools and wants no part of it. Or maybe he just loves his kids, which used to be considered normal.
Musk bringing his children to work — even to meetings with world leaders like the prime minister of India — doesn’t signal chaos. It signals commitment. It embodies the essence of home education: personal, practical, and profoundly traditional.
Education trains the mind to recognize truth, emulate goodness, and appreciate beauty. It equips children to think independently, search for meaning, and pursue wisdom. Schooling does the opposite. It programs children to conform, accept whatever “experts” tell them, and obey the dominant ideology without question.
Education liberates. Schooling enslaves. Today’s school systems manipulate children into believing that self-harm is self-care — gaslighting rebranded as guidance.
That institutional hostility toward children now stands fully exposed. Since the fall of Roe v. Wade, abortion numbers have surged, fueled by the widespread availability of abortion pills and Planned Parenthood’s marketing campaign assuring the public they’re “safe” and “effective.” They’re safe for no one. They end lives. Meanwhile, activists now push for legal protection of gender-transition surgeries for minors — procedures that mutilate healthy bodies and bind children to pharmaceutical dependency for life.
The rot runs deeper. According to the House Select Committee on the Coronavirus Pandemic, the American Federation of Teachers, led by Randi Weingarten, played a central role in shaping harmful COVID-era school policies. The AFT lobbied the CDC to keep schools closed, not based on science or evidence, but to strengthen bargaining leverage. The union's aim wasn’t safety — it was higher compensation. The result: long-term psychological, developmental, academic, and economic damage to millions of children.
Teachers’ unions, long portrayed as champions of children, proved themselves anything but. The report makes it plain: “Any public health response that warrants closing schools should face the highest levels of scrutiny. School closure policy should be informed by science and data, not fear and politics.” Yet no one in power will face consequences.
Does a system that gets worse for children every year while bleeding taxpayers dry deserve the label “education”?
No serious evidence suggests it benefits kids. With their well-being on the line, we should return to what worked for millennia before the 20th century’s great school experiment: parent-led education.
After generations of institutional schooling, we’ve forgotten a basic truth: Children need parents to become healthy, capable adults. In outsourcing education to the state, we’ve sacrificed much. Home education introduces children to more than rote academics. It builds life skills, strengthens family ties, and helps children understand their place in the world.
Compare that with schools today. Age-segregated classrooms teach narrow content in isolated bubbles, infantilizing students while cutting them off from meaningful interaction with older generations. The results speak for themselves: young adults who now need a word — "adulting" — to describe basic responsibilities.
Would anyone argue that Elon Musk has less to offer a child than a Harvard graduate who took a seminar titled “Queering Education”? That class, by the way, trains future teachers to combat “heteronormativity” and “cisnormativity” in the classroom. These so-called experts claim that “negotiating gender and sexuality norms,” including transitioning minors, boosts academic performance.
Musk wouldn’t buy it. No sane person should.
Mocking gender theory isn’t just common sense — it’s starting to look a lot like home education.
Elon Musk made a statement: World leaders matter, but his children matter more. He showed that balancing both is not only possible — it’s commendable. Rather than scoffing, we should applaud it.
Maybe Musk could redefine the DOGE as the “Department of Good Education” and revive a “take your child to work” ethic in American life. Pair that with some math and classic literature, and we’d raise better students — and make better citizens.
Musk knows firsthand what happens when the culture takes too much control. He lost a child to the “woke mind virus” and now seeks to eradicate it. The man who carried a sink into Twitter headquarters on day one understands symbolism. “Let that sink in,” he said.
Then he hoisted his young son onto his shoulders and onto his list of priorities. It’s time we let that sink in, too — and follow his lead.
Last week, Secretary of State Marco Rubio announced that the State Department had revoked more than 300 student visas. The move allows the Trump administration to deport noncitizens who participated in pro-Palestinian protests at universities across the country.
Rubio defended the decision when asked about concerns over free speech — specifically, whether protesting or writing about foreign policy issues could justify a visa revocation.
No serious nation should defend the rights of foreign nationals actively working to harm it under the banner of ‘free speech.’
“If you are in this country on a student visa and are a participant in those movements, we have a right to deny your visa,” he said. “We are not going to be importing activists into the United States. They’re here to study. They’re here to go to class. They’re not here to lead activist movements that are disruptive and undermine our universities. I think it’s lunacy to continue to allow that.”
Rubio is right.
Whether someone supports Israel, supports the Palestinian cause, or criticizes both, that debate is beside the point.
No one has a right to a U.S. visa — student or otherwise. If a visa-holder engages in speech or activism that violates the terms of the visa — such as promoting violence, disrupting public order, or engaging in unauthorized political activity — the government has the authority to revoke the visa and deport the individual.
The Trump administration has made this position clear, particularly in cases involving pro-Palestinian protesters who have expressed support for Hamas, which the United States designates as a foreign terrorist organization.
But the issue of foreign student activism extends beyond the Israel-Hamas conflict.
An analysis by the Capital Research Center found that many “pro-Palestinian” groups share ties with broader movements that oppose the United States and the West in general. These groups frequently advocate violence to achieve their goals, including the destruction of the U.S., which they label an imperialist “settler-colonial” state.
Revoking the visas of foreign students who disrupt public order or seek to undermine American society is both legal and necessary. But the issue goes beyond campus protests. With hundreds of thousands of student visa-holders from adversarial nations like China, the threat is not just ideological — it’s also a national security concern.
No serious nation should defend the rights of foreign nationals actively working to harm it under the banner of “free speech.”
The Constitution does not guarantee the right to a U.S. education. Attending an American university is a privilege, not a right.
Understanding the difference between rights and privileges is essential — especially considering the influence universities have on shaping American political discourse. While student visas are intended for academic study, today’s universities increasingly promote ideological activism over traditional education. And that shift is happening at the same time as the number of international students in the U.S. has grown to over 1 million annually.
At Columbia University, more than 55% of students are foreign nationals — an 18% increase between 2017 and 2022. NYU’s student body is 42% international, up 24% over the same period. This trend is just as pronounced at the graduate level. In 2023, international students made up 42% of Princeton University’s graduate program.
As foreign student enrollment rises alongside campus political activism, the Trump administration has the authority and obligation to respond decisively to the growing influence of ideological movements within universities.
In a series of aggressive actions, the administration has withheld hundreds of millions in federal funding from institutions like Columbia University for what it calls “inaction in the face of persistent harassment of Jewish students.” It has also launched investigations into other universities over allegations of race-based segregation and transgender athletic policies. Through executive order, the administration has taken steps to dismantle the U.S. Department of Education — a long-standing goal for many conservatives since the department’s establishment in 1979.
Unsurprisingly, the left has responded with swift opposition, deploying both legal challenges and familiar media outrage.
Several academic groups have filed lawsuits against the Trump administration to stop the deportation of foreign students. Teachers’ unions have sued to block the administration’s move to revoke federal funding from Columbia University, while others have challenged its attempt to shutter the Education Department.
Mainstream media outlets have framed these actions as an “authoritarian power-grab,” accusing the administration of trying to “impose its political will on American universities, which foster curiosity and independent thought.”
Some critics have gone even further, likening Trump’s efforts to confront anti-American activism on college campuses to the Nazi-era program of Gleichschaltung — a system of totalitarian “social control.”
While American universities may be called many things, bastions of “independent thought” are not among them. Claims that Trump is seeking total “social control” are difficult to take seriously, given how heavily university faculty skew left.
A 2023 Harvard Crimson survey found that just 0.4% of Harvard faculty identified as “very conservative,” while 31.8% described themselves as “very liberal.” A broader study of 51 leading liberal arts colleges revealed a 10.4-1 ratio of Democrat to Republican faculty, underscoring a deep ideological imbalance.
This dominance of progressive ideology on campus doesn’t stay confined to the classroom. It flows into national politics, funding Democratic candidates and fueling an activist pipeline that often promotes anti-American narratives.
According to OpenSecrets, Democrats have received more than 70% of all political donations from the education sector in every election cycle since 2002. In 2018, donors from the education industry gave over $64.5 million to Democrats and just $7.8 million to Republicans.
Teachers' unions show an even sharper tilt. In the 2024 cycle, the National Education Association contributed 98.48% of its donations to Democrats and only 0.79% to Republicans. Employees of the U.S. Department of Education gave zero dollars to Republican candidates.
Given the dominance of left-wing ideology on college campuses and the steady stream of campaign donations from the education sector to Democratic politicians, it’s no surprise that Democrats are fiercely defending what functionally operate as their institutions. Trump’s actions threaten not just campus activism but a political pipeline that helps sustain the left’s long-term dominance.
Far from representing an “authoritarian power-grab,” the Trump administration’s efforts mark one of the first serious attempts by the political right to challenge a system that has traded education for progressive indoctrination.
If the country hopes to reclaim its universities — a goal critical to the republic's long-term health — rooting out radical activism and defunding ideological strongholds must continue and accelerate. Republicans cannot afford to hand over the nation’s future to those who openly disdain it.
President Donald Trump’s administration faces several legal challenges over its attempts to ultimately dismantle the Department of Education.
On Monday, the National Education Association, the nation’s largest teachers’ union, filed a lawsuit against the administration’s allegedly “illegal attempts” to terminate the ED. The NEA was joined by the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, a Maryland-based labor union, and parents of public school children.
'Done nothing to advance the educational outcomes of America’s students.'
“Taken together, Defendants’ steps since January 20, 2025, constitute a de facto dismantling of the Department by executive fiat,” the complaint read. “But the Constitution gives power over ‘the establishment of offices [and] the determination of their functions and jurisdiction’ to Congress—not to the President or any officer working under him.”
The union claimed that the termination of the ED would negatively impact students.
“Eliminating or effectively shuttering the Department puts at risk the millions of vulnerable students, including those from low-income families, English learners, homeless students, rural students, and others who depend on Department support,” the NEA stated.
However, the union also acknowledged that the “vast majority of America’s public education system” is overseen by “state and local governments.”
NEA President Becky Pringle accused Trump, Elon Musk, and ED Secretary Linda McMahon of “try[ing] to steal opportunities from our students, our families, and our communities to pay for tax cuts for billionaires.”
A separate lawsuit was also filed against the administration by the American Federation of Teachers, joined by “a coalition of educators, school districts, and unions.”
“From distributing funds to help schools work with students with disabilities, to providing support and assistance to parents and families, protecting students’ civil rights, and making sure higher education is affordable for deserving students, civil servants at the Department of Education are essential to the success of students. Mass firings of these hardworking people planned by the Trump administration will harm students and schools,” the AFT stated.
AFT President Randi Weingarten said, “The Department of Education, and the laws it is supposed to execute, has one major purpose: to fill opportunity gaps to help every child in America succeed.”
“That’s what the ‘equal access’ provided for in the statute means. And over the last five decades, Congress has fulfilled this mission to help poor kids, kids with disabilities, first generation college kids, kids who want to work in a trade, and 45 million Americans with student debt. Now, wielding a sledgehammer, this president is destroying that promise for this and future generations,” Weingarten continued. “No one likes bureaucracy, and everyone’s in favor of more efficiency, so let’s find ways to accomplish that.”
Both lawsuits expressed concerns that the massive cuts to the ED would interrupt critical services. However, just last week, the Trump administration stated that core functions of the department would not be impacted. The president announced he would shift some of the department’s remaining duties to other federal agencies. Moving forward, the Small Business Administration will manage student loans, while the Department of Health and Human Services will oversee special education.
Harrison Fields, principal deputy press secretary for the White House, told USA Today, “Instead of playing politics with baseless lawsuits, these groups should ditch the courtroom and work with the Trump administration and states on improving the classroom.”
“The NEA and NAACP have done nothing to advance the educational outcomes of America’s students and the latest NAEP [National Assessment of Educational Progress] scores prove that,” Fields concluded.
The Trump administration and its ED cuts are already facing a lawsuit filed by a group of attorneys general from 20 states and Washington, D.C.
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The federal judge may be one of the first in the country to address the problem of her colleagues attempting to usurp the power of the president head-on.
Eliminating the Department of Education is only the first step in breaking the chokehold that the educational establishment has on American families.
The National Education Association and American Federation of Teachers published guides telling school staff how to help illegals evade ICE in a bid to derail Trump's popular immigration measures.
The Democrats' proxy organizations have gotten off scot-free for far too long, Republican attorneys general need to change that.
If students were doing well, the AFT and Harris would want to shout it from the rooftops. But there is painfully little to brag about for government-run schooling.
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