Here we go. The Trump Department of Education wants you to help it “end DEI” by informing (confidentially) on “illegal discriminatory practices at institutions of learning.”
This submission form is an outlet for students, parents, teachers, and the broader community to … identify potential areas for investigation.
Students can snitch on their teachers, parents on their kids’ teachers, teachers on each other. And you don’t have to have any connection to a school: anyone else in the community is welcome to use the form.
The DOE press release announcing the portal quotes Tiffany Justice: “Parents, now is the time that you share the receipts of the betrayal that has happened in our public schools.”
Justice, co-founder of Moms for Liberty, claims the group is bipartisan though it has ties to the Proud Boys, promoted Florida’s “don’t say gay” laws, seeks bans on books with LGBTQ+ or Black characters or themes (and sexy seahorses) and is closely linked with Republican leaders. M4L members have suggested that LGBTQ+ students should be taught in separate classrooms from straight kids and students with disabilities should be de-mainstreamed, and called a Pride event “perverse.”
If you’re a school librarian, a teacher, an assistant principal, if you’re gay or trans, Jewish or Muslim, a second-generation immigrant or a Black person with generations in the United States behind you — or not! — whether a report is even valid is not the point.
Being investigated is exhausting and demoralizing. Being investigated alone will make some people think you’ve done something wrong. Targeting individuals, claiming they’ve violated the nation’s new speech laws, makes it harder for others to dissent.
That is the point.
Gestapo. Securitate. KGB. Frumentarii. Stasi. Secret Police. Whatever you call it, encouraging people to rat on their neighbors is a key feature of authoritarianism.
A Moms for Life chapter newsletter opened with a quote from Hitler (the writer then apologized). In an interview with Forbes, Justice said it was a mistake for a chapter leader to open a newsletter with Nazi propaganda. But at a M4L conference, Justice said, “One of our moms … quotes Hitler.” Someone in the audience whooped. “I stand with that mom,” she added, to many more cheers.
It’s not just about trans people. By foregrounding Moms for Liberty in its call for informers, the Trump Department of Education just told us that, loud and clear.
Posts
