(ThePatriotWire)- In his successful 2016 campaign for president, Donald Trump touted an “America First” policy that was led by one major project in particular – building a border wall along the U.S. border with Mexico.
Doing so, he said, would help to clamp down on the illegal immigration crisis as well as illegal drug trafficking that was coming from Mexico into the United States. That message resonated with many people and, in part, helped vault him into the White House that year.
As Trump is launching his third bid for the presidency, his policy priorities are apparently shifting. During a rally he held last weekend, Trump unveiled a new education plan to the crowd, which received generous applause.
Trump made two appearances over the weekend in two of the first states to hold primary elections – New Hampshire and South Carolina. While the former president focused on a wide range of issues and policy stances – from reforming the armed forces to securing the southern border – New Hampshire’s crowd responded the loudest when he discussed his views on education.
The former president’s plan has parents gaining greater power over the education of their children. As Meredith McGraw, a reporter for Politico, tweeted:
“The loudest applause lines during Trump’s speech in NH so far were for fighting cultural war issues, esp. his plan to ‘eliminate federal funding for any school that pushes Critical Race Theory or left-wing gender ideology’ and ‘direct election of school principals by the parents.’”
These policies are similar to those that have been rolled out by Republican Governors Ron DeSantis of Florida and Glenn Youngkin of Virginia. If Trump does indeed plan to use education as the backbone of his legislative policies, then he could be in for a serious culture war up against other Republican candidates and, potentially, a Democratic candidate as well.
Trump announced his new education policy plan through a video that he released last week. He laid out the fact that he’d cut funding for schools that promoted those topics “or other inappropriate racial, sexual or political content onto our children.”
He also is calling for “abolishing tenure” for teachers in K-12 schools, cutting down the number of administrators responsible for Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI) programs, giving parents the power to elect their school principals and “adopting a parental bill of rights” that would, in part, provide full transparency into the curriculum the school is teaching.
In the video, Trump said:
“As the saying goes, personnel is policy, and at the end of the day, if we have pink-haired communists teaching our kids, we have a major problem. When I’m president, we will put parents back in charge.”
A year ago, DeSantis said he would work to codify a ban in his state on Critical Race Theory, through what is dubbed the Stop WOKE Act. In Virginia, Youngkin focused his campaign for governor on parental rights in schools.
Ironically, those two governors have been mentioned as potential challengers to Trump in a GOP primary for president.
