Trump Exposes How Radical Gender Ideology Still Pervades America’s Schools

As President Donald Trump recently warned, far-left ideology is still a major threat in K-12 schools that parents and grandparents must remain on guard against.

During remarks at the Museum of the Bible during a meeting of the White House’s Religious Liberty Commission earlier this month, Trump took the opportunity to highlight the continued dangers of political indoctrination in the classroom. After thanking attendees, the President called up 12-year-old Shea Encinas to the podium to share his experience as a fifth-grader in a California public school.

As Encinas shared, he was forced to read “My Shadow Is Pink” to a kindergartener — a story about a boy who likes “things not for boys.” The book has clear LBGTQ themes and encourages children to accept the idea that they could be born in the “wrong” body.

“I’ve been a Christian my whole life, and Jesus means everything to me,” Encinas said. “The book said, you can choose your gender based on feelings instead of how God made us. I knew this was not right, but I was afraid of getting in trouble.”

“After my family spoke up, the school treated us badly, and kids started bullying me and my brother because of our faith, and the school did nothing to stop it,” Encinas said. “I believe kids like me should be able to live our faith at school without being forced to go against what we believe. I hope no other family has to go through what mine did.”

Trump blasted the episode as proof of “radical gender ideology” being pushed on students.

While the culture war over American public education has largely faded into the background in recent years, that battle remains as urgent as ever – as cases like that of Shea Encinas show.

In another recent story out of Maryland, a Damascus High School senior was barred from graduating after his family objected to a required health class that promoted gender identity and LGBTQ+ content. His father, Seth Gottesman of Gaithersburg, sued Montgomery County Public Schools for religious discrimination, but a federal judge denied the emergency bid one day before graduation.

Maryland law technically lets parents opt their children out of the “family life and human sexuality” unit. But Gottesman argued the district scattered LGBTQ themes across the entire course, rendering the opt-out effectively “meaningless.”

“In the Health course, MCPS teaches minors that non-traditional sexuality, non-traditional family units, and transgenderism are as natural and beneficial as heterosexuality, traditional family structures, and acceptance of one’s biological sex,” Gottesman stated in his motion.

U.S. District Judge Deborah Chasanow issued a one-page order denying the family’s emergency motion, siding with school officials and leaving the student unable to walk with his classmates.

Meanwhile, in Virginia, Loudoun County Public Schools suspended two high school boys who objected after a female student who claimed to be male entered the boys’ locker room and began filming other students – a violation of district policy and state law.

But instead of punishing the female student, the district charged the male students with harassment under Title IX, slapped them with 10-day suspensions, and barred them from sharing classes with the girl.

Virginia Attorney General Jason Miyares blasted the punishment as a “disturbing misuse of authority” that trampled the boys’ constitutional rights. LCPS has since doubled down on its transgender bathroom and locker room policy despite Trump administration warnings that the district and others that have the same policy could lose federal funding for failure to comply with Title IX requirements that students only use facilities that correspond to their biological sex.

In Texas, Attorney General Ken Paxton has also filed a lawsuit against Coppell Independent School District after undercover video showed its curriculum director explaining how the district had “gotten around” the state’s ban on Critical Race Theory. Paxton’s suit alleges officials knowingly violated Texas law by using taxpayer resources to distribute CRT-related materials.

In Wisconsin, special education teacher Kally Bishop says she was forced to transfer schools because the Madison-area district mandated “culturally responsive practices” — effectively scoring teachers on how much they emphasized race in the classroom. Despite glowing performance reviews, Bishop was pushed out under the policy, which weighted “race responsiveness” more heavily than seniority or actual educational results.

Earlier this year in New York, a school board meeting in Monroe County descended into chaos after furious parents discovered that elementary students had been assigned “The Rainbow Parade: A Celebration of LGBTQIA+ Identities and Allies.” The book, shown to children as young as five, includes illustrations of a naked person walking down the street, a pair of men in bondage outfits, and other adult-themed parade scenes.

Dozens of parents shouted down school officials, demanding to know how such material could possibly be considered age-appropriate.

“If you think that that’s appropriate for children to see, then there’s something wrong with you,” one father said. “You need to have a mental evaluation. There’s no reason that should be in the schools whatsoever at all.”

Unable to take the heat, school officials abruptly shut down the meeting and left without hearing any official public comment.

In June, parents notched a major win when the Supreme Court ruled 6–3 that Montgomery County, Maryland, violated religious liberty by forcing children to sit through LGBTQ storybooks without an opt-out.

Writing for the majority, Justice Samuel Alito said the policy placed “an unconstitutional burden” on parents’ rights. In dissent, Justice Sonia Sotomayor argued children should be exposed to ideas that conflict with their parents’ faith, a telling sign of how far the education establishment has drifted from respecting family authority.

The case, Mahmoud v. Taylor, revealed just how far the problem had spread. Only after families fought all the way to the nation’s highest court did they secure the right to keep their kindergartners from being read transgender storybooks and LGBTQ propaganda.

The fact that it took Supreme Court intervention to stop schools from pushing gender ideology on five-year-olds shows how entrenched these policies are, and why parents cannot afford to let down their guard.

Meanwhile, schools are failing at their core mission. The 2024 Nation’s Report Card showed that nearly 70 percent of fourth and eighth graders are reading at or below “Basic,” the worst results in the test’s history. Math scores weren’t much better, stuck near historic lows. Instead of fixing the crisis, too many school officials are pouring energy into social indoctrination while real education falls by the wayside.

Teachers have been fired, parents silenced, and students punished for daring to question these leftist dogmas. Radical ideology is smuggled into classrooms under the banner of “inclusion,” while parents are treated as the enemy.

Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels openly argued in The Communist Manifesto that the education of children should belong to the state, not their parents. Increasingly, school bureaucrats seem intent on the same goal — stripping parents of authority and handing their children over to leftist ideology.

The battle for the souls and minds of America’s kids is far from over, and parents must not relent.

Sarah Katherine Sisk is a proud Hillsdale College alumna and a master’s student in economics at George Mason University. You can follow her on X @SKSisk76.