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Education | The Reporters

Education secretary puts Newsom in position to put up or shut up

by | Apr 5, 2025 | Ann Coulter

(Photo by Jason Rosewell on Unsplash)

Gov. Gavin Newsom, D-Calif., in a Juily, 4, 2022, ad campaign. (Video screenshot)
California Gov. Gavin Newsom

California Gov. Gavin Newsom has had plenty to say since launching his podcast earlier this month with a splash, breaking from Democratic Party orthodoxy and agreeing with MAGA organizer Charlie Kirk that allowing biological males to compete in girls’ and women’s sports is “deeply unfair.”

In the last week alone, Newsom remarks have generated numerous headlines. On Thursday he signed an order aimed at helping Los Angeles expedite the rebuilding of utility and telecom infrastructure following the deadly and destructive January wildfires.

The same day, he attended a glitzy event with Vogue editor Anna Wintour and announced plans to substantially increase film and television tax credits to win back some of this business, though the proposal still needs legislative approval.

Despite overseeing the growth of California’s government to a record size during his tenure, Newsom claimed during a podcast episode with liberal commentator Ezra Klein to be “the original DOGE” because he opened an office of digital innovation in 2019. He blamed California’s housing affordability crisis on NIMBYism and anti-housing density people “comfortable with their backyards.”

While weighing in on these myriad issues, Newsom, a presumed contender for the 2028 Democratic presidential nomination, has notably remained silent on whether his remarks about transgender athletes playing in girls’ and women’s sports would prompt him to alter the state’s laws allowing the practice.

U.S. Education Secretary Linda McMahon made it more difficult for Newsom to remain on the fence Thursday. She sent the governor a letter warning him that he must comply with President Trump’s executive order banning biological males from competing in women’s sports or risk losing federal funding for schools across the state.

At least $8 billion in federal education money to California hangs in the balance, while California is running what legislative analysts cited as a $46.8 billion budget deficit last year.

“Your recent comments about male athletes playing in women’s sports – that it is ‘deeply unfair’ – came to the attention of my office this week,” McMahon wrote. “I’m writing on behalf of the U.S. Department of Education to request a clarification on your stance as governor of California, and to inquire as to your intention to encourage California public schools to comply with federal law on this issue.”

McMahon pointed to polls showing that an “overwhelming majority” of Americans believe men should not compete in women’s sports, and many citizens, she argued, are “confused” by “your office’s silence on the harms of substituting ‘gender identity’ for sex in other areas of school environment.”

“Allowing participation in sex-separated activities based on ‘gender identity’ places schools at risk of Title IX violations and loss of federal funding,” she asserted. “As governor, you have a duty to inform California school districts of this risk.”

McMahon ended her letter by asking Newsom to inform the department ‘whether you will remind schools in California to comply with federal law by protecting sex-separated spaces and activities” and to “assure parents that California teachers will not facilitate the fantasy of ‘gender transitions’ for their children.”

Charlie Kirk posted on X  a copy of McMahon’s letter. Newsom spokeswoman Elana Ross did not respond to an inquiry about McMahon’s threat.

The matter is all the more pressing because the California Assembly will be holding hearings Tuesday on two GOP-sponsored bills aimed at banning biological boys and men from girls’ and women’s sports, though neither is expected to gain traction in the Democratic super-majority-controlled body. Proponents of the measure are rallying girl athletes who back the measures to show up at the hearings with their parents and press the legislature for action.

“California parents are tired of sending their kids to a government school system that fails them in every basic academic metric but would rather use our kids for public experiments in radical ideology,” Lance Christensen, president of the conservative California Policy Partners, told RealClearPolitics. “One would think that the legislature would have better understood the message of this last election when parents-rights candidates won across the state.”

Christensen, a Republican who ran an unsuccessful campaign for superintendent of public instruction in 2022, was also referring to a separate clash Thursday between McMahon and Newsom.

McMahon announced that the department’s Student Privacy Office launched an investigation into California over its law barring public school teachers and administrators from informing parents when their children as young as six are gender-transitioning at school.

McMahon said the probe would review whether the California Department of Education was violating the Family Educational Rights Privacy Act, which gives parents the right to access their children’s educational data.

“Teachers and school counselors should not be in the business of advising minors entrusted to their care on consequential decisions about their sexual identity and mental health,” McMahon said. “That responsibility and privilege lies with a parent or trusted loved one.”

“It is not only immoral but also potentially in contradiction with federal law for California schools to hide crucial information about a student’s wellbeing from parents and guardians,” she added. “The agency launched today’s investigation to vigorously protect parents’ rights and ensure that students do not fall victim to a radical transgender ideology that often leads to family alienation and irreversible medical interventions.”

On this score, Newsom’s spokeswoman took a shot at the Trump administration’s attempt to dismantle the Department of Education and countered that California schools are not in violation of federal law because their policy allows parents access to all students’ education records, including those dealing with name or gender changes.

“Parents continue to have full, guaranteed access to their student’s education records, as required by federal law,” Ross said in a statement. “If the U.S Department of Education still had staff, this would be a quick investigation – all they would need to do is read the law the governor signed.”

Last year, Newsom signed a bill that prevents schools districts from adopting policies requiring teachers and administrators to notify parents when their children start using different pronouns or identify as a different gender from what’s on their school record.

Prior to the law, several California school boards reacted to state Department of Education guidance barring the disclosure to parents of their children’s gender transitions by either considering or voting for policies that would require schools to disclose these types of changes in identity regardless of the student’s consent.

As the fight has played out across the state, California Attorney General Rob Bonta has sued school districts in Chino and Placer County over their parental notification requirements. Chino Valley School District has pushed back, counter-suing state officials over the new law barring teachers and school administrators from informing parents when their children begin gender-transitioning in school.

“School officials do not have the right to keep secrets from parents, but parents do have the constitutional right to know what their minor children are doing at school,” Emily Rae, senior counsel at the Liberty Justice Center, said after filing the countersuit on behalf of Chino Valley.

Proponents of gender transition notification laws say parental rights protections derive from the Constitution’s 14th Amendment prohibition of a state’s laws depriving “life, liberty, or property, without due process of law.”

The Supreme Court has repeatedly recognized the diminished capacity of minor children and upheld limitations on important matters that significantly alter their lives, including their need for medical care or treatment. The high court has designated parents as the authorities that must make those decisions.

But in recent years, this longstanding doctrine has faced legal challenges. State and local officials have overruled parents when it comes to gender-transitioning medicines when one divorced parent disagrees with the other. In Montgomery County, Maryland, parents can no longer opt their children out of gender and sexuality curriculum in schools. Parents sued Maryland over the new policy. In January, the Supreme Court decided to take up the case.

At least one state, New Hampshire, reacted to the Trump administration threat by banning transgender athletes from participating in girls’ and women’s sports. Yet another, Maine, is standing its ground.

Maine Gov. Janet Mills and President Trump sparred over the issue last month during a meeting of governors at the White House. Trump, at the time, threatened to pull federal funding from Maine if the state fails to comply with his executive order barring transgender athletes from sports.

“We’ll see you in court,” Mills retorted.

The U.S. Education Department has since concluded that Maine violated the Title IX antidiscrimination law and could face Justice Department prosecution. The U.S. Health and Human Services department gave Maine’s Department of Education and its Principals’ Association, which oversees high school sports in the state, 10 days to comply by banning the athletes.

School officials in Maine said Thursday they would not do so, citing state law, including the Maine Human Rights Act.

This article was originally published by RealClearPolitics and made available via RealClearWire.

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The liberals’ license: How the left finds release in an age of rage

by | Apr 5, 2025 | The Hill

“We should replace our piece of crap Constitution.”

Those words  from author Elie Mystal, a regular commentator on MSNBC, are hardly surprising from someone who previously called  the Constitution “trash” and urged  not just the abolition of the U.S. Senate  but also of “all voter registration laws.”

But Mystal’s radical rhetoric is becoming mainstream on the left, as shown by his best-selling books and popular media appearances.

There is a counter-constitutional movement  building in law schools and across the country. And although Mystal has not advocated violence, some on the left are turning to political violence and criminal acts. It is part of the “righteous rage” that many of them see as absolving them from the basic demands not only of civility but of legality.

They are part of a rising class of American Jacobins — bourgeois revolutionaries increasingly prepared to trash everything, from cars to the Constitution.

The Jacobins were a radical group in France that propelled that country into the worst excesses of the French Revolution. They were largely affluent citizens, including journalists, professors, lawyers, and others who shredded existing laws and destroyed property. It would ultimately lead not only to the blood-soaked “Reign of Terror” but also to the demise of the Jacobins themselves as more radical groups turned against them.

Of course, it is not revolution on the minds of most of these individuals. It is rage.

Rage is the ultimate drug. It offers a release from longstanding social norms — a license to do those things long repressed by individuals who viewed themselves as decent, law-abiding citizens.

Across the country, liberals are destroying Tesla cars, torching dealerships and charging stations , and even allegedly hitting political dissenters with their cars .

Last week, affluent liberal shoppers admitted that they are shoplifting from Whole Foods to strike back at Jeff Bezos for working with the Trump administration and moving the Washington Post back to the political center. They are also enraged at Mark Zuckerberg for restoring free speech protections at Meta.

One “20-something communications professional” in Washington explained  “If a billionaire can steal from me, I can scrape a little off the top, too.”  These affluent shoplifters portrayed themselves as Robin Hoods.

Of course, that is assuming Robin Hood was stealing organic fruit from the rich and giving it to himself.

On college campuses, affluent students and even professors are engaging in political violence.

Just this week, University of Wisconsin Professor José Felipe Alvergue, head of the English Department, turned over the table  of College Republicans supporting a conservative for the Wisconsin Supreme Court. He reportedly declared, “The time for this is over!”

Likewise, a mob this week attacked a conservative display  and tent on the campus of the University of California-Davis as campus police passively watched. The Antifa protesters, carrying a large banner with the slogan “ACAB” or “all cops are bastards,” trashed the tent and carried it off.

Antifa is a violent and vehemently anti-free speech group  that thrives on U.S. college campuses. In his book “Antifa: The Anti-Fascist Handbook ,” Mark Bray explains that “most Americans in Antifa have been anarchists or antiauthoritarian communists. … From that standpoint, ‘free speech’ as such is merely a bourgeois fantasy unworthy of consideration.”

Of course, many of the American Jacobins are themselves bourgeois or even affluent figures. And they are finding a host of enablers telling them that the Constitution itself is a threat and that the legal system has been corrupted by oligarchs, white supremacists, or reactionaries.

This includes leading academics and commentators who are denouncing the Constitution and core American values. Erwin Chemerinsky, dean of the UC Berkeley Law School, is the author of “No Democracy Lasts Forever: How the Constitution Threatens the United States.”

In a New York Times op-ed , “The Constitution Is Broken and Should Not Be Reclaimed,” law professors Ryan D. Doerfler of Harvard and Samuel Moyn of Yale called for the nation to “reclaim America from constitutionalism.”

Commentator Jennifer Szalai has scoffed  at what she called “Constitution worship.” “Americans have long assumed that the Constitution could save us,” she wrote. “A growing chorus now wonders whether we need to be saved from it.”

As intellectuals knock down our laws and Constitution, radicals are pouring into the breach. Political violence and rage rhetoric are becoming more common . Some liberals embraced groups like Antifa , while others shrugged off property damage  and violent threats against political opponents . It is the very type of incitement or rage rhetoric that Democrats once accused Trump of fostering in groups like the Proud Boys.

Members of Congress such as Rep. Jasmine Crockett (D-Texas) have called for Tesla CEO Elon Musk to be “taken down ” and said that Democrats have to be “OK with punching .”

Some take such words as a justification to violently attack a system supposedly advancing the white supremacy or fascism. Fortunately, such violence has been confined so far to a minority of radicalized individuals, but there is an undeniable increase in such violent, threatening speech and in actual violence.

The one thing the American Jacobins will not admit is that they like the rage and the release that it brings them. From shoplifting to arson to attempted assassination , the rejection of our legal system brings them freedom to act outside of morality and to take whatever they want.

Democratic leaders see these “protests” as needed popularism to combat Trump — to make followers “strike ready ” and “to stand up and fight back.”

For a politician, a mob can become irresistible if you can steer it against your opponents. The problem is controlling the mob once it has broken free of the bounds of legal and personal accountability.

Jonathan Turley is the Shapiro Professor of Public Interest Law at George Washington University and the author of “The Indispensable Right: Free Speech in an Age of Rage. ”

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