Season 6, Episode 2
Matthew Nielsen speaks with Tiffany Justice about returning education to parents and strengthening parental choice.
Guest: Tiffany Justice
Topics: parental rights
Transcript
Auto-generated transcript with light cleanup. Words may be imperfect; policy names and guest names reviewed where noted.
we live. See if we can find it on X real quick and then retweet it. Yep. And I'm sending it to all my groups, including ones that you're in Tiffany.
Okay. Thank you. Okay, I see it there. It's starting to pop up around the internet.
We're streaming to Facebook, YouTube, X rumble, I think rumble. This is our first time trying that, by the way. One day we'll do X spaces. The one with Heritage was fun the other day, Tiffany.
I'm glad. Yeah, I thought it was great. It was so nice. So nice to see Tim.
I think he's going to do one a week on different subjects, but I thought it was great. Yeah, for sure. I loved X spaces. Yeah, you know, we don't have to we don't have to get super dressed up for X spaces.
Hey, right. Like we do with the video versions, but I was actually in a car. You what?
I liked X spaces during COVID. I ran a lot of them during COVID. It was important to know spirit here. It's how I met Chris Elston, Billboard Chris, who's in Australia right now.
Oh, I saw his, yeah, his ex post. Oh my god, crazy. They were trying to arrest. Did you see that, Matt?
They're the Billboard guy, Billboard Chris. Oh, and for real. He was trying to arrest them and then they backed off at the last minute, but he was standing in front. He said he was obstructing the space and obstructing people in the square, which he absolutely was not.
He was just standing off to the side, but the sign on speaking and the police came up and said, you're obstructing the flow of traffic and they were going to arrest him, but they stopped, but it's really crazy. And I just big shout out, honestly, to ADF International and Elon Musk, who also has named in this suit because it's about an ex post, because they really had Chris's back. So love that. Yeah, basically, they didn't like his sign.
They disagreed with the sign saying that children cannot consent to puberty blockers. And in the video, the police officer, whoever he was, security admitted that they had never had to deal with something like this, even though they they've had people with signs and stuff before. It's just the other, it was people on the left that had signs before. They had free Palestine, not just signs.
They did nothing, but there's Chris, but his children cannot consent to puberty blockers sign. Not looking anybody for moving or anything, just standing there. Yeah, not harassing anybody. People come up to him.
Anyway, so we probably have enough people on the space right now or the video live stream on X for everybody who doesn't know. This is the Educational Freedom Institute podcast co-hosted by my buddy, Matt Nielsen. He's the co-founder of Educational Freedom Institute and myself for Deangelis. And we have an awesome guest today.
It's so amazing. It was great to see you at the White House, Tiffany. But Tiffany, for everyone who doesn't know, most of you probably do. She is a co-founder of Moms for Liberty.
And most recently, a visiting fellow at the Heritage Foundation where they're doing great work. They've been pushing for abolishing the Department of Education for a long time, pushing things like school choice, so we're totally aligned. They're very lucky to have Tiffany Justice with them at Heritage. You guys are assembling a powerhouse team over there with Lindsay Berg, Jonathan Butcher, Jason Frederick and Jay Green and Matt Ladder.
So many good people over there. So Tiffany, how's the new role at Heritage and how long has it been and what do you like about it most? Yeah, well, I love Heritage. I think Kevin Roberts is a really great leader.
And I've been watching and been able to work with Heritage for quite some time as the co-founder of Moms for Liberty. They were very supportive of us as an organization. Early on, we were given the Salvatoree Prize by Heritage Foundation, recognizing us for innovation and American freedom. And we were very proud of that.
And so it was just a natural move to take all of the things that I've learned at Moms for Liberty. You know, Corey, you watch me. I try to get a seat at every table. I try to make sure that all the members at Moms for Liberty had as much information as possible so they could be effective advocates.
And now, starting this parental rights network, we're going to make sure that all of the work that President Trump is doing and groups like yours and others are doing. People know about bills that are important to support and so that we can create more momentum in the parental rights space. I just, honestly, when COVID happened, I had no idea that parental rights were so disrespected in the United States. It was never like an idea in my mind that the government would think they would know better for parents for their children.
But we've certainly seen that that's the case over the course of the past few years. Yeah, and during COVID, when families woke up and we got a lot of school choice passed and we're still doing it, my home state of Texas should be number 16 on universal school choice. A lot of people would point out, oh, you know, people like, like you, Corey, you've been pushing for school choice. This is why it's happened.
Well, one, my response to that was, well, it was Randy Winegarden for overplaying your hand, but two, I tell people it's not me just screaming from where I'm at promoting school choice, that that helps, but you really needed people on the ground to pressure politicians to do the right thing and to stand up for parental rights. And so the way that I put it in my book in another place is that parents basically became an interest group of their own. And I give a lot of credit to what you've done, Tiffany, by getting parents to lock arms, show up at school board meetings. And because politicians listened to power and numbers and you were able to create how big was the Moms for Liberty organization latest latest data that you've seen?
Yeah, so a little over 300 chapters, 130,000 members across the United States of America. And you're right, it was the moms really standing up and saying, we are the lobby. You are going to listen to us. These are our children and they're the bravest women I know.
You know, I'll be honest, Corey, and Matt, when Tina and I started Moms for Liberty, we were serving a school board members right before that, right? So our terms ended November 2020 and then we took a month of December of 2020 to create Moms for Liberty and launch January 1st. We modeled a lot of the different things that we were doing after the teacher's unions because when you're on school board, all of the union members will show up where all red shirts are very close to their advocacy. They bring signs.
They're very clear about what they stand for and what they want. And parents just were not doing that all together. And so, you know, Moms for Liberty was an effort to try to get some blue shirts that say we do not the government and to get Moms and dads out to school board meetings. And it absolutely made a difference.
It made such a difference that they called us domestic terrorists because we were calling out a failing system. But to give you some props, Corey, you really have been a leading voice for parents. And when there's been a lot of division on the right when it comes to school choice, but as schools have continued to show themselves as these failure factories, parents want to get their kids out. And you've been a huge part of that.
Well, thank you. Thanks. Yeah, there's a new sheriff in town. They're called parents and you guys showed the unions that you can beat them at their own game.
Parents care about their kids more than anybody else, certainly more than these unions and bureaucrats. So great work on that, Tiffany. And so, yeah, I saw you at the Department of Education. You actually got a shout out from President Trump, which was really awesome.
I think you were there in the front row of the signing, which was, by the way, really well marketed. It was really well done. They had the children at the seats signing the executive order right by Trump and phenomenal job on his part. So how did that day feel for you?
I know we got to snap a selfie together and that was fun. And it was good seeing you in D.C. How did that day feel for you?
And what does it mean to you that we have a president that signs an executive order like this? That he's listening to parents and keeping promises. You know, he really is keeping the promises that he made to American parents on the campaign trail. And parents were looking for a leader that would be an ally for them, someone that would put us first when it came to our kids.
And so abolishing the Department of Education is just one more step to return the power of education back to the States. And you and I both know that decisions about kids' education should be made at the most local level, ideally in the home. Parents engage with their children's education. If you choose to homeschool, that's awesome.
I hope we talk about this horrible bill in Illinois right now, into restrict homeschooling. I think it's so important people understand what the government is doing. Not only do they want to force their kids to go to a failing school. If you pull your kid out, they want to tell you what you can teach and can't teach in your home.
My goodness, where does that end? So it was just great to be there. And you know, I've worked behind the scenes a little bit with the president and his team to try to help him to see some of the different issues that were happening across the country. And yeah, it was just, it was a, I just felt very lucky to be able to be there.
And to be with all of our friends, all of these amazing warriors that we've been working with over the past four years to celebrate together, it was pretty cool. It's time to make education great again, mega. I like that acronym the best. So yeah, in Illinois, that's that's actually something that relates to something we were talking about on the podcast last time.
Matt, you and I, we just kind of, Matt, is that yours? That's okay, Tiffany. If we hear a baby screaming, that's probably me. But yeah, last last time on the podcast, we talked a little bit about some criticism of school choice from people who say they're on the right.
And they'll say that with government shackles, comes government shackles, what about how this is going to take over private education? We don't want to replicate the public's sphere into the private sphere. And what we were saying at the time was even before this Illinois bill was gaining an interaction, was that you can get regulations without school choice. And in Illinois, they went backwards on school choice last year.
They got rid of their program. And at the same time, their committee just passed last week, right? On a party line vote, eight to four, all Democrats in favor of regulating home education without school. So they can they can walk into gum at the same time, they can take away school choice and take away your homeschooling freedom.
On the flip side, Republicans can expand school choice while expanding homeschool freedom, which they've done in states like Wyoming and Ohio. Same year that they pass bills for universal school choice, deregulated homeschooling. You're still muted. I have good guard dogs, be warned people.
But I have heard from moms and dads across the country, and Cory, you and I've talked about this when it comes to school choice, that people do have concerns. They don't want to trade one monopoly for another. And I think it's important. We want discerning voters.
We do want people asking questions about bills and scrutinizing bills. I've seen really good school choice policy brought up in states. And then I've seen even in states like Florida last year, we had a really crummy bill that was HB1. It was a speakers bill that was a really crummy school choice bill that actually had to be pulled back and rewritten because it did in fringe upon parental rights and home schooling.
So I think it's really important that people don't just say, oh, this is a Republican bill, so it must be a great bill. No, read the bill. Understand what it stands for. Home school parents are often that canaries in the coal mine.
They're very concerned and very discerning when it comes to policy and they're watching and trying to pay attention to it. But I'll tell you I am not going to be the mom that stands at the front of the burning schoolhouse and tells parents, oh no, I'm worried about what might happen 10 years from now. So I'm going to fourth year kid to keep going to this school that has 5% of kids reading on grade level. I'm just not going to do it.
And so I think that the way forward really is being discerning and holding public officials to high standards when it comes to school choice policy. And there is no lack of subject matter experts like you, like Matt, like Jason, like Jonathan, that are willing to help legislators and staff when it comes to creating legislation in their state. So I think we can, if the Democrats can walk and chew gum at the same time, certainly we can too. And we have great minds that should be have we should have the best school choice policy being proposed in states around the United States every single year.
So I'd say Matt Arizona is the gold standard on school choice and the slippery slope went the way in our favor in Arizona, right? You guys used to have a testing mandate and then the parents said to heck with this, we don't need this. And they took away the testing mandate, right?
When they went universal on school choice. So yeah, yeah. The fear of ongoing does it, you know, the the slippery slope doesn't only go in one direction. I'd argue if you have people who are benefiting, they're going to be in a better position to build a coalition to fight to strip away regulations as opposed to them getting tacked on later on.
100%. And then that goes back to your work with, you know, Moms for Liberty. It applies there to Tiffany, right?
When you have a group, a big enough group of concerned parents that are willing to go and show up at a school board meeting or a group of, you know, now the latest numbers just came out two days ago. I was listening to the Arizona State Board of Education's meeting. And the ESA administrator for the Department of Education said that their latest numbers are 87,600, 87,600 kids enrolled in ESAs in Arizona. And it wasn't four years ago, maybe, that that was 10,000, 10,000.
Wow. It's great. So, you know, you get the same principle applies, right?
You get enough people out there saying, look, I don't want this or I do want this and people start to listen. And I wanted to talk to you about Illinois going to that, you know, with the Department of Education being gutted, like it has been with that executive order and everything being moved out, which is wonderful and loving and support that. These Illinois families that want homeschooling or that want ESAs even or that just want to charter school in their zip code. Whatever it is, this executive order and the pulling apart and does hopefully hopefully just eradication of the U.S.
Department of Education is really going to draw distinct lines around state boundaries. It's going to start to become really stark the differences between Illinois and Indiana, between New Mexico and Arizona and between states like what? Alabama and Florida, for instance, Alabama is okay. They're doing okay, but they could be a lot better.
But I'm curious your thoughts on that, Tiffany, with the removal of the Department of Education, or at least the, you know, you're gutting it and moving everything around. I think dismantling, because, you know, I mean, I really think that local direction in the EO was to dismantle it as much as possible. Yep. Given death by a thousand cuts, kill it from the inside if we can't get, and which brings up another point about us needing 60 votes to overcome a filibuster in the Senate, which is something we talked pretty in detail about on the Heritage X-Based yesterday.
Lindsey Burke brought up a good point though that if we, we can do a lot of things through the budget reconciliation process where you only need 51 votes. Yep. So they're thinking that, you know, a couple things. I'll talk about what Matt said, and then let's talk about what Lindsey was chatting about yesterday.
You know, Matt, one of the things that a lot of the moms and blue states came forward and, you know, were very concerned about when President Trump started talking about abolishing the Department of Education was, no, please don't, don't leave us. You know, don't we, but the truth is that the Department of Education and the federal government is not supposed to be involved in education in the way that they are. And, you know, it, that means that, you know, if we don't keep the White House, then we're not able to make good things happen in those states. And the truth is that parents have to step up in those states.
It's going to be take a lot of hard work. I remember a time when Florida wasn't a red state, though, right? And so if you look at Florida now and the leadership that we have and the things that we've been able to do, it really is up to the people of the state to rise up to serve in office. And I think we're just at the beginning of that.
So I'll just say for the moms and dads that I know in blue states, they are getting more involved and they are building a coalition. So let's talk about Illinois. There's a group called Awake Illinois. Shannon Adcock started that during COVID.
She's also been a part of moms for Liberty. There are a lot of amazing moms, Illinois moms and dads in moms for Liberty. They're fighting against this bill. I think it's HB2847.
It's a bill that they call it the Home School Act. The Iron Law of Woke Projection Debrathop. It is definitely an infringement on parental rights. It's wanting to have vaccine requirements for kids who are home school.
That's crazy. The idea that the government thinks they can come into your home and dictate to you. I'm sorry. Forshab your kids.
That's crazy. Right. Right. Crazy.
And then they also want to be able to dictate curriculum to you in your house. And the irony of the fact that Chicago Public Schools, Illinois schools in general are failing kids. And Pritzker just ended. They did it.
You guys in Illinois, as you said, Corey, there was a charter school movement and there was a choice. There was a limited choice in Chicago, but there was some in Pritzker stripped all of that this past year and got rid of it. And so not only do they want to trap your kids in failing schools, but they want now to be able to dictate what you can do in your home. And that's really the bottom line here is that the government thinks that they know better than you for your children.
And they are if they can't get them in the public schools, they're going to follow them all the way to your door. And we need to be telling the government at every turn get out of our house. In the Florida situation, when HB1 came up, they wanted to give choice navigators. They wanted to assign choice navigators, what they call to homeschool families, and they would have to have this aid to work through the public system.
I looked at the homeschool moms and dads, but I was like, you need to be like, hold my beer. Like, not only do I see your choice navigator, but I raise you nothing. I want no attachment. I want no reporting mechanism because the idea that the government schools are failing our kids, the way that they are with only a third of kids, reading on grade level and fourth grade across the country.
And now they're going to tell us what we can do when we choose to homeschool them or put them in an alternate school. It's just nonsense. Yeah, they don't they don't have any of the cards as Trump would put it to Zelensky. They hold no cards.
They have 0% proficiency in like 30 30 Chicago government schools. They spent $30,000 per kid per year, and they had the nerve to tell us how we should educate our kids when they can't educate people's kids. It's also a control thing I think. They think they know better than parents, so they're going to try to reach their hands into the household.
That bill in Illinois actually had 50 or so thousand people sign up in opposition, only about a thousand in favors. That was like 98 99% against. And they still voted. All the Democrats voted to move it to the floor.
I'm concerned it's going to pass the floor too. But maybe like you said, Tiffany Florida wasn't always a deep red state. Maybe Illinois will flip because they just get so bad they start to control people so much. Maybe they flip towards the right like we're seeing with super majorities in Florida right now.
And that happened after school choice passed when Andrew Gillum called to get rid of the scholarship program back in 2018. Ron DeSantis won. School choice has expanded and Republican majorities have expanded. This is something the Republicans should really understand as a political winner for them.
And Democrats, if they're smart, they'll say, I don't want to end up like deep red Florida. Maybe we will support parents too. Well, and here's the thing my message to parents around the country. Illinois needs our help.
Illinois parents need our help because if your parental rights are if any given state can infringe upon your fundamental right to direct the upbringing of your children, the way that Illinois is, it means that your parental rights are under attack too. This cannot. We cannot withstand in the United States. So, you know, I'm going to try to do a better job of highlighting this Illinois bill.
I think we all need to help the families and the parents in Illinois to fight back against this government overreach. And Pritzker is bad news, and he would like to be your candidate for president. He would like to be the candidate for president for the Democrats. In 2028, we can't let that happen.
So, you know, we've got to call out the the liars and the hypocrites here. Yeah, we live in 50 laboratories of democracy, which is a good thing when it comes to school, choice spreading in red states, but it's a double edged sword. The Illinois regulations, if the if the teacher's unions get get away with this, other blue states will say, look, we're not going to be punished if we do the same thing. So, that's why it's so important for parents to stand up and show if you do something like this, if you try to strip our rights away, you are going to be destroyed at the ballot box.
You're going to you're going to be ripped out of office, figuratively speaking, and that that's just not going to fly. And so, we don't want that spreading like wildfire, but we do want school choice to continue spreading. These are the kinds of things that get parents mobilized, though, right?
I mean, this is what like, tell us about that Tiffany, in your experience for the past few years, as you've helped to manage some of that and coordinate it and grow it, what are some of the big hot button issues that got parents in the mood to go down to the school board meeting or or down to the legislature and and request to speak. COVID, I think the forced masking and the mandates, the lockdowns, you know, I was on school board in March 13, 2020. Schools were closed in Florida. Governor DeSantis made that decision.
I was standing in the school board office at the time and it felt like somebody punched me in the stomach. Honestly, I couldn't believe that we were just going to close schools and they said we were going to go to virtual learning and half the kids in the district didn't have a laptop or access to, to, you know, Broadway like Wi-Fi at home. And I was like, well, this is just a joke. What do you mean?
We're going to just switch to virtual learning. We had a charter school in the community that none of the kids had any technology. They didn't have any computers at the school and one of the the gentlemen who ran it came up to me and he said, what am I going to do?
The kids, I can't, I don't know what I'm going to do with the kids. It was one in one of the poorest areas in the county. I just looked at the superintendent and I said, get them laptops too like we have to help them. And so, you know, we made that switch but kids were being quarantined two weeks at a time, healthy kids.
They would say they came in six feet of each other at a school. I remember standing outside of the high school. There was a girl who was a junior who was on the swim team and if you have a kid who's been involved in athletics, we can talk a little bit about that motivating factor. But if you have a child that's involved in athletics, especially swim, it's a lot of early mornings and late nights practicing.
They put a lot of time in and she had just been quarantined. She was completely healthy, did not have COVID and there was a huge meet that weekend that she was going to be forced to not be able to make and she knew it was going to affect her college trajectory and when she was just sobbing and there was nothing I could do. I watched as my own kids were quarantined back to back. My daughter was quarantined twice with 30 days of miss school, just crazy.
And so I think parents saw that and they were speaking out. They were so upset about the fact that the schools were just making these arbitrary decisions, the health department was playing such a huge role in your kids' lives and there was just no rhyme or reason we saw that masking was not source control, did not stop transmission. We had evidence to show that in other parts of the world that masking had not been effective or wasn't being used and transmission rates were not different. And then the masking again, it was a huge issue where the government was forcing these masks on your kids' faces all day long.
It was horrible, unhealthy. We had kids with special needs who were being forced to mask. They were doing speech therapy on computers with, I mean, just craziness. And I think parents saw that hypocrisy.
We saw the American Academy of Pediatrics tell moms and dads that babies didn't need to see their faces. That was a lie. Cory, you have a little baby. You know you smile, that baby smiles.
Can you imagine? If this is what your baby saw all the time, just awful. And so I think those were real motivating factors for parents. They saw all of a sudden that there was a government system that they had elected officials who were abdicating their authority to bureaucrats who we couldn't hold accountable.
We do not cope here with the government slogan came when the superintendent in my own district said he was going to create a medical committee. And he was going to bring in the head of the Cleveland Clinic and some doctors and they were going to create protocols in the district. And I just looked at them and I said, you don't seem to understand. We do not cope here with the government.
Even when I take my kid to the doctor, that's a suggestion. That's a recommendation. I'm not required to follow that doctor's orders on the parent in the home. But you know what we saw across the country in place like Washington, Oregon, and California was that it had become ingrained in parents to not realize that they had the right to say no to the government to stand up.
And so I think if they tried to do COVID again, they'd have a different result. I think there were a lot of parents who would just say, no, sorry, we're not following these rules in regulations. The other issue that and then I'll just say I think COVID really opened parents' eyes up to that the schools were failing. And how far we had gotten away from reading, writing, and and how education had truly become therapy.
And that there was a lot of toxic ideology that was being introduced to our children, oftentimes telling them that the color of their skin somehow dictated their ability to be successful in life. We had one little boy in Tennessee who was a six year old, excuse me, who came home and said, mommy, I don't want anybody to know that daddy's white. That's a problem. There's no room for discrimination in America's class rooms.
And so that was motivating. The last thing I'd say would be the trans issue. This idea that queer theory brought us transgender ideology. This idea you could be born in the wrong body and it's completely antithetical to the majority of teaching in Americans' homes.
Our girls have been put in horribly unsafe positions with males in locker rooms. Not just other boys, they're aged by the way. Sometimes coaches and adults, men from other schools that would come in and use locker rooms and private spaces, as well as just the safety issue on the sports teams. You see people like Peyton McNabb getting hit in the face with the volleyball spiked at her.
And I think parents just all of these things that we know inherently in us are untrue that are not good for our kids. And then all of a sudden we were being forced to be complicit in the harm of our child. And that the government was imposing that on us. You know, Cory and I agree on a lot of stuff including we say government schools.
They are not parents. They are government schools and teachers are government actors. They are government employees. There is no academic freedom in K-312 education.
There are standards. There's curriculum that is chosen to align with those standards. It is not college. And parents have a reasonable expectation to believe that the standards and the curriculum we followed in the classroom and what we found out was that in fact that was not happening.
What's crazy to me is even though the protecting women's sports issues and 80-20 issue, you had the Democrats in the Senate in the US Senate unanimously vote against the protection of women and girls in sports act. It was like a 51 to 45 vote. All the Democrats that were there voted against it. Do you think they're going to lose some seats over this in the midterms?
Like how far gone can have you seen in individual states where Democrats have kind of done the right thing on these issues? No, like increasing individual Democrats that are standing up and doing the right thing. Jamie Reed, she's part of this LGBT coalition, courage coalition. She's a mom who was a whistleblower at St.
Louis Children's Hospital who have been part of doing a part of the gender clinic and then just realized how horribly wrong things had gone and is doing a ton of advocacy fighting against it. She was just up in New Hampshire and was highlighting a Democrat. And what some of the voters were saying that we're there where you're not following your constituents and he said, no, I am following. There are a lot of constituents that don't agree with this.
Politicians care about money and power and until money and power their vote taking and their decision making, they will not stop. I don't know why. It doesn't make a lot of sense to me except for the fact that there's still money behind it for them and we haven't cut off the pipelines of money that are feeding against coal. So I think part of President Trump doing in Doge and Elon Musk who we love so much is stopping the pipeline of money and the funneling of government money, taxpayer money into these NGOs and nonprofit and organizations that are getting involved in pushing supporting political candidates.
We can talk about that, right, Corey? You've seen Planned Parenthood now deciding that they're going to be in school board candidates. Like really?
They're in the business of killing banks. You're all the sudden they want to stay in our kids' education. To reduce enrollment. Yeah, increasing.
Yeah, it's really weird the whole time with Planned Parenthood and the school system aren't. They were already involved before, right? They are. They're involved in comprehensive sex education.
They put out a lot of curriculum. There are a lot of public private partnerships. They're called that happen within school districts. I always tell parents to always ask, who has access to my child during the school day?
If life skills is being taught, who's coming in and teaching that? Do I have access to that curriculum? You should be asking those questions. Planned Parenthood, yes, involved in our school system, involved in comprehensive sex ed and sex ed in general.
You can look out to like, I think at the Mar Monte, California, huge Planned Parenthood DEI office there, really pushing a lot of the comprehensive sex ed. What they want, Corey, though, is school based health clinics. They want a presence in every school in America. And if you lower ages of informed consent, which we've seen happening all over the country, even in places like North Carolina, it's 12 years old, that means that 12, your child can give consent to vaccines, to other medical procedures without a parent's knowledge or consent.
And then you put a school based health clinic in a school and now all of a sudden you have groups like Planned Parenthood are there and they're not just pushing abortions now. They're pushing puberty blockers. It's a very anti-natalist movement that they're a part of. We've got a real problem.
And, you know, as we see declining enrollment, Randy Winegarten, when she spoke in front of Congress and she was asked to speak to the COVID lockdown, she said, what we need is community schools. I hope everybody goes back to look back. No, Tommy to schools. Yeah.
Tommy to schools. That's exactly right. They want to have access to your child and they really want the schools to be the social welfare center of your entire community so that they can keep pushing services out. They can keep expanding the number of union members.
Because like, Corey, we can talk about this in Matt, AFT is part of AFL CIO. AFL CIO is the largest healthcare workers union in the country. And they know that they will increase their membership, their dues, and their influence if they can expand the scope and role of schools in America. Well, and I know in New York, I was just looking at this a couple of weeks ago, AFT has union members in New York that are in the healthcare sector.
So, which is, that struck me as strange. I think I had heard that maybe in passing at one point, but then I actually saw Randy Winegarten was speaking to a group of healthcare professionals maybe two, three, four weeks ago in New York that were members of AFT. So, yeah, they're a hundred percent. They've been trying to make the schools.
I've been thinking about that for decades, schools have started to move up and replace churches as community centers. You know, it used to be in the prior to like 1910, maybe. That was what you had churches. Then clubs started to come in like the Lions Club and the Rotary Club.
All good things, right? Community groups. Those are good, positive things. And then schools, as those kind of faded out, schools started to become the center of communities.
And I think you're spot on Tiffany. I think that there's been a concerted effort over decades to center schools as the gathering place. And from one perspective, you could, if you don't know about, you know, all of this other stuff, you might say, well, that's a good thing. Shouldn't we want to go to school plays and invite the community in to use our facilities.
They're great facilities. But centralizes power in one place. It's a problem. It's, yeah.
It's actually, we were killing it when it came to educating the kids that maybe we could even talk about expanding the scope of what schools do, right? But we're not. That's the bottom line. You can't even teach the kids to read.
And now you want to hand out medication. You want to be in charge of medical care. We don't trust you. No, I don't trust them.
No parents should trust them. You know, it's interesting. The schools do serve a really important role in the community. And I think neighborhood schools, that's what I would call them, schools where parents can walk their child's school in the morning, where, you know, people know each other.
You have neighbors. You build relationships with other people. It's a lovely thing. And I think just not just public schools, but every school in general can create that type of community.
In fact, you know, it's very interesting. I've done a lot of research about desegregation. Even in my own community, I spoke to a gentleman here who was one of the first class when the schools desegregated. And we had had one high school in a primarily black area of our county.
And he said that parent involvement was huge at that school during that time. And their graduation rate was very high, almost 100%. And then when the school was desegregated, and he went to the, what was then considered to be prior to deseg the white high school, that the black parents didn't feel as welcome at the school anymore. And that what happened when the parents weren't didn't feel as welcome at the school, they didn't come to as many of the, you know, musical performances.
They didn't feel welcome in the school to be a part of their kids' education and enrollment went down. Graduation really went down. And so I think, you know, there are a lot of different factors that have brought us to this moment. But more parent involvement.
And we have evidence of this is what's best for kids. And, you know, I wish, honestly, I know Corey and I might disagree about this. What's happened with the government schools and the way they've been so perverted really breaks my heart. As a school board member, having served in public schools, I've seen teachers build amazing relationships with kids and families and really unfold the full potential of every child.
So, you know, in a perfect world for me, I do think that public, that education in general public education is a value to the United States of America. I think the fact that we say we educate every child in our country is important. And it's something that I think we should, we really, it should, it's a huge responsibility, but it's also a privilege to be able to do that. The fact that the schools are spending more money than they ever have before, more money than many other countries around the world, and yet our kids are not doing well in school, they're not learning how to read right and do math.
What is going on? You know, you brought up Chicago Public Schools, it's $30,000 per year, New York Public Schools, $40,000 per year. And I was just up in New York with Secretary McMahon. We met with Eva Moskowitz's Success Charter Schools.
And she was talking about, she has very high expectations for the students, right? And if she was saying how she wants to increase the number of charter schools that she has, and she can't because New York State and New York has a cap on charter schools and a wait list that's so long. So I guess I would just ask you guys, like in these places where charter schools are limited, or even when school choices have been enacted, what are the waiting lists like, where parents are waiting to have the opportunity to send their kids to a different school?
Yeah, I think New York City has like tens of thousands of kids on wait lists. And that's because of the rule that you're talking about that they basically, the unions probably lobby to keep this rule in place so that they don't bleed as many of their customers away. It's them trying to maintain their monopoly on the minds of other people's kids. You saw this happen in Pennsylvania during COVID too when you had the Pennsylvania Education Association lobbying to not allow kids to take their funding to virtual charter schools, which were very attractive at the time because they figured out virtual education, the traditional schools, they didn't know what they were doing and they knew that families were going to want to go to these, any other year families could have switched and they would have gotten the per student funding for those families.
But yeah, this happens everywhere. And in Arizona like Matthew mentioned, when they opened the floodgates for school choice, they broke the government website. So many people signed up. Now we know it's like nearly 90,000 people signed up in a very short amount of time.
But yeah, I think we would agree, Tiffany, that we need to win this war on multiple fronts. We have to fight the battle, hit them at the flanks everywhere we can through the legal system, fight to take back control of the public school boards, also fight for school choice. None of these one policies are silver bullets. And so we do have a lot of work on our hands.
We do. I think whoever is running for mayor in New York that's willing to step up and do this. I wish Eric Adams had switched a Republican party and had said he would lift the charter cap as part of his platform. But message to New York mayor or mayoral candidates, if you want to win, lift the charter cap, tell New York City parents that you are willing to give them a choice as to where their children go to school.
Because $40,000 per year, imagine what you do. Give us half, give us a third of it. And it's just crazy to me how much money is being wasted and how these kids are not learning. So what's crazy to me is in their governor's race, Kathy Hocal actually agreed with Lee Zeldin in one of their final debates saying that she would support lifting the charter school cap.
Now she's in power. It has done zero to live. Shapiro did the same thing in Pennsylvania. Same thing.
And I wrote about it because I tried to box him in that corner to try to get as much sunlight on it so that he would follow through. But he didn't. Now you have Gavin Newsom creating his own podcast saying he's against the. So what do you think about that kind of stuff?
Typically on the one hand, people are like, don't believe him, they're making crap up. But the optimist in me says something we talked about earlier is politicians respond to power, even if they don't believe it. I think it's good news that they even if they're being dishonest in the short run, at least they're they know they need to move that way and it might take longer than we'd hope. But hopefully that momentum continues.
Yeah. So first of all, hey, Gavin, if you're watching, I'd love to come on your podcast. So you talked about Moms for Liberty when you were meeting with Charlie Kirk and interviewing him. So have me on.
I'll come out for a chat. You know, I think you're right. I think the fact that you're seeing Democrats that are waking up and recognizing that they need to move on this issue because it's becoming a hard one for them to win on or to lose. They're going to lose on it, right?
And so they know that they need to change their position. So I think that's good. And I think that Gavin will do whatever is politically expedient for him. And if he believes in California, that this is an issue that he's going to have to bend on, that he's going to.
I believe that, you know, I would just say, you know, I've said before and I say this with all the kindness in my heart, if Gavin's lips are moving, he's lying. He has lied and lied to California parents. His wife is a part of comprehensive sex education in schools all across the United, all across California, excuse me. And if anyone wants to see the receipts of that, I will post them later today.
So, but it is good that you're seeing that they are, they're knowing that they want to switch, right? On this issue, I just think, you know, Charlie called out. I think it was the Latin next thing. Gavin said, oh, no one in my political Latinx.
No one in my administration says Latinx. And then CNN actually fact checked him and said, oh, here are all the time Gavin said Latinx. So I think it just have to take it with a grain of salt. There are Democrat leaders that are willing to stand up and take a stand on these issues.
Sean Theory from Texas Democrat Democrat. Yeah, she switched the Republican party. She took a stand against gender transition for minors. Her party primaried her.
So she's no longer going to be serving in that seat. But there are genuine Democrats, who I think are waking up, just like many of our friends who are Democrats, you know, Jen say, Daniel Cotson, two really good friends of mine, who were in San Francisco during COVID, Daniel leaves to post about the fact that he couldn't take his kids on the playground. There was caution tape all over it. And the police came up and pulled this kids off the playground across from city hall, but he could see people sitting outside of city hall doing drugs.
And the police said nothing to them. So there are really good people who were Democrats, who are waking up like Elon, like Joe Rogan and others. And so we just have to hope that if we keep being loud, we keep showing the hypocrisy, we keep showing what's really best for kids. I think the bottom line with the abolishing the Department of Education are dismantling and then giving more power back down to the states to your point earlier Matt, is you are going to see some really drastic differences between states and academic achievement, between, you know, great leaders, education leaders in those states that are going to take steps to make, get back to the basics, make reading a priority, we're going to see the results of that for the kids.
And then you're going to see other states where the kids are going to stagnate. And, you know, hopefully that'll put pressure on politicians to start making different choices. And there are some Democrats that have actually switched parties on this issue. Trisha Kotham and North Carolina, she was a Democrat legislator.
Marcia Maynard, right? Misha Maynard, yeah, in Georgia. I think Misha may have lost her reelection, kind of like Sean Theory in Texas. The thing is, when there's just one or two that kind of come to the right side, the Democrat party and unions can primary them.
But if they all kind of banded together and all supported school choice or other bills that promote parental rights and education, the unions want to be able to pick them off anymore. They would have no control over them. Let that be a message to funders, right?
You know, that maybe we need to be a little bit more strategic about how we help to support groups of Democrats who are ready to switch on this issue and try to bring them to our side. Because ultimately, it's not about what letter is after your name. It's about making good decisions for kids. Did you see what happened?
I'm sure both of you guys saw what happened in Texas last night. I did a tweet and then I had to go back and rewrite history basically because I had announced a Democrat signed on to the Texas school choice bill. And then like an hour later, she comes out tweeting, oh no, it was a clerical error. Do you get this?
What do you think happened with that? Do those errors? I had a DM from a state representative said those errors don't really happen. She must have heard from party leadership or something.
Yeah, listen, the intimidation factors are huge. I remember that a union member in my own county got up and spoke at a podium during COVID about some of the concerns that she was having. And when she stepped away from the podium and was walking back to her seat, one of the union members in the crowd went like this to her. And I was like, man, yeah, no, I'm not kidding, fierce, fierce, fierce intimidation factors.
So once people start actually losing some races on this issue and it is my hope that they will, then we'll see some changes happen. I hope kids don't have to be abused in the process. I think that's the hardest part of this is watching kids in schools where they're not learning how to read. Parents not being able to get their kids out.
So that's why I say like being complicit in the harm of your child. Imagine if you're a mom whose kid goes to one of those 13 Baltimore schools where 0% of kids are proficient in math. You basically are sending your kid every day to a school where you know they're not going to get the skills they need to unfold their full potential in life. That is heartbreaking to me.
And they don't have a choice about whether or not to send them there. So I think, you know, you look at the little girls, the girls that were forced to change in front of the male in the Illinois locker room. The teachers forced them to change in front of a boy. That's abuse.
These children are being abused. And so, you know, it's really going to take us stepping up and saying, we're not going to let you abuse our children anymore. Yeah, for sure. Okay, on that note, speaking of the Illinois situation where those girls were forced to change in front of that boy, I have some audio that I wanted.
I mentioned this before we started. Neither of you have heard it. I've heard it a lot of times because I had to clip it up and try to get it all in order and for you guys to listen to. But just to set the stage here a little bit, this is a high school student who recorded her English teacher.
The high school student runs track and field, competed against a biological male and in multiple track meets. She was assigned to give a speech, you know, public speaking assignment in the English class. And she spoke about transgender athletes and spoke against that. And her own personal experience, she also talked about she mentioned some of Rayleigh Gaines' work and that kind of thing.
So, subsequent to that, the teacher said, I need to talk to you privately along. So that that private conversation is what I'm going to play for you. I can't play the whole thing it's too long, but I'm going to play a couple of clips and I just want both of your reactions. This is by the way, this hasn't been played anywhere.
For now, the student and the parents of this student have chosen to stay anonymous. They don't have a lot of choice for schools in their area and they want their, so that's the sad part. And we should talk about that after we listen. But let me play a couple of parts of this for you and get your reaction, okay.
Let me set it up. What the challenges are in here and not try to like come into anything different because your opinion is your opinion. And frankly, I think it's a fine opinion. It's a normal opinion and you have evidence to support it and that's what this is about.
But there are some elements in it that are controversial. So I just wanted to look at educate you a little bit on it as opposed to like learn, right? Because we all come from different plates and perspectives and blah, blah, blah, blah. So whatever you have, the speech is like, and your perspective is completely acceptable, completely normal.
Like, it's very challenging. I've also competed against transgender females and things and it's a huge challenge. And it's a challenging topic, specifically because Trump, whether you like him or not, has really kind of utilized just a weapon to direct attention to something while they do other things that are very devious and background. So the things that are controversial are like when you speak biological male, boy, male athletes, you know, men.
So I'm using like, I'm taking it from the perspective that it's more of like a not a concerted effort to isolate or like be cool, but instead like maybe just a lack of understanding and how that can be harmful to people. Okay, words are harmful to people and oh my come on. Right. Saying men or male athlete is saying the truth.
Yeah, saying the truth. And oh, by the way, she had to give a jab to President Trump. These things might be supported by the evidence, she says, but Trump is really just doing this because he's a really bad person. Come on.
I'll tell you what, I prayed to God that President Trump would pick this topic up and understand it better because I think it was a topic he didn't really know a lot about. And when I interviewed him at the end of August, I asked him specifically about this issue because it was so incredibly important to all of us that have been fighting for girls and for children and for their health and well-being for him to take a stand on this issue. So I am thankful to all of the amazing people on his team that helped to make this an issue that he engaged on. It was an issue that wasn't easy to engage on.
And he did and he did it in a very big way. So I love President Trump. I'm very thankful for him. And he ended up winning the parent vote by nine points.
So you've brought that setup several times, Cory, over the past several weeks and as we've been talking you and I. And maybe, and I don't know this but I think it's reasonable to assume that that nine points came from a lot of like moderate Democrats who hate this, hate what their party has done on this issue. They don't agree with it. I think we have plenty, I've seen plenty of evidence in its anecdotal but as you just scroll through X and find all of these former Democrats that are like you know two years ago they were saying I'm politically homeless and today they're saying I voted for Trump and I'm glad I did because look at what he's done for women and girls.
So I think that nine points that you bring up from time to time Cory is is a lot of them came from another party or no party at all and said I have to support the guy look I don't want to agree with him on all these other things but he's the one candidate that's willing to protect women and girls. I think that's interesting. Okay, one last clip and there's a lot more to this if you're interested afterward Tiffany I can share the whole thing with you but um here's the last one this one's audio only so we're gonna have to hope that this plays left and up oh I can turn up the volume on this one. Okay ready here it goes.
So biological male was something that was said previously but it's not and you hear it. You said what it said is like assigned male at birth it's considered a sensitive thing to people that do identify as either transgender female or male. Now I'm not getting into like whether or not you believe that it's such a thing or not that's for you but in like academic arenas it's it's really important to use like the correct terminology so that misgendering people. So you're creating like a sense to people because we do have a transgender male in our class and it was really offensive to them not necessarily like your message but the misgendering.
It's really a compelled speech. Yeah right yeah. So moms really brought a title one suit against the Biden administration. We had four amazing moms around the United States that were plaintiffs in that suit and South East Indian Legal Foundation represented us and what the moms spoke about was exactly this.
It was compelled speech. It was the idea that the government could force your child to lie in school and that is what that teacher is doing. She is saying you can have your opinion. You just can't share it.
You can't. Yeah. You can't hurt other people's feelings. So I would like to hear the rest of it because I think these parents have a lawsuit in their hands.
I think they probably do and what's interesting is later right after this. She says now I want you to know that and you'll hear it later privately but what she says is now I'm a big supporter of free speech and the first amendment is important but just so you know if you move on in this competition because this speech was part of like if you get a certain grade or whatever then you can move on to another round and give another speech and she said just so you know if you move on based on your grade on this then you would have to change a lot of things in this. So it's not just a suggestion anymore. No.
No. I love free speech but I'm going to make you change your speech. If you want to get a good grade in my class and move on. I've got a few lawyers that would like to hear this audio and help us with the event.
And this also brings up the whole debate about banning cell phones in schools. I used to kind of be okay with the idea but then I saw that Randy Weingarten was in favor of banning the cell phones and then I started seeing all the videos and I've shared some of these audio recordings from students myself in California and I went aha they don't want us to be able to share what's happening and so that's I think that's the big downside if we do ban cell phones in schools. It's a catch 22 right?
Yeah. It's a catch 22. There's a bigger issue at play here and it's the fact that teachers don't have the authority in the classroom to be able to tell students to get off their phone is you know we had a dear colleague letter that went out from the Obama administration saying you know we have to spare it. Discipline outcomes as far as discipline is concerned you know and that really put a chill on discipline in general across the United States of America in our schools.
The number one reason why here at teachers are leaving the classroom is discipline issues they cannot enforce any type of discipline measures in their classroom the administration does not have their back and so like any of this stuff if the teacher could just say to the students or if they had the authority to say no cell phones out in the classroom and if you get I mean my own kids district did it where you get you get you get one time you get a a detention two times you get in school suspension three times you get suspended and it's harsh but it stops let me tell you and so they've been able to crack down on it so you know these aren't the I've heard of teachers and administrators actually taking the cell phone of a student enforcing them to remove things from their phone fights that they've recorded or different things we don't see a fraction of the violence that's happening in America's public schools and so you know the police officers can't come up to your kid and take their phone that's illegal search and seizure I don't know why a government employee would think that they could do that I just you know I think phones are a distraction there is no doubt about it I do believe that there are a problem in the classroom but until we really address the root issue of the fact that teachers do not have a authority in the classroom to direct students behavior I just think we're you know so banned so you ban phones and what you know stuff like this happens and kids don't have evidence of it and I know it's not a good idea I know there are probably people listening to me saying like this the worst idea that you would keep phones in the classroom but unfortunately this is happening across the country and they're being a cone of silence around schools isn't necessarily what I think it's best for kids so cool so maybe cameras in classrooms I know a couple people yeah and face it towards the teacher and not the kids yeah and even if it's just audio and only the parents can access it but cameras in classrooms would stop this too right you know I mean I know the unions would freak out about it you don't want kids to have phones well then we put cameras in class we have cameras and daycares to watch our kids when we drop off our kids and take care no one has a problem with that yeah they look at by the way because that's been brought up cameras there's been legislation introduced in a couple of different places and not just there have been other states where it hasn't been introduced but it's been floated and man they hate that they just hate it okay so Tiffany we've hit the hour sometimes we don't have enough to talk with people and we go 40 minutes and we call it a day but with you we could probably talk all day for several days in a row so thanks for being such a great guest Tiffany and everybody go follow Tiffany on X Tiffany where's the what's the best place people can find you and your handle and whatnot yeah so um primarily on X at the number four Tiffany Justice you can follow me and heritage we're going to be starting up this parental rights network going to have amazing leaders around the country coming together every week if that's something that you're interested in if you're a leader in your state and you want to be a part of these amazing calls where you're going to get the breaking news about what's happening on the legal front and parental rights and legislation and policy this will be a call that you will not want to miss and we're going to work to have a once a year summit to which will be a lot of fun so yeah follow me for the latest and greatest and parental rights and we are going to take our country back moms and dads I do believe have helped us to save America we need to continue to have President Trump's back and all of the members of his cabinet as they work to make this change happen that the system doesn't like and you know as a disruptor who went into a public school system and disrupted the system and said we were going to put kids first I know they try to call you a chaos agent they try to pull you down and you just have to stand up shake it off and keep moving well thank you Tiffany Justice for standing up for the kids thank you for being a national leader for parental rights and education thanks for joining the podcast and thanks for being a warrior for education freedom until next time guys thanks for for joining the educational freedom institute podcast our guest today again was Tiffany Justice thank you for listening you can find EFI online at efinstitute.org on Twitter at ef underscore institute and on Facebook at educational freedom institute
