From Kindergarten to Kimmel
MAGA's treatment of K-12 teachers was the warm-up act to taking down comedians
Late night talk show hosts and teachers have a lot in common. Both put on daily live performances reflecting hours of prep but relying on deft spontaneity. Both are masters of discussion. The get better with experience; the great make it look easy. They speak to multiple audiences—in the room, in the office, and at home. They have many bosses and many critics.
In 2025, it seems all Americans have the same top brass, who can threaten our livelihoods if they don’t like what we say. The week that late night host Jimmy Kimmel was suspended by Disney for comments following the killing of right-wing activist Charlie Kirk, dozens of teachers across the US were forced out of their jobs for the same.
The second Trump Administration has been on a tear attacking First Amendment rights, limiting speech and academic freedom at colleges and universities, suing and otherwise pressuring media companies to censor them, kidnapping and deporting students for campus speech, gagging experts in federal agencies, deploying the military to intimidate protesters, working to blur the line between church and state. Actions by MAGA feds and red state pols in the wake of Kirk’s murder have escalated a long campaign to restrict free speech in the US.
Jimmy Kimmel’s suspension broke through to the broader public in ways that other MAGA attacks on free speech have not. A YouGov poll taken the day after Kimmel was taken off the air showed 50% of Americans disapproved of the move. The blowback on Disney from citizens, consumers, even some in the MAGA movement, was strong, resulting in his reinstatement. It’s not just about Kimmel: 68% oppose the government pressuring media companies to cancel shows.
Censorship in K-12
But the public is hearing a lot less about those teachers. (Remember them, back in the second paragraph?) Just as Charlie Kirk’s murder became the occasion for media censorship, it has presented an opportunity for MAGA politicians and their followers seeking to suppress educators’ speech.
The Texas Education Agency announced that it is investigating hundreds of complaints. Some educators could face suspension, firing, or losing their license. Indiana’s attorney general is “telling schools to discipline or fire teachers who make negative comments about [Kirk’s] death.” In South Carolina, an aide was fired after posting Kirk’s own words and critiquing his stance on gun violence.
Educators have long had greater responsibility for and restrictions on their speech than does the general public, and few would disagree that those encouraging violence should face serious consequences. Preventing abuses of speech should not, however, be seen as the primary goal of MAGA leaders, who have proven over the past decade that cowing teachers and controlling education is central to their strategy to secure and cement minority rule.
The end of the first Trump Administration saw the start of a tidal wave of censorship legislation, mostly but not only in red states. The early laws were purportedly meant to protect students from “discomfort” when learning about history or contemporary issues. These laws restrict materials and discussions around race, ethnicity, sex, and gender that MAGA proponents claimed could cause psychological harm and were being used to indoctrinate children. Though they were initially focused on history curriculums, libraries, English classrooms, health programs, social and other science classes, and extracurriculars soon became targets.
By 2023, teachers fearful of backlash were already self-censoring, avoiding political and social topics even more assiduously than they had previously done. In a RAND survey, swaths of teachers even in states that hadn’t passed these kinds of “divisive concepts” laws were avoiding or limiting their discussion of various topics.
Teachers and their administrators have had good reason to be afraid: It isn’t just vocal local MAGA supporters they have to contend with but online harassment campaigns launched by far-right influencers such as Libs of TikTok and conflict-driven local BOE campaigns executed by well-funded groups including Moms4Liberty.
Authoritarians fear satirists, who speak truth to power in ways that appeal to the public. They also fear teachers. This is because they arm the next generation with the tools of democracy, including curiosity, empathy, knowledge, critical thinking, questioning, and confidence.
K-12’s Kimmels
So it was apt when, on the heels of Kimmel’s return to his platform at ABC, journalist Dave Levitan posted on Bluesky: “Do any of the professors or journalists or teachers also get their jobs back or nah.”
Over more than half a decade, K-12 educators have been ousted by MAGA. We only know about some of the dedicated and talented people who have faced disciplinary action, firings, forced resignations, online harassment and death threats, years of costly legal fights. Can we restore those professionals’ careers, safety, peace of mind?
- How about Oklahoma teacher Summer Boismier, who posted a link for her students to a library catalog? Or Em Ramser, who had the graphic novel The Prince and the Dressmaker in her Texas classroom library? Or Sarah Inama, who tacked up a poster in her Idaho classroom that read, “Everyone is welcome here”?
- How about Texas principal James Whitfield, who sent a letter to his community after George Floyd was murdered that used the term “systemic racism”? Or Deon Jackson, a South Carolina district’s first Black superintendent who was fired at the same time as “CRT” was banned? Or Brittany Hogan, who took a job with the title of director of educational equity and diversity in Missouri?
- How about Rydell Harrison, a Connecticut superintendent who posted on Facebook that January 6 was an act of domestic terrorism? Or Florida substitute Brian Covey, whose video of school library shelves, empty amid chaos caused by book banning, went viral? Or Wisconsin’s Melissa Tempel, who tweeted about a Dolly Parton song banned by her school?
- How about the teacher who read an excerpt of an illustrated Diary of Anne Frank in a Texas middle school? Or Katherine Rinderle, who read the picture book My Shadow is Purple to Georgia fifth-graders? Or Toby Price, who read Mississippi children a silly book about farts?
- How about Florida’s AV Vary, who used Mx. in an email? Or Melissa Calhoun, who called her Florida high school student the name they wanted to be called by?
- How about Markayle Gray, who taught the book “Dear Martin” during Black History Month in North Carolina? Or Matthew Hawn, who assigned his Tennessee high school students an article by Ta-Nehisi Coates?
Just as they oppose government censorship of TV shows and personalities, so do most Americans oppose educational censorship. For example, large majorities oppose book bans and 78% are “confident that their community’s public schools select appropriate books for students to read.”
So my question: Energized from restoring Jimmy Kimmel to his place on television, can the attention of this majority be turned toward protecting the celebrities in many in kids’ day-to-day lives, teachers?
Unfortunately, few stories like these make their way to national coverage (How many of the names above have you or I heard?) and MAGA now has more levers for censorship and is adapting to an environment less favorable to state gag orders.
As PEN America has noted, MAGA has been turning away from legislating censorship:
opting instead to disguise their intentions through euphemism and misdirection. This tactic was essential for continuing the campaign to censor America’s classrooms, amid a gauntlet of legal challenges, mounting evidence that gag orders are unpopular and carry no political benefit, and growing momentum for efforts to block censorship legislation.
Surveys of teachers make clear that in today’s environment of lawless leaders, unmoderated social media, and political violence, state laws aren’t necessary for censorship to take place. Freedom to Read project reported, “Teachers shared vivid examples illustrating how censorship committees operate behind closed doors or under the radar altogether.”
The stakes and what we can do
When teachers are silenced, so are the wide diversity of voices they otherwise bring into classrooms, facilitating the conveyance of disinformation and propaganda.
With Trump once again in the White House, MAGA has more tools—including federal dollars to withhold, a captive Supreme Court, a weaponized DOJ, and a multi-media bully pulpit—in their fight to replace diverse perspectives and a full history in public schools with a pro-MAGA, Christian nationalist curriculum.
Last week, the USDOE announced its new “civics” initiative. It’s a perfect example of what PEN America calls “censorship by stealth.” Americans across the political spectrum have clamored for more civics education in schools. Of course, that’s not what this is. It’s a massive propaganda effort by an authoritarian regime designed to warp Social Studies, History, English curriculum. It’s also another of many ways by which MAGA is working to break down the wall between church and state in schools with the help of a mess of well-funded far-right groups.
The usual suspects, many of which were behind Project 2025, are on the job, including Heritage Foundation, Hillsdale College, Moms4Liberty, Faith and Freedom Coalition, Turning Point USA, and PragerU. (Unfamiliar with the slavery-apologist PragerU curriculum? Find out more here.) Resisting this indoctrination-in-civics clothing is essential to future freedoms, including freedom of speech.
Showing up at local board of ed meetings in person or remotely, connecting with educators, and providing vocal support for teachers and librarians is more work than canceling a Hulu subscription, but the urgency and the impact is far greater.
Resources below!
