Right-wing Texas Gov. Greg Abbott’s threat to challenge the Supreme Court decision guaranteeing a public school education to all children regardless of legal status should be horrifying to all decent people.
To the folks at Fox News, it’s the fruit of a years-long campaign, Media Matters reports. The media watchdog said that the propaganda outlet has targeted undocumented children and their access to a public school education for at least a decade now, and as recently as January.
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“In January, Fox & Friends host Brian Kilmeade said the Biden administration is ‘poisoning these cities, and these towns, and these schools, with people that don't belong there,’ regarding people who recently crossed the border,” Media Matters reported. Kilmeade really doesn’t like migrant children, also complaining about them during segments in September and October.
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Of course, we already know he’s a terrible person (and not just because he works at Fox News). In 2018 he was defending the insurrectionist administration’s family separation policy. “Like it or not, these are not our kids,” he said at the time. “Show them compassion, but it’s not like he’s doing this to the people of Idaho or Texas. These are people from another country.” But the news that incoming White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre once called the outlet “racist” is supposed to be controversial? No, it's just fact.
“During a 12-week period between March and June 2021, 32 segments on the channel saw Fox personalities and guests baselessly suggesting that migrant children are a burden to the United States educational system,” the report continued. “Fox & Friends led the field in pushing this attack, accounting for 40% of these segments.” This time span coincides with a period of larger numbers of unaccompanied children arriving to the southern border to seek asylum.
Tucker Carlson, who has promoted white supremacist “replacement theory” on the air, has also attacked kids’ education, the report said: “Carlson in August 2014 similarly asked ‘about the rights of the kids who were born here, the American citizens who presumably have the right to a decent education and aren't getting one because of this?” This was was one of those situations where probably Carlson made that face (you know which one) and bullshitted aloud things that aren’t actually really happening. If anything, it’s Republicans who are blocking children from a decent education through laws like the “Don’t Say Gay” bill, in just one example.
And it’s Abbott who’s also blocking kids from “a decent education,” as Carlson claimed. Challenging the historic 1982 Supreme Court decision that guaranteed all kids an education has been the fever dream of racists like Stephen Miller. Now with a radical 6-3 court in their hands, it could be a reality.
“This is very telling, and I want everybody to pay specific attention to the phrasing of this,” Abbott’s Democratic challenger, Beto O’Rourke, said in an Education Week report. “Governor Abbott is against providing public education to all the children of the state of Texas. Now he’s saying out loud what we know he’s been working on ever since he became governor—he’s trying to defund our public schools.
“Asked about Abbott’s remarks, White House press secretary Jen Psaki said, ‘That’s ultra-MAGA right there,’” Education Week continued. “Denying public education to kids, including immigrants to this country, I mean, that is not a mainstream point of view.” But the GOP’s agenda is about minority rule, whether through judicial force, political violence, cheating, or all of the above.
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