You don't have to be a conservative to hate wokeness. Many on the left recognize that wokeness has gone too far, and some liberals actually blame it for eschewing "working-class interests to make room for cultural concerns," says Marxist Fredrik deBoer. In that sense, wokeness cost the Democrats the election.
Opposition to woke policies, especially as they relate to education, is at the heart of Donald Trump's cultural critique. His plans to combat wokeness will center on the teaching and implementation of woke policies at America's schools from the primary grades to graduate school.
“There are a lot of very smart people who are very excited to get into positions where we can actually start making change happen,” said Tiffany Justice, a Trump ally and the co-founder of the conservative parents' group Moms for Liberty.
Trump's plans include eliminating the Department of Education, a goal of Republican presidents since Ronald Reagan. But there's just too much federal funding going to too many GOP districts for any attempt to completely repeal the DoE. Besides, spending on education is politically popular. An Associated Press poll last year found that two-thirds of Americans think the government spends too little on education.
“I don’t think you’ll see enormous cuts because that’s super unpopular,” said Michael Petrilli, president of the Thomas B. Fordham Institute, a conservative education think tank.
More realistically, taking a hatchet to the funding and some of the more outrageous mandates is more than possible. Beyond that, combating wokeness at every level of the American educational system will be Trump's top priority. He will attack the problem using the power of the presidential purse to force change.
Although a president can’t immediately cut off money to any school, he could use various laws to pressure schools to address antisemitism on campus, disband programs that focus on nonwhite student groups, or reduce accommodations for transgender students.
Trump has said that he believes that Title IX, which bars sex discrimination in education, should prevent transgender girls from playing on female sports teams. This would be a stark reversal from the Biden administration, which has interpreted Title IX to prohibit discrimination based on gender identity.
There's a lot of work to do in this area, and the forces arrayed against change are formidable. As we saw with the Biden administration, Trump's education secretary Betsy DeVos's commonsense Title IX reforms, which reestablished the rights of the accused in sexual assault and harassment cases, were overturned in Biden's first month in office. Clearly, it is the job of the Republican Congress to codify these changes into law.
Trump has indicated he will use civil rights law to challenge the teaching of critical race theory in schools. It's a good idea as long as the reforms maintain the historical integrity of the lessons. That hasn't always been the case in the fight against critical race theory. The silly notion that some blacks benefitted from slavery just because they learned useful skills fails to note the depravity, cruelty, and inhumanity of the institution. It confuses the entire historical critique of slavery by trying to justify it.
Trump is also open to "universal school choice."
Trump has indicated he would support the Educational Choice for Children Act, already proposed in Congress. The law would provide $10 billion in federal tax credits to go toward private-school tuition, home schooling or other educational costs.
Backers say the bill would provide money for up to two million children, and help parents direct and customize their children’s education. School-choice critics say these programs drain resources from public schools.
The Educational Choice for Children Act was voted out of the Ways and Means Committee in September, the first time a school choice bill had been voted out of a congressional committee in history. It's got a long way to go to be passed, but with Trump's support, it has a chance.
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