Rantz: High school teacher asks students to show proof Donald Trump is a fascist

A teacher in the Mukilteo School District assigned students to show evidence that former President Donald Trump is a fascist. But students courageously pushed back against the blatantly biased assignment, exposing a deeper issue of partisan teaching in classrooms. It’s just the latest example of a one-sided, anti-Trump curriculum where educators slip in far-left political perspectives under the guise of academic debate.

In this case, an Advanced Placement (AP) government & politics class at Kamiak High School centered an assignment around recent claims by Vice President Kamala Harris and former Trump Chief of Staff John Kelly, who labeled Trump a “fascist.” The assignment required students to define fascism and “provide evidence that Harris and Kelly’s assessment is possibly correct.”

This Oct. 24 assignment, confirmed by the Kamiak High School principal to “The Jason Rantz Show” on KTTH, was explicitly crafted to support the narrative that Trump is a fascist — an inflammatory and politically charged claim with no room for balanced debate. Yet, despite the clear political bias, the principal doesn’t appear to see any problem with it.

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Is this assignment meant to call Donald Trump a fascist?

A former student flagged the assignment to Kamiak High School principal Stephen J. Shurtleff, prompting an immediate investigation. Shurtleff confirmed that students were savvy enough to challenge the assignment’s clear bias. They questioned the one-sided prompt.

“So far as I could find, no students refused to participate in the activity. Rather, students asked the teacher if they could provide evidence that Harris and Kelly’s assessment was incorrect. The teacher approved that request; AP Government & Politics is a college-level course that develops students’ skills with identifying and justifying positions regardless of their personal beliefs,” the principal explained.

The assignment’s original framing, however, assumes Trump is a fascist and tasks students with finding supporting evidence. But why was it up to students to raise the obvious question? If the intent were truly to foster fair and balanced critical thinking, the assignment would have asked students whether Harris and Kelly’s claims are accurate or not.

This framing doesn’t just suggest an anti-Trump bias — it underlines it, reflecting a disturbing trend in the classroom where politically charged perspectives are subtly enforced as the default.

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Students push back but parents need to be alert

The principal assured parents that students would be graded on the strength of their evidence, not the stance they take. But why would any student feel confident in fair grading when the assignment’s framing is so blatantly partisan?

Kamala Harris has faced accusations of Marxism. Has there been any assignment casting her in a negative light, asking students to find evidence supporting that claim? Of course not.

This selective framing shows a disturbing tolerance for politically motivated teaching that should deeply concern parents about the unchecked spread of ideological indoctrination within public schools.

One silver lining of remote learning during the COVID-19 pandemic was that parents had a front-row seat to the politics creeping into their children’s curriculum. Now that students are back in the classroom, parents aren’t as aware of these biases. It falls on students to stay vigilant and call out these assignments when they see them. If they don’t, we’ll soon revert to the pre-COVID reality where teachers wield their influence to indoctrinate students — while parents remain largely in the dark.

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