October 2025 — Ed Reporter Monthly Email Edition

Most people have heard of the 1619 Project sponsored in 2019 by the New York Times, which served to accelerate the spread of “action civics” among other things including the related critical race theory (CRT) and antiracism curricula. For years, the concept of action civics lurked in the shadowy realm of leftist educational agitprop but was officially greenlighted in 2012 under the Obama Administration, when the U.S. Department of Education issued the report A Crucible Moment: College Learning and Democracy’s Future.

If one reads between the lines, the opening quote in this report provides a clue as to its intent: “Each generation must work to preserve the fundamental values and principles of its heritage … to narrow the gap between the ideals of this nation and the reality of the daily lives of its people; and to more fully realize the potential of our constitutional, democratic republic….” (emphasis added). To many, this implies a need to deviate from teaching children about America’s founding documents, history, and system of government, and replace it with politicized instruction in identity politics and victimology.

The 2012 report emphasizes “a national call to action” and admits K-12 education lays “critical foundations for civic responsibility,” without which “developing crucial understandings of democracy’s history and principles [and] any hopes of raising national civic literacy and civic agency are likely to be undermined, both for those who will attend college and even more so for the portion of high school graduates who may never enroll.”

The report further states:

• Reordering current priorities and reversing the civic deficit will require unprecedented, widely coordinated, and collective commitment and action. No single entity can effect change at the level and scale required. Leadership will be essential from multiple groups such as K-20 educational systems, civic associations, religious organizations, businesses, community members, nonprofits, government agencies, unions, and youth.

Action civics, also dubbed “New Civics,” is essentially the teaching of radical activism in lieu of traditional civics content. The National Association of Scholars (NAS) recognized the problem in 2021 and answered by creating the Civics Alliance, a coalition of educators and policymakers committed to restoring “true civics education across the United States.” (See Education Reporter, June 2025, May 2023, and July 2022.) The alliance calls action civics “a grave new risk” wherewith proponents are seeking “to turn the traditional subject of civics into a recruitment tool of the progressive left.”

The Civics Alliance contends that action civics “has already advanced in America’s education system to a far greater extent than most people realize,” mostly because well-meaning reformers “have failed to see the many wolves in sheep’s clothing.” Alliance members say these folks “should not endorse supposedly nonpartisan New Civics education that is really left-wing activism in disguise,” but instead “must work for true civics education that explicitly excludes the imposter New Civics and its favored pedagogies.”

To counteract the new (or action) civics, the alliance created a Civics Curriculum Statement that calls on Americans to insist on civics education based on real historical dates and documents, and [that] bans the teaching of anti-American propaganda and “Neo-Marxist forms of ‘Social Justice’ Activism.”

The statement details what the ideal civics curriculum should look like at various grade levels, with a focus on “educating students exclusively on the academic content of civics.” The courses, they say, “should not be exercises in partisanship or ventures in social activism.” With such a program then, students “will study primary sources throughout and read serious secondary books and articles in quantities appropriate for college-level courses.”

The alliance adds that civics courses must also teach students civic virtues such as how to engage in civil debate. “Civics classes must teach these virtues and capacities because legal protections of rights in a free republic ultimately depend on a cultural consensus that must be transmitted to each new generation. This consensus includes individual liberty for every citizen, especially with respect to political speech and conscience….”

The Civics Alliance website offers a variety of information, including toolkits parents and supporters of genuine civics education can use to advocate for such curricula at the federal, state, and local levels.

Trump Administration wants ‘informed and patriotic’ civics instruction

Early this month, news broke that the U.S. Department of Education issued sweeping actions in several areas, including civics education, for which it is making “a record $153 million investment.” These new initiatives reflect the Trump Administration’s focus on “restoring civics education and advancing a shared understanding of America’s founding principles.”

According to an article on NPR.org, the department is partnering “with more than 40 conservative organizations to create programming around civics aimed at the celebration of the 250th anniversary of the United States.” The project is called “the America 250 Civics Education Coalition,” and will be overseen by the Education Department and led by the non-profit America First Policy Institute (AFPI). The coalition “includes Turning Point USA, the Heritage Foundation, Hillsdale College, and other conservative state and national organizations.” Not surprisingly, the NAS’s Civics Alliance is also among the participating institutions.

Education Secretary Linda McMahon said the purpose of the coalition’s initiative is “to ensure every young American understands the beauty of our nation and is equipped with the civic knowledge required to contribute meaningfully to its future.”

It’s no secret that President Trump has long supported traditional civics instruction. During his first term, he advocated for the President’s Advisory 1776 Commission and its Final-Report, which was created to restore American civics education based on a history of our founding principles that is “accurate, honest, unifying, inspiring, and ennobling.” Early in his second term, the president issued an Executive Order striking down radical indoctrination in America’s public schools, including anti-American civics instruction.

The recently announced Education Department grants “will fund American History and Civics Seminars hosted by universities and nonprofit organizations ahead of the nation’s 250th anniversary in 2026.” They will also support the “creation of civics toolkits, classroom resources, and events promoting civil discourse and constitutional literacy.” The goal is to continue fostering “informed and patriotic citizenship” among the nation’s youth.

Education Department status

While many are applauding these latest efforts by the Trump Education Department to overcome woke anti-American propaganda and restore faith in America’s founding principles, others are wondering when the department will finally be shut down.

Recent reports indicate that the process is moving forward. The Daily Caller reported that the administration has launched a new web portal “for streamlining federal workforce development programs,” as it moves to shift this responsibility to the U.S. Department of Labor (DOL).

This change includes the transfer of funds and staff to the DOL, as the Education Department announced in a Sept. 8 press release. Secretary McMahon expressed confidence “that the Department of Labor is well positioned to cooperatively administer, implement, and streamline these critical career and adult education programs.”

The press release further stated that the collaboration between the two federal agencies began in May with the signing of an “Interagency Agreement (IAA), a tool routinely utilized by government agencies to procure services, share resources, collaborate, and ensure efficient service delivery.”

The transfer of federal workforce development programs was actually announced in early March via one of Trump’s many Executive orders, and is the latest development in the administration’s efforts to dismantle the Department of Education.

Around that same time, the department began a “reduction in force” affecting nearly half of its employees. More recently, special education programs covered under the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) are being moved to the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), for which the administration has been accused by liberals of causing “disruption and uncertainty.”

The president appears to be doing what he can through executive and regulatory actions to dismantle the U.S. Department of Education. However, the overarching consensus is that a complete dissolution requires legislative action by Congress.

In the meantime, conservative organizations, backed by the downsized Education Department, are hoping to restore traditional civics education that fosters pride in America’s youth along with the belief that the American Dream is still alive and well.

“In more sinister ways, children’s involvement was never a byproduct of sexual liberation but rather the ultimate intent.” So wrote freelance journalist and mom Lisa Ann Thomson, in Public Square Magazine, January 2024. She was describing the sexual revolution that began as far back as the turn of the 20th Century, and bemoaned the many ways “the incessant sexualizing of our children from seemingly all quarters” continues unabated.

Thomson astutely noted that “20th-century theories are impacting the sexualization of children today, starting with the influence of Sigmund Freud, who posited that child development should be understood in psychosexual stages, including his Oedipal Complex theory.” She added that Freud’s protégé, Austrian psychoanalyst Wilhelm Reich, “coined the term ‘sexual revolution’ with his 1936 treatise of the same title.”

Then there was Alfred Kinsey, a zoologist whose fraudulent sex research was not exposed until years after he published two influential books, Sexual Behavior in the Human Male in 1948, and Sexual Behavior in the Human Female in 1953, which earned him the title “father of the sexual revolution.” Kinsey believed children were sexual from birth and he used pedophiles as “scientific observers” of his “experiments” involving the sexual abuse of more than 2,000 children, some of them infants.

The late Dr. Judith Reisman played a significant role in exposing Kinsey’s flawed and even criminal research. Reisman worked tirelessly for 30 years, amassing a comprehensive body of data on Kinsey while forming a network of allies that included Phyllis Schlafly, who helped promote Reisman’s books and publicize her research. (See Education Reporter, April 2021 and The Phyllis Schlafly Report, January 1995.)

In 2005, the Heritage Foundation published an article titled The Kinsey Whitewash about a film then in theaters starring Liam Neeson which, the article said, portrayed Kinsey as “an embattled and troubled hero who sought only to help educate America on matters of human sexuality.”

But as Heritage pointed out: “Kinsey’s goal was to radically redefine what was considered normal and abnormal behavior. He succeeded in many respects – in large measure, ironically enough, because of his blatant disregard for scientific principles.” The article continued:

• Kinsey’s volunteers were disproportionately comprised of homosexuals, bisexuals, prostitutes, and convicts – more in his sample than in society as a whole. So unreliable were his sampling methods that famed psychologist Abraham Maslow, who expressed early interest in Kinsey’s sexuality research, refused to work with him because of his methods.

Heritage further observed that Kinsey’s primary source of information “was a habitual pedophile who kept detailed records on the hundreds of young boys and girls he had abused over many years … Kinsey had a longstanding professional relationship with this man and included an untold amount of his records and notes in his ‘research.’”

Despite all this, the façade of Kinsey’s legitimacy continues to be maintained by the Kinsey Institute, which still operates at Indiana University in Bloomington. Since 2014, a group called Stop The Kinsey Institute has tried to raise awareness of how the “harmful work” of the institute has been given legitimacy and prestige through the granting of “consultative status” by the UN’s Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC) in April of that year.

Mainstreaming child sexualization

Almost no one would deny that children today are exposed at every turn to sexual imagery and themes, from mainstream television programming and commercials to movies, and primarily through the internet, social media, and outright pornography accessible 24-7 on smartphones, pads, and computers. Attempts by parents to protect kids by limiting their access to screens and adding porn-filtering software may help, but these controls are often outsmarted by the ever-increasing electronic sophistication of sexual purveyors.

Public Square’s Thomson reported that “by the time kids are in their teens, almost 85 percent of boys and almost 60 percent of girls have viewed pornography, most often accessed through mobile devices.” These figures have been corroborated in other reports.

And there is no respite for kids in the average public-school classroom. For decades sex education has strayed farther and farther from instruction on biological reproduction to include not only explicit sexual content, but the LGBT agenda as well. This “comprehensive sex education (CSE)” is a product of Kinsey’s deviant research, packaged by Planned Parenthood and its spawn, Sex Ed for Social Change, the rebranded SIECUS (Sexuality Information and Education Council of the United States). (See Education Reporter, November 2023 and December 2021.) SIECUS claims the 2019 rebrand followed “a multitude of organizational initiatives that highlight sex education as a vehicle for social change.” [Emphasis added.]

As Thomson wrote, “these 20th century sexologists’ views are sneaking into 21st-century spaces for children,” and this is happening in various ways, including through inappropriate library books, Drag Queen Story Hours, and attempts to normalize deviance through papers published in journals of sociology.

Disturbing new ‘scholarship’

Manhattan Institute Fellow and editor/CEO of Reality’s Last Stand, Colin Wright, described a paper published in Sage Journals (of the American Sociological Association) titled Sex & Sexualities: On Pleasure and Meaning from the Margins, which claims that “sexualities scholarship marginalizes childhood sexual pleasure, positioning children as vulnerable subjects. This article repositions childhood sexualities within a pleasure-centered, globally oriented, and power-aware frame informed by feminist, queer, and decolonial perspectives.” [Emphasis added.]

Wright observed that “some areas of Social Justice scholarship have gone far beyond eccentricity. Many of these papers seem less like genuine research and more like opportunities for authors to dress up personal fetishes in academic jargon.”

But the fact that they are even being labeled “scholarship” is frightening. For example, On Pleasure and Meaning from the Margins, authored by researchers Deevia Bhana and Stefan Lucke from South Africa’s University of KwaZulu Natal, “calls for nothing less than the elimination of the idea of childhood sexual innocence and the ethical taboos against children engaging in sex acts.” Observers wonder if the UN’s embrace of the Kinsey Institute as a consultant played a role in fostering these notions across the globe.

Wright believes the ideas put forth in the South African paper may be viewed as “laying the intellectual groundwork for dismantling age-of-consent protections.” Indeed, such an agenda has existed for decades; again, largely as a result of the flawed Kinsey research. (See Education Reporter, January 2024.)

The latest twist in the proliferation of this aberrant thinking is the claim that protecting the innocence of children in sexual matters is “oppressive, Western, and colonial,” and therefore must “logically be dismantled.” Bhana and Lucke cite so-called “scholars” from other cultures who allegedly “‘reframe childhood sexuality from a site of peril to also a site of pleasure and positive meaning’ as a way to achieve ‘sexual and gender justice’ for children.”

Particularly troubling for Wright, as for any sensible adult, is the paper’s claim that “the notion of childhood sexual innocence is not a natural construct. It is a colonial fiction that has long erased the very thought of putting sexuality and childhood together” and admonishes that “we should view children as pleasurable beings.” The question that immediately comes to mind is whether this concept is being set forth to legitimize the deranged appetites and inclinations of pedophiles or, as a result of recent efforts to de-stigmatize the term pedophile, the inclinations of “minor-attracted persons”?

Wright correctly asserted:

• It is difficult to overstate the danger of this line of scholarship. When academics reframe childhood as a site of “pleasure and erotic desires,” they are not just playing intellectual games. They are eroding the moral and cultural guardrails that protect children from predatory adults. Papers like this serve as permission structures that prepare the ground for activists, educators, and policymakers to normalize discussions of children’s supposed sexual agency and eventually to undermine the legal frameworks that recognize children as categorically unable to consent. By labeling innocence a “colonial fiction,” the authors smuggle in the claim that protecting children is not protection at all, but a form of oppression. This is an academic rationalization for abuse.

While protections against the sexual manipulation and ill treatment of children do still exist in America through various federal initiatives and state laws, the dangers are many and on the rise. Wright pointed out that the entire thrust of sociological papers on child sexuality “is toward dismantling social and legal protections that exist precisely to safeguard children from adult sexual exploitation.”

On Pleasure and Meaning from the Margins’ authors suggest that through feminism, queer scholarship, and the understanding of “structural inequality,” societies can decolonialize the concept of innocence, which they say “recasts minors as passive objects in need of rescue.”

Public Square’s Thomson called attention to this notion in early 2024 when she warned:

• We cannot have an honest or complete conversation about the sexualization of children without including queer theory and pedagogy. Queer theory, as an academic focus, seeks to “disrupt dominant and normalizing binaries,” citing such norms as oppressive. Queer pedagogy is the practical application of queer theory in classrooms.

Bhana and Lucke take it a step further. They criticize the already explicit CSE in schools for focusing on the risks of sexual behavior while “silencing discussions of desire,” which they call “the missing discourse of desire.” As a corrective, they endorse research suggesting that “recognizing childhood sexual agency and pleasure is a probable key to children’s well-being” and advocate for “integrat[ing] erotics into curricula.” In other words, they want explicit discussions of sexual desire and pleasure, applied to children, added to the classroom teaching.

For traditional minded people, this thinking is beyond the pale. But as Thomson noted, “the hope is us, parents.” Her message is that parents must nurture, influence, and supervise, while developing strong relationships with their children. “In matters of sexuality,” she wrote, “parents must be the first, most often, and most important source of information.” Children will learn, but parents will decide if they learn from them or from the internet and the public schools.

Parents should also be watchful for efforts at the federal and/or state levels to pass laws aimed at protecting children, and to encourage their legislators to create such bills or support any that may be in progress.

Reality’s Last Stand’s Wright said the fact that Bhana and Lucke’s paper was published at all “is a disgrace.” He correctly noted that what begins as an abstract idea “in niche corners of academia rarely stays there.” Rather, such ideas spread and infect other areas, from policy to education to the culture at large, much like a cancer spreads in the body.

And finally: “Every society worth defending recognizes that children cannot consent, and that preserving their innocence is a moral imperative.”

Parents and observers who believe CRT (critical race theory) has been routed from education throughout the land should think again. While CRT has been banned in many states and school districts, as well as outlawed by Executive Order at the federal level since last January, it has in many areas been absorbed by a more benign-sounding yet sinister approach known as “ethnic studies.”

But ethnic studies curricula are nothing new. As Stanley Kurtz, senior fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center (EPPC), articulated so well in his August 2024 article that was reprinted in Education Reporter, ethnic studies “traces its origins to the 1968 student strike at San Francisco State College” in California. That strike, Kurtz explained, “ushered in the first Black Studies department, along with the associated founding of the Third World Liberation Front, which demanded and got the first college programs in Ethnic Studies (Chicano Studies, and the like).”

When Kurtz wrote his article, he pointed not to California but to Minnesota as having “the most radical education standards in the country.” He laid the lion’s share of the blame for that on Governor Tim Walz, who at the time was running for vice president alongside presidential candidate, Kamala Harris.

Since then, Walz has continued to support radical left education in his state. Ethnic studies such as can be found in schools in Minnesota and California are, according to Kurtz, “race-based neo-Marxism.” He wrote: “Essentially, ethnic studies is a kind of anti-civics in which students are taught to reject and replace America’s system of government.”

Ethnic studies in Minneapolis

The organization, Defending Education, recently described the latest Minneapolis Public Schools’ (MPS) ethnic studies classes featuring content which teaches students “that capitalism and Western culture are exploitative and lead to slavery, colonialism, genocide, and white supremacy.” Beginning this year, students are required to take at least one of these courses, all of which force them to “examine the concept of race as an organizing construct in US society.”

Defending Education believes the example set by MPS could have statewide implications as an ethnic studies template for other districts in the state. The MPS classes vary among the district’s schools, and are directed at students from virtually every ethnic group except white students of European descent. For example, the list of courses includes:

• African American Studies
• Asian American Studies
• Chicanx/Latinx Studies
• American Indian Studies
• Hmong Studies (Chinese; primarily PRC)
• Race and Identity Studies
• Somali Studies
• Intro to Ethnic Studies, for middle school

The course description for African American History/Culture promises to “explore why African Americans have occupied an oppressed position in the US and how they have resisted this oppression to create social change.” Certain of the African-American ethnic studies courses are open only to black students.

The Chicanx/Latinx Studies course for high school students covers “why Chicanxs/Latinxs have occupied an oppressed position in the US and how they have resisted and created movements for social change and democracy.”

The Intro to Ethnic Studies Education and Multicultural Education is a year-long barrage of propaganda whereby “students can receive a total of 6 college credits if they meet requirements from Minneapolis College.” This course is presented as “an anti-racist tool” and purports to help students “identify the kinds of structural inequalities that are part of K-12 institutions and their development of curriculum, as well as understand the concept of multidimensional identities/intersectionalities.” In other words, straight white students will be placed on a guilt trip and emotionally assaulted for their presumed white supremacy, racism, and bigotry.

This intro course has a prerequisite called “Intro to Urban Education” which, according to Defending Education, lists themes like “‘Race, Identity & School Experiences,’ ‘Indigenous Education,’ ‘Black Lives Matter at School,’ ‘Language Justice,’ and ‘Decolonizing Education.’”

Not surprisingly, ethnic studies also includes “Gender & Sexuality Studies” which evidently qualify as “ethnic” studies because well, the more victims the merrier. One such course description reads in part:

• This course encourages students of all identities to deepen their understanding of how intersectionality in their own life [sic], and uncovers the history of unequal systems of power and privilege and how they have been used to silence members of the queer community. Students will also learn about resilience, and how the LGBTQIA+ community has embraced resistance as a way to transform the communities in which they live.

These politically charged courses replace genuine learning and understanding of other cultures with an agenda that pits students against each other and encourages them to become Marxist activists.

The Free Beacon observed that “the Hmong studies course provides perhaps the best window into the Minneapolis school system’s approach to ethnic studies classes. In one section [called] ‘Power Struggles and Resistance,’ the class centers on the ‘Pillars of White Supremacy,’ complete with a diagram equating capitalism with slavery and on par with war and genocide.”

Required readings are part of the coursework and feature authors including Ibram X. Kendi, Mahmoud El-Kati, Ronald Takaki, along with Howard Zinn’s discredited A People’s History of the United States.

Many of the suggested texts and supplemental materials are related to specific courses, such as An Indigenous Peoples’ History of the United States by Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz, and Mahmoud El-Kati’s The Myth of Race, the Reality of Racism. Another suggested resource is the article “Five Faces of Oppression, which cites Karl Marx to argue that ‘[e]xploitation uses capitalism to oppress.’”

‘White Supremacy’ defined

The MPS Ethnic Studies curriculum defines “White Supremacy” as “a political, economic, cultural, and ideological system that makes white superiority (dominance) a normal and natural part of society.” Accompanying this definition is a quote from the black activist Stokely Carmichael, who later associated himself with the Black Panthers under his new name Kwame Ture:

• …Racism is not a question of attitude; it’s a question of power. Racism gets its power from capitalism. Thus, if you’re anti-racist, whether you know it or not, you must be anti-capitalist. The power for racism, the power for sexism, comes from capitalism, not an attitude.

As committed leftists hammer away at the American way of life, which is the envy of the world, is it any wonder many of today’s schoolchildren are depressed, with increasing numbers requiring “mental health interventions”? While the topic of mental health screenings and treatment in public schools opens another troubling can of worms (see Education Reporter August 2025, May 2024, etc.), one can easily imagine that some kids genuinely need help, given their relentless exposure to depressing and demeaning curricula that offer no academic value whatsoever.

Defending Education’s senior director of strategic initiatives, Paul Runko, warns that “the Minneapolis ethnic studies curricula and requirements represent a growing trend across the country and match those found in Milwaukee, Denver, Boston, and California.” He adds that parents should be aware of ethnic studies courses because if they are not yet in their children’s schools, they will be.

Runko told The Free Beacon: “Schools should unite children around shared values and academic excellence, not divide students by race and perceived oppression status.” This is especially true given the continually poor performance of students in reading and math as revealed by the most recent NAEP scores. (See Education Reporter, February 2025.) Many parents and observers believe it is precisely because of indoctrination such as described above that real academics have taken a backseat.

While the MPS is allegedly revamping its ethnic studies to comply with state standards established in 2021, the district’s Ethnic Studies Department pledges to provide:

• Explicit exploration of identity, intersectionality, and multiplicity.
• Reframing curriculum to be centered around counter-narratives of communities of color.
• Structural analysis of racism and colonialism that works towards dismantling oppression.
• Interdisciplinary learning that leads to action; co-constructed with students.

MPS further claims its courses “deeply examine the concept of race as an organizing construct in US society, and students are provided opportunities to examine their own identity.” The message could not be clearer as to the intent of this “education.” Parents, beware!

Liberals rioting and throwing tantrums over the deportation of illegal alien criminals living in the U.S. should take solace from the fact that some have managed to achieve success before ICE could catch up with them.

One glaring example is Ian Andre Roberts, who was employed as superintendent of Des Moines, Iowa public schools until last month when he was arrested for illegally entering the country from Guyana and fraudulently working in the U.S. using false credentials. He was also in possession of illegal weapons and had prior narcotics and weapons charges.

Roberts’ past is complicated at best. According to Fox News, he arrived in New York City on Aug. 30, 1999 “on an F-1 student visa to attend St. John’s University in Queens.” But a report on Wikipedia claims he entered the U.S. on a visitor visa in 1994, and played soccer at Brooklyn’s St. Francis College before earning his bachelor’s degree from Coppin State University in Baltimore in 1998. Fox reported that Roberts’ final visa expired in 2004 and he “was not legally authorized to work in the U.S. after his employment authorization card expired in 2020.”

The Des Moines Register said Roberts received a “court-issued ‘final order of removal’ for his deportation in May 2024,” which he apparently ignored. In April 2025, an immigration judge in Dallas denied a motion to reopen the case “in absentia.”

When he was arrested on September 26, Roberts was found not only to be in the country illegally but also in possession of a handgun, wrapped in a towel and stowed in his school district issued vehicle along with a knife and $3,000 in cash. Three more weapons were reported to have been found at his Des Moines home.

He was arrested by ICE agents “with assistance from the Iowa State Patrol” but fled the scene. A press release from ICE stated that when officials approached Roberts, “he identified himself then sped off, abandoned his vehicle, and hid in a brushy area about 200 meters away,” where he was apprehended a short time later.

The press release detailed Roberts’ criminal record, beginning with charges of possessing narcotics “with intent to sell” in New York in 1996. Additional minor offenses followed, and then he was charged with weapons possession in 2020, 2022, and 2025.

The Associated Press reported that Roberts has stepped down from his position as head of the largest school district in Iowa with 30,000 students and plans to fight deportation, claiming that a prior attorney told him his immigration status had been “resolved successfully.”

The Des Moines School Board first placed Roberts on paid leave, but changed it to unpaid leave when the weapons charge and his questionable past became news. On Sept. 28, the Iowa Board of Educational Examiners revoked his license, again according to the Des Moines Register.

While Roberts claimed to have received a doctoral degree from Morgan State University in Baltimore, the college revealed that he did not in fact earn a degree, even though he attended Morgan State from 2002-2007. His claims of a second master’s degree from the McDonough School of Business at Georgetown University and an executive MBA program at the MIT Sloan School of Management have both been debunked. Neither school has a record of his attendance.

Lax oversight

Whether through negligence, lax oversight, faulty vetting, or because Roberts was a master at reinventing himself, previous employers were also duped and are now crying foul. Erie, Pennsylvania’s Millcreek Township School District is threatening to sue Roberts and the search firm who recommended him, citing an “egregious breach of trust.” Roberts served as superintendent of the Millcreek district for three years before moving on to Des Moines.

The search firm apparently failed to discover Roberts’ falsified citizenship status and academic credentials. On October 1, Millcreek Township released a statement, as reported by msn.com, which reads in part that the district is “most disappointed to learn about his lack of citizenship and educational credentialing, as Roberts represented to the District that he was a U.S. citizen and that he had earned a Doctorate in Education … The egregious breach of trust that was perpetrated by Roberts, who we hired to lead our schools, is unconscionable.”

Other reports that have surfaced since his arrest show Roberts was a busy man. In addition to his stints at the school districts in Pennsylvania and Iowa, he was principal of a then all-black high school in Washington, DC, in 2012, and worked for the St. Louis, Missouri public schools as a “network superintendent” from 2015 until 2018.

Track star

Various sources confirm that earlier in life, Roberts competed in track and field events, including at the 2000 Olympic Games in Sydney, Australia, where he represented Guyana in the 800-meter dash. While he reportedly won a gold medal at the 1999 Central American and Caribbean Championships in Athletics in Bridgetown, Barbados, he was unsuccessful at the Olympics.

In the U.S., he competed in the Big East Conference while attending St. John’s University, and also competed in the NCAA finals in 1999. His athletic career included several international competitions but appears to have fizzled out after the 2000 Olympic Games.

Costs and consequences

For years, conservatives have raised concerns over the costs and consequences of illegal immigration, as demonstrated by the case of Ian Andre Roberts. In a free society, the task of tracking and monitoring these individuals presents substantial challenges, particularly given the monumental problems created by the open borders policy of the Biden Administration. When DEI and other hiring practice constraints are added to the mix, it becomes easier to see how imposters such as Roberts might slip through the cracks.

The Roberts saga has become a headline-grabbing sensation. The New York Amsterdam News, for example, called the various visas, green cards and other bureaucratic protocols “America’s broken immigration maze.” The article describes a complex system that would benefit from simplification and better oversight, improvements that might make sense but are unlikely to happen given the contentious political climate regarding immigration.

In January 2024, a report summarizing the testimony of Steven A. Camarota, Director of Research for the Center for Immigration Studies, provided a clue as to the staggering cost of illegal immigration, including impacts on education.

For example, nearly 60 percent of illegals use one or more government-sponsored welfare programs, costing taxpayers “approximately $42 billion annually.” Illegal immigrants accumulate about $7 billion annually in emergency medical costs, and illegal immigrant children cost the U.S. public education system more than $68 billion per year.

The Camarota report called for, above all, stricter enforcement of U.S. immigration laws. And despite incessant protests from the left, it appears that through its Homeland Security and U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agencies, the Trump Administration is attempting to do just that.

In September, Nebraska became one of the first states to opt into the Trump Administration’s federal school choice program that was included in the “tax and budget bill” Congress passed at the beginning of July. School choice supporters in the state include its Republican Governor, Jim Pillen, and U.S. Congressmen Adrian Smith and Mike Flood. The three announced Nebraska’s participation in the voucher program at St. Theresa Catholic School in Lincoln. According to the Nebraska Examiner, Pillen said he was not merely opting his state into the program, but was “cannonballing it into the state of Nebraska.” The governor and other supporters of school choice failed to create the state’s own voucher program in 2024. While the teachers’ union, the Nebraska State Education Association (NSEA), called the federal program “a backdoor voucher scheme that diverts public resources into private systems without accountability or limits,” supporters say the opposite is true. Pillen pushed back, telling the Nebraska Examiner that “ballot initiatives in the state are flawed because ‘anybody that writes a big check can pay signature gatherers to get a [measure] on [the ballot]’” and that Nebraskans “totally agree” on school choice. “LB 753 and LB 1402 were signed into law in 2023 and 2024 and created similar tax credit programs at the state level for everyday Nebraskans …. The teachers union stole these opportunities for students in poverty….” Pillen pledged he will pursue additional school choice legislation if reelected “so Nebraska can be ‘competitive’ with other states” in the school choice arena.

Some New York school districts are spending up to $100,000 per student per year, according to a report by The Center Square. Specifically, the investigation showed “a half-dozen school districts” in the state spending more than $70,000 per student, with two districts spending “almost or more than $100,000.” The highest spending districts, notes the report, are comparable in cost “not to their public counterparts but rather the nation’s most elite boarding schools and expensive private colleges such as the Woodside Priory, a private school run by Benedictine monks, and Pepperdine University, a private Christian College,” both of which are in California. The Center Square quoted Zilvinas Silenas, president of the nonpartisan watchdog group, The Empire Center, as saying these per-student spending amounts are “among the highest in the world.” An immigrant from Lithuania, Silenas said “taxpayers should cast a skeptical eye at school district spending. ‘New York State has spent increasing amounts of money on the public schools since 1969, and what results have we gotten?’” He added that The Empire Center is planning to release “a report on out-of-control public-school spending in the near future.” The Center Square acknowledges that its study comes “at a time when the topics of affordability and government spending have been obsessive issues in New York City’s mayoral race.” Democrat Zohran Mamdani “has proposed universal childcare, government-run grocery stores, and fare-free city buses. His plan would cost $7 billion, with $6 billion of that from free childcare for children five and younger.” The Center Square further points out that in high-spending districts, teachers’ salaries are also correspondingly high, although the superintendent of at least one of those districts disputed that the two were related.

On October 17, the group Defending Education filed a civil rights complaint against the Minneapolis Public Schools (MPS) for offering two “Black Culture” courses available only to Black male students. The complaint asserts that these exclusions “leave some students with fewer class options available in order to graduate.” The two courses, “HS BLACK Culture — Building Lives Acquiring Cultural Knowledge,” and “HS BLACK Culture — Building Lives Acquiring Cultural Knowledge (Queens)” are offered at the district’s South High School. An article on Townhall.com says Defending Education’s 80-page complaint charges “that MPS is violating Title VI of the Civil Rights Act, which clearly states that ‘no person in the United States shall, on the ground of race, color, or national origin, be excluded from participation in, be denied the benefits of, or be subjected to discrimination under any program or activity receiving federal financial assistance.’” The group further found that “MPS actively discriminates against its students based on race.” (See also ‘Ethnic Studies’ Takes Another Radical Turn in Minnesota.) Several MPS high schools prohibit white and Asian students from enrolling in certain courses on black culture. The courses count toward the electives requirement, meaning that “white and Asian students must choose from a narrower list of class options in order to graduate.” Defending Education charges that these exclusions violate the 14th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, as well as “a 1954 Supreme Court ruling” that held racial discrimination and segregation of students to be unconstitutional. This includes the “creation of or failure to address a racially hostile environment,” which the MPS is fostering with its “ethnic studies” curricula.

Originally posted at Daily Caller News Foundation.org, October 13, 2025. Reprinted by permission.

Oregon will spend more in its current budget period on free health care for immigrants regardless of legal status than on state police by $500 million or more, according to state officials and budget documents.

Oregon officials expect to spend $1.5 billion in combined state and federal taxpayer dollars on a program that offers health benefits to illegal aliens from 2025 to 2027. They expect to spend $717 million on Oregon State Police over the same period, the documents indicate.

The state’s health agency, the Oregon Health Authority, said in an email to the Daily Caller News Foundation that the state expects to allocate $1.2 billion to the program — originally named “Cover All People” and now called the “Healthier Oregon Program” (HOP). Oregon lays out budgets in two-year “bienniums.”

The federal government will supply 25% of the funding to provide health benefits to illegal aliens in Oregon, the OHA told the DCNF.

The data emblematizes some of the Democratic stronghold’s policy priorities — facilitating illegal immigrants’ access to health care and reducing criminal crackdowns. These very policies have touched off a government shutdown in Washington, D.C., and protests in Portland.

Medicaid — the joint federal-state program that traditionally provided health services to children, pregnant mothers and disabled adults — formally bars illegal immigrants from receiving benefits.

But some blue states have innovated creative accounting methods to extract federal dollars without the federal restrictions, according to the Paragon Health Institute, a non-partisan policy research group. Blue states will issue taxes on Medicaid insurers and providers, obtain a bundle of federal matching dollars for those funds, then return the taxed money to those institutions, the think tank points out.

Spending on health services for illegal aliens in Oregon has climbed by at least 1100% since the program’s introduction roughly four years ago.

An Oregon report shows a steep jump in spending on its Medicaid expansion to immigrants regardless of legal status.”

Lawmakers first introduced the program in 2021 with a $100 million cap. State Medicaid programs benefitted from increased federal matching dollars for the COVID-19 pandemic at that time. The proposal grew out of a racial justice council convened by then-Gov. Kate Brown in 2020 and enjoyed support from a coalition of managed care organizations, hospital groups, pro-abortion groups, medical professional societies, unions, and advocacy groups.

In the intervening years, the national illegal immigration population surged under President Joe Biden, the public health emergency ended, and Oregon expanded eligibility to all age groups — causing the cost to balloon.

In October 2024, OHA faced a $260 million budget shortfall, according to the Lund Report, an Oregon-focused health news outlet. About 93,000 people had enrolled in the state’s Medicaid expansion for immigrants regardless of legal status, nearly double the state’s projection of 55,000 enrollees, the report said.

Showdowns In DC, Portland

The policy demands congressional Democrats in DC have named as a prerequisite for reopening the government include dismantling barriers preventing Medicaid dollars from flowing to illegal aliens.

Democrats’ counterproposal to the “clean” continuing resolution (CR) preferred by Republicans to end the government shutdown would unwind several reforms that President Donald Trump signed into law via the One Big Beautiful Bill Act (OBBB) in July.

These provisions included ending the disbursement of higher federal Medicaid match dollars for the emergency care of illegal aliens compared to traditional Medicaid recipients like children — states received a 90% rate for illegal aliens compared to 50% for American citizens — and closing accounting loopholes that allow federal funds to be shunted to state priorities like coverage for illegal immigrants.

Republican House Speaker Mike Johnson has estimated that the rollback of health reforms would cost roughly $192 billion.

In Oregon, an illegal alien need not supply proof of long-term residency in the state in order to receive the taxpayer-sponsored health benefits, according to state resources.

According to the OHA, the federal spending for Oregon’s illegal aliens only covers emergency and pregnancy care that the federal government is required to cover per U.S. law, echoing the arguments of Democratic leaders who say illegal immigrants cannot access federal Medicaid dollars outside of the emergency room.

However the OHA budget document shows the state will obtain federal dollars unfettered by federal rules through creative accounting too.

Oregon pads its state pot of Medicaid funds, funds unfettered by federal rules against dispersing it to illegal aliens, through what it describes as a “tax,” but what really amounts to an accounting loophole. Oregon “taxes” hospitals to obtain funding while tapping federal matching funds to pay back the hospitals the “taxed” amount in full.

Meanwhile in Portland, nightly protests continue outside of an Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) facility.

Attorneys for the state of Oregon and city of Portland have argued in court against the deployment of the National Guard, saying that violent crime in Portland is significantly down.

But on October 8, the Portland City Council heard testimony from several small business owners who argued in support of an initiative to revive Portland storefronts amid break-ins, fires, graffiti, shoplifting, public drug use, and visible mental health crises.

“I’ve replaced a total of nine windows, three locks from attempted break-ins, I’ve been spit on, I’ve been punched twice, once resulting in a black eye. I had a man masturbating in my window. I’ve had a gun pulled on me twice — once was last week. I’ve had a knife pulled on me,” said Steve Cook, owner of Portland business Vinyl Resting Place. “When I’m found dead in my shop, I’m gonna be like ‘I told you so.’”

EMILY KOPP is an Investigative Reporter at the @dailycaller News Foundation. TikTok: emilyakopp Tips: emily@dcnf.org.

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