During a town hall hosted by far right group Moms for Liberty, Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wisconsin) suggested, without evidence, that large schools were to blame for the attempt on former President Donald Trump’s life — a narrative aimed at furthering the right’s longtime agenda of dismantling public education.
The event, which took place blocks from the Republican National Convention happening in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, this week, featured a panel of right-wing lawmakers, including Johnson, Rep. Byron Donalds (R-Florida) and Rep. Harriet Hageman (R-Wyoming). The panel was moderated by Moms for Liberty cofounder Tiffany Justice, who frequently utilizes fear tactics to stoke chaos and division on school boards.
“They’re coming after our kids…radical Marxists are trying to steal our children’s future,” Justice, whose organization is described as an “extremist” group by the Southern Poverty Law Center, claimed at one point during the event.
Moms for Liberty members — funded by deep-pocketed donors and far right groups like the Heritage Foundation — have pressured schools across the country to drop curriculum standards that are designed to benefit students from marginalized communities. The group has opposed efforts to develop racially inclusive curriculums, targeted LGBTQ-inclusive policies, and is instrumental in efforts to purge books that include LGBTQ characters or non-white perspectives from school classrooms and libraries.
The panel was billed as being “an honest conversation on the State of America.” Instead, the event served as a platform for misinformation aimed at sowing distrust in public education — as evidenced by Johnson’s response to a question about the attempt on Trump’s life over the weekend.
“Do you think the violence against our former president comes from years of labeling anyone who stands for freedom, like President Trump does, like we do, as a threat to democracy?” Justice asked. (Notably, the former president has openly stated a desire to become a dictator if he’s elected, and has said that he wants to use the executive branch to target people he perceives as his political enemies.)
All of the panelists responded affirmatively to Justice’s insinuation. Johnson then tied the assassination attempt to large public schools.
“This was a loner, in probably a large school, being bullied all the time,” Johnson said.
The Republican senator added that he was hopeful Moms for Liberty could jumpstart a push for smaller schools that are less regulated by state and federal governments.
“I’m hoping if there’s one result, from Moms for Liberty, is we start moving away from these massive, large schools,” he said.
The school the shooter attended, however, is not particularly large. The would-be assassin graduated from Bethel Park High School, where around 1,340 students are enrolled. That’s higher than the average high school in the state of Pennsylvania, but not by much — the state average is 826 students.
What’s more, the school’s student-to-teacher ratio is 14 to 1, which is around average for the state and lower than the national average.
Johnson isn’t the only politician to capitalize on the shooting to push his own political aims — indeed, Trump himself used the weekend’s events to demand that all of his criminal charges and convictions be immediately dropped in the name of “unity.”
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