'March For Our Lives' isn’t fighting for children, it’s exploiting them

On March 24, over 200,000 people converged on Washington, DC to voice their discontent with the myriad of recent school shootings across the United States and to demand gun policy reform.

The March For Our Lives movement sprung up as a result of the February 14 shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School, which resulted in 17 casualties.

A select group of student survivors from this shooting have become the faces of this movement: 18-year-old Emma Gonzalez, a featured speaker at the Washington march whose words have oddly been compared to Joan of Arc by the New Yorker, has become one of the most prominent symbols of the movement.

Other children were also heavily featured onstage, including 11-year-old Naomi Wadler, who claims that she represents the voices of victims whose stories have gone untold.

The response by many outlets, including Time, ABC and CNN, has been to give these children national acclaim and praise them for their passionate activism. However, March For Our Lives is far from the teen-driven grassroots sensation that they’d have you believe.

This movement is driven and carefully curated by adults across the country.

In reality, this movement is driven and carefully curated by adults across the country who have finally found sympathetic faces for their agenda to repeal the Second Amendment.

“But what about the children” has long been a humorous trope when debating social issues. However, this movement has taken it a step further and equates pro-gun sentiment with one that is anti-safety, anti-children, and disrespectful to the recent survivors whose faces they’ve worked to plaster across every channel.

When an 11-year-old girl is standing in front of 200,000 people saying that she represents the interests of “women of color who were murdered at disproportionate rates in this nation,” it’s not hard to figure out that her pre-prepared speech was not written by someone whose driver’s license is still five years away.

No, Naomi Wadler, in all her eloquence, is an 11-year-old girl whose mother supported her in leading a school walkout and facilitated her participation in the recent march. It’s absurd to think that someone too young to use an oven unsupervised actually facilitated her own rise to fame.

While the Parkland students’ activism is a commendable example of exercising free speech, what is less laudable is the response of the media to put these teens on a pedestal and exploit their suffering for policy gains. During her time on stage, Emma Gonzalez famously stood in silence for six minutes and 20 seconds, meant to represent the duration of the shooting that she survived.

During that time, cameras flashed, phones snapped and the face of a crying teenage girl was further associated with the march’s agenda. In a piece titled "The Parkland Diaries," CNN aired video segments recorded by survivors on the morning of their first day back at school. Did each student serendipitously decide to wake up that day and video themselves in the same somber tone?

This was a clear attempt to capitalize on these students’ suffering during a challenging day.

No, it was a carefully orchestrated play for media attention, meticulously paired with an hour-long interview with Anderson Cooper, who has his own history of anti-gun promotion. This was a clear attempt to capitalize on these students’ suffering during a challenging day. Instead of respecting their need to readjust to normal life, CNN and other media outlets have taken every opportunity to put these students in front of the cameras, dooming them to recount their trauma over and over in front of a captivated audience.

This manipulation of our youngest --- and therefore most vulnerable --- members of society to put a sympathetic face on an anti-gun policy agenda is despicable. Far from helping the healing process, this movement has ensured these Parkland teens will never be able to put this horrible catastrophe behind them. Instead, the media personas forced upon them by agenda-wielding adults will follow them throughout their adult lives.

Naomi Wadler, not yet out of elementary school, will start high school in the shadow of her blown-up images projected on news platforms. Did her mother consider that trade-off when putting her in front of 200,000 people?

Many people argue that at the age of 18, outspoken activists like Emma Gonzalez have a full understanding of their actions, and can weigh the costs of media attention on their own. However, for most teenagers, this is not the case. When asked why she chose to be barefoot on the cover of Time magazine, Parkland student Jaclyn Corin highlighted the momentum of this movement at its root, saying, “Hippies didn’t wear shoes in the ‘60s so I’m just jumping on the bandwagon.”

These are not the words of someone who is orchestrating a social movement. These are the words of a teenage girl who has been convinced that allowing adults to spotlight her will ally her with the anti-authority image all teens think is cool.

These teenage outcries are akin to those of any 18-year-old girl putting a peace sign poster up in her dorm room. The only difference is that these Parkland students have been given the platform to think their rebellion is unique.

While young people are the face of March For Our Lives, the true drivers are much older.

While young people are the face of March For Our Lives, the true drivers are much older. Children under 18 made up only 10 percent of the Washington, DC march attendees, and the average attendee age was 49 years old.

The anti-gun movement has been an undercurrent of American policy since as far back as 1968, but it was in the recent shootings that organizers saw a chance to gain traction with a broader swath of the American public, and it worked. As of February 28, roughly two in three Americans now say they support stricter gun control legislation, as opposed to the 58 percent in support after the Pulse Nightclub shooting in 2016.

While the march has sparked a more powerful gun control debate than ever before, it did so by capitalizing on a national tragedy and placing innocent children in the spotlight without their full understanding of the long-term consequences that this spotlight will have.

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Rachel Tripp is a Young Voices contributor and writes about liberty from Washington, DC. Opinions presented here belong solely to the author.

Trump's education secretary has BIG plans for the DoE

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Our education system is broken, and the Department of Education is a massive failure. But that all ends now.

It's no secret that America's school system is seriously lacking in many ways. President Trump pointed out that despite our massive spending per pupil, we are behind most of the developed world in most metrics. Our scores continue to plummet while our student debt and spending skyrocket—it's utterly unacceptable performance and America's students deserve better.

That's where Linda McMahon, Trump's pick for Secretary of Education comes in.

The former WWE CEO and leader of the U.S. Small Business Administration during Trump's first term, McMahon laid out her harsh criticisms of the DoE during a confirmation hearing on the 13th and revealed her promising plans to turn things around. McMahon described the public education system as "in decline" and promised that under her authority, the DoE would be reoriented towards student success.

Here are the top three changes to the Department of Education:

1. Dismantling the Department of Education

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From the beginning Trump's orders for McMahon were clear: oversee the end of the Department of Education.

During her Thursday hearing, McMahon clarified what dismantling the DoE would entail. As Democrats have repeatedly pointed out, Trump does not have the authority to destroy the DoE without Congressional consent, as an act of Congress created it. That is why Trump and McMahon's plan is to start by shutting down programs that can be stopped by executive action, then approach Congress with a plan to dismantle the Department for good. The executive orders have already begun to take effect, and once McMahon is confirmed she will author a plan for Congress to close the Department.

McMahon also promised that the end of the Department of Education does not mean an end to all the programs currently undertaken by the doomed department. Programs that are deemed beneficial will be transferred (along with their funding) to departments that are more suited to the task. The example given by McMahon was IDEA (Individuals with Disabilities Education Act) funding, which instead of being cut would be transferred to the Department of Health and Human Services.

2. School Choice

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In a huge win for parents across the country, McMahon pledged her support for School Choice. School Choice is the idea of allowing parents to enroll their student in any school of their choice, including religious schools and private schools. It would also mean that part or all of the funding that would have gone to a relocated child would follow them and continue to pay for their education.

This gives parents the ability to remove their children from failing schools and seek a better education for them elsewhere. A growing body of evidence suggests that the way we run our schools isn't working, and it is time to try something new. School Choice opens up education to the free market and will allow for competition.

Our children deserve better than what we can currently offer them.

3. COVID and DEI

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Trump's government-wide crackdown on DEI will ironically serve to increase inclusion in many American schools.

McMahon said as much during her Senate hearing: “It was put in place ostensibly for more diversity, for equity and inclusion. And I think what we’re seeing is, it is having an opposite effect. We are getting back to more segregating of our schools instead of having more inclusion in our schools.” She also spoke in support of Title IX, and the push to remove biological males from women's and girl's sports. In the same vein, McMahon pledged to push back against the rise of antisemitism on college campuses, which many Universities have failed to adequately address.

On Friday, February 14th, President Trump signed an executive order barring any school or university with COVID-19 vaccine mandates from receiving federal money. This only applies to the COVID-19 vaccine, and other vaccine mandates are still standing.

POLL: What DARK government secrets will Trump uncover?

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Will the dark secrets of the Deep State finally see the light of day? Or will they slip back into darkness, as they have many times before?

The Trump administration is gearing up to fulfill one of Trump's most anticipated campaign promises: to make the contents of the JFK files, along with other Deep State secrets, available to the public. Kash Patel, who has promised to publicize the highly anticipated files, is expected to be confirmed next week as Trump's director of the FBI. Moreover, the House Oversight Committee created a new task force headed by Rep. Anna Paulina Luna called "Task Force on Declassification of Federal Secrets," which is tasked with investigating and declassifying information on the JFK, RFK, and MLK assassinations, UFOs, the Epstein list, COVID's origins, and 9/11. This all comes after the FBI found 2,400 "new" records relating to the assassination of President Kennedy following Trump's executive order to release the files.

Glenn discussed this topic with the cast of the Patrick Bet David podcast. Glenn expressed his confidence in Trump's radical transparency—on the condition that Kash Patel is confirmed. The cast was not as optimistic, expressing some doubt about whether Trump will actually unveil all that he has promised. But what do you think? What files are likely to see the light of day? And what files will continue to linger in the dark? Let us know in the poll below

Do you think the JFK, RFK, and MLK files will be unveiled?

Do you think the 9/11 files will be unveiled?

Do you think the COVID files will be unveiled?

Do you think the UFO files will be unveiled?

Do you think the Epstein list will be unveiled?

Transgender opera in Colombia? 10 SHOCKING ways USAID spent your tax dollars.

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The government has been doing what with our tax money!?

Under the determined eye of Elon Musk, DOGE has rooted out the corruption that permeates USAID, and it turns out that it's worse than we thought. Glenn recently read a list of atrocious causes that were funded by USAID, and the list was as long as it was shocking.

Since the January consumer index report was published today, one thing is clear: eggs are bearing the brunt of inflation. That's why we illustrated the extent of USAID's wasteful spending of YOUR taxpayer dollars by comparing it to the price of eggs. How many eggs could the American people have bought with their tax dollars that were given to a "transgender opera" in Colombia or indoctrinating Sri Lankans with woke gender ideology? The truth will shock you:

1. A “transgender opera” in Colombia

USAID spent $47,000 on a transgender opera in Colombia. That's over 135,000 eggs.

2. Sex changes and "LGBT activism" in Guatemala

$2 million was spent funding sex changes along with whatever "LGBT activism" means. That equates to over 5.7 million eggs!

3. Teaching Sri Lankan journalists how to avoid binary-gendered language

USAID forked over $7.9 million to combat the "gender binary" in Sri Lankan journalism. That could have bought nearly 23 million eggs.

4. Tourism in Egypt

$6 million (or just over 17 million eggs) was spent to fund tourism in Egypt. If only someone had thought to build some impressive landmarks...

5. A new "Sesame Street" show in Iraq

USAID spent $20 million to create a new Sesame Street show in Iraq. That's just short of 58 million eggs...

6. Helping the BBC value the diversity of Libyan society

$2.1 million was sent to the BBC (the British Broadcasting Corporation) to help them value the diversity of Libyan society (whatever that means). That could have bought over 6 million eggs.

7. Meals for a terrorist group linked to Al-Qaeda

$10 million worth of USAID-funded meals went to an Al-Qaeda linked terrorist group. That comes up to be just shy of 29 million eggs.

8. Promoting inclusion in Vietnam 

A combined $19.3 million was sent to two separate inclusion groups in Vietnam inclusion groups in Vietnam (why where they separated? Not very inclusive of them). That's over 55 million eggs.

9. Promoting DEI in Serbia's workplaces

USAID sent $1.5 million (4.3 million eggs) to “advance diversity equity and inclusion in Serbia’s workplaces and business communities.”

10. Funding EcoHealth Alliance, tied to the Wuhan Institute of Virology's "bat research"

EcoHealth Alliance, one of the key NGOs that funded the Wuhan lab's bat virus research, received $5 million from USAID, which is equivalent to 14.5 million eggs.

The bottom line...

So, how much damage was done?

In total, approximately $73.8 million was wasted on the items on this list. That comes out to be 213 million eggs. Keep in mind that these are just the items on this list, there are many, many more that DOGE has uncovered and will uncover in the coming days. Case in point: that's a lot of eggs.

POLL: Should Trump stop producing pennies?

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On Sunday, February 9th, President Trump ordered the U.S. Mint to halt the production of pennies. It costs the mint three cents to produce every penny, which Trump deemed wasteful. However, critics argue that axing the pennies will be compensated by ramping up nickel production, which costs 13 cents per coin.

In other news, President Trump promised on Truth Social that he would be reversing a Biden-era policy that mandated the use of paper straws throughout the federal government. From potentially slashing entire agencies to saying farewell to pennies and paper straws, Trump is hounding after wasteful spending of taxpayer dollars.

But what do you think? Was Trump right to put an end to pennies? And should plastic straws make a comeback? Let us know in the poll below:

Should Trump stop the production of pennies? 

Do you agree with Trump's reversal of the plastic straw ban?