“The day after the election I was texting my mom to pick me up from school and she almost had to!! Every teacher was crying in class, one even told the whole class ‘Trump winning is worse than 9/11 and the Columbine shooting.’” —a student describing the scene at Edina High School in Minneapolis last November

America is a divided nation. And nothing fosters that division more than the legions of public school students who have been fed a steady diet of progressive ideology for more than four decades — one that asserts America is a fundamentally flawed nation in need of wholesale change. Aided and abetted by Democrats, teachers and their unions have made it clear that students either conform to the progressive worldview or they will be bullied, harassed and intimidated until they do.

Moreover, progressives are twisting the law, especially with regard to their efforts to force-feed transgenderism to children beginning in kindergarten. “Whether parents will have a right to opt their children out of ‘gender identity’ lessons depends on the governing provisions of state law,” explains columnist Margot Cleveland. “Every state regulates public education, and in most states, parents may opt their children out of ‘sex-education’ classes. Whether a discussion of ‘gender identity’ and ‘transgenderism’ would qualify as ‘sex education’ depends on the specific statute.”

Bottom line? “My initial research indicates that the various statutory definitions of ‘sex education’ contained in opt-out provisions focus on sexual reproduction and thus would not cover classroom discussions of gender identity,” she adds. “Further, some states, such as California, expressly provide that ‘gender identity’ is not subject to the statutory opt-out provisions available to parents for comprehensive sex education.

Thus, when a kindergarten teacher Rocklin Academy Gateway staged a gender transition ceremony for one of her students, furious parents who had neither been notified in advance, nor given the opportunity to opt out, were told by the principal that the school’s non-discrimination policy "protects all students, including on the basis of gender, gender identity, and gender expression.”

Parents at a Washington, DC, charter school received the same treatment. When expressing similar concerns they were not given the opportunity to opt out of such classes, the principal was equally obdurate. “I will not exempt any child from classroom discussions or instruction relating to the topics of gender identity, and ‘marital norms,’” he wrote in a letter.

The sentiments of a parental majority are apparently irrelevant as well. A couple who insisted their child was gender fluid at the age of two — because he began emulating Beyoncé’s dance moves — successfully sued St. Paul, Minnesota’s Nova Classical Academy for not including transgender material in kindergarten classes. As a result the school promised to establish a policy that doesn’t allow parents to opt out “based on religious or conscience objections.” In addition, the school stated it would “not call parents’ or guardians’ attention to the policy” — meaning they are trying to hide mandatory compliance with the progressive agenda from unsuspecting parents.

Chalkbeat Indiana is taking it one step further, providing LGBT activists with a list of schools that are “anti-LGBT” (read: espouse traditional and/or Christian values) in case “rainbow protesters wanted to show up at a few, or know where to enroll their gender-dysphoric kindergarteners and then sue,” warns columnist Joy Pullman.

Transgenderism is the tip of the progressive iceberg. “Not many things shock me, but I confess that I have been shocked by what I have learned about the Edina public school system,” writes John Hinderacker. “Indoctrination in left-wing politics begins in elementary school, where children are taught the pernicious doctrine of ‘white privilege.’”

In Texas, Katy High School was forced to delete a picture from its social media site depicting National Guard members taking a rest in an empty school hallway following their effort to help people devastated by Hurricane Harvey. At Georgia’s River Ridge High School, teacher Lyn Orletsky made students remove “Make America Great Again” T-shirts. Why? “Just like you cannot wear a swastika to school, you cannot wear ‘make America great again’ like that,” Orletsky asserted.

President Trump has been used as a springboard for much of this nonsense, beginning shortly after the election when the National Education Association urged schools to participate in a “National Day of Action” against the new president. But such ideological insidiousness began being implemented before that, casing a wider ideological net in the process. In 2015 at Nathan Hale High School in West Allis, Wisconsin, a teacher asked students to rate a list of political statements ranging from communist to fascist. With regard to the statement, “We should not help the poor, it’s a waste of money,” any answer that did not identify it as a “Conservative/Republican” position was marked wrong.

Such overt proselytization has also occurred with regard to religion, global warming, history and economics. Students who resist are bullied, suspended or forced to undergo psychological evaluations.

Yet it is far worse than that. As the Daily Caller reveals, “dozens of public school teachers” belong to the antifa-aligned organization By Any Means Necessary (BAMN). They include Detroit teacher Nicole Conaway, who led students on a 2016 protest resulting in a confrontation with police and her arrest. Militant Berkeley middle school teacher Yvette Felarca, currently faces charges for inciting a riot outside the state capital last year. The district where she works has accused her of and her BAMN of “actively trying to brainwash and manipulate these young people to serve your own selfish interests in not being held accountable to the same rules that apply to everyone else,” yet they have been unable or unwilling to fire her. And in 2016, 17 BAMN members ran for elected positions with the Detroit Federation of Teachers and five ran for positions with the NEA in 2017.

What can be done to counter this ongoing progressive onslaught? It’s time to use the same court-endorsed strategy that keeps organized religion out of the nation’s public school classrooms: make the case that progressive ideology is itself faith-based and its de facto endorsement violates the First Amendment’s prohibition thereof. Nothing demonstrates that reality better than its adherents determination to force the unproven science of transgenderism on children, leaving many of them confused and frightened. “The leftists harping on this topic are essentially demanding a religious litmus test … as a precondition for educating children,” Pullman states.

Not essentially. Exactly, and a class-action suit would be the beginning of an effort to hold schools accountable, not just with regard to transgenderism, but every other bit of progressive propaganda being presented as indisputable fact.

In addition, Congress should hold nationally televised hearings on the current state of public school education. No doubt millions of Americans would be fascinated to discover why an anti-Republican, anti-Trump, anti-tradition, pro-global warming, pro-transgender, pro-socialist, pro-sanctuary and pro-revisionist history agenda has become the default position in hundreds of schools around the nation.

“Give me four years to teach the children and the seed I have sown will never be uprooted,” stated Vladimir Lenin.

In a nation enduring increasingly regular and leftist-orchestrated assaults on free speech, historical monuments, biological reality, capitalism — and American exceptionalism itself — a sustained and organized counter-attack is an idea whose time has come.