Trump’s First Year Was A Triumph, But Republicans Aren’t Acting Like It

American Thinker 

Donald J. Trump’s return to the White House has been a parade of bold, daring accomplishments. Few presidents would dare to dream of matching it.

Elected with a resounding mandate in 2024, Trump wasted no time implementing a transformative agenda that reshaped the nation in tangible, measurable ways. He secured the Mexican border with unprecedented rigor. He is revitalizing the economy through deregulation and tax relief. From brokering international peace deals to dismantling bureaucratic waste, Trump’s administration compiled 365 wins in 365 days.

On immigration, Trump achieved negative net migration for the first time in fifty years, removing over 2.6 million illegal aliens, including 400,000 convicted or charged criminals. Meanwhile, fentanyl trafficking was reduced across the southern border by 56 percent. Border wall construction resumed in critical sectors like El Paso and the Rio Grande Valley.

The Remain in Mexico policy was reinstated, and catch-and-release ended nationwide, resulting in zero interior releases for eight consecutive months. ICE enforcement capacity doubled through aggressive recruitment, the largest surge in agency history. Temporary protected status for over 500,000 migrants was revoked, and refugee resettlement was dramatically curtailed to protect American security.

Crime rates plummeted under Trump’s first-year initiatives.

Homicides fell by the largest margin in U.S. history, overdoses dropped 21 percent, and task forces in Washington D.C., Memphis, Chicago, and New Orleans brought murders to decades-long lows. The Tren de Aragua and MS-13 gangs were dismantled, while nationwide federal law enforcement operations restored deterrence to urban centers and curtailed violent criminal networks.

The Trump administration’s Victims of Immigration Crime Engagement office resumed delivering direct support to victims, and 62,000 missing migrant children were rescued from trafficking and exploitation.

Economic recovery under Trump was equally dramatic.

Gas prices fell below $3 per gallon in 43 states and below $2 in 19, while 654,000 private-sector jobs were created, all directed to native-born Americans through strict immigration enforcement. Real GDP grew 4.3 percent in the third quarter. Blue-collar wages saw their largest increase in nearly six decades. Private-sector real earnings rose by $1,100 annually, partially restoring purchasing power lost under the Biden-Harris administration.

Inflation stabilized at 2.4 percent, mortgage rates hit three-year lows, and existing home sales reached the strongest pace in three years. The Working Families Tax Cut saved 5.9 million jobs, eliminated taxes on tips, overtime, and Social Security benefits for seniors. Deregulation efforts produced $5 trillion in savings while attracting $10 trillion in domestic investment.

Trump’s foreign policy achievements were equally sweeping.

The Israel-Hamas conflict ended with the Gaza Peace Plan. Ceasefires were brokered between Israel and Iran, Armenia and Azerbaijan, India and Pakistan, the Democratic Republic of Congo and Rwanda, Cambodia and Thailand, Kosovo and Serbia, and Egypt and Ethiopia. Groundwork was laid to hopefully resolve Ukraine-Russia tensions. Iran’s nuclear program was neutralized through military and intelligence action. Narcoterrorist Nicolás Maduro was captured, crippling illicit revenue streams for the Venezuelan regime.

U.S. military readiness surged through the largest investment in decades, artificial intelligence was integrated into defense planning, VA backlogs were cut 60 percent, and more than 51,000 homeless veterans were housed.

Yet, despite these unprecedented accomplishments and so many more, public perception remains strikingly disconnected from reality.

The January New York Times/Siena College poll found that only 32 percent of registered voters believed the country was better off than when Trump returned to office. 49 percent said it was worse. Trump’s approval rating stood at 40 percent, disapproval at 56 percent, and a majority of respondents, 55-42 percent, described his first year as unsuccessful.

These figures were released just days after the White House’s “365 Wins in 365 Days” announcement. They reveal a populace largely unmoved by achievements that objectively transformed policy, economy, and security.

Skepticism of this polling is not misplaced. The New York Times has long demonstrated a pattern of framing narratives through a left-leaning lens. It often underreports Republican accomplishments while amplifying Democratic perspectives. Trump condemned the poll as “fake” and “fraudulent,” denouncing it on Truth Social as a rigged effort to undermine his agenda. He promised to incorporate it into a multibillion-dollar defamation suit against the Times.

Yet even as the survey deserves profound suspicion, its existence reflects the reality of perception. These numbers shape voter attitudes and inform media-driven narratives that cannot be ignored. Republicans in this midterm year face a strategic imperative: they must seize Trump’s first-year successes as the centerpiece of their messaging.

From the 89-percent drop in wholesale egg prices to the $1,100 annual boost in real earnings, from the elimination of catch-and-release to the dismantling of transnational gangs, the facts are overwhelmingly positive and tangible. Every elected Republican—federal, state, and local—should internalize these victories and integrate them into debates, campaigns, and public engagements.

The GOP’s focus must be on energizing Trump supporters and persuadable voters through evidence-based celebration of his staggering accomplishments. Not attempting to convince lefty ideologues to give Trumpism a second look. The midterm outcome hinges on turnout, not conversion.

Paul Gottfried, in his January 20 essay Does America Want to Be Saved?, underscores the enduring polarization that shapes the electoral landscape. He recognizes Trump as “by far the most transformative” president he has observed since the Eisenhower era. Gottfried cites immigration law enforcement, tax relief, economic growth, anti-discrimination policies protecting white men, peace deals, and targeted law enforcement as unparalleled achievements.

Yet Gottfried cautions that these victories often fail to sway a leftist electorate whose base remains entrenched, ideologically committed, and resistant to persuasion. He notes that this opposition encompasses many government workers, certain racial minorities, and ideological constituencies such as unmarried college-educated women. These opponents of Trump mobilize efficiently in elections, maintaining turnout levels that are hard for Republicans to match.

The key insight is stark but actionable: the GOP cannot rely on swaying the ideologically rigid opposition but can, and must, motivate its own voters by highlighting Trump’s transformative wins.

In this hyper-polarized environment, Republicans should pivot to offense, showcasing clear, measurable improvements. There are record-low border crossings, historic reductions in crime, dramatic economic gains, and foreign policy breakthroughs. That approach does not promise universal approval. However, it ensures that the electorate sympathetic to Trump’s agenda understands the stakes and responds accordingly at the ballot box.

Ultimately, Trump’s first year stands as a case study in extraordinary achievement amid widespread misperception.

His administration delivered measurable benefits across immigration, crime, the economy, foreign policy, and government efficiency. Yet public recognition lags, distorted by media bias and partisan framing. Republicans’ success in November depends less on convincing the unreachable left than on rallying their own voters around the facts of a proven record.

Energizing the base through specific, demonstrable accomplishments, rather than general rhetoric, offers the clearest path to preserving congressional majorities and consolidating America First gains. This is the strategic lesson of 2026: objective success must be communicated relentlessly to counter a distorted public narrative.

Voter motivation, grounded in clear evidence of achievement, is the GOP’s most powerful tool.

Trump’s first year was not merely good; it was transformational. The disconnect between reality and perception is not a weakness of policy but a challenge in persuasion. Republicans must pivot, act decisively, and harness the power of undeniable facts to win hearts, votes, and, ultimately, the American future.

Podcast thread for Feb 3rd

 

💖💖💖

We Must Win The Battle Against 'The United States of Passivity'

The left’s most powerful weapon is using psy-ops to demoralize conservatives. We must be happy warriors to win.

American Thinker 

What did Russia, China, the Roman Republic, the Weimar Republic, Cambodia, and Iran all have in common? The answer to this question is vitally important to all of us, as the same conditions that led to these societies’ original fall are starkly in evidence here today. The common denominator is that the governments did not take the threats against them seriously enough.

Let me walk you through how I got here:

Many Americans are on tenterhooks, unsure what to do or whom to believe, as they see Democrat agitation play out across the country.

Someone wrote to me, “I see this country coming apart. Look at California, Portland (Oregon), Seattle, Minnesota, Illinois, NYC, Maine, and even my state (Virginia). The Democrats and the mainstream media are working as a team to destroy this nation, and there’s no effective pushback. As a result, I’m tense and despondent.”

I am less despondent because I separate wheat from chaff when I read the news. What helped is that, in last week’s American Thinker “Member Weekly Newsletter” (available only to subscribers), J.R. Dunn wrote that much of the left acts like “revolutionary cosplayers.”

I had to look that up. It turns out that phrase refers to the practice of dressing up as a fictional character—usually from anime, video games, comics, movies, or TV—and then performing or embodying that character’s personality. It’s both a creative hobby and a social subculture, with events, competitions, and communities built around it.

The fact that “crazies”—and they are actually quite small in number—seem willing to confront and impede armed federal officers is because they confuse reality with a fantasy game, believing that there is no risk of any real danger or cost, much like an online fantasy game. Recent events in Minnesota have proved them wrong. 

But rather than take away the lesson that life is not a game, Democrats are attempting to assure these people that it’s not them, but the ICE, Border Patrol agents, and Donald Trump that are out of control and must be reined in. As I was writing this, a judge in Minnesota denied Minnesota’s request for a temporary restraining order or preliminary injunction to stop the ICE surge; unfortunately, they’ll be back again, that’s how the opposition rolls.

While the leftist activists risking death are completely out of touch with reality, the establishment leftists orchestrating this madness have a firm grip on what’s happening: Their goal is to use those whom Lenin termed “useful idiots” to destabilize the system and demoralize law-abiding normal people—and they think that they’ve got Trump between a rock and a hard place, because he’s afraid to act less he escalate the violence that normal Americans hate so much.

And this brings us back to those countries that were brought down, enslaved, or whose societies were obliterated by the machinations of a minority of internal subversives.

Internal takeovers tend to occur when:

• The population is politically passive or exhausted. Often, after war, extended economic collapse or malaise, famine, or long authoritarian rule.
• State institutions lose legitimacy or capacity. Courts, legislatures, and bureaucracies stop functioning or lose public trust.
• A disciplined minority faction remains organized—military, party, militia, or ideological movement with cohesion and a plan.

When those align, as is happening at present, a small internal group can overpower a much larger but demobilized society.

In America, one more salient variable needs to be in play. In that same newsletter, Andrea Widburg wrote that the role of leftist judges is finally coming into focus, especially because judges have lost the internal constraints that once kept them relatively honest:

What used to constrain leftist judges was the humiliation of being overturned on appeal. However, as we’re seeing, that’s no longer the case. They just don’t care anymore. To the extent that they are status-conscious, their status is no longer tied to an impeccable appellate record. Instead, it’s being part of “the Resistance.” If they can hamstring the Trump administration or Trump himself, they’ve won — and that’s true regardless of eventually being overturned on appeal.

Leftist judges wear judges’ cloaks, while they are really politicians who have the innate and almost imperial ability to gum up the works with their decisions, even when some of those decisions are overturned on appeal. Leftist judges today are just another resistance arm of the anti-Trump, anti-conservative wing, but with the distinction that they get to call balls and strikes, while claiming the moral high ground. God help us all survive these self-righteous provocateurs.

If we are to survive this radical minority’s onslaught, a few things need to happen, and it starts with us:

We conservatives need to vote. The best guesstimate is that fewer than 20% of those New Yorkers who could vote did vote in the last mayoral election. The rest did nothing, leading to a communist in Gracie Mansion.

In Seattle, where the new mayor, Katie Wilson, is just as hard-left as Mamdani, only less telegenic, the same is true. ChatGPT estimates that Seattle has around 590,000 residents who are eligible to vote. In the last election, Katie received 138,931 votes. In other words, she’s yanking the city from left-leaning into Marxism with only 23% of the people behind her.

Our intra-party fights need to take place during the primaries—and we need to aim for strong, pro-MAGA, constitutional conservatives to win. Once the primaries are over, the only thing we can do is vote Republican, and that’s true even if we don’t like the Republican candidate. The Democrat candidate will always be worse.

We need to push Congress to enact legislation restraining appellate and district court federal judges. They’re out of control.

We need to keep the faith and be happy warriors, like Donald Trump (and Ronald Reagan). That’s how you win the long war.

For my reader in Virginia, and for the many Republicans and conservatives who believe we have already lost that long war, take heart. It’s not so. We are not destined to fall into the same trap as those other countries, because we have two advantages in this fight:

• We have the most magnificent Constitution ever written, still widely supported, revered, and relevant to the majority of Americans today.
• We have the benefit of knowing our history and of having some very dedicated and serious individuals who already know what I’m telling you and are determined not to let us go over that cliff, whatever it takes to stop it.

The battle ahead will be hard, but it’s not complicated. Stay true to your values, don’t hide those values (but remember that normal people are moved more by persuasion than verbal abuse), don’t give up hope, and vote.

God Bless America!

Here’s the truth -- and it’s not Pretti

The real point here is not that he is dead, but what got him that way.

American Thinker 

In reality, the extreme focus on Minneapolis protester Alex Pretti’s death is a distraction. It may sound terrible to say because, of course, human life is sacred. (Now, if only the Left accepted this on abortion.) But the real point here is not that Pretti is dead, but what got him that way. And, no, it wasn’t blood-lusting ICE agents salivating for their next victim.

It was this: a vast network of power-hungry demagogues, foreign financiers of intra-U.S. destabilization, astroturfing communist/socialist activists, and expendable useful-idiot protesters.

On a simple level, notice that no one is talking about the up-to-$9 billion Somali fraud scandal anymore, the revelation of which caused Governor Tim “Knucklehead” Walz to scuttle his reelection campaign.

Oh, it threatened to do more such damage to the Democrat Party, too.

Convenient, huh?

Then there’s this: Have you heard of Neville Roy Singham? You should have.

Singham, 71, is an American-born tech mogul who sold IT company Thoughtworks for $785 million in 2017 and then decamped to Shanghai. He’s also a self-declared Marxist who likely works for fascist China (it’s about as “communist” today as Mussolini).

And he now devotes his vast fortune and ample free time to his favorite hobby: destabilizing the country that made him rich. Yes -- the United States.   

That is, Singham funnels millions, and perhaps tens of millions, through nonprofits and shell companies to far-left groups in the U.S. They then use this cash to organize protests and mayhem here in America. So, you know those demonstrations in Minneapolis and elsewhere? 

They’re “Made in China” -- at least in part.

They’re not organic at all.

Oh, something else: As with globalist Klaus Schwab, Singham also looks like a James Bond villain.

Despite this, and as commentator Bill O’Reilly has complained, we hear crickets on Singham. You see, if people learned about him, they’d know the true villains aren’t ICE and President Trump. Can’t have that.

Then there are the other villains. People such as Walz, Governor Gavin Newsom (D-Calif.), Senator Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.), Sandy Cortez (D-Green, Leafy Westchester) and countless other Democrats have demonized ICE, propagandized, and helped catalyze a violent useful-idiot emotional response. Sure, individuals such as Rebecca Good and Alex Pretti are, consequently, now anything but good and pretty. But, hey, you’ve gotta’ break a few eggs to make an omelet, right?

There are also those left-wing/communist activist groups themselves, which join Singham in flying below the radar. They have names such as the Party for Socialism and Liberation and the ANSWER Coalition (trust me, it’s not youranswer).

The bottom line is that demagogic Democrat politicians; and agitators, foreign and domestic, created this situation. They have blood on their hands -- and may be guilty of insurrection.

As far as the useful idiots who often get themselves killed go, and ICE agents who may sometimes err, the great President Ronald Reagan once framed it well. “Once the dogs of war are unleashed, you must expect that things will happen,” he told demonstrator-enabling professors in 1969. “And people, being human, will make mistakes on both sides.”

Reagan also pointed out, however, that the blame lies largely with the authority figures who, wink-and-nod style, encourage the mayhem.

So, for sure, mistakes will happen on both sides. But the real problem is caused by only one side -- the one siding against America and with foreign interlopers and invaders.

🎭 𝐖𝟑𝐏 𝓓𝓐𝓘𝓛𝓨 𝓗𝓾𝓶𝓸𝓻, 𝓜𝓾𝓼𝓲𝓬, 𝓐𝓻𝓽, 𝓞𝓟𝓔𝓝 𝓣𝓗𝓡𝓔𝓐𝓓

 

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Even Liberal Media Is Finally Realizing Democrats Might Be in Big Trouble in Future Elections

RedState 

I'm not sure how the midterms will turn out. 

Historically, it's not been good for the party in power, so we have that to contend with. Democrats are going to do what they can to sow chaos until then. So it's definitely going to be an all-hands-on-deck, get your grandma, your neighbor, and everyone you know out to vote. Otherwise, we're going to have two years of nothing getting done beyond Democrats trying to impeach President Donald Trump, going after ICE agents, and who knows what other retributive actions. 

But there's a reason that the Democrats are losing their minds now, particularly over Trump dealing with illegal immigration — that's the coming 2030 census that is projected to increase the House seats in solid red states like Texas and Florida, while losing numbers in blue states like California and New York. 

But it looks like even CNN is now getting that the Democrats have a big problem. Their data guru, Harry Enten, is full of enthusiasm as he details the trouble they are in. He says it should set off "flashing red sirens" for Democrats and "big smiles" for Republicans. There's a "red state boom" and a "blue state depression" ongoing. 

By Enten's estimate, that population change, of people fleeing the blue states for the red states, is going to lead to a pickup of seven seats for the red states that Trump won, versus that loss for the blue states Harris won. The blue states' failed policies are coming back to bite them big time as people flee them. 

Enten also notes how this would affect the Electoral College. Previously, if Harris was able to get the usual blue states and also pick up the "blue wall" states of Michigan, Wisconsin, and Pennsylvania, then she'd have the 270 votes needed to win. But under the projected 2030 rubric, if the numbers being projected hold, that would only work out to 263, not enough. 

So it would make the Democrats winning the presidency "that much more difficult," Enten explained. When even CNN is getting it, you know that the Democrats have to be worried. That may explain why they are freaking out over ICE operations, although they are also being done in red states. They know they're losing numbers, and they know it's going to hurt. 

Now, some of those moving might bring their "blueness" with them. But if they're fleeing the blue states as I did for Texas, at least in part because of their bad policies, folks like me are adding to the red. 

Imagine if you added to that Voter ID and only had citizens voting. Democrats might never win again. 

But we need to make it happen, ensure a fair count, and get it done. 

A Nation That Won’t Enforce Immigration Laws Isn’t A Nation At All

It may be that the next few years will decide whether America remains a sovereign nation or succumbs to subversion from within.

The Federalist

The unrest surrounding immigration enforcement in Minnesota is a flashpoint for a much deeper struggle over U.S. sovereignty. 

A sovereign nation, by definition, must be able to enforce its laws within its own territory.  

When federal immigration law is openly resisted, and elected leaders excuse, rationalize, fail to deter, or even encourage violence against those tasked with exercising constitutional authority, both the federal government and the nation lose their fundamental legitimacy. 

As we see the deliberate subversion of legitimate federal authority play out within Democrat-controlled cities and states across the country, it is not hyperbole to say that the next few years will decide whether America remains a sovereign nation or succumbs to subversion from within. 

The volatile situation America finds itself in is not organic but manufactured. It is an “immune response” from an establishment aligned against the popular sovereignty that propelled Donald Trump into the White House. 

Trump’s Mandate 

In 2024, the American people voted decisively in favor of enforcing existing federal immigration law. Multiple national polls showed majority support for deporting all illegal immigrants, not merely those who had committed additional crimes after entering the country unlawfully.  

Trump ran explicitly on that mandate and won. 

This was not a throwaway campaign promise. It was a demand that the federal government restore the rule of law, secure the border, and reverse decades of deliberate non-enforcement of immigration laws within America’s interior. 

Yet, the moment enforcement moved from campaign rhetoric to reality, especially within the sanctuary cities and states that have been defying federal immigration law for decades, an “ICE-Out” resistance emerged to undermine legitimate immigration enforcement, just as the “No Kings” protests aim to undermine Trump’s legitimate electoral victory.  

Manufactured Resistance 

This resistance is far from a grassroots uprising. Instead, it is a coordinated effort to shape the narrative around immigration enforcement and, subsequently, manufacture a public opinion to undermine the democratic will expressed at the ballot box. 

Minneapolis serves as the primary case in point for this strategy of subversion. Local officials there made a deliberate decision not to deploy police to quell violent protests or meaningfully assist federal authorities engaged in lawful immigration enforcement. 

By withholding local law enforcement, and ramping up their incendiary rhetoric, these officials ensured escalation. They created the exact conditions necessary for a manufactured crisis: chaotic confrontations between organized activist groups and federal agents, captured in dramatic footage stripped of all the context that preceded the altercations. 

The Media’s Role 

Outrageous lies were fabricated and reinforced by a media complex that functions purely as a propaganda machine against ICE agents, such as the story that federal agents had arrested a five-year-old child and used him as “bait.” These lies are designed to weaponize empathy and sever public support for deportation operations. 

From activist networks to cable news panels to elite opinion pages, the same storyline took shape: immigration enforcement itself was the problem, not the violence directed at federal officers or the deliberate, unlawful obstruction of federal law enforcement. 

The depth of this manufactured consensus was revealed following the deaths of two activists after physical confrontations with federal immigration officers in Minnesota.  

When tragedy strikes during these high-tension operations, the reaction from the elite establishment is telling. The editorial boards of nearly every major U.S. newspaper, from The Washington Post and The New York Times to The Wall Street Journal, moved with a unity that on the surface suggests a coordinated objective.  

Instead of demanding a restoration of order so that citizens could be protected and immigration law could be safely enforced, they instead insisted that ICE change its mission entirely away from deporting illegal aliens as a whole and towards only “criminal” aliens. 

The Washington Post framed the unrest as proof that President Trump was “overreaching” by not just focusing on deporting criminal illegal aliens. 

A Republican member of Congress writing in The New York Times called for a “new comprehensive national immigration policy,” one that would limit deportations to “criminals” while sparing so-called “law-abiding” immigrants. 

One Wall Street Journal op-ed called for a “ceasefire” on immigration enforcement, while another criticized how the Trump administration has pivoted away from deporting “the worst of the worst” criminal aliens to illegals without a criminal history — calling this strategy a “political liability for Republicans.”

Republican Newt Gingrich even appeared on Fox News to call for a “national conversation” about what to do with the “law-abiding, taxpaying” illegal immigrants, warning that “very few Americans want to see the police walk in and deport them.” 

All of this is flooding the media landscape while a clear majority of Americans still continue to view illegal immigration as a serious problem that requires a firm, lawful response. 

History of Elite Betrayal 

This pattern of elite betrayal is not new. It follows a historical blueprint that stretches back decades to promises made during debates over the Hart-Celler Immigration Act of 1965, in which prominent politicians such as Sen. Ted Kennedy promised that the bill would not “flood our cities with immigrants” or “upset the ethnic mix of our society.” 

Of course, all these things and more happened anyway. 

During the 1990s, roughly 65 percent of Americans wanted immigration levels reduced. Yet immigration surged to historic highs because both political parties found the influx beneficial to their own narrow interests.  

The left viewed mass immigration as the importation of a new, more favorable electorate, while the “Chamber of Commerce” right viewed it as a source of cheap labor in a globalized free market. This bipartisan consensus held firm through both Republican and Democrat administrations, largely by ignoring the preferences of the American public.  

It held until the political ascendancy of Trump. In him, voters believed they finally had a president who would follow through on the foundational duty of a sovereign state: the protection of its borders and citizens. Political elites on both sides of the aisle recognized this as a threat to their long-standing arrangement, which is why we see the machinery of narrative control turned up to its highest setting. 

Which brings us back to the streets of Minneapolis.  

The goal of the current unrest is to make the cost of enforcing the law appear so high, both socially and politically, that the government will eventually retreat from its duty. This is how sovereignty is undermined: not through a formal declaration of surrender, but through the steady erosion of the state’s will to govern. 

Inflection Point 

America now finds itself at an inflection point, and the sides in this conflict could not be further apart. 

One side, we’ll call it MAGA for simplicity, believes America is a sovereign nation with the right and the obligation to enforce its borders.  

The other side, Democrats and their leftist/activist allies, reject the very concept of U.S. sovereignty, operating on the belief that “no human is illegal” and that the American project itself is illegitimate, going back to 1619. 

The fight in playing out in sanctuary cities across the nation between federal law enforcement and activists isn’t a political disagreement or a debate over policy. It’s a civilizational battle. We either have a country, or we don’t. 

A country that cannot, or will not, enforce its immigration laws is no longer a sovereign nation. And a government that retreats whenever enforcement becomes controversial has ceased to govern and has resigned itself to simply manage its own decline. 

The choice facing America in the coming years is binary and perhaps final: Sovereignty or surrender. 

It’s Illegal For Leftist Agitators To Encourage High School Walkouts. Time To Prosecute

It’s time to enforce the law and ensure that our children are focused on their education rather than on being used as pawns in the political battles of grown-ups.

The Federalist

In an affluent suburb of Milwaukee in mid-January, dozens of students left school in the middle of the day to protest actions by federal immigration authorities to detain and deport people in the U.S. illegally. Similar walkouts have been staged recently in Minneapolis, Oregon, Long Island, and elsewhere. And over the past few years, walkouts to protest against Israel were organized in Montgomery County, San Francisco, Chicago, Seattle, and Boston, among other places. It’s fair to say that groups of students leaving school in left-leaning communities to advocate for leftist concerns has become a regular feature of the educational landscape.

But these walkouts are typically not the spontaneous result of students seeking to express themselves. In almost all cases, these walkouts are encouraged, organized, or at a minimum facilitated by adults. To the extent that adults enable students to leave school so they can engage in political activism, they are in danger of violating the law.

Let’s consider the recent walkout in the Milwaukee suburb of Shorewood, Wisconsin. Being absent from school without a valid excuse is considered truancy, which is prohibited by Wisconsin law. Wisconsin law also forbids contributing to truancy, which “is violated by any person 17 years of age or older who, by any act or omission, knowingly encourages or contributes to the truancy of a child.”

Two state representatives, Darrin Madison and Ryan Clancy, joined the students in their walkout and made speeches to the small crowd, praising them for their action. They led the group in chanting “stand up, fight back” and “abolish ICE.” While these political expressions are certainly protected speech, encouraging students to leave school by joining them and praising them would very likely constitute contributing to truancy. At a minimum, failing to tell them that they legally should be in school would be an omission that contributed to truancy.

The leaders of the Shorewood School District may also have contributed to this truancy. While the district sent a letter to parents saying that the school did not sponsor the walkout, the letter did offer that “parents could excuse their students for the walkout by calling the attendance office.” The district offered this option despite declaring on its website that “regular attendance is a key part of student success in the Shorewood School District.” District policy lists examples of permitted “Parent-Excused Pre-Planned Absence,” such as medical appointments or attending a funeral, but participating in a political demonstration is not among those excused absences.

Some might argue that complying with technical requirements to attend school pales in comparison to the broader issues facing our country. The protesting students obviously think so, as one said: “The mark that me and like my fellow students can leave on the world I think is much more important than, you know, like another day of AP physics and creative writing.”

But these students are children, and children are not entitled to decide whether chanting “abolish ICE” is more important than learning physics and writing. Adults have to make these decisions on their behalf. And adults have enshrined their decisions in laws that compel children to attend school and forbid other adults from undermining that.

Despite these laws, it is very tempting for adults wishing to advance political agendas to mobilize impressionable children for their causes. As one of the student speakers at the protest emphasized, perhaps with some hyperbole, “America’s youth is the best organizing tool there is.” The youth are an attractive enough tool that some adults will be tempted to violate the law to wield it. It is the responsibility of other adults to call them out for these violations, enforce the law, and ensure that our children are focused on their education rather than on being used as pawns in the political battles of grown-ups.

Meanwhile, in Austin: 

HOLY SH*T!

Mob of students in the Hays Consolidated School District in Texas attacked a teacher during an ICE protest. pic.twitter.com/BmXYcv3lG5

— I Meme Therefore I Am 🇺🇸 (@ImMeme0) February 3, 2026