June 3, 2025
In one more occasion of mafia politics, the Trump administration is threatening to destroy the state’s public colleges until its reactionary social agenda is obeyed.
Secretary of Training Linda McMahon talking throughout a press convention at Massapequa Excessive Faculty on Could 30, 2025, discussing New York State’s ban on Native American mascots.
(Alejandra Villa Loarca / Newsday RM through Getty Photos)
Typically the irony doesn’t simply burn. It flays the pores and skin. Donald Trump’s schooling secretary, Linda McMahon—she and her household are the longtime overlords of World Wrestling Leisure—has made billions partially by having her wrestlers embody ethnic and racial stereotypes to the joys of the group. Black pimps, savage Pacific Islanders, and, in fact, primitive Indigenous folks with pretend battle cries and painted faces performed by people who find themselves about as Native American as Colin Firth—all a part of this system.
This has at all times mirrored the comedic tastes of Linda’s violently misogynistic and virulently racist husband, Vince, all of which McMahon knew learn how to monetize. Racism as common leisure is Linda McMahon’s lane. With no schooling expertise, usually trying confused when questioned in regards to the topic (for McMahon, AI is a steak-sauce), her solely qualification for working in Trump’s cupboard is her expertise for overlaying up alleged rape and little one abuse and defending racism—each useful for this administration.
The shamelessness reached a brand new peak on Could 31 when McMahon held a press convention at Massapequa Excessive Faculty in Lengthy Island, New York, to defend racist Indigenous mascoting. Linda excoriated the state’s ban on Indigenous mascots for public highschool sports activities as a result of, anticipate it, it’s the banning of those minstrel exhibits that’s, in truth, racist.
Due to this so-called racism, she introduced that Trump will pull schooling funds from the state until Massapequa Excessive Faculty can maintain calling themselves “the Chiefs.” The regime additionally demanded that Governor Kathy Hochul difficulty a private, public apology for responding to grassroots strain and enacting the ban. It’s extra unprecedented mafia politics from this regime, utilizing the specter of destroying the state’s public colleges until its reactionary social agenda is obeyed.
Present Challenge
“The Trump Administration won’t stand idly by as state leaders try to get rid of the historical past and tradition of Native American tribes,” McMahon stated, surrounded by a coterie of white college students. McMahon was additionally backed by the Native American Guardians Affiliation, a conservative group of Indigenous those that had been flown in from North Dakota. In the meantime, the precise tribal councils in New York State have affirmed and reaffirmed that mascoting is degrading, and, based on American Psychiatric Affiliation research, harms Native children.
By conflating Indigenous minstrelsy—white folks in face paint—with illustration, it additionally makes it simpler for non-Natives to disregard precise points plaguing Native communities, like poverty and poor healthcare entry. It’s a warped model of visibility that solely serves to erase. As a spokesperson from the Nationwide Congress of American Indians stated, “These depictions will not be tributes—they’re rooted in racism, cultural appropriation, and intentional ignorance.”
McMahon traveled to Massapequa following a report decrying mascot bans by the Civil Rights Division of Trump’s Justice Division, which has now been weaponized to assault all anti-racism as prejudicial to whites. Like a remedial debater backed by zero research or stats, Trump and his cronies contend that if we are able to have mascots just like the Dutchmen, as a unique highschool in Lengthy Island does, then it’s racist to forestall Native Individuals from being mascots too. It’s a silly, tiresome argument straight out of 1982, however I’ll handle it nonetheless: There aren’t broad, nationwide organizations of Dutch folks clamoring to alter these names. Possibly that’s as a result of throughout this factor that occurred referred to as historical past, the Dutch have been the conquerors of the larger New York Metropolis space, not the conquered. They weren’t the victims of land theft and genocide. Mascoting Native Individuals not solely commemorates the demeaning stereotype of savageness but in addition implicitly celebrates the white people within the stands whose ancestors had the gumption—or extra precisely, the weapons and germs—to eradicate them. This isn’t about Indigenous rights or illustration. It’s about making non-Native college students and neighborhood members snug with their very own racism: white supremacy with out the guilt, which is the primary tenet of this administration.
Then there may be the toxic lie that Trump cares about Indigenous populations, when his bald racism against Native people has been a constant a part of his life for many years. If he actually cared, he’d apologize for the very fact that Native people are being “mistakenly” arrested by ICE. It’s simply extra gaslighting from this regime, akin to this cupboard of open antisemites claiming to have zero tolerance for antisemitism. This previous week, a true hater of Jews, conservative nepo baby Kingsley Wilson, was promoted to spokesperson of the Division of Protection over the meek objections of the ADL.
As for Massapequa, regardless of being a really conservative neighborhood, on hours’ discover it pulled collectively a major protest that stuffed the streets exterior the varsity. We want extra of this. Or we are able to passively settle for that Linda McMahon, a part of the household that took an Italian wrestler named Joe Scarpa and renamed him Chief Jay Strongbow, offers a rattling about any of this.
Some would possibly say that that is one more of the administration’s weapons of mass distraction, diverting our consideration to this absurdity as a substitute of the brand new funds that may upend folks’s lives and kill many individuals who can be compelled to lose their medical insurance. This can be true on one degree, however we’ve to see that McMahon’s erasure agenda walks hand in glove with Trump’s oligarchical heist. The extra we’re divided, as a substitute of unified just like the protestors in Massapequa, the extra they are going to steal. Anti-racism isn’t a facet difficulty. It’s a vital a part of the form of unity that may efficiently problem an outlaw administration.
That’s why they hate it a lot. Trump and McMahon are keen to halt faculty funding, humiliate elected officers, and demonize—and even criminalize—individuals who received’t mock Native Individuals at sporting occasions.
It boggles the thoughts that that is how they’re selecting to train probably the most highly effective levers of federal energy—till you understand that their agenda can’t succeed with out division, irrespective of how racist, irrespective of how undemocratic, and irrespective of how violent.
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