‘Whiplash’: Swing state Republicans unleash MAGA agenda in barrage of bills

The bills keep coming, one after another, after another.

Ohio Republicans are dominating the “culture wars” over schools and students, joining other states in passing a barrage of new laws involving race, ethnicity and gender with several more in the pipeline.

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Both emboldened by President Donald Trump’s success in the 2024 elections and as a backlash against former President Joe Biden, bills pressing the Make America Great agenda in schools have accelerated and come in rapid fire.

In the past year, Ohio’s Republican supermajority has defended in court its 2023 bans of transgender athletes participating in school sports and of “gender-affirming” health care including hormone treatments and blockers for minors.

Since Trump’s November victory, the state has also passed or is still pursuing far right bills including a transgender bathroom ban and a parental bill of rights opposed by the LGBTQ community, while also opening the door for religious study by public school students and attacking “Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI)” efforts in both colleges and K-12 schools.

The bill affecting colleges, which also includes restrictions on teaching “controversial beliefs,” drew strong opposition but was signed into law by Gov. Mike DeWine last week.

Ohio, thestate with the sixth most students, is one of several passing similar bills — but the number and speed of them reflects the state’s shift to the right in recent years. Ohio was once one of the most reliable bellwether states in presidential elections, voting for the national winner in 14 straight elections from 1964 to 2020. But Ohio voted for Trump in 2020 and has now backed him in three state elections and the state is drawing some national attention for what some consider extremism on education and other issues such as abortion.

Troy McIntosh, executive director of education efforts for the Center for Christian Virtues, an Ohio nonprofit whose influence on legislators has grown in recent years, said Trump’s November win and the wave of bills are fueled by parent anger over how some social issues were framed and taught in online classes during the pandemic. It’s also a pushback against Biden giving transgender students more rights in ways some parents feel infringe on their own.

“Part of the message the electorate sent in that election is, ‘look, we need to fix this,’” McIntosh said. “This is not something we support – these progressive, radical in many ways, interpretations of law, of culture, ethics. So, sure, the (Ohio) General Assembly is responding to what the electorate told them they wanted.”

Democrats, whose opposition to the Trump-aligned bills is regularly outvoted by the state’s Republican supermajority, said the bills distract from more pressing issues like school funding and improving learning, while also being destructive.

“Some of it is just the politics of fear,” said State Senator Kent Smith, a Democrat from the Cleveland area. “It’s a racist agenda, not the ‘out of many, we become one,’ which the country was founded on.”

Bills like those passing in Ohio have cropped up in several states.Texas and Florida have led the way, according to the conservative Heritage Foundation, with other states like Indiana, Oklahoma and Kentucky each passing or proposing different combinations of bills, some directly focused on schools and others lumping schools in with all public services. Ohio was the 23rd state, for example, to pass some form of a parental bill of rights.

Many have centered on rights of transgender youth, which flared into national controversy when the Biden administration made gender identity, not just biological sex, a protected class under Title IX, a 1972 law against sexual discrimination in education. That led to debates over schools allowing transgender youth to use bathrooms they choose and over transgender students participating on sports teams, usually male students transitioning to female.

“We’ve seen really a host of state prohibitions, either through executive order or by legislation, related to gender,” said Jonathan Butcher, a fellow at the conservative Heritage Foundation. “Ohio is in the midst of it.”

Trump is leading the charge to undo Biden’s guidance, most notably with orders in January declaring that there are just two sexes — male and female — and that only biological sex, not gender identity, counts in federal law. But Butcher said states need to take action, particularly with no federal laws in place to carry Trump’s plan out.

“Executive orders are, of course, valuable and strong, but legislation is stronger,” he said. “You need provisions right in law in order for these things to not just take effect, but also remain in effect.”

Butcher said he isn’t as surprised as some at how much legislatures like Ohio’s have acted the last few years, saying it’s typical for changes and tempers to flare when emotional topics are debated, though he sympathizes with feelings of “whiplash” as the nation goes through it.

Ohio’s shift to the right didn’t start with these bills or Trump’s election. Vice President J.D. Vance was elected to the U.S. Senate for Ohio in 2022 and Republican Bernie Moreno just knocked off Democrat Sherrod Brown for Ohio’s other Senate seat in November. Republicans hold the majority in both state legislative houses, plus all major statewide offices including auditor, attorney general and secretary of state.

Republicans also prevailed in a statewide controversy over how state legislative districts are drawn that many say allows polarization of state politics to continue. Though the state supreme court ruled five times that Republicans had gerrymandered state House and Senate unfairly, Ohio voters sided with Republicans in November on a ballot issue that would have redrawn districts under a new process.

Critics charge that candidates don’t have to appeal to both sides, since districts are set up so races are really decided in Republican primaries.

“It (the legislature) has definitely moved towards a much more ideological conservative view,” said Christina Collins, a former state school board member who now heads the left-leaning Honesty for Ohio Education nonprofit.

“It is easier for them to keep up these attacks and to keep the rhetoric going and the vitriol and to keep stirring their base, which is what seems to be happening,” she said.

Ohio’s transgender bathroom ban, though proposed months earlier, passed after the November election. The state legislature followed that by passing a bill in December allowing students to leave school during the school day for religious lessons and creating a “parental bill of rights” that requires schools to tell parents about “any request by a student to identify as a gender that does not align with the student’s biological sex.”

Schools must also inform parents before students can receive any mental health services, which would also include counseling over gender identity or sexual preference. While supporters praise the bill for letting parents, not schools, decide how to handle student sexuality issues, others blasted the bill as requiring schools to “out” students and expose them to violence.

Schools have until July to set policy for how to inform parents, but counselors are bracing for a “chilling effect” the bill would have on students seeking any type of help.

“Many students struggle with unsafe or unwelcoming homes, homes ravaged by poverty or stress, or even comfortable homes where students just sometimes feel the need to vent about family matters,” Douglas Cook testified in hearings on the bill on behalf of the Ohio School Counselors Association. “School counselors’ offices are safe spaces for those students.”

“This will likely be incredibly jarring for students and result in their being scared that they will lose the privacy of having a safe listener available to them at school,” Cook added.

This year, after Trump started his own campaign in January against what he called “radical indoctrination” in schools, Ohio quickly passed a ban on DEI in training and hiring in state colleges. The law also regulates teaching of “controversial beliefs” including foreign policy, diversity, immigration, abortion and climate change.

Gov. Mike DeWine signed that ban Friday after heated debates with 1,500 pieces of written testimony submitted and student marches in protest. Opponents labeled it the “HIgher Education Destruction Act” that amounts to state censorship of educators.

State Sen. Jerry Cirino, the bill’s author said it “will return our public universities and colleges to their rightful mission of education rather than indoctrination.”

In the latest move, bills blocking DEI in training and hiring, though not lessons, in K-12 schools are being heard in the Ohio House and Senate.

Legislators are also seeking a “Given Name Act” that would yank funding from schools that let students change their name or pronouns and another bill that would declare the Ten Commandments a historical document like the Constitution or Magna Carta so schools can post them.

Support from voters for the new laws isn’t clear, though a poll in February led by Bowling Green State University found some backing. The poll found residents backed Trump’s order that there are just two sexes 61 percent to 32 percent. Support for anti-DEI policies was more narrow, 49 percent to 42 percent.