Pete Hegseth isn't smarter than a 5th grader

Because 5th graders have a basic understanding of the US government.

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth is being sued by 12 students over the removal of books that educate on race and gender from Pentagon schools following a racist, sexist, and homophobic executive order.

The lawsuit alleges that their First Amendment rights are being infringed by the decision, by putting children in danger by depriving them of essential information about health, hygiene, biology, and abuse.

The lead counsel in this case has said: “The quality of children’s education, their exposure to ideas and the preparing of citizens in the next generation are all being harmed by this censorship. This is not how public schools are supposed to work—students have a right to learn and to access information that should be above the political fray.”

The plaintiffs in this case are attending schools run by the Defense Department both in the U.S. and overseas. These schools, which are classified as civilian schools and subject to First Amendment rights, should not have to uphold the executive order for federal branches. The 12 children belong to five families of active duty personnel based in the U.S., Italy, and Japan, with their ages ranging from pre-kindergarten to high school.

Since taking office, Trump has signed a number of horrific executive orders aimed at dismantling diversity, equality, and inclusion (DEI) initiatives, which have been aggressively pursued by Hegseth at the Department of Defense.

The defense secretary has used the "Defending Women from Gender Ideology Extremism" and "Ending Radical Indoctrination in K-12 Schooling" orders to purge nearly 400 books and enforce Trump's anti-woman, anti minority, anti-disability, anti-gay, anti-trans policies.

Notable works included in the purge was Maya Angelou’s I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings and Janet Jacobs’ Memorializing the Holocaust, which examines the way in which female victims of Nazi Germany are remembered.

Linda Gordon’s The Second Coming of the KKK was also removed, but Hitler’s Mein Kampf was not, and neither was The Bell Curve, which claims Black people are genetically less intelligent than white people. But what WAS banned was a different text that was a critique of the book.

The award-winning Queer History of the United States was pulled from school shelves, despite it being a core text in AP Psychology courses, while in Italy a children’s book titled Julian Is a Mermaid was among 25 titles removed by the DoD. Because god forbid a boy has an imagination that isn't centered around trucks and GI Joes.

“By quarantining library books and whitewashing curricula in its civilian schools, the Department of Defense Education Activity is violating students’ First Amendment rights,” Matt Callahan, senior supervising attorney at the ACLU of Virginia, said in an ACLU press release. “The government can’t scrub references to race and gender from public school libraries and classrooms just because the Trump administration doesn’t like certain viewpoints on those topics.”

Corey Shapiro, legal director for the ACLU of Kentucky, added: “Our clients have a right to receive an education that includes an open and honest dialogue about America’s history. Censoring books and canceling assignments about the contributions of Black Americans is not only wrong, but antithetical to our First Amendment rights.”