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The One Speech Ingraham Says Republicans Should Play If They 'Want to Win in 2024'

Leah Barkoukis
Leah Barkoukis  |  July 18, 2023 10:30 AM

The “Nation’s Report Card,” released last month, showed “historic” declines in math and reading scores among U.S. teens, many of whom were pushed into Zoom school during pandemic lockdowns, thanks in large part to pressure from teachers’ unions to keep kids out of the classroom. 

Former Education Secretary Betsy DeVos called the report a “5-alarm fire” and warned “a generation is at risk.”

It’s an issue that has the potential to become a key election issue in 2024, and has been shown in some surveys to be one that Americans would vote for a candidate outside their party if their education agenda was in line with their own. 

That’s why a recent speech from Becky Pringle, the president of the National Education Association, is one Fox News’s Laura Ingraham said Republicans should play if they “want to win in 2024.”

Pringle’s speech to the 102 Representative Assembly, while long on advocating for LGBT rights, abortion, DEI, and criticizing the Supreme Court’s recent decisions, was short on addressing the recent educational declines. 

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NEA, our struggle for freedom will never rest. 

We have come here to Florida—our nation’s Ground Zero for shameful, racist, homophobic, misogynistic, xenophobic rhetoric and dangerous actions. We have come here because our children are here. We have come here because our colleagues are here. We have come here because educators, students, and their communities are being attacked by laws that threaten their safety, question their humanity, and block their access to every basic right that defines the word FREEDOM! We stand ready to lift up and protect our colleagues and their students. Right here in Florida, we will preserve and strengthen a democracy that was steeped in the power of “We the People!” 

In this moment—in this state—where the LGBTQ+ community—especially those who are transgender—face relentless attacks, we will fight for the right of every student and every educator to stand completely in the authenticity of who they know themselves to be; to embrace the gender expression that reflects who they are.

In this moment when voting rights hang in the balance, and reproductive rights remain at risk we are required to fight for fair and free elections and a woman’s right to control her own body. 

NEA, this is that moment with the residue of the pandemic lingering, with our psyches still fragile we must try to make sense of all we have lost, and all that we have learned.

NEA, this is that moment when your professional responsibility and your academic freedom to teach the truth of our nation’s history—and its impact to this day—can cost you your license, your job, your life. I will always remember the tearful yet defiant Florida educator who expressed the concerns of far too many, telling me: “I can’t teach like this. I refuse to.” 

NEA, this is that moment when an extremist, out-of-touch Supreme Court slammed shut the doors of access and opportunity for millions of Americans by outlawing affirmative action; refusing to acknowledge the way student loan debt puts higher education out of reach for too many and keeps millions of Americans from experiencing financial freedom in their lifetimes.

During one 24-hour period this radical court struck yet another blow against our LGBTQ+ community, with a decision that—for the first time ever—licenses discrimination under the First Amendment against a protected class. 

NEA, it is in this moment that we cannot rest, because as educators we know Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson told the truth when she wrote in her dissenting opinion: “Every moment these gaps persist is a moment [where] this great country falls short of actualizing one of its foundational principles—the “self-evident” truth that all of us are created equal.”

Justice Sonia Sotomayor told the truth when she wrote: “Despite the Court’s unjustifiedexercise of power, the opinion today will serve only to highlight the Court’s own impotence in the face of an America whose cries for equality resound.”

Both ended their blistering rebukes with these powerful words: I dissent.

NEA, we ALL dissent! […]

We must call out every politician and every pundit who refuses to address gun violence; who seeks to erase the beautiful stories of Indigenous people; of our Latino and API communities; who refuse to acknowledge the right of our trans students to live their true identities.

We must raise our voices and say: No! You will not arm teachers. No! You will not shrink our students’ curriculum. No, you will not leave them unprepared to lead a just society. 

NEA, in this unthinkable moment, make no mistake. These are not culture wars raging across this nation. These are wars on our freedoms. At their very core, these wars are an assault on our rights as humans; our right to have and participate in a civil society; our right to live and learn and be.

Her delivery was equally jarring.

“If the Republicans want to win in 2024, just play that speech,” Ingraham said. “That will win the election. This is what your kids are being subjected to. Rants and angry people apparently. What a disaster she is.”