1 week Ago
YOU MAY have seen the headlines about President Donald Trump’s team exploring whether federal funding for Harvard University should be reconsidered. Predictably, the outrage from the left came fast and furious. “An attack on education!” they cried.
“An assault on democracy!” Let’s look at the bigger picture. These same voices who defend elite, billion-dollar private universities are the ones working just as hard to limit the educational choices of working- and middle-class families. They champion equity in theory but their actions tell a very different story.
Our opponents across the aisle say that private universities like Harvard, Stanford, and Northwestern aren’t funded directly by the federal government but don’t be fooled. These institutions are heavily subsidized by taxpayers just in less visible ways. According to The Washington Times, colleges and universities like Harvard, Stanford, and Northwestern have collected more than $33 billion in taxpayer-funded federal grants and contracts.
On top of that, they’ve received an estimated $12 billion in tax breaks tied to their massive endowments. These are not struggling institutions in need of support — they’re well-known brands with financial resources that rival some nations. Yet they enjoy immense public subsidies, often without scrutiny, transparency, or accountability.
Now contrast how the Democrats respond when a working-class family wants to use a modest amount of public funding to send their child to a private school, a charter program, or a specialized learning environment that better meets their needs. Suddenly, there’s outrage. Suddenly, it’s “an attack on public education.
” The same people who defend funneling billions to private Ivy League institutions will turn around and oppose a few thousand dollars going to a child in Manchester or Nashua trying to get a better shot at life. That’s not consistency. That’s hypocrisy.
This is about protecting power, not students. We’ve seen it firsthand. The Education Freedom Account (EFA) program lets families across our state choose what’s best for their children — whether that means a public school, a private one, a religious institution, or even homeschool.
These accounts aren’t about tearing down the public school system. They’re about recognizing that every child is different, and no single school can meet every need. It doesn’t stop at education.
We’ve seen this double standard again and again. The left claims to stand for working people, yet they champion environmental regulations that shut down domestic energy projects and drive-up gas and heating costs. These policies are rarely felt in faculty lounges, but they hit rural New Hampshire communities and blue-collar families the hardest.
They talk about criminal justice reform but oppose basic law enforcement measures that keep working neighborhoods safe. Cities that have embraced soft-on-crime policies — often in the name of “equity” as seen in our neighbor Boston — have seen spikes in theft, assaults, and chaos, impacting the very communities the left claims to protect. It’s not the gated neighborhoods or high-rise condos feeling the effects.
It’s the working families who power our economy that suffer. It’s a pattern worth noting — the left claims the moral high ground while implementing policies that protect their institutions, their interests, and their ideological allies — often at the expense of the very people they say they’re fighting for. We conservatives, on the other hand, are focused on outcomes, not optics.
We don’t measure success by how well the system is doing — we measure it by how well families are doing. We believe that every parent deserves the right to choose what’s best for their child. That taxpayer dollars should serve people, not prop up prestige.
Working Americans — those who build, teach, drive, fix, and serve — deserve respect, opportunity, and the freedom to rise. We know that real equity isn’t about handing more power to the powerful. It’s about removing barriers for those who’ve been overlooked, underestimated, and underserved.
That means standing up to elite institutions that have coasted on public subsidies while delivering little public benefit. And it means fighting for the families who don’t have a lobbyist or an endowment, but who still deserve a shot at the American Dream. So, the next time someone claims conservatives are attacking education, remember this: we’re not the ones defending billion-dollar private universities while denying options to everyday students.
We’re not the ones demanding fairness for some, while ignoring the struggles of most. We are standing up for parents, for students, and for working families — because we believe that opportunity should belong to everyone, not just the elite. And we’re not backing down.
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