Editors at National Review Online explain how Democratic priorities undermine parents.

Last week, Republicans in Congress passed the Parents Bill of Rights, 213–208. Critics will dismiss it as a messaging bill, but the message it sends about Democrats’ priorities is unsettling in the extreme.

Consider: The bill requires schools in receipt of federal funding to publish their curricula and to provide parents with a list of books and materials accessible at the school library. It also contains provisions that require schools to notify parents of any planned elimination of gifted-and-talented programs, to alert parents to any violent activity that took place at school, to provide parents a forum to speak at school-board meetings, and to offer two in-person meetings between parents and teachers in each school year. It requires parental consent for any medical exams or mental-health and substance-use screenings. Crucially, it establishes for parents “the right to know if a school employee or contractor acts to . . . change a minor child’s gender markers, pronouns, or preferred name; or . . . allow a child to change the child’s sex-based accommodations, including locker rooms or bathrooms.”

As you can guess, each one of these provisions relates to the rash of controversies swirling around public schools in the news the past few years, including the introduction of critical race theory and sexually explicit material for young readers and the treacherous subterfuge of school districts’ making major psychological-health decisions for students while deliberately keeping parents in the dark.

There is legitimate debate about whether the federal government ought to assert itself this way upon locally controlled school districts. But that was not the substance of objections from Democrats.

Progressives tended toward hysterical fictions. “Extreme MAGA Republicans don’t want the children of America to learn about the Holocaust,” alleged Hakeem Jeffries, absent any evidence.