5 minutes read time.
The New McCarthyism
A shameful and dangerous new standard is being codified into the machinery of American government, representing a coordinated, two-front assault on the very principles of free thought and expression. At the federal level, the Felonious Punk administration has directed its immigration services to begin screening visa and green card applicants for perceived “anti-Americanism.” Simultaneously, in a chilling parallel at the state level, Oklahoma’s headline-grabbing school superintendent is rolling out a new ideological purity test designed to filter out teachers from blue states deemed “woke indoctrinators.” This is not a coincidence; it is a pincer movement. While one policy targets the immigrant and the other the educator, the goal is identical: to use the power of the state as a gatekeeper to enforce a narrow, right-wing definition of what it means to be a “good” American. This is the shameful reality of a new McCarthyism taking root, a campaign that seeks to judge individuals not on their merits or character, but on their adherence to a vaguely defined and politically motivated ideological script.
The Federal Front: An Unconstitutional “Anti-Americanism” Test
The first front in this new war on dissent was opened by a U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) policy memorandum. The directive empowers immigration officers to use their discretion to deny benefits—such as green cards, work permits, and other legal pathways—to anyone who has “endorsed, promoted, supported, or otherwise espoused” so-called “anti-American” views. This will be enforced through an expanded program of social media vetting and will be treated as an “overwhelmingly negative factor” in any application. The language of the memo is a masterclass in insidious rhetoric, deliberately conflating “anti-American ideologies” with “terrorist organizations” and “antisemitism.” This is a classic political technique designed to equate legitimate political dissent with violent extremism, thereby making a radical policy of ideological screening seem like a reasonable national security measure.
The most chilling aspect of the policy is its deliberate ambiguity. “Anti-Americanism” is not a legal term; it is a political weapon. As legal experts and civil rights groups have immediately pointed out, its definition is left entirely to the whims of the administration and the individual officers enforcing it. “This is a new powerful weapon in President Trump’s arsenal against politically disfavored groups,” warned David J. Bier of the libertarian Cato Institute. The inevitable result will be a profound “chilling effect” on the free expression of millions of people in the immigration system. As Bier explained, “When mere ‘affiliation’ or ‘association’ with poorly defined, unpopular political speech is enough to trigger the loss of jobs, family, or any chance to remain in the United States… the pressure to avoid controversial views will be immense.”
This has sparked a fierce constitutional debate. The administration’s allies argue that First Amendment rights do not extend to non-citizens, particularly those applying from outside the U.S. But civil rights attorneys like Ruby Robinson of the Michigan Immigrant Rights Center counter that the Constitution protects all people within the United States from government overreach. Professor Jane Lilly Lopez, a sociologist at Brigham Young University, gets to the heart of the practical danger, warning that the policy is “opening the door for stereotypes and prejudice and implicit bias to take the wheel in these decisions.” This subjective test is just one piece of a broader, aggressive anti-immigrant agenda from the Felonious Punk administration, which includes a massive domestic deportation operation and threats to strip citizenship from naturalized Americans.
The State Front: A “Woke” Litmus Test for Teachers
As the federal government targets immigrants, a parallel ideological crusade is unfolding in America’s heartland. In Oklahoma, State Superintendent of Public Instruction Ryan Walters, a controversial figure known for his efforts to distribute Bibles in schools and question the 2020 election, has declared war on teachers from New York and California, whose teaching standards he deems “antithetical” to Oklahoma’s. His new weapon is a mandatory test for applicants from these states, designed explicitly to screen out “woke indoctrinators.”
The test was developed by Prager University, which, despite its name, is not an accredited academic university but a conservative media organization and think tank that produces content promoting right-wing viewpoints. The test itself is a perfect case study in ideological gatekeeping. On the surface, the five sample questions shared by Walters’s office appear to be basic civics:
- What are the first three words of the Constitution?
- Why is freedom of religion important to America’s identity?
- What are the two parts of the U.S. Congress?
- How many U.S. Senators are there?
- Why do some states have more Representatives than others?
The trap lies not in the questions, but in the conditions. Applicants must answer all 50 questions correctly—a 100% pass rate that allows for no errors. Furthermore, Walters has stated the test will also focus on “the biological differences between the two genders,” a clear signal of its true purpose as a right-wing litmus test on cultural issues, not a neutral measure of civics knowledge. The state’s teachers’ union has decried the move as a “political stunt” that will worsen a teacher shortage and may be illegal under state law, a concern echoed even by a member of the state’s own education board, who warned, “It sounds like we’re on the edge.”
The Rise of the Ideological Gatekeeper
The throughline connecting the federal immigration official scrolling through a visa applicant’s social media in Washington and the state bureaucrat grading a teacher’s civics test in Oklahoma is unmistakable. Both are acting as ideological gatekeepers. Both are using a vague, subjective, and politically motivated purity test to enforce a narrow definition of acceptable thought. This is a profound and deeply shameful shift in the nature of American governance. It is a move away from a pluralistic society that, at its best, has welcomed dissent and debate, and toward an authoritarian model where one’s right to immigrate, to work, and to participate in public life is contingent on passing a political litmus test. The shameful reality is that this is no longer a slippery slope, but the ground on which we now stand.
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