But she didn’t face the camera alone. 

She was joined by Nicole Neily, a longtime advocate and president of Defending Education. It was Neily’s organization that scoured district websites for evidence of gender plans — what they call “parental exclusion policies.” In a letter to Maine Education Commissioner Pender Makin, McMahon gave Defending Education credit for gathering the documents through public records requests and referenced two conservative websites, and , that published the group’s findings. 

“We’re proud to stand with you and President Trump as you ensure that the law is being followed and that the school districts do not infringe on parents’ rights,” Neily said in the video.

Neily offered similar quotes when the Office for Civil Rights opened investigations into school district equity policies in Chicago and Fairfax, Virginia. In February, Defending Education filed about Chicago’s , which aims to increase the number of Black teachers, improve student behavior and make instruction more culturally relevant. Neily argues the initiative denies other students “educational opportunity because of the color of their skin.”

And she gets results.

On May 22, two days after for the Fairfax investigation, OCR launched a probe into admission criteria at the district’s elite Thomas Jefferson High School for Science and Technology. Defending Education argues the district discriminates against white and Asian students. The U.S. Supreme Court declined to hear an argument against the policy in February 2024 and turned down a similar case from Boston in December.

An Education Department spokeswoman told ����Ӱ�� that officials welcome support from advocates working to protect parents’ and students’ rights. Neily did not respond to questions about the department’s communications strategy.

But she is just one of several activists working with the department to advance the Trump administration’s education agenda. Since February, at least 10 department press releases announcing investigations have featured quotes from advocates representing eight organizations. They all echo the administration’s position and, like the secretary, stake out conclusions before the OCR team has begun investigating.

In July, McMahon announced an investigation into transgender students playing on girls’ sports teams in Oregon. The probe, the press release said, was prompted by a complaint from the America First Policy Institute — the she chaired for four years before she became secretary.

In the release, Jessica Hart Steinmann, the think tank’s executive general counsel, said, “Thanks to Secretary McMahon’s leadership, this investigation is moving forward as a vital step toward restoring equal opportunity in women’s athletics.”

The organization helped set the agenda for Trump’s return to the White House and the president appointed several of its leaders to . At least six former AFPI staffers work at the Education Department. Craig Trainor, who handled litigation at AFPI, has been serving as acting assistant secretary for civil rights, but was confirmed last week to a top position at the Department of Housing and Urban Development.

The press releases create “a significant pressure point on educational institutions because they’re presumed to have violated the law from the get-go,” said Jackie Wernz, an attorney who worked in the civil rights office during the Obama and first Trump administrations. The department, she said, “has changed from a neutral arbiter of civil rights disputes to an advocacy organization.”

Those who have worked at the department during both Democratic and Republican administrations, including in Trump’s first term, say such tactics could hinder investigators’ ability to gather evidence fairly. 

When OCR opens investigations, it assures subjects that a complaint is just the beginning of the process and doesn’t mean the department has reached a decision. In from 2020, Kimberly Richey, acting assistant secretary for civil rights during Trump’s first term, promised a school district that OCR would act as a “neutral fact-finder.”

“Historically … on both sides of the aisle, the department has been extremely cautious about making public statements about open investigations,” said Jill Siegelbaum, who spent 20 years in the department’s general counsel’s office before she was let go as part of McMahon’s mass layoffs. By including comments from critics, she said, the department risks immediately putting districts “on the defensive.” 

Richey, who was confirmed last week to once again lead OCR, did not respond to requests for comment.

‘Undeniable’ impact

Administration allies downplayed the significance of the actions, comparing it to former first lady Jill Biden’s decision to host American Federation of Teachers President Randi Weingarten and National Education Association President Becky Pringle as the first official when President Joe Biden took office in 2021. A former community college professor, Jill Biden is an NEA member.

Later that same year, parents and advocates in Virginia obtained emails from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention showing the unions played a decisive role in keeping schools closed during the pandemic. The AFT pushed for language that the CDC ultimately recommended saying the agency could amend its guidance if it detected new variants of the virus. Republicans argue the unions exacerbated declines in students’ learning and mental health. 

“It’s far better for the secretary to engage with Defending Education, which champions parents and students, than with Randi Weingarten’s AFT, a mouthpiece for the Democratic Party’s progressive elite,” said Ginny Gentles, an education and parental rights advocate at the conservative Defense of Freedom Institute. Neily, she added, has had an “undeniable” impact. “Nicki Neily and Defending Education have aggressively challenged the corrupt status quo, amplifying parents’ voices and demanding accountability.”

Catherine Lhamon, who ran OCR during the Obama and Biden administrations, dismissed the comparisons. She likened the warm welcome for the teachers union presidents to a political event. OCR, by contrast, is supposed to be neutral. By opening investigations with accusatory quotations from department officials and their allies, she said, the Trump administration is putting its thumb on the scale. Under Biden, she recalled, investigations frequently led to outcomes that disappointed the advocates who brought them.

“There were lots of cases during my time where the complaints were appalling. Then we’d investigate and find that they weren’t,” she said. “You might think at the beginning of a case you’re going in one direction and then when you investigate, you find you’re going in another. That’s the job of an investigator.”

The actions by the department are among several designed to radically repurpose and drastically downsize a civil rights office that had been focused on “transgender ideology and other progressive causes” and that “muddled the enforcement of laws designed to protect students.” In March, she laid off roughly 250 employees and shuttered seven of 12 regional offices. The moves are still being challenged in court. Over the weekend, after another round of layoffs, one attorney who received notice that she had lost her job said three more offices had been closed.

One former OCR attorney said pairing McMahon’s comments with those from advocates compromises the agency.

“Each administration had their favorite issues and those issues sometimes got priority treatment. But I am unaware of any complainants consistently being put to the head of the line,” said Paul Grossman, who led the San Francisco OCR office for 30 years under both Republican and Democratic administrations. 

Under previous administrations, it wasn’t unusual for the department to consult studies from advocates or think tanks and use their data to make a point, he said. “But individual leaders were not treated like or publicized as celebrities.”

Wernz, who now advises districts and colleges, said the Biden administration may have planted the seeds of the current practice. In some cases, the department under the previous regime issued statements after districts agreed to change policies and practices, but before OCR had completed a full investigation. In her view, some of those press releases were  

“The Biden administration kind of opened the door like a crack to do this,” Wernz said. “And the Trump administration has just kicked the door down.”

A majority of the department’s press releases about OCR work highlight Trump administration priorities, like focusing Title IX on biological sex and eliminating diversity, equity and inclusion programs. Many of them include supporting quotes from like-minded advocates, including:

• , executive director of the conservative Southeastern Legal Foundation. She represents drama teacher Stacy Deemar, who filed a complaint against the Evanston-Skokie district in Illinois in 2019. The district, she alleged, racially discriminates against white students and staff through racial affinity groups, training sessions focused on race and “privilege walks.” In the , participants take a step forward or backward based on issues like whether they learned about their own culture in school, have two parents with college degrees or grew up in a poor neighborhood. 
  
  Under former Secretary Miguel Cardona, the department dismissed the complaint. 
  
  “Dr. Deemar has waited patiently for the harms inflicted by the Biden Administration to be rectified,” Hermann said in the release. “For the sake of our children and our country, the time to restore equality and reclaim civil liberties is now.” Deemar previously sued the district in federal court, but a the case last year, ruling that the teacher didn’t experience a hostile environment.

• , executive director of the Foundation Against Intolerance and Racism, which opposes “identity-based practices.” she was “thrilled” that OCR opened an investigation into the Tumwater School District in Washington state. The organization complained on behalf of a 15-year-old female basketball player who refused to participate in a game against an opposing team with a transgender player. The Tumwater district, according to the complaint, also investigated the student for bullying and harassment because she spoke out against the student playing. 

• , vice president of the Native American Guardians Association. The North Dakota-based organization opposes New York’s ban on Native American mascots in sports. The group, along with President Trump and McMahon, took the side of Massapequa High School in its dispute with the state over using the name Chiefs. McMahon has since referred the complaint to the Department of Justice. “We call on federal and state leaders to help us defend these dwindling expressions of our presence and contributions,” Black Cloud said in the department’s press release. 

Julie Hartman, a department spokeswoman, defended the inclusion of advocates in press statements. She said the agency “welcomes support from — and has often worked with — outside groups who want to advocate for students and families and help those who believe that their civil rights have been violated.”

The department, she said, has a “responsibility to ensure that taxpayer dollars are not sponsoring practices that violate” federal laws. According to department records, OCR investigated complaints from multiple advocacy organizations under former Secretary Cardona, including Defending Education. 

Under Biden, OCR opened a dozen based on Defending Education’s complaints.

In one 2023 case, the group complained that the Ashland, Oregon, school district offered exclusive, race-based affinity groups for students. When the Office for Civil Rights looked into , the district that the groups are open to all students and OCR closed the case. 

Advocates frequently issue their own press releases about complaints they want OCR to resolve. Some don’t see a problem with McMahon featuring them in official statements as well and say it’s a matter of transparency. 

“These groups often have expertise in specific areas and connections to affected communities that help them spot problems government agencies might miss,” said Harris, with the Foundation Against Intolerance and Racism.

Quoting advocates “can foster trust by humanizing issues,” said Black Cloud. 

‘What letter?’

In some cases, the advocates commenting are more clued into where an investigation is headed than districts and even OCR itself. 

In one example, the department in March notified the Deerfield Public Schools, north of Chicago, that it was the subject of a probe over complaints about transgender athletes using girls’ locker rooms. The letter came the same day OCR officials issued , said Cathy Kedjidjian, the district’s chief communications officer. The government’s investigation also targets the Illinois Department of Education and the Chicago Public Schools.

“We didn’t know the investigation was coming,” she said.

In the release, Robert Eitel, president and co-founder of the Defense of Freedom Institute, thanked the department for taking steps to ensure “the bad actors comply with Title IX.” 

Deerfield officials, Kedjidjian said, have since “responded in full” to OCR’s questions. In an to the community, the district denied allegations that middle school girls had to change in a locker room with a trans girl present.

Jim Blew, who worked at the department during the first Trump administration and now leads the think tank with Eitel, said they “won’t be commenting for this story.”

Another announcement caught OCR’s attorneys off guard. On , a release stated that the department sent letters to 60 colleges and universities warning them to protect Jewish students on campus during antisemitic protests. 

“We found out from the same press release that you all did,” the attorney who was laid off over the weekend told ����Ӱ��. She asked to remain anonymous for fear of retaliation. When the letters went out, she said OCR attorneys received “confused and angry emails [from universities], like ‘What’s this letter?’ And we go, ‘What letter?’ ”

Actions like that, she said, can damage the “trust and goodwill” that investigators work to create with K-12 and higher education officials. 

“We’re the ones doing the face-to-face with the recipients [of those letters],” she said. With the closure of 10 regional OCR offices, as part of the administration’s plan to eliminate the agency, the staff is trying to reassure districts and give them “a sense that ‘We are still neutral, we will handle this case.’ ”

A U.S.-based tutoring company on Tuesday pushed back against a conservative campaign to “destroy” it due to security fears over its Chinese owner.

In a posted online, said the parents’ rights group in recent months has misrepresented its operations, falsely claiming it has ties to the Chinese government. The company, based in New York, said the parents’ group is trying to persuade lawmakers and others that Tutor.com “is somehow a puppet of the Chinese government and a threat to national security,” according to the letter. 

Founded two decades ago, Tutor.com was acquired in 2022 by , a Beijing-based investment firm in Hong Kong, Singapore and Palo Alto, Calif. In the letter to attorneys representing Parents Defending Education, the company said the parents’ group has chosen to portray Tutor.com “as a stalking horse to advance the advocacy group’s broader political agenda.”

The effort by Parents Defending Education both echoes and influences a larger one by lawmakers nationwide to raise security concerns about companies linked to China, including fears that they could be compelled to share student data with the Chinese government.

But John Calvello, Tutor.com’s spokesperson and chief institutional officer, said the fears are misplaced.

“First and foremost, it’s important to say: We are an American company,” he said in an interview. “I want to be very clear about that. And again, as an American company, you have to abide by all U.S laws and regulations.”

Tutor.com, Calvello said, “cannot be compelled to share data” with anyone.

He noted that it had recently undergone a voluntary review by the federal , which found, in his words, “no unresolved national security concerns.”

He also said the company has a designated security officer approved by the U.S. government to ensure data security compliance. And he said all of Tutor.com’s data is housed in the United States. 

According to the watchdog site , states, school districts, colleges and even the Pentagon have spent more than $35 million on contracts with Tutor.com over the past decade. Among the largest: nearly $1.6 million in 2015 for online homework tutoring for the U.S. Defense Department and $1.1 million in 2022 for tutoring at California State East Bay.

Following the pandemic, state and school district spending on Tutor.com, as with other tutoring providers, skyrocketed. In December, the New Hampshire Department of Education said it would through Tutor.com to every student in fourth- through twelfth grades, as well as to those prepping for GED exams. 

But many lawmakers have also sought to minimize China’s influence in both K-12 and higher education.

After Congress in 2018 targeted the nearly 100 Confucius Institutes on U.S. college campuses, restricting federal funding at schools with programs, their number dropped to fewer than five, according to a 2023 U.S. Government Accountability Office . 

In 2024, lawmakers are seeking to ban TikTok due to the social media application’s Chinese ownership. Primavera is a minority investor in ByteDance, TikTok’s parent company. ByteDance also owns the AI-powered homework helper .

But Tutor.com has been the subject of much of the scrutiny around student data. In February, U.S. Sen. Tom Cotton, a Republican from Arkansas, Lloyd Austin, saying the Pentagon’s relationship with Tutor.com is “ill-advised, reckless, and a danger to U.S. national security.”

Cotton said the Pentagon should end its dealings with the company, suggesting that students’ personal data, such as location, IP addresses and the contents of tutoring sessions, could be released to the Chinese government. He said the U.S. is “paying to expose our military and their children’s private information to the Chinese Communist Party.”

In March, Manny Diaz, Jr., Florida’s commissioner of education, to public K-12 and higher education leaders statewide, saying Tutor.com’s ties to “foreign countries of concern” may compromise student data privacy. Diaz said the State Board of Education had adopted rules to protect student data “to keep it out of the hands of bad actors,” adding that school districts, charter schools and state colleges “must take the necessary steps to protect their students from nefarious foreign actors such as the Chinese Communist Party.”

And last month, 13 lawmakers, led by U.S. Rep. Tim Walberg, R-Michigan, to U.S. Education Secretary Miguel Cardona, saying Tutor.com “poses a significant national security threat.” They asked what measures the department had taken to assess “the potential national security risks associated with Tutor.com’s relationship.”

A spokesperson for Cardona did not immediately respond to a request for comment.Neily recently that Tutor.com’s Chinese ties are “something that just seemed to have slipped past the goalies.”

During a segment on the company, the show’s host alleged that providers like Tutor.com can gather data from even the youngest students and “adapt what they need to teach these kids to make sure they’re good, functional little robots.” He asked Neily, “Is that the plan?” 

She replied, “That very much seems to be the plan,” adding, “Let’s be honest, this data is not being secured by America’s best and brightest.”

Neily did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Tutor.com’s Calvello said much of the alarm around the company’s Chinese ties stems from the parents’ group, which he said has been “promoting falsehoods” that lawmakers and others have amplified. As a result, he said, a few school districts have been under pressure to drop the service, with critics quoting the parents’ group’s materials. 

“We’re prepared to pursue legal avenues to protect our reputation and operations from false claims,” he said.