In an effort to win over voters who he hopes will help him return to the White House, Donald Trump, speaking to voters in Iowa, vowed to ban the teaching of so-called Critical Race Theory in schools and prevent transgender athletes from competing in Girls 'Sports, Trump said he would restore 'common sense as well as prevent transgender women from competing in girls ' sports

---

DAVENPORT, Iowa – March,14,2023

Edited by| Hugh Gey

North America  section -  CJ journalist

---

    The former president also criticized the education system in the United States, calling it" crazy " education, referring to the adoption of the system of indoctrination, not education

Republicans are competing to assail Democrats over what they see as the encroachment of “wokeness” into teaching.

“We have to get back to common sense, and that is reading, writing, arithmetic,” Mr. Trump told the crowd in Davenport, in response to an audience question about schools becoming “indoctrination camps” that are “focused on sexualizing our children”.

“What they’re teaching in schools today is insane,” said the 76-year-old Republican, who is running for president again after failing to win a second term in 2020.

Mr. Trump had previewed his education policy blueprint in January, calling for federal funding cuts to programs teaching children “critical race theory, gender ideology, or other inappropriate racial, sexual, or political content”.

On Monday night, he also promised to champion school choice, the right of parents to elect principals, and state - rather than federal - control over curriculums.

“School choice is where it’s at,” Mr. Trump said, referring to a movement that seeks to use tax credits and vouchers to allow parents to opt out of the public school system in favor of privately managed charter schools.

“As president, I’ll fight to expand that right to every single state in America,” he said.

And he repeated a previous pledge to “keep men out of women’s sports” - a reference to Republican efforts to ban transgender women and girls from sports teams that match their gender identity.

Iowa tends to be deluged by candidates in presidential election cycles as it hosts the first nominating contest for Republicans, and remains high in the Democratic calendar after being knocked from the top spot.

Former United Nations ambassador Nikki Haley, the only high-profile Republican Trump rival to have officially declared her candidacy, also campaigned in the largely rural Midwestern state last week.

A Des Moines Register/Mediacom Iowa Poll out on Friday showed Mr. Trump still holding significant sway in Iowa, although his favorability rating among self-identified Republicans has fallen from 91 percent in September 2021 to 80 percent.

Mr. DeSantis was close behind, with 74 percent of self-identified Republicans having a favorable opinion of him.

And the share of Republicans who said they’d “definitely vote” for Mr. Trump if he were the party's 2024 presidential nominee dropped from 69 percent in June 2021 to 47 percent now.

Democratic National Committee spokesman Rhyan Lake has previously accused Mr. Trump's support for school choice as being an effort to gut public education while pushing to move billions of dollars toward private schools.

“Everyone will see right through Donald Trump’s desperate spin about his own record as the GOP field races to out-MAGA each other at the expense of America's kids,” Lake said in a statement.

Mr. DeSantis’s education agenda in Florida was a recurring theme in his remarks in Iowa on Friday.

“I think we have really done a great job of drawing a line in the sand to say the purpose of our schools is to educate kids not to indoctrinate kids,” he said to cheers from the crowd in Des Moines.

Mr. DeSantis has asked the Florida legislature to expand a ban on teaching gender-identity concepts to eighth grade from third grade currently. He is working to dismantle diversity and equity offices in state universities and has engineered a conservative takeover of a small Florida college.

He recently worked with the national parents’ rights group, Moms for Liberty, to fashion a target list of liberal school board members to challenge in Florida.