CLASS DISMISSED: Trump Hands Nevada Parents School Choice While Titus, Lee and Horsford Vote No

President Donald Trump is opening the new school year with an education agenda built around a proposition that enrages the institutional left and delights parents: children belong to families, not government bureaucracies.

The White House on Monday highlighted Trump’s expanding school-choice program, record charter-school investment, crackdown on gender ideology and effort to return education authority to states and local communities. At the center is the Education Freedom Tax Credit, the first nationwide federal school-choice program, created through Trump’s Working Families Tax Cuts.

Beginning in 2027, taxpayers can receive a federal tax credit of up to $1,700 for contributions to approved scholarship-granting organizations. Those organizations can provide scholarships covering qualified K-12 expenses, giving families additional resources for tuition, tutoring, books and other educational needs. Nearly 52 million students nationwide could be eligible, according to the White House.

Nevada families will not be watching from the sidelines.

Republican Gov. Joe Lombardo formally opted Nevada into the program in January, declaring that parents should have the freedom to choose the education that best fits their children. Nevada joined a growing list of states participating before the program’s launch.

There is, however, an inconvenient roll call for Nevada’s congressional Democrats.

Reps. Dina Titus, Susie Lee and Steven Horsford all voted against the legislation that created the new scholarship tax credit. The House Clerk records all three Nevada Democrats voting “no” on final passage of the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, while Republican Rep. Mark Amodei voted for it. The measure passed 218-214.

So while Lombardo was signing Nevada families up for more educational freedom, Titus, Lee and Horsford had already cast their votes against the law making it possible.

That contrast becomes harder to explain in a state where parents have little reason to accept the educational status quo as sacred scripture. Nevada students have made progress since the pandemic, but statewide students remained more than one-third of a grade level behind 2019 achievement in both math and reading, according to a 2026 academic recovery analysis from researchers affiliated with Harvard, Stanford and Dartmouth.

Trump’s answer is competition, accountability and parental authority rather than another truckload of money for the education bureaucracy.

His administration says it has delivered a record $500 million investment in the federal Charter Schools Program, authorized states to use greater federal flexibility to support parental choice and begun returning federal education authority to states. The administration has also terminated more than $2 billion in diversity, equity and inclusion spending and $67 million in grants the White House says supported sexually explicit material for minors.

Trump has simultaneously made the culture war impossible for schools to avoid. His administration has opened Title IX investigations into institutions allowing biological males into female sports and intimate spaces, rescinded Biden-era guidance involving preferred pronouns and targeted policies that facilitate gender transitions at school without parental knowledge.

The philosophy could hardly be more different from the progressive education establishment: teach children to read, protect girls, stop hiding things from parents and let families escape schools that fail them.

Nevada’s political trajectory makes that argument particularly combustible. Lombardo broke Democrat control of the governor’s mansion in 2022, Trump carried Nevada in 2024, and Republicans are now targeting the congressional seats held by Titus and Lee.

Nevada parents are about to receive something Washington Democrats have spent decades warning against: options.

Titus, Lee and Horsford had their choice too.

They voted no.

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