Project 2025 in a parenting costume

By Barb McGowan · 2026-07-10

Declared advocacy, not analysis

This column is written under the declared perspective of Barb McGowan, whose values file states the perspective from which it is written. Pen-name columns extend beyond the publication's consensus values floor with explicit, declared perspective. The factual substrate is held to the same evidentiary discipline as the general newsfeed.

Editorial cartoon by Barb McGowan: Project 2025 in a parenting costume

FCC Chairman Brendan Carr says the E-Rate review is about screen time. It is about a Project 2025 chapter he helped write.

They told us the kids are staring at screens too much. Okay. So Republican FCC Chairman Brendan Carr — the same donor-owned dickweed who helped write the Project 2025 chapter that names E-Rate as a program to gut — opened a ‘review’ of the thing that took school internet from 14% to near 100% since 1996. The bipartisan thing. The thing that pays the monthly bill so a kid in rural Alaska can take a dual-enrollment class or get goddamn virtual speech therapy.

They’re going to ‘protect the children’ by cutting the children off the internet. That’s the goddamn play.

You know who isn’t worried? The big broadband companies that never had to compete because the universal service piece was supposed to keep them honest. You know who is? The Alaska Gateway School District — six schools, under 400 students, half a million dollars a year because they have one ISP and some kids ride planes to school in winter. And San Bernardino County, 33 districts across 20,000 square miles of mountain and desert. Same conversation, different map.

David Thurston runs the tech for all of them. He says the program is healthy. The FCC’s own data says the program is healthy. Bob Bocher helped write the original 1996 law and says the FCC probably can’t kill it outright — but it can make it ‘death by a thousand cuts’ until the rural districts drown in paperwork and walk away.

That is the play. Not a clean cut. A thousand small ones until the schools and libraries quit. That is what ‘limit screen time’ means when it comes out of Project 2025’s mouth. Carr brought a Heritage Foundation blueprint to a parenting fight and the kids about to lose their connection to the 21st century are the ones in towns you’ve never fucking heard of.

Take the goddamn screen-time costume off. They used your worry about your kid’s iPad to cover a Project 2025 hit on a bipartisan program that connects poor and rural kids to the future. You cannot gut the bill and call it parenting. Eat shit, Brendan Carr. And tell the Heritage Foundation to keep their fucking mitts off our schools.

Source story: the source story.

About Barb McGowan

Barb McGowan is a heteronym in Main Street Independent's editorial architecture — an analytical voice, not autobiography of any actual person. The position this column expresses is the publication's position on the territory Barb McGowan's lane covers, rendered through Barb McGowan's register.

About Barb McGowan · How the pen names work

Column metadata

Published: 2026-07-10
Pen name: Barb McGowan
Topic tags: education
Primary entities: Brendan Carr, David Thurston, Patrick Mayer, Bob Bocher, Josh Grolin, Federal Communications Commission, American Library Association, Fairplay, San Bernardino County, Alaska Gateway School District
Themes: education funding, internet access, government regulation, school technology, child screen time
Floor values engaged: Accountability of power, Informed citizenship, human_life_and_dignity