Conservative parents’ rights organization American Parents Coalition (APC) sent a letter to Congress Wednesday urging an investigation into the federal funding for the non-profit National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine (NASEM).
NASEM claims to provide “independent, trustworthy advice” on STEM, but it has “transformed itself into a platform for pushing radical political agendas into K–12 classrooms across America,” stated the Executive Director of the APC, Alleigh Marré, in the letter.
Marré, a parental rights advocate and former national spokeswoman for the Department of Health and Human Services during the first Trump administration, founded the APC to “[follow] the dollars … making sure that parents and families [understand] the curriculum that’s being presented to their kids, both in public and private school, who its funded by [and] where it’s coming from,” she told The Federalist.
NASEM is a private, non-profit, congressionally chartered organization that acts as the scientific national academy of the United States. Abraham Lincoln started the organization in 1863 to act as a policy advisor on issues related to science and technology. NASEM claims to still give “rigorous, evidence-based processes to deliver high-quality, independent advice … guided by the highest standards of integrity, objectivity, and scientific rigor,” but the APC spotted corruption in NASEM after tracing some of its annual $205 million in government funds to school curriculum that teaches gender ideology and climate alarmism.
“These institutional entities you kind of just expect [them] to do what they say they’re going to do,” Marré said, “[but] have we gotten lost in the comfort of a brand and a name that we’ve known forever? It seems like with [NASEM], we have certainly gotten complacent in the funding that we’re providing.”
The letter states that NASEM has hosted workshops with the American Academy of Pediatrics, which supports transgender mutilation surgery and radical gender ideology. A 2023 workshop titled “Supporting the Health and Well-Being of Transgender and Gender Diverse Youth” advised schools to use children’s preferred pronouns and support a child’s gender delusion, even when parents object.
“[NASEM] is supposed to be setting objective evidence-based standards that improve the STEM capabilities of the next generation of students, and instead of that, we’re seeing them continue to embed more and more ideology into their work,” Marré said.
NASEM continued to push for a leftist agenda in the classroom last year with a report titled “Equity in K–12 STEM Education: Framing Decisions for the Future.” APC stated in the letter that “Rather than charting a course to elevate American scientific achievement, the report frames the entire U.S. educational system as a mechanism of systemic oppression … teaching children that STEM’s primary purpose is social justice.”
“In what world does that fit into improving the next generation’s STEM [abilities]?” Marré exclaimed. “It doesn’t.”
NASEM also focuses on spreading climate alarmism by funding radical companies, the letter states. A NASEM-funded organization, EcoRise, creates and distributes lesson plans for K-12 students on “discover[ing] how [students] can help dismantle and counteract damage caused by systemic racism.” EcoRise states on its website that students should “learn that harming the environment is an example of unkind behavior and that people of color are disproportionately impacted by environmental problems.”
According to the APC, NASEM also funds the Children’s Environmental Literacy Foundation, which “explicitly recruits kids into climate advocacy campaigns,” the letter says. Furthermore, NASEM “awarded Birmingham-Southern College $1.25 million to develop a ‘curriculum focused on environmental justice and climate change,'” a report by APC states.
APC believes that NASEM’s radical agenda push is not just dishonest but potentially illegal. In the letter to Congress, the APC argues that NASEM is in violation of several of President Trump’s Executive Orders (EO) because it supports radical gender ideology and Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) initiatives. Executive Orders 14168, 14151, and 14173 ban federal funding for organizations that promote gender ideology or DEI. “NASEM’s workshops, curricula, partnerships, and DEI-framed publications appear to be in direct conflict with each of these directives,” the letter states.
NASEM’s deception has already alarmed two congressmen. The APC reported that Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, and three other senators sent a letter to the Federal Judicial Center (FJC) in April raising concerns about the FJC’s “Reference Manual on Scientific Evidence.” NASEM created the manual to “aid judges’ scientific understanding when relevant to legal proceedings,” the letter states. The manual’s last chapter on climate change, now inexplicably removed, had “falsities and weaknesses … too numerous to list … that present disputed scientific assertions as settled, reli[ed] heavily on politically mediated sources, and offer[ed] prescriptive conclusions without the safeguards that normally accompany the admission and testing of expert evidence,” the senators said in their letter.
Eleven congressmen sent a separate letter concerning NASEM to the Department of Transportation, asking for an investigation into “NASEM’s federal funding, conflicts of interest, and misuse of taxpayer dollars,” for violating Trump’s executive orders, APC’s letter states.
The Federalist asked NASEM if the organization realized it could be violating federal law, and why it is pushing gender ideology and unsubstantiated climate alarmism when it should be creating reliable STEM-focused materials. NASEM did not respond.
NASEM has numerous ties to far-left donors. A report by the American Energy Institute found a confirmed total of over $6 million from a multitude of groups, include ones backed by George Soros, Mark Zuckerberg, and Reed Hastings.
Considering the donors and the activism, APC Executive Director Marré said, “There are a lot of places [in NASEM] where I think an investigation should be in order, especially when you’re talking about hundreds of millions of dollars.”
Marré hopes to “see federal funding adjusted to reflect the lack of competency we’re seeing on student performance” because of the APC’s letter to Congress.
Congress established the National Assessment Governing Board (NAGB) to measure education in the United States. In its 2024 “Nation’s Report Card,” the NAGB found that fourth and eighth-grade math scores remain below pre-pandemic levels, and that the gap between “higher-performing” and “lower-performing” students in mathematics continues to increase. The most recent international education comparison study, the 2023 Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study (TIMSS), found that U.S. students scored lower than 21 nations in math and 11 nations in science, with Singapore, China, Korea, and Japan in the lead in both subjects.
Marré believes that to improve United States education, NASEM and school curriculum need to change. “We need to take a hard look at what those hard-earned taxpayer dollars are funding and put [NASEM] on hold until we have some curriculum that is actually improving student performance,” she said.
