Leaders of education and parents rights groups across the country sounded off after first lady Jill Biden claimed that her husband, President Biden, will always be ‘the education president.’

‘I knew that Joe would always be the education president, because he knows that … the success of our nation starts with you, the educators who shape our students’ lives,’ Jill Biden told a crowd at the 2023 NEA teacher’s union’s annual meeting on Tuesday.

The first lady’s comment sparked criticism from education leaders across the country who took issue with the president’s record on education, including Sheri Few, president and founder of United States Parents Involved in Education.

‘In light of who her audience was, she was probably 100% accurate when it comes to Biden supporting the liberal NEA agenda,’ Few told Fox News Digital in a statement. ‘Biden is THE most anti-parent education president in the history of this country! And he is THE education president that carries the water for the NEA.

‘He is THE education president whose Department of Justice wanted to label parents as domestic terrorists for objecting to pornography and critical Marxist theories in schools.’

Few continued, ‘He is THE education president whose Press Secretary insisted that trans kids are ‘our kids’ and ‘belong to all of us.’ And he is THE education president who said, ‘There is no such thing as someone else’s child…Our nation’s children are all our children.’’

Jill Biden’s comment comes shortly after the ‘Nation’s Report Card’ showed that reading and math scores for 13-year-olds dipped to their lowest rate in decades exacerbated by school closures that Biden’s critics said he encouraged.

‘If being the education president means sharing a bed with the teachers’ unions, locking children out of their schools for over a year and vilifying their parents for objecting, and subsequently, presiding over the total evaporation of two decades of progress in reading and math, then yes, the title fits perfectly, and he deserves a crown,’ Erika Sanzi, director of outreach at Parents Defending Education and a former educator, told Fox News Digital.

Dr. Jameson Taylor, American Family Association senior fellow and director of policy for AFA Action, told Fox News Digital that Biden had a ‘once-in-a-generation opportunity’ to become ‘the education president’ but ultimately ‘failed America’s kids.

‘Instead, Biden took the easy way out of enabling the mediocre status quo,’ Taylor said. ‘He has also failed to prioritize the things that matter – reading, writing and math – and is preoccupied with making every school in the country comply with CRT and transgender ideologies that are compromising student safety.’

The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment from Fox News Digital. 

EXCLUSIVE: Republican presidential candidate and South Carolina Sen. Tim Scott will launch a massive seven-figure ad buy in the early caucus state of Iowa on Thursday, Fox News has learned.

The ad, titled, ‘Winning,’ is part of a larger $6 million buy, and includes Scott pushing back on the ‘victim’ state of mind he says exhibits what President Biden’s administration has given to America. It also acts as a response to First Lady Jill Biden referring to her husband as ‘the education president.’

‘Playing football taught me that it’s good to fight, but it’s better to win,’ Scott says in the ad, referencing his days as a high school and college football player. ‘In Joe Biden’s America, everybody gets a participation trophy, and everybody is a victim.’ 

‘The radical left is indoctrinating our children, teaching CRT instead of ABC, punishing excellence by eliminating honors classes and promoting a transgender ideology that’s ruining women’s sports. I’m Tim Scott and I approve this message because, as president, I’ll fight back, and I’ll win,’ he says.

Scott excelled at football in high school before earning a scholarship to play at Presbyterian college.

During a Tuesday event at the White House, Jill Biden told members of a teachers union, ‘I knew that Joe would always be the education president because he knows the success of our nation starts with you, the educators, who shape our students’ lives,’ despite the U.S. having decades low reading and math scores.

Scott is one of 13 candidates in the race for the Republican presidential nomination, and is one of two candidates from South Carolina – the other being former U.N. Ambassador Nikki Haley.

A June Fox News poll showed Scott tied in fifth place at 4% alongside former Vice President Mike Pence. Former President Donald Trump has maintained his front-runner status at 56%, followed by Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis in a distant second at 22%.

Yusef Salaam, one of the exonerated ‘Central Park Five,’ has won a Democratic primary for a seat on the New York City Council, all but assuring him of eventual victory. It’s an improbable feat for a political novice who was wrongly accused, convicted and imprisoned as a teenager for the rape and beating of a white jogger in Central Park.

The Associated Press refrained from calling the race on election night, but vote tallies released Wednesday showed him to be the clear winner to represent Central Harlem. Salaam is not expected to face a serious challenge in November’s general election, if any.

It is time, he said, for ‘a new Harlem renaissance.’

‘To have a voice from a person who’s been pushed into the margins of life — someone who has actually been one of those who has been counted out — is finally having a seat at the table,’ Salaam said in an interview Wednesday.

‘Harlem is such a special place that it is known as the Black Mecca,’ he said. What happens in Harlem ‘reverberates around the world.’

Salaam and the four other Black and Latino teens from Harlem became known as the Central Park Five after their arrest in 1989 in the headline-grabbing rape, one of the city’s most notorious and racially fraught crimes. He served nearly seven years in prison before the group was exonerated through DNA evidence.

His outsider campaign prevailed over two political veterans — New York Assembly members Inez Dickens, 73, and Al Taylor, 65 — in his first bid for public office. Democratic socialist Kristin Richardson Jordan, the incumbent council member, dropped out of the race in May but remained on the ballot.

Salaam declared victory on election night with his vote tally barely exceeding 50%, although an unknown number of absentee ballots had yet to be counted. But his lead over Dickens, his nearest competitor, seemed insurmountable, and both she and Taylor conceded. New York City is still tabulating late-arriving mail ballots that could potentially push him back above the 50% threshold, in which case he will have won without the benefit of ranked-choice voting tallies.

‘When I think about the things that we need the most, of course on the top of everyone’s list are affordable housing, education and safe streets,’ Salaam told the AP.

While all three candidates focused on promoting affordable housing, controlling gentrification and easing poverty in Harlem, Salaam capitalized on his celebrity in neighborhoods that consider the Central Park Five — now the Exonerated Five — to be living symbols of the injustices faced by the Black and Latino residents who make up about three-fourth’s of the district’s population.

‘He comes from the neighborhood, and he was incarcerated then turned himself around,’ said voter Carnation France. ‘He’s trying to do something for the people.’

Others were looking for a change in leadership.

Zambi Mwendwa said she voted for Salaam because he is ‘a new face.’ She said her decision had nothing to do with the injustice in his past.

‘I’ve heard him talk. He seems to be talking about the things I care about,’ Mwendwa said on election day.

Salaam’s lack of experience in public office might have actually worked in his favor, according to Amani Onyioha, a partner at Sole Strategies, which ran phone banks and engaged residents on Salaam’s behalf.

‘In a time like this, when people are looking for a hero, they’re looking for somebody who can relate to them,’ Onyioha said.

‘I think people saw him as a survivor,’ Onyioha said. ‘He was vindicated and the system eventually ended up working out for him.’

Salaam moved to Georgia shortly after he was released and became an activist, a motivational speaker, an author and a poet. He returned only in December to launch his campaign.

Salaam was 15 when he was arrested along with Antron McCray, Kevin Richardson, Raymond Santana and Korey Wise, who served between five and 12 years in prison before prosecutors agreed to reexamine the case. DNA evidence and a confession ultimately linked a serial rapist and murderer to the attack, but he wasn’t prosecuted because too much time had passed. Their convictions were vacated in 2002 and the city ultimately agreed in a legal settlement to pay the exonerated men a combined $41 million.

A 2012 Ken Burns documentary called ‘The Central Park Five’ rekindled public attention on the men’s childhood saga. More recently, a 2019 television miniseries, ‘When They See Us,’ drew attention again, just before the Black Lives Matter Movement was launched in response to the killing of George Floyd by a Minneapolis police officer.

Donald Trump, who in 1989 placed ads in four newspapers before the group went on trial with the blaring headline ‘Bring Back the Death Penalty,’ later refused to apologize, saying all five had pleaded guilty — a reference to their coerced confessions. Salaam reminded voters of that in April, putting out his own full-page ad headlined ‘Bring Back Justice & Fairness,’ in response to one of Trump’s indictments.

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Former President Donald Trump has a commanding polling lead in the crowded race for the 2024 Republican presidential nomination, but his fundraising is also robust.

The former president hauled in more than $35 million during the April-June second quarter of 2023 fundraising, Trump’s campaign confirmed to Fox News on Wednesday.

That’s nearly double the $18.8 million the Trump campaign brought in during the January-March first quarter of fundraising.

The massive haul appears to be an indicator that the former president’s mounting legal troubles have helped fuel his 2024 White House campaign.

During the second quarter of fundraising this year, Trump become the first sitting or former president in U.S. history to be charged with a crime. 

Trump pleaded not guilty in early April in New York City to charges brought by the Manhattan District Attorney’s Office. The former president was indicted for allegedly giving hush money payments to adult film actress Stormy Daniels in 2016 to keep her quiet ahead of that year’s presidential election over her claims she had sexual encounters years earlier with Trump. The former president denies sleeping with Daniels and denies falsifying business records to keep the payment concealed.

Trump was indicted and arraigned early last month for his alleged improper retention of classified records. He pleaded not guilty in federal court in Miami, Florida to criminal charges that he illegally retained national security records at his Mar-a-Lago estate in Palm Beach, Florida, following the end of his term as president and that he obstructed federal efforts to recover the documents. In total, Trump faces 37 felony charges.

Trump’s campaign touted that they hauled in $7 in the first four days following the New York City indictment, which spanned the end of the first quarter and the start of the second. And the campaign announced another huge fundraising infusion immediately following last month’s federal indictment.

Trump is the first of the Republican contenders to announce his second quarter fundraising. Candidates have until July 15 to file reports with the Federal Election Commission.

The latest evidence of the former president’s fundraising prowess comes as he holds a commanding lead in the latest GOP presidential nomination polls.

Trump, who is making his third straight White House run, stands at 56% support in the latest Fox News national poll of likely GOP primary voters, with Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis at 22% and everybody else in the large field of candidates in the singe digits. Trump’s lead has steadily expanded since the late winter.

The former president also enjoys large double-digital leads in the most recent surveys in Iowa and New Hampshire — the two states that lead off the Republican presidential nominating calendar.

‘We’ve always firmly believed that President Trump would be the clear and away front-runner in this race and once he started to campaign and travel around the country and engage with voters that it would be clear that he’s in the driver’s seat,’ said a top Trump campaign adviser, who asked to remain anonymous to speak more freely.

Trump’s second quarter haul includes funds for his official presidential campaign and Save America, which is his political action committee.

Trump aides didn’t provide a percentage breakdown of how much of the fundraising went to the campaign and to the PAC. But according to the latest fundraising emails, 90% of donations go to the campaign with the remaining 10% to the PAC. 

Save America spends its money on Trump’s non-campaign activities, including paying former president’s expensive legal bills.

News of Trump’s second quarter fundraising was first reported by Politico.

A proposed amendment that would enshrine abortion rights in Ohio’s constitution is being decried as an attack on parental rights by prominent pro-life groups.

The amendment, which was drafted by the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) of Ohio, declares that ‘every individual has the right to make and carry out one’s own reproductive decisions’ on contraception, fertility treatment, continuing one’s own pregnancy, miscarriage care and abortion.

A coalition of pro-abortion groups submitted the required number of signatures Wednesday to get the amendment on the ballot in November. State officials must now review the signatures for potential errors before voters can decide on it.

‘This amendment is dangerous for the women and children of Ohio,’ Marjorie Dannenfelser, president of Susan B. Anthony Pro-Life America, said in a statement. ‘It removes parents from some of their minor children’s most important health decisions such as parental notification before an abortion. It would eliminate basic health and safety standards for women. And it would permit late term abortion after the baby can feel pain and even right up until birth.’ 

‘This amendment is too extreme for Ohio,’ said Logan Church, director of CatholicVote Ohio. ‘As part of its unrelenting attack on parents, the ACLU’s proposed amendment seeks to cut parents out of their child’s most important and life-altering health decisions – including abortions and sex change operations.’

‘On top of that, the amendment would nullify existing and future health and safety protection for women and permit abortions in Ohio through all nine months of pregnancy, well after the point at which the unborn child can feel pain,’ Church added.

The amendment doesn’t mention sex-change operations, but critics argue that its ‘loosely defined’ language, which prohibits any law that ‘directly or indirectly’ would ‘burden’ or interfere’ with ‘reproductive decisions,’ would leave parents out of the conversation if their child chooses to pursue an abortion or sex change surgery. 

Protect Women Ohio (PWO), which is leading the fight against the amendment, points to comments made in February by Jessie Hill, an attorney for the ACLU of Ohio, who told local media that conflicting laws ‘should not be enforced,’ as evidence of the organization’s offensive position regarding parental rights.  

‘When you pass a constitutional amendment, it doesn’t just automatically erase everything and start over,’ Hill said. ‘But it would mean that laws that conflict with it cannot be enforced, should not be enforced.’

PWO spokesperson Amy Natoce accused the ACLU and pro-abortion groups of deceptively collecting the signatures needed to get on the ballot.

‘The ACLU’s extreme anti-parent amendment is so unpopular that they couldn’t even rely on grassroots support to collect signatures,’ Natoce said. ‘The ACLU paid out-of-state signature collectors to lie to Ohioans about their dangerous amendment that will strip parents of their rights, permit minors to undergo sex change operations without their parents’ knowledge or consent, and allow painful abortion on demand through all nine months. The ACLU’s attempts to hijack Ohio’s constitution to further its own radical agenda would be pathetic if it wasn’t so dangerous.’ 

ACLU Ohio did not respond to Fox News Digital’s request for comment.

Fox News’ Kendall Tietz contributed to this report.

EXCLUSIVE: Sen. Eric Schmitt, R-Mo., is pledging to keep a close eye on the Biden administration after a judge blocked key agencies and departments from communicating with social media companies to avoid potential First Amendment violations.

Schmitt, who filed the lawsuit last year when he was Missouri’s attorney general, told Fox News Digital he believes the case revealed ‘perhaps the most chilling example’ of a government coordinating with private businesses to restrict free speech.

‘That’s at the heart of this case,’ he said of the First Amendment issue. ‘Government’s job is to protect those rights, not to infringe upon those rights. And what’s been uncovered here is perhaps the most chilling example and shocking example of government colluding with some of the most powerful companies in the history of the world to suppress speech.’

Louisiana U.S. District Judge Terry Doughty, a Trump appointee, said there was ‘substantial evidence’ the Biden administration engaged in ‘dystopian’ stifling of speech during the COVID-19 pandemic in a biting 155-page opinion released on Tuesday.

‘[T]he evidence produced thus far depicts an almost dystopian scenario. During the COVID-19 pandemic, a period perhaps best characterized by widespread doubt and uncertainty, the United States Government seems to have assumed a role similar to an Orwellian ‘Ministry of Truth,’’ Doughty wrote. ‘The Plaintiffs have presented substantial evidence in support of their claims that they were the victims of a far-reaching and widespread censorship campaign. This court finds that they are likely to succeed on the merits of their First Amendment free speech claim.’

Now in the Senate, Schmitt said he intended to keep following the case using the powers of ‘legislation and oversight’ his role in Washington calls for.

‘I’ve already filed legislation, that if you’re in violation of people’s First Amendment rights, section 230 protections don’t apply to you if you’re a social media company,’ he said, citing the legal provision that shields such firms from liability for the content users post.

‘I think there’s more to do,’ Schmitt added. ‘So we’ll be looking to follow legislation on that to make sure specific government actors who engage in violating people’s First Amendment rights are held accountable.’

Schmitt also signaled he would follow his promise with letters to ensure the compliance of the Biden administration and social media companies.

‘We’re currently working on that right now,’ he said. ‘It’s certainly a priority for me. We’re going to be vigilant on it. I think that we’ve got to hold these government officials accountable, and we got to make sure to comply with this order.’

‘Whether that’s legislation or oversight, you know, I’m going to be in the middle of that fight every step of the way. And this is not a just a short-term thing for me. This is something that… is a core belief that I have.’

Fox News Digital reached out to the White House for comment but did not immediately hear back.

White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre shut down a reporter’s question Wednesday concerning President Biden’s seventh grandchild, the estranged daughter of his son Hunter Biden who he has so far refused to acknowledge.

During the daily White House press briefing, Jean-Pierre was asked specifically about a Saturday New York Times story centered on 4-year-old Navy Joan Roberts, and whether Biden acknowledged her as his granddaughter, even though the two have not yet met.

‘There was a story in The New York Times over the weekend about Hunter Biden’s daughter in Arkansas. Does the president acknowledge this little girl as his granddaughter?’ the reporter asked.

‘I don’t have anything to share from here,’ Jean-Pierre simply responded, continuing the White House’s tradition of refusing to answer questions pertaining to Roberts.

According to The Times’ report, Biden aides have been told to say publicly that the president only has six grandchildren, omitting Roberts.

On numerous occasions where Biden has talked about his grandchildren, he claimed to only have six, including at a White House ‘take your child to work day’ event in April.

‘I have six grandchildren, and I’m crazy about them. And I speak to them every single day. Not a joke,’ he said at the event.

Last week, Hunter settled his Arkansas child support case with Roberts’ mother, Lunden Alexis Roberts, ending a years-long paternity dispute. A Thursday court filing showed Hunter agreed to give his daughter some of his paintings, and the mother of the child agreed to withdraw her counterclaim to change their child’s last name to ‘Biden.’

Fox News’ Jessica Chasmar contributed to this report.