On Tuesday, Feb. 10, Nebraska governor Jim Pillen announced at a press conference that he was partnering with Turning Point USA, or TPUSA, to expand their reach in schools across the state.  

This expansion would intend to put Club America chapters, an organization under TPUSA, into our high schools. Partnerships with TPUSA similar to this already exist between the states of Texas, Florida, Montana and Tennessee, making Nebraska the fifth state to join.  

Nick Cocca, enterprise director for Club America, stated at the press conference with Pillen that the state would not provide any funding to the organization, and instead would work more to help students who experience pushbacks for starting a Club America chapter. 

He stated during the conference that “essentially, if we had any issues at the school level where administrators, anyone was trying to stop a student from starting a club, generally, they would have to answer to the state on that.” 

Besides this “answering to state,” Pillen failed to clarify how the future of this partnership will work. 

Pillen also refused to take questions after the press conference, leaving reporters and other groups, like the Nebraska State Education Association, or NSEA, confused and concerned about the nature of these punishments, and the direct involvement of state with school extracurriculars. 

Tim Royers, president of the NSEA, stated in a post on X (formerly Twitter) that if students wanted to start a TPUSA club, they had the constitutional right to do so, but that it’s wildly different than “the governor abusing his position to try and force every high school to have one.” 

The right for students to create non-curricular related clubs became protected constitutionally after the US Supreme Court ruled on “Westside Community Schools v. Mergens,” which took place here in Omahain 1990. 

The fact that this partnership’s only clear goal, as of its first announcement, is supposedly to defend students trying to form a club makes no sense when that right is already protected on a federal level. 

What this really brings into question then, is why the state would ever feel the need to create a partnership like this. 

It’s no secret that in the past, Pillen has aligned himself with the goals of the current Trump administration.  

In his state address on Jan. 15, Pillen proudly shared the “countless new opportunities for Nebraska” that Trump’s administration has brought, including banning pop and energy drinks from government-subsidized food programs like SNAP, being the first state to “take advantage of the One Big Beautiful Bill” to require able-bodied adults to work before gaining access to welfare and being one of the first states to establish ICE detention facilities “to help get criminal illegal aliens off our streets.” 

One of the main goals of the Trump Administration on a federal level has been to end “radical indoctrination in K-12 Schooling,” as stated on the White House website. Pillen has also aligned with this, pushing back against transgender rights in schools and electing officials who have moved to ban books like “The Handmaid’s Tale” and other stories about race or sexuality. 

If the goal really is to end “indoctrination” in schools, then the fact that Pillen wants to push every high school to have a TPUSA club makes it clear that it’s only really about ending indoctrination of ideas that he doesn’t agree with. 

Young Nebraskans don’t need Pillen to push his own ideology onto them under the guise of protecting their freedom of speech. 

Throughout the conference discussing the partnership, Pillen stated his admiration for Charlie Kirk, the late conservative political commentator and co-founder of TPUSA, and wife Erica Kirk. He told reporters at the conference that Kirk “inspired him,” and that he hopes young people can be inspired to have good debates and “work through it.” 

Kirk, who became popular prior to his death due to his “prove me wrong” debates, famously had incredibly conservative views. He opposed abortion, gun control, Diversity Equity and Inclusion (DEI) programs and LGBTQ rights. He also leaned into Christian nationalism, advocating for Christianity in politics and moving to make America a Christian nation, even going as far as to say that secularism, atheism and Islam are a threat to America as a whole. 

If our government is willing to partner with a group founded by a man that called Islam “the sword the left is using to slit the throat of America,” I can’t believe to any degree that they are intending to open a space for free speech. The type of hate that Kirk spews does not open spaces for civil discussion like Pillen argues, but divides groups by using extreme levels of hate. 

For Pillen to partner with TPUSA and promote this kind of thinking, especially in public schools, is incredibly harmful to the diverse population that our state is home to.  

Looking at the Nebraska census, between 2020 and 2024, 8.0% of Nebraska’s residents were foreign born and roughly 27.1% were from minority racial groups.  

Before his death Kirk remarked that “America was at its peak when we halted immigration for 40 years and we dropped our foreign-born percentage to its lowest level ever,” referring to the 1924 immigrations laws founded on eugenics and overt racism that cut immigration nearly 90%.  

As a state, Nebraska’s is home to over 153,000 immigrants according to the American Immigration Council. This number does not include the children of immigrants. With a population this large, for our state government to put an organization that is so against immigrants into our schools should be recognized as an incredible disservice not only to it’s students, but also to the hundreds of thousands of immigrants and first generation American’s who TPUSA is teaching people to hate. 

According to the Omaha Public Schools research division, only 20.3% of students across 124 schools from preschool to high school are white, with the remaining percentage (79.7%) of students being from minority groups. 

While many might not realize, Nebraska schools across the state are made of a diverse population, with only 62.4% of students identifying as white.  

OPS is the largest school district in the state, serving over 51,000 students. With a majority of its students being nonwhite, there is no place or reason to introduce a club that spouts ideologies leaning dangerously close to white supremacy in our schools, especially not while endorsed by the state. 

Pillen’s partnership with TPUSA blatantly disregards the fact that the organization has shown that they are fundamentally against the people that much of OPS and other districts across the state, and therefore alarge percentage of Nebraska’s early education, represents. 

This negligence from Pillen brings into question how much of this partnership is really about the students and their political freedom. 

There is nothing wrong with having political clubs in schools, it’s a constitutional right. If students want to start a club with conservative or Christian views, they should be able to, but when the state is moving to sponsor an infamously conservative and harmful group on a legislative level, it blurs the line between political freedom and state sponsored ideology. 

As students, and more importantly as residents of a diverse state, we must realize that this kind of partnership between an overtly harmful political organization and the state government cannot be tolerated, no matter how much Pillen claims it to be about “having good debates.”