Editorial illustration
While most kids his age are worried about video games and summer break, 12-year-old Shea Encinas has been fighting a battle most adults wouldn’t have the courage to face. This week, he stood beside President Donald Trump at the Museum of the Bible and told his story — a story of faith, conviction, and the heavy price of standing up to woke indoctrination in America’s schools.
It started in fifth grade at La Costa Heights Elementary in California’s Encinitas Union School District. Shea was forced into a “buddy” mentoring program where teachers required him to teach his kindergarten partner using a book called My Shadow Is Pink. The book pushes radical gender ideology on children, telling them they can choose their gender “based on feelings instead of how God made us.”
Shea knew it was wrong. But like any child placed in an impossible position, he was afraid of getting in trouble.
What happened next is the part the left doesn’t want you to hear. When his family spoke up, the school didn’t listen — they retaliated. Kids started bullying Shea and his brother because of their faith. The school did nothing to stop it. As Shea put it in his emotional testimony: “It hurt a lot, but I kept trusting God.”
How many families have been through this same nightmare? How many parents have watched their children become targets because they dared to say the emperor has no clothes? The difference here is that Shea refused to back down, and his family refused to be silenced.
Standing at the Museum of the Bible with the President of the United States, this brave young man delivered a message that should resonate with every American who still believes in religious freedom: “I believe kids like me should be able to live out our faith at school without being forced to go against what we believe.”
Shea Encinas is living proof that one person — even a 12-year-old boy — can stand against the machine and remind us what courage looks like. His story isn’t just about one school or one book. It’s about whether America will continue to let activist educators mold children into ideological soldiers, or whether parents and students will reclaim the right to raise their kids according to their values.
Shea chose faith over fear. In an age of conformity, that makes him a rebel worth celebrating.
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