The Soviet Union murdered 25 million of its own people.
American kids have spent decades learning almost nothing about it.
But Erika Donalds wants Florida to be the first state where kids learn the truth about Communism – and a UCLA professor just told you exactly why it matters.
Florida Takes a Stand No Other State Has Taken
Florida schools are rolling out new History of Communism standards this fall, reaching students in grades 6 through 12 across the state.
The standards grew out of a 2024 law signed by Governor Ron DeSantis requiring schools to teach communist movements, the conditions that allowed them to rise, and the atrocities they produced.
Erika Donalds – founder of the Education Freedom Foundation and former Collier County School Board member – went on Florida's Voice Radio Friday and said the quiet part out loud.
"We should be the first state where our students, and then young adults, understand the dangers of communism," she said.
She's right.
https://twitter.com/FLVoiceNews/status/2094749633817739598?s=20
The Black Book of Communism, drawing from declassified Soviet and Eastern European archives, tallied roughly 100 million deaths at the hands of communist regimes across the 20th century.
Stalin alone killed as many as 20 million.
Mao's Great Leap Forward starved 30 to 43 million Chinese to death between 1958 and 1961.
The Khmer Rouge wiped out 25 percent of Cambodia's entire population in four years.
Your grandchildren could graduate high school without knowing a single one of those numbers.
That's not an accident.
The Left Is Already Screaming About This
Florida's new standards don't just cover history.
They instruct educators to teach students about the "repackaging of Marxist ideology" in current political discourse and the dangers of propaganda in modern media.
Left-wing academics lost their minds the moment that language went public.
A UCLA history professor said, "If I were a teacher, I would feel really scared by this."
Scared to teach the truth about communism.
That reaction tells you everything.
https://twitter.com/FLVoiceNews/status/2094481637375414337?s=20
The American Spectator put it correctly – every state in the country should follow Florida's lead.
Congress already moved in that direction.
The Crucial Communism Teaching Act passed the U.S. House 327 to 62 in December 2024, directing schools to resources from the Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation and requiring students to understand that communism has led to the deaths of more than 100 million people and that 1.5 billion people still live under it today.
Florida isn't ahead of the curve.
Florida is the curve.
Why Erika Donalds Is the Right Person to Lead This Fight
Two million Floridians already know what communism looks like up close.
They came from Cuba, Venezuela, and Nicaragua.
When DeSantis signed the 2024 legislation launching this effort, he was joined by veterans of the failed 1961 Bay of Pigs invasion of Cuba.
Rafael Montalvo, president of the Brigade 2506 Veterans Association, said what every one of them was thinking.
"The most important fight against communism is the one that's done in the schoolrooms," Montalvo said. "That's where the battle is happening right now."
Florida's own Education Commissioner, Anastasios Kamoutsas, is the Miami-raised grandson of Cuban exiles.
He's not teaching history.
He's teaching his family's survival story to an entire generation.
Erika Donalds has spent more than a decade fighting for school choice because she watched what happens when left-wing bureaucrats control what children learn.
When her son's Naples public school pushed back against her, she launched a classical charter school, ran for the school board, and eventually built national organizations devoted to parental rights in education.
She chairs the Education Opportunity Initiative at the America First Policy Institute.
https://twitter.com/ErikaDonalds/status/2094539005102625082?s=20
She also raised a warning Friday that every parent in America should hear.
"Remember, the schools stopped allowing students to take books home once parents started blowing the whistle on what was in the books," she said. "That's why we had to pass a law. People forget. I don't forget."
She's not forgetting this either.
Only 22 percent of eighth-graders in America score proficient in civics on the National Assessment of Educational Progress.
Donalds wants stronger accountability – more rigorous testing of both teachers and students to make sure the curriculum actually sticks.
Her husband, Trump-endorsed Republican gubernatorial nominee Byron Donalds, faces Democrat David Jolly in November.
If Byron wins, Erika Donalds will be the most powerful education reform advocate in Florida history standing one office away from the governor's chair – and a generation of Florida students will know what communism actually is, and what it costs.
The people who already know that lesson escaped it with their lives.
Now Florida is making sure the next generation never has to.
Sources:
- Frank Kopylov, "Erika Donalds says Florida should be first to teach students 'dangers of communism,'" Florida's Voice, August 31, 2026.
- "Crucial Communism Teaching Act," H.R. 5349, U.S. House of Representatives, passed December 6, 2024.
- "Curricular Resources," Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation, victimsofcommunism.org, June 2026.
- "Florida's Curriculum on Communism – Every State Should Follow Suit," The American Spectator, August 28, 2026.
- "Body Count: 85–100 Million Dead from Communism," American Enterprise Institute, aei.org.
- "Reading, Writing, Communism: Inside New Curriculum Teaching Kids About Evil," Daily Wire, August 2026.
- "Florida's New Communism Education Mandate Reaches Classrooms This Year," The Epoch Times, August 2026.
