JTC 🇺🇸🦅

2 GOP senators side with Democrats to block ICE, CBP funding dlvr.it/TSBP3t

Allow me to share a story. A story of America. In 1973, a boy named @HungCao_VA arrived in America, a refugee from Vietnam, his family carrying very little beyond hope. They had no land, no lineage, no luxury in America. No pedigree, no property, no "privilege." He learned English in Fairfax County, Va., from "Mr. T" and the voices of the "A-Team," the flickering television screen his classroom. In 1985, he earned his place, by merit, in the first class of Thomas Jefferson High School for Science and Technology in Alexandria, Va., a school started in a public-private partnership for the brightest minds in the area to help make America competitive against the Soviets. In 1986, President Ronald Reagan visited the school. He told the students: "Whatever path you choose, if it follows the light of hope, it will lead you confidently into the future." Hung Cao graduated in the TJ Class of 1989. In 1996, he graduated from the U.S. Naval Academy, deploying later to Afghanistan and beyond. In 2021, after years of service, he laid down his uniform, his wife, April, and children beside him. In 2022, he stood on a different type of battlefield for America's future, this time on the steps of the U.S. Supreme Court, beside parents, many immigrants like his own, who had arrived with nothing but hopes to realize the American Dreams. Their cause was his own: defending the right to merit, the right to rise without facing prejudice. Two years earlier, in 2020, in the year of an explosion of polices called "diversity, equity and inclusion," the school board in Fairfax County had stripped away the merit-only admissions test that had once given a refugee boy his ticket to a school that became America's No. 1 high school. They said there were too many Asian students at the school. By then, there were about seven of 10 kids at TJ of Asian descent. They didn't count in the kind of "diversity" the school board demanded. The school board said they wanted something called "racial balancing." The school superintendent accused the Asian kids of cheating their way into the school. The state's education secretary compared test preparation to athletes "doping." Asian kids started changing their names to hide their ethnic ancestry. A group of determined parents had created a kitchen-table group, @CoalitionforTJ, and led the parent's movement against backward school board policies, taking their fight to America's courts. They had won. A federal judge in the Fourth Circuit, appointed by Reagan, had ruled that the school board had discriminated against Asian students, boys and girls like Hung Cao's younger self. Then, the parents had lost on appeal. They had pressed on, taking their case to the highest court in the land. Thus, in 2022, Hung Cao stood with them—standing for the child he had once been. The Supreme Court didn't hear the parent's case, but U.S. voters elected a president—Donald Trump—who arrived in 2025 and issued as one of his first orders a demand that school systems stop prejudice in education in the name of "diversity, equity and inclusion" and reinstate merit. Now, the arc of that refugee boy's story takes him to the White House. President Donald Trump has named Hung Cao to be the United States’ Undersecretary of the Navy. His response: "Thank you, Mr. President. It's time to get to work." His story is the American Dream realized. A story of hard work. English learned watching "Mr. T." A story of merit. A story of resilience. A story of America.