AG Cox and his reckless attack on Anchorage school board
AG Stephen Cox didn’t bother to check the facts before denouncing the Anchorage school board last fall, treating lies from a right-wing blog as accurate.
Temporary Attorney General Stephen Cox didn’t tell the straight story Thursday about the terrible judgement he and Education Commissioner Deena Bishop displayed last fall in spreading lies that officials of the Anchorage school district are teaching children not to believe in the Declaration of Independence or the U.S. Constitution.
General Cox should refresh his memory about his grandstanding exercise before his next confirmation hearing Friday at 1:30 p.m.
What actually happened last November was that Cox read some lies and half-truths, immediately assuming that Anchorage school board members were violating the oath of office and poisoning the minds of children.
“Alaska law requires school board members to sign—and swear to support and defend—the U.S. Constitution. When a public school district says it won't endorse the Constitution or the Declaration, or ‘the viewpoints expressed in them,’ something has gone terribly wrong,” Cox claimed in a statement.
Cox and Bishop helped stir the Republican hysteria by claiming that affixing disclaimer stickers to pamphlets from Hillsdale College was a grave offense and unpatriotic.
They attacked the district in an officious manner, demanding detailed answers on disclaimer policies in 14 days, suggesting that they could help “restore public confidence” in Anchorage schools.
They volunteered to give the district advice and wanted “cooperation in ensuring that Anchorage students are taught to respect—and not disdain—the founding principles of our nation.”
The pamphlets in question featured the Declaration of Independence, the U.S. Constitution and the Hillsdale College right-wing spin on the operation of government in America.
“In recent decades, the way our government operates has departed from the Constitution,” Hillsdale College President Larry Arnn writes in the pamphlet, a single sentence that is more than enough to earn a disclaimer from any public school.
The pamphlets promote a Hillsdale course in which the college attacks the New Deal of FDR as unconstitutional overreach. Arnn has long favored privatizing Social Security and attacks public education and programs for the needy, wrapping himself in the Constitution.
“The system of philanthropy, unique to our country, that had prevented people who suffered misfortune from starving, is now replaced by a general system of taxpayer aid that has encouraged the destruction of family life, the essential way to raise children,” Arnn wrote 20 years ago.
In the Hillsdale course outline about the Constitution promoted in the booklet, the college attacks the New Deal and claims that in the U.S., “an elite and insular administrative class rules without the consent of American citizens.”
“Moreover, administrative rule is both anti-constitutional and pre-constitutional, because it replaces the rule of law with unaccountable regulatory agencies,” according to the Hillsdale course promoted in the booklet.
Cox is familiar with the Hillsdale College spin on politics and government because the college is one of the supporters of the proposed Anchorage private school co-founded by Cox and his wife.
“Thomas More Classical School receives startup counsel and training from the Hillsdale College K–12 Education Office after being accepted through a competitive application process. TMCS plans to license Hillsdale’s classical curriculum for families in Anchorage,” the school says on its website.
In a fund-raising pitch in 2024, the school said, “If you believe in the power of classical education to transform lives—or if you simply want to support the Cox family in this God-led endeavor—your contribution can make a lasting impact.”
Cox is now treasurer of the private school board.
The Hillsdale College pamphlets, which are printed by the millions to promote the college, reach Anchorage public school students because the Col. John Mitchell chapter of the Daughters of the American Revolution routinely asks the Anchorage district to distribute copies. This school year it gave them to students in 8th grade who are studying government.
Members of the DAR who got the free booklets from Hillsdale applied the disclaimer stickers before delivering the pamphlets to the district.
Any information submitted from an outside organization that gets sent home to public school students in Anchorage is supposed to carry the boilerplate disclaimer that says, “The Anchorage School District does not endorse these materials or the viewpoint expressed in them."
Bishop either forgot or pretended to forget that she was the Anchorage superintendent in 2021 when the same complaint reached her about the same disclaimer on the same Hillsdale booklet.
This controversy was created and inflamed by Must Read Alaska through an article by a 2025 Hillsdale graduate. It began with this stretcher: “What does it mean when a government-funded institution refuses to endorse our country’s Supreme Law of the Land and the documents forming the basis of our national identity?”
After Cox and Bishop sent their foolish letter demanding the names of the culprits and suggesting that the schools were warping young minds, an attorney for the school district told them to knock it off.
The Anchorage School District is run by a local school board, not by the state, and doesn’t answer to the general.
“We do not believe the State of Alaska’s attorney general is vested with any statutory or constitutional powers supporting your lengthy demands for information contained in your November 14 letter,” attorney Matt Singer wrote on behalf of the school district.
“Our office remains available to assist with the review, but at your option,” Cox told the Anchorage school district.
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