Joanne O’Brien, a far-left Maine MSAD 11 School Board member overseeing public education in Gardiner, has garnered nationwide attention in recent days for her unhinged social media posts, including one calling for President Donald Trump-supporting parents to be “forcibly shut down.”
“During PRIDE MONTH it is EXPECTED that we show ourselves to be allies to the LGBTQ community by sharing rainbow flags. MAGA’s loud obnoxious parents, who support Trump and his policies of destruction, death, and division, should have been FORCEFULLY SHUT DOWN,” said O’Brien on Facebook.
That statement came in 2023 in response to the Gardiner school’s decision to allow only American flags to be flown. That decision came in response to a controversy surrounding a student who covered a pride flag with a Trump flag.
“What’s next?-proudly facing confederate and NAZI flags,” said O’Brien in the Facebook post.
O’Brien has a long history of expressing radical political positions and slinging insults and accusations at the majority of voters who supported President Trump, continuing after his victory.
The parental rights advocacy group Courage is a Habit released a screenshot of what appeared to be private messages from O’Brien suggesting that high school girls uncomfortable with biological males in their locker rooms and bathrooms should stop “spying” and “bullying.”
“So basically, girls need to be told spying on classmates in the bathroom is bullying. Their body is none of your business,” said O’Brien.
“To a girl who feels threatened, I would say, that I was sorry that her grown-ups made her feel afraid of people who are different,” she added.
O’Brien accused two other parental rights groups, namely Parents’ Rights in Education and Moms for Liberty, of “stochastic terrorism,” which she defines as the use of “dehumanizing language” that, while not actually calling for violence, makes it more likely.
While sitting on the Gardiner school board, overseeing a school district that also educates the children of Trump supporters, she has repeatedly compared Trump, his voters, and a slew of other Republican officials to Nazis and fascists.
“We KNEW he [Trump] would be acting like Hitler, we knew ICE would be deployed like the Gestapo. The MAGAs love it because they admire him, want his attention, and they believe in “White Christian Supremacy” just like him,” she said in one late January post.
“I thought Congress set the budget and decided where the money goes, not this petty Nazi minion,” she said in a post about Secretary of State Marco Rubio.
She leveled similar accusations at Vice President J.D. Vance, reposting an article accusing him of parroting the language used by Hitler to justify the Holocaust.
O’Brien’s crusade of Facebook memes has also targeted Elon Musk, accusing him, predictably, of fascism, Nazism, and white supremacy in a variety of posts.
One post, reposting another account and adding her own comment, suggested that an X post from Musk that included 14 American flag emojis was a coded message to white supremacists who allegedly use the number 14 as code for “14 Words,” a slogan.
The slogan, allegedly “We must secure the existence of our people and a future for white children,” is, apparently, a common enough white supremacist phrase that the number 14 has become a coded message for white nationalists.
Her hatred of Musk inspired her to repost a statement suggesting that Americans should be more concerned that he, and the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), could have access to personal records than that the Chinese Communist Party could have compromised their data.
“Hey Maga, I’m still waiting for y’all to explain why you’re concerned about a Chinese app having access to our info, but when Elon seizes our SSN’s and bank data it’s no problem,” said the post.
The school board member also reposted an account that claimed Hitler got the idea for the Holocaust from America, and that the U.S. has always been a fascist nation.
“To ignore the reality that Hitler got all his ideas by following the US’s blueprint on indigenous and black oppression [sic]. Trump is copying Hitler, who was copying Andrew Jackson and Jim Crow laws. It’s all extremely US American and always has been,” said the post.
On Tuesday morning, O’Brien expressed her disgust that Trump is trying to secure a peace deal between Russia and Ukraine.
“Trump is letting Elon run amuck through the Treasury while on vacation. Now, he’s going to negotiate the Ukraine away to Russia. I wonder if Russia invaded Alaska, would he do anything,” said O’Brien.
O’Brien’s radically far-left opinions have made their way into her school board position, where she has pushed for a school-based medical clinic in Gardiner that would allow teenagers to receive prescription drugs without parental knowledge or consent.
Those prescriptions could include controversial medications such as antidepressants, cross-sex hormones, and puberty blockers.
The clinic would be operated by a taxpayer-funded nonprofit, thus providing school officials with plausible deniability about anything that occurs there that could concern parents.
O’Brien’s current term on the school board extends until November 2026, when she is up for re-election and/or a challenge by outraged parents.
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