There are some weeks when disparate news stories seem to be connected. This past week was one of those — and we start in Oklahoma, where 122 students were suspended after a Feb. 5 protest walkout at Mustang High School.
The district’s stated reason is “unexcused absence,” not viewpoint-based discipline—a distinction that matters if this ends up in court.
The big question isn’t just what happened on the day of the walkout. It’s what happens next.
Grant argues this is the kind of situation that can attract legal attention quickly because of the sheer number of students involved: “122 kids… it is going to go to court.”
Meaning that somebody — a student, a parent, or multiple parents — is going to engage an organization like the ACLU and sue the school district. I reached out to Oklahoma’s ACLU office and did not receive a response.
Grant noted in our conversation that it may not require a “civil rights lawyer” specifically — it could be any legal or advocacy group focused on student rights in education.
Where this becomes especially interesting (and potentially messy) is what a lawsuit can trigger:
If there’s litigation, you get discovery
Discovery can pull back the curtain on internal communications
That can reshape what the public thinks the real motivations were
There’s also a credibility test embedded in the district’s logic. If “unexcused absence” is truly the standard, critics will naturally compare it to every other “unexcused absence” tradition that schools have tolerated forever.
Grant’s point is simple: if enforcement looks selective, it invites the conclusion people are already reaching — that the punishment is effectively tied to protected expression.
But Grant tied the Mustang protest to a bigger dynamic.
Grant brings up a concept often described as the “3.5% percent rule” — not as a literal rule for this situation, but as a reminder that movements don’t require a majority to create change. The smaller the number needed to apply pressure, the more sensitive institutions become to public pushback.
And the more visible the punishment, the more likely it is to spark additional protests:
Students walk out
The institution clamps down
Friends and peers see the punishment
More people join because now it’s personal
That’s the kind of spillover dynamic that can turn a local incident into a statewide (or national) flashpoint — especially when it hits a nerve of “kids being punished.”
Now, we segue into a national (and now international) conversation that has stayed in the news for years, thanks to consistent pressure and protest: the Epstein case.
Whatever your assumptions about the Epstein story, the key point we keep returning to is credibility — and the public’s ability to trust institutions when those institutions say “there’s nothing here” while other governments appear to treat the issue differently.
Grant frames it this way: other nations acting aggressively can make U.S. non-action look like “at best disconnected, at worst willful ignoring.” And former Prince Andrew’s arrest this week ups the pressure on the United States to investigate and prosecute this case appropriately, because if they don’t, the international justice community might.
Finally, Grant and I talked about. He describes signals that look like buildup: carrier movement, airlift activity, and broader posture shifts — with a major caveat: none of us can see inside the full decision-making “black box.”
But he makes a point that’s hard to shake: even if it’s a bluff, the world responds to posture, not intent. And if it’s not a bluff, the downstream costs aren’t abstract.
We also talk about coalition dynamics: in the early 2000s, the U.S. built a “coalition of the willing.” Grant’s skepticism in this conversation is whether that same coalition exists now — and what it means if it doesn’t. My original question to Grant was, “If we attack Iran, is the United States going to do this alone?”
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