A group of congressional lawmakers known as “The Squad” has been a lightning rod for attention since 2018 when most of its members were elected to the House. Reps. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Rashida Tlaib, Ayanna Pressley, and Ilhan Omar were widely lauded as the fresh faces of progressivism that were supposed to get into Congress and bring about a series of sweeping socialist legislation that would yank the country so far to the left that even Bernie Sanders would say “Damn!”

In 2020, this gaggle of Marxist mavens expanded their tent to include Reps. Cori Bush and Jamaal Bowman, the squad’s first male member – no pun intended. These folks have become the proverbial thorn in the side of the Democratic Party’s moderate establishment wing, constantly pushing them to become more like Mao. Most recently, the group made hay about the watered-down Build Back Better Act, which has yet to pass.

The squad has also become the target for frequent criticism, mostly from conservatives, who routinely point out the devastating flaws in the policies they support, including the Green New Deal, Defund the Police, and other proposals. They have even been castigated by fellow Democrats who blame them for their poor performance in 2020.

But what if the squad isn’t the true enemy? Perhaps their true role is something far more clever when one takes a step back and looks at America’s political battlefield.

While members of the squad have garnered much attention and notoriety, the fact of the matter is that they haven’t gotten much done during their time in Congress. They have been unable to seize a significant level of influence from the rest of the party. While President Joe Biden has been compelled to at least give them a wink when crafting policy, he hasn’t thrown them much of a bone, which is something the far-left faction of the party has been caterwauling about all year.

There is no sign that the policies outlined in the Green New Deal are any closer to becoming reality. Democrats have been taking a chainsaw to the Build Back Better agenda – and they are slashing most of the proposals championed by AOC and the gang, much to their consternation. To put it simply, the far-left Marxist crowd at the federal level isn’t getting it done. To put it in Texanese, these people are “all hat and no cattle,” at least, for the time being.

But what if they are serving a different purpose? What if this whole “squad” thing is serving as a red herring to mask the progressive left’s true agenda?

Perhaps the hard left is not as focused on pushing their agenda at the federal level as they are on the state and local levels. Let’s take a wider view of the situation.

More and more, the progressive plan to inject its ideology into K-12 schools has been exposed. It seems that almost every day we are seeing stories of how teachers and school districts are infusing their curriculum with elements of Critical Race Theory and other forms of wokeist thought.

But it doesn’t stop there.

The far-left is also introducing its ideas regarding sexuality into the school system through the classrooms and even libraries. In May, New York parents became enraged after finding out that their children were being exposed to a teaching called “Pornography Literacy: An intersectional focus on mainstream porn.”

The New York Post also reported on another instance that occurred in New York in which a former educator named Justine Ang Fonte was teaching six-year-olds about masturbation. One of the videos she showed the youngsters featured little children talking about “touching themselves” for pleasure. “Hey, how come sometimes my penis gets big sometimes and points in the air?” asks a little boy in the cartoon during a discussion about what an “erection” is.

A little girl character also said: “Sometimes, when I’m in my bath or when Mom puts me to bed, I like to touch my vulva too.”

But wait! There’s more!

The Marxist crowd is not just targeting local institutions, they are even trying to proselytize their religion in state governments. In Texas, of all places, a whistleblower told gubernatorial candidate Don Huffines that the state’s Department of Family and Protective Services has employee training materials that contain elements of critical race theory and promote far-left ideas about institutional racism and other topics.

On his website, Huffines called out current Gov. Greg Abbott for allowing this type of material to be given to state employees. In a statement, he wrote:

Critical Race Theory is a disgusting, Marxist ideology dedicated to pitting Texans against each other and dividing our state. It has no place in Texas’ period, let alone in our state agencies. Greg Abbott must immediately call a special session of the Texas Legislature to weed out this poison from not only the Department of Family and Protective Services, but every agency and university in our state.

The whistleblower provided the Huffines campaign with some of the materials they were being compelled to cover. The program asks employees questions like “[w]hat is something that makes you proud about your racial and ethnic identity?” and “[w]hat influences have affected your racial and ethnic identity?”

The resource also discusses racism in America with a clear leftist slant. In one section, the document reads:

Institutional racism in the United States has created systems of power and privilege that are now pervasive throughout the country’s institutions including government, education, and criminal justice.

This is just the tip of the iceberg. The document contains a full-on course designed to get the reader to agree with key tenets of wokeism. The fact that this is happening in a red state can only make one wonder how much further the left has been able to infiltrate other areas of the country at the state and local level.

What if the squad is only serving as an easy distraction? What if their role – intended or unintended – is to keep our attention focused on their antics in the federal government while the hard left does the real work right under our noses?

After all, most people know that Americans pay far more attention to what is going on in Washington, D.C. than what is happening closer to home. It is this lack of attention that allows corrupt officials to get away with all kinds of misdeeds because they know that they will not face consequences.

I’m not saying this is an intentional plan – but even so, it underscores the need for more vigilance on our part. The left does not have to get its way at the federal level – yet. But if it manages to build an ideological infrastructure in our local and state governments, it will be far easier to realize their ultimate objective: Transforming America into their idea of a socialist utopia.