A fourth grader in North Carolina wrote a persuasive essay for school. His teacher liked it enough to mail it to his congresswoman with a note attached:

"Please enjoy this student's hard work and passion."

The essay argued that the federal government should offer a $5,000 tax credit to people who buy electric cars, because they cut pollution. He was ten years old. He had researched it. He was proud of it.

The congresswoman is Virginia Foxx. She wrote back.

What she sent a child

Foxx's reply, as Scripps News reported from the copy the boy's mother posted publicly, told Christian Mango that a $5,000 credit would add to the national debt and that he and his classmates would be the ones stuck paying it off. She listed news articles about the downsides of electric vehicles.

Then she got to the part that traveled around the country:

"Incidentally, please ask your teacher to explain propaganda to you. While I will never be able to know you, my guess is that your teachers will not give you a good educational experience and help you learn to think as they are too interested in indoctrinating you. How sad."

That was written by a member of Congress, to a 10-year-old, about the teacher who had just told her the boy worked hard.

His mother, Emily Mango, posted the letter on Instagram in May 2026:

"Imagine being a 10-year-old and receiving this demoralizing and reprehensible response from N.C. Rep. Virginia Foxx to your persuasive essay on the benefits of electric vehicles... He researched, cited facts, and made good arguments in his essay — an essay that had nothing to do with politics. He was proud of his essay."

She added:

"Foxx, who is 82 years old, responded to a 10-year-old in a disrespectful, hostile, and unkind tone. She told my 10-year-old that he and his classmates are responsible for paying the national debt. She attacked his teachers, his school, his education, and referenced propaganda, indoctrination, and other concepts that a 10-year-old has not been exposed to."

The story went national. The Daily Beast reported that it asked Foxx's office for comment; Jalopnik walked through the boy's actual argument — electric cars are "better for the environment. They pay less. And there's no gas." Snopes looked into it, found the letter appeared authentic, and left it unrated for a specific reason: Foxx has never publicly confirmed she wrote it.

She has also never publicly said she didn't.

Who she is, exactly

Plenty of members of Congress send bad form letters. This one is different because of who signed it.

Virginia Foxx is a career educator. Per her biography, she taught sociology at Appalachian State University, ran its Upward Bound program — a federal program that helps low-income and first-generation students get to college — served as an assistant dean, sat on the Watauga County Board of Education for three terms, was president of Mayland Community College, and holds a doctorate in education from UNC Greensboro.

She was also the first person in her family to graduate from high school. She worked as a janitor at that high school. She didn't have running water or electricity at home until she was 14.

Someone gave her an education anyway.

And in Congress, she has run education policy for years. She chaired the House Committee on Education and the Workforce from 2017 to 2019 and again from 2023 to 2025, was its ranking member in between, and still sits on it in the 119th Congress.

So when she tells a fourth grader that his teachers are "too interested in indoctrinating you" than in helping him "learn to think," she isn't a random politician venting. She is a former community college president with an education doctorate, writing on congressional letterhead, about a public school teacher she has never met, on the basis of one essay about cars.

The teacher's offense was mailing in a kid's homework.

It isn't a slip. It's the policy.

The letter reads like a bad day. It isn't out of character — it's the same argument Foxx's committee makes in legislation.

The House Education and Workforce Committee, which she sits on, spent 2026 advancing a package of bills to break the Department of Education into pieces and scatter student aid, TRIO, HBCU funding and Title I across agencies that have never run them. Thirty-seven House Republicans have signed a one-sentence bill to abolish the department outright.

The premise underneath all of it is the one in Foxx's letter: that public school teachers are not educating children, they are indoctrinating them. Say it in a committee markup and it's a policy argument. Say it to a 10-year-old who mailed you his homework and you can see what it actually is.

Foxx has a 0% score from the League of Conservation Voters for 2025 and a 4% lifetime score, so it's no surprise she disagreed with the boy about electric cars. Disagreeing with him was never the problem. She could have written four sentences explaining why she votes the way she does on energy, and it would have been a civics lesson.

She chose to tell him his school was failing him instead.

The part about the debt

There's one more thing worth pulling out, because it's the sentence his mother singled out.

Foxx told a fourth grader that he and his classmates will be responsible for paying down the national debt.

Foxx has been in Congress since 2005 — 21 years. On July 3, 2025 she voted Aye on final passage of Trump's budget bill, which passed 218-214 and paid for its tax cuts by cutting Medicaid and food assistance. She now chairs the Rules Committee, which decides which bills reach the floor at all.

If Christian Mango's generation inherits a debt, it will not be because a 10-year-old asked for a rebate on a car. It will be because of votes cast by adults who had the power to do otherwise, over two decades, one of whom mailed him a lecture about it.

She won't take the question in person

You cannot ask Foxx about the letter at a town hall, because she does not hold them.

She has not held an in-person town hall since 2010. Asked about it on Fox News in March 2025, she said town halls are "just an opportunity for people to yell at their member of Congress." Constituents in Boone have organized their own and left a chair empty for her.

A 10-year-old found the one way left to reach her — the mail — and this is what came back.

We deserve better.

Source

Justin Boggs, "'Totally inappropriate': Mom blasts congresswoman's response to son's EV letter," Scripps News, May 14, 2026, which credits the News & Observer for obtaining the letter. Photo: AP, via Scripps News.