American Teacher Resigns After Comparing MAGA Shirts to Swastikas

A Georgia teacher who compared students T-shirts bearing President Trump’s “Make America Great Again” slogan to swastikas has resigned from her job.

Lyn Orletsky, who taught at River Ridge High School in Woodstock, resigned from her position after receiving death threats.

The former math teacher released a statement explaining her decision:

After attacks on my character and threats on my life, I have made the decision to resign from my teaching position at River Ridge High School. While in hindsight I would have handled the situation differently, the outcry over this incident has been disproportionate to the event itself.

Orletsky had been placed on leave and removed from her classroom in September after a student’s video posted on the conservative student website Turning Point USA showed the teacher ordering students to take off their Trump-supporting T-shirts went viral and gained national media attention.

In the video, she told the two students wearing the “Make America Great Again” T-shirts that wearing the shirts is like wearing a swastika because the phrase had been coined by hate groups, and ordered them to leave the classroom.

“Just like you cannot wear a swastika to school, you cannot wear ‘Make America Great Again’ like that,” the teacher told the students.

Orletsky defended her decision to kick the students out of her class, claiming that she did not want minority students to feel threatened and that her decision had nothing to do with politics.

The controversy did not end there. State Senator Michael Williams (R-Cumming), who launched a 2018 gubernatorial bid in Georgia, organized a protest to demand that the school board fire Orletsky in late September.

The Cherokee County School Board will consider her resignation at Thursday’s board meeting.