What began as a feel-good classroom singalong has become the latest flashpoint in America’s culture war. Children’s YouTube educator Ms Rachel joined New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani in a pre-K classroom to lead kids through “Wheels on the Bus,” a scene designed to spotlight free child care that instead triggered furious denunciations from conservative television hosts. The clash captures how even a nursery rhyme can be recast as a proxy battle over Israel, Gaza and what kind of politics belong in front of young children.
The singalong that doubled as a policy rollout
The appearance brought together two figures who each command intense loyalty from their own audiences. New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani visited a pre-K in Lower Manhattan, where he joined Rachel in front of a semicircle of preschoolers to sing “The Wheels on the Bus,” using the familiar song to introduce the city’s expanded 3-K and new 2-Care offerings. The mayor’s team framed the event as a way to humanize a technical policy change, pairing a widely recognized online educator with a local leader who has made early childhood access a signature priority.
Behind the scenes, the collaboration was carefully prepared to keep the focus on kids. Rachel later recounted that the night before they sang with the children she sent the mayor’s staff a video of “Wheels on the Bus” so he could practice, a detail she shared in a warm Jan post describing how seriously he took the performance. That same clip drew 98 visible comments and highlighted how the partnership with “Rachel and Mayor Zo” was meant to amplify a nuts-and-bolts child care expansion rather than ignite a partisan fight.
From Gaza advocacy to “creepy” on cable
The backlash did not emerge in a vacuum. Rachel, who built her brand around toddler-friendly songs and speech development, has also used her platform to urge support for Palestinian children in Gaz, a move that drew sharp criticism from pro-Israel activists and conservative commentators. Her gesture saw Her included on a list of nominees for “Antisemite of the Year” by the group StopAntisemitism, a label her supporters reject as a distortion of her humanitarian messaging. That prior controversy primed right wing media to treat any public partnership involving Rachel as inherently political, regardless of the setting.
When footage of the classroom singalong surfaced, one cable host seized on it as proof that a children’s entertainer had become, in their telling, a radical activist. In a segment summarized by reporter Joe Sommerlad, the host labeled Ms Rachel “creepy” and argued that “But when she also made her whole personality about hating the Jewish state and basically apologizing for Hamas and promoting all of this anti-Israel propaganda, that is where I draw the line.” Another segment framed the broader climate by declaring, “We are not responsible for the mental illness that has been inflicted upon our people by the American government, institutions and media,” tying Rachel’s advocacy and her new visibility alongside Mamdani into a sweeping indictment of liberal culture.
Why a nursery rhyme became a proxy war
The fury also reflects how Mamdani himself has become a lightning rod. The New York City has aligned with left-wing critics of Israel and has already been targeted in attack content, including a video titled “Mamdani hit for latest move: ‘As if this race couldn’t get any worse!’” that now displays a notice that content isn’t available. His joint appearance with Rachel at the Lower Manhattan pre-K, captured again in local coverage of “The Wheels on the The Wheels on the Bus,” was therefore instantly read by critics as a campaign-style stunt rather than a routine school visit. For supporters, it was a rare example of a big-city leader meeting families where they actually are, in classrooms and on the screens their toddlers already watch.
Local television segments emphasized the policy stakes, noting that Mayor Zohran Mamdani and Rachel were using the moment to spotlight free child care for 2-year-olds in NYC through the 2-Care program. Yet on national conservative shows, the same footage was folded into a longer-running narrative that has also targeted other pop culture figures, with one recap noting how Fox personalities have derided “Rachel” on Fox News, with Tomi Lahren among those turning her into a recurring foil.
For parents who simply know Ms Rachel as the woman who helps their toddlers practice sounds and sing along, the spectacle can be jarring. Yet the pattern is familiar: once a children’s figure speaks about war or human rights, they are pulled into the same polarized arena as any other public voice. In that sense, the “Wheels on the Bus” moment was never just about a song. It was about who gets to shape early childhood spaces, whether a mayor and a YouTuber can talk about free care without relitigating foreign policy, and how quickly a classroom of 2-year-olds can become the backdrop for the next viral cable-news outrage cycle.
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