DOE Partners With Right-Wing Orgs To 'Educate' America

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Welp, right here we go…

On Wednesday, the U.S. Division of Training introduced it has partnered with 40 right-wing organizations to create programming round civics aimed on the celebration of the 250th anniversary of the USA.

In different phrases, the MAGA-fied federal authorities isn’t even making an attempt to cover its agenda to indoctrinate the youth and all of America into far-right conservatism.

To be truthful, the DOE didn’t go into a lot element in its press launch about what precisely this program, referred to as the America 250 Civics Training Coalition, would entail. The division did say it “is devoted to renewing patriotism, strengthening civic data, and advancing a shared understanding of America’s founding rules in colleges throughout the nation.” U.S. Training Secretary Linda McMahon stated it “will take daring steps to teach, encourage, and mobilize youth towards energetic and knowledgeable citizenship.”

It’s simply that we’ve heard comparable language utilized by the GOP, President Donald Trump, and his lackeys earlier than, and it all the time quantities to unbridled jingoism presupposed to be patriotism, mendacity about America’s historical past of slavery, systemic racism, and genocide, and all different method of makes an attempt to disguise white nationalism as American delight.

And if the DOE had any curiosity in showing to be non-partisan in its strategy to educating America about America, it might have chosen totally different companions.

As a substitute, the listing of 40 organizations which can be on board with this venture contains America First Coverage Institute (AFPI), Charlie Kirk’s group, Turning Level USA, Conservative Partnership Institute, Mothers for Liberty, Prager U, the 1776 Undertaking Basis, and the Heritage Basis, which accurately authored Undertaking 2025.

Mother’s for Liberty was labeled a right-wing extremist group by the Southern Poverty Legislation Heart in 2023, which is arguably much less insulting than the moniker people on social media gave the group, “Klanned Karenhood.” The group earned these labels by getting Amanda Gorman’s inauguration poem banned from a Florida college district as a result of Gorman talked about racial equality and gender identification affirmation. Members of the group additionally launched anti-critical race idea complaints towards Black historical past books that taught the Civil Rights Motion period tales of Martin Luther King Jr. and Ruby Bridges.

And don’t even get me began on Prager U, an unaccredited conservative non-profit group that was chosen by Florida’s Board of Training to supply classroom supplies to Florida colleges. I’ve written about this group and the racist who based it fairly extensively. My favourite instance of the type of supplies it’s identified for is an animated video for youngsters that teaches that abolitionist and former enslaved particular person, Frederick Douglass, would have agreed with the U.S. authorities’s choice to prioritize the better good of America over ending slavery.

And I’m simply guessing right here, however the 1776 Undertaking Basis sounds prefer it was impressed by Trump’s “1776 Fee,” which was denounced by historians for excusing slavery and the Three-Fifths Compromise as one other necessity for the better good of the nation, amongst many different makes an attempt to whitewash U.S. historical past on the expense of accuracy. The venture was additionally only a petty response to journalist, educator, historian, and activist Nikole Hannah-Jones’ The 1619 Undertaking, which was revealed within the New York Instances in 2019 and earned her a Pulitzer Prize.

Possibly I’m simply being a cynic, or possibly I simply refuse to disregard that the America 250 Civics Training Coalition is the brainchild of the identical administration that’s purging the Smithsonian of Black historical past, and lately ordered the removing of indicators and displays associated to slavery at a number of nationwide parks, together with the enduring slavery-era photograph, “The Scourged Again.”

This new program is simply going to be extra MAGA miseducation. There’s merely no cause to assume in any other case.