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Ed Dept. Will Give Grants to Schools That Adopt ‘Patriotic’ Civics Curriculum From MAGA Orgs
One civics education advocate said the program, which will push schools to teach history content written by PragerU, Hillsdale College, and Turning Point USA, "smacks of authoritarianism."
Sep 18, 2025
President Donald Trump's Department of Education has announced that it will partner with right-wing think tanks and organizations to develop a new curriculum for “patriotic education” in American classrooms.
Earlier this week, the Trump administration redirected $137 million initially meant for programs aimed at minority students toward what it described as "American history and civics education."
Education Secretary Linda McMahon announced Wednesday that the money will be directed toward discretionary grants aimed at K-12 schools that adopt a new curriculum being drawn up by the 250 Civics Education Coalition—a consortium of more than 40 right-wing groups that launched on same day. The goal, McMahon said, was to advance education that "emphasizes a unifying and uplifting portrayal of the nation's founding ideals" in advance of the nation's 250th anniversary in 2026.
It is not Trump's first crack at instilling the nation's youth with a "patriotic education." In the waning days of his first term in office, Trump unveiled the 1776 Report, which, education columnist Jennifer Berkshire recently noted in The Baffler, "was widely panned by actual historians for its worshipful treatment of the Founding Fathers, its downplaying of slavery, and its portrayal of a century-old 'administrative state' controlled by leftist radicals."
While little has been publicized yet about what McMahon's new endeavor will look like, it is known who will be crafting it. The initiative is being led by the America First Policy Institute, a MAGA-aligned think tank that has been responsible for staffing Trump's second administration and has received over $1 million from his political action committee, the Save America PAC. Until 2023, McMahon herself served on the board of AFPI.
In 2022, the group presented a piece of model legislation for a "Civics Course Act" to be introduced in states. It included requirements for students to spend ample time studying the nation's founding documents and figures while banning the teaching of what it called the "defamatory history of America’s founding," which suggests that slavery or inequality are in any way inherent to the nation's institutions.
It also banned the concepts of "systemic racism" and "gender fluidity" and forbade teachers from giving students course credit for engaging with "social or public policy advocacy."
Also included in the coalition is Hillsdale College, a private Christian liberal arts school in Michigan that has proposed its own K-12 curriculum, which Vanity Fair notes "has been criticized for revisionist history, including whitewashed accounts of US slavery and depictions of Jamestown as a failed communist colony."
Another participant is PragerU, the overtly partisan and often factually loose YouTube channel that has been tasked with creating children's educational content in nearly a dozen red states.
The group has produced content venerating figures notorious for practicing slavery, like colonist Christopher Columbus and Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee. Its videos have argued, among other things, that climate change is a myth, that European fascism was a "far-left" ideology, and that Israel has "the world's most moral army."
The pro-Trump youth group Turning Point USA will also be involved in crafting the curriculum. Its longtime leader, Charlie Kirk, who was assassinated in Utah last week, went on a crusade last year to, in his words, "tell the truth" about Martin Luther King Jr., whom he described as "an awful person," while claiming his signature achievement, the 1964 Civil Rights Act, was a "huge mistake."
An offshoot of Kirk's group, Turning Point Education, said Kirk's assassination has increased its resolve to promote a "God-centered, virtuous education" in US public schools.
The 250 Civics Education Coalition has not yet published a curriculum. But according to the Department of Education, it will be rolling out "a robust programming agenda" over the next 12 months.
During Trump's second term, he has undertaken an effort to purge federal museums and national parks of what one executive order called "improper ideology," which has resulted in the erasure of exhibits and monuments to Black and Native American history. Last month, he lamented that the Smithsonian Museum focuses too much on "how bad slavery was" and ordered a review of the museum's content.
Federal websites, meanwhile, have systematically eliminated many pages that acknowledged the accomplishments of nonwhite historical figures or important events in women's and LGBTQ+ history.
Critics in the education world view Trump's effort to use grants to induce them to adopt his preferred curriculum as an illegal effort to propagandize children.
"The law is clear," said education historian Diane Ravitch in a blog post. "Federal officials are prohibited from seeking to influence or direct curriculum in any way."
Since 1970, the federal government has been barred by law from "any direction, supervision, or control over the curriculum" of public schools.
"Civic education is and must be non-partisan," said Ted McConnell, the executive director of the Campaign for the Civic Mission of Schools. "While the funding is long sought, this is the wrong approach and smacks of authoritarianism."
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Christian Nationalism Resurrected as Trump Promotes Prayer in Public Schools
"President Trump is using religion to promote his self-aggrandizement and political agenda, all the while perpetuating the lie that America is a Christian nation and that religion is under attack," said one critic.
Sep 08, 2025
Proponents of separating church and state on Monday decried US President Donald Trump's pledge to protect prayer in public schools, warning that the administration is advancing the agenda of far-right Christian nationalists seeking to impose their religious beliefs upon everyone.
Speaking at a meeting of the president's so-called Religious Liberty Commission at the Museum of the Bible in Washington, DC, Trump announced upcoming Department of Education guidance "protecting the right to prayer in our public schools, and it's total protection."
"We're defending our rights and restoring our identity as a nation under God," Trump said. "To have a great nation, you have to have religion. I believe that so strongly. As president, I will always defend our glorious heritage, and we will protect the Judeo-Christian principles of our founding."
The president added that it is "ridiculous" that the nation's public school students are "indoctrinated with anti-religious propaganda, and some are even punished for their religious beliefs."
Trump also launched his "America Prays" initiative, which asks the faithful to "join with at least 10 people to meet each week for one hour to pray" for the country.
In response to the president's speech, the Freedom From Religion Foundation (FFRF) said on social media: "We've never been 'one nation under God.' There's nothing to restore. Our true identity is freedom of conscience—the right to believe in any faith, or none at all."
"A great nation isn't built on religion—it's built on equality, liberty, and justice for all," FFRF added. "Our strength comes from We The People, not belief in a god."
Rachel Laser, president of the group Americans United for Separation of Church and State, said in a statement that Monday's event "once again demonstrated that this commission isn't about religious liberty; it's about rejecting the nation's religious diversity and prioritizing one set of Christian beliefs."
"From the professions of Christian faith to the chorus of 'amens' during Christian prayers to the exclusively Christian speakers this morning, this government hearing was more like a church service," Laser noted. "Once again, President Trump is using religion to promote his self-aggrandizement and political agenda, all the while perpetuating the lie that America is a Christian nation and that religion is under attack."
Laser continued:
The Trump administration is advancing this Christian nationalist agenda with the launch of his 'America Prays' initiative, which calls on Americans to pray for our country. People who care about religious freedom don't need to be told when or how to pray; they need leaders who are committed to separation of church and state.
At a hearing focused on religious freedom and public schools, the commission ignored the most serious threats. From mandates to display the Ten Commandments and teach from the Bible to Christianity-infused curriculum and the installation of school chaplains, Christian nationalists and their political allies are trying to impose their personal religious beliefs on America's public school children.
"Our country's promise of church-state separation means that families—not politicians or public school officials—get to decide how and when children engage with religion," Laser added. "Yet many of the organizations represented at today's meeting and members of the Religious Liberty Commission have tried to undermine this fundamental American principle and turn our public schools into Sunday schools."
Monday's event came as some GOP-led states push forward with plans for more overt displays of religiosity in public schools. Most notably, Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton—a US Senate candidate—is urging schools to display the Ten Commandments in spite of a federal judge's recent injunction on a law requiring the Judeo-Christian religious and ethical directives to be displayed in all classrooms.
Paxton is also urging all schools "to begin the legal process of putting prayer back in the classroom and recommending the Lord's Prayer for students."
Responding to Paxton's push, gun control advocate Fred Guttenberg said last week on social media: "Hey Ken, many have said that you committed adultery. Shouldn't you worry about your own morality before imposing this on others? Looks like you are using religion for personal gain."
Recent polls have shown a significant drop in the number of Americans who identify as Christian in recent decades, an all-time low in belief in "God," and a steady overall decline in religiosity among younger Americans.
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How to Research Your Way to a Better World
In the midst of the torrent of lies and repressive practices emanating from Washington, the use of research to guide strategy and support organizing is more important than ever.
Sep 03, 2025
I have spent the bulk of my career—on and off since the late Carter administration—following the money that drives war and repression. What I have finally learned after so many decades of doing research on the war machine is that while research is critical, it must be in the service of a smart strategy backed by a lot of hard work by organizers from all walks of life.
My interest in using research to promote social change was sparked by my years at Columbia University in the 1970s, when I was a researcher and advocate in the divestment movement targeting the apartheid regime of South Africa and a participant in other social justice movements like the boycott in support of the United Farmworkers Union and the opposition to the Pinochet dictatorship in Chile.
Henry Kissinger’s justification for the US-backed coup in Chile that put Augusto Pinochet in power still sticks in my mind: “I don’t see why we need to stand by and watch a country go Communist due to the irresponsibility of its own people.”
So much for the land of the free and the beacon of global democracy.
The US role in the coup was eventually recounted by many media outlets, but for me the first and most important was the North American Congress on Latin America (NACLA), which devoted several issues of its magazine, then called The Latin America and Empire Report, to the origins of the coup, including the role of US corporations. I was so impressed with their research and commitment that I applied to work at NACLA after graduating from Columbia in January 1978. They wisely demurred, since my background on Latin America was largely limited to what I had read in their own reports. Still, their skill in deploying detailed research to debunk the official lies that surrounded the coup stuck with me.
Research Against Apartheid
My real schooling in research, however, came in the anti-apartheid movement, starting with the divestment campaign at Columbia and expanding into my work with national anti-apartheid organizations like the American Committee on Africa (ACOA). Again, research was front and center. In order to make effective demands for divestment, we needed to know which companies were supporting the apartheid regime, and which of those companies our universities held stock in. ACOA was of great help in this, including through Richard Knight, who worked in a back room of their offices at 198 Broadway and had what may well have been the messiest desk in the history of progressive politics. But if my memory serves me correctly, he seemed to be able to remember exactly where he put a given document in one of the many piles of paper that obscured his desktop. The work he did, along with colleagues at ACOA, helped fuel the student divestment movement, along with research by students on campuses around the country.
Another key group at that time was Corporate Data Exchange (CDE). Tina Simcich, who worked at CDE and was also part of the New York Committee to Oppose Bank Loans to South Africa (COBLSA), did the definitive research on which banks were lending to the apartheid regime.
At Columbia, we made an interesting discovery that put the lie to the university’s position on divestment. In response to demands to divest from firms involved with the apartheid regime, university leaders argued that, if there were objections to the actions of companies they were invested in, they felt it would be more productive to support shareholder resolutions seeking to change their conduct than to divest from those companies’ stocks.
if there were not people organizing for change, my research would be little more than a peculiar hobby.
But after digging around in past Columbia University documents, we found a memo from a prior year in which the university had responded to a request to support a shareholder resolution on behalf of trade unionists in Chile, some of whom had been murdered by the Pinochet regime. The university’s position then proved to be precisely the opposite of what it said just a few years later when asked to divest from companies involved in South Africa: They didn’t think it was productive to engage in shareholder resolutions. If there was an ethical issue with one of their holdings, their preference was to divest from the stock of that company.
Although it was a small instance of hypocrisy, it was nonetheless revealing. At that point, the university had been determined to do absolutely nothing to hold companies that were complicit in repression accountable. Our divestment campaign of the mid-1970s did not succeed, but in 1985, another cohort of student activists did finally persuade Columbia to divest. The next year, in 1986, Congress passed comprehensive sanctions on South Africa, overriding a veto attempt by President Ronald Reagan.
Obviously, research was only partly responsible for our success. It was research in the service of organizing and sound strategy that won the day. The fact that the liberation movements in South Africa, including the African National Congress and the Black Consciousness Movement, were calling for divestment greatly strengthened our case. And inspiring organizers and speakers like the incomparable Prexy Nesbitt and the late Dumisani Kumalo, a South African exile who went on to be liberated South Africa’s first representative to the United Nations, played a huge role, as did thousands of campus activists, religious leaders, trade unionists, state and local officials, and heads of pension funds.
Eight years later, in 1994, Nelson Mandela was sworn in as the first president of a free South Africa. The vast bulk of the credit for that historic change goes to the people of South Africa, but the divestment campaign and the larger global boycott of the apartheid regime played an important supporting role, a role much appreciated by activists in South Africa.
As for me, my work in the anti-apartheid movement shaped my career. I worked for a while as part of the collective that put out Southern Africa magazine, an independent journal that supported the anti-apartheid movement and the liberation movements in Southern Africa. The original editor was Jennifer Davis, the brilliant exiled South African economist who went on to direct ACOA. I wrote articles about the divestment campaign, violations of the arms embargo on South Africa, and the role of US firms in propping up the apartheid regime. The skills and values I learned there were far more important to my career than my philosophy degree from Columbia, an institution whose leaders have now covered themselves in shame by cracking down on students speaking out against US-financed Israeli genocide in Gaza.
The Impact of ‘68
Our work against apartheid was inspired in part by the generation of 1968, whose research exposed the role of companies fueling the war in Vietnam, including Dow Chemical, which produced napalm that was used to kill and maim untold numbers of people. We were also influenced by publications like “Who Rules Columbia,” as well as a handy publication on how to research the corporate ties of one’s university, published by the ever-relevant and crucial NACLA. And groups like National Action Research on the Military-Industrial Complex (NARMIC) were invaluable for peace activists from the anti-Vietnam War period onward.
Other influences on me from that generation of researchers and analysts included Michael Klare, whose reports and books like Supplying Repression, War Without End: American Planning for the Next Vietnams, and Rogue States and Nuclear Outlaws: America’s Search for a New Foreign Policy were foundational in forming my understanding of US military spending and strategy. And my perspective on the domestic factors driving Pentagon spending began with The Iron Triangle, written by my friend and mentor Gordon Adams (now Abby Ross).
The Corporate Role in Fueling Genocide in Gaza
Activists pushing universities to divest from companies profiting from Israel’s war in Gaza have made connections with the earlier generation of researchers described above, from webinars with members of NARMIC to essays that link to documents like “Who Rules Columbia?”
A key organization in the middle of current efforts is Little Sis—a powerful research organization whose name is based on the idea that they are the opposite of Big Brother. They facilitate research and make connections on a wide range of issues, but at this moment one of their most important products is a webinar they did with Dissenters, a youth anti-militarism group based in Chicago, on how to research the corporate ties of universities. It’s a tutorial on researching university ties to war profiteers, going well beyond the issue of stock holdings in arms makers to look at the connections of trustees, financial institutions, and other relevant ties to weapons makers.
As the Trump administration stops collecting some kinds of data and destroys other kinds altogether, the job of research will be ever more difficult.
Groups of dedicated students within the ceasefire and anti-genocide movements on US campuses have done excellent work in researching the corporate ties of their own universities. I appeared on Santita Jackson’s radio show in February 2025 and connected with Bryce Greene, a student at the University of Indiana involved in the ceasefire-Gaza movement there. He and his fellow students were researching the military ties of the university, and they wanted me to review their research to see if they were missing anything. As it happened, they had dug up far more information than I would have, in part because of local connections. Their biggest find was related to the university’s ties to the Naval Surface Warfare Center (NSWC), Crane Division, which provides technical support for everything from missile defense systems to Special Operations Forces. University professors had gone back and forth between Crane and campus, and Crane had a direct presence at the school. Students then started a “keep Crane off campus” campaign.
Researchers focused specifically on Israel and Gaza include the American Friends Service Committee, which has a web page on “Companies Profiting from the Gaza Genocide,” and No Tech for Apartheid, which, among other things, reaches out to workers at Google and Amazon to encourage them to take a stand against technology from tech firms going to support the Israeli war effort. One of the most valuable current resources is the United Nations report, From the Economy of Occupation to the Economy of Genocide, produced under the supervision of Special Rapporteur Francesca Albanese, which describes its purpose this way:
This report investigates the corporate machinery sustaining Israel’s settler-colonial project of displacement and replacement of the Palestinians in the occupied territory. While political leaders and governments shirk their obligations, far too many corporate entities have profited from Israel’s economy of illegal occupation, apartheid and now, genocide. The complicity exposed by this report is just the tip of the iceberg; ending it will not happen without holding the private sector accountable, including its executives.
Models of Research and Strategy
The most effective current model for using data to shape the debate on security issues is the Costs of War Project at Brown University. Their work on the costs of America’s post-9/11 wars ($8 trillion and counting), the number of overseas US counterterror missions, the cost of US military aid and military operations in support of Israel (over $22 billion in the first year of the war in Gaza) is routinely cited in the press and by political leaders, and provides fuel for activists in their writing and public education efforts.
The best current example of merging research, organizing, and strategy is the new Poor People’s Campaign, cochaired by Reverend William Barber of Repairers of the Breach and Reverend Liz Theoharis of the Kairos Center. Their campaign was inspired by the effort of the same name announced by Martin Luther King Jr. in November 1967. King was assassinated before his campaign came to fruition, but the National Welfare Rights Organization (NWRO) and other groups picked up the work of making its signature event, The Poor People’s March on Washington, happen.
One of the bedrock principles of the current Poor People’s Campaign is that the people most impacted by poverty should lead the movement. But cultivating such leadership, especially among those who have been excluded from the halls of power and influence for so long, requires an ongoing process of research, education, and training. Theoharis, director of the Kairos Center and cochair of the Poor People’s Campaign, underscores this point in her new book on the history of poor people’s organizing, coauthored with Noam Sandweiss-Back:
Without a continual process of learning, reflecting, and growing intellectually, our organizing is reduced to mobilizing, an exercise in moving bodies without supporting existing leaders and developing new ones... mobilizing people is important, but when it becomes our sole focus, we sacrifice long-term power for short-term action.
As Theoharis notes, King made a similar point in Where Do We Go From Here?:
Education without social action is a one-sided value because it has no true power potential. Social action without education is a weak expression of pure energy… Our policies should have the strength of deep analysis beneath them to be able to challenge the clever sophistries of our opponents.
In the midst of the torrent of lies and repressive practices emanating from Washington, the use of research to guide strategy and support organizing is more important than ever. But as the Trump administration stops collecting some kinds of data and destroys other kinds altogether, the job of research will be ever more difficult. That can be partially compensated for by drawing on the collective knowledge of researchers, organizers, and community members alike, taking our lead from people who are on the front lines of dealing with repressive policies.
Occasionally, when I am giving a talk on how to reduce the influence of the war machine, I point out that, if there were not people organizing for change, my research would be little more than a peculiar hobby. That is only a slight exaggeration. We need to bring together researchers, organizers, and strategists, taking our lead from members of impacted communities, to work in partnership against the challenges we now face on a daily, at times hourly, basis.
This means the content of our work may take different forms. Rather than reports and briefings, we may need to rely on music, storytelling, art, and ritual to share insights on the political terrain and tales of resistance and revival in these times of escalating crisis. This may become even more to the point as traditional forms of protest continue to be criminalized.
We have a rich history to guide and inspire us, but the task is ours.
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