President Trump said Thursday that the left’s “cancel culture,” including so-called Critical Race Theory and the 1619 Project of The New York Times, are “toxic propaganda” that Americans must eliminate from the workplace and from schools for the sake of national unity.
“American parents are not going to accept indoctrination in our schools, cancel culture at work, or the repression of traditional faith, culture, and values in the public square. Not anymore,” the president said in a speech at the National Archives in Washington. “Critical Race Theory, the 1619 Project, and the crusade against American history is toxic propaganda — an ideological poison that, if not removed, will dissolve the civic bonds that tie us together.”
Mr. Trump announced to cheers and applause that he will sign an executive order soon to establish a national commission called the 1776 Commission, to “promote patriotic education.”
In his speech on the anniversary of the Constitution, Mr. Trump said “a radical movement is attempting to demolish this treasured and precious inheritance.”
“We are here today to declare that we will never submit to tyranny,” Mr. Trump said. “We will reclaim our history, and our country, for citizens of every race, color, religion and creed.”
The president said the movement by the Left is trying “to make students ashamed of their own history.”
“There is no better example than The New York Times totally discredited 1619 project,” Mr. Trump said. “This project rewrites American history to teach our children that we were founded on the principle of oppression, not freedom.
Nothing could be further from the truth.”
Critical-race theory, the president said, “is being forced into our children’s schools, it’s being imposed into workplace training. And it’s being deployed to rip apart friends, neighbors and families.”
“Teaching this horrible doctrine to our children is a form of child abuse in the truest sense,” Mr. Trump said.
The president earlier this month banned critical-race theory training in federal agencies. It addresses “White privilege;” the White House called it “anti-American propaganda.”
He said for years, radicals “have mistaken Americans’ silence for weakness.”
“But they are wrong. There is no more powerful force than a parent’s love for their children — and patriotic moms and dads are going to demand that their children are no longer fed hateful lies about this country,” he said. “The only path to national unity is through our shared identity as Americans. That is why it is so urgent that we finally restore patriotic education to our schools.”
The president said “left-wing rioting and mayhem are the direct result of decades of left-wing indoctrination in our schools.”
Two House Republicans introduced legislation Thursday that would bar federal funds from schools with curriculum featuring the Times’ 1619 Project, which they said indoctrinates K-12 students with fake history.
The bill, sponsored by Reps. Ken Buck of Colorado and Rick Allen of Georgia, is companion legislation to a measure introduced in July by Sen. Tom Cotton, Arkansas Republican.
“The 1619 Project teaches children a historically inaccurate account of our nation’s history,” Mr. Buck said. “Federal funding should not go towards schools that teach flawed and inaccurate curriculum in classrooms. We should be able to acknowledge the stains on our nation’s history while still continuing to celebrate the good our country has done.”
Mr. Cotton calling the curriculum based on The Times’ project being taught in about 4,500 classrooms nationwide “left-wing garbage.”
The project seeks to revise American history by arguing that 1619 — the year the first slave was brought to North America — represents the country’s actual founding.
“The 1619 Project’s goal is to indoctrinate the idea in our nation’s young people that America is an evil country — which is far from the truth,” Mr. Allen said. “Though our history is not perfect, we have overcome our challenges to create a land of opportunity for all. If we want to fight injustice and work toward a more perfect union, we must learn from our past and teach our students to do better — not teach false history.”
