“Department of Education is looking at this.  If so, they will not be funded!” Trump wrote on Twitter, citing a message from an unverified account saying the project was being taught in California schools.  Previously, Arkansas Sen. Tom Cotton, a Republican, introduced legislation that would prevent schools from teaching the curriculum.  The legislation, titled the Saving American History Act of 2020, “would prohibit the use of federal funds to teach the 1619 Project by K-12 schools or school districts.  Schools that teach the 1619 Project would also be ineligible for federal professional-development grants.”  Cotton’s bill stands little chance of gaining approval in the Senate and would be entirely doomed in the House, but, like Trump’s tweeting, it provides the senator with an opportunity to demagogically send a message — a message of exclusion, hatred, racism and, perhaps most important, government censorship.

Writing in Forbes, business journalist Seth Cohen wrote:

During a time when the United States is engaged in an emotional, and increasingly confrontational, dialogue over the legacy of its racist past, educators across the United States are also exploring ways to better teach the narratives of racial privilege and injustice that have led to the pervasiveness of institutional racism in America.  By threatening to censor content that it finds objectionable, the Trump administration is not only treading dangerously on the underlying principles of a free and democratic society; it is also acting in a deeply hypocritical manner, as it otherwise generally endorses local autonomy on issues of education and school choice.

But perhaps most troubling of all, Trump’s tweet and the arguments of his administration and allies demonstrate a belief that history should be taught in a way that limits criticism of the United States.  Further, Trump himself has shown that he is willing to take actions to constructively censor those whose views of history conflict with those of the administration.

That’s not teaching history, that is shaping national propaganda.

Although some of its arguments have been disputed, the 1619 Project has been hailed as a unique collaboration between scholars and journalists that offers potential new resources for educators.  As one of its critics noted, whatever the project’s flaws its most important impact has been to “correct a worldview that consistently ignores and distorts the role of African Americans and race in our history in order to present white people as all powerful and solely in possession to the keys of equality, freedom and democracy.”

The US Supreme Court in 1943 famously declared as “a fixed star in our constitutional constellation” that no official “can prescribe what shall be orthodox in politics, nationalism, religion or other matters of faith.” (West Virginia State Board of Education v. Barnette)  School districts and teachers must be free to employ — or not employ — materials and resources like the 1619 Project as they best see fit without fear that the heavy hand of the federal government will threaten their funding should their choices run counter to the political preferences of the executive branch.