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Trump's push for 'patriotic education' is predictably corrupt and dumb [1]
['Daily Kos Staff']
Date: 2025-09-18
In any other era, an announcement that the government is going to be spending millions of taxpayer dollars on civics education would come as welcome news, because if there is one thing Americans are in sore need of, it is remedial instruction on civics. But we live in the Trump era, so we’re getting something much, much worse and much, much stupider.
Yes, President Donald Trump has formed a civics education coalition to re-educate us all in advance of the nation’s semiquincentennial birthday in 2026. You’ll spot some familiar names in this scheme, all of them horrible.
Can we first take a moment and talk about just how unfortunate it was for all of us that a significant anniversary of the founding of our nation had to happen during the second Trump administration, where it could be hijacked for garbage like military parades and whatever this horror show is?
Oh, and also, don’t call it “civics education.” Trump thinks that’s for wusses and radical leftists, so we’re all doing “patriotic education” now. It isn’t entirely clear what that might mean, but if you remember that Trump is currently stripping our parks and museums of anything that illuminates America’s shameful legacy of enslaving Black people, you can probably get the gist.
Related | Trump doesn’t want you to see the scars of slavery
So, who gets your taxpayer dollars to teach us all about civics, Trump-style?
You absolutely already know that these are not groups with any particular background in civics or pedagogy, because who needs that nerd stuff, right? Nope, what we’ve got here are the most MAGA of the MAGA, the least-hinged groups imaginable.
To start, there’s the America First Policy Institute, which employed both Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins and Education Secretary Linda McMahon after being founded in 2021 following Trump’s 2020 defeat. You might wonder how it isn’t a conflict of interest for McMahon to oversee her previous employer’s civic education efforts, which are being paid for by her current employer. Glad you asked! She signed an ethics waiver so that she can do whatever she wants, so your tax dollars are totally safe.
Now, AFPI has no background in education issues whatsoever. They were formed as a bog-standard wingnut policy shop for conservative goals like “cracking down on crime” and hating China. But hey, a complete lack of qualifications is no barrier for literally anything in this administration.
Also here to teach your kids about civics? Stephen Miller’s America First Legal, which actually just functions as a sort of puppet law firm that Miller uses to sue organizations to force them to do the same thing that the government employing Stephen Miller also just happens to want them to do, which is functionally to get rid of everyone who isn’t a white straight man.
It was probably inevitable that Moms for Liberty would be on the list. Yes, the group behind the howler monkeys being flung at every unsuspecting district in the nation that just wants to let the kids read “To Kill a Mockingbird” or whatever. That’s sort of learning-adjacent, maybe. But they don’t really count at all as a civics or education group unless your definition of civics and/or education is basically book burning and quoting Hitler.
And of course it includes late MAGA hero Charlie Kirk’s Turning Point USA—because of course.
In case it wasn’t clear what type of “civics” matter to this administration and who, exactly, this sort of thing is for, the money to pay for this effort is being redirected from funds for schools that serve majority-minority populations. Because giving money to those schools is racist communism, natch, but giving millions to Linda McMahon and friends is freedom, baby.
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