Will the 1776 Commission Continue to Oppose the 1619 Project?

            Former President Donald Trump saw the damage being done by the 1619 Project and appointed 18 members to his newly created President’s Advisory 1776 Commission. President Joe Biden abolished the commission on his first day in office. However, the 1776 Commission did not die but merely worked without federal appointment. The commission submitted its report to the White House, but the Biden administration has removed it from the WhiteHouse.gov site.

            According to Fred Lucas at The Daily Signal, the appointed members of the 1776 Commission met yesterday at the Hillsdale College campus in Washington, D.C. They expressed a united opposition to a federal regulation that promotes the teaching of critical race theory in school. They called for states and other localities to establish groups in their areas to promote the true and accurate history of America. At the end of a one-page statement, the commission stated the following. 

Lastly, recalling the long history of citizen participation in our civic life, we call on states, counties, and local communities to form their own 1776 commissions to advance this great work of American renewal as we prepare for the 250^th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence in July 2026.

            In their published statement, the commission made clear that they oppose the proposed regulation by the Biden Department of Education to make it a priority to federally fund the teaching of critical race theory in K-12 school systems.

We are concerned that the U.S. Department of Education’s proposed rule defining priorities for the American history and civics education programs, whether as critical race theory or under the misleading name of “antiracism,” actually encourages and seeks to direct federal funds to the teaching of racial discrimination in America’s elementary and secondary school systems.

This proposed rule should be withdrawn, and individual states should oppose any such race-based pedagogy as part of their curricula, especially if that curricula is imposed by the federal government.

The Constitution leaves education to the states and localities and denies the federal government any authority to impose national curriculum standards. The federal government should not circumvent this obstacle by using federal funding to entice states and localities to adopt what it wants taught in the nation’s schools. We learned from the failed Common Core experiment that one-size-fits-all national models are a blueprint for trivializing and mechanizing learning.

Instead, we encourage a genuine civics education that will rebuild our common bonds, our mutual friendship, and our civic devotion and eagerly look forward to the forthcoming release of curricula designed in the true spirit of 1776.

            Critical race theory seeks to teach everything about America through the lens of race.

Thus, they teach that America began in 1619 when the first black slave came to America. The 1619 Project seeks to teach school children to hate each other and to hate their country, while the 1776 Commission seeks to create “consensus on historical facts of America’s founding, the Declaration of Independence, and the Constitution.” Its report in January 2021 focused on the “bleaker parts of U.S. history such as slavery and restriction of voting rights to white males.” Nevertheless, activists and commentators on the left were critical of it. This is the reason why it no longer exists at WhiteHouse.gov.