Donald Trump said on Friday that schools that teach the accurate history of slavery and racism’s role in America should not receive funding from the federal government.
Trump’s statement on education policy came during a friendly interview with the hosts of “Fox & Friends” on the conservative Fox News, continuing Trump’s trend of appearing before sympathetic audiences. He also mentioned dismantling the Department of Education.
During a discussion about allowing states to determine educational priorities with minimal federal oversight, co-host Brian Kilmeade asked Trump what would happen if a “liberal city” decided to teach history that said, “this is America, built off the backs of slaves, on stolen land.”
“Then we don’t send them money,” Trump replied.
The forced labor of enslaved Black people was a key factor in America becoming an economic powerhouse, and land was forcibly and systematically taken away from the Native American population by European colonists to build the United States. These are historical facts that are a part of U.S. history.
Trump’s dismissal of historic abuses is in line with his history of praising the pro-slavery Confederacy and arguing in favor of historical monuments and building names that honor the Confederate movement.
During his time as president and after, Trump and other Republicans have attacked education programs that seek to inform students about the role discrimination based on race, gender, and sexual orientation has played in American history.
In another education-related statement, Trump also told the “Fox & Friends” hosts that he is in favor of dismantling the federal Department of Education.
“We’re moving it all out of Washington, and we’re going to let the states run the schools,” Trump said. “Department of Education, I’m going to have one person working there, maybe with a secretary.”
Trump also said that he wanted to limit schools to teaching English and teaching “reading, writing and arithmetic, not transgender.”
His policy prescription is directly out of the Project 2025 agenda, which calls for dismantling the existing federal education infrastructure and ceding control of local school curricula to right-wing interests. The National Education Association described the plan as a strategy to “deny our most vulnerable students the resources they need to succeed.”
Additionally, the NEA said it would “gut federal education funding, sanction discrimination against LGBTQ+ students, divert taxpayer funds to private schools, and codify book bans and classroom censorship on a national level. That’s just the beginning.”
Trump has attempted to distance himself from Project 2025 but his endorsement of the plan—which was formulated by a group consisting of many of his former subordinates and current allies—further ties him to the initiative.
The more people learn about Project 2025, the more unpopular it is with the public. A recent poll from Navigator Research found that 52% of registered voters are opposed to the project. Even among Republicans, support for Project 2025 is weak, with only 10% of those identifying themselves as “Non-MAGA Republicans” backing the initiative and 30% of “MAGA Republicans” expressing support.
Vice President Kamala Harris has derided Project 2025 as “a plan to return America to a dark past,” and called it an “outright attack on our children, our families, and our future.”
Trump inadvertently highlighted the need for education with a wider historical scope in his interview with Fox, as he argued that President Abraham Lincoln should have “settled” the Civil War.
If Lincoln had settled the war instead of defeating the rebellious Confederacy, it would have preserved the institution of slavery in the south, harming millions of Black Americans.
