Biden to rescind Trump's '1776 Commission'
President-elect Joe Biden's administration will rescind on his first day in office President Trump's "1776 Commission," an educational initiative designed to teach U.S. history from a patriotic perspective.
The commission, first announced in September, aimed to push back on the idea that the country is "irredeemably and systemically racist" and present an alternative to The New York Times' "1619 Project," which has been adopted as an educational tool in some U.S. schools, as well as other critical accounts of the early days of the nation.
Biden is expected to rescind the commission as part of a day one executive order to "advance racial equity." The Biden-Harris transition team said in a Wednesday press release that the 1776 Commission "has sought to erase America's history of racial injustice."
The two-year 1776 Commission would have published a report on the core principles of the nation and advised the federal government on how to prioritize founding principles in grants and other activities.
The executive order will also reverse a Trump-era policy limiting the ability of federal agencies, contractors and grantees to implement diversity and inclusion training.
"Additional actions in the coming weeks will restore and reinvigorate the federal government's commitment to diversity, equity, inclusion, and accessibility," the press release states.
In September, the administration ordered federal agencies to cease these types of trainings for federal employees after researcher Chris Rufo published documents showing how Sandia National Laboratories, a major nuclear lab, forced white male executives to undergo "white privilege" training, as he told Fox News' "Tucker Carlson Tonight" in August.
Rufo suggested that other institutions across the U.S., both large and small, may be adopting similar race training programs.
"I think through this kind of complex cultural construct that plays on human frailties and emotions and guilt, we've allowed this to really perpetuate all of our institutions," he told Carlson. "And I'm afraid that, at this time, it is almost everywhere from the smallest local school district in Tennessee or Kansas to the highest levels of the federal government."
M.E. Hart, an attorney who has conducted diversity training sessions for businesses and the federal government, told The Washington Post in September that these trainings can improve morale, cooperation and efficiency.
"If we are going to live up to this nation's promise -- 'We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal' -- we have to see each other as human beings, and we have to do whatever it takes, including taking whatever classes make that possible," Hart told the Post.
The Biden administration will also "direct every federal agency to undertake a baseline review of the state of equity within their agency and deliver an action plan within 200 days to address unequal barriers to opportunity in agency policies and programs."
Photo: President Donald Trump and first lady Melania Trump wave to a crowd as they board Air Force One at Andrews Air Force Base, Md., Wednesday, Jan. 20, 2021. (AP Photo/Luis M. Alvarez)
