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Biden disbands Trump's 1776 project, a committee that promoted 'patriotic education'

The 1776 Commission was established to counter the New York Times' 1619 Project.

Published: January 21, 2021 10:11am

Updated: January 22, 2021 9:32am

President Joe Biden on the first day of his term shuttered former President Trump's 1776 Commission that championed "patriot education." 

Biden ended the project Wednesday with an executive order that also overturned a final report released this week by the group.

The commission was established in September 2020, after the publication of The New York Times' 1619 Project, which attempted to reframe U.S. history by making the consequences of slavery and the contributions of black Americans more central to the "national narrative."

The project's content has also become part of some U.S. high school and college curriculums.

Biden's order said the 1776 Commission's 45-page report released Tuesday "sought to erase America's history of racial injustice." 

Matt Spalding, who was the commission's executive director, said members aimed to "put together a report to address the core question that was asked to the commission, which is to come to give an explanation of America's core principles and how they have shaped and understood in our history." 

He also told Just the News' John Solomon that the panel looked at the principles of 1776, the ideas of the founding fathers and those of Abraham Lincoln, the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. and Frederick Douglass to try to "understand those principles as they are as life principles, and as a claim of truth that all men are created equal, as opposed to looking at groups or others by various characteristics, other than or equal status as human beings, which really is the root of many of our problems."

Some American historians have said the commission's report attempts to undermine the role of slavery in early America and defends the founders despite their ownership of slaves.

"It comes out an an agenda of political propaganda," said David Blight, a Yale University Civil War historian.

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