Trump Accused of Trying to Censor Schools, 1619 Project

President Donald Trump on Monday was accused of trying to censor the history of slavery in America following a tweet Sunday in which he suggested pulling federal funding from schools that use The New York Times' 1619 Project in their curriculum.

"Department of Education is looking at this. If so, they will not be funded!" the president tweeted in response to a tweet California schools had implemented the 1619 Project into school curriculum.

Trump's tweet was met with both criticism and support.

According to Newsweek, Nikole Hannah-Jones, who was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for commentary on the 1619 Project wrote: "Do those concerns about cancel culture and McCarthyism and censorship only apply to the left or do they apply to the POTUS threatening to investigate schools for teaching American journalism? Silence is deafening here."

Seth Cohen, writing in Forbes, said the Trump administration is "threatening to censor the way schools teach about the history of slavery and racism in the United States."

Still, others pointed out the 1619 Project has faced its own criticism from scholars who have noted its historical inaccuracies.

Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, tweeted:

"Calling out lies is not silence. NYT explicitly admits the 1619 project is revisionist history: 'It aims to reframe our country's history.' It is filled with serious errors — which have been called out by top historians — but the NYT doesn't care. You're not after truth...."

This past December, Newsweek noted, five prominent historians, Sean Wilentz, Victoria Bynum, Gordon Wood, James McPherson, and James Oakes, accused the creators of the project of a "displacement of historical understanding by ideology."

They noted in Hannah-Jones' introduction to the project she claimed a primary reason  "colonists decided to declare their independence from Britain was because they wanted to protect the institution of slavery" was unfounded.

The Times has since changed that assertion to "some" of the colonists.

Other scholars and political scientists have slammed the projects for claiming slavery is a uniquely American phenomenon. Slavery actually dates back thousands of years and has existed in many cultures.

• Newt Gingrich Slams NY Times 1619 Slavery Project as a 'Lie'
• 1619 Project Ignores Mountains of Relevant Facts