- United States
- Mich.
- Letter
Vote no on H.R. 8705, the CHARLIE Act, and do everything in your power to stop it from reaching the floor. This bill would gut federally funded civics and history education by banning any content the majority deems "radical indoctrination" — vague, politically loaded language that Republicans on the Education and Workforce Committee already used to reject amendments that would have protected teaching about slavery, immigration, the January 6 attack, and LGBTQ+ history. Every single amendment. Gone.
Rep. Mark Takano said it plainly: "Censoring American history doesn't change what happened — it dooms future generations to forget and potentially repeat the mistakes of the past." He's right. The bill's definitions of "gender ideology" and "discriminatory equity ideology" are lifted directly from Trump executive orders, and they're designed to erase whole categories of Americans from the classroom. Programs like the American History and Civics Education initiative and the Presidential and Congressional Academies for American History and Civics are directly at risk. This isn't curriculum reform — it's state-sponsored historical amnesia. Fight it.