Republican state legislators in Iowa have introduced legislation that would cut state funding from any schools that promote the far-left 1619 Project in their curriculum, according to The Hill.
The bill was introduced by State Representatives Henry Stone (R-Iowa) and Skyler Wheeler (R-Iowa), and has already passed through a three-member subcommittee, which now means it will head to the State House’s full education committee. The bill would target schools featuring “any United States history curriculum that in whole or in part is derived from a project by the New York Times, known as the ‘1619 Project,’ or any similarly developed curriculum.”
Any school that is found to use such curriculum in violation of the proposed law would have their funding “reduced by one-hundred-eightieth for each day of the previous budget year for which the school district used” that curriculum. Representative Wheeler confirmed that there would be similar reductions in state aid payments for any schools that feature such education, and that these penalties would include community colleges and regent institutions.
The 1619 Project, started in 2019 by New York Times author Nikole Hannah-Jones, essentially attempted to rewrite American history with a far-left approach by portraying the United States as a fundamentally racist nation, built by slavery and discrimination. The project has since been incorporated in many public schools who have begun teaching it as fact, even despite numerous historical inaccuracies and blatant omissions that have been pointed out by scholars and critics.