President Trump has often suggested that the nation needs a refresher course in civics, and now he is enlisting his political allies to teach the lesson.
The Trump administration announced on Wednesday the launch of a civics education coalition that includes the Education Department and more than 40 partner groups, all of which are closely aligned with the president’s Make America Great Again movement.
One of the groups is the America First Policy Institute, a Trump-aligned nonprofit where Education Secretary Linda McMahon worked before joining the president’s cabinet. An Education Department spokeswoman said that no federal funds were being spent on the coalition and that Ms. McMahon had signed an ethics waiver, allowing her to participate despite the conflict of interest.
The America 250 Civics Education Coalition includes mostly tax-exempt nonprofits, which are prohibited under the federal tax code from engaging in political campaign activity. Still, many of these types of groups — including those aligned with both Democrats and Republicans — generally support a partisan agenda by advancing specific policies rather than particular politicians.
Whether so many politically aligned nonprofits have ever banded together to promote civics is unclear. More explicit has been Mr. Trump’s interest in imbuing the nonpartisan idea of civics — the rights, responsibilities and duties inherent in citizenship — with his own political goals.
In 2022, when he announced his 2024 presidential campaign, Mr. Trump vowed to strip federal funding from schools that promoted what he called “radical civics.” In another campaign speech, he criticized a bipartisan proposal to expand civics education in America.
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