After spending nearly a year gutting her own department — a policy choice that was ripped from the pages of Project 2025 — the secretary of education, Linda McMahon, has launched a cross-country tour called “History Rocks!”
The tour, which is meant to highlight civics education and celebrate our nation’s 250th anniversary, is made possible by the Education Department’s leftover funds from the 2025 fiscal year (perhaps when you fire over 1,300 people, you have some money lying around). McMahon’s involvement includes visiting classrooms, speaking to students, delivering a speech and hosting American history-themed games.
“The History Rocks! initiative is a key component of the U.S. Department of Education’s America 250 celebrations, coordinated with the America 250 Civics Education Coalition, a national partnership with the America First Policy Institute, Turning Point USA, Hillsdale College, and more than 50 national and state organizations,” according to a news release from the Department of Education.
Hutz H. Hertzberg, the chief education officer of Turning Point Education, is quoted in another D.O.E. news release saying, “Turning Point USA, which includes Turning Point Education, is more resolved than ever to advance God-centered, virtuous education for students flourishing across our nation,” and with that in mind, he is thrilled to partner with coalition partners like Moms for Liberty, Priests for Life, and Project 2025’s creators, the Heritage Foundation.
This information is publicly available from the D.O.E. (In December, my newsroom colleague, Tracey Tully, was barred from entering a school on McMahon’s tour in New Jersey, though some local press was allowed inside.) I had read that the tour had spurred protests in many states, and I had questions about why a right-wing organization that wants to advance “God-centered” education was getting involved in history games with Linda McMahon.
I spent the last week talking to public school parents who were not excited to hear that the secretary was coming to Alabama, Illinois, New Jersey and Connecticut because of the extremely conservative, anti-L.G.B.T.Q. and Christian makeup of the America 250 Civics Education Coalition. They were concerned that this tour was part of a larger Trumpian effort to whitewash American history.
Visits to schools in Fairfield, Conn., and Mobile, Ala., were canceled after a swift backlash. Parents in Illinois that I spoke to were unhappy that McMahon appeared at Genoa-Kingston High School with Erika Kirk, the widow of Charlie Kirk and the chief executive of Turning Point USA.
Though McMahon’s appearance with Kirk was not, according to the Department of Education, an official part of the History Rocks! Tour, there seemed to be confusion among Genoa-Kingston organizers about that fact. (I reached out to the superintendent about the McMahon/Kirk appearance; he did not get back to me.) An invite from the school’s Club America, which a local parent shared with me, associated the event with History Rocks! Students appeared to think the two efforts were related — they were expecting a straightforward civics lesson. “It just felt like this wasn’t educational at all. You’re handing me a bracelet that says ‘We are Charlie Kirk.’ I’m just trying to learn about America’s history,” a senior at Genoa-Kingston High School told Peter Medlin of Northern Public Radio.
Parents made clear to me that they saw McMahon’s tour as overtly conservative. John Fallon, a parent in the Fairfield, Conn., school district, was particularly disturbed by a video from the America First Policy Institute, a conservative think tank founded by President Trump’s secretary of agriculture, Brooke Rollins, and other MAGA luminaries after the end of his first term. That video, which Fallon perceived to be the “prime advertisement” for the tour, had “highly objectionable political undertones,” he said.
The Department of Education links directly to the A.F.P.I.’s site. The video there, which has McMahon’s image in it, declares: “American education was once a shining light, guiding generations, built on faith, heritage, patriotism. But over the past 60 to 70 years, that brilliance has been dimmed. A great institution has been crumbled from within, overtaken by those who teach hatred for America, false revisionist history, and division.” It then goes on to show a clip of Barack Obama under the headline, “Georgetown University Hid Religious Symbols at White House Request.”
In a statement, McMahon insisted that there was nothing partisan about the History Rocks! Tour, and how dare anyone imply that there might be: “Some have tried to brand this tour as ‘radical,’ ‘dangerous’ and ‘partisan indoctrination.’ How absurd. What you see is not politics — it is a shared commitment to our nation’s story. It speaks volumes about certain voices in our society that they would seek to distort a celebration of America’s 250th anniversary and deprive children of this experience.”
A Department of Education official sent me some sample civics games shared by McMahon at school visits and two speeches she gave, one in Alabama and one in New York. The games were straightforward and factual, and the speech was not distinctly conservative, though it was heavy on expressing that “America is the greatest country on Earth.”
The official added that “the department does not direct or supervise or control the membership of the coalition” or the materials it creates. I asked whether McMahon agrees with the message of the America First Policy Institute video, considering that her name and image are used repeatedly in it, and why the institute describes its relationship with the Department of Education as a “formal partnership.” I did not receive a response.
I was also told that anybody could join the America 250 Civics Education Coalition, but when I asked if nonpartisan or even liberal groups were invited to join, the official said she’d have to get back to me on specifics. I’m still waiting.
Even if one believes that the History Rocks! Tour is scrupulously unbiased, I question the wisdom of embarking on such a tour when the Department of Education has so many other problems.
Schools are continuing to dig out from Covid-related learning loss and trying to raise test scores that have been on a downhill slope for about 15 years. A truly nonpartisan leader in the Department of Education might help states share wisdom and research. As my colleague Nick Kristof pointed out, some red states are leading the way in math and English recovery. Instead of trying to help spread knowledge about best practices, the Trump administration attempted to cut over $300 million in funding to Regional Educational Laboratories that help with this work, calling it “woke spending” last year.
While a judge told the administration to reinstate some of that funding months later, researchers can’t just pick up where they left off, especially since the future is so uncertain. As part of the 1,300 layoffs in the D.O.E., McMahon cut the Institute of Education Sciences, which was established by George W. Bush to explore the best teaching practices, down to the bone. According to the Hechinger Report, the I.E.S. went from more than 175 employees to fewer than 20.
Ideally, McMahon would be trying to fix some of these pivotal issues affecting our nation’s children, instead of touring the country asking students, “How many original colonies were there?,” which was one of the sample questions provided to me from McMahon’s tour. Perhaps there’s just not much work to manage in Washington because she already fired everyone who might make a difference.
End Notes
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I’m still digesting “Neighbors,” an HBO docuseries about everyday Americans fighting with the people they must live beside. The first episode aired last week, and it featured two families living off the grid in Montana and threatening each other over a gate, and a group of people in Florida sparring over public versus private beach access. While violent disputes among neighbors are common in American history (think: Hatfields and McCoys), my biggest takeaway so far is that social media and the panopticon of phone surveillance have the potential to make every fight bigger, uglier and more filled with misunderstanding than it needs to be.
Feel free to drop me a line about anything here.
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