With presidential debate fireworks and the battle to replace Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, it is easy to forget that on Sept. 17, Constitution Day, President Trump proposed something unconstitutional. At the National Archives, where the Constitution is on display, Trump attacked the New York Times’s 1619 Project and other “deceptions, falsehoods, and lies” propagated by “the Left” while promising to create a national commission to foster “patriotic education.” It was in line with other recent Republican actions, including legislation to reduce federal education dollars to public schools that choose to teach the 1619 Project.

These actions are both unconstitutional and threaten to take the painful, fever-pitch anger of our national politics and inject it into our children’s classrooms.