Ken Paxton calls it a victory. In truth it is an assault on the minds of the youngest. The Attorney General of Texas forces the schools of Austin to erase every word about Critical Race Theory. A scholarly approach that has examined for decades how racism is embedded in laws and institutions is summarily declared “anti-American propaganda.” No dialogue, no contradiction - an order from the Attorney General, just think about that, that robs the curriculum of its humanity.

KEN PAXTON
ATTORNEY GENERAL OF TEXAS

IMMEDIATE RELEASE
September 15, 2025
www.texasattorneygeneral.gov

Attorney General Ken Paxton Scores Victory: Austin ISD Must Comply With State Law Against Radical, Anti-American Critical Race Theory

AUSTIN – Attorney General Ken Paxton has won a victory over the Austin Independent School District (“AISD”) by ordering an end to any instruction of Critical Race Theory (“CRT”), a radical, anti-American doctrine.

This agreement requires the Superintendent of Austin ISD to ensure that all principals and staff across the district comply with the Texas Education Code, which prohibits the teaching of Critical Race Theory in public schools in Texas. The order further prohibits staff from advising parents or students on how to circumvent the law, and provides that all inquiries regarding compliance must be referred to a designated administrator.

“Critical Race Theory is anti-American propaganda, and in no world will I allow the woke indoctrination of Texas children,” said Attorney General Paxton. “While this order is an important step forward, I want to make clear that any school authority that violates this law will be monitored: We will keep an eye on them. My office stands ready to defend Texas law and the rights of parents against any unlawful implementation of CRT.”

The order follows an investigation that found AISD officials had made statements that the district used materials connected with the banned “1619 Project,” and that staff had been instructed on how to “find ways around” the CRT ban in Texas. The court order now requires Austin ISD to reverse course and strictly enforce the law throughout the district.

To read the order, click here.

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And Texas is only the beginning. Florida, Tennessee, Idaho, Iowa, North Dakota, South Dakota, Montana, Oklahoma, Arkansas, Utah, Mississippi, New Hampshire, South Carolina, Kentucky and Arizona have long followed suit. Republican-governed states that all do the same: they rip chapters from the minds of children before they can even read them. They sell a “perfect” version of the United States in which slavery was a mishap, racial segregation only a footnote, and racism at best a misunderstanding. This is how racism is step by step made socially acceptable again - not through slogans in the street, but through silence in the classroom.

At the center of this culture war is the “1619 Project” - an initiative of the New York Times that marks the year 1619 as the true founding moment of America. The year in which the first enslaved Africans were brought to Virginia. The project shows how deeply slavery and racism are inscribed in the DNA of the country: in the economy, in politics, in the Constitution. It does not put Washington or Jefferson in the center, but those millions of people whose bodies and labor formed the foundation of the nation. That is precisely why it is pursued by Republicans like a forbidden scripture. Because whoever sets 1619 as the starting point recognizes that freedom in the United States never applied to everyone - and that the white majority society built its power from the very beginning on oppression.

The mechanism we see here is old. In 1933 books were thrown into the fire, entire libraries purged, students indoctrinated with a “pure” version of history. Today there are no flames, but silent erasures, lists of banned material, threats against teachers. The technique is more modern, the goal the same: a youth without questions, without unrest, without a view into its own abysses. But not everyone remains silent. Teachers sue against the bans, risking job and career. Parents read their children at home texts that were banned from schools. Civil rights groups remind us that a democracy that cannot bear its own history is nothing more than a façade.

The Republicans say they would protect children from “woke indoctrination.” In truth they rob these children of the right to knowledge. They steal their history - and thereby plant racism right back into the center of society.

The parallels to Europe are brutally simple: A project is also forming here that corrodes memory and narrows debates. The AfD is not a fringe phenomenon, it is part of this strategy - only in German packaging. In Germany this does not come as a one-to-one copy of American laws, but the logic is the same. It is about politics of history and about the erasure of memory: Björn Höcke openly speaks of a “180 degree turn in remembrance policy,” he calls the Holocaust memorial a “monument of shame” - words that are not accidental. They express a moment in which remembrance is read as a burden to be cast off. The AfD pushes into education policy, tries to discredit critical educational content, opens teacher reporting platforms and creates a climate of intimidation. Gender studies, colonial history, the struggle over victim and perpetrator narratives - all this is declared an enemy. Whoever asks how power works, whoever thematizes collective responsibility, is linguistically excluded and politically delegitimized.

Added to this are networks: think tanks, alternative media, campaigns that shift narratives, distort facts and suffocate counter-narratives in the bud. This is no coincidence, it is tactics: securing control of interpretation before counterarguments can take root. In short: The AfD does not need a formal “CRT ban,” its approach leads in the same direction - a pedagogical purge that leaves a generation incomplete. Not only in the United States does society fall back piece by piece into conveniences: also here there is the danger that ignorance again becomes normality and racism again socially acceptable.

What follows now is not a slogan, but a task: It is about documentation, about public awareness and about legal action. Whoever undermines remembrance works with mechanisms that can be made visible. Evidence, charges, lawsuits, independent expert reports - these are the tools with which democratic societies respond to censorship. Just as important is the counteroffensive in everyday life: readings, project weeks in schools, local educational initiatives, journalistic research, clear reporting.

No one may wait until silence has become normal. Education is not harmless, it is the backbone of a society. Whoever denies children access to truth does not only rob them of knowledge - they damage democracy itself. If politics fails, society must act: with legal means, with patience, with persistence. Writing, documenting, suing, reading aloud, going into schools, defending remembrance - that is the work that counts now. Because whoever cuts back history today will not understand the present tomorrow. And whoever does not understand the present has no chance to win the future.

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