A right-leaning legal organization is calling on parents to scrutinize how schools teach children about the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, warning against what it describes as an “ideological rewriting of American history.”
America First Legal released a “Parent Toolkit” on Friday, marking the 25th anniversary of 9/11. The group says classroom instruction should cover not only the attacks that killed 2,977 people, but also Al Qaeda, the Islamist ideology behind the plot, and what it characterizes as breakdowns in the US immigration and visa system that enabled the 19 hijackers to enter and stay in the country.
The AFL campaign was announced a day after The Post reported that the Trump administration had issued new guidance for American educators on teaching 9/11 to students born after the attacks.
The toolkit includes sample letters parents can send to schools seeking access to lesson plans, teacher-training documents and other materials tied to 9/11, including content from outside groups. One form letter asks for a reply within five business days and requests written confirmation if the school has no instructional materials related to the attacks.
A second template urges school officials to adopt what it calls a “factual, substantive 9/11 curriculum.”
“A moment of silence is not an education,” AFL President Gene Hamilton said in explaining the effort.
America First Legal, co-founded by current White House deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller, rolled out the parent resources after raising objections to 9/11 lesson materials used or promoted in New York, California, New Jersey and Virginia.
In New York, AFL said the city Department of Education spent more than $1 million from 2012 through 2026 on contracts with Bridging Cultures Group, an organization that provided teacher training focused on Islamophobia in the years after Sept. 11.
Bridging Cultures Group was founded by Debbie Almontaser, who also served as board president of the Muslim Community Network. That group drew controversy for lobbying Congress to withdraw funding from the National 9/11 Memorial & Museum at the World Trade Center site, arguing that some exhibits “demonize Islam and Muslims.”
In Fairfax County, Va., AFL pointed to a six-page district guide that advises teachers not to “associate the 9/11 attacks with Islam or Muslims” or “center the extremists or the acts of extremists.” The guide does not name Osama bin Laden, the late Al Qaeda leader, or Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, whom US authorities have described as the “mastermind” of the hijacking plot.
In California, the North Monterey County Unified School District approved a “required ethnic-studies course” in which the curriculum directs students to bin Laden’s infamous “Letter to America” as a source related to claims that the United States targeted “Muslim communities.”
Another lesson in that same course says the Sept. 11 attacks made prejudice against Arab and Muslim Americans “more obvious and shameless.”
Additionally, AFL found that the National Education Association’s 2025 policy handbook contains no reference to 9/11, but instead explicitly states support for transgender students’ access to preferred bathrooms and locker rooms, and “gender-affirming health care.”
“Parents must therefore take the lead in teaching American history to their children,” the toolkit states. “We must not let our history be eradicated, censored, or rewritten by those with an ideological agenda.”
