Virginia’s legislature has passed a bill prohibiting schools from teaching what it considers to be falsehoods about the Jan. 6, 2021, U.S. Capitol riot, including portraying it “as peaceful protest.”
The General Assembly approved the measure Thursday, as a first-of-its-kind legislation to combat false statements by supporters of President Trump.
The bill says that school instruction must “Not describe, portray, or present as credible a description or portrayal of the actions precipitating or involved in the events of the January 6, 2021, insurrection as peaceful protest.”
Schools may also not “state, suggest, or present as credible a statement or suggestion that there was extensive election fraud that could have changed or actually changed the results of the 2020 presidential election.”
Instead, the measure says that school instruction must “Describe the January 6, 2021, insurrection at the United States Capitol as an unprecedented, violent attack on United States democratic institutions, infrastructure, and representatives for the purpose of overturning the results of the 2020 presidential election.”
The legislation was sponsored by state delegate Dan Helmer, a Democrat from Northern Virginia. In the state Senate, the bill passed 21-19 — the chamber’s 19 Republicans opposed the measure. CBS News has requested comment from Virginia state Senate GOP leader.
State and local police in Virginia were among the law enforcement responders who helped repel the rioting mob on Jan. 6, 2021.
“The White House has tried to rewrite history,” Helmer told CBS News. “I don’t want to celebrate traders in our public schools.”
The White House posted a series of lies about Jan. 6 on an official federal government web page on Jan. 6, 2026, including a bogus claim that police bore responsibility for the attack.
Helmer’s bill is expected to be signed by Virginia Gov. Abigail Spanberger, a Democrat who was elected in November and who served in Congress at the time of the Capitol attack.
A spokesperson for Spanberger said, “The Governor will review all legislation that comes to her desk.”
Helmer, who spoke by phone with CBS News from the State Capitol, said, “This bill does not mandate the teaching of Jan. 6. It just says that if you do it, you have to do so in line with the actual facts of the day.”
President Trump and his surrogates and supporters have characterized the events of Jan. 6 as patriotic. They’ve also claimed the prosecutions of U.S. Capitol rioters represented a political “weaponization” of the Justice Department by the Biden administration.
Mr. Trump pardoned more than 1,500 Capitol riot defendants, including hundreds charged with beating and maiming police officers during the assault.
Helmer told CBS News, “The bill provides guardrails for our schools.”
“We have a history in Virginia, of celebrating the ‘lost cause of the Civil War’ and the Confederacy in our schools, trying to rewrite history that way,” Helmer said. “We have a long history of some of that going the wrong way.”
“Delegate Helmer’s bill requiring any education in school curriculum be fact-based, truthful and honest is a no-brainer,” said Harry Dunn, a former Capitol Police officer who responded to stop the mob on Jan. 6. Dunn, who is now running for the Democratic nomination for a U.S. House seat in Maryland, told CBS News, “This bill isn’t politically left. Any opponents of the bill who suggest otherwise are the ones who are making it ‘political.’ The world saw that happened that day and who was responsible for it,” said Dunn.
New York’s legislature is also considering new legislation to require proper teaching of the Capitol siege. Long Island Democratic state Rep. Chuck Lavine has proposed legislation in New York to require all public schoolchildren to receive instruction about the insurrection.
“The idea is to require New York students to be instructed about what happened on Jan. 6 and its aftermath,” Lavine told CBS News. “We can’t sweep history under the rug. If we don’t teach our students about the truth of history, we are doing them a grave disservice. And we’d be doing a disservice to our nation as well.”
His legislation must be passed by December in order to become law.
“This is part of civic responsibility,” Lavine said. “People are entitled to their own political beliefs, but they are not entitled to change facts.”
“Anyone of good faith who watched what happened on that day recognizes the threat to democracy represented by what occurred on that day,” Lavine said. “The old line is, ‘Those who ignore history are condemned to repeat its mistake.'”
Brendan Ballou, a former Justice Department prosecutor who handled Jan. 6 cases, told CBS News, “It’s absolutely essential that the reality of Jan. 6 not be forgotten and the history of the day not be rewritten.”
“Kudos to Virginia for pushing back on the relentless gaslighting about January 6th and the 2020 election,” said former prosecutor Mike Gordon, who also handled a number of Jan. 6 prosecutions. “Kids should learn the truth.”
