PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: The left-wing rioting and mayhem are the direct result of decades of left-wing indoctrination in our schools. It’s gone on far too long. Our children are instructed from propaganda tracts, like those of Howard Zinn, that try to make students ashamed of their own history.

This week President Trump described the work of the legendary historian Howard Zinn, who died in 2010, as “propaganda” meant to “make students ashamed of their own history.” But Zinn believed the opposite, that teaching the unvarnished truth about history was the best way to combat propaganda and unexamined received wisdom. We air excerpts from a 2009 interview with Zinn in which he explained his approach to education. “We should be honest with young people; we should not deceive them. We should be honest about the history of our country,” Zinn said.

AMY GOODMAN: We only have two minutes, and I want to get to the election. When I interviewed you in 2016, you said you wouldn’t support either main-party candidate at the time. What are your thoughts today for 2020?

ANGELA DAVIS: Well, my position really hasn’t changed. I’m not going to actually support either of the major candidates. But I do think we have to participate in the election. I mean, that isn’t to say that I won’t vote for the Democratic candidate. What I’m saying is that in our electoral system as it exists, neither party represents the future that we need in this country. Both parties remain connected to corporate capitalism. But the election will not so much be about who gets to lead the country to a better future, but rather how we can support ourselves and our own ability to continue to organize and place pressure on those in power. And I don’t think there’s a question about which candidate would allow that process to unfold.

So I think that we’re going to have to translate some of the passion that has characterized these demonstrations into work within the electoral arena, recognizing that the electoral arena is not the best place for the expression of radical politics. But if we want to continue this work, we certainly need a person in office who will be more amenable to our mass pressure. And to me, that is the only thing that someone like a Joe Biden represents. But we have to persuade people to go out and vote to guarantee that the current occupant of the White House is forever ousted.

AMY GOODMAN: Angela Davis, I want to thank you so much for this hour, world-renowned abolitionist, author, activist, professor emerita at the University of California, Santa Cruz, author of many books, including Freedom Is a Constant Struggle: Ferguson, Palestine, and the Foundations of a Movement. I’m Amy Goodman. Thanks so much for joining us. Stay safe.

It looks like the transfer of more than 900,000 acres of Nevada public land to military ownership just got less likely.

The Senate Armed Services Committee advanced the National Defense Authorization Act last week authorizing $8.15 billion for military construction for the coming fiscal year, but those plans did not include the controversial land expansions of the Naval Air Station Fallon and the Nevada Test and Training Range.

The committee, led by Oklahoma Republican Sen. Jim Inhofe, advanced the proposed legislation on an overwhelmingly bipartisan vote of 25-2. The bill is now headed to the Senate floor for consideration.

“Senator Cortez Masto celebrates the language she helped craft with the Senate Armed Services Committee that secures a status-quo extension of the Nevada Test and Training Range (and the Fallon Naval Air Station),” said Ryan King, communications director for Cortez Masto in an email.

Neighboring tribes, conservation groups and some rural towns have opposed the expansion of both training ranges asking that any existing land withdrawals in Nevada with the military only be extended, not expanded.

Nevada tribes — including the Fallon Paiute Shoshone Tribe, the Moapa Band of Paiutes and the Las Vegas Paiute Tribe — have strongly opposed the expansion of both training ranges.

Fallon Paiute Shoshone Tribal Chairman Len George has said the expansion of Navy training on Paiute Shoshone traditional lands would destroy burial grounds and other sacred cultural sites while cutting off public lands for religious and cultural activities like gathering, hunting, ceremonies and burials.

The Inter-Tribal Council of Nevada, which represents 27 member tribal nations in Nevada, wrote a resolution supporting the Fallon Paiute Shoshone Tribe and other tribal nations in opposition to the planned expansion.

Laura Parry, chairwoman of the Moapa Band of Paiutes, said that while the tribe takes matters of national security very seriously, a lack of proper consultation left them with “no other choice than to vehemently oppose the expansion” of the Nevada Test and Training Range.