These teens are vying to win Trump’s civics contest. Some have mixed feelings about patriotism and the president

By Piper Hudspeth Blackburn, Sunlen Serfaty, CNN

(CNN) — Earlier this year, Ishant Jawali, a 16-year-old from Raleigh, North Carolina, was scrolling on Instagram when he stumbled upon a little-known way to win money for college: The Trump administration was putting on a national civics contest for America’s 250th birthday.

He signed up, becoming one of about 8,000 high school students entering for the chance to win a scholarship worth up to $150,000.

After rounds of contests, he is one of 20 finalists for the Presidential 1776 Award competition, one of the Trump administration’s main efforts to promote patriotism in young people as part of its programming for the country’s big birthday.

Jawali and other contestants who spoke to CNN expressed nuanced reasons for participating, along with their feelings about the contest’s connections to President Donald Trump and the idea of patriotism itself.

“I feel like it’s a bit of a loaded word, at least to me, like it’s hard to be patriotic,” Jawali said. “It’s hard to really understand what that means when there’s so many things that you disagree with the leaders of our government about.”

The contest, which begins Tuesday at the Kennedy Center, will be broadcast on CBS at the end of the month and includes a White House visit for the top three finishers.

But the anticipatory rush has come with mixed feelings and thorny questions about what it means for young people to be patriotic in the age of Trump, at a time when Gen Z is increasingly pessimistic about the country’s future.

The civics contest has drawn teens from across the country and with varied backgrounds — from the children of immigrants, like Jawali, to homeschooled students and history buffs.

Being in the contest as the son of Indian immigrants was “remarkable and emotional,” said Aangad Singh, 15, of Connecticut.

“I’m just doing this for the actual knowledge,” he said. “Because that knowledge is permanent, like the philosophy, the rights our Constitution — that is the real reward.”

A contest years in the making

The idea for the 1776 Award dates to Trump’s first term, when he created an education-focused panel called the 1776 commission as an answer to The New York Times’ “1619 Project,” which he dismissed as “toxic propaganda.”

In his second term, Trump reestablished both the commission and the contest as he seeks to put an end to what he has called “radical indoctrination” in schools across the country.

The contest is run by his Education Department, which under Secretary Linda McMahon has bolstered the administration’s ideological allies and made promoting civics a key initiative, even as much of the agency has been dismantled.

McMahon has emphasized civic education in schools, doling out just over $150 million last fall in grant awards for nonprofits’ and universities’ civics and history programs. The department has also launched the America 250 Civics Education Coalition, made up of groups that promote classical Christian education, school choice and conservative policies.

The agency has touted the civics competition as a way of producing more patriotic Americans: “The Presidential 1776 Award reflects a belief central to American education: that informed students become patriotic citizens, and patriotic citizens are essential to the future of the Republic,” Murray Bessette, an Education Department official and classical education proponent, wrote in a blog post earlier this year.

Trump and his administration loomed large over the contest — and in some contestants’ minds.

High school senior Macon Harrell, a finalist from Mississippi, said at first he was concerned about how history could be interpreted by the judges and that they would avoid “dark parts” of the nation’s past. Trump has issued several executive orders that critics say attempt to rewrite history and ignore difficult questions about America’s past, including about slavery and the struggles of minority groups.

Harrell decided to participate and said his concern has not been borne out. “I don’t think that this competition, shockingly, has sugarcoated what our nation is,” the 18-year-old said.

Though some aspects have been conventional — multiple-choice questions about subjects like key battles of the American Revolution or concepts in the Federalist Papers — others have been less so, according to Jawali.

At his regional competition, contestants were given wearable cameras to make videos of one another and free hats with the year “1776” stitched on front — which he said reminded him of some Trump-branded merchandise.

Contestants have spent hours a day over the past several weeks preparing for the final round.

Rowan Kozminski, 16, of Grand Rapids, Michigan, studied for the competition virtually with a friend in Florida who competed in the earlier rounds. Summer Brondstetter, 17, of Seattle, said she became more invested as she progressed through the contest, sometimes studying with her dad for two to three hours a day.

Many who spoke to CNN described the camaraderie they felt with other students in the competition, logging hours quizzing one another with flashcards.

Gen Z assesses America

After clinching a finalist spot, Jawali wrestled with whether his peers might mistake his participation for support for the administration, he said.

“I definitely had a thought in the back of my mind, like, ‘OK, what does it say about me if I’m doing this thing?’ but I think that money, and also the sort of topic, was enough for me to overcome that,” he said.

“I don’t know if the competition has been super successful in selling patriotism, to be honest; it’s a lot of people talking about the principles and being engaged about that, but again, like a big motivation that I saw amongst the people, and I guess amongst myself, was financial,” he said.

Others felt no such conflict.

“This is not a political issue. This is an American issue,” said Brondstetter, the student from Seattle, who said she is a supporter of the president. “Everyone walking away from the competition knowing this is the greatest country of the world — why the Constitution works, why government exists — that is the most important gift in the world.”

Kozminski, the student from Michigan, acknowledged that he thought Trump’s Department of Education has done a lot of “contentious” things, but said he thought the contest was one thing it got right.

“I think that they have missed the mark on certain other policy goals, but I think this is a big success to be able to celebrate students that have this level of achievement — regardless of what president it’s under,” he said.

But young people across the US are divided over whether to feel pride in the country.

According to a June 2025 Gallup poll, only 41% of adults who belong to Generation Z have been extremely or very proud to be Americans in recent years, compared with 58% of millennials. Many young people have been rattled by the trials of growing up during the Covid-19 pandemic, along with the high price of college education and housing.

Young people overwhelmingly take a dim view of Trump — according to a May CNN/SSRS poll, 77% of respondents aged 18-34 disapproved of the way he is handling his job as president — and how democracy is functioning today. Only 16% of Gen Z respondents said the system is working well for young people, according to a 2025 report from the Center for Information & Research on Civic Learning and Engagement, or CIRCLE, at Tufts University.

“They don’t dislike democracy as a system, they generally support the principles of a democratic government, but they’re not seeing those principles being lived up to,” said Ruby Belle Booth, a researcher at CIRCLE.

Booth said her research shows Gen Z still has a “resilience” around their political participation. “They are not going to give up just because they don’t like the system; they’re going to work to change it,” she said.

‘A New Patriotism’

The 1776 Award is not the only Trump-backed contest aimed at youths. Later this year, the administration will hold a sporting event, the “Patriot Games,” which the president has billed as “an unprecedented four-day athletic event featuring the greatest high school athletes — one young man and one young woman from each state and territory.”

Various nonpartisan civics initiatives to inspire youth to connect with America’s founding and promote pride are taking place. America Gives, a program to encourage young people to volunteer, and America’s Field Trip, a contest for schoolchildren, both run by America 250, a congressionally overseen nonprofit, have drawn 9 million and over 10,000 participants, respectively.

Made By Us, a youth-led civics coalition backed by major cultural institutions like the Smithsonian, has launched “Civic Season” and is expected to reach over 20,000 people with 300 in-person events happening in 43 states.

Another Made by Us project, called Letters to America, asks Gen Z to reflect on what the country means to them.

In the dozens of letters posted so far, high school students and young people in their 20s grapple with the promise of America and their complicated feelings about the country’s past.

Like Jawali and Singh, 16-year-old Annalise Huang is the child of immigrants. She was drawn to the Letters to America campaign to express her complicated feelings about the country that became a flashpoint between her and her grandfather, who immigrated from China to Ecuador before settling in the United States.

In her letter, “A New Patriotism,” she described a very different kind of patriotism from what Trump has touted. The president has called for teaching children to “love our country, honor our history and always respect our great American flag.”

“I am a patriot not for my unwavering support of America’s actions,” Huang wrote, “but rather my relentless devotion to make this country better.”

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