The Trump administration on Thursday threatened to withhold federal funds from public schools unless state education officials confirm the elimination of all programs they say have unfairly promoted diversity, equity and inclusion.
In a memo sent to public education officials across the country, the education department said funding for high-schools of low-income students, known as Title I funding, is at risk as compliance with the administration's directives is pending.
The memo included a certificate that state and local school officials must sign and return within 10 days, even if they struggled to define programs that define programs that violate interpretations of civil rights laws. The move is the latest in a series of education sector directives aimed at implementing President Trump's political agenda in schools in the country.
During a confirmation hearing in February, Education Secretary Linda McMahon said the school should be allowed to celebrate the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., but she was more cautious when asked whether a class focused on black history violated Trump's agenda and should be banned.
“I'm not sure,” McMahon said.
More recently, the education department said, “The evaluation of school policies and programs depends on the facts and circumstances of each case.”
Programs aimed at recognizing historical events and contributions and promoting awareness will not violate the law “unless you engage in racial exclusion or discrimination.”
“However, school programming must consider whether all races will interfere with attendance by either exclude or blocking a particular race or race from students or by creating a race-based hostile environment for participating students,” the education department said.
He also said that if federal funds are found to be spent while violating civil rights laws, the Department of Justice can sue a breach of contract.
The administration's views on these laws, including the anti-discrimination requirements, were first raised in a letter from the department on February 14, two weeks before McMahon was confirmed, as a potential condition for public school funding.
The letter indicated that the administration plans to enforce the Supreme Court decision that declared a racially-based program of action in 2023. The ruling did not address any related issues at K-12 schools, but the department made it clear in a letter that the administration interpreted the Supreme Court's decision “a wider.”
“At the heart of it, the test is easy,” writes Craig Trainer, the vice-secretary of civil rights in the education sector. “If an educational institution treats people of a different race than treating another person because of that person's race, the educational institution violates the law.”
His letter raised lawsuits from the American Federation of Teachers, the American Sociological Association and the liberal legal organizations that are democratic forwards. This called on federal judges to preemptively block the administration from withholding funds from schools. The plaintiffs argued that the threat of this letter violates and ambiguous the academic freedom protected by the First Amendment, and thus violates the right to legitimate proceedings of the Fifth Amendment.
“These illegal and unprecedented threats to educators and students, the American public education system, have not made anyone's lives better,” Skye Perryman, president and CEO of Democracy Forward, said Thursday. “Intimidating teachers and wing up the chaos in schools across America is part of Trump's war of education.”
The government's efforts, led by Elon Musk, the world's wealthiest person and top Trump advisor, have cancelled 70 grants in the education division of the DEI training program worth $373 million.
In the first 11 weeks, the Trump administration launched a civil rights investigation into Denver public schools through toilets for all genders at one high school.
At the same time, Trump argued that it would be best to leave America to the decision to educate the country's schoolchildren. Trump has signed an executive order to begin demolition of the education sector. This has filed multiple lawsuits citing federal law that only Congress can close the agency.
The federal government accounts for about 8% of local school funding, but the amounts vary widely. In Mississippi, for example, around 23% of school funding comes from federal sources, while only 7% of New York's school funding comes from Washington, according to the Pew Research Center.
Project 2025, a right-wing blueprint for overhauling the federal government, called for the Title I program to be transferred to the Department of Health and Human Services and for a decade to abolish federal funding sources.
“Federal financial support is a privilege, not a right,” the trainer said in a statement. “If state education commissioners accept federal funds, they agree to comply with the federal anti-discrimination requirements.”
