The president has said he wants to eliminate the Education Department while fighting ‘woke’ ideology in schools. A week-by-week look at what he’s done.
This story was originally published by The Hechinger Report, a nonprofit news outlet focused on education.
President Donald Trump has unleashed a flurry of orders and actions designed to reshape the federal government’s role in education since taking office for the second time. He directed Education Secretary Linda McMahon to shrink the agency she oversees, while other cuts have been initiated by Trump’s Department of Government Efficiency. Shuttering the Education Department entirely would take an act of Congress, but the administration laid off about half of its workers, floated plans to shift its work to other departments, and cut millions of dollars for education research, teacher-training programs and other projects funded through agencies as varied as the National Institutes of Health, the Department of Agriculture, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, the Department of Homeland Security, and the Department of Health and Human Services, among others.
At the same time, Trump is calling for a larger federal role in certain areas of education. His administration is redefining what the federal government considers discrimination in schools and on college campuses, eliminating diversity, equity and inclusion policies among others that it describes as “woke” and punishing academic institutions it says discriminate against white and Asian people by taking into account race in hiring, housing, admissions and other practices.
The administration is also aggressively investigating colleges over alleged antisemitism and policies that are inclusive of transgender students, and in some cases canceling colleges’ federal funding. It has threatened the visa status of international students over minor legal infractions.
Many of the administration’s actions have been challenged in court but are already influencing how schools and colleges operate.
The Hechinger Report compiled the administration’s major education actions below and are updating this list as Trump’s second term unfolds. Tell The Hechinger Report how the effects of these executive actions are unfolding in your communities, childcare centers, schools and colleges. Email editor@hechingerreport.org. Learn how to reach them securely.
Week 22 (June 16)
The State Department said it would resume interviews for international student visas but that applicants’ social media accounts would be reviewed for alleged “hostility” toward the United States. The department had paused the process for foreign students to receive visas last month, as part of a broader crackdown on universities. Education advocates said they hoped the new screening would not deter international students from coming to the United States.
The Department of Justice filed a lawsuit challenging Kentucky’s policy granting in-state tuition at public colleges to students who are undocumented. The department said the policy discriminates against U.S. citizens from other states who are not afforded the same tuition break. A spokesperson for Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear, a Democrat who was named in the lawsuit, said the policy predates his tenure and that he should not be a party to the complaint.
The Trump administration said next month it will stop providing specialized care for LGBTQ+ youth through its national suicide prevention hotline, a service that has handled about 1.3 million calls, texts and chat messages since 2022. A national survey last year found that 39 percent of LGBTQ+ young people seriously considered suicide in the past year — including 46 percent of those who are transgender and nonbinary. The Trump administration budget proposal for next year foreshadowed the shift, though it said overall funding for the 988 hotline would not change. The Health Department’s annual budget “does not, however, grant taxpayer money to a chat service where children are encouraged to embrace radical gender ideology by ‘counselors’ without consent or knowledge of their parents,” Rachel Cauley, a spokesperson for the White House’s Office of Management and Budget, told The Hill.
California has 60 days to remove all mention of gender identity from its federally funded sexual education curriculum or face possible cuts to the program, the Trump administration said. The federal Administration for Children and Families said that when it reviewed California’s Personal Responsibility Education Program materials, it found what it called “egregious content teaching young students that gender identity is distinct from biological sex and that boys can identify as girls.”
Week 21 (June 9)
The Education Department intensified its scrutiny of the Minnesota Department of Education and the Minnesota State High School League, after a transgender student participated in a recent girls’ softball match and the student’s school went on to win a state championship. The state agency and league were already under investigation for possibly violating Title IX because of state policies that allow student-athletes to compete in sports based on gender identity; now a federal team that includes the Justice Department will investigate. The Minnesota attorney general earlier sued the Trump administration over its interpretation of Title IX.
The Trump administration created a plan and interagency agreements to outsource Education Department work on student loans and career, technical and adult education programs, POLITICO reported, citing court documents. A May 21 agreement between the Education Department and the Labor Department would transfer up to nearly $2.7 billion to DOL, including Perkins Title I grants to states and Title II grants under the Workforce Innovation and Opportunity Act, plus adult literacy programs and other career and technical education the Education Department now runs. A separate agreement would allow the detailing of nine Education Department employees to the Treasury Department to handle student loans and Federal Student Aid programs.
Week 20 (June 2)
In an emergency appeal, the Trump administration asked the Supreme Court to lift a court order blocking it from dismantling the Education Department and firing nearly 1,400 of its workers. The May 22 order said the mass firings prevented the department from fulfilling legally required services and programs and could not be carried out without the approval of Congress, which established the Education Department in 1979.
The president issued a proclamation preventing foreign students from entering the country to study at Harvard, arguing that it would jeopardize national security to allow the school to continue hosting international students. The proclamation also asked the State Department to consider revoking student visas for foreign students already at Harvard. The order followed a decision last month by a Boston court to temporarily block an effort by the Department of Homeland Security to revoke the visa certification that allows Harvard to enroll foreign students.
The Justice Department sued Texas over a 20-year-old law allowing undocumented students to receive in-state tuition at public universities. Within hours, the state agreed to end the practice. In a statement, Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton celebrated the end of the law, saying it had discriminated against American citizens who do not reside in Texas by requiring them to pay higher tuition than undocumented immigrants living in Texas.
The Education Department said it notified Columbia University’s accreditor that the school was “in violation of federal antidiscrimination laws” regarding its treatment of Jewish students, and no longer meets accreditation standards. Education Secretary Linda McMahon said she expected the accreditor, the Middle States Commission on Higher Education, to keep the department informed of any actions taken as a result. A Columbia spokesperson told USA TODAY that she was aware of the letter and that the university “is deeply committed to combating antisemitism on our campus.”
The Education Department paused a plan to garnish Social Security benefits from people who’d defaulted on their student loans, several news organizations reported. A spokesperson for the department said the agency had not garnished any such benefits since collections on student loans restarted in early May.
The Department of Justice threatened legal action against California public schools unless they stopped allowing transgender students to participate in girls’ sports. In a letter sent to schools in the state, Assistant Attorney General Harmeet K. Dhillon said a California Interscholastic Federation bylaw permitting trans student participation in sports amounted to “unconstitutional sex discrimination” against female athletes. A spokeswoman for the California Department of Education told The New York Times that the agency was preparing guidance for school districts on how to respond.
The Education Department launched investigations into a university and a school district over whether they allowed males to join and live in what it called female-only intimate and communal spaces. The agency’s Office for Civil Rights is investigating the University of Wyoming after it allowed a man to join the Kappa Kappa Gamma sorority. It is also investigating Jefferson County Public Schools in Colorado over a policy that says students will be “assigned to share overnight accommodations with other students that share a student’s ‘gender identity.’”
The Trump administration returned most of the roughly 400 books pulled from a Naval Academy library earlier this year because of concerns that they contained messages of diversity, equity and inclusion, The 19th reports. The books were removed after orders from Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and included Maya Angelou’s “I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings,” Harper Lee’s “To Kill a Mockingbird” and Elizabeth Reis’ “Bodies in Doubt: An American History of Intersex.” Some 20 books remain unavailable pending a review, the Defense Department said, but did not provide details to The 19th about which titles.
Week 19 (May 26)
Harvard University will lose its remaining federal contracts, the General Services Administration told the school in a draft letter obtained by The New York Times. The planned cuts of about $100 million come on top of $3.2 billion in contracts and funds the Trump administration has already frozen. In its letter, the GSA accused the university of failing to take steps to combat antisemitism and engaging in racial discrimination in its hiring and admissions processes. Harvard is suing the administration, alleging that it is violating the university’s First Amendment rights.
Week 18 (May 19)
Harvard can no longer enroll international students, DHS said. DHS said Harvard had not provided information about its foreign students as the cinagency requested, including records about misconduct. Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem said the decision applies both to incoming students and students already enrolled: They must transfer to another institution for the coming academic year. In a letter dated May 22, Noem gave Harvard 72 hours to comply with a host of records requests if it wants to preserve its ability to enroll international students. A federal judge temporarily blocked the ban from taking effect.
The Justice Department said it will use a law designed to recover money lost to fraud, the False Claims Act, to investigate universities. It said an institution could be in violation of the act “when it encourages antisemitism, refuses to protect Jewish students, allows men to intrude into women’s bathrooms, or requires women to compete against men in athletic competitions.” In announcing the new DOJ Civil Rights Fraud Initiative, Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche wrote that colleges and universities cannot accept federal funds while discriminating against their students.
Harvard will lose another $60 million in federal contracts, the Health and Human Services Department said. The agency cited what it called Harvard’s “continued failure to address anti-Semitic harassment and race discrimination.”
The Trump administration withheld hundreds of millions of dollars in federal money states largely use to provide child care subsidies to low-income families, The 74 reported. Child Care Development and Block Grants were anticipated to arrive at the start of April. In testimony before the Senate, Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. said his agency was behind the decision to withhold the money. The 74 reported that it’s unclear if the funding is delayed due to personnel challenges or being held back for a more substantive reason.
The Education Department’s Office for Civil Rights launched an investigation into an admissions policy for a science and technology magnet high school in Fairfax County, Va. In 2020, Fairfax schools changed the admissions process for Thomas Jefferson High School for Science and Technology to a holistic policy based on socioeconomic status and other factors. Though the Supreme Court declined to take up a challenge to the policy in 2024, the Virginia attorney general revived the debate by submitting a complaint to the federal Education and Justice departments, saying the school now discriminates against Asian American students.
Columbia University violated federal civil rights law by acting with “deliberate indifference towards student-on-student harassment of Jewish students” since the start of the Israel-Hamas war, the civil rights arms of the federal Education and Health and Human Services departments said. In a statement to Axios, Columbia said the finding is part of ongoing discussions with the federal government and that it is committed to addressing antisemitism and other forms of harassment on campus. HHS said it is encouraging Columbia to propose an agreement that would result in meaningful change for Jewish students.
Week 17 (May 12)
The Department of Education rescinded a nearly $38 million fine against Grand Canyon University, the university said. The fine was levied by the Biden administration, which alleged that the university misrepresented the cost of its doctoral programs. Grand Canyon denied any wrongdoing and appealed.
Nearly 2 million federal student loan borrowers who applied for a payment plan aligned to their income are stuck in a backlog of applications and still waiting to be approved or denied, the Education Department said in a court filing just days after it began withholding money from tax refunds and other federal payments from borrowers in default. The Education Department shared the backlog as part of a response to a lawsuit by the American Federation of Teachers, which sued the Trump administration for cutting off access to income-driven repayment plan applications on the Education Department’s website, CNBC reported. The agency directed borrowers to apply for income-driven repayment plans if they could not afford their student loan payments.
Grants that pay for internet access for rural and low-income families and businesses were frozen, with President Donald Trump calling the money distributed via the Digital Equity Act racist, including $35 million for Maine and more than $15 million for Indiana. The act, part of a bipartisan infrastructure law former President Joe Biden signed into law in 2021, provided about $2.75 billion in grants to help states and territories craft plans to make internet access more equitable and then put those plans into motion. Only some states received their shares of the money before Trump took office.
The federal Equal Employment Opportunity Commission is scrutinizing Harvard’s hiring practices, investigating whether the university discriminated against white, Asian, male and heterosexual workers. The EEOC said, in a memo first reported by The Washington Free Beacon, that Harvard documents show that from 2013 to 2023, the share of tenured white male faculty decreased, from 64 percent to 56 percent. The EEOC was created by the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which was primarily intended to address discrimination against Black Americans in all aspects of life.
Harvard will lose another $450 million in federal grants, the Trump administration’s Joint Task Force to Combat Antisemitism said, on top of $2.2 billion that was previously cut. The new grant cancellations, which the task force said stemmed from the university’s failure to “confront the pervasive race discrimination and anti-Semitic harassment plaguing its campus,” included grants from eight federal agencies. Harvard President Alan Garber disputed those allegations in a letter, saying the university has taken steps to root out antisemitism and is in compliance with the law.
The Health and Human Services Department said its Office for Civil Rights was investigating a “prestigious Midwest university” to determine whether it discriminated against Jewish students. HHS did not name the university. A complaint raised concerns about whether the campus climate, academic direction and institutional policies ensure there is no discrimination of students based on race, color or national origin.
Federal grants for charter schools were increased by $60 million, the Education Department said, for a total of $500 million in federal dollars that support the public but independently run schools. The department did not specify where additional grant dollars came from. The grants can be used to help charter schools pay for buildings, replicate or expand and share innovative ideas. The Trump administration has said it wants to expand and boost school choice, including charter schools.
The Defense Department plans to cap indirect cost reimbursement rates for universities at 15 percent, according to a memo from Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth. The move follow similar steps by the National Science Foundation, the Department of Energy and NIH. Universities have sued those agencies over the caps, arguing that they harm research and require congressional approval.
Week 16 (May 5)
The University of Washington faced a review by the departments of Education, Health and Human Services and the General Services Administration following violence and arrests at the institution. Protesters had demanded the school end what they called a “targeted assault” on “pro-Palestine activism and activists” and occupied a building, The Seattle Times reported. The Trump administration said that the University of Washington, which condemned the violence, must do more to guarantee Jewish students a safe and productive learning environment.
The Education Department warned Harvard that it would be ineligible for new federal research grants unless it complied with Trump administration demands including combating antisemitism on campus and ending policies that consider a student’s race, news organizations reported.
Colleges and universities were warned that they could lose access to federal student loan dollars and Pell Grant money if too many of their former students default on their student loans. The Education Department told institutions they should begin “proactive and sustained outreach” to former students who are behind on their student loan payments.
The Education Department’s Office for Civil Rights initiated an investigation into the Saratoga Springs City School District in New York, the agency said, after its school board adopted a resolution that said, with regard to “transgender and gender-expansive students,” the district will “ensure their right to use facilities and participate in activities and sports consistent with their gender identity.” Rep Elise Stefanik, a Republican, wrote to Education Secretary Linda McMahon last month to draw attention to the district and ask for a look into whether it is violating Title IX.
The Education Department said it was terminating the Ready to Learn grant program, which had been used to pay for educational programs on public television. An Education Department spokeswoman said the money was being used to pay for “racial justice programming.” “Molly of Denali” and “Lyla in the Loop” are among the programs that were supported by the grant.
Western Carolina University faces an investigation from the Education Department’s Office for Civil Rights, the agency said, because its approach to transgender students may violate Title IX. It cited a May 7 article in National Review that included excerpts from campus officials’ emails, including one in which the university’s chief compliance officer wrote that “we are not making changes based on this EO,” referring to an executive order signed by the president that recognizes only two genders, male and female. The Trump administration also said the investigation was triggered by reports that the North Carolina university allowed a transgender student to room with a female in a girls’ dormitory and that it opened an investigation against a female student for asking a transgender student to leave a female locker room.
The Education Department said it will investigate the University of Pennsylvania over concerns about the accuracy of its foreign funding records, saying the university did not disclose any foreign gifts or contracts until February 2019, though it was required to do so under federal law long before that. Tom Wheeler, the department’s acting general counsel, said the investigation is intended to ensure “that universities cannot conceal the infiltration of our nation’s campuses by foreign governments and other foreign interests.”
Library books across the armed services related to diversity, anti-racism or gender issues were targeted for elimination. According to a Defense Department memo, every military educational institution, including war colleges and service academies, was given until May 21 to pull these materials off shelves pending a review and possible disposal. The memo said the move was part of the department’s work to enforce an earlier directive from Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and an executive order about eliminating race-based and sex-based discrimination in the armed forces.
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth in a memo called on the military service academies to certify that their admissions policies “apply no consideration of race, ethnicity, or sex.” The directive followed his Jan. 29 memo banning race-conscious admissions policies at the academies. “Selecting anyone but the best erodes lethality, our warfighting readiness, and undercuts the culture of excellence in our Armed Forces,” he wrote.
The Trump administration eliminated funding for a climate research program at the University of Washington, The Seattle Times reported. Officials with the program, the Northwest Climate Resilience Collaborative, were told in a letter from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration that their roughly $1 million grant was being canceled in order to “streamline and reduce the cost and size of the Federal Government.”
In another move to expand school choice, the Trump administration revived a piece of the 2001 No Child Left Behind Act, requiring states to define and identify “persistently dangerous” schools and give parents the option to send their children elsewhere. Historically, the provision has been little used and was intended to refer to physical danger a student may face, but a letter the administration sent to states appears to widen the definition. “For instance, a State might find that persistently poor academic performance makes a school unsafe for students,” the letter says.
Week 15 (April 28)
The president released his 2026 budget request to Congress, which calls for deep cuts to education spending, among many areas. The proposal would reduce the Education Department by 15 percent, or $12 billion, including a 25 percent cut to Title I spending for high-poverty schools. It would also cut preschool development grants, adult education programs and funding for the Office for Civil Rights, while consolidating some 24 K-12 and special education grant programs into two funding streams. The proposal boosts support for new charter schools, increasing their federal funding by $60 million, or 8.3 percent. Presidential budget requests almost never make it through Congress without significant changes.
The Justice Department ended a decades-long desegregation order on Plaquemines Parish schools in Louisiana, and additional orders may also be lifted, The Associated Press reported. Dozens of districts, mostly in Alabama, Georgia and Mississippi, remain under desegregation orders that date as far back as the 1960s.
The Department of Transportation canceled $54 million in grants to seven universities for projects it described as “woke.” The projects included a University of Southern California effort to promote equal access to transportation for disadvantaged communities, a New York University project to expand e-bikes to low-income individuals in transportation deserts, and transportation-related environmental justice work at the University of New Orleans.
The Education Department planned to cancel $1 billion in mental health grants for schools created after the school shooting in Uvalde, Texas, in 2022, saying they violate the purpose of civil rights law, The Associated Press reported. The grants, created by the Bipartisan Safer Communities Act, were intended to help schools hire more psychologists, counselors and other mental health staff. The cuts became public in a social media post from conservative activist Christopher Rufo, who posted grant document excerpts that outlined goals for hiring counselors who are not white and other DEI policies.
The Trump administration is making it easier for colleges and universities to switch accreditors going forward by allowing institutions to forgo an extensive review process before making the shift, the Education Department said in a Dear Colleague letter. The change was intended to act on a recent executive order on accreditation. The Education Department also said it is lifting a Biden-era ban on accepting and reviewing applications for potential new accreditors and told one group that applied to become an accreditor its request is no longer on pause.
The Education Department’s Office for Civil Rights is investigating a school district in Illinois for allegedly segregating and stereotyping students through so-called required “privilege walks” for staff and students and district-sponsored segregated affinity groups. The Education Department said the investigation into the Evanston-Skokie School District 65 arose from a complaint filed by a teacher, and that the district potentially violated the Civil Rights Act by sponsoring groups for students and staff that are formally restricted on the basis of race, hosting training sessions to increase racial literacy and pressuring educators to acknowledge “white skin privilege,” among other things.
The Trump administration created new guidelines for canceling an international student’s legal status, The Associated Press reported. A document from Immigration and Customs Enforcement shared in a court filing says a valid reason now includes the revocation of the visas students used to enter the U.S. In the past, The AP said, if a student’s visa was revoked, they generally could stay in the U.S. to finish school. They simply would not be able to reenter if they left the country.
The Title IX Special Investigations Team, a joint initiative of the Education and Justice departments, opened an investigation into the Washington state education department over reports that it required school boards to adopt policies permitting transgender students to participate on sports teams and use bathrooms and locker rooms that match their gender identity. The federal government said the requirements potentially violated the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act, or FERPA, and the Protection of Pupil Rights Amendment, or PPRA, along with Title IX.
The Education Department’s Office for Civil Rights said it is launching an investigation into Chicago Public Schools’ “Black Student Success Plan,” saying that the initiative discriminates against students of other races. The plan, unveiled in February, calls for hiring more Black male teachers, increasing the retention rate of Black educators, and decreasing the Black student suspension and expulsion rate, among other goals.
The University of Pennsylvania was found by the Trump administration to have violated federal Title IX law by allowing 2022 graduate Lia Thomas, who is transgender, to compete on the women’s swim team and use women-only bathrooms and locker rooms. The administration gave the university 10 days to resolve the violations by agreeing to comply with Title IX in its athletics programs, restore titles and awards to women who competed against Thomas, and apologize to female athletes who lost to Thomas. Education Department civil rights cases typically take months or years to resolve; the Trump administration case against UPenn, which also faces losing $175 million in federal dollars over the case, began in early February.
The civil rights offices of the Education and Health and Human Services departments announced investigations into Harvard University and the Harvard Law Review, saying there are reports of “race-based discrimination permeating the operations of the journal.” The agencies said they received information that policies and practices for journal membership and article selection may violate Title VI of the Civil Rights Act. The administration said it will examine Harvard’s relationship with the journal, including financial ties, oversight procedures, selection policies and other documentation for membership and article publication.
The Education Department said it will continue to operate its online library, known as ERIC, after allowing it to lapse last week. DOGE tried to make significant cuts to the document repository, used by 14 million people a year, and allowed funding to run out April 23, ending the ability of the Education Department to add new research reports and documents to the library. Still, ERIC’s $5.5 million annual budget has been cut by half.
States can no longer offer undocumented students in-state tuition at public universities, according to an executive order on immigration. The attorney general and homeland security secretary, the order said, will work to stop the enforcement of state and local laws and policies that favor immigrants in the country without full legal status. That includes state laws that provide in-state higher education tuition to undocumented students but not to out-of-state American citizens, the order said.
The Department of Labor canceled a teacher apprenticeship contract. The contract was for the Educator Registered Apprenticeship Intermediary, which said in a LinkedIn post announcing the cancellation that it works with partners in 35 states to design, launch and expand teacher apprenticeship programs. ERA, led by a group of nonprofits and women-owned businesses, said its materials will remain on its website for anyone to use.
Week 14 (April 21)
The Trump administration put most of the staff of AmeriCorps, the federal agency that deploys about 200,000 volunteers a year to work with schoolchildren and other groups, on paid leave. In 2024, people participating in AmeriCorps programs, many of whom are ages 18-26, supported nearly 9,000 K-12 students in out-of-school programs and painted or renovated nearly 228,000 school rooms, according to its annual report.
The Trump administration is reactivating the visa registrations of thousands of foreign college students. Officials had abruptly canceled the registrations in recent weeks, causing mass confusion about the students’ legal status. Several judges around the country had already granted restraining orders preventing the government from deporting the students until the matter could be resolved. The action still leaves some students with questions about their legal ability to stay in the U.S.
The president signed several executive orders that touched on a wide range of education issues. For K-12 education, the orders promote training in artificial intelligence and roll back school discipline policies developed during the Obama and Biden administrations. The orders related to higher education forbid college accreditors from evaluating colleges on DEI initiatives, require colleges to disclose more information about foreign funding, promote expansion of apprenticeship programs, and create an initiative to support historically Black colleges and universities.
The federal government said it would resume collecting payments from federal student loan borrowers in default for the first time since 2020, at the start of the pandemic. Later this summer, the Federal Student Aid Office will notify borrowers who remain in default that a cut of their pay will be taken to repay their loans. More than 5 million borrowers have not made a monthly payment in over a year, the Education Department said.
To reduce costs, the National Assessment Governing Board voted to kill more than a dozen of the tests that comprise the National Assessment of Educational Progress, or NAEP. The main reading and math tests, which are required by Congress, were preserved. A now-defunct schedule of testing included all of these exams.
The Education Department said it is investigating the University of California, Berkeley, over whether it filed inaccurate or incomplete foreign funding disclosures. The investigation is related to money the university received from the Chinese government in 2023. And the department said it will shift foreign funding disclosure oversight of universities from the Federal Student Aid Office to the department’s Office of General Counsel.
NIH won’t give universities with DEI programs or that boycott Israeli companies any new grants, the agency said. The NIH notice also says grantees found to have violated these terms can lose NIH awards and would have to return federal research dollars.
The Energy Department told the University of Maine to stop work on three offshore wind projects, NOTUS reported. The three stop-work orders, one involving a federal grant of $12.6 million, said the university failed to comply with “national policy assurances”—rules grant recipients must follow to use federal dollars. Those rules include Title IX, which is at the center of a conflict between Maine and the federal government because Maine has allowed transgender teens to play on high school sports teams.
The Trump administration sent text messages to many faculty and staff at Barnard College, a women’s college affiliated with Columbia University, to collect information about alleged antisemitism at Barnard, one of a number of actions targeting elite colleges and their handling of antisemitism, The Intercept first reported. The message said it was from the federal Equal Employment Opportunity Commission and included a link to a survey asking those who received it to say if they identified as Jewish or Israeli and whether they had been subjected to harassment.
The Education Department’s Office for Civil Rights launched an investigation on behalf of New York residents who wanted to keep Native American names and mascots in their schools. In 2023, New York moved to ban schools from using tribal names and mascots, saying they promoted harmful stereotypes. Residents in Massapequa, on Long Island, appealed directly to Trump in their fight to keep the “Chiefs” name for their school district. “LONG LIVE THE MASSAPEQUA CHIEFS!” the president posted on his Truth Social platform.
Week 13 (April 14)
The National Science Foundation canceled more than 400 grants to universities and other research institutions, according to a list obtained by The New York Times. NSF also froze all new grants, Nature reports. NSF said it was canceling existing grants that are not in line with its priorities, “including but not limited to those on diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) and misinformation/disinformation.”
Some $2.2 billion in multiyear grants to Harvard were frozen by the Trump administration’s Joint Task Force to Combat Antisemitism, along with another $60 million in multiyear contracts. That followed Harvard’s rejection of a collection of conditions that called for changing its admissions policies, including how it screens international students; changing hiring policies, including hiring people with a more diverse range of viewpoints; ending all DEI programs and services; auditing certain programs for antisemitism; changing how it disciplines students; and providing a way for anyone associated with Harvard to report violations of these demands to the institution and the federal government. Harvard lawyers rejected those demands, saying they “go beyond the lawful authority of this or any administration.” In a letter to the Harvard community, President Alan Garber said the university has taken steps to address antisemitism and plans to do more but that the administration’s demands went too far. “No government—regardless of which party is in power—should dictate what private universities can teach, whom they can admit and hire, and which areas of study and inquiry they can pursue,” he wrote.
The White House threatened Harvard with the loss of another $1 billion in federal money for health research, The Wall Street Journal reported. The threat appeared to be in response to Harvard making public a list of demands from Trump administration officials. The administration was surprised when Harvard released the letter to the public, the Journal said.
NIH staff members were instructed to freeze all funding to Brown, Cornell and Northwestern universities, along with Harvard, according to internal emails reported on by journalists with The Brown Daily Herald, Nature and Science. The administration accused those universities of doing too little to combat antisemitism.
Trump suggested Harvard, which has an endowment of $53 billion, lose its tax-exempt status. “Perhaps Harvard should lose its Tax Exempt Status and be Taxed as a Political Entity if it keeps pushing political, ideological, and terrorist inspired/supporting ‘Sickness?” the president posted on his Truth Social platform. Harvard, like most private and public universities, is tax-exempt and largely avoids paying taxes on its investment income or donations it receives. Congress created a 1.4 percent endowment tax that affects some of the nation’s wealthiest universities during Trump‘s first term, however, including Harvard.
The IRS reportedly looked into whether to revoke Harvard’s tax-exempt status, though a White House spokesman said the agency began to do so before the president’s social media post. Education Secretary Linda McMahon told CNN that it was her “guess” that the IRS was looking at the tax exempt statuses of other universities. Under federal law, the president cannot request that the IRS investigate or audit specific targets.
Harvard must turn over records detailing its student visa holders’ “illegal and violent activities” by the end of April or face losing the ability to enroll international students, Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem said. She also said her agency was canceling $2.7 million in grants to Harvard.
The Education Department accused Harvard of failing to properly disclose large donations from foreign sources and demanded that the university provide the government with information on all foreign gifts, grants and contracts since Jan. 1, 2020. A university spokesperson, Jason Newton, disputed the government’s contention that Harvard had not disclosed information on foreign gifts larger than $250,000.
A letter of demands the Trump administration sent to Harvard may have been sent by mistake, The New York Times reported. University officials had been in talks with the administration’s Joint Task Force to Combat Antisemitism over its concerns with the institution. When the letter arrived, however, its demands were so extreme that Harvard decided it would not be able to reach a deal with the task force and instead decided to challenge the requests, the Times reported.
The Trump administration announced plans to lay off almost all employees of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau—cutting the staff of around 1,700 to 200. The agency has already been thrown into turmoil, significantly affecting its work on student loans. A federal judge paused the plan, writing there was cause to believe it would “decimate the agency and render it unable to comply with its statutory duties.”
The Department of Justice sued Maine over its refusal to comply with a ban on transgender girls participating in female sports, according to Attorney General Pam Bondi. DOJ said Maine was in violation of Title IX, the federal law prohibiting sex-based discrimination in schools. Maine’s governor, Janet Mills, had objected to the Trump administration’s interpretation of Title IX and said transgender students’ participation in sports was protected in state law.
The Trump administration sought to deport Mohsen Mahdawi, a Columbia University student and legal permanent resident in the United States, for leading pro-Palestinian demonstrations. Mahdawi, who is Palestinian, was detained by immigration officials after arriving at an immigration services center in Vermont intending to take a test that would allow him to become a naturalized citizen.
Week 12 (April 7)
The Education Department said it was working to cut all federal education money to Maine and would refer its Title IX investigation into the Maine Department of Education to the Justice Department for enforcement. The investigation centered around allegations that Maine allowed transgender athletes to compete in female sports and use women’s bathrooms, in violation of new Trump administration orders. The same day, a federal judge said the USDA must “unfreeze and release” any federal funding that the agency froze or refused to pay Maine over the alleged Title IX violations.
The Energy Department announced it was changing its policy for supporting universities’ indirect or overhead costs on research grants. In a move similar to one taken by NIH earlier in the year, that spending was capped at 15 percent. The Energy Department, which spends more than $2.5 billion a year on grants to more than 300 colleges and universities, said that the new policy would result in cuts to universities of about $405 million. In response, a group of higher education associations and research universities sued, saying the move would “devastate scientific research.”
The Air Force Academy has ended race- and gender-based preferences in admissions, the Justice Department said in a legal filing. The filing was in response to a lawsuit against the academy for allegedly discriminating against applicants by taking race into account.
HHS said its Office for Civil Rights initiated an investigation into a grantee, the nonprofit group Academy Health, for allegedly using racial preferences in selecting recipients of a scholarship program. The agency said the practice violates Title VI.
Education Secretary Linda McMahon said in a Fox News interview that the new Title IX investigations unit, a collaboration between her agency and the Justice Department, would investigate an incident at a USA Fencing event in which an athlete was allegedly disqualified for protesting a transgender opponent.
The Justice Department said Illinois and six universities canceled a scholarship program after the federal law enforcement agency threatened to sue, calling the program discriminatory because it was open only to people of certain races.
The Trump administration froze more than $1 billion in federal grants for Cornell University and $790 million for Northwestern University. The two universities were among those being investigated for their handling of antisemitism on campus. The funding freeze largely involved grants from the Agriculture, Defense, Education, and Health and Human Services departments.
The administration announced it was cutting nearly $4 million in federal funding for climate change research at Princeton University. In a statement about the cuts, the Department of Commerce said some of the research, which was conducted in partnership with NOAA, “promotes exaggerated and implausible climate threats, contributing to a phenomenon known as ‘climate anxiety,’ which has increased significantly among America’s youth.” The Commerce Department, which houses NOAA, also said the agency would halt funding for “educational initiatives aimed at K-12 students.”
The Trump administration took steps to place Columbia University under a consent decree, a legal arrangement that would put a federal judge in charge of monitoring whether the higher education institution had changed its practices, according to The Wall Street Journal. In exchange for a restoration of $400 million in federal funding, Columbia had previously agreed to changes that included empowering security officers to make arrests and reassigning control of its Middle East studies department.
Week 11 (March 31)
Milwaukee Public Schools won’t get help investigating lead poisoning from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the agency said, because HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. eliminated the team that does that work. Milwaukee and Wisconsin’s state health department requested the CDC’s help in late March because many schools in the city were found to be exposing children to “significant lead hazards.” Federal experts were asked for help developing a strategy to test and triage Milwaukee public school students for lead poisoning and with outreach to the community, CBS News reported.
The Education Department’s Office for Civil Rights ended an agreement with the school district in Rapid City, South Dakota, which had been under investigation since 2010 for steering Native American students away from gifted classes and overdisciplining them compared to their peers. Last year, the district and the federal government agreed on actions the district would take to address those problems. But on March 27, OCR sent a follow-up letter to the district, saying it was no longer required to make any changes because the agreement was in conflict with the Trump administration’s prohibition on DEI.
In a 5-4 decision, the Supreme Court sided with the Trump administration’s cuts to teacher-training grants in eight states. The cuts were made as part of a broader crackdown on programs that the White House claimed promoted DEI. Chief Justice John Roberts sided with the high court’s three liberal justices in the ruling. While the decision temporarily allowed the White House to stop the funding, the ruling was not the end of the road for the grant programs; the decision sent the case back to a lower court for further argument.
The Trump administration revoked the visas of students at several California universities, including the University of California campuses in Los Angeles, San Diego, Berkeley, Davis and Irvine as well as Stanford University, the Los Angeles Times reported. In a campus message, UC San Diego Chancellor Pradeep Khosla said five students had their visas revoked and a sixth student was “detained at the border, denied entry and deported to their home country.” Neither the State Department nor DHS explained to the outlet why the visas were canceled.
The Trump administration was poised to block $510 million in grants and contracts to Brown University, one of 60 higher education institutions under investigation for alleged antisemitism, according to news reports. Christina H. Paxson, the president of Brown, had previously said that if her university found its freedom of expression and organizational independence threatened, “we would be compelled to vigorously exercise our legal rights to defend these freedoms.”
The Education and Justice departments announced a new “Title IX Special Investigations Team” to streamline probes into allegations of trans students participating in girls’ sports and other examples of “gender ideology.”
Public schools face losing federal money if they don’t assure the Education Department they have nixed any program that wrongly promotes DEI, acting Assistant Secretary for Civil Rights Craig Trainor said. “Federal financial assistance is a privilege, not a right. When state education commissioners accept federal funds, they agree to abide by federal antidiscrimination requirements. Unfortunately, we have seen too many schools flout or outright violate these obligations, including by using DEI programs to discriminate against one group of Americans to favor another,” he said. States were given 10 days to gather assurances from school districts and share those certifications with the Education Department. The department cited the 2023 Supreme Court ruling striking down the use of race-conscious college admissions as the basis for its action.
Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins said money sent to Maine schools from the USDA for “administrative and technological functions” would be frozen, a move aimed at punishing the state for Title IX violations because a transgender athlete participated in girls’ athletics. “You cannot openly violate federal law against discrimination in education and expect federal funding to continue unabated,” Rollins said. “This is only the beginning, though you are free to end it at any time by protecting women and girls in compliance with federal law.” Money for school meals, subsidized by the Agriculture Department, was not affected, the letter said. “If a child was fed today, they will be fed tomorrow,” Rollins wrote.
American diplomats have been ordered to research the social media posts of student visa applicants and those applying for other types of visas to prevent people who have criticized the United States and Israel from entering the country, The New York Times reported. Secretary of State Marco Rubio gave the directive in a cable sent to diplomats in late March. He specified that the applicants whose social media posts should be scrutinized are those with suspected terrorist ties; those who had a student or exchange visa between Oct. 7, 2023, and Aug. 31, 2024; or those whose visa was terminated since that October date, the start of the Israel-Hamas war.
Dozens of research grants to Princeton University were suspended by the Trump administration, the institution said in a campus message. It was not clear why the grants, from federal agencies including the Department of Energy, NASA and the Defense Department, were put on pause, university President Christopher Eisgruber said. The collective value of the grants was unclear.
At least five regional Head Start offices—in Boston, New York, Chicago, San Francisco and Seattle—were closed as a result of the Trump administration’s downsizing of the Department of Health and Human Services.
The U.S. Naval Academy removed about 400 books from its library ahead of a visit by Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth in response to the Trump administration’s war on DEI programs, a Navy spokesman told The Washington Post. The report did not say which books were removed.
Maine was threatened with the loss of federal dollars for education if its Department of Education did not comply with demands from the Trump administration about transgender athletes. Maine had been under pressure to prevent transgender students from participating in female sports and was directed to sign an agreement by April 11 that would forbid that. “By refusing to comply with Title IX, MDOE allows—indeed, encourages—male competitors to threaten the safety of female athletes, wrongfully obtain girls’ hard-earned accolades, and deny females equal opportunity in educational activities to which they are guaranteed under Title IX,” the Education Department’s acting Assistant Secretary for Civil Rights Craig Trainor said.
The departments of Education, Health and Human Services and the General Services Administration announced that some $9 billion in grants to Harvard and its affiliates would be scrutinized by the federal Joint Task Force to Combat Antisemitism, along with more than $255 million in federal contracts. The agencies said the review was to ensure Harvard was complying with federal regulations, “including its civil rights responsibilities.” “While Harvard’s recent actions to curb institutionalized anti-Semitism—though long overdue—are welcome, there is much more that the university must do to retain the privilege of receiving federal taxpayers’ hard earned dollars,” said task force member Josh Gruenbaum.
The Education Department said it sent letters to all the states encouraging them to take advantage of existing flexibility in federal funding to expand school choice. The letter described how up to 3 percent of funds from Title I, the federal program for low-income students, can be used to “expand education options” for parents by supporting tutoring, dual enrollment, career and technical education and other priorities.
Week 10 (March 24)
Education Secretary Linda McMahon told states still in the midst of spending the last of Biden-era Covid relief dollars that their time is up, according to several news outlets. She canceled extensions the Education Department gave states—through early 2026—to spend the money, some of which already has been committed to vendors and contract workers. In Maryland, for instance, the state said it had plans to spend $360.7 million on high-dosage tutoring, summer school and other ways to help students whose academic performance has nosedived since the pandemic.
The Justice Department said it launched compliance reviews of Stanford University; UC, Berkeley; UCLA; and UC, Irvine to look into whether the institutions are illegally considering race in their admissions practices. The use of race-conscious college admissions was undone by a 2023 Supreme Court case, but the practice was banned in California years earlier—in 1996.
The Administration for Children and Families within HHS asked California to provide curriculum and program materials for a sex education program that receives federal dollars. ACF said in a statement it would review the program to make sure it was “medically accurate and age-appropriate.”
The Office for Civil Rights within HHS said it began an investigation into five medical schools over allegations that they consider race, color, national origin or gender in their admissions, in violation of executive orders signed by the president. HHS did not name the schools, but one is in California; the agency said it had received a complaint about discrimination at the institution. National Review reported that Johns Hopkins University and Cincinnati Children’s Hospital Medical Center were among the other institutions and that the review into them was prompted by complaints from conservative legal group the Wisconsin Institute for Law and Liberty.
The Education Department sent letters to all states warning them not to take any steps that would prevent parents from reviewing student records, including those related to gender identity or gender plans, or risk losing federal funding.
The Education Department’s Student Privacy Policy Office announced an investigation into California’s state education agency for alleged violations of the Family Educational Rights Privacy Act, known as FERPA. The Education Department said the state agency had “abdicated the responsibilities FERPA imposes” by enforcing a new California state law that allows school staff to withhold information about a student’s gender identity from their parents. The law was passed to prevent “forced outing” of students after a handful of California districts introduced policies requiring school staff to tell parents if students changed their pronouns. A day after announcing the California investigation, the Department of Education said it was also launching a similar investigation into Maine.
HHS said in a social media post that it referred Maine to the Department of Justice for not complying with federal Title IX law. The move came a day after leaders of the Maine Principals’ Association and Greely High School said they would not sign a proposed agreement from the Trump administration requiring Maine to stop allowing transgender high school athletes to compete in girls sports, the Portland Press Herald reported. The Maine Department of Education also was expected to refuse to sign the agreement, the Press Herald said. Signing the agreement, local officials in Maine said, would violate the Maine Human Rights Act.
The Naval Academy no longer includes race as a factor in admissions, according to court documents filed by the Trump administration. America’s military academies were exempted from a Supreme Court ruling in 2023 that barred other colleges and universities from using race in admissions, but the Trump administration has said that all elements of the armed forces must operate free from “any preference based on race or sex.”
Trump signed an executive order ending collective bargaining for workers in agencies with national security missions. The American Federation of Teachers, which represents affected employees in Defense Department schools and Department of Veterans Affairs hospitals, called the move “retaliation” against workers who’d protested government cuts.
Secretary of State Marco Rubio said the State Department has revoked more than 300 student visas because the students who held them were involved in protests or acts to destabilize American college campuses. “We gave you a visa to come and study, and get a degree not to become a social activist that tears up our university campuses,” Rubio said, speaking at a press conference in Guyana. “We’re looking every day for these lunatics that are tearing things up. … It might be more than 300 at this point.”
The Education Department said it had revoked Biden-era waivers allowing colleges in California and Oregon to use federal money on services to help immigrant students who lack papers. The agency said that use of the money amounted to “entitlements to illegal immigrants.”
The Trump administration filed an emergency application with the Supreme Court seeking the green light to cancel $65 million in teacher-training grants. The administration says the grants violate its order prohibiting DEI initiatives. A federal judge had ordered the administration to pause the cancellation as he considered a lawsuit brought by eight states challenging the termination of the training grants.
The Education Department has received requests from Iowa and Oklahoma to waive many requirements attached to their federal education money, The Associated Press and other outlets reported. Iowa has asked the department to convert its federal money into a block grant, with few spending requirements. Oklahoma’s block grant proposal requests more flexibility to use the money for private and religious school options.
As part of federal investigations into concerns about antisemitism, the Education Department’s Office for Civil Rights is asking universities for the names and nationalities of students who might have harassed Jewish students or faculty, The Washington Post reported. Civil rights attorneys working for the administration told the Post they wondered if the break with precedent meant the administration would target or deport foreign students on those lists who participated in protests about the Israel-Hamas war.
The Department of Education reopened the income-driven loan repayment plan application for student borrowers. The agency said it had taken down the application temporarily to comply with a court injunction stemming from a lawsuit brought by a group of Republican attorneys general over a Biden-era repayment plan. But its removal prompted a lawsuit from the American Federation of Teachers, whose leader, Randi Weingarten, accused the Education Department of “effectively freezing the nation’s student loan system.”
The Education Department’s Office for Civil Rights announced investigations into Portland Public Schools and the Oregon School Activities Association over allegations related to the participation of trans students in girls’ sports.
A University of Alabama graduate student from Iran, Alireza Doroudi, was reportedly arrested by immigration officials. DHS called Doroudi a security threat, but his lawyer said he had not been informed of any such allegations. Additionally, a Russian medical researcher working at Harvard since 2023 was forced to leave the country after frog embryos were found in her luggage weeks earlier when she was returning from a trip to a French lab involved with her work. The punishment is typically a fine. Kseniia Petrova had been arrested in 2022 in Russia for protesting the Ukraine war.
A federal judge ruled that a Columbia University student who participated in pro-Palestinian demonstrations cannot be detained as she fights deportation. Yunseo Chung, a legal permanent resident who emigrated from South Korea to the United States when she was 7, was arrested earlier this year after a protest at Barnard College and sued the Trump administration for trying to deport her. Her lawsuit details the lengths to which immigration officials have gone to try to capture and deport her, which include Secretary of State Marco Rubio personally identifying her for deportation, according to a memo released as part of her legal challenge. In the memo, Rubio wrote that her continued presence “would have potentially serious adverse foreign policy consequences for the United States.” The administration argues the move is part of its efforts to address antisemitism.
Federal immigration officials detained a Tufts University graduate student from Turkey, according to her lawyer and the university. The student, Rümeysa Öztürk, had recently co-authored an op-ed in the student newspaper calling for Tufts’ president to divest from Israeli corporations, among other steps. The Trump administration, however, did not have evidence showing Öztürk engaged in antisemitic activities or made public statements supporting a terrorist organization days ahead of detaining her with the intention of deporting her, The Washington Post reported. As a result, the State Department said she could be deported under a law that allows for revoking a visa at the secretary of state’s discretion.
The scrutiny of Columbia University and cancellation of $400 million in federal grants and contracts over concerns about its response to antisemitism should be a warning to other universities, said Josh Gruenbaum, a member of a federal task force on combating antisemitism. Columbia agreed to a litany of requests from the Trump administration, including to change how it oversees disciplining students, to implement rules on when and where demonstrations on campus are allowed to take place and to add oversight to its department of Middle East, South Asian and African Studies as a first step to unlocking the money withheld. “Other universities that are being investigated by the Task Force should expect the same level of scrutiny and swiftness of action if they don’t act to protect their students and stop anti-Semitic behavior on campus,” Gruenbaum said in a statement.
Week Nine (March 17)
Columbia University agreed to a collection of demands from the Trump administration so it could begin negotiations over $400 million in federal grants and contracts that were withheld over concerns about the university’s handling of antisemitism on campus, according to news reports. Columbia’s interim president issued a letter addressing how students should be disciplined as well as when and where students can protest and how they must identify themselves during any demonstrations. The letter also announced new supervision of the Middle East, South Asian and African Studies department along with the adoption and enforcement of a formal definition of antisemitism.
Student loan oversight and special education services will be moved out of the Education Department to other agencies, the president said. The vast federal student loan portfolio, involving more than 40 million borrowers who hold more than $1 trillion in debt, would immediately shift to the Small Business Administration, Trump announced on the same day the SBA disclosed it would cut more than 40 percent of its staff. He added that HHS “will be handling special needs and all of the nutrition programs and everything else,” though it was unclear which nutrition programs he was referring to. The National School Lunch Program is already administered by the USDA.
Trump signed an executive order instructing Education Secretary Linda McMahon to begin dismantling the Department of Education. The order did not call for shutting the department entirely, as that would require congressional action. But it guided the secretary to further diminish the agency, which had already undergone mass layoffs. “Instead of filtering resources through layers of federal red tape, we will empower states to take charge and advocate for and implement what is best for students, families, and educators in their communities,” McMahon said in a statement. She added: “We will continue to support K-12 students, students with special needs, college student borrowers, and others who rely on essential programs.” In remarks at the White House, Trump noted that he holds teachers in high esteem, whether a part of unions or not, and that shifting power to states is “going to work. Absolutely it’s going to work.” He also said, regarding abolishing the agency, “Everybody knows it’s right. … We have to get our children educated. We’re not doing well with the world of education in this country, and we haven’t for a long time.”
Sen. Bill Cassidy, who leads his chamber’s committee on education, said he would introduce legislation to abolish the Education Department. “I agree with President Trump that the Department of Education has failed its mission,” the Louisiana Republican said.
In its latest action against pro-Palestinian college students and faculty, the Trump administration wants an international Cornell graduate student to surrender to Immigration and Customs Enforcement, according to news reports. Momodou Taal, a Cornell doctoral student who is a citizen of Gambia and the United Kingdom was one of several student activists who disrupted a Cornell career fair, leading Cornell to require him to study remotely this term.
The Illinois Department of Education, Chicago Public Schools and the Deerfield Public Schools District 109 in Illinois are being investigated for violating federal Title IX law, the Education Department said. The investigations by the Office for Civil Rights center around complaints of girls being forced to share locker rooms with boys.
Federal immigration agents detained a postdoctoral fellow at Georgetown University, accusing him of promoting antisemitism and Hamas propaganda. The fellow, Badar Khan Suri, was in the United States legally from India on a student visa and was studying peace building at Georgetown. His lawyer said he was innocent and the university said it was not aware of him engaging in any illegal activity. A judge ordered the Trump administration not to deport Suri.
The White House said in a post on X that it had paused $175 million in federal funding for the University of Pennsylvania over the participation of transgender students in girls sports. The money being withheld came from DOD and HHS, and a separate Education Department review of the university is ongoing, according to the White House.
Less than a month after opening an investigation into Maine’s education agency, the Education Department announced that its Office for Civil Rights had found the state Education Department in violation of Title IX for allowing transgender students to compete in girls sports. The federal agency, along with HHS, gave the Maine Department of Education 10 days to agree to certain steps, including directing every public school in the state to comply with its rules on Title IX, or “risk imminent enforcement action including referral to the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) for proceedings.”
The USDA said it had restored funding to the University of Maine System following a compliance review related to Title IX. The agency said the university system had informed it that it does not allow male athletes to participate in women’s sports.
More than 70 grants for training new teachers, canceled by the Education Department, must be reinstated, a federal court ruled. The $600 million in grants for the Supporting Effective Educator Development (SEED) Program, Teacher Quality Partnership (TQP) Program, and Teacher and School Leader Incentive (TSL) Program, support preparation of teachers across the country and are a major pipeline for educators in rural communities. Losing the federal grants would harm low-income kids and schools, the judge said. (The plaintiffs in the case, in an earlier press release, said the Education Department’s actions affected over 100 grants.)
The Trump administration has begun rehiring thousands of fired probationary federal employees after a judge ruled the terminations were illegal, according to The Washington Post and other outlets. The ruling affects employees at more than a dozen agencies, including the Education Department. Some of the rehired workers reportedly have been placed on administrative leave.
Week Eight (March 10)
The Education Department said it cut its workforce by nearly half, from 4,133 employees to 2,183 this week, after layoffs, voluntary resignations and retirements since Trump took office. In a statement, the agency said the reduction in staff is “part of the Department of Education’s final mission.” The statement also said it “will continue to deliver on all statutory programs that fall under the agency’s purview, including formula funding, student loans, Pell Grants, funding for special needs students, and competitive grantmaking.”
The Education Department’s Office for Civil Rights lost about half its staff in job cuts. As a consequence, seven of its 12 regional offices were closed. The office in the past investigated issues including accusations of racial or sex discrimination, and its biggest share of complaints was related to students with disabilities. Since Trump took office it closed cases related to the banning of books and worked to root out efforts related to DEI.
A Trump administration executive order called for, among other cuts, the elimination of the Institute of Museum and Library Services. In a statement decrying that announcement, the nonprofit American Library Association said that eliminating the federal agency would cut “off at the knees” services it supports, including early literacy development, summer reading programs for kids, employment assistance for job-seekers and science, technology, engineering and math programs.
The Trump administration ratcheted up the pressure on Columbia University over concerns about what it called the institution’s failure to protect faculty and students from antisemitic violence and harassment. In a letter, the Education Department and three other federal agencies said the university must ban masks that allow protesters to obscure their identity—and require those who do wear masks to wear their Columbia identification on the outside of their clothing if they are masked; place the Middle East, South Asian and African Studies department under academic receivership for a minimum of five years; adopt and enforce a formal definition of antisemitism; and discipline students with expulsion or a multiyear suspension for participating in encampments or the occupation of a building last year. A day later, the university said that was just the type of punishment it meted out. (Editor’s note: The Hechinger Report, which produced this article, is an independent unit of Columbia University’s Teachers College.)
Federal immigration agents arrested two foreigners, including a Columbia student, who participated in Gaza war protests at the university last year. They also revoked the visa of a second student. A Brown University medical professor was deported, presumably to her home country of Lebanon, despite a judge’s order.
The Education Department said it opened investigations into about four dozen universities because of work that it said may contradict a Dear Colleague letter sent in February about ending the use of racial preferences in colleges and schools. The agency listed 45 colleges that will be scrutinized by its Office for Civil Rights because they partner with The PhD Project, an organization that supports people pursuing doctoral degrees. The Education Department described the group as limiting eligibility based on the race of applicants. OCR is also investigating six universities it said may have awarded race-based scholarships—including the University of Alabama and the University of South Florida and another because it runs a program that segregates students on the basis of race. The Education Department later updated the list, changing University of Alabama to University of Alabama at Birmingham, without explanation, the Alabama Daily News reported. The University of Alabama had previously eliminated race-based scholarships.
The Education Department said it hosted a “listening session” with six people who had stopped or reversed their gender transitions, as well as parental rights advocates and others. The agency’s head, Linda McMahon, along with an HHS representative, discussed steps they are taking to roll back recognition of transgender people and combat “gender ideology.”
Sixty universities were sent letters from the Education Department’s Office for Civil Rights, saying they face punishment if they do not protect Jewish students on campus, “including uninterrupted access to campus facilities and educational opportunities.” The colleges are those already under investigation for violating Title VI of the Civil Rights Act relating to antisemitic harassment and discrimination. The schools include Brown, Columbia, Cornell, Princeton, Harvard, Yale and UC, Berkeley.
The USDA notified the University of Maine System that it was cutting off tens of millions of dollars to the university while it “evaluates if it should take any follow-on actions related to prospective Title VI or Title IX violations.” Title VI prohibits discrimination on the basis of race, color or national origin; Title IX prohibits sex-based discrimination. The USDA and the Education Department began examining the university for gender-related civil rights violations last month, the day after Trump and Gov. Janet Mills had a public confrontation over the state’s refusal to ban transgender athletes from competing in girls sports. The University of Maine System later said the USDA reversed its decision. It has $63 million in active USDA awards and about $35 million has yet to be paid out.
Week Seven (March 3)
Education Secretary Linda McMahon was tasked with revising eligibility requirements for the popular Public Service Loan Forgiveness program under an executive order Trump signed. The order said that the program—which forgives some of the education debt for people who work in government and certain nonprofit jobs for a decade—“has misdirected money into activist organizations.” The order “appears to target groups supporting undocumented immigrants, diversity initiatives or gender-affirming care for children, among others,” The New York Times reported.
The Senate confirmed Linda McMahon, the former wrestling executive and head of the Small Business Administration, as Trump’s education secretary. In a message to the agency, she said, “Our job is to respect the will of the American people and the President they elected, who has tasked us with accomplishing the elimination of bureaucratic bloat here at the Department of Education—a momentous final mission—quickly and responsibly.”
The Trump administration canceled $400 million in federal contracts and grants to Columbia University over what it said was the school’s “continued inaction in the face of persistent harassment of Jewish students.” The cancellations followed an announcement four days earlier that a new interagency Task Force to Combat Antisemitism was reviewing those contracts. In a press release, the administration said the cuts were preliminary and additional cuts could follow.
The Education Department said it was investigating a Washington state school district for allegedly permitting transgender athletes to compete in girls sports.
The Education Department said it planned to investigate the District of Columbia Public Schools system over whether it was failing to meet the needs of students with disabilities.
Some $660 million from the USDA that pays for food at some child care programs was cut off, including about $12 million for Massachusetts, according to the School Nutrition Association. The Local Food for Schools program links farms and ranches to child care programs no more than about 400 miles away—and limits the types of foods that states can buy to those considered minimally processed. The USDA’s Agricultural Marketing Service said in a letter to Massachusetts that the money “no longer effectuates agency priorities and that termination of the award is appropriate.” The administration later repurposed that money to be used as part of its plan to address a major national bird flu outbreak, Politico reported.
Week Six (Feb. 24)
Peggy Carr, who led testing at the Department of Education, was put on leave, The Washington Post and other outlets reported. Carr had been appointed to a six-year term as commissioner of the National Center for Education Statistics, which administers the landmark test known as NAEP, in 2021.
The Department of Agriculture reinstated the 1890 National Scholars Program, a scholarship for rural students to attend historically Black colleges and universities, or HBCUs, after outcry over its suspension the previous week.
The Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE, has cut some $18 million in grants from the Department of Labor’s Office of Apprenticeships, reports The Job newsletter. The grants were to provide employers with technical assistance on apprenticeships, among other work. The Labor Department also terminated its Advisory Committee on Apprenticeships.
Week Five (Feb. 17)
The Education Department announced more than $600 million in cuts to teacher training programs it said were educating teachers in “divisive ideologies.”
The department also canceled 18 grants totaling $226 million to a network of regional and national centers that provides materials and support to states and education systems. It accused the centers of promoting “race-based discrimination and gender-identity ideology.”
The department eliminated a Biden-era rule requiring federal review of how states approve and monitor certain authorizers of charter schools. Under the old rule, South Carolina had faced the loss of federal money because of what the Education Department had said was inadequate oversight of charter schools.
Also canceled was a long-term trend assessment for 17-year-olds, part of the National Assessment of Educational Progress, known as the Nation’s Report Card, or NAEP. A department spokesperson told the 74, which first reported the news, that that portion of the test had not been conducted since 2012 and was therefore not a “very effective longitudinal study.”
The department’s Office for Civil Rights initiated an investigation into the Maine Department of Education, and Maine School Administrative District #51, over allegations of transgender athletes competing in sports that align with their gender identity.
Week Four (Feb. 10)
An Education Department “Dear Colleague” letter threatened to withhold federal funds from schools, colleges and other education institutions that take into account race in their programs, training, admissions and other practices. The letter, which cited the 2023 Supreme Court decision striking down affirmative action in college admissions, said academic institutions that consider race in their practices are engaging in discrimination.
Trump, in a briefing, said, “The Department of Education is a big con job,” and “I’d like it to be closed immediately.” In her confirmation hearing the next day, Linda McMahon, the nominee for education secretary, seemed to support Trump’s calls to dismantle the Education Department. But she said funding for most programs would remain intact.
The Education Department rescinded guidance from the Biden administration that name, image and likeness payments to college athletes had to comply with Title IX and be proportionate between men and women.
The department also sent letters to a collegiate and a high school athletic association urging them to strip awards it said had been “wrongfully credited” to transgender athletes. It further announced two investigations into other school athletic associations it said were in violation of Trump’s executive order banning transgender athletes from competition, and said it would investigate five Virginia school districts for permitting transgender students to use bathrooms and other facilities that align with their gender identity.
The Institute of Education Sciences, the Education Department’s research arm, saw major cuts, including the termination of 89 contracts it said totaled nearly $900 million. The actual total may be significantly smaller, as some of the grants, which included evaluations of how the government spends education funds and efforts to improve math and reading instruction, had already been paid out. Also canceled were census-like data collections that track student progress.
In addition, the Education Department canceled $350 million in contracts and grants for regional educational laboratories, which provide technical assistance to schools, and four equity assistance centers. The department said those grants and contracts supported “wasteful and ideologically driven spending.”
The Trump administration’s efforts to lay off probationary employees hit agencies including the Department of Education and the Bureau of Indian Education. Education Department staff who lost their jobs reportedly included those in the Office for Civil Rights, communications, financial aid and the legal department.
Schools and universities that require students to be vaccinated against Covid face the loss of federal funding, under a new executive order.
The Education Department reversed Biden-era reporting requirements under the Carl D. Perkins Career and Technical Education Act of 2006 that it said were overly burdensome and subjected school districts to “bureaucratic red tape.”
The White House created the “Make America Healthy Again” commission, to be led by Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., and charged it with evaluating the “prevalence of and threat posed” to children by antidepressants, antipsychotics, mood stabilizers, stimulants and weight-loss drugs.
Week Three (Feb. 3)
Trump signed an executive order barring trans girls and women from participating in women’s sports, and withholding federal funding from entities that refuse to comply.
The Education Department announced it would investigate San Jose State University, the University of Pennsylvania and the Massachusetts Interscholastic Athletic Association for allowing trans athletes to participate on sports teams for women or girls.
The administration announced it would reduce to 15 percent the “indirect cost payments” that the National Institutes of Health includes in its research grants to universities, hospitals and research institutes. Those overhead costs help cover facilities and administrative expenses; some institutions said the cuts would cripple research.
The Education Department opened investigations into five universities where it said widespread anti-Semitic harassment had been reported: Columbia University; Northwestern University; Portland State University; The University of California, Berkeley; and the University of Minnesota, Twin Cities.
The Defense Department began restricting access to books and learning materials in the school system it oversees for the children of military families, citing the Trump administration’s crackdown on diversity, equity and inclusion programs, according to The Washington Post.
The Education Department updated the Free Application For Student Aid (FAFSA), which high school and college students use to apply for federal money to pay for college, to remove the ability to mark anything but male or female as a student’s gender. Students who have to make any correction to a form already submitted for the 2024-25 or 2025-26 academic year will have to also update this piece of the form, the Federal Student Aid office said.
Week Two (Jan. 27)
A far-reaching pause on the distribution of federal grants and loans across agencies, including the Education Department and Health and Human Services, which oversees Head Start, quickly led to confusion. Court orders have blocked the effort, and the White House said it had pulled back the memo, but some Head Start providers, among other entities, reported they still had limited or no access to federal funds weeks later.
The Office for Civil Rights opened an investigation into Denver Public Schools over a gender-inclusive bathroom. The school board voted in 2020 to require all district schools to have at least one all-gender bathroom.
Notices were sent to about 50 Education Department staffers that they had been put on leave. The employees were reportedly dismissed because of their connection, however limited, to DEI work.
Trump issued an executive order to eliminate what the White House called radical indoctrination in K-12 schools. The order said federal dollars would be stripped from schools where there is “illegal and discriminatory treatment and indoctrination, including based on gender ideology and discriminatory equity ideology.”
In a collection of actions to tackle anti-Semitism, including cataloging complaints about the issue against K-12 schools and colleges and universities, the president said he “will quickly cancel the student visas of all Hamas sympathizers on college campuses” and order the Department of Justice to “quell pro-Hamas vandalism and intimidation, and investigate and punish anti-Jewish racism in leftist, anti-American colleges and universities.”
On school choice, an executive order directed the education secretary to issue guidance within 60 days about how states can use federal dollars to support K-12 educational choice initiatives. It also orders the heads of other agencies, including the Labor Department; Health and Human Services; the Department of Defense; and the Interior Department, which houses the Bureau of Indian Education, to review how grants and funding in their control can be used to send students to private or charter schools.
The Education Department withdrew Biden administration rules about applications for federal charter school grant programs that it said “included excessive regulatory burdens and promoted discriminatory practices.” The agency also said it would quickly make available $33 million in federal grants for charter management organizations that it said had been stalled by the Biden administration.
Race-conscious admissions policies at military academies, explicitly left intact by the Supreme Court affirmative action ruling, were banned by the Defense Department. The agency also said it would ban the use of its resources and its employees’ time to host celebrations or events related to cultural awareness months, such as Black History Month or National Disability Employment Awareness Month, and identity-based clubs.
Rules governing how cases of sexual assault and harassment are handled at K-12 schools and colleges will revert to a version created in the first Trump administration, the Education Department said. Unlike rules set by the Biden administration, the 2020 rules set by then-Education Secretary Betsy DeVos did not extend Title IX protection to gender identity.
Data from across government websites was removed to comply with Trump’s executive order recognizing only two sexes, male and female. The Office of Personnel Management ordered agencies to remove websites and social media accounts that “inculcate or promote gender ideology.” Among the information removed was data from the Youth Risk Behavior Survey, maintained by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The wide-ranging survey includes questions about youth sexual orientation and gender identity.
Week One (Jan. 20)
Trump issued a sweeping executive order banning DEI efforts in all federal agencies, covering personnel policies, federal contracting and grant-making processes, among other things. He also instructed federal institutions to investigate DEI “compliance” at colleges with endowments of more than $1 billion, giving them 120 days to complete their investigations.
He issued an executive order reversing Title IX protections for transgender people and declaring that the government recognizes only two sexes, male and female, assigned at birth.
The Office for Civil Rights declared an end to investigations of book bans, dismissing 11 complaints from schools alleging that removing “age-inappropriate, sexually explicit, or obscene materials from their school libraries created a hostile environment for students.”
Schools and colleges are no longer off-limits to ICE and other immigration enforcement agents, according to a directive from the Department of Homeland Security.
