On Monday, the Trump administration terminated $600 million of federal grants to institutions and nonprofit organizations that were teaching left-wing ideologies to education agencies and teachers.
The Department of Education announced the end of the grants and listed examples of how they taught critical race theory, social justice activism, “anti-racism,” diversity, equity, and inclusion, and other progressive concepts that hyper-fixate on race.
The grants also featured recruiting strategies “implicitly and explicitly based on race,” the department said in its announcement. The grant applications included programs focused on “equity trainings” in topics such as “Dismantling Racial Bias” and “Centering Equity in the Classroom.”
One of the grant applications was for programs that teach how to acknowledge and respond to “systemic forms of oppression and inequity.” Another program required trainees to take responsibility for “systemic inequities” on a personal and institutional level. A separate grant proposal would have taught “abolitionist pedagogies” and “diversity in classroom management” to attendees.
These programs spread progressive academic concepts that are contrary to the Trump administration’s agenda in the Education Department and the federal government at large. Critics of DEI, CRT, and affiliated left-wing ideas believe that they divisively obsess about identity and discriminate against certain groups, based on immutable characteristics such as skin color, rather than emphasizing individual character and professional merit.
The Education Department recently warned schools that they could lose federal funding if they do not shut down DEI initiatives that violate federal anti-discrimination law in the next two weeks. The notice was based largely on the Supreme Court’s 2023 decision to ban race-based college-admissions criteria under the 14th Amendment’s equal protection clause.
President Trump has repeatedly promised to abolish the Education Department and send federal funds to states to handle their own education systems. His administration is preparing an executive order to eliminate the agency, NBC News reported earlier this month, citing two sources familiar with the plans.
“One other thing I’ll be doing very early in the administration is closing up the Department of Education in Washington, D.C., and sending all education and education work and needs back to the states,” Trump said in September 2023.
Conservatives dating back to President Ronald Reagan have pushed for dismantling the agency because of its bloat, its lack of results, and its role in promoting left-wing ideology nationwide. If Trump terminates the agency through executive order rather than by going through Congress, he will probably face significant legal challenges from progressive groups, left-wing teachers’ unions, and Democratic states.
Trump has acted quickly to begin dismantling DEI programs that became commonplace in American institutions nationwide following the Black Lives Matter riots and racial panic in the summer of 2020. Trump has signed executive orders declaring DEI illegal and ending affirmative action requirements for federal contractors. Trump has also moved to fire DEI employees inside the federal government and end DEI programs in federal agencies.