President Donald Trump has signed an executive order seeking to end transgender-inclusive policies and anti-racist education in K-12 schools. The order calls to cut off federal funding to trans-inclusive and anti-racist schools, to force schools to out trans students to their potentially unsupportive parents, and accuse supportive teachers of “sexually exploiting minors” or “unlawfully practicing medicine.”
The order is part of Trump’s larger plan to discredit and defund public education in order to redirect billions of taxpayer funds from public schools to private religious homeschools and charter schools, a long-sought goal of Christian nationalists.
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Trump’s order also calls to end federal funding for schools that promote “discriminatory equity ideology” that teaches an “individual’s race, color, sex, or national origin, is inherently racist, sexist, or oppressive, whether consciously or unconsciously” or that “Virtues such as merit, excellence, hard work, fairness, neutrality, objectivity, and racial colorblindness are racist or sexist or were created by members of a particular race, color, sex, or national origin to oppress members of another race, color, sex, or national origin.”
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While anti-racist education and critical race theory necessarily teach this, Trump and Republicans have essentially characterized both as “anti-white.” Trump’s order says that anti-racist teachings suggest that students “should feel guilt, anguish, or other forms of psychological distress because of … actions committed in the past by other members of the same race, color, sex, or national origin.”
“In many cases, innocent children are compelled to adopt identities as either victims or oppressors solely based on their skin color and other immutable characteristics,” the executive order states. “In other instances, young men and women are made to question whether they were born in the wrong body and whether to view their parents and their reality as enemies to be blamed. These practices not only erode critical thinking but also sow division, confusion, and distrust, which undermine the very foundations of personal identity and family unity.”
The trans-inclusive policies targeted by the order include “social transitioning” methods that affirm trans students’ gender identities. These methods include confidential conversations with teachers and school counselors, addressing trans people by their personal name or pronouns, calling a child “nonbinary,” and allowing trans students to access facilities or sports teams that match their gender identity.
The order calls these policies “anti-American, subversive, harmful, and false ideologies … [that] violate longstanding anti-discrimination civil rights law in many cases, [and] usurp basic parental authority.” The order also claims that supporting students’ trans identities is the same as “steering students toward surgical and chemical mutilation without parental consent or involvement or allowing males access to private spaces designated for females.”
The order gives the Secretaries of Education, Defense, and Health and Human Services a 90-day deadline to work with the Attorney General to present an “Ending Indoctrination Strategy” that would end federal funding for schools, programs, and teacher trainings that incorporate trans-inclusive policies and anti-racist education.
The order overturns the interpretation of Title IX used by the administration of former President Joe Biden which considered anti-trans school policies as a form of sex-based discrimination. Instead, Trump’s order interprets Title IX as requiring schools to deny the existence of trans people in order to purportedly protect students from sex-based discrimination.
The order also directs the Attorney General to coordinate with state attorneys general and local district attorneys to prosecute K-12 teachers and school officials who violate the law by “sexually exploiting minors,” “unlawfully practicing medicine by offering diagnoses and treatment without the requisite license, or “otherwise unlawfully facilitating the social transition of a minor student.”
In doing so, the order lays the groundwork for parents to sue educators with trans-inclusive policies and accuse them of “sexually exploiting” students, the likes of which could lead to costly civil and criminal prosecutions. In essence, the order will shut down all conversations around anti-racism and trans-inclusion.
In a statement condemning the executive order, Human Rights Campaign PresidentKelley Robinson said, “All students deserve to feel safe and welcome in school. But this new administration is making it clear they want to dictate to children, their parents, and educators what they can read, what they can learn, what they can say, and who they can be. They want to limit the ability to talk about the very existence of LGBTQ+ people in our schools and keep all our children from being taught an honest, accurate history of our nation.”
“All young people–including LGBTQ+ students and the children of LGBTQ+ parents, who are accepted by the adults in their life have much better outcomes for mental health and other metrics. We owe it to them to ensure that they feel safe, respected and ready to learn when they’re at school,” Robinson added.
The executive order is part of a larger Christian Nationalist strategy to defund public education
Trump’s order uses rhetoric repeated by the Republican-led, anti-LGBTQ+ “parents’ rights” movement that accuses educators of “indoctrinating,” “sexualizing” and “grooming” children. The movement was started in the 1980s by a deeply religious conservative Christian evangelical lawyer named Michael Farris who believes that public schools regularly “undermined [the] religious beliefs” of parents and Christian conservatives.
In August 2023, an audio recording caught Farris encouraging parents to file lawsuits accusing public schools of violating their rights by teaching students about racial and LGBTQ+ issues. These lawsuits could eventually secure a U.S. Supreme Court victory that would redirect billions of taxpayer funds from public schools to religious homeschools and charter schools.
Trump’s order also calls for the establishment of a 1776 Commission to promote a so-called “patriotic education” in schools that provides an “accurate, honest, unifying, inspiring, and ennobling characterization of America’s founding and foundational principles.”
America’s founding involved the use of racist and classist laws, Black slave labor and anti-Native American genocide that negatively affect present-day civil rights. However, the original 1776 Commission’s report on U.S. history (published during Trump’s first presidency) identified progressive social justice policies as a major threat to American principles and the so-called “color-blind civil rights” movement.
The 1776 Commission is tasked with promoting the work of the White House Task Force on Celebrating America’s 250th Birthday. The force’s key goal is to organize a “grand celebration worthy of the momentous occasion of the 250th anniversary of American Independence on July 4, 2026.”
The commission’s “patriotic education” must promote an “accurate, honest, unifying, inspiring, and ennobling characterization of America’s founding and foundational principles” and also work to provide similar views in educational programs provided at national parks, battlefields, monuments, museums, installations, landmarks, cemeteries, and other places important to the American founding and American history.
The 1776 Commission was Trump’s answer to The 1619 Project, an anti-racist educational curriculum that reframes U.S. history by centering the consequences of slavery and the contributions of Black Americans in the country’s founding.
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