On Jan. 29, 2025, President Trump signed an executive order, “Expanding Educational Freedom and Opportunity for Families,” which aims to  empower parents with choice in their child’s education. 

This order gives states federal funding to “support parents in choosing and directing the upbringing and education of their children.”

This order goes beyond the Department of Education, instead impacting the Secretary of Health and Human Resources, who issue the block grants for specific states. Additionally, the order extends to the Secretary of Defense and Secretary of the Interior asking them to look at grants and funding mechanisms for the Department of Defense schools and Bureau of Indian Affairs.  

The order would also ask schools to allow the use of their federal funding for educational options of parents’ choice, including private, faith-based or public charter schools for the 2025-26 school year.  

Trump’s actions come in the wake of parents’ increasing involvement in schools. The term “school choice” can mean different things to different people — from erasing school boundaries, to open enrollment, to being able to curate your child’s individual curriculum, to parental control over K-12 course content.

This executive order was issued at the same time as the “ending radical indoctrination” order. The Department of Education could see major changes during Trump’s term.

On Feb. 14, 2025, the U.S. Department of Education released a letter explaining that schools that receive federal funding must cease the use of race as a determining factor in scholarships, admissions, financial aid and more. Schools have two weeks to comply with this order before the Department of Education begins checking to see which schools are complying. If schools fail to comply, they could lose their funding. 

“In recent years, American educational institutions have discriminated against students on the basis of race, including white and Asian students, many of whom come from disadvantaged backgrounds and low-income families. These institutions’ embrace of pervasive and repugnant race-based preferences and other forms of racial discrimination have emanated throughout every facet of academia,” the letter reads. 

The letter echoes President Donald Trump’s Jan. 20, 2025, executive order that halted the use of DEI in government programs. This order terminated contracts, jobs and all “equity action plans.” A federal judge later blocked this executive order.

On Jan. 29, 2025, Donald Trump signed an executive order mandating a number of K-12 educational reforms. With sweeping claims of classroom victimization, “anti-American” schooling and a need to instill patriotism, Trump ordered several cabinet officials to come up with a plan to end “indoctrination” within 90 days of the order going into effect. 

The order specifically targets students identifying as transgender, banning teachers from facilitating a student’s “social transition”—the term for someone choosing a new name or pronouns to align with their gender identity. 

“Steering students toward surgical and chemical mutilation without parental consent or involvement or allowing males access to private spaces designated for females may contravene Federal laws that protect parental rights,” the order said. Existing law already requires parents to give consent for their child’s gender affirming care, and in states like Florida, parents that give this consent can lose custody. 

The order borrows language from an earlier one defining men and women as people with XY and XX chromosomes (an identity which cannot be changed) as the north star for the new policy on gender. 

The executive order also bars the teaching of any “racist” lessons, and singles out the words “White Privilege” and “unconscious bias” as “racial discrimination [that] undermines national unity.” 

It calls for “(prioritizing) federal resources, consistent with applicable law, to promote patriotic education.” It also re-establishes the 1776 Commision, an initiative from Trump’s first term that assembles a 20-person task force to promote the principles of a phrase repeated nine times throughout the order: “patriotic education.”

President Trump has just signed an executive order prohibiting transgender athletes from competing in girls’ and women’s sports, unless they were biologically born a female. This news comes after he ordered the federal government to define sex as only female or male on his first day his office. His signing of the order, which is officially known as “No Men in Women’s Sports Executive Order” also comes as the country celebrates National Girls and Women in Sports Day.

This new law officially applies to all high schools and colleges across the nation, marking Trumps’ fourth executive order that directly targets transgender people. Those who do not abide by this law will not receive any federal funding.

Trump also took a jab at the International Olympic Committee (IOC), especially since Los Angeles will host the 2028 Summer Olympic Games.

His remarks surrounding the IOC were due to events that took place during the 2024 Summer Olympic Games in Paris, where Trump falsely remarked that two female boxers had “transitioned.” He also claimed that Algerian boxer Imane Khelif “stole the women’s gold medal.”

“With this executive order, the war on women’s sports is over,” Trump said.

President Trump declared Tuesday that Palestinians have “no alternative” but to leave Gaza, suggesting a permanent resettlement of the around 2 million people living there. 

“I mean, they’re there because they have no alternative. What do they have? It is a big pile of rubble right now,” Trump said when speaking about the residents of Gaza. 

He suggested that moving the population to a different area, such as Jordan or Egypt, would be for the best, despite the storied history of war and forced migration in the region. Jordan, Egypt and multiple other Arab nations have publicly stated their opposition to any plans resettling Palestinians in their countries. 

In a letter to Secretary of State Marco Rubio, five foreign ministers and a senior Palestinian official voiced concerns that such changes would violate international law and further threaten regional security. 

“For those who want to send the Palestinian people to a ‘nice place’, allow them to go back to their original homes in what is now Israel,” Palestinian Ambassador to the United Nations Riyad Mansour said.

Trump made these statements alongside Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who made an official visit to the White House on Tuesday. 

Last week, United States Representative Thomas Massie reintroduced a bill to eliminate the Department of Education. This comes alongside reports that the White House is preparing an executive order with the same goal. 

Massie, who represents Northern Kentucky, introduced a similar bill in 2017. His newly proposed bill, which has 27 Republican co-sponsors, is a single line stating that “The Department of Education shall terminate on December 31, 2026.” 

According to NBC, the White House is also preparing an executive order to abolish the Department of Education. The president cannot eliminate a federal agency without congressional approval. 

The Office of Management Budget (OMB) memo ordering an immediate freeze on federal grants and loans has been rescinded, however the freeze itself is still being implemented in “full force and effect.” Possible implications for educational funding have already been noted in some places. 

Alongside Medicaid, many Head Start providers could not access necessary systems temporarily following the OMB memo release. Head Start is a program from the Department of Health and Human Services that provides early education and comprehensive services to children and families in need. In the fiscal year 2024, Kentucky received over $213 million dollars in funding for Head Start programs.

The Department of Education clarified on Tuesday that Pell grants and student loans would not be affected by the ordered federal grant or loan freezes, given that they are “received directly” by individuals. 

The Kentucky Higher Education Assistance Authority (KHEAA) has confirmed that the state grant and scholarships the organization provides will not be impacted by the freeze. 

Additionally, organizations and universities have voiced concerns about funding for higher education and research grants. At the University of Chicago, Provost Katherine Baicker sent an email to faculty requesting they “temporarily suspend their non-personnel spending on federal grants” as a result of the now rescinded OMB memo freezing federal grants. 

“We are extremely concerned about the impact of this action on our country’s ability to maintain its scientific and technological lead against competitors and potential adversaries,” said American Association of Universities President Barbara Snyder in a statement. 

The President of the American Council for Better Education, which represents over 1,600 colleges, called on President Trump to rescind the memo, stating it was “bad public policy”.

On Wednesday, Jan. 29, the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) rescinded a memo directing agencies to freeze trillions of dollars in federal grants and loans. This order was temporarily blocked by a federal judge on Tuesday, before it could go into effect by 5 p.m. that day. 

The order had undergone public scrutiny before it was rescinded, given its vagueness regarding what funding was to be freezed. Updated guidelines sent out by OMB on Tuesday stated that Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, SNAP and other programs that “provide direct benefits to Americans” would not be included in the freeze. 

“It is expressly limited to programs, projects, and activities implicated by the President’s Executive Orders, such as ending DEI, the green new deal, and funding nongovernmental organizations that undermine the national interest,” stated a White House facts sheet released on Tuesday addressed concerns that the freeze would apply to all federal grants and loans.

While the memo itself has been rescinded, the White House has said that the federal freeze itself is still in “full force and effect,” giving agencies more time to review and assess their relevant programs to comply with the freeze. 

White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt said in a Wednesday tweet that the memo was rescinded “…to end any confusion created by the court’s injunction.” 

The rescission of this order is the first major reversal in the Trump administration thus far, given that President Trump has issued dozens of sweeping executive orders since his inauguration. His orders have addressed immigration, healthcare, gender and more.