In one major move, the federal agency has announced it is cancelling DEI-related grants totaling more than $100 million. The grants were uncovered by DOGE, the Department of Government Efficiency, led by Trump appointee Elon Musk.
Altogether, Musk and DOGE identified 89 grants at the DOE totaling a whopping $881 million, according to a Fox News story.
In a related development, the U.S. Department of Education is now warning states to drop their DEI policies in public schools and in higher ed. or risk losing federal funding.
Craig Trainor, the acting assistant secretary for civil rights, sent a letter stating that school campuses have "toxically indoctrinated students” with the false belief the United States was built by “systemic and structural racism” and advanced discriminatory policies and practices."
The letter’s reference to “systemic and structural racism” appears to be a reference to Critical Race Theory, the Marxist-inspired belief that minorities live and work in a racist, white-dominated power structure. That theory about “white privilege” is related to DEI – diversity equity, and inclusion – because college deans and public school boards cite “systemic racism” to justify discriminating against whites, especially white men.
Trainor wrote that discrimination based on race, color or national origin, under any guise, is still illegal.
Jonathan Butcher, a senior education researcher at The Heritage Foundation, tells AFN there is a reason the letter came from Trainor and the Office of Civil Rights: It is vowing to enforce a 2023 U.S. Supreme Court ruling, the Students for Fair Admissions decision.
The lawsuit was brought by Asian students, whose stated race on their college application hurt their chances to get admitted to Harvard University and the University of North Carolina. In a 6-3 vote, the justices effectively ended affirmative action in college admissions.
“What the letter is doing,” Butcher says, “is it's clarifying that the administration intends to enforce policies that would prohibit, for example, racial preferences in college admissions, and racial preferences in the hiring and promotion of employees across the education world."
The previous Biden administration filed a “friend of the court” brief supporting Harvard and UNC, which is why Butcher is praising such a big reversal on the hot-button issue of race and equality. The new Trump administration, he tells AFN, is defending the historic Civil Rights Act and the belief in an equal, color-blind society.
Ryan Casey, a writer and investigative reporter at Parents Defending Education, is familiar with left-wing indoctrination in public school districts across the country. That’s because PDE maintains an “IndoctriNation Map” that documents left-wing incidents across the country, including many based on race and racism.
In one example, PDE learned that a public school superintendent in Colorado complained to staff members about “privileged white people” who wanted to participate in a parental involvement committee.
That comment from Superintendent Tony Byrd was eventually quoted in a Washington Times story, and he later told local newspaper Summit Daily News it was regretful and “wasn’t appropriate” to make.
Alarmed about that incident and other race-based decisions in the Summit School District, PDE filed a civil-rights complaint with the Biden-led U.S. Department of Education in April 2024, The Daily Caller reported.
That complaint was likely ignored by liberal attorneys in the Office of Civil Rights who are now under a new US. president, and new DOE leadership, 10 months later.
Casey says his own investigations have found much of the education funding for DEI training has been a waste of money that could have helped children read and write.
"We need to fund initiatives to help prepare students in their math, their science, their reading and better prepare them for college, better prepare them for their jobs,” he says. “This is where the money should be going, not to push pseudo-scientific ideas."
