Yesterday President Trump signed several executive orders advancing policies of the new administration and overturning executive action President Biden had taken. Though some of these might be slowed or stopped by lawsuits challenging their legality, many could have impacts on education programs and funding (all executive orders are posted here). With assistance from our colleagues at the Committee for Education Funding in Washington D.C., we wanted to list these in one document with links so you would have the text available for your review. In the coming weeks and months, we will keep you posted on the details and implementation issues involved with many of these that have the most significant impacts on TK-12 schools in California. The Executive Orders include:
- Securing borders and setting policy to take all appropriate action to secure U.S borders through several enumerated measures.
- “Defending women from gender ideology extremism and restoring biological truth to the federal government”requires all federal policies to recognize only male and female as the two sexes assigned at birth and for all policy to abide by those definitions, ending the option of gender self-identification. It lists several Department of Education regulations and guidance documents under Section 7, part c, subsection (ii).
- Regulatory freeze pending review prohibiting any agencies from issuing a rule until the new department head approves it, and to immediately withdraw any pending rules. The Department of Education had already withdrawn several student loan repayment plans that were still in the approval process, so I am not sure if this has an additional impact there.
- “Ending radical and wasteful government DEI programs and preferencing” that includes within 60 days ending all federal DEI or environmental justice positions and services and assessing whether any programs were relabeled since the election “in an attempt to preserve their pre-November 4, 2024 function.” There are some education programs that mention having a diverse educator workforce and approaches designed to take into account students’ backgrounds that may be impacted.
- “Initial rescissions of harmful executive orders” rescinds many overarching Biden Administration orders including ones on DEI, discrimination related to gender identity and sexual orientation, and reopening of schools during the pandemic as well as several that established White House offices on faith-based and neighborhood partnerships, advancing equity to various minority populations, strengthening tribal colleges and universities, advancing educational equity for Black Americans.
- Implementing a federal hiring freeze of civilian employees for 90 days to allow for submission of a “plan to reduce the size of the Federal Government’s workforce through efficiency improvements and attrition.” In the first Trump Administration, the Department of Education had a multi-year hiring freeze.
We know there has been executive action today as well, and we'll be sharing those details as they emerge.
Kevin Gordon, President