Trump Takes Aim at American Schools

In March 2025, amid the fanfare of the Trump White House in its quest to implement Project 2025, the President and Secretary of Education Linda McMahon announced deep cuts to eliminate the Department of Education. The first set of cuts focused on congressionally approved funding for 2025-26 projects such as English language acquisition, academic enrichment, after-school programs, and teachers’ professional development (1).

Following the announcement, school districts all over the nation scrambled to find money to support planned programs. In California, we would be spared some of the immediate effects due to a robust commitment to funding public education (2). In the final week of August, under pressure from many sectors, the Administration reversed its decision and released the allocated funding (3). However, the commitment to eliminate the Department of Education remains in play.

In addition to the attempted rollbacks, the so-called “Big Beautiful Bill” passed by Congress on July 4 includes $1 trillion in Medicaid cuts over ten years. This will financially hurt schoolchildren and their families. Besides schools, services for the elderly, the poor, and the children of Tuolumne County will be impacted (4). With program reductions set to begin after the November 2026 mid-term election, Republican lawmakers are hoping to skirt voters’ wrath.

We know that healthy kids do better in school. About half of Tuolumne County’s children ages 1-18 receive health care through Medicaid (5). As Medicaid funds dwindle, essential health services, including physical and behavioral health screenings in K-12 schools, will be reduced. Special needs children, those with a physical or intellectual disability, will find it increasingly difficult to access medical care. They may end up missing school because of chronic illness or the need to travel further to get the medical care they need if our rural hospital does not survive these Medicaid cuts.

Besides keeping our children healthy, we need to prevent hunger. CalFresh (our state’s Food Stamps initiative) is another federal program that suffered deep cuts in the budget bill. The free and reduced price meals program, for which schools receive U.S. Department of Agriculture reimbursement, may also be at risk.

Which services will be diminished or eliminated is unclear at this time. Educational institutions are attempting to anticipate what this will mean for their budgets. The chaos and confusion sown by the federal government have left states and school districts in a quandary.

Donald Trump has said on several occasions, “I love the poorly educated (6).” It seems he intends to diminish our public education system with his mean-spirited actions and policies directed at schools.

NOTES

1. Mark Lieberman, “What’s the Latest on Trump’s Funding Freeze? What We Know and Don’t Know,” Education Week, July 16, 2025.
2. Tara Garcia Matthewson and Carolyn Jones, “Trump is withholding $800 million from California schools. How kids will be affected,” Cal Matters, July 1, 2025.
3. Maanvi Singh, “Trump Administration to Restore $6.8B in Education Funds after Multi-state Suit,” The Guardian, August 25, 2025.
4. Amanda Litvinov, “Trump’s Budget Bill: An Attack on Public Schools, Working Families, and Immigrants,” NEA TODAY, July 7, 2025.
5. Tuolumne County Summary for 2020,  KidsData. (The Georgetown statistics show 45.5% of Tuolumne County children received Medi-Cal in 2023.)
6. An excerpt of Donald Trump’s remarks following the Nevada Caucus, Politico.com video of Trump campaign speech, February 24, 2016.