Trump and his administration are determined to impose their rightwing agenda on the nation’s colleges and universities. They have withheld federal funding for scientific and medical research, using that money to demand compliance.

Trump and Secretary of Education Linda McMahon, former wrestling entrepreneur, recently rolled out their “Compact for Academic Excellence in Higher Education.”

The Compact asked universities to pledge to do the following:

1. When admitting students, institutions must not take such factors as “sex, ethnicity, race, nationality, political views, sexual orientation, religious associations, or proxies for any of the foregoing into account, unless they are institutions “solely or primarily comprised is students of a specific sex or religious denomination.”
   Therefore, no factor such as sex, ethnicity, race, nationality, political views, sexual orientation,
2. Institutions shall have all undergraduate applicants take a widely-used standardized test (i.e. SAT,
   ACT, or CLT) or program-specific measures of accomplishment in the case of music, art, and other
   specialized programs of study. Universities shall publicly report anonymized data for admitted and rejected
   students, including GPA, standardized test score, or other program-specific measures of accomplishments,
   by race, national origin, and sex.
3. To protect a vibrant marketplace of ideas, the signatories agree to foster ideological and political diversity and to “transform or abolish” institutional units that punish, belittle or spark violence against conservative ideas.
4. In hiring faculty and administrators, signatories shall not take into account race, gender, nationality, etc.
5. Women and men must be accorded separate and appropriate facilities, meaning trans people don’t exist.
6. Universities must agree to accept no more than 15% of their students from foreign countries and no more than 5% from any one country. They must also screen them to be sure they are not “anti-American.”

There is much more. Read the text of the 10-page document. It represents a very large degree of government intervention in the affairs of universities. And raises the question: who will police all these requirements?

The administration asked nine institutions to sign on to the Compact. So far, seven of the nine said no. The seven recognized that they were being asked to give up academic freedom and institutional independence in return for a guarantee of future funding.

The administration initially invited nine universities (on or around early October 2025) to accept the Compact:

These are the nine:

Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) 

Brown University 

Dartmouth College 

University of Pennsylvania (Penn) 

University of Southern California (USC)

University of Virginia (UVA) 

University of Texas at Austin (UT Austin) 

University of Arizona (UArizona) 

Vanderbilt University 

MIT was first to say no. Within a few days, the Compact was rejected by Penn, USC, Brown, Dartmouth, UVA, and–most recently– the University of Arizona.

Currently, only the University of Arizona and Vanderbilt are holdouts and are engaging in “dialogue.”

A group of scholars from different political perspectives explained their opposition to the Compact in an article that appeared in The Chronicle of Higher Education.

The article was co-written by Robert P. George, Tom Ginsburg, Robert C. Post, David M. Rabban, Jeannie Suk Gersen, and Keith E. Whittington.

We write as scholars of academic freedom to respond to the proposed “Compact for Academic Excellence in Higher Education.” We are politically diverse and do not share common views about the wisdom of particular proposals contained in the compact. Nor do we agree on the extent or substance of the reforms needed in American higher education today. We are, however, united in our concern about key features of the proposed compact.

The compact’s demands that universities and colleges eschew foreign students with “anti-American values” and that they impose a politically determined diversity within departments and other institutional units are incompatible with the self-determination that colleges and universities must enjoy if they are to pursue their mission as truth-seeking institutions. So also is the compact’s demand that universities and colleges select their students only on the basis of “objective” and “standardized” criteria. Colleges may of course voluntarily elect exclusively to deploy objective criteria (such as standardized-test scores and high-school or college grade-point averages), but these standards should not be imposed on institutions which, operating within the law, wish to include consideration of nonquantifiable criteria in selecting students.

Furthermore, we believe that certain aspects of the compact violate core principles of academic freedom. Academic freedom comes with obligations and limitations, to be sure; its essence, however, involves the liberty of faculty within the bounds of professional competence to teach and to research as they choose. The architect of America’s public-private research partnership, Vannevar Bush, asserted that “scientific progress” requires “the free play of free intellects, working on subjects of their own choice, in the manner dictated by their curiosity for exploration of the unknown.” Some of us believe that colleges today are failing in important ways to promote independence of mind and protect academic freedom, but we are united in the conviction that an attempt to solve this problem by government intervention, even if in the form of conditions for eligibility for grants, will be counterproductive.…

As recognized for over a century, faculty should be able to engage as individual citizens in extramural speech. Faculty should exercise these rights responsibly and professionally, but when they fail to do so, it is not the role of the government or the university to sanction them. Colleges that censor their faculty will quickly undermine the vibrancy and initiative so vital for teaching and research.

The power to punish extramural speech has been abused against both conservative and liberal speakers in the past. The requirement of the compact that universities and colleges censor students and faculty who voice support for “entities designated by the U.S. government as terrorist organization” imposes overly intrusive regulation of constitutionally protected speech.

Almost all colleges enshrine the basic principles of academic freedom in contractual agreements with faculty. Elements of the compact seek to use financial incentives to pressure colleges to break these contractual agreements. For a university to bend to this pressure and sacrifice the academic freedom of its faculty is to abandon constitutive institutional commitments essential to both education and the pursuit of knowledge.

Peter Greene, the best education blogger ever, writes regularly for Forbes magazine. Hopefully, some of the nation’s business executives are learning about the for-profit entrepreneurs who have entered into the education “industry,”where they are profiting without doing much for students.

Greene recently wrote about the latest setback for the giant of the cybercharter industry. It’s now called Stride, but for many years it was K12 Inc. Top executives are paid millions of dollars. Profit, not learning, is its highest priority. Despite terrible academic results, low graduation rates, complaints about inflated enrollments, there are always school districts happy to host the cybercharter industry because the district gets a cut of the profits.

Greene writes:

Stride, a giant in the cyber charter school industry, was accused by a New Mexico school district of violating rules and regulations. Now a lawsuit alleges that Stride responded by mounting a coordinated attack on the district and its superintendent. 

In 2020, Gallup-McKinley County Schools contracted with Stride (formerly known as K12 Inc) to operate its New Mexico Destinations Career Academy. But the district alleges that the for-profit organization repeatedly cut corners, violated staffing rules, and inflated enrollment numbers. In May 2025, the school board voted to end the contract. 

“Our students deserve better,” said School Board President Christopher Mortensen in a press release.“This action is not sudden; it is the result of months of effort to address persistent issues with the contractor. We are taking this step to protect our students, uphold academic standards, and meet our obligations under state and federal law.”

Within months, the district had filed a complaint against Stride, charging them with fraud, unfair trade practices, civil conspiracy, and seven other counts. That lawsuit outlines the issues between Stride and the district. 

According to the complaint, Stride had continuing issues with meeting requirements for student-teacher ratios, having been notified as early as September 2023 that it was out of compliance. Special education teachers were over their permitted caseloads, and IEP students were not receiving their due process. Further, Stride failed to employ certified teachers, complete background checks, or provide state-mandated occupational and professional trainings to their staff. 

The district also alleges that Stride “retained nonexistent students on its rolls” and took school district funds for educating these ghost students. Stride failed to provide timely required communication with the district. Stride’s graduation rate, says the district, was “horrific,” with a graduation rate of 27.67% in 2024.

The district also claims that through it all, Stride has “ignored compliance requirements” and failed to produce a remediation plan. 

According to the suit filed by the district, a management representative of Stride came forward in May as a whistleblower, declaring that the increases in student-teacher ratios was “intentional… in order to increase profit margins.” The whistleblower reported that he made multiple attempts to inform upper management that Stride was out of compliance with state law, and asked for authority to hire the roughly 80 teachers needed. The Vice President of Finance, says the whistleblower, refused to authorize those hires. Instead, in a later meeting, the whistleblower was allegedly told that his “projected profit margin was too low.” He was directed to cut staff for the next year to meet projected profit margin.”

According to the whistleblower, Stride’s plans to deal with their troubles were not focused on meeting their obligations to the district. 

Instead, the whistleblower says, at an April meeting Stride’s Senior Vice President of School Development “Peter Stewart said the company should attack first publicly and Stride Inc. should develop a strategy for that” and that Stride CEO “James Rhyu said [to the group] that the Superintendent [for the School District] was in over his skis on this issue.” 

Alleges the district’s suit, ”Stride’s management, including the individual Defendants, engaged in and agreed to a civil conspiracy to cover up its misconduct and illegal activities acting, by and through its employees, agents and attorneys, in planning and engaging in a systemic public attack on the School District and its Superintendent of Schools to distract from its illegal activities and its breach of the contract with the Board of Education.”

And counter-attack they did. On April 22, the district sent Stride a letter charging it had “materially breached” its contract. On April 28, the company filed an ethics complaint against GMCS Superintendent Michael Hyatt, alleging that he had tried to leverage Stride’s contract with the district in order to secure a “lucrative position” with Stride. Hyatt had applied for a management position with Stride in 2024; the company declined to hire him.

The list of complaints by the district against Stride is long, but the theme is simple enough. 

Defendant Stride purposely and willfully disregarded the contractual requirements and the statutory and regulatory requirements in order to defraud the School District to increase its profits…

Defendant Stride, while obligated to provide a certain quality of education to students, disregarded its legal obligations with the sole intent to profit on the education of students that it was supposed to educate, and that profit was obtained illegally through the intentional 27 violations of State law, incomplete and false reporting of student data, withholding technical support and operating and manipulating student counts to include students who had been dropped, withdrawn or were excessively absent.

Asked for comment on the suit, a Stride representative directed me to the company’s suit-related web site which argues that the company has been working on an improvement plan, that their student-to-staff ratios are better than those reported by the district, and that “explosive growth” of NMDCA makes it hard to stay caught up with staffing. A reply to the district’s Aprill 22 letter contests virtually every point that the district has made about Stride’s performance. 

Since being cut loose from GMCS, Stride has re-opened NMDCA as a cyber charter school partnered with Charna Valley Independent Schools and Santa Rosa Consolidated Schools; a fact sheet from Stride says 3,000 students are enrolled, including 2,300 returning families. Those families, they say, are largely satisfied with the school. They also point out that many students enter the school short of credits, and that the majority of students are closing that gap. The Stride representative also sent a fact sheet alleging that GMCS is facing other legal problems. 

But Stride is no stranger to legal issues. It was founded in 2000 as K12 Inc by Ron Packard, former banker and Mckinsey consultant, and quickly became the leading national company for cyber schooling. One of its first big investors was Michal Milken. That investment came a decade after he pled guilty to six felonies in the “biggest fraud case in the securities industry” ending his reign as the “junk bond king.” Besides Milliken, Stride investors have included brothers Lowell and Larry Ellison, and BlackRock, founded by Larry Fink, whose brother Steve sits on the Stride Board of Directors.

In 2011, the New York Times detailed how K12’s schools were failing miserably, but still making investors and officers a ton of money. Former teachers wrote tell-alls about their experiences. In 2012. Florida caught K12 using fake teachers. The NCAA put K12 schools on the list of cyber schools that were disqualified from sports eligibility. In 2014, Packard turned out to be one of the highest paid public workers in the country, “despite the fact that only 28% of K12 schools met state standards in 2011-2012.”

In 2013 K12 settled a class action lawsuit in Virginia for $6.75 million after stockholders accused the company of misleading them about “the company’s business practices and academic performance.” In 2014, Middlebury College faculty voted to end a partnership with K12 saying the company’s business practices “are at odds with the integrity, reputation and educational mission of the college.”

In 2016 K12 got in yet another round of trouble in California for lying about student enrollment, resulting in a $165 million settlement with then Attorney General Kamala Harris. K12 was repeatedly dropped in some states and cities for poor performance.

In 2020, they landed a big contract in Miami-Dade county (after a big lucrative contribution to an organization run by the superintendent); subsequently Wired magazine wrote a story about their “epic series of tech errors.” K12 successfully defended itself from a lawsuit in Virginia based on charges they had greatly overstated their technological capabilities by arguing that such claims were simply advertising “puffery.”

The district is seeking compensatory and punitive damages from Stride. Four Stride executives are named in the suit in addition to Stride Inc itself. The court will decide who’s blowing smoke here. In the meantime, school districts continue to learn about the price of teaming up with aggressively for-profit partners. 

https://open.substack.com/pub/steady/p/no-kings-no-tyranny?r=rls8&utm_medium=ios

To the thousands of you who comment on Steady each week, first, let me say thank you. In reading your thoughts, it is safe to say you are: a) not happy with the direction of our country, and b) really not happy with the current president.

We’ve heard reports that millions of you will express your discontent on Saturday at “No Kings” rallies across the country and the world. That is your right, guaranteed under the First Amendment to the Constitution, which reads:

“Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.”

And we hope that if you choose to make your voice heard, you remain steady, hold your head high and proudly participate in one of our most cherished democratic institutions. That is what freedom is about. Anyone and everyone can speak truth to power.

But Donald Trump has a long history of hating criticism and punishing those who challenge him and his actions. So, in yet another act of fealty to their “king,” the Republican Party has coordinated an intentional perversion of reality to explain why so many people may protest against the president.

Dipping back into their playbook of characterizing something before it has even happened, Republicans have dubbed them the “hate America” rallies, claiming that anyone who attends must be “pro-Hamas” or “antifa” types. Speaker of the House Mike Johnson took it a convoluted step further.

“It’s being told to us that they [Democrats] won’t be able to re-open the government until after that rally, because they can’t face their rabid base,” he said on Fox “News.” Someone might want to tell Johnson that the shutdown ball is in his court. If he actually wants to negotiate an end to it, he would have to bring the House back in session.

Johnson’s nonsensical sentiment was mirrored by Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent. “You know, ‘No Kings’ means no paychecks,” he said.

“The unhinged comments are the message,” Michael Steele, an MSNBC host and former head of the Republican National Committee explained.

“This is what it looks like when you’ve fully lost control of the message and you’re panicking,” Leah Greenberg, co-founder of Indivisible, one of the groups organizing “No Kings,” posted on social media.

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These comments on shaming Americans who are only exercising their constitutional rights should make everyone’s blood boil. It is absolute nonsense.

The goal of the disinformation campaign, which was no doubt coordinated in the highest ranks of the Republican Party, is simple: suppress turnout by criminalizing dissent–and change the narrative from “ peaceful protests” to “terrorism.”

“What they’re trying to do is to suppress support for the opposition, to try to make you think that you are somehow connected with violence if you show up for a peaceful protest rally,” Connecticut Senator Chris Murphy told NBC News. “I think the turnout is going to be big, and I think that that’ll be a sign that their tactics aren’t working.”

The “No Kings” rallies in June mobilized roughly five million peaceful protesters who love America but despise Trump and what they believe he is doing to the country. If estimates are correct, Saturday’s protests will be even bigger.

America was built on the backs of people protesting injustice. Resistance to wrongdoing is foundational to this country’s ethos. The American Revolution was sparked by the Boston Tea Party, a protest of British taxation. The fights for women’s suffrage, civil rights, gay rights all started with protests and ended with political change.

Curtailing rights has become a hallmark of the second Trump administration. Just ask the reporters who cover the Pentagon.

On Wednesday, any journalist who works for a news organization that did not agree to sign Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s 21-page long press rules — replacing a one-pager — was shown the door. Every organization, except the far-right One America News Network, declined. Even Fox, Hegseth’s former employer, chose not to sign. Hundreds of years of institutional knowledge and reporting experience left the building.

The new rules put increased limitations on access and raise the possibility of punishment for something as simple as asking for information. Hegseth claims these “common sense” changes are necessary to protect national security.

However, the only breach of national security since he became defense secretary was perpetrated by Hegseth himself. In March, he posted possibly classified U.S. military attack plans to an unsecure group chat, to which the editor of The Atlantic had accidentally been added.

Hegseth’s paranoia about leaks and security breaches should be a red flag. If things were going well under his leadership, he would be trumpeting his accomplishments. Instead, he engages in the classic Trump ploy of misdirection. What is he trying to hide?

One story he is attempting to spin into a positive narrative is the Trump administration’s repeated attacks on boats off the Venezuelan coast. A fifth boat was hit on Tuesday, killing all six alleged drug traffickers on board. The Pentagon was asked what ordnance was used, the legal basis for the attack, and the identities of those killed. No answers were given for that strike or for any of the four previous ones.

Hegseth, the least qualified person to lead the Defense Department in U.S. history, is trying to shut down scrutiny and restrict what the American people know about what the DOD is doing with a trillion dollars in tax payer money. But it is about more than billion-dollar weapons systems. It is about the men and women who serve.

“U.S. military’s policy of opening the Pentagon to the press was never a favor to the journalists who cover the military, but rather an obligation to a country that asks its sons and daughters to volunteer for service. If the government was going to ask Americans to risk their lives for our freedoms, then those empowered to send them into harm’s way would be willing to answer questions, especially tough ones,” wrote Nancy Youssef, who has covered the Pentagon for The Atlantic for 18 years.

Since the Pentagon opened its doors in 1943, the U.S. military has been able to balance its promise to protect secrets with its responsibility to inform the public through the media. Even though more than eight decades of balancing these dueling interests has been dismantled, reporters promised to keep reporting.

“I turned in my Pentagon pass today after 30 years because like all major news organizations ABC will not sign the new restrictive Pentagon requirements… [T]o be clear. We will all continue to cover national security from outside the building,” ABC News’s Martha Raddatz posted on social media. Mary Walsh of CBS News, one of the best and most patriotic reporters I have ever known, promised the same thing.

Godspeed to Raddatz, Walsh, and their colleagues, and to the protesters on Saturday. In different ways, both groups will be heeding the words on the “No Kings” website: “The president thinks his rule is absolute. But in America, we don’t have kings and we won’t back down against chaos, corruption, and cruelty.”

Patti Vasquez has the story that Trump voters need to hear. Their farms are failing, their property taxes are rising, their schools are closing, their hospitals are going broke…and they need to know why the cost of living is soaring.

She writes:

Tensions are crazy high right now. Many of us are angry at the chaos, the violence, at watching everything we warned about come true. But the way to turn this around isn’t through matching their hate. It’s through relentlessly showing working Americans what’s actually happening.

Every foreclosed farm is a Trump voter who could be reached. Every parent facing a $372 per student education cut is persuadable. Every suburban Republican watching their property taxes explode while their services disappear is a potential ally against authoritarianism.

Democrats- we need to start talking about the bills people can’t pay. Healthcare costs. Housing prices. Grocery bills. School budgets. Property taxes. These aren’t just economic issues – they’re proof that MAGA governance is a scam that hurts the very people who vote for it.

Red states handed Trump his victory. Now they’re getting destroyed by it.

Across Texas, Florida, Kentucky, and Ohio – the heart of MAGA country – cities are slashing services, gutting education, and watching their budgets implode. Fort Worth is scrambling to close a $17 million deficit. Kentucky depends on federal funds for 30% of its budget – funds Trump is cutting. Florida faces a potential $7 billion shortfall while spending $505 million to enforce Trump’s immigration policies.

The leopards are feasting in Trump country. Unfortunately, we’re all on the menu.

Texas delivered Trump his biggest victory margin. Texas is now delivering the biggest budget disasters. Houston officials are calculating how much of their $6.7 billion budget will vanish under Trump’s spending freeze. San Antonio depends on $325.5 million in federal funds that keep low-income families housed. Dallas has the worst taxpayer burden in Texas at $13,000 per person.

“If confusion and chaos were the goal, mission accomplished,” San Antonio Mayor Ron Nirenberg said about Trump’s policies.

These are the suburban Republicans who drive $80,000 F-150 Platinums to HOA meetings in master-planned communities. The ones who post Facebook rants about “welfare queens” while their kids attend publicly-funded schools, drive on federally-funded roads, and drink water from government-maintained systems. They genuinely believed economic devastation was reserved for “those people” in blue cities.

Meanwhile, rural America collapses. Farms bankrupted by tariffs, China refusing to buy American soybeans, rural hospitals shuttering after the “big beautiful bill” gutted their funding. They told themselves they were different. They had real jobs. Good insurance. They were insulated.

While MAGA was outraged by drag queens and library books, Trump quietly withheld $6.8 billion in federal education funds Congress had already approved. After-school programs serving 1.4 million children are shutting down. Trump’s proposed budget cuts Department of Education funding by 15% and eliminates all $1.3 billion for English language learners. In Kentucky – deep Trump country – the highest-poverty schools could lose $372 per student.

These are their kids’ schools. They voted to destroy them because they were mad about pronouns. But math is “woke” now, while inspecting children’s genitals for sports is a legislative priority.

MAGA voters never understood that Red states are “taker states.” They receive far more federal money than they send to Washington. Kentucky is among the top five nationally, receiving 30.1% of its budget from federal funding. That’s $4,850 for every person. Indiana gets 25.7%. Ohio takes 21%. Even Florida depends on the federal government for 32% of its budget.

They mock California and call it a liberal hellscape. The sunshine state sends more to Washington than it gets back. It’s subsidizing them.

The “big beautiful bullshit bill” cuts the federal aid keeping their states alive. Medicaid for rural hospitals, education money for schools, infrastructure funds for roads. They voted to kill the very things keeping them afloat.

State Senator Paul Bettencourt insists cities aren’t “starved” because they can just ask voters to raise taxes. Sure, Paul. The same voters who elected officials promising to eliminate taxes will happily vote to raise them.

Austin is asking voters to approve a 20% property tax increase just to maintain basic services. That’s an extra $303 per year before the real cuts hit. When ACA subsidies expire, health insurance premiums will spike between $360 and $1,860 per person annually. Dallas, Fort Worth, Houston are all facing massive tax increases or complete service collapse.

They believed they were voting against taxes. They voted for the biggest property tax increases in history.

While red state cities collapse, Wall Street thrives. JD Vance’s investment fund profits from the economic chaos. When cities sell assets or privatize services, private equity swoops in. When family farms fail, agribusiness giants buy the land at fire-sale prices.

The Penn Wharton Budget Model, Trump’s own “alma mater” – projects his tariffs will reduce GDP by 8% and wages by 7%. A middle-income family faces a $58,000 lifetime loss. That’s not Woke spin, that’s Wharton.

Trump’s “One Big Beautiful (Bullshit) Bill” slashes non-defense discretionary spending by $163 billion. It creates $5 trillion in revenue losses while gutting everything from education to infrastructure. The only thing beautiful about it is if you’re a billionaire getting another tax cut.

MAGA voted to “take back our country.” Private equity took their cities instead.

Texas Republicans who spent decades claiming government is the problem are discovering what happens when government can’t afford to function.

But, we all suffer for their choices.

Blue states will bail them out. Again. Our federal tax dollars will flow to states that voted to destroy themselves.

They voted to hurt all of us. For what? Trans athletes? Immigrants picking strawberries? Masks during a pandemic?

But, maybe their pain is our opportunity to show them exactly who did this to them.

When Trump selected Linda McMahon as U.S. Secretary of Education, she knew that her job was to close down the Department. She has not been able to reach that goal yet, but she has devised means to impose Trumpian policies on the public schools, by threatening to withhold federal funding unless they comply.

ProPublica reports that McMahon has a much larger goal: she has surrounded herself with aides whose goal is clear: to eliminate public schools entirely.

Megan O’Matz and Jennifer Smith Richards of ProPublica write:

Education Secretary Linda McMahon has been clear about her desire to shut down the agency she runs. She’s laid off half the staff and joked about padlocking the door.

She calls it “the final mission.”

But the department is not behaving like an agency that is simply winding down. Even as McMahon has shrunk the Department of Education, she’s operated in what she calls “a parallel universe” to radically shift how children will learn for years to come. The department’s actions and policies reflect a disdain for public schools and a desire to dismantle that system in favor of a range of other options — private, Christian and virtual schools or homeschooling.

Over just eight months, department officials have opened a $500 million tap for charter schools, a huge outlay for an option that often draws children from traditional public schools. They have repeatedly urged states to spend federal money for poor and at-risk students at private schools and businesses. And they have threatened penalties for public schools that offer programs to address historic inequities for Black or Hispanic students.

McMahon has described her agency moving “at lightning rocket speed,” and the department’s actions in just one week in September reflect that urgency.

The agency publicly blasted four school districts it views as insubordinate for refusing to adopt anti-trans policies and for not eliminating special programs for Black students. It created a pot of funding dedicated to what it calls “patriotic education,” which has been criticized for downplaying some of the country’s most troubling episodes, including slavery. And it formed a coalition with Turning Point USA, Hillsdale College, PragerU and dozens of other conservative groups to disseminate patriotic programming.

Officials at the Education Department declined to comment or answer questions from ProPublica for this story.

At times, McMahon has voiced support for public schools. But more often and more emphatically she has portrayed public schools as unsuccessful and unsafe — and has said she is determined to give parents other options.

To carry out her vision, McMahon has brought on at least 20 political appointees from ultraconservative think tanks and advocacy groups eager to de-emphasize public schools, which have educated students for roughly 200 years.

Among them is top adviser Lindsey Burke, a longtime policy director at The Heritage Foundation and the lead author of the education section in Project 2025’s controversial agenda for the Trump administration.

In analyzing dozens of hours of audio and video footage of public and private speaking events for McMahon’s appointees, as well as their writings, ProPublica found that a recurring theme is the desire to enable more families to leave public schools. This includes expanding programs that provide payment — in the form of debit cards, which Burke has likened to an “Amazon gift card” — to parents to cobble together customized educational plans for their children. Instead of relying on public schools, parents would use their allotted tax dollars on a range of costs: private school tuition, online learning, tutors, transportation and music lessons.

More than 8 in 10 elementary and secondary students in the U.S. go to a traditional public school. But Burke expects that public schools will see dramatic enrollment declines fueled by both demographic and policy changes.

Addressing an interviewer in an April podcast, she noted: “We’re going to have a lot of empty school buildings.”

In a 2024 podcast, Noah Pollak, now a senior adviser in the Education Department, bemoaned what he sees as progressive control of schools, which he said has led to lessons he finds unacceptable, such as teaching fourth graders about systemic racism.

“And so the work that I do is trying to come up with creative policy ideas to stop that, to turn back the tide, to figure out ways that conservatives can protect these institutions or build new institutions,” said Pollak, who has been an adviser to conservative groups.

As tax dollars are reallocated from public school districts and families abandon those schools to learn at home or in private settings, the new department officials see little need for oversight. Instead, they would let the marketplace determine what’s working using tools such as Yelp-like reviews from parents. Burke has said she is against “any sort of regulation.”

President Donald Trump himself said in July that the federal government needs only to provide “a little tiny bit of supervision but very little, almost nothing,” over the nation’s education system except to make sure students speak English.

Advocates for public schools consider them fundamental to American democracy. Providing public schools is a requirement in every state constitution.

Families in small and rural communities tend to rely more heavily on public education. They are less likely than families in cities to have private and charter schools nearby. And unlike private schools, public school districts don’t charge tuition. Public schools enroll local students regardless of academic or physical ability, race, gender or family income; private schools can selectively admit students.

Karma Quick-Panwala, a leader at the Disability Rights Education and Defense Fund, which advocates for disabled students, said she wants to be optimistic. “But,” she added, “I’m very fearful that we are headed towards a less inclusive, less diverse and more segregated public school setting.”

Allison Rose Socol, a policy expert at EdTrust, an organization focusing on civil rights in schools, decried what she called the “demo crew” in McMahon’s office. Socol described McMahon’s push to help grow private school enrollment through taxpayer-funded vouchers and other means as a “great American heist” that will funnel money away from the public system.

“It’s a strategic theft of the future of our country, our kids and our democracy,” she said.

“Lead as Christians”

Attention on McMahon often focuses on her former role as CEO of World Wrestling Entertainment. It was no different on the day of her Senate confirmation hearing, when journalists and social media delighted in noting that seated behind her was her son-in-law, the retired wrestler known as Triple H.

Little attention was paid to the conservative education activists in the front row from Moms for Liberty, which has protested school curricula and orchestrated book bans nationwide; Defending Education (formerly Parents Defending Education), which has sued districts to fight what it calls liberal indoctrination; and the America First Policy Institute, co-founded by McMahon after the first Trump administration.

Now two people who once served at Defending Education have been named to posts in the Education Department, and leaders from Moms for Liberty have joined McMahon for roundtables and other official events. In addition, at least nine people from the America First Policy Institute have been hired in the department.

AFPI’s sweeping education priorities include advocating for school vouchers and embedding biblical principles in schools. It released a policy paper in 2023, titled “Biblical Foundations,” that sets out the organization’s objective to end the separation of church and state and “plant Jesus in every space.”

The paper rejects the idea that society has a collective responsibility to educate all children equally and argues that “the Bible makes it clear that it is parents alone who shoulder the responsibility for their children.” It frames public schooling as failing, with low test scores and “far-left social experiments, such as gender fluidity.”

The first AFPI leader pictured in that report is McMahon.

AFPI and the other two nonprofit groups sprang up only after the 2020 election. Together they drew in tens of millions of dollars through a well-coordinated right-wing network that had spent decades advocating for school choice and injecting Christianity into schools.

Ultrawealthy supporters include right-wing billionaire Richard Uihlein, who, through a super PAC, gave $336,000 to Moms for Liberty’s super PAC from October 2023 through July 2024.

Defending Education and AFPI received backing from some of the same prominent conservative foundations and trusts, including ones linked to libertarian-minded billionaire Charles Koch and to conservative legal activist Leonard Leo, an architect of the effort to strip liberal influence from the courts, politics and schools.

Maurice T. Cunningham, a now-retired associate professor of political science at the University of Massachusetts, studied the origins and connections of parents’ rights groups, finding in 2023 that the funders — a small set of billionaires and Christian nationalists — had similar goals.

The groups want “to undermine teachers unions, protect their wealthy donors from having to contribute their fair share in taxes to strengthen public schools, and provide profit opportunities through school privatization,” he concluded. The groups say they are merely trying to advocate for parents and for school choice. They didn’t discuss their relationship with donors when contacted by ProPublica.

These groups and their supporters now have access to the top levers of government, either through official roles in the agency or through the administration’s adoption of their views.

When the department created an “End DEI” portal to collect tips about diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives in schools, it quoted Moms for Liberty co-founder Tiffany Justice in the press release. She encouraged parents to “share the receipts of the betrayal that has happened in our public schools.” Moms for Liberty referred to the portal as the “culmination” of Justice’s work. (Federal judges ruled against some of the administration’s anti-DEI actions and the department took the controversial portal down in May.)

Asked what percentage of children she imagines should be in public schools going forward, Justice, who is now with The Heritage Foundation’s political advocacy arm, told ProPublica: “I hope zero. I hope to get to zero.”

She and others say most public schools don’t teach students to read, are dividing children over race and are secretly helping students to change genders — familiar claims that have been widely challenged by educators.

When Trump signed an executive order in March to dismantle the Education Department, Justice sat in the first row, as she had at McMahon’s confirmation hearing. The president praised her, along with various governors and lawmakers. “She’s been a hard worker,” he said.

Defending Education’s Nicole Neily, who was also at McMahon’s confirmation, stood next to McMahon when the secretary announced an investigation into the Maine Department of Education for keeping records from parents about student gender identity plans. Defending Education has filed civil rights complaints against colleges and school districts and has been successful in having its causes taken up by the Trump administration.

In an email, Neily told ProPublica she is proud of the work that Defending Education has done to challenge schools that have supported DEI in their curricula and have allowed students to hide their gender identity from parents. She singled out teacher unions and “radical education activists” while blaming drops in student achievement on “the education-industrial complex.”

“The sooner this stranglehold is broken, the better,” she wrote. 

McMahon’s tenure also has been marked by an embrace of religion in schools. She signaled that priority when she appointed Meg Kilgannon to a top post in her office.

Kilgannon had worked in the department as director of a faith initiative during the first Trump term and once was part of the Family Research Council, an evangelical think tank that opposes abortion and LGBTQ+ rights.

She has encouraged conservative Christians to become involved in what she’s described as “a spiritual war” over children and what they’re being taught in public schools.

Reached by phone, Kilgannon told ProPublica, “I have no comment,” and hung up.

Overhauling “Government Schools”

Betsy DeVos, the Michigan billionaire who was education secretary in Trump’s first term, cheered on July 4 this year when Congress instituted America’s first federal voucher program. It came in the form of a generous tax credit program to encourage voucher expansion at the state level. Families can start accessing the aid beginning Jan. 1, 2027.

DeVos once said she wanted “to advance God’s kingdom” through vouchers for religious schools and has funneled vast amounts of her family fortune into advocating for school choice. She called the passage of the federal measure “the turning point in ending the one-size-fits-all government school monopoly.”

An article in The Federalist, a conservative publication, boiled down the implications into one headline: “How Trump’s Big, Beautiful Bill Will Help Kids Escape Failing Government Schools.”

But school choice isn’t the only tool that Trump’s education leaders are using to target public schools. McMahon has gutted the Education Department’s civil rights division, where lawyers and other federal employees work to ensure all students can access public school, free from discrimination.

The administration rolled back protections for LGBTQ+ students and students of color, prioritized investigating discrimination against white and Jewish students, and launched aggressive investigations of states and districts that it says refused to stop accommodating transgender students.

It has rescinded official guidance that said schools had to provide language help and other services for students who are learning English, contradicting long-established federal law.

And Trump officials have repeatedly cast public schools as dangerous even as the agency canceled about $1 billion in training grants for more school mental health professionals — money that had been authorized by Congress to help prevent school shootings. The administration now says it plans to resume paying out a fraction of that funding, which would be used for school psychologists.

Over and over, the department has used the threat of pulling federal funding to force compliance with new directives and rapid shifts in policy. The department, for instance, threatened to withhold money from schools that did not verify they were ending diversity initiatives, which were designed to address inequitable treatment of Black, Native and Latino students.

In August, the department announced it was withholding millions of dollars in grants from five northern Virginia school districts that had refused the department’s demands to bar transgender students from using restrooms and locker rooms that aligned with their gender identity. The districts argued that complying would mean defying Virginia law and a 2020 federal appeals court ruling.

Nevertheless, the Education Department told the districts that until they acquiesced to the agency’s bathroom rules they would have to pay expenses up front and request reimbursement. McMahon wrote to districts that “Lindsey Burke is available to answer any questions.”

The Fairfax County Public Schools sued and in a legal filing said it faced losing $167 million this school year, money that it was relying on to provide meals to students, support programs for children with disabilities, help English-language learners and enhance teacher training. The federal department has argued that it has discretion to withhold funding and admonished the district for taking the agency to court.

In this atmosphere, public school advocates are particularly concerned about what will happen to funding for Title I grants, which is the federal government’s largest program for schools and is aimed at helping students from low-income families. In early September, House Republicans proposed slashing more than $5 billion from the $18.4 billion earmarked for Title I, putting at risk reading and math teachers, tutors and classroom technology.

At the same time, under McMahon, the Education Department is trying to redefine how states and districts can spend the money.

In three guidance letters so far this year, the agency encouraged states to divert some Title I money away from public school districts. One suggested paying for outside services, such as privatized tutoring. Another urged states to use Title I money to benefit low-achieving students who live within the boundaries of a high-poverty public school but attend private schools.

McMahon is prepared to loosen even more rules on the money. The federal dollars currently are distributed to districts using a formula. Project 2025 calls for Title I to be delivered to states as block grants, or chunks of money with few restrictions. McMahon has encouraged states to ask her to waive rules on spending the money.

Critics of this approach fear that Title I money could eventually be used in ways that undermine public schools — on private school vouchers, for example.

Public school advocates like William Phillis, a former official at the Ohio Department of Education, fear the change would devastate public schools.

“I just know any block grant or any funding that would be left up to state officials on Title I money would be misappropriated in terms of the intent,” Phillis said. “Block grants to Ohio would go to the private sector.”

A spokesperson for the Ohio Department of Education and Workforce did not respond to requests for comment.

Rainey Briggs, chief of operations for Des Moines Public Schools in Iowa, said he supports parental choice but worries that public schools will suffer financially and will not have the resources to stay up to date.

And he fears that right-wing narratives around public schools, the distrust and lack of support for highly trained district leaders — whether from some parents or politicians — could lead accomplished educators to walk away.

“Public education is irreplaceable,” he said, citing its commitment to serve every child regardless of their background or circumstance. 

Those influencing Trump’s education agenda disagree.

“If America’s public schools cease to exist tomorrow, America would be a better place,” Justice told ProPublica.

I often see stories online about ICE acting like thugs, brutalizing people; releasing tear gas at a traffic stop in a quiet neighborhood; storming an apartment building at 1 a.m., sending everyone into the street, zip-tying the children together; ICE smashing car windows and dragging out the occupants; ICE agents beating up women, throwing them to the floor; ICE detaining people who then disappear.

This is another example of ICE acting as Trump’s Gestapo. George Reyes is an American citizen and a veteran. He was arrested by ICE and held incommunicado for three days. His story appears on a blog called Home of the Brave.

He wrote:

By George Retes

Civil rights in America have always been about one thing: holding power accountable when it strips people of their dignity and freedom. They are not privileges that government agents get to decide whether to honor. What happened to me wasn’t just a mistake—it was a violation of the very protections that our Constitution guarantees.

On July 10, I was on my way to work when ICE agents engulfed my car in tear gas, smashed my driver-side window, and pepper-sprayed my face. They dragged me out, threw me to the ground, and even while I was complying, one agent kneeled on my neck and another kneeled on my back as others stood by and watched.

I spent three nights and three days in federal custody. During that time, I was never told what I was charged with, was not allowed to shower despite being covered in tear gas and pepper spray, had no phone call to my family, and no access to an attorney. I was placed on suicide watch and missed my daughter’s third birthday. No explanation. No charges. No apology. One day, I was just told, “you’re free to go.”

For me as a veteran, this is more than just a personal injustice—it’s a constitutional affront. We are taught that America stands apart because of its rule of law and protection of rights. If the government can strip those rights from us without consequence, it undermines the very system we claim makes our country stand apart.

As of now, I have submitted claims under the Federal Tort Claims Act (FTCA) to federal agencies related to my wrongful detention by federal officers. These claims describe my unlawful detention, including the officers’ use of excessive force, the denial of a hearing with a judge, the denial of access to legal counsel and any other contact with the outside world, and the denial of basic necessities.

While the claims are under review by the relevant federal authorities, I am continuing to speak out. I do it for two reasons. First, because I believe that Americans of all ideological stripes would agree that the government can’t just make people disappear without any process or explanation. Second, because I want to give the government a chance to admit that they were wrong.

So far the government has not done so. Instead, in response to an op-ed I published in the San Francisco Chronicle, DHS claimed that during the July 10 operation in Camarillo, CA, I “became violent and refused to comply with law enforcement,” blocked their route, and was arrested for assault. They stated that US citizens are not being “wrongfully” arrested by ICE, that their enforcement operations are highly targeted, and that their personnel conduct due diligence to know who they are targeting. DHS also framed criticisms of the operation as “smears” against ICE officers, alleging such claims have contributed to an increase in assaults on law enforcement.

DHS’s statement ignores reality and is designed to demonize and villainize people who don’t let the government trample over their rights, and aren’t afraid to speak the truth. First, I was not violent, I simply asked the officers to let me pass through because I needed to get to work; and I also complied with ICE’s demands by backing up my car. Second, the statement ignores the three days I spent in federal custody with no charges, no phone call to my family, no access to a judge or an attorney, no shower, and no explanation for their actions. It is deeply troubling that a government agency would publicly deny these facts while portraying my experience as a threat or attack on officers. The truth is that I am a US citizen and a veteran, and I will continue to pursue accountability for the rights that were violated that day.

This fight is not just about my case—it’s about ensuring that there is recourse when people are silenced, detained, or dehumanized by the very government meant to protect us. The legal system must allow accountability when government agencies overstep their authority.

Incidents like this are proof that civil rights protections in America are only as strong as our willingness to enforce them. What happens when government agencies act as though the Constitution doesn’t apply to them? Agencies like ICE cannot be allowed to operate in the shadows, unchecked and unaccountable. Civil rights mean nothing if those in power face no consequences for violating them. Accountability is the only way forward.

George Retes is a US citizen and Army veteran who served in Iraq and was jailed by ICE and held for three days without an explanation.