Trump threatens funding for schools that accommodate transgender children
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President Trump on Wednesday issued an executive order that threatens to cut federal funding for K-12 schools that it claims "indoctrinate" students with teachings related to race and gender.
The big picture: Trump's repeated threat to defund schools accused of teaching critical race theory and that accommodate transgender students has become part of a rallying call for the right in a culture war over what children should be exposed to.
Driving the news: "Imprinting anti-American, subversive, harmful, and false ideologies on our Nation's children not only violates longstanding anti-discrimination civil rights law in many cases, but usurps basic parental authority," the order states.
- It also alleges that demanding acceptance of concepts like white privilege or unconscious bias "actually promotes racial discrimination and undermines national unity."
Zoom in: The secretaries of Education and Defense are tasked with creating a plan for ending "indoctrination in K-12 education" within 90 days.
- The executive order demands the strategy, among other things, eliminates federal funding or support for "illegal and discriminatory treatment and indoctrination" in schools, "including based on gender ideology and discriminatory equity ideology."
- The order is to be enforced by the attorney general through state attorneys general and local district attorneys.
- Trump also reinstated the 1776 Commission, which he created in his first term, "to promote patriotic education."
Zoom out: A day earlier, Trump signed another executive order attempting to ban federal funding or support for youth gender-affirming care — part of the administration's series of attacks against transgender people in the U.S.
Go deeper: Trump signs executive order to defund youth gender-affirming care
