Trump Has Found A Way To Punish Blue States — And Kids Are In The Crosshairs

Since President Donald Trump went back to the White House in January, his administration has been on a frenzied and haphazard tour gutting existing government agencies, flouting norms and attempting to force conservative values across the government. Much of this effort has, ostensibly, been laser-focused on ending or curtailing diversity, equity and inclusion efforts.

So it may seem discordant that the administration also has announced investigations into several school systems for allegedly violating federal laws surrounding student civil rights, threatening to pull their federal funding if they don’t comply.

Until, that is, you realize the schools are mostly in blue states. And the allegations all have to do with questionable claims about transgender kids.

“They’re using schools and education as a big battleground for their culture wars,” Will Ragland, a researcher at the left-leaning think tank Center for American Progress, told HuffPost.

Throughout his campaign and the early days of his second term, the president has claimed that American schools are failing because the Department of Education is pushing so-called radical left-wing ideas such as teaching about the history of racism in the U.S. or reading books with LGBTQ+ themes. It’s a common talking point in conservative circles, despite the fact that the agency does not set curriculum.

In a 2023 campaign video, Trump pledged that if he was re-elected he’d end the real problem once and for all: federal oversight.

“We’re going to end education coming out of Washington, D.C. We’re going to close it up — all those buildings all over the place and people that in many cases hate our children. We’re going to send it all back to the states,” he said.

And after he won the 2024 election, Trump blamed a decline in education quality on the federal government, saying the Department of Education is a “big con job.”

However, the Department of Education doesn’t actually handle what’s taught in schools. It mostly provides funding for low-income schools, recourse for students who believe their civil rights have been violated or oversees the implementation of laws that ensure kids with disabilities have equal access to education. It turns out that “sending education back to the states” really means turning the screws on public school educators and students who don’t toe the line on the conservative playbook.

What that looks like in practice can be multifold: For example, promoting voucher schemes that take public money and give it to parents to subsidize private school tuition or threatening educators who dare teach their students about progressive ideals. But the tactic that has been moving fastest is the move to single out, and punish, blue state school districts under the guise of protecting civil rights.

It’s the biggest indication that the claim they’re “sending education back to the states” is just rhetorical sleight-of-hand. And it’s real kids who will suffer the likely consequences.

Kids In The Political Crosshairs

Typically, the agency’s Office of Civil Rights receives complaints from parents and then opens up an investigation. But in many of the new investigations the agency has announced, it appears that the administration is targeting them before receiving a complaint.

And in line with the administration’s overall anti-trans agenda — which also has sought to ban access to gender-affirming care for youths, kick trans service members out of the military and recognize only two genders — trans students again are emerging as the scapegoat.

At a White House event last month,Trump threatened to withhold Maine’s federal funding over the state’s transgender athlete policies, to which the state’s Democratic Gov. Janet Mills simply responded with “See you in court.” Then the administration opened up an investigation. The Department of Education announced the next day that the state’s schools were under investigation because they were allowing trans kids to play on sports teams that match their gender identity.

In another February press release, the agency said California and Minnesota schools’ athletic associations would be investigated for saying they would continue to allow transgender athletes to play sports. Both states have laws on the books that allow trans students to play on sports teams that match their identity. In Washington and Oregon, school districts were singled out for investigations for allowing transgender athletes to participate in sports.

The Department of Education also announced on Thursday that it was investigating several unnamed California and Maine school districts for allegedly “socially transitioning” children without parental consent. The conspiracy theory that schools were providing gender reassignment, including surgery, took hold among the right after Trump heard the baseless rumor at the Moms for Liberty summit last year.

“Can you imagine you’re a parent and your son leaves the house and you say, ‘Jimmy, I love you so much, go have a good day in school,’ and your son comes back with a brutal operation?” he said at a campaign rally in Wisconsin last year.

And the Trump administration opened up yet another investigation into Portland Public Schools this week, saying the participation of a transgender athlete in a high school track meet was a violation of federal law.

There, the federal government has singled out a specific transgender athlete, who made headlines last year after excelling in a track meet. Right-wing media published her name, and as a result the kid, and the high school she attends, was on the receiving end of an online harassment campaign.

“We will use all lawful means to protect girls and female athletics and put an end to the gender insanity,” Secretary of Education Linda McMahon posted on social media. She accompanied the post with a screenshot of a Fox News headline about the trans student and a link to the press release about the investigation.

Superintendent of Portland Public Schools Kimberlee Armstrong said she was complying with the investigation but also with Oregon law, which allows transgender athletes to compete in sports that match their gender identity. “I stand firm in our legal responsibilities, and I deeply value every student’s right to be treated with dignity, safety, and respect,” she told NBC News.

The Oregon Department of Education’s guidance for school policies for LGTBQ+ students says that all students are entitled to feel safe and welcome at school, among other things.

“That guidance is really just about ensuring that LGBTQ+ students’ civil rights that they already have are protected at schools,” Blair Stenvick, the communications manager for Basic Rights Oregon, told HuffPost. The group was instrumental in helping the state’s education department put the guidance together. “In Oregon, they have the right to use the correct facilities and use the right pronouns.”

The Real Agenda

If Trump and his cronies truly believe the problem with education in this country is too much federal involvement, why is his administration using its vast powers to attack and threaten state school policies? The answer is obvious.

Part of it is a continuation of a long-standing hostility to educational policies, particularly at the federal level. Republicans have been complaining about the Department of Education since it first began operating in 1980, saying the federal government shouldn’t be involved in schools. But with the ongoing conservative backlash to the coronavirus-related school closures and racial justice protests of 2020, the agency has become a popular boogeyman for the GOP, who continue to hammer the rhetorical line that schools are “indoctrinating” kids into liberal ideologies. And with the new Trump administration’s autocratic philosophy, conservatives have a chance to get rid of the department for real — in fact, the administration is moving to dismantle it now.

But by dismantling federal oversight, Trump isn’t simply moving educational decision-making closer to home. He’s also removing many of the protections that prevent students and their education from being used as political gambling chips.

The focus of the investigations reveals that the Trump administration clearly thinks the federal government should still play a role in education — just in a completely different way. While the states and school districts whose decisions he likes are allowed to continue unimpeded, the ones he doesn’t, or whose decisions contradict his agenda, are certainly subject to federal oversight, threats and pressure campaigns.

Those campaigns, backed by the power of the federal government, serve multiple facets of the overall Trump agenda. The focus on state-level school policies gives him a way to single out for punishment the blue states that might oppose his actions, while not forcing his hand with red states that would support them. The focus on transgender students props up the conservative culture war claim that transgender people are predators and a threat to children, which appeals to Trump’s ultra-conservative base. And the allegations of civil rights violations gives the administration a way to reframe the traditional understanding of who needs these protections away from historically marginalized groups, at the same time as it works to cut the institutions that provide civil rights defenses.

It’s unclear how the threats will play out, or if the agency will really revoke federal funding from schools who continue to have trans-inclusive policies. It’s also worth noting that the Office of Civil Rights was gutted in mass firings that took place earlier this month. Who exactly will be handling these investigations?

But Stenvick says even the threats can impact students. “Even if nothing comes from this investigation in Portland, it does have a chilling effect.”

The message from the Trump administration is clear: State’s rights for some, federal government oversight for everyone else.