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President Donald Trump signed yet another executive order on Wednesday attacking trans people and anti-racist education, the latest development in the new administration’s “anti-woke” agenda.
The latest order, titled “Ending Radical Indoctrination in K-12 Schooling,” generally accuses public schools of having introduced “radical, anti-American ideologies” into the classroom. Specifically, Trump’s order takes aim at racial justice education and policies that affirm a trans student’s gender, which it calls “discriminatory equity ideology” and “gender ideology” respectively. Repeating false and misleading claims Trump previously made on the campaign trail, the order asserts that students are “compelled” by their teachers “to adopt identities as either victims or oppressors” based on race, and “made to question whether they were born in the wrong body and whether to view their parents [...] as enemies to be blamed.”
The order’s primary effect is to require the Departments of Education, Defense, and Health and Human Services to submit an “Ending Indoctrination Strategy” within 90 days. That plan will identify all federal funding streams that “support or subsidize [...] gender ideology or discriminatory equity ideology.” Part of the “strategy” will specifically deal with the social transitions of trans youth — as opposed to medical transitions, which Trump is seeking to outlaw via another executive order. Trump’s order calls on the Attorney General to work with state governments in pursuing legal action against schools and educators who assist students with social transitioning in some way, whether through counseling, affirming their name and/or pronouns, or allowing them to use school facilities consistent with their gender.
Trump’s latest order also lays out disturbing, propagandistic rhetoric about Trump’s intent for the public education system as a whole: because racially conscious education “undermines national unity,” Trump claims, schools should instead promote a “patriotic education,” defined in the order as instruction that provides a “unifying, inspiring, and ennobling characterization” of the United States and its history. Schools should note how the U.S. has “admirably grown closer to its noble principles” over time, and tell students that “celebration of America’s greatness and history is proper.” (Trump’s nominee for Secretary of Education, anti-trans WWE co-founder Linda McMahon, has not yet been scheduled for a confirmation hearing as of Thursday; Trump has also vowed to eliminate the department entirely.)
Separately, Trump also signed another executive order Wednesday seeking to expand “school choice” — in other words, parents’ access to “private and faith-based” schools, a major priority for Trump’s allies like Chris Rufo and Corey DeAngelis. “It is the policy of my Administration to support parents in choosing and directing the upbringing and education of their children,” Trump declared in that order.
Trey Walk, a researcher at Human Rights Watch, told CBS News that K-12 students “have a right to learn about how discrimination can be entrenched in law and society. If the U.S. denies young people this knowledge, it has little hope of eradicating racism.” In an emailed statement Thursday morning, New York-based LGBTQ+ advocacy group The NEW Pride Agenda condemned the order as a “direct and dangerous assault on transgender and gender nonconforming (TGNC) youth, educators, and the broader LGBTQIA+ community.”
“Let us be clear: these unconstitutional attempts to tie federal funding to the suppression of bodily autonomy and privacy violate fundamental rights — and they will not stand. These attacks may begin with those at the margins, but their harm extends to us all,” organizers wrote, calling on New York officials to “fully implement” the state’s LGBTQ+ protective “shield laws.”
The National Education Association (NEA) also denounced the order in a press release issued Wednesday, calling it “dangerous” to education. NEA President Becky Pringle accused Trump of “shamelessly trying to restrict the freedom of educators to teach and students to learn,” adding that the “unnecessary and punitive executive order does nothing to help educators inspire their students to learn and to give them the resources needed to succeed.”
That Trump would tie anti-racism and trans identity so closely together in the same executive order is no accident. Far-right ideologues have for years sought to suppress both racial consciousness and gender fluidity, in the name of a radical natalist ideology that highly values white, gender-conforming children.
“When you put together all the moves this week, trans and DEI and immigration, they can seem to be disparate, but what I think they all have in common is ‘Great Replacement’ theory,” trans journalist Imara Jones told MSNBC’s Ayman Mohyeldin on Wednesday, referring to the conspiracy theory that white people are being globally “replaced” by other demographics. “If you are going to enforce patriarchy, then eliminating the idea of trans people is essential,” Jones continued, adding, “This is really about the health of our democracy and whether we include people or not.”
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