Under the newly minted Trump administration, the U.S. Department of Education has announced nearly $1 billion in cuts to programs that fund critical race theory and diversity, equity and inclusion programs and narratives.
The cuts include “$600 million in grants to institutions and nonprofits that were using taxpayer funds to train teachers and education agencies on divisive ideologies” and “$350 million in woke spending,” as The College Fix reported Wednesday.
Education activist and watchdog Christopher Rufo, in a Substack piece headlined “How DOGE could take down the Department of Education,” expanded on some of what those taxpayer dollars were funding, exactly:
Last week, I had a front-row seat to this process. I released material from an ongoing investigation into ideological corruption at the Department of Education and its sprawling NGO network. This material painted a damning picture of the department’s reigning ideologies. In one video, a Department of Education-funded NGO argued that public-school educators should destigmatize child “sex work,” especially for “queer and trans people of color” and “LGBTQ+ youth.” In another, activists with a Department of Education-affiliated NGO claimed that babies develop racial biases and begin “attributing negative traits” to nonwhite races by age five. And finally, I published a clip from an NGO that had received an $8 million grant to promote the idea that America is a “racialized structure of power, privilege, [and] oppression.”
For close observers of the education world, none of this came as a surprise. But with President Trump in office, an opportunity now exists for reform. Hours after I posted this material, the Department of Education announced that it had canceled the grants, totaling $350 million, for the Equity Assistance Centers and Regional Education Laboratories that had been organizing such trainings. “So many situations like this,” pronounced Musk on X, adding, “funding for racist baby training is canceled.”
The Department of Education funded this training program for teachers, which claims that babies develop racial biases as infants and begin “attributing negative traits to non-dominant (non-white) races” by age 5.
They want you to believe that babies are racist. pic.twitter.com/H05pMDVOoN
— Christopher F. Rufo
(@realchrisrufo) February 14, 2025
Rufo goes on to argue this could be the tip of the iceberg in the ultimate collapsing of the Education Department’s leftwing ideology machine:
These initial strikes at the Department of Education could be the opening for a broader fight. The public can now see that the department functions, in part, as a patronage scheme for left-wing ideologies. It oversees a massive budget, which it then disperses to universities, schools, and NGOs that, for the most part, advance a monolithic left-wing line. The question is how far DOGE can go in dismantling it.
Though some of the department’s programs are almost certain to continue—such as federal student aid and specialized K-12 funding—DOGE could feasibly cut billions more in spending and set the stage for Congress to abolish the department altogether. These targeted missions will, in theory, create permission for larger actions in the future.
The College Fix, in a piece Wednesday, echoed similar sentiments.
“Average Americans do not think in large, abstract terms like think tank wonks and magazine essayists. Rather, they think about the silliness of government spending, like $70,000 on a DEI music festival in Ireland,” Associate Editor Matt Lamb wrote.
“Trump and Musk understand storytelling and how to push a broader agenda through soundbites and anecdotes. Their critics fail to grasp this, which is why they remain without influence while the second Trump term continues to steamroll through the D.C. establishment.”
MORE: Goodbye Atticus Finch, hello ‘Antiracist Baby.’ #DisruptTexts is coming to a classroom near you.
IMAGE: Antiracist Baby / Ibram Kendi
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