PROVIDENCE, R.I.—To union cheers, all Democratic Attorneys General from 22 states and D.C., plus the Democratic governors of Kentucky and Pennsylvania, sued President Donald Trump and two of his top officials to get $6.89 billion in federal education grant money due nationwide on July 1. One of the two officials later relented on $1.3 billion in grants for after-school programs.
The School Administrators (AFSA) and the National Education Association (NEA), lauded the suit, filed late on July 15 in federal court in Rhode Island. It’s one of the latest in a carload of lawsuits against the GOP regime. The unions bluntly said yanking the money will hurt the kids.
And the Teachers/AFT made the same point in their own later lawsuit, filed with school districts on their side, in another federal court. The first school district on that suit’s list is in Anchorage, Alaska.
NEA, the nation’s largest union, warned the cutoffs will “cause chaos in the schools,” including potential cuts in teachers’ pay, and definitely cuts that would hurt students.
“These billions of dollars would be used for curriculum, technology, and other critical services,” NEA added. “Loss of these funds affects thousands of school districts and every state in the nation.”
If the school districts don’t get the money soon, they’ll have to cut teachers’ pay, “reading and math supports, summer and after-school programs, and support for migrant students and English learners. Educators will face layoffs leading to significantly larger class sizes.”
“The department is taking a first step toward ‘impoundment,’ the illegal withholding of money appropriated by Congress to fund federal programs and activities,” NEA added.
AFSA said just the looming prospect of the cuts is already hurting schools, and will hurt kids through “immediate and widespread disruptions in school systems across the country—-putting essential programs, staffing, and ultimately, student success at serious risk.”
With school districts “finalizing their spending plans” and teachers and schools preparing for the kids’ return as early as mid-August, “This abrupt and unexplained funding delay has thrown those preparations and their budgets into disarray.
“Districts are being forced to slash programs, freeze contracts, and halt hiring. School leaders now face the impossible task of opening schools without knowing whether the federal funds they relied on will arrive—-or when.”
The halt in the grants causes chaos in local schools, the suit says. It also violates federal law, regular procedures for determining how to grant and withhold funds, and the U.S. Constitution’s “power of the purse.” The nation’s basic charter gives authority over money to the Congress, not the president.
But Trump, his Office of Management and Budget Director Russell Vought, and his Education Secretary Linda McMahon all said “no” and yanked the funds via a 3-sentence e-mail from Vought to every state and school district on June 30. Just after the suit was filed in U.S. District Court in Rhode Island on July 15, McMahon let about 20% of the money, for after-school programs, loose.
“We have to constantly go to court and sue them and sue them and sue them to get the money you’ve already appropriated,” Teachers/AFT President Randi Weingarten told Democratic senators at an informal roundtable on July 24. Her union filed its own separate suit, joining school districts all the way up to Anchorage, Alaska, days after the Rhode Island lawsuit.
They don’t see this
But the ruling Republicans “don’t see this. They should be meeting in our schools and with our students, not making them hungrier, sicker and poorer!… How dare they! How dare they!” she exclaimed, banging her fist on the witness table.
Though the Rhode Island lawsuit doesn’t say so, the Trump-Vought-McMahon action is part of Trump’s campaign to dismantle the Education Department. The department is a favorite target of Trump, who calls its staff “radical leftists.” McMahon fired half of them early this year.
And Trump’s MAGA legions hate public schools, their teachers and their unions. Schoolteachers teach children how to think for themselves, rather than accept dogma, religious, parental, political or otherwise. Some schools also teach complex and un-whitewashed U.S. history, also angering Trump, MAGAites and their white nationalist legions.
“On the evening of June 30, 2025, ED [the Education Department] sent an e-mail to the states, stating funds for the impacted programs were being withheld for a ‘review’ of the programs’ consistency with, among other things, the ‘president’s priorities.’ The decision not to make funds…available on July 1 is contrary to law, arbitrary and capricious, and unconstitutional,” the lawsuit, led by Massachusetts, says.
“States have relied upon these funds to fulfill the critical role of educating their population, including K-12 students. As Congress intended, the states have this funding to carry out specific programs” which federal law requires them “to support financially.” The states get the money through a formula based on student population, not on congressional whim.
“School districts have had to lay off staff and terminate contracts. The Education Department offered no rationale,” NEA Vice President Princess Moss, an elementary school music teacher from rural Southside Virginia added at the informal session with the Senate Democrats.
“They’ve shown their priorities,” Moss said of the GOP. “And it’s for the billionaires, not for the folks in this room”—which was jammed with teachers who came to D.C. for a conference and to lobby—“or for the families I represent.”
Congress determined the overall total, $6.89 billion, for this budget year, which ends September 30, but programs are funded a year in advance so the grants would be for the new school year. The suit does not mention the fate of those same programs next fiscal year. These grants are separate from the Education Department’s top program. That Title I money aids public schools with high proportions of students from low-income families. It faces an 80% cut next fiscal year
Besides the other grants the Education Department yanked, funds were cut off for teaching English as a second language, for teaching children of migratory workers, for extracurricular programs, mental health programs, reading programs, teaching civics, for community learning centers, to improve school conditions and $2.19 billion to help school districts train teachers in effective classroom instruction—a particular cause for AFSA.
Trump, Education Secretary Linda McMahon—a GOP donor and former head of World Wrestling Entertainment—and Office of Management and Budget Chief Vought “engaged in this conduct without any statutory or constitutional authority. Congress designed each of the impacted programs as a formula grant, meaning defendants are ‘obliged to distribute funds pursuant to a statutory formula’ set by Congress.”
An NEA chart shows California schools would be the biggest losers, at $928 million—no great surprise as the state is home to one of every eight people in the U.S. Next are Texas ($738.5 million), New York ($464 million), Florida ($398 million) and Illinois ($243.2 million). Ironically, while the “blue” states sue for the grants, “red” and “purple” states Trump won would get 55% of the grant money.
CONTRIBUTOR
