In 2025, the Trump administration put through an education budget that slashed the living daylights out of education. Some cuts were sneaky, combining various items into one item that was to be funded by less than the combined total of the previous separate items. Others were just axed entirely.
The cut programs included some teacher preparation items, like the teacher-supporting grant programs like the Supporting Effective Educator Development (SEED) program and teacher and school leader incentive grants. The explanation offered in the Department of Education's budget request was "Elimination of this program is part of the Administration’s overall effort to restore fiscal discipline and reduce the Federal role in education." The other explanation was that these programs had too much DEI, focusing too much on "divisive ideologies," one of the great bullshit phrases of this administration. Divisive how? Dividing what from what? Because I'm pretty sure Dear Leader has some pretty divisive ideas of his own.
But last week, the legal challenge to the cuts from eight states finally received a ruling from US District Judge Angel Kelley, who said the cuts were “arbitrary and capricious." Says the judge, the administration can't even define DEI.
“Rather than confining the Directive to actions that are traditionally understood to constitute discrimination, the record instead reflects that Defendants terminated grants with topics such as ‘acknowledging … racism’ and ‘anti-racism’—activities expressly undertaken to oppose discrimination,” Kelley wrote.
In other words, she rejected the administration's bizarro-world position that the real discrimination happening in this country is against white guys, and any policy that centers some other group is discriminatory and illegal.
Savannah Newhouse, press secretary for the Education Department, said, “Taxpayer dollars should support preparing teachers for meaningful student learning, expanding the pipeline of high-quality teachers, and retaining top talent — not funding divisive ideology or racial preferences.”
The lawsuit had previously been before a different judge who called to stop the cuts, but the Supreme Court, in one of their special We Don't Have To Explain Ourselves rulings, lifted the injunction.
Kelley's ruling is only one step in a longer journey, as the states will have to take a lawsuit to the Court of Federal Claims if they want to recover any of the money that the feds cut. So good luck with that. Will it affect next year's budget? Stay tuned.
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