US President Donald Trump talks to the press as he departs the South Garden of the White Home for the U.S. Open, in Washington, U.S., September 7, 2025.
REUTERS/Annabelle Gordon
The Trump administration stated it would strip tens of thousands and thousands in federal training funding from New York Metropolis and different cities throughout the nation after these faculty districts failed to satisfy the president’s Sept. 23 deadline to scrap insurance policies defending transgender people.
In New York Metropolis alone, the administration is cancelling about $36 million in whole funding for Magnet Faculties Help Program funding, which covers specialised curricula, educator skilled improvement, afterschool studying, and summer time studying. The funding cuts embrace roughly $15 million for subsequent 12 months, in line with the US Training Division. The administration can be pulling funding from Chicago, Illinois, and Fairfax, Virginia, for a similar cause.
The funding cuts signify the newest instance of the Trump administration’s full-court press in opposition to transgender rights since returning to the White Home in January.
The administration’s announcement comes every week after Craig W. Trainor, who serves because the appearing assistant secretary for civil rights within the US Training Division, delivered a letter to metropolis officers claiming that New York Metropolis was out of compliance with the president’s interpretation of Title IX, the federal civil rights regulation carried out in 1972, and warning that funding can be slashed if trans-inclusive insurance policies weren’t nixed — together with insurance policies defending the suitable of student-athletes to play sports activities and use loos and different services in accordance with their gender id.
The Trump administration’s letter appeared to intentionally misgender college students and advance false accusations about inclusive lavatory insurance policies in New York, the place each metropolis and state legal guidelines shield people’ proper to make use of loos in accordance with their gender id. The town’s inclusive lavatory coverage, Trainor wrote within the letter, “means that male students who identify as female or transgender are given unqualified access to female intimate spaces,” in line with the New York Instances.
Within the days following the Trump administration’s letter, Mayor Eric Adams drew widespread outrage when he criticized town’s inclusive lavatory insurance policies and acknowledged that he would evaluate his energy to alter the legal guidelines, although he conceded on Sept. 22 that he lacks the ability to change the coverage on his personal.
A spokesperson for New York Metropolis Faculties stated town unsuccessfully sought to place off the funding cuts.
The Trump administration’s funding cuts additionally drew criticism from civil rights teams.
“Trump’s decision to rip millions of dollars from the nation’s largest public school system and bully New York City’s most vulnerable students is a sick move that will hurt thousands of young people across all five boroughs,” Johanna Miller, the director of the Training Coverage Heart on the New York Civil Liberties Union, stated in a written assertion. “The Trump regime’s transphobic agenda has no place in our city’s schools.”
Miller added: “Let’s be clear: New York City’s public schools welcome every student, local law and regulations protect public school students’ right to use restrooms consistent with their gender identity, and the Trump administration cannot rescind these funds to force its ideology on New Yorkers.”
Manhattan Borough President Mark Levine, who’s the Democratic nominee for metropolis comptroller, wrote a letter to Mayor Eric Adams and others urging town to stay defiant within the face of threats from Washington.
“As this fight continues, I call on the [Department of Education] and the Panel for Educational Policy to remain steadfast in their defense of trans and gender-expansive students,” Levine wrote. “Their right to participate fully and safely in school life is non-negotiable, and New York City must send a clear message that we will not sacrifice equality and inclusion in exchange for federal dollars.”
As for Adams’ latest criticism of inclusive lavatory insurance policies, Levine stated the “mayor must cease using rhetoric that undermines our city’s values of inclusion and identify prospective emergency funds for any school that has grant dollars illegally revoked.”
