President Donald Trump, who once called himself the “father of the vaccine” for COVID-19, is on the warpath against any organization mandating that anyone receive it.
Executive Order 14184 (Jan. 27), “Reinstating Service Members Discharged Under the Military’s COVID–19 Vaccination Mandate,” makes reinstatement with rank and back pay available for those who “the military unjustly discharged” for refusing the vaccine.
The U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) agency, part of the Department of Homeland Security, ended former president Joe Biden’s requirement that green card applicants prove they were vaccinated.
And, most recently, there is Executive Order 14214 (Feb. 15), “Keeping Education Accessible and Ending COVID-19 Vaccine Mandates in Schools.” It laments that “some school districts and universities continue to coerce children and young adults into taking the COVID-19 vaccine by conditioning their education on it.” Consequently, the order says,
it is the policy of my Administration that discretionary Federal funds should not be used to directly or indirectly support or subsidize an educational service agency, State educational agency, local educational agency, elementary school, secondary school, or institution of higher education that requires students to have received a COVID-19 vaccination to attend any in-person education program.
The secretary of education, it continued,
shall as soon as practicable issue guidelines to elementary schools, local educational agencies, State educational agencies, secondary schools, and institutions of higher education regarding those entities’ legal obligations with respect to parental authority, religious freedom, disability accommodations, and equal protection under law, as relevant to coercive COVID-19 school mandates.
Within 90 days, the secretary of education shall also provide “a plan to end coercive COVID-19 school mandates” that includes a list of federal grants and contracts provided to schools that are noncompliant as well as each executive department or agency’s process for “preventing Federal funds from being provided to, and rescinding Federal funds from, elementary schools, local educational agencies, State educational agencies, secondary schools, and institutions of higher education that are non-compliant.”
This is the third Trump executive order that relates to the withholding of federal education funds from schools. The first was Executive Order 14190 (Jan. 29), “Ending Radical Indoctrination in K-12 Schooling.” It eliminates federal funding for K-12 schools that teach any material considered anti-American, unpatriotic, or that promotes “gender ideology” or “discriminatory equity ideology,” which is also known as diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI). The second was Executive Order 14201 (Feb. 5), “Keeping Men out of Women’s Sports.” It rescinds “all funds from educational programs that deprive women and girls of fair athletic opportunities, which results in the endangerment, humiliation, and silencing of women and girls and deprives them of privacy” because it shall “be the policy of the United States to oppose male competitive participation in women’s sports more broadly, as a matter of safety, fairness, dignity, and truth.”
According to the Epoch Times, “The five largest U.S. public school districts stand to lose more than $5 billion in federal funds per year if they refuse to comply with President Donald Trump’s executive order.” And according to Jonathan Butcher, senior research fellow for education policy at the Heritage Foundation, “many large school districts spend upward of $75,000 for one-day faculty DEI training sessions that guide establishing ‘mandatory affinity groups’ based on race or ethnicity.”
Although it is good that schools will lose their federal funding if they have vaccine or mask mandates or promote gender ideology or DEI, no school should receive federal funds for any reason. This includes even the most patriotic, America First, MAGA school that recognizes only two genders, keeps biological males out of women’s sports, and doesn’t grant anyone special privileges on account of their race.
An article in The New Yorker a few years ago argued that education was a constitutional right. But what sayeth the Constitution?
The Constitution, in fact, nowhere authorizes the federal government to spend one penny on education. In fact, the words education, teacher, teaching, college, university, or school do not even appear in the Constitution.
This means no federal student loans, grants, mandates, standards, accreditation, initiatives, vouchers, school breakfast or lunch programs, and certainly no federal Department of Education.
The United States was set up as a federal system of government under which the states, through the Constitution, granted a limited number of powers to a central government. As James Madison succinctly explained in Federalist No. 45: “The powers delegated by the proposed Constitution to the Federal Government, are few and defined. Those which are to remain in the State Governments are numerous and indefinite.” The Constitution doesn’t grant rights; the Constitution guarantees rights. It specifically guarantees certain natural rights, and the right to an education — like the rights to housing, clothing, and food — is not one of them.
Education is simply not the concern of the federal government. Members of Congress, the president, the Supreme Court, law professors, college and university administrators, K-12 principals and teachers, and parents may want the federal government to have some role in education, but that doesn’t override the fact that the Constitution nowhere authorizes the federal government to have anything to do with education.
Every state constitution has a provision for state and local schools, colleges, and universities. All government funding for education and educational institutions — if there is to be government funding of these things — should come from state and local sources and never from the federal government.
Schools that allow biological males to play on women’s sports teams, institute vaccine or mask mandates, or promote gender ideology or DEI should not receive federal funds for the simple reason that no school should receive federal funds.
