Federal disbursements identified by the Washington Examiner occurred under both the Biden administration and the first Trump administration. Trump’s Office of Management and Budget, however, recently ordered a freeze of all federal grants shortly after the president took office, partially to rein in government DEI spending.

“The American people sent a clear message to Congress in November — they are tired of excessive government spending and woke policies,” a spokesperson for the House Education and Workforce Committee told the Washington Examiner. “Chairman [Rep. Tim] Walberg is prepared to work with the Trump administration to hold agencies accountable and save taxpayer dollars.”

The spokesperson accused the Biden administration of “telling students what to think rather than how to think” and argued that DEI has led to “bloated education budgets.”

Trump’s freeze has since been halted pending litigation. As lawyers take to the courts to hash out the legality of the administration’s maneuvers, the Department of Education is poised to continue pouring taxpayer dollars into programs aimed at integrating DEI into public school districts.

Just days before Trump was set to take office, for instance, the Biden administration crammed through $75 million in funding for the “Supporting Effective Educator Development” grant program. The program makes federal funds available to eligible nonprofit groups to increase “educator diversity” and to support an existing “diverse educator workforce.”

Some ongoing DEI programs funded by the federal government have explicit racial quotas baked into them. “From the Margins to the Center,” a diversity initiative that will cost taxpayers an estimated $14.3 million as it stretches into late 2025, requires that at least 50% of teachers who receive specialized training and certifications through the program be racial minorities. It is “critical” to student success that they learn from “teachers of color,” according to the grant’s description. 

“Americans should never again see their taxes go to outrageous grants that promote the illegal and divisive DEI agenda,” Heritage Action executive vice president Ryan Walker told the Washington Examiner. “The Department of Education’s DEI grant programs encourage these unconstitutional practices and remove education from the department’s central focus. Now is the time for Congress to help the Trump administration dismantle DEI and work toward quality education across the United States.”

While Trump’s grantmaking freeze faces legal scrutiny, the president is mulling an alternative approach to bring the Department of Education under control.

“I told Linda I hope you do a great job and put yourself out of a job,” the president said of education nominee Linda McMahon on Tuesday, corroborating earlier reports that he was mulling an executive order to shutter the agency. “I want the states to run schools, and I want Linda to put herself out of a job.”

Legal experts, among them some conservatives, express doubt that Trump could unilaterally dissolve the department, noting that the executive branch still has to spend appropriations approved by the legislature.

Several of the ongoing grant programs contain explicitly ideological language.

“We write this grant guided by the current context in which we find ourselves — a world struggling to make sense of the horrific impacts of racism and violence on our collective humanity” the description of one such grant reads. “We understand these impacts as directly related to racist, oppressive institutional structures, including an educational system that does not provide equitable access to quality teachers and schooling.”

The federally funded program, which spans from the first Trump administration to the present and has soaked up over $25 million in taxpayer funding, provides financial support to educational institutions and nonprofit organizations in the Republican-led state of Georgia to “recruit, support, and retain” teachers with black educators being given prioritized access to resources. More nonwhite teachers, per the grant description, “are critical to this moment of/movement toward education for liberation for all.”

“The Georgia grant seems to contradict itself,” Capital Research Center communications director Sarah Lee told the Washington Examiner. “It says it wants excellence in teachers – presumably so students will have excellence in education — but wants to apply a quota in which minority status is the barometer, not excellence. So which is it? If you exclude people based on immutable characteristics, you may necessarily exclude really wonderful teachers, which would seem to run counter to the explicit proposal.”

Education officials in other red states also accepted funds from the department to pay for programs that gave special perks to racial minorities. Level Up Virginia, a program led by the state Department of Education, has a $14 million stream of federal grant funding and focuses on increasing college access for “Black and Latinx students” as well as other “historically underrepresented and marginalized student groups.” In South Carolina, meanwhile, the Department of Education set aside $6 million to increase the racial diversity of teachers in the state.

While Trump is angling to cut federal DEI spending now, Trump’s first Department of Education approved multiple racially charged grants. Roughly $5.7 million, for instance, was allocated by the department to recruit “social-justice-oriented advocates” to become teachers. Millions more in taxpayer dollars were set aside during the first Trump administration to increase racial diversity at magnet schools across multiple states.

Racial spending at the Department of Education intensified under President Joe Biden, however, with the federal body shelling out over $1 billion on DEI programs between 2021 and the end of Biden’s tenure, according to a report from the right-of-center group Parents Defending Education.

“Through both word and deed, the Biden Department of Education prioritized absolutely everything except student achievement and the basic functions of the department,” Nicole Neily, president of Parents Defending Education, told the Washington Examiner. “From the FAFSA debacle through to an unwillingness to enforce civil rights equally before the law, the American people are fortunate that the era of equity is finally over.”

Parents Defending Education has, through public information requests, revealed multiple instances of racially discriminatory policies in public schools. It found that San Rafael City Schools in California, for instance, advocated racial quotas to increase the number of minorities on staff.

The Department of Education and the White House did not respond to requests for comment.