Tracking the Erosion of Civil Rights Enforcement through the Trump Administration Chaos

The Trump Administration is operating at a much faster pace compared to its first term. The shock and awe or rapid dominance approach to governance has created a sense of overwhelm for media, advocacy organizations, and individuals. In education, this strategy has taken the form of executive orders and guidance on behalf of the Department of Education (ED) that overstep state sovereignty, strip away funding from educator programs, and abdicate the federal responsibility to uphold and enforce civil rights protections. It is worth noting that at the beginning of this year, the Trump administration fired nearly 1,300 staff members from the Office for Civil Rights (OCR). Most recently however, the Department is required to bring back 260 employees to OCR under court order.

Across the education field, people are working to mitigate the harms being done, and in some places it is working. Students and communities have taken to the streets protesting and lawsuits are being filed to slow and stop actions that go against long-standing precedent and historical interpretations of the law. For example, the American Federation of Teachers (AFT) filed a lawsuit against ED over its February “Dear Colleague” letter in which they upended established interpretation of Title VI of the Civil Rights Act to accommodate the administration’s anti-diversity equity and inclusion (DEI) positions. As a result, that guidance has recently been struck down by a federal judge.

Still, the tidal waves of damage to the public education system seem to be coming from every direction, from every agency, all the time. For students, parents, educators, advocates, and other invested parties, tracking the executive actions, investigations, and challenges that will ultimately impact the civil rights of students in public schools has become more difficult than ever.

To facilitate that work, here are seven organizations and media outlets that have created trackers following almost every action related to education that is coming out of the Trump Administration. In this annotated list below, we highlight the executive actions to watch that are specifically related to students’ and families’ civil rights protections.

EducationCounsel is a consulting firm focused on improving public education. Their Executive Actions Chart provides detailed summaries and analysis of Trump Administration actions that impact children and families, organized by topic. For example, the Equity and Civil Rights topic includes all of the executive orders that have been signed since January such as the Restoring Equality of Opportunity and Meritocracy and Reinstating Common Sense School Discipline Policies orders. And the analysis of these orders clearly shows that both of these orders intend to strike down important aspects of civil rights enforcement. EducationCounsel has also organized an Executive Actions Tracker that includes “to do’s” for the administration, outlining what we can expect to come after the executive action to implement each order as well as their due dates.

Education Week is an education specific news resource, covering a range of issues relating to students, schools, and educators from early childhood through higher education. Journalists Brooke Schultz and Matthew Stone have compiled a list of all the education related lawsuits that have been filed against the Trump administration. This resource includes when the complaint was filed, who the plaintiffs are, what the argument is, and other important details related to each case.

The Hechinger Report is a national news outlet covering inequality and innovation across the education field. Their resource, Tracking Trump: His actions to dismantle the Education Department, and more, lists all of the administration's actions by week and provides a brief summary for each item. This tracker covers a broad spectrum of public education issues from Head Start to higher education. See also the entry for Week 28 (July 28th), there is a helpful map depicting all of the states where OCR has opened an investigation under the second Trump administration, and the type of investigation that has been opened.

The Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights is a historic civil rights organization that hosts coalitions and task forces across a number of policy issues. They created a chronological timeline that tracks the Trump Administration’s actions that have rolled back civil and human rights protections since 2017. This resource can be organized by the 14 issue areas that the organization covers, including education, and it also includes where the Leadership Conference has issued a response related to the administration action.

Partnership for the Future of Learning (PFL), a national education network of school, district, and state leaders, nonprofits, and other education organizations, has developed the Trump Administration Play-by-Play. This site includes overviews of the administration’s priorities, including their plans to weaponize the Department of Education’s OCR. PFL provides background information on what OCR does, an explanation of how the administration’s plans will work, and what advocates can do to fight these actions. This resource also includes an overview of other priorities for this administration, like the school-to-deportation pipeline, and the federal voucher program. It also has interactive timelines that are designed to cover the entire first year of this presidency.

Some members of Congress are using their platforms to track the Trump Administration’s actions. Representative Steve Cohen, the Democratic Congressman from Tennessee’s ninth district, is tracking the harmful actions taken by the administration on his website. And for his constituents in particular, Rep. Cohen has listed a number of resources for people that have been directly impacted by administration actions, such as the administration’s attempt to dismantle the Department of Education, and the changes they have made to the student loan system. And while his site does not include a section dedicated to civil rights, it does make note of where Trump Administration actions are impacting civil rights protections and enforcement.

The University Council for Education Administration (UCEA) is a consortium of university-based PreK–12 leadership preparation programs across the country that focus on improving education. The UCEA Education Executive Action Tracker provides overviews and analysis of executive actions that apply to issue areas like PreK-12 school funding, immigration, civil rights, DEI, LGBTQ+, state governance, and many others. The nature of UCEA’s work means that this tracker also covers a number of higher education issue areas as well.

The fight to protect the institution of public education against the damage being inflicted by the current Trump Administration is going to require a long term effort. And tracking this administration’s actions to weaken students’ civil rights is a vital piece of this fight. Trackers such as the ones featured take an enormous amount of time and effort to maintain, but are central to community organization and mobilization efforts.The Trump Administration does not show signs of slowing down, but these resources can help keep us informed so that the work continues.