In late March, the education secretary, Linda McMahon, recorded a video to announce an investigation into Maine school districts that allow students to change their gender identity without their parents’ permission – a key target of the Trump administration.
But she didn’t face the camera alone.
She was joined by Nicole Neily, a longtime conservative advocate and president of Defending Education. It was Neily’s organization that scoured district websites for evidence of gender plans – what they call “parental exclusion policies”. In a letter to Maine’s education commissioner, Pender Makin, McMahon gave Defending Education credit for gathering the documents through public records requests and referenced two conservative websites, The Federalist and Maine Wire, that published the group’s findings.
“We’re proud to stand with you and President Trump as you ensure that the law is being followed and that the school districts do not infringe on parents’ rights,” Neily said.
Neily offered similar quotes when the Department of Education’s office for civil rights (OCR) opened investigations into school district equity policies in Chicago and Fairfax, Virginia. In February, Defending Education filed a complaint about Chicago’s Black Student Success Plan, which aims to increase the number of Black teachers, improve student behavior and make instruction more culturally relevant. Neily argues the initiative denies other students “educational opportunity because of the color of their skin”.
Julie Hartman, a department spokesperson, defended the inclusion of advocates in press statements. She said the agency “welcomes support from – and has often worked with – outside groups who want to advocate for students and families and help those who believe that their civil rights have been violated”. Neily did not respond to questions about the department’s communications strategy.
But she is just one of several activists working with the department to advance the Trump administration’s education agenda. Since February, at least 10 department press releases announcing investigations have featured quotes from advocates representing eight organizations. They all echo the administration’s position and, like the secretary, stake out conclusions before the OCR team has begun investigating.
In July, McMahon announced an investigation into transgender students playing on girls’ sports teams in Oregon. The investigation, the press release said, was prompted by a complaint from the America First Policy Institute (AFPI) – the conservative thinktank she chaired for four years before she became secretary.
In the release, Jessica Hart Steinmann, the thinktank’s executive general counsel, said: “Thanks to Secretary McMahon’s leadership, this investigation is moving forward as a vital step toward restoring equal opportunity in women’s athletics.”
The organization helped set the agenda for Trump’s return to the White House and the president appointed several of its leaders to cabinet-level positions. At least six former AFPI staffers work at the education department. Former staffer Craig Trainor served as acting assistant secretary for civil rights until last week, when he was confirmed to a top position at the Department of Housing and Urban Development.
The press releases create “a significant pressure point on educational institutions because they’re presumed to have violated the law from the get-go,” said Jackie Wernz, an attorney who worked in the civil rights office during the Obama and first Trump administrations. The department, she said, “has changed from a neutral arbiter of civil rights disputes to an advocacy organization”.
Those who have worked at the department during both Democratic and Republican administrations, including in Trump’s first term, say such tactics could hinder investigators’ ability to gather evidence fairly.
When OCR opens investigations, it assures subjects that a complaint is just the beginning of the process and doesn’t mean the department has reached a decision. In one case from 2020, for example, Kimberly Richey, acting assistant secretary for civil rights during Trump’s first term, committed in a letter to a school district that OCR would act as a “neutral fact-finder”.
“Historically … on both sides of the aisle, the department has been extremely cautious about making public statements about open investigations,” said Jill Siegelbaum, who spent 20 years in the department’s general counsel’s office before she was let go as part of McMahon’s mass layoffs.
Richey, who was confirmed last week to once again lead OCR, did not respond to requests for comment.
Administration allies downplayed the significance of the relationships with advocacy groups, comparing them to former first lady Jill Biden’s decision to host Randi Weingarten, the America Federation of Teachers president, and Becky Pringle, the National Education Association president, as the first official White House guests when President Joe Biden took office in 2021. A former community college professor, Jill Biden is an NEA member.
“It’s far better for the secretary to engage with Defending Education, which champions parents and students, than with Randi Weingarten’s AFT, a mouthpiece for the Democratic party’s progressive elite,” said Ginny Gentles, an education and parental rights advocate at the conservative Defense of Freedom Institute. “Nicki Neily and Defending Education have aggressively challenged the corrupt status quo, amplifying parents’ voices and demanding accountability.”
The actions by the department are among several designed to radically repurpose and drastically downsize a civil rights office that McMahon said had been focused on “transgender ideology and other progressive causes” and that “muddled the enforcement of laws designed to protect students”. In March, she laid off roughly 250 employees and shuttered seven of 12 regional offices, moves that are still being challenged in court. Over the weekend, after another round of layoffs, one attorney who received notice that she had lost her job said three more offices had been closed, affecting roughly 45 additional staff members.
Catherine Lhamon, who ran OCR during the Obama and Biden administrations, dismissed the comparisons. She likened the warm welcome for the teachers union presidents to a political event. OCR, by contrast, is supposed to be neutral. By opening investigations with accusatory quotations from department officials and their allies, she said, the Trump administration is putting its thumb on the scale. Under Biden, she recalled, investigations frequently led to outcomes that disappointed the advocates who brought the initial complaints.
“There were lots of cases during my time where the complaints were appalling. Then we’d investigate and find that they weren’t,” she said. “You might think at the beginning of a case you’re going in one direction and then when you investigate, you find you’re going in another. That’s the job of an investigator.”
-
This story was produced by the 74, a non-profit, independent news organization focused on education in the US