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Trump Administration Wants Colleges to Reveal Foreign Donors

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The Trump administration is not letting up in its determination to make American colleges and universities shape up and fly right. First, it has asked the universities to supply the administration with information on what they have been doing to record, punish, and prevent antisemitic acts on their campuses. Second, the administration has asked them to furnish the government with information on DEI (Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion) programs that are enforced at the schools, so that their observance of the law, or failure to do so — the law as set out in the 2023 Supreme Court decision that struck down Affirmative Action programs for college admissions — can be judged. And now the Trump administration wants colleges and universities to reveal what foreign money they have accepted, with particular attention to moneys coming from China and Qatar, two countries that do not share our values, and are, indeed, hostile to us.

More on this request for more information on foreign “influencers” of American universities can be found here: “Trump order will prevent Qatari, Chinese influence at schools, ed. sec. says,” by Michael Starr, Jerusalem Post, April 24, 2025:

A Wednesday executive order from US President Donald Trump will require transparency in foreign university funding, with Education Department Secretary Linda McMahon emphasizing that the order would address the problem of Chinese and Qatari influence in American academic institutions.

Trump’s order called for McMahon to take all appropriate action to enforce preexisting laws on foreign funding to universities and to demand the disclosure of more details about the donations, their sources, and purposes.

McMahon and Attorney-General Pam Bondi were ordered to hold institutions that failed to properly disclose foreign funding accountable, and to conduct audits and investigations where appropriate.

The order explained that legislation on foreign funding in higher education had not been robustly enforced, with blame leveled at former US president Joe Biden’s administration. Trump accused Biden of undermining investigations into foreign funding by moving the task out of the Education Department, and supposedly undoing his previous term’s work.

The previous Trump administration had opened 19 investigations into undisclosed foreign funds, according to the order, leading to the reporting of a further $6.5 billion in foreign funding.

Trump’s new administration suggested that as much as half of reportable foreign gifts were not being disclosed, and funds that had been reported supposedly did not detail their true sources.

A Wednesday White House Fact Sheet claimed that $60b. in foreign gifts and contracts had flowed into American academic institutions over several decades, and only 300 institutions self-reported about the matter each year….

$60 billion given by foreign donors to American colleges and universities is a staggering sum. It is rarely given out of the goodness of their hearts, but funding from certain countries is more worrisome than that from others, because this money forms part of sustained campaigns to buy up influence on campuses, by paying for faculty to teach subjects that will be in line with the donors’ desires. Foreign donors can, provide scholarships to their own nationals, judged politically reliable, to study in America, and influence their classmates, or provide scholarships to American students to study in their countries, where they will be subject to round-the-clock propaganda. The Chinese might pay an American university to take Chinese students or faculty, who will then be able both to spread propaganda, but also, if in the sciences, potentially steal secrets from American researchers. This has already been happening far too often. Qatar has poured money into Middle East Centers filled with native speakers of Arabic, where certain subjects — “contemporary Palestinian literature,” or “the literature of Palestinian resistance,” or “Edward Said’s ‘Orientalism’ Reconsidered” — might be the subject of courses that would please the donors in Doha.

The request had also sought a list of visiting researchers, scholars, students, and faculty, and details about foreign students who had been expelled or had their credentials cancelled.

These requests do no more than request of universities what they were already required to do under the 1965 Higher Education Act. That is, universities are required to report to the government on “foreign gifts, grants, and contracts” received, and provide information as to the individuals involved in such donations. Why should this be controversial? Doesn’t the government have a right — a duty — to make sure that malign foreign governments are not managing to plant agents in American universities, either to propagandize for those governments, or for their favorite causes, or to nurture, among the American faculty who receive funding from them, a cadre of professors who may brainwash American students? How many departments of Middle Eastern Studies have even one faculty member who is well-disposed to Israel? And what about the continuing scandal of Chinese researchers working at American universities, insufficiently vetted, who have turned out to be stealing the work of American researchers?

Qatar may be the largest foreign donor to American colleges. It is also the main supporter of the terror group Hamas, to which it has donated billions of dollars for weapons and to pay the salaries of combatants. Most of Hamas’ leaders live securely, and luxuriously, in Doha. Of course the Qataris will want to support Middle East Studies programs that can be staffed with faculty who will be well disposed not just to the Palestinians, but also to Hamas. Think of the effect of the key professors — Joseph Massad, Rashid Khalidi, and Hamid Dabashi — at Columbia’s Department of Middle East Studies, whose courses would not be out of place at Bir Zeit University, and who have managed to prevent the hiring of any faculty who do not share their pro-Palestinian views. The Qatar Foundation has been pouring money into Columbia, and if the federal government continues to withhold $400 million in funding for the university, Qatar could easily step in and make up the difference.

All the administration wants is to be kept fully informed of what foreign money has been, and is being, spent on American higher education, what programs or individuals are being funded, what sums are being provided, and whether there is any reason for alarm about the effects of that funding coming from countries that have very different values from ours, and do not wish us well, such as China, such as Qatar. What’s wrong with that?

AUTHOR

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EDITORS NOTE: This Jihad Watch column is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.

America Teeters On Precipice Of ‘Radical Education Reform’ After Trump Shuts Off Lights At ED

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President Donald Trump fulfilled a key campaign promise when he signed an executive order to begin dismantling the Department of Education (ED), sending shockwaves throughout an entrenched bureaucracy that has been the face of American education for decades.

Though officially dissolving the ED can only be done through Congress, Democratic officials like California Gov. Gavin Newsom and Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, teachers unions and several education groups have wasted no time in protesting Trump’s actions. Despite the outrage, experts say a full shuttering of the department would bring much-needed changes to a bloated education system that spends over $10,000 per pupil with very little to show for it.

“America is on the precipice of radical education reform and change, where we are empowering parents, and we’re not empowering the bureaucrats anymore,” Norton Rainey, CEO of ACE Scholarships, an organization that gives financial support to children so that they can attend the school of their choice, told the Daily Caller News Foundation. “We’re putting money into the hands of our children, not into administrators, and that’s a good thing for America.”

Trump’s executive order is framed around “returning education to parents and communities,” and directs the Secretary of Education to “take all necessary steps to facilitate the closure of the Department of Education.”

The department excused half of its employees March 11 while Secretary of Education Linda McMahon vowed to end the “bureaucratic bloat” of her department to fulfill Trump’s mandate.

McMahon announced on March 3 that her department’s “final mission” is “to send education back to the states and empower all parents to choose an excellent education for their children.”

“American education can be the greatest in the world,” she continued. “It ought not to be corrupted by political ideologies, special interests, and unjust discrimination. Parents, teachers, and students alike deserve better.”

The main complaints surrounding the Department of Education, stemming from conservative and libertarian critics, is that the agency is unconstitutional, fails to deliver on the promises it makes and that is corrupted by left-wing ideology.

The taxpayer spends about $14,840 per pupil every year, according to figures from World Population Review, though educational achievement does not seem to be improving.

“Increases in education spending do not produce student achievement,” Johnathan Butcher, a senior research fellow for education policy at the Heritage Foundation, wrote in a statement provided to the DCNF. “How we use the spending matters far more — and since centralized policies will not meet the needs of a diverse study body nationwide, interest groups will claim that they need more money in order to make the programs work.”

Numerous reports regarding student test scores have revealed shocking declines in academic performance, one example being the Nation’s Report Card released in January. Its 2024 data showed plummeting reading scores for fourth and eighth grade students and static math scores for students in both grades. The report stated that this was “compounding a decline in the nation’s reading scores that started prior to the pandemic.”

Trump has championed the demise of the department for months, declaring that “we will ultimately eliminate the federal Department of Education” while on the campaign trail in Wisconsin in September.

“Closing the Department of Education would provide children and their families the opportunity to escape a system that is failing them,” Trump said during his speech accommodating his executive order signing on Thursday.

The Department of Education did not respond to the DCNF’s multiple requests for comment.

‘A Product Of Leftist Politics’

In 1979, President Jimmy Carter signed the Department of Education Organization Act, with the office officially established in 1980. Carter stated that though the primary responsibility for education falls to the “states, localities, and private institutions,” the federal government “has for too long failed to play its own supporting role in education as effectively as it could.”

“The Department of Education is a product of leftist politics from the late 1970s,” Butcher continued. “President Jimmy Carter negotiated with teacher unions about its creation, and it has since become a way for special interest groups to identify and claim funding streams from federal taxpayers.”

Federal education projects and grants were already being organized and doled out before the ED, though the department was created to “improve the coordination” of these programs, as well as “supplement and complement” state efforts to improve education.

The office was contested by Republicans from the start, while in the Cato Institute’s policy recommendations for the 108th congress, the think tank cited several Democrats that weren’t fond of the idea, either. Democratic Rep. Benjamin Rosenthal went along with the plan out of “not wanting to embarrass the president,” according to the handbook.

The libertarian think tank also pointed to one House Democrat that spoke to the Wall Street Journal at the time. “The idea of an Education Department is really a bad one,” the anonymous House Democrat told the Journal’s Al Hunt in 1979. “But it’s NEA’s [National Education Association] top priority. There are school teachers in every congressional district and most of us simply don’t need the aggravation of taking them on.”

During his first State of the Union address in 1982, President Ronald Reagan called on Congress to eliminate both the Energy Department and the Education Department.

“The budget plan I submit to you on February 8th will realize major savings by dismantling the Departments of Energy and Education and by eliminating ineffective subsidies for business,” he said.

The ‘Gazillion-Dollar-Question’

Leading libertarian and conservative thought leaders at the Cato Institute, the Heritage Foundation, the Manhattan Institute, the American Enterprise Institute the Center for Education Reform remain convinced that dissolving the ED will not diminish the quality of American education.

Important programs would continue and could even flourish if given more flexibility if their grants were provided “in block grants to the states,” Butcher argued.

“Likewise, student loans should be moved to another agency, and the main adjustment will be to whom or where students make payments,” he continued.

Butcher’s long-term vision for education is that “local schools and state departments of education will not have to keep navigating burdensome federal education regulations or ‘dear colleague letters’ that micromanage local school practices. And this will be one of the largest benefits from closing the federal agency.”

“We do not have the option to send our kids to public school because of a progressive agenda. It’s not an option for a committed Christian family,” Pam Costes, administrator of Spirit Christian Academy, a private school with an alternative education model referred to as a NAUMS inc. university model school, told the DCNF. The institution is “a [private] school that puts the parents into their rightful place,” Costes said, though she is not against public school. Costes emphasized that the partnership between parents and the school are essential to the institution’s model.

During the COVID-19 shutdowns, the school looked to what other academic institutions were doing for guidance and that the school’s leadership was “really good about listening and letting people make their decisions about what they thought was for their family, and allow parents to make those decisions, rather than us,” Costes said.

“We don’t for sure know why some districts are really able to leverage their dollar to get greater growth for their students,” Dr. Marguerite Roza, research professor and director of the Edunomics Lab at Georgetown University, told the DCNF. “But it’s clear that some districts are really quite successful at leveraging their money and getting better outcomes than maybe some of their others.”

Roza agreed with Butcher’s assessment that it is not the amount of funding that seems to make a difference, but how the funding is used. Edunomics has dedicated years of research to measuring states’ return on investment. The professor pointed to several factors that might impact a state’s return on investment, including differing work forces, certifications, “appetite[s] for academics,” poverty levels and pay structures.

Edunomics documents the correlation between state funding and student outcomes, with some data showing that increased spending doesn’t positively relate to increased academic achievement. However, some school districts in certain states within them do show a positive correlation.

The “gazillion-dollar-question” is why some states are more effective at converting their state or federal funding into academic success than others, and that it can’t be attributed to any one factor, Roza said.

The professor emphasized that it is not necessarily a department that leads to improved education, but good policies. She pointed to former President George W. Bush’s’ ‘No Child Left Behind’ policy, which she said was “widely suspected to be responsible” for “some steady improvement in student outcomes,” though other sources say that the policy was “a failed experiment.”

The policy triggered “more focus by states on getting the student outcomes,” Roza argued. No Child Left Behind expired in 2009 but was later officially changed in 2015 to the Every Student Succeeds Act.

A common critique of private schools is that they are not accessible to all students. Organizations like ACE Scholarships and the Commonwealth Foundation, a Pennsylvania-based think tank dedicated to expanding school choice and fighting government overreach, work to ensure that school choice options are available, even for low-income families.

“I think we as taxpayers need to ask ourselves what we are getting from the U.S. Department of Education,” Rachel Langan, a senior education policy analyst at the Commonwealth Foundation, told the DCNF. “What are we getting for all of those tax dollars and is there a better way for those dollars to be spent?”

Langan is a former public-school teacher and described herself as once “very pro-public education” to the DCNF. She pointed to the COVID-19 shutdowns’ effects on education as having changed her perspective.

The policy analyst noted that the “COVID crisis open[ed] the eyes of American parents as to the value they were receiving or not from their public schools.” Langan pointed to the shutdowns as a catalyst for many parents to realize that education could be improved, that school choice options are a necessity and how confusion emerged among parents over funding.

“Where is our money going?” She asked.

The Commonwealth Foundation “would like to see a dollar amount attached to every child in Pennsylvania that would follow that student to the school of their choice, whether that’s a public, private, homeschool, career, technical school or charter school,” Langan continued.

She also referenced that in January, the think tank learned from a Right-to-Know request that there are about 50,000 students who applied for a tax credit scholarship in the state and did not receive one due to Pennsylvania’s state program caps. “There’s 50,000 kids whose families want something better for them who applied for scholarship but because of program caps, they didn’t receive it,” she said.

ACE Scholarships also provides K-12 scholarships to lower-income children. The organization also collaborates with state legislatures to advocate for school choice policies.

“Our belief at ACE is that school choice works,” Rainey told the DCNF. He also noted that ACE financially supports children with partial tuition scholarships for up to $4,000 annually, and that a child’s quality education prepares kids for the “American dream.”

Rainey said that at ACE, they believe every child “should experience the American dream. And we think that it really does begin with education, but sadly, as we all know and we lament about this, our country is not providing the American Dream for too many kids. They’re being left behind. They’re not being educated.”

Rainey pointed to some “exciting” upcoming changes in education, including Texas’ proposed education savings account bill and Trump’s federal tax cut initiative. (R

“We believe that when you invest in kids, great things will happen, and that when you change education, that you’re changing everything in their lives,” he said.

AUTHOR

Audrey Streb

Contributor.

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EDITORS NOTE: This Daily Caller column is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.

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Linda McMahon Says She Was ‘Fully Aware’ Her Admin Job Would Be To Eliminate Her Own Position

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Education Secretary Linda McMahon told the Daily Caller on Tuesday that she was “fully aware” that her administration job would be to eliminate her own position as she and President Trump prepared for his second term in the White House.

Trump signed an executive order on Thursday that directed the Secretary of Education to take “all necessary steps to facilitate the closure of the Department of Education and return education authority to the States.” Both Trump and McMahon have talked about fully eliminating the department, which would require Congressional approval. McMahon told the Caller that she knew she was signing up for a temporary job when Trump spoke to her about taking the top education post.

“Bear in mind that I also served as co-chair of the transition committee, so I was fully on board all along with all of the [president’s ] thought process,” McMahon told the Caller, noting that Trump had continuously touted his plans on the campaign trail. “I was fully aware of the job that I was assuming and he was very clear with me, and then asked me about my willingness to do this.”

“He always knew my interest in education. The fact that I served on a board of trustees for university for 16 years, and been on the State Board of Education in Connecticut. I had some background and had done some research in education, and I had some really strong ideas and strong opinions, and he liked our conversation, and so I agreed to do this,” the education secretary told the Caller.

Trump’s executive order does not tell McMahon where to move each function of the department, but that is something the secretary is looking at, she previously told the Caller. For example, the Office of Civil Rights may end up in the Department of Justice, McMahon hinted.

The administration has repeatedly pointed to previous student achievement scores when justifying its decision to dismantle the Education Department. The latest National Assessment of Educational Progress data, released in January, showed that in 2024, one-third of eighth graders, the largest percentage on record, failed to reach reading level expectations. Students’ scores in reading have been on a decline since 2019.

“Since 1979, the U.S. Department of Education has spent over $3 trillion with virtually nothing to show for it,” the White House wrote in a fact sheet. “Despite per-pupil spending having increased by more than 245% over that period, there has been virtually no measurable improvement in student achievement.”

While Trump’s executive order calls for the dismantling of the department, both he and the secretary have talked about axing the sector of the federal government. McMahon mentioned to reporters on Tuesday that her department will be working with Congress on the dismantling but also on codifying the president’s executive order.

“So working in partnership with Congress, I met with Senator Rounds yesterday. We had a really good conversation, because he was one of the first ones to hop out and talk about how we would take away the Department of Education and make sure the states were more responsible for their programs,” McMahon told reporters.

“And Senator Cassidy and I, He chairs the Health Committee, he wants to introduce legislation [to eliminate the department] as well, so we will be working lock stepping with Congress by the time they do vote for that, which I hope eventually, we will convince them that the best education we can provide for students is at the state level and not through the bureaucracy in Washington,” she added.

AUTHOR

Reagan Reese

White House correspondent. Follow Reagan on Twitter.

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EDITORS NOTE: This Daily Caller column is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.

EXCLUSIVE: Linda McMahon Prepares To Shut Down Department Of Education Following Trump’s Order

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Education Secretary Linda McMahon is preparing to shut down the Department of Education by pledging to work with Congress and state leaders to “eliminate the bureaucracy responsibly” in a memo obtained by the Daily Caller as Trump signs an executive order aimed at dismantling her office.

President Donald Trump signed an executive order Thursday that directs McMahon to take “all necessary steps to facilitate the closure of the Department of Education and return education authority to the States.” In her first comments on the executive order, obtained exclusively by the Daily Caller, McMahon explains that the department “will continue to support K-12 students, students with special needs, college student borrowers, and others” while working with the states to give them control over education.

“Closing the Department does not mean cutting off funds from those who depend on them — we will continue to support K-12 students, students with special needs, college student borrowers, and others who rely on essential programs. We’re going to follow the law and eliminate the bureaucracy responsibly by working with Congress and state leaders to ensure a lawful and orderly transition,” McMahon says in her statement.

“With today’s action, we take a significant step forward to give parents and states control over their children’s education. Teachers will be unshackled from burdensome regulations and paperwork, empowering them to get back to teaching basic subjects. Taxpayers will no longer be burdened with tens of billions of dollars of waste on progressive social experiments and obsolete programs. K-12 and college students will be relieved of the drudgery caused by administrative burdens — and positioned to achieve success in a future career they love,” she continues.

The executive order does not abolish the department, but rather sizes it down as it calls for “uninterrupted delivery of services, programs, and benefits on which Americans rely.”

Abolishing the department would require Congressional approval. White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt told the Daily Caller that the president would later address whether he wants Congress to codify his executive order.

“Today’s Executive Order is a history-making action by President Trump to free future generations of American students and forge opportunities for their success,” McMahon writes.

“We are sending education back to the states where it so rightly belongs. Education is fundamentally a state responsibility. Instead of filtering resources through layers of federal red tape, we will empower states to take charge and advocate for and implement what is best for students, families, and educators in their communities,” she continues.

White House Principal Deputy Press Secretary Harrison Fields told USA Today that the order “will empower parents, states, and communities to take control and improve outcomes for all students.” Fields also pointed to the latest National Assessment of Educational Progress data as a reason why the department needs to be paired down.

In January, new National Assessment of Educational Progress data showed that in 2024, one-third of eighth graders, the largest percentage on record, failed to reach reading level expectations. Students’ scores in reading have been on a decline since 2019.

“Since 1979, the U.S. Department of Education has spent over $3 trillion with virtually nothing to show for it,” the White House wrote in a fact sheet. “Despite per-pupil spending having increased by more than 245% over that period, there has been virtually no measurable improvement in student achievement.”

AUTHOR

Reagan Reese

White House correspondent. Follow Reagan on Twitter.

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EDITORS NOTE: This Daily Caller column is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.