Trump administration threatens to pull millions in school funding over transgender students

Betsy DeVos is threatening to withhold millions in desegregation funding if schools don’t ban transgender student athletes.

Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos and President Donald Trump
Photo: Wikimedia Commons

Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos is reportedly threatening to pull $18 million in diversity funding from Connecticut schools that refuse to withdraw from the state’s athletic conference that allows transgender students athletes to compete.

The Office for Civil Rights at the Department of Education is threatening to withhold the diversity money from three districts in the state that is intended to help schools desegregate. The schools are members of the Connecticut Interscholastic Athletic Conference (CIAC), the organization that runs school sports in the state.

Related: This transgender teen athlete is a rising star & an inspiration

The CIAC is currently being sued by three cisgender students with help from the SPLC designated hate group Alliance Defending Freedom because transgender girls are allowed to compete with their gender in that state. The Department of Education, under Trump, has been supportive of the hate group’s lawsuit.

The Trump administration wants school districts in New Haven, Hartford and southeast Connecticut to cut ties with CIAC by October 1 and they’re using the desegregation funds to put pressure on them.

The grants help fund Black and Hispanic students who want to attend schools outside of their neighborhoods.

The New York Times notes that Trump and DeVos have championed such school choice programs in the past, but apparently their support for Black and Hispanic students isn’t as strong as their opposition to transgender teenagers.

“It’s effectively extortion,” said….

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