While President Trump signed his so-called “One Big Beautiful Bill” into law this July 4 — locking in massive tax cuts for the wealthy and ramping up funding for ICE and the military — the Education Department quietly froze over $6 billion in federal education funding, throwing thousands of schools and community programs into limbo.

The funding freeze, like the ugly spending bill, is part of Trump’s plans to slash programs that benefit the working class while deepening inequality and redirecting public money toward repression, privatization, and militarization. This also comes as Trump effectively dismantles the Department of Education via executive order with the full support of Education Secretary Linda McMahon, and giving ICE the green light to attack immigrant students and families through raiding schools, hospitals, and religious sites.

The frozen education funding, which was already approved by Congress, affects six major federal programs that support after-school care, summer learning, English language instruction, teacher training, and services for migrant and low-income students. These programs are lifelines for over 1.4 million children, especially in working-class, rural, and immigrant communities.

Now, school districts across the country, from rural Oregon to Texas and California,  are scrambling to cancel programs, lay off staff, and warn families that the programs they depend on for the upcoming school year — and even current summer programs — may simply not happen. These cuts will especially impact working-class parents and guardians who depend on after-school programs as childcare while they’re at work.

In Alabama, the Gadsden City Schools say they’ll be forced to shut down after-school programming for 1,200 students if the money doesn’t arrive. The Boys and Girls Clubs of America estimate they could be forced to shut down 926 sites, displacing over 220,000 kids. 

The statements from the Trump administration are dripping with red-baiting rhetoric to justify gutting these programs. A statement from the Office of Management and Budget claimed that many “have been grossly misused to subsidize a radical leftwing agenda.” The Trump administration claims it is “reviewing” the grants to ensure they align with the president’s “priorities” — in other words, targeting programs that serve immigrant youth, LGBTQ+ students, and working-class communities.

As we wrote regarding the dismantling of the Department of Education earlier this year, 

…despite having no control over how or what students are taught, the DOE has been used as a symbol for the Right’s crusade against what it calls “woke ideology.” Last fall he said the Department had been overtaken by “radicals, zealots, and Marxists,” and his order demands that any program receiving whatever funding remains from the Department of Education “will not advance DEI or gender ideology.” In other words, teaching accurate U.S. history and protecting students’ right to express their sexuality or gender.

Meanwhile, Trump’s ugly bill — now law — makes clear what the administration’s actual priorities are. The bill makes Trump’s corporate tax cuts permanent, costing $3.4 trillion over 10 years. It cuts Medicaid and SNAP, pushing millions of working-class people off health care and food supports. And all these cuts are to pave the way for borders and militarization — the law adds $46.5 billion for border wall construction, expands ICE detention capacity with $45 billion, and increases ICE hiring and training with $30 billion. Horrifically, it makes the ICE budget bigger than most of the world’s militaries.

But let’s be clear: educational austerity is bipartisan and part of a systemic undermining of public education throughout the neoliberal era. For decades, Democrats have defunded public education, expanded charter schools, and treated students as data points for testing companies and ed-tech firms. Obama’s Race to the Top program, pushed alongside union-busting reforms and the rise of high-stakes testing, entrenched a model that treated public schools as businesses and expanded charter schools. In cities like Chicago, New Orleans, and New York, it was Democratic mayors who closed hundreds of public schools and handed them over to private operators. These bipartisan attacks created the crisis conditions Trump is now exploiting — and deepening.

The consequences fall hardest on working-class families: parents forced to scramble for childcare, students losing instruction and social time, and teachers navigating yet another year of underfunded classrooms — while billions flow to border enforcement and weapons manufacturers. 

ICE is already disrupting public schools across the country, detaining students and family members and forcing schools to adapt. In New York City, severalstudents have been detained by ICE, and in Detroit, a high schooler was detained and subsequently deported to Colombia. In Chicago, an adult was detained by federal immigration officials during school dropoff. Some schools have even shifted to virtual learning so undocumented students can safely attend class without risking arrest. 

In other words, Trump’s funding freeze doesn’t just neglect children’s education — it helps bankroll the violence being used against them and their classmates. Behind this is accelerating, brutal logic of austerity and privatization fused with right-wing authoritarianism and repression.

The fight for fully-funded, liberatory public education is inseparable from the broader struggle against capitalism and imperialism — especially amid global capitalist crisis and U.S. hegemony in decline. This system will always prioritize profits over students; it will always find money for war, prisons, and deportations while cutting school budgets and slashing social welfare programs.

That’s why our unions must mobilize against the education funding freeze, against the brutal cuts ahead in Trump’s ugly bill, and against the attacks on immigrants and trans rights. We need coordinated action from educators, healthcare workers, transit workers, and beyond to defend public services, organize against deportations and detentions, demand full funding, and build working-class power to halt Trump’s agenda and fight for so much more.