What You Need to Know About Trump’s ‘Radical Indoctrination’ Executive Order — and Why Michigan Educators and Leaders Are Worried
Guidelines target students’ social transitions, bathroom usage and more
Donald Trump's Jan. 29 executive order targeting transgender youth, "Ending Radical Indoctrination in K-12 Schooling," has intensified concerns among Michigan educators and students already reeling from a series of anti-LGBTQ directives.
The order follows his earlier executive actions, including a nationwide ban on gender-affirming care for anyone under 19 and restrictions on transgender participation in sports. While other orders have focused on medical care and athletics, this directive takes aim at schools themselves, threatening to withhold federal funding from institutions that support students' gender identity choices and potentially criminalizing educators who help transgender youth.
What’s in the order?
Signed into effect on Jan. 29, the order claims that parental oversight from schools has been “usurped” and that parents have seen schools indoctrinate their children with “radical, anti-American ideologies,” effectively labeling trans youth and advocates as “anti-American.”
The executive order takes two concrete actions regarding federal funding: If it withstands challenges in court, it will immediately rescind funding from existing K-12 programs, curriculum, instruction and teacher-related activities (certification, education and employment) that involve what it terms "gender ideology." Second, it will withdraw funding from schools that continue such practices after the order takes effect.
While the order doesn't enumerate specific programs that will lose funding, if it survives expected legal challenges, it would empower U.S. Attorney General Pete Hegseth to collaborate with state attorneys general to enforce these measures. This enforcement includes both withdrawing federal funds and prosecuting school staff deemed to "directly or indirectly support" student "social transition."
“Social transition” is defined in the order as adopting a gender identity other than the sex assigned at birth. This language is problematic because it conflates sex and gender. Those are very different, especially for nonbinary and trans youth.
The order goes on to exemplify how educators and staff would contribute to the process of a student’s social transition. For instance, staff would be found liable for engaging in the following: providing counseling, allowing a student to use the bathroom, locker room or participate in athletics of the gender that they identify with, using a student’s preferred name or pronouns or even just calling a student nonbinary.
In essence, this executive order decrees that educators and school staff must traumatize their trans students by outing them to their parents, denying them therapy, deadnaming them, and subjecting them to potential physical and emotional violence both at school and at home.
Community reaction
Community leaders are speaking out against the executive order and remain committed to protecting the ability of students to choose their own identities.
In a video shared to social media, Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel responded to the order, stating in part, “There are no laws on the books [in Michigan] that involve prosecuting people for ‘radical indoctrination,’ whatever that is.”
Nessel also urged students and educators to stay calm, saying, “Please don’t be looking over your shoulder or wondering when the state police are going to storm your classroom. We are not coming into your schools to investigate you for teaching in accordance with whatever your curriculum is for your particular school district.” She continues, “We support teachers. We want you to continue doing your jobs, continue serving kids and families all across the state of Michigan and making sure that our children have a brighter future.”
This is a welcome message from a top state official, but what have the impacts been on the ground?
Anthony Pennock, a teacher in the Battle Creek area and co-chair of the Michigan Education Association LGBTQ+ Caucus, voiced his experience and concerns with Pride Source.
“My trans students are terrified and my trans staff are terrified,” Pennock said. “So, I sent something out, as the union president, and said, look, we are going to stand for you and we are going to protect you as much as we can.”
Pennock noted that there are many protections for the LGBTQ+ community in Michigan, including the expanded Elliott-Larsen Civil Rights Act, which was amended in 2022 to include discrimination protections related to sexual identity and gender expression, the expansion of the Michigan Hate Crimes Act earlier this year and the recent passage of House Bills 5300 and 5303, which updated Michigan’s legal name change process and enshrined transgender Michiganders with access to self-determination on birth certificates.
Despite these federal executive orders, Michigan’s state level protections and our anti-discrimination laws still stand. States have the authority to enforce their own civil rights legislation within their jurisdictions. Additionally, Michigan’s constitution grants powers to the governor to form a Civil Rights Commission. Pennock concluded, “We have some very strong laws that protect us in the state of Michigan – as much as we’re scared, we have it pretty good here.”
Pennock sees the true threat in districts that could change policies out of fear or districts governed by school boards that align politically with the Trump administration’s goals and aims. Some boards, he notes, are filled with “Moms for Liberty” people. “I remind folks who are concerned that the school board needs to be accessible to them and vice versa,” he advises. “Find a friendly one and go get coffee, go to lunch, have dinner, have a conversation — share your experience and how they on the board can help you, because if we just live in the fear, that far fringe is going to get into the minds of the board, and the board makes the policy for the district.”
Pennock acknowledged that it has been a difficult period since Trump took office on Jan. 20. “[It has] been taxing on all of us emotionally and some of us physically,” he said. “We need to pause, breathe, reflect intentionally and then get back to work because we ain’t going nowhere.”
Another teacher, who works at a public school in Michigan's thumb region and wished to remain anonymous, said that in her district, there truly hasn’t been much change: “For most of my students this is all they’ve ever known. They’ve never known life not under Trump.”
Mostly, the teacher said, her district has not communicated about the order. “But my interpretation of their silence is, if they issue statements and say things, it will raise attention for people who agree with this order, and that if we can just conduct business as usual, maybe we can maintain a status quo,” she said. “And I do understand that thinking, because unfortunately there are teachers who do agree with this order. They pose the biggest risk of exposure and damage to the culture we’ve worked so hard to build.”
As an educator and member of the LGBTQ+ community, the teacher acknowledged it has been difficult to navigate continued attacks from the Trump administration — all while being asked to operate like everything is normal.
“It’s been hard,” she said. “I feel like I have to put this layer of protection around myself, not necessarily to protect my job but to protect my reputation if I get fed up. But there has been a lot of progress in the last eight years and I don’t see that changing instantly because of this.”
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