The Trump administration will not renew the subsidies of the Biden era worth $ 1 billion aimed at promoting mental health services in schools, confirmed a spokesman for the Department of Education to ABC News.
“These subsidies are aimed at improving the mental health of American students by financing additional mental health professionals in schools and campus,” wrote Madison Biedermann, deputy secretary of Communications, Madison Biedermann in a statement to ABC News. “On the other hand, under the deeply defective priorities of the Biden Administration, the beneficiaries of subsidies used the funds to implement actions based on the breed such as recruiting quotas so that it has nothing to do with mental health and could damage the same students who are supposed to help subsidies.”
The decision occurs when the Trump administration takes radical measures to eliminate programs for diversity, equity and inclusion and supposed practices of racial discrimination in schools. However, multiple courts have blocked efforts to ensure that schools certify compliance with administration’s demands.
The Secretary of Education, Linda McMahon, speaks during a cabinet meeting in the White House Cabinet Room in Washington, on April 30, 2025.
Jim Watson/AFP through Getty Images
The department said the subsidies programs did not advance the priorities of the administration. Conservative activist Christopher Rufo praised the administration’s decision to suspend the programs, claiming that they intend to advance in “racialism and left discrimination.”
“No more SLUSH Fund for activists under the appearance of mental health,” Rufo wrote in an X publication.
But the president of the American Federation of Teachers, Randi Weingarten, described him as a “direct attack” on the safety and well -being of children.
“They may not have agreed everything, but Congress obtained $ 1 billion in bipartisan mental health scholarships to help children better understand themselves and the world around them,” WeingTen wrote in a statement. “The benefits were obvious. Now, with the blow of a pen, that detailed progress has been eliminated, even when the president and his allies insist that improving mental health is the only way to fix the epidemic of armed violence.”
The subsidies were assigned under the Law of Communities Safer Safer Bipartis of President Joe Biden. The BSCA, a law of violence against weapons signed after shooting at the mass school in Uvalde, Texas, in 2022, used “historical funds” to add more mental health services to schools for five years, according to former White House officials.
The building of the Department of Education in Washington, March 24, 2025.
Jim Watson/AFP through Getty Images
ABC News previously reported the Biden administration that prioritizes mental health services in schools during a youth crisis caused by the interrupted learning time and social isolation of the Coronavirus pandemic.
The former president had indicated that his objective was to double the number of school professionals, including social workers, psychologists and counselors.
President Donald Trump speaks during a cabinet meeting in the White House Cabinet Room in Washington, on April 30, 2025.
Ken cedeno/pool/EPA-EFE/Shuttersock
Dr. Tish Brookins, a social worker certified in Jefferson County, Kentucky, told ABC News that the Trump administration’s decision could lead to “lost opportunities, a deepened trauma and a future future” for students throughout the country.
“This cut undermines all the efforts we have made to build safe, receptive and equitable schools,” Brookins wrote in a statement.
“Mental health support in schools is not a luxury. It is a necessity,” he added.
