The White House has announced that it will release $5.5bn in frozen education funds back to US states.
That announcement came on Friday after Donald Trump’s administration decided to abruptly withhold the congressionally approved funds a day before their 1 July release for the 2025-26 school year.
The funds include money for educator training, arts and music education, and additional English as a second language support for children from immigrant families.
In a statement to USA Today, Madi Biedermann, a deputy assistant secretary for communications at the White House, confirmed the release, saying that the federal office of management and budget (OMB) will begin to release the funds to states next week.
“OMB has completed its review of [the] funds and has directed the Department to release all” of them, Biedermann told the outlet.
At the time of the White House’s decision to withhold the funds, the OMB claimed that it had discovered instances of federal funds being “grossly misused to subsidize a radical left-wing agenda”. One of the examples cited was a seminar on “queer resistance in the arts”, as the New York Times reported.
The decision to withhold the funds had triggered widespread outrage from educators as well as pushback from several Republican lawmakers.
Earlier in July, Randi Weingarten, the president of the American Federation of Teachers, called the Trump administration’s decision “another illegal usurpation of the authority of the Congress”. She added that “it directly harms the children in our nation”.
Meanwhile, 10 Republican senators, including the former Senate majority leader Mitch McConnell, penned a letter to the White House, urging it to release the funds.
In the letter, the senators wrote: “Withholding this funding denies states and communities the opportunity to pursue localized initiatives to support students and their families.”
“We share your concern about taxpayer money going to fund radical left-wing programs,” they added. “However, we do not believe that this is happening with these funds. These funds go to supporting programs that enjoy longstanding, bipartisan support like after-school and summer programs that provide learning and enrichment opportunities for school aged children which also enables their parents to work and contribute to local economies.”
In response to the White House’s decision to release the funds on Friday, the Republican congressman Don Bacon of Nebraska – who also wrote to the White House expressing concerns over the freezing of the money in question – hailed the announcement.
“Exciting news to announce!” he wrote on X. “All frozen education funding for the upcoming school year have been released, following my letter to the OMB! It helps centers … and our schools!”
Similarly, the School Superintendents Association hailed the decision, with its executive director, David Schuler, saying: “We are pleased public schools will receive the funding as appropriated by Congress for the 2025-26 school year.
“We appreciate their tireless advocacy, communication and outreach to the administration about the importance of releasing these critical funds.”
