Sexual Assaults on Campus No Longer Scrutinized as Closely Under Trump’s Education Department

Jennifer Smith Richards and Jodi S. Cohen:

The civil rights arm of the U.S. Department of Education has dramatically scaled back investigations involving schools and colleges since the second Trump administration began, even as complaints continue to pour in, a ProPublica analysis of newly obtained records found.

The analysis shows how severely the department’s Office for Civil Rights has retracted from its mission, launching an average of about 100 new investigations a month — 1,839 total from Inauguration Day in 2025 through July 2026. The OCR launched an average of 310 new investigations each month in 2024 during the Biden administration, according to data previously obtained by ProPublica.

Under President Donald Trump, the OCR abandoned the public-facing list of schools it was investigating and the reasons for those investigations, including claims of discrimination based on race, sex and disability. ProPublica sued the department to obtain internal case data. The government subsequently provided records of the OCR’s actions in the first 18 months of Trump’s return to power, and we are publishing the data so the public can search the cases.