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Timeline › 2025 › August › 7

August 7, 2025

4 entries on this date.

Trump signed EO 14332, placing political appointees as sole gatekeepers over all federal discretionary grants

On August 7, 2025, President Trump signed Executive Order 14332, requiring all federal agencies to appoint senior political appointees as sole gatekeepers with approval authority over every new discretionary grant announcement, reducing peer review panels to advisory status. The order prohibits federal funding for programs using racial preferences, rejecting binary sex classifications, supporting immigration assistance, or promoting undefined "anti-American values." A "termination for convenience" provision permits agencies to retroactively cancel any existing grant that no longer aligns with "agency priorities."

Trump ordered NCES to collect race-disaggregated admissions data from colleges, bypassing required APA notice-and-comment

On August 7, 2025, President Trump issued a presidential memorandum directing the Department of Education's National Center for Education Statistics to collect race- and sex-disaggregated admissions data from colleges nationwide, requiring institutions to report seven years of applicant, admissions, and enrollment records to verify they were not using race as a factor in decisions. The directive imposed a presidentially mandated 120-day deadline that caused NCES to skip the Administrative Procedure Act's required notice-and-comment rulemaking process. A coalition of 17 Democratic state attorneys general subsequently challenged the mandate, and a federal judge later found the rollout "rushed and chaotic."

Trump directed the Education Department to collect college race-admissions data in 120 days, bypassing notice-and-comment rulemaking

On August 7, 2025, President Trump signed a presidential memorandum directing the Department of Education and the National Center for Education Statistics to expand IPEDS reporting requirements to collect data from colleges purporting to show they are not using race as a factor in admissions, imposing a 120-day deadline to initiate enhanced reporting for the 2025–2026 school year. The accelerated timeline forced NCES to skip the legally required federal notice-and-comment rulemaking process. A coalition of 17 Democratic state attorneys general sued, and on April 3, 2026, U.S. District Judge F. Dennis Saylor IV (D. Mass.) granted a preliminary injunction blocking the mandate for public universities in the plaintiff states, finding the rollout "rushed and chaotic" and that the presidentially-imposed deadline had caused NCES to bypass required administrative procedure.

IRS disclosed 47,000 taxpayers' addresses to ICE under an April 2025 data-sharing deal, later found unlawful in 42,695 cases

On August 7, 2025, the IRS disclosed the last-known addresses of approximately 47,000 taxpayers to Immigration and Customs Enforcement, responding to a June 27, 2025 ICE request for 1.28 million records under an April 2025 data-sharing agreement signed by Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent and Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem. Of the addresses disclosed, 90.3% were matched and released through an automated process that never independently verified the addresses ICE had supplied, as Section 6103 requires. A federal judge later found the IRS had violated the statute approximately 42,695 times.