President Donald Trump’s ego knows no bounds, and GOP legislators know it, which is why they’ve come up with the idea to name a new Pell Grant after him.
Trump’s “One Big, Beautiful Bill” created the Workforce Pell Grant, in which low-income students can receive Pell Grants while in career training programs for “in-demand industry sectors or occupations.”
These short-term programs are no more than 15 weeks and aim to prepare people for high-skill, high-wage jobs.
There was a bipartisan push for this new grant, which will be a great funding source for some community college programs. But there’s a legitimate fear that, instead, it will be used to get students into for-profit, slapdash programs.
There are a lot of “coding boot camps” and the like that have scammed students. In 2021, three students sued Lambda School, alleging deceptive marketing practices. Lambda later rebranded as BloomTech. In 2024, when there was still a functioning Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, it took action against BloomTech for lying to students about loans and placement rates.
Similarly, in 2022, Washington State sued Prehired LLC, which charged students $30,000 for an online course and guaranteed a job offer of at least $60,000 “from a tech company YOU choose.”
Of course, that proved to be false, and then Prehired used aggressive collection techniques to squeeze out money from the students it duped.
It’s really too bad that Trump University is no longer a going concern, as it’s just the kind of entity to stand up one of these grifty programs.
The introduction of the House appropriation bill suggests naming these “Trump Grants,” which triggered a “hell no” letter from the Rhode Island delegation.
The letter pointed out that renaming these grants would erase the legacy of a true champion of education and replace it with the name of the guy who has vowed to dismantle the Department of Education.
Related | Trump’s push for ‘patriotic education’ is predictably corrupt and dumb
While the “One Big, Beautiful Bill” kept Pell Grant funding steady, it pro-rated Pell Grants for students who are enrolled part time, locking lower-income students out of schools with higher tuition. The bill also lowered lifetime loan limits for graduate students and eliminated PLUS loans, on which about 40% of doctoral students have relied.
Similarly, Trump is destroying the Public Service Loan Forgiveness program, which made it possible for people to choose lower-paying public service roles without being completely crushed by their debt.
The Trump administration is also pushing a new rule that would deny loan forgiveness to people who work for any organization it says has a “substantial illegal purpose.” Of course, according to Trump, organizations that defend immigrants or work with transgender youth have a “substantial illegal purpose.”
He has also resumed collections on defaulted student loans, even as he trashes the economy.
The move to name these “Trump Grants” is just like the “Trump Account” and his Trump Card, which allows people to become citizens for $5 million. There’s also the proposal to put Trump’s face on the $100 bill, knocking off Ben Franklin, and to add him to Mount Rushmore.
And, of course, there’s the proposal to rename Nashville International Airport to “Trump International Airport.” One of the GOP legislators pushing that, state Rep. Todd Warner, says he wants to see an airport named after Trump in every state.
Another would slap his name on Washington Dulles because, according to GOP Rep. Addison McDowell, “We have entered the golden age of America largely thanks to President Trump’s leadership.”
Uh-huh, sure.
And if GOP Rep. Greg Steube of Florida had his way, all U.S. coastal waters would be renamed the “Donald John Trump Exclusive Economic Zone of the United States,” and Washington, D.C.,’s Metrorail would be called the “Trump Train.”
GOP legislators know that the key to Trump’s heart—or whatever it is that Trump has in the place of one—is to continually and obsequiously praise him. And what better way to do that than slapping his name on everything?
Of course, where the GOP thinks that the Trump brand represents some sort of quality, the rest of the country knows that all it represents is grift and disdain. They can rename things all they want, but it won’t change the fact that everything Trump touches is a disaster.
His name shouldn’t belong on anything except a wall of shame.
