Conservative election integrity advocates praised the Trump administration for rescinding a Biden-era guidance that allowed Federal Work-Study funds to be used to employ students to perform election jobs.
The announcement came after The College Fix reported on multiple incidents of the work-study program being used to fund left-wing get-out-the-vote efforts.
Hans von Spakovsky, senior fellow at the Heritage Foundation’s Edwin Meese Center, called the Biden-era work-study guidance an “abusive misuse” of tax dollars, intent on ensuring “liberal organizations supporting the Biden reelection effort and the Democrat Party were provided with interns … to enhance the party’s prospects of winning elections.”
The Trump administration rescinded Biden’s guidance on Aug. 19, according to a press release by the Department of Education.
The new guidance prohibits work-study jobs that involve “any partisan or nonpartisan political activity.”
The department told higher education institutions that they “must have proper controls in place to avoid employing students in FWS jobs where they engage in any political activity or in work that serves the interests of a particular group.”
Additionally, while institutions under the Higher Education Act are required to make a “good faith effort” to distribute voter registration forms to students, they also have a duty to ensure said students are “eligible voters,” the department stated in its guidance.
von Spakovsky, a former Federal Election Commission member, told The Fix in a recent email that the government shouldn’t engage in “any type of voter registration activity” because it’s “inevitable” that any such activity will eventually be aimed at aiding “the political party in power.”
“There is too much danger of individuals who depend on government benefits and resources being intimidated and thinking that they must support the political party in power or risk losing such benefits and resources,” Spakovsky said.
When asked what this decision could signal about the direction the Trump administration is taking the Education Department, he told The Fix that it is trying to “rid” the department of “partisan politics and bring it back within its legal statutory authority.”
The work-study program should focus on “furthering educational opportunities” rather than “help[ing] the election prospects of the political party in power,” he said.
The federal, taxpayer-funded program provides paid jobs to low-income students as a way to help pay for their college tuition.
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