PROVIDENCE — Two members Rhode Island‘s congressional delegation are objecting to plans to change the name of federal Workforce Pell Grants to “Trump Grants.”
The Workforce Pell Grants, referred to as “short-term Pell,” provide federal financial aid for students enrolled in short-term, career-focused training programs. The Trump administration is not attempting to rename the more widely known Pell Grants that help millions of students attend college each year.
Both grant programs are named for the late US Senator Claiborne Pell, a Rhode Island Democrat who served from 1961 to 1997. He sponsored the 1972 bill that created the Basic Educational Opportunity Grant, a program that eventually bore his name.
“In a world where so many people have debt, he thought it was very important that education be an investment,” Clay Pell, the late senator’s grandson, told the Globe in an earlier interview.
In New England, $948 million in Pell Grants were disbursed to more than 210,000 students last fiscal year, including $95 million in Rhode Island and $405 million in Massachusetts. The larger Pell Grant program gave out $33 billion in grants to more than 6 million students last year.
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The Pell Grants are so ubiquitous and ingrained in American higher education parlance that few outside of Rhode Island still connect the grants with their namesake, who served six terms in the US Senate before retiring in 1997. Some assume Pell is just another of the many acronyms splashed across laws passed by Congress.
Pell’s name is hard to miss in Rhode Island. The grand Newport Bridge was renamed for him in 1992, and the Pell Center for International Relations and Public Policy bears his name at Salve Regina University.
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On Tuesday, US Representatives Gabe Amo and Seth Magaziner, both Rhode Island Democrats, called on leaders of the House Appropriations Committee to oppose renaming the Workforce Pell Grants after President Donald Trump.
They said the fiscal year 2026 Labor, Health and Human Services, Education, and Related Agencies Appropriations Act includes a provision to change the Workforce Pell Grant’s name to “Trump Grants.”
In a joint statement, Amo and Magaziner said that whenever Pell was asked about his greatest achievement, he’d always cite the Pell Grants. And they described Pell as “a visionary public servant who believed deeply in the power of education to transform lives.”
“In stark contrast to Senator Pell’s steadfast commitment to education, President Donald Trump’s record includes efforts to bypass Congress to unlawfully dismantle the Department of Education, freeze federal education and research funding at institutions, pressure schools to roll back key initiatives, including those focused on diversity, equity, and inclusion,” the congressman wrote.
Amo and Magaziner said preserving Pell’s name on the program “is not just about honoring the past, it is about protecting a future where every student, regardless of background, has the chance to dream big and achieve more.”
“To attempt to erase Senator Pell’s name from a program that has uplifted generations and replace it with a president whose record on education is defined by cuts and dismantlement is a profound insult to that legacy,” they said.
In a letter to House Appropriations Committee leaders, Amo and Magaziner noted that Trump University was a failure.
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“It was not a university, it was not accredited, and it ultimately resulted in a $25 million settlement to resolve fraud claims brought by thousands of students who were misled by President Trump,” they wrote. “The actions by Trump University raise questions about the appropriateness of associating the Trump name with a federal grant program designed to help working-class Americans achieve their higher education dreams.”
They congressmen argued that the grants “should remain rooted in the legacy of Senator Pell, whose name symbolizes opportunity, integrity, and the belief that education is the cornerstone of a strong democracy.”
Globe Rhode Island reporter Steph Machado contributed to this report.
Edward Fitzpatrick can be reached at edward.fitzpatrick@globe.com. Follow him @FitzProv.