WASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trump on Thursday plans to reestablish the Presidential Fitness Test for American schoolchildren, a program created in 1966 to help interest young people in following healthy, active lifestyles.
Children had to run and perform situps, pullups or pushups and a sit-and-reach test, but the program changed in 2012 during the Obama administration to focus more on individual health than athletic feats.
The president “wants to ensure America’s future generations are strong, healthy, and successful,” White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said in a statement, and that all young Americans “have the opportunity to emphasize healthy, active lifestyles — creating a culture of strength and excellence for years to come.”
In a late afternoon ceremony at the White House, Trump intends to sign an order reestablishing the President’s Council on Sports, Fitness, and Nutrition, as well as the fitness test, to be administered by his health secretary, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. The council also will develop criteria for a Presidential Fitness Award.
In 2012, the assessment evolved into the Youth Fitness Program, which the government said “moved away from recognizing athletic performance to providing a barometer on student’s health.” Then-first lady Michelle Obama also promoted her “Let's Move” initiative focused on reducing childhood obesity through diet and exercise.
Reinvigorating the sports council and the fitness test fits with Trump's focus on athletics.
The Republican president played baseball in high school and plays golf almost every weekend. Much of the domestic travel he has done this year that is not related to weekend golf games at his clubs in Florida, New Jersey and Virginia was built around attending sporting events, including the Super Bowl, Daytona 500 and UFC matches.
The announcement Thursday comes as Trump readies the United States to host the 2025 Ryder Cup, 2026 FIFA World Cup games and the 2028 Summer Olympics.
The Youth Fitness Test, according to a Health and Human Services Department website last updated in 2023 but still online Thursday, “minimizes comparisons between children and instead supports students as they pursue personal fitness goals for lifelong health.”
Expected to join Trump at the event are several prominent athletes, including some who have faced controversy.
They include Trump friend and pro golfer Bryson DeChambeau; Kansas City Chiefs kicker Harrison Butker; Swedish golfer Annika Sorenstam; WWE chief content officer Paul “Triple H” Levesque, the son-in-law of Trump's education secretary, Linda McMahon; and former New York Giants linebacker Lawrence Taylor, a registered sex offender.
The NFL distanced itself from comments Butker made last year during a commencement address at a Kansas college, when he said most of the women receiving degrees were probably more excited about getting married and having children than entering the workforce and that some Catholic leaders were “pushing dangerous gender ideologies onto the youth of America.” Butker also assailed Pride Month and railed against Democratic President Joe Biden’s stance on abortion.
Butker later formed a political action committee designed to encourage Christians to vote for what the PAC describes as “traditional values.”
Sorenstam faced backlash for accepting the Presidential Medal of Freedom from Trump on Jan. 7, 2021, the day after rioters spurred by Trump's false claims about his election loss to Biden stormed the Capitol in Washington.
Taylor, who has appeared on stage with Trump at campaign rallies, pleaded guilty in New York in 2011 to misdemeanor criminal charges of sexual misconduct. He was sentenced to six years of probation and ordered to register as a sex offender. He was arrested in 2021 in Broward County, Florida, and charged with failing to report a change of residence as a sex offender. He later pleaded no contest to an amended charge, was ordered to pay $261 in court fees, and the case was closed, court records show.
The return of the exam brought mixed reactions from some who study exercise.
Trump is putting a welcome focus on physical activity, but a test alone won’t make America’s children healthier, said Laura Richardson, a kinesiology professor at the University of Michigan. The exam is only a starting point that should be paired with lessons to help all students improve, she said.
“It’s not just, you get a score and you’re doomed,” said Richardson, whose teaching focuses on obesity. “But you get a score, and we can figure out a program that really helps the improvement.”
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Associated Press writers Jeff Martin in Atlanta, Collin Binkley in Washington and John Wawrow in Buffalo, New York, contributed to this report.
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