WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump on Thursday plans to reestablish the Presidential Fitness Test for American schoolchildren.
The program, which was created in 1966, had children run and perform situps, pullups or pushups and a sit-and-reach test. It 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 that reestablishes 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.”
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 a number of prominent athletes, including some who have faced controversy.
They include pro golfer Bryson DeChambeau, a Trump friend; kicker Harrison Butker of the Kansas City Chiefs; 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, a 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.
