EAGLES Act 2025: Secret Service Gets $10M a Year for School Violence Prevention Program, No Firearms Training

The EAGLES Act of 2025 essentially gives the Secret Service's National Threat Assessment Center (NTAC) a bigger role and more money to prevent targeted violence, especially in schools. Instead of reacting to tragedies, the bill focuses on stopping them before they happen. The Act is named in honor of the victims of the 2018 Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School shooting in Parkland, Florida, and builds upon the threat assessment model that the NTAC has been developing.

Zeroing in on Threats

The core of the bill (SEC. 3) expands the NTAC's work. They're tasked with training people across the country – think school staff, law enforcement, and mental health professionals – on how to spot and deal with potential threats. It's not just about active shooter drills; it's about recognizing concerning behaviors and intervening early. The bill mandates that the NTAC offer training resources in every state within one year of the bill's passage.

Beyond training, the NTAC will also act as a consultant on tricky threat assessment cases and conduct research on what works best in preventing targeted violence. They'll be sharing information across agencies and developing standardized threat assessment practices for federal, state, and local levels. Imagine a teacher noticing a student's disturbing drawings and alarming social media posts. Under this law, that teacher's school could have a trained team, informed by NTAC's best practices, to assess the situation and connect the student with appropriate resources, potentially averting a crisis.

Real-World Rollout

This isn't just theoretical. The bill creates a national program specifically for preventing school violence. Within two years, the Secret Service Director has to report back to Congress (SEC. 3) on how things are going. They'll need to detail how many people and school districts have been trained in each state, which agencies they've helped, and how effective the training has been. This means there's built-in accountability to see if the program is actually working.

For example, a school district in rural Montana might currently lack the resources to address a student exhibiting warning signs. This bill aims to equip them with the training and support to intervene effectively. Conversely, a large urban school district with existing programs could benefit from NTAC's research and updated best practices. The legislation authorizes $10,000,000 annually from 2026 through 2030 to fund these efforts (SEC. 3), but it specifically prohibits that money from being used for firearms training. The bill is set to expire on September 30, 2030 (SEC.3).

The Big Picture

While the EAGLES Act focuses on preventing school violence, it also raises some practical questions. The success of this program hinges on how well the training is designed and implemented. It will be crucial to avoid profiling or unfairly targeting certain groups of students. The bill requires collaboration with the Departments of Justice, Education, and Health and Human Services, which could help ensure a balanced approach. The bill also calls for the NTAC to make its findings available on the Secret Service and SchoolSafety.gov websites, promoting transparency. It repeals a previous, related section of the Presidential Threat Protection Act of 2000 (SEC.3), streamlining the legal framework for the NTAC's expanded role.