Trump Relaunching Presidential Fitness Test in Schools at White House Event With Chiefs Kicker Harrison Butker

AP Photo/Lynne Sladky

President Donald Trump is bringing back the Presidential Fitness Test for public schools, officially relaunching the program by signing an executive order at a White House event Thursday with several professional athletes.

The Presidential Fitness Test was established in 1966 by President Lyndon B. Johnson to recognize “excellence in physical education” and to set the criteria for the Presidential Fitness Award. The program was cancelled in 2012 by President Barack Obama and replaced with FitnessGram, an endurance run assessment test.

CNN’s Alayna Treene and Kyle Feldscher reported that Trump will be joined by athletes including LIV golfer Bryson DeChambeau, Kansas City Chiefs kicker Harrison Butker, former New York Giants linebacker Lawrence Taylor, and Paul “Triple H” Levesque, a 14-time World Champion and Chief Content Officer for the WWE who has known Trump for decades.

These athletes have longstanding ties to the president, and most will officially join his sports, fitness, and nutrition council. DeChambeau, who visited the White House last month to hit golf balls on the South Lawn, will be named the group’s chairman, CNN reported.

Some of the athletes have had controversies, like Taylor, who spoke at a Trump campaign rally in May 2024 and is a registered sex offender after admitting to paying a 16-year-old to have sex with him, and Butker, who drew outrage when he delivered a commencement speech that criticizing “dangerous gender ideologies” and arguing that women should prioritize being a wife and mother over academic or professional accomplishments, denounced both birth control and fertility treatments like IVF and surrogacy, and made an apparent dig about Pride Month. A number of his fellow Chiefs players voiced their support for their teammate in the aftermath.