President Donald Trump signed a presidential memorandum on May 5 restoring the Presidential Fitness Test Award, a decades-long competitive school fitness program that was ended during the Obama administration.
In July 2025, Trump signed an executive order that reestablished the President’s Council on Sports, Fitness, and Nutrition, as well as the Presidential Fitness Test. Tuesday’s memorandum goes one step further by restoring the test and awards at all U.S. schools.
“We’re bringing it back. My administration is working very hard to defend America’s cherished athletic traditions and pass our values of excellence and competitiveness to the next generation,” Trump said during a signing ceremony in the Oval Office.
“These next few years will be a golden age for American sports.”
Trump was joined by members of the President’s Council on Sports, Fitness, and Nutrition as well as National Fitness Foundation board members, including several professional athletes like Bryson DeChambeau, retired professional golfer Gary Player, Baltimore Ravens cornerback Amani Oruwariye, and baseball pitcher Noah Syndergaard.
Key Cabinet members—Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., Education Secretary Linda McMahon, Housing and Urban Development Secretary Scott Turner, and War Secretary Pete Hegseth—were also present during the signing ceremony.
President Dwight D. Eisenhower established the President’s Council on Youth Fitness by executive order in 1956 after studies highlighted a youth fitness gap between the United States and Europe.
The council began administering the fitness test through schools, and it started giving out the Presidential Physical Fitness Award in 1966 during the Lyndon B. Johnson administration.
“Almost immediately after my uncle [President John F. Kennedy] was elected in 1960, he came across some federal data that showed that 5 percent of American kids were obese, and that was more than double the European number,” Kennedy said at the ceremony. “He launched the physical fitness test, which became a milestone for my generation. For several generations after me, it was an enduring rite of passage for us that everybody in my generation remembers. It was a benchmark.”
In an attempt to make the program less centered on competition, then-President Barack Obama phased out the fitness test as part of his “Let’s Move” initiative, which renamed it the Presidential Youth Fitness Program.
The change was intended to lower childhood obesity by “assessing health versus athleticism for America’s youth” and de-emphasizing comparison between children, according to a 2012 “Let’s Move” press release.
“I think it’s very unfortunate that President Obama and President Biden abandoned it. He said competition is not good for kids, which is not true,” Kennedy said. “If we’re going to be competitive internationally, we need to be competitive with each other. We need to teach people how to win and how to lose, and how to process victory and defeat.”
Turner, who played in the NFL before his political career, said he believes “competition brings out the best in us.”
U.S. childhood and teen obesity hit record highs early this year, according to data released by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Roughly 21.1 percent of U.S. children and teens ages 2 through 19 are obese, compared to 5.2 percent in the early 1970s. Severe obesity rates have increased sevenfold in 50 years, with 7 percent of children qualifying as severely obese.
