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  • Language in the Age of Fascist Politics (Henry Giroux)

    Language in the Age of Fascist Politics (Henry Giroux)

    becomes all the more urgent and makes clear that the language of tyrants, embodied in the rhetoric, images, and modes of communication characteristic of the Trump regime, is a dead language. For her “a dead language is not simply one that is no longer spoken or written,” it is unyielding language “content to admire its own paralysis.” It is repressive language infused with power, censored and censoring. Ruthless in its policing duties and dehumanizing language, it has no desire or purpose other than maintaining the free range of its own narcotic narcissism, its own exclusivity and dominance. “Though moribund, it is not without effect” for it actively thwarts the intellect, stalls conscience, and “suppresses human potential.” Unreceptive to interrogation, it cannot form or tolerate new ideas, shape other thoughts, tell another story, or fill baffling silences. This is the language of official power whose purpose is to sanction ignorance and preserve. 

    As more people revolt against this dystopian project, neoliberal ideology and elements of a fascist politics merge to contain, distract and misdirect the anger that has materialised out of legitimate grievances against the government, controlling privileged elites and the hardships caused by neoliberal capitalism. The current crisis of agency, representation, values and language demands a discursive shift that can call into question and defeat the formative culture and ideological scaffolding through which a savage neoliberal capitalism reproduces itself. This warped use of language directly feeds into the policies of disposability that define Trump’s regime.

    State Terror and Trump’s Politics of Disposability

    As Trump’s regime concentrates power, he invokes a chilling convergence of law, order, and violence, a cornerstone of his politics of disposability. His acts of cruelty and lawlessness, abducting and deporting innocent people, branding immigrants as “vermin,” claiming they are “poisoning the blood” of Americans, and even proposing the legalization of murder for twelve hours, make clear that his violent metaphors are not just rhetorical flourishes. They are policy blueprints. In Trump’s hands, rhetoric becomes a weaponized prelude to atrocity, a tool of statecraft. Threats, hatred, and cruelty are transformed into instruments of governance.

    This is not careless talk, it is a brutal and calculated expression of power. Trump’s threats to arrest and deport critics such as Zohran Mamdani reveal his willingness to use the machinery of the state for political extermination. His targets are predictable: immigrants, Black people, educators, journalists, LGBTQ+ individuals, and anyone who dares to challenge his white Christian nationalist, neoliberal, and white supremacist vision. His language does not merely offend, it incites harm, enacts repression, and opens the gates to state-sanctioned violence. It extends the reign of terror across the United States by labeling protesters as terrorists and deploying the military to American cities, treating them as if they were “occupied territories.” 

    Trump is not alone. Many of his MAGA follower use these same hateful discourse. For instance, conservative pundit Ann Coulter wrote “in response to a speech by Melanie Yazzie, a Native artist and professor, about decolonization, “We didn’t Kill enough Indians.” This is not simply harsh rhetoric; nor is it a performative display of emboldened hatred and historical forgetting, it sets the stage for state-sanctioned repression and mass violence. What is at stake is more than civic respect. It is democracy itself. When language loses meaning and truth is blurred, tyranny thrives. Trump’s and too much of MAGA discourse is not about persuasion; it is about dehumanization and domination. It functions as statecraft, laying the groundwork for a society where suffering becomes spectacle and repression masquerades as law and order. Language is the canary in the coal mine, warning us that democracy dies without an informed citizenry.

    As Eddie Glaude Jr. has powerfully argued, Americans must confront a brutal truth: the creation and expansion of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), now the largest federal law enforcement agency, is not merely a matter of policy, it is a cornerstone of white supremacy. It is a racist institution, entrenched in an immigration policy designed to uphold the values of white nationalism. In the face of shifting demographics, ICE is tasked with an urgent mission—to make America white again, a calculated attempt to turn back the clock on progress, to preserve an imagined past at the cost of justice and humanity.

    We now live in a country where class and racial warfare both at home and abroad is on steroids, exposing the killing machine of gangster capitalism in its rawest, most punitive form. Trump supports the genocidal war waged by a state led by a war criminal. Children are being slaughtered in Gaza. Millions of Americans, including poor children, teeter on the edge of losing their healthcare. Funds for feeding hungry children are being slashed, sacrificed to feed the pockets of the ultra-rich. Thousands will die, not by accident, but by design. Terror, fear, and punishment have replaced the ideals of equality, freedom, and justice. Childcide is now normalized as the law of the land. The lights are dimming in America, and all that remains are the smug, ignorant smirks of fascist incompetence and bodies drained of empathy and solidarity.

    Gangster Capitalism and the Death of Empathy

    Gangster capitalism lays the foundation for Trump’s racist and fascist politics. As I have noted elsewhere, the United States has descended into a state of political, economic, cultural, and social psychosis, where cruel, neoliberal, democracy-hating policies have prevailed since the 1970s. At the core of this authoritarian shift lies a systemic war on workers, youth, Blacks, and immigrants, increasingly marked by mass violence and a punishing state both domestically and internationally. The U.S. has transformed into an empire dominated by a callous, greedy billionaire class that has dismantled any remnants of democracy, while embracing the fascistic ideology of white Christian nationalism and white supremacy. Fascism now parades not only beneath the flag but also under the Christian cross. 

    America has shifted from celebrating unchecked individualism, as depicted in Ayn Rand’s Atlas Shrugged, to the glorification of greed championed by Gordon Gekko in Wall Street, and the psychotic avarice of Patrick Bateman in American Psycho. This descent into barbarity and psychotic infatuation with violence is further demonstrated by Justin Zhong, a right-wing preacher at Sure Foundation Baptist Church in Indianapolis, who called for the deaths of LGBTQ+ individuals during a sermon. Zhong defended his comments by citing biblical justifications and labeling LGBTQ+ people as “domestic terrorists.” 
    It gets worse. During a Men’s Preaching Night at Sure Foundation Baptist Church, Zhong’s associate, Stephen Falco, suggested that LGBTQ+ people should “blow yourself in the back of the head,” and that Christians should “pray for their deaths.” Another member, Wade Rawley, advocated for violence, stating LGBTQ+ individuals should be “beaten and stomped in the mud” before being shot in the head. Fascism in America, nourished by the toxic roots of homophobia, now cloaks itself not just in the poisonous banner of the Confederate flag, but also in the sacred guise of the Christian cross.

    Welcome to Trump’s America, where empathy is now viewed as a weakness and the cold rule of the market is the template for judging all social relations. One noted example can be found in the words of Trump’s on-and-off billionaire ally, Elon Musk, who dismisses empathy as a naive and detrimental force that undermines the competitive, individualistic ethos he champions. Speaking to Joe Rogan on his podcast, Musk specifically stated that “The fundamental weakness of western civilization is empathy.” As Julia Carrie Wong observes in The Guardian, the stakes extend far beyond casting empathy as a “parasitic plague.” Empathy’s true danger lies in its role as an enabler—granting permission to dehumanize others and constricting the very “definition of who should be included in a democratic state.” This is a recipe for barbarism, one that allows both states and individuals to turn a blind eye to the genocidal violence unfolding in Gaza and beyond.

    Naming the Deep Roots of the Police State

    Ruth Ben-Ghiat has warned that “America has been set on a trajectory to become a police state,” pointing to the passage of the Brutal and Bellicose Bill (BBB), which handed ICE a budget larger than the militaries of Brazil, Israel, and Italy combined. But the roots of this state violence go deeper. The foundation was laid under Bush and Cheney, whose war on terror birthed Guantanamo, Abu Ghraib, mass surveillance, and extraordinary rendition. What Trump has done is strip these earlier authoritarian practices of all pretenses, elevating them to the status of governing principles.

    The police state did not begin with Trump; it evolved through him. Now, we see its terrifying maturity: racial cleansing disguised as immigration policy, hatred normalized as political speech, dissent criminalized, birthright citizenship threatened, and everyday life militarized. This is not politics as usual, it is fascism in real time.

    Trump’s fascist politics grows even more dangerous when we recognize that his language of colonization and domination has helped transform American society into what Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o chillingly describes as a “war zone.” This war zone now spans the digital terrain—through the internet, podcasts, social media, and educational platforms—becoming a fertile breeding ground for fascist symbols, reactionary values, manufactured identities, and the toxic resurrection of colonial logics. In this battleground of meaning, the language of colonization does more than obscure the truth—it erodes critical thinking, silences historical memory, and disarms the very possibility of empowered agency. What remains in its wake is a nation scarred by suffering, haunted by loneliness, bound by shared fears, and anesthetized by the numbing rituals of a punishing state.

    The transformation of America into a war zone finds its most visible expression in the rise of Trump’s omnipresent police state. This authoritarian machinery reveals itself through the mechanisms of state-sponsored terror, a heavily militarized ICE force operating like masked enforcers, and the rapid expansion of detention centers that will increasingly resemble a network of potential forced labor camps. As Fintan O’Toole warns, Trump’s deployment of troops onto the streets of Los Angeles is not merely symbolic—it is “a training exercise for the army, a form of reorientation.” In this reorientation, soldiers are no longer defenders of the Constitution but are being retrained as instruments of authoritarian power, bound not by democratic ideals but by obedience to a singular will.

    Nevertheless, we resist or refuse to name the fascist threat and the ideological and economic architecture of its politics. Still, we recoil from calling the Trump regime what it is: a fascist state engaged in domestic terrorism. Still, we remain blind to the fact that economic inequality, global militarism, and the genocidal logics of empire are not peripheral issues, they are the center. Why is it so difficult to admit that we are living in an age of American fascism? Why do the crimes of the powerful, at home and abroad, so often pass without scrutiny, while the victims are blamed or erased?

    The Collapse of Moral Imagination

    What we face is not only a political crisis, partly in the collapse of conscience and civic courage– a profound moral collapse. The war being waged at home by the Trump regime is not just against immigrants or the poor, it is a war on critical thought, on historical memory, on the courage to dissent. It is a war on every institution that upholds critical thinking, informed knowledge, and civic literacy. This is a genocidal war against the very possibility of a just future—a war not merely against, but for stupidity, for the death of morality, and for the annihilation of any robust notion of democracy. Viktor Klemperer, in his seminal work The Language of the Third Reich, offers a crucial lesson from history: “With great insistence and a high degree of precision right down to the last detail, Hitler’s Mein Kampf teaches not only that the masses are stupid, but that they need to be kept that way, intimidated into not thinking.” Klemperer’s analysis reveals that Nazi politics did not arise in a vacuum; it was cultivated in a culture where language itself was the breeding ground of cruelty and control.

    Trump’s rhetoric of fear, racial hatred does not emerge in a vacuum. It resonates because it taps into a long and violent history, a history soaked in blood, built on genocide, slavery, colonialism, and exclusion. His language recalls the genocidal campaigns against Indigenous peoples, Black Americans, Jews, and others deemed disposable by authoritarian regimes. It is a necrotic lexicon, resurrected in service of tyranny. It gives birth to politicians with blood in their mouths, who weaponize nostalgia and bigotry, cloaking brutality in the false promises of patriotism and “law and order.”

    Language as War and the Return of Americanized Fascism

    This is not merely a rhetoric of cruelty, it is a call to arms. Trump’s words do not simply shelter fascists; they summon them. They silence dissent, normalize torture, and echo the logic of death camps, internment camps, and mass incarceration. His discourse, laden with hatred and lies, is designed to turn neighbors into enemies, civic life into war, and politics into a death cult and zone of terminal exclusion. Undocumented immigrants, or those seeking to register for green cards or citizenship, are torn from their families and children, cast into prisons such as Alligator Alcatraz, a grotesque manifestation of the punishing state. As Melissa Gira Grant writes in The New Republic, it is “an American concentration camp…built to cage thousands of people rounded up by ICE,” constructed in a chilling display of colonial disregard, and erected on traditional Miccosukee land without so much as consulting the Tribe.

    This is the face of modern cruelty: language wielded as a tool to orchestrate a spectacle of violence, designed to degrade, divide, and erase. Culture is no longer a peripheral force in politics; it has become the central weapon in the rise of state terrorism. The language of war and complicity normalizes America’s transformation into a monstrous carceral state, a symbol of state-sponsored terror where due process is suspended, and suffering is not just an outcome but the point itself. 

    A culture of cruelty now merges with state sponsored racial terror, functioning as a badge of honor. One example is noted in Trump advisor Laura Loomer, who ominously remarked that “the wild animals surrounding President Donald Trump’s new immigration detention center… will have ‘at least 65 million meals.” Change.org, along with others such as Pod Save America co-host Tommy Vietor, noted that her comment “is not only racist, it is a direct emotional attack and veiled threat against Hispanic communities. This kind of speech dehumanizes people of color and normalizes genocidal language.” Her racist remark not only reveals the profound contempt for human life within Trump’s inner circle but also highlights how cruelty and violence are strategically used as both a policy tool and a public spectacle. Loomer’s remark is not an aberration, it is a symptom of the fascist logic animating this administration, where death itself becomes a political message. Her blood-soaked discourse if symptomatic of the criminogenic politics fundamental to the working of the Trump regime.

    The parallels to history are unmistakable. Loomer’s invocation of death as the outcome of detention recalls the Nazi designation of certain camps as Vernichtungslager, extermination camps, where as Holocaust survivor Primo Levi noted, imprisonment and execution were inseparable. Likewise, the U.S. internment of Japanese Americans during World War II, though often sanitized in public memory, operated under a similar logic of racial suspicion and collective punishment. The message in each case is clear, as Judith Butler has noted in her writing: some lives are rendered invisible, deemed unworthy of legal protection, of family, of dignity, of life itself. In fascist regimes, such spaces function not only as instruments of punishment but as symbolic theaters of power, meant to instill terror, enforce obedience, and declare which bodies the state has marked for erasure.

    For Trump, J.D. Vance, and their ilk, fascism is not a specter to be feared but a banner to be waved. The spirit of the Confederacy and the corpse-like doctrines of white supremacy, militarism, and neoliberal authoritarianism have returned, this time supercharged by surveillance technologies, financial capital, and social media echo chambers. In the spirit of the Trump regime, the symbols of the Confederacy are normalized. Confederate flags are now waved by neo-Nazis in public squares and parades, while Trump renames US warships and 7 military bases after Confederate officers, reinforcing a dangerous nostalgia for a past rooted in racism and rebellion against the very ideals of unity and equality that this nation claims to uphold.

    Higher Education and the Fight Against Authoritarianism

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    It should not surprise us that the American public has grown numb with the constant echo chamber of state terrorism playing out in multiple sites of attack. Powerful disimagination machines, mainstream media, right-wing propaganda platforms, tech billionaires, have flooded public consciousness with conspiracy theories, historical amnesia, and spectacularized images of immigrants and others being deported to prisons, foreign Gulags, and modern day black holes. These are not simply entertainment outlets; they are pedagogical weapons of mass distraction, breeding civic illiteracy and moral paralysis. Under their influence, the American people have been placed in a moral and political coma.

    White Nationalism and Reproductive Control

    Nowhere is this more evident than in the mainstream media’s failure to address the racial and ideological foundations of Trump’s agenda. His attacks on Haitian immigrants, the travel ban on seven African countries, the shutting down of refugee programs, and his open-door policy for white Afrikaners from South Africa are not merely racist; they are explicitly white nationalist. The same ideology drives attacks on women’s reproductive rights, revealing the deep racial and gender anxieties of a movement obsessed with white demographic decline. These are not isolated skirmishes, they are interconnected strategies of domination.

    These converging assaults, white nationalism, white supremacy, patriarchal control, and militarized life, manifest most vividly in the war on reproductive freedom. White nationalists encourage white women to reproduce, to hold back demographic change, while punishing women of color, LGBTQ+ people, and the poor. It is a violent calculus, animated by fantasies of purity and control.

    The Systemic Assault on Democracy

    This is a full-spectrum assault on democracy. Every act of cruelty, every racist law, every violent metaphor chips away at the social contract. A culture of authoritarianism is now used to demean those considered other, both citizens and non-citizens, critics and immigrants, naturalized citizens and those seeking such status. They are labeled as unworthy of citizenship now defined by the Trump regime as a privilege rather than a right. Meanwhile, a media ecosystem built on clickbait and erasure renders both such fascists as legitimate while making invisible the roots of suffering mass suffering and fear, all the while, turning oppression into spectacle and silence into complicity.

    In this fog, language itself is emptied of meaning. Truth and falsehood blur. As Paulo Freire warned, the tools of the oppressor are often adopted by the oppressed. We now see that the logic of fascism has seeped into the culture, eroding civic sensibility, destroying moral imagination, and rendering resistance almost unspeakable.

    The Normalization of Tyranny

    Trump’s authoritarian fantasies do not alienate his base, they galvanize it. What was once unthinkable is now policy. What was once fringe has become mainstream. Cruelty is not something to be deplored and avoided at all costs, it is a central feature of power, wielded with theatrical and spectacularized brutality. Under the current acting ICE Director, Todd Lyons, this punitive logic has intensified: Lyons oversees a $4.4 billion Enforcement and Removal Operations apparatus staffed by over 8,600 agents across 200 domestic locations, using militarized tactics, surprise raids, and aggressive targeting of immigrant communities to sustain a regime of fear. ICE’s presence is at the heart of Trump’s hyper-police state, and its funding has been greatly expanded to $170 billion under Trump’s new budget bill, creating what journalist Will Bunch calls Trump’s “own gulag archipelago of detention camps across a United States that’s becoming increasingly hard to recognize.”

    Meanwhile, figures like Tom Homan, who led ICE under Trump’s first term, laid the groundwork with Gestapo-style operations, midnight raids, family separations, and public declarations that undocumented immigrants “should be afraid”. As the “border tzar” under Trump, Homan has initiated deportation policies that are even more aggressively violent and cruel that those that took place in Trump’s first term as president. As Bunch notes, take the case of “the 64-year-old New Orleans woman, Donna Kashanian, who fled a tumultuous Iran 47 years ago, volunteered to rebuild her battered Louisiana community after Hurricane Katrina, never missed a check-in with U.S. immigration officials , and was snatched by ICE agents in unmarked vehicles while she was out working in her garden and sent to a notorious detention center.” These horror stories now take place daily in cities extending from Los Angeles to Providence, Rhode Island.

    A central player in this current regime of state terrorism, systemic racism, mass abductions, deportations, and the criminalization of dissent is Stephen Miller, Trump’s White House Deputy Chief of Staff. During Trump’s first term, Miller was the driving force behind the Muslim ban, the family separation policy, and assaults on birthright citizenship, all rooted in an unapologetic white supremacist and eugenicist worldview. In Trump’s second term, he has emerged as the architect of even more draconian measures, pushing for mass deportations, the abolition of birthright citizenship, and the revocation of naturalized citizenship for those who fall outside his white Christian vision of who deserves to be called American.

    Far-right white nationalist such as Miller, Tom Homan and Todd Lyons, do not treat cruelty as a regrettable side effect. For them, cruelty is the currency of power. Suffering becomes a spectacle, and violence a ritual of statecraft. Tyranny is not inching forward in silence; it is advancing at full speed, cheered on by those who treat fear as a governing principle and pain as public policy. At stake here is what Timothy Snyder calls the practice of fascist dehumanization.

    This is not a passing storm. It is the death throes of a system that has long glorified violence, commodified everything, and fed on division. Trump’s language is not a performance, it is preparation. His words are laying the foundation for a society without empathy, without justice, without democracy.

    Reclaiming the Language of Resistance, Reclaiming Democracy

    In a decent society, language is the lifeblood of democracy, a vessel of solidarity, truth, and hope. But in Trump’s America, language has become a weapon, dehumanizing, excluding, and dominating. His vision is not a warning; it is a blueprint. We must resist, or we risk losing everything. The stakes are nothing less than the survival of democracy, the retrieval of truth and the refusal to live in a world where cruelty is policy and silence is complicity. 

    What is needed now is not only a rupture in language but a rupture in consciousness, one that brings together the critical illumination of the present with a premonitory vision of what lies ahead if fascist dynamics remain unchecked. As Walter Benjamin insisted, we must cultivate a form of profane illumination, a language that disrupts the spectacle of lies and names the crisis in all its violent clarity. At the same time, as A.K. Thompson argues, we must grasp the future implicit in the present. His notion of premonitions urges us to read the events unfolding around us as urgent warnings, as signs of the catastrophe that awaits if we do not confront and reverse the political and cultural paths we are on. It demands that we see the connections that bind our suffering, rejecting the fragmented reality that neoliberalism forces upon us. 
    The time for complacency is past. The time for a new and more vibrant language, one of critique, resistance, and militant hope, is now. A language capable not only of indicting the present but of envisioning a future rooted in justice, memory, and collective struggle.

    As Antonio Gramsci remarked in his Prison Notebooks, “The crisis consists precisely in the fact that the old is dying and the new cannot be born; in this interregnum a great variety of morbid symptoms appear.” What is clear is that these morbid symptoms have arrived. Yet, alongside the despair they breed, they also present new challenges and opportunities for revitalized struggles. This is where the power of language comes into play—this is the challenge and opportunity for those who believe in the transformative power of culture, language, and education to address not just the nature of the crisis but its deeper roots in politics, memory, agency, values, power, and democracy itself.

    [This article first appeared in the LA Progressive.]


    By Henry A. Giroux

    Henry A. Giroux currently holds the McMaster University Chair for Scholarship in the Public Interest in the English and Cultural Studies Department and is the Paulo Freire Distinguished Scholar in Critical Pedagogy. His latest book is The Burden of Conscience: Educating Beyond the Veil of Silence (Bloomsbury in 2025). He is LA Progressive’s Associate Editor. His website is www.henryagiroux.com

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  • Homeless Student Counts in California Are Up. Some Say That’s a Good Thing – The 74

    Homeless Student Counts in California Are Up. Some Say That’s a Good Thing – The 74


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    In Kern County, the first rule in counting homeless students is not saying “homeless.”

    Instead, school staff use phrases like “struggling with stable housing” or “families in transition.” The approach seems to have worked: More families are sharing their housing status with their children’s schools, which means more students are getting services.

    “There’s a lot of stigma attached to the word ‘homeless,’” said Curt Williams, director of homeless and foster youth services for the Kern County Office of Education. “When you remove that word, it all changes.”

    Largely as a result of better identification methods, Kern County saw its homeless student population jump 10% last year, to 7,200. Those students received transportation to and from school, free school supplies, tutoring and other services intended to help them stay in school. For the purposes of this data, the definition of homelessness is broader than the state’s point in time count.

    The trend is reflected statewide. In the latest state enrollment data released last month, California had 230,443 homeless students — a 9.3% increase from the previous year. Some of the increase is due to the state’s ongoing housing shortage, but most of the increase is because of better identification, advocates and school officials said.

    Homeless students face numerous obstacles in school. They have higher rates of discipline and absenteeism, and fare worse academically. Last year, only 16% of homeless students met the state’s math standard, some of the lowest scores of any student group.

    “Schools can’t solve homelessness, but they can ensure the students are safe in the classroom and getting the education they need to get out of homelessness,” said Barbara Duffield, executive director of Schoolhouse Connection, a national homeless youth advocacy group. “That starts with identifying the child who’s homeless.”

    Challenges of counting homeless students

    Under the federal McKinney-Vento Act, schools are required to count their homeless students throughout the school year and ensure they receive services. Homeless students also have the right to stay enrolled in their original school even if they move.

    For many years, schools struggled to identify homeless students. Under state law, schools must distribute forms at the beginning of the school year asking families where they live — in their own homes, in motels, doubled-up with other families, in shelters, cars or outdoors.

    Some schools were less-than-diligent about collecting the form, or reassuring families understood the importance. Often, homeless families were reluctant to submit the form because they were afraid the school might contact a child welfare agency. Immigrant families sometimes feared the school might notify immigration authorities. And some families didn’t realize that sharing quarters with another family — by far the most common living situation among homeless families – is technically defined as homeless, at least under McKinney-Vento.

    A 2021 bill by former Assemblymember Luz Rivas, a Democrat from Arleta in the San Fernando Valley, sought to fix that problem. The bill requires schools to train everyone who works with students — from bus drivers to cafeteria workers to teachers — on how to recognize potential signs of homelessness. That could include families who move frequently or don’t reply to school correspondence.

    The bill seems to have helped. Last year, the state identified 21,000 more homeless students than it had the previous year, even as overall enrollment dropped.

    Still, that’s probably an undercount, researchers said. The actual homeless student population is probably between 5% and10% of those students who qualify for free or reduced-price lunch, according to the National Center for Homeless Education. In California, that would be a shortfall of up to 138,713 students.

    Influx of funding

    Another boost for identifying homeless students came from the American Rescue Plan, the federal COVID-19 relief package. The plan included $800 million for schools to hire counselors or train existing staff to help homeless students. Nearly all schools in California received some money.

    About 120 districts in California won grant money through the McKinney-Vento Act, which last year dispersed about $15.9 million in California to pay for things like rides to school, backpacks, staff and other services. Districts are chosen on a competitive basis; not all districts that apply receive funds.

    But those funding sources are drying up. Most of the pandemic relief money has already been spent, and President Donald Trump’s recently approved budget does not include McKinney-Vento funding for 2026-27.

    The cuts come at a time when advocates expect steep increases in the number of homeless families over the next few years, due in part to national policy changes. Republican budget proposals include cuts to Medicaid, food assistance and other programs aimed at helping low-income families, while the immigration crackdown has left thousands of families afraid to seek assistance. For families living on tight budgets, those cuts could lead to a loss of housing.

    And in California, the shortage of affordable housing continues to be a hurdle for low-income families. Even Kern County, which has traditionally been a less pricey option for families, has seen a spike in housing costs as more residents move there from Los Angeles.

    Joseph Bishop, an education professor at UCLA and co-author of a recent report on homeless students nationwide, said the loss of government funding will be devastating for homeless students.

    “California is the epicenter of the homeless student crisis, and we need targeted, dedicated support,” Bishop said. “Folks should be extremely alarmed right now. Will these kids be getting the education they need and deserve?”

    Better food, cleaner bathrooms

    In Kern County, identification has only been one part of the effort to help homeless students thrive in school. Schools also try to pair them with tutors and mentors, give them school supplies and laundry tokens, and invite them to join a program called Student Voice Ambassadors. There, students can tour local colleges, learn leadership skills and explore career options.

    As part of the program, staff ask students what would make school more enticing — and then make sure the suggestions happen. At one school, students said they’d go to class if the bathrooms were cleaner. So staff improved the bathrooms. At another school, students wanted better food. They got it.

    Williams credits the program with reducing absenteeism among homeless students. Two years ago, 45% of Kern County’s homeless students were chronically absent. Last year, the number dropped to 39% – still too high, he said, but a significant improvement.

    “Without McKinney-Vento funds, the Student Voice Ambassador program would go away,” Williams said. “How will we keep it going? I don’t know.”

    This article was originally published on CalMatters and was republished under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives license.


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  • UNCF Taps Veteran HBCU Leader Dr. Walter M. Kimbrough for Key Research and Engagement Role

    UNCF Taps Veteran HBCU Leader Dr. Walter M. Kimbrough for Key Research and Engagement Role

    Dr. Walter M. KimbroughThe United Negro College Fund (UNCF) has appointed Dr. Walter M. Kimbrough, a seasoned higher education administrator known for his transformational leadership at historically Black colleges and universities, to serve as Executive Vice President of Research & Member Engagement, effective September 2, 2025.

    The appointment represents a strategic move by UNCF to strengthen its support for member institutions through enhanced research capabilities and deeper engagement initiatives. 

    Kimbrough, who is an expert on Black fraternities and sororities, brings decades of presidential experience from multiple UNCF member institutions, positioning him uniquely to understand the challenges and opportunities facing HBCUs today.

    “Dr. Kimbrough’s appointment is the culmination of our lengthy search for a transformational leader,” said Dr. Michael L. Lomax, UNCF President and CEO, in announcing the selection to UNCF staffers.

    Kimbrough’s extensive presidential portfolio includes leadership roles at three UNCF member institutions: Dillard University in New Orleans, Philander Smith College (now University) in Arkansas, and most recently as interim president at Talladega College in Alabama. UNCF officials add that this breadth of experience across different regions and institutional contexts provides him with an insider’s perspective on the diverse needs of UNCF’s 37 member institutions.

    In his new role, Kimbrough will report directly to the Office of the President, working alongside Dr. Lomax on strategic initiatives while collaborating with the Chief Operating Officer on operational priorities. His portfolio encompasses four major UNCF initiatives that span the educational pipeline from K-12 through higher education.

    The Frederick D. Patterson Research Institute (FDPRI), one of the key components under his leadership, serves as UNCF’s research arm, producing critical data and analysis about HBCUs and their impact on American higher education. As chief research officer and principal editor of research publications, Kimbrough will guide the institute’s scholarly output while serving as a spokesperson for UNCF in media appearances and external engagements.

     Kimbrough will also oversee the Institute for Capacity Building (ICB), positioning him as UNCF’s lead consultant for member institutions seeking to strengthen their operational and academic capabilities. This role leverages his presidential experience, allowing him to provide peer-to-peer guidance to current HBCU leaders navigating similar challenges he has faced throughout his career.

    His responsibilities also extend to HBCUv® Digital Learning Solution, UNCF’s innovative technology platform designed to support online and hybrid learning at member institutions—a particularly relevant initiative in the post-pandemic educational landscape.

    “I have had the great honor to serve four UNCF member institutions, three as president, and for over 20 years I benefited from the advocacy and support of UNCF,” Kimbrough told Diverse. “This position allows me to pour back into UNCF, its member institutions and students.”

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  • How a Christian Nationalist Group is Getting the Ten Commandments into Classrooms – The 74

    How a Christian Nationalist Group is Getting the Ten Commandments into Classrooms – The 74

    School (in)Security is our biweekly briefing on the latest school safety news, vetted by Mark KeierleberSubscribe here.

    As far-right political operative David Barton leads a Christian nationalist crusade, he’s traveled to state capitols across the country this year to support dozens of bills requiring Ten Commandments displays in classrooms. 

    My latest story digs into a well-coordinated and deep-pocketed campaign to inject Protestant Christianity into public schools that could carry broader implications for students’ First Amendment rights. Through a data analysis of 28 bills that have cropped up across 18 states this year, I show how Barton’s role runs far deeper than just being their primary pitchman.

    The analysis reveals how the language, structure and requirements of these bills nationwide are inherently identical. Time and again, state legislation took language verbatim from a Barton-led lobbying blitz to reshape the nation’s laws around claims — routinely debunked — about Christianity’s role in the country’s founding and its early public education system. 

    Three new state laws in Louisiana, Arkansas and Texas mandating Ten Commandments posters in public schools are designed to challenge a 1980 Supreme Court ruling against such government-required displays in classrooms. GOP state lawmakers embracing these laws have expressed support for eradicating the separation of church and state — a pursuit critics fear will coerce students and take away their own religious freedom.


    In the news

    Updates to Trump’s immigration crackdown: Immigration and Customs Enforcement has released from custody a 6-year-old boy with leukemia more than a month after he and his family were sent to a rural Texas detention center. | Slate

    • As the Department of Homeland Security conducts what it calls wellness checks on unaccompanied minors, the young people who migrated to the U.S. without their parents “are just terrified.” | Bloomberg
    • ‘It looks barbaric’: Video footage purportedly shows some two dozen children in federal immigration custody handcuffed and shackled in a Los Angeles parking garage. | Santa Cruz Sentinel
    • The Department of Homeland Security is investigating surveillance camera footage purportedly showing federal immigration officers urinating on the grounds of a Pico Rivera, California, high school in broad daylight. | CBS News
    • California sued the Trump administration after it withheld some $121 million in education funds for a program designed to help the children of migrant farmworkers catch up academically. | EdSource
    • Undocumented children will be banned from enrolling in federally funded Head Start preschools, the Trump administration announced. | The Washington Post
      • Legal pushback: Parents, Head Start providers challenge new rule barring undocumented families. | The 74
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    The executive director of Camp Mystic in Texas didn’t begin evacuations for more than an hour after he received a severe flood warning from the National Weather Service. The ensuing tragedy killed 27 counselors and campers. | The Washington Post

    The day after the Supreme Court allowed the Education Department’s dismantling, Secretary Linda McMahon went ahead with plans to move key programs. | The 74 

    • Now, with fewer staff, the Office for Civil Rights is pursuing a smaller caseload. During a three-month period between March and June, the agency dismissed 3,424 civil rights complaints. | Politico
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    Get the most critical news and information about students’ rights, safety and well-being delivered straight to your inbox.

    Massachusetts legislation seeks to ban anyone under the age of 18 from working in the state’s seafood processing facilities after an investigation exposed the factories routinely employed migrant youth in unsafe conditions. | The Public’s Radio

    An end to a deadly trend: School shootings decreased 22% during the 2024-25 school year compared to a year earlier after reaching all-time highs for three years in a row. | K-12 Dive

    Florida is the first state to require all high school student athletes to undergo electrocardiograms in a bid to detect heart conditions. | WUSF 

    The Senate dropped rules from Trump’s “big, beautiful” tax-and-spending bill that would have prevented states from regulating artificial intelligence tools, including those used in schools. | The Verge

    • Food stamps are another matter: The federal SNAP program will be cut by about a fifth over the next decade, taking away at least some nutrition benefits from at least 800,000 low-income children. | The 74

    ICYMI @The74

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    Supreme Court to Address Legality of Barring Trans Athletes From School Sports

    Medicaid Cuts in Trump Tax Bill Spark Fears for Child Health, School Services

    Heinous, heartbreaking — and expensive. California schools face avalanche of sex abuse claims


    Emotional Support

    74 editor Nicole Ridgway’s dog Mika is cooler than your dog.


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  • Weekend reading: The Launch of the APPG on Students: Commission on Students in Higher Education

    Weekend reading: The Launch of the APPG on Students: Commission on Students in Higher Education

    This blog was kindly authored by Alex Stanley, NUS Vice President of Higher Education, Saranya Thambirajah, NUS Vice President Equality & Liberation and Alex Sobel Member of Parliament for Leeds Central and Headingly.

    Today, we’re proud to launch the Commission on Students in Higher Education, a project between the APPG on Students, supported by NUS UK and a group of expert Commissioners, and based on evidence, event attendance and input from over 50 students’ unions and sector organisations.

    The Commission speaks to the themes of the Department for Education’s HE Review and Post-16 Strategy and places the voices of students right at the heart of key questions on inspiring high-quality teaching and learning, access and widening participation.

    In the current financial climate for universities and for the Treasury, we would have loved to be able to produce a Commission which speaks to interventions in quality, that highlights the groundbreaking pedagogical practice that students’ unions and educational organisations were excited to share with us, and the amazing widening participation work that we have seen across the country.

    However, across all of our work we had to return to the question of funding, for students and for the sector. Right now, we risk a situation where the state of funding for students and for universities creates a double crisis, where neither the student themselves have the money to thrive while studying, nor the university has the money to adequately support them.

    We know that students are working longer and longer hours outside of their degrees, in jobs not directly relevant to their future careers. The HEPI and AdvanceHE Student Academic Experience Survey for 2025 shows that this is eating into their independent study time, with the average weekly study time dropping by two hours over the last year.

    Our evidence shows a further impact of working hours: what is suffering is not necessarily academic outcomes, but students’ overall experience in higher education. Students’ unions reported to us that the uptake of student activities, clubs, societies, and extracurricular activities is decreasing, and when asked, students stated that they were spending the time they would have liked to spend on activities undertaking paid work instead.

    This should raise significant concerns for anyone involved in higher education and student life. When a student enters university, they of course gain experience and qualifications from their academic study, but the skills and experiences gained from their additional activities are just as valuable for many students. In providing these activities, students’ unions are engines of social capital.   

    Those students who work the longest hours and come from middle and lower income families are seeing the sharpest end of the cost-of-living crisis are also those who stand to benefit from extracurricular activity. There are some widening participation initiatives actively working to rectify this, by providing mentoring and support to participate in additional activities. Evaluation of these programs, further explored in the Commission report, found that those who were enrolled in the programs were also more likely to take up leadership positions in their Students’ Unions, clubs and societies. This shows the need for financial support which supports not only academic, but social participation.

    As part of the Commission, we received proposals on how a fairer settlement for student maintenance could be reached within the current financial envelope. The Commission considered proposals on funding maintenance through a system of stepped repayments to redress regressive distributional effects in the current student loan repayment system, to instituting a graduate levy on employers who benefit from recruiting graduates, both of which have been covered in the HEPi report How should undergraduate degrees be funded?

    The cross-party consensus is clear: right now, it’s imperative that the government establish a new system of student maintenance that rises with the cost of living and ensures grant funding is available for the poorest students. We also believe that the government should have ambition toward meeting a Student Minimum Income, also fully explored here.

    In the Post-16 Review, the Department for Education has the opportunity to publish with a suite of bold, brave reforms to make like better for students. We will not be able to have the conversation about teaching, access and high-quality student experience without a foundational conversation about funding and student maintenance: we urge the Department to include a new settlement for student maintenance in the scope of the Post-16 Strategy.

    You can read the full report from the Commission here.

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  • Special educators are in short supply at all levels. A cohesive fix is needed, experts say.

    Special educators are in short supply at all levels. A cohesive fix is needed, experts say.

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    ALEXANDRIA, Va. — To address chronic shortages of special educators and disability experts, leaders in the field are looking at best practices across early childhood, K-12 and postsecondary to focus on the similar challenges all three levels face in attracting, preparing and retaining special education professionals. 

    The cohesive approach to filling shortages of early interventionists, teachers, administrators, paraprofessionals and specialized instructional support personnel — as well as trying to reverse a decline in teacher education enrollment —  reflects a shared mission to support students with disabilities at all age levels, speakers said July 14 at a legislative summit hosted by the Council for Exceptional Children and the Council of Administrators of Special Education. 

    “Schools are facing a significant shortage of qualified special education teachers — a challenge that directly affects the support and outcomes for students with disabilities,” said Kevin Rubenstein, president of CASE.

    Rubenstein added that finding enough teachers to fill staff vacancies “feels like trying to spot a unicorn,” because it’s “rare but magical.”

    At the start of the 2024-25 school year, 74% of both elementary and middle schools reported difficulty filling special education teacher vacancies with fully certified teachers, according to federal data. Early childhood education is also facing challenges in recruiting and retaining early interventionists.

    At the higher education level, enrollment in teacher preparation programs has plummeted by 45% in one decade, according to CASE.

    Supporting special educators

    Developing a comprehensive special educator pipeline can better support teacher prep activities so future educators can eventually help boost outcomes for students at all levels, speakers said.

    According to Amanda Schwartz, associate project director of the Maryland Early EdCorp Apprenticeship Program at the University of Maryland, some solutions to recruiting and retaining early interventionists include: boosting salaries, reducing teacher-student ratios, and training on high standards for early intervention services. 

    Recruiting and retaining qualified early interventionists is critical to children’s development, Schwartz said. “We want our teachers to have all this content in order to be able to deliver appropriate practice in classrooms,” she said. 

    David Krantz, executive director of special education at Michigan’s Saginaw Intermediate School District, said it’s helpful to have robust data that can pinpoint where there are staffing struggles. 

    Krantz then pointed to specific ways districts can attract and retain paraprofessionals who support special educators in the classroom. For starters, he said, paraprofessionals need to know their work matters.

    “If people don’t feel valued in their service, they’re going to leave,” Krantz said.

    The Michigan Association of Administrators of Special Education started a paraeducator learning series in January to provide professional development and other support to paraprofessionals. About 350 paraprofessionals have participated so far, Krantz said.

    In the higher education field, Kyena Cornelius, an education professor at the University of Florida, put it bluntly: “Our supply pipeline is broken.” 

    While alternative pathways to the teaching profession have grown, those programs often don’t provide the depth of training into teaching pedagogy or disability-specific knowledge needed, she said. The alternative pathways, Cornelius added, were never meant to replace traditional teacher preparation programs

    She highlighted CEC’s professional standards for special educators as a blueprint for the knowledge and skills teachers need so they are ready to serve students with disabilities and stay in the profession. 

    “We need to think about how we can not only attract and retain but how we can comprehensively prepare teachers in an affordable way, how we can make it attractable and get them the skills,” Cornelius said.

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  • Trump administration to release frozen after-school, summer program funds

    Trump administration to release frozen after-school, summer program funds

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    Dive Brief:

    • The Trump administration will now release the federal funding for after-school and summer programs that districts and states expected to begin accessing July 1 but had been frozen by the Office of Management and Budget, OMB confirmed on Friday.
    • The $1.3 billion for 21st Century Community Learning Centers was under review by OMB to ensure the funding aligned with Trump administration priorities. The weekslong delay had already caused cancellations and other disruptions to summer and school-year student services, according to educators, families, education organizations and lawmakers.
    • Still under OMB review is about $5.6 billion in other K-12 funds, including programs for English learners, professional development, student academic supports, migrant services and adult education. OMB did not provide a time frame for the review or release of those funds.

    Dive Insight:

    In an emailed statement Friday to K-12 Dive, an OMB senior administration official verified the release of the after-school and summer program money and said, “Guardrails have been put in place to ensure these funds are not used in violation of Executive Orders.” The official did not say when the funds would be released to states.

    Earlier this week, OMB said its preliminary findings found the grant programs “have been grossly abused to promote a radical leftwing DEI agenda” — referring to diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives — and directly violate Trump’s executive orders.

    The 21st Century grant money for after-school and summer programming, and the other withheld funds, come from the federal fiscal year 2025 budget, which was approved by Congress and then signed into law by President Donald Trump in March. States and districts typically expect to access the funding in question on July 1 for the upcoming school year.

    Federal Title I funds for low-income schools and districts and money for the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act was released on July 1 as expected.

    The funding hold caused widespread concern among governors, Republican and Democratic senators, parents, education organizations and others calling for the federal government to release the money. Some 24 states filed a lawsuit against Trump, the U.S. Education Department and OMB, calling the funding freeze “contrary to law, arbitrary and capricious, and unconstitutional.”

    Jodi Grant, executive director of the Afterschool Alliance, said in a Friday statement that “working parents in particular are breathing an enormous sigh of relief” with the news of the release of the summer and after-school funds.

    But, she added, the funding delay “caused massive chaos and harm with summer learning programs abruptly shutting down and a large number of afterschool programs canceling plans to open in the fall.”

    The uncertainty caused those programs to fall behind in hiring, outreach, contracting and other work, Grant said. 

    Relief at the funding release also came from David Schuler, executive director of AASA, the School Superintendents Association.

    However, Schuler added, “Districts should not be in this impossible position where the Administration is denying funds that had already been appropriated to our public schools, by Congress. The remaining funds must be released immediately — America’s children are counting on it.”

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  • Alabama Schools to Implement State Approved Anti-Vaping Policies – The 74

    Alabama Schools to Implement State Approved Anti-Vaping Policies – The 74

    Alabama schools are set to implement a new system to prevent vaping by public school students in the coming academic year.

    HB 8, sponsored by Rep. Barbara Drummond D-Mobile, requires the Alabama State Board of Education to create a model policy for local boards of education to adopt by November.

    “[Drummond] wanted an anti-vaping law, so we were able to work with her on something that’s not too overwhelming for the districts, but they are all going to have an anti-vaping policy,” State Board of Education Superintendent Eric Mackey told members of the board in a meeting on Tuesday.

    Under the proposed policy, students who are caught vaping once will have their parents contacted and students who are caught vaping twice will have to take a state approved vaping awareness, education and prevention class which includes a curriculum created in collaboration with the Drug Education Council.

    The topics covered in the proposed curriculum presented to board members include health consequences, peer pressure, nicotine and addiction, resources to quit vaping and common misconceptions about vaping among others.

    According to the Children’s of Alabama newsroom, the media branch for the Children’s of Alabama hospital, nearly 20% of high school students in 2023 said they had vaped.

    Some board members at Tuesday’s meeting questioned the need for the vaping law.

    “As an educator, parent and grandparent, I don’t quite understand the focus on this and bifurcating or separating from the other common concerns in every discipline policy,” said Wayne Reynolds, who represents District 8 on the board. “Why would you separate what you’re doing to a child caught vaping and contacting the parents than any other child in the discipline policy?”

    District 1 Representative Jackie Zeigler raised concerns about children moving onto other drugs like Fentanyl and Xylazine or tranq and pushed for broader language in the law to prevent having to add resolutions to add other specific items such as marajuana into the law.

    “I don’t think by labeling it does any justice,” she said. “We need to make it broader so these things fit into it so we don’t have to come back and say, ‘now we have [THC] gummies, and now we have vaping.’”

    Mackey agreed that the law is more specific than most Alabama Department of Education policies, but because it’s the law they have to follow it and said the board is “being no more restrictive than the law requires.”

    Beginning in the 1995 school year, Alabama schools were required to have a policy prohibiting the usage of tobacco on school property and the Code of Alabama Title 16 Chapter 41 states every county and city school system must have drug abuse and education courses in their curriculum.

    The Alabama State Board of Education will vote on the model policy for the law next month.

    Alabama Reflector is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Alabama Reflector maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Brian Lyman for questions: [email protected].


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  • George Mason University faces federal probe into hiring and promotion practices

    George Mason University faces federal probe into hiring and promotion practices

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    The U.S. Department of Justice on Thursday opened an investigation into George Mason University to determine whether it discriminates against employees based on sex and race, including in promotion and tenure decisions.

    The news comes after the U.S. Department of Education opened two investigations into the public institution earlier this month over claims the university hasn’t done enough to respond to antisemitism and illegally uses race in employment decisions.

    The flurry of federal inquiries raises questions regarding the future of George Mason’s president, after pressure from the Justice Department pushed former University of Virginia President Jim Ryan to announce his abrupt resignation in June.

    3 probes in 3 weeks

    In a Thursday letter to George Mason, DOJ alleged that “race and sex have been motivating factors in faculty hiring decisions to achieve ‘diversity’ goals” under President Gregory Washington’s tenure. The agency cited Biden administration-era emails and statements from Washington in which he discussed a desire to support diversity and faculty of color and oppose racism on an institutional level.

    The DOJ’s letter opens an investigation into whether the university has violated Title VII, which bars employers from discriminating based on race, color, religion, sex or national origin. 

    “When employers screen out qualified candidates from the hiring process, they not only erode trust in our public institutions — they violate the law, and the Justice Department will investigate accordingly,” Harmeet Dhillon, assistant attorney general of DOJ’s civil rights division, said in a statement.

    The agency said it has “not reached any conclusions” yet and called on the university to provide relevant information.

    George Mason did not immediately respond to a Friday request for comment on DOJ’s investigation.

    “Painted as discriminatory”

    On Wednesday, Washington strongly repudiated similar allegations from the Education Department. The agency is investigating the university’s faculty hiring practices over potential violations of Title VI, which bars federally funded institutions from discriminating based on race, color or national origin.

    “Our diversity efforts are designed to expand opportunity and build inclusive excellence — not to exclude or advantage any group unlawfully,” he said in a statement July 16.

    The university’s faculty performance evaluations do not “use race or anti-racism measures as determinants of institutional success,” Washington said, and George Mason’s promotion and tenure policies do not give preferential treatment based on protected characteristics.

    The university president said that all inclusivity work done by a task force at George Mason aligned with the One Virginia Plan, a state-level initiative promoting diversity and inclusion in the state government’s workforce.

    The plan, established during former Democratic Gov. Ralph Northam’s administration, is set to conclude at the end of 2025 and is unlikely to be extended by Republican Gov. Glenn Youngkin, a vehement opponent of diversity and inclusion efforts.

    Washington, the first Black president to lead George Mason, also commented on “the “profound shift in how Title VI is being applied,” in what he called “a stark departure from the spirit in which civil rights law was written.”

    “Longstanding efforts to address inequality — such as mentoring programs, inclusive hiring practices, and support for historically underrepresented groups — are in many cases being reinterpreted as presumptively unlawful,” Washington said. “Broad terms like ‘illegal DEI’ are now used without definition, allowing virtually any initiative that touches on identity or inclusion to be painted as discriminatory.”

    The Education Department never publicly announced its first investigation into George Mason, which alleges that the university failed to respond “effectively to a pervasive hostile environment for Jewish students and faculty.” George Mason confirmed the investigation on July 3, though a conservative news outlet began publishing government documents about the case the day before.

    Washington predicted many of the obstacles George Mason has faced this month in an interview with ProPublica and The Chronicle of Higher Education

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  • Interest charges will restart for borrowers in SAVE forbearance (Student Borrower Protection Center)

    Interest charges will restart for borrowers in SAVE forbearance (Student Borrower Protection Center)

    Dahn,

    The Biden Administration’s Saving on a Valuable Education (SAVE) repayment plan promised to lower monthly student loan payments for millions of Americans. But legal attacks by the same conservative state attorneys general who exploited the courts to block President Biden’s original student debt relief plan resulted in a court injunction that has blocked borrowers from enrolling. Thus, borrowers have been trapped in a year-long, interest-free forbearance while their unprocessed Income-Driven Repayment (IDR) applications wait in limbo.

    But now, Trump and Education Secretary McMahon are saddling these borrowers with interest. Last week, the U.S. Department of Education (ED) announced that it will begin restarting student loan interest charges on August 1, 2025, for the nearly 8 MILLION borrowers stuck in this forbearance.

    McMahon voluntarily chose to do this—there was no state or federal court order forcing her hand. Read our Executive Director Mike Pierce’s statement on this below:

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