Category: Donald Trump

Another Casualty of Trump Research Cuts? California Students Who Want To Be Scientists – The 74

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This spring, the National Institutes of Health quietly began terminating programs at scores of colleges that prepared promising undergraduate and graduate students for doctoral degrees in the sciences.

At least 24 University of California and California State University campuses lost training grants that provided their students with annual stipends of approximately $12,000 or more, as well as partial tuition waivers and travel funds to present research at science conferences. The number of affected programs is likely higher, as the NIH would not provide CalMatters a list of all the cancelled grants.

Cal State San Marcos, a campus in north San Diego County with a high number of low-income learners, is losing four training grants worth about $1.8 million per year. One of the grants, now called U-RISE, had been awarded to San Marcos annually since 2001. San Marcos students with U-RISE stipends were often able to forgo part-time jobs, which allowed them to concentrate on research and building the skills needed for a doctoral degree.

The cuts add to the hundreds of millions of dollars of grants the agency has cancelled since President Donald Trump took office for a second term.

To find California campuses that lost training grants, CalMatters looked up known training grants in the NIH search tool to see if those grants were still active. If the grant’s award number leads to a broken link, that grant is dead, a notice on another NIH webpage says.

The NIH web pages for the grants CalMatters looked up, including U-RISE, are no longer accessible. Some campuses, including San Marcos, Cal State Long Beach, Cal State Los Angeles and UC Davis, have updated their own websites to state that the NIH has ended doctoral pathway grants.

“We’re losing an entire generation of scholars who wouldn’t have otherwise gone down these pathways without these types of programs,” said Richard Armenta, a professor of kinesiology at San Marcos and the associate director of the campus’s Center for Training, Research, and Educational Excellence that operates the training grants.

At San Marcos, 60 students who were admitted into the center lost grants with stipends, partial tuition waivers and money to travel to scientific conferences to present their findings.

From loving biology to wanting a doctoral degree

Before the NIH terminations, Marisa Mendoza, a San Marcos undergraduate, received two training grants. As far back as middle school, Mendoza’s favorite subjects were biology and chemistry.

To save money, she attended Palomar College, a nearby community college where she began to train as a nurse. She chose that major because it would allow her to focus on the science subjects she loved. But soon Mendoza realized she wanted to do research rather than treat patients.

At Palomar, an anatomy professor introduced her to the NIH-funded Bridges to the Baccalaureate, a training grant for community college students to earn a bachelor’s and pursue advanced degrees in science and medicine.

“I didn’t even know what grad school was at the time,” she said. Neither of her parents finished college.

The Bridges program connected her to Cal State San Marcos, where she toured different labs to find the right fit. At the time she was in a microbiology course and found a lab focused on bacteria populations in the nearby coastal enclaves. The lab was putting into practice what she was learning in the abstract. She was hooked.

“It just clicked, like me being able to do this, it came very easily to me, and it was just something that I came to be very passionate about as I was getting more responsibility in the lab,” Mendoza said.

Marisa Mendoza, right, and Camila Valderrama-Martínez, left, get ready to demonstrate how they use lab equipment for their research work at Cal State San Marcos on May 6, 2025. Photo by Adriana Heldiz, CalMatters

From Palomar she was admitted as a transfer student to San Marcos and more selective campuses, including UCLA and UC San Diego. She chose San Marcos, partly to live at home but also because she loved her lab and wanted to continue her research.

She enrolled at San Marcos last fall and furthered her doctoral journey by receiving the U-RISE grant. It was supposed to fund her for two years. The NIH terminated the grant March 31, stripping funds from 20 students.

For a school like San Marcos, where more than 40% of students are low-income enough to receive federal financial aid called Pell grants, the loss of the NIH training awards is a particular blow to the aspiring scientists.

The current climate of doctoral admissions is “definitely at a point where one needs prior research experience to be able to be competitive for Ph.D. programs,” said Elinne Becket, a professor of biological sciences at Cal State San Marcos who runs the microbial ecology lab where Mendoza and other students hone their research for about 15 hours a week.

San Marcos doesn’t have much money to replace its lost grants, which means current and future San Marcos students will “100%” have a harder time entering a doctoral program, Becket added. “It keeps me up at night.”

Research is ‘a missing piece’

In a typical week in Becket’s lab, Mendoza will drive to a nearby wetland or cove to retrieve water samples — part of an ongoing experiment to investigate how microbial changes in the ecosystem are indications of increased pollution in sea life and plants. Sometimes she’ll wear a wetsuit and wade into waters a meter deep.

The next day she’ll extract the DNA from bacteria in her samples and load those into a sequencing machine. The sequencer, which resembles a small dishwasher, packs millions or billions of pieces of DNA onto a single chip that’s then run through a supercomputer a former graduate student built.

“Once I found research, it was like a missing piece,” Mendoza, a Pell grant recipient, said through tears during an interview at Cal State Marcos. Research brought her joy and consumed her life “in the best way,” she added. “It’s really unfortunate that people who are so deserving of these opportunities don’t get to have these opportunities.”

Student Marisa Mendoza gets emotional while she speaks about her research at Cal State San Marcos on May 6, 2025. Photo by Adriana Heldiz, CalMatters

The origins of the San Marcos training center date back to 2002. Through it, more than 160 students have either earned or are currently pursuing doctoral degrees at a U.S. university.

The grant terminations have been emotionally wrenching. “There had been so many tears in my household that my husband got me a puppy,” said Denise Garcia, the director of the center and a professor of biological sciences.

Garcia recalls that in March she was checking a digital chat group on Slack with many other directors of U-RISE grants when suddenly the message board lit up with updates that their grants were gone. At least 63 schools across the country lost their grants, NIH data show.

In the past four years of its U-RISE grant the center has reported to the NIH that 83% of its students entered a doctoral program. That exceeds the campus’s grant goal, which was 65% entering doctoral programs.

Mendoza is grateful: She was one of two students to win a campus scholarship that’ll defray much, but not all, of the costs of attending school after losing her NIH award. That, plus a job at a pharmacy on weekends, may provide enough money to complete her bachelor’s next year.

Others are unsure how they’ll afford college while maintaining a focus on research in the next school year.

Student Camila Valderrama-Martínez in a lab at Cal State San Marcos on May 6, 2025. Photo by Adriana Heldiz, CalMatters

“You work so hard to put yourself in a position where you don’t have to worry, and then that’s taken away from you,” said Camila Valderrama-Martínez, a first-year graduate student at San Marcos who also earned her bachelor’s there and works in the same lab as Mendoza. She was in her first year of receiving the Bridges to the Doctorate grant meant for students in master’s programs who want to pursue a biomedical-focused doctoral degree. The grant came with a stipend of $26,000 annually for two years plus a tuition waiver of 60% and money to attend conferences.

She can get a job, but that “takes away time from my research and my time in lab and focusing on my studies and my thesis.” She relies solely on federal financial aid to pay for school and a place to live. Getting loans, often anathema for students, seems like her only recourse. “It’s either that or not finish my degree,” she said.

Terminated NIH grants in detail

These grant cancellations are separate from other cuts at the NIH since Trump took office in January, including multi-million-dollar grants for vaccine and disease research. They’re also on top of an NIH plan to dramatically reduce how much universities receive from the agency to pay for maintaining labs, other infrastructure and labor costs that are essential for campus research. California’s attorney general has joined other states led by Democrats in suing the Trump administration to halt and reverse those cuts.

In San Marcos’ case, the latest U-RISE grant lasted all five years, but it wasn’t renewed for funding, even though the application received a high score from an NIH grant committee.

Armenta, the associate director at the Cal State San Marcos training center, recalled that his NIH program officer said that though nothing is certain, he and his team should be “cautiously optimistic that you would be funded again given your score.” That was in January. Weeks later, NIH discontinued the program.

He and Garcia shared the cancellation letters they received from NIH. Most made vague references to changes in NIH’s priorities. However, one letter for a specific grant program cited a common reason why the agency has been cancelling funding: “It is the policy of NIH not to prioritize research programs related to Diversity (sic), equity, and inclusion.”

That’s a departure from the agency’s emphasis on developing a diverse national cadre of scientists. As recently as February, the application page for that grant said “there are many benefits that flow from a diverse scientific workforce.”

Future of doctoral programs unclear

Josue Navarrete graduated this spring from Cal State San Marcos with a degree in computer science. Unlike the other students interviewed for this story, Navarrete, who uses they/them pronouns, was able to complete both years of their NIH training grant and worked in Becket’s lab.

But because of the uncertain climate as the Trump administration attempts to slash funding, Vanderbilt University, which placed Navarrete on a waitlist for a doctoral program, ultimately denied them admission because the university program had to shrink its incoming class, they said. Later, Navarrete met a professor from Vanderbilt at a conference who agreed to review their application. The professor said in any other year, Navarrete would have been admitted.

The setback was heartbreaking.

Josue Navarrete at the Cal State San Marcos campus on May 6, 2025. Photo by Adriana Heldiz, CalMatters

“I’m gripping so hard to stay in research,” Navarrete said. With doctoral plans delayed, they received a job offer from Epic, a large medical software company, but turned it down. “They wanted me to be handling website design and mobile applications, and that’s cool. It’s not for me.”

Valderrama-Martinez cited Navarrete’s story as she wondered whether doctoral programs at universities will have space for her next year. “I doubt in a year things are going to be better,” she said.

She still looks forward to submitting her applications.

So does Mendoza. She wants to study microbiology — the research bug that bit her initially and brought her to San Marcos. Eventually she hopes to land at a private biotech firm and work in drug development.

“Of course I’m gonna get a Ph.D., because that just means I get to do research,” she said.

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

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June 1, 2025
A history lesson on Europe for Donald Trump

“The European Union was formed in order to screw the United States, that’s the purpose of it.” So said U.S. President Donald Trump in February. He repeats this assertion whenever U.S.-European relations are a topic of debate.

Trump voiced his distorted view of the EU in his first term in office and picked it up again in the first three months of his second term, which began on January 20 and featured the start of a U.S. tariff war which up-ended international trade and shook an alliance dating back to the end of World War II.

What or who gave the U.S. president the idea that the EU was “formed to screw” the United States is something of a mystery. If he were a student in a history class, his professor would give him an F.

Trump’s claim does injustice to an institution that won the Nobel Peace Prize in 2012 in recognition for having, over six decades, “contributed to the advancement of peace and reconciliation, democracy and human rights in Europe” as the Nobel committee put it.

So, here is a brief guide to the creation of the EU, now the world’s largest trading bloc with a combined population of 448 million people, and the events that preceded its formal creation in 1952.

Next time you talk to Trump, feel free to brief him on it.

Staving off war

With Germans still clearing the ruins of the world war Adolf Hitler had started in 1939, far-sighted statesmen began thinking of ways to prevent a repeat of a conflict that killed 85 million people.

The foundation of what became a 28-country bloc lay in the reconciliation between France and Germany.

In his speech announcing the Nobel Prize, the chairman of the Norwegian Nobel Committee, Thorbjorn Jagland, singled out then French Foreign Minister Robert Schuman for presenting a plan to form a coal and steel community with Germany despite the long animosity between the two nations; in the space of 70 years, France and Germany had waged three wars against each other. That was in May 1950.

As the Nobel chairman put it, the Schuman plan “laid the very foundation for European integration.”

He added: “The reconciliation between Germany and France is probably the most dramatic example in history to show that war and conflict can be turned so rapidly into peace and cooperation.”

From enemies into partners

In years of negotiations, the coal and steel community, known as Montanunion in Germany, grew from two — France and Germany — to six with the addition of Italy, Belgium, the Netherlands and Luxembourg. The union was formalized with a treaty in Paris in 1951 and came into existence a year later.

The coal and steel community was the first step on a long road towards European integration. It was encouraged by the United States through a comprehensive and costly programme to rebuild war-shattered Europe.

Known as the Marshall Plan, named after U.S. Secretary of State George C. Marshall, the programme provided $12 billion (the equivalent of more than $150 billion today) for the rebuilding of Western Europe. It was part of President Harry Truman’s policy of boosting democratic and capitalist economies in the devastated region.

From the six-nation beginning, the process of European integration steadily gained momentum through successive treaties and expansions. Milestones included the creation of the European Economic Community and European Atomic Energy Community.

In 1986, the Single European Act paved the way to an internal market without trade barriers, an aim achieved in 1992. Seven years later, integration tightened with the adoption of a common currency, the Euro. Used by 20 of the 27 member states, it accounts for about 20% of all international transactions.

Brexiting out

One nation that held out against the Euro was the United Kingdom. It would later withdraw from the EU entirely after the 2016 “Brexit” referendum led by politicians who claimed that rules made by the EU could infringe on British sovereignty.

Many economists at the time described Brexit as a self-inflicted wound and opinion polls now show that the majority of Britons regret having left the union.

In decades of often arduous, detail-driven negotiations on European integration, including visa-free movement from one country to the other, no U.S. president ever saw the EU as a “foe” bent on “screwing” America. That is, until Donald Trump first won office in 2017 and then again in 2024.

What bothers him is a trade imbalance; the EU sells more to the United States than the other way around; he has been particularly vocal about German cars imported into the United States.

Early in his first term, the Wall Street Journal quoted him as complaining that “when you walk down Fifth Avenue (in New York), everybody has a Mercedes-Benz parked in front of his house. How many Chevrolets do you see in Germany? Not many, maybe none, you don’t see anything at all over there. It’s a one-way street.”

This appears to be one of the reasons why Trump imposed a 25% tariff, or import duty, on foreign cars when he declared a global tariff war on April 2.

His tariff decisions, implemented by Executive Order rather than legislation, caused deep dismay around the world and upended not only trade relations but also cast doubt on the durability of what is usually termed the rules-based international order.

That refers to the rules and alliances set up, and long promoted by the United States. For a concise assessment of the state of this system, listen to the highest-ranking official of the European Union: “The West as we knew it no longer exists.”

So said Ursula von der Leyen, president of the Brussels-based European Commission, the main executive body of the EU. Its top diplomat, Kaja Kallas, a former Prime Minister of Estonia, was even blunter: “The free world needs a new leader.”

Questions to consider:

1. Why was the European Union formed in the first place?

2. How can trade serve to keep the peace?

3. In what ways do nations benefit by partnering with other countries?

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May 12, 2025
The Trump Administration’s War on Children – The 74

ProPublica is a Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative newsroom. Sign up for The Big Story newsletter to receive stories like this one in your inbox.

The clear-cutting across the federal government under President Donald Trump has been dramatic, with mass terminations, the suspension of decades-old programs and the neutering of entire agencies. But this spectacle has obscured a series of moves by the administration that could profoundly harm some of the most vulnerable people in the U.S.: children.

Consider: The staff of a program that helps millions of poor families keep the electricity on, in part so that babies don’t die from extreme heat or cold, have all been fired. The federal office that oversees the enforcement of child support payments has been hollowed out. Head Start preschools, which teach toddlers their ABCs and feed them healthy meals, will likely be forced to shut down en masse, some as soon as May 1. And funding for investigating child sexual abuse and internet crimes against children; responding to reports of missing children; and preventing youth violence has been withdrawn indefinitely.

The administration has laid off thousands of workers from coast to coast who had supervised education, child care, child support and child protective services systems, and it has blocked or delayed billions of dollars in funding for things like school meals and school safety.

These stark reductions have been centered in little-known children’s services offices housed within behemoth agencies such as the Department of Health and Human Services and the Department of Justice, offices with names like the Children’s Bureau, the Office of Family Assistance and the Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention. In part because of their obscurity, the slashing has gone relatively overlooked.

“Everyone’s been talking about what the Trump administration and DOGE have been doing, but no one seems to be talking about how, in a lot of ways, it’s been an assault on kids,” said Bruce Lesley, president of advocacy group First Focus on Children. He added that “the one cabinet agency that they’re fully decimating is the kid one,” referring to Trump’s goal of shuttering the Department of Education. Already, some 2,000 staffers there have lost or left their jobs.

The impact of these cuts will be felt far beyond Washington, rippling out to thousands of state and local agencies serving children nationwide.

The Department of Education, for instance, has rescinded as much as $3 billion in pandemic-recovery funding for schools, which would have been used for everything from tutoring services for Maryland students who’ve fallen behind to making the air safer to breathe and the water safer to drink for students in Flint, Michigan. The Department of Agriculture, meanwhile, has canceled $660 million in promised grants to farm-to-school programs, which had been providing fresh meat and produce to school cafeterias while supporting small farmers.

At the Department of Health and Human Services, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the agency’s secretary, has dismissed all of the staff that had distributed $1.7 billion annually in Social Services Block Grant money, which many states have long depended on to be able to run their child welfare, foster care and adoption systems, including birth family visitation, caseworker training and more. The grants also fund day care, counseling and disability services for kids. (It is unclear whether anyone remains at HHS who would know how to get all of that funding out the door or whether it will now be administered by White House appointees.)

Head Start will be especially affected in the wake of Kennedy’s mass firings of Office of Head Start regional staff and news that the president’s draft budget proposes eliminating funding for the program altogether. That would leave one million working-class parents who rely on Head Start not only for pre-K education but also for child care, particularly in rural areas, with nowhere to send their kids during the day.

Some local Head Start programs are already having to close their doors, and many program directors are encountering impediments to spending their current budgets. When they seek reimbursement after paying their teachers or purchasing school supplies, they’re being directed to a new “Defend the Spend” DOGE website asking them to “justify” each item, even though the spending has already been appropriated by Congress and audited by nonpartisan civil servants.

Next on the chopping block, it appears, is Medicaid, which serves children in greater numbers than any other age group. If Republicans in Congress go through with the cuts they’ve been discussing, and Trump signs those cuts into law, kids from lower- and middle-class families across the U.S. will lose access to health care at their schools, in foster care, for their disabilities or for cancer treatment.

The Trump administration has touted the president’s record of “protecting America’s children,” asserting in a recent post that Trump will “never stop fighting for their right to a healthy, productive upbringing.” The statement listed five examples of that commitment. Four were related to transgender issues (including making it U.S. government policy that there are only two sexes and keeping trans athletes out of women’s sports); the other was a ban on COVID-19 vaccine mandates at schools that receive federal funding.

The White House, and multiple agencies, declined to respond to most of ProPublica’s questions. Madi Biedermann, a Department of Education spokesperson, addressed the elimination of pandemic recovery funding, saying that “COVID is over”; that the Biden administration established an “irresponsible precedent” by extending the deadline to spend these funds (and exceeding their original purpose); and that the department will consider extensions if individual projects show a clear connection between COVID and student learning.

An HHS spokesperson, in response to ProPublica’s questions about cuts to children’s programs across that agency, sent a short statement saying that the department, guided by Trump, is restructuring with a focus on cutting wasteful bureaucracy. The offices serving children, the statement said, will be merged into a newly established “Administration for Healthy America.”

Programs that serve kids have historically fared the worst when those in power are looking for ways to cut the budget. That’s in part because kids can’t vote, and they typically don’t belong to political organizations. International aid groups, another constituency devastated by Trump’s policy agenda, also can’t say that they represent many U.S. voters.

This dynamic may be part of why cuts on the health side of the Department of Health and Human Services — layoffs of doctors, medical researchers and the like — have received more political and press attention than those on the human services side, where the Administration for Children and Families is located. That’s where you can find the Office of Child Support Services, the Office of Head Start, the Office of Child Care (which promotes minimum health and safety standards for child care programs nationally and helps states reduce the cost of child care for families), the Office of Family Assistance (which helps states administer direct aid to lower-income parents and kids), the Children’s Bureau (which oversees child protective services, foster care and adoption) and the Family and Youth Services Bureau (which aids runaway and homeless teens, among others).

All told, these programs have seen their staffs cut from roughly 2,400 employees as of January to 1,500 now, according to a shared Google document that is being regularly updated by former HHS officials. (Neither the White House nor agency leadership have released the exact numbers of cuts.)

Those losses have been most acutely felt in the agency’s regional offices, five out of 10 of which — covering over 20 states — have been closed by the Trump administration. They were dissolved this month without notice to their own employees or to the local providers they worked with. It was these outposts that had monitored Head Start programs to make sure that they had fences around their playgrounds, gates at the top of their stairs and enough staffing to keep an eye on even the most energetic little ones. It was also the regional staff who had helped state child support programs modernize their computer systems and navigate federal law. That allowed them, among other things, to be able to “pass through” more money to families instead of depositing it in state coffers to reimburse themselves for costs.

And it was the regional staff who’d had the relationships with tribal officials that allowed them to routinely work together to address child support, child care and child welfare challenges faced by Native families. Together, they had worked to overcome sometimes deep distrust of the federal government among tribal leaders, who may now have no one to ask for help with their children’s programs other than political appointees in D.C.

In the wake of the regional office cuts, local child services program directors have no idea who in the federal government to call when they have urgent concerns, many told ProPublica. “No one knows anything,” said one state child support director, asking not to be named in order to speak candidly about the administration’s actions. “We have no idea who will be auditing us.”

“We’re trying to be reassuring to our families,” the official said, “but if the national system goes down, so does ours.”

That national system includes the complex web of databases and technical support maintained and provided by the Office of Child Support Services at HHS, which helps states locate parents who owe child support in order to withhold part of their paychecks or otherwise obtain the money they owe, which is then sent to the parent who has custody of the child. Without this federal data and assistance, child support orders would have little way of being enforced across state lines.

For that reason, the Trump administration is making a risky gamble by slashing staffing at the federal child support office, said Vicki Turetsky, who headed that office under the Obama administration. She worries that the layoffs create a danger of system outages that would cause child support payments to be missed or delayed. (“That’s a family’s rent,” she said.) The instability is compounded, she said, by DOGE’s recent unexplained move to access a highly confidential national child support database.

But even if the worst doesn’t come to pass, there will still be concrete consequences for the delivery of child support to families, Turetsky said. The staff members who’ve been pushed out include those who’d helped manage complicated, outdated IT systems; without updates, these programs might over- or undershoot the amount of child support that a parent owes, misdirect the money or fail to give notice to the dad or mom about a change in the case.

When Liz Ryan departed as administrator of the Department of Justice’s juvenile division in January, its website was flush with opportunities for state and local law enforcement as well as nonprofits to apply for federal funding for a myriad of initiatives that help children. There were funds for local police task forces that investigate child exploitation on the internet; for programs where abused children are interviewed by police and mental health professionals; and for court-appointed advocates for victimized kids. Grants were also available for mentoring programs like Big Brothers Big Sisters and the Boys & Girls Clubs of America.

But the Trump administration removed those grant applications, which total over $400 million in a typical year. And Ryan said there still hasn’t been any communication, including in what used to be regular emails with grant recipients, many of whom she remains in touch with, about whether this congressionally approved money even still exists or whether some of it might eventually be made available again.

A spokesperson for the Office of Justice Programs within the DOJ said the agency is reviewing programs, policies and materials and “taking action as appropriate” in accordance with Trump’s executive orders and guidance. When that review has been completed, local agencies and programs seeking grants will be notified.

Multiple nonprofits serving exploited children declined to speak on the record to ProPublica, fearing that doing so might undermine what chance they still had of getting potential grants.

“Look at what happened to the law firms,” one official said, adding that time is running out to fund his program’s services for victims of child abuse for the upcoming fiscal year.

“I never anticipated that programs and services and opportunities for young people wouldn’t be funded at all by the federal government,” Ryan said, adding that local children’s organizations likely can’t go to states, whose budgets are already underwater, to make up the funding gap. “When you look at this alongside what they’re doing at HHS and the Department of Education and to Medicaid, it’s undercutting every single effort that we have to serve kids.”

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May 4, 2025
HHS Condemns Gender-Affirming Care in Report That Finds ‘Sparse’ Evidence of Harm – The 74

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This story was originally reported by Orion Rummler of The 19th. Meet Orion and read more of his reporting on gender, politics and policy.

On Thursday, the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) published a 400-page analysis of research on gender-affirming care for transgender youth, as directed by President Donald Trump. The agency used the release of the report to declare that available science does not support providing gender-affirming care to trans youth. LGBTQ+ advocacy groups worry the report will be used to further restrict gender-affirming care and to change medical guidelines in ways that harm trans youth.

The president mandated the report in an executive order condemning the medical treatment — without evidence — as a form of mutilation, amid a broader push by the administration to exclude trans people from public life. Trump’s order asked the health agency to review the “best practices for promoting the health of children who assert gender dysphoria,” while pressuring youth clinics to halt treatment or lose federal funding.

Now, the HHS has produced that report. The agency combed through research on the outcomes of puberty blockers, hormone replacement therapy, social transition, psychotherapy, and the rare cases of surgeries on adolescents and young adults diagnosed with gender dysphoria.

Gender dysphoria, the reason that most trans people undergo gender-affirming care, is a strong and persistent distress felt when one’s body is out of sync with their gender identity. Without treatment, gender dysphoria can lead to severe negative impacts in day-to-day life.

The agency states in its executive summary of the report that the document is not meant to provide clinical practice guidelines or issue legislative or policy recommendations. However, the report does imply that health care providers should refuse to offer gender-affirming care to adolescents and young adults on the basis that such care comes with the potential for risk — despite little evidence for that risk actually being found in the report.

“The evidence for benefit of pediatric medical transition is very uncertain, while the evidence for harm is less uncertain,” the executive summary states. “When medical interventions pose unnecessary, disproportionate risks of harm, healthcare providers should refuse to offer them even when they are preferred, requested, or demanded by patients.”

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In its research review, the HHS determined that evidence measuring the effects of gender-affirming care on psychological outcomes, quality of life, regret and long-term health is of “very low” quality. This conclusion ignores decades of research, as well as a recent survey of more than 90,000 transgender people in the United States that found an overwhelming majority report more life satisfaction after having transitioned. Access to gender-affirming care has been linked to lower odds of suicidality and depression in trans youth, while gender-affirming surgeries have been found to lower psychological distress for adults.

Even when analyzing research that the administration deemed low-bias, the HHS found “sparse” to no evidence of harm from gender-affirming care. What’s more, the report frequently found evidence demonstrating the benefits of gender-affirming care — though it ultimately downplays those findings as not significant.

Available research on puberty blockers found high satisfaction ratings and low rates of regret. A systematic review of hormone replacement therapy described improved gender dysphoria and body satisfaction. Another found that hormone treatment leads to improved mental health. Two before-and-after studies reported reduced treatment needs or lower levels of suicidality and self-harm after hormone treatment. When measuring safety outcomes of hormone treatment, side effects did not have a major impact on treatment and complications were limited.

Despite these findings, the Department of Health and Human Services advertised the report in a Thursday news release as one that “highlights a growing body of evidence pointing to significant risks” of gender-affirming care. At the White House briefing room Thursday, deputy chief of staff for policy Stephen Miller touted the new report and attributed the idea of being transgender as part of a “cancerous communist woke culture” that is “destroying this country.”

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There are side effects to many of the medications that transgender people — and cisgender people — take to receive gender-affirming care, as is the case with most medical treatments. These side effects, like the risk of decreased bone density when taking puberty blockers, are closely monitored and treated by doctors and communicated to patients.

LGBTQ+ advocacy organizations denounced the report as a political attack on transgender youth. Multiple groups said that the report’s endorsement of psychotherapy as a “noninvasive alternative” to puberty blockers and hormone treatment amounts to an endorsement of conversion therapy — a practice wherein mental health professionals try to change a youth’s sexual orientation or gender identity.

“It is already clear that this report is a willful distortion of the evidence intended to stoke fear about a field of safe and effective medicine that has existed for decades, in order to justify dangerous practices which amount to conversion therapy,” said Sinead Murano Kinney, health policy analyst at Advocates for Trans Equality.

The Human Rights Campaign, the country’s largest LGBTQ+ rights organization, accused the HHS of producing a report that is attempting to lay the groundwork to replace medical care for trans and nonbinary people with conversion therapy.

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“Trans people are who we are. We’re born this way. And we deserve to live our best lives and have a fair shot and equal opportunity at living a good life,” said Jay Brown, chief of staff at the Human Rights Campaign. “This report … lays the groundwork to push parents and doctors aside and allow politicians to subject our kids to the debunked practice of conversion therapy.”

No authors or contributors are named in the report or in its executive summary. The agency says these names are being initially withheld to “maintain the integrity of this process,” and states that chapters of the document were subject to peer review.

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May 3, 2025
The silencing of America’s voice leaves journalists abandoned

On 28 March, several journalists in South Asia opened their inboxes and found messages that changed their lives. Reporting assignments were cancelled. Email access revoked. For many, it marked the end of years of work with Voice of America — without explanation, without notice.

Nazir Ahmad is a journalist. For 11 years, Ahmad worked for Voice of America as a multimedia journalist. He documented protests, crackdowns and mass detentions. That morning, his email account was suspended. His press card was no longer valid.

“It ended without warning,” he said. “No notice, no call. Just a message that my services were no longer needed. I had been filing reports even a week before this.”

Nazir Ahmad is not his real name. We changed it for this article to protect his identity. And we offered anonymity to all the journalists we interviewed for this story because their reporting for Voice of America has put them in danger.

Ahmad is one of several South Asian journalists who lost their jobs after the Trump administration signed an executive order to downsize multiple U.S. government agencies, including the U.S. Agency for Global Media, which oversees Voice of America.

On 22 April, a federal district judge in Washington, D.C. ruled that the administration illegally required Voice of America to cease operations and ordered it be temporarily restored until the lawsuits challenging the closure have run their course. How this will affect Ahmad and the other reporters who were dismissed remains to be seen.

Shutting down a news network

The Trump Administration’s decision to end Voice of America affected journalists across Asia who have been covering sensitive political developments for years.

“I covered the Delhi riots, Punjab farmers’ protests, and the elections,” said another Voice of America journalist. “These were not easy stories. I often worked without backup and sometimes without formal protection. Now, I’m being told to stop working.”

Trump’s executive order resulted in mass administrative leave across Voice of America’s global network. Michael Abramowitz, Voice of America’s director, confirmed that nearly all 1,300 journalists and staff were placed on leave.

The White House said the order was intended to reduce government spending and eliminate what it called “radical propaganda.” It accused outlets like Voice of America of political bias, despite decades of bipartisan support for the agency.

For many South Asian journalists, the move came at a personal and professional cost. Several freelancers and stringers in India, Pakistan, Nepal, Bangladesh and Sri Lanka had worked with Voice of America for over a decade.

Telling important stories to the world

Besides reporting on protests, these reporters covered elections, environmental disasters and rights violations in hard-to-reach areas.

“I reported from Punjab’s border villages during the height of the farmers’ protests,” said yet another journalist who worked with Voice of America since 2014. “I was there when the police fired tear gas. I was there when elderly protesters braved the winter cold. And now I’m unemployed.”

These journalists say they received no formal termination letters, only a message from editors citing administrative leave and funding suspensions. They have not been told when or if their jobs will resume.

“There was a clear line in the message: stop all reporting,” said a Voice of America contributor from New Delhi. “I depend on this income to support my family. I’ve been sending stories every week for eight years.”

Voice of America was established in 1942 during World War II to counter Nazi propaganda. It has since expanded to reach 360 million people weekly in nearly 50 languages. In South Asia, it provided a platform for independent voices, especially in regions where domestic media faced political pressure or censorship.

Press coverage where the press is muzzled

Experts say the funding freeze, if ultimately allowed by the courts, could silence important coverage from conflict zones. In regions like Kashmir, where local journalists already face surveillance and restrictions, international media partnerships like Voice of America provided both visibility and a layer of protection.

“Working with VOA allowed us to tell local stories without fear of censorship,” says a journalist based in Srinagar. “Now that channel is gone.”

The impact also extends beyond journalists. Translators, video editors and fixers who worked with Voice of America in the region say their contracts have been halted.

“I’ve been working as a video editor for their South Asia bureau for six years,” said a technician based in Lahore, Pakistan. “We’ve stopped getting assignments. I haven’t been paid for last month’s work.”

Some journalists say they are now exploring alternate work, but few opportunities exist for those with years of specialized international reporting experience.

“I’m being told to apply to local newspapers, but they don’t have the budget or the editorial independence,” said a journalist from Kathmandu. “It feels like I’m starting over after 12 years.”

Stories the domestic press hesitates to cover

The Executive Order also affected coverage of religious freedom, caste violence and press crackdowns in India. Journalists who regularly filed in-depth features say important stories are now going untold.

“I was working on a long story about attacks on Christian communities,” said a reporter based in Tamil Nadu. “It’s not something mainstream outlets want to cover. Voice of America gave me space to explore that. Now it’s shelved.”

The global press watchdog Reporters Without Borders has described the shutdown as a serious setback for journalism, warning that it could encourage political interference in media operations across the world.

Stephen Capus, head of Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, which also lost funding, said the move would leave millions without access to independent reporting.

In South Asia, journalists say this is about more than losing a paycheck. For them, it’s the breakdown of a reporting network that allowed them to cover sensitive stories in challenging environments.

“We weren’t just sending news reports,” says a journalist who covered the Indian government’s 2019 decision to revoke Kashmir’s autonomy. “We were capturing what was happening when few others could. And now someone in Washington has pulled the plug.”

With no clarity on whether the shutdown is permanent, most contributors are in limbo. Some are looking for freelance work. Others are applying for short-term grants. But many say the abrupt stop has left them disoriented.

“I always thought if I stopped reporting, it would be because of risks here,” one journalist said. “I didn’t expect to be cut off by a government halfway across the world.”

Questions to consider:

• What is the Voice of America?

• Why has the U.S. government long funded foreign journalists outside the United States?

• Do you think governments should pay journalists to cover events and other stories? Why?

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May 1, 2025
Federal Education Cuts and Trump DEI Demands Leave States, Teachers in Limbo – The 74

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Early this month, the U.S. Department of Education issued an ultimatum to K-12 public schools and state education agencies: Certify that you are not engaging in discrimination under the banner of diversity, equity and inclusion, or risk losing federal funding — including billions in support for low-income students.

The backlash was immediate. Some states with Democratic governors refused to comply, arguing that the directive lacks legal basis, fails to clearly define what constitutes “illegal DEI practices,” and threatens vital equity-based initiatives in their schools.

After lawsuits from the National Education Association teachers union and the American Civil Liberties Union, the Department of Education agreed to delay enforcement until after April 24.

But states across the country, both liberal- and conservative-led, are worried about losing other aid: the pandemic-era money that in some cases they’ve already spent or committed to spending.

The Department of Education has long played a critical role in distributing federal funds to states for K-12 education, including Title I grants to boost staffing in schools with high percentages of low-income students, and emergency relief like that provided during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Conservative-led states — particularly Mississippi, South Dakota and Arkansas — rely the most heavily on these funds to sustain services in high-need districts.

The 15 states with the highest percentage of their K-12 budget coming from federal funding in fiscal year 2022 — the latest year with data available from the National Center for Education Statistics — voted for Trump in the 2024 presidential election. Similarly, 10 of the 15 states receiving the highest amounts of Title I funding in fiscal year 2024 also voted for Trump.

Mississippi and Kentucky have sent letters to the Department of Education expressing concern over halted pandemic aid.

The clash over federal funding comes even as the future of the Department of Education is murky, given President Donald Trump’s pledge to dismantle the department.

DEI-related cuts

In letters to the Department of Education, state officials and superintendents in Illinois, New York and Wisconsin pushed back against the DEI directive.

New York officials said they would not provide additional certification beyond what the state already has done, asserting that there “are no federal or State laws prohibiting the principles of DEI.” Illinois Superintendent Tony Sanders wrote that he was concerned that the Department of Education was changing the conditions of federal funding without a formal administrative process. Wisconsin Superintendent Jill Underly questioned the legality of the order.

New York State Department of Education Counsel and Deputy Commissioner Daniel Morton-Bentley noted that the federal department’s current stance on DEI starkly contrasts with its position during Trump’s first term, when then-Education Secretary Betsy DeVos supported such efforts.

Colorado and California also confirmed they would not comply with the Department of Education’s order.

While some states with liberal leaders are gearing up for legal battles and possible revocation of funding, conservative-led states such as Florida have embraced the federal directive as part of a broader push to reshape public education.

In Florida, anti-DEI laws have been in place dating back to 2023. In fact, many school districts and the state education department say they plan to follow the federal department’s directives, noting the similar state laws.

Pandemic aid cancellations

In March, the Department of Education abruptly rescinded previously approved extensions of pandemic-era aid, ending access to funds months ahead of the original March 2026 deadline.

When the Massachusetts governor’s office voiced concern over that decision, the federal department’s reply on social media was blunt: “COVID is over.”

Sixteen mostly Democratic-led states and the District of Columbia filed a federal lawsuit against the Department of Education and Secretary Linda McMahon, challenging the abrupt rescission of previously approved extensions for spending COVID-19 education relief funds.

But backlash against abrupt federal cuts to education has not been limited to blue states.

Mississippi’s Department of Education warned the cuts would jeopardize more than $137 million in already obligated funds, slated for literacy initiatives, mental health services and infrastructure repairs. “The impact of this sudden reversal is detrimental to Mississippi students,” state Superintendent Lance Evans wrote in a letter to McMahon.

The letter also outlines the state’s repeated — but unsuccessful — efforts to draw down millions in approved funds since February.

Shanderia Minor, a spokesperson for the Mississippi education department, told Stateline the agency is awaiting next steps and direction about the funds and federal directives.

In Kentucky, state Education Commissioner Robbie Fletcher told districts — which stand to lose tens of millions in pandemic aid — that abrupt federal changes leave them “in a difficult position,” with schools already having committed funds to teacher training and facility upgrades.

According to Kentucky Department of Education spokesperson Jennifer Ginn, the state has about $18 million in unspent pandemic aid funds left to distribute to districts. And districts have about $38 million in unspent funds, for a total $56 million that could be lost.

Lauren Farrow, a former Florida public school teacher, told Stateline that schools that receive Title I money are already underfunded — and the federal threat only widens the gap.

“Florida is pouring billions into education — but where is it going? Because we’re not seeing it in schools, especially not in Title I schools,” said Farrow. “I taught five minutes away from a wealthier school, and we didn’t even have pencils. Teachers were buying shoes for students. Why is that still happening?”

Effects in the classroom

Tafshier Cosby, senior director of the Center for Organizing and Partnerships at the National Parents Union, a parents advocacy group, told Stateline that while most families don’t fully understand the various school funding systems, they feel the impact of cuts in the classroom.

Cosby said parents are worried about the loss of support services for students with disabilities, Title I impacts, and how debates about DEI may deflect from more urgent needs like literacy and teacher support.

“We’ve been clear: DEI isn’t the federal government’s role — it’s up to states,” she said. “But the confusion is real. And the impact could be devastating.”

Today, as a consultant working with teachers across Florida’s Orange County Public Schools — one of the largest districts in the country — Farrow says many educators are fearful and confused about how to support their students under changing DEI laws.

“Teachers are asking, ‘Does this mean I can’t seat a student with glasses at the front of the room anymore?’ There’s so much fear around what we’re allowed to do now.”

“There’s no one giving teachers guidance or even basic acknowledgment. We’re just left wondering what we’re allowed to say or do — and that’s dangerous.”

Amanda Hernández contributed to this report. Stateline reporter Robbie Sequeira can be reached at rsequeira@stateline.org.

Stateline is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Stateline maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Scott S. Greenberger for questions: info@stateline.org.

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April 20, 2025
Punishing Parents for Chronic Absenteeism – The 74
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School (in)Security is our biweekly briefing on the latest school safety news, vetted by Mark Keierleber. Subscribe here.

As educators nationwide grapple with stubbornly high levels of student absences since the pandemic drove schools into disarray five years ago, Oklahoma prosecutor Erik Johnson says he has the solution.

Throw parents in jail.

This week, I offer a look at chronic absenteeism’s persistence long after COVID shuttered classrooms, plunged families into poverty and led to the deaths of more than 1 million Americans. Lawmakers nationwide have proposed dozens of bills this year designed to curtail student absences — with radically different approaches.

While a proposal in Hawaii would reward kids’ good attendance with ice cream, new laws in Indiana, West Virginia and Iowa impose fines and jail time for parents who can’t compel their children to attend class regularly. In Oklahoma, where Johnson has ushered in a new era of truancy crackdowns, state lawmakers say parents — not principals and teachers — should be held accountable for students’ repeat absences.

“We prosecute everything from murders to rape to financial crimes, but in my view, the ones that cause the most societal harm is when people do harm to children, either child neglect, child physical abuse, child sexual abuse, domestic violence in homes, and then you can add truancy to the list,” Johnson told me this week.

“It’s not as bad, in my opinion, as beating a child, but it’s on the spectrum because you’re not putting that child in a position to be successful,” continued Johnson, who has dubbed 2025 the “Year of the Child.”

In the news

Books are not a crime — yet: Under proposed Texas legislation, teachers could soon face jail sentences for teaching classic literary works with sexual content, including The Catcher in the Rye and (unironically?) Brave New World. | Mother Jones

Mass layoffs at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services this week could have devastating consequences for the health and well-being of low-income children. | The Associated Press

Ten days or else: The Education Department demanded Thursday that states certify in writing within the next 10 days that K-12 schools are complying with its interpretation of civil rights laws, namely eliminating any diversity, equity and inclusion programs, or else risk losing their federal funding. | The New York Times

A Texas teen was kneed in the face by a school cop: Now, with steep cuts to the Education Department’s Office for Civil Rights, her case is one of thousands that have been left to languish. | The 74

Students’ right to privacy versus parents’ right to know: The Trump administration has opened an investigation into a California law designed to protect transgender students from being outed to their parents, alleging violations of the federal student privacy law. | The New York Times

A similar investigation has been opened against officials in Maine, where the feds claim district policies to protect students’ privacy come at the expense of parents’ right to information. | Maine Morning Star

“Parents are the most natural protectors of their children,” Education Secretary Linda McMahon said in a statement after a similar federal investigation was launched against Virginia educators. “Yet many states and school districts have enacted policies that imply students need protection from their parents.” | Virginia Mercury

A little context: In a recent survey, more than 92% of parents said they were supportive of their child’s transgender identity. | Human Rights Campaign

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The Student Press Law Center joined a coalition of free speech and journalism organizations in denouncing the recent ICE detention of Tufts University international student Rumeysa Ozturk over opinions she expressed in an op-ed in the student newspaper.

“Such a basis for her detention would represent a blatant disregard for the principles of free speech and free press within the First Amendment,” the groups wrote in their letter. | Student Press Law Center

The Turkish doctoral candidate is one of several students who’ve been rounded up by immigration officials in recent weeks based on pro-Palestinian comments. | The New York Times

Florida lawmakers have a plan to fill the jobs of undocumented workers who are deported: Put kids on the overnight shift. | The Guardian

Minority report: Following bipartisan opposition, Georgia lawmakers have given up on efforts to create a statewide student-tracking database designed to identify youth who could commit future acts of violence. | WABE

A majority of school district programs focused on protecting student data are led by administrators with little training in privacy issues, a new report finds. | StateScoop

Washington students’ sensitive data was exposed. The culprit? A student surveillance tool. | The Seattle Times

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Emotional Support

Annie, who lives with The 74 social media guru Christian Skotte, is the cutest regular at Brooklyn’s Prospect Park. You won’t convince me otherwise.

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April 5, 2025
Charles Darwin uni loses $200,000 US research funding – Campus Review

A research contract valued at about $200,000 has been lost by Charles Darwin University (CDU) as a result of US President Donald Trump’s “America First” agenda.

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April 2, 2025
TN Schools Could Exclude Immigrant Kids Without Legal Status in GOP-Backed Bill – The 74

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Tennessee lawmakers on Wednesday voted to advance a bill that would require public K-12 and charter schools to verify student immigration status and allow them to bar children who cannot prove they lawfully reside in the United States unless they pay tuition.

The 5-4 vote by the Senate Education Committee came despite the Legislature’s own fiscal analysis, which said the proposed legislation “may jeopardize federal funding to the state and to local governments” and violate the federal Civil Rights Act, which specifically prohibits discrimination based on national origin in programs receiving federal dollars. Three Republicans joined the committee’s sole Democrat in voting “no.”

Immediately after the vote was cast, shouts of “so shameful” and “that’s trash” erupted inside the hearing room. Others, including school-age children in attendance, streamed out of the room in tears.

The bill (HB793/SB836) by Sen. Bo Watson, a Hixson Republican, and House Majority Leader William Lamberth, a Portland Republican, says that local school districts and public charter schools “shall require” students to provide one of three forms of documentation: proof of U.S. citizenship, proof the student is in the process of obtaining citizenship or proof they have legal immigration status or a visa.

Students who lack one of the three forms of documentation could then be barred by their local school district from enrolling unless their parents paid tuition.

Watson, the bill’s sponsor, said he brought the measure in response to the increasing cost to the state of providing English-as-a-second-language instruction.

“Remember, we are not talking about people who are here lawfully,” Watson said. “What I’m trying to discuss here is the financial burden that exists with what appears to be an increasing number of people who are not lawfully here.”

In response to a question from Sen. Raumesh Akbari of Memphis, the sole Democrat on the panel, Watson said he had received no formal request from any school official to introduce the measure.

“In an official capacity, this is one of those issues people do not talk about,” Watson said. “This is a very difficult bill to present. It is very difficult to have all these eyes on you.”

“In an unofficial capacity at numerous events, have people mentioned this problem to me? Absolutely,” Watson said.

Akbari responded: “I’m from the largest school district in the state. I have not had those conversations.”

“I am offended by this legislation,” Akbari said. “I find that it is so antithetical to the very foundation of this country….This is saying that babies – you start school at five years old – that you do not deserve to be educated.”

The bill’s sponsors have acknowledged the measure is likely to face a legal challenge if enacted. The proposed legislation, they have said, is intended to serve as a vehicle to potentially overturn the Supreme Court’s Plyler v. Doe decision, which established a constitutional right to a public school education for all children. The 1982 decision was decided by a 5-4 vote, Watson noted.

“Many 5-4 decisions taken to the court today might have a different outcome,” Watson said.

The proposed legislation is part of an unprecedented slate of immigration-related bills introduced in the Tennessee legislature this year as Gov. Bill Lee and the General Assembly’s GOP supermajority seek to align with the Trump Administration’s immigration policies.

Lee last month signed into law legislation to create a state immigration enforcement office to liaise with the Trump administration, create distinct driver’s licenses for noncitizens and levy felony charges at local elected officials who vote in favor of sanctuary policies.

Among nearly three dozen other immigration-related bills still being considered is one to require hospitals that accept Medicaid payments to report on the immigration status of their patients. Another bill would open up charitable organizations, including churches, to lawsuits if they have provided housing services to an individual without permanent legal immigration status and that individual goes on to commit a crime.

Following Wednesday’s hearing in the Senate Education Committee, hundreds congregated in a hallway of the Legislature, chanting “education for all” and pledged to return as the bill winds through the committee process.

The bill “instills fear and hopelessness in these students,” said Ruby Aguilar, a Nashville teacher who testified against the bill during the hearing. “Education is not merely a privilege, it is a shared human right every child should have access to.”

Tennessee Lookout is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Tennessee Lookout maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Holly McCall for questions: info@tennesseelookout.com.

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March 8, 2025
Will Trump’s “anti-wokeism” change DEI in Australian universities?
United States President Donald Trump’s first six weeks of his second term has been defined by 76 executive orders, the disestablishment of the national education department and establishment of the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE).

One of the most controversial executive orders, which is a written directive signed by a president that orders immediate governmental action, was titled “Ending Radical And Wasteful Government DEI Programs And Preferencing,” signed on President Trump’s first day back in office on January 20, 2025.

He directed all federal DEI staff be placed on paid leave and, eventually, laid off. He has also signed another Executive Order, titled “Ending Illegal Discrimination and Restoring Merit-Based Opportunity.”

DEI stands for diversity, equity and inclusion, and refers to programs and committees that help people from underrepresented backgrounds (women, Indigenous, Black, for instance) get into, and stay in, jobs or courses those people wouldn’t traditionally participate in. It is largely similar to the strategy of the Australian Universities Accord.

President Trump has also cut funding to schools and universities that do not cancel DEI programs. He labelled the programs “radical,” “wasteful” and said they demonstrate “immense public waste and shameful discrimination.”

The full effects of these Executive Orders and DEI changes are yet to be seen because decisions regarding DEI will ultimately be made by the court.

However, private companies in the US have walked away from internal DEI programs, including Meta (which has worked closely with Trump as of late), Google (which provides some services to the US government), Pepsi, Disney and multiple prominent banks.

There has been no significant walk away from DEI in Australian private companies, and many universities continue to discuss how to bolster and “future-proof” internal DEI programs.

Australia’s ambassador to the US from 2020 to 2023, Arthur Sinodinos, told the Universities Australia Solutions Summit last week that institutions are best off making decisions “based off their objectives,” but should enact genuine change, not just tick diversity boxes.

Arthur Sinodinos said DEI should be about achieving true diversity rather than ticking boxes. Picture: Sam Ruttyn

“My view on DEI is that [universities should] start from a posture that they want to make the best use of all the talent and resources available to them,” he said.

“If you’re also interested in trying to expand the reach of higher education to groups that might otherwise be disadvantaged, you have to find ways to do that, but in a way that also addresses the genuine issue.

“I think access to higher education is still important for a country like Australia, which has to make – given its population – the best use of the resources it’s got.

“The argument that you can just leave it to the market, the meritocracy will still be there [is wrong]. Frankly, in the market, some people start with a head start with with inbuilt advantages.”

President Trump’s former White House chief of staff Mick Mulvaney, who was also on the panel at the UA summit, said he thinks DEI programs in the US have gone “too far to one side.”

Former Trump White House chief of staff Mick Mulvaney said he thinks DEI has gone “too far” in the US. Picture: UA

“One of the reasons you’re seeing the pushback against it in my country is that it went too far to one side. I don’t know where it is in this country, but at some point it may go too far, and the pushback will come.”

He also explained why this Trump term is already more action-packed than his first was at this time: the President expected to win in November, 2024, but not in 2016.

“Not only did [Trump] expect to win, [his team has] been working for four years on what they would do when they won,” he said.

“What are we gonna do the first day? The first week, the first month, the first 100 days? Which is why we’re seeing all these executive orders. It’s actually four years worth of planning coming forward.”

Mr Mulvaney said he thinks DEI could survive if its reasoning for existing is communicated in a tailored way.

He said Trump’s administration is receptive to initiatives that improve efficiency, productivity and merit.

“You could have a program that is good on on the climate, [for example,] but that’s not your selling pitch. That doesn’t register with the person you’re talking to,” he explained.

Related stories: “Unis are not Centrelink offices”: Coalition’s pitch to university leaders | Q&A: Bill Shorten talks VC pay cuts and politics in HE | Report card: Accord recommendations 12 months on

“You have to learn how to speak the language of the person you’re talking to. Don’t change what you’re doing, perhaps just simply change how you explain it.”

UA chief executive Luke Sheehy was asked after his National Press Club address last Wednesday whether he thinks an “anti-woke” sentiment will affect how universities function.

Luke Sheehy’s membership body discussed the impact of “Trump 2.0” at last week’s conference. Picture: UA

“Obviously there’s a major disruption that’s happened in America with Trump 2.0 … One of the things we’ve learned is, once articulated in a certain way, positive sentiment skyrockets for universities,” he responded.

“If you offer a simple proposition: we have 4,000 fewer teachers than we need today ,and universities are the only way to get those skilled workers into the workforce to support young people; we need 132,000 more nurses, etc.

“Then remove yourself from what happens on the front pages of newspapers and what occupies political pundits, and think about what the real Australian people need and want from the university sector.

“My hope is that the more we talk about the important role of universities and our core mission in education and research, the more Australians, irrespective of whether or not they went to university or not, they see the value for us as part of our future.”

The university sector’s declining “social license” has been a major topic of discussion of late for university leaders.

There is a growing sentiment that universities, and the knowledge economy, needs to “show” society why they’re worth the funding and enrolments.

“We always have more work to do. In an era where there is declining trust in institutions, I think it’s really important that universities invest in themselves in terms of how they engage with their communities,” Mr Sheehy continued.
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March 5, 2025