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The United States as guardian or bully

The recent United States military incursion into Venezuela and abduction and subsequent arrest of its President Nicolás Maduro and his wife in New York is a major geopolitical event. Like all major geopolitical events, it has several components — historical, legal, political and moral.

And like all major geopolitical events, it has very different points of view. There is no grandiose “Truth” about what happened. There are many truths and points of view.

What can be said is that on 3 January 2026, the United States military carried out strikes on Venezuela and captured its president, Nicolás Maduro, and his wife Cilia Flores. The two were then flown to the United States where they were arrested and charged with issues related to narcoterrorism.

The United States’ intervention in a Latin American country has historical precedents as well as current foreign policy implications.

Under President James Monroe, the United States declared in 1823 that it was opposed to any outside colonialism in the Western Hemisphere. Now known as the Monroe Doctrine, it established what political scientists refer to as a “sphere of influence”; No foreign country could establish control of a country in the United States-dominated Western Hemisphere.

(This was indeed one of the central issues in the 13-day October 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis when the United States established a blockade outside Cuba to stop the installation of Soviet missiles on the island.)

The Trump Corollary

In the latest U.S. official security strategy document — National Security Strategy 2025 — the Monroe Doctrine was presented in what has been labelled “The Trump Corollary.” In it, the government said that defending territory and the Western Hemisphere were central tasks of U.S. foreign policy and national interest. The document clearly stated that activities by extra-hemispheric powers would be considered serious threats to U.S. security.

As such, the “Trump Corollary” of the Monroe Doctrine is the justification of the military action in Venezuela based on stopping Russian and Chinese influence in Venezuela. In addition, it can be seen as the justification for the U.S. to acquire Greenland, resume control of the Panama Canal and stop narcotics and illegal migrants coming into the United States from anywhere in the Western Hemisphere.

But the Corollary and Doctrine are mere national strategic statements. Are they legally justified? The U.S. military operation in Venezuela has been highly criticized by international lawyers as well as United Nations officials. The United Nations Charter, of which the United States is a signatory, clearly forbids the use of force by one country against another country except in the case of self-defense and imminent threat.

In an interview with New Yorker magazine reporter Isaac Chotiner on 3 January, Yale Law School Professor Oona Hathaway noted that when the UN Charter was written 80 years ago, it included a critical prohibition on the use of force by states. “States are not allowed to decide on their own that they want to use force against other states,” she told Chotiner. “It was meant to reinforce this relatively new idea at the time that states couldn’t just go to war whenever they wanted to.”

Hathaway said that in the pre-UN Charter world, you could use force if you felt like drug trafficking was hurting you and come up with legal justification that that was the case. “But the whole point of the UN Charter was basically to say, ‘We’re not going to go to war for those reasons anymore’,” she said.

The legality of an ouster

Besides the international legal issue, there is also a domestic legal question about the Venezuelan military action. The 1973 War Powers Act was enacted to limit the power of the U.S. president to use military forces with the approval of the Congress.

It was enacted following the Vietnam War during which the president engaged troops without Congressional approval or a formal declaration of war. The Act clearly requires the president to notify Congress before committing armed forces to military action.

Trump did not consult with members of Congress before and during the military action in Venezuela. The political implications of the Venezuelan strikes and abduction also have international as well as domestic implications. Internationally, there is a dangerous precedent being set.

If the United States asserts its sphere of influence in the Western Hemisphere, what is to stop the Russian Federation from claiming a similar sphere of influence in the Baltic countries of Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia as well as Ukraine?

Similarly, what about Chinese influence in the Indo-Pacific region and especially Taiwan? If the United States claims domination in one geographic region, why can’t other powers like Russia and China do the same?

The Westphalian system

Within the United States, there have also been serious reservations about President Trump’s actions. That was to be expected from the opposing Democratic Party. But, several members of Trump’s Republican Party as well as loyal members of his Make America Great Again (MAGA) movement argue that Trump was elected on the slogan “Make America Great Again.” One of the pillars of that movement is a focus on internal problems instead of foreign interventions.

Republican U.S. Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene used to be one of Trump’s staunchest supporters. On 3 January she told interviewer Kristen Walker on the NBC show “Meet the Press” that America First should mean what Trump promised on the campaign trail in 2024.

“So my understanding of America First is strictly for the American people, not for the big donors that donate to big politicians, not for the special interests that constantly roam the halls in Washington and not foreign countries that demand their priorities put first over Americans,” Greene said.

Other criticisms have centered on President Trump’s focus on restoring business in Venezuela for the U.S. oil industry, which has the world’s largest oil reserves. Republican U.S. Representative Thomas Massie warned that “lives of U.S. soldiers are being risked to make those oil companies (not Americans) more profitable.”

Finally, there are moral arguments against the use of force in Venezuela as well as Trump’s threats of the use of force in Colombia, Cuba and elsewhere. There is no question that Venezuelans had suffered under the rule of Maduro; statistics show the rapid decline in the economy as well as a significant democratic deficit.

Fundamental to today’s notion of international order is what’s known as the Westphalian system of the integrity of state sovereignty. The world has seen an order since the end of World War II and the establishment of the United Nations. That order was based on respect for the rule of law. There are other means for states to act against other states, such as sanctions, below military intervention. One country invading another goes against the basis of the Westphalian system.

The Venezuelan strikes and abduction have set a dangerous precedent.

Questions to consider:

1. What is meant by the “Monroe Doctrine”?

2. When is one country considered part of a “sphere of influence” of another country?

3. How do you define “national security”?

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January 12, 2026
Conservatives see married parents as a solution to low student achievement. It’s not that simple

by Jill Barshay, The Hechinger Report
January 12, 2026

Conservatives have long argued that unwed motherhood and single parenting are major drivers of poor student achievement. They contend that traditional two-parent families — ideally with a married mother and father — provide the stability children need to succeed in school. Single-parent households, more common among low-income families, are blamed for weak academic outcomes.

That argument has resurfaced prominently in Project 2025, a policy blueprint developed by the conservative Heritage Foundation that calls for the federal government to collect and publish more education data broken out by family structure.

Project 2025 acknowledges that the Education Department already collects some of this data, but asserts that it doesn’t make it public. That’s not true, though you need expertise to extract it. When I contacted the Heritage Foundation, the organization responded that the family-structure data should still be “readily available” to a layman, just like student achievement by race and sex. Fair point.

Related: Our free weekly newsletter alerts you to what research says about schools and classrooms.

With some help, I found the figures and the results complicate the conservative claim.

Since 2013, the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP), often called the Nation’s Report Card, has asked students about who lives in their home. While the question does not capture every family arrangement, the answers provide a reasonable, albeit imperfect, proxy for family structure and it allows the public to examine how a nationally representative sample of students from different types of households perform academically.

I wanted to look at the relationship between family structure and student achievement by family income. Single-parent families are far more common in low-income communities and I didn’t want to conflate achievement gaps by income with achievement gaps by family structure. For example, 43 percent of low-income eighth graders live with only one parent compared with 13 percent of their high-income peers. I wanted to know whether kids who live with only one parent perform worse than kids with the same family income who live with both parents.

To analyze the most recent data from the 2024 NAEP exam, I used the NAEP Data Explorer, a public tool developed by testing organization ETS for the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES). I told an ETS researcher what I wanted to know and he showed me how to generate the cross-tabulations, which I then replicated independently across four tests: fourth- and eighth-grade reading and math. Finally, I vetted the results with a former senior official at NCES and with a current staff member at the governing board that oversees the NAEP assessment.

The analysis reveals a striking pattern.

Among low-income students, achievement differs little by family structure. Fourth- and eighth-grade students from low-income households score at roughly the same level whether they live with both parents or with only one parent. Two-parent households do not confer a measurable academic advantage in this group. Fourth-grade reading is a great example. Among the socioeconomic bottom third of students, those who live with both parents scored a 199. Those who live with just mom scored 200. The results are almost identical and, if anything, a smidge higher for the kids of single moms.

As socioeconomic status rises, however, differences by family structure become more pronounced. Among middle- and high-income students, those living with both parents tend to score higher than their peers living with only one parent. The gap is largest among the most affluent students. In fourth grade reading, for example, higher-income kids who live with both parents scored a 238, a whopping 10 points higher than their peers who live with only their moms. Experts argue over the meaning of a NAEP point, but some equate 10 NAEP points to a school year’s worth of learning. It’s substantial.

Family structure matters less for low-income student achievement

Still, it’s better to be rich in a single-parent household than poor in a two-parent household. High-income students raised by a single parent substantially outperform low-income students who live with both parents by at least 20 points, underscoring that money and the advantages it brings — such as access to resources, stable housing, and educational support — matter far more than household composition alone. In other words, income far outweighs family structure when it comes to student achievement.

Despite the NAEP data, Jonathan Butcher, acting director of the center for education policy at the Heritage Foundation, stands by the contention that family structure matters greatly for student outcomes. He points out that research since the landmark Coleman report of 1966 has consistently found a relationship between the two. Most recently, in a 2022 American Enterprise Institute-Brookings report, 15 scholars concluded that children “raised in stable, married-parent families are more likely to excel in school, and generally earn higher grade point averages” than children who are not. Two recent books, Brad Wilcox’s “Get Married” (2024) and Melissa Kearney’s “The Two-Parent Privilege” (2023), make the case, too, and they point out that children raised by married parents are about twice as likely to graduate from college as children who are not. However, it’s unclear to me if all of this analysis has disaggregated student achievement by family income as I did with the NAEP data.

Related: Trump administration makes good on many Project 2025 education goals

Family structure is a persistent theme for conservatives. Just last week the Heritage Foundation released a report on strengthening and rebuilding U.S. families. In a July 2025 newsletter, Robert Pondiscio, senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, a conservative think tank, wrote that “the most effective intervention in education is not another literacy coach or SEL program. It’s dad.” He cited a June 2025 report, “Good Fathers, Flourishing Kids,” by scholars and advocates. (Disclosure: A group led by one of the authors of this report, Richard Reeves, is among the funders of The Hechinger Report.)

That conclusion is partially supported by the NAEP data, but only for a relatively small share of students from higher-income families (The share of high-income children living with only their mother ranges between 7 and 10 percent. The single-parent rate is higher for eighth graders than for fourth graders.) For low-income students, who are Pondiscio’s and the scholars’ main concern, it’s not the case.

The data has limitations. The NAEP survey does not distinguish among divorced families, grandparent-led households or same-sex parents. Joint custody arrangements are likely grouped with two-parent households because children may say that they live with both mother and father, if not at the same time. Even so, these nuances are unlikely to alter the core finding: For low-income students, academic outcomes are largely similar regardless of whether they live with both parents all of the time, some of the time or only live with one parent.

The bottom line is that calls for new federal data collection by family structure, like those outlined in Project 2025, may not reveal what advocates expect. A family’s bank account matters more than a wedding ring.

Contact staff writer Jill Barshay at 212-678-3595, jillbarshay.35 on Signal, or [email protected].

This story about family structure and student achievement was produced by The Hechinger Report, a nonprofit, independent news organization focused on inequality and innovation in education. Sign up for Proof Points and other Hechinger newsletters.

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January 12, 2026
Modernizing education communications for safety and simplicity

Key points:

Schools, colleges, and universities face growing challenges in keeping their communities informed, connected, and engaged. From classroom collaboration to campus-wide alerts, reliable communication is critical to creating positive learning environments and student experiences.

Currently, many educational institutions are weighed down by outdated and disjointed communication systems that hinder learning, experience, and even safety. Educators need technology that is both flexible and responsive, and these systems are falling short.

The campus communication disconnect

Many schools find themselves in a fragmented communication trap, juggling a complex tech stack with outdated systems. On its own, each tool might work well, but when different applications are used for texts, emails, virtual classrooms, and emergency alerts, each with separate logins and interface, communication can become disjointed.

School district IT teams are notoriously spread thin, and having fragmented communication tools that requires their own training, trouble shooting, and management is burdensome. This also adds unnecessary complexity for the wider faculty that can easily lead to missed messages or alerts. When taking safety into account, hampered communications in times like severe weather or lockdown can have serious repercussions.

Outside of safety and complexity, patchworked communication systems can weigh schools down financially. Many platforms come with their own hidden fees or inconsistent licensing costs across departments. Those seeking to upgrade might face a block if budgets don’t have room for the initial investment, even though it could lead to long-term savings. This has left many schools in the position of maintaining a web of outdated tools like on-site servers or phone lines where potential benefits are overshadowed by price and complications.

Key benefits of unified communications

Faculty, students, families, and communities must be connected for impactful learning. Effective connection requires simplified and streamlined information sharing, which can be achieved through unifying communications. Modern, unified communication systems bring together channels like alerts, email, phone, messaging, and virtual learning into one platform, making it easier for schools to stay informed and engaged.

Driven by a need for reliability, security, and budget predictability, 62.5% of educational institutions are now moving to UCaaS platforms, according to a 2025 Metrigy study. In practice, these platforms can enable teachers to reach the school nurse, contact a parent, or join a virtual classroom–all without switching platforms. For administrators, these tools can provide ecosystem management through one simple dashboard, reaching from individual campuses to entire school districts.

Today’s learning environment requires flexibility. Whether class is fully remote or in person, modernized communication ensures both staff and students maintain consistent access to learning. Modern tools are also simplified–they can exist on the cloud in one platform, decreasing the need for separate servers, phone systems, or emergency alert tools.

Modernized communication isn’t just convenient, but functions to bolster safety and responsiveness. For example, if a safety threat is reported, in real time, a unified system can automatically alert first responders, prompt crisis notifications, and confirm message distribution. Outside of emergencies, in a more day-to-day function, administrators can benefit from smoother operations like automated attendance alerts and streamlined family communications.

Uplevel with AI

AI has emerged as a valuable partner for school administrators who perpetually need to do more with less. Within unified communications systems, AI can identify overlooked patterns and inefficiencies, such as if parent engagement rates climbed when sending a text as opposed to a phone call.

Faculty can use AI to automate more administrative tasks like summarizing meeting notes, routing calls, or translating messages for multilingual families. These tools can help staff focus more on hands-on teaching and human interactions. Collated over time, these learnings can aid in decision making around staffing, communication approach, and resource allocation.

Where to start

Modernizing communication requires alignment between faculty, IT departments, and leadership. Before selecting a solution, school leaders should work to identify pain points and align goals across departments to ensure any updates serve both operational and academic priorities.

When evaluating a consolidated communication solution, it’s important to consider tools that fit the specific needs of your institution, offering both flexibility and scalability. These solutions should work to unify legacy systems where needed, instead of completely gutting them. For example, an effective solution for your school might have the ability to work with bell or hardware phone systems while modernizing the rest of your communication tools into a single platform to minimize disruption and protect previous investments.

A complete overnight rework of current communication systems is intimidating, and frankly, unrealistic. Instead, start by evaluating where a few systems can be consolidated and then gradually expand. This could look like first integrating messaging and emergency alerts before looking to incorporate analytics and collaboration tools.

A more connected future

The current education landscape is intrinsically dynamic, hybrid, and interconnected. Learning now takes place across both physical and digital spaces, requiring students and educators to collaborate seamlessly across locations and time zones.

As advanced technology like AI continues to integrate into schools and universities, those that modernize their communications now will ensure they are ready to meet current and future educational needs for more effective, seamless, and safe learning environments.

Damon Covey, GoTo

Damon Covey is General Manager, UCC at GoTo. As General Manager of UCC, Damon is responsible for the continued growth and strengthening of GoTo’s business communications product portfolio.

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January 12, 2026
Lessons on Renee Good’s Death and the Politization of Facts

Darnella Frazier received a Pulitzer Prize for capturing Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin’s murder of George Floyd in May 2020. The then–17-year-old Black girl was not pursuing journalistic acclaim; instead, she instinctively reached for her cellphone to document unspeakable police misconduct.

There is a chance that without Frazier’s footage, the facts concerning Floyd’s death might have been disputed. There are many reasons why this tragedy ignited protests around the world—one of them is that we all saw with our own eyes how Chauvin pressed his knee on an unarmed Black man’s neck, ultimately killing him. We saw it. Personally, nearly six years later, I remain incapable of unseeing it.

A U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agent shot and killed Renee Nicole Good in Minneapolis last week. The tragedy occurred just blocks away from where Floyd died. Like Frazier, several eyewitnesses recorded the incident involving Good; her wife, Becca; and ICE agents. Videos have since emerged capturing the shooting from multiple angles. One seems to potentially show that Good’s vehicle may have struck an ICE officer, a claim that President Donald Trump, Vice President JD Vance and U.S. Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem made just hours after the tragedy occurred. These leaders declared this to justify the killing, absent a formal investigation.

Millions of people around the world have seen the videos of Good’s killing on television and social media. Doing so compelled thousands across the U.S. to take to streets in protest. Presumably, they decided for themselves that they saw what they saw, that it was real and that an egregious crime had been committed that resulted in the loss of a mother’s life. Despite this, the Trump administration continues to cling to and articulate an alternative set of facts.

Just as people around the world are listening to dueling interpretations of what happened to Good, so too are students in K–12 schools and on college campuses across America. Those who have scrolled social media platforms or watched news with their families in recent days have likely seen at least one video showing the ICE agent firing his gun into Good’s vehicle. Their government leaders are telling them that they don’t see what they see. This is noteworthy for at least three reasons.

First, it teaches students how to heartlessly politicize the loss of life. Defending the federal government’s actions is seemingly more important than is empathy for Good, her wife and children, and those in her community who witnessed what happened on a snowy Minnesota street that day. The lesson for students is that partisan loyalty and the advancement of a White House administration’s policy agenda (in this case, the mass deportation of immigrants) justify cruel responses to a citizen’s death. Also, they are learning that just about anything rationalizes the relentless pursuit of a partisan mission, regardless of who gets hurt and what crimes are committed.

Students also are learning that investigations and rigorous analyses of facts are unimportant. Eyewitnesses who were there saw what they saw. They did not need an investigation. Videos that they subsequently released present their versions of what happened.

Even still, Good and the ICE officer who killed her deserve a nonpartisan, uncontaminated investigation; that is what our laws and policies have long specified. Notwithstanding, the second terrible lesson from last week is that it is seemingly acceptable for elected officials and other leaders to stand on politics in defense of a crime—in this case, one that resulted in the loss of a citizen’s life.

In recognition of its one-year anniversary, I published an Education Week article in which I insisted that educators teach facts about the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection (including the truth about the demographic composition of the rioters who committed crimes that day). I predicted then that in future years, there would be efforts to rewrite history and minimize what happened. Because it was just five years ago, many Americans and people around the world remember what we saw. Notwithstanding, because of politics, we have been repeatedly told that something different happened on Jan. 6 and that it was patriots, not criminals, who stormed the Capitol.

Similarly, because of politics, students are being taught that it is acceptable to gaslight people who saw what they saw on videos emerging from Minneapolis. They are learning that facts and what will eventually become the historical account of Good’s death matter less than do partisan commitments.

Some of these students will someday become U.S. presidents, congresspersons, governors and leaders. All of this is dangerous for our democracy because it is guaranteed to exacerbate political polarization and result in additional betrayals of our nation’s justice system.

Shaun Harper is University Professor and Provost Professor of Education, Business and Public Policy at the University of Southern California, where he holds the Clifford and Betty Allen Chair in Urban Leadership. His most recent book is titled Let’s Talk About DEI: Productive Disagreements About America’s Most Polarizing Topics.

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January 12, 2026
Apparently, Civil Discourse Requires a Bachelor’s Degree

I have to hand it to CC Daily; its article on the recent round of FIPSE grants had a killer closing sentence.

The recent round of grants from the Fund for the Improvement of Postsecondary Education had focus areas in AI, accreditation and civil discourse. As CC Daily succinctly noted, “No community colleges received awards in the civil discourse category.”

None. Not one, out of over 1,000 institutions across the country. Zero.

I know it’s not for lack of applications.

They were well represented among the awards focused on workforce training but were shut out when it came to addressing larger social issues.

To be fair, FIPSE wasn’t alone in ignoring community colleges. As Karen Stout pointed out this weekend, The Chronicle’s quarter-century forecast drew on 50 experts from across higher education to talk about emerging trends; only one was from a community college. We have over 40 percent of the students in the country, but received 2 percent of the attention. Two is greater than zero, granted, but come on.

Who is at the table will affect what gets considered important. From the Chronicle group, for instance, you wouldn’t know that dual enrollment has quietly but steadily redefined the barriers between secondary and postsecondary education around the country and that the funding structures and academic policies in many states (cough Pennsylvania cough) haven’t kept up. That has consequences in myriad ways, ranging from faculty credential requirements to residency-based tuition to the impact on grad school applications for students who got B’s at age 14. Business models based on a previous reality struggle under the emerging one. That’s invisible to people at think tanks who focus on disciplining “the woke left,” but it’s real and it matters.

The civil discourse piece was just the latest in a long line of reminders that many policymakers see community colleges as workforce training centers and nothing else. Higher education, in their view, belongs to those who can afford it; our job is to produce skilled proles who will produce profit, do what they’re told and stay quiet.

Well, no. Community colleges are, among other things, colleges; they embody the belief that nothing is too aspirational for anybody, including people from lower-income backgrounds. Workforce training is a key component of the mission, but it isn’t the entire mission—and it shouldn’t be. Our students have just as much dignity, humanity and perspective as anyone else’s.

Last week I had the opportunity to see a new slate of officers of student government get sworn in. It’s always a happy occasion. Over the course of my career, though, I’ve seen the tone of those events shift. Twenty years ago, I heard students talk about making a difference. Ten years ago, I heard them talk about building their résumés. Now I hear them talk about making friends. That very human need for connection isn’t unique to four-year schools. Community colleges are, among other things, places where people from different backgrounds interact on equal footing, often for the first time. It’s where students learn to practice civil discourse on the ground. Interactions like those are crucial parts of educating a citizenry. That’s part of our mission, and I offer it without apology.

An old saying suggests that if you aren’t at the table, you’re on the menu. Community colleges deserve to be at the table. When we aren’t, the entire conversation is distorted.

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January 12, 2026
UC Enrollment Reaches Record High

The University of California, San Diego, pictured here, is one of 10 UC system institutions.

Laser1987/iStock/Getty Images

The University of California system reached record enrollment this fall, surpassing 301,000 students across its 10 campuses. About 200,000 of them come from California; the share of students who come from outside the state has decreased by two percentage points over the past four years.

University officials said in a news release that the decline represents the system’s commitment to serving California residents.

“These numbers reflect California’s commitment to academic excellence, access, and innovation, values that have made the University of California the world’s greatest research university,” said UC president James B. Milliken. “The value of a UC degree is abundantly clear. An investment in UC is the best investment in the future of our students, California’s workforce, and the state’s economy.”

The release noted that this enrollment success comes at a time when UC campuses are facing increased costs, federal funding cuts and other financial hardships. Four hundred federal research grants remain suspended or terminated across the system.

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January 12, 2026
Texas Drops ABA Oversight of Lawyers Amid Anti-DEI Crusade

For the first time in 43 years, lawyers who want to practice in Texas will no longer be required to hold a degree from a law school accredited by the American Bar Association, the Texas Supreme Court decided last week.

While the ABA is “continuing to work with the Texas Supreme Court—and all other state supreme courts and bar admitting authorities—to help preserve the portability of law school degrees throughout the country,” the policy “reinforces the authority that the Supreme Court of Texas has always had over the licensure of JD graduates,” Jenn Rosato Perea, managing director of the ABA’s accrediting arm, wrote in an email to Inside Higher Ed.

Since 1983, Texas has ceded some of that authority to the ABA, whose Section of Legal Education and Admissions to the Bar accredits the majority of law schools in the United States. Most other states have similar ABA oversight in place; it became a popular move in the 1980s because law was becoming increasingly national business. Widespread adoption of ABA accreditation as a licensure standard offered more uniformity and has made it easier for lawyers to practice in multiple states.

The new Texas policy comes amid the broader crackdown on higher education accreditors by the Trump administration and its allies, and specifically on the ABA, which has become a target of the Republican-led anti-DEI crusade in recent years. Indeed, the ABA suspended its diversity, equity and inclusion standards last year. Now Texas has become the first state to say it will no longer rely on the accreditor to help to set law licensure standards.

“[The Court] intends to provide stability, certainty, and flexibility to currently approved law schools by guaranteeing ongoing approval to schools that satisfy a set of simple, objective, and ideologically neutral criteria (such as bar exam passage rate) using metrics no more onerous than those currently required by the ABA,” read a Jan. 6 order signed by all nine justices of the Texas Supreme Court. “[It] does not intend to impose additional accreditation, compliance, or administrative burdens on currently approved law schools.”

While the policy likely won’t change much in the short term, critics say it invites the creation of alternative law school accreditors, which could make it harder for lawyers to move their practice across state lines.

Republican-controlled Florida, Ohio and Tennessee are weighing similar measures.

“This could be the beginning of the end of the ABA as the accreditor of choice for law schools nationally,” Peter Lake, a law professor at Stetson College of Law’s Center for Excellence in Higher Education Law and Policy, told Inside Higher Ed. “It’s a little too early to call the game, but this is a significant step toward a goal the Trump administration and many states want to see happen.”

Part of that goal involves asserting more control over higher education accreditors.

In April, Trump issued an executive order directing the Department of Education to suspend or terminate the federal recognition of accreditors found “to engage in unlawful discrimination in accreditation-related activity under the guise of ‘diversity, equity, and inclusion’ initiatives.” It specifically called for an investigation of the ABA and the Liaison Committee on Medical Education, which accredits medical schools. In June, six states—Florida, Georgia, North Carolina, South Carolina, Tennessee and Texas—announced the launch of a new regional accreditor, the Commission for Public Higher Education; at the time, Florida governor Ron DeSantis described it as part of an effort to root out “woke ideology” in higher education and break up the “accreditation cartel.”

The federal government made adjacent arguments in supporting the Texas Supreme Court’s plan to minimize the ABA’s oversight of legal education, also announced last April. In December, the Federal Trade Commission submitted a public comment letter in support of the policy, accusing the ABA of having a “monopoly on the accreditation of American law schools” and of imposing “rigid and costly requirements” mandating “every law school follow an expensive, elitist model of legal education.”

Texas Open to ABA Alternative

While the Texas court stopped short of establishing a new law school accreditor, it acknowledged that it might in the future consider “returning to greater reliance on a multistate accrediting entity other than the ABA should a suitable entity become available,” according to the final version of the policy.

Lake said that could happen eventually, especially if other states decide to follow Texas and ditch the ABA’s oversight. “This is an open invitation to form a [new law school–accrediting] organization,” he said. “And I suspect that whatever group forms will probably be a little more aligned with the Trump administration’s goals and ideas.”

Educators and experts believe such a move will only impede the goals of legal education and practice.

“ABA accreditation provides a nationally recognized framework for quality assurance and transparency; portability of licensure through recognition of ABA accreditation by all 50 states, which is critical for graduates’ career flexibility; consumer protections and public accountability through disclosure standards; and a baseline of educational quality that correlates with higher bar passage rates and better employment outcomes,” the deans of eight of the state’s 10 ABA-accredited law schools wrote in a letter to the Texas Supreme Court in June.

The dean of South Texas College of Law Houston was among those that objected to minimizing the ABA’s oversight of law licenses in the state.

JHVEPhoto/iStock/Getty Images

A degree from an ABA-accredited law school is generally required to pursue a career as a lawyer, said Oren R. Griffin, a law professor at the University of Tulsa College of Law.

“ABA accreditation is a national stamp of approval,” he said. “Law schools may differ on what they prioritize, such as curriculum or clinics they offer, but the standards have identified some basic requirements that allow all law schools to operate at an efficient, effective level.”

And even if a state says it will license lawyers who didn’t graduate from an ABA-accredited law school, graduates from such institutions may still face limited opportunities.

“Law schools have been very well served by these standards,“ Griffin said. “If other states were to follow suit and begin to not require ABA accreditation as a national standard, you could end up with some real disparities or differences among the 50 states, which could increase the complexities for students who are graduating and want to be able to practice in multiple states.”

Regardless of the Texas Supreme Court’s new policy, law schools won’t likely abandon ABA accreditation anytime soon, said Austen L. Parrish, dean of the University of California, Irvine, School of Law and president of the Association of American Law Schools.

“For example, a school like the University of Texas—where about 40 percent of students come from out of state and some 30 percent of graduates are placed out of state—cannot afford to not be ABA accredited. And I suspect that’s true for all of the ABA-accredited schools,” he said, adding that any school that eventually gives up ABA accreditation would be charting “a very dangerous path.”

Students who are not held to the ABA’s national accreditation standards are less likely to receive a quality legal education, Parrish said—a result long demonstrated by the poor outcomes at California’s handful of non-ABA-accredited law schools, which have high attrition and low bar-passage rates, he added.

“The unraveling of the national accreditation system would be really harmful to students and law schools,” Parrish said. “We’re in a world where schools need to recruit from all over and students end up practicing all over. To have a school that doesn’t do that makes them less attractive to students and more likely to create some of the problems at some of the unaccredited schools in California.”

And even if Texas and other states do band together to form their own law school accreditor, rivaling the ABA’s influence would be a challenge.

First, “it’s very difficult to set up an accrediting body and takes quite a bit of money,” Parrish said. “They could set up a regional accreditor, but it’s not necessarily clear who will see that as sufficient for licensing eligibility, which means the schools in those states will still have to go with ABA accreditation … I’m skeptical that more progressive states are going to buy into something that’s blatantly political.”

For now, he interprets the Texas order as a placeholder.

“There probably won’t be many changes right now,” he said, “other than keeping the pressure on the ABA, because [Texas] has signaled a willingness to move to a different approach, though it’s not clear what that is right now.”

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January 12, 2026
For Now, Judge Won’t Restore Prof Calling for War on Israel

A UK professor will not get to return to teaching while the university continues investigating him.

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A federal judge is, for now, declining to return to the classroom a professor whom the University of Kentucky removed from teaching amid his calls for a global war to end Israel’s existence as a country.

On his website, antizionist.net, law professor Ramsi Woodcock asks fellow legal scholars to sign a “Petition for Military Action Against Israel.” He says Israel is a colony and war is needed to decolonize, and he calls for the war to continue until “Israel has submitted permanently and unconditionally to the government of Palestine.”

The university removed him from teaching in July. In a message to campus that month, UK president Eli Capilouto wrote, “We have been made aware of allegations of disturbing conduct, including an online petition calling for the destruction of a people based on national origin.” (Woodcock says he’s calling for the end of the state of Israel, not the destruction of Jews.)

In November, Woodcock sued UK in U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Kentucky, asking for restoration of his normal teaching duties and other relief. On Thursday, Judge Danny C. Reeves paused the case while the university’s investigation proceeds.

“As is customary for the University investigating claims that potentially impact the educational environment, Woodcock was removed from teaching and the law building as an interim measure during the investigation,” Reeves said. “Abstention is appropriate because those removals cannot be separated from the investigation and interference clearly would result if the Court were to enjoin any aspect of the investigation.”

Reeves added that “once the investigation is completed or any subsequent disciplinary procedures have concluded and claims have been exhausted, the stay will be lifted.”

In a statement, a UK spokesperson said the university “appreciates the Court’s thoughtful and clear ruling.” Woodcock, in his own statement, suggested he may appeal, saying UK officials were “torching the First Amendment and the university’s own regulations in an effort to protect a colonization project that practices apartheid and commits genocide.”

“There is very strong precedent stretching back to the Civil War that federal courts must intervene when rogue state actors, like university officials in my case, abuse their authority to try to silence speech that they happen to dislike,“ he wrote.

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January 12, 2026
Prison Education May Raise Risk of Reincarceration

Prison education programs are designed to help people succeed after release, but new research suggests they may actually increase participants’ chances of reincarceration.

An analysis from Grinnell College found that participation in prison education increases an individual’s likelihood of returning to prison within three years of release by 3.4 percentage points—a roughly 10 percent increase compared to those who did not participate. That increase is driven largely by revocations, such as technical violations of release conditions, rather than by new crimes.

“The takeaway from this should not be that prison education is bad,” said Logan Lee, an associate professor of economics at Grinnell and the study’s author. “Instead, what seems to be happening is that there are these unintended consequences.”

The analysis examined more than 22,000 prisoner stints in Iowa, drawing on data from the Iowa Department of Corrections, the Iowa Department of Education, Iowa Workforce Development and Grinnell College to create a comprehensive, individual-level dataset of people released from Iowa prisons between 2014 and 2018.

The research found that participation in prison education programs affects how individuals are released. Those who enroll in college courses are less likely to be released free and clear and more likely to be assigned to work release, which allows eligible inmates to leave prison during the day to work in the community and return at night.

In Iowa, work release often takes place in a halfway house, a structured living environment intended to support people as they transition back into the community. But work release also exposes individuals to more intensive postrelease supervision, which dramatically increases the likelihood of revocation, or being reincarcerated for violating supervision terms, Lee said.

“Work release programs are quite ineffective at achieving their goals, [and] they’re driving a significant increase in people returning to prison,” Lee said. “It’s being assigned far too often at the margins, and some [incarcerated individuals] would be better off on parole or even released free and clear.”

Lee said anecdotal evidence suggests that some correctional officers may resent the idea of “free” education for incarcerated people, pointing out that the requirements for their job are a high school diploma and a clean criminal record. As a result, he said, there is “the potential for some animosity,” with research finding “an increase in misconduct for people who are participating in education programs.”

“Correctional officers are very difficult, high-stress, low-pay jobs,” Lee said. “So you can imagine that that sort of person might go, ‘Look, I kept my nose clean and I didn’t commit any crimes, so why are these people given opportunities that I wasn’t given?’”

However, Lee said case managers, who often recommend how incarcerated individuals are released, don’t share the same resentment. He noted they are “much more likely to have college degrees and interact with prisoners in a different way.”

The background: The U.S. has one of the world’s largest incarcerated populations, with nearly two million people in prison in 2024. This population recidivates at high rates: 46 percent of released prisoners are rearrested within five years, research shows.

U.S. prisons disproportionately house economically vulnerable individuals, many of whom have limited education. Despite historically limited access, prison education programs consistently draw strong interest from incarcerated people. A survey from the National Center for Education Statistics found that 70 percent of incarcerated individuals wanted to enroll in educational programs, and that a majority were academically eligible for college-level courses.

In Iowa, all prison education is offered through local colleges, primarily community colleges. The state funds all GED preparation courses and some postsecondary and vocational programs. Lee said programs offered through some institutions, including Grinnell College and the University of Iowa, are funded by donations.

Across the country, nearly all state and federal prisons provide some form of educational programming. The expectation in both Iowa and nationally is that courses offered inside prisons resemble, as closely as prison guidelines allow, their nonprison counterparts.

“The reality on the ground in most [prisons] is that [incarcerated individuals] only take a couple of courses and then they get released and move on,” Lee said. “You can certainly look at national statistics and see that most people who participate in education in prison are not earning any sort of degree.”

The implications: In addition to his work at Grinnell College, Lee said he previously taught at a women’s prison in Mitchellville, Iowa. He led a “how-to-do-college course,” where he taught writing, critical reading and academic honesty.

Lee described the experience as “eye-opening,” adding that the incarcerated women he taught were highly engaged and deeply interested in the material.

“I saw a real hunger for education, and I do think they got a lot out of the class,” Lee said, noting that he taught 16 students, six of whom were released from prison during the course and 10 of whom eventually completed it.

Providing education in prisons, however, can be challenging. Limited access to technology and learning materials, restrictions on participation times, and situations like lockdowns can interrupt learning opportunities.

“There are just some real challenges with balancing the educational mission with the security demands of the setting,” Lee said. “It’s much more difficult to write a research paper if you can’t get on the internet and start googling stuff.”

Ultimately, Lee emphasized that policymakers, prison administrators and educators need to think “holistically” about the entire system for incarcerated individuals.

“I thought [prison education] might be positive, I thought it might have no effect, but I really did not expect it to increase reincarceration,” Lee said. “If you’re thinking about offering prison education or expanding it, you need to be really aware of the whole system that’s in place and the implications it’s going to have for the people who are participating.”

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January 12, 2026
Lane Community College Board Approves Budget Reduction

The Lane Community College Board of Education voted to approve college leaders’ plans for a budget reduction on Jan. 7, despite fierce pushback from the faculty union. The latest controversy comes amid a dramatic year for the Oregon community college, marked by long, fractious board meetings and an ongoing battle between administrators and faculty over stalled labor negotiations and course cuts.

College administrators argue the approved proposal—cutting spending by $8 million over the next three years—is a financial necessity. They say the college regularly falls short of a board requirement to maintain 10 percent of its balance in reserves. Administrators also conducted a new multiyear forecast that predicted expenses are going to grow.

The college is expected to be “in a deficit every year … if we continue on the same trends that we have been in the last two or three years,” said Kara Flath, Lane’s vice president of finance and operations. The plan also proposes using some of the freed-up money for deferred maintenance and other projects.

But faculty union leaders disagree with the administration’s view of the college’s financial present and future. Adrienne Mitchell, president of the faculty union, the Lane Community College Education Association, believes leadership’s projections are pessimistic and that a roughly 8 percent cut to the $104 million operating budget is excessive.

“We don’t believe any of those cuts are necessary,” Mitchell said. “Currently, all of our funding sources—state funding, property taxes and student tuition revenue—are up.”

The union came out with an independent report last week suggesting that the college is in a sound financial position and should invest more, not less, in faculty and the campus over all. But faculty and administrators fundamentally disagree on how much spending will rise and what tranches of money the college has at its disposal.

The union’s perspective that the college can spend less “makes the numbers look better,” Flath said. “But as finance people, we have decades of finance experience” and such cost estimates are “not fiscally viable.”

Mitchell also argued that Oregon Local Budget Law requires the board to follow a legal process that includes forming a committee of board and nonboard members, presenting the budget and hosting a public hearing, before formally adopting a budget. The union put out a legal memo on the matter in September.

But administrators say their overarching plan isn’t the final budget—it doesn’t specify where exactly cuts will be made—so it doesn’t need to go through such a process yet. They said they plan to review programs, solicit community feedback and draw up a list of recommended cuts in the spring.

Board members, initially skeptical of the plan’s lack of specificity, held multiple ad hoc budget committee meetings last week to discuss it ahead of the meeting on Wednesday, which lasted almost five hours.

Board member Zach Mulholland said at the Wednesday meeting that he still sees “red flags and concerns with regards to unspecified cuts” but concluded, “at this moment in time, this appears to be a balanced proposal.” Mulholland and other board members on the ad hoc committee recommended the board move forward with the plan, as long as it includes annual updates and regular progress reports from administrators.

“Now maybe as a college we can work together,” Flath said.

Fraught Faculty Relations

But the college is also mired in other controversies. The faculty union, which represents about 525 full- and part-time professors, has been without a contract since June as administrators and faculty clash over the details.

Discussions have soured over disagreements about workloads, class-size limits, cost-of-living adjustments, the timing of layoff notices and the college’s efforts to strike some provisions, which Mitchell says amounts to a “net divestment” of over a million dollars in spending on faculty. The administration argued some of the issues in the proposed contract aren’t directly connected to faculty benefits, including proposals to add immigration status to the college’s nondiscrimination policy and ramp up campus safety measures.

Grant Matthews, vice president of academic affairs, said significant progress has been made since the summer, but “really, we’re stuck on economics.”

“We’re trying to really have a fiscally sustainable institution, and the proposals that we’re receiving at the table are not fiscally responsible,” he said. He estimated that the current contract proposal could cost the college up to $61 million.

Professors aren’t pleased with how the process is going. In a December survey of 271 faculty members, 87 percent reported low morale, 90 percent said they didn’t trust the college’s president and 69 percent reported that they fear retaliation for expressing their views. The union has also raised concerns that faculty of color are leaving the college. On Wednesday, about 75 union members and supporters picketed outside ahead of the board meeting.

Two more bargaining sessions are planned for this month, and mediation is scheduled after.

Recent course cuts have also frayed relations between faculty and college leaders. Lane cut about 100 course sections for the winter and spring terms after introducing a new system that allows students to sign up in the fall for courses for the entire year.

Administrators said this is a typical number of course cuts for the college, on par with past years, to optimize their academic offerings, and advisers are ensuring students still get the classes they need. But Mitchell described the move as a blow to part-time faculty, who lost classes that might have filled up later in the year. The union filed an unfair labor practice complaint with the Oregon Employment Relations Board, arguing the eliminated courses should have been a part of bargaining. Mitchell also worries the cuts are a roadblock for students who need to take certain courses, noting that a popular biology class—a prerequisite for many health professions courses—has a wait list of 168 students.

Leadership Tensions

The board, meanwhile, has had its own share of drama over the past year.

The faculty union has accused administrators of encroaching on board responsibilities and criticized the board for failing to exercise its authority.

“There’s been a lot of controversy surrounding the administration essentially taking over the role of the Board of Education,” Mitchell said.

Meanwhile, in August, a third-party report concluded that Mulholland, formerly the board chair, and other board members discriminated against President Stephanie Bulger, a Black woman, on the basis of race and sex. The report described Mulholland and some other board members as displaying a dismissive or hostile attitude toward Bulger, cutting her off in conversations, and deferring questions to male staff. The report also found that Mulholland had intimidated a student. In September, the board censured the former board chair, who apologized, and the full board then came out with a joint apology.

“We are deeply sorry for the negative impact our behavior has had on you and the college community at large,” said Austin Fölnagy, the current board chair, who was also accused of adopting a dismissive tone toward the president. “President Bulger, please accept the board’s apology for treating you badly.”

Mitchell said the union is “very concerned about any type of discrimination, and we think it’s really important for everyone on the campus to feel safe.”

The college’s accreditor, the Northwest Commission on Colleges and Universities, also deemed the college “substantially in compliance” with accreditation standards but “in need of improvement” in a notice last March. The accreditor recommended the college evaluate its internal communication and ensure decision-making processes are “inclusive of all constituents,” among other suggestions.

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January 12, 2026