In his State of the Union message last night, President Trump reaffirmed his interest in encouraging rich people from around the world to become US citizens. The price of US Gold Cards, and a path to citizenship, will be $5M per person. Trump added that these Gold Card members would not have to pay taxes to their native countries.
Tag: Trump
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James Goodale on Trump: ‘He’d sue everybody . . . in the media business’ and their ‘response has been pathetic’ — First Amendment News 460
Recently, on a WBUR public radio program with Willis Ryder Arnold and Deborah Becker, author and leading First Amendment attorney James Goodale had some things to say about Donald Trump’s attempts to intimidate the press.
First a bit about the man. From the Wikipedia entry on Goodale:
James Goodale James Goodale is the former vice president and general counsel for The New York Times and, later, the Times’ vice chairman. He is the author of “Fighting for the Press: The Inside Story of the Pentagon Papers and Other Battles.”
Goodale represented The New York Times in four of its United States Supreme Court cases, including Branzburg v. Hayes, in which the Times intervened on behalf of its reporter Earl Caldwell. The other cases were New York Times v. Sullivan, New York Times Co. v. United States (the Pentagon Papers case), and New York Times Co. v. Tasini.
He has been called “the father of the reporter’s privilege” in the Hastings Law Journal because of his interpretation of the Branzburg case.
And now on to Goodale’s comments on WBUR regarding Trump:
So, if you’re not going to fight for your creativity, you’re not going to have a company left. And that applies not only to newspapers, but obviously movies, too. And let me say also, finally, that if you don’t fight, what Trump is going to do, he’s going to go from media company to media company with quasi true cases and pick up money. He’s just on a . . . bribery trail. And I say that from some experience here in New York City, which is exactly what he did before he ran for president. He’d sue everybody who was in the media business and drive them nuts, and the cases would finally go away.
But guess what? It cost the media company some bucks to defend it.
[. . .]
I believe that once the press starts making settlements where it has no real basis, in my humble opinion, for making them, it undercuts that whole role, and more importantly, I think it encourages someone like Trump to keep on doing it.
Similarly, in an exchange with Trevor Timm for The Freedom of the Press Foundation on Feb. 12, Goodale had this to say:
If CBS decides to settle [the “60 Minutes” lawsuit], it will be an absolute disaster for the press. It would be one more domino falling down, handing Trump an undeserved victory against the press. . . . [ABC’s] cowardly settling its case in which George Stephanopoulos said “rape” instead of “sexual abuse,” but since then, Facebook has settled Trump’s even more outlandish suit, and for what? CBS should be standing up and fighting Trump. If I’m them, I’m not letting Trump make me look foolish. Because if it happens, there will be no end. Trump will bring lawsuits against every part of the media, and it will put pressure on everyone else to settle.
Let me make clear that the lawsuit is a bunch of nonsense. Trump’s legal theory doesn’t exist anywhere in the law, and so not only is the settlement bad in terms of putting the onus on everyone else to settle, but the entire premise of the lawsuit is ridiculous. News outlets are allowed to edit interviews! Hard to believe it even has to be said.
[ . . . ]
The suit is from Mars. To my knowledge, I’ve never seen a suit brought like this one where editing is being criticized as constituting consumer fraud. It has no basis in law as far as I’m concerned, and what’s going to happen — if, in fact, the case is settled — is there will be more consumer fraud cases every time the media edits an interview, not only with Trump, but other politicians. And the First Amendment will suffer.
[ . . . ]
[And] the response by the press as we speak has been pathetic. There’s no spokesperson for the press who is out there leading the charge and coordinating a united front with all the news outlets on the same page.
Related
Revenge Storm: ‘Chill all the Lawyers’
“Under my watch, the partisan weaponization of the Department of Justice will end. America must have one tier of justice for all.” — Pamela Bondi (Confirmation hearing for U.S. Attorney General, Jan. 15)
“There are a lot of people in the FBI and also in the DOJ who despise Donald Trump, despise us, don’t want to be there. We will find them. Because you have to believe in transparency, you have to believe in honesty, you have to do the right thing. We’re gonna root them out and they will no longer be employed.” — Pamela Bondi (March 3)
WATCH VIDEO: Trump Signs Anti-Weaponization Executive Order: ‘The Deranged Jack Smith Signing!’ The administration is acting in ways that will necessarily chill a growing number of lawyers from participating in any litigation against the federal government, regardless of who the client is. That, in turn, will make it harder for many clients adverse to the Trump administration to find lawyers to represent them — such that at least some cases either won’t be brought at all or won’t be brought by the lawyers best situated to bring them.
[ . . . ]
[W]hat the Trump administration is doing is far more than just bad behavior; it’s a direct threat to the rule of law—almost as much as defying court orders would be.
Related
Executive Watch
President Donald Trump and his ally Elon Musk portray themselves as near-absolutists when it comes to free speech, engaged in an epic fight to let Americans speak openly again after years of enduring liberal efforts to shut down conservative voices.
But since taking office, the president has mounted what critics call his own sweeping attack on freedom of expression. Some of it aims to stamp out diversity, equity and inclusion and what he terms “radical gender ideology.” Some of it is aimed at media organizations whose language he dislikes. In other cases, the attacks target opponents who have spoken sharply about the administration.
Together, critics — and in some cases, judges — have said Trump’s efforts have gone beyond shaping the message of the federal government to threaten the First Amendment rights of private groups and individuals.
- “The MAGA War on Speech,” The New York Times (Feb. 28)
- David Enrich and Minho Kim, “Voice of America Journalists Face Investigations for Trump Comments,” The New York Times (Feb. 28 (Updated Mar. 2))
- Greg Lukianoff, “The First Amendment Isn’t on Trump’s Side,” The Wall Street Journal (Feb. 26)
- “The White House Says It ‘Will Determine’ Which News Outlets Cover Trump,” First Amendment Watch (Feb. 26)
- Devlin Barrett, Glenn Thrush, Maggie Haberman, and Alan Feuer, “Trump Takes Aim at Law Firm Aiding Jack Smith,” The New York Times (Feb. 25)
- Steve Benen, “DHS’ Kristi Noem says her pro-Trump ad campaign was Trump’s idea,” MSNBC (Feb. 24)
New report on state threats to free speech advocacy and donor privacy
Hurt feelings from the campaign trail fuel retaliatory disclosure demands across the U.S.
Legislative and regulatory proposals in as many as 34 states pose a potential threat to the privacy and free speech rights of donors to the nonprofit community, a new report finds. People United for Privacy Foundation (PUFPF), a national privacy rights advocacy group, warns that state officials are increasingly targeting the ability of nonprofit supporters to maintain their privacy as political polarization rises.
“After a bruising campaign season, many politicians are out for revenge against the groups and donors that dared to criticize them. These efforts reach far beyond traditional political committees to target nonprofits that discuss elected officials’ voting records or advocate on policy issues. Forcing nonprofits to publish their supporters’ names and home addresses is an intimidation tactic that chills free speech and violates personal privacy,” said PUFPF Vice President Matt Nese, a co-author of the report.
The report, “2025 State Threats to Donor Privacy and Nonprofit Advocacy,” analyzes current and past legislation, regulatory proposals, and statements by public officials to catalog potential threats to donor privacy in state legislative sessions occurring across the country.
Forthcoming book on how foreign authoritarian influence undermines freedom and integrity within American higher education
Sarah McLaughlin A revealing exposé on how foreign authoritarian influence is undermining freedom and integrity within American higher education institutions.
In an era of globalized education, where ideals of freedom and inquiry should thrive, an alarming trend has emerged: foreign authoritarian regimes infiltrating American academia. In Authoritarians in the Academy, Sarah McLaughlin exposes how higher education institutions, long considered bastions of free thought, are compromising their values for financial gain and global partnerships.
This groundbreaking investigation reveals the subtle yet sweeping influence of authoritarian governments. Universities leaders are allowing censorship to flourish on campus, putting pressure on faculty, and silencing international student voices, all in the name of appeasing foreign powers. McLaughlin exposes the troubling reality where university leaders prioritize expansion and profit over the principles of free expression. The book describes incidents in classrooms where professors hesitate to discuss controversial topics and in boardrooms where administrators weigh the costs of offending oppressive regimes. McLaughlin offers a sobering look at how the compromises made in American academia reflect broader societal patterns seen in industries like tech, sports, and entertainment.
Meticulously researched and unapologetically candid, Authoritarians in the Academy is an essential read for anyone who believes in the transformative power of education and the necessity of safeguarding it from the creeping tide of authoritarianism.
Sarah McLaughlin is a senior scholar of global expression at the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression
Nadine Strossen on ‘The Weimar Fallacy’
FIRE Senior Fellow and former ACLU President Nadine Strossen discusses what is commonly known as The Weimar Fallacy: The idea that, if only the Weimar Republic in Germany had tamped down on Nazis and anti-Semitic speech, Hitler’s rise and the horrors of the Holocaust could have been averted.
As the daughter of a Holocaust survivor, Nadine knows just how ugly anti-Semitism can be — but censorship only makes it worse.
The truth is, there were many hate speech laws in Weimar Germany, and they were strongly enforced against the Nazis — including Hitler himself.
Not only did those hate speech laws help the Nazis gain power, they also helped the Nazis censor anyone who challenged it.
WATCH VIDEO: Would “hate speech” laws have stopped the Nazis? NAACP-LDF’s Janai Nelson on racism and book banning
LDF Associate Director-Counsel Janai Nelson speaks on the legal challenges to banned books, LDF’s legacy of using the law in order to transform society, and why progress toward racial justice requires we tell the truth about our nation’s history.
WATCH VIDEO: Banned Books Week: Janai Nelson on Ideas & Action New Book by Gene Policinski traces history of First Amendment
First amendment, threats and defenses have, for much of the past 100 years, largely focused on protecting individual speech, the right of any one of us to express ourselves without interference or punishment by the government. But there is an increasing danger to our core freedoms from systemic challenges, which often involve other issues or circumstances, but which carry a First Amendment impact, if not wallop. – Gene Policinski
Gene Policinski (left) and Kevin Goldberg at Freedom Forum on Feb. 26, 2025. (Credit: Ron Collins) This fast-paced history of the First Amendment will engage students, educators, scholars and other fans of our nation’s most fundamental freedoms.
In “The First Amendment in the 21st Century,” Gene Policinski, Freedom Forum senior fellow for the First Amendment and past First Amendment Center president, traces the history of the First Amendment through its winding social and legal paths as it has intertwined with world events and cultural change.
He explores how this history shows today’s potential for a First Amendment renaissance even amid new technological challenges.
Deeply researched and clearly written, “The First Amendment in the 21st Century” reconciles the past and the present and opines on the future of our First Amendment freedoms — from the courtroom to the chat room.
New scholarly article: First Amendment Right to Affirmative Action
In the wake of Students for Fair Admissions, Inc. v. President & Fellows of Harvard College, affirmative action proponents should pursue a First Amendment approach. Private universities, which are speaking associations that express themselves through the collective speech of faculty and students, may be able to assert an expressive association right, based on Boy Scouts of America v. Dale, to choose their faculty and students. This theory has been recently strengthened by 303 Creative LLC v. Elenis.
I discuss various complexities and counterarguments: (1) Race is not different from sex or sexual orientation for purposes of the doctrine. (2) The market context may not matter, especially after 303 Creative. (3) The conditional-federal-funding context does give the government more power than a simple regulatory context; the government will still be able to induce race-neutrality by the threat of withdrawing federal funds, but the unconstitutional conditions doctrine precludes draconian penalties such as withdrawing all funds from the entire institution based only on affirmative action in some units. (4) This theory doesn’t apply to public institutions.
I also explore the potential flexibilities of this theory, based on recent litigation. The scope of the Boy Scouts exception might vary based on (1) what counts as substantial interference with expressive organizations, (2) what counts as a compelling governmental interest, and, most importantly, (3) what it takes for activity to be expressive.
More in the news
2024-2025 SCOTUS term: Free expression and related cases
Cases decided
- Villarreal v. Alaniz (Petition granted. Judgment vacated and case remanded for further consideration in light of Gonzalez v. Trevino, 602 U. S. ___ (2024) (per curiam))
- Murphy v. Schmitt (“The petition for a writ of certiorari is granted. The judgment is vacated, and the case is remanded to the United States Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit for further consideration in light of Gonzalez v. Trevino, 602 U. S. ___ (2024) (per curiam).”)
- TikTok Inc. and ByteDance Ltd v. Garland (The challenged provisions of the Protecting Americans from Foreign Adversary Controlled Applications Act do not violate petitioners’ First Amendment rights.)
Review granted
Pending petitions
Petitions denied
Last scheduled FAN
FAN 459: “Alex Kozinski on JD Vance’s censorship speech”
This article is part of First Amendment News, an editorially independent publication edited by Ronald K. L. Collins and hosted by FIRE as part of our mission to educate the public about First Amendment issues. The opinions expressed are those of the article’s author(s) and may not reflect the opinions of FIRE or Mr. Collins.
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Not all campus cuts last month were driven by Trump
February was a tumultuous month for higher education as President Donald Trump’s agenda began to take shape. His barrage of executive actions threatened federal funding and created uncertainty for colleges, prompting some to freeze hiring and others to pause graduate school admissions.
Even wealthy institutions like the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Stanford University enacted hiring freezes last month, while Northwestern University paused both hiring and compensation increases, in addition to other moves.
Some institutions were more severely affected by the Trump cuts than others. Federally run tribal colleges like Haskell Indian Nations University and Southwestern Indian Polytechnic Institute lost multiple staff members as the Office of Personnel Management laid off many probationary employees.
But the cuts below are not tied to Trump—at least not directly.
The latest installment of Inside Higher Ed’s monthly roundup of personnel and program cuts at colleges finds those changes largely propelled by financial issues tied to the usual suspects: declining enrollment and rising operational costs.
Catholic University of America
Facing a $30 million structural deficit, the Washington, D.C.-based institution has eliminated 16 positions in the Center for Academic and Career Success and is transitioning to a faculty advising model.
The position of vice president for student affairs was also cut, and CUA has launched a voluntary faculty separation program for full-time faculty with 10 or more years of service, according to an email from President Peter Kilpatrick that was obtained by Inside Higher Ed.
A reorganization of CUA’s colleges is also planned.
“While the specific form of these changes continues to evolve through consultation, the need for substantive reorganization and consolidation is certain,” Kilpatrick wrote in an email to campus.
One former employee, speaking on condition of anonymity, questioned the rationale behind cuts to advising. They told Inside Higher Ed that faculty are already overworked and underpaid and expressed concern about advising responsibilities, which they believe were better left to the ousted advisers.
CUA confirmed 16 job cuts within the Center for Academic and Career Success to Inside Higher Ed but did not address other personnel reductions.
Western Washington University
Officials at the public four-year institution in Bellingham have expanded a plan to lay off employees.
Initially, the university planned to cut 55 jobs, but that has now grown to 74, Cascadia Daily reported. Three dozen of those 74 positions targeted for elimination are currently vacant.
The cuts are in response to an $18 million budget deficit. WWU has thus far shaved off $13 million, but the remaining $5 million means that even more cuts could be on the horizon.
“At this time, we are still working to identify reductions for the remaining $5 million gap. While we are making significant reductions now, our financial position will continue to evolve based on state funding and enrollment trends. More changes may be necessary, and we will provide updates as soon as decisions are made,” officials wrote on a frequently asked questions page.
Columbia-Greene Community College
Grappling with financial challenges, the college in Hudson, N.Y., laid off 17 employees late last month as part of a sustainability plan, The Daily Gazette reported.
Additionally, 11 tenured faculty members accepted retirement incentives.
A college spokesperson declined to provide specifics, calling the layoffs a human resources matter, but told the newspaper that affected positions include faculty, staff and administrators.
Spring Hill College
Six majors and nine faculty members are on the way out at the private, Catholic college in Alabama, which dropped academic programs and cut jobs as part of budget cuts, WKRG reported.
The TV station reported that enrollment dropped by almost 25 percent in recent years, from 1,200 before the coronavirus pandemic to 920 currently, though numbers are trending up for this fall.
The majors cut were biochemistry, chemistry, history, philosophy, secondary education and studio art. A studio art minor was also eliminated.
Tuskegee University
An unspecified number of employees have been laid off at Tuskegee University, WSFA reported.
The private, historically Black university in Alabama declined to specify the number of layoffs, but the TV station reported that employees told them the job cuts arrived abruptly—giving them little time to clean out their desks—and affected personnel in the university’s veterinary program.
“Tuskegee University is always exploring opportunities to provide a stellar academic experience for our students,” university officials said in a statement. “Staffing adjustments are part of that process. These adjustments did not include academic leadership and are minimal in number.”
Our Lady of the Lake University
Amid a “realignment” process, the private, Catholic institution in San Antonio plans to cut academic programs and faculty jobs, though specific details have not been released, Texas Public Radio reported.
“As part of the realignment process, some academic programs will be discontinued and we will modify some academic programs,” university officials wrote on a frequently asked questions page about the coming changes. “We will also reduce some full-time and part-time faculty positions. Some programs have had dwindling interest from students, to the point where they are no longer viable as stand-alone degree plans. Others are trending in that direction.”
The university cited the need to boost enrollment, following recent declines. Though not mentioned on the FAQ page, OLLU has also faced significant legal expenses in recent years due to a 2022 data breach that affected nearly 42,000 employees and resulted in a settlement.
Franklin & Marshall College
Cuts are coming this spring to the private liberal arts college in Pennsylvania, LancasterOnline reported.
Franklin & Marshall president Barbara Altmann wrote in a message to employees that the move was “one piece of a strategic financial sustainability plan.” She added that the college has already made various efforts to trim expenses, including by eliminating vacant positions.
Job cuts are expected in April, though an exact number has not been specified publicly.
“Although the plan is not yet finalized, we are evaluating potential cuts to provide more stability for the entire community going forward. This plan will need to include a reduction in workforce, meaning the strategic elimination of some employee positions, rather than relying on attrition,” Altmann wrote in an email published by LancasterOnline.
Southern Illinois University–Edwardsville
Due to a budget deficit of more than $10 million, cuts are expected to both academic programs and jobs at Southern Illinois University–Edwardsville, The St. Louis-Post Dispatch reported.
In an email to campus, Chancellor James Minor wrote that the university “is not in a financial crisis” but has “long-standing structural imbalances in our budget that must be addressed.”
That plan will include possible changes to academic programs, early retirement incentives and the “consolidation, reduction or elimination of some positions,” according to Minor’s email. Early retirement incentives will be rolled out this spring.
Minor did not specify a timeline for job and program cuts or a target number of reductions.
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After Heated Oval Office Exchange, Trump Ends Pivotal Meeting With Zelensky Early (Time)
Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelensky wouldn’t concede the point. A tense Oval Office meeting Friday that was supposed to end in Ukraine agreeing to share mining resources with the U.S. devolved into a heated argument as President Donald Trump and Vice President J.D. Vance insisted Ukraine should express more gratitude for U.S. support and agree to a ceasefire with Russia, even without clear security guarantees from the U.S.
“You don’t have the cards right now,” Trump told Zelensky, as the two interrupted each other during a forceful exchange in front of TV cameras. -
A letter to NEH on compliance with Trump orders (opinion)
On Feb. 11, the National Endowment for the Humanities announced on its website that it had modified its funding criteria for eligible humanities projects in compliance with three recent executive orders. According to the announcement, “NEH awards may not be used for the following purposes:
- promotion of gender ideology;
- promotion of discriminatory equity ideology;
- support for diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) or diversity, equity, inclusion, and accessibility (DEIA) initiatives or activities; or
- environmental justice initiatives or activities.”
These prohibitions impose the terminology of Executive Orders 14151, 14168 and 14190 onto future applicants for NEH funding, whether individual scholars, museums, nonprofit organizations or colleges (including historically Black colleges and universities and tribal colleges). Published well within the stipulated 60-day window for government agency compliance with the order to terminate all “equity-related” initiatives, grants or contracts, these prohibitions represent a swift implementation of the Trump administration’s point-by-point mandate for “Ending Radical Indoctrination.”
I can only begin to conjecture here about what the consequences of the NEH’s new criteria might be for the humanities, the domain of cultural and intellectual inquiry the NEH was created to foster. To cite the National Foundation on the Arts and Humanities Act of 1965, “While no government can call a great artist or scholar into existence, it is necessary and appropriate for the Federal Government to help create and sustain not only a climate encouraging freedom of thought, imagination, and inquiry but also the material conditions facilitating the release of this creative talent.”
To uphold conditions defined by prohibition rather than freedom—and with prohibitions explicitly targeting the right to existence of queer and transgender people (“gender ideology”), the ability in any way to offset egregious structural inequalities in educational and cultural access (“DEI”), and even the very right to advocate on behalf of anyone’s rights (“discriminatory equity ideology”)—is to betray the very terms under which the NEH was created. In revising its Notice of Funding Opportunities, the NEH is in violation of its public mission.
Presumably, as a government agency perpetually under threat of budget cuts, the NEH hastened to implement Trump’s executive orders in order to fend off wholesale elimination. The NEH is a federal agency and is thus directly implicated in the executive orders, provided those orders are constitutional. By complying with Trump’s ideology, the National Endowment may perhaps live to see another day, thereby preserving the careers of at least some of its approximately 185 employees and its ability—to do what?
The NEH has not yet fully overhauled its website to reflect its compliance. Of its current listings of Great Projects Past and Present, perhaps “The Papers of George Washington,” “Journals of the Lewis and Clark Expedition,” and “The Real Buffalo Bill” might manage to squeeze through under the new stipulations, but would the Created Equal documentary film project be so lucky? Would a biography of union organizer César Chavez manage to qualify as a fundable project, or a documentary about “A Black Surgeon in the Age of Jim Crow”? How about the Transatlantic Slave Trade Database? The NEH has leveraged its own institutional survival on the forfeit of future such projects.
The problem is a far deeper one, however. In what universe should it be too much to ask that a state-sponsored institution created to uphold the “material conditions” for freedom of thought, imagination and inquiry put up even the slightest resistance to the inhumane, reactionary and repressive edicts issued by the Trump regime? Even today, the NEH website champions its past support for projects that uphold justice in the face of oppression, that resist totalitarian erasure. Yet the NEH itself has mustered no such resistance. Instead, it has announced that any such projects are now ineligible for consideration.
Of one thing I am certain: The National Endowment for the Humanities has forfeited its claim to the word “humanities.” The humanities do not designate a prohibitive sphere of capitulation to ruling forces. The humanities are not furthered by a governmental agency that serves, willingly or unwillingly, as an ideological extension of a political party. The humanities are a domain of inquiry, of questioning and investigation, not of unquestioning acquiescence.
As a literature professor and an educator in the humanities for more than a quarter century, I have assured my students that the study of cultural, artistic and intellectual production is continuous with its practice. This not only means that humanistic inquiry involves creativity, creation and a commitment to thinking freely, but it also means that humanistic inquiry necessarily upholds the same responsibility to questions of ethics, value and meaning with which any other historical action must reckon. Humanists cannot, and do not, stand meekly aside while the “real” agents of historical change make big decisions.
In posting a recent message to the frequently asked questions web form on the NEH website, I wrote that in light of the NEH’s silent capitulation to Trump’s executive orders, I was ashamed to call myself a humanist. I hereby recant that statement. I am not ashamed to call myself a humanist. It is the National Endowment for the Humanities that should be ashamed. Or, better yet, I call on the NEH and all its 185 employees, including and especially NEH chair Shelly C. Lowe, to recant their compliance with Executive Orders 14151, 14168 and 14190 and join other national and international agencies, organizations and individuals in resisting the inhumane and unconstitutional decrees of the Trump administration.
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Trump tells agencies to plan for mass layoffs
The Trump administration on Wednesday ordered federal agencies to start preparing for “large-scale reductions in force,” the latest step in a broader effort to dramatically reduce the federal workforce.
The memo from the Office of Management and Budget and Office of Personnel Management applies to all federal departments, and the Department of Education could face heavy cuts as a result of Trump’s promise to “sweepingly reform” what he calls a “bloated, corrupt federal bureaucracy.”
The president has repeatedly talked about shutting down the Education Department, and this memo’s orders could give him an opportunity to diminish the agency. Specifically, the OMB document tells agency heads to eliminate all “non-statutorily mandated functions”—an action proponents of abolishing the department have supported.
The OMB memo cites an executive order, “Implementing The President’s ‘Department of Government Efficiency’ Workforce Optimization Initiative,” that was signed Feb. 11 as justification and directed agencies to submit a reorganization plan by March 13.
“Pursuant to the President’s direction, agencies should focus on the maximum elimination of functions that are not statutorily mandated while driving the highest-quality, most efficient delivery of their statutorily-required functions,” wrote OMB director Russell Vought and Charles Ezell, the acting director of the Office of Personnel Management. “Agencies should also … implement technological solutions that automate routine tasks while enabling staff to focus on higher-value activities … and maximally reduce the use of outside consultants and contractors.”
The memo notes that reduction should not impact positions necessary to meet border security, national security or public safety responsibilities, nor should it affect agencies or services that are directly provided to citizens “such as Social Security, Medicare, and veterans’ health care.”
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Teachers’ union sues to block Trump admin’s DEI guidance
The lawsuit comes after a federal judge blocked the Trump administration from carrying out parts of two executive orders cracking down on diversity, equity and inclusion.
Pete Kiehart/The Washington Post/Getty Images
A coalition of educators and sociologists is challenging the Department of Education and its unprecedented Dear Colleague letter—which declared all race-conscious student programming illegal—in a lawsuit filed late Tuesday evening.
The American Federation of Teachers and the American Sociological Association argue in the complaint, which was submitted to a Maryland federal court, that following the letter’s dictates “will do a disservice to students and ultimately the nation by weakening schools as portals to opportunity.”
“This vague and clearly unconstitutional memo is a grave attack on students, our profession and knowledge itself … It would hamper efforts to extend access to education, and dash the promise of equal opportunity for all, a central tenet of the United States since its founding,” AFT president Randi Weingarten said in a statement. “It would upend campus life.”
The expected legal challenge came just three days before a Feb. 28 compliance deadline. The four-page guidance document says that colleges and universities must rescind any race-based policies, activities and resources by the end of the day or risk investigation and the loss of federal funding.
The department justifies its demands through a new interpretation of the Supreme Court’s 2023 ruling in Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard, which banned the consideration of race in college admissions. Although the Supreme Court’s decision applied specifically to admissions, the Trump administration believes it extends to all race-conscious activities.
On Friday, a judge from the same federal court in Maryland issued a temporary injunction in a separate lawsuit that blocked parts of President Trump’s antidiversity executive orders.
But higher education legal experts say that the Dear Colleague letter and the executive orders, though similar, are independent levers, so the injunction doesn’t affect the department’s guidance. The Education Department has also said it is still moving forward with its interpretation of the law and the deadline stands.
So now all eyes are on this most recent court case, as higher education leaders wait to see if the judge will issue a second injunction and block the guidance.
“The Department of Education’s new policy, reflected in the February ‘Dear Colleague’ letter, seeks to undermine our nation’s educational institutions and is an unlawful attempt to impose this administration’s particular views,” said Skye Perryman, president of Democracy Forward, the legal group representing the plaintiffs. “We will continue to pursue every legal opportunity to oppose and stop harmful attacks on freedom of expression and on the values like inclusion, diversity and belonging that make us all and our nation stronger.”
In the meantime, higher education advocacy groups are urging colleges and universities to stay calm and not overreact to the Dear Colleague letter.
On Tuesday the American Council on Education sent a letter to Craig Trainor, the acting assistant secretary of civil rights, requesting that he “rescind the DCL” and work with higher education institutions to ensure a clearer understanding of the letter before setting a new compliance deadline.
“Over the last two years, our colleges and universities have worked hard to assess and modify, as appropriate, policies and practices in light of the decision in the SFFA case and applicable civil rights laws,” ACE president Ted Mitchell wrote. “It is unreasonable for the department to require institutions to appropriately respond to this extremely broad reinterpretation of federal law in a mere two weeks and in the absence of necessary guidance.”
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Jon Stewart Reworks Trump & Elon’s Sweeping DOGE Budget Cuts (The Daily Show)
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College presidents stay mostly silent on Trump
In his first month, President Donald Trump has upended federal research funding and taken aim at race-conscious programs amid a flurry of executive orders and other actions.
While some higher ed associations and universities have responded with lawsuits, college presidents, for the most part, have watched in relative silence. Some have released statements on changes to their institutions’ federal funding or diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives, but those announcements have mostly been vague, with little mention of the political forces driving the changes. Few college leaders have publicly criticized the president’s efforts to overhaul the sector to match his vision.
The muted or mostly nonexistent response comes as campuses have increasingly grappled with how to navigate political events since last spring’s pro-Palestinian protests, when students demanded their leaders speak up about the war between Israel and Hamas. That seems to have quelled interest in taking institutional positions. Any pushback college leaders voiced during Trump’s first term has been largely replaced by silence.
The Presidents Speaking Up
Still, there have been some notable exceptions to the trend.
Michael Roth at Wesleyan University and Patricia McGuire at Trinity Washington University—two notoriously outspoken presidents—are among those who have voiced alarm about Trump’s attacks on the sector.
Roth has written op-eds calling on his fellow college presidents to “weigh in when they see the missions of their institutions” and the health of their campus communities “compromised.” He also shared his thoughts on speaking up at the American Council on Education conference last week, noting that he tries “not to speak about the president directly” but rather the need to stand up for institutional values when they are threatened by external forces, such as Trump.
McGuire remains an outspoken presence on social media and in interviews.
Other leaders have spoken forcefully to their constituents about Trump’s interference.
Following a recent and widely panned Dear Colleague letter that declared race-conscious programming, resources and financial aid illegal, Case Western Reserve University president Eric Kaler wrote in a message to campus that “this expansion to include all aspects of campus life appears to be a gross overreach of the Supreme Court decision and may be challenged in the legal system.” He added that the university “will remain firmly committed to our core values.”
Some presidents at minority-serving institutions have added their voices to the mix.
David Thomas, president of Morehouse College, a historically Black institution, told CNBC last month that Trump’s attempted freeze on federal funding represents an “existential threat.” He also called out an executive order targeting diversity, equity and inclusion, telling MSNBC that “we must be a point of resistance to that effort to essentially teach untruths.”
Thomas, who is retiring in June, suggested a second Jim Crow era was coming, which he called “a reaction to the progress of people of color and others who have been disenfranchised.”
Presidential Silence
But as most presidents have remained silent, some critics have blamed institutional neutrality, the concept that universities should refrain from making statements on social or political issues. The movement seemed to boom last year as pro-Palestinian protests spread nationally and students often called on presidents to make public statements.
Roth, speaking at ACE, cast institutional neutrality as “a vehicle for staying out of trouble.”
The American Association of University Professors has also taken a critical view of institutional neutrality, writing in a lengthy statement earlier this month that it “conceals more than it reveals.”
Joan Scott, professor emerita at the Institute for Advanced Study who was part of the AAUP group that crafted the statement on institutional neutrality, is also critical of presidential silence in the face of what she described as an attack by the Trump administration on higher education.
“I think there is no question that the target is the university mission as we’ve known it, and that very few people are speaking up,” Scott said. “And in fact, I would say that institutional neutrality is being used as a kind of protective stance for those administrators who are not speaking up.”
A frequent refrain from campus leaders who have adopted institutional neutrality is that they would speak up when the core institutional mission is threatened, which experts argue is happening. However, most presidents are not speaking up despite perceived threats to the core mission.
Inside Higher Ed contacted 10 universities with institutional neutrality policies, all among the wealthiest in the nation, with multibillion-dollar endowments. Only Yale University provided a statement, though some others shared prior messages from their presidents to the campus communities regarding the federal funding freeze and Trump attacks on DEI. Of those messages, none directly connected their concerns to the Trump administration or said what was driving federal actions.
“The university is working to understand the scope and implications of the recent [Dear Colleague] letter and remains committed to the mission, to the principles of free expression and academic excellence, and to supporting the community,” Yale spokesperson Karen Peart wrote by email. “President [Maurie] McInnis and Provost [Scott] Strobel sent a message to the Yale community that addresses recent developments from the federal government. President McInnis has also shared a message to the community about the university’s commitment to the research mission.”
Yale did not answer specific questions sent by Inside Higher Ed.
Scott believes presidents are conducting a balancing act—one she views as cowardly. She argues that many are more concerned about “short-term risks,” such as an increase to the endowment tax or the loss of federal funding, than “the long-term risk” that “higher education as we’ve known it disappears or is put on hold” through the remainder of Trump’s four-year term.
“What we’re watching is a struggle on the part of university administrators to balance some commitment to the mission—the attacked mission of the university—and some anxiety about the funding that keeps the mission going, even as the mission is being undermined,” Scott said.
Jeremy Young, director of state and higher education policy at PEN America, a free expression group, takes a more charitable view of college presidents remaining mum on Trump’s actions.
Speaking up is fraught with risks, Young argues, ranging from punitive actions by the Trump administration to pushback from trustees. Instead, he thinks leaders should organize a unified sector response.
“If you’re looking to individual presidents to face off against the power of the U.S. government, you’re looking in the wrong place,” Young said.
He believes associations are leading the fight and urges them to collaborate more, arguing that organizations need to stick together to flex collective strength. That’s the only way “higher ed will be strong enough to be able to respond effectively,” he said.
But just because presidents aren’t speaking up doesn’t mean they have to cower, he said.
“I think the one thing that’s easy is that presidents shouldn’t overinterpret the law,” Young emphasized. “They shouldn’t comply in advance. You look at the Dear Colleague letter—it’s very clear in the letter that it does not have the force of law. There is an attempt here to scare presidents, and they should avoid being scared into doing things that aren’t required.”
He stressed the importance of maintaining normalcy and core values on campus. One area where college presidents could improve is on their internal messaging, he said. As political pressures mount on higher ed, it’s vital that administrators communicate with constituents “to reassure them that they have their backs.”
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Following Trump EOs, Naval Academy prohibits class materials
The U.S. Naval Academy’s provost told faculty last week not to use course readings “or other materials that promote” critical race theory, “gender ideology” and other topics targeted by the Trump administration, The Baltimore Banner reported.
The institution pointed to Trump’s multiple executive orders, which include one specifically restricting the curricula of military academies.
Provost Samara Firebaugh told faculty in the email to search materials for “diversity,” “minority” and other words and forbade them from using “materials that can be interpreted to assign blame to generalized groups for enduring social conditions, particularly discrimination or inequality,” the Banner reported. The Naval Academy confirmed the email to Inside Higher Ed but declined to provide a copy, saying it doesn’t share internal emails.
“That was a leak,” a representative from the institution’s public affairs office said.
In an email to Inside Higher Ed, the Naval Academy’s media relations arm said the provost’s message “provided more detailed guidance and clarity to ensure course materials and assignments are in alignment with all executive orders.” Commander Ashley Hockycko, public affairs officer at the Naval Academy, said the provost’s letter wasn’t meant to further restrict curriculum and coursework beyond the presidential executive orders—it’s just meant to provide “amplifying guidance and clarification.”
A Jan. 27 executive order titled “Restoring America’s Fighting Force” said educational institutions operated or controlled by the Defense Department and military “are prohibited from promoting, advancing or otherwise inculcating the following un-American, divisive, discriminatory, radical, extremist and irrational theories.” It then went on to list “gender ideology,” “divisive concepts,” “race or sex stereotyping,” “race or sex scapegoating” and the idea “that America’s founding documents are racist or sexist.”
On Jan. 29, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth sent a memo saying, “No element within DoD will provide instruction on critical race theory, DEI or gender ideology as part of a curriculum or for purposes of workforce training“ and that military academies “shall teach that America and its founding documents remain the most powerful force for good in human history.”
The U.S. Air Force Academy and the U.S. Military Academy at West Point didn’t respond to requests for comment Tuesday about whether they’ve released similar guidance.