Tag: Trump

  • The Trump Administration’s War on Children – The 74

    The Trump Administration’s War on Children – The 74

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

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

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and internet crimes against children; responding to reports of missing children; and preventing youth violence has been withdrawn indefinitely.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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  • Harvard faculty group pledges 10% of salary to help university fight Trump

    Harvard faculty group pledges 10% of salary to help university fight Trump

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     Dive Brief:

    • Dozens of faculty members at Harvard University have signed on to contribute 10% of their salaries, for up to a year, to the institution’s legal fight against the Trump administration. 
    • As of Friday afternoon, 88 senior faculty had signed the agreement, according to organizers. Of those, 43 have done so publicly.
    • The faculty pledge came just before President Donald Trump said his administration will pull Harvard’s tax-exempt status, adding “It’s what they deserve!” in a Friday social media post.

    Dive Insight:

    This week’s developments are only the latest in the ongoing battle between Harvard and Trump.

    In the president’s numerous attacks on higher education, Harvard in particular has borne intense scrutiny from the Trump administration. That aggression escalated significantly in mid-April when the Ivy League institution rebuked demands from federal agencies to interfere in academic matters, becoming the first well-known college to respond so forcefully.

    Since then, the administration has slashed Harvard’s federal funding by almost $2.3 billion, threatened billions of dollars more, opened Title VI investigations into it and its law review, and threatened its ability to enroll international students.

    Harvard is now suing the Trump administration over what it calls the government’s efforts to withhold federal funding “as leverage to gain control of academic decisionmaking.”

    Though Harvard is one of the best-resourced institutions in the country, the legal battle is likely to be arduous and expensive. This week’s faculty salary pledge described the university as facing “severe financial damage for its defense of academic freedom.” 

    That damage could come in the form of an unprecedented tax bill.

    In previous social media posts, Trump said Harvard “is a JOKE, teaches Hate and Stupidity, and should no longer receive Federal Funds” and should “be Taxed as a Political Entity.”

    Trump, as president, does not have unilateral legal authority to pull Harvard’s tax exemption, a status bestowed by the Internal Revenue Service. And neither the president nor employees of the executive office can legally direct the IRS to audit or investigate an institution. Federal law requires IRS employees who receive such directions to report them to the agency’s oversight office.

    Despite this, CNN reported in April that the IRS was making arrangements to revoke Harvard’s status, just after Trump posted on the matter.

    Such a change would significantly escalate Trump’s financial battle against Harvard that prompted the faculty pledge. The 11 faculty members leading the salary pledge said they intend for the signatories to hold a vote.

    “If the majority agrees that the university is making a good faith effort to use its own resources in support of staff, student, and academic programs, faculty will proceed with their donation,” their letter said.

    The pledge also acknowledged that not all faculty at Harvard are in a position to pledge 10% — or any — of their income and said the salary contribution plan is “only one of the various ways in which we can express solidarity around the university.”

    “We also know that many faculty are making important contributions to the Harvard community during this difficult time in other ways, by helping students and staff directly,” it said. 

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  • Trump Proposes Deep Cuts to Education and Research

    Trump Proposes Deep Cuts to Education and Research

    President Donald Trump wants to end funding for TRIO, Federal Work-Study and other grant programs that support students on campus as part of a broader plan to cut $163 billion in nondefense programs.

    The funding cuts were outlined in a budget proposal released Friday. The document, considered a “skinny budget,” is essentially a wish list for the fiscal year 2026 budget for Congress to consider. The proposal kicks off what will likely be a yearlong effort to adopt a budget for the next fiscal year, which starts Oct. 1. Trump is unlikely to get all of his plan through Congress, though Republicans have seemed especially willing this year to support his agenda.

    If enacted, the plan would codify Trump’s efforts over the last three months to cut spending and reduce the size of the federal government—moves that some have argued were illegal. (Congress technically has final say over the budget, but Trump and his officials have raised questions about the legality of laws that require the president to spend federal funds as directed by the legislative branch.)

    The proposed budget plan slashes nearly $18 billion from the National Institutes of Health, $12 billion from the Education Department, and nearly $5 billion from the National Science Foundation. The skinny budget also eliminates funding for the Institute of Museum and Library Sciences, AmeriCorps, National Endowment for the Arts, and National Endowment for the Humanities. Trump has already made deep cuts at those agencies and put most—if not all—of their employees on leave.

    A fuller budget with more specifics is expected later this month.

    Democrats were quick to blast Trump’s plan, saying it would set the country “back decades by decimating investments to help families afford the basics.” But Republicans countered that the proposal would rein in “Washington’s runaway spending” and right-size “the bloated federal bureaucracy.”

    For higher ed groups and advocates, the proposed cuts could further jeopardize the country’s standing as a leader in global innovation and put college out of reach for some students.

    “Rather than ushering in a new Golden Age, the administration is proposing cuts to higher education and scientific research of an astonishing magnitude that would decimate U.S. innovation, productivity, and national security,” said Mark Becker, president of the Association of Public and Land-grant Universities, in a statement. “We call on Congress to reject these deeply misguided proposed cuts and instead invest in the nation’s future through education and pathbreaking research.”

    Zeroing Out ED Programs

    At the Education Department, the Trump administration is proposing to end a number of programs and reduce funding to others.

    The president wants to eliminate the department altogether; Education Secretary Linda McMahon said in a statement that the proposal reflects “an agency that is responsibly winding down, shifting some responsibilities to the states, and thoughtfully preparing a plan to delegate other critical functions to more appropriate entities.”

    McMahon laid off nearly half of the agency’s staff in March, so the budget also addresses those cuts.

    To compensate for the cuts to programs that directly support students or institutions, the administration argued colleges, states and local communities should on take that responsibility. Other justifications for the cuts reflect the administration’s crackdown on diversity, equity and inclusion programs and higher ed.

    For instance, officials from the Office of Management and Budget wrote that the SEOG program “contributes to rising college costs that [institutes of higher education] have used to fund radical leftist ideology instead of investing in students and their success.” (The SEOG program provides $100 to $4,000 to students “with exceptional financial need,” according to the department.)

    On TRIO and GEAR UP, which help low-income students get to college, the administration said those programs were a “relic of the past when financial incentives were needed to motivate Institutions of Higher Education to engage with low-income students and increase access … Today, the pendulum has swung and access to college is not the obstacle it was for students of limited means.”

    Additionally, the administration wants to cut the Office for Civil Rights’ budget by $49 million, or 35 percent. The budget document says this cut will refocus OCR “away from DEI and Title IX transgender cases.” In recent years, the Biden administration pleaded with Congress to boost OCR’s funding in order to address an increasing number of complaints. The office received 22,687 complaints in fiscal year 2024, and the Biden administration projected that number to grow to nearly 24,000 in 2025.

    But the OMB document claims that OCR will clear its “massive backlog” this year. “This rightsizing is consistent with the reduction across the Department and an overall smaller Federal role in K-12 and postsecondary education,” officials wrote.

    The administration also proposed cutting the Education Department’s overall budget for program administration by 30 percent. The $127 million cut reflects the staffing cuts and other efforts to wind down the department’s operations.

    “President Trump’s proposed budget puts students and parents above the bureaucracy,” McMahon said. “The federal government has invested trillions of taxpayer dollars into an education system that is not driving improved student outcomes—we must change course and reorient taxpayer dollars toward proven programs that generate results for American students.”

    Science and Research Cuts

    Agencies that fund research at colleges and universities are also facing deep cuts. The $4.9 billion proposed cut at the National Science Foundation is about half of what the agency received in fiscal year 2024—the last year Congress adopted a full budget.

    The cuts will end NSF programs aimed at broadening participation in the STEM fields, which totaled just over $1 billion, as well as $3.45 billion in general research and education.

    “The budget cuts funding for: climate; clean energy; woke social, behavioral, and economic sciences; and programs in low priority areas of science,” the officials wrote in budget documents. “NSF has fueled research with dubious public value, like speculative impacts from extreme climate scenarios and niche social studies.”

    As examples of “research with dubious public value,” officials specifically highlighted a $13.8 million NSF grant at Columbia University to “advance livable, safe, and inclusive communities” and a $15.2 million grant to the University of Delaware focused on achieving “sustainable equity, economic prosperity, and coastal resilience in the context of climate change.” The administration is maintaining the funding for research into artificial intelligence and quantum information sciences.

    The budget plan also aims to make significant reforms at the National Institutes of Health while slashing the agency’s budget by $17.9 billion. NIH received $47 billion in fiscal 2024.

    The plan would consolidate NIH programs into five areas: the National Institute on Body Systems Research; National Institute on Neuroscience and Brain Research; National Institute of General Medical Sciences; National Institute of Disability Related Research; and National Institute on Behavioral Health.

    The National Institute on Minority and Health Disparities, the Fogarty International Center, the National Center for Complementary and Integrative Health and the National Institute of Nursing Research would all be cut. The administration is planning to maintain $27 billion for NIH research.

    “The administration is committed to restoring accountability, public trust, and transparency at the NIH,” officials wrote. “NIH has broken the trust of the American people with wasteful spending, misleading information, risky research, and the promotion of dangerous ideologies that undermine public health.”

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  • Trump Order Targets Undocumented Students’ In-State Tuition

    Trump Order Targets Undocumented Students’ In-State Tuition

    Immigrant rights advocates are urging state and higher ed leaders not to make any hasty changes to their in-state tuition policies after President Trump issued an executive order on Monday threatening to crack down on sanctuary cities and localities with laws that benefit undocumented immigrants.

    The blow to undocumented students, who in nearly half the country pay in-state tuition, is tucked into an executive order focused mostly on pressuring state and local officials to abandon their cities’ sanctuary status and cooperate with federal immigration authorities. The order demands federal officials make lists of “sanctuary jurisdictions” and the federal funds that could be suspended or cut if they don’t change course. The order also commands them to take “appropriate action” to stop the enforcement of state and local laws and practices “favoring aliens over any groups of American citizens,” including in-state tuition benefits to undocumented students “but not to out-of-state Americans.”

    The move has the potential to affect 24 states and Washington, D.C., which allow in-state tuition for local students with or without citizenship. (Florida previously allowed undocumented students to pay in-state tuition rates but ended its decade-old, historically bipartisan policy in February.) Undocumented students and supporters have long touted these policies as a way to make college more affordable for those who can’t access federal financial aid but who grew up in the states and plan to work in their local communities after they graduate.

    “What immigrant, international and refugee students bring is needed talent, skills and contributions,” said Miriam Feldblum, executive director of the Presidents’ Alliance on Higher Education and Immigration. “In-state tuition increases the number of a state’s residents who are college educated, who are able to contribute far more to the state’s economy and to their communities than if they did not have a college education.”

    Gaby Pacheco, president and CEO of TheDream.US, a scholarship provider for undocumented students, said many of these students come from low-income backgrounds and couldn’t afford college otherwise.

    Her organization is currently scrambling to help undocumented students in Florida pay for the remainder of their credits and graduate before they have to pay much higher out-of-state tuition rates. In some cases, that means helping them transfer to more affordable institutions.

    For many, “it’s just impossible for them to be able to come up with that money,” she said.

    She’s encouraging state and institutional leaders to avoid “panicking” or “making abrupt policy changes” in response to the executive order.

    Other executive orders have “created so much panic and unnecessary movement from colleges, universities, states, that it was more hurtful than anything,” she said. The administration is putting forward a “belief” that charging undocumented students in-state tuition rates is unlawful, but “that belief is legally dubious.”

    Deciphering the Executive Order

    Immigrants’ advocates and legal scholars say the meaning of the executive order is somewhat hazy. For example, it’s unclear what it means for federal officials to “take appropriate action” to prevent in-state tuition policies from being enforced.

    The order also doesn’t directly say states or institutions with such laws will lose any federal funding, noted Ahilan Arulanantham, professor from practice at the UCLA School of Law and co-director of the law school’s Center for Immigration Law and Policy.

    Still, the order’s threatening tone toward sanctuary cities’ federal funds could be “a window into where this fight could go if the federal government wants to expend significant political capital on this issue,” Arulanantham said. Congress, for example, could decide to pass a law to cut federal funds from universities that offer undocumented students in-state tuition—a proposal outlined in Project 2025. But the executive order itself doesn’t explicitly take away federal dollars from anyone or have the power to do so, he said.

    “If I were a local government or state government official, I probably wouldn’t sue tomorrow over this,” Arulanantham said. “I would wait to see if this is actually going to have any teeth, or if it’s just like a press release.”

    Pacheco similarly described the order as “warning” states of the administration’s posture toward these policies. At the same time, she believes it’s important to plan ahead in case Trump takes the issue further.

    “They’re trying to tell states, ‘We believe that you providing certain benefits for undocumented students is against the law,’” she said. “We’ve known this forever—these states are not violating the law.”

    The order suggests that in-state tuition for undocumented students “may violate” a federal statutory provision that says undocumented people can’t receive higher ed benefits unless citizens are also eligible. But in-state tuition policies are designed to serve citizens living in these states, as well. For example, under California’s Assembly Bill 540, any nonresident who spent three years in California high schools is eligible for in-state tuition. That policy also benefits citizens who grew up in the state who may have left for any reason and returned.

    These types of in-state tuition policies, including California’s, have faced legal challenges in the past, “but all the challenges have failed, said Kevin Johnson, dean of the UC Davis School of Law. He described the executive order as “vaguely worded,” while the state laws, by contrast, are “very clear.”

    The legal argument is that undocumented students are “just being treated equally as all other residents of the state,” he said. “The idea is that they’re residents, which means they’re taxpayers—maybe it’s sales tax, maybe state income tax, federal income tax—whatever it is, they should be treated like other residents and not discriminated against because of their immigration status.”

    What Happens Next

    Arulanantham worries that despite their strong legal foundation, states and higher ed institutions may rush to end in-state tuition benefits for undocumented students out of fear.

    “That’s actually almost certainly the primary purpose of this order”: to spur “pre-emptive discrimination because [institutions] think they have to or they think it’s safer to,” he said.

    Feldblum noted that, prior to the executive order, some state lawmakers were already starting to shift on the issue, perhaps “to align themselves with the federal government.”

    While some states have recently doubled down on such policies, proposing new legislation to expand in-state tuition eligibility, others have also moved to curtail them. Following in Florida’s footsteps, lawmakers in other states, including Kansas, Kentucky and Texas, are considering legislation to prohibit in-state tuition for undocumented students. Texas was the first to allow undocumented students to pay in-state tuition rates in 2001, joined by California that same year.

    “This is not coming in a vacuum … We have to take this seriously and substantively, consider the kinds of actions we need to take to defend in-state tuition—including, if needed, legal action,” Feldblum said. “And then also make sure we’re placing equal emphasis on supporting and communicating with potentially impacted students so that they know their education is important and that they’re important.”

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  • Lawsuit challenges Trump ICE raid policy, citing LAUSD activity

    Lawsuit challenges Trump ICE raid policy, citing LAUSD activity

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    The Trump administration’s Immigration and Customs Enforcement policy allowing ICE raids on school grounds and other sensitive locations was challenged in a lawsuit filed this week on behalf of an Oregon-based Latinx organization and faith groups from other states. 

    The lawsuit cites ICE activity at two Los Angeles elementary schools last month, as well as parents’ fears of sending their children to school in other locations across the country. 

    “Teachers cited attendance rates have dropped in half and school administrators saw an influx of parents picking their children up from school in the middle of the day after hearing reports that immigration officials were in the area,” said the lawsuit filed April 28 by the Justice Action Center and the Innovation Law Lab. It was filed in the U.S. District Court for the District Court of Oregon’s Eugene Division.

    The two organizations filed on behalf of Oregon’s farmworker union Pineros y Campesinos Unidos del Noroeste, whose members say they are “afraid to send their children to school,” per the draft complaint. The farmworker union’s members, especially those who are mothers, say their livelihood depends on sending their children to school during the day while they work. 

    “They now must choose between facing the risk of immigration detention or staying at home with their children and forfeiting their income,” the lawsuit said. One of the members of the union said her children were “afraid of ICE showing up and separating their family.” 

    The lawsuit challenges a Department of Homeland Security directive, issued one day after President Donald Trump’s inauguration, that undid three decades of DHS policy that prevented ICE from raiding sensitive locations like schools, hospitals and churches. 

    “Criminals will no longer be able to hide in America’s schools and churches to avoid arrest,” a DHS spokesperson said in a January statement on the order. “The Trump Administration will not tie the hands of our brave law enforcement, and instead trusts them to use common sense.”

    When asked for comment on the lawsuit, an ICE spokesperson said the agency does not comment on pending or ongoing litigation. 

    Monday’s lawsuit and others filed against the directive say the change in policy is impacting students’ learning and districts’ ability to carry out their jobs. 

    A lawsuit filed in February by Denver Public Schools said the DHS order “gives federal agents virtually unchecked authority to enforce immigration laws in formerly protected areas, including schools.” It sought a temporary restraining order prohibiting ICE and Customs and Border Protection from enforcing the policy. 

    According to the American Immigration Council, over 4 million U.S. citizen children under 18 years of age lived with at least one undocumented parent as of 2018. A 2010 study cited by the council found that immigration-related parental arrests led to children experiencing at least four adverse behavioral changes in the six months following the incidents.

    Another study cited by the organization, conducted in 2020, found that school districts in communities with a large number of deportations saw worsened educational outcomes for Latino students.

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  • Ex-NIH Director Says Trump Silenced Him, Others

    Ex-NIH Director Says Trump Silenced Him, Others

    A former director of the National Institutes of Health—who resigned in February—told CBS’s 60 Minutes that working at the agency became “untenable” after President Donald Trump started his second term Jan. 20. 

    Like “every other scientist, I was not allowed to speak in any kind of scientific meeting or public setting,” Francis Collins, a geneticist who had worked for the biomedical research agency since the 1990s, said during an episode that aired Sunday. He believed staying at the agency wouldn’t have helped. “I would have been pretty much in the circumstance of not being able to speak about it.”

    Over the past few months, the Trump administration has announced sweeping budget cuts and ideologically driven policy changes at numerous agencies across the federal government, including at the $47 billion NIH. The NIH is the largest funder of biomedical research in the world, sending about 80 percent of its budget to universities, medical colleges and other institutes in the form of extramural grants that support research on fatal diseases, such as cancer, Alzheimer’s and diabetes. 

    But scientists and medical research advocates say the work of the NIH—and the millions of patients it supports—is in jeopardy. 

    In late January, the NIH temporarily froze spending and communication and halted most reviews of grant applications; so far in 2025 it’s awarded about $2.8 billion less than usual at this point over the past five years. It’s also announced a plan to cap indirect research cost rates, which universities say would create gaping budget holes and slow the pace of medical breakthroughs. (A federal judge has since blocked the guidance.)

    The agency has also fired some 1,300 employees and terminated roughly $2 billion in grants—many focused on the health of women, LGBTQ+ people and racial minorities—that no longer effectuate “agency priorities.” (Researchers have since sued over the grant terminations). And earlier this month, The Washington Post reported that an internal White House budget proposal outlined plans to cut $20 billion from NIH’s annual budget and consolidate the NIH’s 27 institutes and centers into eight.

    Although research advocates have protested the cuts, the drastic changes have created an environment of fear and anxiety for both university scientists and the remaining NIH employees who support them and conduct their own medical research. 

    “I’ve never seen the morale of an institution change so abruptly to where we feel fear,” said an NIH researcher who spoke to 60 Minutes on the condition of anonymity. “You can’t run an organization as complicated as NIH without a support system … That has now been decimated … This doesn’t feel like a strategic plan to make the NIH better and more efficient. It feels like a wrecking ball.”

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  • How colleges can support transgender students amid the Trump administration

    How colleges can support transgender students amid the Trump administration

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    Almost immediately after taking office, President Donald Trump launched a flurry of executive orders and policy directives that threaten to roll back the civil rights of transgender and nonbinary students and erase their identities. The administration has also targeted colleges that support transgender inclusion. 

    Despite these moves, legal experts and transgender rights experts say college leaders can protect transgender and nonbinary students and make their campuses welcoming spaces. That type of support can be crucial to recruit those students, as well as improve their mental health and well-being on campus. 

    But implementing affirming policies for those students can be challenging, as institutions risk losing federal funding or facing Title IX investigations under the policies now in place. 

    One of Trump’s executive orders declares the federal government will only recognize two sexes, male and female, which the directive said cannot be changed — a policy out of step with scientific understanding. 

    Another executive order, which was blocked by a federal court, withheld federal funding to medical providers that provide gender-affirming care, such as puberty blockers and hormone therapies, to transgender people under the age of 19. An additional order directed federal agencies to end “equity-related” grants “to the maximum extent allowed by law.”

    The U.S. Department of Education also issued guidance in late January advising education leaders to follow the previous Trump administration’s Title IX regulations after the Biden-era version of the rules were struck down. The Trump administration’s letter stated the department will enforce Title IX in a way that is consistent with Trump’s executive order mandating the federal government only recognize two sexes that cannot be changed.

    This interpretation stands in contrast with the Biden-era version of the Title IX rules, which had prohibited discrimination based on gender identity. The Biden administration also withdrew proposed Title IX rules in December that would have barred blanket bans on transgender students participating on sports teams aligning with their gender identity.

    Yet another executive order targeted an extremely small sliver of student athletes nationwide by threatening to withhold federal funding from colleges or K-12 schools that allow transgender girls and women from competing in sports aligning with their gender identity. The NCAA revised its policies to comply with the order. 

    The new administration has already opened Title IX investigations into San José State University, the University of Pennsylvania, the Massachusetts Interscholastic Athletic Association, and others that allow or have allowed transgender women or girls to participate on teams corresponding with their gender identity. 

    However, the enforceability of the Trump administration’s recent executive orders, which are essentially “ideological policy statements,” has not yet been determined, said Elana Redfield, federal policy director at the University of California, Los Angeles’ Williams Institute. 

    At the very least, colleges shouldn’t be rushing to implement “harmful and discriminatory policies” before they are legally required to do so, said Jose Abrigo, an attorney and HIV project director for Lambda Legal Defense and Education Fund. The policies could be blocked or modified by the courts and preemptive compliance could “needlessly harm students,” he said. 

    The executive orders try to suppress speech, erase identities and punish those who affirm the existence of transgender and nonbinary people on college campuses — institutions that are meant to be “bastions of free thought and open discourse,” Abrigo said. 

    “Academic institutions should be places where truth is explored, not dictated,” Abrigo said, “where students are empowered to live authentically, not forced into silence by discriminatory and unconstitutional edicts from the president.”

    How colleges can protect trans students

    College leaders have several ways to affirm and protect their transgender and nonbinary students, experts say. 

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  • Trump is gutting what made American science great (Fareed Zakaria, CNN)

    Trump is gutting what made American science great (Fareed Zakaria, CNN)







    Higher Education Inquirer : Trump is gutting what made American science great (Fareed Zakaria, CNN)




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  • Trump Versus Academia, April 25, 2025 (Bryan Alexander)

    Trump Versus Academia, April 25, 2025 (Bryan Alexander)

    Here’s my latest Trump and academia vlog report. If you’re new to this series, these videos are where I summarize what the Trump administration has been doing to higher education, and how colleges and universities have responded. Here are the latest developments since the last video, as of today, April 25, 2025. 

    Previous episodes here:

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  • Presidents’ Alliance challenges “unlawful” SEVIS terminations

    Presidents’ Alliance challenges “unlawful” SEVIS terminations

    Their suit argues that the thousands of terminations, which to date have left more than 1,800 students without valid status, are “unlawful” and came “without warning, individualised explanation and an opportunity to respond”.

    The Presidents’ Alliance on Higher Education and Immigration, which advocates for immigrant and international student rights, and several impacted students from institutions such as MIT and Boston University filed the suit in the District Court for the district of Massachusetts yesterday.

    Not only have students been forced out of housing, jobs or their chosen institution mere weeks away from graduation, but the Trump administration’s crackdown on international students has “undermined’ institutions’ being able to “attract, retain, and effectively serve” students from overseas, the group warned.

    The court is asked to find that the policy is unlawful and unconstitutional, reactivate the SEVIS records of affected students, halt the policy while the case is being fought and “vacate all improper SEVIS terminations”.

    President and CEO of the Presidents’ Alliance, Miriam Feldblum, warned that students would be put off from studying in the US because of the “fear and uncertainty diminishing our global competitiveness and reputation”.

    “The unlawful termination of student records without due process strikes at the heart of higher education’s mission. Colleges and universities drive innovation, research, and workforce growth by fostering global talent – but they can’t do that when students’ futures are derailed without explanation,” she said.

    “These actions deter future students from studying here in the US, and hinder campus administrators from carrying out their work by the arbitrary upending of established regulations and processes.” 

    Meanwhile, Sirine Shebaya, executive Director at the National Immigration Project – which is representing the Presidents’ Alliance – blasted the policy vas “not only lawless… [but] cruel” – marking “yet another manifestation of policies that fly in the face of both legal standards and common decency”.

    These actions deter future students from studying here in the US, and hinder campus administrators from carrying out their work by the arbitrary upending of established regulations and processes
    Miriam Feldblum, Presidents’ Alliance

    While the surge in visa revocations was at first thought to mainly affect students who had expressed pro-Palestinian sympathies, international education stakeholders have been left baffled at a growing number being issued at institutions where no such protests had taken place.

    Some students – including one unnamed Boston University graduate represented in the legal case – are reporting that their visas had been taken away due to minor traffic infractions. Others have been left confused after their visas were revoked despite having no criminal history.

    Yet the State Department continues to back the policy.

    “The Trump administration is focused on protecting our nation and our citizens by upholding the highest standards of national security and public safety through our visa process,” a State Department spokesperson told The PIE News this week.  

    “The Department of State will continue to work closely with the Department of Homeland Security to enforce zero tolerance for aliens in the United States who violate US laws, threaten public safety, or in other situations where warranted.” 

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