Tag: Trump

  • AAUP Accuses Trump of Weaponizing Civil Rights Law

    AAUP Accuses Trump of Weaponizing Civil Rights Law

    The Biden and Trump administrations have both stepped up enforcement of Title VI in the last two years.

    Photo illustration by Justin Morrison/Inside Higher Ed | Etienne Laurent/AFP/Getty Images | Scott Olson/Getty Images

    A new report released Monday by the American Association of University Professors and its Committee A on Academic Freedom and Tenure argues that the Trump administration has weaponized federal civil rights laws with a goal of discrediting colleges and compromising their academic freedom and institutional autonomy.

    The report focuses in part on a surge of investigations that have been launched by the Department of Education since Oct. 7, 2023, especially those that involve national origin and religion. Based on an analysis of those cases, AAUP argues that in many instances the Trump administration has targeted types of speech or programming that do not actually qualify as legally actionable discrimination. Rather, the association says, the Trump administration has used this surge to sidestep historical procedures and enforce its own interpretation of the law.

    Both the Biden and Trump administrations stepped up their enforcement of Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which prohibits discrimination based on race, color, religion, sex or national origin, after the Hamas attack on Israel prompted a number of protests on college campuses and an increase in reports of antisemitism. Their approaches, however, have been quite different.

    Biden civil rights officials took issue with how colleges responded to reports of antisemitic harassment and found several colleges in violation of that law.

    However, the Trump administration has moved aggressively to cut off funds and to demand sweeping changes at institutions—all in the name of combating antisemitism. More recently, the administration has used Title VI as a way to restrict and investigate race-based practices and programs as well as admissions decisions.

    “In a perverse reading of DEI, the administration makes it an instance of racial discrimination rather than an attempt to dismantle the structures of discrimination based on race,” the report notes.

    Over all, the AAUP argues that the Trump administration is attempting to “unmake” and “hijack” Title VI.

    The Trump administration is “unmooring the Civil Rights Act from its foundational commitments to addressing structures of discrimination that prevent educational access,” the report stated. And doing so “is nothing less than an attempt to rewrite the history of the nation.”

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  • Feds Press CPS to End Black Student Initiative, Transgender Student Guidelines – The 74

    Feds Press CPS to End Black Student Initiative, Transgender Student Guidelines – The 74


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    The Trump administration says it will withhold some federal funding from Chicago Public Schools over an initiative to improve outcomes for Black students and guidelines allowing transgender students to play sports and use facilities based on the gender with which they identify.

    Craig Trainor, the acting assistant secretary of civil rights in the U.S. Department of Education, wrote the district Tuesday saying his office has found CPS violated anti-discrimination laws and will lose grant dollars through the Magnet School Assistance Program. The district, with a budget of roughly $10.2 billion, has a five-year, $15 million Magnet Schools Assistance Program grant it received last year.

    The feds are demanding that the district abolish the Black Student Success Plan it unveiled in February and issue a statement saying it will require students to compete in sports or use locker rooms and bathroom facilities based on their biological sex at birth, among other demands.

    However, Illinois law conflicts on both fronts, putting CPS in a difficult position. The state issued guidance in March that outlines compliance with the Illinois Human Rights Law, including that schools must allow transgender students access to facilities that correspond to their gender identity. Separately, an Illinois law passed in 2024 requires the Chicago school board to have a Black Student Achievement Committee and plan for serving Black students.

    Chicago Public Schools said Wednesday in an emailed statement that it “does not comment on ongoing investigations.” Previously, its leaders have said that the Black Students Success Plan is a priority to address longstanding academic and discipline disparities that Black students face. They have vowed to forge ahead with the five-year plan in defiance of the Trump administration’s crackdown on race-based initiatives.

    Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson said earlier this year that he would take the Trump administration to court if it takes federal funding away from CPS because of the district’s diversity, equity, and inclusion efforts. His office also did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

    In response to a complaint from a Virginia-based conservative nonprofit earlier this year, the Education Department’s Office for Civil Rights opened an investigation into the Black Student Success Plan, which sets goals to double the number of male Black teachers, reduce Black student suspensions, and teach Black history in more classrooms. Trainor said in his department’s interpretation, the initiative runs afoul of a U.S. Supreme Court decision last year banning the consideration of race in college admissions by offering added support to Black students and teachers exclusively.

    “This is textbook racial discrimination, and no justification proffered by CPS can overcome the patent illegality of its racially exclusionary plan,” he wrote.

    The OCR also launched an investigation in March of CPS, the Illinois State Board of Education, and suburban Deerfield Public School District 109 to look into their policies on transgender students using facilities and participating in school sports. Trainor said Chicago’s Guidelines Regarding the Support of Transgender and Gender Nonconforming Students violate Title IX, the federal law that prohibits discrimination on the basis of sex in education.

    District officials told Chalkbeat recently that the members of a new school board Black Student Achievement Committee tasked with overseeing the plan’s rollout will be unveiled later this month.

    Stacy Davis Gates, the president of the Chicago Teachers Union, issued a statement decrying the federal move to withhold funds from CPS and saying the district will stay the course.

    “We will not back down,” she said in the statement. “We will not apologize. Our duty is to our students, and no amount of political bullying will shake our commitment to them.”

    Chalkbeat is a nonprofit news site covering educational change in public schools.


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  • Trump student visa policies pose outsized risk to speciality colleges

    Trump student visa policies pose outsized risk to speciality colleges

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    A loss of international students due to restrictive federal policies could disproportionately harm small private colleges that have specialized focuses or are affiliated with Christian churches, according to a recent report from the Brookings Institution. 

    Many public institutions that charge much higher tuition for international and out-of-state students could also face serious financial hits, said the report’s author, Dick Startz, an economics professor at the University of California, Santa Barbara.

    In his analysis, Startz looked at the common traits of colleges where international students made up at least 30% of enrollment. He found that all of those colleges were private, tended to be small, and have a special focus like business or arts. 

    They were also disproportionately Christian colleges. According to the report, Christian institutions represent 34.3% of colleges and universities where international students comprise more than 30% of total enrollment. 

    “Perhaps the importance of international students to Christian schools should not be so surprising,” the report said. “Many Christian schools are affiliated with evangelical beliefs, spreading their faith globally.”

    Many small private and religious colleges in the U.S. have closed in recent years amid enrollment losses. For such institutions, a sudden loss of 30% of their student population could be a “disaster,” the report warned.

    “The majority of schools will see very little effect,” said Startz. “But there are a small number of schools — private schools that are not very large — and 30% of their budget could disappear. It could be devastating.”

    In June, the U.S. Department of State reopened consular interviews for foreign students looking to apply or renew their student visas after freezing the process the month prior. The State Department, however, now requires those students to unlock their social media accounts so consular officers can review whether they consider their posts hostile to the U.S. or to its culture and founding principles, The Associated Press reported. 

    International students who were previously in the country with active visas are less likely to be affected, said Startz. But first-year students, new graduate students, or some students who need to renew their visas will be impacted, he said. 

    It’s unclear how much those policies will affect international student enrollment or when colleges may start seeing significant impacts, said Startz. But some major colleges and university systems are already beginning to report a major drop in international student enrollment. 

    Over the summer, NASFSA: Association of International Educators projected international enrollment at U.S. colleges could decline by as much as 150,000 students this semester if the federal government did not start ramping up efforts to issue visas. 

    International freshmen enrollment at elite institutions like Princeton University and Columbia University remained steady heading into fall, The New York Times reported. However, other institutions, such as the University at Buffalo, are reportedly experiencing significant declines in international student enrollment, NPR reported. 

    Affecting the economy, affecting colleges

    Volatility in international student levels could affect nearly every college in the country that enrolls foreign students, the Brookings report stated. But not every college — even the ones with large foreign student enrollments — would be affected equally. 

    Colleges such as the University of California, Santa Barbara — where international students make up 9% of enrollment — could face serious financial threats. That’s because those students pay triple the tuition paid by in-state students at UC Santa Barbara, the report stated. 

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  • Ford, Trump and the War on Education (Henry A. Giroux and William Paul)

    Ford, Trump and the War on Education (Henry A. Giroux and William Paul)

    Analyses of fascism too often fixate on its most spectacular expressions: staggering inequality, systemic racism, the militarization of daily life, unbridled corruption, monopolistic control of the media, and the concentration of power in financial and political elites. Fascism thrives on a culture of fear and racial cleansing and the normalization of cruelty, lies, and state violence. Yet what is often overlooked is how culture and education now function as decisive forces in legitimating these authoritarian passions and in eroding democratic commitments. As Hannah Arendt, Jason Stanley, Richard Evans, Chris Hedges, and others remind us, the protean origins of fascism are never fully buried; they return in altered and often disguised forms, seeping into everyday life and reshaping the common sense of a society.

    Under US President Donald Trump, we face a terrifying new horizon of authoritarian politics: the erosion of due process, mass abductions, vicious attacks on higher education, and the steady construction of a police state. Canada has not yet descended into such full-fledged authoritarianism, but troubling echoes are undeniable. Public spaces and public goods are under assault, book bans have appeared in Alberta, languages of hate increasingly target those deemed disposable, the mass media bends to corporate interests, labour is suppressed, and democratic values are met with disdain. These may not replicate the worst horrors of the past, but they reveal how culture and education become the terrain upon which democracy is dismantled and authoritarianism gains legitimacy. These are warning signs of a gathering darkness that must be confronted before they harden into something far more sinister.

    Culture and Pedagogy

    Fascism thrives not only on brute police power, prisons, or economic violence but also on culture and pedagogy. Culture has increasingly become a site in the service of pedagogical tyranny. It works through erasure and repression, through memory stripped of its critical force, and through dissent silenced in the name of order. Fascism is never solely a political or economic system; it is a pedagogical project, a machinery of teaching and unlearning that narrows the horizon of what can be said, imagined, or remembered.

    Today authoritarianism seeps insidiously into everyday life, embedded in seemingly obvious maneuvers that consolidate power under the guise of technical or bureaucratic necessity. Its mobilizing passions often emerge unobtrusively in maneuvers that hide in the shadows of the mundane, often at the level of everyday experience.

    This creeping logic is starkly visible in Ontario, where Doug Ford’s Progressive Conservative (PC) government has moved to seize control of local school boards. What may look like routine administrative measures should be read as a warning: authoritarianism does not arrive only with grandiose spectacles or open attacks on democracy’s foundations; it gains ground quietly, through the erosion of the ordinary, the capture of the local, and above all, through the weaponization of education as a tool to dismantle democracy itself.

    The Ford government’s seizure of the Toronto, Toronto Catholic, Ottawa-Carleton, and Dufferin-Peel Catholic district school boards is extraordinary, even for this democracy-averse regime. Education Minister Paul Calandra has even mused about eliminating trustees altogether before the 2026 local elections, declaring “Everything is on the table.” His justification that Ontario’s Ministry of Education (MOE) has allowed them to make too many decisions on their own is both unsupported and revealing. It exposes a deeper authoritarian project: the desire to centralize power and strip away democratic oversight from institutions closest to local communities. It curbs liberal instincts of trustees who see first-hand the vast diversity of lives and needs of the families who rely on their schools.

    This is precisely how authoritarian control operates: by eroding intermediary structures that connect people to power. Just as Donald Trump sought to bend national cultural institutions like the Smithsonian Museum to his will, Ford dismantles the modest democratic functions of trusteeship. Both cases illustrate how authoritarianism works through the fine print of governance as much as through grandiose pronouncements.

    Manufactured Deficits and Structural Starvation

    The pretext for takeover was financial mismanagement. Yet none of the investigators found evidence of serious fiscal incompetence. The truth is that boards submitted balanced budgets year after year but only after slashing programs and services, closing outdoor education centres, selling property, cutting staff, and raising fees. What really drives their fiscal crises is a decades-old funding model – first imposed by the Mike Harris PC government in 1997 – that shifted resources from local taxes to provincial grants. This was not a move toward equitable funding; these were neoliberals of the first order who believed in central control of funding so they could squeeze school boards and education workers to contain costs.

    This model, based on enrolment rather than actual need, starved boards of resources for special education, transportation, salaries, and infrastructure. For instance, school boards don’t get funding for actual children who need special education support but rather on the basis of a predictive model MOE devised. Boards pay for the kids MOE doesn’t fund. The Ford government hasn’t funded the full increase for statutory teacher benefits for years, leaving boards short by millions. The result is a structural deficit: chronic underfunding that leaves even well-managed boards teetering on insolvency. The Ford government, while claiming to increase spending, has in fact cut funding per student by $1,500 in real terms since 2018. This is the problem faced by with 40 percent of Ontario school boards.

    It is this manufactured insolvency that led Minister Calandra to get the most out of a useful crisis and put the four school boards under supervision and maybe next eliminate all school boards in the province. Here we see neoliberal austerity converging with authoritarian ambition. Underfunding is not a policy mistake; it is a deliberate strategy to weaken public education, undermine trust in democratic institutions, and prepare the ground for privatization schemes such as vouchers and charter schools. In this instance, the policy of underfunding is a way of weakening public education and then blaming whatever problems occur on education itself. This is gangster capitalism at work, cloaked in the language of fiscal responsibility but fueled by a pedagogy of dispossession.

    Eliminating Trustees, Silencing Communities

    If board takeovers were simply about money, supervisors would have been told to just find savings. Instead, elected trustees were suspended, their offices shuttered, their tiny stipends cut off, and their ability to communicate with constituents forbidden. Calandra’s power grab has all the elements of Elon Musk’s DOGE assaults in the US: move fast, offer absurd excuses, and blame the victims. The supervisors replacing trustees – accountants, lawyers, and former politicians with no background in education – now wield greater power than the elected community representatives they displaced.

    This substitution of technocrats for democratically accountable representatives is part of fascism’s pedagogy. It teaches the public to accept disenfranchisement as efficiency, to see obedience as order. Parents who ask why a program disappeared or why their child’s special education class has grown larger are now met with silence. In this vacuum, the lesson learned is that participation is futile and resistance meaningless – precisely the kind of civic numbing oligarchic fascism requires.

    Command, Control, and the Policing of Education

    Ford’s government frames these takeovers as a “broader rethink” of governance, but the real project is clear: the imposition of command and control over education. This move sends a strong message that it’s time to duck our heads and get back to basics: teaching “reading, writing, spelling, and arithmetic and the whole shebang…” as Doug Ford complained last fall after teachers and students attended a rally in support of the Grassy Narrows First Nation and its efforts to deal with generations of mercury contamination in their area. He proclaimed, with no evidence, that the field trip was “indoctrination” by teachers because activists protesting Israeli genocide were present. Community members who supported an Indigenous curriculum, modern sexual education, or even school-name changes honoring anti-colonial figures are dismissed or painted as obstacles. The message from Ford and Calandra is blunt: stick to the basics – reading, writing, arithmetic – and leave politics at the door.

    Yet politics hangs over classrooms like a shroud. Despite his Captain Canada complaints about the Trump tariffs, Ford admires the President quick-marching America toward fascism. In an off-mic moment he commented recently: “Election day, was I happy this guy won? One hundred per cent I was.” It’s not the racism, the authoritarianism, the compulsive lying, the fraud, the sexual assaults that bothers the Premier; it’s that he got stiffed by his friend.

    Usurping trustees according to University of Ottawa professor Sachin Maharaj is just another step toward the Progressive Conservatives’ goal to “squelch the pipeline of more progressive leaders” like those gaining notice and experience attending to the needs of local schools.

    The banning of the Toronto Muslim Student Alliance’s screening of the film No Other Land, which documents Israeli settler violence, shows how censorship now masquerades as neutrality. This is the pedagogy of repression in action: narrowing what can be taught, remembered, or discussed until education is reduced to obedience training. What parades as a “broader rethink” is part of the authoritarian language of censorship and control. Like Trump’s attacks on “critical race theory” or his censorship of the Smithsonian, Ford’s moves are not about protecting students from politics but about protecting power from critique. The real issue here is constructing authoritarian policies that narrow critical thinking, teacher autonomy, essential funding, and knowledge that enable schools to both defend and facilitate democracy.

    For Ford and his adherents, the real issue is not that schools are failing but that they are public and have a vital role to play in a democracy. The real threat to Ford is that a democracy can only exist with informed citizens. Yet that is precisely the role education should assume.

    Bill 33: Codifying Authoritarianism

    The perversely named Bill 33, the Supporting Children and Students Act extends this authoritarian logic. It allows the Minister to investigate boards or trustees on the mere suspicion they might act “inappropriately” or against the “public interest” – an elastic phrase that grants unchecked power. It checks much-maligned Diversity Equity and Inclusion efforts by refusing boards the right to name schools, forcing them to abandon diversity-affirming figures in favor of colonial or sanitized names. It mandates the reintroduction of police officers into schools, despite community opposition to surveillance and “unaccountable access to youth by cops.”

    At work here is the legacy of colonialism, a legacy that is terrified of diversity, of those deemed other, being able to narrate themselves. Viewed as threat, this anti-democratic language ultimately falls back on issues of control and security. This is one instance of how authoritarianism consolidates itself, not through tanks in the streets but through legislation that transforms education into an arm of the security state. Pedagogical spaces are militarized, memory is policed, and students are taught that surveillance is normal and dissent dangerous.

    Trumpasitic Authoritarianism

    Ford’s methods echo those of his southern counterpart. Just as Trump’s politics thrive on dispossession, erasure, and the weaponization of culture, Ford borrows from the same authoritarian playbook. The takeover of school boards not only tightens political control but also grants easy access to billions of dollars in public land, enriching developers tied to his government. Here, neoliberal profiteering fuses seamlessly with authoritarian centralization, an example of the merging of gangster capitalism with the pedagogy of repression.

    What do you expect from a government that makes decisions reflecting the arrogance of power? The Ford government cut Toronto city council in half soon after took office in 2018 and threatened to use a constitutional override, the Notwithstanding Clause, Section 33 of Canada’s Charter of Rights and Freedoms, to overturn a Superior Court justice’s decision that the move was unconstitutional. Ford actually used the clause to push through a bill restricting election advertising in 2021 and again, pre-emptively, in 2022, buttressing back-to-work legislation against striking public workers, among the lowest paid in the province. He’s considering using it again after his decision to remove bike lanes from Toronto streets was overturned in court; power makes you petty.

    Democracy in the Smallest Details

    The takeover of Ontario school boards may appear less dramatic than Trump’s assaults on national institutions, but its implications are just as dire. Authoritarianism advances not only through spectacle but through the slow erosion of local democratic practices that once seemed secure.

    If fascism is a pedagogy of fear, amnesia, and conformity, then resistance must be a pedagogy of memory, solidarity, and imagination. To defend education is to defend democracy itself, for schools are not simply sites of instruction but laboratories of citizenship, places where young people learn what it means to speak, to question, to remember, and to act. When trustees are silenced, when curricula are censored, when communities are stripped of their voice, what is lost is not only oversight but the very possibility of democratic life.

    What is at stake, then, is far larger than budget shortfalls or bureaucratic reshuffling. It is whether the future will be governed by communities or dictated from above by those who mistake obedience for learning and silence for peace. Fascism thrives in these small erasures, in the details that seem technical until they harden into structures of domination.

    The lesson could not be clearer: democracy dies in increments, but it can also be rebuilt in increments – through collective memory, through civic courage, through the refusal to allow education to become a weapon of obedience. To resist the Ford government’s authoritarian incursions is not only to protect local school boards; it is to reclaim the very ground on which democratic hope stands. •

    Henry A. Giroux currently is the McMaster University Professor for Scholarship in the Public Interest and The Paulo Freire Distinguished Scholar in Critical Pedagogy. His most recent books include The Violence of Organized Forgetting (City Lights, 2014), Dangerous Thinking in the Age of the New Authoritarianism (Routledge, 2015), coauthored with Brad Evans, Disposable Futures: The Seduction of Violence in the Age of Spectacle (City Lights, 2015), and America at War with Itself (City Lights, 2016). His website is henryagiroux.com.

    William Paul is editor of School Magazine website.

    This article first appeared at the Social Project Bullet

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  • UC employees, unions sue Trump administration over ‘financial coercion’

    UC employees, unions sue Trump administration over ‘financial coercion’

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    A coalition of University of California faculty groups and employee unions sued the Trump administration Tuesday over the federal government’s efforts to “exert ideological control” over the system and its 10 institutions. 

    Over the past three months, the federal government has cut off at least $584 million in grants to the University of California, Los Angeles, sought $1 billion from the system to restore that funding and delivered a wide-ranging list of ultimatums that would dramatically reshape the state’s university system through political interference. 

    In their lawsuit, the coalition — which represented tens of thousands of faculty, staff and students within the university system — called the cuts unconstitutional and an “arbitrary, ideologically driven, and unlawful use of financial coercion” that threatened U.S. higher education and advancement.

    “The administration has made clear its intention to commandeer this public university system and to purge from its campuses viewpoints with which the President and his administration disagree,” the lawsuit said.

    “Campaign to control universities”

    President Donald Trump began laying the groundwork for “his administration’s coordinated attack on academic freedom and free speech and campaign to control universities” shortly after retaking office in January, the lawsuit alleged.

    Since then, Trump has put dozens of colleges on notice at once via civil rights investigations and targeted specific, often well-known institutions — such as Harvard University and Columbia University — that have invoked his ire.

    “Rather than acknowledging educational institutions like the UC as the assets to this nation that they are, the Trump administration views them as barriers to the President’s agenda of ideological dominance,” the lawsuit said.

    At the end of July, the U.S. Department of Justice ruled that UCLA had violated civil rights law by failing to adequately protect Jewish and Israeli students from harassment. A week later, the federal government suspended $584 million in grants to UCLA over the allegations.

    Tuesday’s lawsuit alleged DOJ picked and chose from university documents to make the argument it had wanted to from the start. For example, the agency relied heavily on an October report from UCLA that found antisemitism and anti-Israeli bias on its campus. But DOJ entirely failed to address the improvements UCLA had undertaken since — a factor similar to one cited by a federal judge when she struck down the Trump administration’s $2.2 billion funding freeze at Harvard earlier this month.

    DOJ also did not explain what connection the specific research funding cuts had to alleged antisemitism, forcing all university employees to prepare “for the possibility of significant and immediate termination of funding,” the lawsuit said.

    The University of California, one of the largest research systems in the country, derives a third of its annual operating budget — $17 billion — from federal funding, according to the lawsuit.

    The Trump administration has also unlawfully disregarded the process by which the government can terminate or withhold federal funds, the lawsuit argued.

    Addressing the cuts on Aug. 6, system President James Milliken said they did “nothing to address antisemitism,” but said the University of California would enter into negotiations with the Trump administration to have the funding restored.

    In the event of a major loss of federal funding, the system would need, at minimum, between $4 million and $5 billion just to survive, Milliken told state lawmakers this month.

    Dramatic and expensive ultimatums

    On Aug. 8, two days after Milliken announced the forthcoming negotiations, the system received an unprecedented list of wide-ranging demands from the Trump administration tying its federal funding to total compliance, according to the lawsuit. The plaintiffs cited a copy of the list, obtained by the Los Angeles Times, which the University of California has not made public.

    The letter would require UCLA to install a “resolution monitor” — appointed with final approval by the Trump administration — who would hold significant authority over campus affairs.

    UCLA would also be forced to provide the federal government regular access to “a wide variety of records” on faculty, staff and students, “as deemed necessary by the resolution monitor.”

    “The only exception is for attorney-client privilege, not for speech, association, or privacy purposes,” the lawsuit said.

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  • California Unions Sue Trump Admin Over Threats to UC System

    California Unions Sue Trump Admin Over Threats to UC System

    The Trump administration has frozen more than $500 million in federal funding to UCLA.

    A coalition of California education unions and faculty associations is suing the Trump administration to challenge what they say is “the illegal and coercive use of civil rights laws to attack the University of California system and the rights of their members,” the American Association of University Professors announced Tuesday. 

    The coalition comprises 19 groups—including the AAUP, the American Federation of Teachers and 10 University of California campus faculty associations—and is represented by the legal organization Democracy Forward.

    “We will not stand by as the Trump administration destroys one of the largest public university higher education systems in the country and bludgeons academic freedom at the University of California, the heart of the revered free speech movement,” AAUP president Todd Wolfson said in a statement. “We stand hand in hand to protect not only our individual rights to free expression, debate, and association, but also to safeguard the health, safety, and economic mobility of our communities—all of which is at risk.”

    The Trump administration has issued a litany of demands to the University of California in exchange for restored federal funding, including unfettered government access to faculty, student and staff data; cooperation with immigration enforcement; a ban on gender-inclusive restrooms and locker rooms; an official statement that the UC does not recognize transgender identity; and over a billion dollars in penalties. So far, the University of California, Los Angeles, has borne the brunt of the demands, but university system officials fear that funding freezes could extend to the system’s other campuses.

    On Sept. 4, University of California, Berkeley, officials notified 160 faculty, staff and students that their names appeared in documents given to the Trump administration as part of the administration’s investigation into alleged antisemitism on campus. 

    “UCLA [faculty association] is honored to stand with this coalition, which presents as an important reminder of what the UC really is—the people who day in and day out do the work on UC campuses,” Anna Markowitz, president of the UCLA faculty association executive board, said in a statement Tuesday. “Today, we join the people of the UC in standing up against federal extortion, job loss, bans on speech and expression—against any effort to dismantle core public values that have made the UC great.”

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  • Trump Administration Withholds Millions for TRIO Programs

    Trump Administration Withholds Millions for TRIO Programs

    Normally, back-to-school season means that the staff who lead federally funded programs for low-income and first-generation college students are kicking into high gear. But this month, the Trump administration has frozen hundreds of millions of dollars in TRIO grants, creating uncertainty for thousands of programs. Some have been forced to grind to a halt, advocates say.

    Colleges and nonprofits that had already been approved for the award expected to hear by the end of August that their federal funding was on its way. But rather than an award notice, program leaders received what’s known as a “no cost extension,” explaining that while programs could continue to operate until the end of the month, they would not be receiving the award money. 

    Over all, the Council for Opportunity in Education, a nonprofit advocacy group that focuses on supporting TRIO programs, estimates that the Trump administration has withheld about $660 million worth of aid for more than 2,000 TRIO programs. (Congress allocated $1.19 billion to TRIO for the current fiscal year.) 

    As a result of the freeze, COE explained, many colleges and nonprofit organizations had to temporarily pivot to online services or shutter their programs and furlough staff. Roughly 650,000 college students and high school seniors will lack vital access to academic advising, financial guidance and assistance with college applications if the freeze persists, they say.

    “For many students, these first few weeks of the year are going to set the trajectory for their whole semester, especially if you’re an incoming freshman,” said COE president Kimberly Jones. “This is when you’re making critical choices about your coursework, trying to navigate the campus and just trying to acclimate to this new world. If you’re first-gen, you need the guidance of a program to help you navigate that.”

    Jones said that Education Department officials said this week that the pause is temporary. However, the Department of Education did not immediately respond to Inside Higher Ed’s request for comment Friday.

    TRIO Under Threat

    Originally established in the 1960s, TRIO now consists of seven different programs, each designed to support various individuals from disadvantaged backgrounds and help them overcome barriers of access to higher education.  

    Not all the TRIO programs have had funding withheld. Roughly 1,300 awards for certain programs—such as Upward Bound Math-Science, Student Support Services and any general Upward Bound projects with a June 1 start date—were disbursed on time, Jones said. But that’s only 40 percent of the more than 3,000 TRIO programs.  

    Other programs, including Upward Bound projects with a Sept. 1 start date, Veterans Upward Bound, Educational Opportunity Centers and Talent Search, are still waiting for checks to land in their accounts.

    Policy experts added that funding for the McNair Postbaccalaureate Achievement program, a TRIO service focused on graduate students, also has yet to be distributed. But unlike most of the programs, funding for McNair is not due until Sept. 30. Still, Jones and others said they are highly concerned those funds will also be frozen.

    Given the unpredictability of everything this year around education, we can’t make any assumptions. Until we get those grants in the hands of our constituents, we have to assume the worst.”

    —COE president Kimberly Jones

    President Donald Trump proposed cutting all funding for TRIO in May, saying that the executive branch lacks the ability to audit the program and make sure it isn’t wasting taxpayer dollars. But so far, House and Senate appropriators have pushed back, keeping the funding intact. 

    When confronted by Sen. Susan Collins, a Maine Republican and longtime TRIO advocate, at a budget hearing in June, McMahon acknowledged that “Congress does control the purse strings,” but went on to say that she would “sincerely hope” to work with lawmakers and “renegotiate” the program’s terms. 

    And while advocates hope that funds will eventually be reinstated, most experts interviewed remain skeptical. With 18 days left until the end of the fiscal year, any unallocated TRIO funds will likely be sent back to the Department of Treasury, never to reach the organizations they were intended for. 

    The Trump administration has tried to freeze or end other education-related grant programs—including a few TRIO programs that were cut off in June—which officials said “conflict with the Department’s policy of prioritizing merit, fairness, and excellence in education; undermine the well-being of the students these programs are intended to help; or constitute an inappropriate use of federal funds.”

    And while some of the funding freezes have been successfully challenged in court, the judicial process needed to win back federal aid is slow. Most colleges don’t have that kind of time, the advocates say.

    “Given the unpredictability of everything this year around education, we can’t make any assumptions,” Jones said. “Until we get those grants in the hands of our constituents, we have to assume the worst.”

    ‘Crippling’ Effects 

    For Summer Bryant, director of the Talent Search program at Morehead State University in Kentucky, the funding freeze has been “crippling.”

    Talent Search is a TRIO program focused on supporting middle and high school students with college preparation. And while the loss of about $1 million hasn’t forced Bryant to shut down her program quite yet, it has significantly limited her capacity to serve students.

    After paying the program’s 10 staff members for the month of September, Bryant has just over $1,000 left—and that’s between both of the grants she received last year.

    “It may sound like a lot, but when you take into account that we’re providing services to eight counties and 27 target schools, coupled with the fact that driving costs about 50 cents a mile and some of our schools one-way are almost 120 miles away, that’s not a lot of money,” she said. “So instead, I had to make a Facebook post notifying our students and their guardians that we would be pausing all in-person services until we receive our grant awards.”

    Even then, Morehead TRIO programs are based in a rural part of Appalachia, so broadband access and choppy connections are also a concern. 

    “Doing things over the phone or over a Zoom is just not as effective as doing it face-to-face—information is lost,” Bryant said. And because this freeze is happening during the most intensive season for college applications, “even a one month delay could lead to a make-or-break moment for a lot of our seniors,” she added.

    It’s not just Bryant facing these challenges. Of Morehead’s nine preapproved TRIO grants, only four have been awarded. The same scenario is playing out at campuses across the country.

    Democratic senators Jeff Merkley of Oregon and Raphael Warnock of Georgia, along with 32 other lawmakers from both sides of the aisle, demanded in a letter sent Wednesday that the administration release the funds. Collectively, they warned that failure to do so “will result in irreversible damage to our students, families, and communities, as many rely on the vital programs and services provided by TRIO programs.”

    They wrote that TRIO has produced over six million college graduates since its inception in 1964, promoting a greater level of civic engagement and spurring local economies. 

    “The data proves that TRIO works,“ the senators stressed. “Students’ futures will be less successful if they do not receive their appropriated funds immediately.” 

    Rep. Gwen Moore, a Wisconsin Democrat and TRIO alumna, and 53 fellow House members sent a similar letter the same day.

    The freeze is hitting community colleges particularly hard; they receive half of all TRIO grants, said David Baime, senior vice president for government relations at the American Association of Community Colleges.

    Baime said he has “no idea” why the department is withholding funds and added that while he is hopeful the federal dollars will be restored, there is an “unusual degree of uncertainty.”

    Between a handful of TRIO grants that were terminated with little to no explanation earlier in the year and the recent decision to cancel all grant funding for minority-serving institutions, worries among TRIO programs are high, Jones from COE and others said.

    Still, Baime is holding out hope.

    “The department has gone on record saying that fiscal year 2025 TRIO funds would be allocated,” he said. “So despite the very concerning delays, we remain optimistic.”

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  • Trump Wants Harvard to Build Vocational School

    Trump Wants Harvard to Build Vocational School

    Trump reportedly wants Harvard to build vocational schools as part of a $500 million settlement.

    Zhu Ziyu/VCG/Getty Images

    While President Trump has proposed slashing the federal workforce development budget, a potential settlement between Harvard University and the Trump administration could involve the a plan to use $500 million the government is demanding to build vocational schools, Bloomberg reported Thursday. 

    Harvard is one of nine universities the Trump administration has targeted with federal funding freezes. In April, the government froze $2.2 billion in federal grants after the university rejected its demands to overhaul its policies on admissions, governance, hiring and more. In July, Harvard, which also sued the Trump administration over the freeze, was reported as open to paying as much as $500 million to settle with the Trump administration, though leaders said they would be reluctant to pay the government directly. 

    While no deal with Harvard has materialized yet, Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick told CNBC on Thursday that if one does, the $500 million could go toward vocational education. 

    “If Harvard settles with Donald Trump, you know what he’s going to do with the $500 million?” Lutnick said. “He’s going to have Harvard build vocational schools. The Harvard vocational school, because that’s what America needs.” 

    But deal or no deal, the frozen funds may start flowing back to Harvard soon.

    Last week, a federal judge ruled that the Trump administration illegally froze Harvard’s federal money, but the government plans to appeal. Earlier this week, The New York Times reported that Harvard researchers were told some grants were being restored, though it’s not clear how widespread those restorations were.

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  • Students, schools race to save clean energy projects in face of Trump deadline

    Students, schools race to save clean energy projects in face of Trump deadline

    Tanish Doshi was in high school when he pushed the Tucson Unified School District to take on an ambitious plan to reduce its climate footprint. In Oct. 2024, the availability of federal tax credits encouraged the district to adopt the $900 million plan, which involves goals of achieving net-zero emissions and zero waste by 2040, along with adding a climate curriculum to schools.

    Now, access to those funds is disappearing, leaving Tucson and other school systems across the country scrambling to find ways to cover the costs of clean energy projects.

    The Arizona school district, which did not want to impose an economic burden on its low-income population by increasing bonds or taxes, had expected to rely in part on federal dollars provided by the Biden-era Inflation Reduction Act, Doshi said. 

    But under HR1, or the “one big, beautiful bill,” passed on July 4, Tucson schools will not be able to receive all of the expected federal funding in time for their upcoming clean energy projects. The law discontinues many clean energy tax credits, including those used by schools for solar power and electric vehicles, created under the IRA. When schools and other tax-exempt organizations receive these credits, they come in the form of a direct cash reimbursement.

    At the same time, Tucson and thousands of districts across the country that were planning to develop solar and wind power projects are now forced to decide between accelerating them to try to meet HR1’s fast-approaching “commence construction” deadline of June 2026, finding other sources of funding or hitting pause on their plans. Tina Cook, energy project manager for Tucson schools, said the district might have to scale back some of its projects unless it could find local sources of funding. 

    “Phasing out the tax credits for wind and solar energy is going to make a huge, huge difference,” said Doshi, 18, now a first-year college student. “It ends a lot of investments in poor and minority communities. You really get rid of any notion of environmental justice that the IRA had advanced.”

    Emma Weber leads a chant at a Colorado state capitol rally in support of “The Green New Deal for Colorado Schools.” Credit: Courtesy of Emma Weber

    The tax credits in the IRA, the largest legislative investment in climate projects in U.S. history, had marked a major opportunity for schools and colleges to reduce their impact on the environment. Educational institutions are significant contributors to climate change: K-12 school infrastructure, for example, releases at least 41 million metric tons of emissions per year, according to a paper from the Annenberg Institute at Brown University. The K-12 school system’s buses — some 480,000 — and meals also produce significant emissions and waste. Clean energy projects supported by the IRA were helping schools not only to limit their climate toll but also to save money on energy costs over the long term and improve student health, advocates said.

    As a result, many students, consultants and sustainability leaders said, they have no plans to abandon clean energy projects. They said they want to keep working to cut emissions, even though that may be more difficult now.

    Related: Become a lifelong learner. Subscribe to our free weekly newsletter featuring the most important stories in education. 

    Sara Ross, cofounder of UndauntedK12, which helps school districts green their operations, divided HR1’s fallout on schools into three categories: the good, the bad and the ugly. 

    On the bright side, she said, schools can still get up to 50 percent off for installing ground source heat pumps — those credits will continue — to more efficiently heat and cool schools. The network of pipes in a ground source pump cycles heat from the shallow earth into buildings.

    In the “bad” category, any electric vehicle acquired after Sept. 30 of this year will not be eligible for tax credits — drastically accelerating the IRA’s phase-out timeline by seven years. That applies to electric school buses as well as other district-owned vehicles. Electric vehicle charging stations must be installed by June 30, 2026 at an eligible location to claim a tax credit.*

    EPA’s Clean School Bus Program still exists for two more years and covers two-thirds of the funding for all electric school buses districts acquire in that time. The remaining one-third, however, was to be covered by federal and state tax credits. 

    The expiration of the federal tax credits could cost a district up to $40,000 more per vehicle, estimated Sue Gander, director of the Electric School Bus Initiative run by the nonprofit World Resources Institute. 

    Related: So much for saving the planet. Climate jobs, and many others, evaporate for 2025 grads

    Solar projects will see the most “ugly” effects of HR1, Ross said. 

    Los Angeles Unified School District is planning to build 21 solar projects on roofs, carports and other structures, plus 13 electric vehicle charging sites, as part of an effort to reduce energy costs and achieve 100 percent renewable energy by 2040. The district anticipated receiving around $25 million in federal tax credits to help pay for the $90 million contract, said Christos Chrysiliou, chief eco-sustainability officer for the district. With the tight deadlines imposed by HR1, the district can no longer count on receiving that money. 

    “It’s disappointing,” Chrysiliou said. “It’s nice to be able to have that funding in place to meet the goals and objectives that we have.”

    Emma Weber, at left, trains student leaders at Sunrise Movement’s “summer intensive” in Illinois this year. Credit: Courtesy of Emma Weber

    LAUSD is looking at a small portion of a $9 billion bond measure passed last year, as well as utility rebates, third-party financing and grants from the California Energy Commission, to help make up for some of the gaps in funding.

    Many California State University campuses are in a similar position as they work to install solar to meet the system’s goal of carbon neutrality by 2045, said Lindsey Rowell, CSU’s chief energy, sustainability and transportation officer. 

    Tariffs on solar panel materials from overseas and the early sunsetting of tax credits mean that “the cost of these projects are becoming prohibitive for campuses,” Rowell said. 

    Sweeps of undocumented immigrants in California may also lead to labor shortages that could slow the pace of construction, Rowell added. “Limiting the labor force in any way is only going to result in an increased cost, so those changes are frightening as well,” she said. 

    New Treasury Department guidance, issued Aug. 15, made it much harder for projects to meet  the threshold needed to qualify for the tax credits. Renewable energy projects previously qualified for credits once a developer spent 5 percent of a project’s cost. But the guidelines have been tightened — now, larger projects must pass a “physical work test,” meaning “significant physical labor has begun on a site,” before they can qualify for credits. With the construction commencement deadline looming next June, these will likely leave many projects ineligible for credits.

    “The rules are new, complex [and] not widely understood,” Ross said. “We’re really concerned about schools’ ability to continue to do solar projects and be able to effectively navigate these new rules.” 

    Schools without “fancy legal teams” may struggle to understand how the new tax credit changes in HR1 will affect their finances and future projects, she added.

    Some universities were just starting to understand how the IRA tax credits could help them fund projects. Lily Strehlow, campus sustainability coordinator at the University of Wisconsin, Eau-Claire, said the planning cycle for clean energy projects at the school can take ten years. The university is in the process of adding solar to the roof of a large science building, and depending on the date of completion, the project “might or might not” qualify for the credits, she said. 

    “At this point, everybody’s holding their breath,” said Rick Brown, founder of California-based TerraVerde Energy, a clean energy consultant to schools and agencies. 

    Brown said that none of his company’s projects are in a position where they’re not going to get done, but the company may end up seeing fewer new projects due to a higher cost of equipment. 

    Tim Carter, president of Second Nature, which supports climate work in education, added that colleges and universities are in a broader period of uncertainty, due to larger attacks from the Trump administration, and are not likely to make additional investments at this time: “We’re definitely in a wait and see.”

    Related: A government website teachers rely on is in peril 

    For youth activists, the fallout from HR1 is “disheartening,” Doshi said. 

    Emma and Molly Weber, climate activists since eighth grade, said they are frustrated. The Colorado-based twins, who will start college this fall, helped secure the first “Green New Deal for Schools” resolution in the nation in the Boulder Valley School District. Its goals include working toward a goal of Zero Net Energy by 2050, making school buildings greener, creating pathways to green jobs and expanding climate change education. 

    Emma, far left, and Molly Weber, far right, work with climate leaders from the Boulder Valley School District’s Sunrise Movement to prepare for Colorado’s legislative session. Credit: Courtesy of Emma Weber

    “It feels very demoralizing to see something you’ve been working so hard at get slashed back, especially since I’ve spoken to so many students from all over the country about these clean energy tax credits, being like, ‘These are the things that are available to you, and this is how you can help convince your school board to work on this,’” Emma Weber said.

    The Webers started thinking about other creative ways to pay for the clean energy transition and have settled on advocating for state-level legislation in the form of a climate superfund, where major polluters in a community would be responsible for contributing dollars to sustainability initiatives. 

    Consultants and sustainability coordinators said that they don’t see the demand for renewable energy going away. “Solar is the cheapest form of energy. It makes sense to put it on every rooftop that we can. And that’s true with or without tax credits,” Strehlow said. 

    *Correction: This version of the story includes updated information on the timeline for the expiration of tax credits for electric vehicle charging stations.

    Contact editor Caroline Preston at 212-870-8965, via Signal at CarolineP.83 or on email at [email protected]. 

    This story about tax credits was produced by The Hechinger Report, a nonprofit, independent news organization focused on inequality and innovation in education. Sign up for the Hechinger newsletter.

    The Hechinger Report provides in-depth, fact-based, unbiased reporting on education that is free to all readers. But that doesn’t mean it’s free to produce. Our work keeps educators and the public informed about pressing issues at schools and on campuses throughout the country. We tell the whole story, even when the details are inconvenient. Help us keep doing that.

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  • Tracking Key Lawsuits Against the Trump Administration

    Tracking Key Lawsuits Against the Trump Administration


    By
    Jessica Blake

    President Donald Trump’s efforts to reshape higher education and the federal government have spurred a flurry of lawsuits as higher education associations, students, legal advocacy organizations and colleges push back and seek relief through the courts.

    The lawsuits started almost immediately after Trump’s first day, and seven months later, advocates continue to file new complaints, challenging various executive orders, guidance documents or decisions to cut grants. Inside Higher Ed is tracking some of the key legal challenges related to higher ed. That includes Harvard University’s efforts to restore more than $2.7 billion in frozen research funding and protect its ability to enroll international students as well as several lawsuits aiming to stop the dismantling of the Education Department. Of the 42 included in our searchable database, judges have ruled against the administration in two-thirds of the cases so far. You can find more analysis of the lawsuits filed so far here.

    We’ll refresh the database weekly, so check back on Mondays for updates.

    What’s new as of Sept. 8: In one of the more significant rulings for higher ed this year, the district court judge ruled that it was illegal for the administration to freeze more than $2 billion in federal research funding for Harvard University. The judge wrote that doing so violated the institution’s First Amendment and procedural rights. The government is planning to appeal but hasn’t done so yet. Legal experts expect the fight over funding to end at the Supreme Court. For more on details of the ruling and what it means for higher education at large, check out Inside Higher Ed’s reporting on the matter here and here.

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