Tag: Trump

  • A history lesson on Europe for Donald Trump

    A history lesson on Europe for Donald Trump

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

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

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

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

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

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

    Staving off war

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

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

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

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

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

    From enemies into partners

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

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

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

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

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

    Brexiting out

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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


     

    Questions to consider:

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

    2. How can trade serve to keep the peace?

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


     

    Source link

  • America’s Undocumented Educators Unsure of What’s Next Under Trump – The 74

    America’s Undocumented Educators Unsure of What’s Next Under Trump – The 74


    Get stories like this delivered straight to your inbox. Sign up for The 74 Newsletter

    This story was originally reported by Nadra Nittle of The 19th.

    LOS ANGELES — Scattered among the shrubs on the southern border lie belongings migrants left behind — toothbrushes, water bottles, baseball caps. Some of the owners forged north, crossing the boundary undetected. Others were apprehended or succumbed to dehydration, drowning or one of the unimaginable dangers in the harsh desert that straddles Mexico and the United States.

    Angélica Reyes survived. At nine months old, she made the journey that could have claimed her life just as it started.

    Since 1994, approximately 10,000 migrants have died in the borderlands. That year, the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) took effect. Designed to open trade between the United States, Canada and Mexico, the now-defunct policy has faced criticism for depressing Mexican wages. Their income flatlining, Reyes said, her parents left the city of Guadalajara, in the western part of Mexico, and headed with her to Los Angeles. They did not have authorization to live in the United States.

    Reyes is now 32, though she remembers knowing she was undocumented as early as first grade.

    “My mom was very cognizant of the discrimination and the obstacles that I would face throughout my life,” she said. “She made it clear, like, ‘You can’t mess up. You need to be twice as good to get half of the respect. You need to really prove that you earned your spot.’”

    To do that, Reyes earned the good grades that set her up to become a history teacher for the Los Angeles Unified School District. She is one of about 15,000 teachers — and among the more than 835,000 undocumented people — who have received temporary permission to live, work and study in the United States through an Obama-era program known as Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA). Women represent over half of DACA recipients, whose future in this country has been under threat by legal challenges to the program’s existence and the anti-immigration agenda of President Donald Trump.

    https://datawrapper.dwcdn.net/nA5Cv/10/

    If DACA ends, the goal of ongoing litigation,  700 education personnel, including teachers and teacher aides, would lose their jobs each month for two years as their work permits are revoked, according to FWD.us, an immigration reform organization. In California, the state with the most DACA recipients, 200 educators would lose their jobs monthly. In Texas, 100 would.

    DACA-recipient teachers relate firsthand to the estimated 620,000 undocumented K-1 2 students, who confide in them about their experiences in immigrant families. They show youth that regardless of legal status, it’s possible to attain one’s professional goals. Many of these teachers are also activists, fighting for their students, themselves and other marginalized people. They see themselves as assets to schools.

    “My immigration status inspires both my undocumented and documented students because they know all the obstacles that are faced by folks with my immigration status can be overcome,” Reyes said. “They know that if I could do it, that’s something that they could do as well.”

    Without undocumented teachers, educator shortages across states could worsen. California has spent about $1.6 billion since the 2016-17 school year to tackle its teacher shortage. Still, the state issued 11 percent fewer teaching credentials between the 2021-22 and 2022-23 school years. Last year, it enacted legislation to eliminate barriers to entry, dropping a standardized test teaching candidates had to pass to demonstrate competence in math, reading and writing. But since undocumented immigrants aren’t widely perceived to be career professionals, the fact that schoolchildren nationwide depend on them has received scant attention in the broader immigration debate.

    Maria Miranda, elementary vice president of the United Teachers Los Angeles (UTLA) labor union, said undocumented teachers “bring a different perspective to the table, a different skill set.”

    Randi Weingarten, president of the American Federation of Teachers, the nation’s second largest teacher labor union, said DACA recipients in classrooms have strengthened the United States.

    “They are role models, like all teachers, and should be treated as such, but instead, they are made to feel uncertain and fearful as their protections are challenged in court and as the Trump administration promotes mass deportations, even from sensitive locations like schools that were once considered off limits,” Weingarten said. “Immigration reform can’t be used as an excuse to rip teachers out of classrooms, where they are so desperately needed.”

    Reyes at 1 year old with her father. (Angelica Reyes)

    When Reyes was about to register for the SAT during her senior year in high school, one misinformed guidance counselor asked her why she planned to take the college entrance exam, insisting that higher education was off limits to undocumented students.

    “I was devastated. It broke my heart,” Reyes said. “I remember crying and telling my mom, ‘I worked hard, for what?’”

    Since 2001, however, California has extended access to in-state college tuition to undocumented students who have lived there long term. Unaware of this law and under the assumption that her counselor was correct, Reyes missed the deadline for the SAT and for the application to University of California schools, so she enrolled in a community college she could afford, a common path for many undocumented immigrants.

    Then, in 2011, a state law was enacted that made her cry tears of gratitude: the California DREAM Act. The policy allows undocumented immigrants who entered the United States before they were 16 to obtain financial aid if they’ve earned qualifying credits at California schools. These young people have been nicknamed Dreamers after the Development, Relief, and Education for Alien Minors (DREAM) Act, a 2001 federal bill that would have given them legal status had it succeeded.

    Reyes said that when she decided to apply to the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), a community college counselor took in her light brown skin and wavy black mane and without so much as seeing the 4.0 GPA in her transcript, told her to apply somewhere less competitive.

    “I’m a competitive student!” Reyes recalled balking. “She opened my chart and she was, like, ‘Oh, you actually are.’ Her tune changed so quickly. It was really infuriating because if I had believed her, like many students believe counselors, I would have not gone to UCLA.”

    In college, Reyes had to make a choice about her career path. Her research project on youth activism at Abraham Lincoln High School, where she graduated in 2010, had drawn her to education. “I realized that’s where I was needed,” she said.

    It was at Lincoln High in March 1968 that students spearheaded the protests known as the Chicano Blowouts or East Los Angeles Walkouts. With signs stating “School Not Prison” and “We Are Not Dirty Mexicans,” almost 15,000 youth from Lincoln and other schools in historically Mexican-American East L.A. walked out of classes for a week to protest their substandard education.

    Black-and-white photo of students holding protest signs outside Abraham Lincoln High School demanding equal education and language rights.
    Chicano student walkouts in front of Abraham Lincoln High School in East Los Angeles during the 1968 blowouts. (LAPL)

    Back then, students could be paddled for speaking Spanish, and with few advanced courses at Eastside schools, they were routinely steered to vocational classes like auto shop. These inequities contributed to a 60 percent dropout rate in the area. Jailed for their activism against these circumstances, the teenagers garnered community support that ushered in sweeping policy changes — bilingual instruction, ethnic studies and more Latino teachers.

    Today, the carnicerías, bungalow homes and palm trees along North Broadway Avenue, leading to 93 acres of green hills, offer no hint of the past tumult, but a mural at Lincoln commemorates the walkouts of nearly six decades ago.

    Through her research, which also explored youth activism of the 2010s, Reyes learned that contemporary Lincoln High students continued to have unmet needs, such as support applying for college financial aid or accessing legal services as members of immigrant households. So when Lincoln High teachers asked if she wanted to develop a space to serve students, Reyes threw herself into the effort. The Paula Crisostomo Dream Center — named after a lead activist of the Chicano Blowouts and the inspiration for the 2006 film “Walkout” — opened at Lincoln in 2015.

    “We established programming for immigrant students, for immigrant parents. We did immigrant and educational history,” Reyes said. “It’s still a resource for students at Lincoln, and we’ve expanded it to several other schools.”

    Working at the Dream Center for three years convinced her that teaching was the best way to reach undocumented and marginalized youth. Rather than dismiss them, as she had been dismissed by school counselors, she would inspire students to excel academically regardless of legal status. In 2012, four years before she graduated from UCLA with a bachelor’s degree in sociology and six years before she earned her master’s in education from the university, DACA enabled undocumented students like herself to become career professionals.

    In 2017, the year Reyes began teaching, the Migration Policy Institute estimated that as many as 20,000 DACA-eligible individuals were involved in education occupations. But today the number of DACA-recipient educators is 25 percent lower as litigation has frozen new applications.

    Reyes wears a cap and gown, holding flowers and standing with three smiling family members on graduation day.
    Reyes surrounded by family at her high school graduation. (Angelica Reyes)

    It’s complicated: Those two words capture Reyes’ feelings about DACA. Although the program allowed her to teach, she has long viewed it as flawed, exploitative and a “constant reminder” she isn’t “fully accepted.”

    DACA stems from the activism of undocumented college students frustrated that the DREAM Act failed and that their immigration status would limit their potential, said Jennifer R. Nájera, author of “Learning to Lead: Undocumented Students Mobilizing Education.” Fighting for immigrant rights, they found a purpose.

    Like the DREAM Act, DACA was reserved for young people who came to the United States as children and didn’t have criminal histories. “They had to graduate from high school or college or go to the military, show ‘good moral character,’” said Nájera, an associate professor in the Department of Ethnic Studies at the University of California, Riverside. Instead of citizenship, Obama’s executive order “provided temporary relief from deportation, a two-year relief specifically, that could be renewed, and a work permit, which was a big deal.”

    While DACA recipients cherished their professional opportunities, some contended that the policy cast them as second-class citizens, Nájera said.

    That includes Reyes.

    “I knew it was a Band-Aid,” she said. “In fact, when I first started teaching, my DACA expired because of an issue with the application. They had asked me if I was in a gang, and apparently I didn’t check off the X hard enough, so I wasn’t hired at the beginning of the year. I remember feeling this immense frustration.”

    Los Angeles Unified employs about 300 DACA-recipient school personnel, according to Miranda of the UTLA labor union. As Reyes’ teaching career started, DACA weathered the first of multiple legal challenges. Trump rescinded the program during his first term, a move the Supreme Court later blocked; at the time, Reyes told her students about possibly losing her job. Since then, she has endured several other threats to DACA , though she’s now pained to tell her students that the program isn’t accepting new applicants.

    DACA, she said, must be replaced with a sustainable alternative.

    In a December interview, Trump said, “We’re going to have to do something with” DACA recipients. “They were brought into this country many years ago” and “in many cases, they’ve become successful.”

    But that sympathy has been absent from his immigration policies since he resumed office. He has issued an executive order prohibiting undocumented college students from receiving in-state tuition. He has also lifted restrictions on immigration enforcement in “sensitive locations” such as churches, hospitals and schools, prompting parents nationwide to keep kids out of class.

    A young girl looks out from the arms of an adult while holding a small Mexican flag during an immigration rights protest.
    A protester waves the Mexican flag during a demonstration for immigration rights outside Los Angeles City Hall on February 5, 2025. (Qian Weizhong/Getty Images)

    “A lot of times, the children are U.S. citizens and the parents are concerned,” Reyes said. “But I’ve had students who shared that their parents are U.S. citizens, and they’re still scared because they know that U.S. citizens are also caught up in these raids. So, this isn’t about criminality. It’s about the targeting of Brown folks.”

    Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents and other federal authorities reportedly detained or deported at least 10 U.S. citizens, including children, in the first 100 days of Trump’s second term.

    Last month, the California state superintendent presented Senate Bill 48 to limit ICE appearances at schools as absences have spiked — and schools could lose millions of dollars since their funding is tied to average daily student attendance. About half of California children belong to families that include at least one immigrant parent, while one in five live in mixed-status families with at least one undocumented parent.

    “It’s very taxing emotionally for our members and our students,” Miranda said of ICE enforcement. “We have students at the elementary level who are terrified of seeing anyone in uniform. Some of them are so young that they don’t know the difference between the police and immigration. It’s a very scary moment.”

    When Trump targeted DACA during his first term, Reyes warned in a Los Angeles Times opinion piece that disbanding the program could upend public education. But now she says her students deserve more than DACA’s “breadcrumbs.”

    “We need to fight for something new because my kids want to be chefs and doctors and lawyers, but they’re being held back by their immigration status,” she said. “It’s excruciating in two ways: One, I want my students to have the opportunities that they deserve to serve the community. And, two, I don’t know when I’m going to be taken from them because of my own uncertainty.”

    For now, she knows that her presence makes a difference at her high school. Los Angeles Unified has an immigrant student body of about 30,000 students, according to UTLA. Of those, one in four is undocumented. After Reyes shared her immigration status with students during a recent lunchtime conversation, she said a ninth grader confessed that she planned to quit school because she, too, is undocumented. Learning Reyes managed to become a teacher made the girl reconsider.

    “It was really beautiful to see that, like it reignited her hope to have a bright future,” Reyes said.

    Although the risks of revealing her status frighten her, her conscience compels her to, Reyes said. She quoted Mexican Revolution leader Emiliano Zapata: “It’s better to die on your feet than to live on your knees.”

    Staying silent as the president attacks immigrants would make it hard for Reyes to face the youth in her life — her son, especially.

    Reyes smiles in her graduation gown, holding flowers and wearing a decorated cap that reads “abolish ICE — not 1 more!”
    Reyes after receiving her master’s degree in education from UCLA. (Angelica Reyes)

    Whenever a state turned red on Election Night, Nathan Reyes felt his anxiety shoot up. Still, he held out hope Kamala Harris would win. Then the Electoral College math made it plain: Donald Trump would be president again.

    Although he’s a U.S. citizen, Nathan wondered what lay ahead for his undocumented relatives under a president promising mass deportations.

    “I feel worried for them because if they get deported, what am I going to do?” he asked. “Where am I going to stay?”

    So, he began to plan. He and his family would “have to pick our poison” — stay in a country hostile to their presence or self-deport together to Mexico regardless of citizenship status.

    That her son, with a pile of ringlets and a round cherubic face, was even considering these options stunned Reyes. Nathan is in seventh grade.

    “I was like, ‘Oh, my God, this kid is 12,’” Angélica Reyes said. “Why is he talking about this?’”

    Rummaging through a bin of childhood possessions in her mother’s bedroom last year, Reyes found a poem she wrote in fourth grade about her fear of police. Her parents were street food vendors, an occupation California criminalized until 2018, so Reyes realized growing up that one brush with the law could have seen them deported.

    Just as she did not have a childhood free of deportation fears, neither has her son.

    Nathan, now 13, is hardly the only youth pondering the possibility of a relative’s departure, according to Lisette Sanchez, a psychologist in Long Beach, California. She said children are leaving school with “Know Your Rights” cards advising them of their civil liberties during ICE encounters, but they may not understand the information.

    “They’re just feeling fear,” she said. “They’re being told something’s gonna happen. So mental health wise, you’re looking at chronic anxiety. You’re looking at hypervigilance.”

    Reyes and her teenage son Nathan stand side-by-side holding hands in front of a yellow school building, both looking directly at the camera.
    Angélica Reyes and her son Nathan Reyes in front of Abraham Lincoln High School in East Los Angeles, California, on February 9, 2025. (Zaydee Sanchez/The 19th)

    To gain some sense of control, they may overconsume social media, leading to racing thoughts, rapid heart rate and sleeping difficulties.

    “It’s this chronic nonstop anxiety because the state of uncertainty feels never-ending, and in many ways, it is not ending, right?” Sanchez said. “There’s different news every day.”

    By speaking openly with children, parents can help them better manage stress, she said. Teachers, if they’re permitted, can broach the topic of immigration. Nathan appreciated how his Spanish teacher led a class discussion after the election.

    “Sharing your feelings and emotions and finding that a lot of other people are feeling very similar can bring comfort to you,” he said.

    Reyes gave birth to her son while she was in college and briefly wed to his father. She applied for legal status as an immediate family member of a U.S. citizen, her spouse. But years passed before the federal government responded to her request, she said. By then, her marriage had ended.

    “I don’t think people understand how long the path to citizenship can be, what it looks like, how costly and time-intensive it is,” Sanchez said.

    Reyes, who has not remarried, said being undocumented seeps into every aspect of her life, including romantic relationships. She feels obligated to tell prospective partners about her status.

    “I remember to always be upfront, like, ‘Hey, I’m undocumented. I don’t want you to think I’m going to use you for papers,’” she said.

    Reyes lives in one of the country’s 4.7 million mixed-status households, which include undocumented individuals and people with legal status or U.S. citizenship. If she gets deported, she has arranged for others to care for her son.

    Her sister, two years younger, is a U.S. citizen. Asked if she resents that twist of fate, Reyes said, “I’m happy that she gets to be safe. I think that there’s a lot of pain and guilt for her.”

    Her sister realizes, Reyes said, that her entire family could be taken away.

    A younger Reyes and her son Nathan smile and throw their arms up while seated at a table with a bubbling orange bowl.
    Reyes and her son Nathan doing a science experiment when he was little. (Angelica Reyes)

    Should she be forced out of the only country she considers home, Reyes wants her son to know this: “I would never willingly leave you. I am dedicated to you. I love you, and I will always be working as hard as possible to get back to you.”

    For Nathan, it is mind-boggling that anyone would want his mother out. He doesn’t understand why politicians demonize immigrants. Trump launched his first presidential campaign calling them criminals and continues to malign them.

    “My mom has done a lot of good for her community,” Nathan said. “She has organized a finders keepers closet where people who don’t have some resources they need, like canned food or clothes, can take what they need.”

    Just as Nathan defends her honor, Reyes vouches for her parents. Her mother is now a nail technician and her father is a food vendor. Growing up, she said, she watched them visit the sick, volunteer at churches and fundraise for the poor.

    “Whenever they saw a need, they stepped up, and they didn’t wait for someone else to help,” she said.

    She’s hurt when people sympathize with Dreamers while disparaging their parents, that the immigration system paints family members as saints or sinners. The DACA recipients she’s researched feel similarly, Nájera said.

    “Many of the students that I interviewed were always talking about their parents,” Nájera said. “They did not want their stories to be divorced from their parents and their family stories. These families, they’re units.”

    But the Dream Act caused a migrant generational divide, insinuating that those who arrived in this country as children deserve citizenship, while their parents and others who arrived as adults do not, Nájera said.

    A colorful mural shows scenes from Chicano and immigrant activism, including raised fists, “HUELGA” signs, Day of the Dead skulls, and depictions of farmworkers and students.
    Angélica Reyes helped paint the red and yellow skulls on the mural across the street from Abraham Lincoln High School in East Los Angeles, where she graduated. (Zaydee Sanchez/The 19th)

    Migration often occurs out of necessity. For example, after NAFTA took effect in 1994, U.S. agricultural exports flooded Mexico, displacing workers, according to Edward Alden, a distinguished visiting professor in the College of Business and Economics at Western Washington University. Four years earlier, over 4 million Mexican migrants were in the United States, a figure that ballooned to nearly 13 million — around 9 percent of Mexico’s population — by 2008.

    Reyes said NAFTA crushed the bakery business her father’s side of the family owned because it could not compete with the U.S. companies that swooped in. Her parents migrated north to earn higher wages.

    Today, economic instability is but one of the reasons that motivate migrants.

    “A lot of the Venezuelans are leaving Venezuela because it’s a violent, dangerous place, and the government has destroyed the economy in different ways,” Alden said. “Same thing out of Central America. These are people who aren’t necessarily leaving for economic reasons. They’re doing it for personal safety reasons.”

    Reyes said she has Central American students who fled horrors. She wants them to feel safe in the United States, and the fact Los Angeles Unified has pledged not to cooperate with immigration officials voluntarily provides some comfort. Run by a formerly undocumented superintendent, the sanctuary district blocked Homeland Security agents from entering two schools in April.

    The fear of raids on campuses has traumatized her students, Reyes said. “It’s so difficult to convince my students that they are worthy of love and that they’re worthy of respect and that they deserve civil rights.”

    It is equally difficult to keep advocating for herself, she said. But as the threat of deportation looms, she has no choice but to keep fighting.

    “It’s hard to know that I can’t earn citizenship and that I can’t give my kid stability or safety,” she said. “I feel like if I could earn it, I would have three citizenships. I would have put in the work.”


    Get stories like these delivered straight to your inbox. Sign up for The 74 Newsletter

    Source link

  • This week in 5 numbers: Trump eyes 15.3% cut for Education Department

    This week in 5 numbers: Trump eyes 15.3% cut for Education Department

    The number of college presidents who testified before the House Committee on Education and Workforce this week about how they’ve handled alleged campus incidents of antisemitism. While Republicans have said they’re trying to combat antisemitism, some Democrats accused GOP lawmakers of using those concerns to quell constitutionally protected speech during the hearing with the leaders of Haverford College, DePaul University and California Polytechnic State University, San Luis Obispo.

    Source link

  • How the Trump Administration’s FSA Notice Doubles Down on Student Debtors While Privileging the Higher Education Racket

    How the Trump Administration’s FSA Notice Doubles Down on Student Debtors While Privileging the Higher Education Racket

    The U.S. Department of Education, under the renewed influence of the Trump Administration and its deep-pocketed friends in the for-profit and debt collection industries, has issued a chilling reminder of just how little it cares for the tens of millions of Americans drowning in student debt. Cloaked in bureaucratic language and peppered with sanctimonious calls for “shared responsibility,” the Department’s latest notice is, in truth, a battle cry in its war to privatize higher education, scapegoat the vulnerable, and enrich corporate cronies at the expense of working families.

    Let’s call this what it is: a renewed assault on the student debtor class—the adjunct professors, the first-generation college students, the single mothers, the underemployed graduates who were sold a dream of economic mobility and handed a lifetime of debt servitude.

    According to the Department, only 38% of borrowers are current on their loans, and nearly a quarter of all loans are in default or severe delinquency. Rather than treating this figure as evidence of systemic failure—ballooning tuition, predatory lending, lack of loan forgiveness—the Department responds by resuming draconian collection measures like the Treasury Offset Program and Administrative Wage Garnishment. This means that the government will begin seizing tax refunds and garnishing wages of those already pushed to the economic brink.

    Worse, the Department has the audacity to wrap this cruelty in the rhetoric of “support” and “outreach.” Borrowers are told that they’ll be reminded of their “repayment obligations” as if they have simply forgotten—not that they’ve been buried under compound interest, stagnating wages, and fraudulent institutions that peddled worthless degrees. The supposed “enhancements” to income-driven repayment plans are little more than PR spin, insufficient to address the tidal wave of suffering inflicted by a broken system.

    Then comes the most insulting part: the Department deflects blame onto institutions while simultaneously pressuring them to track down and guilt-trip former students. Colleges are urged to contact former enrollees and remind them they’re obligated to pay. Why? Not out of concern for their welfare—but because high cohort default rates (CDRs) might threaten those institutions’ eligibility for federal aid money.

    So we see the real game here: this isn’t about protecting students. It’s about protecting the federal loan program as a revenue engine and shielding the reputations of colleges—especially the for-profit diploma mills that flourished under prior Republican administrations. These institutions can continue hiking tuition and churning out underprepared graduates because the government, under Trump and his Department of Education appointees, would rather collect on unpayable loans than hold schools accountable.

    Even more dystopian is the Department’s plan to publicly release “loan non-payment rates by institution.” While transparency sounds virtuous, this move will undoubtedly be weaponized—not to shut down abusive schools but to further stigmatize borrowers, especially those from marginalized backgrounds who attended underfunded schools with few resources.

    Nowhere in this document is there any meaningful discussion of debt relief, student protections, or reining in college costs. Nowhere is there a reckoning with the fact that federal student aid has been transformed from a tool of opportunity into a tool of coercion. Instead, the Trump Administration signals it is open for business—the business of extracting wealth from the poor and funneling it into the private sector.

    This notice is more than a policy update. It is a declaration of values. And those values are clear: Profit over people. Compliance over compassion. Privatization over public good.

    The Higher Education Inquirer stands with the debtors. We see through the lies of “fiscal responsibility” and “integrity.” And we will continue to expose every cynical maneuver designed to crush the educated underclass in the name of neoliberal orthodoxy.

    To student borrowers: You are not alone. You are not a failure. You are a victim of a system that was never built to serve you.

    Here’s the actual post from the US Department of Education, Federal Student Aid, dated May 5, 2025:

     

    The
    United States faces critical challenges related to the federal student
    loan programs. According to estimates from the U.S. Department of
    Education (Department), only 38% of Direct Loan and Department-held
    Federal Family Education Loan Program borrowers are in repayment and
    current on their student loans. We also estimate that almost 25% of the
    entire portfolio is either in default or a late stage of delinquency. 

    Given these challenges, the Department is taking immediate steps to
    engage student borrowers and support the repayment of their federal
    student loans. As announced in an April 21, 2025, press release,
    today, the Department will resume collections on its defaulted federal
    student loan portfolio with the restart the Treasury Offset Program and,
    later this summer, Administrative Wage Garnishment. The Department has
    also initiated an outreach campaign to remind all borrowers of their
    repayment obligations and provide resources and support to assist them
    in selecting the best repayment plan for their circumstances. The
    Department has also launched an enhanced income-driven repayment (IDR) plan process,
    simplifying how borrowers enroll in IDR plans and eliminating the need
    for many borrowers to manually recertify their income each year. 

    Maintaining the integrity of the Title IV, Higher Education Act of 1965 (HEA)
    loan programs has always been a shared responsibility among student
    borrowers, the Department, and participating institutions. Although
    borrowers have the primary responsibility for repaying their student
    loans, institutions play a key role in the Department’s ongoing efforts
    to improve loan repayment outcomes, especially as the cost of college
    set solely by institutions has continued to skyrocket. Institutions are
    responsible for providing clear and accurate information about repayment
    to borrowers through entrance and exit counseling, and colleges and
    universities are responsible for disclosing annual tuition and fees and
    the net price to students and their families on the costs of a
    postsecondary education. The financial aid community has demonstrated
    its commitment to providing direct advice and counsel to students
    regarding their borrowing, but institutions must refocus and expand
    these efforts as pandemic flexibilities come to an end.

    Under section 435 of the HEA, institutions are required to
    keep their cohort default rates (CDR) low and will lose eligibility for
    federal student assistance, including Pell Grants and federal student
    loans, if their CDR exceeds 40% for a single year or 30% for three
    consecutive years. The Department reminds institutions that the
    repayment pause on student loans ended in October 2023, and CDRs
    published in 2026 will include borrowers who entered repayment in 2023
    and defaulted in 2023, 2024, or 2025. The Department further reminds
    institutions that those borrowers whose delinquency or default status
    was reset in September 2024 could enter technical default status / be
    delinquent on their loans for more than 270 days beginning in June and
    default this summer. As such, we strongly urge all institutions to begin
    proactive and sustained outreach to former students who are delinquent
    or in default on their loans to ensure that such institutions will not
    face high CDRs next year and lose access to federal student aid. 

    Given
    the urgent need to ensure that more student borrowers enter repayment
    and stay current on their loans, the Secretary urges each participating
    institution to provide the following information to all borrowers who
    ceased to be enrolled at the institution since January 1, 2020, and for
    whom they have contact information: 

    • Remind
      the borrower that he or she is obligated to repay any federal student
      loans that have not been repaid and are not in deferment or forbearance;

    • Suggest that the borrower review information on StudentAid.gov about repayment options; and 

    • Request that the borrower log into StudentAid.gov
      using their StudentAid.gov username and password to update their
      profile with current contact information and ensure that their loans are
      in good standing. 

    The
    Department urges that this outreach be performed no later than June 30,
    2025. We do not stipulate how institutions reach out to borrowers, nor
    the specific information provided, as long as it covers the three
    categories described above. 

    We also encourage institutions to focus their initial outreach on
    students who are delinquent on one or more of their loans in order to
    prevent defaults. We will provide additional information in the future
    to assist schools with identifying and communicating with these
    borrowers.

    The
    Department is committed to overseeing the federal student loan programs
    with fairness and integrity for students, institutions, and taxpayers.
    To that end, the Department believes that greater transparency is needed
    regarding institutional success in counseling borrowers and helping
    them get into good standing on their loans. 

    The Department maintains data on the repayment status of federal
    student loan borrowers and in the past has provided information in the
    College Scorecard about the status of each institution’s borrowers at
    several intervals after they enter repayment. The Department plans to
    use this data to calculate rates of nonpayment by institution and will
    publish this information on the Federal Student Aid Data Center later
    this month. The Department will provide more information about this
    publication process soon. 

    Thank you for your continued efforts to maintain the integrity of the Title IV, HEA
    loan programs. The Department values its institutional partners and
    looks forward to continued collaboration to place borrowers on the path
    to sustainable repayment of their loans.

    Source link

  • Trump administration court filing may spell end of overtime final rule

    Trump administration court filing may spell end of overtime final rule

    This audio is auto-generated. Please let us know if you have feedback.

    U.S. Department of Justice attorneys asked the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals to temporarily suspend the Labor Department’s appeals in two cases challenging its 2024 Fair Labor Standards Act overtime rule, according to an April 24 court filing.

    Texas district court judges twice blocked DOL’s final rule, which increased the minimum salary threshold for overtime pay eligibility in two steps. First, a November 2024 decision sided with plaintiffs including the state of Texas and enjoined the rule nationwide. A second judgment set aside and vacated the rule in response to a lawsuit by marketing agency Flint Avenue.

    The government asked that the 5th Circuit place its appeals in abeyance “pending the agency’s reconsideration of the rule.” It said counsel for the appellees in both cases did not oppose its request.

    The Biden administration’s effort to expand overtime eligibility to millions of U.S. workers would have pushed the annual minimum threshold under the FLSA to $58,656 in 2025 with automatic, additional increases every three years beginning in July 2027. An initial increase to $43,888 per year took effect before Texas federal judges blocked it along with the rule’s other components.

    The entire policy is almost certain to be erased by the second Trump administration, according to attorneys who previously spoke to HR Dive. Prior to the Biden-era rule, DOL had last increased the overtime-pay threshold during Trump’s first administration in 2019.

    Source link

  • Harvard Faculty Pledge 10% of Salary to Defend Against Trump

    Harvard Faculty Pledge 10% of Salary to Defend Against Trump

    Nearly 100 senior faculty members at Harvard have committed to taking a pay cut to support the institution’s legal defense against the federal government.

    The Trump administration has frozen more than $2 billion in federal funding, threatened to revoke Harvard’s tax-exempt status and said it would end the institution’s ability to enroll international students.

    Last month, Harvard filed a lawsuit to halt the federal freeze on $2.2 billion in grants after university officials refused to comply with a sweeping list of demands from the government.

    On Friday, President Trump repeated his calls to revoke Harvard’s tax exempt status. “We are going to be taking away Harvard’s Tax Exempt Status. It’s what they deserve!” he said in a post on his social media platform, TruthSocial.

    Harvard president Alan Garber said taking away the institution’s nonprofit tax exemption would be “highly illegal” and that its mission to educate and research would be “severely impaired” if the status were revoked.

    In their pledge, 89 senior faculty signatories said they would take a 10 percent pay cut for up to a year to protect the institution, as well as faculty and students who are more exposed to efforts to shore up costs, including by limiting graduate student enrollment and implementing hiring and salary freezes.

    “The financial costs will not be shared equally among our community. Staff and students in many programs, in particular, are under greater threat than those of us with tenured positions,” the pledge says.

    Ryan Enos, a signatory and professor of government at Harvard, estimated that the donations could amount to more than $2 million.

    The group said it intends to move quickly but has not decided how the salary cuts will be implemented.

    “We envision that faculty who have made the pledge will hold a vote and 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.”

    Last week the institution announced changes to its admissions, curriculum and disciplinary procedures after two internal task forces launched last year investigating anti-Muslim bias and antisemitism on campus found the university’s response lacking.

    In response to the efforts, a White House official told CNN, “Harvard’s steps so far to curb antisemitism are ‘positive,’” but “what we’re seeing is not enough, and there’s actually probably going to be additional funding being cut.”

    Source link

  • Trump Admin Cuts Off New Research Funding to Harvard

    Trump Admin Cuts Off New Research Funding to Harvard

    Joseph Prezioso/AFP/Getty Images

    Harvard University won’t be getting any new grants, Education Secretary Linda McMahon wrote in a blistering letter to the institution that was posted on the social media platform known as X.

    “Harvard will cease to be a publicly funded institution and can instead operate as a privately-funded institution, drawing on its colossal endowment and raising money from its large base of wealthy alumni,” McMahon wrote. “You have an approximately $53 billion head start, much of which was made possible by the fact you are living within the walls of, and benefiting from, the prosperity secured by the United States of America and its free-market system you teach your students to despise.”

    McMahon didn’t specify what grants she was referring to in the letter, sent Monday evening, but other media outlets reported that the Trump administration was cutting Harvard off from new research grants.

    The move escalates the Trump administration’s war with Harvard University. After the university rejected sweeping demands, the administration froze $2.26 billion of Harvard’s estimated $9 billion in grants and contracts. Harvard then sued. Trump also has threatened to revoke Harvard’s tax-exempt status and its ability to enroll international students.

    The letter didn’t cite any legal authority for cutting off new funds to Harvard, so it’s unclear if McMahon can follow through on her threat.

    McMahon accused Harvard of failing to follow federal law and abide “by any semblance of academic rigor.” She also raised questions about why the university was offering an introductory math course to address pandemic learning loss and criticized the decision to scrap standardized testing requirements.

    “Why is it, we ask, that Harvard has to teach simple and basic mathematics, when it is supposedly so hard to get into this ‘acclaimed university’? Who is getting in under such a low standard when others, with fabulous grades and a great understanding of the highest level of mathematics, are being rejected?” McMahon wrote.

    Over all, she wrote that Harvard had “made a mockery of the country’s higher education system,” referencing in part the plagiarism allegations against the university’s former president. To McMahon, it all shows “evidence of Harvard’s disastrous management” and an “urgent need for massive reform.”

    Trump administration officials told Politico that to restore the flow of federal funds, Harvard “would have to enter into a negotiation with the government to satisfy the government that it’s in compliance with all federal laws.” (The government has yet to release any finding or evidence showing that Harvard isn’t complying with federal laws, though officials have made plenty of accusations.)

    McMahon wrote that the administration stands by its demands for “common sense” reforms such as merit-based admissions and hiring decisions and an “end to unlawful programs that promote crude identity stereotypes.” Those changes “will advance the best interests of Harvard University,” she added.

    Source link

  • Education researchers sue Trump administration, testing executive power

    Education researchers sue Trump administration, testing executive power

    UPDATE: The hearing scheduled for May 9 has been postponed until May 16 at the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia. The court will hear two similar motions at the same time and consider whether to temporarily restore the cuts to research and data collections and bring back fired federal workers at the Education Department. More details on the underlying cases in the article below.

    Some of the biggest names in education research — who often oppose each other in scholarly and policy debates — are now united in their desire to fight the cuts to data and scientific studies at the U.S. Department of Education.

    The roster includes both Grover J. “Russ” Whitehurst, the first head of the Institute of Education Sciences (IES) who initiated studies for private school vouchers, and Sean Reardon, a Stanford University sociologist who studies inequity in education. They are just two of the dozens of scholars who have submitted declarations to the courts against the department and Secretary Linda McMahon. They describe how their work has been harmed and argue that the cuts will devastate education research.

    Professional organizations representing the scholars are asking the courts to restore terminated research and data and reverse mass firings at the Institute of Education Sciences, the division that collects data on students and schools, awards research grants, highlights effective practices and measures student achievement. 

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

    Three major suits were filed last month in U.S. federal courts, each brought by two different professional organizations. The six groups are the Association for Education Finance and Policy (AEFP), Institute for Higher Education Policy (IHEP), American Educational Research Association (AERA), Society for Research on Educational Effectiveness (SREE), National Academy of Education (NAEd) and the National Council on Measurement in Education (NCME). The American Educational Research Association alone represents 25,000 researchers and there is considerable overlap in membership among the professional associations. 

    Prominent left-wing and progressive legal organizations spearheaded the suits and are representing the associations. They are Public Citizen, Democracy Forward and the Legal Defense Fund, which was originally founded by the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) but is an independent legal organization. Allison Scharfstein, an attorney for the Legal Defense Fund, said education data is critical to documenting educational disparities and improve education for Black and Hispanic students. “We know that the data is needed for educational equity,” Scharfstein said.

    Related: Chaos and confusion as the statistics arm of the Education Department is reduced to a skeletal staff of 3

    Officers at the research associations described the complex calculations in suing the government, mindful that many of them work at universities that are under attack by the Trump administration and that its members are worried about retaliation.  

    “A situation like this requires a bit of a leap of faith,” said Elizabeth Tipton, president of the Society for Research on Educational Effectiveness and a statistician at Northwestern University. “We were reminded that we are the Society for Research on Educational Effectiveness, and that this is an existential threat. If the destruction that we see continues, we won’t exist, and our members won’t exist. This kind of research won’t exist. And so the board ultimately decided that the tradeoffs were in our favor, in the sense that whether we won or we lost, that we had to stand up for this.”

    The three suits are similar in that they all contend that the Trump administration exceeded its executive authority by eliminating activities Congress requires by law. Private citizens or organizations are generally barred from suing the federal government, which enjoys legal protection known as “sovereign immunity.” But under the Administrative Procedure Act of 1946, private organizations can ask the courts to intervene when executive agencies have acted arbitrarily, capriciously and not in accordance with the law. The suits point out, for example, that the Education Science Reform Act of 2002 specifically requires the Education Department to operate Regional Education Laboratories and conduct longitudinal and special data collections, activities that the Education Department eliminated in February among a mass cancelation of projects

    Related: DOGE’s death blow to education studies

    The suits argue that it is impossible for the Education Department to carry out its congressionally required duties, such as the awarding of grants to study and identify effective teaching practices, after the March firing of almost 90 percent of the IES staff and the suspension of panels to review grant proposals. The research organizations argue that their members and the field of education research will be irreparably harmed. 

    Of immediate concern are two June deadlines. Beginning June 1, researchers are scheduled to lose remote access to restricted datasets, which can include personally identifiable information about students. The suits contend that loss harms the ability of researchers to finish projects in progress and plan future studies. The researchers say they are also unable to publish or present studies that use this data because there is no one remaining inside the Education Department to review their papers for any inadvertent disclosure of student data.

    The second concern is that the termination of more than 1,300 Education Department employees will become final by June 10. Technically, these employees have been on administrative leave since March, and lawyers for the education associations are concerned that it will be impossible to rehire these veteran statisticians and research experts for congressionally required tasks. 

    The suits describe additional worries. Outside contractors are responsible for storing historical datasets because the Education Department doesn’t have its own data warehouse, and researchers are worried about who will maintain this critical data in the months and years ahead now that the contracts have been canceled. Another concern is that the terminated contracts for research and surveys include clauses that will force researchers to delete data about their subjects. “Years of work have gone into these studies,” said Dan McGrath, an attorney at Democracy Forward, who is involved in one of the three suits. “At some point it won’t be possible to put Humpty Dumpty back together again.” 

    Related: Education research takes another hit in latest DOGE attack

    In all three of the suits, lawyers have asked the courts for a preliminary injunction to reverse the cuts and firings, temporarily restoring the studies and bringing federal employees back to the Education Department to continue their work while the judges take more time to decide whether the Trump administration exceeded its authority. A first hearing on a temporary injunction is scheduled on Friday in federal district court in Washington.*

    A lot of people have been waiting for this. In February, when DOGE first started cutting non-ideological studies and data collections at the Education Department, I wondered why Congress wasn’t protesting that its laws were being ignored. And I was wondering where the research community was. It was so hard to get anyone to talk on the record. Now these suits, combined with Harvard University’s resistance to the Trump administration, show that higher education is finally finding its voice and fighting what it sees as existential threats.

    The three suits:

    1. Public Citizen suit

    Plaintiffs: Association for Education Finance and Policy (AEFP) and the  Institute for Higher Education Policy (IHEP)

    Attorneys: Public Citizen Litigation Group

    Defendants: Secretary of Education Linda McMahon and the U.S. Department of Education

    Date filed: April 4

    Where: U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia

    Documents: complaint, Public Citizen press release

    A concern: Data infrastructure. “We want to do all that we can to protect essential data and research infrastructure,” said Michal Kurlaender, president of AEFP and a professor at University of California, Davis.

    Status: Public Citizen filed a request for a temporary injunction on April 17 that was accompanied by declarations from researchers on how they and the field of education have been harmed. The Education Department filed a response on April 30. A hearing is scheduled for May 9.

    1. Democracy Forward suit

    Plaintiffs: American Educational Research Association (AERA) and the Society for Research on Educational Effectiveness (SREE)

    Attorneys: Democracy Forward 

    Defendants: U.S. Department of Education, Institute of Education Sciences, Secretary of Education Linda McMahon and Acting Director of the Institute of Education Sciences Matthew Soldner

    Date filed: April 14

    Where: U.S. District Court for the District of Maryland, Southern Division 

    Documents: complaint, Democracy Forward press release, AERA letter to members

    A concern: Future research. “IES has been critical to fostering research on what works, and what does not work, and for providing this information to schools so they can best prepare students for their future,” said Ellen Weiss, executive director of SREE. “Our graduate students are stalled in their work and upended in their progress toward a degree. Practitioners and policymakers also suffer great harm as they are left to drive decisions without the benefit of empirical data and high-quality research,” said Felice Levine, executive director of AERA.

    Status: A request for a temporary injunction was filed April 29, accompanied by declarations from researchers on how their work is harmed. 

    1. Legal Defense Fund suit

    Plaintiffs: National Academy of Education (NAEd) and the National Council on Measurement in Education (NCME)

    Attorneys: Legal Defense Fund

    Defendants: The U.S. Department of Education and Secretary of Education Linda McMahon 

    Date filed: April 24

    Where: U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia

    Documents: complaint, LDF press release

    A concern: Data quality. “The law requires not only data access but data quality,” said Andrew Ho, a Harvard University professor of education and former president of the National Council on Measurement in Education. “For 88 years, our organization has upheld standards for valid measurements and the research that depends on these measurements. We do so again today.” 

    Status: A request for a temporary injunction was filed May 2.*

    * Correction: This paragraph was corrected to make clear that lawyers in all three suits have asked the courts to temporarily reverse the research and data cuts and personnel firings. Also, May 9th is a Friday, not a Thursday. We regret the error. 

    Contact staff writer Jill Barshay at 212-678-3595, jillbarshay.35 on Signal, or barshay@hechingerreport.org.

    This story about Education Department lawsuits was written by Jill Barshay and produced by The Hechinger Report, a nonprofit, independent news organization focused on inequality and innovation in education. Sign up for Proof Points and other Hechinger newsletters.

    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.

    Join us today.

    Source link

  • 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.”

    Source link

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

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

    This audio is auto-generated. Please let us know if you have feedback.

     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. 

    Source link