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  • Trump Signs Executive Order Requiring All Colleges to Submit

    Trump Signs Executive Order Requiring All Colleges to Submit


    Trump signed an executive order requiring colleges to prove that they are not continuing to practice affirmative action on behalf of racial minorities. He seems obsessed with the idea that Black students are gaining entrance to college without the right test scores. He wants to call a halt to it.

    Conservatives believe that admission should be based solely on grades and test scores. They ignore the fact that colleges have other goals they want to meet: students who can play on sports’ teams; who can play in the band or orchestra; who want to study subjects with low enrollments, like advanced physics or Latin. There are also legacy students whose parents went to the college. And students whose parents are big donors, as Jared Kushner’s father Charles was when he pledged $2.5 million to Harvard the year that Jared applied, a story told by Daniel Golden in his book The Price of Admission. RFK Jr. was admitted to Harvard by signing a form with only his name.

    Annie Ma and Joycelyn Gecker of the Associated Press reported:

    WASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trump on Thursday signed an executive order requiring colleges to submit data to prove they do not consider race in admissions.

    In 2023, the Supreme Court ruled against the use of affirmative action in admissions but said colleges may still consider how race has shaped students’ lives if applicants share that information in their admissions essays.

    Trump’s Republican administration is accusing colleges of using personal statements and other proxies to consider race, which conservatives view as illegal discrimination.

    The role of race in admissions has featured in the administration’s battle against some of the nation’s most elite colleges — viewed by Republicans as liberal hotbeds. For example, the executive order is similar to parts of recent settlement agreements the government negotiated with Brown University and Columbia University, restoring their federal research money. The universities agreed to give the government data on the race, grade point average and standardized test scores of applicants, admitted students and enrolled students. The schools also agreed to an audit by the government and to release admissions statistics to the public.

    Conservatives have argued that despite the Supreme Court ruling, colleges have continued to consider race through proxy measures.

    The executive order makes the same argument. “The lack of available admissions data from universities — paired with the rampant use of ‘diversity statements’ and other overt and hidden racial proxies — continues to raise concerns about whether race is actually used in admissions decisions in practice,” said a fact sheet shared by the White House ahead of the Thursday signing.

    The first year of admissions data after the Supreme Court ruling showed no clear pattern in how colleges’ diversity changed. Results varied dramatically from one campus to the next.

    Some schools, such as the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Amherst College, saw steep drops in the percentage of Black students in their incoming classes. But at other elite, selective schools such as Yale, Princeton and the University of Virginia, the changes were less than a percentage point year to year.

    Some colleges have added more essays or personal statements to their admissions process to get a better picture of an applicant’s background, a strategy the Supreme Court invited in its ruling.

    “Nothing prohibits universities from considering an applicant’s discussion of how race affected the applicant’s life, so long as that discussion is concretely tied to a quality of character or unique ability that the particular applicant can contribute to the university,” Chief Justice John Roberts wrote in 2023 for the court’s conservative majority.

    It is unclear what practical impact the executive order will have on colleges, which are prohibited by law from collecting information on race as part of admissions, says Jon Fansmith, senior vice president of government relations at the American Council on Education, an association of college presidents.

    “Ultimately, will it mean anything? Probably not,” Fansmith said. “But it does continue this rhetoric from the administration that some students are being preferenced in the admission process at the expense of other students.”

    Because of the Supreme Court ruling, schools are not allowed to ask the race of students who are applying. Once students enroll, the schools can ask about race, but students must be told they have a right not to answer. In this political climate, many students won’t report their race, Fansmith said. So when schools release data on student demographics, the figures often give only a partial picture of the campus makeup.



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  • Gov. Gavin Newsom signs executive order for a master plan for career education

    Gov. Gavin Newsom signs executive order for a master plan for career education


    Gov. Gavin Newsom signs an executive order that charges the state’s educational and legislative leaders with creating a master plan for career education.

    Credit: Office of the Governor

    In recent years, the state has poured billions of dollars into a dizzying array of programs under the banner of career education. The only problem, said Gov. Gavin Newsom, is that there is no cohesion between these programs.

    “Tens of billions of dollars invested in the last few years, 12 different agencies, but not a cohesive, connective tissue, not a compelling narrative that drives a vision and drives a focus forward,” Newsom said Thursday, during a news conference at River City High in West Sacramento.

    Newsom took aim at that disconnection by signing an executive order calling for the state to create a master plan for career education in the next 13 months.

    The governor’s executive order promises to knock down the barriers that students in California face on their journey from the K-12 system to college and ultimately a fulfilling, well-paying career.

    “California will be the model of the nation in making sure that we educate all Californians to be career-ready, back in their neighborhoods where they lift their neighborhoods,” said CSU Chancellor Mildred Garcia.

    Newsom signed the order while flanked by a heavy-hitting lineup of state education leaders who pledged to knock down the “silos” between the institutions.

    That includes the leaders of all the educational systems: Garcia, UC Chancellor Michael Drake, Community College Chancellor Sonya Christian and State Superintendent of Instruction Tony Thurmond. It also includes Assembly Education Committee Chair Al Muratsuchi, D-Torrance, and Senate Education Committee Chair Josh Newman, D-Fullerton. It also included the secretary of the California Labor & Workforce Development Agency, Stewart Knox.

    “This is a team effort; it is a collective effort, and it is long overdue,” Newsom said.

    Input for the master plan, due Oct. 1, 2024, will come, not just from education leaders, but from labor leaders, business leaders, community groups, students, parents and families, the governor said.

    The order lays out the importance of building connections not just between different education agencies but also between education institutions and employers.

    It lays out some specific strategic goals, such as building an online portal for any job-seeking Californian and rethinking the concept of a student transcript.

    Newsom introduced the concept of a “career passport” that would look beyond grades. That means a student’s transcript would include marketable work skills and experience developed through classes as well as apprenticeships, internships or other experiences outside the classroom.

    Newsom said it’s important to look at a student “broadly,” adding “I say that as someone who didn’t get very good grades.”

    The plan will require public progress reports to the Legislature. The first deadline is Dec. 1 — shortly before the next legislative session — when agencies are requested to provide preliminary recommendations to the governor’s office.

    The master plan describes the state’s three goals for career education. One is ensuring that ninth grade students are encouraged to explore well-paying careers and that they are guided on a pathway to that career. The second is that students have opportunities to learn real-life career skills in their education, preferably for pay. Lastly, the executive order states that students shouldn’t have to take on substantial debt or navigate complicated bureaucracies as they prepare for their careers.

    The state has already made substantial investments in this arena, particularly during recent years when the state budget was flush.

    The governor named a few of these programs: dual enrollment in high school and college classes, apprenticeships, the state’s volunteer corps, the cradle-to-career data system and college-and-career savings accounts. He added two funding programs, one aimed at retraining oil and gas workers and the other to address workforce shortages and future demand in the fields of health care, education, climate and technology.

    “California, like most states in the nation, has workforce shortages in just about every single sector,” said State Superintendent Thurmond. “This presents the opportunity for us to use our pathway programs to propel our students into the workforce.”

    The state is focused on knitting together the disparate parts of its career education strategy, but the governor noted that some of this work is already funded and happening at the regional level through its K-16 collaboratives and its California Economic Resilience Fund.

    The governor’s executive order also takes aim at the way the state hires its own workers. It charged the Department of Human Resources with reviewing any position where a bachelor’s degree is a requirement and determining whether there is data to back up that job requirement. Newsom said the state has already reclassified 169 positions that previously required a degree, but this executive order charges the state with updating its existing policies to make this process official.





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  • Restraining order in Chico State threat case ‘warranted, necessary and justified,’ judge rules

    Restraining order in Chico State threat case ‘warranted, necessary and justified,’ judge rules


    Suspended Chico State biology professor David Stachura “made a credible threat of violence” against two colleagues who cooperated in an investigation that found he had a sexual affair with a student, a judge found in a tentative ruling released Friday that orders him to stay off campus for three years.

    Protection of “the entire Chico State community is warranted given the nature of the threats and the events that have transpired,” Judge Virginia Gingery wrote in a 13-page decision that, when made final, will grant the university a workplace violence restraining order against Stachura, who witnesses said threatened a mass shooting on campus.

    In addition to professors Emily Fleming and Kristen Gorman, Gingery also extended protection to biology lecturer Betsey Tamietti, graduate student Jackelin Villalobos and members of Fleming’s and Tamietti’s families. The judge also banned Stachura from owning firearms for three years.

    Stachura’s arguments against the order were “unavailing,” Gingery wrote, including his claims that Chico State sought the order based only in reaction to news stories about the threats.

    The restraining order is “warranted, necessary and justified based on (Stachura’s)” conduct the judge wrote.

    Orders first identified as tentative such as the one Gingery released Friday are all but certain to be made final under California court rules. The Butte County Superior Court’s website did not list a hearing date Friday where that would happen.

    Stachuara’s lawyer, Kasra Parsad, did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Neither did Chico State officials.

    Parsad told the judge during a hearing in July that if the restraining order were granted it would likely destroy Stachura’s academic career. He is an expert in fish biology, specializing in zebrafish and stem-cell research.

    The ruling comes following a two-part hearing that began in April as part of the fallout of revelations made public last year that Stachura had a prohibited sexual affair with a student in 2020 and allegedly threatened to kill the professors who cooperated in a university investigation of the matter.

    EdSource reported on Dec. 8  that the investigation found that Stachura and the student had sex in his office that could be heard through the walls. Stachura agreed to a settlement of the matter that included suspension without pay for a third of the 2021 spring semester. He has repeatedly denied the 2020 affair but has admitted he is currently romantically involved with the now-former student.

    The revelations roiled the 13,000-student campus in the northern Sierra foothills, resulting in several mass meetings and calls for Stachura’s removal. Provost Debra Larson, who signed off on the settlement in the sex case, resigned within days. The school also revoked an “outstanding professor” award it gave Stachura for the 2020-21 academic year.

    But it was the gun threats — at a time when the country is plagued with mass shootings in schools and elsewhere — that caused both students and faculty to express deep fears.

    As the sex investigation unfolded in 2020, Stachura allegedly told his estranged wife, Miranda King, that he’d bought weapons and ammunition — including hollow-point bullets, with the intention of killing Fleming and Gorman.

    King revealed the alleged threats in an application for a domestic violence restraining order in the midst of a deeply contentious divorce. King’s lawyer alerted Fleming and Gorman.

    A biology lecturer, Tamietti, revealed that Stachura allegedly spoke to her about committing gun violence in the biology department. At a Dec. 12 campuswide meeting, Tamietti quoted Stachura as telling her, “If I wanted you guys dead, you’d be dead. I am a doer. If I do go on a shooting spree, maybe I’ll pass your office. I am not sure.”

    Stachura, in both the divorce case and the current case, has claimed he told King that he had a nightmare about killing his colleagues and had no intention of acting violently. He has repeatedly said Tamietti is lying because he ended a friendship with her when she didn’t support him after King revealed the alleged threats.

    Stachura sued both King and Tamietti for libel. But the case against Tamietti was dismissed when another judge ruled in June that her statement at the meeting was a matter of public interest. Court records show Stachura dropped his suit against King last month. Their divorce case remains ongoing.

    Gorman, Fleming, Tamietti and Villalobos all testified of a deep fear of Stachura.

    Stachura testified twice. Much of his testimony centered on Tamietti, with whom he said he had “a really weird relationship.”

    He testified that after the date she claimed he threatened a shooting in the biology department in November 2021, she continued to email and text him even after he sent her “a dear John email” ending their friendship. Her contacts with him, he claimed, showed the threat was fabricated.

    But Tamietti testified in July that she felt safer by staying in communication with Stachura, a point Deputy Attorney General Shanna McDaniel reiterated in her closing statement.

    Stachura’s lawyer said the women named in the restraining order are “afraid of (Stachura) based on some article. I don’t believe that for the last three years, they have been terrified of him.”

    Parsad also told Gingery that a three-year order restraining him from stepping foot on campus would ruin Stachura’s career. “He has worked very hard in his career, and I don’t think any university would hire him (with a workplace violence restraining order) on his record.”

    It was not immediately clear Friday what action the university will now take. Court records show it opened another investigation of Stachura in March that focuses, in part, on whether he was dishonest during the investigation of his affair with the then-student.

    Gingery seemed to key on Stachura’s repeated denials of the affair as undermining his credibility. She noted that in testimony, he had even claimed the investigation of the affair “came back negative” despite the fact that an investigator found the affair occurred and Stachura entered into a settlement with the university that resulted in his pay being temporarily reduced as discipline.

    Michael Weber of the Chico Enterprise-Record contributed to this story.





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  • Headstart Leaders Speak Out Against Kennedy’s Order to Ban Children of Non-Citizens

    Headstart Leaders Speak Out Against Kennedy’s Order to Ban Children of Non-Citizens


    The first iteration of Trump’s Big Ugly Bill included the elimination of Headstart. This program was birthed in 1965 as part of President Lyndon B. Johnson’s “war on poverty.” It provides food, medical screening, education, and socialization skills for low-income children ages 3-4. It also provides jobs for some of the children’s mothers.

    But there must have been enough negative feedback from Republicans to cause Headstart to survive.

    However, the Secretary of Health and Human Services Robert F. Kennedy Jr. declared that children of undocumented immigrants would not be allowed to participate in Headstart. How will the programs know which children to exclude? The announcement outraged Headstart providers, those brave enough to speak out.

    The blog Wonkette reported on the negative reactions:

    Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. added further shame to his family’s legacy Thursday, announcing that effective immediately, undocumented immigrant children will be banned from the Head Start preschool program, which not only provides child care and preparation for kindergarten to low-income preschoolers, but also provides school meals and health screenings. The point is to finally crack down on undocumented three- to five-year-olds to send the message that they must not come to the US without proper legal authorization. 

    In addition to kicking an unknown number of children out of Head Start, the change in HHS policy also bars everyone in the country without legal status from multiple HHS programs including access to public clinics, family planning, mental health and substance abuse treatment, and the federal low-income energy assistance program. Sure, some people will probably get sick and die, but that’s the point. The Trump war on immigrants must ratchet up cruelty at every opportunity, just as the Nazis’ Nuremberg laws systematically excluded German Jews from every aspect of public life. 

    People living in the US without authorization are already prohibited from most public benefits like Medicaid and SNAP, but a 1998 rule enacted by the Clinton administration allowed them to use some public health programs, including Head Start, under the logic that a healthy public, including children attending preschool, is actually better than sickness and ignorance. Kennedy reversed that interpretation, redefining Head Start and a bunch of other HHS programs as “federal public benefits’’ that are only available to citizens and to permanent legal residents. You know, at least until Stephen Miller figures out how to invalidate all green cards, too. The MAGA faithful can never be satisfied in their demands for eradication of ILLEGALS.

    Kennedy said in a press release that even the most basic health and education measures “incentivize illegal immigration,” which of course is some bullshit, so we won’t quote any of his other lies. 

    Yasmina Vinci, executive director of the National Head Start Association, issued a statement pointing out that in its 60 years of existence, Head Start “has never required documentation of immigration status as a condition for enrollment,” and that nothing in the Head Start Act justifies the new restrictions. Vinci added that “Attempts to impose such a requirement threaten to create fear and confusion among all families who are focused on raising healthy children, ready to succeed in school and life,” which of course is the point. She also noted that Kennedy’s action

    “undermines the fundamental commitment that the country has made to children and disregards decades of evidence that Head Start is essential to our collective future. Head Start programs strive to make every child feel welcome, safe, and supported, and reject the characterization of any child as ‘illegal.’”

    We will just assume that her comments were met with angry complaints from MAGA that it’s dishonest to call someone a “child” when in fact they’re an ILLEGAL ALIEN, which automatically wins every argument. 

    As for wisely using taxpayer money, HHS claimed that banning undocumented kids from Head Start would save $374 million a year, at the low, low cost of only $21 million annually to document eligibility. Not included in the estimate was any guess at how many US citizen children would be thrown out of Head Start because their parents fear submitting paperwork to the government, or how many kids of US citizens would lose access to the program because of paperwork snafus. 

    The number of children affected by the decision is difficult to assess, since according to experts, most of the young children of parents here without papers were born here in the US. Julie Sugarman, who directs K-12 research for the Migration Policy Institute, told the Washington Post, “The actual number of children this would affect is probably very, very small.” Of course, the ban is also so vaguely defined that the administration may intend for it to exclude any children of undocumented parents regardless of the child’s own citizenship status. 

    We’ll add that ripping away education and health services from any children at all as a means of punishing their parents is cruel on the face of it. And of course Donald Trump is still itching to end birthright citizenship so babies can be deported more easily. 

    For that matter, the Right has long despised Head Start and sought to wipe it out altogether because preschool is communist, and allows poor families to have some childcare they don’t deserve. It’s a bit of a wonder that the administration’s draft budget plan to zero out Head Start, leaked in April, didn’t ultimately make it into the Big Shitty F**k Poor People Twenty Ways From Sunday Bill. But then, there’s little reason to think Trump won’t decide at some point to simply eliminate Head Start by decree, since he considers funding passed by Congress only a suggestion anyway.

    In the longer term, red states and groups like the Heritage Foundation keep pushing their efforts to pass laws to ban undocumented children from public schools altogether. The 1982 Supreme Court decision in Plyler v. Doe ruled that states can’t deny access to public education based on immigration status, but that’s yet another thing that gets rightwingers spittin’ mad. Bills that would have required schools to collect information on families’ immigration status failed this year in Indiana, New Jersey, Texas, and Tennessee, but eventually one is nearly certain to pass and make its way to the Supreme Court.

    Pushback to the latest assault on Head Start and undocumented children came very quickly. The Illinois Head Start Association on Friday instructed its hundreds of members not to make any changes to who they serve, pointing out that the government hasn’t provided any directions on how providers are supposed to put the ban in place and screen out undocumented children. (Or parents? Nobody knows!) 

    “We have never asked for [the] status of our children that we’re serving, and to do so creates fear and anxiety among our community,” said Lauri Morrison-Frichtl, head of the Illinois Head Start Association, which supports about 600 centers statewide serving the 28,000 students in Head Start in the state. “So we’re really worried that families will stop bringing their children, they won’t be able to go to work [and] children will be in unsafe places.”

    The Illinois Head Start Association is also one of several educational organizations and parent groups who filed a federal lawsuit in April aimed at stopping Trump’s threatened cuts to Head Start. The ACLU, which is representing the plaintiffs, immediately announced that the plaintiffs will amend their complaint in the case to fight the administration’s latest attack on Head Start.

    Now that Trump’s polling on immigration policy is deep underwater with Americans, who support deporting dangerous criminals but are horrified by Trump’s fascist stormtrooper shit, this new cruelty aimed at little kids is only going to make people more disgusted with the administration. Americans freaking love education. We hate seeing kids harmed. Let Republicans know you aren’t going to stand for this crap.



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  • Biden immigration order could help thousands of California children

    Biden immigration order could help thousands of California children


    A woman holds a placard saying “No human is illegal” during an August 7, 2023, march on the Golden Gate Bridge.

    Credit: Michael Ho Wai Lee / SOPA Images/Sipa USA

    Tens of thousands of children in California stand to benefit from a new executive order by the Biden administration that would provide a pathway to citizenship for their parents.

    Advocates said the new program will improve children’s financial security, physical health, mental health and will help them stay focused in school.

    Biden announced in June a new program that will allow undocumented immigrant spouses of U.S. citizens to apply for permanent residency without returning to their home countries, if they have lived in the U.S. for at least 10 years and have no criminal record. In the past, undocumented spouses of U.S. citizens could apply for permanent residency, but they had to return to their home countries to finalize the process and could be barred from the U.S. for up to 10 years. U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services will begin accepting applications in August.

    The Department of Homeland Security estimates that about 500,000 spouses of U.S. citizens and 50,000 children of applicants who are stepchildren of U.S. citizens will be eligible for the new program nationwide. About 120,000 spouses of U.S. citizens will be eligible for the program in California, according to an analysis by the organization FWD.us of data from the 2022 American Community Survey conducted by the U.S. Census Bureau. 

    Many of those eligible likely have children. An estimated 1 in 10 children in California have at least one undocumented parent, according to the National Center for Children in Poverty. It is not clear how many of them also have a U.S. citizen parent.

    “When this was announced, it was like a huge sigh of relief,” said Mayra Alvarez, president of The Children’s Partnership, a nonprofit children’s advocacy organization based in Los Angeles. “The opportunity that families are going to be able to stay together as they apply for permanent residency is a direct commitment to child well-being. It’s an acknowledgment that parents and caregivers are critical to children’s healthy development.”

    Some research shows that the fear of deportation of a parent or caregiver impacts children’s ability to do well in school. 

    “Absenteeism, repeating a grade and dropping out are all more likely” for children who have an undocumented parent, said Carolyn Sattin-Bajaj, associate professor of education at UC Santa Barbara. She added that undocumented parents are also less likely to apply for public programs for which their U.S. citizen children are eligible, like Head Start, food stamps and public health insurance.

    Modesto resident Mirna Cisneros, whose husband and three children are U.S. citizens, said she was elated when she found out about the new policy.

    “Imagine, I even cried when I found out,” Cisneros said in Spanish. Still, she said she won’t truly believe it until she is actually able to apply for permanent residency.

    Cisneros came to the U.S. from Mexico in 1999, when she was 17. She met her husband in Florida, and later moved with him to California. Though her husband is a U.S. citizen, she has not been able to obtain permanent residency through him. She was going to apply, but stopped the process after realizing that she would have to return to Mexico and might have to stay there for 10 years.

    Cisneros said her three children, who are 17, 16 and 11 years old and are also U.S. citizens, have told her many times they are afraid she will be deported. She said her middle son told her, “’Mamá, I’m always thinking about what will happen if they grab you and take you to Mexico. I’m going to miss you. What will happen if we can’t see you?’”

    If she is able to get permanent residency, she said, it would allow her to work in better-paying jobs to help support her family. She currently bakes and decorates cakes from her home.

    Being able to apply for permanent residency would also give her children more flexibility and freedom to choose where they want to attend college, Cisneros said. Her oldest daughter is set to graduate from high school next year and has told her she wants to attend college out of state, in Florida, but because Cisneros avoids traveling by plane because of her immigration status, her daughter has been planning to give up that dream to attend school closer to home.

    “We know that as soon as they’re able to get a work permit and have the stability of knowing that they’re not going to be deported, that parent will be able to access better employment. That will mean better salaries, better types of jobs that allow parents to be more engaged in their children’s schooling, and that’s going to lead to mental and physical health benefits for parents and children,” said Wendy Cervantes, director of immigration and immigrant families at the Center for Law and Social Policy (CLASP). The nonprofit organization was one of two dozen groups that sent a letter to the Biden administration in May asking for the change in policy.

    Cervantes pointed to research about how children benefited when their parents received work permits and protection from deportation through the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program, introduced by then-President Barack Obama in 2012 that has allowed hundreds of thousands of people who were brought to the United States as children to temporarily remain in the country and obtain work permits. In one study, children whose mothers were eligible for the deferral program had 50% fewer diagnoses of adjustment and anxiety disorders.

    However, Sattin-Bajaj expressed concern that many immigrants may be hesitant to apply because of the upcoming presidential election and the uncertainty of whether such a policy would be maintained under a new administration, particularly if led by former President Donald Trump.

    “I don’t have a lot of confidence that there’s euphoria right now, because things move so slowly, and it feels like a storm is brewing,” said Sattin-Bajaj.

    Top Republican leaders have rejected the program. Karoline Leavitt, the Trump campaign national press secretary, issued a statement saying, “Biden only cares about one thing — power — and that’s why he is giving mass amnesty and citizenship to hundreds of thousands of illegals who he knows will ultimately vote for him and the Open Border Democrat Party.”

    Those who qualify for the new program would not be able to vote until they receive citizenship, and they would not be able to apply for citizenship until three years after they get permanent residency.

    Speaker of the House Mike Johnson issued a statement saying he expects the program to be challenged in court and accused President Joe Biden of trying to “play both sides.”

    “The President may think our homeland security is some kind of game that he can try to use for political points, but Americans know this amnesty plan will only incentivize more illegal immigration and endanger Americans,” Johnson said.





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  • Trump Signs Executive Order Urging CPB to Stop Funding NPR and PBS

    Trump Signs Executive Order Urging CPB to Stop Funding NPR and PBS


    The Constitution says Congress has the power of the purse, not the president. The president executes the funding decisions of Congress.

    Yesterday Trump called on the Corporation for Public Broadcasting to stop funding public radio and public television. Never mind that National Public Radio brings news to listeners in areas totally saturated by rightwing Sinclair stations. Never mind that PBS is the best source of documentaries about science, history, nature, medicine, other nations, and global affairs. PBS is educational television at its best.

    The Washington Post reported:

    President Donald Trump signed an executive order on Thursday evening seeking to prohibit federal funding for NPR and the Public Broadcasting Service (PBS). The order, which could be subject to legal challenge, called the broadcasters’ news coverage “biased and partisan.”

    It instructs the Corporation for Public Broadcasting to cease providing direct funds to either broadcaster. It also orders CPB to cease indirect funding of the services through grants to local public radio and television stations.

    CPB is the main distributor of federal funds to public media. It receives about $535 million in federal funds per fiscal year, which it mostly spends on grants to hundreds of stations nationwide. The stations spend the grants on making their own programming or on buying programming from services such as NPR and PBS.

    CPB, created by an act of Congress in 1967, also sometimes provides direct grants to NPR and PBS to produce national programs.
    Thursday’s order instructs the CPB board to ensure that stations receiving its grants “do not use Federal funds for NPR and PBS.”



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  • Federal Judges Order Pentagon to Resume Gender-Affirming Care for Transgender Troops

    Federal Judges Order Pentagon to Resume Gender-Affirming Care for Transgender Troops


    One of Trump’s major goals during his campaign was to strip any rights from transgender people and make them invisible. He and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth agree that trans men and women should not serve in the military and should not receive gender-affirming care to support their transition to a different gender identity. Trump signed an executive order ousting them from the military.

    However, federal judges have blocked their plans. Not only will they continue to serve but the Pentagon will continue to provide gender-affirming care for them.

    Politico reported:

    The Pentagon will resume gender-affirming care for transgender service members, according to a memo obtained by POLITICO, an embarrassing setback to Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s efforts to restrict their participation.

    The memo says the Defense Department is returning to the Biden-era medical policy for transgender service members due to a court order that struck down Hegseth’s restrictions as unconstitutional. The administration is appealing the move, but a federal appeals court in California denied the department’s effort to halt the policy while its challenge is pending.

    As a result, the administration is barred from removing transgender service members or restricting their medical care, a priority of President Donald Trump and Hegseth. The administration insisted its restrictions were geared toward people experiencing medical challenges related to “gender dysphoria,” but two federal judges said in March that the policy was a thinly veiled ban on transgender people that violated the Constitution.

    The Trump administration on Thursday asked the Supreme Court to allow the Pentagon to ban transgender servicemembers while legal battles continue to play out.

    Both judges ordered the military to refrain from forcing out more than 1,000 transgender troops and to resume providing for their medical care, including surgical procedures and voice and hormone therapy. The memo is the latest move by the Pentagon to comply with those orders.

    But it presents another headache for Hegseth, who has made culture war issues — such as changing recruitment standards and reinstating the ban — a key piece of his effort to make the military more lethal. Hegseth has emphasized this theme as he’s sought to defend himself amid multiple scandals, including texting sensitive details of military operations in Yemen to multiple Signal group chats and a vicious brawlbetween his top advisers.

    “Service members and all other covered beneficiaries 19 years of age or older may receive appropriate care for their diagnosis of [gender dysphoria], including mental health care and counseling and newly initiated or ongoing cross-sex hormone therapy,” Dr. Stephen Ferrara, the Pentagon’s acting assistant secretary of Defense for health affairs, said in a memo dated April 21.

    Trump signed a long-expected order banning transgender people from serving in the military at the outset of the administration, just as he had done in 2017. But LGBTQ+ advocacy groups quickly pounced, calling the order discriminatory.

    So far, the courts have rejected the Pentagon’s arguments that including transgender troops reduces the military’s ability to fight. U.S. District Judge Benjamin Settle ruled in March that there is no evidence that transgender troops harm military readiness, and ordered the Pentagon to return to the status quo.

    A three-judge panel of the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals on Tuesday became the first appellate court to hear arguments on Trump’s transgender military policy but gave little indication of how it might rule.

    Defense officials acknowledged in a March memo sent to Pentagon leadership that the agency would comply with the court order, but did not detail the steps the department would take to follow it. Hegseth has openly attacked one of the judges, U.S. District Judge Ana Reyes, for her order, labeling her “Commander Reyes” in a pejorative post on X.



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  • California leaders reject Trump administration order to allow immigration enforcement in schools

    California leaders reject Trump administration order to allow immigration enforcement in schools


    Protesters in Bakersfield rally against an extensive Border Patrol operation held on Jan. 14,.

    Credit: Emma Gallegos / EdSource

    This article has been updated with information from the California Department of Education, Long Beach Unified and San Diego Unified.

    Este artículo está disponible en Español. Léelo en español.

    California state officials and leaders of county offices of education and school districts quickly rebuked the Trump administration’s new guidance allowing immigration enforcement near or in schools.

    “Schools must be safe spaces, not sites of fear,” said Alex Traverso, director of communications of the State Board of Education. “Every child deserves to learn without intimidation, and California will do all we can to protect our students.”

    The directive issued Tuesday by Department of Homeland Security acting Secretary Benjamine Huffman reverses guidance that dates back to 2011, restricting Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and Customs and Border Protection (CBP) agencies from detaining immigrants near locations like schools, child care centers, playgrounds, hospitals and churches.

    “This action empowers the brave men and women in CBP and ICE to enforce our immigration laws and catch criminal aliens — including murderers and rapists — who have illegally come into our country. Criminals will no longer be able to hide in America’s schools and churches to avoid arrest,” the Department of Homeland Security said in a statement Tuesday.

    Under California law, school officials are not required to allow immigration agents to enter schools without a judicial warrant, according to recent guidance issued by California Attorney General Rob Bonta.

    “It is disappointing, but unfortunately unsurprising that President Trump, in his first days in office, is focusing his time and energy on making his inhumane and irresponsible mass deportation agenda a reality. My team is actively reviewing his executive orders, and we stand ready to defend the rights of Californians if we find that the President has in any way violated the law — starting with our lawsuit, filed today, challenging the President’s unconstitutional executive order on birthright citizenship,” Bonta said.

    The Association of California School Administrators issued a statement saying they are “troubled and deeply disappointed” in the Trump administration’s order allowing immigration enforcement near schools.

    “This is an abuse of power and goes against the constitutional right of every child to have a public education,” the statement reads. “Schools are meant to be safe spaces where children can learn and grow without fear. … We know from past experience that this decision will result in some students not attending school, families disengaging, academics being disrupted, and severe impacts on social-emotional well-being.”

    In response to requests for support from school districts and county offices of education, the California Department of Education sent a letter Tuesday to all county and school district superintendents and charter school administrators with resources for immigrant students and families and reminders about their rights.

    “Our schools must be a safe place for children to learn and educators to teach. In line with federal and state law, California’s schools can take actions to ensure that all students have access to school campuses and educational opportunities without fear of deportation,” State Superintendent of Public Instruction Tony Thurmond said.

    “In light of the new administration’s action today to overturn the sensitive locations policy, I want to reassure our education community that the Los Angeles County Office of Education (LACOE) remains steadfastly committed to ensuring that every student, regardless of their immigration status, has access to a safe, secure and nurturing learning environment,” said Debra Duardo, superintendent of schools for Los Angeles County, in a statement.

    “The change to the policy does not overrule the student’s constitutional right to an education. It also does not overrule state constitutional protections,” Duardo continued. “It is important to reinforce that all students possess the right to a public education, independent of their immigration status. Our schools are mandated to ensure that no student is denied enrollment or faced with barriers to their educational opportunities based on their or their family’s immigration status.”

    Many school districts, including Los Angeles Unified, Long Beach Unified, San Diego Unified and San Francisco Unified have reaffirmed “sanctuary resolutions” or sent letters to families in recent weeks, explaining their rights and sharing legal resources. Seventeen Santa Clara County superintendents and school board members signed a letter earlier this month, saying schools will continue to support immigrant students and families and reminding the public of a 1982 Supreme Court decision, Plyler v. Doe, which found that all children present in the United States have a right to a public education, regardless of their immigration status or their parents’ immigration status.

    A spokesperson for Los Angeles Unified School District said the district has begun training all staff in how to respond if federal immigration officers show up at schools and will be distributing cards to students explaining their rights if approached by immigration agents.

    “Los Angeles Unified School District is compelled by legal, professional, and moral obligations to protect rights of its students and employees, including privacy rights under FERPA (Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act), and state and federal constitutional rights, which include rights of all students to a free and public education,” a district spokesperson wrote in an email. “School officials do not collect or share information about the immigration status of students and their families. Since 2017, LAUSD has had a policy to not voluntarily cooperate with immigration enforcement actions by federal agencies.”

    Fresno Unified School District is holding a series of workshops for families about immigrant rights. District spokesperson Diana Diaz wrote, “We want to urge our families who are concerned about possible detainment or deportation to please make a family preparedness plan NOW. This includes updating your child’s emergency card with their school so they can be released to another trusted adult if parents are unable.”

    Teachers’ unions also rejected the Trump administration’s change.

    “As educators and union members, we are committed to protecting our students — every single student, regardless of their immigration status,” said David Goldberg, president of the California Teachers Association, which represents 310,000 teachers, nurses, counselors, psychologists, librarians and other education staff across the state. “We have a professional and moral responsibility to keep our students safe if ICE comes to our communities. We will always come together in our union to ensure every public school is a safe space and to uphold the constitutionally protected right of all students to access a public education.”

    Jeff Freitas, president of the California Federation of Teachers, the state’s second-largest teachers union, said in a statement, “Trump’s first day in office showed us that he is exactly who he told us he would be. His first actions as president direct hate and aim to stoke fear in the hearts of immigrant families and our LGBTQIA+ community.  We can’t expect students to learn when they fear being separated from their parents, being bullied for being LGBTQIA+, or being treated differently based on the language they speak or the color of their skin.

    “While we still hope to see Congress and our courts block these blatantly unconstitutional actions,” Freitas continued, “we won’t wait for them to act. Educators and school staff stand ready to fight back against every single action that stands to harm our members, our students, and our communities.”

    EdSource reporter Diana Lambert contributed to this article.





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  • How to resist Trump’s order imposing classroom censorship and discrimination 

    How to resist Trump’s order imposing classroom censorship and discrimination 


    The LGBTQ+ community rallies in solidarity, opposing the Social Studies Alive! ban in Temecula Valley Unified in June 2023.

    Credit: Mallika Seshadri / EdSource

    This week’s executive order by President Donald Trump disingenuously titled “Ending Radical Indoctrination in K-12 Schooling” is a brazen assault on our educational freedoms and civil rights. The order directs the secretary of education and other department heads to develop a plan to terminate federal funds that directly or indirectly support classroom instruction on systemic racism or provide supportive school services and protections to transgender youth. 

    The order’s sweeping definition of what it calls “discriminatory equity ideology” could lead to a ban on teaching about slavery, segregation, redlining, voter suppression and other historical realities that continue to shape life and opportunity in America today. The order could also result in a ban on ethnic studies, gender studies, queer studies and other rigorous academic disciplines that prepare students to think critically and to live in a multicultural, multiracial society. 

    Equally troubling is the order’s attack on transgender students and the educators who support them. By directing the attorney general and federal prosecutors to coordinate investigations and prosecutions against educators who provide basic support to transgender students, like psychological counseling, or who use the student’s preferred pronouns, the order puts already vulnerable students at grave risk. 

    Put this all together and what results is a stunning proposal for a federal takeover of local education, where the president of the United States dictates what local schools can teach and which type of student belongs in our classrooms. It is also another attempt by President Trump and many of his right-wing supporters to purge our nation’s history of uncomfortable truths and erase the lived experience of people of color, women and members of the LGBTQ+ community.

    While the potential consequences of this order are staggering to imagine, the most effective way to resist it is clear: Schools, educators and communities should not cave in to threats and intimidation and rush to voluntarily comply with this likely unconstitutional and unlawful order. Stay the course, partner with students, families and community organizations, and resist unless and until the courts have authorized any aspect of these outlandish proposals. 

    Trump tried something similar and failed in his last days of his first presidential term by issuing Executive Order 13950, which prohibited federal agencies and grant recipients from conducting trainings that included “divisive concepts” such as systemic racism, white privilege and unconscious bias. The order was blocked by a court in Northern California on First Amendment and Fifth Amendment grounds and later rescinded by the Biden administration. 

    Similar attempts to censor classroom discussion and discriminate against transgender students have also faced legal challenges in states across the country, and most challenges have prevailed. Courts have generally protected local control and academic freedom as essential to democracy and have struck down restrictions on federal funding that essentially coerce states to the point of compulsion. Multiple federal statutes dating back to the founding of the U.S. Department of Education, including the bipartisan-supported Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA) in 2015, also prohibit federal officials from controlling specific instructional content or curriculum, and expressly leave such decisions to state and local officials. 

    Even if there are legal setbacks, it will take time, perhaps years, for the courts to resolve these issues. In the meantime, schools have a legal and moral obligation to protect all students and provide an inclusive and honest education. They should stand firm while legal challenges proceed.

    But the fight for educational justice belongs to all of us, not just to lawyers — and it requires a broader movement. Students, parents, educators and community leaders must speak out and stand firm against this dangerous attack on our values. Together, we must continue to make the public case for inclusive education. This includes sharing stories of how discussions of history and identity have transformed our classrooms and our life journeys. Documenting the positive and life-saving impact of supporting LGBTQ+ students. Helping parents understand why preparing diverse teachers to work with students of all backgrounds makes education better for everyone. And importantly, we must document the harm this order would cause to students’ educational experiences. These stories and voices — not just legal arguments in court — will ultimately determine whether we can build schools that truly serve all students.

    In the meantime, stand firm, keep supporting all students and continue teaching truth. 

    •••

    Guillermo Mayer is president and CEO of Public Advocates, a nonprofit law firm and advocacy organization that challenges the systemic causes of poverty and racial discrimination by strengthening community voices in public policy and achieving tangible legal victories advancing education, housing, transportation equity and climate justice.

    The opinions expressed in this commentary represent those of the author. EdSource welcomes commentaries representing diverse points of view. If you would like to submit a commentary, please review our guidelines and contact us.





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  • Trump signs executive order to dismantle Department of Education

    Trump signs executive order to dismantle Department of Education


    President Donald Trump, left, holds up a signed executive order as young people hold up copies of the executive order they signed at an education event in the East Room of the White House in Washington on March 20, 2025.

    Credit: Ben Curtis/AP Photo

    President Donald Trump signed an executive order Thursday directing U.S. Secretary of Education Linda McMahon to work toward eliminating the Department of Education, pushing forward a campaign promise to dismantle an agency that has long been maligned by conservatives.

    With a group of students as a prop busily working on school desks behind him, Trump said, “My administration will take all lawful steps to shut down the department.” 

    The order instructs Education Secretary Linda McMahon to “take all necessary steps to facilitate the closure of the Department of Education and return authority over education to the States and local communities while ensuring the effective and uninterrupted delivery of services, programs, and benefits on which Americans rely.” 

    The federal government funds less than 10% of public school budgets, though much of that money supports especially vulnerable students. The department also oversees programs that help students pay college tuition, including Pell grants for low-income students.

    The White House has already taken steps to gut the Education Department by roughly halving its workforce of 4,100, but officially eliminating the Cabinet-level agency would require congressional action.

    The administration has also vowed to ship other critical functions to other federal departments — services for students with disabilities and low-income students to the Department of Health and Human Services and student loans to the Treasury Department. 

    “Closing the Department does not mean cutting off funds from those who depend on them — we will continue to support K-12 students, students with special needs, college student borrowers, and others who rely on essential programs,” McMahon said in a statement. “We’re going to follow the law and eliminate the bureaucracy responsibly by working through Congress to ensure a lawful and orderly transition.”

    Children’s advocates were skeptical. The executive order “could result in a catastrophic impact on the country’s most vulnerable students and cutting much-needed funding will specifically impact students of color, students with disabilities and students in low-income communities,” the Association of California School Administrators said in a statement.

    Over the decades, Republicans have repeatedly called for shutting down the department, although doing so would require 60 votes in the Senate — unlikely because Republicans now hold only 53 seats.

    Nonetheless, Sen. Bill Cassidy, R-Louisiana, chairman of the Senate education committee, said in a statement, “Since the Department can only be shut down with congressional approval, I will support the President’s goals by submitting legislation to accomplish this as soon as possible.”

    House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-Louisiana, praised the order in a post on X “President Trump is keeping his promise and returning education to the states,” but didn’t pledge to bring the issue to a vote. David Cleary, who worked on education issues on Capitol Hill for two decades, indicated he wouldn’t be surprised if Johnson didn’t.  

    “Leaders don’t like to spend time on things they know can’t get over the finish line,” he told the Washington Post.

    California Attorney General Rob Bonta, who has sued the administration over the wholesale firing of federal employees and abrupt cancelation of research contracts, said he would monitor how the executive order is carried out. 

    While acknowledging the obligation to go through Congress, “the Administration continues to do everything it can to destroy the department’s ability to carry out its most vital, congressionally mandated functions — with the clearly stated ‘final mission’ of shuttering the Department for good,” he said in a statement. “My office will be looking at what this executive order actually does — not what the President says it will do.”

    Trump used the executive order to continue his attack on equity-focused education programs. The Secretary of Education will ensure that Department of Education funds will follow federal law and administration policy, it states, “including the requirement that any program or activity receiving Federal assistance terminate illegal discrimination obscured under the label ‘diversity, equity, and inclusion’ or similar terms and programs promoting gender ideology.”

    In response, Jessie Ryan, president of the Campaign for College Opportunity, said the continued attacks on diversity, equity, and inclusion and dismantling of the department “will leave millions of students and their families vulnerable to discrimination and deny them the opportunity to succeed in school, achieve their individual potential, and prepare for the future workforce. We cannot allow this administration to steamroll students and communities to achieve its agenda.”

    Guillermo Mayer, President and CEO of the nonprofit Public Advocates, attributed the executive order to the Administration’s larger aim.

    “Nobody should be fooled,” he said. “While this order purports to reduce federal bureaucracy, it’s part of a longer-term plan to eliminate federal oversight in education and give states free rein to redirect billions of dollars away from public schools and towards private school vouchers. The ultimate goal is to erode the public’s trust in our system of public education.” 





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