برچسب: Trumps

Robert Shepherd: Trump’s Attack on Nature is a Disaster

Robert Shepherd is a polymath who frequently comments on this blog. He has worked in almost every aspect of education, on curriculum, assessments, textbooks, and as a classroom teacher. His breadth of knowledge is remarkable.

Shepherd writes:

First, a little about the nature of nature.

There are about 800 known species of fig. Each particular species[1] is pollinated by females of ONE species of tiny wasp. For example, the two known species of fig in the United States, the Florida strangler fig (Ficus aurea) and the shortleaf fig (Ficus citrifolia), are pollinated by the fig wasps Pegoscapus mexicanus and Pegoscapus tonduzi, respectively. When a fig has flowered (the flowers are internal), it emits a specific odor that attracts its ONE specific wasp, which burrows into the fig for a meal. The wasp lays its eggs inside the ovaries of the short seeds of the fig and pollinates, incidentally, the long seeds with pollen from its original host fig, and so the short seeds produce baby fig wasps, and the long seeds produce, eventually, with luck, more figs. The pollinating wasp dies, and its nutrients are absorbed by the fig and turned into luscious fruit. It’s a cycle.

Black Elk explained why his people, the Lakota, built their teepees in circular forms and arranged them in circles. Birds do this, too, he said, “because theirs is the same religion as ours.” It is worth contemplating what might be the guiding principles in such a religion.

So, here’s the key point: If you interfere with the lifecycle of one of these wasps, the corresponding fig dies out. If you interfere with the lifecycle of one of these figs, the corresponding fig wasp dies out. That’s how things work out there beyond the asphalt jungle, folks. It’s all about mutuality and interdependence.

Biologists can tell you how breathtakingly interdependent species are. So can indigenous peoples. Here is Oren Lyons, Haudenosaunee Faith Keeper of the Wolf Clan of both the Onondaga Nation and the Seneca Nation. The Haudenosaunee are the Six Nations of the Grand River, also known as the Iroquois:

“The Seven Generations reminds you that you have responsibility to the generations that are coming, that you indeed are in charge of life as it is at the moment. . . . You have the continuing responsibility to look out for the next seven generations. . . .

In the United States, they have a Bill of Rights that they added onto the Constitution. . . . And I think that should have been a Bill of Responsibility, not a Bill of Rights. People talk about their rights, their rights, but they never talk about their responsibility. And leadership has got to have that above all. They’ve got to have vision. They’ve got to have compassion for the future. They’ve got to make that decision for the seventh generation. That’s not just a casual term. That’s a real instruction for survival. Every animal, every nation, every plant, has its own area to be, and you respect that. You know, as we sit here and look about us, there are these flowers. And no tree grows by itself . . . certain plants will gather around certain trees, and certain medicines will gather around those plants, so if you kill all the trees, if you cut all the trees, then you’re destroying the community. You’re not just destroying a tree. You’re destroying a whole community that surrounds it and thrives on it, and that might be very important medicine for people and for animals, because animals know the same medicine. They use this medicine. That’s where we learned. We learned by watching the animals. They taught us a lot. Where is the medicine? Because they use it themselves. And if you replant the tree, you don’t replant the community. You replant the tree. So, you’ve lost a community. And if you clear cut, which is what’s happening in America and in Canada a great deal these days and I guess around the world, then you’re really a very destructive force, and simply replanting trees is not replanting community. You lost a lot in the process. IF YOU DON’T UNDERSTAND THAT, YOU WILL [Caps mine].”

—From the film Indigenous American Prophecy (Elders Speak)

It is with these matters in mind that I want you to consider the modification of interpretation of the Endangered Species Act posted for comment by the Trump Maladministration’s Department of the Interior’s Fish and Wildlife Service on April 17 of this year:

Rescinding the Definition of Harm under the Endangered Species Act

Regulations.gov

What this modification does is redefine harm to a threatened or endangered species as take, that is, as the direct killing of an animal. And the effect is to do away with the established definition of harm as, duh, taking an action that causes harm, such as destroying an animal’s habitat, including the plants and animals and fungi and eukaryotes and prokaryotes upon which the animal in question depends (for example, the network of fungal mycelia by which plants and trees communicate with one another and share essential resources; trees will nurture other sick trees nearby by sharing nutrients via these networks; don’t get me started on that one; you will end up out in the woods with me, boot deep in humus and mud).

This proposed modification of interpretation will be devastating to threatened and endangered species because ALMOST ALL EXTINCTION RESULTS FROM HABITAT LOSS, not take. That’s why, for example, Indian Elephants and Mountain Gorillas are facing extinction. Their habitats have steadily eroded from human encroachment. “The Endangered Species List has become like the Hotel California: Once a species enters, they [sic] never leave,” Trump’s Secretary of the Interior, Doug Burgum, wrote, with typical Trump maladministration semiliteracy. “The only thing we’d like to see go extinct is the need for an endangered species list to exist.” The vandalous Trump maladministration is claiming that the proposed rule change doesn’t matter at all but just clarifies the meaning of the Act. But then, out of the same all-consuming maw, it refers to a dissent by Cro-Magnon Antonin Scalia that defines harm as “take” and take as the direct killing of an animal. And that’s the side of the maw that speaks the actual meaning of its action.

Real Estate developers (LIKE TRUMP; what a surprise!) have long hated the Endangered Species Act because it prevents them from going into fragile, interdependent, mutualist, codependent habitat and clearing it for building. If you live in the so-called developed world, you are familiar with this phenomenon. Developers name their developments after whatever they ripped out to do their building. They cut down the whispering pines and christen their development Whispering Pines. They cut down the palms and level the rock palisade and name their development Palisade Palms. They bulldoze the plants that produce the flowers the butterflies used to migrate for thousands and thousands of miles to feed upon and name their barren, butterfly-less, soulless McMansions development—you guessed it—Mariposa Acres.

It is unsurprising that Trump was recently filmed in the now Offal Office saying that, you know, a lot of endangered species ought to go extinct. [Since this amendment was proposed, I have looked in vain for that clip of IQ 47. If anyone can find it, please share in the Comments, below.]

The change will, OF COURSE, be devastating for vulnerable species. But being devastating to the vulnerable so as further to engorge the rich is what the Trump maladministration specializes in, isn’t it? And all the while, as it paves the way for the rapacious wealthy to leave devastation for the next seven generations, it will tell you that what it is doing is a nonissue. Here’s what Shakespeare had to say about that sort of equivocation:

“And be these juggling fiends no more believed,

That palter with us in a double sense.”

–Macbeth, Act V, Scene xiii.

If you don’t understand that, your grandchildren will.

[1] The redundancy is intentional and for emphasis.

For more work by Bob Shepherd, see Robert Shepherd – YouTube

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23/04/2025
More Than 100 Universities Sign Statement Rejecting Trump’s Interference in and Control of Their Campuses

More than 100 universities joined forces to oppose the Trump administration’s efforts to control their curriculum, their hiring policies, and their admissions policies. The initial statement was released this morning and almost another 100 universities signed on.

The Trump administration’s threat to academic freedom by suspending federal funding and threatening the universities’ tax-exempt status alarmed the universities and spurred them to resist the administration’s unprecedented effort to stifle academic freedom.

CBS News reported:

Washington — More than 100 U.S. universities and colleges, including Harvard, Princeton, Penn, Brown, MIT, Cornell and Tufts issued a joint letter Tuesday condemning President Trump’s “political interference” in the nation’s education system.

The move comes a day after Harvard University sued the Trump administration, which announced an initial funding freeze of $2.2 billion and later signaled its intention to suspend an additional $1 billion in grants. The moves came after weeks of escalation between the administration and Harvard, which had rejected the administration’s demands to change many of the school’s policies and leadership, including auditing the student body and faculty for “viewpoint diversity.”

“We speak with one voice against the unprecedented government overreach and political interference now endangering American higher education,” Tuesday’s letter read.

“We are open to constructive reform and do not oppose legitimate government oversight. However, we must oppose undue government intrusion,” it said, adding: “We must reject the coercive use of public research funding.”

Mr. Trump has sought to bring several prestigious universities to heel over claims they tolerated campus antisemitism, threatening their budgets and tax-exempt status and the enrollment of foreign students.

The letter said the universities and colleges were committed to serving as centers where “faculty, students, and staff are free to exchange ideas and opinions across a full range of viewpoints without fear of retribution, censorship, or deportation.”

“Most fundamentally,” the letter reads, “America’s colleges and universities prepare an educated citizenry to sustain our democracy.

“The price of abridging the defining freedoms of American higher education will be paid by our students and our society. On behalf of our current and future students, and all who work at and benefit from our institutions, we call for constructive engagement that improves our institutions and serves our republic.”

Reuters reported that other higher education institutions added their names to the statement, which now has nearly 200 signatories.

The New York Times reported today that some of Harvard’s major donors were urging it to settle with the administration. Eventually, the government’s threats to take control of the university made a settlement impossible.

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23/04/2025
ProPublica: Trump’s War on Data Undermines Public Policy

Trump’s war on our federal government continues unabated. Among his least noticed targets is data collection. If we don’t collect data, we don’t know where to focus our efforts and where we are succeeding or failing. Trump is not smart enough to figure this out on his own. Someone put this malevolent plan in action on his behalf. We know he is destroying our government, firing essential personnel, closing down Congressionally authorized agencies by eliminating their staff. But we don’t yet know why. He is not cutting waste, fraud, and abuse. He is literally disabling every department. Is he the Manchurian Candidate or is it Musk? The attack on data collection appears to be a direct hit on knowledge.

Alec MacGillis of Pro Publica wrote this report:

More children ages 1 to 4 die of drowning than any other cause of death. Nearly a quarter of adults received mental health treatment in 2023, an increase of 3.4 million from the prior year. The number of migrants from Mexico and northern Central American countries stopped by the U.S. Border Patrol was surpassed in 2022 by the number of migrants from other nations.

We know these things because the federal government collects, organizes and shares the data behind them. Every year, year after year, workers in agencies that many of us have never heard of have been amassing the statistics that undergird decision-making at all levels of government and inform the judgments of business leaders, school administrators and medical providers nationwide.

The survival of that data is now in doubt, as a result of the Department of Government Efficiency’s comprehensive assault on the federal bureaucracy.

Reaction to those cuts has focused understandably on the hundreds of thousands of civil servants who have lost their jobs or are on the verge of doing so and the harm that millions of people could suffer as a result of the shuttering of aid programs. Overlooked amid the turmoil is the fact that many of DOGE’s cuts have been targeted at a very specific aspect of the federal government: its collection and sharing of data. In agency after agency, the government is losing its capacity to measure how American society is functioning, making it much harder for elected officials or others to gauge the nature and scale of the problems we are facing and the effectiveness of solutions being deployed against them.

The data collection efforts that have been shut down or are at risk of being curtailed are staggering in their breadth. In some cases, datasets from past years now sit orphaned, their caretakers banished and their future uncertain; in others, past data has vanished for the time being, and it’s unclear if and when it will reappear. Here are just a few examples:

The Department of Health and Human Services, now led by Robert F. Kennedy Jr., laid off the 17-person team in charge of the National Survey on Drug Use and Health, which for more than five decades has tracked trends in substance abuse and mental health disorders. The department’s Administration for Children and Families is weeks behind on the annual update of the Adoption and Foster Care Analysis and Reporting System, the nationwide database of child welfare cases, after layoffs effectively wiped out the team that compiles that information. And the department has placed on leave the team that oversees the Pregnancy Risk Assessment Monitoring System, a collection of survey responses from women before and after giving birth that has become a crucial tool in trying to address the country’s disconcertingly high rate of maternal mortality.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has eviscerated divisions that oversee the WISQARS database on accidental deaths and injuries — everything from fatal shootings to poisonings to car accidents — and the team that maintains AtlasPlus, an interactive tool for tracking HIV and other sexually transmitted diseases.

The Environmental Protection Agency is planning to stop requiring oil refineries, power plants and other industrial facilities to measure and report their greenhouse-gas emissions, as they have done since 2010, making it difficult to know whether any of the policies meant to slow climate change and reduce disaster are effective. The EPA has also taken down EJScreen, a mapping tool on its website that allowed people to see how much industrial pollution occurs in their community and how that compares with other places or previous years.

The Office of Homeland Security Statistics has yet to update its monthly tallies on deportations and other indices of immigration enforcement, making it difficult to judge President Donald Trump’s triumphant claims of a crackdown; the last available numbers are from November 2024, in the final months of President Joe Biden’s tenure. (“While we have submitted reports and data files for clearance, the reporting and data file posting are delayed while they are under the new administration’s review,” Jim Scheye, director of operations and reporting in the statistics unit, told ProPublica.)

And, in a particularly concrete example of ceasing to measure, deep cutbacks at the National Weather Service are forcing it to reduce weather balloon launches, which gather a vast repository of second-by-second data on everything from temperature to humidity to atmospheric pressure in order to improve forecasting.

Looked at one way, the war on measurement has an obvious potential motivation: making it harder for critics to gauge fallout resulting from Trump administration layoffs, deregulation or other shifts in policy. In some cases, the data now being jettisoned is geared around concepts or presumptions that the administration fundamentally rejects: EJScreen, for instance, stands for “environmental justice” — the effort to ensure that communities don’t suffer disproportionately from pollution and other environmental harms. (An EPA spokesperson said the agency is “working to diligently implement President Trump’s executive orders, including the ‘Ending Radical and Wasteful Government DEI Programs and Preferencing.’” The spokesperson added: “The EPA will continue to uphold its mission to protect human health and the environment” in Trump’s second term.) The White House press office did not respond to a request for comment.

Laura Lindberg, a Rutgers public health professor, lamented the threatened pregnancy-risk data at the annual conference of the Population Association of America in Washington last week. In an interview, she said the administration’s cancellation of data collection efforts reminded her of recent actions at the state level, such as Florida’s withdrawal in 2022 from the CDC’s Youth Risk Behavior Survey after the state passed its law discouraging classroom discussion of sexual orientation. (The state’s education secretary said the survey was “inflammatory” and “sexualized.”) Discontinuing the survey made it harder to discern whether the law had adverse mental health effects among Florida teens. “States have taken on policies that would harm people and then are saying, ‘We don’t want to collect data about the impact of the policies,’” Lindbergsaid. “Burying your head in the sand is not going to be a way to keep the country healthy.” (HHS did not respond to a request for comment.)

Making the halt on data gathering more confounding, though, is the fact that, in some areas, the information at risk of being lost has been buttressing some of the administration’s own claims. For instance, Trump and Vice President JD Vance have repeatedly cited, as an argument for tougher border enforcement, the past decade’s surge in fentanyl addiction — a trend that has been definitively captured by the national drug use survey that is now imperiled. That survey’s mental health components have also undergirded research on the threat being posed to the nation’s young people by smartphones and social media, which many conservatives have taken up as a cudgel against Big Tech.

Or take education. The administration and its conservative allies have been able to argue that Democratic-led states kept schools closed too long during the pandemic because there was nationwide data — the National Assessment of Educational Progress, aka the Nation’s Report Card — that showed greater drops in student achievement in districts that stayed closed longer. But now NAEP is likely to be reduced in scope as part of crippling layoffs at the Department of Education’s National Center for Education Statistics, which has been slashed from nearly 100 employees to only three, casting into doubt the future not only of NAEP but also of a wide array of long-running longitudinal evaluations and the department’s detailed tallies of nationwide K-12 and higher education enrollment. The department did not respond to a request for comment but released a statement on Thursday saying the next round of NAEP assessments would still be held next year.

Dan Goldhaber, an education researcher at the University of Washington, cast the self- defeating nature of the administration’s war on educational assessment in blunt terms: “The irony here is that if you look at some of the statements around the Department of Education, it’s, ‘We’ve invested X billion in the department and yet achievement has fallen off a cliff.’ But the only reason we know that is because of the NAEP data collection effort!”

Shelly Burns, a mathematical statistician who worked at NCES for about 35 years before her entire team was laid off in March, made a similar point about falling student achievement. “How does the country know that? They know it because we collected it. And we didn’t spin it. We didn’t say, ‘Biden is president, so let’s make it look good,’” she said. “Their new idea about how to make education great again — how will you know if it worked if you don’t have independent data collection?”

“Reality has a well-known liberal bias,” Stephen Colbert liked to quip, and there have been plenty of liberal commentators who have, over the years, taken that drollery at face value, suggesting that the numbers all point one way in the nation’s political debates. In fact, in plenty of areas, they don’t.

It’s worth noting that Project 2025’s lengthy blueprint for the Trump administration makes no explicit recommendation to undo the government’s data-collection efforts. The blueprint is chock full of references to data-based decision-making, and in some areas, such as immigration enforcement, it urges the next administration to collect and share more data than its predecessors had.

But when an administration is making such a concerted effort to stifle assessments of government and society at large, it is hard not to conclude that it lacks confidence in the efficacy of its current national overhaul. As one dataset after another falls by the wayside, the nation’s policymakers are losing their ability to make evidence-based decisions, and the public is losing the ability to hold them accountable for their results. Even if a future administration seeks to resurrect some of the curtailed efforts, the 2025-29 hiatus will make trends harder to identify and understand.

Who knows if the country will be able to rebuild that measurement capacity in the future. For now, the loss is incalculable.

Jesse Coburn, Eli Hager, Abrahm Lustgarten, Mark Olalde, Jennifer Smith Richards and Lisa Song contributed reporting.

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22/04/2025
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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22/04/2025
Trump’s nominee says she may break apart, not shut down Education Department

Linda McMahon, Trump’s nominee for secretary of education, answers questions from senators during her confirmation hearing while surrounded by family members in Washington, D.C., on Thursday.

Credit: Allison Bailey/NurPhoto via AP

The nominee to become the next and, President Donald Trump vows, last secretary of education assured U.S. senators on Thursday that there are no plans to shut down the Department of Education or to cut spending that Congress has already approved for the department.

Linda McMahon, however, said she would be open to moving programs to other departments, such as sending the Office of Civil Rights to the Justice Department.

Sen. Bill Cassidy, R-La, who chairs the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions, brought up funding early in the two-hour hearing on the nomination.

“If the department is downsized, would the states and localities still receive the federal funding that they currently receive?” he asked.

“Yes, it’s not the president’s goal to defund the programs. It’s only to have it operate more efficiently,” she said.

Closing the department, a longtime goal of conservative Republicans, was one of Trump’s campaign promises. Calling the department a “con job” this week, he has said repeatedly that McMahon’s goal should be to shrink the department, to “put herself out of a job.”

But Trump also acknowledged that only Congress can dismantle what it established in 1980 during the Carter administration. At the hearing, McMahon affirmed that she would work with Congress to follow the law.

With husband Vince, McMahon, 76, founded a successful sports entertainment company that later became World Wrestling Entertainment, and served as its president, then its CEO for 30 years. McMahon served as Trump’s administrator of the Small Business Administration in his first administration. She also served for a year on the Connecticut State Board of Education in 2009 and is a longtime trustee of Sacred Heart University in Fairfield, Connecticut, but otherwise has had little involvement in education.

Democratic senators did not press her on her lack of education experience, although Sen. Patty Murray, D-Washington, did push her to name a requirement for schools to show improvement under the Every Student Succeeds Act, the principal law determining accountability for K-12 schools. She could not.

Instead, they questioned her on Trump’s plan to ship federal funding to states as block grants without federal oversight, his intention to expand parental school choice, and his threats to cut funding for colleges that allow transgender athletes to participate in women’s sports and for schools that continue policies for diversity, equity and inclusion, known as DEI.

‘Invest in teachers, not bureaucrats’

McMahon made clear in her opening statement she is in sync with the president’s assessment of education.

Calling the nation’s schools a “system in decline,” she said, “we can do better for elementary and junior high school students by teaching basic reading and mathematics; for the college freshmen facing censorship or antisemitism on campus, and for parents and grandparents who worry that their children and grandchildren are no longer taught American values and true history.”

“So what’s the remedy?” she asked. “Fund education freedom, not government-run systems. Invest in teachers, not Washington bureaucrats.”

McMahon expressed support for continuing federal funding for Title I in support of low-income students, and for students with disabilities under the Individuals With Disabilities Education Act (IDEA). However, she will investigate whether IDEA should remain in the department.

“When IDEA was originally set up, it was under the Department of Health and Welfare. After the Department of Education was established, it shifted over there,” she said. “I’m not sure that it’s not better served in Health and Human Services, but I don’t know. If I’m confirmed, it is of high priority to make sure that the students who are receiving disability funding (are) not impacted.”

Sen. Maggie Hassan, D-New Hampshire, called her commitment to continued funding “gaslighting.”

Even as the hearing was happening, Republicans in the House were working on “reconciliation” bills that called for possibly balancing massive continued personal income tax cuts with hundreds of billions in funding cuts for Medicaid and education.

This week, Elon Musk’s budget-cutting SWAT team known as DOGE, cut $881 million in research contracts without notice. Other education grants associated with DEI received termination notices, too.

McMahon said DOGE’s “audit” of the department was appropriate. “I believe the American people spoke loudly in the election last November, to say that they want to look at waste, fraud and abuse in our government.” Trump recently fired the Department of Education’s independent inspector general, Sandra D. Bruce, whose job was to root out waste, fraud and abuse.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hm9QfK8zDU0
Watch: Linda McMahon said DOGE’s “audit” of the department was appropriate.

“I understand an audit,” Murray said. “But when Congress appropriates money, it is the administration’s responsibility to put that out, as directed by Congress who has the power of the purse. So what will you do if the president or Elon Musk tells you not to spend money Congress has appropriated to you?”

“We’ll certainly expend those dollars that Congress has passed,” McMahon responded. “But I do think it is worthwhile to take a look at the programs before the money goes out the door. It’s much easier to stop the money before it goes out the door than it is to claw it back.”

Sen. Chris Murphy, D-Conn., said schools across the nation are “scrambling because they have no idea what DEI means” and are worried they will lose funding. He presented two scenarios that pointed to ambiguities in the executive order.

If a school in Connecticut celebrates Martin Luther King Day events and programming teaching about Black history, does it violate or run afoul of DEI prohibitions? he asked.

“Not, in my view, that is clearly not the case,” McMahon said. “That celebration of Martin Luther King Day and Black History Month should be celebrated throughout all of our schools.”

Murphy continued, “What about educational programming centered around specific ethnic and racial experiences? My son is in a public school. He takes African American History. Could you perhaps be in violation of this executive order?”

“I’m, I’m not quite certain,” McMahon said. “I would like to take a look at these programs and fully understand the breadth of the executive order and get back to you on that.”

As with all of Trump’s nominees so far, McMahon is expected to win a majority vote in the Senate, possibly along party lines, later this month.

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20/04/2025
As Global Economy Imploded, Trump’s Cash Register Was Going Ka-Ching

Investigative reporters at the New York Times–Eric Lipton, Theodore Schleifer, and Zoltan-Youngs, with assistance from Maggie Haberman– were watching the busy scene at Mar-a-Lago during the brief period when Trump announced draconian tariffs on other economies (but not Russia, North Korea, Belarus or Cuba), but before his decision to postpone the tariffs for 90 days. Trump demonstrated that he could rattle the global economy with a statement, then shift gears a few days later. What fun he must have had! He knew he could crater the stock markets and he knew that he could make it soar.

In between times, Mar-a-Lago was enriching Trump and his PACs.

The financial market meltdown was underway when President Trump boarded Air Force One on his way to Florida on Thursday for a doubleheader of sorts: a Saudi-backed golf tournament at his family’s Miami resort and a weekend of fund-raisers attracting hundreds of donors to his Palm Beach club.

It was a fresh reminder that in his second term, Mr. Trump has continued to find ways to drive business to his family-owned real-estate ventures, a practice he has sustained even when his work in Washington has caused worldwide financial turmoil.

The Trump family monetization weekend started Thursday night, as crowds began to form at both the Trump National Doral resort near Miami International Airport, and separately at his Mar-a-Lago resort 70 miles up the coast.

Mr. Trump landed on the edge of one of the golf courses in a military helicopter — just in time for a dinner at Doral. The next day, LIV Golf, the breakaway professional league backed by Saudi Arabia’s sovereign wealth fund, was scheduled to hold a tournament at the course for the fourth time.

On Thursday at Mar-a-Lago, hundreds of guests gathered for the American Patriots Gala, a conservative fund-raiser that featured Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem and President Javier Milei of Argentina, who told his supporters back home that he was hoping to catch up with Mr. Trump while there, seemingly unaware that Mr. Trump was double-booked at two of his family properties that night.

And that was just the weekend’s lead-up.

Mr. Trump ordered a new set of global tariffson Wednesday from the White House using his trademark Sharpie pen, a version of which is on sale at Mar-a-Lago for $3.

The announcement set off one of the largest market crashes in American history, erasing $5 trillion in market value from companies in the S&P 500 in just two days. Mr. Trump has said his policy would reverse what he calls unfair trade practices, and that eventually the “markets are going to boom.”

On Friday, as markets continued to tumble, thousands of golf fans visited Doral, as did Eric Trump, Mr. Trump’s son, and Yasir Al-Rumayyan, the governor of Saudi Arabia’s $925 billion sovereign wealth fund. Mr. Al-Rumayyan is also the chairman of LIV Golf, and was there to see its stars compete.

“It is a nice club,” Mr. Al-Rumayyan said as he walked around the golf course watching the players tee off.

LIV Golf — a venture intended to lift the Saudi profile worldwide even as it has burned through hundreds of millions of dollars of state funds — is styled as a daylong party, with club music pumping out of speakers lining tournament courses and machines dispensing wine and large beers. On Friday, fans watched a bit of golf and danced on the edges of the course. Others in MAGA hats walked around smoking cigars.

In short, the economic turbulence seemed far away.

“You are all looking a little too stiff!” said Matt Rogers, a LIV Golf announcer, as he yelled into a microphone, blasting his message across the greens as the first group of golfers on Friday prepared to play with dance music blaring in the background. “You need to turn this up! This is LIV Golf.”

Every room at the 643-room Trump Doral, including the $13,000-a-night presidential suite, was sold out through the weekend. Not a seat could be found at the BLT Prime steakhouse bar, where a porterhouse steak cost $130.

“This is the perfect venue,” Eric Trump said as he strolled the golf course Friday.

He had driven his father in a golf cart from the military helicopter to the resort dinner the day before, as the festivities over the big moneymaking weekend were getting underway.

The president spent much of Friday at yet another Trump family venue, Trump International Golf Club, not far from Mar-a-Lago, sending out social media messages during the day, including, “THIS IS A GREAT TIME TO GET RICH, RICHER THAN EVER BEFORE.” [Had he already decided to pause the tariffs?]

By Friday night, the center of attention had shifted back to Mar-a-Lago, as Mr. Trump held another in a series of $1 million-a-head dinners at his private club in Palm Beach.

Since he was elected in November, Mr. Trump has hosted at least four of the fund-raisers, including one in December, two in March and the one Friday night, with a fifth planned for April 24.

The fund-raisers unfold in similar ways, according to people who have attended them.

Roughly 20 people gather around a candlelit table with big white flowers in the club’s “White and Gold Room” after a photo session. Mr. Trump speaks, then listens to the guests discuss their businesses, one by one. In just an hour or two, he can raise as much as $20 million — a great return on his time investment, associates say.

Attendees at some of the post-election dinners at Mar-a-Lago hosted by MAGA Inc., one of Mr. Trump’s fund-raising political action committees, have included the casino owner Miriam Adelson, the sugar magnate Pepe Fanjul and James Taiclet, the chief executive of Lockheed Martin, the world’s largest military contractor, along with representatives from the cryptocurrency and energy industries.

On Friday, Ronald S. Lauder, the cosmetics heir, and Steve Wynn, the former casino executive, both billionaires, were among the guests at the Mar-a-Lago fund-raiser, according to two people briefed on the matter. They spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the event.

The dinners have been just the start. Mar-a-Lago remains a popular site for Republicancandidates to host their own fund-raisers, Federal Election Commission records show. It is not clear to some Republicans why Mr. Trump has been raising money so aggressively, according to eight people involved in conservative fund-raising who have kept track of his efforts. Never before has a president ineligible for re-election vacuumed up so much money for a super PAC.

Some of Mr. Trump’s associates believe it is prudent to fund-raise when the money is available, as corporate interests and others seek to get access to the president or make amends for perceived slights, people close to him acknowledge.

The packed agendas at the two Trump venues recalled the constant buzz and spending by lobbyists, members of Congress and foreign leaders at Trump International Hotel in Washington before the Trump family sold its lease after Mr. Trump’s first term.

In addition to the Saudi sovereign wealth fund, top sponsors of the Doral golf tournament included Aramco, the Saudi oil company; Riyadh Air, the airline owned by the sovereign wealth fund; and TikTok, the Chinese-owned social media company whose fate Mr. Trump is helping to decide, according to a large billboard outside one of the event’s party tents.

Mr. Trump’s merchandise shops — there are at least three of them at Doral — were also doing swift business, selling everything from a $550 Trump-branded crystal-studded purse to $18 Doral-branded paperweights made in China. The store clerk said that he did not know if new tariffs on imported products would mean price increases.

Fans in the crowd said that they had traveled from as far as South Africa to attend the event. Some purchased special tickets that cost as much as $1,400 to enter exclusive party areas with free drinks and food — tickets that were sold out as of Saturday.

In interviews, tournament attendees and others said that they did not mind the disconnect between the Wall Street meltdown and the events at the Trump properties.

“The sky is falling every day,” said Mike Atwell, a Key Largo, Fla., restaurant owner who was attending the LIV event with his wife enjoying lunch and drinks. “When you are happy, you drink. When you are sad, you drink. It all works out.”

Tyrell Davis, a 39-year-old entrepreneur spending Saturday afternoon in Palm Beach, said that he admired Mr. Trump for focusing on his own businesses while also implementing tariffs that he believed would benefit Americans.

Mr. Davis said that the United States had given away money to other countries for years while not investing in American cities, and that it only made sense Mr. Trump would continue to bolster his own businesses while in office.

“It’s all about business and money,” Mr. Davis said. “That’s what it’s all about. America is a business. It’s a corporation.”

On Saturday, as the tournament continued at Doral, Mr. Trump showed up at yet another family golf course, in Jupiter, Fla., which is holding its own, more modest tournament.

Good news was announced by the White House staff: “The president won his second round matchup of the senior club championship today in Jupiter, Fla., and advances to the championship round on Sunday.” Reporters and photographers were prohibited from watching him play, and were held down the street at a coffee shop.

As Mr. Trump returned to Mar-a-Lago, one of his political committees sent out an offer to his followers: They could buy a signed replica of his executive order changing the name of the Gulf of Mexico to the Gulf of America. The minimum contribution was $50. “I want you to have a PIECE OF HISTORY in your home,” Mr. Trump said in the solicitation.

The White House then announced that there would be no more public events on Saturday.

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15/04/2025
Thomas L. Friedman: After Trump’s Tariff Fiasco, Will Any Other Nation Trust America?

Thomas L. Friedman is the foreign affairs opinion writer for The New York Times. In this post, he excoriates Trump for his arrogance and stupidity in handling the tariffs issue, and especially for his arrogance and stupidity in dealing with China. First, he insisted that he would “hang tough” on his plan to impose draconian tariffs. When the stock and bond markets crashed, he decided to put a 90-day pause on tariffs, exempting China.

He has alienated our allies and outraged China. His arrogance has isolated us in the world as a faithless bully. It seems that Trump’s “art of the deal” consists of bullying, threatening, insulting, and humiliating the other party. It doesn’t work in the international stage. Trump dissipated long-standing alliances and has made us look foolish in the eyes of the world. In less than three months, he has squandered good will, scorned close relationships, and thrown away our reputation as “leader of the free world.” The emperor has no clothes. He stands naked before the world as a stupid and reckless man.

It’s important to remember that Trump was never a successful businessman. He went bankrupt six times. No American bank would extend loans to him because of his abysmal record. Yet his MAGA cult believes in his business acumen because he played a successful businessman on TV. He is a performer who knows nothing about foreign trade, economics, or history.

How will we survive four years of Trump’s demented whims?

Friedman wrote:

I have many reactions to President Trump’s largely caving on his harebrained plan to tariff the world, but overall, one reaction just keeps coming back to me: If you hire clowns, you should expect a circus. And my fellow Americans, we have hired a group of clowns.

Think of what Trump; his chief knucklehead, Howard Lutnick (the commerce secretary); his assistant chief knucklehead, Scott Bessent (the Treasury secretary); and his deputy assistant chief knucklehead, Peter Navarro (the top trade adviser), have told us repeatedly for the past weeks: Trump won’t back off on these tariffs because — take your choice — he needs them to keep fentanyl from killing our kids, he needs them to raise revenue to pay for future tax cuts, and he needs them to pressure the world to buy more stuff from us. And he couldn’t care less what his rich pals on Wall Street say about their stock market losses.

After creating havoc in the markets standing on these steadfast “principles” — undoubtedly prompting many Americans to sell low out of fear — Trump reversed much of it on Wednesday, announcing a 90-day pause on certain tariffs to most countries, excluding China.

Message to the world — and to the Chinese: “I couldn’t take the heat.” If it were a book it would be called “The Art of the Squeal.”

But don’t think for a second that all that’s been lost is money. A whole pile of invaluable trust just went up in smoke as well. In the last few weeks, we have told our closest friends in the world — countries that stood shoulder to shoulder with us after Sept. 11, in Iraq and in Afghanistan — that none of them were any different from China or Russia. They were all going to get tariffed under the same formula — no friends-and-family discounts allowed.

Do you think these former close U.S. allies are ever going to trust getting into a trench with this administration again?

This was the trade equivalent of the Biden administration’s botched exit from Afghanistan, from which it never quite recovered. But at least Joe Biden got us out of a costly no-win war for which America, in my opinion, is now much better off.

Trump just put us into a no-win war.

How so? We do have a trade imbalance with China that does need to be addressed. Trump is right about that. China now controls one-third of global manufacturing and has the industrial engines to pretty much make everything for everyone one day if it is allowed to. That is not good for us, for Europe or for many developing countries. It is not even good for China, given the fact that by putting so many resources into export industries it is ignoring the meager social safety net it offers its people and its even more threadbare public health care system.

But when you have a country as big as China — 1.4 billion people — with the talent, infrastructure and savings it has, the only way to negotiate is with leverage on our side of the table. And the best way to get leverage would have been for Trump to enlist our allies in the European Union, Japan, South Korea, Singapore, Brazil, Vietnam, Canada, Mexico, India, Australia and Indonesia into a united front. Make it a negotiation of the whole world versus China.

Then you say to Beijing: All of us will gradually raise our tariffs on your exports over the next two years to pressure you to shift from your export economy to a more domestic-oriented one. But we will also invite you to build factories and supply chains in our countries — 50-50 joint ventures — to transfer your expertise back to us the way you compelled us to do for you. We don’t want a bifurcated world. It will be less prosperous for all and less stable.

But instead of making it the whole industrial world against China, Trump made it America against the whole industrial world and China.

Now, Beijing knows that Trump not only blinked, but he so alienated our allies, so demonstrated that his word cannot be trusted for a second, that many of them may never align with us against China in the same way. They may, instead, see China as a better, more stable long-term partner than us.

What a pathetic, shameful performance. Happy Liberation Day.

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15/04/2025
Harvard Will Not Bow to Trump’s Demands

Trump has been waging war against the nation’s top universities, demanding that they accept his orders to stamp out DEI or lose their federal grants. Trump uses the phony claim that he is combatting anti-Semitism, but the reality is that he is silencing academic freedom and free speech. For the record, Trump has accepted the support of American Nazis, so his concern for Jews cannot be taken seriously.

The first campus to receive Trump’s demands was Columbia University. Trump threatened to withhold $400 million if Columbia did not put several departments (Middle Eastern Studies, African American Studies, and South Asian Studies) into receivership. Sadly, Columbia complied.

Harvard was threatened with the loss of $9 billion in research grants. Harvard said NO. Harvard will not bend the knee to Trump as he seeks to trample academic freedom of faculty and students.

Mike Damiano of The Boston Globe reported:

Lawyers for Harvard University said Monday the school will not comply with a new list of demands sent by the Trump administration on Friday, as part of the government’s purported crackdown on antisemitism and alleged civil rights violations at elite universities.

The new demands expand on a previous list sent to Harvard’s leaders on April 3, which ordered Harvard to close diversity offices and cooperate with federal immigration authorities, among other directives.

In a message to the campus community Monday, Harvard president Alan Garber vowed that the university will not yield to the government’s pressure campaign. “The University will not surrender its independence or relinquish its constitutional rights,” Garber said.

Harvard’s stance is the most forceful pushback yet against the Trump administration’s crackdown on elite universities. It is a sharp contrast to the approach taken by Columbia University’s leaders who acquiesced to a list of demands from the Trump administration last month. Columbia promised to change student disciplinary procedures and place a Middle East studies department under new oversight, among other measures.

The Harvard demands went further. Two weeks ago, the Trump administration’s antisemitism task force placed $9 billion in federal funding under review and followed up with its first list of demands.

Then, last Friday, the government sent Harvard a much more detailed explanation of its demands, which Harvard released Monday afternoon. Harvard’s lawyers said the university “is not prepared to agree to demands that go beyond the lawful authority of this or any administration.”

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15/04/2025
Joyce Vance: Do Republicans Care About Trump’s Tyranny? If Not Now, When?

Joyce Vance was US Attorney for Northern Alabama and a steady voice of reason. She wonders in this post what it will take to awaken Republicans to Trump’s erosion of the Constitution and our rights.

She writes:

Why doesn’t any of this break through? Why do Republicans still support Trump?

The reporting in The Atlantic on the Signal chain? The voter suppression executive order Trump issued…? The foul-ups in deporting supposed gang members who turn out not to be? Why aren’t Americans out on the streets protesting in massive numbers like we have seen people in other countries doing—Israel, Georgia, Turkey, South Korea, and others? In part, it’s because a large number of people who are Trump supporters just don’t care. Their guy can do anything, and they don’t care. They’ll believe any lie, and they’ll ignore any horrible; they’re all in for Trump for reasons the rest of us still struggle to understand.

The question is, how many of the rest of us are there? By that I mean Americans who, regardless of party affiliation, still care about truth and democracy. Those words are no longer just philosophical notions to be bandied about, an elite construct. They are the reality of what we are fighting a rearguard action to try and save.

Statistics from the last election provide reason for some optimism. Donald Trump won with 49.9% of the popular vote. Although he has claimed he has a mandate for a radical transformation of government, the numbers just don’t back that up. And they don’t suggest there’s a mandate for putting out military information on a Signal chain being used on personal phones, rather than on secured government systems. If there ever truly was a mandate for Trump, the reality is, it’s evaporating day by day as egg prices stay high and people lose their jobs. And now, there’s this, a cavalier disregard for the safety of our troops, lax security with one member of the Signal group apparently in Russia while communications were ongoing, what looks like an effort to do an end run around government records retention procedures.

Will the Atlantic story break through? It should. Trump’s Vice President, his Secretary of Defense, his CIA director, his DNI, all put American pilots in harm’s way. If that’s not enough for Senate Republicans to break ranks with Trump, especially those on subcommittees that have oversight into military and intelligence community operations, it’s hard to imagine what would be.

Why use Signal in the first place when American leaders have some of the most secure communications technology in the world available to them? Is it just for convenience? If so, that’s sloppy, and they should be committing to do better, not arguing over whether the information was classified or not. (But if it looks like a duck…)

The truth is that by going to Signal, they avoided leaving a paper trail. No annoying records that could be unearthed down the road. Remember Trump’s first impeachment? It came about in large part because after the call where he threatened Ukraine’s president with withholding security aid if he wouldn’t announce his country was investigating Joe Biden for financial misconduct, records of the call were buried inside a classified information system where they didn’t belong. That was what got the ball rolling. It was about trying to hide records of an official call that everyone knew was wrong.

As far as we know at this point, there was nothing improper about the attack on the Houthis. So why were high-ranking members of the Trump administration communicating off the books? How pervasive is the practice, and who knows/authorizes it? We are a government of the people. Transparency isn’t optional. There are rules about public records that have to be followed, and this president who likes to operate in secret and at the margins of our laws has frequently tried to skirt them.

It’s hard to imagine that the Signal chain for the Houthi attack was just a one-off, that they only went to Signal for this moment. Is this how this new government is operating routinely—off the books, in a hidden fashion designed to avoid scrutiny and accountability?

It may seem like a minor point with everything else that’s going on, but this is how autocrats work, not how a democracy operates. That’s the danger we are now facing, and this is another marker on the path to tyranny.

Calls are mounting for Hegseth and others to resign. Anyone who would engage in this kind of behavior and then argue that it was not improper rather than apologizing and promising to do better should leave government, whether voluntarily or not. But they should never have been confirmed in the first place. There is a cancer on the heart of the presidency, to quote from the Watergate era, and it’s infecting all of us.

We’re in this together,

Joyce

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13/04/2025
As University of California searches for new president, Trump’s policies make the position more difficult

University of California presidents since 2008.

The presidency of the University of California has long been considered one of the more challenging positions in American higher education. It requires overseeing nearly 300,000 students, 10 campuses, $8 billion a year of premier research, six medical centers and three federally funded national energy laboratories.

Now, UC’s board of regents is looking for the next person to fill the role and replace President Michael V. Drake, who plans to step down at the end of the academic year. But in the months since the search began, the job has only grown more complicated and pressured as a result of Donald Trump’s election and his policies affecting funding, racial diversity, student protests and many other aspects of higher education.

“I think the university is dealing with more significant challenges all at the same time than they probably have in the last 50 years, 60 years,” said John Pérez, the former state Assembly speaker who served on the university’s board of regents for a decade, including a stint as chair, before stepping down last year. “My friends on the regents have a difficult task to find the person to lead through this moment.”

The U.S. Department of Justice is currently investigating, among other things, allegations of discriminatory admissions practices and complaints of antisemitism at several UC campuses.

The federal threats are on top of issues that existed even before Trump took office, such as the likelihood of a nearly $400 million cut or 8% to UC’s state funding this year. Even with that probable budget reduction, the next president will be expected to increase graduation rates — especially among Black and Latino students — and to keep enrolling more California residents.

And there are the perennial questions of how to deal with the many and sometimes conflicting constituencies within the state and university, including the state’s governor and legislators, faculty, alumni, student leaders, labor unions, political activists and parents.

“We need a UC president that can be ready to advocate and fight back on any reduction of potential federal funds, and then also be ready to figure out what to do in case we do incur those losses,” said Assemblymember Mike Fong, D-Alhambra, who is chair of the Assembly’s Higher Education Committee. He said some legislators have floated the idea of another tuition hike for out-of-state students.

University presidential searches often raise the questions of whether to get someone from inside the university or someone with fresh, outside experience, and whether to hire someone with experience in academia or from another background, such as in business, government or philanthropy. UC has tried different routes in its most recent presidential hirings.

It’s unlikely that the next president will have every desirable skill and experience, said Hironao Okahana, a vice president at the American Council on Education, a national organization that lobbies on behalf of universities.

What’s most important, he said, is that the president be prepared for a constantly evolving job. He noted that in the past five years, college leaders have had to navigate a pandemic, a racial reckoning following the murder of George Floyd and now the many federal threats. “Higher education leadership is never static, especially for a place like the University of California,” he said.

The search for the next president was launched last summer after Drake announced he would step down. Drake, who earns a base salary of $1.3 million after getting a raise last year, entered the job in 2020 and had to deal with many of the issues arising from the pandemic, including a temporary switch to online classes.

The university’s website for the search says the regents are seeking “an individual who is an outstanding leader and a respected scholar who has successfully demonstrated these abilities in a major complex organization.”

At the most recent regents meeting last month, board chair Janet Reilly said the special regents committee in charge of finding the next president “has been working diligently” but did not say when the search would finish. The committee’s work is being tightly held: It has met only in closed session and has not released the names of any potential finalists.

UC also hosted three town hall meetings in January to gather public feedback. Assisting with the process is SP&A Executive Search, a national search firm specializing in higher education and nonprofit sectors.

Drake’s final months on the job have been marked by policies and actions responding to the Trump administration, a reality with no end in sight.

Last month, his office announced UC would no longer require faculty job applicants to submit statements about how they would promote diversity. That move came after the Trump administration threatened to withhold funding from universities with programs related to diversity, equity and inclusion. Earlier that same day, Drake announced a systemwide hiring freeze in anticipation of those potential funding cuts.

In February, UC also filed a declaration of support when California and 21 other states sued the Trump administration over billions in proposed National Institutes of Health (NIH) funding cuts. The judge in the case has temporarily blocked the Trump administration from making those reductions.

UC gets about $6 billion annually in federal funds for research and other program supports, with NIH being the top source. Cuts to that funding would be felt across the immense system, which comprises nine undergraduate campuses and one graduate-only campus, UC San Francisco. All 10 campuses have R1 status from the Carnegie Classification of Institutions of Higher Education, the highest tier for research universities.

Also potentially at risk if the White House and Congress decide to pursue deeper, broader cuts is the $8 billion in Medicare and Medicaid that UC receives for patient care at the medical centers at its Davis, Irvine, Los Angeles, Riverside, San Diego and San Francisco campuses. So far, Trump says he will not reduce those.

UC’s next president could be squeezed from two sides: trying to preserve federal funds while also facing pressure from students and faculty not to succumb to any potential demands from Trump. Last month, Columbia University agreed to change its protest policies, security practices and Middle Eastern studies department to keep $400 million that the Trump administration threatened to cut.

Students are “extremely concerned” that a similar scenario could play out at UC, said Aditi Hariharan, a fourth-year student at UC Davis and president of the systemwide UC Student Association. The U.S. Department of Education is investigating UC’s Berkeley, Davis, San Diego and Santa Barbara campuses for possible Title VI violations “relating to antisemitic harassment and discrimination.” Separately, the Department of Justice is investigating Berkeley, UCLA and UC Irvine for potentially considering race in admissions, which UC has denied doing.

Hariharan said she was disappointed to see UC stop requiring diversity statements, which she viewed as a concession to Trump.

“I’m hoping to see the next UC president push back stronger,” she said.

To navigate the many federal complications, UC might consider hiring someone with government experience this time, said Adrianna Kezar, director of the University of Southern California’s Pullias Center of Higher Education.

She pointed to Janet Napolitano, who was UC’s president from 2013 to 2020 and took the job after stints as the U.S. secretary of homeland security and governor of Arizona.

“Someone like that will understand how to navigate all the executive orders, how to navigate shifts in the agencies,” Kezar said. “Over the next four years, this is going to be a landscape where, if you lack that kind of experience, I think it’s going to be really challenging.”

It would also help if the next president has philanthropic acumen, Kezar added. If UC loses significant federal dollars, the university will need to look for new funding sources, she said.

Napolitano was succeeded by Drake, who had a much more traditional academic background. He served as president of Ohio State University and, before that, was UC’s vice president for health affairs and later chancellor of UC Irvine. Napolitano’s predecessor, Mark Yudof, also had an academic background. Before serving as UC’s president from 2008 to 2013, he was the dean of the University of Texas at Austin’s law school, president of the University of Minnesota and chancellor of the University of Texas system.

Pérez, the former regent who chaired the board when Drake was hired, said he’d prefer UC to hire another president who has headed a large public research university, especially if they have experience overseeing academic medical centers.

Despite the many threats and challenges UC faces, Pérez added that he’s confident “in the strength of the institution to weather these storms.”

“But having the right leader means that we will weather the storms more easily and that folks will have confidence that we won’t lose sight of all that’s essential in the university,” he said.

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12/04/2025