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برچسب: Wants

  • Trump Wants Smithsonian to Downplay or Eliminate Dark Portrayal of Slavery

    Trump Wants Smithsonian to Downplay or Eliminate Dark Portrayal of Slavery


    Trump warned that he was prepared to take an active role in reviewing exhibits in the Smithsonian museums, especially the African-American Museum. Too many show bad portrayals of their nation, he complained. Think about it: is it possible to show slavery in a positive light?

    Trump’s insistence on purging the Smithsonian of the accurate portrayal of Black history is yet another example of his efforts to minimize and sanitize that history.

    The New York Times wrote that Trump is hostile to an honest confrontation with the past:

    Since taking office, Mr. Trump has led an effort to purge diversity, equity and inclusion policies from the federal government and threatened to investigate companies and schools that adopt such policies. He has tried to reframe the country’s past involving racism and discrimination by de-emphasizing that history, preferring to instead spotlight a sanitized, rosy depiction of America.

    The administration has worked to scrub or minimize government references to the contributions of Black heroes, from the Tuskegee Airmen, who fought in World War II, to Harriet Tubman, who guided enslaved people along the Underground Railroad. Mr. Trump commemorated Juneteenth, the celebration of the end of slavery in the United States that became a federal holiday in 2021, by complaining that there were too many non-working holidays in America. He has called for the return of Confederate insignia and statues honoring those who fought to preserve slavery.

    And he has previously attacked the exhibits on race at the Smithsonian, which has traditionally operated as an independent institution that regards itself as outside the purview of the executive branch, as “divisive, race-centered ideology.”

    CNN described Trump’s determination to compel museums to remove exhibitions of events that show shameful behavior by whites and the government:

    President Donald Trump escalated his campaign to purge cultural institutions of materials that conflict with his political directives on Tuesday, alleging museums were too focused on highlighting negative aspects of American history, including “how bad slavery was.”

    In a Truth Social post, Trump directed his attorneys to conduct a review of museums, comparing the effort to his crackdown on universities across the country.

    “The Smithsonian is OUT OF CONTROL, where everything discussed is how horrible our Country is, how bad Slavery was, and how unaccomplished the downtrodden have been — Nothing about Success, nothing about Brightness, nothing about the Future,” Trump wrote.

    Trump’s comments come days after the White House announced an unprecedented, sweeping review of the Smithsonian Institution, which runs the nation’s major public museums. The initiative, a trio of top Trump aides wrote in a letter to Smithsonian Institution secretary Lonnie Bunch III last week, “aims to ensure alignment with the President’s directive to celebrate American exceptionalism, remove divisive or partisan narratives, and restore confidence in our shared cultural institutions.”

    The letter said the review would focus on public-facing content, the curatorial process to understand how work is selected for exhibits, current and future exhibition planning, the use of existing materials and collections and guidelines for narrative standards.

    Bunch — who has served as Secretary of the Smithsonian Institution since 2019 and is the first African American to hold the position — has made multiple comments about the importance of educating people about slavery through the National Museum of African American History and Culture specifically. He told Smithsonian Magazine that part of the purpose of that museum “was to help a nation understand itself — an impossible task without the full recognition of the horrors of slavery.”

    Exhibits at the Smithsonian take years of planning and are heavily evaluated by teams of scholars and curatorial experts before they make their debut. Janet Marstine, a museum ethics expert, said that the demands laid out by the Trump administration “set the Smithsonian up for failure.”

    “Nobody could provide those kinds of materials in such a comprehensive way, in that short amount of time, and so it’s just an impossible task,” she said. The White House has asked the Smithsonian to provide a wide array of materials, from internal emails and memos to digital copies of all placards and gallery labels currently on display.

    The Smithsonian declined to comment on Trump’s latest remarks. A White House official, asked about the attorney review process Trump described, said the president “will explore all options and avenues to get the Woke out of the Smithsonian and hold them accountable.”

    Still, Trump’s efforts to target colleges and universities — which he is now comparing to his focus on Smithsonian museums — has been even more aggressive. His administration has moved to strip federal funding from higher education institutions for a variety of reasons, including allegations of antisemitism and failure to comply with certain policy changes. Columbia University recently settled with the Trump administration for more than $220 million dollars and Trump has also been in a protracted battle with Harvard University after his administration froze $2 billion in federal funding.

    The Trump administration’s push to align federal support with his cultural agenda has extended beyond the nation’s capital. The Institute of Museum and Library Services and the National Endowments for the Arts and the Humanities canceled tens of millions of dollars in federal grants earlier this year, affecting small museums, library initiatives, arts programs and academic research projects across the country.

    Trump has previously praised the Smithsonian museums, including the National Museum of African American History and Culture, which he toured during his first term as president.

    “I’m deeply proud that we now have a museum that honors the millions of African American men and women who built our national heritage, especially when it comes to faith, culture and the unbreakable American spirit,” Trump said during remarks at the museum in February 2017. Later that month, Trump said the museum “tells of the great struggle for freedom and equality that prevailed against the sins of slavery and the injustice of discrimination.”

    Earlier this year, Trump signed an executive order that put Vice President JD Vance, who serves on the Smithsonian’s Board of Regents, in charge of stopping government spending on exhibits that don’t align with the administration’s agenda. He also tasked a former member of his legal team, attorney Lindsey Halligan, with helping to root out “improper ideology” at the Smithsonian.

    “Museums in our Nation’s capital should be places where individuals go to learn — not to be subjected to divisive narratives,” the executive order said.

    The Smithsonian began a review of its own in June, and has repeatedly stressed its commitment to being nonpartisan. The institution told CNN in July that it was committed to an “unbiased presentation of facts and history” and that it would “make any necessary changes to ensure our content meets our standards.”

    The Smithsonian was established in the 1840s by the US with funds from the estate of James Smithson, a British scientist. As a unique trust instrumentality that is supported by federal funds, it is not an executive branch agency, which makes it a complex question whether the Trump administration has the ability to control its exhibits. It is governed by a 17-member Board of Regents led by Chief Justice John Roberts.

    The fact that the Smithsonian is not an “executive branch agency” won’t deter Trump. He has ignored laws and the Constitution when they don’t support his agenda. Neither the Library of Congress nor the National Portrait Gallery is an executive agency. Yet Congress sat silently as Trump forced out their leaders.

    Trump is rapidly assuming control of every federal agency that was designed to be independent.

    No other President has attempted to do that.



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  • Trump Wants to Ban Mail-In Voting Because Putin Told Him So

    Trump Wants to Ban Mail-In Voting Because Putin Told Him So


    Thom Hartmann is outraged. Trump proclaimed that he would issue an executive order banning mail-in voting. Why? Because Putin told him that mail-in voting caused him to lose the 2020 election. Republicans know that they will lose control of the House and possibly the Senate unless they can suppress the vote or redistrict, as they are in Texas, drawing lines that squeeze out Democrats.

    Hartmann wrote:

    Yesterday, Donald Trump crossed another line that no president in our history has ever dared p to touch. With the echo of Vladimir Putin’s whisper in his ear, in front of President Zelenskyy and seven other European leaders, Trump announced he’s preparing an executive order to ban mail-in ballots and even outlaw voting machines across America ahead of the 2026 midterm elections. 

    Sitting in front of the Chancellor of Germany and the Prime Minister of Great Britain, — both nations that allow and even encourage mail-in voting — Trump said:

    “Mail-in ballots are corrupt mail-in ballots. You can never have a real democracy with mail-in ballots, and we as a Republican Party are gonna do everything possible that we get rid of mail-in ballots. We’re gonna start with an executive order that’s being written right now by the best lawyers in the country to end mail-in ballots because they’re corrupt. And, you know that we’re the only country in the world, I believe, I may be wrong, but just about the only country in the world that uses it because of what’s happened.”

    This is not just a partisan maneuver. It’s an open assault on the Constitution, a grotesque power grab, and a direct threat to the foundation of democracy itself. And it’s happening in real time, in broad daylight, with a criminally compliant Republican Party cheering him on. 

    Republicans hate mail-in voting for multiple reasons.

    First, for people who’re paid by the hour, mail-in voting increases participation because they can fill out their ballots at the kitchen table after work. Republicans don’t want people to vote, and have introduced over 400 pieces of legislation in the past three years nationwide to make voting more difficult. 

    Second, mail-in voting makes voters better informed and less vulnerable to sound-byte TV ads because, while perusing that ballot at the kitchen table, they can look up candidates on their laptops and get more detail and information. Republicans hate informed voters and rely heavily on often-dishonest advertisements to swing voters. 

    Third, mail-in ballots — because they arrive in the mail weeks before the election — give voters an early chance to discover if they’ve been the victim of Republican voter-roll purges, one of their favorite tactics to pre-rig elections. 

    Fourth, mail-in ballots end the GOP trick of understaffing and underresourcing polling places in minority neighborhoods, leading to hours-long lines. Hispanic voters generally wait 150% longer than white voters, and Black voters must endure a 200% longer wait; mail-in ballots put an end to this favorite of the GOP’s voter suppression efforts. 

    Trump, knowing all this, couldn’t help himself yesterday, finally blurting out his real reason for wanting to end mail-in voting in America:

    “We got to stop mail-in voting, and the Republicans have to lead the charge. The Democrats want it because they have horrible policy,” Trump proclaimed. “If you [don’t] have mail-in voting, you’re not gonna have many Democrats get elected. That’s bigger than anything having to do with redistricting, believe me.”

    Once again, Trump is ignoring the law and the Constitution, which explicitly delegates the administration of elections to the states and Congress, not presidential executive orders.

    That’s not some vague norm or debatable tradition: it’s written into the very DNA of our system of government. States set the rules, unless Congress — not the president — overrides them. States decide how their citizens vote, as the Constitution’s Article I, Section 4, Clause 1 dictates:

    “The Times, Places and Manner of holding Elections for Senators and Representatives, shall be prescribed in each State by the Legislature thereof; but the Congress may at any time by Law make or alter such Regulations, except as to the Places of chusing Senators.”

    Yet here we have a president declaring that he alone will dictate the terms of elections nationwide, in direct violation of two centuries of law and precedent. This is not only unconstitutional, it’s tyrannical. 

    When a president asserts powers he does not have, with the full knowledge that they aren’t his to wield, he’s announcing to the country that the rule of law no longer constrains him. That’s the definition of dictatorship.

    And what makes this even more obscene is the source of Trump’s inspiration. According to multiple reports, Trump’s sudden rant on mail-in ballots followed a private conversation with Vladimir Putin, who reportedly told him that mail-in voting was the reason he lost in 2020.

    The man occupying the Oval Office is now taking advice about how to rig American elections from the very dictator who has spent his career poisoning journalists, jailing opponents, and staging sham referendums to annex entire countries. 

    It’s bad enough that Trump has always been Putin’s toady, but now we see the Kremlin effectively writing U.S. election law. If Jefferson, Madison, or Lincoln were alive to hear this, they would spit.

    Mail-in voting is not a scam. It’s not a trick. It’s how tens of millions of Americans — Republicans, Democrats, independents — exercise their right to vote. 

    Seniors rely on it. People with disabilities rely on it. Military service members overseas rely on it. Hourly workers who can’t take a day off rely on it. Parents with young children rely on it. Rural voters, who often live miles from polling places, rely on it. 

    And every study, every audit, every bipartisan commission has found mail-in voting to be secure, safe, and reliable. Five states do it exclusively; we’ve had it more than two decades here in Oregon with nary a single scandal or problem. To call it fraudulent is a lie. To ban it is voter suppression on a scale this country has never seen.

    And voting machines? Trump is openly declaring that he’ll return us to mind-numbingly slow hand-counting of ballots, a tactic straight from the authoritarian playbook designed to create chaos, delays, and endless opportunities to dispute the results in 2026 and 2028. 

    I’ve had concerns about voting machines and Windows-based tabulators for decades, but my solution isn’t to end them. Instead, we should use machines owned by the government itself, generating paper ballots and operating transparently on open-source software with every election subject to sample audits. 

    Instead of trying to make elections more secure, Trump’s laying the groundwork for election theft in plain sight. This isn’t subtle: it’s the loud declaration of a man preparing to overturn the will of the voters, with the blessing of a foreign adversary, and with a Republican Party too craven to object.

    If Trump succeeds in outlawing mail-in ballots and voting machines, millions of Americans will simply not be able to vote. Seniors in nursing homes, service members abroad, people with disabilities, single parents, rural citizens: they will all be disenfranchised overnight. And make no mistake: that’s the point. 

    This is not about integrity. This is not about security. This is about shrinking the electorate to a size that Republicans believe will guarantee them victory forever.

    Republicans know they can’t win free and fair elections in much of America. They know their policies are unpopular. They know their agenda is toxic. 

    So they cheat. They gerrymander districts into grotesque shapes that make a mockery of representative government. They purge voters from the rolls. They criminalize voter registration drives. They intimidate voters at the polls. 

    And now, at Trump’s command and Putin’s urging, they want to ban the very methods by which millions of Americans vote. This is not politics as usual. This is the slow-motion strangulation of democracy.

    Every American who believes in self-government must rise up against this. Governors must prepare to defy such an executive order in court and in practice. State legislatures must assert their constitutional authority. 

    Attorneys general must be ready to sue. And ordinary citizens must take to the streets, the phones, the ballot box, and every civic space available to declare that this will not stand. Because if it does, we’ll have surrendered the very essence of the American experiment.

    We’ve been here before in spirit if not in form.

    Reagan’s campaign cut a deal with the Iranian Ayatollahs to hang onto the hostages until after the election. Richard Nixon tried to sabotage our democracy by killing LBJ’s peace negotiations with Vietnam and followed-up with burglaries and cover-ups when he thought Democrats were onto him. He was forced to resign. George W. Bush and the GOP stopped the counting of votes in Florida and handed the presidency to themselves. That assault has scarred our politics for decades. 

    But never — not once in 250 years — has a president openly declared that he will strip states of their constitutional right to run elections, end mail-in voting, and ban voting machines altogether. This is unprecedented, authoritarian, and it must be stopped.

    It’s also just one in a broad spectrum of attacks Republicans have launched against your right to vote, with the SAVE Act — which will prevent women from voting if their birth certificate and drivers’ license have different names on them and they’ve never had an official change-of-name in the courts — teed up in the US Senate. All while millions are being purged from the voting rolls as you read these words.

    This is the moment when the American people must decide whether they still believe in democracy. If we shrug, if we accept this as just more noise from a corrupt and broken con man, we will lose it. If we wait for someone else to act, we will lose it. If we tell ourselves the courts will save us, we may be bitterly disappointed. 

    The survival of democracy has never been guaranteed. It has always required vigilance, courage, and action. Now it requires all three from each of us.

    Trump’s promised executive order is not just a legal maneuver. It’s a declaration of war against the American people. It’s the dream of every tyrant: to control who votes and who does not, to dictate the rules of elections so that the outcome is predetermined. 

    What Putin and Trump are proposing is not democracy. It’s not freedom. It’s not America.

    And the Republicans who are enabling this treachery are as guilty as Trump himself. They’re betraying their oaths, their constituents, and our country. History will remember them not as conservatives or patriots, but as the gravediggers of our Republic.

    This is the line. This is the moment. We cannot let Trump and his cronies bulldoze democracy into the ground at Putin’s command. Every patriot, every progressive, every independent, every honest conservative who still believes in the Constitution must join together and say no. 

    No to dictatorship. No to disenfranchisement. No to treason.

    If we fail now, there may not be another chance.



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  • Trump wants to cut college access programs for low-income students; California educators are pushing back

    Trump wants to cut college access programs for low-income students; California educators are pushing back


    Students at a National TRIO Day Celebration at Cal Poly Pomona.

    Courtesy of Laura E. Ayon

    Around California this summer, low-income and first-generation students are staying in college dorms for the first time. High schoolers are camping beside the Klamath River. Undergraduates are presenting research at a symposium for budding scholars in Long Beach.

    All are part of federally funded TRIO programs — like Upward Bound and McNair Scholars — based on California campuses, from rural Columbia College neighboring Yosemite National Park to private four-year institutions in Los Angeles like the University of Southern California. TRIO reaches children as young as middle school, preparing them to enroll in college and providing mentorship, academic advice and research opportunities when they do. In California, the programs served over 100,000 participants in the 2023-24 academic year.

    “I really don’t think I could have made it through City College [of San Francisco] without them,” said Ekaterini Stamatakos, 22, a psychology major and TRIO student who earned an associate degree and then transferred to UCLA, where she will start her junior year this year. “I think these kinds of programs really go beyond whatever they might say on their profiles or the paragraphs that they have on their webpages — it really does make such an impact on students’ lives.”

    But hanging over TRIO programs like Talent Search and Student Support Services is a Trump administration proposal to eliminate them. If Congress enacts that plan, all TRIO Student Support Services — such as tutoring in reading, help with college applications and workshops in financial literacy — would be defunded starting in fiscal year 2026. Their funding is uncertain until Congress finalizes the appropriations bill later this year.

    TRIO, whose name derives from an original group of three programs but now includes eight, has largely prevailed in past funding battles. With an annual budget now exceeding $1 billion, it continues to garner significant bipartisan support. But a White House budget request released in the spring argues that TRIO programs, rooted in 1960s anti-poverty policy, are now “a relic of the past.”

    “Today, the pendulum has swung and access to college is not the obstacle it was for students of limited means,” the budget request says. Colleges “should be using their own resources to engage with K-12 schools in their communities to recruit students, and then once those students are on campus, aid in their success through to graduation.”

    The threat has mobilized TRIO supporters to redouble a public awareness campaign aimed at persuading lawmakers to maintain the programs. In California, there were about 450 TRIO programs in the 2023-24 academic year, an EdSource analysis of federal data shows, with most of that funding flowing to programs housed at more than 100 colleges and universities.

    The proposal to sever funding for TRIO comes as the Trump administration has notched a U.S. Supreme Court victory that clears the way for mass layoffs at the U.S. Department of Education. This month, California joined a coalition of states suing for the release of $6.8 billion in federal school funding that has been frozen by the federal government. Since January, the White House has enacted or attempted a host of other changes affecting areas like financial aid and how the federal government interprets civil rights law. 

    TRIO programs based on California campuses like Sonoma State University, Cal Poly Pomona and UC Davis each receive millions of dollars annually and are funded to serve thousands of participants per campus, the analysis shows. Smaller TRIO programs, many at community colleges, may work with dozens or hundreds of students on a budget of less than $300,000. 

    At Cal Poly Humboldt, high school students and rising college freshmen this summer read an August Wilson play before venturing on a field trip to see it performed live at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival. At Cal Poly Pomona, peer coaches prepare presentations for fellow students on such topics as artificial intelligence and summer internships. At Columbia College, a community college 50 miles northeast of Modesto, a TRIO director said she’s worked with everyone from 14-year-olds in dual enrollment programs to 72-year-olds advancing toward master’s degrees.

    Decades of consensus meets partisan divides

    Studies generally suggest TRIO has a positive effect on academic outcomes, such as enrolling in college or completing a degree. Supporters also tout the success of alumni — some of whom have gone on to become lawmakers, astronauts, and in many cases, leaders of local TRIO programs themselves — as evidence of a positive impact on families and communities. 

    “I have alumni whose kids are now in college and thriving, or have graduated college,” said Rafael Topete, who leads the TRIO Student Support Services Program at Cal State Long Beach. 

    But this is not the first time TRIO programs have faced Republican-led challenges. Under President Ronald Reagan, TRIO advocates blocked an attempt to halve the program’s budget. Bipartisan support again thwarted a bid to eliminate TRIO funding during the Clinton administration. 

    TRIO’s critics point to a U.S. Department of Education-sponsored 2009 study finding that Upward Bound did not have a statistically significant impact on overall postsecondary enrollment. (The Council for Opportunity in Education, which advocates for TRIO and other college access programs, later sponsored a rebuttal study, which found Upward Bound had a strong positive impact on students.)

    Two recent U.S. Government Accountability Office reports argue that the federal Department of Education could improve how it evaluates TRIO. The department has said further steps to verify data depend on the agency having adequate staff.

    Educational Talent Search and Cal-SOAP students at Cal State Long Beach attend a workshop to help rising seniors get ready for college applications and financial aid. (Courtesy of Jesus Maldonado)

    Education Secretary Linda McMahon this spring resurrected such accountability arguments to justify defunding the programs. “I just think that we aren’t able to see the effectiveness across the board that we would normally look to see with our federal spending,” McMahon said at a June budget hearing.

    People who work for TRIO programs object to those criticisms. In interviews, many named by memory the metrics they report as a condition of receiving federal funding, like high school graduation rates and college enrollment statistics. “Every year, we report data to verify we are doing what we said we would do,” said Kathy Kailikole, who has had a 30-year career in TRIO programs and currently works at San Diego State University.

    There are signs that TRIO remains a point of agreement in a Congress more often divided along party lines. Federal funding for TRIO has climbed from $838 million in 2014 to almost $1.2 billion in 2023. And of the 130 members in the Congressional TRIO Caucus, 26 are Republicans. U.S. Sen. Susan Collins of Maine and U.S. Rep. Mike Simpson of Idaho are among the Republicans who have vocally questioned cuts to TRIO.

    Today’s bitter ideological divides may test that consensus. 

    In May, three Upward Bound grantees outside California received notice from the Department of Education that their funding would not be continued due to conflicts with Trump administration priorities, said Kimberly Jones, president of the Council for Opportunity in Education.

    A copy of one such cancellation letter provided to EdSource by Jones said the grants “violate the letter or purpose of Federal civil rights law; conflict with the Department’s policy of prioritizing merit, fairness, and excellence in education; undermine the well-being of the students these programs are intended to help; or constitute an inappropriate use of federal funds.” 

    Overcoming distance and doubt in rural California 

    Jen Dyke directs the Upward Bound program at Cal Poly Humboldt where, years ago, she was once a student. Today, she travels hundreds of miles to recruit students from rural Hayfork, South Fork and Hoopa. It’s a region where rural schools often contend with high teacher turnover rates, low math test scores and an uncertain economic outlook, Dyke and her colleagues said. 

    “Timber is already gone. Fishing is already gone. Tourism is now something that is not super strong because of wildfires,” Dyke said during a lull in Upward Bound’s summer academy, which brings 27 high school-age students on campus to take classes and live in dorms. “So these areas that we serve are, once again, facing dismal futures if we also cut TRIO.”

    Cal Poly Humboldt’s TRIO initiatives are among dozens of TRIO programs in California — and more than 500 in the U.S. — that reach participants in predominantly rural communities and remote towns, an EdSource review of federal data found.

    Rose Sita Francia, who directs another Cal Poly Humboldt TRIO program called Talent Search, tries to expose students as early as sixth grade to careers that give them a reason to consider postsecondary education. The first step, she said, is to put college on the map for them — literally. 

    “Many students don’t know where Arcata is, where Cal Poly Humboldt is located,” she said. “And so we have teachers ask us regularly, ‘Will you show us some geography of college-going, and will you talk to us about trade school options as well?’”

    Associate degree students at Columbia College tour a Humboldt County forest while on a trip to visit Sonoma State University and Cal Poly Humboldt on Sept. 17, 2024. (Courtesy of Anneka Rogers Whitmer)

    Anneka Rogers Whitmer oversees TRIO programs housed at Columbia College, more than an hour’s drive from the two nearest four-year universities, Stanislaus State University and UC Merced. The college’s Educational Opportunity Center serves more than 1,000 people across five counties with just two staff members, who visit places like prisons and social service agencies. The TRIO staff have had to overcome distrust of college degrees, Whitmer said, by offering advice on how to apply for financial aid and where to find vocational training.

    “We’re an education desert, no doubt,” she said, “but we just have to think more creatively about how we’re going to reach the folks.”

    Ekaterini “Kat” Stamatakos and Ghislaine Maze pose for a photo at the City College of San Francisco commencement ceremony in May 2025. (Courtesy of Ghislaine Maze)

    ‘It’s easy for students to get lost or discouraged’

    The program Ghislaine Maze coordinates at City College of San Francisco may be called the TRIO Writing Success Project, but it does much more than provide writing workshops and embedded tutors in English classes.

    “So many students are trying to figure things out on their own, on the fly, with just a few hours on campus,” said Maze, whose program is funded to serve 310 students on a budget of roughly $485,000 a year. “It’s easy for students to get lost or discouraged.”

    Tight campus budgets may leave other academic advisers on campus so overbooked that students struggle to get appointments, she said. A trusted TRIO mentor can help navigate financial aid and plan a student’s academic schedule. “That’s where a program like ours kind of fits in,” Maze said.

    Before Ekaterini Stamatakos got to City College, she attended four high schools. She thinks she must have missed hundreds of days of school in that time, a consequence of housing instability. She struggled academically, but finished at a credit recovery school.

    Stamatakos, who goes by Kat, was retaking an English class at City College when a tutor from the TRIO Writing Success Project explained that it provided feedback on writing assignments, mentorship and a place to hang out at the library, complete with snacks. “This is perfect,” Stamatakos thought. “I’m just going to basically live there.”

    With assistance from a writing tutor, Stamatakos earned an ‘A’ in the course. “I don’t think I ever imagined that I would get an ‘A’ after my years of failing classes,” she said.





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  • Migrant education helps farmworkers’ children catch up; Trump wants to end it

    Migrant education helps farmworkers’ children catch up; Trump wants to end it


    High school students in Monterey County’s Migrant Education Student Academy learn bioengineering from Stanford University students.

    Credit: Zaidee Stavely/EdSource

    Top Takeaways
    • In Monterey County, students brush up on English, math and science to fill gaps caused by moving schools.
    • California is suing the Trump administration for withholding funds from the nearly 60-year-old program.
    • Many current and former students call the program life-changing.

    A group of high school students in Monterey County is spending their summer extracting DNA from sprigs of clover, making jewelry out of algae and shaping ceramic bowls, while also beefing up their math, reading and writing skills.

    This Migrant Education Student Academy is one of dozens of federally funded migrant education programs in California that help the children of agricultural workers fill gaps in academic instruction as they move with their parents from job to job.

    Fourteen-year-old Omar Flores said the program offers classes that he has never had access to, like ceramics and BioJam, a bioengineering class taught by Stanford University students.

    “I like how we get to build with clay, and we get to express our feelings with clay. I like BioJam too because we further our knowledge and look in microscopes. I’ve learned a lot about genes and how we can modify genes,” Flores said.

    Educators say Migrant Education Programs help boost students’ academic skills and put them on track for college and careers, which is backed up by some research studies.

    But this program and others like it throughout the state may soon disappear. Migrant education is one of five programs for which President Donald Trump withheld federal funds that are usually distributed to states on July 1. California is now suing the Trump administration over the frozen funds, which total about $121 million for migrant education in the state, according to an estimate by the Learning Policy Institute. 

    The president has proposed eliminating the program in the next fiscal year’s budget, which is yet to be voted on in Congress. In his budget proposal, he implied that it was not in the nation’s interest to prepare migrant education students for college. “These programs have not been proven effective, are extremely costly, and encourage ineligible non-citizens to access U.S. IHEs [institutions of higher education], stripping resources from American students.”

    Yet many migrant education students are U.S. citizens. The Migrant Education Program, established almost 60 years ago, serves students whose parents work in agriculture, fishing, dairy or logging, and have moved in the last three years for work, regardless of their immigration status.

    Loss of funds would be ‘devastating’

    In California, 47,225 students were enrolled in Migrant Education Programs statewide in 2024-25. Monterey County’s program is one of the largest, with 4,328 students in 2024-25, for which it received about $14 million in federal funds. In addition to academic instruction and counseling, many counties also offer health services. San Diego County, for example, brings a mobile dental clinic from USC each year to provide dental cleanings, fillings and other treatment to migrant students.

    Monterey County and many others are keeping their programs through the end of the summer, but after that, their future is uncertain. The elimination of the funds would be devastating, said Constantino Silva, senior director of migrant education in Monterey County.

    “The support system for the migratory students will not be there,” Silva said. “Hopefully, there’s enough caring people who will still keep these students on their radar, right? But I’m afraid the students will fall through the cracks. I’m worried that only a few will continue to thrive as opposed to many.” 

    Silva credits the Migrant Education Program with preparing him for college. He was a migrant student himself, after he moved with his family from Mexico to Monterey County when he was 6 so they could be with his father, who moved back and forth for work. 

    “It made a huge difference for me. By the time I got to high school, I was taking college prep courses, right? I could speak and write in English on a very high level. And my math was great too. So I was propelled into college prep, and then I went to college, and I really credit that to the additional support that I received through the migrant program,” Silva said.

    ‘I learned a little bit more words here’

    Silva’s first school in the U.S. was Santa Lucia Elementary in King City, where on a recent Wednesday, first and second grade migrant education students were learning the sound O makes when it’s before an A. In unison, they read sentences aloud: “They load the boat,” “Goats like to roam,” and ‘The soap will float.”

    In another classroom, third and fourth graders practiced the moves for a dance they learned from a visiting teacher from Mexico. Piñatas the students made by hand hung from the ceiling.

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JapJFXJZERE

    Fifth graders discussed a book they were reading, “Radio Man,” about a child in a migrant farm-working family. Teacher Keyla Robles asked them to talk with their classmates about what happened at the beginning of the book, and then what happened in the middle.

    Daleysa, 10, said she was excited to read a book about migrant workers like her own family, who travel each year from Yuma, Arizona, to King City. Both of her parents work in the fields, she said.

    “I like it a lot because it’s about a boy who moves to different places to get different fruits and vegetables. And it’s kind of like how we do it, but we only go to two different places,” Daleysa said. 

    Oliver, 10, whose parents work in the lettuce fields, said he learned multiplication and more English during the summer program.

    “I learned a little bit more words here,” he said, adding that it has also helped his friends who do not speak fluent English. “It helps them a little bit more than the normal school, because the normal school doesn’t really tell you to repeat those words.”

    Their teacher, Robles, is passionate about teaching the children of migratory farmworkers because she was one herself. As a child, her dad worked in Arizona for six months out of the year and in Monterey County the other half. Her family’s constant moves made it hard for her to do well in school or learn English, she said.

    “I experienced that big gap,” she said. “It took me years to pass the ELPAC, for example, because I wasn’t having that support that I know that Migrant Ed gives our students.” The ELPAC is the English Language Proficiency Assessments for California, a test that all students who speak a language other than English must take until they are considered proficient in English.

    Keyla Robles is passionate about teaching migratory students.
    Credit: Zaidee Stavely/EdSource

    Now, Robles is trying to help fill the gaps she sees in her own migrant education students. “It’s basic phonics, phonemic awareness that as they’re progressing from grade level to grade level, they just go over their head. They never actually get that understanding of basic letter sounds, basic addition, subtraction,” she said.

    Robles applied for a job as a full-time migrant resource teacher with the Monterey County Office of Education, but the job was put on hold after federal funding was frozen.

    “It’s really disappointing for me,” Robles said. “Because I feel like I have such a big impact on the students.”

    Setting students up for success

    A few blocks away at Chalone Peaks Middle School, students gushed about how much they learned in the summer migrant education program’s STEM class, putting together hand-cranked light bulbs and building palm-sized radios. 

    “The Migrant Education Program is different from regular school because it teaches you a lot more,” said 12-year-old Evelyn, who travels back and forth between Yuma, Arizona, and King City every year. “In school, you mostly review stuff. Here in the STEM class, they teach you real science, and you actually do stuff for yourself.”

    Clicking through different stations from banda music to talk shows on her new radio, Evelyn said she will “definitely” use it.

    High school migrant education students from Monterey County spent a few days at the University of California, Santa Cruz, this summer. Others attended a summer program at California State University, Fresno. Migrant Education Program coordinator Karla Caliz said the program makes it more likely for these students to attend college.

    “Many of our students will narrate how it’s life-changing for them,” she said. “We do believe that without programs like these, we would have students who would not be able to access the information or the process to enter [college].”

    Jose Perez, the migrant resource teacher for the King City Union School District, said the summer Migrant Education Program helps set students up to succeed during the school year.

    “Sometimes we have students who haven’t had any formal education, so they don’t know about social expectations, and this is a good way to teach them norms in the United States, because in the regular setting, during the regular year, these students may be seen as troublemakers or just being defiant, and they just need to learn our system,” Perez said.

    It hurts, Perez said, to know the program could end.

    “In my experience in this community, even the district itself, they rely on me a lot,” he said. “I don’t see these students having the chances without the migrant education support.”





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  • Secretary of ED McMahon Wants to Destroy US Education with Her Budget!

    Secretary of ED McMahon Wants to Destroy US Education with Her Budget!


    Secretary of Education Linda McMahon released her budget proposal for next year, and it’s as bad as expected.

    Carol Burris, executive director of the Network for Public Education, reviewed the budget and concluded that it shows a reckless disregard for the neediest students and schools and outright hostility towards students who want to go to college.

    We know that Trump “loves the uneducated.” Secretary McMahon wants more of them.

    Burris sent out the following alert:

    Image

    Linda McMahon, handpicked by Donald Trump to lead the U.S. Department of Education, has just released the most brutal, calculated, and destructive education budget in the Department’s history.

    She proposes eliminating $8.5 billion in Congressionally funded programs—28 in total—abolishing 10 outright and shoving the other 18 into a $2 billion block grant. That’s $4.5 billion less than those 18 programs received last year.

    Tell Congress: Stop McMahon From Destroying Our Public Schools

    And it gets worse: States are banned from using the block grant to support the following programs funded by Congress:

    • Aid for migrant children whose families move frequently for agricultural work
    • English Language Acquisition grants for emerging English learners
    • Community schools offering wraparound services
    • Grants to improve teacher effectiveness and leadership
    • Innovation and research for school improvement
    • Comprehensive Centers, including those serving students with disabilities
    • Technical assistance for desegregation
    • The Ready to Learn program for young children

    These aren’t just budget cuts—they’re targeted strikes. 

    McMahon justifies cutting support for migrant children by falsely claiming the program “encourages ineligible non-citizens to access taxpayer dollars.” That is a lie. Most migrant farmworkers are U.S. citizens or have H-2A visas. They feed this nation with their backbreaking labor.

    The attack continues for opportunity for higher education:

    • Pell Grants are slashed by $1,400 on average; the maximum grant drops from $7,395 to $5,710
    • Federal Work-Study loses $1 billion—an 80% cut
    • TRIO programs, which support college-readiness and support for low-income students, veterans, and students with disabilities, are eliminated
    • Campus child care programs for student-parents are defunded

    In all, $1.67 billion in student college assistance is gone—wiped out on top of individual Pell grant cuts. 

    Send your letter now

    And yet, McMahon increased funding for the federal Charter Schools Program to half a billion dollars for a sector that saw an increase of only eleven schools last year. Meanwhile, her allies in Congress are pushing a $5 billion private school and homeschool voucher scheme through the so-called Educational Choice for Children Act (ECCA).

    And despite reducing Department staff by 50%, she only cuts the personnel budget by 10%.

    This is not budgeting. It is a war on public education.

    This is a blueprint for privatization, cruelty, and the systematic dismantling of opportunity for America’s children.

    We cannot let it stand.

    Raise your voice. Share this letter: https://networkforpubliceducation.org/tell-congress-dont-let-linda-mcmahon-slash-funding-for-children-college-students-and-veterans-to-fund-school-choice/  Call Congress.

    Let Congress know that will not sit silently while they dismantle our children’s future.

    Thank you for all you do,

    Carol Burris

    Network for Public Education Executive Director



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  • How California can achieve what the public actually wants from education

    How California can achieve what the public actually wants from education


    Three high school Linked Learning pathway students don lab coats as they collaborate on a hands-on science experiment, bringing classroom learning to life through real-world application.

    Courtesy: Linked Learning Alliance

    California’s Golden State Pathways Program is a historic commitment to career-connected learning.

    In January 2025, $470 million in grants began flowing to hundreds of school communities across the state. These are huge investments, based on a proven approach to education called Linked Learning, which carefully integrates rigorous, college-bound academics with hands-on career learning experiences and strong student supports — all connected by an industry theme that meets workforce needs within the local community.

    For example: In Porterville Unified School district, which serves California’s rural central valley, nearly every high school student is enrolled in a Linked Learning college and career preparatory pathway related to thriving local occupations, including those in energy, aviation, agricultural technology, and other fields. The district has an impressive 99% graduation rate, 94% of its alumni enroll in postsecondary education, and 25% percent of students earn industry-recognized certificates while still in high school. Similarly, by offering Linked Learning pathways focused on health sciences, information technology, child development and other high-growth careers, the more urban Oakland Unified School District has boosted its rates of high school graduation and completion of college-preparatory credits, and reduced absenteeism and discipline issues.

    Both the extraordinary new Golden State Pathways Program (GSPP) funding and the California Master Plan for Career Education, recently released to guide educators and labor market leaders across the state, empower school leaders to build such learning pathways for their students. We wholeheartedly affirm this work.

    But truly effective Linked Learning practice — the kind that extensive third-party research links to excellence and equity — requires more than working through a checklist of courses and activities. It takes intentional integration of each aspect of student experience, thoughtful measurement and supportive policy.

    To this end, we offer three key recommendations: 

    1. District leaders should push for true college and career integration. Rather than maintain the long-standing divide between college prep curricula and career-technical education, Golden State Pathways Program resources can be applied to make core academic subjects more engaging and useful by connecting them to themed pathways focused on the high-opportunity, high-wage careers that correspond to real workforce needs in each region. Classroom learning should sync with similarly themed sequential career-technical education courses and work-based learning, like internships and apprenticeships. Districts should engage students and families to ensure pathway options are well understood, aligned with student interests, and connected to workforce demands. As modeled in Porterville and Oakland, the right industry themes bring learning to life in very tangible ways, and they build skills and mindsets that translate to success in any field of future study or employment.

    2. Researchers should inform and strengthen program implementation. Rather than wait for parents and legislators to ask, “did this pathways investment work?” participating regions should develop a robust and proactive research agenda in coordination with local communities to begin generating evidence that improves outcomes along the way. Understanding student experiences, opportunities and outcomes in pathways is essential for strengthening the program over time. Research on the conditions that return the strongest results can help spread best practices across rural, suburban and urban communities.

    3. Policymakers should remove barriers to effective implementation. We cannot keep asking high schools to do everything they currently do and layer additional tasks on top of it all. State and local policies that enable waivers, flexibility, or alternatives to A–G requirements for UC/CSU admissions would increase time and space in students’ schedules to engage in work-based learning. Policymakers should also build in incentives for collaboration and coordination between K–12 and postsecondary institutions to enable purposeful dual-enrollment opportunities that accelerate all students toward a valuable credential. To further our recommendation in point two above, policymakers should also ensure data systems that tag students in pathways to lower the barriers and costs of high-quality research on program outcomes. 

    Washington DC and California are moving in dramatically different directions on education. Where the nation is pulling back, we are charging ahead. We must continue to see this progress through. By acting on these recommendations, we prove a point: that government can respond in good faith to the public it serves. And we do not fail to miss the point of it all: that our future depends on getting education right for young people.

    •••

    Ash Vasudeva is president and CEO of ConnectED: The National Center for College and Career, an organization that partners with school, district, and community leaders to transform education through Linked Learning pathways.

    Anne Stanton is president and CEO of the Linked Learning Alliance, an organization that leads the movement toward educational excellence and equity for every adolescent through high-quality college and career preparation.

    Editors’ note: Anne Stanton is a member of the EdSource board of directors. EdSource maintains sole editorial control over the content of its coverage. 

    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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  • What’s Missing from the Story About the Qatari Jet That Trump Wants

    What’s Missing from the Story About the Qatari Jet That Trump Wants


    So the U.S. government accepted the luxurious jet offered by Qatar to serve as Air Force 1, the President’s official airplane.

    The New York Times published a lengthy story –“the inside story”–of Trump’s longing to accept the jet as a gift from the government of Qatar. It explains that the Qataris had been trying to sell the opulent jet for five years, with no success.

    Trump wants an opulent jet, even if it is a used jet. He thinks the U.S. should have the biggest airplane for its president. The Qataris flew the jet to Palm Beach, so he could personally inspect it. He fell in love with it. He always falls for gold trappings. He thought there was no problem accepting a gift from another nation. Who would turn down a “free” gift?

    The inside story begins:

    President Trump wanted a quick solution to his Air Force One problem.

    The United States signed a $3.9 billion contract with Boeing in 2018 for two jets to be used as Air Force One, but a series of delays had slowed the work far past the 2024 delivery deadline, possibly beyond Mr. Trump’s second term.

    Now Mr. Trump had to fly around in the same old planes that transported President George H.W. Bush 35 years ago. It wasn’t just a vanity project. Those planes, which are no longer in production, require extensive servicing and frequent repairs, and officials from both parties, reaching back a decade or more, had been pressing for replacements.

    Mr. Trump, though, wanted a new plane while he was still in office. But how?

    “We’re the United States of America,” Mr. Trump said this month. “I believe that we should have the most impressive plane.”

    The story of how the Trump administration decided that it would accept a free luxury Boeing 747-8 from Qatar to serve as Air Force One involved weeks of secret coordination between Washington and Doha. The Pentagon and the White House’s military office swung into action, and Mr. Trump’s Middle East envoy, Steven Witkoff, played a key role.

    Aeronautical experts say that it would cost as much as $1 billion to renovate the jet and give it the security of an Air Force 1. It might not be ready until the end of Trump’s term, when (they said) it would be retired to the Trump Library.

    The story failed to mention the Emoluments Clause of the Constitution, which prohibits the President or other federal officials from accepting gifts from foreign nations.

    Brittanica says:

    The emoluments clause, also called the foreign emoluments clause, is a provision of the U.S. Constitution (Article I, Section 9, Paragraph 8) that generally prohibits federal officeholders from receiving any gift, payment, or other object or service of value from a foreign state or its rulers, officers, or representatives. The clause provides that:

    No Title of Nobility shall be granted by the United States: And no Person holding any Office of Profit or Trust under them, shall, without the Consent of the Congress, accept of any present, Emolument, Office, or Title, of any kind whatever, from any King, Prince, or foreign State.

    The Constitution also contains a “domestic emoluments clause” (Article II, Section 1, Paragraph 7), which prohibits the president from receiving any “Emolument” from the federal government or the states beyond “a Compensation” for his “Services” as chief executive.

    I have so far not seen a story that explains that the gift is unconstitutional, unless Congress gives its consent.

    I think we have become so accustomed to Trump ignoring and violating the Constitution that it isn’t even worth mentioning. This is a classic demonstration of the Overton Window.



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  • California wants to accelerate schools’ efforts to build 2.3 million units of housing

    California wants to accelerate schools’ efforts to build 2.3 million units of housing


    A view of the courtyard from the third floor of a housing complex for teachers and education staff of Jefferson Union High School District in Daly City on July 8, 2022.

    Credit: Godofredo A. Vásquez/AP Photo

    Jefferson Union High School District used to lose a quarter of its staff every year, which meant that it began every school year scrambling to fill vacancies. That changed in 2022 when the Daly City-based district developed affordable housing for its staff.

    The district built 122 units on school district-owned land that is now fully occupied by 25% of the district’s staff. Board member Andy Lie said the district is beginning the new school year with zero vacancies, a transformation he calls “remarkable” and “unheard of in public education.”

    In January, legislation to ease zoning requirements for school districts interested in building affordable housing took effect. Jefferson Union High and a handful of other districts in the state are ahead of others in providing housing for both teachers and classified staff.

    Districts with success stories, as well as local and state leaders, will be at an Aug. 14 housing summit convened by the California Department of Education (CDE). During a news conference Tuesday at department headquarters, State Superintendent of Public Instruction Tony Thurmond said schools own 75,000 acres of undeveloped land that could be used to build 2.3 million units. Thurmond wants to see these units built over the next eight years as a way to address California’s teacher shortage.

    Citing overwhelming interest in this matter, the California School Boards Association’s presentation on the topic this month noted that 158 of about 1,000 school districts have expressed interest in providing affordable housing for education staff. Eight districts already provide housing or have housing under construction, while the vast majority of the rest are in the early stages of exploring it.

    The California School Boards Association (CSBA) has created a map showing the status of housing projects across the state. To access more information expand the map to full screen:

    Recruiting and retaining school staff

    State and local officials say that building housing goes a long way toward solving many of the problems both schools and other Californians face. Salaries of school staff are often far below the median rent in many areas, which creates difficulties finding or retaining staff. That leads to long commutes for staff whose household budgets are already stretched thin.

    Many districts dealing with declining enrollment and associated financial woes consider selling off some of their land, a valuable resource in California, for short-term gain, according to Andrew Keller, senior director of operations and strategic initiatives for CSBA.

    Developing housing on that land instead makes a dent in California’s affordability crisis and helps retain teachers, while also offering school districts a new stream of no-strings-attached funding. Schools can typically rent far below market value while still earning income that can support them long-term, Keller said.

    Jefferson Union High School District found no shortage of staff members interested in their affordable housing. The district currently has a waitlist of 30 members. Thurmond would also like to see legislation that would allow districts to open their units to the wider community because students and their families are also struggling with the affordability of California.

    In Los Angeles, LAUSD has three projects with 185 units that serve its employees — and Superintendent Alberto Carvalho said the district is surveying employees and considering opening more affordable housing on 10 sites. But the district has also launched a project aimed at helping local families in concert with Many Mansions, a local nonprofit. The Sun King Apartments is a 25-unit facility that offers permanent supportive housing to chronically homeless families with children enrolled in LAUSD schools.

    Even school districts that led the trend said it was a struggle to make the pitch to the community. Richard Barrera, a San Diego Unified School District board member, said community members would be confused about why the district would need to get into the housing business.

    “If we don’t recruit and retain educators, we can’t do our job as educators,” Barrera said.

    San Diego Unified has a goal of opening up 1,500 affordable units to house 10% of its staff, thanks to a school bond measure that passed in 2022, Barrera said.

    Thurmond would like to see legislation that creates even more financial incentives for districts to build housing, which might help those seeking bond measures to fund projects. He noted that educator housing is also eligible for the $500 million in available annual housing tax credits from the state.

    Some school districts have had trouble convincing voters that building housing for teachers and staff is worth it. In 2020, school bond measures for staff housing failed at Patterson Joint Unified School District in Stanislaus County, Soledad Unified in Monterey County and East Side Union High School District in Santa Clara County. 

    Even Jefferson Union High School District eked out a narrow win with just over the 55% requirement needed to pass.

    “The community didn’t quite understand what it was that we were doing,” Lie said, “but it passed.”

    Lie said that staff morale has improved, and the district can now rely on veterans to stick around and build on their success in Jefferson Union High School District, demonstrating why affordable housing for staff is so important to student success. 

    “We can’t give our best to our students if our educators are struggling with housing insecurity,” he said.

    Resources for districts

    CSBA has joined forces with researchers to create resources for districts interested in building housing — to help overcome one of the biggest concerns about school districts lacking expertise in building housing, Keller said. 

    Researchers want to make the process as easy as possible for schools, said Manos Proussaloglou, assistant director at UCLA’s cityLAB, including preparing guides, based on lessons learned both from both successful and unsuccessful projects. 

    “We’re really interested in learning why some educational workforce housing projects start but then stall — and see if we can learn from those,” Proussaloglou said.

    To expedite the process of building, researchers from the Center for Cities + Schools at UC Berkeley have created a map that homes in on the communities that will most benefit.

    “Ultimately, those are the districts we really want to work with and make sure they understand that it is an opportunity to address those challenges,” said Sara Hinkley, the California program manager at the Center for Cities + Schools.

    The calculations behind the map by UC Berkeley are where Thurmond got the number of 2.3 million potential units in the state. That figure assumes that every extra acre of developable land a school district owns could support 30 units.

    The map tallies the surplus property California school districts own, considering factors such as how many are on school campuses or completely undeveloped sites and whether those sites are close to amenities like public transit, while also accounting for annual teacher turnover rate, the demographics of the school, enrollment and the gap between staff salaries and median rents.

    “We know that until we can pay teachers and classified staff better — which is our priority, that building affordable housing for them is an important tool for educator recruitment and retention,” said Thurmond.





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  • Stephen Miller Wants to Abolish Habeas Corpus. This Is Why He Is Wrong.

    Stephen Miller Wants to Abolish Habeas Corpus. This Is Why He Is Wrong.


    Stephen Miller is the evil genius of the Trump administration. He has built his reputation as the person with the least heart or soul. He has been the loudest advocate for kicking out immigrants, as many and as quickly as possible. Miller recently proposed that the Trump administration might need to suspend habeas corpus so as to speed up the expulsion of millions of undocumented immigrants.

    Habeas corpus means literally “you should have the body.” It means that a prisoner must be brought before a court so a judge can decide if the detention is lawful.

    The U.S. Constitution guarantees the right to habeas corpus in Article I, Section 9,states that the right to habeas corpus, which is a legal procedure to ensure a person isn’t unjustly imprisoned, “shall not be suspended, unless when in Cases of Rebellion or Invasion the public Safety may require it“

    Miller said: “The writ of habeas corpus can be suspended in a time of invasion. So I would say that’s an option we’re actively looking at.”

    Legal scholar Steve Vladeck wrote that “Miller made some of the most remarkable (and remarkably scary) comments about federal courts that I think we’ve ever heard from a senior White House official.” In this post, he explains why Miller is wrong.

    He begins with Miller’s words:

    Well, the Constitution is clear. And that, of course, is the supreme law of the land, that the privilege of the writ of habeas corpus can be suspended in a time of invasion. So … that’s an option we’re actively looking at. Look, a lot of it depends on whether the courts do the right thing or not. At the end of the day, Congress passed a body of law known as the Immigration Nationality Act which stripped Article III courts, that’s the judicial branch, of jurisdiction over immigration cases. So Congress actually passed what’s called jurisdiction stripping legislation. It passed a number of laws that say that the Article III courts aren’t even allowed to be involved in immigration cases.

    Vladeck writes that Miller’s view is just plain wrong:

    I know there’s a lot going on, and that Miller says lots of incendiary (and blatantly false) stuff. But this strikes me as raising the temperature to a whole new level—and thus meriting a brief explanation of all of the ways in which this statement is both (1) wrong; and (2) profoundly dangerous. Specifically, it seems worth making five basic points:

    First, the Suspension Clause of the Constitution, which is in Article I, Section 9, Clause 2 is meant to limit the circumstances in which habeas can be foreclosed (Article I, Section 9 includes limits on Congress’s powers)—thereby ensuring that judicial review of detentions are otherwise available. (Note that it’s in the original Constitution—adopted before even the Bill of Rights.) I spent a good chunk of the first half of my career writing about habeas and its history, but the short version is that the Founders were hell-bent on limiting, to the most egregious emergencies, the circumstances in which courts could be cut out of the loop. To casually suggest that habeas might be suspended because courts have ruled against the executive branch in a handful of immigration cases is to turn the Suspension Clause entirely on its head.

    Second, Miller is being slippery about the actual text of the Constitution (notwithstanding his claim that it is “clear”). The Suspension Clause does not say habeas can be suspended during any invasion; it says “The Privilege of the Writ of Habeas Corpus shall not be suspended, unless when in Cases of Rebellion or Invasion the public Safety may require it.” This last part, with my emphasis, is not just window-dressing; again, the whole point is that the default is for judicial review except when there is a specific national security emergency in which judicial review could itself exacerbate the emergency. The emergency itself isn’t enough. Releasing someone like Rümeysa Öztürk from immigration detention poses no threat to public safety—all the more so when the release is predicated on a judicial determination that Öztürk … poses no threat to public safety.

    Third, even if the textual triggers for suspending habeas corpus were satisfied, Miller also doesn’t deign to mention that the near-universal consensus is that only Congress can suspend habeas corpus—and that unilateral suspensions by the President are per se unconstitutional. I’ve written before about the Merryman case at the outset of the Civil War, which provides perhaps the strongest possible counterexample: that the President might be able to claim a unilateral suspension power if Congress is out of session (as it was from the outset of the Civil War in 1861 until July 4). Whatever the merits of that argument, it clearly has no applicability at this moment.

    Fourth, Miller is wrong, as a matter of fact,about the relationship between Article III courts (our usual federal courts) and immigration cases. It’s true that the Immigration and Nationality Act (especially as amended in 1996 and 2005) includes a series of “jurisdiction-stripping” provisions. But most of those provisions simply channel judicial review in immigration cases into immigration courts (which are part of the executive branch) in the first instance, with appeals to Article III courts. And as the district courts (and Second Circuit) have explained in cases like Khalil and Öztürk, even those provisions don’t categorically preclude any review by Article III courts prior to those appeals.

    Toward the end of the video, Miller tries to make a specific point about whether revocations of “TPS” (temporary protected status) are subject to judicial review. Here, he appears to be talking about a California district court ruling in the TPS Alliance case, in which the Trump administration is currently asking the Supreme Court for a stay of the district court’s injunction (the appropriate remedy in case the district court erred). And as the plaintiffs’ response brief in the Supreme Court explains in detail, the district court had very good reasons for holding that it had the power to hear their case.

    I don’t mean to overstate things; some of the questions raised by the INA’s (notoriously unclear) jurisdiction-stripping provisions can get very messy. But there’s a big difference, in my view, between reasonable disagreements over the language of complex jurisdictional statutes and Miller’s insinuation that Congress has categorically precluded judicial review in these cases. It just hasn’t.

    Fifth, and finally, Miller gives away the game when he says “a lot of it depends on whether the courts do the right thing or not.” It’s not just the mafia-esque threat implicit in this statement (“I’ll make him an offer he can’t refuse”); it’s that he’s telling on himself: He’s suggesting that the administration would (unlawfully) suspend habeas corpus if (but apparently only if) it disagrees with how courts rule in these cases. In other words, it’s not the judicial review itself that’s imperiling national security; it’s the possibility that the government might lose. That’s not, and has never been, a viable argument for suspending habeas corpus. Were it otherwise, there’d be no point to having the writ in the first place—let alone to enshrining it in the Constitution.

    If the goal is just to try to bully and intimidate federal judges into acquiescing in more unlawful activity by the Trump administration, that’s shameful enough. But suggesting that the President can unilaterally cut courts out of the loop solely because they’re disagreeing with him is suggesting that judicial review—indeed, that the Constitution itself—is just a convenience. Something tells me that even federal judges and justices who might otherwise be sympathetic to the government’s arguments on the merits in some of these cases will be troubled by the implication that their authority depends entirely upon the President’s beneficence.

    ***

    It’s certainly possible that this doesn’t go anywhere. Indeed, I hope that turns out to be true. But Miller’s comments strike me as a rather serious ratcheting up of the anti-court rhetoric coming out of this administration—and an ill-conceived one at that.



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  • Randi Weingarten: Not Everyone Needs or Wants to Go to College. That’s OK.

    Randi Weingarten: Not Everyone Needs or Wants to Go to College. That’s OK.


    A colleague said recently to me that the abandonment of vocational education was one of the great errors in American education in the past generation. I recall when New York City had successful high schools that prepared students for vocations and careers that paid well. The concept of “college for all” undermined support for such schools, and most of them closed.

    A few days ago, Randi Weingarten wrote an article in the New York Times endorsing CTE–career and technical education--a cause she has been supporting for years. CTE is an updated term for vocational education. One of the r big complaints about vocational education was that students were being trained to service obsolete machinery. CTE incorporates the latest technology into its curricula.

    Isn’t it time to recognize that electricians, plumbers, nurses, computer technicians, auto mechanics, and other skilled occupations are needed as much and often paid more than those with a Ph.D.? To be clear, I admire those who spend years to acquire a doctorate in the liberal arts, but the reality today is that most college professors are underpaid adjuncts.

    We should recognize that education is a lifelong endeavor. Everyone needs a strong foundation from K-12 in the skills of reading, writing, thinking, and using technology, as well as a solid grounding in mathematics, civics, history, the sciences, and the arts. Students should graduate high school ready for college or careers. They should be ready to make choices and able to change course, which many adults do.

    Randi writes:

    For years, America’s approach to education has been guided by an overly simplistic formula: 4+4 — the idea that students need four years of high school and four years of college to succeed in life.

    Even with this prevailing emphasis on college, around 40 percent of high schoolers do not enroll in college upon graduating, and only 60 percent of students who enroll in college earn a degree or credential within eight years of high school graduation.

    While college completion has positive effects — on health, lifetime earnings, civic engagement and even happiness — it’s increasingly clear that college for all should no longer be our North Star. It’s time to scale up successful programs that create multiple pathways for students so high school is a gateway to both college and career.

    More than 80 percent of America’s young people attend public schools, and the challenges many students and their families face are well known. Chronic absenteeismworsened during the pandemic. For many reasons, the country’s lowest-performing students are being left behind. Cellphones and social media have helped fuel an epidemic of bullying, loneliness and mental health struggles among youth. Educators, who have less and less authority in their classrooms, are valiantly fighting those headwinds, too often with insufficient resources.

    So far, President Trump’s response has been to order the dismantling of the Department of Education and to propose billions of dollars of cuts to K-12 education that will push our system of public schools closer to the breaking point.

    Republican-led states are increasingly embracing school vouchers, which let parents spend public funds on private schools, despite evidence of the negative effect of vouchers on student achievement: Evaluations of vouchers in Indiana, Louisiana, Ohio and Washington, D.C., show that these programs can cause drops in test scores. And vouchers divert vital funding that could and should go to public schools. Arizona is spending millions of dollars on vouchers for kids already attending private schools. Students in Cleveland’s public schools may lose up to $927 per pupil in education spending to vouchers each year.

    I propose a different strategy: aligning high school to both college prep and in-demand vocational career pathways. Just as students who plan to go to college can get a head start through Advanced Placement programs, high schools, colleges and employers should work together to provide the relevant coursework to engage students in promising career opportunities.

    I’m not suggesting reviving the old shop class, although there is value in aspects of that approach, including hands-on learning. We’ve got to shed the misperception some may still have of technical education as a dumping ground for students headed for low-skill, low-paying jobs.

    I taught social studies and A.P. government in a career and technical education, or C.T.E., school. My students not only prepared for careers in health care such as nursing; they also had robust discussions about the Constitution and won national debate competitions. I have seen innovative programs throughout the country, which show that high schools — with work force partners — can prepare all students for a variety of careers and fulfilling lives whether they go on to four-year or two-year college or training for a variety of skilled trades and technical careers.

    In April, I attended the opening of a C.T.E. high school, RioTECH, in Rio Rancho, N.M. RioTECH is a partnership between the public schools and a local community college, with support from industry partners and the local teachers union — an affiliate of the organization I lead, the American Federation of Teachers — giving students the opportunity to earn stackable credentials in high-demand skilled trades as well as tuition-free, dual-credit classes that count for both high school and college credit.

    The Brooklyn STEAM Center is a public school at the Navy Yard that partners with businesses, public high schools and the local union, the United Federation of Teachers. Students there have access to internships and apprenticeships and the potential of full-time jobs with more than 500 businesses on site. Career pathways include cybersecurity, construction technology and computer-aided design and engineering.

    In Newark, students at the Red Hawks Rising Teacher Academy can enter a no-cost, dual-enrollment program in partnership with Montclair State University, Newark Public Schools and the A.F.T. This high school experience with a high-quality teacher preparation program helps create a pipeline to educate, train and retain future teachers, and to diversify the teacher work force.

    Last year, the A.F.T. and two affiliates began an advanced technology framework with Micron and the state of New York in 10 school districts, now expanding to districts in Michigan and Minnesota, with federal funding. In this program, high school students acquire technical and foundational skills, creating pathways to middle-class jobs in the microchip sector that often won’t require a four-year college degree.

    More than 90 percent of students who concentrate in career and technical education graduate from high school, and about three-quarters of them continue their education after high school. Research shows that career and technical education has positive effects on students’ academic achievement, high school completion and college readiness…

    Ensuring all students get a great public education takes resources, which is why Mr. Trump’s planned cuts are just plain wrong. The Senate passed a resolution this year “supporting the goals and ideals of ‘Career and Technical Education Month’”; a similar resolution is pending in the House. Now it’s time for Congress and the administration to offer tangible support for those goals in the federal budget.

    Rather than undercutting the Education Department, or using the challenges that public schools face as a rationale to cut vital federal funding under the pretext of sending more authority to the states (which already have most of the authority for schools), why not support and scale practices, policies and programs that will make our schools more engaging and relevant to more students?





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