The Department of the Army plans to “limit” a longstanding contracting preference the federal government has given to blind vendors, according to a notice scheduled to be published in the federal register this week.
The notice states that Army dining halls will no longer give blind applicants the same priority after the Trump administration determined doing so “adversely affects the interests of the United States.”
The decision was made by Trump’s education secretary, Linda McMahon, the former professional wrestling CEO, according to the notice. The Education Department oversees what’s known as the Randolph-Sheppard Vending Facility Program, which was created during the Great Depression to help integrate blind workers into the U.S. workforce due to discrimination.
An Education Department spokesperson, Madi Biedermann, said in an emailed statement that McMahon had reviewed the Department of the Army’s proposal and approved it.
“The Army reports significant price and efficiency issues due to the requirement, impacting military readiness and imposing undue burdens on the Army,” Biedermann said.
The change at the Army appears to be part of the Trump administration’s broader attack on government policies aimed at boosting underrepresented groups in the country’s workforce. Advocacy groups representing workers with disabilities could end up suing in an attempt to stop it, arguing the change is unlawful.
HuffPost reported during the government shutdown that the Education Department planned to lay off a group of blind staffers who administer the Randolph-Sheppard program within the federal government, putting its future in doubt. The layoffs were stopped — at least temporarily — due to the deal Democrats reached with Republicans to reopen the government.
The notice states that the Department of the Army currently has at least 23 dining facility contracts that were awarded through the program. There are more than 1,000 licensed blind vendors across the country, many of them helping provide concessions on military bases.
“Based on the Department of the Army’s representations, it is clear that the Randolph-Sheppard priority hinders the Department of the Army’s ability to act swiftly, efficiently, and cost-effectively in procuring and managing [dining] contracts, which negatively impacts the availability and quality of food options for the nation’s warfighters,” it states.
Although the notice alludes to some examples the department cast as wasteful, it does not mention any comprehensive analysis finding the preference for blind vendors has hurt the Army.
Trump’s secretary of the Army, Daniel Driscoll, has criticized the program in the past. He appeared on a podcast in October and claimed the program was being abused and taken advantage of by people who don’t actually have disabilities, forcing the Defense Department to pay more than necessary for chicken.
“It’s been interpreted over the years to basically mean we have to prioritize blind people when we go out for our chicken contracts,” Driscoll said.
One Education Department employee previously told HuffPost that they were appalled by Driscoll’s portrayal of the program as wasteful.
“The mentality of these people is if we have a disability and we have a job, we’re taking it away from an able-bodied person,” they said.
This story has been updated with comment from the Education Department.
STUDENT. THAT’S RIGHT. AND THE STUDENT WORRIES ABOUT LOANS AND PAYING FOR HER EDUCATION. UNIVERSITY OF MARYLAND, BALTIMORE ADMINISTRATORS SAY TO THE STUDENTS, CONTINUE TO PURSUE YOUR DREAMS. HE HAS NO ALLERGIES TO THIS MEDICATION. IN THIS CLINICAL SITUATION, LAB STUDENTS AT THE UNIVERSITY OF MARYLAND NURSING SCHOOL IN BALTIMORE ARE PRACTICING AND GAINING CONFIDENCE IN THEIR SKILLS TO CARE FOR PATIENTS. OTHER STUDENTS ARE GIVING THEIR END OF SEMESTER PRESENTATIONS. SOME NURSES WHO HAVE COME BACK TO SCHOOL FOR MORE PROFESSIONAL TRAINING ARE WORRIED ABOUT NEWS. THE U.S. DEPARTMENT OF EDUCATION IS CONSIDERING EXCLUDING NURSING FROM ITS DEFINITION OF PROFESSIONAL DEGREE PROGRAMS. IT’S PRETTY UPSETTING FOR, I THINK, A LOT OF US. JAMIE CUTLER HAS BEEN A NURSE FOR FOUR AND A HALF YEARS. SHE IS NOW STUDYING TO GET HER DOCTORATE DEGREE IN NURSING. THEY SAW US AS FRONTLINE WORKERS ABOUT FIVE YEARS AGO. WE WERE ESSENTIAL IN THE COVID PANDEMIC, AND NOW THEY’RE SAYING THAT WE’RE NOT ESSENTIAL AND THAT THEY DON’T WANT TO LOAN US MONEY TO GET OUR DEGREES AND ENHANCE OURSELVES. UNIVERSITY OF MARYLAND. BALTIMORE’S TAKE ON THE PROPOSAL. IT WAS SHOCKING, BUT IT WASN’T COMPLETELY UNEXPECTED BECAUSE WE HAVE BEEN TRACKING THIS ISSUE. THE PROVOST SAYS THIS WILL IMPACT STUDENTS AND HEALTH CARE. WE WANT TO ATTRACT STUDENTS FROM A VARIETY OF SOCIOECONOMIC BACKGROUNDS SO THAT THEY COULD GO OUT AND BE PRACTITIONERS IN THEIR COMMUNITIES, INCLUDING IN RURAL COMMUNITIES. AND SO THE DIRECT IMPACT OF THIS, IT MAKES THESE PROGRAMS LESS, LESS ACCESSIBLE. WHAT ARE ADMINISTRATORS TELLING STUDENTS? WE’VE GOT YOU AND WILL CONTINUE TO WORK HARD TO MAKE SURE THAT, NOTWITHSTANDING THE POLICY AND THE CHALLENGES THAT WE CONTINUE TO WORK TOWARDS OUR MISSION, WHICH IS TO IMPROVE THE HUMAN CONDITION. THE FINAL DECISION IS SET FOR JULY 2026. UNIVERSITY’S NURSING AND OTHER ORGANIZATIONS ARE NOT GIVING UP. THEY ARE TRYING TO GET THE DEPARTMENT OF EDUCATION TO RECONSIDER. REPORTING LIVE FROM DOWNTOWN
Lawmakers urge Education Department to add nursing to ‘professional’ programs list amid uproar
A bipartisan group in Congress is urging the Education Department to add nursing to a list of college programs that are considered “professional,” adding to public outcry after nurses were omitted from a new agency definition.The Trump administration’s list of professional programs includes medicine, law and theology but leaves out nursing and some other fields that industry groups had asked to be included. The “professional” label would allow students to borrow larger amounts of federal loans to pursue graduate degrees in those fields.Video above: Nursing students concerned over possible loss of federal student loan accessUnder new rules proposed by the Trump administration, students in graduate programs deemed professional could borrow up to $200,000 for their degrees in total, and up to $50,000 a year. Loans for other graduate programs would be capped at $100,000 in total and $20,500 per year.In the past, graduate students had been able to borrow federal loans up to the full cost of their programs.In a Friday letter, lawmakers argue that a $100,000 cap on nursing graduate programs would make it harder for students to pay for expensive but high-demand programs, like those for nurse anesthetists. The annual cap would also pinch students in year-round nurse practitioner programs, which charge for three terms a year rather than just two and often cost more than $20,500 a year, they wrote.The letter challenges the Education Department’s claim that few nursing students would be affected by the caps.Programs for certified nurse anesthetists can cost more than $200,000, lawmakers said, but the programs typically pay off and supply a workforce that “overwhelmingly provides anesthesia to rural and underserved communities where higher cost physicians do not practice.”Video below: Massachusetts hospitals cut vacancies but critical staffing gaps persist, report saysThe letter was signed by more than 140 lawmakers, including 12 Republicans. It was sent by Sen. Jeff Merkley, D-Ore., Sen. Roger Wicker, R-Miss., Rep. Suzanne Bonamici, D-Ore., and Rep. Jen Kiggans, R-Va., leaders of the Senate and House nursing caucuses.Another Democrat, Rep. Ritchie Torres of New York, sent a similar letter this week. Excluding nurses would require students to take out riskier private loans or put tuition out of reach entirely, said Torres, who represents the South Bronx.”A restrictive interpretation would undermine our healthcare and education systems, weaken our workforce, and close doors for low-income, first-generation, and immigrant students who make up much of my district,” Torres said.The Trump administration has said new loan caps are needed to pressure colleges to reduce tuition prices.In deciding what would count as a professional degree, the department relied on a 1965 law governing student financial aid. The law lays out several examples of professional programs but says it is not an exhaustive list. The Trump administration adopted those examples as the only fields in its definition.Those deemed professional are: pharmacy, dentistry, veterinary medicine, chiropractic, law, medicine, optometry, osteopathic medicine, podiatry, theology and clinical psychology.The definition drew blowback from nursing organizations and other industry groups that were left out, including physical therapists and social workers. Department officials have said the new proposal may change as it’s finalized in a federal rulemaking process.
WASHINGTON —
A bipartisan group in Congress is urging the Education Department to add nursing to a list of college programs that are considered “professional,” adding to public outcry after nurses were omitted from a new agency definition.
The Trump administration’s list of professional programs includes medicine, law and theology but leaves out nursing and some other fields that industry groups had asked to be included. The “professional” label would allow students to borrow larger amounts of federal loans to pursue graduate degrees in those fields.
Video above: Nursing students concerned over possible loss of federal student loan access
Under new rules proposed by the Trump administration, students in graduate programs deemed professional could borrow up to $200,000 for their degrees in total, and up to $50,000 a year. Loans for other graduate programs would be capped at $100,000 in total and $20,500 per year.
In the past, graduate students had been able to borrow federal loans up to the full cost of their programs.
In a Friday letter, lawmakers argue that a $100,000 cap on nursing graduate programs would make it harder for students to pay for expensive but high-demand programs, like those for nurse anesthetists. The annual cap would also pinch students in year-round nurse practitioner programs, which charge for three terms a year rather than just two and often cost more than $20,500 a year, they wrote.
The letter challenges the Education Department’s claim that few nursing students would be affected by the caps.
Programs for certified nurse anesthetists can cost more than $200,000, lawmakers said, but the programs typically pay off and supply a workforce that “overwhelmingly provides anesthesia to rural and underserved communities where higher cost physicians do not practice.”
Video below: Massachusetts hospitals cut vacancies but critical staffing gaps persist, report says
The letter was signed by more than 140 lawmakers, including 12 Republicans. It was sent by Sen. Jeff Merkley, D-Ore., Sen. Roger Wicker, R-Miss., Rep. Suzanne Bonamici, D-Ore., and Rep. Jen Kiggans, R-Va., leaders of the Senate and House nursing caucuses.
Another Democrat, Rep. Ritchie Torres of New York, sent a similar letter this week. Excluding nurses would require students to take out riskier private loans or put tuition out of reach entirely, said Torres, who represents the South Bronx.
“A restrictive interpretation would undermine our healthcare and education systems, weaken our workforce, and close doors for low-income, first-generation, and immigrant students who make up much of my district,” Torres said.
The Trump administration has said new loan caps are needed to pressure colleges to reduce tuition prices.
In deciding what would count as a professional degree, the department relied on a 1965 law governing student financial aid. The law lays out several examples of professional programs but says it is not an exhaustive list. The Trump administration adopted those examples as the only fields in its definition.
Those deemed professional are: pharmacy, dentistry, veterinary medicine, chiropractic, law, medicine, optometry, osteopathic medicine, podiatry, theology and clinical psychology.
The definition drew blowback from nursing organizations and other industry groups that were left out, including physical therapists and social workers. Department officials have said the new proposal may change as it’s finalized in a federal rulemaking process.
WASHINGTON — A coalition of nursing and other healthcare organizations are outraged over a Trump administration proposal that could limit access to federal loans for some students pursuing graduate degrees, because the government would no longer label their studies as “professional” programs.
Without such a U.S. Department of Education designation, students pursuing graduate degrees in nursing and at least seven other fields, including social work and education, would face tighter federal student loan limits.
The revamp is part of Trump’s “Big Beautiful Bill” passed by Congress, and is prompting anger and confusion, particularly among nurses who are lashing out online. Some social media posts have amplified inaccurate information about the changes — leading the Education Department to issue a “Myth vs. Fact” explainer on the proposed modifications.
But it has done little to quell the furor. Nurses and others affected not only oppose potential limits on educational borrowing to advance their careers, but perceive the move as a semantic insult that disrespects the intense training that is required to achieve their professional credentials.
One Instagram user — a self-described registered nurse with more than 250,000 followers on the platform — said that she had planned to attend graduate school to become a nurse practitioner, but the proposed loan caps may put that out of reach. “They don’t want us to continue our education,” she said. “They want women to be barefoot and pregnant.”
Susan Pratt, a nurse who is also president of a union representing nurses in Toledo, Ohio, called the move “a smack in the face.”
“During the pandemic, the nurses showed up, and this is the thanks we get,” she said.
The Education Department did not respond to a request for comment about the proposed rule changes. But its explainer said that “progressive voices” had “been fear mongering” about the changes and spreading “misinformation.”
The Trump administration has said limits on graduate school loans are needed to reduce tuition costs and believes that capping student loans will push universities charging higher-than-average tuition to look at lowering rates.
What counts as a ‘professional’ program
While graduate students could previously borrow loans up to the cost of their degree, the new rules would set caps depending on whether the degree is considered a graduate or professional program. For program without a “professional” designation, students would be limited to borrowing $20,500 a year and up to $100,000 total.
Students in a designated professional program would be able to borrow $50,000 a year and up to $200,000 in total.
To define what counts as a professional program, the department turned to a 1965 law governing student financial aid. The law includes several examples of professional degrees but says it isn’t an exhaustive list. The Trump administration’s proposal, by contrast, says only the degrees spelled out in the new regulation can count as professional programs.
The Education Department would define the following fields as professional programs: pharmacy, dentistry, veterinary medicine, chiropractic, law, medicine, optometry, osteopathic medicine, podiatry and theology.
Left out are nursing, physical therapy, dental hygiene, occupational therapy and social work — as well as fields outside of healthcare such as architecture, education, and accounting.
One in six of the nation’s registered nurses held a master’s degree as of 2022, according to the American Assn. of Colleges of Nursing.
The federal fact sheet noted that a “professional degree” is merely an internal definition it uses “to distinguish among programs that qualify for higher loan limits.” It is “not a value judgement about the importance of programs … It has no bearing on whether a program is professional in nature or not.”
The federal rules would take effect in July, but can still be changed by the Education Department after a public comment period.
Nursing leaders decry the change
Jennifer Mensik Kennedy, president of the American Nurses Assn., decried the proposed changes, saying they would widen an already painful shortfall of advanced practice nurses — whose roles require graduate degrees. Among them are nurse practitioners, who are able to diagnose illnesses and write prescriptions.
“Nurse practitioners provide the largest amount of primary care services in the United States,” she said. “We have a primary care shortage right now. And we’re going to continue [to have one]. Now we’re not going to fully allow nurse practitioners to get the funding they need.”
“We are short over 2,000 nursing faculty in the United States,” she said. “So this has a downward spiral effect.”
But the Education Department’s “Myth vs. Fact” sheet, released Monday, argued that its data shows that “95% of nursing students borrow below the annual loan limit and therefore are not affected by the new caps.”
“Further, placing a cap on loans will push the remaining graduate nursing programs to reduce their program costs, ensuring that nurses will not be saddled with unmanageable student loan debt,” the department said.
Kennedy said it would be very difficult for graduate nursing programs to cut costs, because of their focus on hands-on training. “I’m not quite sure where the schools in nursing are supposed to cut, because the faculty are already underpaid, and those workloads are at a point where it’s keeping the public safe training new nurses,” she said.
Lin Zhan, dean of the UCLA Joe C. Wen School of Nursing, said the proposed changes are “deeply concerning” and urged policymakers to reject them.
“We cannot afford to create barriers that limit entry and growth in this essential profession and any policy changes must prioritize expanding access and enabling professional nurses to practice with knowledge and compassion,” Zhan said. “Graduate-prepared nurses play a critical role across health care. … Their expertise is vital, especially as care becomes more complex and patient needs grow.”
A coalition of healthcare organizations has also urged the Education Department to change course and noted that fields being excluded are largely filled by women. According to a U.S. Census Bureau report in 2019, women made up about three-fourths of the full-time, year-round healthcare workers in the U.S. and accounted for a much higher share in jobs such as dental and medical assistants.
Deborah Trautman, president of American Assn. of Colleges of Nursing, said in a statement to The Times that “reducing the federal student loan limit for nurses pursuing master’s and doctoral degrees will likely discourage many from advancing their education.”
“Yet nurses prepared at these levels are essential to the workforce — as advanced practice nurses, faculty, researchers, and expert clinicians,” she said.
Associated Press reporters Collin Binkley and John Seewer contributed to this story.
The U.S. Department of Education announced new steps Tuesday in President Donald Trump’s push to downsize the federal agency. Trump signed an executive order in March that called for eliminating the Education Department, but his administration has previously acknowledged that dissolving it entirely would require an act of Congress, which created the agency in 1979. For now, the department is moving forward with plans to shift key services to other parts of the federal government through six new interagency agreements. “The Trump Administration is taking bold action to break up the federal education bureaucracy and return education to the states,” U.S. Secretary of Education Linda McMahon said in a statement. “Cutting through layers of red tape in Washington is one essential piece of our final mission.”The announcement is already facing pushback. Critics fear that the Education Department shakeup will disrupt critical services that students rely on.The National Education Association called it an “illegal plan to further abandon students.”Minnetonka Public Schools Superintendent David Law, who serves as president of AASA, The School Superintendents Association, said the reorganization could prove counterproductive. “It talks about streamlining and efficiency, and yet it’s counterintuitive to me that multiple agencies having their hand on something is more efficient,” Law said.Under the plan, the Labor Department will co-manage the Office of Elementary and Secondary Education, which administers K-12 grant programs and Title 1 funding for low-income schools, as well as the Office of Postsecondary Education, which oversees grants for institutions of higher education.The Department of the Interior will take on a greater role in administering Indian Education programs. The Department of Health and Human Services will co-manage the Child Care Access Means Parents in School (CCAMPIS) program and Foreign Medical Accreditation. The State Department will help oversee international education and foreign language studies programs. In the past, the Trump administration has also talked about moving management of other Education Department services, like the student loan portfolio and civil rights enforcement. The administration is still “exploring options,” according to a senior department official who briefed reporters on Tuesday ahead of the official rollout. Tuesday’s announcement builds on a sweeping downsizing effort that started earlier this year. The Trump administration has already launched an interagency partnership with the Labor Department to manage adult education and career and technical education programs.In July, the Supreme Court paved the way for the Education Department to move forward with roughly 1,400 layoffs.The Education Department said in an email on Tuesday that no additional layoffs are expected at this time as a result of the new interagency agreements.
Trump signed an executive order in March that called for eliminating the Education Department, but his administration has previously acknowledged that dissolving it entirely would require an act of Congress, which created the agency in 1979.
For now, the department is moving forward with plans to shift key services to other parts of the federal government through six new interagency agreements.
“The Trump Administration is taking bold action to break up the federal education bureaucracy and return education to the states,” U.S. Secretary of Education Linda McMahon said in a statement. “Cutting through layers of red tape in Washington is one essential piece of our final mission.”
The announcement is already facing pushback. Critics fear that the Education Department shakeup will disrupt critical services that students rely on.
The National Education Association called it an “illegal plan to further abandon students.”
Minnetonka Public Schools Superintendent David Law, who serves as president of AASA, The School Superintendents Association, said the reorganization could prove counterproductive.
“It talks about streamlining and efficiency, and yet it’s counterintuitive to me that multiple agencies having their hand on something is more efficient,” Law said.
Under the plan, the Labor Department will co-manage the Office of Elementary and Secondary Education, which administers K-12 grant programs and Title 1 funding for low-income schools, as well as the Office of Postsecondary Education, which oversees grants for institutions of higher education.
The Department of the Interior will take on a greater role in administering Indian Education programs. The Department of Health and Human Services will co-manage the Child Care Access Means Parents in School (CCAMPIS) program and Foreign Medical Accreditation. The State Department will help oversee international education and foreign language studies programs.
In the past, the Trump administration has also talked about moving management of other Education Department services, like the student loan portfolio and civil rights enforcement. The administration is still “exploring options,” according to a senior department official who briefed reporters on Tuesday ahead of the official rollout.
Tuesday’s announcement builds on a sweeping downsizing effort that started earlier this year.
The Trump administration has already launched an interagency partnership with the Labor Department to manage adult education and career and technical education programs.
In July, the Supreme Court paved the way for the Education Department to move forward with roughly 1,400 layoffs.
The Education Department said in an email on Tuesday that no additional layoffs are expected at this time as a result of the new interagency agreements.
WASHINGTON — The Trump administration on Tuesday accelerated the dismantling of the U.S. Department of Education with a plan to transfer key, legally required functions to other agencies, including oversight of its $18-billion, core anti-poverty program, Title 1.
Critics said the move was politicized and counterproductive and fear future program cuts. California Supt. of Public Instruction Tony Thurmond said vital services to the state and nation’s most vulnerable students were likely to be disrupted.
The steps move toward fulfilling a Trump campaign promise to eliminate the department, which some conservatives have long derided as wasteful, ineffective and unnecessary.
“The Trump Administration is taking bold action to break up the federal education bureaucracy and return education to the states,” U.S. Secretary of Education Linda McMahon said in a statement. “Cutting through layers of red tape in Washington is one essential piece of our final mission.”
President Trump called for the department’s elimination in a March executive order. Both he and McMahon have spoken of a broad goal of sparking innovation through local control.
Even before this effort, states provided about 90% of their own funding for education, but federal investment is still crucial, advocates say. In particular, the federal role has focused on ensuring services are provided for overlooked students and students with higher needs, such as those facing discrimination and poverty, and students with disabilities.
While slashing the Education Department workforce, which Trump officials have characterized as a bloated bureaucracy, the president has adopted an interventionist agenda in education as well. He has threatened pulling federal funding if states and schools don’t follow his directives to combat antisemitism, clamp down on campus protests, end diversity, equity and inclusion programs and oppose expanded rights for transsexual students, among other issues in keeping with his agenda.
The strategy behind the moves
The key strategy announced Tuesday creates partnerships with other federal agencies, which will take on Education Department responsibilities. The department would retain legal authority even as the actual work shifts elsewhere.
These partnerships are meant to sidestep federal rules — under the jurisdiction of Congress — that place programs, including Title I, specifically within the Education Department.
Title I is expected to shift to the Department of Labor, which is likely to absorb an unknown number of education workers with the necessary experience and expertise. The long-term goal is to win buy-in from Congress — and then to eliminate the Education Department entirely, which requires congressional approval.
“As we partner with these agencies to improve federal programs, we will continue to gather best practices in each state,” McMahon said.
She also spoke of working “with Congress to codify these reforms,” an acknowledgment that the Department of Education was created by an act of Congress.
Administration officials insist that their actions to date are legal, citing as precedent earlier agreements between federal agencies, including one example from the Biden administration. The scale of the current effort, however, is a much larger order of magnitude.
Rep. Jimmy Gomez (D-Los Angeles) questioned Trump’s authority to take this action. “Not only is dismantling the education department without congressional approval illegal, but they chose today because they knew the Epstein vote would dominate the headlines. They clearly didn’t want the public to see what they were doing to our kids’ futures.”
Becky Pringle, president of the National Education Assn., the nation’s largest teachers union, accused the administration of “taking every chance it can to hack away at the very protections and services our students need.”
How the action affects vulnerable students
The changes will complicate efforts to get money and services where they are needed, Thurmond said.
“This is an unnecessary, disruptive change that is going to harm students, especially the most vulnerable,” Thurmond said. “It is clearly less efficient for state departments of education and local school districts to work with four different federal agencies instead of one.
“Experience also tells us that any time you move expertise and responsibilities, you disrupt services. There is no way to avoid negative impacts on our children and our classrooms with a change of this magnitude.”
But administration officials talked of new efficiencies and synergies, asserting that associating education with workforce development in the Department of Labor would make education more relevant to a student’s employment future.
What happens to other programs?
The Labor Department would oversee almost all grant programs that are now managed by the Education Department’s offices for K-12 and higher education. That includes funding pools for teacher training, English instruction and TRIO, a program that helps steer low-income students to college degrees.
Tuesday’s action leaves in place the Education Department’s $1.6-trillion student loan portfolio and its funding for students with disabilities.
But ultimately moving these programs seems likely if the mission remains to shutter the department.
Another transfer puts Health and Human Services in charge of a grant program for parents who are attending college, along with management of foreign medical school accreditation. The State Department will take on foreign language programs. Interior will oversee programs for Native American education.
Federal officials said states and schools should see no funding disruptions. Liz Huston, White House assistant press secretary, said Tuesday the administration “is fully committed to doing what’s best for American students, which is why it’s critical to shrink this bloated federal education bureaucracy while still ensuring efficient delivery of funds and essential programs.”
The Education Department tested this approach in June, announcing the transfer of adult education programs to the Labor Department. Working out essential details took some five months, officials said Tuesday.
The administration’s plan immediately drew support from Tim Walberg, a Republican who represents a southern Michigan district.
“The past few decades have made one thing clear: The status quo is broken,” Walberg said. “As the bureaucracy swelled, left-wing bureaucrats were emboldened to waste taxpayer dollars on a radical agenda. As a result, our students have been left in the dust. Test scores are plummeting, students can’t read, and college graduates leave school burdened by debt rather than equipped with workforce-ready skills.”
But the Education Department — and its central programs — has bipartisan support.
One Republican expressing concern is Pennsylvania Rep. Brian Fitzpatrick.
“The United States Congress created the U.S. Department of Education for very good reason,” Fitzpatrick said. “And for millions of families, particularly those raising children with disabilities or living in low-income communities, the Department’s core offices are not discretionary functions. They are foundational. They safeguard civil rights, expand opportunity, and ensure that every child, in every community, has the chance to learn, grow, and succeed on equal footing.”
Feds say programs’ funding will continue
Department officials said programs will continue to be funded at levels set by Congress. But that doesn’t stop programs from running afoul of another portion of the Trump agenda. For example, the Tuesday announcement notes that a program to help with the education of the children of migrant workers will transfer to the Labor Department.
However, on other fronts the Trump administration is trying to eliminate that program. The administration first tried to hold back funding approved by Congress. The administration relented under pressure. But the administration also cut funding for migrant education from its budget proposal for future years.
Officials said they did not yet have details on whether the changes would bring further job cuts at the Education Department, which has been thinned by waves of layoffs and retirements under pressure.
Blume is a Times staff writer. Binkley writes for the Associated Press. Times staff writers Daniel Miller and Michael Wilner contributed to this report.
California universities are facing intense backlash for handing over employees’ personal contact information to the Trump administration as it investigates allegations of campus antisemitism, amping up tensions over government incursions into higher education.
At Cal State, a faculty union filed suit Friday in state court after learning the personal phone numbers and email addresses of 2,600 Los Angeles campus employees were turned over to the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, which is investigating employee complaints of campus antisemitism. In addition, the EEOC is contacting Jewish faculty across the 22-campus system, prompting campus demonstrations against cooperating with Trump.
At UC Berkeley, protesters recently converged on campus after University of California leaders said they released files from their civil rights office and UC police incident reports containing the names and contact information of 160 faculty and staff to the Education Department, which is also investigating alleged campus antisemitism.
UC-wide faculty senate leaders are demanding to know whether there have been other campus disclosures. UC has not publicly announced similar actions outside of Berkeley — but has not denied the possibility.
Gov. Gavin Newsom has intervened. The governor said he received a report last week from UC leadership on the data release that made a “compelling case” that UC was legally required to share information with the government. Newsom said he was still “reviewing” the report. The governor also said he may similarly scrutinize CSU’s actions.
Federal requests for campus data are not unusual in civil rights or employment discrimination investigations, legal experts say. But what is exceptional is the large-scale nature of the demands. CSU was ordered under subpoena to release employee information. UC says it negotiated over government asks to provide employee data — first offering redacted files — before relenting.
The orders come against the backdrop of President Trump’s aggressive campaign to force higher education institutions to align with his conservative agenda. The administration has suspended billions in research grants and has offered to absolve alleged campus violations in exchange for hefty fines and sweeping policy changes.
Broad size and scope
Legal experts said they were not surprised investigations were taking place, citing campus civil rights complaints over the years and Trump administration declarations that prioritize combating antisemitism.
Brian Soucek, UC Davis law professor, worried the antisemitism investigations — which involve nearly every California public university — are “a witch hunt.”
The EEOC has powers to subpoena relevant information needed “to advance some lawful purpose,” said Soucek, who teaches about equality and free speech law. “The question is whether these [actions] are overly broad.”
Ted Mitchell, president of the American Council on Education, said “asking for information about individuals and groups of individuals in the course of an investigation is about as unusual as traffic on the 405. But it is entirely appropriate to mistrust the Trump administration.” Mitchell, whose group represents 1,600 campuses, said schools are “between a proverbial rock and hard place.”
Spokespeople for the Education Department and EEOC did not reply to requests for comment.
UC and CSU’s views
Caught between the government and faculty are campus administrators, some who have expressed distrust of Trump’s civil rights investigations. But they fear that resisting would not only be illegal but could result in devastating funding cuts.
In recent faculty meetings, UC President James B. Milliken has declined to say whether other campuses aside from Berkeley have shared personal information of employees or students. Speaking at a UC-wide academic senate meeting Thursday, Milliken said he understood employee concerns and argued that data sharing was routine across presidential administrations.
He said the university was not handing over lists of faculty names but that broader documents shared with the government contained personnel information.
Milliken said UC is also working to fulfill data sharing requirements under a December 2024 agreement with the Biden administration that has carried over to this year.
That agreement resolved civil rights complaints — over antisemitism and bias against Muslim, Arab and pro-Palestinian students — at the Davis, Los Angeles, San Diego, Santa Barbara and Santa Cruz campuses. It required UC to share “an electronic sortable spreadsheet” with details on who reported civil rights complaints and who they were lodged against for the 2023-24 and 2024-25 academic years.
“Failure to comply with government oversight could result in a very significant loss of funding, potentially jeopardizing tens of thousands of jobs, the education of our students, the research careers of thousands of faculty, and the care afforded by our health enterprise,” Milliken recently wrote to campuses.
Administrators at both systems said they tried to resist or minimize government requests and have made strides to protect privacy while complying with the law.
At CSU, officials told the EEOC that the Los Angeles campus would only turn over publicly available data — such as university email addresses. But then the campus was subpoenaed for personal data.
Over the spring, the EEOC also subpoenaed UC for information on hundreds of employees who had signed letters in 2023 and 2024 expressing concern about the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas attack on Israel and the campus climate for Jewish people, according to faculty contacted by EEOC investigators who they said informed them about the legal order.
The EEOC’s systemwide CSU investigation has not yet involved a subpoena for other Cal State campuses.
Tensions grow
Faculty, staff, students and unions have pushed back, saying university leaders should have rejected government demands, moves many say weaponize antisemitism charges for ideological goals.
“Rather than taking a stance against an authoritarian regime, CSU leadership has chosen to be complicit,” said the California Faculty Association, which represents 29,000 employees.
The union’s suit in state court asks for a judge to order CSU to avoid disclosing union members’ personal information in response to federal subpoenas without giving notice to affected employees and offering a chance for faculty to reject the request.
Peyrin Kao, a pro-Palestinian electrical engineering and computer science lecturer, was among those who UC Berkeley notified that their names were in files given to the government.
“They didn’t tell me why I was reported,” said Kao, who suspects the move was tied complaints in 2023 over an optional lecture he gave against Israel’s war in Gaza and UC’s investments in weapons companies. After the lecture, the university issued him a warning about potential violation of a policy against “political indoctrination.”
“Showing everyone that you can get reported for pro-Palestine speech does have a chilling effect,” Kao said.
Jewish voices
Ryan Witt, president of the CSU Channel Islands chapter of Students for Justice in Palestine, agreed. Witt, who is Jewish and organized a recent protest against the investigation and “repressive” CSU free speech policies, felt that antisemitism was not a “major issue” on campus.
Other Jewish community members elsewhere differed.
Jeffrey Blutinger, director of Jewish Studies at Cal State Long Beach, filed an Equal Employment Opportunity Commission complaint against the university.
(Gary Coronado/For The Times)
Referring to Trump’s higher education policies and antisemitism, Cal State Long Beach Jewish Studies professor Jeff Blutinger said he “shouldn’t be required to choose which threat I ignore.”
Blutinger made a report last summer to the commission about a February 2024 an incident where police shut down a guest lecture he presented at San Jose State University after protesters demonstrated in the hallway outside the classroom. He laid blame on the university and police for not protecting his right to speak about Israelis and Palestinians.
But he said the EEOC investigator he spoke to last month told him the probe was not tied to that complaint, which was closed for being too old. Instead, it was about a May 2024 public letter to CSU leaders that Blutinger signed, expressing worry over the “well-being of Jewish and Israeli students, staff, and faculty.”
Another signatory the EEOC contacted last month is Arik Davidyan, an assistant professor of physiology at Sacramento State University. Davidyan said he told the investigator that “our administration has worked a lot with the Jewish community to address our concerns.”
Tackling discrimination
Some leaders at UC and CSU have expressed frustration, saying efforts to combat discrimination and anti-Israel sentiment have gone unnoticed by the government.
At UC, protest rules have been revamped with bans on encampments, masking to hide identity while breaking the law, and student government boycotts of Israel. New training programs on antisemitism are underway.
CSU also revamped protest policies and in the last fiscal year spent nearly $16 million to expand systemwide and campus-level civil rights programs. In the coming months, it is rolling out a new case management system to track discrimination complaints.
“We’re working as hard as we possibly can to address antisemitism and to address any of the protected characteristic discrimination issues that may arise,” said Dawn S. Theodora, the system’s interim executive vice chancellor and general counsel. “We take it very seriously.”
The U.S. Department of Education is launching an investigation into Fairfax County Public Schools over allegations that a school social worker scheduled an abortion appointment for a student and didn’t tell the student’s parents.
The U.S. Department of Education is launching an investigation in Virginia’s largest school division over allegations a school social worker scheduled an abortion appointment for a student and didn’t tell the student’s parents.
In a news release, the agency said it has initiated enforcement action against Fairfax County Public Schools and is seeking additional information by mid-October. If the school system doesn’t provide it, they could risk losing federal funding, the agency said.
The step comes weeks after reports that a Centreville High School social worker allegedly scheduled an abortion for a student during the 2021-22 school year, paid the clinic fee and didn’t tell the student’s parents. The release said the social worker reportedly pressured a second student into having an abortion.
The action, the Education Department said, could violate the Protection of Pupil Rights Amendment. That amendment requires schools to tell parents about invasive physical examinations and gives parents the chance to opt their child out of them.
Fairfax County Public Schools emailed a statement to WTOP in response to the Education Department’s announcement of its investigation.
FCPS has received the latest Department of Education (DOE) letter requesting information, and welcomes the opportunity to answer the DOE’s questions, based on our ongoing review of these 2021 allegations. We want to reiterate that such conduct would be completely unacceptable in Fairfax County Public Schools. Although there is also an ongoing state police investigation, we are committed to cooperating, to the fullest extent possible, with the DOE’s inquiry. FCPS remains focused on our commitment to academic excellence and opportunity for each and every student in a safe and welcoming environment.
The announcement comes as the school system is also engaged in a legal battle with the federal agency over bathroom policies.
“It shocks the conscience to learn that school personnel in Fairfax have allegedly exploited their positions of trust to push abortion services on students without parental knowledge or consent,” said Candice Jackson, the Education Department’s acting general counsel.
“Children do not belong to the government — decisions touching deeply held values should be made within loving families. It is both morally unconscionable and patently illegal for school officials to keep parents in the dark about such intimate, life-altering procedures pertaining to their children,” Jackson said.
The department is requesting a specific set of information by Oct. 17. The request includes the county’s notice to parents telling them about their rights under the Protection of Pupil Rights Amendment, and a statement indicating whether federal funds were used in connection with sensitive medical services, including abortion-related procedures.
Separately, the federal agency had threatened to withhold funding to five Northern Virginia school systems, including Fairfax County, if they didn’t change their bathroom policies. The department said policies that allow students to use intimate facilities based on gender identity violate Title IX.
Several of those school districts have taken legal action to prevent funds from being frozen.
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In an interview with WTOP, Superintendent Michelle Reid said the division is “a bit confused and a bit perplexed as to how best to address this, because there really is not a relevant exemplar in recent years that anyone can recall that called out anything of this nature.”
Days after the Department of Education placed five Northern Virginia school systems that didn’t change their bathroom policies on high-risk status, Fairfax County’s superintendent said the state’s largest school district is reviewing the agency’s message and considering next steps.
In an interview with WTOP, Superintendent Michelle Reid said the division is “a bit confused and a bit perplexed as to how best to address this, because there really is not a relevant exemplar in recent years that anyone can recall that called out anything of this nature.”
In a four-page letter sent to Prince William County Superintendent LaTanya McDade on Monday, and obtained by WTOP, Secretary of Education Linda McMahon said the division has to submit a corrective action plan within 30 days. It also told the district to submit plans for compliance with all federal laws.
The step marks a significant escalation in the back-and-forth between the federal agency and the five Northern Virginia districts.
Arlington, Alexandria, Loudoun, Prince William and Fairfax counties’ schools all rejected a request to change their bathroom policies, which currently allow students to use intimate facilities based on their gender identity. While the school districts said their practices align with current law, the education department said they violate Title IX.
“We were really disappointed that the Department of Education wouldn’t engage in any kind of thoughtful collaboration, and rather, sent this letter in response,” Reid said. “We were very disappointed with this.”
In the letter to Prince William County schools, obtained through a Freedom of Information Act request, McMahon said despite an extension to the deadline to change bathroom policies, the district “stated it does not intend to make the necessary policy changes to come into compliance with Title IX.” The division is on high-risk status so the agency can “ensure taxpayer dollars are not being spent on illegal activity.”
There hasn’t been funding withheld to date, and school districts routinely apply for reimbursement when the funding is tied to federal grants.
In Fairfax, Reid said it’s unclear what the high-risk status means, “because we recently received a very clean federal audit on our Title II grant. And in fact, as we read the regulation around this high-risk language, we’re in compliance with all elements of operation in terms of these federal grants.”
Despite the uncertainty, Reid said the district is confident that “appropriated Congressional funds will continue to be appropriated.” The school districts have 10 business days to ask for a reconsideration of the high-risk designation.
In the case of Fairfax County, Reid said practices “are aligned with Virginia law and the rulings of the federal Court of Appeals in the Fourth Circuit.”
The district is planning to reach out the federal agency for clarification, she said.
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Five Northern Virginia school divisions have been placed on high-risk status and will have federal reimbursement requests scrutinized, the Department of Education announced.
Five Northern Virginia school divisions that refused to change their gender policies over the use of bathrooms and locker rooms have been placed on “high-risk status” by the U.S. Department of Education and will have their federal reimbursement requests scrutinized.
In a news release, the federal agency said the school districts will be placed on “reimbursement status” for funding, including formula funding, discretionary grants and impact aid grants. Schools in Loudoun, Fairfax, Prince William and Arlington counties and the City of Alexandria will have to pay up front and then request reimbursement, the department said.
The announcement comes days after the districts all announced they wouldn’t make changes to their policies for intimate facilities, such as restrooms and locker rooms. The Education Department requested they do so, saying policies that allow students to use bathrooms based on gender identity rather than biological sex violated Title IX.
The divisions, however, said their current practices are in compliance with the law.
“The Northern Virginia School Divisions that are choosing to abide by woke gender ideology in place of federal law must now prove they are using every single federal dollar for a legal purpose,” Education Secretary Linda McMahon said in the release.
Prince William County School Board Chairman Babur Lateef said the federal agency already approves its reimbursement requests based on spending for special education and Title IX. However, he said, $50 million could be at risk for Virginia’s second-largest school system.
“Now, they’re saying they will scrutinize all our reimbursements at a level to determine if we are compliant with federal laws, and we’re assuming that, since they don’t believe we’re compliant, they are likely to withhold money to our school divisions for our Title I monies and students for disabilities,” Lateef told WTOP. “We don’t believe they are allowed to do that, but it looks like that’s what they are going to try to do.”
Prince William, Lateef said, is “willing to do whatever it takes to protect our federal funds and we’re looking at different options.”
Meanwhile, Fairfax County Public Schools said it received the DOE’s letter just after 4 p.m. Tuesday. On Friday, the original deadline for divisions to change their policies, Fairfax responded with information about why its existing practices are consistent with state and federal law, the division said in a statement.
In that message, Fairfax “also requested the Department of Education stop further action while this issue is clarified by the courts.”
The school district said it’s reviewing the new letter in detail, and while the issue is pending, policies will stay aligned with state law and a ruling from the federal Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit.
“Any student who has a need or desire for increased privacy, regardless of the underlying reason, shall continue to be provided with reasonable accommodations,” Fairfax County schools said.
A spokesman for Loudoun County Public Schools, meanwhile, said the division doesn’t believe it’s in violation of Title IX: “LCPS disputes that we have engaged in activity that would warrant being characterized as a ‘high-risk’ grantee and will consider appropriate next steps.”
The City of Alexandria school system told WTOP that it’s reviewing the correspondence from the Education Department.
WTOP has contacted Arlington County Public Schools for comment.
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Across multiple fronts, Democrats and their allies are stiffening their resistance to a surge of Republican-led book bans.
President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris in the past month have conspicuously escalated their denunciations of the book bans proliferating in schools across the country, explicitly linking them to restrictions on abortion and voting rights to make the case that “MAGA extremists” are threatening Americans’ “personal freedom,” as Biden said in the recent video announcing his campaign for a second term.
Last week, Illinois became the first Democratic-controlled state to pass legislation designed to discourage local school districts from banning books. And a prominent grassroots progressive group today will announce a new national campaign to organize mothers against the conservative drive to remove books and censor curriculum under the banner of protecting “parents’ rights.”
“We are not going to let the mantle of parents’ rights be hijacked by such an extreme minority,” Katie Paris, the founder of the group, Red Wine and Blue, told me.
These efforts are emerging as red states have passed a wave of new laws restricting how classroom teachers can talk about race, gender, and sexual orientation, as well as measures making it easier for critics to pressure schools to remove books from classrooms and libraries. Partly in response to those new statutes, the number of banned books has jumped by about 30 percent in the first half of the current school year as compared with last, according to a recent compilation by PEN America, a free-speech group founded by notable authors.
To the frustration of some local activists opposing these measures in state legislatures or school boards, the Biden administration has largely kept its distance from these fights. Nor did Democrats, while they controlled Congress, mount any sustained resistance to the educational constraints spreading across the red states.
But the events of the past few weeks suggest that this debate has clearly reached a turning point. From grassroots organizers like Paris to political advisers for Biden, more Democrats see book bans as the weak link in the GOP’s claim that it is upholding “parents’ rights” through measures such as restrictions on curriculum or legislation targeting transgender minors. A national CBS poll released on Monday found overwhelming opposition among Americans to banning books that discuss race or criticize U.S. history. “There is something about this idea of book banning that really makes people stop and say, ‘I may be uncomfortable with some of this transitional treatment kids are getting, and I don’t know how I feel about pronouns, but I do not want them banning books,’” says Guy Molyneux, a Democratic pollster.
The conservative call to uphold parents’ rights in education has intensified since Republican Governor Glenn Youngkin in 2021 unexpectedly won the governorship in blue-leaning Virginia partly behind that theme. In the aftermath of long COVID-related shutdowns across many school districts, Youngkin’s victory showed that “Republicans really did tap into an energy there” by talking about ways of “giving parents more of a choice in education,” Patrick Brown, a fellow at the conservative Ethics and Public Policy Center who specializes in family issues, told me.
But as the parents’-rights crusade moved through Republican-controlled states, it quickly expanded well beyond academic concerns to encompass long-standing conservative complaints that liberal teachers were allegedly indoctrinating kids through “woke” lessons.
New red-state laws passed in response to those arguments have moved the fight over book banning from a retail to a wholesale level. Previously, most book bans were initiated by lone parents, even if they were working with national conservative groups such as Moms for Liberty, who objected to administrators or school boards in individual districts. But the new statutes have “supercharged” the book-banning process, in PEN’s phrase, by empowering critics to simultaneously demand the removal of more books in more places.Five red states—Florida, Texas, Missouri, South Carolina, and Utah—have now become the epicenter of book-banning efforts, the study concluded.
Biden and his administration were not entirely silent as these policies proliferated. He was clear and consistent in denouncing the initial “Don’t Say Gay” law that Florida Governor Ron DeSantis passed to bar discussion of sexual orientation and gender identity in early grades. But that was the exception. Even during the 2022 campaign, when Biden regularly framed Republicans as a threat to voting and abortion rights, he did not highlight red-state book bans and curriculum censorship. Apart from abortion and voting, his inclination has been to focus his public communications less on culture-war disputes than on delivering kitchen-table benefits to working families. Nor had Education Secretary Miguel Cardona done much to elevate these issues either. “We have not seen a lot of visibility” from the Education Department, says Nadine Farid Johnson, PEN’s managing director for Washington.
The administration’s relative disengagement from the classroom wars, and the limited attention from national progressive groups, left many grassroots activists feeling “isolated,” Paris said. Revida Rahman, a co-founder of One WillCo, an organization that advocates for students of color in affluent and predominantly white Williamson County, south of Nashville, told me that the group has often felt at a disadvantage trying to respond to conservative parents working with national right-leaning groups to demand changes in curriculum or bans on books with racial or LGBTQ themes. “What we are fighting is a well-funded and well-oiled machine,” she told me, “and we don’t have the same capacity.”
Pushback from Democrats and their allies, though, is now coalescing. Earlier this month, the Freedom to Learn initiative, a coalition organized mostly by Black educators, held a series of events, many on college campuses, protesting restrictions on curriculum and books. The Red Wine and Blue group is looking to organize a systematic grassroots response. Founded in 2019, the organization has about 500,000 mostly suburban mothers in its network and paid organizers in five states. The group has already provided training for local activists to oppose curriculum censorship and book bans, and today it is launching the Freedom to Parent 21st Century Kids project, a more sweeping counter to conservative parents’-rights groups. The project will include virtual training sessions for activists, programs in which participants can talk with transgender kids and their parents, and efforts to highlight banned books. “We want to equip parents to talk about this stuff,” Paris told me. “It’s moms learning from moms who already faced this in their community.”
Illinois opened another front in this debate with its first-in-the-nation bill to discourage book banning. The legislation will withhold state grants from school districts unless they adopt explicit policies to prohibit banning books in response to partisan or ideological pressure. Democratic Governor J. B. Pritzker has indicated that he will sign the bill.
Potentially the most consequential shift has come from the Biden administration. The president signaled a new approach in his late-April announcement video, when he cited book bans as evidence for his accusation that Republicans in the Donald Trump era are targeting Americans’ “personal freedom.” That was, “by far, the most we have seen on” book bans from Biden, Farid Johnson told me.
One senior adviser close to Biden told me that the connection of book bans to those more frequent presidential targets of abortion and democracy was no accident. “There is a basic American pushback when people are told what they can and cannot do,” said the adviser, who asked for anonymity while discussing campaign strategy. “Voters,” the adviser said, “don’t like to be told, ‘You can’t make a decision about your own life when it comes to your health care; you can’t make a decision about what book to read.’ I think book bans fit in that broader context.”
Biden may sharpen that attack as soon as Saturday, when he delivers the commencement address at Howard University. Meanwhile, Vice President Harris has already previewed how the administration may flesh out this argument. In her own speech at Howard last month, she cited book bans and curriculum censorship as components of a red-state social regime that the GOP will try to impose nationwide if it wins the White House in 2024. In passing these laws, Republicans are not just “impacting the people” of Florida or Texas, she said. “What we are witnessing—and be clear about this—is there is a national agenda that’s at play … Don’t think it’s not a national agenda when they start banning books.”
The Education Department has also edged into the fray. When the recent release of national test scores showed a decline in students’ performance on history, Cardona, the education secretary, issued a statement declaring that “banning history books and censoring educators … does our students a disservice and will move America in the wrong direction.”
His statement came months after the department’s Office of Civil Rights launched an investigation that could shape the next stages of this struggle. The office is probing whether a Texas school district that sweepingly removed LGBTQ-themed books from its shelves has violated federal civil-rights laws. The department has not revealed anything about the investigation’s status, but PEN’s Farid Johnson said if it concludes that the removals violated federal law, other districts might be deterred from banning books.
The politics of the parents’-rights debate are complex. Republicans are confident that their interconnected initiatives related to education and young people can win back suburban voters, especially mothers, who have rejected the party in the Trump era. Polling, including surveys done by Democratic pollsters last year for the American Federation of Teachers, has consistently found majority national support for some individual planks in the GOP agenda, including the prohibitions on discussing sexual orientation in early grades.
Brown said he believes that at the national level, the battle over book bans is likely to end in a “stalemate.” That’s not only, he argued, because each side can point to examples of extreme behavior by the other in defending or removing individual books, but also because views on what’s acceptable for kids vary so much from place to place. “We shouldn’t expect a national consensus on what book is appropriate for a 13-year-old to be reading, because that’s going to be different among different parents in different communities,” Brown told me.
Yet as the awakening Democratic resistance suggests, many in the party are confident that voters will find the whole of the GOP agenda less attractive than the sum of its parts. In that 2022 polling for the teachers’ union, a significant majority of adults said they worry less that kids are being taught values their parents don’t like than that culture-war fights are diverting schools from their real mission of educating students. Paris said the most common complaint she hears from women drawn to her group is that the conservative activists proclaiming parents’ rights are curtailing the freedoms of other parents by trying to dictate what materials all students can access. “What you’ll have women in our communities say all the time is ‘If you don’t want your kid to read a book, that’s fine, but you don’t get to decide for me and my family,’” she told me.
The White House, the senior official told me, believes that after the Supreme Court last year rescinded the right to abortion, many voters are uncertain and uneasy about what rights or liberties Republicans may target next. “There is a fear about Where does it stop?,” the official said, andbook bans powerfully crystallize that concern. Trump and DeSantis, who’s expected to join the GOP race, have both indicated that they intend to aggressively advance the conservative parents’-rights agenda of attacks on instruction they deem “woke” and books they consider indecent. Biden and other Democrats, after months of hesitation, are stepping onto the field against them. The library looms as the next big confrontation in the culture war.
