The Lyndon Baines Johnson Department of Education Building pictured on Nov. 25, 2024. (Photo by Shauneen Miranda/States Newsroom)
WASHINGTON — The U.S. Department of Education must temporarily reinstate the hundreds of employees laid off earlier this year and cannot follow through on an executive order from President Donald Trump seeking to dismantle the agency, a federal judge in Massachusetts ruled Thursday.
The ruling stems from a pair of March lawsuits — one from a slew of Democratic attorneys general, another from a coalition of advocacy and labor groups — and blocks three Trump initiatives, marking a major blow to the president’s education agenda as his administration seeks to dramatically reshape the federal role in education.
The lawsuits challenge some of the administration’s most consequential education initiatives so far: a reduction in force effort at the agency that gutted more than 1,300 employees, Trump’s executive order calling on Education Secretary Linda McMahon to facilitate the closure of her own department and Trump’s proposal to rehouse the student loan portfolio in the Small Business Administration and special education services in the Department of Health and Human Services.
“A department without enough employees to perform statutorily mandated functions is not a department at all,” U.S. District Judge Myong J. Joun wrote in his 88-page memorandum and order granting a preliminary injunction.
“This court cannot be asked to cover its eyes while the Department’s employees are continuously fired and units are transferred out until the Department becomes a shell of itself,” wrote Joun, whom former President Joe Biden appointed.
Joun’s preliminary injunction took effect immediately and will remain until the merits of the consolidated case are decided.
A department spokesperson said the administration would immediately appeal the ruling. The agency has since filed an appeal.
Win for Democratic states
One of the cases comes from a coalition of Democratic attorneys general in Arizona, California, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, the District of Columbia, Hawaii, Illinois, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, Nevada, New York, New Jersey, Oregon, Rhode Island, Vermont, Washington state and Wisconsin.
The other lawsuit was brought by the American Federation of Teachers, its Massachusetts chapter, AFSCME Council 93, the American Association of University Professors, the Service Employees International Union and two school districts in Massachusetts.
The department’s reduction in force plan prompted concerns from education advocates and leaders over how the agency would be able to carry out its core responsibilities after roughly halving its workforce, including major cuts to key units including the Office of Federal Student Aid, Office for Civil Rights and the Institute of Education Sciences.
Randi Weingarten, president of the American Federation of Teachers, one of the largest teachers unions in the country, celebrated the ruling in a Thursday statement.
“Today, the court rightly rejected one of the administration’s very first illegal, and consequential, acts: abolishing the federal role in education,” Weingarten said.
“This decision is a first step to reverse this war on knowledge and the undermining of broad-based opportunity. For America to build a brighter future, we must all take more responsibility, not less, for the success of our children.”
Joun’s order also bars the agency from carrying out the president’s directive to transfer the student loan portfolio and special education services out of the agency.
Trump announced the proposal, which had no accompanying executive order, at the opening of an Oval Office appearance with Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth. The department had told States Newsroom earlier this week that it had nothing new to share at this time regarding the proposed transfer.
Judge ‘dramatically overstepped’
Madi Biedermann, a spokesperson for the department, said the agency “will immediately challenge this on an emergency basis.”
“Once again, a far-left Judge has dramatically overstepped his authority, based on a complaint from biased plaintiffs, and issued an injunction against the obviously lawful efforts to make the Department of Education more efficient and functional for the American people,” she said in a statement shared with States Newsroom.
“President Trump and the Senate-confirmed Secretary of Education clearly have the authority to make decisions about agency reorganization efforts, not an unelected Judge with a political axe to grind. This ruling is not in the best interest of American students or families.”
Thursday’s ruling came just a day after McMahon took a grilling from U.S. House Democrats over the drastic cuts and proposed changes at her department during a hearing in a panel of the U.S. House Committee on Appropriations.
McMahon appeared before the lawmakers to outline Trump’s fiscal year 2026 budget request, which calls for $12 billion in spending cuts at the department.
U.S. Education Secretary Linda McMahon testifies at a hearing of the U.S. House Appropriations Subcommittee on Labor, Health and Human Services, Education, and Related Agencies on May 21, 2025. (Screenshot from committee livestream)
WASHINGTON — U.S. Education Secretary Linda McMahon took heat from U.S. House Democrats on Wednesday over the drastic cuts and proposed changes at her federal agency in the months since President Donald Trump took office.
Democrats on a panel within the U.S. House Committee on Appropriations expressed dissatisfaction with McMahon’s education initiatives so far, as well as Trump’s fiscal year 2026 budget request released earlier this month. The request calls for $12 billion in spending cuts at the department.
McMahon appeared before the Subcommittee on Labor, Health and Human Services, Education, and Related Agencies to outline the budget request as part of the panel’s work to write the bill to fund the department for the coming fiscal year.
McMahon told the panel that the department aims to “shrink federal bureaucracy, save taxpayer money and empower states — who best know their local needs — to manage education in this country.”
“We’ve reduced a department that was overstaffed by thousands of positions, cut old contracts that were enriching private parties at taxpayer expense, suspended grants for illegal (diversity, equity and inclusion) programs and now are putting forward a budget request that reduces department funding by more than 15%,” she said.
Trump and his administration have sought to dramatically reshape the federal role in education, including an executive order calling on McMahon to facilitate the closure of her own department, the gutting of more than 1,300 employees at the agency, threats to revoke funds for schools that use DEI practices and a crackdown on “woke” higher education.
‘Disdain for public education’
Rep. Rosa DeLauro, ranking member of the full panel and the subcommittee, called McMahon’s actions at the department “lawless,” adding that they “reek of disdain for public education” and are “hurting the most vulnerable in our nation.”
“Under your leadership of the department, hundreds of millions of dollars have been frozen, and entire programs have been terminated,” the Connecticut Democrat said. “Funding for vital research, protection of students’ civil rights and programs that support the recruitment and professional development of effective educators have been terminated.”
DeLauro also lambasted the budget’s proposal to consolidate 18 grant programs for K-12 education and replace them with a $2 billion formula grant that would give states spending flexibility.
A White House document summarizing major changes in the budget request said the consolidation would cut spending by more than $4.5 billion, a point DeLauro emphasized.
“Yet at the same time, you propose that we provide $4.5 billion less to educate our nation’s children overall,” she said. “A block grant is a cut — all of my colleagues here know that the states cannot afford to pick up the slack.”
In another exchange in the lengthy hearing, McMahon pushed back against New Jersey Democratic Rep. Bonnie Watson Coleman’s assertion that the department’s Office for Civil Rights is “being decimated.” The unit has seen significant staffing cuts as part of the department’s reduction in force effort along with the closure of several regional offices.
“Well, it isn’t being decimated,” McMahon said. “We have reduced the size of it, however, we are taking on a backlog of cases that were left over from the Biden administration and we’re working through those.”
Watson Coleman proceeded to press McMahon on why the department would reduce its resources if the agency has a backlog in addition to confronting cases that will come before it now.
“Because we are working more efficiently in the department,” McMahon replied.
Prioritizing school choice
Meanwhile, Republicans focused largely on school choice initiatives and how McMahon and the department are prioritizing those efforts.
The term “school choice” applies to alternative programs to a student’s assigned public school. Proponents say school choice programs are necessary for parents dissatisfied with their local public schools, though critics argue these efforts drain critical funds from school districts.
Rep. Robert Aderholt, chair of the subcommittee, said “too many schools, encouraged and facilitated by federal funding, have let things like social justice advocacy and divisive issues crowd out the focus on teaching students and the core subjects.”
“Thankfully, some states have pursued choice options for students whose traditional public schools have not served them well, including through charter schools,” the Alabama Republican said.
McMahon said increasing school choice was one of her priorities as secretary and highlighted the budget’s proposed increase of $60 million to expand the number of charter schools in the country, according to the budget request.
“The president absolutely believes, as do I, that the more choice that parents have, the better off the students are, and we’ve seen that repeatedly in different states,” she said.
U.S. Sen. Cory Booker, a New Jersey Democrat, speaks at a press conference outside the U.S. Capitol on Tuesday, May 20, 2025, in Washington, D.C. (Photo by Shauneen Miranda/States Newsroom)
WASHINGTON — Congressional Democrats on Tuesday blasted the assault charges the Trump administration is pursuing against New Jersey U.S. Rep. LaMonica McIver following a clash with law enforcement earlier this month outside an immigration detention center in Newark.
Leaders of the Congressional Black Caucus, Democratic Women’s Caucus and Congressional Progressive Caucus defended McIver at a press conference attended by dozens of Democrats outside of the U.S. Capitol, arguing that the New Jersey Democrat was simply doing her job in conducting oversight of the facility.
In a criminal complaint, McIver is charged with two counts of “assaulting, resisting, and impeding certain officers or employees,” with one charge involving a Homeland Security Investigations special agent and another surrounding an Immigration and Customs Enforcement deportation officer.
The charges are tied to McIver’s May 9 visit to the detention center, where she was accompanied by fellow New Jersey Democrats — Reps. Rob Menendez and Bonnie Watson Coleman. The lawmakers had said they wanted to inspect the detention center.
Federal authorities say McIver assaulted two officers as she tried to prevent the arrest of Newark Mayor Ras Baraka. Alina Habba, acting U.S. attorney for the District of New Jersey, announced Monday that she would be dropping a trespassing charge against Baraka stemming from the same standoff.
‘Reprehensible political stunt’
At the Capitol press conference, Rep. Yvette Clarke, chair of the Congressional Black Caucus, described the charges as a “reprehensible political stunt.”
The New York Democrat said “members of Congress have every right to conduct oversight at ICE facilities and any other federal agency, and when egregious, undeniable and vicious violations of the law and people’s freedoms are taking place, we, they, in fact, have an obligation to do so.”
New Jersey Democratic Sen. Cory Booker said McIver, Menendez and Watson Coleman “stood their ground, used their voice and did their job.”
“They actually are obeying the Constitution. They are standing up to give checks and balances to this administration at a time that the Republicans in control of the House and the Senate are laying down and completely abrogating their duties to check and balance and give oversight to the president,” he added.
New Jersey Democratic Rep. Frank Pallone also condemned the charges on Tuesday, calling the Justice Department’s actions “outrageous.”
Ahead of a Tuesday hearing in the House Judiciary Committee on “threats to ICE operations,” Pallone led several other New Jersey Democrats in writing to the panel’s chair, Rep. Jim Jordan of Ohio, and ranking member, Rep. Jamie Raskin of Maryland, to express their support for the three lawmakers’ oversight visit to the detention center.
The group also condemned what they see as efforts from the Justice and Homeland Security Departments to “politicize and suppress lawful Congressional oversight through acts of intimidation and threats of legal action against our colleagues.”
‘Baseless charges’
Rep. Greg Casar, who chairs the Congressional Progressive Caucus, said the Department of Justice “filing baseless charges against a member of Congress for simply doing her job should send a chill down the spine of every American.”
The Texas Democrat said the caucus held a meeting just before the press conference where they decided that they are “just about to go and do a lot more oversight visits at ICE facilities.”
He said the members of the caucus recognized at the meeting that President Trump “doesn’t want us conducting oversight at ICE facilities like these brave members of Congress were doing — he wants to intimidate us out of doing that.”
A proposal in the U.S. House would allocate $5 billion a year in tax credits for people donating to organizations that provide private and religious school scholarships. (Getty photos)
WASHINGTON — A national school voucher program got a step closer to becoming law Wednesday, as school choice continues to take heat across the United States.
The proposal in the U.S. House would allocate $5 billion a year in tax credits for people donating to organizations that provide private and religious school scholarships and is baked into the Ways and Means Committee’s piece of a massive reconciliation package to fund President Donald Trump’s priorities.
The tax credit provision largely reflects the Educational Choice for Children Act — a sweeping bill that GOP Reps. Adrian Smith of Nebraska, Burgess Owens of Utah and Sen. Bill Cassidy of Louisiana reintroduced in their respective chambers earlier this year.
The tax-writing committee advanced its measure Wednesday in a party-line vote. Republicans are using the complex reconciliation process to move the package through Congress with simple majority votes in each chamber, avoiding the Senate’s 60-vote legislative filibuster, which would otherwise require bipartisanship.
“School choice” is an umbrella term centering on alternative programs to one’s assigned public school. While proponents have argued that school choice programs are necessary for parents dissatisfied with their local public schools, opponents say these efforts drain critical funds and resources from school districts.
At a press conference Wednesday, Rep. Elise Stefanik praised the Educational Choice for Children Act, which she cosponsored in the House.
The New York Republican said the bill is “a transformative piece of legislation that will expand educational opportunities for children across our nation.”
“For too long, students, especially those from underserved communities, have been trapped in failing school systems,” she said, adding that “school choice gives students the opportunity to succeed” and “is the great equalizer.”
$20 billion tax credit over 4 years
The tax panel’s proposal includes a $20 billion total tax credit, which would be made up of a $5 billion tax credit annually between 2026 and 2029.
The scholarships would be available to students whose household incomes do not exceed 300 percent of the median gross income of their area.
“This is opening the door to the federal government subsidizing a secondary private system of education that gets to pick and choose who it educates and how it educates kids,” Sasha Pudelski, director of advocacy at AASA, The School Superintendents Association, told States Newsroom.
The association helps to ensure every child has access to a high quality public education.
“I think it’s really important for folks to understand that we are opening this door for the first time to this kind of subsidy,” Pudelski said.
The provision also comes as Trump has made school choice a major part of his education agenda.
He signed an executive order in January that gave the U.S. secretary of Education two months to offer guidance on how states can use “federal formula funds to support K-12 educational choice initiatives.”
More opposition
Organizations that advocate for students with disabilities, including the National Center for Learning Disabilities, the Council for Exceptional Children, the Center for Learner Equity, and The Arc of the United States, fiercely opposed the bill, highlighting concerns that it is not sufficient in providing enforceable protections for students with disabilities and their families.
In a statement, Jacqueline Rodriguez, CEO of the National Center for Learning Disabilities, said “the guarantee of rights and protections for students with disabilities using these vouchers is disingenuous at best and crooked at worst, without the other critical provisions of IDEA,” or the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act.
“It is quite possible that families with disabilities will use a voucher under the pretense that their child will have the same rights when in fact they do not,” Rodriguez said.
House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries holds a press conference May 13, 2025, at the U.S. Capitol in Washington, D.C. (Photo by Shauneen Miranda/States Newsroom)
WASHINGTON — Democrats Tuesday criticized House Republicans for their efforts to pass “one big, beautiful” bill to extend Trump-era tax cuts that would require potential cuts to food assistance and Medicaid.
“The American people do not support this extreme and toxic bill, and we’re going to hold every single House Republican who votes for it accountable,” said House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, Democrat of New York, during a press conference.
As House Republicans push forward with the last three bills of their reconciliation package in committee this week, Democrats slammed the proposed work requirements for Medicaid, extending the 2017 tax cuts enacted during President Donald Trump’s first term and overhaul of the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP, in order to pay for the megabill.
The complex reconciliation process skirts the Senate filibuster and Republicans plan to pass the bill through a simple majority, meaning input from Democrats is not needed.
Several House Democrats, such as Rep. Steven Horsford, Democrat of Nevada, called the legislation a “scam.”
Horsford, who sits on the Ways and Means Committee, said during a separate press conference with the advocacy group Popular Democracy that extending the 2017 Trump tax cuts would “gut Medicaid.”
Medicaid is the state-federal health care program for people with low incomes and certain people with disabilities, and has 71.3 million enrollees.
“This would be the largest cut to health care in the history of our country,” Horsford said.
Rep. Judy Chu, Democrat of California, said only the ultra wealthy, such as billionaires, would benefit from reconciliation through tax cuts.
The cost of the tax proposal has not yet been released, but government deficit watchdogs estimated a wholesale extension would cost roughly $4 trillion over the next decade.
SNAP costs shifted in part to states
The House committees on Agriculture, Energy and Commerce and Ways and Means met Tuesday to debate and pass their bills.
The Agriculture panel seeks to hit as much as $290 billion in cuts by passing part of the costs of SNAP to states through a sliding pay scale, based on error rates.
States with the lowest error rates for SNAP benefits would only pay for 5%, while other states with higher rates could pay as much for 25% of food benefits. More than 42 million people rely on SNAP, which is currently completely funded by the federal government.
The Energy and Commerce bill would cut federal spending by $880 billion, such as by instituting work requirements for Medicaid for some able-bodied adults ages between 19 and 65.
House committees have already signed off on eight of the 11 bills that will make up the sweeping reconciliation legislation before the Budget Committee rolls the bills into one package. If all Republicans get on board, the House is on track to approve the entire package before the end of May.
Warnings of rising premiums, hospital closings
Senate Democrats slammed potential cuts and changes to Medicaid.
“Not only will millions of Americans lose coverage — for many others, their premiums will skyrocket,” Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer said at a press conference Tuesday.
“Hospitals — rural, urban and in between — will close,” the New York Democrat said. “Many, many people will lose their jobs, and many more will lose their health coverage. States will scramble with their budgets, and American families will be left out to dry.”
Oregon Democratic U.S. Sen. Ron Wyden also blasted the proposed cuts.
“What the Republicans do in their health care provisions in the reconciliation package is walk back health security for millions and millions of Americans,” he said.
“We’re for a tax code that gives everybody in America the chance to get ahead, that’s something that we’re going to battle for in this process,” said Wyden, the top Democrat on the U.S. Senate Committee on Finance.
Senate GOP
Some Republicans have also raised concerns about cuts to Medicaid, such as Missouri Sen. Josh Hawley, who wrote in an opinion piece in the New York Times that any cuts to Medicaid would be “both morally wrong and politically suicidal.”
But Senate Majority Leader, John Thune of South Dakota, said Tuesday that he feels “very good” about where House Republicans are on their bill and “where, ultimately, we are going to be on that bill as well.”
“We are coordinating very closely with our House counterparts at the committee level, at the leadership level, and we know they have to get 218 votes,” he said.
Thune said House Republicans will “do what it takes to get it done in the House, and when it comes over here, we will be prepared for various contingencies, obviously, one of which could be taking up the House bill and then offering a Senate substitute, but we’ll see what ultimately they’re able to get done.”
Haverford College President Wendy Raymond testifies before the U.S. House Committee on Education and Workforce on Wednesday, May 7, 2025, at the U.S. Capitol in Washington, D.C. (Photo by Shauneen Miranda/States Newsroom)
WASHINGTON — A trio of college presidents from across the nation Wednesday took heat from U.S. House lawmakers, as Republicans expand their drive to penalize higher education institutions they say have failed to combat antisemitism.
The presidents of Pennsylvania’s Haverford College, DePaul University in Chicago and California Polytechnic State University at San Luis Obispo appeared before the House Committee on Education and Workforce to detail the steps the schools have taken to address antisemitism at their schools.
But it was the Haverford president, Wendy Raymond, who drew the most outrage from Republicans, including a tense exchange with Rep. Elise Stefanik, a New York Republican, when Raymond could not say how many students have been disciplined recently for antisemitic conduct.
Stefanik called Raymond’s responses “completely unacceptable.”
The hearing in the GOP-controlled House education panel — the first on antisemitism since President Donald Trump took office — came as his administration takes drastic steps to withhold billions of dollars in federal funding from several elite institutions across the country over claims that the schools are harboring antisemitism on their campuses.
Harvard University has had grant funding yanked by the administration for permitting “intolerable” harassment of Jewish students.
Trump officials have also attempted to make elite institutions align more with the administration ideologically.
GOP lawmakers have focused on antisemitism in the wake of Hamas’ Oct. 7, 2023, attack on Israel and college protests that surfaced across the country last year over the war in Gaza. Now they are moving on beyond the Ivy League.
Chairman Tim Walberg said “the scourge of antisemitism has taken root far beyond the country’s best-known ivory towers, and it’s our responsibility as a committee to unearth and address antisemitism at these schools, too, and others, especially as antisemitism is at a historic high in the United States.”
“Antisemitism is proliferating at colleges across the country, both private and public, in rural, urban and suburban settings,” the Michigan Republican said.
Haverford president apologizes
Republicans on the panel expressed particular dissatisfaction with testimony offered from Haverford’s Raymond.
The small liberal arts college, founded in 1833, is located in the suburbs of Philadelphia.
Raymond acknowledged that in reaction to the war in Gaza, “events have occurred on our campus that are inconsistent with our values” and apologized to Haverford’s Jewish community. She did not elaborate on the incidents.
She said the college has taken “significant steps to address these issues and strengthen our policies.”
“That includes updating our policies, strengthening campus safety programs, deepening engagement with the Jewish community, launching programs to combat antisemitism and forming our ad hoc committee on free expression.”
Asked by Walberg how many students have been expelled or suspended for antisemitic conduct since Hamas’ 2023 attack, Raymond was the only one of the three presidents who could not provide concrete numbers.
Raymond said Haverford does not publicize that information but that suspension and expulsion are “normal parts” of their disciplinary process.
‘Straightforward questions’
Stefanik took aim at Raymond’s refusal to offer more details on any actions taken by the school regarding antisemitism.
During a heated exchange between Stefanik and Raymond, the Haverford president said: “Respectfully, representative, I will not be talking about individual cases here.”
Stefanik fired back, saying: “Respectfully, president of Haverford, many people have sat in this position who are no longer in the positions as president of universities for their failure to answer straightforward questions.”
Stefanik was pointing to multiple university presidents she grilled who appeared before the House education panel for hearings regarding campus antisemitism and later resigned, including leaders at Harvard, Columbia University and the University of Pennsylvania.
Raymond had said that there “have been some” disciplinary actions taken by Haverford related to antisemitism but did not offer details.
“For the American people watching: You still don’t get it. Haverford still doesn’t get it. It’s a very different testimony than the other presidents who are here today, who are coming with specifics,” Stefanik said.
DePaul’s president, Robert Manuel, detailed a number of steps the university is taking, including implementing a new ID verification and mask policy, placing new limits on campus protests and suspending the operations of a student group that Walberg claimed is “at the very center” of the school’s “antisemitism problem.”
Cal Poly’s president, Jeffrey Armstrong, said “when alleged antisemitism or harassment occurs, we investigate and impose immediate university discipline.”
He also said the university is enhancing its mandatory student orientation and biannual employee training to provide greater education and awareness on antisemitism.
At the end of her heated exchange with Raymond, Stefanik said “this is completely unacceptable, and it’s why this committee has stepped in, because higher education has failed to address the scourge of antisemitism, putting Jewish students at risk at Haverford and other campuses across the country.”
Democrats criticize cuts at Education Department
Meanwhile, Democrats on the panel criticized Republicans on the committee for pursuing hearings on antisemitism when the Trump administration has made huge cuts to the U.S. Department of Education, including its Office for Civil Rights that’s tasked with investigating discrimination complaints.
Rep. Bobby Scott, ranking member of the panel, said “in its first three months, the Trump administration has closed down seven of 12 OCR regional offices, all of which conduct investigations into discrimination on campus, whether it be based on antisemitism or race, national origin, gender or disability.”
The Virginia Democrat also pointed to reports of nearly half of the OCR staff being laid off. “One is left to wonder: how can OCR carry out its important responsibilities with half the staff?” he said.
Scott added that the administration’s move to dismantle OCR “raises reasonable doubt about the plans for addressing antisemitism on campus as well as racism, homophobia, sexism, Islamophobia or the needs of students with disabilities.”
Angélica Infante-Green, Rhode Island’s commissioner of elementary and secondary education, speaks at a forum on Tuesday, May 6, 2025, at the U.S. Capitol in Washington, D.C. (Screenshot via YouTube)
WASHINGTON — U.S. Senate Democrats on Tuesday blasted the Trump administration’s efforts to dismantle the U.S. Department of Education, underscoring the impact of the dizzying array of cuts, overhauls and proposed changes to the agency on students, families and educators.
Sen. Patty Murray, who hosted the forum in a U.S. Senate hearing room alongside several Democratic colleagues, said Trump is “essentially bulldozing the Department of Education, regardless of who depends on it, regardless of who is still inside, and regardless of the very loud outcry from parents and educators and students about this.”
The Washington state Democrat brought in education advocates and leaders, who emphasized the importance of the department in delivering on federal resources for public education, investigating civil rights complaints and helping students cheated by predatory institutions.
Trump and his administration have sought to dramatically reshape the federal role in education, including an executive order calling on Education Secretary Linda McMahon to facilitate the closure of her own department, the gutting of more than 1,300 employees at the agency, threats to revoke funds for schools that use diversity, equity and inclusion practices and a crackdown on “woke” higher education.
‘Unnecessary confusion and chaos’
Angélica Infante-Green, Rhode Island’s commissioner of elementary and secondary education, said she and colleagues who lead state education across the country have spent a great deal of time trying to decipher the intent of Trump’s executive orders and the department’s directives and policy changes.
“They seem unclear and cause unnecessary confusion and chaos for all of us,” Infante-Green said. “While the impact of the confusion may be hard to quantify, what is clear is that students and families and educators are the losers in this new paradigm.”
Denise Forte, CEO of the nonprofit policy and advocacy group EdTrust, said “most urgently, we are alarmed by the mass firing of over half of the department staff.”
“This isn’t reform — it is sabotage,” Forte said, pointing to the layoffs hitting wide swaths of the department, particularly in the Office for Civil Rights, Office of Federal Student Aid and Institute of Education Sciences.
“With the Office for Civil Rights now severely understaffed, civil rights complaints will skyrocket while response capacity plummets,” she said.
Students with disabilities
The cuts at the agency and Trump’s proposal in March that the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services “will be handling special needs” have sparked worries among disability advocates over whether the department can carry out its responsibilities to serve students with disabilities.
Diane Willcutts, director of Education Advocacy, said she’s been getting “panicked phone calls from parents of children with disabilities who are wondering, ‘What does this all mean?’”
Willcutts has worked for over two decades in Connecticut and Massachusetts helping families of children with disabilities navigate the education process.
“I think everyone’s shell-shocked, and we’re looking for direction — how can we be helpful to you in order to protect the U.S. Department of Education?” she said. “I know there’s this assumption that ‘Oh, the states will take care of it.’ That is absolutely not the case, I can tell you in my state that is not what is happening right now, and so, as I said, there’s a level of panic but we’re looking for direction.”
Trump’s budget request
Meanwhile, Trump also released a budget request last week that calls for $12 billion in spending cuts at the department.
Wisconsin Democratic Sen. Tammy Baldwin said the budget includes “devastating cuts to many critical programs,” and that the proposal “comes at a time when too many students are chronically absent and achieving at levels that will not set them up for success.”
Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer said the Trump administration is “cutting so many things — don’t feel alone, Department of Education.”
“They don’t know what they’re doing about just about anything, and they want to cut everything, but to cut education, which has been sacrosanct in America, is just awful,” the New York Democrat said.
Schumer said Tuesday’s “spotlight hearing” is just one in a series Senate Democrats will be hosting in response to Trump’s cuts to the department.
Trump administration officials said the outrage was misplaced.
“If Senate Democrats were truly interested in fighting for parents, students, and teachers as they claim, where was their outrage over this year’s dismal math and reading scores? Don’t get it twisted,” Savannah Newhouse, a spokesperson for the U.S. Department of Education, said in a statement shared with States Newsroom.
Senate Democrats “are fighting President Trump’s education agenda for one reason: to protect the bloated bureaucracy that has consistently failed our nation’s students,” Newhouse said.
“By returning education authority to the states, President Trump and Secretary McMahon will help every American child — including those in public schools — to have the best shot at a quality education.”
A U.S. Border Patrol official vehicle is shown parked near the border. (Getty Images)
WASHINGTON — U.S. House Judiciary Republicans Wednesday worked in committee on a portion of a major legislative package that would help fund President Donald Trump’s plans to conduct mass deportations of people living in the United States without permanent legal status.
The Judiciary panel’s $81 billion share of the “one, big beautiful” bill the president has requested of Congress would provide $45 billion for immigration detention centers, $8 billion to hire thousands of immigration enforcement officers and more than $14 billion for deportations, among other things.
The border security and immigration funds are part of a massive package that wraps together White House priorities including tax cuts and defense spending boosts. Republicans are pushing the deal through using a special procedure known as reconciliation that will allow the Senate GOP to skirt its usual 60-vote threshold when that chamber acts.
On Wednesday, lawmakers continued work on the various sections of the reconciliation bill with markups — which means a bill is debated and potentially amended or rewritten — in the Financial Services, Judiciary, Transportation and Infrastructure and Oversight and Government Reform committees.
House Speaker Mike Johnson of Louisiana said Republicans will spend the rest of this week and next debating the 11 separate bills in committees. Committees when they finish their measures will send them to the House Budget Committee, which is expected to bundle them together prior to a floor vote.
The Judiciary panel’s 116-page bill vastly overhauls U.S. asylum laws. It would, for example, create a fee structure for asylum seekers that would set a minimum cost for an application at no less than $1,000. Applications now are free.
“These and other resources and fees in this reconciliation bill will ensure the Trump administration has the adequate resources to enforce the immigration laws in a fiscally responsible way,” GOP Chair Jim Jordan of Ohio said.
The bill would establish a $1,000 fee for immigrants granted temporary protected status, which would mean they would have work authorizations and deportation protections.
It would also require sponsors to pay $3,500 to take in an unaccompanied minor who crosses the border without a legal status. Typically, unaccompanied minors are released to sponsors who are family members living in the United States.
The bill would also require immigrants without permanent legal status to pay a $550 fee for work permits every six months.
The top Democrat on the panel, Rep. Jamie Raskin of Maryland, slammed the bill as targeting immigrants.
“Every day, this administration uses immigration enforcement as a template to erode constitutional rights and liberties,” he said.
A final committee vote was expected Wednesday night.
‘A giveaway to ICE’
The Judiciary bill directs half of the fees collected from asylum seekers to go toward the agency that handles U.S. immigration courts, but Democrats criticized the provisions as creating a barrier for asylum seekers.
“The so-called immigration fees that are in this bill are really fines and nothing but a cruel attempt to make immigrating to this country impossible,” Washington Democratic Rep. Pramila Jayapal said.
Democratic Rep. Chuy Garcia of Illinois, said the bill would not only “gut asylum” but would significantly increase funding for U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement detention.
Funding for ICE detention this fiscal year is roughly $3.4 billion, but the Judiciary bill would sharply increase that to $45 billion.
Garcia called the increase a “a giveaway to ICE, a rogue agency that’s terrorizing communities and clamping (down) on civil liberties and the Constitution itself, because they’ve been directed to do so by this president.”
House Republicans have also included language that would move the Federal Trade Commission into the Department of Justice’s antitrust division, a move Democrats argued would kneecap the FTC’s regulatory authority.
“You’re trying to shutter the FTC, the Federal Trade Commission, making it harder for us to enforce our antitrust laws,” Democratic Rep. Becca Balint of Vermont said.
Consumer protections to take a hit
Lawmakers on the House Committee on Financial Services met in a lengthy, and at times tense, session to finalize legislation to cut “no less than” $1 billion from government programs and services under the panel’s jurisdiction, according to the budget resolution Congress approved in April.
Funds in the crosshairs include those previously authorized for the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, and grants provided under the Biden administration-era Inflation Reduction Act for homeowners to improve energy efficiency.
Chair French Hill said the committee “will do its part to reduce the deficit and decrease direct spending, so that Congress can enact pro-growth tax policies.”
“And remember, today, we are here with one purpose, to do our part to put our nation back on a responsible fiscal trajectory,” the Arkansas Republican said.
Democrats introduced dozens of amendments during the hourslong session to block cuts to community block grants and programs protecting consumers, including veterans, from illegal credit and lending practices.
Ranking member Maxine Waters said committee Republicans’ plans to cut the CFPB by 70% “is ridiculous.”
“The bureau has saved American consumers $21 billion by returning to them funds that big banks and predatory lenders swindled out of them,” said Waters, a California Democrat.
Congress created the CFPB in the aftermath of the 2008 financial crisis, when subprime mortgage lending cascaded into bank failures and home and job losses.
Republicans opposed amendment after amendment.
Rep. María Salazar of Florida tossed a copy of one of Waters’ lengthy amendments straight into a trash can after a staffer handed it to her. Michigan’s Rep. Bill Huizenga held up proceedings for several minutes when he accused Waters of breaking the rules by not distributing enough paper copies of her amendment.
“We cannot allow our government to continue spending money like there are no consequences,” GOP Rep. Mike Flood of Nebraska said in response to several Democratic amendments.
A final committee vote was expected Wednesday night.
Transportation section adds fees on electric vehicles
The House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee also approved, by a party line 36-30 vote, reconciliation instructions that would cut $10 billion from the federal deficit while boosting spending for the U.S. Coast Guard and the air traffic control system.
Like other portions of the larger reconciliation package, the transportation committee’s instructions would add funding for national security and border enforcement, through the Coast Guard funding, while cutting money from programs favored by Democrats, including climate programs and any spending that could be construed as race-conscious.
The bill would provide $21.2 billion for the Coast Guard and $12.5 billion for air traffic control systems. It would raise money through a $250 annual fee on electric vehicles and a $100 annual fee on hybrids, while also cutting $4.6 billion from climate programs created in Democrats’ 2022 reconciliation package.
Chairman Sam Graves, a Missouri Republican, said the measure included priorities for members of both parties, as well as business and labor interests.
“We all want to invest in our Coast Guard,” he said. “We all want to rebuild our air traffic control system and finally address the broken Highway Trust Fund. We have held countless hearings on all of these topics, both recently and, frankly, for years. And now members have the opportunity to actually act.”
Democrats on the panel complained that the reconciliation package was a partisan exercise and a departure from the panel’s normally congenial approach to business. They introduced dozens of amendments over the daylong committee meeting seeking to add funding for various programs. None were adopted.
“The larger Republican reconciliation package will add more than $15 trillion in new debt, gives away $7 trillion in deficit-financed tax cuts to the wealthy and slashes access to health care and food assistance for families,” ranking Democrat Rick Larsen of Washington said. “Given that, I think we’re going to have to vote no on the bill before us.”
The vehicle fees, which would be deposited into the Highway Trust Fund that sends highway and transit money to states, created a partisan divide Wednesday.
Federal gas taxes provide the lion’s share of deposits to the fund and Republicans argued that, because drivers of electric vehicles pay no gas taxes and hybrid drivers pay less than those who drive gas-powered cars, the provision would make the contributions fairer.
Republicans scrapped a proposed $20 annual fee on gas-powered cars, which Graves said was meant to “start a conversation” on the solvency of the Highway Trust Fund. But the provision “became a political distraction that no longer centered around seriously addressing the problem,” he said.
Pennsylvania Democrat Chris Deluzio criticized the vehicle fees, noting Republicans were pursuing additional revenue opportunities to offset losses from tax cuts.
“I don’t know when you guys became the tax-and-spend liberals,” Deluzio told his Republican colleagues. “But I guess the taxing of car owners so you can pay for tax giveaways to billionaires is your new strategy. Good luck with that.”
Federal employee benefits targeted
The House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform voted nearly along party lines, 22-21, to send its portion of the reconciliation package to the Budget Committee, with Ohio Republican Rep. Mike Turner joining Democrats in opposition.
Turner was the first GOP lawmaker to cast a committee vote against reconciliation instructions this year.
The legislation hits at federal employee benefits and comes as the Trump administration continues to overhaul the federal workforce.
Part of the bill would raise federal employees’ required retirement contribution to a rate of 4.4% of their salary and eliminate an additional retirement annuity payment for federal employees who retire before the age of 62, while cutting more than $50 billion from the federal deficit.
At his committee’s markup, Chairman James Comer said the legislation “advances important budgetary reforms that will save taxpayers money.”
The Kentucky Republican acknowledged that the chief investigative committee in the U.S. House has “very limited jurisdiction to help reduce the federal budget deficit,” noting that the panel is “empowered to pursue civil service reforms, including federal employee benefits and reining in the influence of partisan and unaccountable government employee unions.”
But Democrats on the panel blasted the committee’s portion of the reconciliation package, saying the bill chips away at federal employees’ protections.
Rep. Stephen Lynch, the top Democrat on the panel, said congressional Republicans instructed the panel to target the federal workforce with roughly $50 billion in funding cuts “regardless of the impact on hard-working, loyal federal employees and their critical services that they provide to the American people.”
The Massachusetts Democrat said the bill “threatens to further undermine the federal workforce by reducing the take-home pay, the benefits and workforce protections of 2.4 million federal employees, most of whom are middle-class Americans and a third of whom are military veterans.”
Ohio’s Turner, who voted against the legislation because of the provision reducing pension benefits, said he supported the overall reconciliation package and hoped the pension measure would be stripped before a floor vote.
Turner said “making changes to pension retirement benefits in the middle of someone’s employment is wrong.”
Demonstrators holds signs as a motorist passes with flags supporting President Donald Trump during an April 5, 2025, protest in Columbia, South Carolina. Protestors organized nationwide demonstrations against Trump administration policies and Elon Musk's U.S. DOGE Service. (Photo by Sean Rayford/Getty Images)
WASHINGTON — Tuesday marked the 100th day of President Donald Trump’s second term, a period filled almost daily with executive orders seeking to expand presidential power, court challenges to block those orders and economic anxiety that undermines his promised prosperity.
Trump has taken decisive actions that have polarized the electorate. He’s used obscure authorities to increase deportations, upended longstanding trade policy with record-high tariffs, made drastic cuts to the federal workforce and ordered the closure of the Education Department.
Those moves have garnered mixed results and led to legal challenges.
The approach to immigration enforcement has yielded lower numbers of unauthorized border crossings compared to last year. But the immigration crackdown has barreled the country toward a constitutional crisis through various clashes with the judiciary branch.
Those nearing retirement have watched their savings shrink as Trump’s blunt application of tariffs, which he promises will replace income taxes, roils markets. Administration officials have promised the short-term tariff pain will benefit the country in the long term.
And White House advisor and top campaign donor Elon Musk’s efforts at government efficiency have resulted in eliminations of wide swaths of government jobs. That includes about half of the Education Department workforce so far, though Trump has signed an executive order to eliminate the department.
The controversial moves appear unpopular, as Americans delivered record low approval ratings for a president so early in his term. Polls spearheaded by Fox News, NPR, Gallup and numerous others yield overall disapproval of Trump’s job performance.
Trump speaks to reporters after signing executive orders in the Oval Office on April 23, 2025. Secretary of Commerce Howard Lutnick, Secretary of Labor Lori Chavez-DeRemer and Secretary of Education Linda McMahon look on. (Photo by Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)
Deportation push tests legal boundaries
Immigration was Trump’s signature issue on the campaign trail and his first 100 days were marked by a crackdown carried out against people with a range of immigration statuses and at least three U.S. citizen children. The aggressive push has led to clashes with the judiciary branch.
A burst of Inauguration Day executive orders Trump signed upon his return to office included some hardline immigration policies he’d promised.
On day one, he declared a national emergency at the U.S.-Mexico border that enabled his deployment two days later of 1,500 troops to help border enforcement.
District courts blocked the birthright citizenship and refugee resettlement measures and an appeals court has upheld those interpretations. The U.S. Supreme Court will hear arguments in May on birthright citizenship.
Trump’s record on immigration is a clear example of his desire to expand executive power, said Ahilan Arulanantham, a co-director of the Center for Immigration Law and Policy at the University of California Los Angeles School of Law.
“It’s an attempt to expand the government’s powers far beyond anything that we have seen before in this realm,” he said.
Unprecedented authorities
The administration has taken a series of actions considered nearly unprecedented to conduct mass deportations.
Authorities never accused Khalil of committing a crime, but sought to revoke his green card under a Cold War-era provision that allows the secretary of State to remove lawful permanent residents if the secretary deems their presence has “potentially serious adverse foreign policy consequences.”
Similar arrests followed at universities across the country.
In mid-March, Trump invoked the Alien Enemies Act of 1798 to deport two planeloads of people his administration said belonged to the Venezuelan gang Tren de Aragua.
It was only the fourth time the law was invoked and the first outside of wartime. The first flights left U.S. soil en route to a mega-prison in El Salvador on Saturday, March 15, amid a hearing on the legality of using the law in peacetime.
Prison officers stand guard over a cell block at the Centro de Confinamiento del Terrorismo, or CECOT, on April 4, 2025 in El Salvador. (Photo by Alex Peña/Getty Images)
When a federal judge entered an oral order to turn the flights around, the administration refused, arguing the oral order was not valid. The administration also ignored a subsequent written order demanding the return of the flights, later arguing the flights were outside U.S. airspace at that time and impossible to order returned.
Administration officials mocked the court order on social media.
The Supreme Court on April 7 allowed for the use of the Alien Enemies Act to deport suspected gang members of Tren de Aragua. However, the justices unanimously agreed that those removed under the wartime law needed to have due process and have a hearing to challenge their removal.
Abrego Garcia
A third March 15 flight carried a man who was mistakenly deported in an episode that has gained a national spotlight.
Maryland resident Kilmar Abrego Garcia, a native of El Salvador, had a final order of removal, but was granted deportation protections by an immigration judge because of the threat he would be harmed by gangs if he were returned to his home country. Despite the protective order, he was deported to the notorious Centro de Confinamiento del Terrorismo, or CECOT prison.
After his family sued over his deportation, the administration admitted he’d been removed through an “administrative error,” but stood by its decision.
The administration argued it had no power to compel the El Salvador government to release Abrego Garcia, despite a possibly illegal $6 million agreement with the country to detain the roughly 300 men.
A Maryland federal court and an appeals court ruled the administration must repatriate Abrego Garcia, whose wife and 5-year-old son are U.S. citizens, and the Supreme Court unanimously ruled that the Trump administration must “facilitate” his return, but stopped short of requiring it.
The administration has done little to indicate it is complying with that order, earning a rebuke from a conservative judge on the 4th Circuit Court of Appeals.
“The Supreme Court’s decision does not … allow the government to do essentially nothing,” Circuit Court Judge J. Harvie Wilkinson III wrote. “‘Facilitate’ is an active verb. It requires that steps be taken as the Supreme Court has made perfectly clear.”
The administration’s relationship with the courts — delaying compliance with orders and showing a clear distaste for doing so — has led to the brink of a constitutional crisis, Arulanantham said.
“They’re playing footsy with disregarding court orders,” he said. “On the one hand, they’re not just complying. If they were complying, Abrego Garcia would be here now.”
But the administration has also not flagrantly refused to comply, Arulanantham added. “They’re sort of testing the bounds.”
Tariffs prompted market drop
Trump’s first 100 days spiraled into economic uncertainty as he ramped up tariffs on allies and trading partners. In early April, the president declared foreign trade a national emergency and shocked economies around the world with costly import taxes.
Following a week of market upheaval, Trump paused for 90 days what he had billed as “reciprocal” tariffs and left a universal 10% levy on nearly all countries, except China, which received a bruising 125%.
Some products, including pharmaceuticals, semiconductors, lumber and copper, remain exempt for now, though the administration is eyeing the possibilities of tariffs on those goods.
A billboard in Miramar, Florida, displays an anti-tariff message on March 28, 2025. The Canadian government has placed the anti-tariff billboards in numerous American cities in what they have described as an “educational campaign” to inform Americans of the economic impacts of tariffs. (Photo by Joe Raedle/Getty Images)
The administration now contends it will strike trade deals with some 90 foreign governments over the pause, set to expire in July.
Meanwhile, an all-out trade war rages with China after Trump hiked tariffs on the world’s no. 2 economy even further to 145%. China responded with 125% tariffs on U.S. goods. The two economies share a massive trading relationship, both in the top three for each other’s imports and exports.
‘Chaotic’ strategy
Inu Manak, fellow for trade policy at the Council on Foreign Relations, summed up Trump’s first 100 days as “chaotic.”
“We haven’t seen anything like this in our U.S. history in terms of how trade policy is being handled. It’s very ad hoc,” Manak said.
“U.S. businesses can’t figure out what to do. And even for the large companies, it’s hard for them to know some of the long-term trajectories of where this was going to go,” Manak said.
Shortly after his second term began, Trump declared a national emergency over illicit fentanyl entering the U.S. — an unprecedented move to trigger import taxes — and began escalating tariffs on Chinese goods, as well as up to 25% on certain products crossing the borders from Canada and Mexico.
Trump hiked existing tariffs on steel and aluminum in mid-March under trade provisions meant to protect domestic production and national security, followed by 25% levies on foreign cars and auto parts — though Trump signed two executive orders Tuesday to grant some tariff relief to carmakers.
The import taxes have alarmed investors, small businesses and American consumers following the 2024 presidential campaign when Trump made lowering prices a major tenet of his platform.
The latest University of Michigan survey of consumers — a staple indicator for economists — reported consumer outlook on personal finances and business conditions took a nosedive in April. Expectations dropped 32% since January, the largest three-month percentage decline since the 1990 recession, according to the analysis.
Manak said Trump’s tariffs are “really at odds with” with the administration’s objectives of helping U.S. manufacturers and cutting costs for Americans.
“The U.S. now has the highest tariff rates in the world,” she said. “That’s going to hurt both consuming industries that import products to make things, and then consumers as well. We’re starting to see notifications coming out on layoffs, and some small businesses considering closing up shop already. And the tariffs haven’t been in place for that long.”
Rhett Buttle, of Small Business for America’s Future, said the policies are “causing real damage in terms of not just planning, but in terms of day-to-day operations.”
Buttle, a senior advisor for the advocacy group that claims 85,000 small business members, said even if Trump begins to strike deals with other countries, entrepreneurs will likely be on edge for months to come.
“It’s that uncertainty that makes business owners not want to hire or not want to grow,” Buttle said. “So it’s like, ‘Okay, we got through this mess, but why would I hire a person if I don’t know if I’m gonna wake up in two weeks and there’s gonna be another announcement?’”
Support dropping
Trillions were erased from the U.S. stock market after “Liberation Day” — the White House’s term for the start of its global tariff policy. The S&P 500 index, which tracks the performance of the 500 largest U.S. companies, is overall down 8.5% since Trump’s inauguration, according to The Wall Street Journal’s analysis.
Numerous recent polls showed flagging support for Trump’s economic policies.
In a poll released Monday, Gallup found 89% of Americans believe tariffs will result in increasing prices. And a majority of Americans are concerned about an economic recession and increasing costs of groceries and other goods, according to an Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research survey between April 17 and April 22.
The Pew Research Center similarly found a growing gloomy outlook among U.S. adults from April 7 to April 13. Results showed a majority of Americans — 59% across race, age and income levels — disapproved of Trump’s approach to tariffs. But when broken down by party, the survey showed a majority of Democrats disapprove while the majority of Republicans approve of the tariff policy.
American households are poised to lose up to $2,600 annually if tariffs remain in place and U.S. fiscal policy doesn’t change, according to the Yale Budget Lab. Analyses show low-income households will be disproportionately affected.
“If these tariffs stay in place, some folks are going to benefit, but a lot of people are going to get hurt,” Manak said.
The White House did not respond to a request for comment.
Government spending
Elon Musk, accompanied by his son X Musk and Trump, speaks during an executive order signing in the Oval Office on February 11, 2025. (Photo by Andrew Harnik/Getty Images)
Trump began his second term with a flurry of action on government spending, challenging the balance of power between the president and Congress.
Efforts to unilaterally cancel funding already approved by lawmakers, who hold the authority to spend federal dollars under the Constitution, led to confusion and frustration from both Democrats and Republicans, especially after the U.S. DOGE Service froze allocations on programs that have long elicited bipartisan support.
Many of the Trump administration’s efforts to roll back appropriations are subject to injunctions from federal courts, blocking the cuts from moving forward while the lawsuits advance through the judicial system.
Kevin Kosar, senior fellow at the conservative-leaning American Enterprise Institute, said Trump’s actions on spending so far have sought to expand the bounds of presidential authority.
“We’ve never seen a president in modern times who’s been this aggressive in trying to seize control of the power of the purse,” he said. “To just say, ‘I’m not going to fund this agency, like USAID, despite money being appropriated for it. And we’re going to walk over and take their plaque off their wall and lock their doors.’ This is new.”
Many of Trump’s actions so far indicate to Kosar that the administration expects a change to the balance of power following next year’s midterm elections, when the president’s party historically loses control of at least one chamber of Congress.
“It feels to me that the first 100 days are in large part predicated on an assumption that they may only have two years of unified Republican control of the House of Representatives, the Senate and the presidency,” he said. “We know the margins in the House are quite narrow, and the heavy use of executive actions and the simple defunding of various government contracts and agencies all through executive action, just tell me that the administration feels like they have to get everything done as fast as they possibly can, because the time is short.”
Kosar said he’s watching to see if Trump works with Republicans in Congress, while they still have unified control, to codify his executive orders into law — something he didn’t do with many of the unilateral actions he took during his first term.
“He just did executive actions, which, of course, (President Joe) Biden just undid,” he said. “And I’m just wondering: Are we going to see this movie all over again? Or is he going to actually partner with Congress on these various policy matters and pass statutes so that they stick?”
Zachary Peskowitz, associate professor of political science at Emory University, said Trump has been much more “assertive” during the last 100 days than during the first few months of 2017.
DOGE ‘winding down’
U.S. DOGE Service and Musk hit the ground running, though their actions have fallen short of the goals he set, and appear to be sunsetting with the billionaire turning his attention back toward his businesses.
“I think the big bang is winding down. They did a lot of things early on. It’s not clear how many of them are going to stick, what the consequences are,” Peskowitz said. “And I think, big picture, in terms of federal spending, the amounts of money that may have been saved or not are pretty small.”
Democrats in Congress released a tracker Tuesday listing which accounts the Trump administration has frozen or canceled to the tune of more than $430 billion.
But Trump has just gotten started.
The administration plans to submit its first budget request to Congress in the coming days, a step that’s typically taken in early February, though it happens a couple months behind schedule during a president’s first year.
That massive tax-and-spending proposal will begin the classic tug-of-war between Congress, which will draft the dozen annual appropriations bills, and Trump, who has shown a willingness to act unilaterally when he doesn’t get his way.
Trump and lawmakers must agree to some sort of government funding bill before the start of the fiscal year on Oct. 1, otherwise a partial government shutdown would begin. And unlike the reconciliation package that Republicans can enact all on their own, funding bills require some Democratic support to move past the Senate’s 60-vote cloture threshold.
Trump stands with McMahon after signing an executive order to reduce the size and scope of the Education Department during a ceremony in the East Room of the White House on March 20, 2025. (Photo by Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)
Eliminating the Education Department
Researchers and advocates predicted even more changes to the federal role in education, underscoring anti-diversity, equity and inclusion efforts and a continued ideological battle with higher education that have marked Trump’s approach to education policy in his first 100 days.
In a torrent of education-related decisions, Trump and his administration have tried to dismantle the Education Department via an executive order, slashed more than 1,300 employees at the department, threatened to revoke funds for schools that use DEI practices and cracked down on “woke” higher education.
The Trump administration has taken drastic steps to revoke federal funding for a number of elite universities in an attempt to make the institutions align more with them ideologically.
Rachel Perera, a governance studies fellow at the Brown Center on Education Policy at the Brookings Institution, cited “brazen lawlessness” when reflecting on Trump’s approach to higher education in his second term.
“The ways that they’re trying to withhold funding from universities are very clearly in violation of federal law and the processes mandated by civil rights law in terms of ensuring that institutions are offered due process in assessing whether violations have taken place,” Perera said. “There’s not even a pretense of pretending to investigate some of these institutions before taking really dramatic action.”
Whether the administration’s approach continues or not depends on court action, she added.
“I think what the next three years might look like is really going to depend on how some of these lawsuits play out,” Perera said, referencing some of the major legal battles involving the Trump administration.
Wil Del Pilar, senior vice president at the nonprofit policy and advocacy group EdTrust, said “much of what this administration has done has been overreach.” He pointed to the Education Department’s letter threatening to yank federal funds for schools that use race-conscious practices across aspects of student life as one example.
Del Pilar, who was previously deputy secretary of postsecondary and higher education for the state of Pennsylvania, said the administration is “going to take any opportunity to grab at power that advances their ideology.”
Meanwhile, Perera said the consequences of the department implementing a reduction in force plan in March “have yet to be felt.”
“I think we will start to see really the material consequences of the reduced staffing capacity in the coming years, in terms of how programs are administered, in terms of how funding is moving out the building, in terms of auditing, making sure funding is going to the right groups of students that Congress intended for the money to go to, whether big data collection efforts that are congressionally mandated are being carried out in timely and effective ways,” she said.
Education Secretary Linda McMahon testifies during her Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee confirmation hearing on Feb. 13, 2025. (Photo by Win McNamee/Getty Images)
A federal judge in Maryland ordered the Trump administration Thursday to pause enforcement of a new U.S. Education Department ban on diversity, equity and inclusion practices.
The order came as another federal judge in New Hampshire issued a preliminary injunction temporarily blocking the Trump administration from yanking federal funding from many schools.
The New Hampshire order, though, only applied to schools that employ members of the National Education Association — the country’s largest labor union, which brought the case challenging the ban — or the Center for Black Educator Development.
The rulings used different legal logic but arrived at the same conclusion: The administration’s ban on race-conscious practices is not valid.
In Maryland, U.S. District Judge Stephanie A. Gallagher said she ruled not on the merits of the policy, but the way the Trump administration developed it.
“This Court takes no view as to whether the policies at issue here are good or bad, prudent or foolish, fair or unfair. But this Court is constitutionally required to closely scrutinize whether the government went about creating and implementing them in the manner the law requires,” she wrote. “The government did not.”
Gallagher’s order pauses the enforcement of a Feb. 14 letter to school districts from Craig Trainor, the department’s acting assistant secretary for civil rights, that threatened to rescind federal funds for schools that use race-conscious practices in programming, admissions, scholarships and other aspects of student life.
In New Hampshire, U.S. District Judge Landya McCafferty wrote that “the loss of federal funding would cripple the operations of many educational institutions.”
McCafferty’s order has a nationwide effect, but McCafferty limited it to schools that employ NEA members, rejecting the union’s attempt to completely halt the policies outlined in the letter.
Teachers unions sued
The Feb. 14 letter drew swift legal action, and the National Education Association brought the suit in New Hampshire against the administration alongside the Center for Black Educator Development.
The American Federation of Teachers — one of the largest teachers unions in the country — filed a complaint in February alongside its affiliate, AFT-Maryland. The American Sociological Association and a public school district in Oregon also sued over the letter.
“Today the court confirmed the importance of our job as educators to foster opportunity, dignity, and engagement,” Randi Weingarten, president of the American Federation of Teachers, said in a statement after the Maryland ruling.
“The court agreed that this vague and clearly unconstitutional requirement is a grave attack on students, our profession, honest history, and knowledge itself,” she added. “It would hamper efforts to extend access to education, and dash the promise of equal opportunity for all, a central tenet of the United States since its founding.”
NEA also celebrated the preliminary injunction granted in its case Thursday, and the union’s president, Becky Pringle, said in a statement “today’s ruling allows educators and schools to continue to be guided by what’s best for students, not by the threat of illegal restrictions and punishment.”
The statement said President Donald Trump, billionaire head of the U.S. DOGE Service Elon Musk and Education Secretary Linda McMahon were responsible for an “attack” on public education.
“The fact is that Donald Trump, Elon Musk, and Linda McMahon are using politically motivated attacks and harmful and vague directives to stifle speech and erase critical lessons to attack public education, as they work to dismantle public schools,” Pringle said. “This is why educators, parents, and community leaders are organizing, mobilizing, and using every tool available to protect our students and their futures.”
The Education Department did not immediately respond to a request for comment Thursday.
Letter raised questions
In the February letter, Trainor offered a wide-ranging interpretation of a U.S. Supreme Court ruling in 2023 involving Harvard University and the University of North Carolina, which struck down the use of affirmative action in college admissions.
Trainor wrote that though the ruling “addressed admissions decisions, the Supreme Court’s holding applies more broadly.”
The four-page letter raised a slew of questions for schools across pre-K through college over what fell within the requirements, and the department later released a Frequently Asked Questions document on the letter in an attempt to provide more guidance.
Earlier this month, the Education Department gave state education leaders just days to certify all K-12 schools in their states were complying with the letter in order to keep receiving federal financial assistance. The department and the groups suing in the New Hampshire case later reached an agreement that paused enforcement.
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