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education
The Uncertain Future of Student Aid Shows Trump Doesn’t Think Education Is a Right
Trump and his lackeys putting the Department of Education in limbo is probably part of the plan to eviscerate any sense of a national commitment to higher education for all.
Apr 13, 2025
The Trump administration has assigned itself the mission of ruining education in the United States. From attacks on DEI to attaching themselves to conservative education activists, a blatantly obvious result of the Trump administration will be to make education inaccessible for anyone who is not wealthy and white.
A prime example is financial aid. The administration hasn’t yet stated where Federal Student Aid (FSA) and the application system it administers, Free Application for Student Aid (FAFSA), would be placed if President Donald Trump succeeds in his entirely misguided assault on the Department of Education. FAFSA is the standardized form that students fill out every year to receive federal assistance in paying for college, grad school, med school, law school, etc. FSA, by way of the FAFSA, now services an estimated 17 million students per year. FAFSA ensures millions of students across the country can obtain an education and pursue a career of their choice. Without it, how can students who do not come from privilege pay some exorbitant amount of money in tuition?
Reportedly, President Trump is considering moving the agency (and thus the system) to the Department of Commerce, run by Howard Lutnick. Small Business Administration (SBA) Chief Kelly Loeffler, best known for her insider trader scandal, wants to move the program to her agency. This would more than quadruple the SBA’s loan portfolio after Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency( DOGE) has already cut “a few hundred” of SBA’s probationary staff.
Imagine AI trying to help students complete their financial aid.
Both Commerce and SBA disburse loans. SBA actually offers a myriad of different loans, even some specific to women. The problem is that with the massive reduction in the federal workforce, how can Loeffler and her skeleton staff manage to serve the needs of approximately 17 million students per year? Loeffler has only suggested moving FAFSA, not FSA (meaning the trained administrative staff) to SBA.
While the agency has grown over the years from serving just under 48,000 loans in 2022 to over 70,000 in 2024, especially after the cuts from DOGE, it does not have the dedicated workforce to service the needs of students in the way FSA can. SBA’s peak in 2024, prior to being kneecapped by Musk, was approximately 70,242 loans. That is nowhere near the average of 17 million students that FSA is used to aiding. Especially given the 2024 FAFSA mishap in which Education’s (well intentioned) attempts to streamline the application for students led to issues of communication between both students and the agency, and even an inability to process applications. It does not help that the Education Department already contracts out to lenders like Nelnet who already are keeping people in debt for longer than they should be. Students will be waiting for their federal dollars, and graduates will be forever saddled with debt.
For its part, Commerce (whose IT system similarly was hit with Elon Musk’s DOGE sledgehammer) offers flexible loans for mortgages and cars, but again, the type of loan servicing is entirely different for student borrowers. Commerce also has some issues with technology and modernization (include identity authentication and even its financial systems), which in the entirely digital landscape that is FAFSA would probably impact students in a way that would inhibit their ability to successfully complete their applications
A third and no more viable option for students is turning FSA into a government-owned enterprise. Rather than scrapping FSA, Project 2025 proposed spinning it off into a “new government corporation with professional governance and management.” A government corporation is a company created by Congress to achieve specific policy goals. This would turn FSA into something akin to Amtrak.
Now, Musk would make the argument that these loan serving agencies indicate why the federal workforce should be replaced with AI. Experts say this would be a terrible idea that would lead to chaos. CEO of the Work3 Institute, an AI advisory firm, Deborah Perry Piscione points out that while AI can streamline some paperwork, it just can’t replace civil servants. Piscione gave the example of an AI chatbot that does not understand the unique elements of a veteran applying for benefits. Imagine AI trying to help students complete their financial aid.
The Education Department already utilizes AI to answer rudimentary questions in their call centers. Last September, during the rollout of the new FAFSA, three-quarters of the calls were left unanswered. AI in its current form simply does not have the processing power to service the 17 million students who need aid.
A study from the U.S. Merit Systems Protection board MSPB) found that downsizing agencies ultimately undermined the mission they were supposed to accomplish. ED has the smallest federal workforces of the cabinet agencies, so rolling it into other agencies already saddled with existing duties would exacerbate these problems. Increasing the federal workforce, and curtailing the reliance on AI, probably would have ensured that three-quarters of phone calls would not have been missed.
The Trump administration seemingly does not believe a quality education is a right. Trump and his lackeys putting the Department of Education in limbo is probably part of the plan to eviscerate any sense of a national commitment to higher education for all. Leaving FAFSA in limbo will have a material impact on students. Just last year, almost 18 million students filled out this form, a slight uptick from the average of 17 million. The groups that are most likely to receive aid are Black students, women, and dependents (most likely to be minors).
A little history lesson for you: FSA was established under former President Lyndon Johnson through the Higher Education Act to ensure students could pay for college. Students would fill out the Common Financial Aid Form, which was later replaced by the FAFSA in 1992 during the HEA’s reauthorization. Even in the 1960s, Washington politicians knew that college was inaccessible to anyone who was not well off. The Trump administration’s decision to dismantle ED, and put millions of students at risk, will have dire consequences that will ripple across decades.
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Plainclothes DHS Agents Lied to LA School Officials to Question Elementary Students
The Homeland Security officials falsely told the school principals they had permission from the children's guardians to speak to them.
Apr 10, 2025
The superintendent of Los Angeles public schools, Alberto M. Carvalho, confirmed Thursday that plainclothes federal immigration agents lied to school officials this week in order to gain access to two elementary schools to question several children—which the schools refuses to grant.
Carvalho told reporters that the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) agents told the principals of Lillian Street Elementary School and Russell Elementary School that they had permission from the four children's caretakers to question them—a claim that "was confirmed to be a falsehood,"CBS News reported.
The Biden administration barred immigration agents from trying to conduct enforcement operations in "sensitive" areas like schools and places of worship, but President Donald Trump reversed that policy after taking office, with former acting Homeland Security Secretary Benjamine Huffman saying, "Criminals will no longer be able to hide in America's schools and churches to avoid arrest."
The five children DHS sought to question on Monday ranged from first to sixth graders.
"My very first question starts there, what interest should a Homeland Security agent have in a first grader?" Carvalho told CBS News. "No federal agency has the authority, short of a judicial warrant, that means the equivalent of a criminal subpoena to enter our schools."
Kate Cagle of Spectrum News 1 SoCal reported that the agents wore plain clothes and that children came to the U.S. as unaccompanied minors and are in the care of legal guardians.
"My very first question starts there, what interest should a Homeland Security agent have in a first grader?"
Schools are not required to allow immigration agents onto their campuses without being presented with a warrant. In February, Denver's public school district sued the Trump administration over its policy allowing DHS to attempt raids in schools, saying it had led to decreased attendance as families fear potential enforcement actions in their children's classrooms.
"I am proud of these principals, I am proud of our workforce, I am proud of the clerical staff in the front office, for they did exactly what we trained them to do," said Carvalho. "We declared back in August and September and October that at Los Angeles Unified [School District] we have protocols in place and training in place to prepare our workforce in... protection of our students."
The Los Angeles schools were targeted days after a school principal in the small town of Sackets Harbor, New York, joined the community in demanding the safe return of three children and their mother after they were arrested and detained in a Texas facility by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents.
"As the principal of these students, I need to speak plainly," wrote Jaime Cook in a letter that went viral. "Our three students who were taken by ICE were doing everything right... They are not criminals. They have no ties to any criminal activity. They are loved by their classmates... We are in shock—and it is that shared shock that has unified our community in the call for our students' release."
A rally over the weekend drew more than 1,000 people in the town of just 1,351—part of New York's most reliably Republican congressional district, according to the Cook Partisan Voting Index, and the part-time home of Tom Homan, Trump's border czar.
The children were released along with their mother on Monday after the weekend rally, and were back in school on Wednesday.
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Supreme Court Lets Trump Freeze Millions in Funding to Tackle Teacher Shortages
One legal expert called it "unquestionably a win for the Trump administration, but on remarkably narrow and modest terms."
Apr 04, 2025
Republican-appointed justices handed the second Trump administration its first win at the U.S. Supreme Court on Friday, allowing the Department of Education to temporarily freeze millions of dollars in grants intended to help states combat K-12 teacher shortages while a legal battle over the money plays out.
The emergency order was unsigned, but the three liberals—Justices Ketanji Brown Jackson, Elena Kagan, and Sonia Sotomayor—all dissented, and Chief Justice John Roberts noted that he "would deny the application" without offering further explanation. That means the decision came from the other five right-wingers, including three appointees of President Donald Trump.
The decision stems from a federal lawsuit filed in the District of Massachusetts by a coalition of Democratic state attorneys general last month after the U.S. Education Department "arbitrarily terminated approximately $600 million in critical grants" for two programs: the Teacher Quality Partnership (TQP) and Supporting Effective Educator Development (SEED).
The coalition's initial complaint explains that Congress authorized the funding "to address nationwide teacher shortages and improve teacher quality by educating, placing, and supporting new teachers in hard-to-staff schools, especially in rural and other underserved communities, and in hard-to-staff subjects, such as math and special education."
"The department's actions appear to encompass 'policy objectives' of ending disfavored but lawful efforts to promote diversity, equity, and inclusion—objectives that Congress expressly directed grantees to carry out in creating these programs, including by identifying that these teacher preparation programs should assist 'traditionally underserved' local education agencies... and ensure 'general education teachers receive training in providing instruction to diverse populations, including children with disabilities, limited English proficient students, and children from low-income families," the document details.
U.S. District Judge Myong Joun—an appointee of former President Joe Biden—found that the coalition was likely to succeed on the merits of its claims under the Administrative Procedure Act and issued the temporary restraining order sought by offiicals in California, Colorado, Illinois, Maryland, Massachusetts, New Jersey, New York, and Wisconsin.
However, the country's high court granted a stay on Friday, concluding that the Trump administration "is unlikely to recover the grant funds once they are disbursed," the plaintiff states "have the financial wherewithal to keep their programs running" during the legal fight, and if they "ultimately prevail, they can recover any wrongfully withheld funds through suit in an appropriate forum."
In a dissent that was under two pages, Kagan wrote that "nothing about this case demanded our immediate intervention. Rather than make new law on our emergency docket, we should have allowed the dispute to proceed in the ordinary way."
Jackson argued in her longer dissent, joined by Sotomayor, that "this court's eagerness to insert itself into this early stage of ongoing litigation over the lawfulness of the department's actions—even when doing so facilitates the infliction of significant harms on the plaintiff states, and even though the government has not bothered to press any argument that the department's harm‐causing conduct is lawful—is equal parts unprincipled and unfortunate. It is also entirely unwarranted."
In a footnote that drew attention from court watchers, Jackson accused the majority of handing the Trump administration "an early 'win'—a notch in its belt at the start of a legal battle in which the long-term prospects for its eventual success seem doubtful," and expressed concern that "permitting the emergency docket to be hijacked in this way, by parties with tangential legal questions unrelated to imminent harm, damages our institutional credibility."
I am fascinated by this fourth wall–breaking footnote from Justice Jackson criticizing the majority for handing the Trump administration "a notch in its belt at the start of a legal battle in which the long-term prospects for its eventual success seem doubtful." It's more about optics than law ...
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— Mark Joseph Stern ( @mjsdc.bsky.social) April 4, 2025 at 4:44 PM
Trump's billionaire education secretary, former wrestling executive Linda McMahon, welcomed the ruling as "an important step towards realizing the president's agenda to ensure that taxpayer funds that support education go toward meaningful learning and serving our students—not to train teachers in radical racial and gender ideologies."
Meanwhile, Steve Vladeck, CNN's Supreme Court analyst and a Georgetown University Law Center professor, said that Friday's decision "is unquestionably a win for the Trump administration, but on remarkably narrow and modest terms."
"It leaves open the possibility that the plaintiffs are going to win not just this case, but a bunch of other challenges to the government's cancellation of grants, while freezing the order in this specific case. And even that was a bridge too far for Chief Justice Roberts and the three Democratic appointees," he added. "It's a victory for the government, but a short-lived one that may soon be overtaken by far more significant losses in the other pending cases in which Trump has asked the justices to intervene."
CNN noted that the Supreme Court "has already resolved two emergency appeals from the Trump administration" and is still considering others on topics including Trump's efforts to end birthright citizenship and to invoke the Alien Enemies Act for mass deportations.
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