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u s department of education
'He's Not Kidding,' Advocates Warn as Trump Threatens to Defund Schools for Teaching US History
The Republican presidential nominee is threatening funding if teachers "don't teach what he wants," said one teachers union leader. "That's indoctrination and it's dangerous."
Oct 18, 2024
Education advocates implored voters to take Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump's latest comments on public schools on Friday after his appearance on the Fox News morning show "Fox & Friends," where he explained how he would punish schools that teach students accurate U.S. history, including about slavery and racism in the country.
Trump was asked by a viewer who called into the show how he would help students who don't want to attend their local public schools, and said he plans to "let the states run the schools" to allow for more "school choice."
"We're gonna take the Department of Education, we're gonna close it," said the former president, explaining that each state would govern educational policy without federal input—a promise of the right-wing policy agenda, Project 2025, that was co-authored by hundreds of former Trump administration staffers.
"Fox & Friends" co-host Brian Kilmeade said the plan was concerning only because it could allow a "liberal city" or state to decide that schools would teach that the country was "built off the backs of slaves on stolen land, and that curriculum comes in."
"Then we don't send them money," replied Trump.
The American Federation of Labor and Congress of Industrial Organizations (AFL-CIO) warned, "He's not kidding," pointing to Project 2025, which calls to reduce the role the federal government to "that of a statistics-gathering agency that disseminates information to the states."
"It's in his Project 2025 plan: Trump wants to defund public schools," said the labor union.
The federal government provides public schools with about 13.6% of the funding for public K-12 education. The loss of federal funds could particularly affect schools in low-income communities, resulting in school closures, teacher layoffs, and fewer classroom resources.
Trump's comments touched on the "culture war" promoted by the Republican Party in recent years regarding what they have claimed is the teaching of "critical race theory" (CRT) in public schools. The concept holds that race is a social construct and racism is carried out by legal systems and institutions, through policies like redlining and harsh criminal sentencing laws.
The focus on CRT has resulted in attacks on all "culturally relevant teaching" that takes the experiences of people of color into account and all teachings about the history of the U.S.—particularly about the enslavement of Black people for hundreds of years, Jim Crow laws, the contributions made by racial minorities, and the civil rights movement.
Randi Weingarten, president of the American Federation of Teachers (AFT), said educators' goal is to "teach students how to think, not what to think"—contrary to right-wing claims that the left aims to "indoctrinate" students.
Trump, she said, is "threatening funding if they don't teach what he wants. That's indoctrination and it's dangerous. Our kids deserve better."
Trump is not alone among Republicans in his calls to defund public education. As the Daily Montananreported this week, GOP Senate candidate Tim Sheehy, a multimillionaire who is running to unseat Sen. Jon Tester (D-Mt.) and is leading in recent polls, has spoken about throwing the Department of Education "in the trash can."
Federal funding accounts for 12% of per-student spending in Montana, where nearly 90% of children attend public schools. The state gets $40 million alone to support students with disabilities.
"Fairly significant harm would be implemented in Montana's public schools if we suddenly snapped our fingers and said, 'No more federal funding of education,'" Lance Melton, head of the Montana School Boards Association, told the Daily Montanan.
Lauren Miller, acting communications director for the AFL-CIO, said the former president's comments on Friday fit "a pattern" evident in numerous policies outlined by Trump and Project 2025.
"He'll defund public schools if they don't obey him," said Miller. "He'll fire government workers if they don't obey him. He'll gut the Department of Justice if they don't obey him. He'll deny FEMA funding to states if they don't obey him."
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Jewish Groups Decry House Passage of Bill Defining Criticism of Israel as 'Antisemitism'
"Antisemitism is a serious problem, but codifying a legal definition could have dangerous implications for free speech," said one campaigner.
May 01, 2024
House lawmakers voted overwhelmingly Wednesday to approve legislation directing the U.S. Department of Education to consider a dubious definition of antisemitism, despite warnings from Jewish-led groups that the measure speciously conflates legitimate criticism of the Israeli government with bigotry against Jewish people.
House members approved the
Antisemitism Awareness Act—bipartisan legislation introduced last year by Reps. Mike Lawler (R-N.Y.), Josh Gottheimer (D-N.J.), Max Miller (R-Ohio), and Jared Moskowitz (D-Fla.) in the lower chamber and Sen. Tim Scott (R-S.C.) in the Senate—by a vote of 320-91.
Both progressive Democrats and far-right Republicans opposed language in the bill. The former objected to conflating criticism of Israel with hatred of Jews, while the latter bristled at labeling Christian scripture—which posits that Jews killed Jesus—as antisemitic.
"Antisemitism is the hatred of Jews. Unfortunately, one doesn't need to look far to find it these days. But the supporters of this bill are looking in the wrong places," Hadar Susskind, president and CEO of the Jewish-led group Americans for Peace Now, said following Wednesday's vote.
"They aren't interested in protecting Jews," he added. "They are interested in supporting right-wing views and narratives on Israel and shutting down legitimate questions and criticisms by crying 'antisemite' at everyone, including Jews" who oppose Israel's far-right government.
"With this disingenuous effort, House Republicans have failed to seriously address antisemitism," Susskind added. "I hope the Senate does better."
The legislation—officially H.R. 6090—would require the Department of Education to consider the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) Working Definition of Antisemitism when determining whether alleged harassment is motivated by antisemitic animus and violates Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which "prohibits discrimination on the basis of race, color, and national origin in programs and activities receiving federal financial assistance," including colleges and universities.
Lawler's office called the proposal "a key step in calling out antisemitism where it is and ensuring antisemitic hate crimes on college campuses are properly investigated and prosecuted," while Gottheimer emphasized that "the IHRA definition underscores that antisemitism includes denying Jewish self-determination to their ancestral homeland of Israel... and applying double standards to Israel."
Critics say that's the trouble with the IHRA working definition: It conflates legitimate criticism and condemnation of Israeli policies and practices with anti-Jewish bigotry, and forces people to accept the legitimacy of a settler-colonial apartheid state engaged in illegal occupation and a "plausibly" genocidal war on Gaza.
As the ACLU noted last week in a letter urging lawmakers to reject the legislation:
The IHRA working definition... is overbroad. It equates protected political speech with unprotected discrimination, and enshrining it into regulation would chill the exercise of First Amendment rights and risk undermining the Department of Education's legitimate and important efforts to combat discrimination. Criticism of Israel and its policies is political speech, squarely protected by the First Amendment. But the IHRA working definition declares that "denying the Jewish people their right to self-determination, e.g., by claiming that the existence of a state of Israel is a racist endeavor," "drawing comparisons of contemporary Israeli policy to that of the Nazis," and "applying double standards by requiring of [Israel] a behavior not expected or demanded of any other democratic nation" are all examples of antisemitism.
Jewish Voice for Peace Action
slammed what it called IHRA's "controversial and dangerous mis-definition that does not help fight real antisemitism and is only a tool for silencing the movement for Palestinian rights."
"The Israeli government's bombardment and siege of Gaza has killed over 34,000 people in six months," the group said on social media. "Congress must stop attacking the students and faculty members who are trying to stop this genocide, and instead focus on ending U.S. complicity in Israel's attacks."
Israel's Gaza onslaught has sparked a wave of nonviolent student-led protests across the United States and around the world. Some of these protests have been violently repressed by police, while anti-genocide activists including Jews have been branded "antisemitic" for condemning Israeli crimes or defending Palestinians' legal right to resist them.
Sending in militarized police and snipers to stop students from exercising their First Amendment rights is truly disgusting.
Why are my colleagues and the mainstream media more outraged over these anti-war protests than they are about the over 35,000 Palestinians killed in Gaza? pic.twitter.com/EwLqRrS2we
— Congresswoman Rashida Tlaib (@RepRashida) May 1, 2024
Americans for Peace Now said that while it is "deeply concerned about the escalating antisemitism in the United States and globally," the legislation "poses a significant threat to free speech and open discourse."
"Equating criticism of the Israeli government with antisemitism is a tactic used to stifle important discussions on Israeli policies and actions, thereby hindering the broader effort to combat true instances of hatred and discrimination against Jewish communities," the group added.
Kenneth Stern, director of the Bard Centre for the Study of Hate and lead drafter of the IHRA working definition, warned years ago that "Jewish groups have used the definition as a weapon to say anti-Zionist expressions are inherently antisemitic and must be suppressed."
"Imagine if Black Lives Matter said the most important thing the [Biden] administration could do to remedy systemic racism is adopt a definition of racism, and that definition included this example: opposition to affirmative action," Stern wrote in 2020.
"Obviously, sometimes opposition to affirmative action is racist and sometimes it is not," he added. "The debate about systemic racism would be changed to a free speech fight, and those with reasonable concerns about affirmative action correctly upset that the state was branding them racist."
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House Progressives Applaud as Biden Student Debt Relief Tops $143 Billion
"Let's keep fighting until we cancel student debt for EVERY single borrower," said Rep. Ilhan Omar.
Mar 21, 2024
Progressive U.S. lawmakers and campaigners on Thursday cheered the Department of Education's announcement of nearly $6 billion in additional student loan relief—this time for public service workers—as President Joe Biden continues to find ways to work around a Supreme Court ruling limiting how he can eliminate educational debt.
The Department of Education (DOE) said the administration has approved $5.8 billion in student debt for around 78,000 borrowers, the result of adjustments to the Public Service Loan Forgiveness (PSLF) program. The move brings the total amount of student loan forgiveness approved by Biden administration to $143.6 billion for nearly 4 million borrowers.
"Of the estimated 43 million student loan borrowers in America, approximately 20% have either been approved for debt cancellation or have no current repayment obligation."
"For too long, our nation's teachers, nurses, social workers, firefighters, and other public servants faced logistical troubles and trap doors when they tried to access the debt relief they were entitled to under the law," U.S. Education Secretary Miguel Cardona said in a statement.
"With this announcement, the Biden-Harris administration is showing how we're taking further steps not only to fix those trap doors, but also to expand opportunity to many more Americans," Cardona added. "Today, more than 100 times more borrowers are eligible for PSLF than there were at the beginning of the administration."
Before 2021, only around 7,000 borrowers benefited from PSFL relief. During Biden's tenure, more than 871,000 people have had their student loan debt canceled after the administration updated and fixed key parts of the program, including by introducing a new help tool to simplify navigation of the debt relief process.
"The president gets it. Today, thousands more borrowers are finally able to imagine life after student debt," Congressional Progressive Caucus Chair (CPC) Pramila Jayapal (D-Wash.) said in a statement.
Jayapal noted that after the U.S. Supreme Court struck down the president's student debt cancellation program last June, Biden and Cardona "got to work" and have been "relentless in the pursuit of other avenues to help the millions of Americans burdened by student debt."
"With the administration's fixes to the Public Service Loan Forgiveness program, teachers, nurses, firefighters, and others in public service will see their relief sooner and can finally start putting their hard-earned income towards buying homes, investing in their communities, and taking care of their families," she added.
Student loan attorney Adam Minsky noted this week that "of the estimated 43 million student loan borrowers in America, approximately 20% have either been approved for debt cancellation or have no current repayment obligation."
According to the Education Data Initiative, U.S. student loan debt in the United States currently totals more than $1.7 trillion.
Some advocates reacted to the Biden administration's announcement by calling for more debt relief and even tuition-free higher education.
"Americans have a right to an education, and it should be debt-free," the Student Debt Crisis Center said on social media. "The time to #CancelStudentDebt is now, not later."
Former Democratic Ohio state Sen. Nina Turnerasserted: "The more student debt canceled, the better. "We must keep pushing for more; it's a nearly $2 trillion crisis."
"We must stop saddling our students with this debt to begin with," Turner added. "We need tuition-free college."
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