SUBSCRIBE TO OUR FREE NEWSLETTER
Daily news & progressive opinion—funded by the people, not the corporations—delivered straight to your inbox.
5
#000000
#FFFFFF
5
#000000
#FFFFFF
linda mcmahon
Trump Accused of 'Abandoning Kids With Disabilities' in New Assault on Education Department
"By moving special education from the Department of Education to the Department of Health and Human Services, the administration is taking us back to a dark period in American history."
Jun 17, 2026
The Trump administration accelerated its assault on the US Education Department on Tuesday by announcing that the agency's work defending civil rights and students with disabilities will be placed under the authority of other federal departments, a move that teachers, Democratic lawmakers, and advocacy organizations condemned as illegal and disastrous for vulnerable children.
Linda McMahon, the billionaire education secretary who has enthusiastically advanced the destruction of her own agency, announced the transfer of the Office of Special Education and Rehabilitative Services—which oversees the Individuals With Disabilities Education Act (IDEA)—to the US Department of Health and Human Services, headed by Robert F. Kennedy Jr. Additionally, the Justice Department will oversee the work of the Education Department's Office for Civil Rights, McMahon said, claiming the changes would "break down the bureaucratic barriers and strengthen the coordination of resources to improve programs that serve infants, toddlers, children, and adults."
Critics argued the moves would do the opposite, scattering crucial programs across departments that lack the expertise and resources to fulfill the education offices' mandates, ultimately depriving children and their families of support.
“Moving IDEA out of the Department of Education is not an administrative adjustment—it is an attack on the educational and civil rights foundation of the law," said Becky Pringle, president of the National Education Association. "It would drag us backward by treating disability as a medical issue instead of an educational right and by unraveling decades of progress. The Department of Education is the only federal agency with the expertise, infrastructure, and specialists needed to protect students’ rights and ensure they receive the services they are guaranteed."
"Relocating the Office for Civil Rights to the Department of Justice as part of this scheme would further erode federal oversight and endanger disability-rights enforcement nationwide," Pringle added.
The Arc of the United States, a nonprofit that advocates for the rights of people with intellectual and developmental disabilities, said that "moving special education to HHS and civil rights enforcement to DOJ would split apart the offices responsible for making disability rights real in schools, leaving families chasing answers across the federal government instead of getting accountability from one education agency."
"Moving IDEA oversight into HHS pushes students with disabilities toward a medical model, where disability is treated as a diagnosis to manage instead of a natural part of human life," said Katy Neas, the group's CEO. "When that mindset drives education decisions, students are more likely to be segregated, underestimated, or treated as separate from the school community."
"It’s an outrageous betrayal that undoes decades of hard-won progress for students."
The changes that McMahon announced Tuesday are part of the Trump administration's effort to completely dismantle the Education Department, which cannot be legally abolished without congressional approval. The Washington Post noted that the newly targeted offices were among the last Education Department segments to "outsource major functions," underscoring that the administration's assault "has advanced far more than most observers predicted would be possible."
In addition to displacing agency functions, the Trump administration has gutted the Education Department's staff, firing nearly half of its workers in what opponents say is an obvious effort to decimate public education.
Rep. Rosa DeLauro (D-Conn.), the top Democrat on the House Appropriations Committee, said the transfer of critical functions out of the Education Department is unlawful, "usurping the power of the purse while the Republican majority stands idly by, forfeiting their authority as a co-equal branch of government." DeLauro pointed to language in a 2026 appropriations measure enacted earlier this year that prohibits the Education Department from transferring responsibilities to other federal agencies without congressional approval.
“This is a disgraceful violation of the law," DeLauro said Tuesday. "By moving special education from the Department of Education to the Department of Health and Human Services, the administration is taking us back to a dark period in American history. One where individuals with disabilities were viewed not as whole persons deserving of an education, but as medical patients whose education is not a priority."
The top Democratic appropriator in the Senate, Patty Murray of Washington, warned that "the Trump administration is abandoning kids with disabilities and its most basic legal responsibility to protect the rights of every student in the classroom."
"Instead of helping kids get a great education, this administration is spending its time, energy, and taxpayer resources fixated on where employees sit and illegally trying to shutter the Department of Education," said Murray. "It’s an outrageous betrayal that undoes decades of hard-won progress for students."
Keep ReadingShow Less
Facing Backlash, McMahon Pauses 'Reckless' Plan to Garnish Wages of Student Borrowers
Advocates warned wage garnishment "would have risked pushing nearly 9 million defaulted borrowers even further into debt."
Jan 16, 2026
Billionaire US Education Secretary Linda McMahon has temporarily suspended the Trump administration's plan to resume garnishing the wages of defaulted student loan borrowers, a reversal that came after advocates warned the pay seizures would have had devastating economic consequences for people across the country amid a worsening cost-of-living crisis.
McMahon, who is actively working to dismantle her department from within, told reporters earlier this week that wage garnishment efforts have "been put on pause for a bit," without providing specifics. The Trump administration, which last summer ended a pause on student loan repayments that had been in place since the start of the Covid-19 pandemic, was reportedly set to begin notifying defaulted borrowers of plans to withhold a portion of their wages last week.
Aissa Canchola Bañez, policy director at the advocacy group Protect Borrowers, said in a statement Friday that "after months of pressure and countless horror stories from borrowers, the Trump administration says it has abandoned plans to snatch working people’s hard-earned money directly from their paychecks simply for falling behind on their student loans."
"Amidst the growing affordability crisis, the administration’s plans would have been economically reckless and would have risked pushing nearly 9 million defaulted borrowers even further into debt," Canchola Bañez added. "Earlier this month, a coalition of partners sent an urgent letter to ED urging them to do just this. We are pleased to see they have heeded our calls.”
That letter—sent on January 7 by Protect Borrowers, the American Federation of Teachers, Debt Collective, and other groups—called the administration's earlier decision to resume wage garnishment "calloused and unnecessary," warning that it came at a time when "struggling borrowers have been forced to wait amidst a nearly 1 million application backlog to enroll in an Income-Driven Repayment (IDR) plan, and as mass layoffs at the department have made it even harder for borrowers to get help with their student loans or if they are experiencing issues with their student loan servicer."
According to an analysis by Protect Borrowers, 3.6 million new student loan borrowers fell into default during the first year of President Donald Trump's second term in the White House. That's one new default every nine seconds.
"Nearly two-thirds of the borrowers who defaulted during the Trump administration—more than 2.6 million people—live in states that President Trump won in the 2024 election," the analysis found.
Under federal law, the Education Department can withhold up to 15% of a borrower's after-tax income to pay down defaulted debt. The Trump administration has already begun seizing income tax refunds from student borrowers in default.
The National Consumer Law Center (NCLC) noted in a Thursday blog post that "if you have received a notice of proposed garnishment, there are steps you can take to object to the garnishment notice and request a hearing, which is typically conducted through a written review of your objections."
"You must act quickly to avoid a potential garnishment order from being sent to your employer," the group stressed.
Keep ReadingShow Less
'Cruel, Unnecessary, and Irresponsible': Trump Admin to Resume Garnishing Wages of Student Borrowers
One group noted "the irony of a billionaire being in charge of collecting pennies from debtors."
Dec 23, 2025
The US Education Department confirmed Monday that, starting next month, it will resume seizing the pay of student loan borrowers in default as the Trump administration wages a broader war on debt relief and cancellation efforts.
The department, led by billionaire Linda McMahon—who is working to gut the agency from the inside—told the Washington Post that "it will notify about 1,000 defaulted borrowers of plans to withhold a portion of their wages to pay down their past-due debt," beginning the week of January 7, 2026.
"After that, the department said, notices will be sent to larger numbers of borrowers each month," the Post reported. "There were about 5.3 million borrowers who had not made a payment on their federal student loans for at least 360 days as of June 30, according to the latest available data from the Education Department. Many of them were in default before the federal government stopped collecting defaulted loans because of the pandemic nearly six years ago."
Persis Yu, deputy executive director and managing counsel of the advocacy group Protect Borrowers, said in a statement Tuesday that "at a time when families across the country are struggling with stagnant wages and an affordability crisis, this administration's decision to garnish wages from defaulted student loan borrowers is cruel, unnecessary, and irresponsible."
"As millions of borrowers sit on the precipice of default, this administration is using its self-inflicted limited resources to seize borrowers' wages instead of defending borrowers' right to affordable payments," said Yu. "There are still nearly a million unprocessed Income-Driven Repayment applications, and this administration has admitted to denying en masse borrowers who applied and requested the US Department of Education’s help in accessing the most affordable payment option."
“Finally, during the last Trump administration, hundreds of thousands had their wages improperly taken at the peak of the pandemic because the US Department of Education was unable to control this tool," Yu added. "It is irresponsible to turn on a debt collection tool that the administration cannot turn off."
In May, the Trump administration ended a pause on student loan repayments that had been in place since the onset of the Covid-19 pandemic in 2020.
The administration has also attacked student debt relief efforts launched under former President Joe Biden. Earlier this month, the Trump Education Department cut a deal to effectively end the Saving on a Valuable Education (SAVE) plan, jacking up monthly payments for millions of borrowers enrolled in the Biden-era program.
"While millions of student loan borrowers struggle amidst the worsening affordability crisis—as the rising costs of groceries, utilities and healthcare continue to bury families in debt—billionaire Education Secretary Linda McMahon chose to strike a backroom deal with a right-wing state attorney general and strip borrowers of the most affordable repayment plan that would help millions to stay on track with their loans while keeping a roof over their head," Yu said in a statement after the deal was announced.
"The real story here," Yu added, "is the unrelenting, right-wing push to jack up costs on working people with student debt."
"The federal government also wields vast extrajudicial powers to collect student debt, including garnishing wages and seizing Social Security payments."
The Education Department is legally allowed to withhold up to 15% of a borrower's after-tax income to pay down defaulted debt. As the Post noted, the Trump administration has already resumed seizing tax refunds and Social Security benefits student loan borrowers in default.
The Debt Collective, the first debtors' union in the US, noted "the irony of a billionaire being in charge of collecting pennies from debtors."
"The Department of Education pushes debtors toward payment to get out of default," the group added. "They don’t want you to know that you have other options. These include traditional repayment options, nonpayment options, and lesser-known options."
The Trump administration's decision to resume garnishing borrowers' wages comes as advocates are warning of a "default cliff" as borrowers struggle to afford basic necessities, leaving them unable to keep up with loan repayments. A Data for Progress survey released earlier this month found that more than 40% of borrowers report making tradeoffs between covering basic needs and staying current on student loan debt payments."
"Student loan default comes with severe and punitive consequences," Michele Zampini, associate vice president of federal policy and advocacy at the Institute for College Access and Success, wrote in a blog post earlier this month.
"In addition to ongoing credit score damage and hefty collection fees, the federal government also wields vast extrajudicial powers to collect student debt, including garnishing wages and seizing Social Security payments and tax refunds that are targeted to households with very low incomes, including the Child Tax Credit and the Earned Income Tax Credit," Zampini added. "These seizures compound financial hardship for those who can least afford it."
Keep ReadingShow Less
Trump's Billionaire Education Secretary Makes 'Backroom Deal' to Shaft Low-Income Borrowers
Amid a cost-of-living crisis, millions of low-income borrowers may now be forced to spend several hundred more dollars a month paying for student loans.
Dec 09, 2025
As student debt exacerbates the financial struggles of millions of Americans, the Trump administration has taken a major step toward killing the Biden administration's student loan forgiveness program.
On Tuesday, the Department of Education announced that it had reached a settlement with the state of Missouri to end the Saving on a Valuable Education (SAVE) program, which allowed more than 7 million mostly low-income Americans to reduce their federal student loan payments.
Rather than setting monthly payments based on income, the SAVE program bases them on how much borrowers earn and the size of their families, which is referred to as an income-driven repayment option, or IDR. SAVE cut most enrollees' monthly loan payments in half and left 4.5 million of them, mostly those earning between 150–225% of the federal poverty level, paying $0 per month.
In March 2024, a coalition of 11 states led by Kansas Attorney General Kris Kobach sued in federal court to stop the SAVE plan. The next month a similar lawsuit was filed by another coalition of seven states led by Missouri's former attorney general, Andrew Bailey.
In February, the 8th Circuit Court of Appeals ruled in favor of the states, blocking 8 million borrowers from accessing lower payments under the program. Now President Donald Trump's administration which aggressively opposes student loan forgiveness, has agreed to settle the lawsuit, effectively killing SAVE.
“For four years, the Biden administration sought to unlawfully shift student loan debt onto American taxpayers, many of whom either never took out a loan to finance their postsecondary education or never even went to college themselves, simply for a political win to prop up a failing administration,” said Undersecretary of Education Nicholas Kent. "The Trump administration is righting this wrong and bringing an end to this deceptive scheme. The law is clear: if you take out a loan, you must pay it back."
The settlement also includes a provision requiring that, for the next 10 years, the Department of Education notify the state of Missouri at least 30 days in advance before instituting broad-based student debt relief.
As the Debt Collective, a membership-based debtors' union, explained in a post on social media: "30 days is enough notice that Missouri will find standing to sue for relief before it even happens. So not only is Trump gutting the SAVE plan, they're essentially putting a moratorium on cancellation for the next 10 years with this agreement."
"What Republicans admit is that the executive administration does have authority to cancel federally held student debt," the group added. "They just want to make it so that it will be administratively and practically impossible to deliver it because of this technicality. It's stealing in advance."
SAVE was already slated to end in 2028 following July's passage of Republicans' One Big Beautiful Bill Act, which replaced it with a pair of less generous income-based repayment plans that require many debtors to pay hundreds more per month. The deadline to switch to one of the new plans will now move up, though the administration has not yet clarified when borrowers will have to switch.
The Debt Collective predicted that the end of SAVE "means many more debtors will likely be forced to default on their loans," which the group added "is bad for millions of families and our economy."
According to an analysis of federal student loan data from the American Enterprise Institute, a libertarian think tank, more than 12 million borrowers in the US are already in default or otherwise behind on their student loan payments.
Since their introduction, former President Joe Biden's student loan forgiveness policies have been chipped away at bit by bit through litigation. In 2023, the conservative US Supreme Court struck down the administration's plans to forgive up to $20,000 in student loan debt for millions of Americans, ruling that the plan exceeded the administration's executive authority. A year later, it halted SAVE as well while it considered the merits of the Missouri lawsuit.
The group Protect Borrowers, which supports student loan forgiveness, argues that SAVE is "not a novel use of executive power," noting that Congress gave the Education Department the authority to create IDRs in 1993 and that several other programs have been created since.
"This settlement is pure capitulation—it goes much further than the suit or the 8th Circuit order requires," said Persis Yu, the group's deputy executive director and managing counsel. "The real story here is the unrelenting, right-wing push to jack up costs on working people with student debt.”
A September survey by Data For Progress found that student loans make it more difficult for many borrowers to keep up with other bills amid a growing cost-of-living crisis: 42% of respondents said their debt payments had a negative impact on their ability to pay for food or housing. More than a third, 37%, said it had a negative impact on their ability to cover healthcare costs for themselves or their dependents, while the majority, 52%, said it had a negative impact on their ability to save for retirement.
“While millions of student loan borrowers struggle amidst the worsening affordability crisis as the rising costs of groceries, utilities, and healthcare continue to bury families in debt," Yu said, "billionaire Education Secretary Linda McMahon chose to strike a backroom deal with a right-wing state attorney general and strip borrowers of the most affordable repayment plan that would help millions to stay on track with their loans while keeping a roof over their head."
Keep ReadingShow Less
Warren Demands Resignation of Trump Education Secretary Over Lawless Assault on Public Schools
Billionaire Linda McMahon "has no business leading the Department of Education," said US Sen. Elizabeth Warren.
Dec 01, 2025
Democratic US Sen. Elizabeth Warren on Monday called on President Donald Trump's billionaire education secretary, Linda McMahon, to step down over her sweeping attempt to dismantle the Department of Education from within.
In an op-ed for USA Today, Warren (D-Mass.) warned that "both families and schools will suffer" from McMahon's mass layoffs and transfer of key Education Department functions and programs to other federal agencies—an effort to circumvent the fact that only Congress can legally shutter the department.
McMahon is carrying out what she's described as her department's "final mission" at the direction—and with the enthusiastic support—of the president, who reportedly told McMahon earlier this year that "when we actually close down the department, you and I are going to stand on the steps, and we’re going to have a padlock that we’re going to put on it and invite the press."
Warren wrote Monday that under McMahon and Trump's plan, "the Department of Labor will be in charge of supporting K-12 literacy, American history and civics, and Title I funding."
"Drink that in: Labor Department employees will decide which reading readiness programs to support for kindergartners," she wrote. ""No part of public education will remain untouched by this move. Title I provides the biggest federal fund for K-12 schools and is used to help pay for good teachers and new textbooks all across America. School administrators are concerned that these changes may result in bigger class sizes, fewer afterschool and tutoring programs, and not enough workbooks for our kids because federal funding isn’t coming through."
Warren argued that McMahon, a longtime supporter of school privatization, "has no business leading the Department of Education" and "should resign."
"When a secretary of Education is actively dismantling our public education system, it’s time to reconsider her role in government," she wrote. "When the secretary is working to make class sizes bigger, take away aides for kids with special needs, leave college students at the mercy of financial predators, and make the whole department nonfunctional, it’s time for new leadership."
The senator's op-ed came after a coalition of labor unions, educators, and school districts took legal action against the Trump administration's over its ongoing destruction of the Education Department.
The lawsuit argues the administration's actions "violate the Constitution, authorizing statutes, appropriations statutes, and the Administrative Procedure Act."
"More importantly, defendants’ actions will harm millions of students and their families, school districts, and educators across the nation," the complaint reads. "Scattering Department of Education programs among agencies with no expertise in education or lacking key agency infrastructure will reduce the efficiency and effectiveness of these programs and will prevent the type of synergy that Congress intended to achieve by consolidating federal education activities in one cabinet level agency."
Keep ReadingShow Less
'Students Deserve So Much Better,' Union Leader Says as Trump Tears Up Education Department
"This contemptible assault on American education must be condemned by everyone who strives towards a prosperous future for our country and our children," said one opponent of the new partnerships.
Nov 18, 2025
Teachers union leaders, Democratic lawmakers, and other critics of President Donald Trump's efforts to dismantle the US Department of Education on Tuesday forcefully denounced what the administration is calling "new agency partnerships to break up federal bureaucracy."
Although the Education Department cannot be fully shuttered without approval from Congress, Trump has signed an executive order aimed at starting the process "to the maximum extent appropriate and permitted by law" and laid off over 1,300 workers.
Shortly after journalists began reporting on the new plans Tuesday, citing unnamed sources, Secretary of Education Linda McMahon confirmed the agreements with the departments of Health and Human Services, the Interior, Labor, and State.
One federal official told Politico that the partnerships are a "proof of concept strategy to show Congress how this can be done," and said that the Education Department will work with lawmakers "on making these agreements permanent."
A succinct description of so much that this administration does: if they don’t like longstanding, duly enacted laws and Congress isn’t prepared to amend them, they’ll just hack them to bits illegally.wapo.st/4i6ZRr5
[image or embed]
— Heidi Kitrosser (@heidikitrosser.bsky.social) November 18, 2025 at 4:52 PM
Becky Pringle, president of the National Education Association, the nation's largest labor union representing nearly 3 million employees, noted in a statement that "Donald Trump and his administration chose American Education Week, a time when our nation is celebrating students, public schools, and educators, to announce their illegal plan to further abandon students by dismantling the Department of Education."
"Not only do they want to starve and steal from our students—they want to rob them of their futures," Pringle said. "Ensuring a brighter future for our children should be a top priority for any administration, but this administration is taking every chance it can to hack away at the very protections and services our students need."
"Just last week, they went to the Supreme Court to avoid feeding families. And they're still pushing to gut healthcare programs," she continued. "Now, they're neglecting the basic responsibility to educate our children. It's cruel. It's shameful. And our students deserve so much better."
American Federation of Teachers president Randi Weingarten, whose union represents 1.8 million people, declared that "this move is neither streamlining nor reform—it's an abdication and abandonment of America's future."
"Spreading services across multiple departments will create more confusion, more mistakes, and more barriers for people who are just trying to access the support they need."
"What's happening now isn't about slashing red tape. If that were the goal, teachers could help them do it, and we invite Donald Trump and Linda McMahon to sit down with educators and hear from the people who actually do this work every day," she emphasized. "Teachers know how to make the federal role more effective, efficient, and supportive of real learning—if only the administration would listen."
"Instead, spreading services across multiple departments will create more confusion, more mistakes, and more barriers for people who are just trying to access the support they need," she warned.
Aissa Canchola Bañez, policy director for nonprofit Protect Borrowers, similarly said that "shuffling certain functions of the US Department of Education across four different agencies is a political stunt that will only lead to more chaos and confusion for working families who just want their kids to get a quality education, to be able to pay for college, and to pay off their student loans."
Lisa Gilbert, co-president of the watchdog group Public Citizen, also slammed the announcement, saying that "in his ongoing rampage against everything that makes our country what it is, President Trump is now acting on the plan to destroy the Department of Education."
"Short of toppling the Statue of Liberty, there is perhaps nothing that could capture the agenda of this administration more than what they are in fact doing right now: Making an enemy out of education itself," she suggested. "This contemptible assault on American education must be condemned by everyone who strives towards a prosperous future for our country and our children."
Senate Appropriations Committee Vice Chair Patty Murray (D-Wash.)—a former preschool teacher and local school board member—also piled on, saying that "Donald Trump and Linda McMahon are lawlessly trying to fulfill Project 2025's goal to abolish the Department of Education and pull the rug out from students in every part of the country."
"But instead of seeking congressional approval of their reckless actions to weaken our education system—which McMahon has acknowledged is necessary—Trump and McMahon are now pretending that our laws and the constitutional separation of powers are a mere suggestion," said Murray, who used to lead and remains a member of the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions.
"This is an outright illegal effort to continue dismantling the Department of Education," she argued, "and it is students and families who will suffer the consequences as key programs that help students learn to read or that strengthen ties between schools and families are spun off to agencies with little to no relevant expertise and are gravely weakened—or even completely broken—in the process."
The senator stressed that she is "always ready and willing to talk about reforms to our education laws to improve educational outcomes for students," and urged her Republican colleagues to join Democrats in standing up against the administration's attacks.
The GOP controls both chambers of Congress. According to Murray, "The fact that Trump and McMahon are choosing to break the law to do this on their own—despite having unified Republican control of Washington—tells us they know just how unpopular their plans are and can't win the approval of members of their own party."
Keep ReadingShow Less
Trump Plan to Privatize Student Loans Denounced as ‘Giveaway to Wealthy Insiders’
"By selling parts of the federal student loan portfolio, the Trump administration may seek to unlawfully strip borrowers of their legally guaranteed protections," wrote a group of more than 40 Democratic lawmakers.
Nov 18, 2025
Dozens of Democratic lawmakers in the US House and Senate warned Monday that the Trump administration's reported push to sell off the federal government's massive student portfolio to the private market would be disastrous for borrowers and a "lucrative giveaway" to predatory corporations.
The lawmakers, led by Sens. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) and Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) in the Senate and Rep. Ayanna Pressley (D-Mass.) in the House, pointed with alarm to recent reports indicating that Treasury and Education Department officials have met repeatedly with finance industry executives for the purpose of valuing the federal government's student loan portfolio, which is believed to be worth around $1.7 trillion.
"By selling parts of the federal student loan portfolio, the Trump administration may seek to unlawfully strip borrowers of their legally guaranteed protections," the lawmakers wrote in a letter to Education Secretary Linda McMahon and Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent. "As experts have explained, private investors' 'interest would likely be to squeeze as much profit from the repayment as they could.' Those profits would likely come at the expense of the borrower via fewer protections and less generous benefits."
Politico reported last month that the Trump administration is considering selling at least part of the federal government's student loan portfolio to private companies.
Though small relative to the federal portfolio, the private student loan market has an "outsized" impact on borrowers, the advocacy group Protect Borrowers explained earlier this year.
"While private student loans account for roughly 8% of all student loan debt, more than 40% of student-loan-related complaints submitted to the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) are about private loans," the group said. "Of these private student loan complaints, roughly one-third are from borrowers who are struggling and can’t afford their monthly payment. This is because, unlike federal student loans, private loans lack critical safeguards for students and parents."
In their letter to McMahon and Bessent, the Democratic lawmakers demanded that the Trump administration "immediately cease any efforts to privatize the federal student loan portfolio," arguing that "this sale would be a giveaway to wealthy insiders at the expense of working-class borrowers and taxpayers."
Warren echoed that sentiment in a statement, saying, "Any way you spin it, this sale would be a massive giveaway to giant companies."
"It'd be a tremendous mistake," the senator added.
Keep ReadingShow Less
'MIT Did the Right Thing': First School Rejects Trump Extortion Compact
"It put its students first and preserved the social fabric of its university life," said Amnesty International USA. "We hope other universities will follow suit."
Oct 10, 2025
The Massachusetts Institute of Technology on Friday became the first university to reject President Donald Trump's "Compact for Academic Excellence in Higher Education," which critics have called an "extortion" agreement for federal funding.
MIT and eight other schools—the University of Arizona, Brown University, Dartmouth College, the University of Pennsylvania, the University of Southern California, the University of Texas, Vanderbilt University, and the University of Virginia—were invited to sign the pledge earlier this month.
Sally Kornbluth, MIT's president, met with US Education Secretary Linda McMahon earlier this year and on Friday published her response to the administration's letter on the school's website.
"The institute's mission of service to the nation directs us to advance knowledge, educate students, and bring knowledge to bear on the world's great challenges. We do that in line with a clear set of values, with excellence above all," Kornbluth wrote. MIT "prides itself on rewarding merit" and "opens its doors to the most talented students," and "we value free expression."
Kornbluth continued
These values and other MIT practices meet or exceed many standards outlined in the document you sent. We freely choose these values because they're right, and we live by them because they support our mission—work of immense value to the prosperity, competitiveness, health, and security of the United States. And of course, MIT abides by the law.
The document also includes principles with which we disagree, including those that would restrict freedom of expression and our independence as an institution. And fundamentally, the premise of the document is inconsistent with our core belief that scientific funding should be based on scientific merit alone.
In our view, America’s leadership in science and innovation depends on independent thinking and open competition for excellence. In that free marketplace of ideas, the people of MIT gladly compete with the very best, without preferences. Therefore, with respect, we cannot support the proposed approach to addressing the issues facing higher education.
"As you know, MIT's record of service to the nation is long and enduring," she concluded. "Eight decades ago, MIT leaders helped invent a scientific partnership between America's research universities and the US government that has delivered extraordinary benefits for the American people. We continue to believe in the power of this partnership to serve the nation."
The decision to reject the compact was praised by current members of the university community, alumni, and others—including Amnesty International USA, which said on social media: "We commend MIT in its decision to reject President Trump's proposed 'compact.' In refusing to cave to political pressures, MIT has upheld the very ideals higher education is built on—freedom of thought, expression, and discourse."
"The federal government must not infringe on what students can read, discuss, and learn in school," the human rights group continued. "It is a violation of their academic freedom. MIT did the right thing: It put its students first and preserved the social fabric of its university life. We hope other universities will follow suit."
MIT's response to the Trump admin's proposed "compact" is excellent and should be a model for other universities. orgchart.mit.edu/letters/rega...
[image or embed]
— Jameel Jaffer (@jameeljaffer.bsky.social) October 10, 2025 at 10:14 AM
American Association of University Professors president Todd Wolfson similarly said in a statement to The New York Times that "the ability to teach and study freely is the bedrock of American higher education."
"We applaud MIT for standing up for academic freedom and institutional autonomy rejecting Trump's 'loyalty oath' compact," he added. "We urge all institutions targeted by the administration’s bribery attempt to do the same."
According to the Boston Globe:
MIT faculty are "relieved" by the school's position, said Ariel White, a political science professor and vice president of MIT's American Association of University Professors chapter. But they expect to see Trump employ his whole-of-government approach against the university in response.
"This offer looked like an invitation, but it wasn't," she said. "It was a ransom note. Now there is some risk that we will face reprisal."
What form that reprisal could take is not immediately clear. But White House spokesperson Liz Huston said Friday that "any university that refuses this once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to transform higher education isn't serving students or their parents—they’re bowing to radical, left-wing bureaucrats."
"The truth is, the best science can't thrive in institutions that have abandoned merit, free inquiry, and the pursuit of truth,” Huston's statement continued. "President Trump encourages universities to join us in restoring academic excellence and commonsense policies."
As Common Dreams reported earlier this week, campus activist groups at various schools are organizing against Trump's proposed compact, and the national legal organization Democracy Forward launched an investigation into the effort to strong-arm universities—which is part of a broader agenda targeting any entities or individuals not aligned with the administration.
Keep ReadingShow Less
Trump Pressures Top Universities to Sign 'Extortion Agreement' for Federal Funds
"It is a document of unconditional surrender," one professor said of a compact "urging campus leaders to pledge support for President Trump's political agenda to help ensure access to federal research funds."
Oct 02, 2025
President Donald Trump's war on academia continued this week with letters pressuring the leaders of top universities across the United States to sign his "Compact for Academic Excellence in Higher Education" for priority access to federal funding and other "positive benefits."
The New York Times reported that "letters were sent on Wednesday to the University of Arizona, Brown University, Dartmouth College, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, the University of Pennsylvania, the University of Southern California, the University of Texas, Vanderbilt University, and the University of Virginia."
The letters "urging campus leaders to pledge support for President Trump's political agenda to help ensure access to federal research funds" were signed by Education Secretary Linda McMahon and two key White House officials, according to the Times.
The compact, published by the Washington Examiner, states that "no factor such as sex, ethnicity, race, nationality, political views, sexual orientation, gender identity, religious associations, or proxies for any of those factors shall be considered, explicitly or implicitly, in any decision related to undergraduate or graduate student admissions or financial support, with due exceptions for institutions that are solely or primarily comprised of students of a specific sex or religious denomination."
"Signatories commit themselves to revising governance structures as necessary to create such an environment, including but not limited to transforming or abolishing institutional units that purposefully punish, belittle, and even spark violence against conservative ideas," the 10-page document continues.
In an apparent response to campus protests against US complicity in Israel's ongoing genocide in the Gaza Strip, the compact adds:
Universities shall be responsible for ensuring that they do not knowingly: (1) permit actions by the university, university employees, university students, or individuals external to the university community to delay or disrupt class instruction or disrupt libraries or other traditional study locations; (2) allow demonstrators to heckle or accost individual students or groups of students; or (3) allow obstruction of access to parts of campus based on students’ race, ethnicity, nationality, or religion. Signatories commit to using lawful force if necessary to prevent these violations and to swift, serious, and consistent sanctions for those who commit them.
The compact also requires strict definitions of gender, including for sports, as well as limits on the enrollment of international students. Transgender athletes and foreign scholars have been key targets of the Trump administration.
While Kevin P. Eltife, chair of the University of Texas Board of Regents, told the Times that the school system "is honored" that its flagship in Austin was "selected by the Trump administration for potential funding advantages" and "we enthusiastically look forward to engaging with university officials and reviewing the compact immediately," the other eight schools declined to comment.
The president has already used federal funding to push for changes at major institutions, waging battles over admission policies, trans athletes, and campus protests against US government support for Israel's genocide in the Gaza Strip. Brown and UPenn are two of the schools that have already reached agreements with the administration, while others have fought back.
Critics were swift to condemn the Trump administration's effort as "blackmail," "extortion," and a "shakedown."
"This administration is extorting universities to sign away academic freedom—nothing meritocratic or 'small government' about it," said Salomé Viljoen, an assistant professor at the University of Michigan Law School, on social media.
The compact was decried as a "loyalty oath" and "political bribe." Damon Kiesow, the Knight chair for journalism innovation at the Missouri School of Journalism, said that "it is a document of unconditional surrender."
Edward Swaine, a professor at the George Washington University Law School, warned that "this steps boldly toward a scheme in which the federal government's role in relation to all colleges and universities, public and private, is akin to how state governments presently govern state institutions."
"Federalism aside, at what point does every school become a state actor?" he asked.
Despite Republican officials' long-standing opposition to student debt relief and tuition-free higher education, the compact also calls for a five-year tuition freeze and free tuition for students studying "hard sciences" if a school's endowment exceeds $2 million per undergraduate student.
Richard W. Painter, the chief White House ethics counsel under former President George W. Bush and now a University of Minnesota law professor, said Thursday that "the Trump administration is absolutely right that universities must freeze tuition."
"Price gouging of students and wasteful spending must stop," he added. "The administration's obsession over 'definition of gender' is a silly sideshow undermining higher ed reform."
Keep ReadingShow Less
Children Are in the Crosshairs of Trump and McMahon's Attack on Public Education
The pair's efforts to return education to the states appear motivated not by improving educational outcomes, but by creating tax breaks for the rich while privatizing public education and weakening teachers’ unions, a pillar of the Democratic Party.
Sep 27, 2025
After surviving a contentious US Senate confirmation hearing, Linda McMahon, the former World Wrestling Entertainment CEO turned secretary of education, received a profound first directive from President Donald Trump: “Put yourself out of a job.” Like other appointees, Mrs. McMahon has done exactly as ordered by a president who accepts nothing less.
As Secretary, McMahon has championed Trump’s executive order dismantling her department and delivering its K-12 responsibilities to state and local governments. She has fired 1,315 department employees, targeting jobs in the Office for Civil Rights and the Institute of Education Sciences, groups that investigate civil rights complaints in schools and provide advice on best practices in teaching. As a result, the department’s staff has been nearly halved since January.
And now Secretary McMahon is spiking the ball in a 50-state tour called “Returning Education to the States.” More than a celebration of the administration’s defeat of brainy bureaucrats at the Department of Education, the tour touts the passage of the “Educational Choice for Children Act” (ECCA) as part of the president’s “One Big Beautiful Bill.” The act creates a national opt-in voucher system for students to attend private or religious schools, to be funded by an extraordinarily generous dollar-for-dollar tax credit for donations to Scholarship Granting Organizations.
The problem is that in these related cases—the attacks on the department of education and the creation of a national voucher system—Secretary McMahon and President Trump are not acting in the interests of students, nor do they seem to be thinking about them at all. These efforts to return education to the states appear motivated not by improving educational outcomes, as we’ll explore, but by creating tax breaks for the rich while privatizing public education and weakening teachers’ unions, a pillar of the Democratic Party.
But First, a Little Backstory...
To fully grasp the stakes of the attack on the Department of Education, we must remember why the federal government got involved in education in the first place. Conservatives rightly note that the Constitution does not mention education, leaving it instead as a reserved power for the states. They’re also correct that despite providing only 10% of total public school funding, the role of the federal government in education has grown significantly over the past half-century.
Yet federal power in education grew neither by accident nor by conspiracy, but in response to systemic failures that states could not and in some cases would not address.
In 1965, following the Civil Rights Act and amid the War on Poverty, the Johnson administration sought to tackle two forms of intransigence: the South’s resistance to school integration and the persistence of poverty amid plenty. A former schoolteacher himself, President Lyndon Johnson proposed the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA), which directed federal funds, called Title I, to low-income schools and students. Crucially, it tied Title I funding to compliance with desegregation orders. This strings-attached model became the foundation of the federal approach to K-12 education and is critical to understanding its outsized voice.
When Secretary McMahon announced that her “Returning Education to the States” tour would kick off in Louisiana, Arkansas, and Tennessee, it sounded like yet another state’s rights dog whistle.
Flash forward a decade: When President Jimmy Carter created the Department of Education in 1979, conservatives saw it as the fulfillment of a politically motivated campaign promise to secure support from the National Education Association, the largest teachers’ union in the country. Politics was surely part of the calculus, which conservatives have long resented.
Yet beyond the politics of the moment, the new department was also created to increase efficiency and effectiveness, allowing the federal government to consolidate its education-related functions into a single agency. Navigating the two largest streams of K-12 funding—Title I and IDEA—would be less complicated under its purview. Continuing the strings-attached model, the department established an Office of Civil Rights to investigate whether schools receiving funds were in compliance with federal civil rights laws. But this last piece represented a continuation of federal oversight that some states resented, especially across the South.
So in 1980, when Ronald Reagan campaigned against the new department and called for returning control to the states, he appealed—intentionally or not—to two groups. The first were earnest conservatives who, after decades of government expansion, sought a renewed federalism that would respect greater state and local autonomy. The second were those who felt the federal government had overreached, in schools and elsewhere, by enforcing civil rights laws in the South. Reagan’s advisors seemed to understand this double-meaning and tapped into it with dog whistles, directing the Gipper to open his 1980 campaign with a “state’s rights” speech in Neshoba, Mississippi, a town made infamous by the 1964 murders of three prominent civil rights activists.
President Reagan was ultimately unable to get rid of the Department of Education. Instead, Reagan decided that if he couldn’t kill the department, he would render it useless by appointing leaders, like Secretary William Bennett, who did not believe in its purpose. This was the template for Trump’s appointment of both Betsy Devos and Linda McMahon.
Back to the Present
When Secretary McMahon announced that her “Returning Education to the States” tour would kick off in Louisiana, Arkansas, and Tennessee, it sounded like yet another state’s rights dog whistle. Compounding that feeling is the fact that the secretary’s layoffs in March targeted the department’s Office for Civil Rights, leaving it unable to perform its oversight and investigative duties and leading to a long list of civil rights cases that may never be reviewed.
But more than civil rights oversight is at stake. The Institute of Education Sciences, which researches best practices in teaching and provides comparative data about educational outcomes, was also targeted in the Secretary’s layoffs. The institute additionally oversees the National Assessment of Educational Programs (NAEP) tests, which are used to gauge academic achievement by various measures across the country.
None of this is in the interests of students.
President Trump and Secretary McMahon have shown no consideration of the fact that, as research suggests, many of these programs will fail students, affecting millions of children nationwide.
The growing backlog of cases in the Office for Civil Rights does nothing to protect vulnerable students, just as the effective shuttering of the Institute of Education Sciences does nothing to improve teaching and learning. But rendering the Office for Civil Rights useless does give cover to states to do as they please—and if doing so hurts test scores, a dataless Institute of Education Sciences will lack the information critical for accountability.
Secretary McMahon and President Trump have also expressed interest in turning Title I, the largest stream of federal money for K-12 education, into block grants. Doing so, as Project 2025 advises, would give states greater discretion over how the funds are used. Without vigorous oversight, it is likely that some states would not direct the money toward low-income schools and students. The president has already issued guidance for how states can redirect Title I money into voucher programs and, according to Politico, has worked with House Republicans to propose a $5.2 billion cut to the program for fiscal year 2026.
But the most immediate push for vouchers comes in an overlooked part of the “One Big Beautiful Bill,” called the “Educational Choice for Children Act” (ECCA). It establishes the first national voucher system, allowing students in states that opt in to use vouchers to send students to private or religious schools. The program is funded through federal tax credit. These breaks are an unusually generous dollar-for-dollar credit on any donation to Scholarship Granting Organizations. And, shockingly, donations can include stocks that will be valued at their pre-capital gains amount, meaning donors will save more from the donation than they would make from cashing out the stock.
More than an appealing program for the wealthy, the ECCA voucher program is politically appealing to Republicans because it undermines public schools—and their teachers’ unions—in states that opt in. When students accept vouchers to leave for private schools, the traditional public school they previously attended loses that money, forcing them to continue providing the same services for all students but with less funding. And while conservatives frame this as “school choice,” the choice lies equally with private schools that, unlike public schools that are required to educate every student, have the right to reject applicants on the basis of talent, character, and even disability—leaving public schools to educate only the most challenging students.
In other words, the program sets up public schools to fail—and when they do, they will likely be blamed for their own failure, leading to additional disinvestment and greater failure.
One thing is clear: The ECCA voucher program, like the rest of Trump and McMahon’s K-12 policy, isn’t about helping students, nor is it even about education; it’s about fattening pockets and weakening political opponents. The tax credit is a boondoggle for the wealthy at a cost of billions to the public. But the credit is also a tool for attacking a pillar of the Democratic Party by undermining traditional public schools and teachers’ unions. Children are in the crosshairs of this battle but under Trump, the Republican Party is unwilling to value them above entrenching their own political power and financial interests.
It is a tragic moment in K-12 education. To be clear, there are valid debates about school choice and vouchers. There have even been successes in certain targeted voucher studies, and we should learn from them. But overwhelmingly, recent studies show that voucher programs have yet to scale well and have consistently led to lower test scores. Indiana, Louisiana, and Ohio have large, longstanding voucher programs. In the past decade, each has witnessed a decline in math and reading scores for students entering from public school.
In 2016, researchers at Tulane University found that voucher users who performed “at roughly the 50th percentile” before entering the program fell “24 percentile points below their control group counterparts in math after one year.” Martin West, professor of education policy at Harvard and a 2012 campaign adviser to Mitt Romney, described the results as “as large as any” he’s “seen in the literature.” Results are similarly poor in Ohio, where the erstwhile voucher-supporting Thomas B. Fordham Institute concluded, “Students who use vouchers to attend private schools have fared worse academically compared to their closely matched peers attending public schools.”
Even in the best cases of scaled-up experiments, as in Florida and Arizona, results are mixed. Some studies suggest slight academic improvement while others range from no benefit to moderate academic decline. And yet without nuance or humility, the Trump administration is all-in on vouchers as the future of education, at least in the Republican-led states. President Trump and Secretary McMahon have shown no consideration of the fact that, as research suggests, many of these programs will fail students, affecting millions of children nationwide.
If the administration truly had a non-ideological interest in vouchers as part of a commitment to improving educational outcomes, they would recognize the shortcomings of many recent voucher experiments and propose more targeted voucher programs that expand on areas where they’ve shown some success.
But they haven’t done that because it’s not about students. And for all the wrong reasons, we’re about to scale vouchers across much of the country at a time when the Department of Education, the leading K-12 oversight body, is on life support.
Keep ReadingShow Less
See More Stories
Most Popular
To inform. To inspire. To ignite change for the common good.
News & Opinion
Trending
Common Dreams, Inc. Founded 1997. Registered 501(c3) Non-Profit
Privacy Policy