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"Clearly, those trying to recast the narrative of DeVos from the potent force originally described in the media into the weakened warrior currently in fashion are seeing the trees and not the forest." (Photo: Alex Milan Tracy/AP)
With less than a year in office, Education Secretary Betsy DeVos is already having the narrative of her impact on the nation's public schools recast from someone with the power to "single-handedly decimate our public education system" to someone who is capable of only incremental change or who is completely ineffectual altogether.
Don't believe this shift in the storyline.
First consider how many times media reports trumpeting efforts by the President Trump administration to act more responsibly have quickly changed, within days or even hours, to news reports of the continued fecklessness of the White House. Similarly, news stories about Trump being completely ineffectual at accomplishing his agenda are constantly counterbalanced with stories of his continued success at radically altering the nation.
Likewise, we can judge any attempts to recast DeVos into a more diminished role as short-term and mistaken interpretations of events.
For instance, one popular stab at remaking the DeVos image is to credit her with achieving an "evolution" in thinking about her influence at the helm of the education department.
Education policy observers, from Beltway think tanks to prominent news outlets, have used DeVos's recent speech at Harvard University as evidence of some newfound "restraint" in her approach to radically alter the nation's education landscape from one dominated by public institutions to a "market place" of privately owned providers getting public funds to compete against neighborhood schools.
Writing at his blog at Education Week, conservative education pundit Rick Hess cites passages from DeVos's Harvard speech to claim she had transitioned from someone intent on using her leadership role to push through an agenda for "school choice" - the term most often used to describe expansion of privately operated education providers - to someone who will "tread carefully" in using her powers.
Similarly, Lauren Camera, the education reporter for U.S. New & World Reports, cites the same speech to credit DeVos with "a natural recalibration of expectations that can occur when one steps into a position and better understands the political realities that can constrain agendas."
In addition to these "she ain't so bad" portrayals of DeVos, there has been a rash of reports on the apparent inability of her agenda to gain support in Congress. The House rejected the proposals of DeVos and Trump for more federal spending to boost school choice, and the Senate also rejected the Trump administration's funding for more school choice ventures.
Reports like these have lulled education policy poohbahs into believing DeVos and her agenda have been effectively neutered by Congressional opposition.
In fact, a recent survey of education policy elites - current and former government officials and bureaucrats and Beltway apparatchiks - finds these "Insiders are skeptical that Education Secretary Betsy DeVos will effectively advance any policies during her tenure at the Department of Education."
Over 50 percent of survey respondents believe DeVos will have no success in expanding charter schools, private school vouchers, tax credits (to expand vouchers), public school choice, or virtual schools.
These conclusions about the supposed ineffectiveness of DeVos should be treated with a great deal of skepticism.
First, as seasoned education reporter at Education Week Alyson Klein explains, "from her perch at the department, [DeVos] has other levers to get states and districts to offer kids more schooling options, without help from anyone in Congress."
With the more than $1 billion in federal grants at her disposal every year, DeVoa can incentivize school choice programs. Klein writes, "Federal officials can give applicants a leg-up if they pitch something choice related, or maybe even if they are a charter school, or part of a district that's home to a voucher program."
Further, Klein says, DeVos can use her media leverage - due to her being the most controversial of Trump's Cabinet officials - to " give speeches on the virtues of choice, and travel to schools and districts where she thinks choice is making a positive difference."
And DeVos can use an obscure provision in the new federal education law, called the weighted student-funding pilot, to "allow districts to combine federal, state, and local dollars into a single funding stream tied to individual students." Klein explains, "Adopting a weighted student-funding formula could make it easier for districts to operate school choice programs, since money would be tied to individual students and could therefore follow them to charter or virtual public schools."
Any speculation that DeVos is somehow backing off her intent to impose school choice on communities or softening her approach to privatizing schools is further cast into doubt by her Department's recently published "priorities" document that makes clear what her tenure will continue to focus on at the expense of all other possible goals.
The document lists 11 priorities for use in federal discretionary grant programs under her rule. Priority No. 1 deals with school choice. The document specifically proposes giving priority to projects that seek to increase the proportion of students with access to "educational choice."
In the document, the word "choice" and its variations - "choose" and "option" - occurs 22 times
On the other hand, "equity," something many would want at the top of the list, is not a priority at all. Its mention occurs twice, once in a footnote and the other parenthetically. The issue of school funding is also mostly ignored, mentioned only three times. When the subject does occur, it is de-prioritized. "Increased Federal funding cannot be a stand-in for increased learning," the document declares. "We will focus less on discrete funding streams and more on innovative problem solving."
There is no mention of the need to work toward racial integration of schools or rectify the harms of segregation.
Clearly, those trying to recast the narrative of DeVos from the potent force originally described in the media into the weakened warrior currently in fashion are seeing the trees and not the forest.
As my colleague at The Progressive Jennifer Berkshire writes, DeVos's strategy to transform American schools from universal access to a competitive marketplace is a "long game" approach in which every momentary defeat will result in her dedication to the cause to grow even more fervent.=
"[DeVos] gives every indication of being quite pleased with the progress she's making," Berkshire contends. "'Hasten slowly,' is how DeVos described her family's motto in a recent interview. DeVos' own family, and the one she married into, have sought to impose their vision of a country free of unions and dependence on government, including 'government schools,' for two generations. Now, after decades of slow hastening, they're almost there."
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With less than a year in office, Education Secretary Betsy DeVos is already having the narrative of her impact on the nation's public schools recast from someone with the power to "single-handedly decimate our public education system" to someone who is capable of only incremental change or who is completely ineffectual altogether.
Don't believe this shift in the storyline.
First consider how many times media reports trumpeting efforts by the President Trump administration to act more responsibly have quickly changed, within days or even hours, to news reports of the continued fecklessness of the White House. Similarly, news stories about Trump being completely ineffectual at accomplishing his agenda are constantly counterbalanced with stories of his continued success at radically altering the nation.
Likewise, we can judge any attempts to recast DeVos into a more diminished role as short-term and mistaken interpretations of events.
For instance, one popular stab at remaking the DeVos image is to credit her with achieving an "evolution" in thinking about her influence at the helm of the education department.
Education policy observers, from Beltway think tanks to prominent news outlets, have used DeVos's recent speech at Harvard University as evidence of some newfound "restraint" in her approach to radically alter the nation's education landscape from one dominated by public institutions to a "market place" of privately owned providers getting public funds to compete against neighborhood schools.
Writing at his blog at Education Week, conservative education pundit Rick Hess cites passages from DeVos's Harvard speech to claim she had transitioned from someone intent on using her leadership role to push through an agenda for "school choice" - the term most often used to describe expansion of privately operated education providers - to someone who will "tread carefully" in using her powers.
Similarly, Lauren Camera, the education reporter for U.S. New & World Reports, cites the same speech to credit DeVos with "a natural recalibration of expectations that can occur when one steps into a position and better understands the political realities that can constrain agendas."
In addition to these "she ain't so bad" portrayals of DeVos, there has been a rash of reports on the apparent inability of her agenda to gain support in Congress. The House rejected the proposals of DeVos and Trump for more federal spending to boost school choice, and the Senate also rejected the Trump administration's funding for more school choice ventures.
Reports like these have lulled education policy poohbahs into believing DeVos and her agenda have been effectively neutered by Congressional opposition.
In fact, a recent survey of education policy elites - current and former government officials and bureaucrats and Beltway apparatchiks - finds these "Insiders are skeptical that Education Secretary Betsy DeVos will effectively advance any policies during her tenure at the Department of Education."
Over 50 percent of survey respondents believe DeVos will have no success in expanding charter schools, private school vouchers, tax credits (to expand vouchers), public school choice, or virtual schools.
These conclusions about the supposed ineffectiveness of DeVos should be treated with a great deal of skepticism.
First, as seasoned education reporter at Education Week Alyson Klein explains, "from her perch at the department, [DeVos] has other levers to get states and districts to offer kids more schooling options, without help from anyone in Congress."
With the more than $1 billion in federal grants at her disposal every year, DeVoa can incentivize school choice programs. Klein writes, "Federal officials can give applicants a leg-up if they pitch something choice related, or maybe even if they are a charter school, or part of a district that's home to a voucher program."
Further, Klein says, DeVos can use her media leverage - due to her being the most controversial of Trump's Cabinet officials - to " give speeches on the virtues of choice, and travel to schools and districts where she thinks choice is making a positive difference."
And DeVos can use an obscure provision in the new federal education law, called the weighted student-funding pilot, to "allow districts to combine federal, state, and local dollars into a single funding stream tied to individual students." Klein explains, "Adopting a weighted student-funding formula could make it easier for districts to operate school choice programs, since money would be tied to individual students and could therefore follow them to charter or virtual public schools."
Any speculation that DeVos is somehow backing off her intent to impose school choice on communities or softening her approach to privatizing schools is further cast into doubt by her Department's recently published "priorities" document that makes clear what her tenure will continue to focus on at the expense of all other possible goals.
The document lists 11 priorities for use in federal discretionary grant programs under her rule. Priority No. 1 deals with school choice. The document specifically proposes giving priority to projects that seek to increase the proportion of students with access to "educational choice."
In the document, the word "choice" and its variations - "choose" and "option" - occurs 22 times
On the other hand, "equity," something many would want at the top of the list, is not a priority at all. Its mention occurs twice, once in a footnote and the other parenthetically. The issue of school funding is also mostly ignored, mentioned only three times. When the subject does occur, it is de-prioritized. "Increased Federal funding cannot be a stand-in for increased learning," the document declares. "We will focus less on discrete funding streams and more on innovative problem solving."
There is no mention of the need to work toward racial integration of schools or rectify the harms of segregation.
Clearly, those trying to recast the narrative of DeVos from the potent force originally described in the media into the weakened warrior currently in fashion are seeing the trees and not the forest.
As my colleague at The Progressive Jennifer Berkshire writes, DeVos's strategy to transform American schools from universal access to a competitive marketplace is a "long game" approach in which every momentary defeat will result in her dedication to the cause to grow even more fervent.=
"[DeVos] gives every indication of being quite pleased with the progress she's making," Berkshire contends. "'Hasten slowly,' is how DeVos described her family's motto in a recent interview. DeVos' own family, and the one she married into, have sought to impose their vision of a country free of unions and dependence on government, including 'government schools,' for two generations. Now, after decades of slow hastening, they're almost there."
With less than a year in office, Education Secretary Betsy DeVos is already having the narrative of her impact on the nation's public schools recast from someone with the power to "single-handedly decimate our public education system" to someone who is capable of only incremental change or who is completely ineffectual altogether.
Don't believe this shift in the storyline.
First consider how many times media reports trumpeting efforts by the President Trump administration to act more responsibly have quickly changed, within days or even hours, to news reports of the continued fecklessness of the White House. Similarly, news stories about Trump being completely ineffectual at accomplishing his agenda are constantly counterbalanced with stories of his continued success at radically altering the nation.
Likewise, we can judge any attempts to recast DeVos into a more diminished role as short-term and mistaken interpretations of events.
For instance, one popular stab at remaking the DeVos image is to credit her with achieving an "evolution" in thinking about her influence at the helm of the education department.
Education policy observers, from Beltway think tanks to prominent news outlets, have used DeVos's recent speech at Harvard University as evidence of some newfound "restraint" in her approach to radically alter the nation's education landscape from one dominated by public institutions to a "market place" of privately owned providers getting public funds to compete against neighborhood schools.
Writing at his blog at Education Week, conservative education pundit Rick Hess cites passages from DeVos's Harvard speech to claim she had transitioned from someone intent on using her leadership role to push through an agenda for "school choice" - the term most often used to describe expansion of privately operated education providers - to someone who will "tread carefully" in using her powers.
Similarly, Lauren Camera, the education reporter for U.S. New & World Reports, cites the same speech to credit DeVos with "a natural recalibration of expectations that can occur when one steps into a position and better understands the political realities that can constrain agendas."
In addition to these "she ain't so bad" portrayals of DeVos, there has been a rash of reports on the apparent inability of her agenda to gain support in Congress. The House rejected the proposals of DeVos and Trump for more federal spending to boost school choice, and the Senate also rejected the Trump administration's funding for more school choice ventures.
Reports like these have lulled education policy poohbahs into believing DeVos and her agenda have been effectively neutered by Congressional opposition.
In fact, a recent survey of education policy elites - current and former government officials and bureaucrats and Beltway apparatchiks - finds these "Insiders are skeptical that Education Secretary Betsy DeVos will effectively advance any policies during her tenure at the Department of Education."
Over 50 percent of survey respondents believe DeVos will have no success in expanding charter schools, private school vouchers, tax credits (to expand vouchers), public school choice, or virtual schools.
These conclusions about the supposed ineffectiveness of DeVos should be treated with a great deal of skepticism.
First, as seasoned education reporter at Education Week Alyson Klein explains, "from her perch at the department, [DeVos] has other levers to get states and districts to offer kids more schooling options, without help from anyone in Congress."
With the more than $1 billion in federal grants at her disposal every year, DeVoa can incentivize school choice programs. Klein writes, "Federal officials can give applicants a leg-up if they pitch something choice related, or maybe even if they are a charter school, or part of a district that's home to a voucher program."
Further, Klein says, DeVos can use her media leverage - due to her being the most controversial of Trump's Cabinet officials - to " give speeches on the virtues of choice, and travel to schools and districts where she thinks choice is making a positive difference."
And DeVos can use an obscure provision in the new federal education law, called the weighted student-funding pilot, to "allow districts to combine federal, state, and local dollars into a single funding stream tied to individual students." Klein explains, "Adopting a weighted student-funding formula could make it easier for districts to operate school choice programs, since money would be tied to individual students and could therefore follow them to charter or virtual public schools."
Any speculation that DeVos is somehow backing off her intent to impose school choice on communities or softening her approach to privatizing schools is further cast into doubt by her Department's recently published "priorities" document that makes clear what her tenure will continue to focus on at the expense of all other possible goals.
The document lists 11 priorities for use in federal discretionary grant programs under her rule. Priority No. 1 deals with school choice. The document specifically proposes giving priority to projects that seek to increase the proportion of students with access to "educational choice."
In the document, the word "choice" and its variations - "choose" and "option" - occurs 22 times
On the other hand, "equity," something many would want at the top of the list, is not a priority at all. Its mention occurs twice, once in a footnote and the other parenthetically. The issue of school funding is also mostly ignored, mentioned only three times. When the subject does occur, it is de-prioritized. "Increased Federal funding cannot be a stand-in for increased learning," the document declares. "We will focus less on discrete funding streams and more on innovative problem solving."
There is no mention of the need to work toward racial integration of schools or rectify the harms of segregation.
Clearly, those trying to recast the narrative of DeVos from the potent force originally described in the media into the weakened warrior currently in fashion are seeing the trees and not the forest.
As my colleague at The Progressive Jennifer Berkshire writes, DeVos's strategy to transform American schools from universal access to a competitive marketplace is a "long game" approach in which every momentary defeat will result in her dedication to the cause to grow even more fervent.=
"[DeVos] gives every indication of being quite pleased with the progress she's making," Berkshire contends. "'Hasten slowly,' is how DeVos described her family's motto in a recent interview. DeVos' own family, and the one she married into, have sought to impose their vision of a country free of unions and dependence on government, including 'government schools,' for two generations. Now, after decades of slow hastening, they're almost there."
"We're supportive of what the president is trying to do. But the reality of it is our industry has to have the Hispanic immigrant-based workers in it," said the CEO of an Alabama construction firm.
After months of national protests over U.S. President Donald Trump's mass deportation agenda, even some of his supporters—including an Alabama man who runs day-to-day operations at construction sites—have come to the conclusion that workplace raids aimed at rounding up undocumented immigrants are the wrong way to go.
In an interview with Reuters published Monday, construction site superintendent Robby Robertson expressed frustration at the way the Trump administration's hard-line immigration policies have impacted his business.
He said that trouble at his site began in late May shortly after an Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) raid on a construction site in Tallahassee, Florida, which he said scared off nearly his entire workforce for several days afterward. Even though nearly two months have passed since then, he said a little more than half of his workforce has come back.
This is negatively impacting his current project, which he said was projected to be finished already but which has been slow to complete now that his initial 22-person roofing team has dwindled down to just a dozen workers. As if that weren't enough, Reuters wrote that Robertson's company "is facing potentially $84,000 in extra costs for the delays under a 'liquidated damages' clause of $4,000 for every day the project runs beyond" its deadline.
"I'm a Trump supporter," Robertson told Reuters. "But I just don't think the raids are the answer."
Robertson added that the raids aren't just intimidating undocumented immigrant workers but also Latino workers who are in the country legally but who don't want to get swept up in raids "because of their skin color."
"They are scared they look the part," Robertson explained.
Tim Harrison, the CEO of the construction firm that is building the project being overseen by Robertson, told Reuters that finding native-born American workers to do the kind of work he needs is extremely difficult, especially since Alabama already has a low unemployment rate that makes trying to attract workers to a physically demanding industry difficult.
"The contractor world is full of Republicans," explained Harrison in an interview with Reuters. "I'm not anti-ICE. We're supportive of what the president is trying to do. But the reality of it is our industry has to have the Hispanic immigrant-based workers in it."
A report issued earlier this month by the progressive Economic Policy Institute (EPI) projected that the construction industry could take a severe hit from Trump's mass deportation plan given how many undocumented immigrants work in that industry.
"Employment in the construction sector will drop sharply: U.S.-born construction employment will fall by 861,000, and immigrant employment will fall by 1.4 million," wrote EPI senior economist Ben Zipperer, who added that the Trump administration's plans risked "squandering the full employment... inherited from the Biden administration and also causing immense pain to the millions of U.S.-born and immigrant workers who may lose their jobs."
"We're holding these members of Congress accountable for voting for the Republican tax law that strips health care away from millions of Texas families," said Unrig Our Economy campaign director Leor Tal.
The progressive advocacy group Unrig Our Economy launched a new $2 million advertising campaign Monday against four Texas Republicans who voted for the massive Medicaid cuts in this month's GOP megabill.
At the behest of President Donald Trump, Republican Texas Gov. Greg Abbott is mounting an unusual mid-decade effort to redraw Texas' congressional map to keep control of the U.S. House of Representatives come 2026.
The plan is expected to net the GOP five seats. But the flipside is that some seats that were once GOP locks may become more vulnerable to Democratic challengers.
Those include the ones held by Republican Reps. Lance Gooden (5), Monica De La Cruz (15), Beth Van Duyne (24), and Dan Crenshaw (2)—all of whom voted for the "One Big Beautiful Bill Act."
Put together, these four congresspeople alone represent around 450,000 Medicaid recipients, according to data from KFF.
The law remains dismally unpopular, with the majority of Americans believing that it benefits the rich, while providing little to ordinary Americans. According to a Navigator survey conducted last week, 7 in 10 Americans said they were concerned about its cuts to Medicaid.
The Congressional Budget Office projects that 10 million Americans will lose health insurance as a result of the law's Medicaid cuts.
Around 200,000 of them are in Texas according to KFF. In total, up to 1.7 million people in the state may lose their insurance as a result of other subsidies that were also cut.
Those are the people Unrig Our Economy hopes to reach with its new ad blitz.
One ad hits Crenshaw—whose district has nearly 92,000 Medicaid recipients—for making false promises to protect the program.
(Video: Unrig Our Economy)
It shows a video of the congressman from May 14 assuring Texans: "You have nothing to worry about. Your Medicaid is not going anywhere," less than two months before voting for "the largest Medicaid and healthcare cuts in history."
Another singles out De La Cruz—who represents over 181,000 Medicaid recipients—for her vote for the bill after warning that the cuts "would have serious consequences, particularly in rural and predominantly Hispanic communities where hospitals and nursing homes are already struggling to keep their doors open."
Among hundreds at risk across the country, 15 rural hospitals in Texas are in danger of closing because of the cuts, according to a study by the health services research arm of the University of North Carolina.
The ads targeting Gooden and Van Duyne, meanwhile, draw more attention to the effects of their cuts on Texan families: "Medicaid covers a third of all children, half of all pregnant women, the elderly in long-term care, and the disabled."
(Video: Unrig Our Economy)
Gooden's district contains more than 120,000 Medicaid recipients—over half of whom are children. In Van Duyne's district, children make up close to two-thirds of the more than 57,000 enrollees.
According to the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy, the bill cuts more than $930 billion in total from Medicaid over the next ten years. Over that same ten-year period, the wealthiest 1% of Americans will receive over $1 trillion worth of tax breaks.
All the ads hammer home the fact that these devastating cuts were passed "to fund tax breaks for billionaires."
Unrig Our Economy's ad blitz is the first salvo of a $20-million effort by the House Majority PAC—the largest national PAC supporting Democrats—to beat back the effects of the Republican gerrymandering effort.
"We're holding these members of Congress accountable for voting for the Republican tax law that strips healthcare away from millions of Texas families," said Unrig Our Economy campaign director Leor Tal.
Unrig Our Economy has launched similar ads against vulnerable Republicans across the country, such as first-term Rep. Rob Bresnahan, whose northeast Pennsylvania constituency is made up of more than one-fourth Medicaid recipients.
"These ads," Tal said, "are just the latest in our nationwide campaign to show the horrible impacts of this law, which benefits the superwealthy at working families' expense."
"I cannot defend the indefensible," said Sen. Angus King.
A longtime supporter of military aid to Israel in the U.S. Senate is drawing a red line amid the ongoing starvation crisis in Gaza.
Sen. Angus King (I-Maine) on Monday released a statement saying he would not vote to support any more aid to Israel unless Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's government drastically reversed course to allow more food and other life-saving supplies to enter Gaza.
In a statement flagged on X by Dylan Williams, the vice president for government affairs at the Center for International Policy, King delivered a harsh rebuke to the Israeli government for its role in the humanitarian catastrophe unfolding under its watch.
"I cannot defend the indefensible," King's statement began. "Israel's actions in the conduct of the war in Gaza, especially its failure to address the unimaginable humanitarian crisis now unfolding, is an affront to human decency. What appears to be a deliberately-induced famine among a civilian population—including tens of thousands of starving children—can never be an acceptable military strategy."
King emphasized that he supported Israel's right to retaliate after the October 7, 2023 attacks on the country by Hamas, but then said "that tragic event cannot in turn justify the enormous toll on Palestinian civilians caused by Israel's relentless bombing campaign and its indifference to the current plight of those trapped in what's left of Gaza."
The Maine senator then vowed to back up his words with actions.
"I am through supporting the actions of the current Israeli government and will advocate—and vote—for an end to any United States support whatsoever until there is a demonstrable change in the direction of Israeli policy," he said. "My litmus test will be simple: No aid of any kind as long as there are starving children in Gaza due to the action or inaction of the Israeli government."
Israel has come under increased international pressure as images and video footage of starving children has been pouring out of Gaza in recent weeks. The Israeli government over the weekend announced a tactical "pause" in its Gaza military campaign to allow more humanitarian assistance into the area, although critics such as Bushra Khalidi, Oxfam policy lead for the occupied Palestinian territory, described the Israeli measures as woefully inadequate in the face of mass starvation.
"Deadly airdrops and a trickle of trucks won't undo months of engineered starvation in Gaza," said Khalidi on Sunday. "What's needed is the immediate opening of all crossings for full, unhindered, and safe aid delivery across all of Gaza and a permanent cease-fire. Anything less risks being little more than a tactical gesture."