Sam Halpert, NALP Director of Public Service Initiatives

Hi Interested Public,

Tough week. Via an Executive Order, Donald Trump has directed his administration to unwind the Department of Education (student loans will spin off onto the Small Business Administration). Columbia University agreed to the Trump Administration's extensive demands for its internal restructuring as an opening to its negotiations over $400 million in withheld federal funding (a tactic believed by many experts to be unlawful: [Dorf]; [Feldman]). As always, these stories and more are in the links below.

Solidarity,

Sam

Editor’s Choice(s)

• ‘No Way’ to Please Everyone: Columbia’s President Confronts Trump’s Ultimatum (Wall St Journal; 20 Mar 2025)

  “Now, with the Trump administration intent on making an example of Columbia, Armstrong stands at the center of a fight over the future of higher education in America. The school’s board of trustees faces a Friday deadline to meet nine far-reaching demands from Trump in negotiations over federal funding.”

• Columbia AAUP Urges University to Reject Trump’s Demands (Inside Higher Ed; 19 Mar 2025)

  “Compliance would make Columbia complicit in its own destruction, stripping shared control of academic and student affairs from the faculty and administration and replacing the deliberative practices and structures of the university with peremptory fiats from outside the institution,” the AAUP chapter said in a statement Tuesday. “We see no evidence that compliance would assuage the hostility of the White House.”

• Judge tells Columbia and Barnard to refrain from turning over student disciplinary records for now (AP; 20 Mar 2025)

  “A federal judge on Thursday ordered Columbia University and Barnard College to refrain from complying with a Republican-led House committee’s demand for student disciplinary records, at least until he holds a hearing next week on a request by Mahmoud Khalil and other students for a temporary restraining order.”

• Columbia Yields to Trump in Battle Over Federal Funding (Wall St. Journal; 21 Mar 2025)

  “The Trump administration laid out nine demands for the university to meet as a precondition to start talks about the federal funding. On top of those nine demands, Columbia now says it is already taking additional actions to encourage more intellectual diversity at the historically left-leaning institution. … A Columbia senior administrator said the school considered legal options to challenge the Trump team but ultimately determined the federal government has so many available levers to claw back money, it would be a difficult fight. Additionally the school believed there was considerable overlap between needed campus changes and Trump’s demands. …

  Schools nationwide are watching Columbia with alarm; many fear a demand for similar concessions. Their primary concern: without freedom to follow their intellectual curiosity, the discoveries and innovations that fuel the U.S.’s economy will decline or even grind to a halt.”

• How a University Fights an Authoritarian Regime (The Chronicle of Higher Education; 14 Mar 2025)

  “A college president phone me the other day to ask for advice…he wanted to know what he could learn from my time as president of Central European University when Hungary’s prime minister, Viktor Orbán, tried to expel us from Budapest. … I told him to frame his fight to gain as many allies as he can. Mobilize your alumni networks. Enlist families whose children’s lives have been saved in your hospitals; reach out to companies that have commercialized your research, make contact with universities in red and blue states, public and private, who face the same threat. Do it fast. Make sure your campaign is not just about you, because that opens you to attack as a defender of privilege. Make the case to the public that these attacks are senseless assaults on institutions that promote what America is famous for: life-saving science and world-class innovation.”

Conflicts Over Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, and Accessibility

• DOJ reduces ADA compliance guidance, pointing to Trump order (The Hill; 20 Mar 2025)

  “The first five repealed pieces of guidance reference COVID-19 conditions including mask exemption policies, access to resources that help disabled employees explain their rights, and regulations for a medical or family aide in hospital settings, in addition to rules for street eateries to remain ADA compliant.”

• Colleges cut ties with a little-known nonprofit targeted by the Trump administration over DEI (AP; 21 Mar 2025)

  “Until recently, it was a little-known program to help Black and Latino students pursue business degrees. But in January, conservative strategist Christopher Rufo flagged the program known as The PhD Project in social media posts that caught the attention of Republican politicians. The program is now at the center of a Trump administration campaign to root out diversity, equity and inclusion programs in higher education. The U.S. Education Department last week said it was investigating dozens of universities for alleged racial discrimination, citing ties to the nonprofit organization…The investigations left some school leaders startled and confused, wondering what prompted the inquiries. Many scrambled to distance themselves from The PhD Project, which has aimed to help diversify the business world and higher education faculty.”

  • [Ed Note: I also refer readers out to NALP’s Weekly Industry News Digest, which has separate coverage of this topic]

Access to Justice

• Mr. Musk, Please Defund the Legal Services Corporation [opinion] (The American Conservative; 19 Mar 2025)

  “This legal-aid network, substantially funded by LSC, has a 50-year history of advancing a radical agenda on controversial subjects such as racial preferences, transgenderism, homelessness, illegal immigration, and the growth of the welfare state. Where possible, legal-aid attorneys have sued in court; on other occasions, they have used advocacy tools outside the courthouse. Their efforts, in league with activist judges, have radicalized American society and institutions, undermining values and interests of the vast middle class. As Trump looks to eliminate wasteful and politicized spending, he needs to pick up where Reagan left off a generation ago, and this time the White House and Congress need to get the job done.”

Student Loans & the Dept of Ed

• Student Loan Borrowers Sue Trump Administration For Blocking Loan Forgiveness And Affordable Payments (Forbes; 19 Mar 2025)

• Trump signs executive order to dismantle Department of Education (The Hill; 20 Mar 2025)

  “Today, we take a very historic action that was 45 years in the making,” he said at a signing ceremony at the East Room of the White House that included multiple school-age children sitting at classroom desks. “I will sign an executive order to begin eliminating the federal Department of Education.”

  “The department’s useful functions … will be preserved, fully preserved,” Trump added, referring to Pell Grants, Title I funding and programs for students with disabilities. “They’re going to be preserved in full and redistributed to various other agencies and departments.”

  • Improving Education Outcomes by Empowering Parents, States, and Communities (US Presidential Executive Order; 20 Mar 2025)

• Trump says student loans moving to SBA, ‘special needs’ to HHS (The Hill; 21 Mar 2025)

2025 Federal Reductions in Force

• We finally learned how many federal probationary workers the White House fired and where they worked (Business Insider; 18 Mar 2025)

  “In declarations from 18 departments or agencies, officials said roughly 25,000 federal workers had been terminated across the government. Their disclosures are the largest insight yet into mass reductions that have become the signature focus of President Donald Trump's first 100 days in office. Agency officials were required to file the declarations by Monday night in a Maryland case brought by 20 Democratic state attorneys general who allege that the mass firings were illegal.”

• Judiciary Official Warns Federal Layoffs Could Impact Courts (Bloomberg Law; 18 Mar 2025)

  “Recent reduction-in-force actions taken by the General Services Administration “have the potential to create both immediate and long-term effects on court operations and the services provided by GSA,” Paul Gamble, chief of the facilities and security office of the Administrative Office of the US Courts, wrote in a Monday memo.”

• Trump Aides Shutter Homeland Security Civil Rights Office (Bloomberg Government; 21 Mar 2025)

  “The Department of Homeland Security is dismantling the office that investigates civil rights violations in immigrant enforcement and other departmental work as President Donald Trump aims to downsize federal agencies. Employees in the Office for Civil Rights and Civil Liberties received news of the closure in a meeting Friday afternoon, according to a Senate aide and four people in the meeting or briefed on it in real time.”

• Emails Reveal Top IRS Lawyer Warned Trump Firings Were a “Fraud” on the Courts (Pro Publica; 19 Mar 2025)

  “Trump administration lawyers insist that the IRS and other federal agencies have acted within their authority when they ordered waves of mass terminations since Trump took office. But according to previously unreported emails obtained by ProPublica, a top lawyer at the IRS warned administration officials that the performance-related language in his agency’s termination letter was “a false statement” that amounted to “fraud” if the agency kept the language in the letter.”