PSJD News Digest – May 16, 2025

May 16, 2025 at 4:27 pm · Filed under Public Interest Law News Bulletin

Sam Halpert, NALP Director of Public Service Initiatives

Photo: Harris and Ewing Collection, Library of Congress

Hi Interested Public,

Welcome to the end of another week. Glad you’re still with us–and very glad to have had a chance to connect with some of you in person at the ABA/NLADA Conference in San Francisco this week! While we’ve been conferencing, the Trump Administration has been attempting (thus far without success) to install new employees at the Library of Congress and the Government Accountability Office. In Congress itself, the draft version of a new tax bill indicates a number of significant changes to the tax environment for universities and non-profits. CNN has obtained court documents indicating the government’s bold, aggressive strategy for convincing a court to grant them access to Columbia’s campus. And the National Center for Youth Law is hoping to take on some of the former efforts of the Department of Education.

As always, these stories and more are in the links below. Solidarity,

Sam

Editor’s Choice(s)

  • Breaking: DOGE sought access to Congress's watchdog (LawDork; 16 May 2025)

    “in the aftermath of recent Trump administration efforts to upend the leadership at the Library of Congress, officials with the non-department Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) reached out to another legislative support agency — the U.S. Government Accountability Office — wanting to “assign a team” to GAO. Per a staff announcement on Friday, GAO — which describes itself as “an independent, non-partisan agency that works for Congress” — said no[:] ‘As a legislative branch agency, GAO is not subject to Executive Orders and has therefore declined any requests to have a DOGE team assigned to GAO.’”

    • Trump Installs Top Justice Dept. Official at Library of Congress, Prompting a Standoff (New York Times; 12 May 2025)

      “President Trump on Monday named the No. 2 official at the Justice Department and his former personal lawyer to serve as the acting librarian of Congress…Staff members at the library balked and called the U.S. Capitol Police as well as their general counsel, Meg Williams, who told the two officials that they were not allowed access to the Copyright Office and asked them to leave…Mr. Perkins and Mr. Nieves then left the building willingly, accompanied to the door by Ms. Williams. The library’s staff is recognizing Robert Newlen, the principal deputy librarian who was Dr. Hayden’s No. 2, as the acting librarian until it gets direction from Congress, one of the people familiar with the situation said.”

    • Trump Is Trying to Take Control of Congress Through Its Library (Rolling Stone; 12 May 2025)

      “While the takeover has been framed as part of Trump’s broader purge of diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) content, it is the latest effort by the president and his team to subsume the role of Congress and ensure it cannot do its job. An expert on the Library of Congress tells Rolling Stone that Trump’s takeover attempt is “dangerous,” given that the Library’s sub-agencies provide confidential legal advice to members of Congress and help police misconduct by lawmakers. The expert says the Trump administration is actively trying to place a landing team at the Library of Congress, noting that when Elon Musk’s so-called Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) has done this elsewhere, the first thing that team does is hoover up and gain control over as much sensitive data as possible…Moreover, they note that the Congressional Research Service (CRS), an agency within the Library of Congress, “provides confidential advice to Congress, including confidential legal advice, and there is a database that has all the questions that every member has asked for the last 50 years and the answers. That cannot be made available.”” (emphasis added)

Federal RIFs

Non-Federal Funding

Civil Society

  • House GOP Tax Proposal Targets Nonprofits (Davis Wright Tremaine LLP; 15 May 2025)

    “Increase in Excise Tax on Investment Income of Private Colleges and Universities (Endowment Tax)… Increase in Excise Tax on Private Foundation Investment Income… Expanded Scope of "Excess Compensation Tax" for Nonprofits… Suspension of Tax-Exempt Status for Terrorist Supporting Organizations…This provision adopts language from prior proposed legislation, H.R. 9495 (dubbed by some as the "Nonprofit Killer Bill"), with some adjustments. It modifies IRC § 501(p) to grant authority to the Secretary of the Treasury to suspend the tax-exempt status of any organization designated as a "terrorist supporting organization." An organization may be designated a terrorist support organization if the Treasury Secretary determines that within the prior three years the organization provided more than a de minimis amount of material support or resources to a designated terrorist organization.”

  • Why This “Nonprofit Killer” Clause Is So Alarming—and How Trump Will Use It (Slate; 15 May 2025)

    “Last year, I warned that this legislation could be used by an administration interested in going after civil society by manipulating the language of national security…This year, we do not need to imagine attacks on NGOs generally and their tax-exempt status specifically as a scary hypothetical. It’s currently happening without this legislation…And lest one, for some reason, soothe oneself by saying that this will only (“only”) impact those engaged on issues related to Israel, Palestine, and antisemitism, the NGO sector itself knows that this is not true: Last month, there were reports that Trump was considering signing an executive order that would strip the tax-exempt status of environmental groups.”

Student Debt & Other Student Concerns

  • How immigration agents tried to build the case that Columbia University was ‘harboring aliens’ (CNN; 15 May 2025)

    “Court documents, including a newly unsealed search warrant affidavit, reveal authorities went further than previously known in their effort to target the students and the university…The affidavit shows that government officers asked Columbia to allow them into Chung’s university housing but were denied. At the time, Columbia would not permit access without a warrant signed by a judge…The federal agent who wrote the affidavit said he was not aware whether Chung had left her college apartment and that finding her there could be evidence of Columbia “harboring an alien.” …“Columbia University has refused, and continues to refuse, to permit immigration officers to locate and arrest Ranjani Srinivasan and Yunseo Chung at their student housing and were and are thus concealing, harboring, or shielding from detection removable aliens, Ranjani Srinivasan and Yunseo Chung, or are conspiring to do so.”

    Nathan Yaffe, Srinivasan’s former lawyer and part of the team representing Chung, said this made “no sense.” “It’s incoherent to go to a judge and say, ‘On March 8, we terminated this person’s student status and within 72 hours that person had left the United States (but) we’re going to pursue harboring charges against the institution where she used to reside,” he told CNN. “That one is totally bizarre.” The search warrants were authorized by a District Court Judge on March 13.”

  • Who Will Protect Student Borrowers? The CFPB’s New Direction Explained (Investopedia; 16 May 2025)

    “according to an internal memo, the agency will be deprioritizing the regulation of certain industries, including student loans and digital payments. While the memo notes that the CFPB is shifting away from supervision and enforcement of areas that can be handled by states, reduced federal support could make state regulatory enforcement more difficult.”

Conflicts Over Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, and Accessibility

Access to Justice