“Sen. Elizabeth Warren said that she would begin to eliminate student loan debt on the first day of her administration, using legal tools that would allow her to bypass Congress,” CNBC reports.
“Warren said she will direct her Secretary of Education to begin to ‘compromise and modify’ federal student loans up to $50,000 for 95% of those with outstanding student debt, or 42 million people.”
New York Times: “The textbooks cover the same sweeping story, from the brutality of slavery to the struggle for civil rights. The self-evident truths of the founding documents to the waves of immigration that reshaped the nation.”
“The books have the same publisher. They credit the same authors. But they are customized for students in different states, and their contents sometimes diverge in ways that reflect the nation’s deepest partisan divides.”
“Hundreds of differences — some subtle, others extensive — emerged in a New York Times analysis of eight commonly used American history textbooks in California and Texas, two of the nation’s largest markets.”
“The Student Government Association at the University of Alabama is warning groups that protesting President Trump during the Tide’s Saturday game vs. LSU could result in loss of reserved seating for the remainder of the season,” the Birmingham News reports.
President Trump is expected to be in the audience.
New York Times: “From the 12th floor of a glass office tower in the Washington suburbs, a campaign to sway the governor’s race in Kentucky on Tuesday is being waged with an alarmist claim that has little to do with the race itself: If Democrats have their way, soon boys will be able to compete against girls in school sports.”
“This scenario, presented in a pair of ads that are appearing on computer screens and smartphones across Kentucky, is the work of a little-known group funded by anonymous donors called the American Principles Project, which in recent years has focused on fighting more familiar clashes in the culture wars over same-sex marriage and abortion rights.”
“The group is limiting its work to Kentucky for now, but strategists say it has bigger ambitions. It is effectively running a pilot program for the 2020 election that will help it determine how it could use the debate over transgender rights to rally conservative voters in support of President Trump.”
“A federal judge on Thursday held Education Secretary Betsy DeVos in contempt for violating an order to stop collecting loan payments from former Corinthian Colleges students,” the Washington Post reports.
“Magistrate Judge Sallie Kim of the U.S. District Court in San Francisco slapped the Education Department with a $100,000 fine for violating a preliminary injunction. Money from the fine will be used to compensate the 16,000 people harmed by the federal agency’s actions.”
“A senior student-loan official in the Trump administration said he would resign Thursday and endorse canceling most of the nation’s outstanding student debt, calling the student-loan system ‘fundamentally broken,'” the Wall Street Journal reports.
“Wayne Johnson was appointed in 2017 by Education Secretary Betsy DeVos as chief operating officer of the Office of Federal Student Aid, overseeing the $1.5 trillion student-loan portfolio. After seven months, he moved into a different role as chief strategy and transformation officer, leading a revamp of how the agency deals with borrowers and the companies that service the debt.”
“Mr. Johnson said repayment trends suggest much of the debt will likely never be repaid, and he is calling for moving toward a system that gets the government out of student lending.”
“Sen. Elizabeth Warren is calling for $800 billion in additional federal funding for public education, a move that would exhaust the remaining revenue to be raised by her proposed wealth tax even as she seeks ways to finance Medicare for All,” the Wall Street Journal reports.
“Ms. Warren outlined on the blog site Medium an additional $450 billion in Title I funding to boost schools with low-income students, $200 billion in grants for students with disabilities and $100 billion in other grants over 10 years. She also vowed to invest $50 billion in school infrastructure on top of existing funding for school upgrades that are in some of her other policy proposals.”
“Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos faces potential sanctions or a finding she’s in contempt of court for continuing to collect on the debt of former students at bankrupt Corinthian Colleges Inc., going so far as seizing their tax refunds and wages,” Bloomberg reports.
Said U.S. Magistrate Judge Sallie Kim: “I’m not sure if this is contempt or sanctions. I’m not sending anyone to jail yet but it’s good to know I have that ability.”
The federal security detail assigned to Education Secretary Betsy DeVos is expected to cost taxpayers more than $26 million during President Trump’s first term, CNN reports.
The Trump administration is threatening to cut funding for a Middle East studies program run by the University of North Carolina and Duke University, arguing that it’s misusing a federal grant to advance “ideological priorities” and unfairly promote “the positive aspects of Islam” but not Christianity or Judaism, the AP reports.
“In one of the boldest state-led efforts to expand access to higher education, New Mexico is unveiling a plan on Wednesday to make tuition at its public colleges and universities free for all state residents, regardless of family income,” the New York Times reports.
Tennessee state Sen. Kerry Roberts (R) said on a radio show that he supports getting rid of higher education because he argues it would cut off the “liberal breeding ground,” the AP reports.
He asserted that a woman activist arguing in favor of abortion rights was a “product of higher education” and claimed that getting rid of higher education would “save America.”
“The office of an African American employee of the U.S. Department of Education was vandalized earlier this week, and other employees have expressed concern that the attack may have been racially motivated,” NBC News reports.
“African art figurines were found beheaded, with their limbs removed, and a school desegregation poster was damaged.”
A new Pew Research Center survey finds that only 50% of American adults think colleges and universities are having a positive effect on the way things are going in the country these days, while 38% say they are having a negative impact – up from 26% in 2012.
“The increase in negative views has come almost entirely from Republicans and independents who lean Republican. From 2015 to 2019, the share saying colleges have a negative effect on the country went from 37% to 59% among this group. Over that same period, the views of Democrats and independents who lean Democratic have remained largely stable and overwhelmingly positive.”
Former Michigan Gov. Rick Snyder (R) “said he will withdraw from a planned Harvard fellowship after a social media backlash and email and petition campaign opposing the appointment,” the Detroit Free Press reports.
News of the appointment “sparked outrage over the weekend from critics who cited Snyder’s role in the Flint drinking water crisis.”
“Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) will propose on Monday eliminating all $1.6 trillion of student debt held in the United States, a significant escalation of the policy fight in the 2020 Democratic presidential primary two days before the candidates’ first debate in Miami,” the Washington Post reports.
“Sanders is proposing the federal government pay to wipe clean the student debt held by 45 million Americans — including all private and graduate school debt — as part of a package that also would make public universities, community colleges and trade schools tuition-free.”
Vox: Sanders’s free college proposal just got a whole lot bigger.
A new Civic Science survey finds 56% of Americans don’t want Arabic numerals taught in schools.
Taegan Goddard is the founder of Political Wire, one of the earliest and most influential political web sites. He also runs Political Job Hunt, Electoral Vote Map and the Political Dictionary.
Goddard spent more than a decade as managing director and chief operating officer of a prominent investment firm in New York City. Previously, he was a policy adviser to a U.S. Senator and Governor.
Goddard is also co-author of You Won - Now What? (Scribner, 1998), a political management book hailed by prominent journalists and politicians from both parties. In addition, Goddard's essays on politics and public policy have appeared in dozens of newspapers across the country.
Goddard earned degrees from Vassar College and Harvard University. He lives in New York with his wife and three sons.
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