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      Arts groups for people of color steel themselves after Trump’s NEA cuts: ‘They poked the bear’

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      Summertime at the Upijata Scissor-Tail Swallow Arts Company, an artistic program located on Pine Ridge reservation in South Dakota, is usually bustling. The arts community center, created to help combat high youth suicide rates on the reservation, would normally offer twice-a-week classes to enrolled students. Traditional artists – quilters or beadworkers – would be paid to teach interested participants. It was all a part of Upijata’s mission to emotionally and economically support the vulnerable community, the poorest reservation in the US.But this year Upijata will have to significantly reduce its programming. Classes will now only be held monthly. Instead of hosting 20 students for workshops, Upijata will only be able to accommodate six. The cuts at Upijata come after a $10,000 grant from the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) was rescinded last week. The funding, the first time Upijata has received an NEA award since being founded in 2019, made up about half of the company’s budget.Upijata is one of hundreds of groups facing severe budget deficits after the Trump administration swiftly cut millions of dollars in NEA grants. Now, arts organizations nationwide, such as Portland Center Stage and Berkeley Repertory Theatre, are scrambling to cover the shortfall. Groups specifically catering to marginalized communities are also caught in the fallout.“We’re [building] a community where we’re creating a sense of belonging to combat the suicide rates,” said Upijata’s executive director, Shannon Beshears. “If we cannot be that sense of belonging, because we don’t have the consistency, the ability to impact our participants’ lives in a positive way decreases dramatically.”An email sent out to grant recipients on 2 May said that the NEA would “focus funding on projects that reflect the nation’s rich artistic heritage and creativity as prioritized by the President”, several outlets reported. Recipients of rescinded grants were given only seven days to appeal the decision. Several top officials at the NEA have since resigned from the agency following the grant terminations. The NEA did not respond to the Guardian’s request for comment.Projects being prioritized by the Trump administration instead include initiatives that “elevate the Nation’s HBCUs and Hispanic Serving Institutions, celebrate the 250th anniversary of American independence, foster AI competency, [and] empower houses of worship to serve communities”, among others.Grant terminations have affected artistic programming in every corner of the US, and organization administrators have taken to social media to share their shock and outrage. Many of the funded projects are already underway. In the interim, institutions have launched emergency funding campaigns, urging community members to donate. Others say they are appealing to other streams of donation, including private philanthropists. Many have filed appeals with the NEA to have their grants restored. Several of the funded programs are also the signature projects for impacted organizations, such as the annual Uptown Shakespeare in the Park initiative for the Classical Theatre of Harlem (CTH) in New York City.CTH, known for its contemporary takes on Shakespeare classics and Greek tragedies, was only a month out from rehearsals for their production of Memon, a new play about an Ethiopian king who fought with the city of Troy, when they received news that their $60,000 grant had been cancelled. “They sort of signaled that they were going to do something like this a couple of months ago,” said CTH’s producing artistic director, Ty Jones. “Did I think they would follow through? No, I didn’t.”The production is a part of the theatre’s annual Uptown Shakespeare in the Park festival, which sees about 2,000 attendees a performance. The event generates foot traffic for local businesses. Representatives from New York City’s department of health and mental hygiene also provide community members with onsite services, including blood pressure checks and social service references.In Philadelphia, the advocacy group Asian Americans United (AAU) lost a $25,000 grant meant to support their annual mid-Autumn festival ahead of the event’s 30-year anniversary in October. The event was first founded by local youth who couldn’t be with their families for the mid-Autumn celebration, said AAU’s executive director, Vivian Chang. The festival has since grown substantially, exposing upwards of 8,000 attendees annually to more than 100 local performers.“For a lot of people, it’s a very accessible way to reach a new audience. These aren’t groups that will be on a super mainstream stage, or maybe they’re performing an art form that’s undervalued,” said Chang. “Where do they get to celebrate this? Where do they get to display? The festival is one of the few places for that.”For many organizations catering to disenfranchised groups, the alleged reprioritization is especially frustrating and contradictory. Upijata, for example, works with tribal groups and theoretically should be considered eligible under the NEA’s newly outlined goals, which include projects that “support Tribal communities”. “They said supporting tribal communities [in their new priorities], but in their effort to prioritize supporting tribal communities, they are directly taking funding from them,” said Beshears. “It feels like there is so much back and forth, so much dishonesty.”skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionMany affected organizations were not surprised to see the Trump administration’s attack on funding. Prior to last week’s cuts, the NEA was ordered to require grant applicants not to promote “gender ideology”, as a part of a broader executive order.The National Queer Theater (NQT), a non-profit theater based in Brooklyn, New York, had a $20,000 grant rescinded for its Criminal Queerness Festival, a showcase featuring work by queer artists from countries where queerness is criminalized or censored. The group joined a lawsuit in March with the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) to sue the NEA over its anti-LGBTQ+ policy. As for the latest NEA cuts, NQT’s artistic director, Adam Odsess-Rubin, said he and staff members are “upset by the NEA cuts, but I can’t say we’re surprised”.“These cuts are part of the larger story of how Elon Musk and Doge have tried to gut the federal government and really focused on eliminating any programs they see as potentially counter to this administration’s priorities,” said Odsess-Rubin. “That includes any programming related to LGBTQ+ issues, any programming focused on Black and brown communities, as well as programming around climate change or healthcare”.Many groups are hopeful that they’ll be able to close the gaps in funding, especially given outcry from the community. But questions of how to handle attacks on the arts in a long-term capacity remain.CTH ultimately decided not to request an appeal, instead opting to focus on future actions against NEA attacks. The theatre hopes to work with the other organizations who have also seen their funds stopped, possibly through legal means.In the meantime, CTH is moving ahead with their Memon production and is confident their community will help them raise $60,000 by June. “I’m one of these crazy people that believes that the power of people is stronger than the people in power,” said Jones. “I don’t fear these people. If anything, they poked the bear. It’s a spark that’s put a flame in motion.” More

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      This Mother’s Day, lets talk about why birth rates are really declining | Katrina vanden Heuvel

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      Mother’s Day is here, and while Donald Trump may seem an unlikely celebrant of the occasion, his administration has recently floated several proposals to incentivize motherhood – or, more accurately, giving birth. There’s the $5,000 “baby bonus” for every American mother, free classes educating women on their menstrual cycles and a National Medal of Motherhood for moms who have at least six children. (Want to guess which regime also awarded such a medal?)As usual, the president has offered ridiculous solutions to a very real problem. He’s certainly right that every American should be able to afford to raise children, and that programs like social security depend on stable demographics. But of course, every other action he has taken to undermine gender equality would suggest that this sudden interest in the wellbeing of mothers is less than sincere. That’s exactly why progressives have an opening to break up what the Republican party believes to be its ideological monopoly on pro-family policies.The roots of the fertility crisis engage the bread-and-butter issues that have long been the domain of Democrats. US birthrates have hit a record low not because the nation has become “almost pathologically anti-child”, as JD Vance asserted to the New York Times. Instead, surveys have shown that would-be parents want to own a home, repay student debt and have money for childcare before starting a family. Yet the average age of a homebuyer has climbed to 56, almost double what it was 40 years ago. And 43% of young people currently carry student debt, compared with 28% in 1993. The problem isn’t lack of interest – it’s too much interest being paid on record high loans.But most of the Trump administration’s floated fixes are unoriginal swipes from the undemocratic leaders they admire. In 2017, Vladimir Putin declared a “Decade of Childhood in Russia”, an innocent name for a program that calls for everything from defending so-called family values to encouraging conjugal trysts during workplace coffee breaks to censoring “childfree propaganda”. Meanwhile, Viktor Orbán has dedicated 5% of Hungary’s GDP to pronatalist policies, which include nationalized IVF services and lifetime tax exemptions for mothers with three children. These men are carrying on an authoritarian tradition begun by the original strongman, Benito Mussolini, whose “Battle for Births” portended literal battles that decreased Europe’s population by 20 million people.That’s why those who really care about real solutions would be wise to start offering their own plans, and, in fact, some already have. What the Trump administration didn’t plagiarize from autocrats, they took from progressives, which is why “baby bonuses” sounds an awful lot like the “baby bonds” proposed in 2021 by Senators Tammy Baldwin and Cory Booker and Representative Ayanna Pressley. The legislation would put $1,000 in a savings account at birth for every American child. The Biden-era American Rescue Plan also almost doubled the child tax credit, which nearly halved the child poverty rate. Though making that expansion permanent received bipartisan support, it was ultimately killed by the centrist triangulating of Joe Manchin.Four years later, Democrats have the chance to embrace a genuinely progressive agenda that doubles as a pro-family platform. Bernie Sanders has long called for cancelling all student debt, Elizabeth Warren has campaigned for universal childcare, and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez was among the first politicians on Capitol Hill to offer three months of paid parental leave to her entire staff. The Congressional Progressive caucus has also called for a whole raft of policies that would lower the cost of living, from expanding Medicaid to investing $250bn in affordable housing. They understand that real relief will come not from handing out medals but from having the mettle to fight for working families.Still, even if Democrats manage a progressive populist revival not seen since Franklin Delano Roosevelt, it probably wouldn’t be enough to lift birthrates. In social democracies like Finland and Sweden – which offer 13 months of paid parental leave and cover 90% of preschool costs, respectively – fertility remains below replacement levels.Does that indicate the problem may be more fundamental? One sociologist, Dr Karen Benjamin Guzzo, has attributed this dilemma to apprehension: “People really need to feel confident about the future.” But whether it’s 60% of young people feeling very worried about the climate crisis, or 80% of new mothers feeling lonely, or 90% of voters feeling that American politics is broken, the state of the world doesn’t seem too conducive to domestic bliss. The right’s response to this anxiety is embodied by Elon Musk, who keeps siring children with women he meets on X to create a “legion-level” brood “before the apocalypse”.To help avert said apocalypse, what should be on offer are authentically family-friendly policies that benefit parents and non-parents alike. In doing so, there’s a chance to persuade Americans that the next generation still might have a brighter future than the last. Or, at the very least, that progressives have a more compelling vision for American families than the one whose budget is about to take billions from children’s education, food and healthcare.It’s one thing to incentivize giving birth. Americans deserve leaders who will fight for those kids after they’re born.

      Katrina vanden Heuvel is editorial director and publisher of the Nation. She is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations and has contributed to the Washington Post, the New York Times and the Los Angeles Times More

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      Trump health cuts create ‘real danger’ around disease outbreaks, workers warn

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      Mass terminations and billions of dollars’ worth of cuts at the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) have gutted key programs – from child support services to HIV treatment abroad – and created a “real danger” that disease outbreaks will be missed, according to former workers.Workers at the HHS, now led by Robert F Kennedy Jr, and in public health warned in interviews that chaotic, flawed and sweeping reductions would have broad, negative effects across the US and beyond.While Donald Trump’s administration is cutting the HHS workforce from 82,000 to 62,000 through firings and buyouts, grant cuts by Elon Musk’s so-called “department of government efficiency” (Doge) have also had a stark impact on state governments – and resulted in firings at state public health agencies.At the South Carolina department of public health, for example, more than 70 staff were laid off in March due to funding cuts.“Disease surveillance is how we know when something unusual is happening with people’s health, like when there are more food-poisoning cases than usual, or a virus starts spreading in a community,” an epidemiologist at the department, whose role was eliminated, said. “It’s the system that lets us spot patterns, find outbreaks early, and respond before more people get sick.”“When you lose public health staff, you lose time, you lose accuracy, you lose responsiveness, and ultimately that affects people’s health,” they added. “Without us, outbreaks can fly under the radar, and the response can be delayed or disorganized. That’s the real danger when these roles get cut.View image in fullscreen“It’s invisible work, until it’s not. You may not think about it day to day, but it’s protecting your drinking water, your food, your kids’ schools and your community.”A spokesperson for South Carolina’s public health department declined to comment on specifics, but noted employees hired through grants are temporary. “When funding for grants is no longer available, their employment may end, as happened with some temporary grant employees who were funded by these grants,” they said.In Washington, the HHS has been cut harder by Doge than any other federal department. Hundreds of grants to state, local and tribal governments, as well as to research institutions, have been eliminated, worth over $6.8bn in unpaid obligations.The HHS receives about a quarter of all federal spending, with the majority disbursed to states for health programs and services such as Medicare and Medicaid, the insurance programs; medical research; and food and drug safety. Trump’s budget proposal calls for cutting the department’s discretionary spending by 26.2%, or $33.3bn.RFK Jr, who has a history of promoting conspiracy theories and medical misinformation, was nominated by Trump and approved by the Senate along party lines, with Mitch McConnell the sole Republican dissenter.Following a reduction in force of 10,000 employees on 1 April, Kennedy Jr claimed 20% of the firings were in error and that those workers would be reinstated, though that has not happened.An HHS spokesperson blamed any such errors on data-collection issues, and did not comment on any other aspects of the Guardian’s reporting.Aids relief program ‘dismantled’At the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, an operating division of the HHS, employees working on maternal and child health at the President’s Emergency Plan for Aids Relief (Pepfar) program were shocked to be included in the reduction in force, as earlier in the administration their work had received a waiver for parts of the program from federal funding freezes.All federal experts on HIV prevention in children overseas were fired as part of the reduction in force.“Our concern initially was that it was a mistake with the name. We hoped around that time it came out that there were 20% errors, that we would be included,” said an epidemiologist who was included in the reduction in force, but requested to remain anonymous as they are currently on administrative leave. They also noted that they were in the middle of planning and delivering a new pediatric HIV treatment medication set to be dispersed this year, and that that work was now at risk.View image in fullscreenThey said 22 epidemiologists in the branch of their CDC division had been fired. Pepfar was created in 2003 by George W Bush to prevent mother-to-child HIV transmission and credited with saving 26 million lives.“We were very shocked on April 1 that we were put immediately on admin leave,” said another epidemiologist affected by the reduction in force at the CDC. “We really feel our branch being cut was a mistake. The state department had said services were a priority and needed to continue, but then we were cut by HHS.”They noted HIV treatment had already stopped in regions of countries that had been reliant on USAID programs, such as Zambia.“It is one of the most successful global health programs in history, data driven with high levels of accountability and the dollars spent achieve impact. Our concern now is, yes, they are continuing Pepfar in name, but they are dismantling all the systems and structure that allowed it to succeed,” they added. “The US made a huge investment in this program in 20 years and a lot of it is now undone. We’ve now disrupted those systems that could have reduced and eventually removed US investment in these programs.”‘Long-term impact’ on US familiesInside the HHS, the Administration for Children and Families is responsible for enforcing court-ordered child-support payments. For every dollar it receives in federal funding, ACF says it is able to collect $5 in child support.A child-support specialist with the HHS, who requested to remain anonymous for fear of retaliation, said reductions in force at the department have increased workloads on those who were not fired by multiple times, making it so state and tribal agencies have no way of ensuring they are compliant with federal requirements.“The regional staff with direct oversight of the program are gone,” they said. “There are entire regions that have two staff members managing a quarter of the work for the program with no management, no support, no knowledge of the program.”After the Trump administration took office, the agency was under an unofficial stop-work order, where staff were not permitted to provide guidance or support to grantees or even answer phones, until late February, the specialist said. A reduction in force followed on 1 April, when, the child-support specialist claimed, about half the ACF staff working on child support were fired.Their department is responsible for overseeing child-support programs at state, tribal and local levels. States “could very well lose millions of dollars in funding” if ACF does not provide key training and assistance and the states do not have qualified staff, the specialist cautioned. “And that is the long-term impact to vulnerable children and families in the country.”They added: “The entire function of the program is to give economic stability to children and families, so that they do not depend on any other government program, or their reliance on these programs is lower, because the children are supported by both parents.”‘A living hell’At the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, also within the HHS, one of 300 workers terminated as part of a reduction in force claimed it had been illegal, and had not followed any proper procedures. The National Treasury Employees Union has filed a grievance over how the firings were carried out, including incorrect information on notices.They explained that, on 1 April, they received a generic letter informing them of an intent of reduction in force. Hours later, they were locked out of their government logins. “We started emailing the management that was left, trying to get clarification on what our status was. Nobody could give us an answer,” the worker said.On 7 April, they discovered through their paystub that they had been placed on administrative leave, despite never receiving a notice. They didn’t receive an RIF notice until weeks later, after requesting it.“Based on my tenure, and as a disabled veteran, I should at least have a chance of reassignment,” they said. “I’m not mad about losing my job. It happens. I’ve been laid off. The first time was in the private sector, and it was way more humane, more empathetic, and I was given different offers.“This, on the other hand, is unbridled hate. This administration has gone out of their way to make it a living hell for all of its public servants.” More

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      Trump to embark on Middle East trip to meet Gulf allies

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      Donald Trump this week will embark on the first foreign trip of his second administration with a tour of the Middle East, as he looks to secure investment, trade and technology deals from friendly leaders with deep pockets amid turbulent negotiations around numerous regional conflicts, including Israel’s war in Gaza.The tour through the Middle East is largely a repeat of his first international trip in 2017, when he was feted in the region as a transactional leader eager to secure quick wins and capable of providing support for the regional monarchies’ economic and geopolitical interests.His negotiations in Saudi Arabia, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates will focus on a number of topics, including oil and trade, investment deals, the regional conflicts in Israel-Gaza and Yemen, and negotiations over the Iran nuclear programme among other issues.But Trump’s key goal is to come out of the region saying that he put America first, say observers.“I think what he’s clearly looking to get out of this is deals, the announcement of multiple multi-billion dollar deals,” said Steven A Cook, the senior fellow for Middle East and Africa Studies at the Council on Foreign Relations.“The president’s approach to foreign policy is heavily influenced by … his version of economic statecraft, which is to look towards the wealthy states in the Gulf and their very large sovereign wealth funds as sources of investment in the United States,” he said.Trump has already announced Saudi Arabia’s commitment to invest $1tn into the US economy and is hoping to secure big-ticket investments on Monday’s visit. That would be consistent with his America First policy of prioritising domestic interests, Cook said.Those countries may also seek access to advanced US semiconductor exports, and Saudi Arabia will want to ink a deal on civilian nuclear infrastructure, which had previously been tied to the country’s normalisation of relations with Israel. In a departure from previous policy, the Trump administration has indicated the two issues are no longer linked.The Middle East trip is notable for the US president’s lack of plans to visit Israel, where Benjamin Netanyahu and his cabinet have floated plans to launch a larger invasion of Gaza and expel the Palestinian population there in what critics have called a broad plan of ethnic cleansing.The Israel-Gaza war will loom large over the negotiations, as Saudi Arabia has said it will not normalise relations with Israel unless there is a clear path to a two-state solution, and many countries in the Middle East have spoken out against a proposal that began with Trump to expel Palestinian from Gaza to other Arab countries.“He could have gone to Israel like he did last time,” said Elliot Abrams, former deputy national security advisor under President George W Bush and a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations. He added that Pete Hegseth, the defense secretary, had cancelled a planned trip to Israel. “I think there’s some tension here … [Israel] knows that Trump is going to be spending a week in the Gulf hearing about Gaza, Gaza, Gaza, Gaza every day. So it’s not the best moment in US-Israel or Trump-Israel relations.”There is a growing understanding in Washington and Israel that Trump has taken a step back from attempting to mediate the war in Gaza. His administration said that they would negotiate a new aid deal without the direct involvement of the Israeli government to renew deliveries of aid into Gaza, which is suffering its worst humanitarian crisis of the war since a ceasefire collapsed in March.“He’s the only one who speaks the same language as Netanyahu, and he’s the only one who can speak to Netanyahu in a language that Netanyahu will understand,” said Ami Ayalon, a former director of the Israel Security Agency, also known as the Shin Bet.“Trump again, when it comes to to the hostages, when it comes to our relations in the Palestinians, has become the center of everything in the Middle East,” he said.That turns Trump’s attention to the things he can get done.He has said that he plans to decide on his trip to Saudi Arabia on an announcement that the US could refer to the Arabian Gulf or the Gulf of Arabia rather than the Persian Gulf.That has angered Iran at a moment when the Gulf states appear largely in support of US efforts in talks on the future of the Iranian nuclear programme. As opposed to 2017, the Gulf states have largely spoken in support of renewed negotiations between the United States and Iran over the nuclear programme, but those governments were said to be unclear on the details of any deal as of yet.“US partners have confided to me that there are US statements on all of these issues, but they don’t yet see US policies,” said Jon Alterman, director of the Middle East Program at CSIS, a thinktank. “The US government doesn’t speak with one voice and its actions remain uncoordinated.”In Saudi Arabia, Trump has enlisted his son-in-law Jared Kushner to act as a point man for the discussions ahead of the trip, CNN has reported. Kushner, who was Trump’s envoy to the region during his first administration, is said to be tasked with making progress in discussions of Saudi Arabia joining the Abraham accords. But his role is also tainted by a perceived conflict-of-interest given his family’s business interests in the region.Yet with such a complicated tableau of economic and geopolitical interests in the region, there are questions about whether the Trump administration has the focus and the team to pursue a comprehensive policy in the region. Many in Trump’s orbit say that US policy should place lower priority on the Middle East, and focus instead on China and the Indo-Pacific region.“I think the sense that there’s these pieces that the President is negotiating don’t respond together, and that his priority really is essentially domestic focus, securing, you know, agreements to invest in the estates,” said Cook. “Regionally, the president would like these issues to go away, and that’s why he has these compressed timelines he doesn’t want to focus on.” More

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      Trump news at a glance: Newark mayor Ras Baraka takes on Trump administration over immigration

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      The battle with the Trump administration over illegal immigration continues, with Newark mayor Ras Baraka saying he would fight his arrest in court.The mayor was arrested on Tuesday after joining three members of Congress at a protest and press conference outside a new Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice) detention facility in Newark called Delaney Hall. The mayor was released about five hours later and charged with trespassing.Baraka has pushed back against the construction and opening of Delaney Hall, a 1,000-bed detention center, arguing that it should not be allowed to open because of building permit issues.Here are the key stories at a glance:New Jersey mayor to continue fight against Ice detention center after arrestSpeaking out after his arrest on Tuesday, Ras Baraka said his city would continue its fight in court against the company that runs an immigration detention facility in New Jersey.“I know there are some protests that other people are planning and if I feel obligated to be there, I will,” Newark’s mayor told the Rev Al Sharpton on MSNBC Saturday afternoon. “This doesn’t stop the city’s contention with the Geo Group, and we’re going to continue in court with them.”Read the full storyPentagon orders military to pull books related to DEI and ‘gender ideology’Military leaders and commanders at the Pentagon were ordered on Friday to go through their libraries and review all books that were related to diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) in the US military’s latest anti-DEI move.Leaders were ordered to “promptly identify” materials that promote “divisive concepts and gender ideology [that] are incompatible with the department’s core mission”, according to a memo sent to leaders that was seen by the Associated Press. The department gave leaders until 21 May to remove the books.Read the full story‘From all sides’: universities in red states face attacks from DC and at homeDays after the University of Michigan president, Santa Ono, announced he was leaving his post to lead the University of Florida, his name was quietly removed on Wednesday from a letter signed by more than 600 university presidents denouncing the Trump administration’s “unprecedented government overreach and political interference” with academic institutions.Read the full storyDaughter of Maggie Gyllenhaal and Peter Sarsgaard arrested at Columbia University The daughter of actors Maggie Gyllenhaal and Peter Sarsgaard was among those arrested at the latest Columbia University protests, marking the latest development in the anti-war demonstrations that also led to the temporary suspension of student journalists.Read the full storyJudge orders White House to temporarily halt sweeping government layoffsDonald Trump’s administration must temporarily halt its sweeping government overhaul because Congress did not authorize it to carry out large-scale staffing cuts and the restructuring of agencies, a federal judge in California said on Friday.US district judge Susan Illston in San Francisco sided with a group of unions, non-profits and local governments in blocking large-scale mass layoffs known as “reductions in force” for 14 days.Read the full storyWhat else happened today:

      A 4.1-magnitude earthquake in Tennessee woke up families and rattled homes as far away as Atlanta as it spread tremors across portions of the southern US on Saturday morning. No injuries or major damage were immediately reported.

      Google has agreed to pay $1.375bn in a settlement in principle reached with the state of Texas over allegations the company violated users’ data privacy, the Texas attorney general, Ken Paxton, said on Friday.

      A recently introduced bill, if it passes, would allow research on cannabis despite its schedule I status, which some experts say could help policymakers “craft effective” legislation in the future.
      Catching up? Here’s what happened on May 9. More

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      ‘From all sides’: universities in red states face attacks from DC and at home

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      Days after the University of Michigan president, Santa Ono, announced that he was leaving his post to lead the University of Florida, his name was quietly removed on Wednesday from a letter signed by more than 600 university presidents denouncing the Trump administration’s “unprecedented government overreach and political interference” with academic institutions.As Ono is set to become the highest-paid public university president in the country, in a state that has often been at the forefront of the rightwing battle against higher education, the reversal, first reported on by Talking Points Memo, underscored the challenges of standing up against the government’s sweeping attacks on education in solidly red states.Many private colleges and universities have begun to push back against Donald Trump’s federal funding cuts, bans on diversity initiatives, and targeting of foreign students, while faculty at more than 30 universities, most of them public, have passed resolutions calling for a “mutual defence compact” – a largely symbolic pledge to support one another in the face of the government’s repressive measures. But in conservative states, where local attacks on higher education were in vogue before the US president took office, faculty trying to fight back find themselves fighting on multiple fronts: against state legislators as well as against Trump.Some have persevered, although for now that resistance has been limited to statements and resolutions calling on the universities themselves to put up a more muscular response. The faculty senate at Indiana University, Bloomington, voted in favor of a defence compact last month, days before Republican legislators passed a sweeping overhaul of the state school’s governance. In Georgia, Kennesaw State University became the first – and so far only – school in the US south to join the call for the solidarity pact, in part to protest the state scrapping a decades-old initiative to increase the college enrollment of Black men, which was pulled as part of the broader Trump-led crackdown on diversity initiatives. This week, faculty at the University of Miami in Ohio and at the University of Arizona – both states with Republican-majority legislatures – also passed resolutions in favor of mutual alliances among universities.The resolutions are nonbinding, as faculty senates play an advisory role at most universities, and so far no administrations have responded to the call. But the idea, those behind it say, is to send a message.“All universities in all states are under threat,” said Jim Sherman, a retired psychology professor at Indiana University, Bloomington, who proposed the resolution passed by faculty there. “If we don’t stand together and talk about what each of us is experiencing, how we’re dealing with it, and what the options are, then we’re standing alone, and that’s much more difficult.”Paul Boxer, a psychology professor at Rutgers University in New Jersey, first came up with the plan to organize faculty in the “Big Ten” conference, a group of 18 large, mostly public universities, to put up a united front against the Trump administration. But schools outside the conference showed an interest, and the solidarity effort quickly outgrew the consortium to include other, mostly public colleges and universities across the country. Boxer also praised other collective initiatives that have since emerged, including by a group of “elite” universities quietly strategizing to counter the Trump administration policies, but called on more universities to publicly unite in their resistance.“A lot of the attention has been on Harvard, and the Ivy Leagues, and the universities that Trump has name-dropped, and I’m glad that Harvard did what they did, obviously, but they’re sitting on a $50bn endowment, and they can do things that we can’t in a public university,” Boxer said, referring to the university’s public defiance of Trump’s demands and a lawsuit it filed against the administration.Large state universities – particularly those in blue states with sympathetic legislators – had other advantages, Boxer noted, including strong connections to alumni in local government and the broader community.That is a harder case to make in Republican-controlled states – some of which, like Florida, Texas, Iowa and Utah – had essentially drawn up a blueprint for attacking diversity initiatives and academic freedom in the years leading up to Trump’s election. In Indiana, the recently passed measures, which legislators attached to a budget bill at the last minute, would establish “productivity” quotas for tenured faculty and end alumnis’ ability to vote for the university’s board of trustees, which would fall under the full control of the state’s governor, Mike Braun.“There is a lot of anxiety,” said Sherman. “If Indiana is any indication, red states might even be more under threat from their state legislatures than they are from the federal government.”Taking a public stance in a climate of growing repression is not easy, faculty say. In Florida, where Ono is headed, the state’s Republican governor, Ron DeSantis, was an early champion of the battle against diversity initiatives and said this week that he expects the incoming president to abide by the state’s mission to “reject woke indoctrination”.In Georgia, at a statewide faculty leadership meeting this week, scholars from across the state’s universities debated how to defend programmes supporting Black students, help international students facing visa revocations, and prepare to fight proposed state legislation that would impose further restrictions on diversity initiatives and criminalize the distribution of some library materials.“Faculty want to do something, they want to respond, but they also see the inevitability of their university system and their lawmakers doing it. There’s no stopping that train here in Georgia,” said Matthew Boedy, a professor at the University of North Georgia who also leads the state’s American Association of University Professors conference.“There are state-level attacks, there are federal attacks,” he said. “We are taking it from all sides.” More

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      Judge orders White House to temporarily halt sweeping government layoffs

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      Donald Trump’s administration must temporarily halt its sweeping government overhaul because Congress did not authorize it to carry out large-scale staffing cuts and the restructuring of agencies, a federal judge in California said on Friday.US district judge Susan Illston in San Francisco sided with a group of unions, non-profits and local governments in blocking large-scale mass layoffs known as “reductions in force” for 14 days.“As history demonstrates, the president may broadly restructure federal agencies only when authorized by Congress,” Illston said.The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment.The ruling is the broadest of its kind against the government overhaul that has been led by Elon Musk, the world’s richest person who is also the chief executive officer of electric vehicle maker Tesla.Dozens of lawsuits have challenged the work of the so-called “department of government efficiency” (Doge) on various grounds including violating privacy laws and exceeding its authority, with mixed results.Trump directed government agencies in February to work with Doge to identify targets for mass layoffs as part of the administration’s restructuring plans.The president urged agencies to eliminate duplicative roles, unnecessary management layers and non-critical jobs while automating routine tasks, closing regional field offices and reducing the use of outside contractors.“The Trump administration’s unlawful attempt to reorganize the federal government has thrown agencies into chaos, disrupting critical services provided across our nation,” said a statement from the coalition of plaintiffs.“Each of us represents communities deeply invested in the efficiency of the federal government – laying off federal employees and reorganizing government functions haphazardly does not achieve that.”Illston scheduled a hearing for 22 May to consider a longer-lasting preliminary injunction.She said that the plaintiffs are likely to succeed on merits of some of their claims in their lawsuit, which was filed on 28 April and alleged Trump exceeded his authority. It also alleged the office of management and budget, Doge and the office of personnel management exceeded their authority and violated administrative law.Illston said plaintiffs are likely to suffer irreparable harm without the temporary restraining order, which she said preserves the status quo.Illston said the plaintiffs submitted more than 1,000 pages of evidence and 62 sworn declarations, and she highlighted some of the material.For example, she said the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health and its Pittsburgh office, which researches health hazards facing mineworkers, had 221 of the department’s 222 workers terminated, citing the union. She gave similar examples at local offices of the Farm Service Agency, the Social Security Administration and Head Start, which supports early learning.“The court here is not considering the potential loss of income of one individual employee, but the widespread termination of salaries and benefits for individuals, families and communities,” Illston wrote in her ruling. More

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      Trump’s latest Fox News hire looks even worse than Pete Hegseth | Margaret Sullivan

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      The revolving door between the Trump administration and rightwing Fox News took another wild spin this week, as America’s TV-obsessed president tapped Jeanine Pirro for a prominent legal post: top federal prosecutor for Washington DC.Pirro is unqualified, perhaps even more so than was her former Fox colleague Pete Hegseth when he was named Trump’s defense secretary a few months ago. In that crucial position, Hegseth has been a dangerous embarrassment, as his shockingly inappropriate communications have exposed national security secrets to the world.Pirro, although once a county-level district attorney, hasn’t held a government legal position in decades. But she has been opining on Fox for 14 years, mostly recently as a host on The Five, the network’s popular afternoon talkshow.But no matter. She “is in a class by herself”, Trump wrote on social media in announcing his intention to make her the interim (and perhaps permanent) prosecutor.His description may be accurate, but surely not in the way he intends.Pirro’s record at Fox is startlingly checkered, even for that propaganda outfit. She got in trouble with the network’s brass a few years ago for her eager promotion of Trump’s lies about supposed voter fraud in the 2020 election. (The voting-fraud lies became part of a defamation lawsuit against the network by a voting-systems company; Fox paid nearly $800m to settle the case and had to acknowledge that statements made on air were false.)Fox once suspended her for her ugly commentary on Congresswoman Ilhan Omar’s wearing a hijab, which Pirro suggested was an adherence to “sharia lawm which in itself is antithetical to the United States constitution”. And she advocated for a “cleansing” of the FBI and the justice department because their ranks were full of people who “need to be taken out in handcuffs”.But none of this causes any real concern for the president, apparently, because Pirro has one huge thing going for her. Over the course of a long friendship and many visits to Mar-a-Lago, she has been relentlessly loyal to Trump.In fact, she has gone well beyond loyalty into straight-up sycophancy.On this score, Pirro has what it takes.“Since Trump returned to office, Pirro has kept busy by showering him with praise and lashing out at anyone who stands in his way,” wrote Matt Gertz, senior fellow at the progressive watchdog group Media Matters, noting that she is the 23rd former Fox employee whom Trump has tapped for his administration.Tom Homan, a former Fox contributor, became Trump’s “border czar”, aggressively carrying out the administration’s anti-immigrant policy, and Mike Huckabee, the former Arkansas governor and former host of a weekly Fox show, was named ambassador to Israel.Beyond her peerless cheerleading, Pirro would be useful to Trump in practical terms, noted the New York Times in a news story.She supports “Trump’s efforts to exact vengeance on his political enemies, has backed his challenges to federal judges who have questioned the legality of his immigration policies and spent months protesting the legitimacy” of Biden’s 2020 election to the presidency.Although Trump often doesn’t return the favor of loyalty, he has stepped up for Pirro’s family by pardoning her former husband (once Trump’s lawyer), who in 2020 was convicted of conspiracy and tax-evasion charges.All told, this is some serious symbiosis. In stepping away from her high-profile – and high-earning – TV job, Pirro may solve a sticky problem for Trump, whose earlier choice for the DC prosecutor’s position ran into trouble with Senate Republicans.It’s not clear if Pirro’s nomination will succeed, especially in the long term. Although Trump is nominating her on an interim basis, there’s little doubt he’d like it to be permanent. But even the interim appointment may run into a legal fight over just how many acting US attorneys the president can appoint consecutively.You might think that with Hegseth’s rocky and widely criticized start as defense secretary – where he oversees almost three million employees while maintaining a TV star’s firm jawline – the president would hesitate to choose another unqualified TV personality for a key role.But Trump clearly doesn’t see it that way.There’s hardly anything better, it turns out, than Fox News on one’s resume. Even better when it’s paired with a solid record of fealty to the Audience in Chief.

      Margaret Sullivan is a Guardian US columnist writing on media, politics and culture More