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    Migrant and Seasonal Head Start is a ‘bridge’ for many US families. An order threatens its survival

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    It has been a challenging year for Head Start.The Trump administration first froze funding and cut staff, forcing many centers to close temporarily or permanently. It then asked Congress to eliminate the early childhood education program in a leaked budget proposal (the White House ultimately reversed course).Then, in July, the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) released an executive order excluding some immigrants from accessing a range of federal programs, including Head Start. Its argument: Head Start is equivalent to public welfare, which unauthorized immigrants have not been able to access since the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act (PRWOR) of 1996. And Head Start advocates are waiting to learn whether enforcement will begin this week or sometime soon.The term “unauthorized” includes not only undocumented people but also those who entered the US legally but do not qualify for public benefits, such as asylum applicants; trafficking victims; and recipients of Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (Daca), a program that protects people who came to the US as undocumented minors from deportation and allows them to work.Head Start centers have said they have no protocols for verifying eligibility. The program doesn’t, for example, gather information on citizenship status.Attorneys general from 20 states and a coalition of Head Start organizations filed separate suits in federal court, arguing that the order was unconstitutional. Following the lawsuits, the government backtracked, though only slightly: it delayed enforcement of the rule until 10 September, pending the result of the legal challenges.Experts say this executive order is a broader attempt to disenfranchise immigrants from accessing a wide range of public services. “On its face, this appears designed to ensure that virtually all public supports are unavailable to unauthorized persons,” said Mark Greenberg, who formerly worked as deputy general counsel in the Department of Health and Human Services and also served in its administration for children and families.He said that the government has “a very, very difficult case … The legal question for the courts at this point will be, ‘Is Head Start similar to welfare?’”View image in fullscreenHe believes that this argument will be very difficult to prove. First, welfare is almost always defined as cash assistance or its equivalents, welfare checks or electronic benefit transfer (EBT) cards, used for food stamps. Head Start programming is neither. In addition, PRWOR does not give federal agencies the power to define what counts as a public benefit. So the government has to argue that Congress always intended to define Head Start as welfare – something it has never done.Should the executive order stand, it’s hard to estimate the possible impact on Head Start. Estimates suggest that the vast majority of the nearly 755,000 children currently enrolled are US citizens. Only 1.5 million children under 18 living in the US in 2023 were unauthorized, the most recent year for which statistics are available.However, one particular part of Head Start is likely to feel the impact more deeply.Migrant and Seasonal Head Start (MSHS) provides early childhood education and services to approximately 25,000 children whose families work in agricultural labor. These children range in age from infancy to five years old, and the program currently operates in 34 states.The term “migrant” as used in MSHS does not refer to citizenship status. “In our world, a migrant means a family that is moving within a certain distance from their home in pursuit of work,” said Cleo Rodriguez Jr, executive director of the National Migrant and Seasonal Head Start Association (NMSHSA).Nevertheless, between 37-45% of all farm workers are unauthorized and the order “raises the concern of chilling effects that go far beyond the families [in Head Start]”, Greenberg said. Parents may choose not to enroll eligible children to protect unauthorized family or friends from discovery, denying them the opportunities for social mobility and education that Migrant and Seasonal Head Start provides. And enforcement would theoretically apply to all families seeking Head Start services.Soon after Head Start’s creation in 1965, program administrators realized that itinerant farm workers could not enroll their children in one location year-round. Migrant Head Start began in 1969 to support these families. Seasonal Head Start was added in 1999 as warmer weather due to climate change enabled more agricultural workers to work year-round in one location.View image in fullscreenMSHS works the same as the other Head Starts in a few ways. It also serves infants and children up to age five. All enrolled children receive health services such as developmental and vision screenings and nutritional support.And according to Rodriguez, some of the key features of Head Start’s larger programs began with standards set by Migrant and Seasonal Head Start. The program served children agedup to three years from the beginning, whereas Early Head Start only started in 1995. Similarly, it always offered extended hours so agricultural workers could spend as long in the field as necessary; conventional Head Start did not expand to full-day and year-round care until 1998.“The program that supports agriculture families is really the model for all of Head Start,” Rodriguez said. “We’ve always served the infants and toddlers. We’ve always done the extended hours. We’ve always been flexible.”Every program, by necessity, is different, dictated by the length and yield of each harvest season. “What works in Nebraska doesn’t necessarily work in central Florida, and what works in central Florida doesn’t necessarily work in central Michigan,” he said.Variation even occurs at the same center from year to year. It’s common, Rodriguez said, for growers to ask MSHS staff to extend the program on short notice if the weather suddenly becomes more favorable.MSHS can even be open six or seven days a week and for lengthy hours. “Programs can start deploying buses at 4.35 in the morning, and get the kids to school and put them back to bed,” Rodriguez said.The flexibility that makes MSHS so useful for growers and families also makes it challenging to study, according to early childhood researcher Michael Lopez, who helped design Head Start studies while employed by the administration for children and families from 1991 to 2005.“We would do an assessment at the beginning of the year, an assessment at the end of the year, and you look at progress over the year,” he explained. “A defined academic experience for an MSHS kid could be three months in this location, three months in that location,” he said. In addition, “a lot of these measures were developed for predominantly English-speaking classrooms”, not designed for students learning the language.Nevertheless, Lopez said existing research supports the value of early education on children’s health and development no matter the program. “There’s no question in my mind that it has positive effects,” he said.View image in fullscreenMultiple studies suggest that children of migrant farm workers have among the highest high-school dropout rates in the country, due to a combination of language barriers, frequent moves and even a need to work to support their families.So when Rodriguez kept encountering MSHS graduates who not only completed high school but also went to college, one of his first projects as NMSHSA executive director was to start a summer internship program in Washington DC. Since 2012, 49 interns have worked for organizations including United Farm Workers, UnidosUS and the National Hispanic Caucus of State Legislators.Maria Espinoza participated in the program in 2021 and worked in agricultural research and policy before starting law school at American University this year. The youngest of seven, she was born in South Carolina to migrant parents during the tobacco harvest. When the family settled in the agricultural community of Immokalee, Florida, they sent her to a center run by Redlands Christian Migrant Association (RCMA).“It was one of the first organizations that we interacted with after we moved,” Espinoza said. She recalls walking to and from class with her parents, interacting with her teachers and her parents attending meetings after their long hours working in the fields.“They were kind of a vehicle for how we settled into our community and the US as a whole,” she said, describing RCMA staff and centers as “pillars of the community”.Two of her siblings found employment at RCMA, with Espinoza’s eldest sister eventually launching her own daycare business. Espinoza’s nieces and nephews now attend RCMA’s charter school.“[MSHS] does so much to fill all those gaps and make a bridge so that both the families and their children are able to succeed,” Espinoza said.Even if the executive order is struck down, families are already more hesitant to engage, according to Rodriguez. Some MSHS parents have already been detained by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice).“My parents were both migrant farm workers, and I also did work when I was a kid,” Rodriguez said. “So this is very personal to me.”However, he still has a deep belief not only in the benefits of MSHS but also in America as a whole.“We’re still the greatest country with the greatest opportunities,” he said. More

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      Judge sides with Harvard and orders Trump to reverse billions in funding cuts – US politics live

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      A federal judge in Boston has sided with Harvard university in its court battle with the Trump administration, ordering that the federal government reverse funding cuts, the AP reports.The Trump administration had cut more than $2.6bn in research grants to the school as part of the president’s aggressive attacks on academic institutions.Judge Allison Burroughs ruled Wednesday the cuts constituted illegal retaliation after Harvard had refused the White House’s demands to change its policies and governance, the AP reported.Harvard’s complaint, filed in July, said:
      This case involves the government’s efforts to use the withholding of federal funding as leverage to gain control of academic decisionmaking at Harvard. All told, the tradeoff put to Harvard and other universities is clear: allow the government to micromanage your academic institution or jeopardize the institution’s ability to pursue medical breakthroughs, scientific discoveries, and innovative solutions.
      The NAACP has filed a lawsuit against the state of Missouri to block the red state’s special legislative session to redraw congressional maps and expand GOP representation.The civil rights group said in a press release that it was suing to “stop an unlawful attempt to convene a special legislative session aimed at redrawing political maps in ways that would diminish the voting power of Black Missourians”.The NAACP filed a similar lawsuit in Texas last month to block the state’s redistricting plan, which is expected to add five GOP seats to Congress.Derrick Johnson, NAACP president, said in a statement:
      This case is about defending democracy and protecting the voice of every voter. The Missouri legislature’s attempt to force a rushed, unconstitutional redistricting process in a special session is a blatant effort to silence Black voters and strip them of their fundamental rights. We will not stand by while elected officials manipulate the system to weaken our power and representation.”
      The redistricting effort pushed by Mike Kehoe, Missouri’s GOP governor, followed calls by Donald Trump for the state to redraw its maps so it could “elect an additional Maga Republican in the 2026 midterm elections”. States traditionally have only redrawn maps every ten years based on the US census, but Republican efforts to add seats this year, in the middle of the decade, have sparked a redistricting battle with Democrats.A federal judge in Boston has sided with Harvard university in its court battle with the Trump administration, ordering that the federal government reverse funding cuts, the AP reports.The Trump administration had cut more than $2.6bn in research grants to the school as part of the president’s aggressive attacks on academic institutions.Judge Allison Burroughs ruled Wednesday the cuts constituted illegal retaliation after Harvard had refused the White House’s demands to change its policies and governance, the AP reported.Harvard’s complaint, filed in July, said:
      This case involves the government’s efforts to use the withholding of federal funding as leverage to gain control of academic decisionmaking at Harvard. All told, the tradeoff put to Harvard and other universities is clear: allow the government to micromanage your academic institution or jeopardize the institution’s ability to pursue medical breakthroughs, scientific discoveries, and innovative solutions.
      Hundreds of federal agents are arriving to the Chicago area for Donald Trump’s deployment, with some already “practicing crowd control with shields and flash-bang grenades”, according to a new report in the Chicago Sun-Times.Roughly 230 agents, some who work for US Customs and Border Protection (CBP), are arriving from Los Angeles, the newspaper reported, with at least 30 of them training at a naval station near north Chicago.JB Pritzker, Illinois’ Democratic governor, has strongly condemned the deployment, which the president has claimed is meant to address crime. “Any kind of troops on the streets of an American city don’t belong unless there is an insurrection, unless there is truly an emergency. There is not,” the governor said on Sunday. “I’m going to do everything I can to stop him from taking away people’s rights and from using the military to invade states. I think it’s very important for us all to stand up.”More than 100 unmarked vehicles have been sent to the Navy training station, the Sun-Times reported.The deployment of troops and other federal agents in LA caused widespread outrage and protests. Some demonstrations were met with teargas and other munitions. Border patrol agents with CBP were also accused of injuring protesters in LA and were found to have made false statements about demonstrators they arrested.Jeff Landry, the Republican governor of Louisiana, said he backed the president’s threat to send federal troops to his state.“We will take President @realDonaldTrump’s help from New Orleans to Shreveport!” Landry said on social media, responding to a White House post that said Trump was determining whether to send federal forces to Chicago or New Orleans “where we have a great governor”.It’s unclear if Landry has formally requested that the president send in troops, and his office did not respond to questions from the Associated Press.New Orleans, like other cities attacked by Trump, has seen a sharp decline in crime. JP Morrell, president of the New Orleans city council, criticized Trump’s threats of deployment in a statement, saying:
      It’s ridiculous to consider sending the National Guard into another American city that hasn’t asked for it. Guardsmen are not trained law enforcement. They can’t solve crimes, they can’t interview witnesses and they aren’t trained to constitutionally police.
      Trump’s deployment of troops to US cities has been condemned as authoritarian, with scholars saying the president was increasingly acting like a dictator.Eric Adams, the mayor of New York, has denied, sort of, having conversations with the Trump administration about him being given a government job in exchange for dropping his re-election campaign.The New York Times reported on Wednesday that advisers to Donald Trump “have discussed the possibility” of giving Adams a position, in an attempt to thwart Zohran Mamdani, the 33-year-old Democratic socialist who is currently the frontrunner to be elected mayor in November.According to the Times, “intermediaries” for Trump have spoken to “associates” of Adams about leaving the race. Adams, who has proved to be deeply unpopular among New York Democratic voters and is running as an independent candidate, is well behind Mamdani in the polls, and is draining support from Andrew Cuomo, another independent candidate.There is a suggestion that if Adams, a centrist Democrat, and the Republican candidate, Curtis Sliwa, were to drop out of the race, Cuomo could consolidate enough support to challenge Mamdani. The Times reported that there have been talks in the Trump administration about also finding a job for Sliwa.Sliwa did not respond when asked about the Times story, but the Adams campaign did reply to the Guardian.“Mayor Adams has made it clear that he will not respond to every rumor that comes up,” said Todd Shapiro, a spokesman for Adams.“He has had no discussions with, nor has he met with, President Donald Trump regarding the mayoral race. The Mayor is fully committed to winning this election, with millions of New Yorkers preparing to cast their votes. His record is clear: crime is down, jobs are up, and he has consistently stood up for working families. Mayor Adams is focused on building on that progress and earning four more years to continue delivering for the people of New York.”On Tuesday a poll found Adams with 9% of the vote in the election – Mamdani was at 42%, Cuomo 26%, and Sliwa 17%. It’s worth noting that the Times story did not claim that Adams himself had discussed leaving the race with Trump.Speaking in Mexico City, Marco Rubio, the secretary of state, warned that the US military would continue to target vessels belonging to alleged Venezuelan drug cartels.Arguing that previous interdiction efforts in Latin America have not worked, Rubio said: “What will stop them is when you blow them up, when you get rid of them.”“The president of the United States is going to wage war on narco-terrorist organizations,” Rubio said, adding that the strikes would continue, according to reporters covering the news conference. “It’ll happen again. Maybe it’s happening right now.”Rubio’s visit to Mexico, his first since taking office, comes after the US military launched what the president said was a “a kinetic strike” on a “drug-carrying boat” in the Caribbean Sea. Trump said 11 drug traffickers were killed in the attack.Defending Tuesday’s military operation, Rubio said of the Venezuelan vessel: “This one was operating in international waters, headed towards the United States, to flood our nation with poison. And under President Trump those days are over.”A handful of House Republicans helped tank a motion to censure Democratic congresswoman LaMonica McIver of New Jersey stemming from her indictment by a federal grand jury earlier this year for allegedly assaulting law enforcement during an altercation at an immigration facility in her home state – charges she denies.The censure, brought by Republicans congressman Clay Higgins, was expected to succeed in the GOP-led chamber where the once-rare form of public disapproval is now increasingly common. The House voted 215-207 to set aside the censure resolution, which would have stripped her of her position on the homeland security committee, a role the resolution claimed represented a “significant conflict of interest”.Nearly a half-dozen Republicans sided with Democrats in voting to table the resolution.Nigel Farage, the Reform UK leader, has crossed the pond and popped up at House judiciary committee, a guest of House Republicans.His testimony was met with scalding derision by Democrats on the panel, who accused the far-right leader of being a a “Putin-loving free speech impostor” working to “ingratiate yourself with tech bros”. At one point, Congressman Hank Johnson, asked Farage to confirm that Reform currently has four MPs.Farage, who missed prime minister’s questions to appear before the committee, testified to the “awful authoritarian” situation for free speech in the UK.Children in Florida will no longer be required to receive vaccines against preventable diseases including measles, mumps, chicken pox, polio and hepatitis, the state’s surgeon general, Joseph Ladapo, announced on Wednesday.In a speech announcing the move, Ladapo likened vaccine mandates to “slavery”.Ladapo, hand-picked for the role by Ron DeSantis, Florida’s Republican governor, is a long-time skeptic of the benefit of vaccines, and has previously been accused of peddling “scientific nonsense” by public health advocates.In his Wednesday speech he said that every state vaccine requirement would be repealed, and that he expected the move would receive the blessing “of God”.“All of them. All of them,” Ladapo said. “Every last one of them is wrong and drips with disdain and slavery.”In 2022, Ladapo altered data in a study about Covid-19 vaccines in an attempt to exaggerate the risk to young men who took one.The governors of California, Oregon and Washington announced on Wednesday the creation of a West Coast Health Alliance aimed at safeguarding access to vaccines, amid growing turmoil at the nation’s top public health agency under the leadership of Robert F Kennedy Jr.In a joint press release, governors Gavin Newsom of California, Tina Kotek of Oregon, and Bob Ferguson of Washington said the CDC had become a “political tool that increasingly peddles ideology instead of science”.“President Trump’s mass firing of CDC doctors and scientists – and his blatant politicization of the agency – is a direct assault on the health and safety of the American people,” the Democratic governors said in a joint statement, adding: “California, Oregon, and Washington will not allow the people of our states to be put at risk.”Speaking on Capitol Hill earlier, Chauntae Davies, one of Epstein’s victims, says the disgraced financier bragged often about his friendship with Trump.Epstein and Maxwell “were always very boastful about their friends – their famous or powerful friends”, she told reporters in Washington. “And his biggest brag forever was that he was very good friends with Donald Trump.”Davies added that Epstein kept an 8in x 10in framed photo of him and Trump on his desk. “They were very close,” she said.Vice-President JD Vance and second lady Usha Vance have arrived in Minneapolis, where they will meet with the families of the victims of the Annunciation Catholic church shooting that killed two schoolchildren and injured nearly two dozen people last week.“They will hold a series of private meetings to convey condolences to the families of those affected by the tragedy,” the White House said in a statement.Trump’s attorneys are asking the US supreme court to reverse a $5m sexual abuse and defamation lawsuit against him in the civil lawsuit brought by E Jean Carroll, Bloomberg News has reported.According to a new filing, the president’s lawyers are asking the justices to extend the deadline for him to formally ask the court to toss out the verdict.In 2023, a civil jury trial concluded that Trump had sexually abused Carroll, a former magazine columnist, in the 1990s, before he embarked on his political career, and then defamed her in 2022 when he denied the allegations as a hoax and said that she was “not my type”. Carroll was awarded $5m in damages.The petition was due on 11 September, but Trump’s legal team has asked for an extension, until 10 November, Bloomberg wrote.Here’s a look back at what’s gone on today so far:

      Democratic congressman Ro Khanna said only two more Republican signatures are needed for the success of a discharge petition to force a vote on legislation compelling the release of files related to the Jeffrey Epstein case.

      Donald Trump slammed the push for the files’ release as a “Democrat hoax that never ends” and mulled deploying federal agents into New Orleans to fight crime.

      Republican congressman Thomas Massie criticized how House GOP leaders handled the Epstein issue.

      At a separate press conference outside the US Capitol, Epstein survivors detailed abuse they suffered at the disgraced financier’s hands.

      The defense secretary, Pete Hegseth, said that the US would carry out more strikes like the one that targeted a suspected drug trafficking boat and killed 11 people on Tuesday off the coast of Venezuela.

      A federal appeals court ruled on Tuesday that Donald Trump unlawfully invoked the Alien Enemies Act to deport Venezuelans he alleged were part of a criminal gang.
      Donald Trump teased the possibility of deploying federal resources into New Orleans to fight crime.“We’re going to be going to maybe Louisiana, and you have New Orleans, which has a crime problem. We’ll straighten that out in about two weeks. It’ll take us two weeks,” the president said.New Orleans has a homicide rate that is among the highest in the nation, but lies in a Republican-governed state – unlike Los Angeles and Washington DC, where Trump deployed federal troops earlier this year.Trump also confirmed that he was still sending federal agents into Chicago, saying: “We could straighten out Chicago”.Asked at the White House about the push in Congress to release the Epstein files, Donald Trump again accused Democrats of orchestrating the controversy, and attempted to change the subject to his own purported accomplishments.“This is a Democrat hoax that never ends,” Trump said. Referring to the recent release of documents related to Jeffrey Epstein, he said: “Nobody’s ever satisfied.”“They’re trying to get people to talk about something that’s totally irrelevant to the success that we’ve had as a nation since I’ve been president,” Trump said. He went on to claim credit for making Washington DC a “totally safe zone” with “no crime, no murders, no nothing” – though crime, including murders and robberies, have continued since he deployed the national guard and took control of its police department.Another boast from Trump: “I ended seven wars, nobody’s going to talk about it because they’re going to talk about the Epstein whatever.” It’s unclear which seven he is referring to, though his claims of having quelled recent fighting between Pakistan and India played a part in souring the relationship with New Delhi. He also has notably not ended the war in Ukraine – something he boasted, on the campaign trail, that he could do right after taking office.The White House has referred to signing the discharge petition to release the Epstein files as a “hostile act”, and discouraged Republicans from supporting it.Thomas Massie, the Republican congressman who introduced the petition and is one of four lawmakers from his party who signed it, replied:
      I don’t know if that’s precedented in this country to have a president call legislators to say that they’re engaged in a hostile act, particularly when the so-called hostile act is trying to get justice for people who’ve been victims of sex crimes.
      He also said that the fact that there was little new in the case documents released yesterday may spur more lawmakers to sign the petition:
      What people are waking up and discovering right now is the folks who stayed up all night to go through the 34,000 individual pages have found that they’re so redacted as to be useless and that many of them were already available.
      A reality check on the discharge petition that could force a vote in the House on legislation to release the Epstein files.The petition needs two more signatures – which will probably have to come from Republicans – to reach the majority threshold to compel the vote. But even if the petition receives that support and the bill passes the House, the legislation will still need to be approved by the Senate, where Republican majority leader John Thune has given no indication he will put it up for a vote.Should it pass the Senate, it faces another obstacle: Donald Trump. He’s condemned the furor over the Epstein files as a distraction created by the Democrats, and could veto the legislation. That would punt the issue back to Congress, where the bill would need two-thirds majority support to overcome his veto – a tall order.Marjorie Taylor Greene is among the most outspoken conservatives in Congress, but has made a rare pact with the Democrats by signing the discharge petition that could force a vote on legislation to release the Epstein files.“This is an issue that doesn’t have political boundaries. It’s an issue that Republicans and Democrats should never fight about. As a matter of fact, it’s such an important issue that it should bring us all together,” she said at the press conference convened by the petition’s sponsors outside the Capitol.“The truth needs to come out, and the government holds the truth. The cases that are sealed hold the truth. Jeffrey Epstein’s estate holds the truth. The FBI, the DoJ and the CIA holds the truth. And the truth we are demanding comes out on behalf of these women, but also as a strong message to every innocent child, teenager, woman and man that is being held captive in abuse. This should never happen in America, and it should never be a political issue that divides us.” More

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      in US Politics

      Can you solve it? Are you a genius at gerrymandering?

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      Gerrymandering is the practice of redrawing the boundaries of political districts to favour certain parties or politicians.On Friday, Texas governor Greg Abbott signed a new redistricting bill with a gerrymandered map that will heavily favour Republicans – and California governor Gavin Newsom plans to retaliate by doing the same in his state for Democrats.Irresepective of the politics of gerrymandering, however, the ruse conceals some interesting maths. Such as – given a certain distribution of voters, how do you draw a map that makes the minority party win the majority of districts?It’s exactly this question that underlies today’s puzzles.In each of the grids below, the challenge is to find the unique electoral map in which the minority colour wins the most regions. A region is defined as a contiguous block of cells that are joined either horizontally or vertically. (A region cannot contain any cells that are only connected diagonally, i.e. via a corner.) Winning a region means having the most cells in that region.The puzzles were conceived by Brady Forrest, a university student in Toronto, whose online alias is Deckard.ExampleDivide the grid into 3 regions of 3 cells each. Purple, the minority colour, must win the majority of the regions.To solve using pencil and paper, click here for a print out (and some bonus puzzles). To play on your screen, below each puzzle is a link to an interactive version.Puzzle 1: EasyDivide the grid into 5 regions of 5 cells each. Purple, the minority colour, must win the majority of regions.View image in fullscreenPuzzle 2: MediumDivide the grid into 5 regions of 10 cells each. Purple, the minority colour, must win the majority of regions. No ties allowed in any region.View image in fullscreenPuzzle 3: HardDivide the grid into 7 regions of 7 cells each. Blue, the minority colour, must win the majority of regions. No ties allowed for first place in any region.View image in fullscreenI’ll be back at 5pm UK with the solutions.NO SPOILERS Please discuss the maths of gerrymandering.Thanks to Deckard for sharing his puzzles. Thanks to Starwort for the interactive versions.I’ve been setting a puzzle here on alternate Mondays since 2015. I’m always on the look-out for great puzzles. If you would like to suggest one, email me.View image in fullscreenIn other Gerry-related news, here’s a fact from my new book, Football School Facts. Gerry Taggart (ex-Bolton) is one of only four Premier League players to have been sent off on their birthdays. The wrong sort of card! This curio and hundreds of others appear in the book, the latest in the long-running series I write with Ben Lyttleton for children aged 7 to 107. Football School Facts is full-colour, hardback, would make an excellent gift, and is available at the Guardian Bookshop. More

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      in US Politics

      The battle over US history reveals our education system’s key flaw | Katherine Kelaidis

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      No part of the Trump 2.0 agenda has been more revealing to the ideological intentions of the administration than the sustained efforts that insist upon a “pro-American” version of history. It is an effort that has taken many forms, including a recent letter sent by the White House to the Smithsonian announcing that there will be a review of the national museums’ semiquincentennial plans to “insure alignment with the president’s directive to celebrate American exceptionalism, remove divisive or partisan narratives, and restore confidence in our shared cultural institutions”. It is only the latest move in a broader campaign to commandeer the nation’s historical memory, a campaign mirrored in statehouses and school boards across the country, where history curricula have become a central front in the culture wars.Unfortunately, the battle over the past – how we should understand it and, more importantly, how we should teach it – is a conflict for which most Americans today are woefully unprepared. That is because for more than two generations, the US educational system has systematically devalued the liberal arts in favor of vocationally oriented Stem education. By doing so, we have failed to accomplish the primary goal of education in a democracy: creating citizens capable of the difficult work of self-government. Of course vocational training and Stem education are vital to individual livelihoods and national prosperity. But when they become the sole focus of education, at the expense of the liberal arts, they leave citizens unprepared for the demands of democratic life.The liberal arts derive their name from the Latin ars liberalis, which literally means “the trade skills of a free person”. For the ancient Greeks and Romans, and more importantly their Enlightenment admirers, citizenship was a trade, a vocation that required particular skills, just like any craft. Among the skills a citizen needed were critical thinking, a command of rhetoric and historical literacy. Importantly, historical literacy does not just mean memorizing dates and facts, but the ability to evaluate arguments, weigh interpretations against evidence, and connect past to present.The decline of the humanities has also contributed to the collapse of empathy in American society. Literature and history, in particular, cultivate the ability to see the world through another’s eyes. Of course, empathy can be learned in other ways, but the humanities are uniquely powerful in diverse societies, where civic life depends on the capacity to empathize with those who are profoundly different from ourselves.This is why the Trump administration and its allies have zeroed in on history education. They know what the enemies of free and compassionate societies have always known: people who understand what lies in the pages of history are far harder to oppress and far harder to coax into cruelty.In the place of teaching history, they wish to place propaganda aimed at assuring that the critical thinking, compassion and perspective cultivated by real historical education are denied to America’s students. It is a kind of education American students have been denied for too long, which is why the American public is so vulnerable to this administration’s escalation.Public education in the United States was not initially created to give students “job skills”, as so many on both sides of the political aisle today would have you believe. Teaching the skills necessary for a particular occupation, undeniably essential to economic health, was long viewed as the responsibility of private business and industry, which directly benefited from a trained workforce. Publicly funded schools existed to assure that students would have the skills needed to participate as responsible citizens of the republic. For this reason, the liberal arts, including history, were at the heart of the curriculum.This began to change in the late 1950s, as cold war paranoia fueled a shift in educational priorities towards science, mathematics, technology and engineering aimed at preventing the US from falling behind the Soviet Union in these areas. These subjects, eventually branded Stem, would gain additional traction over the course of the next 60 years as changing economic winds seemed to suggest that career prospects in the rapidly expanding “technology” sector were the best assurance of a stable, if not prosperous, future. The fact that future employment prospects were even a consideration was evidence of another, less often articulated, change that was occurring.Our understanding of education was being shifted to a view in which every part of the curriculum must have an immediate economic utility. It was, whether anyone realized it at the time or not, a dangerous and unconsidered change to the fundamental goals of education that assumed the assurance of economic prosperity required more public attention – and public funding – than the safeguarding of political liberty.It was a gamble that has cost us dearly. The reason that so many of us have become increasingly susceptible to foreign propaganda, “fake news” and just plain bad arguments can be easily explained by the fact that much American curriculum simply fails to teach students how to think critically and deprives them of the important historical and geographic information that would allow them to spot when they are being deceived.One of the great ironies of our era is that the economic benefits of Stem-focused education have proven to be an illusion. It is now clear that within a generation, many non-research based Stem jobs (and plenty of the research-based ones) are likely to simply vanish in the face of AI. And a public without a liberal arts education may simply lack the imagination to work their way out of this radical reordering of the economy. We will have traded our freedom for prosperity and ended up with neither.But it is not too late. Maga’s assault on history can be the line in the sand – the moment we recognize what we have nearly lost. The surest way to defeat the dark forces now gathering in our politics is to make education once again serve its true purpose: preparing citizens for freedom. The liberal arts have always been at the heart of that mission. If we want to remain a free people, we must restore them to their rightful place at the center of American education.

      Katherine Kelaidis is a research associate at the Institute of Orthodox Christian Studies in Cambridge, England More

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      Trump administration to restore $6.8bn in education funds after multi-state suit

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      After a multi-state lawsuit over Donald Trump’s abrupt decision to freeze more than $6.8bn in education funding to US schools, the Trump administration has agreed to restore the funds for a range of educational services, including after school and summer learning, teacher training, and support for English-learners.The administration did not give a clear explanation as to why it had withheld the congressionally-allocated funds, though a spokesperson for the White House Office of Management and Budget had indicated that review found instances of federal education money being “grossly misused to subsidize a radical left-wing agenda”.Following a lawsuit brought by the attorneys general of California and 22 other states, as well as the governors of two states, the administration released some funding. On Monday, California attorney general Rob Bonta announced that the states secured an agreement to have the funding fully restored.“The Trump administration upended school programs across the country when it recklessly withheld vital education funding just weeks before the school year was set to begin,” Bonta said. “Fortunately, after we filed our lawsuit, the Trump Administration backed down and released the funding it had previously withheld … Our kids deserve so much better than what this anti-education administration has to offer, and we will continue to fight to protect them from this president’s relentless attacks.”In their lawsuit, states accused the administration of holding back money illegally, as the US constitution gives congress the rights to appropriate funding, and the Impoundment Control Act of 1974 bars the president from unilaterally withholding funds designated by congress.The delayed funds, which were frozen just weeks before the start of the school year this year, had left many communities and school districts uncertain if they would be able to sustain programs. The withheld funds affected after-school and other programs attended by about 1.4 million children nationwide, according to the nonprofit group Afterschool Alliance. Most of the programs benefit low-income families.The funds also covered programs to retain teachers, especially in low-income school districts.Since taking office, Donald Trump has pushed to reshape public education in the US to fit more closely with his rightwing political and social beliefs.He had repeatedly threatened to withhold federal funds from states over policies allowing transgender athletes to compete in sports. It has also separately threatened or cancelled for sex ed over mentions of transgender people from educational materials.The administration has also pushed states to disqualify immigrant students from discounted in-state tuition reserved for state residents. More

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      When immigration shows up at daycare: crackdown in DC terrifies families and workers

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      Early on Tuesday morning, as parents went to drop off their young children at a bilingual childcare center in north-west Washington DC, they received a message from the administrator saying that unmarked cars were parked directly outside.Shortly after 8am, federal agents in tactical vests arrested two people unaffiliated with the center, the administrator said.“While these activities are not connected to our program, we are closely monitoring the situation and taking extra precautions to ensure everyone feels safe entering and leaving the building,” read the message to parents, reviewed by the Guardian.Foram Mehta, whose son attends the daycare, said she had feared immigration raids there for months, but her fears escalated when Donald Trump sent national guard troops and federal agents to Washington two weeks ago. She said she was concerned about her own safety as a brown person, even though she’s an immigrant in the country lawfully, and also worries for her undocumented neighbors.She, and other Washington residents, including undocumented parents and caregivers, said they were avoiding parts of the city where federal agents have been reported, and she said her parents who are visiting were “strictly forbidden to go anywhere alone – even down the street to the grocery store”.In a city already upended by the second Trump administration’s mass firings of government workers, Trump’s decision to take over the city’s police force, send thousands of federal agents to Washington, and ramp up immigration enforcement has left many residents on edge and grappling with how to go about their lives in a city that no longer feels safe. The return to school for most public schools on Monday has cast that in sharp relief.The White House said on Friday that 719 people had been arrested since the start of the federal crackdown, with many hundreds of them immigrants in the country without legal documents. On the ground, that has looked like federal agents patrolling the streets for undocumented immigrants, setting up checkpoints at busy intersections, stopping delivery drivers and pedestrians, and detaining immigrants at their places of work.The crackdown has especially been affecting parents and caregivers as the new school year begins. Parents told the Guardian they were scared to send their children to school. Nannies are calling out or asking to be escorted to and from work. Daycares are having to implement new safety precautions.Once off limits for immigration enforcement and arrests, schools and daycares feel as if they are no longer safe for employees and for children, many Washingtonians said.Immigrations and Customs Enforcement (Ice) did not respond to the Guardian’s request for comment. Last week, Ice’s acting director, Todd Lyons, told NBC that Washington parents should not expect to see Ice officers at schools on the first day Monday, but that they may come to school campuses in the future.“It’s gotten to the point where people are scared to be out and about,” said Amie Santos, a Washington resident who lives near the daycare. “Nothing about this is making DC safer.”For many Washingtonians, the potential targeting of people and institutions that care for small children has been especially alarming. Multiple people told the Guardian they were struggling with childcare, as so many who work as nannies or in childcare centers are immigrants.Claire, a mom who asked not to use her real name due to fears about her undocumented nanny, said her caretaker called out of work last week with short notice, saying she was concerned about reports of increased police and arrests.View image in fullscreen“She said there’s a very heavy police presence and she’s hearing all of these stories from other nannies and from friends and acquaintances that there are all of these checkpoints,” Claire said. “She said she and her husband are both staying home and not coming into work, either of them.”Claire gave her the week off and is working to figure out options to make her more comfortable to return to work this week, including offering to pick her up from her home.The nanny, who has been in the country for almost three decades, has a teenage child, and “she is so concerned about deportation – that something could happen to her and her husband – that she has asked if we would take care of her child if that were to happen”, Claire said.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionOther parents said they were driving their children to the neighboring state of Maryland to meet their nannies who live there, or that their nannies have been staying inside rather than venturing outside, or driving throughout the city rather than walking.In a neighborhood parents group, a mom on Tuesday shared a document template for parents to fill out and give to their nannies as they escort their children around the city.“In the event that [NANNY’S NAME] is detained by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice) or any other law enforcement authority, this letter affirms that [CHILD’S NAME] is my child and should be immediately returned to me, [HER/HIS MOTHER/FATHER/PARENT] and legal guardian,” the template reads. “Under no circumstance should [CHILD’S NAME] be taken into government custody or placed in foster care.”With the new school year beginning in the middle of Trump’s federal takeover, parents are also concerned about what might be happening at schools.Sebastien Durand, the director of facilities at a public charter school in north-west DC whose role involves student safety, said the school had engaged with families this week before the school year begins.“It was made clear to us that they are all extremely scared,” he said. “Quite a bit of them were actually asking if we can go back to a pandemic era-type of school where they didn’t have to come to school and we had to provide something remote.”He said he explained to them that legally they can’t do that, but the school decided to use its own funds to run buses from the closest Metro station to the campus for at least the next two weeks. The school is concerned about attendance, he said, especially with rates still lower than desired since the pandemic.For children that have already started the school year, the first week has been fraught. Santos’s five-year-old son started kindergarten on Monday at school in north-west DC. On the second day of school, there were unmarked police cars with agents who appeared to be in tactical gear parked in front of the school, she said. That evening, parents were told the school was enhancing security measures and all students, parents and caretakers would be required to wear colored lanyards with photo identification to enter school grounds. The school will also be running a bus for students and caretakers from the Metro to the parking lot.“As you can imagine, it’s been hard,” Santos said. “We had to talk to our son about what was going on, why there was increased security, the importance of kindness, that not everybody feels safe and welcome.“With kids going back to school, there are intimidation factors at play,” she added, “and it’s creating an aggressive environment that I don’t think is conducive to learning or to children.” More

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      Burner phones, wiped socials: the extreme precautions for visitors to Trump’s America

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      Keith Serry was set to bring a show to New York City’s Fringe festival this year, but pulled the plug a few weeks out. After 35 years of traveling to the United States, he says he no longer feels safe making the trip.“The fact that we’re being evaluated for our opinions entering a country that, at least until very recently, purported to be an example of democracy. Yeah, these are things that make me highly uncomfortable,” said Serry, a Canadian performer and attorney.“You’re left thinking that you don’t want to leave evidence of ‘bad opinions’ on your person.”Serry is among a substantial cohort of foreign nationals reconsidering travel to the US under the Trump administration, after troubling reports of visitors facing intense scrutiny and detention on arrival.In March, a French scientist who had been critical of Donald Trump was refused entry to the US after his phone was searched. An Australian writer who was detained and denied entry in June said he was initially grilled about his articles on pro-Palestinian protests, and then watched as a border agent probed even the most personal images on his phone. He was told the search uncovered evidence of past drug use, which he had not acknowledged on his visa waiver application, leading to his rejection. German, British and other European tourists have also been detained and sent home.More than a dozen countries have updated their travel guidance to the US. In Australia and Canada, government advisories were changed to specifically mention the potential for electronic device searches.On the advice of various experts, people are locking down social media, deleting photos and private messages, removing facial recognition, or even traveling with “burner” phones to protect themselves.In Canada, multiple public institutions have urged employees to avoid travel to the US, and at least one reportedly told staff to leave their usual devices at home and bring a second device with limited personal information instead.“Everybody feels guilty, but they don’t know exactly what they’re guilty of,” said Heather Segal, founding partner of Segal Immigration Law in Toronto, describing the influx of concerns she’s been hearing.“‘Did I do something wrong? Is there something on me? Did I say something that’s going to be a problem?’”She advised travelers to assess their risk appetite by reviewing both the private data stored on their devices and any information about them that’s publicly accessible, and to consider what measures to take accordingly.US Customs and Border Protection (CBP) has broad powers to search devices with minimal justification. Travelers can refuse to comply, but non-citizens risk being denied entry. CBP data shows such searches are rare; last year, just over 47,000 out of 420 million international travelers had their devices examined. This year’s figures show a significant increase, with the third quarter of 2025 reflecting an uptick in electronic device searches higher than any single quarter since 2018, when available data begins.“Anecdotally, it seems like these searches have been increasing, and I think the reason why that’s true is, undoubtedly, I think they are more targeted than before,” said Tom McBrien, counsel at the Electronic Privacy Information Center.“It seems like they are targeting people who they just don’t generally like politically.”Travelers who are concerned about their privacy should consider minimizing the amount of data they carry, McBrien said.“The less data you have on you, the less there is to search, and the less there is to collect,” he said. Beyond using a secondary device, he suggested securely deleting data, moving it to a hard drive or storing it in a password-protected cloud account.A Department of Homeland Security (DHS) spokesperson rejected claims that CBP had stepped up device searches under the new administration or singled out travelers over their political views.“These searches are conducted to detect digital contraband, terrorism-related content, and information relevant to visitor admissibility, all of which play a critical role in national security,” the spokesperson told the Guardian in a statement.“Allegations that political beliefs trigger inspections or removals are baseless and irresponsible.”The statement acknowledged, however, that there had been heightened vetting under Trump and the homeland security secretary, Kristi Noem.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotion“Under the leadership of the Trump Administration and Secretary Noem, we have the most secure border in American history,” it said. “This has allowed CBP to focus to actually vet and interview the people attempting to come into our country.”Alistair Kitchen, the Australian writer who was denied entry to the US in June, said the DHS’s denial of political targeting directly contradicts what he was told on arrival.Border officials “bragged actively that the reason for my targeting, for my being pulled out of line for my detainment, was explicitly because of what I’d written online about the protests at Columbia University”, he told the Guardian.While he doesn’t plan to return to the US under the Trump administration, Kitchen said that if he ever did, he would either not take a phone or bring a burner.“Under no conditions would I ever hand over the passcode to that phone,” he added. “I would accept immediate deportation rather than hand over the passcode. People should think seriously before booking travel, especially if they are journalists or writers or activists.”Various foreign nationals told the Guardian they are rethinking travel plans for tourism, family visits, academic events and work.Donald Rothwell, a professor who teaches international law at the Australian National University, says he no longer plans to accept speaking invitations to the US over fears of being detained or denied entry – which, he noted, could also trigger red flags on his record for future travel.He’s even considered traveling without a device at all, but is concerned his academic commentary in the media could be used against him regardless.“I might be commenting on matters that could be quite critical of the United States,” he said. “For example, I was very critical of the legal or lack of legal justification for the US military strikes on Iran in June.”Kate, a Canadian whose name has been withheld due to privacy concerns, said she has wrestled with complicated decisions about whether to travel across the border to see American relatives, including for an upcoming wedding. During a trip earlier this year, she deleted her social media apps before going through customs.Despite DHS assurances that travelers are not flagged for political beliefs, she said “it’s hard to believe things that this government is saying”.“It would be really nice to have trust that those kinds of things were true, and that these kinds of stories that you hear, while absolutely horrific, are isolated incidents,” she said.“But I do feel like in many ways, the United States has sort of lost its goodwill.” More

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      Texas killed in-state tuition for undocumented college students – what happened next?

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      Ximena had a plan.The 18-year-old from Houston was going to start college in the fall at the University of Texas at Tyler, where she had been awarded $10,000 a year in scholarships. That, she hoped, would set her up for her dream: a PhD in chemistry, followed by a career as a professor or researcher.“And then the change to in-state tuition happened, and that’s when I knew for sure that I had to pivot,” said Ximena, who is from Mexico but has attended schools in the US since kindergarten. (The Guardian and its partner the Hechinger Report, which produced this story, is using her first name only because she fears retaliation for her immigration status.)In June, the Texas attorney general’s office and the Trump administration worked together to end the provisions in a state law that had offered thousands of undocumented students like Ximena lower in-state tuition rates at Texas public colleges. State and federal officials successfully argued in court that the longstanding policy discriminated against out-of-state US citizens who paid a higher rate. That rationale has now been replicated in similar lawsuits against Kentucky, Oklahoma and Minnesota – part of a broader offensive against immigrants’ access to public education.At UT Tyler, in-state tuition and fees for the upcoming academic year total $9,736, compared to more than $25,000 for out-of-state students. Ximena and her family couldn’t afford the higher tuition bill, so she withdrew. Instead, she enrolled at Houston Community College, where out-of-state costs are $227 per semester hour, nearly three times the in-district rate. The school offers only basic college-level chemistry classes, so to set herself up for a doctorate or original research, Ximena will still need to find a way to pay for a four-year university down the line.Her predicament is exactly what state lawmakers from both political parties had hoped to avoid when they passed the Texas Dream Act, 2001 legislation that not only opened doors to higher education for undocumented students but was also meant to bolster Texas’s economy and its workforce in the long term. With that law, Texas became the first of more than two dozen states to implement in-state tuition for undocumented students, and for nearly 24 years, the landmark policy remained intact.Conservative lawmakers repeatedly proposed to repeal it, but despite years of single-party control in the state legislature, not enough Republicans embraced repeal even as recently as this spring, days before the Texas attorney general’s office and the federal Department of Justice moved to end it.Now, as the fall semester approaches, immigrant students are weighing whether to disenroll from their courses or await clarity on how the consent agreement entered into by the state and justice department affects them.Immigration advocates are worried that Texas colleges and universities are boxing out potential attendees who are lawfully present and still qualify for in-state tuition despite the court ruling – including recipients of the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (Daca) program, asylum applicants and temporary protected status holders – because university personnel lack immigration expertise and haven’t been given clear guidelines on exactly who needs to pay the higher tuition rate.At Austin Community College (ACC), members of the board of trustees are unsure how to accurately implement the ruling. As they await answers, they have so far decided against sending letters asking their students for sensitive information in order to determine tuition rates.“This confusion will inevitably harm students because what we find is that in the absence of information and in the presence of fear and anxiety, students will opt to not continue higher education,” said Manuel Gonzalez, vice-chair of the ACC board of trustees.Policy experts, meanwhile, warn that Texas’s workforce could suffer as talented young people, many of whom have spent their entire education in the state’s public school system, will no longer be able to afford the associate’s and bachelor’s degrees that would allow them to pursue careers that would help propel their local economies. Under the Texas Dream Act, beneficiaries were required to commit to applying for lawful permanent residence as soon as possible, giving them the opportunity to hold down jobs related to their degrees. Even without legal immigration status, it’s likely they will still work – just in lower-paying, under-the-radar jobs.“It’s so short-sighted in terms of the welfare of the state of Texas,” said Barbara Hines, a former law school professor who helped legislators craft the Texas Dream Act.The legislation was first introduced in the state’s lower chamber by retired army national guard Maj Gen Rick Noriega, a Democrat who served in the Texas legislature from 1999 to 2009, after he learned of a young yard worker in his district who wanted to enroll at the local community college for aviation mechanics but could not afford out-of-state tuition.View image in fullscreenNoriega called the school chancellor’s office, which was able to provide funding for the student to attend. But that experience led him to wonder: how many more kids in his district were running up against the same barriers to higher education?So he worked with a sociologist to poll students at local high schools about the problem, which turned out to be widespread. And Noriega’s district wasn’t an outlier. In a state that has long had one of the nation’s largest unauthorized immigrant populations, politicians across the partisan divide knew affected constituents, friends or family members and wanted to help. Once Noriega decided to propose legislation, a Republican, Fred Hill, asked to serve as a joint author on the bill.The legislation easily passed the Texas house, which was Democratic-controlled at the time, but the Republican-led senate was less accommodating.“I couldn’t even get a hearing,” said Leticia Van de Putte, the then state senator who sponsored the legislation in her chamber.View image in fullscreenTo persuade her Republican colleagues, she added several restrictions, including requiring undocumented students to live in Texas for three years before finishing high school or receiving a GED. (Three years was estimated as the average time it would take a family to pay enough in state taxes to make up the difference between in-state and out-of-state tuition.) She also included the clause mandating that undocumented students who accessed in-state tuition sign an affidavit pledging to pursue green cards as soon as they were able.Van de Putte turned to Texas business groups to hammer home the economic case for the bill. And she convinced the business community to pay for buses to bring Latino evangelical conservative pastors from Dallas, San Antonio, Houston and other areas to Austin, so they could knock on doors in support of the legislation and pray with Republican senators and their staff.After that, the Texas Dream Act overwhelmingly passed the state senate in May 2001, and the then governor, Rick Perry, a Republican, signed it into law the following month.Yet by 2012, a new slew of rightwing politicians was elected to office, many philosophically opposed to the law – and loud about it. Perry’s defense of the policy came back to haunt him during the 2012 Republican presidential primary, when his campaign was dogged by criticism after he told opponents of tuition equity during a debate: “I don’t think you have a heart.”Still, none of the many bills introduced over the years to repeal the Texas Dream Act were successful. And even the current Texas governor, Greg Abbott, a Republican border hawk, at times equivocated on the policy, with his spokesperson saying in 2013 that Abbott believed “the objective” of in-state tuition regardless of immigration status was “noble”.By 2017, the same year Trump began his first term, polling showed a plurality of Texans in support of in-state tuition for undocumented students. More recently, research has indicated time and time again that Americans support a pathway to legal status for undocumented residents brought to the US as children.But arguments against in-state tuition regardless of immigration status also grew in popularity: critics contended that the policy is unfair to US citizens from other states who have to pay higher rates, or that undocumented students are taking spots at competitive schools that could be filled by documented Americans.The justice department leaned on similar rhetoric in the lawsuit that killed tuition equity in Texas, saying the state law is superseded by 1996 federal legislation banning undocumented immigrants from getting in-state tuition – over US citizens – based on residency.View image in fullscreenIn Texas, the sudden policy change is causing chaos. Even the state’s two largest universities, Texas A&M and the University of Texas, are using different guidelines to decide which students must pay out-of-state rates.“Universities, I think, are the ones that are put in this really difficult position,” said Luis Figueroa, senior director of legislative affairs at the advocacy group Every Texan. “They are not immigration experts. They’ve received very little guidance about how to interpret the consent decree.”Meanwhile, young scholars are facing difficult choices. One student, who asked to remain anonymous because of her undocumented immigration status, wondered about her future.The young woman, who has lived in San Antonio since she was nine months old, had enrolled in six courses for the fall at Texas A&M-San Antonio and wasn’t sure whether to drop them. It would be her final semester before earning her psychology and sociology degrees, but she couldn’t fathom paying for out-of-state tuition.“I’m in the unknown,” she said, like “many students in this moment.”

      This story was originally produced by the Hechinger Report, a non-profit, independent news organization focused on inequality and innovation in education More

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      ‘We’re all going backwards’: dismay as Trump undoes Biden student-debt plan

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      When Faith, a 33-year-old in Burlington, North Carolina, went back to get her master’s degree in higher education administration in 2020-21, she hoped it would accelerate her career growth and maybe even help her get on the housing ladder.Now, Faith has federal student loan debts of $38,113, and a repayment schedule that is much more demanding than she realized so she feels like the program stalled her progress.“I wasn’t aware of the detriment it would have on my future,” she said. “You really don’t know the full scope of what you’re getting into [when taking out student loan debt] … I got my master’s specifically to progress in my career, but what I make now versus what I owe on the degree, it’s almost like it doesn’t make sense.”She added: “I always regret that decision.”Faith’s situation has been made worse by the Trump administration’s move to resume charging loan interest for borrowers under the Saving on a Valuable Education (Save) plan as of 1 August. Under the Biden administration, about 8 million people enrolled in the Save plan – a 2023 income-driven repayment plan for student debt – many of whose loans have been in forbearance since last year.Under Donald Trump, the Department of Education has effectively killed the Save plan, recommending people switch to another repayment plan for their federal student loans. Borrowers can still choose to forgo payments, but will see interest accruing on their loans and won’t make any progress toward student loan forgiveness.“To me that just looks like you’re digging me deeper into debt, so I felt like I had no other choice but to go ahead and change from the Save plan and start making those payments,” Faith said.Faith is one of scores of people who got in touch with the Guardian to share how they will be affected by changes to the Save plan. Her new repayment plan means she must find an extra $300 a month, on top of her rent of $1,200 (before bills and living costs), a financial challenge that feels “very overwhelming” and has put everything else on hold.“Luckily I don’t have any dependents … but all the people in their 30s around me, it feels like we’re all going backwards,” Faith said. “I’m scared for what the future looks like, especially as we get older. Does that mean, unlike our grandparents whose homes were paid off and who were free of debt, that we’re just going to be in debt?”Public school teacher Jennifer, a 34-year-old based in Portland, Oregon, with $63,419 in federal student loan debt, is also leaving the Save plan, but said her monthly payments almost doubled in her new repayment scheme from about $250 to $480.“I don’t understand why it’s so high,” she said – but she has to leave the Save plan in order to make progress towards loan forgiveness for public school teachers.Jennifer wants to have children in the next couple of years, but said she was “scared for my family plans” under such difficult financial pressures. Alongside teaching in public school, she babysits and runs a weekly bar trivia night in order to earn extra cash to make a living.“The [Trump] administration claims to be pro-family, but is screwing a lot of people over – including ones with families, including ones who want to build a family,” she said.After changes to the Save plan were announced, Jennifer was forced to ask her parents for financial support to help pay off her car loan, which felt difficult as a 34-year-old woman, the age her mother already had two children.“I’m really lucky to be in the position” to ask for help, she said, but added that “there’s so many Americans who don’t have access to generational wealth in that way, and so many teachers who don’t – and we wonder why the teaching field is so white, so unrepresentative. It’s so expensive to be a teacher.”Sedona, a 30-year-old lawyer in Seattle, Washington, who has federal student loans worth $170,848, will be staying in the Save plan, despite the loan interest resuming. She is “much more afraid of defaulting on private debt”, which is currently $22,413 in loans co-signed with her mother, she said.Despite Sedona earning a good wage as an associate lawyer, she and her partner still “live paycheck to paycheck” and already keep a hawkish eye on their finances. As a household they have cancelled most of their subscriptions, very rarely go on trips like to the movies or for nights out, and Sedona picks up sporadic gig work such as copy editing to supplement their income.“In my therapy sessions, we talk a lot about how so much of my anxiety and issues are tied to financial concerns,” she said. “It’s kind of like always sitting there, as this heavy weight.”Sedona feels that the Trump administration’s decision to in effect kill the Save plan aggressively punishes those already in often severe levels of debt, while it simultaneously gives lavish tax giveaways to wealthy individuals and corporations.One day Sedona and her partner would like to adopt or foster children but they currently cannot see a future in which it would be financially responsible to do so. “It feels like, when do I get to start living my life?” she said. “We’re a generation of people who feel jilted.”In Aurora, Colorado, 46-year-old Chris is also remaining in the Save plan. He said he had about $50,000 in outstanding student loan debts – down from $65,000 – that he accrued while studying a bachelor’s degree in hospitality management. He’s keeping his federal student loans in forbearance and paying the interest for as long he can, in order to prioritize paying other debts.“It’s not that I don’t intend to pay my students debts, I understood it was a loan like any other to be repaid,” he said, but the “repayment costs need to be able to fit in a budget that allows for personal and professional growth”.It feels to Chris as if the Trump administration wants to “keep those with [student] debt in it for as long as possible”.“My hope is that midterm elections will bring about government leaders that will undo this mess, that is where my vote will go,” he said. More