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New York lawmakers arrested for blocking Ice access to federal building
New York lawmakers, immigrants’ rights activists and religious leaders were arrested on Thursday at protests both inside and outside the complex in lower Manhattan where federal officials have been routinely detaining immigrants amid the Trump administration’s anti-immigration agenda.At least 70 demonstrators staged a direct-action protest to block access to and from the underground garage used by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice) to transport people arrested by the agency. The nature of the protest prompted the New York police department (NYPD) to begin arresting people sitting in front of the access ramp.Others protesting were arrested by federal officers inside the federal building, which houses a number of facilities including offices for the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) – the parent agency of Ice – as well as the FBI and an immigration court.Inside, 11 elected officials were detained after demanding to see the conditions inside the Ice intake facility on the 10th floor of the building, which has recently prompted reports of allegedly poor treatment.These included Brad Lander, the New York City comptroller, who was previously arrested there in June by masked federal agents, provoking uproar and objections from New York governor Kathy Hochul. Lander was a Democratic party mayoral candidate this year but teamed up to cross-endorse eventual primary winner Zohran Mamdani.View image in fullscreenIn recent months, breaking norms, Ice has been showing up outside immigration court and arresting people in the hallways as they come out of hearings in the small courtrooms.Tony Simone, a New York state representative who was arrested at the protest, said: “We will be back here time and time again,” and encouraged other officials to stand up to the administration’s aggressive immigration policies. “Ice is not welcome in our state,” he added.In a statement responding to the protests, DHS spokesperson Tricia McLaughlin said that Lander and the other politicians were “pulling a stunt in attempt to get their 15 minutes of fame while endangering DHS personnel and detainees”.“As a result of the chaos caused by Lander, Federal Protective Service called NYPD,” McLaughlin said, adding that local police and federal law enforcement “arrested 71 agitators and sanctuary politicians”, in a reference to New York being a sanctuary city where local law enforcement is supposed to limit or deny cooperation with federal immigration enforcement.In the statement, McLaughlin accused the immigrants who were kept inside the Ice intake facility of being gang members, possessing fentanyl or having a gun.“Brad Lander’s obsession with attacking the brave men and women of law enforcement, physically and rhetorically, must stop NOW,” McLaughlin said.View image in fullscreenOutside, dozens of protesters gathered with signs and banners as they crowded together to block the garage used by Ice – the only entry and exit for official vehicles at the complex at 26 Federal Plaza.As the protesters sat and chanted a few meters from the garage entrance, NYPD officers arrived and ordered them to disperse.When protesters refused, the officers, including members of the controversial Strategic Response Group, moved in to arrest them. New York City public advocate Jumaane Williams was the first to be detained from the demonstration outside.Others arrested near the garage included city council members Tiffany Cabán and Sandy Nurse and state assembly member Phara Souffrant Forrest.View image in fullscreenPolice motioned to the people who remained sitting, then lifted up some, cuffing them with zip ties while they continued to chant. The protesters were then moved and lined up before being placed in a police van.Inside, state senators Julia Salazar, Jabari Brisport and Gustavo Rivera and state representatives Jessica González-Rojas, Marcela Mitaynes, Emily Gallagher, Claire Valdez, Tony Simone, Robert Carroll and Steven Raga were arrested. The 11, including Lander, were charged with a federal misdemeanor for blocking the corridors, then released with a date to appear in court.View image in fullscreen“To be clear, Ice should be abolished,” Brisport said. He described how when the lawmakers had requested to enter the Ice intake facility, officials zip-tied the doors shut and added duct tape over windows to prevent the politicians from seeing inside.Cabán said: “As an elected official, it is my duty to protect my constituents from cruelty and violence. Ice is cruel and violent. Ice puts New Yorkers and our democracy in danger.”She called for the abolition of Ice and said federal enforcement officers were “kidnapping my neighbors”, detaining and sending people to “cruel for-profit detention camps”. She also called for proposed legislation to be passed, including the New York for All bill prohibiting local and state agencies from assisting in federal immigration enforcement.“Ice has terrorized over 3,000 New Yorkers this year, kidnapping them as they attempt to attend court dates and immigration check-ins, holding them in inhumane conditions, without medicine, changes of clothing, adequate food, beds or contact with the outside world, snatching away due process,” Cabán said. More
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Trump suggests punishing TV networks for ‘negative’ coverage amid outrage over Kimmel suspension
Donald Trump suggested on Thursday that TV networks which cover him “negatively” could lose their licenses after his celebration of ABC suspending late-night host Jimmy Kimmel.On Air Force One, the president spoke to reporters on his flight back to the US from his state visit to the UK. The president said major US networks were “97% against me”, though he did not offer evidence to prove this figure or detail how this conclusion was evaluated. He said he read the statistic “someplace”.“Again, 97% negative, and yet I won easily. I won all seven swing states,” Trump said. “They give me only bad press. I mean they’re getting a license. I would think maybe their licenses should be taken away.”Trump supported ABC’s decision to suspend Jimmy Kimmel’s late-night show, saying on Thursday that the comedian was “not a talented person” who “had very bad ratings”.“Well, Jimmy Kimmel was fired because he had bad ratings more than anything else, and he said a horrible thing about a great gentleman known as Charlie Kirk,” Trump told reporters on Thursday during his state visit to the United Kingdom. “Jimmy Kimmel is not a talented person. He had very bad ratings, and they should have fired him a long time ago.”According to Nielsen ratings as reported by LateNighter, although Stephen Colbert’s Late Show leads the time slot in total viewers with 2.42 million, Kimmel’s show averaged 1.77 million viewers in the second quarter of 2025 and edged out Colbert in the key 18-49 demographic.However, there was an 11% drop off in his show’s viewership the last month. Kimmel also has over 20 million subscribers on YouTube.The controversy began after Kimmel, in a recent broadcast, suggested that “many in Maga land are working very hard to capitalize on the murder of Charlie Kirk”. Within a day, FCC chair Brendan Carr condemned the comments as “truly sick” and suggested ABC could face regulatory consequences.ABC suspended the show after affiliate operator Nexstar called Kimmel’s remarks “offensive and insensitive”.The indefinite suspension of the popular late-night show has prompted numerous calls for a boycott against Disney, ABC’s parent company, and other major media conglomerates that have refused to air Kimmel’s show.Writers Guild of America union members protested against the suspension of Kimmel outside Disney/ABC in Los Angeles on Thursday, with the union issuing a statement saying: “The right to speak our minds and to disagree with each other – to disturb, even – is at the very heart of what it means to be a free people. It is not to be denied. Not by violence, not by the abuse of governmental power, nor by acts of corporate cowardice.”Carr further raised censorship concerns when he suggested that the FCC might be “looking into” The View, another ABC talkshow. Appearing on conservative podcast the Bulwark, Carr was asked if other shows could face similar issues.He said: “I think it’s worthwhile to have the FCC look into whether The View and some of these other programs that you have still qualify as bona fide news programs and therefore exempt from the equal-opportunity regime that Congress has put in place.”The View hosts did not comment about Kimmel during the show’s Thursday broadcast.View image in fullscreenDamon Lindelof, a powerful Hollywood showrunner and creator of the ABC series Lost and other dramas, has promised not to work with Disney unless it puts Kimmel back on the air.Lindelof wrote on Instagram: “I was shocked, saddened and infuriated by yesterday’s suspension and look forward to it being lifted soon. If it isn’t, I can’t in good conscience work for the company that imposed it.”He added: “If you know Jimmy … You know he loves his country. You know he appreciates a good roast and he can take as good as he gives. You know he supported his crew through multiple strikes and you know he is generous and philanthropic and most of all, you know that he is kind.”The feud between Trump and Kimmel stretches back years, most notably when Kimmel hosted the 2024 Academy Awards and Trump posted online calling him a “WORSE HOST”. Kimmel read that message out during the ceremony, and responded by asking Trump if it wasn’t “past your jail time?”The comedian also emerged as a vocal critic during Trump’s first term, leading the fight against Obamacare repeal efforts after revealing his newborn son’s heart surgery had been made possible by the Affordable Care Act.Kimmel is the second prominent US late-night host to lose his show in the past few months. CBS announced in July that it would be cancelling Stephen Colbert’s show after he was also critical of Trump.JD Vance added to the pile-on Thursday, joking on social media that secretary of state Marco Rubio would be taking over as host of ABC’s late night show, a quip referencing Rubio’s multiple roles in the Trump administration.Barack Obama condemned what he called a “dangerous” escalation by the Trump administration. “After years of complaining about cancel culture, the current administration has taken it to a new and dangerous level by routinely threatening regulatory action against media companies unless they muzzle or fire reporters and commentators it doesn’t like,” Obama wrote on X.FCC commissioner Anna Gomez, a Democrat on the commission, also accused ABC of “shameful” corporate capitulation that “has put the foundation of the first amendment in danger”. She said the FCC “does not have the authority, the ability, or the constitutional right to police content or punish broadcasters for speech the government dislikes”.House Democratic leaders called for Carr’s resignation, accusing him of forcing ABC to suspend the show through regulatory threats.“Brendan Carr has engaged in the corrupt abuse of power,” said the Democratic leader, Hakeem Jeffries, and five other lawmakers in a joint statement. “He has disgraced the office he holds by bullying ABC and forcing the company to bend the knee to the Trump administration.”Ro Khanna, a representative of California, issued a motion to subpoena Carr in the House oversight committee. “This administration has initiated the largest assault on the first amendment and free speech in modern history,” he said. “They’re making comedy illegal.”Democrats are also planning legislative action in response to what they see as escalating government censorship. Senator Chris Murphy and Congressman Jason Crow announced Thursday they will introduce bicameral legislation meant to protect anti-government speech from censorship and includes creating “a specific defense for those that are being targeted for political reasons”.In a press conference in Washington, Murphy warned that “Jimmy Kimmel is likely to not be the last person to lose their job, or face retaliation for their criticism of Donald Trump,” while Senate minority leader Chuck Schumer called the administration’s threats “an assault on everything this country has stood for since the constitution has been signed”.Chris Stein contributed reporting More
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‘Censor-in-chief’: Trump-backed FCC chair at heart of Jimmy Kimmel storm
“The FCC should promote freedom of speech,” Brendan Carr, now the chair of the Federal Communications Commission, wrote in his chapter on the agency in Project 2025, the conservative manifesto that detailed plans for a second Trump administration.It’s a view he’s held for a long time. He wrote on X in 2023 that “free speech is the counterweight – it is the check on government control. That is why censorship is the authoritarian’s dream.”And in 2019, in response to a Democratic commissioner saying the commission should regulate e-cigarette advertising, Carr wrote that the government should not seek to censor speech it does not like. “The FCC does not have a roving mandate to police speech in the name of the ‘public interest’,” he wrote on Twitter at the time.But Carr has found himself at the center of the much-criticized decision by ABC to indefinitely cancel Jimmy Kimmel’s late-night show over comments the host made about Charlie Kirk’s killing. Despite the decision being, on its face, in opposition to free speech, Carr has used his position as chair of the commission, tasked with regulating communications networks, to go after broadcasters he deems are not operating in the “public interest”.Before he was named chair, Carr said publicly that “broadcast licenses are not sacred cows” and that he would seek to hold companies accountable if they didn’t operate in the public interest, a vague guideline set forth in the Communications Act of 1934. He has advocated for the FCC to “take a fresh look” at what operating in the public interest means.He knows the agency well: he was nominated by Trump to the commission in 2017 and was tapped by the president to be chair in January. He has also worked as an attorney at the agency and an adviser to then-commissioner Ajit Pai, who later became chair and appointed Carr as general counsel.Tom Wheeler, a former FCC chair appointed by Democratic president Barack Obama, said Carr is “incredibly bright” and savvy about using the broad latitude given to the chairman, “exploiting the vagaries in the term ‘the public interest’.”Instead of the deregulation Trump promised voters, the administration “delivered this kind of micromanagement”, Wheeler said.“It’s not the appropriate job of the FCC chairman to become the censor-in-chief,” Wheeler said.Since Kimmel’s suspension, Carr has said Kimmel’s comments were not jokes, but rather attempts to “directly mislead the American public about a significant fact”. During Monday’s show, Kimmel said that the “Maga gang” was “desperately trying to characterize this kid who murdered Charlie Kirk as anything other than one of them and with everything they can to score political points from it”. The comments came before charging documents alleged the shooter had left-leaning viewpoints.Kimmel is just Carr’s latest target. As chair, he has used the agency’s formal investigatory power, and his own bully pulpit, to highlight supposed biases and extract concessions from media companies who fear backlash from the Trump administration if they don’t pre-emptively comply.The commission itself hasn’t directly sought these actions from broadcasters. Carr has instead said publicly what the commission could do – for instance, signaling he would not approve mergers for any companies that had diversity policies in place – and companies have responded by doing what he wants.Nexstar, a CBS affiliate operator which first said it would not air Kimmel’s show on the local channels it owns, wants to buy Tegna.Carr is honing a playbook, and so far it’s working. “It’s rinse and repeat,” Wheeler said. “I think we’ll continue to see it for as long as he can get away with it.”Top Democrats on Thursday called for Carr’s resignation, and some suggested they would find a way to hold Carr accountable, either now or if they regain power in Congress.The lone Democrat on the FCC, Anna Gomez, criticized Carr for “using the weight of government power to suppress lawful expression”. Gomez called ABC’s decision “a shameful show of cowardly corporate capitulation” that threatens the first amendment, and said the FCC is operating beyond its authority and outside the bounds of the constitution.“If it were to take the unprecedented step of trying to revoke broadcast licenses, which are held by local stations rather than national networks, it would run headlong into the first amendment and fail in court on both the facts and the law,” Gomez wrote in a statement. “But even the threat to revoke a license is no small matter. It poses an existential risk to a broadcaster, which by definition cannot exist without its license. That makes billion-dollar companies with pending business before the agency all the more vulnerable to pressure to bend to the government’s ideological demands.”Trump has cheered Carr as he collected wins against the president’s longtime foes in the media. On Wednesday, Trump called Kimmel’s suspension “Great News for America” and egged on NBC to fire Jimmy Fallon and Seth Meyers, their late-night hosts.“Do it NBC!!!” Trump wrote on Truth Social.Amid the criticism of Carr, Trump said the FCC chair was doing a great job and was a “great patriot”.Breaking norms at the FCCAt the FCC, the chair has wide latitude and operates as a CEO of the agency, Wheeler said. There are four other commissioners, but the chair sets the agenda and approves every word of what ends up on an agenda, he said. The commissioners are by default in a reactionary position to the power of the chair.“What Chairman Carr has raised to a new art form is the ability to to achieve results without a formal decision by the commission and to use the coercive powers of the chairman,” Wheeler said.Without a formal decision by the commission, he said, there can’t be appeals or court reviews, one of the key ways outside groups have sought to hold the Trump administration accountable for its excesses.The agency has historically been more hands-off about the idea of the “public interest”. On the FCC’s website, for instance, it notes that the agency has “long held that ‘the public interest is best served by permitting free expression of views’” and that instead of suppressing speech, it should “encourage responsive ‘counter-speech’ from others.”In Trump’s first term, when Pai was chair, the president called for the agency to revoke broadcast licenses. At the time, Pai said, “the FCC does not have the authority to revoke a license of a broadcast station based on the content”.Wheeler and a former FCC chair appointed by a Republican, Al Sikes, noted in an op-ed earlier this year that Trump has also used executive orders to undermine the independence of the FCC, instead making it into a “blatantly partisan tool” subject to White House approval rather than an independent regulator.What Carr is trying to doIn an appearance on conservative host Benny Johnson’s show that proved fateful for Kimmel, Carr alluded to ways the commission could take action against the late-night host. Carr carefully explained that he could be called upon to judge any claims against the broadcasters while also calling Kimmel’s comments “some of the sickest conduct possible.”“But frankly, when you see stuff like this, I mean, look, we can do this the easy way or the hard way,” Carr said. “These companies can find ways to change conduct and take action, frankly, on Kimmel or, you know, there’s going to be additional work for the FCC ahead.”The companies could handle it by issuing on-air apologies or suspending Kimmel, Carr said. He cited the idea of the “public interest” but also claimed there was a case that Kimmel was engaging in “news distortion”. In further comments to Johnson, he talked about the declining relevance of broadcast networks and credited Trump for “smash[ing] the facade”.“We’re seeing a lot of consequences that are flowing from President Trump doing that,” Carr said. “Look, NPR has been defunded. PBS has been defunded. Colbert is retiring. Joy Reid is out at MSNBC. Terry Moran is gone and ABC is now admitting that they are biased. CBS has now made some commitments to us that they’re going to return to more fact-based journalism.“I think you see some lashing out from people like Kimmel, who are frankly talentless and are looking for ways to get attention, but their grip on the narrative is slipping. That doesn’t mean that it’s still not important to hold the public interest standard.” More
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Jury finds LA protester not guilty of assaulting border patrol agent
A Los Angeles protester charged with assaulting a border patrol agent in June was acquitted on Wednesday after US immigration officials were accused in court of lying about the incident.The not guilty verdict for Brayan Ramos-Brito is a major setback for the Donald Trump-appointed US attorney in southern California and for Gregory Bovino, a border patrol chief who has become a key figure in Trump’s immigration crackdown. The 29-year-old defendant, who is a US citizen, was facing a misdemeanor and was the first protester to go to trial since demonstrations against immigration raids erupted in LA earlier this summer.Border patrol and prosecutors alleged that Ramos-Brito struck an agent during a chaotic protest on 7 June in the south Los Angeles county city of Paramount outside a complex where the Department of Homeland Security has an office. But footage from a witness, which the Guardian published days after the incident, showed an agent forcefully shoving Ramos-Brito. The footage did not capture the demonstrator assaulting the officer.The jury delivered its not guilty verdict after a little over an hour of deliberations, the Los Angeles Times reported. Bovino testified earlier in the day and faced a tough cross-examination from public defenders.Bovino was one of four border patrol agents who testified as witnesses, but was the only one to say he saw the alleged assault by Ramos-Brito, according to the LA Times. Videos played in court captured the agent shoving Ramos-Brito, sending him flying backward, and showed the protester marching back toward the agent, the paper reported. The videos did not capture Ramos-Brito’s alleged assault.There were multiple factual discrepancies in DHS’s internal reports on the protest, which initially led to charges against five demonstrators, the Guardian reported in July. A criminal complaint suggested Ramos-Brito and others had attacked agents in protest of the arrests of two sisters, but records showed the women had been arrested in a separate incident that occurred after Ramos-Brito’s arrest.A supervisor later documented the correct timeline and “apologized” for errors, records showed.At trial, Cuauhtemoc Ortega, a federal public defender, sought to cast doubt on Bovino’s credibility, questioning him about facing a misconduct investigation several years ago, which resulted in a reprimand for referring to undocumented people as “scum, filth and trash”, the LA Times reported.After Bovino responded that his comment was in reference to a “specific criminal illegal alien”, Ortega read from the reprimand, signed by Bovino, which said he was describing “illegal aliens”, the newspaper said.Ortega also argued the agent who Ramos-Brito allegedly assaulted lied about the incident and Bovino was “trying to cover up for him”.Bovino has previously faced scrutiny for making false and misleading statements. He defended a major immigration sweep in January by claiming agents had a “predetermined list of targets”, many with criminal records, but documents showed that 77 out of 78 people taken into custody during the operation had no prior record with the agency, a CalMatters investigation revealed.And in June, while defending the arrest of a US citizen in a high-profile case, Bovino falsely claimed on social media that the man was charged with assaulting an officer.In Ramos-Brito’s trial, videos also contradicted initial claims of a border patrol agent who had said he was chasing a man who assaulted him, but was stopped by Ramos-Brito and Jose Mojica, another protester, the LA Times said. The footage showed no chase.Mojica first shared his account of the incident with the Guardian days after his arrest, saying he was assaulted and injured and had not attacked officers. The US attorney’s office subsequently dismissed felony assault charges it had initially filed against Mojica and Ramos-Brito, but then filed a lower-level misdemeanor against Ramos-Brito.Ramos-Brito’s attorneys did not immediately respond to requests for comment on Thursday.A spokesperson for Bill Essayli, the US attorney appointed by the president earlier this year, declined to comment on the acquittal. Border patrol officials did not immediately respond to an inquiry and requests for comment from Bovino.Essayli’s office has aggressively prosecuted protesters and people accused of interfering with immigration arrests, with more than 40 cases filed in June and July. But prosecutors have repeatedly dismissed some of the felony charges soon after filing them.Carley Palmer, an attorney who served as a supervisor in the US attorney’s office in LA until she left last year, said Thursday it was notable that the federal government had devoted significant resources to a misdemeanor case against an individual with no reported criminal history. Bovino, a senior official, flew in from Chicago for the trial.It is challenging to win convictions in cases like these without video evidence, she said: “The government bears the burden of proof, and if you don’t have footage of the relevant events, then everything is going to rise and fall on the credibility of your witnesses. If the witnesses are law enforcement officers and jurors believe they had bias … that’s really going to hurt their credibility.”The discussion at trial of Bovino’s past misconduct could create challenges for the government moving forward, she added: “In addition to harming the individual case, if a law enforcement witness has their credibility impeached on the stand, that can impact if they can testify in future cases and if their word can be relied on in sworn affidavits going forward.”Meghan Blanco, an attorney who represented Mojica, said it was significant that jurors did not believe the statements of such a senior official.“These jurors had the opportunity to listen firsthand to the CBP officer overseeing enforcement nationally and could not have found his testimony to be credible,” said Blanco, a former federal prosecutor. “It is a bad sign for the federal government. They are doing everything they can to try to legitimize their prosecutions, and thank God the jury and the public are seeing right through it.” More
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Judges rule against Trump administration on deporting Guatemalan children and Venezuelans
The Trump administration has been handed a double defeat by judges in immigration cases, barring the executive branch from deporting a group of Guatemalan children and from slashing protections for many Venezuelans in the US.A federal judge on Thursday ordered the administration to refrain from deporting Guatemalan unaccompanied immigrant children with active immigration cases while a legal challenge plays out.Judge Timothy Kelly, a Trump appointee based in Washington DC, kept in place an earlier judicial block on the policy, sharply criticizing the administration’s unproven assertion that the children’s parents wanted them deported.The administration attempted to deport 76 Guatemalan minors being held in US custody in a surprise move in the early morning on 31 August, sparking a lawsuit and emergency hearing that temporarily halted the move.The Department of Justice lawyer Drew Ensign initially said that the children’s parents had requested they be returned home, but the department later withdrew that claim. Reuters published a Guatemalan government report saying that most parents of the roughly 600 Guatemalan children in US custody could not be contacted and of those who could, many did not want their children forced back to the country.Kelly said the justice department’s explanation “crumbled like a house of cards” in light of that report.The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and the justice department did not immediately respond to requests for comment.Kelly said some children were unexpectedly taken from their shelter beds in the middle of the night, driven to the airport and, in some cases, put on planes, leaving them worried and confused. At one shelter in McAllen, Texas, a young girl was so scared that she vomited, Kelly wrote, citing evidence submitted in the case.Immigrant children who arrive at US borders without a parent or guardian are classified as unaccompanied and sent to federal government-run shelters until they can be placed with a family member or foster home, a process outlined in federal law.Meanwhile, late on Wednesday, a federal appeals court rejected an attempt by the Trump administration to set aside a judge’s order holding that it unlawfully rolled back temporary protections from deportation granted to 600,000 Venezuelans living in the US.A three-judge panel of the San Francisco-based ninth US circuit court of appeals declined to pause a judge’s 5 September ruling holding that the homeland security secretary, Kristi Noem, lacked the authority to end the program, known as temporary protected status or TPS.“Vacating and terminating Venezuela’s TPS status threw the future of these Venezuelan citizens into disarray, and exposed them to a substantial risk of wrongful removal, separation from their families, and loss of employment,” the panel said.The justice department has said that if a stay were denied, it might take the case to the US supreme court, which in May put on hold an earlier injunction Chen issued and cleared the way for the administration to end temporary protections for about 348,000 of the Venezuelans at issue.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionTricia McLaughlin, a spokesperson for the DHS, in a statement said the ninth circuit’s ruling “is nothing short of open defiance against the US Supreme Court”. The administration had contended the supreme court’s May decision meant Chen’s latest ruling had to be similarly paused.“Luckily for us, and for all Americans, the Ninth Circuit is not the last stop,” McLaughlin said.TPS is available to people whose home country has experienced a natural disaster, armed conflict or other extraordinary event. It provides eligible migrants with work authorization and temporary protection from deportation. The program was created in 1991 and extended under Joe Biden to cover about 600,000 Venezuelans and 521,000 Haitians. Noem reversed the extensions, saying they were no longer justified, prompting legal challenges.Chen’s decision had also applied to 521,000 Haitians. The administration did not ask the ninth circuit to put that part of Chen’s ruling on hold as a second judge in New York had already blocked the revocation of the Haitians’ status. More
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‘I had teachers crying’: the schools trying to plug million-dollar funding holes after Trump cuts
In the time it took to read an email, the federal money vanished before Eisa Cox’s eyes: dollars that supported the Ashe county, North Carolina, school district’s after-school program, training for its teachers and salaries for some jobs.The email from the US Department of Education arrived 30 June, a day before the money – $1.1m in total – was set to materialize for the rural western district. Instead, the dollars were frozen pending a review to make sure the money was spent “in accordance with the president’s priorities”, the email said.In a community still recovering from Hurricane Helene, where more than half of students are considered economically disadvantaged, Cox said there was no way they could replace that federal funding for the school system she oversees as superintendent. “It is scary to think about it,” she said. “You’re getting ready to open school and not have a significant pot of funds.”School leaders across the country were reeling from the same news. The $1.1m was one small piece of a nearly $7bn pot of federal funding for thousands of school districts that the Trump administration froze – money approved by Congress and that schools were scheduled to receive on 1 July. For weeks, leaders in Ashe county and around the country scrambled to figure out how they could avoid layoffs and fill financial holes – until the money was freed on 25 July, after an outcry from legislators and a lawsuit joined by two dozen states.“I had teachers crying, staff members crying. They thought they were going to lose their jobs a week before school,” said Curtis Finch, superintendent of Deer Valley unified school district in Phoenix, Arizona.View image in fullscreenNow, as students are back in classrooms, their school systems can no longer count on federal dollars as they once did. They must learn to plan without a playbook under a president intent on cutting education spending. For many districts, federal money is a small but crucial sliver of their budgets, potentially touching every part of a school’s operations, from teacher salaries to textbooks. Nationally, it accounts for about 14% of public school funding; in Ashe county, it’s 17%. School administrators are examining their resources now and budgeting for losses to funding that was frozen this summer, for English learners and for after-school and other programs.So far, the Trump administration has not proposed cutting the largest pots of federal money for schools, which go to services for students with disabilities and to schools with large numbers of low-income students. But the current budget proposal from the US House of Representatives would do just that.At the same time, forthcoming cuts to other federal support for low-income families under the Republican One Big, Beautiful Bill Act – including Medicaid and Snap, previously known as food stamps – will also hammer schools that have many students living in poverty. Some school districts are also grappling with the elimination of Department of Education grants announced earlier this year, such as those designed to address teacher shortages and disability services. In politically conservative communities like this one, there’s an added tension for schools that rely on federal money to operate: how to sound the alarm while staying out of partisan politics.For Ashe county, the federal spending freeze collided with the district’s attempt at a fresh start after the devastation of Helene, which demolished roads and homes, damaged school buildings and knocked power and cell service out for weeks. Between the storm and snow days, students here missed 47 days of instruction.Cox worries this school year might bring more missed days. That first week of school, she found herself counting the number of foggy mornings: an old Appalachian wives’ tale says to put a bean in a jar for every morning of fog in August. The number of beans at the end of the month is how many snow days will come in winter.“We’ve had 21 so far,” Cox said with a nervous laugh on 21 August.A funding freeze rollercoasterFragrant evergreen trees blanket Ashe county’s hills, a region that bills itself as America’s Christmas tree capital because of the millions of Fraser firs grown for sale at the holidays. Yet this picturesque area still shows scars of Hurricane Helene’s destruction: fallen trees, damaged homes and rocky new paths cut through the mountainsides by mudslides. Nearly a year after the storm, the lone grocery store in one of its small towns is still being rebuilt. A sinkhole that formed during the flooding remains, splitting open the ground behind an elementary school.As students walked into classrooms for the first time since spring, Julie Taylor – the district’s director of federal programs – was reworking district budget spreadsheets. When federal funds were frozen, and then unfrozen, her plans and calculations from months prior became meaningless.Federal and state funding stretches far in this district of 2,700 students and six schools, where administrators do a lot with a little. Even before this summer, they worked hard to supplement that funding in any way possible – applying for state and federal grants, like one last year that provided money for a few mobile hotspots for families who don’t have internet access. Such opportunities are also narrowing: the Federal Communications Commission, for example, recently proposed ending its mobile hotspot grant program for school buses and libraries.View image in fullscreen“We’re very fiscally responsible because we have to be. We’re small and rural. We don’t have a large tax base,” Taylor said.When the money was frozen this summer, administrators’ minds went to the educators and kids who would be most affected. Some of it was meant to pay for a program through Appalachian State University that connects the district’s three dozen early career teachers with a mentor, helping them learn how to schedule their school days and manage classroom behavior.The program is part of the reason the district’s retention rate for early career teachers is 92%, Taylor said, noting the teachers have said how much the mentoring meant to them.Also frozen: free after-school care the district provides for about 250 children throughout the school year – the only after-school option in the community. Without the money, Cox said, schools would have had to cancel their after-school care or start charging families, a significant burden in a county with a median household income of about $50,000.Will assistance for immigrant students go away?The salary for Michelle Pelayo, the district’s migrant education program coordinator for nearly two decades, was also tied up in that pot of funding. Because agriculture is the county’s biggest industry, Pelayo’s work extends far beyond the students at the school. Each year, she works with the families of dozens of immigrant students who move to the county for seasonal work on farms, which generally involves tagging and bundling Christmas trees and harvesting pumpkins. Pelayo helps the families enroll their students, connects them with supplies for school and home, and serves as a Spanish translator for parent-teacher meetings – “whatever they need”, she said.Kitty Honeycutt, executive director of the Ashe county chamber of commerce, doesn’t know how the county’s agriculture industry would survive without the immigrant families Pelayo works with. “The need for guest workers is crucial for the agriculture industry. We have to have them,” she said.A couple of years ago, Pelayo had the idea to drive to Boone, North Carolina, where Appalachian State University’s campus sits, to gather unwanted appliances and supplies from students moving out of their dorm rooms at the end of the year to donate to immigrant families. She’s a “find a way or make a way” type of person, Honeycutt said.Cox is searching for how to keep Pelayo on if Ashe county loses these federal funds next year. She’s talked with county officials to see whether they could pay Pelayo’s salary, and has begun calculating how much the district would need to charge families to keep the after-school program running. Ideally, she’d know ahead of time and not the night before the district is set to receive the money.Around the nationDistricts across the country are grappling with similar questions. In Detroit, school leaders are preparing, at a minimum, to lose Title III money to teach English learners; more than 7,200 Detroit students received services funded by Title III in 2023.In Wyoming, the small, rural Sheridan county school district 3 is trying to budget without Title II, IV and V money – funding for improving teacher quality, updating technology and resources for rural and low-income schools, among other uses, the superintendent Chase Christensen said.Schools are trying to budget for cuts to other federal programs, too, such as Medicaid and food stamps. In Harrison school district 2, an urban district in Colorado Springs, schools rely on Medicaid to provide students with counseling, nursing and other services.The district projects that it could lose half the $15m it receives in Medicaid next school year.“It’s very, very stressful,” said Wendy Birhanzel, superintendent of Harrison school district 2. “For a while, it was every day you were hearing something different. And you couldn’t even keep up with: ‘What’s the latest information today?’ That’s another thing we told our staff: if you can, just don’t watch the news about education right now.”There’s another calculation for school leaders to make in conservative counties like Ashe, where 72% of the vote last year went to Donald Trump: objecting to the cuts without angering voters. When North Carolina’s attorney general, a Democrat, joined the lawsuit against the administration over the frozen funds this summer, some school administrators told state officials they couldn’t publicly sign on, fearing local backlash, said Jack Hoke, executive director of the North Carolina School Superintendents’ Association.Cox sees the effort to slash federal funds as a chance to show her community how Ashe county schools uses this money. She believes people are misguided in thinking their schools don’t need it, not malicious.“I know who our congresspeople are. I know they care about this area,” Cox said, adding that they care even if they do not fully grasp how the money is used. “It’s an opportunity for me to educate them.”If the education department is shuttered – which Trump said he plans to do in order to give more authority over education to states – she wants to be included in state-level discussions of how federal money flows to schools through North Carolina. Importantly, she also wants to know ahead of time what her schools might lose.As she made her rounds to each of the schools that first week back, Cox glanced down at her phone and looked up with a smile. “We have hot water,” she said while walking in the hall of Blue Ridge elementary school. It had lost hot water a few weeks earlier, but to Cox, this crisis was minor – one of many first-of-the-year hiccups she has come to expect.Still, it’s one worry she can put out of her mind as she looks ahead to a year of uncertainties.Marina Villeneuve contributed data analysis to this story, which was originally produced and published by the Hechinger Report. More
