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      US supreme court to decide on legality of Trump’s sweeping global tariffs

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      The US supreme court agreed on Tuesday to decide the legality of Donald Trump’s sweeping global tariffs, setting up a major test of one of the Republican president’s boldest assertions of executive power that has been central to his economic and trade agenda.The justices took up the justice department’s appeal of a lower court’s ruling that Trump overstepped his authority in imposing most of his tariffs under a federal law meant for emergencies. The court swiftly acted after the administration last week asked it to review the case, which involves trillions of dollars in customs duties over the next decade.The court, which begins its next nine-month term on 6 October, placed the case on a fast track, scheduling oral arguments for the first week of November.The justices also agreed to hear a separate challenge to Trump’s tariffs brought by a family-owned toy company, Learning Resources.The US court of appeals for the federal circuit in Washington ruled on 29 August that Trump overreached in invoking a 1977 law known as the International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA) to impose the tariffs, undercutting a major priority for the president in his second term. The tariffs, however, remain in effect during the appeal to the supreme court.The levies are part of a trade war instigated by Trump since he returned to the presidency in January that has alienated trading partners, increased volatility in financial markets and fueled global economic uncertainty.Trump has made tariffs a key foreign policy tool, using them to renegotiate trade deals, extract concessions and exert political pressure on other countries.Trump in April invoked the 1977 law in imposing tariffs on goods imported from individual countries to address trade deficits, as well as separate tariffs announced in February as economic leverage on China, Canada and Mexico to curb the trafficking of fentanyl and illicit drugs into the US.The law gives the president power to deal with “an unusual and extraordinary threat” amid a national emergency. It historically had been used for imposing sanctions on enemies or freezing their assets. Prior to Trump, the law had never been used to impose tariffs.Trump’s Department of Justice has argued that the law allows tariffs under emergency provisions that authorize a president to “regulate” imports.
      “The stakes in this case could not be higher,” the justice department said in a filing. Denying Trump‘s tariff power “would expose our nation to trade retaliation without effective defenses and thrust America back to the brink of economic catastrophe”, it added.Trump has said that if he loses the case the US might have to unwind trade deals, causing the country to “suffer so greatly”.The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office reported in August that the increased duties on imports from foreign countries could reduce the US national deficit by $4tn over the next decade. More

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      Israeli-Russian graduate student freed after 903 days in Hezbollah captivity

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      Israeli-Russian academic and Princeton student Elizabeth Tsurkov has been released after being kidnapped by Kata’ib Hezbollah and spending more than two years in captivity, Donald Trump said in a post on social media.“I am pleased to report that Elizabeth Tsurkov, a Princeton Student, whose sister is an American Citizen, was just released by Kata’ib Hezbollah (MILITANT Hezbollah), and is now safely in the American Embassy in Iraq after being tortured for many months. I will always fight for JUSTICE, and never give up. HAMAS, RELEASE THE HOSTAGES, NOW!” the US president wrote in a TruthSocial post on Tuesday.Tsurkov went missing for months in Iraq in early 2023 and was confirmed alive in July 2023. She holds Israeli and Russian passports and entered Iraq using her Russian passport, according to the Israeli government, to do academic research on behalf of Princeton.Israel said she was abducted in Baghdad by pro-Iranian militants in March 2023. A video featuring Tsurkov was broadcast on Iraqi television in November of that year. The circumstances of her release were not immediately clear. Press reports from May of this year indicated the US and Iraq were in talks on her release with Iraq.After Trump announced Tsurkov’s release on Tuesday, her sister Emma Tsurkov – who has long been a vocal advocate for her sibling’s freedom – wrote on X:“My entire family is incredibly happy. We cannot wait to see Elizabeth and give her all the love we have been waiting to share for 903 days. We are so thankful to President Trump and his Special Envoy, Adam Boehler. If Adam had not made my sister’s return his personal mission, I do not know where we would be. We also want to thank Josh Harris and his team at the US Embassy in Baghdad for the support they provided to our sister and the team at the nonprofit Global Reach who advocated relentlessly for my sister’s safe return.” More

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      Trump calls release of suggestive note to convicted sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein a ‘dead issue’

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      White House officials on Tuesday doubled down on their assertion that a sexually suggestive letter carrying what appeared to be Donald Trump’s signature that was included in a birthday book for convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein had not been signed by the president.The letter, and its drawing of a naked woman’s torso around an imagined conversation between Trump and Epstein, was part of a batch of documents released by the House oversight committee in response to a subpoena after its existence was first reported in July by the Wall Street Journal.The release of the letter and the entirety of the birthday book only intensified a furore that Trump has been attempting to shut down for months – and hardened the White House’s resolve to claim the purported Trump signature on the letter was a fabrication or a forgery.At a press briefing, Trump’s press secretary, Karoline Leavitt, denied Trump’s involvement in the letter and added that the White House would support an expert review of the signature to determine whether it had been done by Trump’s hand.“Three separate signature analysts who said this was not the president’s authentic signature and we have maintained that all along. The president did not write this letter, he did not sign this letter, and that’s why the president’s external legal team is pursuing litigation against the Wall Street Journal,” Leavitt said.View image in fullscreenMultiple White House officials have sought to distance Trump from the 2003 note since it was released on Monday by suggesting the signature did not resemble recent examples showing Trump, in recent years, signing both his first and last name in sharp, angular figures.But officials have declined to address the fact that before his time in office, Trump regularly used only his first name in signatures, stylized with a line extending from the last letter – and Trump’s signature on a letter from 1995 closely resembled the one found on the note to Epstein.Earlier on Monday, Trump declined to address the letter in an interview with NBC. “I don’t comment on something that’s a dead issue,” Trump said.At the briefing that gave rise to questions concerning Epstein and the Trump letter on several separate occasions, Leavitt also denied a claim by Republican House speaker Mike Johnson that Trump had been an FBI informant against Epstein.“I can affirm that is not true and I think the speaker was referring to the fact that President Trump kicked Jeffrey Epstein out of his Mar-a-Lago property for reasons the president has already discussed,” Leavitt said.With the clamor over the Epstein files reignited on Capitol Hill following the release of the Epstein birthday book and other materials turned over to Congress by the lawyers for Epstein’s estate, the White House may yet face pressure to release the extent of the documents held by the justice department on the matter.Despite staunch opposition from the White House and Republican leaders, a bipartisan resolution directing the justice department to release all of its investigative files on Epstein appears headed to gain enough backers to force action on the House floor, provided two Democrats win special elections later this month.Over on Capitol Hill, top Republicans have joined the White House in alleging that it is not actually Donald Trump’s signature on a suggestive poem and drawing addressed to Jeffrey Epstein that was made public yesterday.“The White House says it’s not true,” House speaker Mike Johnson told PBS News, adding that he has not seen the artwork from Epstein’s birthday book, which was released by Democrats on the House oversight committee.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionThe Republican chair of the oversight committee, James Comer, who has been leading an investigation into Epstein and the justice department’s handling of allegations of sex trafficking against Epstein, said he did not plan to investigate the veracity of Trump’s signature on the document.“Twenty-two years ago was when that was allegedly sent. So, I don’t think the oversight committee is going to invest in looking up something that was 22 years ago,” Comer told CNN.Republican representative and oversight committee member Tim Burchett also doubted that Trump had made the drawing and signed it – even though Trump has a history of making sketches in thick black pen.“I’ve never known Trump to be much of an artist,” he told CNN, adding that it was “so easy” to forge a signature.The extent of any additional exposure for Trump is unclear. A lawyer for Epstein’s estate told CNN that they would turn over additional materials to the committee “on a rolling basis” in response to the subpoena, while the justice department is expected to produce more records of its own.Survivors have slammed the Trump administration’s promise to investigate Epstein further, with nine attorneys telling the Guardian they have not even been contacted by the justice department, suggesting it is merely interested in “whitewashing” previous investigations.Maga influencers largely dismissed the release of the birthday book, claiming Trump’s signature in it was a forgery, despite what other publications have noted is the clear resemblance to Trump’s signature at the time.Trump has repeatedly dismissed concerns about the wider collection of Epstein files, referring to it in general terms as a “Democrat hoax” despite having campaigned in 2024 on releasing the same Epstein files. After he took office in January, Trump’s department of justice declared that no “client list” linking powerful individuals to Epstein’s crimes existed. More

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      Michigan judge dismisses charges against 15 of Trump’s 2020 fake electors

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      A judge in Michigan dismissed the felony charges against a slate of electors who falsely signed on to documents claiming Donald Trump won the 2020 election in the latest blow to efforts to hold the president and his allies accountable for attempting to overturn the results of the White House race he lost to Joe Biden.Sixteen people were initially charged with eight felonies each related to forgery and conspiracy by the Democratic attorney general, Dana Nessel, in 2023, though one of them had his charges dropped after he agreed to cooperate with the prosecution. The fake electors in Michigan will not go to trial.District court judge Kristen Simmons decided that the state had not provided “evidence sufficient to prove intent”, a requirement for fraud cases. She told a courtroom on Tuesday that the case did not involve the intent of those who orchestrated the scheme, like Kenneth Chesebro and other Trump attorneys – but those who actually signed the documents, Votebeat reported.“I believe they were executing their constitutional right to seek redress,” Simmons said of those who signed the documents.Nessel spoke against the decision in a press conference after, according to Michigan Advance. “The evidence was clear,” she said. “They lied. They knew they lied, and they tried to steal the votes of millions of Michiganders. And if they can get away with this, well, what can’t they get away with next?”Trump supporters in seven swing states signed on as fake electors in the scheme. Some of the fake electors – and, in some cases, those who orchestrated the scheme – were charged for state crimes in five of those states.Protesters outside the courtroom called the case an example of “lawfare” and a “hoax”. After the judge’s comments, those charged and their supporters celebrated the decision and called for consequences against Nessel for bringing the case.An attorney for the former Michigan Republican party co-chairperson Meshawn Maddock said the case was a “malicious prosecution” and that “there needs to be major consequences for the people who brought this,” according to the Associated Press.Some of those who signed on as fake electors in 2020 went on to be real presidential electors for Trump in the 2024 election, when he defeated Kamala Harris to return to the Oval Office beginning in January. More

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      What is the truth about Trump and Epstein? The story keeps getting murkier … | Arwa Mahdawi

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      You have to keep this hush-hush, OK? I have top-secret information to share. You know Donald Trump has been reluctant to release the Epstein files? Well, it’s not because there’s anything nefarious going on. Trump may be an adjudicated sexual predator accused of sexual misconduct by at least 27 women (all of which he denies), who publicly boasted in 2002 about how his “terrific” pal Jeffrey Epstein liked women “on the younger side”, but you shouldn’t read too much into all that. Nor should you overanalyse a Wall Street Journal report claiming White House officials told Trump in May that his name appeared multiple times in the files. Or that House Democrats have now released a sexually suggestive letter and drawing sent to Epstein in 2003 for his birthday that appears to show Trump’s signature, the same note the president has denied writing. Nor should you worry yourself with the photo that has been released showing Epstein holding a novelty check signed by Trump with the suggestion that Epstein “sold” him a woman for $22,500.No, the real reason Trump is being weird about Epstein is … drum roll, please … because the president may or may not have been covertly operating as an FBI informant and investigating the disgraced financier.To be clear: I did not learn this information by scrolling conspiracy theory subreddits at 3am. It comes via the highest levels of government. Last week, the House speaker, Mike Johnson, told a CNN reporter that the president cares deeply about justice for Epstein’s accusers. In fact, when Trump first heard “the rumour” about Epstein, he “kicked him out of Mar-a-Lago; he was an FBI informant to try and take this stuff down”.Why would Johnson make such an explosive and weird claim? Is it because he reckons Maga supporters, some of whom are angry about the president’s handling of the Epstein files, are gullible? With conspiratorial thinking on the rise, is he playing into a proclivity among certain voters to flip Occam’s razor and believe in the most complex explanation? (Macco’s razor, if you will.)Honestly, I don’t know what Johnson was thinking. Nor does anyone else; even the Trump administration was reportedly perplexed by the claim. And on Sunday, Johnson’s office delicately walked back his assertion in a statement: “The speaker is reiterating what the victims’ attorney said, which is that Donald Trump – who kicked Epstein out of Mar-a-Lago – was the only one more than a decade ago willing to help prosecutors expose Epstein for being a disgusting child predator.”The attorney referenced is Brad Edwards, who represents a number of Epstein survivors and said last week that Trump was “friendly” to the cause before doing an “about-face”. As per the Washington Post, Trump “helped” Edwards with efforts against Epstein in 2009. Not quite the same as being an FBI informant.To give Trump his due, he did, as Johnson claimed, bar Epstein from Mar-a-Lago. This reportedly happened in 2007, after the latter behaved inappropriately towards a club member’s teenage daughter. And he doesn’t appear to have been friendly with the paedophile after his sex crime conviction in 2008 – unlike Bill Gates, who met Epstein multiple times after that.Epstein and Trump were good friends for at least 15 years, but there’s little record of them interacting after 2004. Rather than Trump’s concern for abused girls causing the falling out, it seems a bidding war over a Palm Beach mansion may have been to blame. In July, Trump also said he rowed with Epstein because the financier “stole” young women who worked for his Mar-a-Lago spa. The president seemed rather more upset about his “property” being taken than the safety of the women Epstein “stole”.Whatever happened between the pair, questions about their relationship are not going away. The White House is saying the suggestive birthday note is FAKE NEWS and part of a “Democrat hoax” – but is that landing with Maga supporters? Maybe it’s time for Team Trump to sit down and workshop some better deflections. Perhaps blame the brouhaha on an extraterrestrial plot or Hillary Clinton’s emails; anything to stop people from coming to the simplest possible explanation for why Trump wants to bury this story. “Enigma’s never age,” a line on Trump’s supposed birthday note reads. But this Epstein enigma is ageing like raw milk. If only it would sour voters on Trump. More

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      Trump apparently thinks domestic violence is not a crime. That makes sense | Moira Donegan

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      Speaking at a Christian museum on Monday, Donald Trump claimed, falsely, that his deployment of national guard troops to invade the nation’s capital has eliminated crime in Washington. He complained, however, that domestic violence was being counted in the crime statistics, which he claimed meant that the influence of his policy was not being seen as significant enough. “They said, ‘Crime’s down 87%,’” the president claimed, not explaining who “they” were. “I said, no, no, no. It’s more than 87%, virtually nothing. And much lesser things, things that take place in the home they call crime. You know, they’ll do anything they can to find something. If a man has a little fight with the wife, they say this was a crime. See? So now I can’t claim 100%, but we are. We are a safe city.”If Trump wanted to endorse domestic violence decriminalization, he may take some comfort in the status quo: as it is, about 24% of adult American women have been the victims of “severe physical violence” by an intimate partner, according to the National Domestic Violence Hotline; the Centers for Disease Control, meanwhile, puts the proportion of women who have experienced “contact sexual violence, physical violence, or stalking by an intimate partner” at 41%. and many of those incidents are not reported or not prosecuted – meaning that the perpetrators are free, and that their assaults have not been treated as fully “criminal”.The Trump administration, meanwhile, has been working to make sure that victims of domestic violence have even fewer resources and even scanter opportunities to escape their abusers. The Trump administration has moved to drastically cut federal grants to domestic violence non-profits, which rely heavily on the federal government for funding. The administration has further sought to freeze funding to domestic violence charities that serve trans women victims and participate in diversity, equity and inclusion programming, severely hampering the work of groups that seek to serve marginalized victims from LGBTQ+ or racial minority populations, or to frame domestic violence as a gender justice issue. The administration has also moved to condition domestic violence funding on charities’ willingness to hand over abused women to Ice, a move that would severely limit the ability of undocumented victims to seek help.Trump’s complaint that private violence enacted by men against women in the home should not be considered criminal is of a piece with old and long-abandoned misogynist legal understandings of women’s status, the nature of marriage, and men’s prerogatives in the home, which dictated that women had no rights in the private sphere that their husbands or fathers needed to respect, and that men could enforce their dominance and control over women in private with violence.This notion – that gender, family and sexual relations are private matters that the law has nothing to say about, and that the state has no duty to defend the rights and safety of its women citizens from the violence of its male ones – was dismantled over the long course of the 20th century by feminist legal activists that worked to criminalize domestic battery, establish a woman’s right to sexual refusal, and build institutions that would provide material resources and physical opportunities for women to leave the homes where they were being abused.But Trump’s interpretation of the law has a long history, too. The 17th-century English jurist Matthew Hale, who was cited approvingly by Justice Samuel Alito in the Dobbs decision, articulated the view of men’s prerogatives in the law when he wrote that the rape of a wife by her husband was not illegal, because: “The husband cannot be guilty of a rape committed by himself upon his lawful wife, for by their mutual matrimonial consent and contract the wife hath given up herself in this kind unto her husband, which she cannot retract.” Hale’s vision of marriage as endowing a man with a right to inflict violence on his wife in private – a quasi-proprietary relationship in which a woman’s initial consent to marriage eliminated any subsequent claims she may have had to her own rights, property or body – is one of total mastery. “I do” is translated into a permanent, irrevocable and horrifyingly inclusive “he can”.It is not surprising that Trump thinks that men’s domestic violence against women should not be a crime. This is the man who once boasted that he liked to “grab ’em by the pussy”; the man who has been accused of sexual misconduct by more than two dozen women; who was accused of rape by his first wife (who later rescinded her accusation) and by the writer E Jean Carroll, whose sizable judgment against Trump was upheld by a court on the same day that he gave his remarks. This is the man who is alleged to have barged in on young beauty pageant contestants as they changed, and whose letter to the pedophile financier Jeffrey Epstein, extolling the “wonderful secret” that the two shared, was made public on Monday as well, complete with a drawing of a nude female form.What might be more surprising is how closely Trump’s view of the prerogatives and entitlements of abusive husbands towards their abused wives mirror his own sense of his prerogatives and entitlements as president towards his abused country. Throughout his second term, Trump has spoken of the 2024 election in terms similar to the way that Hale spoke of the marriage vow: as an irrevocable grant of total power. He believes, he says, that because he won the 2024 election, that there are now no more rights that Americans have that he must respect: that he can discard the will of Congress, fire civil servants at will, kidnap our neighbors and invade our cities.These are not the gestures of a leader who respects his people and seeks to serve them, just as Hale’s vision of marriage is not one in which a husband respects his wife as an equal and seeks to love her. The model is not of partnership, but of domination. This time, it is America herself who is taking the beating.

      Moira Donegan is a Guardian US columnist More

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      Project 2025 and Donald Trump’s Dangerous Dismantling of the US Federal Government

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      Fair Observer Founder, CEO & Editor-in-Chief Atul Singh, or the Rajput, and retired CIA officer Glenn Carle, or the WASP, examine US President Donald Trump’s cuts to the US federal government. Their wide-ranging discussion blends sharp historical insight with ideological critique, seeking to make sense of today’s Volatile, Uncertain, Complex and Ambiguous (VUCA) world.

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      They emphasize that this topic has global resonance, since the world still depends on the stability and leadership of the United States. The discussion, therefore, becomes both an internal American debate and an international concern.

      Trump’s attack on federal agencies

      Atul and Glenn begin by cataloging specific Trump-era actions they view as evidence of a systematic weakening of the federal apparatus. These include the removal of officials such as Federal Reserve Governor Lisa Cook, Center for Disease Control and Prevention Director Susan Monarez and Internal Revenue Service Commissioner Billy Long. They argue that such moves, combined with a broader hollowing out of institutions like the Federal Reserve, the State Department, the CIA, US Agency for International Development and NASA, represent an intentional “gutting” of agencies crucial to governance and public welfare.

      Atul and Glenn insist that these institutions exist not only for technical governance but also for maintaining the credibility of the American democratic model. If the credibility of these institutions collapses, it erodes public trust and damages the US’s global standing.

      Norquist’s philosophy and Ronald Reagan’s agenda

      Glenn situates Trump’s efforts within a longer ideological arc. He traces them back to US President Ronald Reagan’s “revolution,” which reduced faith in government and elevated conservative economic philosophy. Reagan’s agenda, amplified by figures such as Americans for Tax Reform President Grover Norquist — who is famous for wanting to shrink government so small he could “drag it into the bathroom and drown it in the bathtub” — and bolstered by conservative think tanks, paved the way for what Glenn calls today’s “Trumpian revolution.”

      Atul adds that the Reagan years were not just an American turning point, but part of a broader global shift toward neoliberalism, deregulation and privatization. The ideological groundwork laid in that era, they contend, continues to shape political agendas today.

      Trump and Project 2025

      Central to the conversation is Project 2025, a Heritage Foundation initiative Atul and Glenn describe as a radical blueprint. Its goals include cutting the federal workforce by half and dramatically expanding presidential powers. They stress that these proposals would not only disrupt government efficiency and accountability but also tilt the balance of power sharply toward the executive branch.

      Atul and Glenn emphasize that the size of the workforce reflects the government’s ability to deliver services, regulate markets and provide stability in times of crisis. Reducing this by half would, in their view, leave the country dangerously exposed.

      Federal layoffs under Trump 2.0

      Atul and Glenn note that Trump’s current plans echo his first term, but with greater intensity. They state that proposals to eliminate 50% of the federal workforce are unprecedented in scope. They interpret these layoffs as more than cost-cutting; they are an ideological purge designed to weaken federal institutions and concentrate loyalty directly under presidential control. Such measures would ripple outward beyond Washington to ordinary citizens who depend on federal programs, grants and regulatory oversight for health, education and economic stability.

      Presidential control: a threat to US democracy?

      Glenn links Trump’s approach to the legal philosophy of Carl Schmitt, “[Adolf] Hitler’s legal theorist,” who defended the primacy of unchecked executive authority in Nazi Germany. Schmitt’s concept of the unitary executive resonates with Trump’s own political movement, Glenn argues, by undermining checks and balances and normalizing near-absolute presidential power. This strikes at the heart of democratic governance.

      Atul points out that the American system was designed around the separation of powers. If that foundation is eroded, the US risks losing what has long been its distinctive democratic safeguard.

      The Republican Party’s evolution

      The conversation also turns to the broader Republican Party. Atul and Glenn argue that decades of conservative activism, think tank influence and shifting party priorities have steered the Grand Old Party toward radical centralization of power. They suggest that what once seemed like outlandish ideas are now mainstream within the Republican platform, particularly under Trump’s leadership. This shift is both political and cultural, representing a redefinition of what conservatism means in the US.

      Fascism, strongmen and the future

      Atul and Glenn conclude with a sober warning: Left unchecked, the United States risks sliding from liberal democracy into what they call a “conservative autocracy.” They point to echoes of strongman politics and fascist ideology, stressing the long-term danger of normalizing authoritarian principles. At the same time, they note Trump’s diverse support base — including many immigrants who align with cultural conservatism and share a disdain for bureaucracy — as evidence that these dynamics are both complex and deeply embedded in American society.

      They highlight that this contradiction of immigrants supporting an anti-immigrant politician reveals how cultural and ideological affinities can often outweigh personal experience. The episode ends as a call to reflect on the fragility of democratic institutions and the vigilance required to protect them.

      [Lee Thompson-Kolar edited this piece.]

      The views expressed in this article/podcast are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy. More

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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