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The Independent
an hour ago
- The Independent
Trump team quietly ends guidance that forced school to accommodate students who don't speak English
The Trump administration has quietly rescinded a longstanding Department of Education guidance explaining how schools must comply with civil rights laws and court decisions mandating they provide services to English language learners, alarming education advocates. The guidance, issued in 2015, details how schools must comply with longstanding parts of U.S. law like Title VI of the Civil Rights Act, which bars national origin discrimination. Courts have interpreted this provision to mean that schools must offer support services to students who don't speak English. Since taking office, the Trump administration has been pushing to prioritize English-speaking as a national priority while cutting support for the roughly 5 million U.S. public school students who don't yet speak the language, as well as non-English speakers more broadly. In February, the president signed an executive order designating English the official language of the U.S. while rescinding a federal mandate requiring agencies and institutions receiving federal funding to provide language assistance. Since then, the Department of Education has laid off nearly all the workers in its Office of English Language Acquisition. In July, the Department of Justice wrote in a memo to all federal agencies to 'minimize non-essential multilingual services' and argued that treating people differently based on English proficiency didn't necessarily constitute national origin discrimination. The memo added that by next January, the DOJ will create guidance to 'help agencies prioritize English while explaining precisely when and how multilingual assistance remains necessary,' part of the White House goal to "promote assimilation over division' through language policy. Critics said rescinding the Education Department guidance will, in fact, make it harder for U.S. students to learn English, while freeing up districts to potentially ignore past rulings and legal mandates to support pupils who are still learning the language without fear of federal enforcement. 'For a teacher, it was kind of like the Bible,' Montserrat Garibay, head of the Biden-era Office of English Language Acquisition, told The Washington Post, which first reported on the rescinded 2015 guidance. 'If, in fact, we want our students to learn English, this needs to be in place.' 'Instead of providing this office with more capacity and more resources to do exactly what the executive order says — to make sure that everybody speaks English — they are doing the total opposite,' she added. Last month, the administration temporarily withheld $890 million in English language learning funds and called for their elimination next year. 'We're put in a position where, we want you to learn English, but at the same time, we're going to de-emphasize anything that will help provide you the opportunity to learn English,' Jeff Hutcheson, the director of advocacy and public policy at the English-language learning group TESOL International Association, told K-12 Dive last month. Outside of education, other parts of the government have been quick to embrace the Trump administration's language mandates. 'HUD is ENGLISH only,' Housing Secretary Scott Turner wrote on X on Tuesday, sharing an image of eliminating a Spanish-language page on the Department of Housing and Urban Development website.
Telegraph
an hour ago
- Telegraph
To Americans, Britain is no longer the free country we thought it was
Every year, the US Department of State releases a report on human rights practices in other countries (CRHRP). One of my first assignments as a political officer at the US embassy was to coordinate and edit one country report. Not surprisingly, certain governments sometimes take issue with how their policies are characterised in the CRHRP. For example, South Africa claimed a recent CRHRP was 'inaccurate and deeply flawed' in criticising them for failing to 'investigate, prosecute and punish officials who committed human rights abuses … or violence against racial minorities'. President Cyril Ramaphosa seemed bewildered in May when President Trump took him to task for the murders of white farmers. His government's defence seems to be that South Africa's horrific levels of crime afflict everyone, not just white people, and that the motives are not racist but merely criminal. That is unlikely to mollify a country impoverished under an incompetent succession of ANC leaders, nor will Ramaphosa's explanation that they haven't actually used their sweeping new Land Expropriation Act inspire commercial farmers who feed the country to invest in their farms. But I digress. China doesn't just reject US criticism, they've cheekily published their own report criticising the US for 'the chronic disease of racism,' and 'basic rights and freedoms being disregarded'. Usually, the governments taking the most criticism in the CRHRP are repressive or feckless regimes, from China to Zimbabwe, that suppress free speech, stifle religious expression, or oppress women, minority groups, and political dissidents. That doesn't sound like the England in which I was born over half a century ago. But this year, the Country Report on the UK flags Britain as a risky place to speak your mind. The CRHRP claims that 'the human rights situation worsened in the United Kingdom during the year,' citing 'credible reports of serious restrictions on freedom of expression, including enforcement of or threat of criminal or civil laws in order to limit expression; and crimes, violence, or threats of violence motivated by anti-Semitism'. The report notes restrictions on speech – even silent meditation – near abortion clinics, and the Online Safety Act's curtailment of internet speech, policed by Ofcom. It calls out government censorship of speech deemed misinformation or 'hate speech', including in relation to migrants and crimes committed by foreign nationals. It could have gone even further. In its section on Worker Rights, the CRHRP doesn't discuss the people who have been sacked or disciplined for refusing to accept the forced speech codes of gender ideology, like prison officer David Toshack or nurse Jennifer Melle; or for social media posters who have criticised government action, like teacher Simon Pearson. Like the proverbial frog in slowly heating water, perhaps Brits can't see what is happening to their freedoms. But looking from the outside, we can, and the State Department has called it out. In reaction, I expect the British Left to be as indignant and in denial as the establishment in Washington DC is about crime. Now Donald Trump has temporarily taken over local law enforcement in the city, the Leftist establishment and the national media are claiming that violent crime is lower than in recent years. This ignores some inconvenient realities. First, unreliable numbers. The city has reportedly just settled a lawsuit from a whistleblowing police officer who had alleged that her supervisors were re-classifying serious crimes as lesser offences, to flatter the city's crime statistics. Second, even the supposedly lower murder rate puts Washington among the most dangerous cities in the nation. Like the DC establishment, the British government and much of the media are happy to ignore Lucy Connolly, who is still in prison after she made an unwise online post (and then deleted it); Hamit Coskun, who was prosecuted after he burnt a book; and the thousands of ordinary Brits who have been accused of 'Non-Crime Hate Incidents,' which is at the very least an astonishing waste of police time. The Left likes to pretend that the real villains in the fight for free speech are people like Kathleen Stock, Maya Forstater, and JK Rowling, who courageously state objective truth, rather than the gender ideologues trying to force women to accept men in their changing rooms, prisons, and shelters. George Orwell, Aldous Huxley, and other writers of the early 20th century predicted a future where the populace was dumbed down, repressed, and fed information by an authoritarian state. In the dystopian futures they imagined in 1984 and Brave New World, independent, critical thinking was banned and speech violators were punished. That sounds like the logical destiny of Britain if it maintains its present course. There is already a semi-official dogma on gender ideology, immigration, and crime which it is costly to challenge. Censorship and group-think get worse if not disrupted. Instead of rejecting America's criticism in high dudgeon, I hope Britain will heed the warning of its Atlantic cousins and return to the people their right to speak their minds. For the land of Magna Carta to slowly sink into repression and state control would be a great injustice to Britain's present inhabitants, and an insult to our ancestors' work of centuries. 'The Ten Woke Commandments (You Must Not Obey)' from Academica Books.
Reuters
an hour ago
- Reuters
Texas Republicans set to approve Trump-backed congressional map to protect party's majority
Aug 20 (Reuters) - Texas legislators on Wednesday took up a new state congressional map intended to flip five Democratic-held U.S. House seats in next year's midterm elections, after dozens of Democratic lawmakers ended a two-week walkout that had temporarily blocked passage. Republican legislators, who have dominated Texas politics for over two decades, have undertaken a rare mid-decade redistricting at the behest of President Donald Trump, who is seeking to improve his party's odds of preserving its narrow U.S. House of Representatives majority amid political headwinds. The map, which should easily pass the Texas House by a simple majority vote but will have to be reconciled with the state Senate's version, has triggered a national redistricting war, with governors of both parties threatening to initiate similar efforts in other states. Democratic California Governor Gavin Newsom is advancing an effort to redraw his state's map to flip five Republican seats. Democratic-controlled California is the nation's most populous state while Republican-led Texas is the second most populous. The Texas map would shift conservative voters into districts currently held by Democrats and combine some districts that Democrats hold. Other Republican states -- including Ohio, Florida, Indiana and Missouri -- are moving forward with or considering their own redistricting efforts, as are Democratic states such as Maryland and Illinois. Redistricting typically occurs every 10 years after the U.S. Census to account for population changes, and mid-decade redistricting has historically been unusual. In many states, lawmakers manipulate the lines to favor their party over the opposition, a practice known as gerrymandering. Texas Democrats on Wednesday raised multiple objections to and questions about the measure, slowing debate. Democratic Representative Chris Turner introduced an amendment to kill the bill, which did not pass. He said from the House floor that the redistricting bill was an "illegal and racially discriminatory Congressional map." "This body has no business passing it," Turner said. "This is unprecedented and it is wrong." Republicans argued the map was created to improve political performance and would increase majority Hispanic districts. Turner was among the Democrats who fled the state earlier this month to deny the Texas House a quorum. In response, Republicans undertook extraordinary measures to try to force the Democrats home, including filing lawsuits to remove them from office and issuing arrest warrants. The walkout ended when Democrats voluntarily returned on Monday, saying they had accomplished their goals of blocking a vote during a first special legislative session and persuading Democrats in other states to take retaliatory steps. Republican House leadership assigned state law enforcement officers to monitor Democrats to ensure they would not leave the state again. One Democratic representative, Nicole Collier, slept in the Capitol building on Monday night rather than accept a police escort. Republicans, including Trump, have openly acknowledged that the new map is aimed at increasing their political power. The party currently controls 25 of the state's 38 districts under a Republican-drawn map that was passed four years ago. Democrats and civil rights groups have said the new map dilutes the voting power of racial minorities in violation of federal law and have vowed to sue. Nationally, Republicans captured the 435-seat U.S. House in 2024 by only three seats. The party of the president historically loses House seats in the first midterm election, and Trump's approval ratings have sagged since he took office in January.
