UH President responds to Trump executive orders impacting university
Hensel emphasized that she is working closely with Hawaii's congressional delegation, Gov. Josh Green, the state attorney general, and community partners to determine how best to move forward.
LOVE BITES is back for Valentine's day
'I want to assure members of this community that leaders across the university are meeting regularly and working hard, in collaboration with the Board of Regents, to determine how we will respond to these orders,' Hensel said. 'We are also working with the governor's team and members of the legislature to ensure a coordinated and thoughtful response.'
Hensel stressed the importance of inclusion at UH, stating, 'Every individual on our campuses is a vital member of our ohana. No matter where you came from, who you are, what you believe, or who you love, we see you and you are welcome here.'
To facilitate community input, Hensel announced plans to form an advisory council made up of stakeholders from across the UH system.
Download the free KHON2 app for iOS or Android to stay informed on the latest news
The council will provide a public forum for discussion, with further details to be announced at a later date.
Copyright 2025 Nexstar Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
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Yahoo
2 hours ago
- Yahoo
To defeat Trumpism, Democrats must speak the language of pain
Across the country, many Americans are screaming in frustration: 'The rent is too high.' From Boston to New York to Florida to Michigan to California, affordable housing is increasingly difficult to find. The U.S. is in a housing crisis; rents keep rising while incomes stagnate or fall. Since 2019, home prices have surged by 60%. Recent polls have shown the depth and breadth of economic anxiety and anger Americans are feeling about the economy. According to YouGov, for the week ending Aug. 16, 53% of Americans believe that the economy is getting worse. A majority believe the country and the economy are headed in the wrong direction under President Donald Trump's leadership. Inflation is causing the price of many basic food and household goods to increase; in July, the consumer price index rose by 2.7%, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. This increase in costs can be attributed, at least in part, to Trump's tariffs. Millions of Americans are being laid off from their private sector jobs; more than 50,000 people have also been fired or furloughed from federal jobs by the Trump administration. These job losses have not been felt equally: Around 300,000 Black women have left the labor force in the last three months because of such factors as Trump's witch hunt against diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) initiatives, as well as cuts to federal jobs. The latest jobs report from the Bureau of Labor Statistics indicates that the administration's mass deportation campaign, and revoking of visas for skilled workers and professionals, are also imperiling economic growth. Trump's Big Vile Bill is in the process of slashing trillions from the social safety net, including Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security and other programs that support vulnerable communities. The goal? More money for the richest Americans and corporations. As winter approaches, the legislation will also cause an increase in utility bills. On top of all this, Mark Zandi, chief economist at Moody's Analytics, told the Telegraph in June that he believes 'that as much as a third of [the U.S.] economy' is effectively in a recession, citing manufacturing, construction, transportation, distribution and wholesaling. 'Manufacturing is in recession. Retail is holding on by its thumbs,' he said. 'The industries that are going to get nailed, they're the kind of working class, low-to-middle income kind of job.' If the U.S. does fall into a recession, it will largely be the result of the Trump administration's policies. Will Democrats respond with a clear, bold plan and direct message? Or will they continue to lose the messaging and branding war to Donald Trump and the Republican party? 'Trumpflation' and a failing economy are themes Democrats can use to slow Trump and MAGA's legislative agenda. Moreover, a compelling message about the state of the economy under Trump could resonate with a swath of voters who drifted his way in 2024 — and now find themselves disaffected. 'Mr. Trump was re-elected on a wave of economic pessimism,' according to The Economist, 'telling voters that 'incomes will skyrocket, inflation will vanish completely, jobs will come roaring back and the middle class will prosper like never, ever before' during his second term. So far, they have been disappointed. Ratings of his handling of the economy and inflation were net positive shortly after his inauguration. They have since fallen to strongly negative in the wake of his declarations of trade war and the ensuing response of investors.' A July AP/NORC poll showed that almost half of Americans report that Trump's policies have personally hurt them. But as I explained in a previous essay, individual perceptions of statistics are complicated by psychology. In this case, a person can be shown statistics about the overall health of the economy, but they will almost certainly interpret that data — accepting or rejecting it — through a personal lens. In essence, 'the economy' is an abstraction that individuals and groups give meaning. Democrats will have to confront a cruel irony about economic conditions and the American voter. The economy consistently does better under Democratic presidents. It's a vicious cycle of events: Republicans break things, Democrats spend years fixing them — and then the GOP takes credit for the positive outcome, all while decrying 'big government' and 'social engineering.' President Joe Biden's horribly named 'Inflation Reduction Act' is the most recent example. But contrary to the facts, Americans generally believe the economy performs better under Republican presidents than Democrats. This is a result of successful messaging and branding by the GOP. At least since Ronald Reagan's 1980 presidential campaign, Republicans have spent decades branding themselves as the part of 'entrepreneurs,' 'free markets,' 'capitalism' and being 'good for the economy,' as compared to Democrats, whom they deplore as being for 'big government' and 'taxing and spending' to take money from 'hard working Americans' to give it to 'takers,' 'welfare queens' and other 'parasites' and 'lazy' people. A recent series of polls show that Democrats are viewed by a plurality, if not a majority, of Americans as being out of touch with their real needs and concerns. Even more troubling is how an equal percentage of Americans now believe the GOP is 'looking out for the interests of people like you.' This is a marked shift. In 2023, the Democrats enjoyed a 23% advantage over Republicans on that question. Democrats are not without blame for this, given that they helped to advance the neoliberal gangster capitalist economic regime of globalization, outsourcing, the financialization of everyday life and society, and a state of permanent economic precarity for the average American — specifically those who do not belong to the moneyed classes. In a story published by the New York Times, long-time Democratic pollster John Anzalone recently diagnosed the problem Democrats are confronting. 'They're doing nothing to move their own numbers because they don't have an economic message,' he said. 'They think that this is about Trump's numbers getting worse…They need to worry about their numbers.' Democrats, the story continued, are perceived by many Americans as being out of touch and too focused on 'identity politics.' The Times spoke with Kendall Wood, a 32-year-old Henrico County, Va., truck driver who voted for Biden in 2020 and switched to Trump in 2024. 'It seemed like they were more concerned with DEI and LGBTQ issues and really just things that didn't pertain to me or concern me at all,' Wood said. 'They weren't concerned with, really, kitchen-table issues.' Today's Democrats are losing the messaging war because they are not skilled in making emotional appeals that emphasize tangible connections between policy and people's everyday lives — and pain. In all, Democrats are too cerebral, abstract and 'wonky.' By comparison, Trump, like other authoritarian populists, is an expert in political sadism. But as historian Timothy Snyder has explained, Trumpism and MAGA actually offer their followers fake populism that does not materially improve their lives, and they serve it with a dose of cruelty against an enemy they designate as the Other. When Democrats do talk about pain, there is a genuine ethic of care and concern, which in turn impacts their public policy and political vision. 'Liberals believe in compassion toward others-they believe that subjective claims about pain ought to be taken seriously and endorse broad-minded approaches to relief,' Princeton University historian Keith Wailoo explained in a 2014 interview with The American Prospect. 'Conservatives believe in stoic, grin-and-bear-it approaches to pain. They believe people should push through pain despite discomfort in order to get back to work.' But Democrats must learn to do better at speaking the language of pain. They need a unified message that centers on empathy — and bold policies. It should be tailored to specific issues and as straightforward as this: 'Donald Trump and Republicans are causing clear and direct harm to you, your loved ones and your community. Democrats will protect you and make your life and future much better. Trump and the Republicans are hurting you.' Democrats also sometimes stand on their principles to their own political detriment. When COVID relief checks were sent out in 2020, Trump made the very astute decision to sign them. His action created a relationship in the minds of many voters: He cared enough about their welfare to send them 'free' money. Biden had the same opportunity when his administration mailed another round of checks a year later, but he decided that signing them was tacky and beneath the office of the president. Evidence suggests that low information voters actually believed Trump would give them more money if he won the 2024 election. That's in the past and can't be changed. But Democrats now have other opportunities to seize the narrative as Trump's Big Vile Bill causes more economic misery. But will they? In red states such as Missouri, Indiana, Oklahoma and Montana, Democrats are using bright yellow billboards to communicate how Trump and his MAGA Republicans are responsible for closing down rural hospitals. The messaging is direct and powerful: Trump and the GOP are making you sick. Democrats should expand this model of direct and transparent communication to other issues as well. The most effective marketing and advertising wins the heart first — and only then the head and the brain. The Democrats and their consulting class, along with many others, have forgotten that first principle. Donald Trump and his messengers have not. This is why they keep winning, and it's also why Democrats have been largely ineffective at stopping them. The post To defeat Trumpism, Democrats must speak the language of pain appeared first on
CNN
4 hours ago
- CNN
How back-to-school will look different this year under Trump 2.0
The yellow school buses, crisp spiral notebooks and cramped dorm rooms are still around – but students and parents can expect an element of uncertainty and confusion this school year. President Donald Trump's second administration has used the power of the presidency to pressure university and K-12 schools to retreat from diversity, equality, and inclusion initiatives and support for transgender students; pull back funding from research universities; throttle K-12 funding sources; and crack down on immigrants and foreign students. The US education system faces further upheaval due to Trump's signature 'Big Beautiful Bill,' which will upend student loans, school voucher programs and university endowments in the coming years. And then there are the broader economic, technological and cultural changes affecting schools, such as concerns about tariffs and inflation, the rise of artificial intelligence in classrooms and the growing movement to ban cell phones during the school day. Taken together, the theme of this back-to-school season is uncertainty, education experts told CNN. 'While there have been some new policies and a rash of executive orders, I think there's still a lack of clarity around what that actually means for school districts and for universities,' said Kris DeFilippis, clinical professor at New York University's Steinhardt School of Culture, Education, and Human Development. 'There is this sort of chaos and confusion that is leading to a lot of this, even around funding.' 'The biggest theme that I hear when I talk to people who work in schools is a feeling of uncertainty,' said Erica Meltzer, the national editor at Chalkbeat, a nonprofit news organization covering education. Still, the US education system is so localized, particularly on the K-12 level, that many students, parents and teachers may not see much change at all. 'Federal law essentially says the federal government cannot direct curriculum instruction, they can't shape what happens day-to-day in schools. That is still the case,' said Jon Valant, director of the Brown Center on Education Policy at The Brookings Institution, the nonprofit think tank. 'It's not going to be that extreme because it's just not the federal government that controls that stuff for the most part.' One of the most notable changes to education under the new Trump administration is its effort to pressure schools to retreat from so-called 'woke' policies, such as initiatives for Diversity, Equity and Inclusion, or DEI. On Trump's second day in office, he signed an executive order calling out institutions of higher education for using the 'dangerous, demeaning, and immoral race- and sex-based preferences under the guise of so-called 'diversity, equality, and inclusion (DEI).'' To enforce these changes, the administration has in some cases withheld federal funds from schools, citing violations of civil rights law. Due to the pressure, many universities and schools have changed or disbanded their DEI programs. But experts said the term DEI remains a bit vague, and it's unclear if schools have moved away from certain policies or whether they've just changed their names to something less controversial. 'I don't think that work has gone away. In some cases it's required by law,' said Jon Fansmith, a senior vice president at the American Council on Education. 'You have to support students based on all sorts of reasonable accommodations that they're entitled to under civil rights laws. In addition, no school wants to be an unwelcoming or unfriendly place to their students.' Meltzer, the Chalkbeat editor, said there's a lot of variation in how school districts are responding to the increased scrutiny on DEI programs. 'Does a school have a luncheon to celebrate Black students or Native American students at graduation time? Is there a Future Black Engineers club at a high school? Is there a mentorship program for younger teachers of color?' she said. 'These are some of the types of programming that are under scrutiny and that people aren't sure will they or won't they get in trouble for that kind of thing.' The first year of the Trump administration has also featured a reversal of support and accommodations for LGBTQ students – transgender ones in particular. An executive order on Trump's first day back in office, titled 'Defending Women from Gender Ideology Extremism and Restoring Biological Truth to the Federal Government,' directed the government to use the term 'sex' instead of 'gender' and said that humans are either male or female, determined by biology at conception. In February, Trump signed an executive order titled 'Keeping Men Out of Women's Sports' with the goal of banning transgender women and girls from competing in women's and girls' sports. The NCAA subsequently announced an overhaul of its transgender athlete policy to limit transgender women from participating in women's sports. Last month, faced with the prospect of losing $175 million in federal funding, the University of Pennsylvania agreed to block transgender women athletes from female sports teams and erased the records set by swimmer Lia Thomas in 2022. On the K-12 level, the Department of Justice has filed lawsuits against California and Maine over their policies on transgender students' sports participation. DeFilippis, who worked as a middle and high school teacher, said he was worried for LGBTQ students trying to understand their own identities in this new environment. 'The executive branch has signaled that LGBTQ students and trans students are generally less safe than they were to exist as who they are in school districts,' he said. However, he noted that it depends on the individual school district and state law. Compared to K-12 schools, universities and colleges typically rely more heavily on federal dollars, so the Trump administration's efforts to cut funding and scientific research grants have had a more significant impact. Most prominently, Ivy League schools Columbia and Harvard have faced the biggest challenges, with the federal government threatening to withhold funding and research grants of all kinds due to what the Trump administration says are violations of civil rights law on campus — in particular, accusations of antisemitism during protests over the Israel-Hamas war. Columbia agreed last month to pay the government over $220 million to resolve several federal probes into allegations that the university had violated anti-discrimination laws. The university did not admit to any wrongdoing, but the settlement was crafted to 'allow our essential research partnership with the federal government to get back on track,' acting university president Claire Shipman said in a statement, citing hundreds of millions of dollars at stake. Meanwhile, the government has frozen $2 billion in funding for Harvard, leading the university to file a lawsuit to claw those funds back. That case remains open. The Trump administration has similarly frozen funding for UCLA – about $584 million is suspended and at risk, the chancellor said – as part of what the administration has termed efforts to crack down on antisemitism and protect civil rights. The cuts to federal research funding – whether frozen, cancelled, or never allocated – have hit higher education of all kinds, from Ivy League institutions to local colleges, Fansmith said. The federal cuts especially targeted research touching on issues of gender or race. 'Students in those fields who are looking to come back to campus and hoping to pursue research work and pursue that as part of their academic studies are going to find a different environment that will vary from school to school … but everybody is going to be impacted,' Fansmith said. A delay in the release of federal funds for K-12 schools has had its own costs, too. Nearly $7 billion of funding was supposed to go to the states for K-12 education programs on July 1, but a day beforehand, the Department of Education sent a letter saying the money would be frozen pending a review. The funds, which were approved by Congress, were expected to go toward school districts and nonprofits that run free enrichment programs, such as teacher education and recruitment and English language programs. The White House Office of Management and Budget claimed at the time that 'many' of these programs 'have been grossly misused to subsidize a radical leftwing agenda.' Weeks later, the Trump administration unfroze the funds and released the money to the states. 'Guardrails are in place to ensure these funds will not be used in violation of Executive Orders or administration policy,' an OMB official said. Even though the money has since been sent out, the pause in releasing those funds led to a scramble among school districts and cutbacks in budgets. 'The only rational response to an uncertain funding stream is to not budget it into your spending,' said Chase Christensen, the superintendent of Sheridan County School District 3 in Wyoming. DeFilippis also said budget uncertainty has consequences: 'So I know a lot of districts have just entirely paused things until they figure out exactly what they're going to get (and) when they're going to get it.' Valant said the government's decision to back down from its freeze shows that federal funding for K-12 education still has bipartisan support. 'They have broad support across the American public and across Congress,' he said. 'Those funds are used everywhere.' Though not directly education-related, the Trump administration's crackdown on immigration has sparked fear among immigrant families of schoolchildren in the US and a decline in foreigners coming to the US to study, experts said. For K-12 schools, immigrant families may be more wary of attending community events due to ICE's aggressive immigration enforcement. In Los Angeles, for example, parents like Anna Bermudez and her husband noticed other parents were absent from first day of school drop-offs compared to previous years. 'It sucks, and it's horrible and heartbreaking,' she told CNN last week. 'It should be a happy day, and bringing our kids to school feeling safe. But the fact that you don't feel safe, even dropping them off, you know? It's very emotional.' Valant said the fear could impact attendance as well as the learning environment in some school districts with heavy immigrant populations. 'A lot of people are nervous about what the general threat of ICE and immigration raids and enforcement could mean for attendance rates, say, of undocumented kids or kids with undocumented relatives,' he said. As for higher education, a record 1.1 million international students studied in the US during the 2023-2024 academic year, with India the top country of origin, according to the Institute of International Education. However, universities and colleges are expecting a significant drop in international students this coming year, Fansmith said. 'What you get is – both for students on American campuses already from foreign countries and students abroad considering it – they just don't know how safe they feel committing to coming to the United States to study,' he said. The 'Big Beautiful Bill,' the name for the massive tax and budget bill signed into law by President Trump, makes significant changes to the US education system in the coming years, including: Student loan changes: The law puts a cap on Parent PLUS loans, limits the maximum graduate student loans and overhauls the student loan repayment plan. School vouchers: Using an unusual tax structure, the law creates a national school voucher program that states can choose to opt into. Raised endowment tax: Colleges with endowments over $2 million per enrolled student must pay an endowment tax of 8%, up from 1.4%. Though the exact details are still to be determined, the legislation has already pushed universities to make cuts to their budgets and pressed schools to consider the potential loss of enrollment. Yale University, for example, said it will pay an estimated $280 million in the first year of the increased endowment tax. The university cited that cost in announcing a 90-day hiring freeze and 5% budget cut in non-salary expenses. DeFilippis, the NYU professor, said the uncertainty and confusion around the changes has meant students are much less willing to take out loans, unsure of what type of support they'll get from the federal government. Some of the biggest changes this school year stem from broader cultural, technological and economic trends, far removed from politics. 'Schools don't operate in a vacuum where they're only affected by education policy and education programs,' Valant said. 'They're really integrated with everything else in American society.' For one, at least 31 states have passed bans or restrictions on cell phone usage during school hours over the last few years, according to a tally from Education Week. Spurred in part by Jonathan Haidt's bestselling book 'The Anxious Generation,' the bans reflect a recognition that cell phones and social media distract from a safe and open learning environment. The crackdown on cell phones also comes amid the rise in artificial intelligence, which threatens to upend school education. Will this new technology enhance student learning or just make it easy for them to quickly 'write' a 500-word essay? Will AI help teachers spend more time with their students, or will it replace them altogether with a chatbot? Schools are quickly having to answer those questions as the technology gains mainstream adoption. Finally, schools are sensitive to economic downturns or higher prices due to tariffs and inflation. A recession this year could lead to cutbacks or reduced budgets for schools, with broader effects on the public. 'They are part of the economy, they are part of the community, often they are very large employers,' Meltzer said. 'To the extent that they feel constrained in their budget, that has a lot of ripple effects.' CNN's Andy Rose, Sunlen Serfaty, Riane Lumer, Tami Luhby, Amanda Musa and Betsy Klein contributed to this report.
CNN
4 hours ago
- CNN
How back-to-school will look different this year under Trump 2.0
The yellow school buses, crisp spiral notebooks and cramped dorm rooms are still around – but students and parents can expect an element of uncertainty and confusion this school year. President Donald Trump's second administration has used the power of the presidency to pressure university and K-12 schools to retreat from diversity, equality, and inclusion initiatives and support for transgender students; pull back funding from research universities; throttle K-12 funding sources; and crack down on immigrants and foreign students. The US education system faces further upheaval due to Trump's signature 'Big Beautiful Bill,' which will upend student loans, school voucher programs and university endowments in the coming years. And then there are the broader economic, technological and cultural changes affecting schools, such as concerns about tariffs and inflation, the rise of artificial intelligence in classrooms and the growing movement to ban cell phones during the school day. Taken together, the theme of this back-to-school season is uncertainty, education experts told CNN. 'While there have been some new policies and a rash of executive orders, I think there's still a lack of clarity around what that actually means for school districts and for universities,' said Kris DeFilippis, clinical professor at New York University's Steinhardt School of Culture, Education, and Human Development. 'There is this sort of chaos and confusion that is leading to a lot of this, even around funding.' 'The biggest theme that I hear when I talk to people who work in schools is a feeling of uncertainty,' said Erica Meltzer, the national editor at Chalkbeat, a nonprofit news organization covering education. Still, the US education system is so localized, particularly on the K-12 level, that many students, parents and teachers may not see much change at all. 'Federal law essentially says the federal government cannot direct curriculum instruction, they can't shape what happens day-to-day in schools. That is still the case,' said Jon Valant, director of the Brown Center on Education Policy at The Brookings Institution, the nonprofit think tank. 'It's not going to be that extreme because it's just not the federal government that controls that stuff for the most part.' One of the most notable changes to education under the new Trump administration is its effort to pressure schools to retreat from so-called 'woke' policies, such as initiatives for Diversity, Equity and Inclusion, or DEI. On Trump's second day in office, he signed an executive order calling out institutions of higher education for using the 'dangerous, demeaning, and immoral race- and sex-based preferences under the guise of so-called 'diversity, equality, and inclusion (DEI).'' To enforce these changes, the administration has in some cases withheld federal funds from schools, citing violations of civil rights law. Due to the pressure, many universities and schools have changed or disbanded their DEI programs. But experts said the term DEI remains a bit vague, and it's unclear if schools have moved away from certain policies or whether they've just changed their names to something less controversial. 'I don't think that work has gone away. In some cases it's required by law,' said Jon Fansmith, a senior vice president at the American Council on Education. 'You have to support students based on all sorts of reasonable accommodations that they're entitled to under civil rights laws. In addition, no school wants to be an unwelcoming or unfriendly place to their students.' Meltzer, the Chalkbeat editor, said there's a lot of variation in how school districts are responding to the increased scrutiny on DEI programs. 'Does a school have a luncheon to celebrate Black students or Native American students at graduation time? Is there a Future Black Engineers club at a high school? Is there a mentorship program for younger teachers of color?' she said. 'These are some of the types of programming that are under scrutiny and that people aren't sure will they or won't they get in trouble for that kind of thing.' The first year of the Trump administration has also featured a reversal of support and accommodations for LGBTQ students – transgender ones in particular. An executive order on Trump's first day back in office, titled 'Defending Women from Gender Ideology Extremism and Restoring Biological Truth to the Federal Government,' directed the government to use the term 'sex' instead of 'gender' and said that humans are either male or female, determined by biology at conception. In February, Trump signed an executive order titled 'Keeping Men Out of Women's Sports' with the goal of banning transgender women and girls from competing in women's and girls' sports. The NCAA subsequently announced an overhaul of its transgender athlete policy to limit transgender women from participating in women's sports. Last month, faced with the prospect of losing $175 million in federal funding, the University of Pennsylvania agreed to block transgender women athletes from female sports teams and erased the records set by swimmer Lia Thomas in 2022. On the K-12 level, the Department of Justice has filed lawsuits against California and Maine over their policies on transgender students' sports participation. DeFilippis, who worked as a middle and high school teacher, said he was worried for LGBTQ students trying to understand their own identities in this new environment. 'The executive branch has signaled that LGBTQ students and trans students are generally less safe than they were to exist as who they are in school districts,' he said. However, he noted that it depends on the individual school district and state law. Compared to K-12 schools, universities and colleges typically rely more heavily on federal dollars, so the Trump administration's efforts to cut funding and scientific research grants have had a more significant impact. Most prominently, Ivy League schools Columbia and Harvard have faced the biggest challenges, with the federal government threatening to withhold funding and research grants of all kinds due to what the Trump administration says are violations of civil rights law on campus — in particular, accusations of antisemitism during protests over the Israel-Hamas war. Columbia agreed last month to pay the government over $220 million to resolve several federal probes into allegations that the university had violated anti-discrimination laws. The university did not admit to any wrongdoing, but the settlement was crafted to 'allow our essential research partnership with the federal government to get back on track,' acting university president Claire Shipman said in a statement, citing hundreds of millions of dollars at stake. Meanwhile, the government has frozen $2 billion in funding for Harvard, leading the university to file a lawsuit to claw those funds back. That case remains open. The Trump administration has similarly frozen funding for UCLA – about $584 million is suspended and at risk, the chancellor said – as part of what the administration has termed efforts to crack down on antisemitism and protect civil rights. The cuts to federal research funding – whether frozen, cancelled, or never allocated – have hit higher education of all kinds, from Ivy League institutions to local colleges, Fansmith said. The federal cuts especially targeted research touching on issues of gender or race. 'Students in those fields who are looking to come back to campus and hoping to pursue research work and pursue that as part of their academic studies are going to find a different environment that will vary from school to school … but everybody is going to be impacted,' Fansmith said. A delay in the release of federal funds for K-12 schools has had its own costs, too. Nearly $7 billion of funding was supposed to go to the states for K-12 education programs on July 1, but a day beforehand, the Department of Education sent a letter saying the money would be frozen pending a review. The funds, which were approved by Congress, were expected to go toward school districts and nonprofits that run free enrichment programs, such as teacher education and recruitment and English language programs. The White House Office of Management and Budget claimed at the time that 'many' of these programs 'have been grossly misused to subsidize a radical leftwing agenda.' Weeks later, the Trump administration unfroze the funds and released the money to the states. 'Guardrails are in place to ensure these funds will not be used in violation of Executive Orders or administration policy,' an OMB official said. Even though the money has since been sent out, the pause in releasing those funds led to a scramble among school districts and cutbacks in budgets. 'The only rational response to an uncertain funding stream is to not budget it into your spending,' said Chase Christensen, the superintendent of Sheridan County School District 3 in Wyoming. DeFilippis also said budget uncertainty has consequences: 'So I know a lot of districts have just entirely paused things until they figure out exactly what they're going to get (and) when they're going to get it.' Valant said the government's decision to back down from its freeze shows that federal funding for K-12 education still has bipartisan support. 'They have broad support across the American public and across Congress,' he said. 'Those funds are used everywhere.' Though not directly education-related, the Trump administration's crackdown on immigration has sparked fear among immigrant families of schoolchildren in the US and a decline in foreigners coming to the US to study, experts said. For K-12 schools, immigrant families may be more wary of attending community events due to ICE's aggressive immigration enforcement. In Los Angeles, for example, parents like Anna Bermudez and her husband noticed other parents were absent from first day of school drop-offs compared to previous years. 'It sucks, and it's horrible and heartbreaking,' she told CNN last week. 'It should be a happy day, and bringing our kids to school feeling safe. But the fact that you don't feel safe, even dropping them off, you know? It's very emotional.' Valant said the fear could impact attendance as well as the learning environment in some school districts with heavy immigrant populations. 'A lot of people are nervous about what the general threat of ICE and immigration raids and enforcement could mean for attendance rates, say, of undocumented kids or kids with undocumented relatives,' he said. As for higher education, a record 1.1 million international students studied in the US during the 2023-2024 academic year, with India the top country of origin, according to the Institute of International Education. However, universities and colleges are expecting a significant drop in international students this coming year, Fansmith said. 'What you get is – both for students on American campuses already from foreign countries and students abroad considering it – they just don't know how safe they feel committing to coming to the United States to study,' he said. The 'Big Beautiful Bill,' the name for the massive tax and budget bill signed into law by President Trump, makes significant changes to the US education system in the coming years, including: Student loan changes: The law puts a cap on Parent PLUS loans, limits the maximum graduate student loans and overhauls the student loan repayment plan. School vouchers: Using an unusual tax structure, the law creates a national school voucher program that states can choose to opt into. Raised endowment tax: Colleges with endowments over $2 million per enrolled student must pay an endowment tax of 8%, up from 1.4%. Though the exact details are still to be determined, the legislation has already pushed universities to make cuts to their budgets and pressed schools to consider the potential loss of enrollment. Yale University, for example, said it will pay an estimated $280 million in the first year of the increased endowment tax. The university cited that cost in announcing a 90-day hiring freeze and 5% budget cut in non-salary expenses. DeFilippis, the NYU professor, said the uncertainty and confusion around the changes has meant students are much less willing to take out loans, unsure of what type of support they'll get from the federal government. Some of the biggest changes this school year stem from broader cultural, technological and economic trends, far removed from politics. 'Schools don't operate in a vacuum where they're only affected by education policy and education programs,' Valant said. 'They're really integrated with everything else in American society.' For one, at least 31 states have passed bans or restrictions on cell phone usage during school hours over the last few years, according to a tally from Education Week. Spurred in part by Jonathan Haidt's bestselling book 'The Anxious Generation,' the bans reflect a recognition that cell phones and social media distract from a safe and open learning environment. The crackdown on cell phones also comes amid the rise in artificial intelligence, which threatens to upend school education. Will this new technology enhance student learning or just make it easy for them to quickly 'write' a 500-word essay? Will AI help teachers spend more time with their students, or will it replace them altogether with a chatbot? Schools are quickly having to answer those questions as the technology gains mainstream adoption. Finally, schools are sensitive to economic downturns or higher prices due to tariffs and inflation. A recession this year could lead to cutbacks or reduced budgets for schools, with broader effects on the public. 'They are part of the economy, they are part of the community, often they are very large employers,' Meltzer said. 'To the extent that they feel constrained in their budget, that has a lot of ripple effects.' CNN's Andy Rose, Sunlen Serfaty, Riane Lumer, Tami Luhby, Amanda Musa and Betsy Klein contributed to this report.
