Ed Dept. Nominee Vows Aggressive Civil Rights Enforcement Despite Mass Layoffs
The mass layoffs, part of Trump's plan to eliminate the Education Department, fell particularly hard on the civil rights office, which lost more than half its staff and currently has a backlog of more than 25,000 discrimination cases. Despite that, Ritchey said she is 'always going to advocate' for the office to have 'the resources and tools it needs to do its job,' while at the same time calling out only those types of cases prioritized by the administration.
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'If I am confirmed, the department will not stand idly by while Jewish students are attacked and discriminated against,' Richey said. 'We will stop forcing schools to let boys and men into female sports and spaces,' she continued, referring to inclusive school policies that allow transgender students to participate in school athletics and use restroom facilities that align with their gender identities.
Richey led the civil rights office on an interim basis during Trump's first term amid COVID's widespread disruptions and she also worked for the office under President George. W. Bush. She is a prominent force in Republican-led state efforts to deny civil rights protections to transgender youth, promote school choice and parental rights, crack down on curriculum that focuses on racism, and weed out diversity, equity and inclusion efforts.
During Thursday's hearing, lawmakers put particular emphasis on Richey's record involving LGBTQ+ youth, with Democratic Sen. Tammy Baldwin of Wisconsin pointing to a recent climate survey where more than half of these students reported experiencing discrimination at school.
'These kids are in dire need of protection against discrimination,' Baldwin said. 'If confirmed, I hope you will act in the best interest of all children.'
Meanwhile, Republican Sen. Tommy Tuberville, a retired college football coach from Alabama, described permitting transgender students to compete in school sports as 'a huge problem' and dangerous.
Richey, a former basketball player, said she would have had to sit out had transgender students been allowed to participate in school sports when she was a student.
'I could not have competed against biological men, it's just not something that I would have been able to do,' she said.
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The Trump administration maintains that policies allowing transgender students to participate in school sports 'actually violated Title IX because they deprive women and girls of the opportunity to participate in athletics.'
'I'm very proud of the way the secretary and the president have prioritized this issue, and I'm certainly committed to vigorously enforcing it and continuing to pursue these cases,' she said.
Richey's interim stint leading the civil rights office included the Trump administration's response to a 2020 U.S. Supreme Court decision extending anti-discrimination protections to LGBTQ+ employees in the workplace. The administration said the ruling did not apply to schools under Title IX, the federal law prohibiting gender discrimination.
The Biden administration then based much of its rewrite of Title IX regulations around that same Supreme Court decision, instructing schools to allow transgender students to use restrooms and pronouns that match their gender identity. The rule, no longer in effect, sparked lawsuits from red states and hard-right parent groups like Moms for Liberty.
In 2021, near the end of her interim leadership, Richey launched investigations into allegations that the state of Indiana and three districts — Fairfax County, Virginia, Los Angeles and Seattle — failed to provide special education services during the COVID school shutdowns. Both the Los Angeles and Fairfax probes resulted in agreements to make up for missed services.
Richey said her commitment to protecting the civil rights of children with disabilities reflects her own learning experiences. She was diagnosed with a brian tumor nearly 20 years ago, she explained, and relied on federal protections to access educational programs.
'I know firsthand the importance and the significance of our civil rights laws and there's no greater work than leading an agency responsible for ensuring that students get the services they need,' Richey said.
Whether the Education Department will be capable of fulfilling that mission is now being fought over in court. On Tuesday, an appeals court rejected the administration's request to lift an injunction stopping it from further dismantling the department and ordering it to reinstate the thousands of Education Department employees who lost their jobs. The administration has said it will appeal to the Supreme Court.
Earlier this year, the nonprofit National Center for Youth Law filed a separate lawsuit against the Education Department, alleging specific staff reductions at the civil rights office rendered it incapable of carrying out civil rights enforcement efforts mandated by Congress, with particular harm to students of color, female students and LGBTQ+ youth.
Johnathan Smith, the center's chief of staff and general counsel, dismissed any assertion that the administration was interested in protecting students' civil rights.
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'Nothing about this confirmation changes the fact that this administration has consistently gutted OCR by laying off staff, by closing regional offices and by sending the message that discrimination just simply isn't a priority for them and their work,' he told The 74 this week.
Richey's appointment has largely been embraced by conservative groups like the American Enterprise Institute. In a blog post, the think tank lauded the nominee for her role in 'ambitious reform efforts' in Virginia and Florida, and urged her to end the 'Biden-Harris team's unconscionable 'catch and release' approach to antisemitism, where some of the worst offenses in decades were treated with indifference.'
On Wednesday, the Office for Civil Rights notified the accreditor for Columbia University that the institution violated federal anti-discrimination laws and had 'acted with deliberate indifference towards the harassment of Jewish students.' Also on Wednesday, the Trump administration sought to restrict international students from entering the country to attend Harvard University as the administration cracks down on the institution over its response to protests during the 2023-24 school year over the Israel-Gaza war.
Richey said Thursday that antisemitism has intensified at U.S. institutions in recent years and the civil rights office will continue to prioritize efforts to combat it.
Meanwhile, Democrats accused the Trump administration during Thursday's hearing of opening a slew of civil rights cases — including allegations of antisemitism on university campuses — primarily motivated by politics.
The administration has also sought to revoke the visas and deport international students for their participation in protests, their social media postings and expressing opinions in their college newspapers.
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Sen. Ed Markey, a Democrat from Massachusetts, asked Richey if she would object to actions that 'do not afford due process' to students and charged the Trump administration with 'treating American freedom and dissent as the enemy.'
'Do you endorse ripping funding from researchers and students, stealing educational opportunity from international students, abducting students from campuses for asserting their First Amendment rights and continuing to threaten colleges and universities that refuse to comply with lawless demands?' Markey asked.
In response, Richey stated simply she would 'commit to following OCR's regulations and OCR's case processing manual.'
The Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions is expected to vote in the coming weeks on Richey's nomination before it moves to the full Senate for confirmation.
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Business Journals
12 minutes ago
- Business Journals
Opportunity Zone tracts that could be in play across Los Angeles
Story Highlights New Opportunity Zone program reduces eligible areas by 26%. Governors must select zones by July 1, 2026. Intense lobbying is expected for limited Opportunity Zone designations. The second iteration of the federal Opportunity Zone program is expected to have fewer zones than its predecessor, potentially sparking intense lobbying efforts to determine which census tracts qualify for the high-stakes designation. The sweeping tax-and-spend legislation enacted last month — President Trump's One Big Beautiful Bill — changed the criteria of the previous version of the Opportunity Zone program in a way that ultimately will shrink the number of eligible areas. The program by definition is intended to "spur economic growth and job creation in low-income communities while providing tax benefits to investors." GET TO KNOW YOUR CITY Find Local Events Near You Connect with a community of local professionals. Explore All Events In the original program, passed during President Trump's first term as part of the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act of 2017, 42,176 census tracts were eligible to become designated Opportunity Zones. Ultimately, governors in each state and territory picked 8,764 of those locations to receive the tax-advantaged investments made possible by the program. In the new version of the Opportunity Zone program, Congress narrowed the definition of "low-income community" to census tracts with a median household income that does not exceed 70% of an area's median income, down from an 80% threshold previously. A census tract also would be eligible if it has a poverty rate above 20%. Congress also removed the ability of governors to nominate census tracts that would not otherwise be eligible but were allowed in the previous edition of the program because they were 'contiguous' to an eligible tract. Eliminating those tracts in the program's new version shrinks the eligibility pool even further. The federal government has not yet published an official list of eligible tracts under the new law. But, according to an analysis of census tracts and the most recently available poverty data by The Business Journals, about 26,000 tracts appear to meet the eligibility criteria for an Opportunity Zone designation under the parameters of the revamped program. If governors were to then pick the maximum-allowed 25% of those sites to be Opportunity Zones, that would mean about 6,500 zones in the program — a nearly 26% drop from the number of available sites in the program's first iteration. That figure is in line with other estimates that have found the number of eligible Opportunity Zones could fall by more than 20% under the new law. To determine the estimated number of zones that could be available locally under the new version of the program, The Business Journals analyzed the 2025 Census Bureau list of all tracts and applied the new eligibility rules to those tracts. The analysis included poverty rate data from the Census Bureau's American Community Survey. In and around Los Angeles, more than 1,300 census tracts appear to qualify under the new criteria. Here's a look at the number of eligible tracts by county, according to The Business Journals' analysis: Los Angeles County: 846 tracts San Bernardino County: 159 Orange County: 138 Riverside County: 131 Ventura County: 44 New rules expected to fuel fights For Jacob Naig, a real estate agent, contractor and Opportunity Zone investor in Des Moines, Iowa, having fewer tracts means every mayor, chamber of commerce official and developers' coalition is going to have to fight harder to ensure their areas are included in the program. 'Look for polished census tract pitch decks, not only letters from governors' offices," Naig said in an email. "In Iowa, I can already see Des Moines, Cedar Rapids, Davenport and who knows where else jockeying for a limited pool of urban tracts, while rural counties protest that they were forgotten last time and need a carve‑out.' Naig said there also are upsides to fewer Opportunity Zones. The changes should ensure that capital can go to truly distressed regions and not so-called 'tourist' areas as in the previous version of the program — places where no subsidy was truly needed to get developers to build. He also thinks states will devise clearer, more-transparent scoring rubrics, such as highlighting jobs or vacancy rates, to protect Opportunity Zone nominations from political blowback. He anticipates cities and states will pile on additional benefits such as facade grants, expedited permitting or special taxation zones, as well. 'States will codify what was previously ad hoc, and locals will create packages of incentives to sweeten tracts that appear scary on paper,' Naig said. Where Opportunity Zones could be located Some states will have many more eligible census tracts than others, according to The Business Journals' analysis. California tops all states in our estimate, with 2,738 census tracts that appear to be eligible, followed by Texas with 2,492 and New York with 1,649. Vermont, on the other hand, has just 19 such census tracts, according to our estimate, followed by Wyoming with 29 and Arkansas with 30. At a more-local level, the most-populous counties are at the top of the list for eligible number of census tracts, according to The Business Journals' analysis. That means Los Angeles County, with 846 tracts that appear to be eligible, followed by Chicago's Cook County, with 528. Harris County (Houston) in Texas has 526 eligible tracts, followed by New York's Kings County (Brooklyn) and Wayne County (Detroit) in Michigan. What will change for the program The new Opportunity Zone program calls for governors to identify their targeted sites by July 1, 2026, and for the program to officially open for investment on Jan. 1, 2027. That might seem like a lengthy timeline, but experts say business owners, landowners, investors and local-government officials should be taking action now — especially since the sun-up to designating new zones is likely to be a time of intense lobbying. Blake Christian, CEO at builder MIT Modular and an Opportunity Zone expert, said lobbying during the first round of the Opportunity Zone program was not pronounced because people were less aware of the full scope of the program and its potential. Governors ended up picking tracts that were already developed or were poorly suited to attract investment. Not this time, Christian said. 'Local lobbying has already begun, and with rural census tracts now more directly competing with urban areas, governors will be getting more public input than they may want,' Christian said. The original Opportunity Zones program saw about $89 billion in qualifying equity investments across 5,600 census tracts through the end of 2022, according to a working paper by the Economic Innovation Group — with expectations those investments will eventually total more than $100 billion. The group additionally noted that Opportunity Zones ultimately were responsible for a net increase of 313,000 housing units over a five-year period. Ahmed Whitt, director of the Center for Wealth Equity at Living Cities, said the new limitations on eligibility will likely discourage some real estate projects that contributed to the issues of gentrification and oversupply that plagued the program previously. 'We'll see more-intense lobbying, especially for select urban neighborhoods,' Whitt said. 'Still overall, the changes in 2.0 are likely to create a more-effective program by focusing on areas that truly need both investment and have growth potential.' Stay on top of the latest real estate news by signing up for The National Observer: Real Estate Edition.
Axios
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Defense industry is filling the Golden Dome vacuum
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The Democratic Party has spent months reevaluating its future in the aftermath of its losses last November and figuring out its direction ahead of the midterms. The party has experienced a battle for at least the past decade between its progressive and moderate wings for control of the party and the message pitched to voters. Finger-pointing followed former Vice President Harris's loss in 2024, with progressives getting blame from more moderate Democrats for contributing to a perception of the party as too far left. Coupled with some high-profile defeats for progressive candidates in key congressional and local races in 2024, the progressive wing didn't appear to be in a strong position entering this year. But progressives are much more optimistic now following results in some of the mayoral elections taking place this year in large cities. The first and biggest victory yet came with the surprise win from Mamdani, a New York State Assembly member backed by Democratic Socialists of America (DSA), in the primary over former Gov. Andrew Cuomo, who touted progressive accomplishments while in office but ran as a moderate. Most public and even Mamdani-aligned polling didn't show him leading ahead of the primary, but he outperformed expectations to win comfortably by double digits in the final round of the city's ranked-choice tabulation. Meanwhile, another DSA-backed candidate is seeking to gain momentum in Minneapolis after winning the city party's endorsement. Minnesota state Sen. Omar Fateh (D) won the endorsement last month over Mayor Jacob Frey (D), who is seeking his third term in office. Though Frey is filing an appeal to the decision over what he argues was a flawed process, after significant technological issues, the development nonetheless underscores the proxy battle taking place in the city's election. 'This endorsement is a message that Minneapolis residents are done with broken promises, vetoes, and politics as usual,' Fateh said in a post on X at the time. 'It's a mandate to build a city that works for all of us.' Most recently, Wilson took observers by surprise by finishing ahead of Harrell in the Seattle mayoral primary with about 51 percent of the vote to 41.4 percent for the incumbent mayor. The candidates will face off again in the November general election. Issues of affordability and public safety are playing key roles in the contest, as is the case for other large cities. Harrell has touted declining violent crime rates during his time as mayor and has pushed for increased hiring for the city's police force. Wilson, who previously expressed sympathy for the 'defund the police' movement but hasn't called for it during her campaign, has criticized Harrell over rising costs of living and housing affordability, while arguing that armed officers aren't needed to respond to mental health and other non-crime calls they receive. Gallo-Brown cast doubt on how much the public cares about 'labels' as opposed to who will find solutions to their problems. 'A lot of people, they kind of look at the Democratic Party or certain parts of it, and it's just business as usual,' he said. 'And so I think people like Katie, like Zohran, like other mayoral candidates around the country are showing people that another world is possible.' Harrell told The Hill in an interview that he wasn't surprised by the results given the 'angst' that voters expressed while his campaign conducted field work. He said he needs to remind voters that he's been a 'change agent' and helped turn the city around from the place it was in when he first took office, a time when the city was still coming out of the COVID-19 pandemic and facing much higher levels of crime. 'You don't want to sacrifice a proven leader, just because there's impressive-sounding rhetoric that seems to excite people,' he said. 'The rhetoric will not get change done. It's people who are capable and have done the work.' Some Democrats tempered expectations for the progressive challengers and argued that Minneapolis and Seattle's races aren't as directly comparable to New York City's. Corey Day, a former executive director of the Minnesota Democratic-Farmer-Labor Party, pointed to the controversy surrounding the process that resulted in Fateh's endorsement and Frey's appeal, which could change the city party's decision. He also said he doesn't believe the endorsement will be as critical to determining the winner as it would be for some city council races. Day called Fateh's candidacy a 'significant challenge' to Frey but said he expects the incumbent to make clear their differences ahead of November. The election will be conducted by a ranked-choice process in which all candidates for the office compete on the same ballot. The race doesn't have a primary, so no results on where voters stand will be available until the election happens. Frey also doesn't have the controversies that Mamdani's chief opponent, Cuomo, had to overcome in the New York race. 'Once both of these candidates are spotlighted, and I think when they start talking about their policies and their records, it's going to be pretty clear for voters that Jacob Frey is their choice,' Day said, arguing that Frey has also established his progressive bona fides. Ashik Siddique, a DSA co-chair, said voters are excited from candidates who show they're willing to fight for working class voters, and these types of candidates can win even outside these cities if they hone their message and have discipline. 'People are very motivated to see people like Zohran and Omar and others all over the country really standing up for clear economic demands that will address the ways people feel their day to day lives are getting worse, but also being able to confront the [Trump] administration when it's scapegoating people,' he said. DSA enthusiasm was on full display at its national convention this month following Mamdani's win. DSA isn't involved in the Seattle mayor's race, and Wilson hasn't run as a democratic socialist, but the race is still another example of progressives feeling bullish. Washington state Democratic strategist Ron Dotzauer said he expects the general election turnout to be much higher than that of the primary was, changing the electorate. He said the low turnout favored Wilson's constituency and other more liberal candidates. Dotzauer said Wilson's constituency is 'ironclad,' so the onus will be on Harrell to capitalize on the increased voter turnout. 2024 Election Coverage 'There's a scenario for each of them to win, and I think it's going to be very, very close,' he said. Harrell also argued that he has shown his progressive values in fighting to raise the minimum wage, setting an 'aggressive' climate policy and raising taxes on the largest businesses. He also pointed to a key endorsement he received from Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D-Wash.), a former chair of the Congressional Progressive Caucus. 'When people start calling people names or labeling them, they're not really looking at the hard work that's been achieved,' he said. 'And again, I'll that story during the general, but I think that should resonate in the minds of most voters.'
