Welcome back to After the First 100 Days, Inside Higher Ed’s weekly roundup of news from the Hill to the Oval Office. I’m your host, Jessica Blake, Inside Higher Ed’s federal policy reporter.
It’s Day 368 of the second Trump administration. We’ve surpassed the one-year mark for Trump 2.0 and we are only eight days out from Congress’s budget deadline.
But I want to turn our attention back to everyone’s favorite topic, negotiated rule making!
As regular readers of this newsletter know, I’ve spent weeks closely following the policy debates around Workforce Pell, student loan caps and accountability measures. I watched as Under Secretary Nicholas Kent and his staff at the Education Department managed to defy expectations and reach unanimous agreement on three highly contentious provisions from Trump’s One Big Beautiful Bill Act.
What I learned is that the approach he used to do so was a significant departure from how previous administrations engaged in negotiated rule making.. To some observers, Kent was just strategic and good at making deals, but to others he was aggressive and used “bare-knuckled” tactics to “strong-arm” negotiators into consensus. Either way, he made a major step forward in implementing the largest overhaul to higher education policy in decades, and he achieved it in what many say is record time.
You can read more about how he did it and what we can learn from his playbook as we head into three more years of rule making in my latest story, here.
A Budget Update: Congress made significant progress on funding for the Education Department and a large chunk of the nation’s scientific research grants. The lawmakers once again rejected Trump’s proposed cuts and plan to keep ED’s funding level and to increase NIH’s budget. The House passed that legislation Thursday, and now it’s up to the Senate to sign off and avert another government shutdown.
In Other News: The department backed off of its appeal in a major lawsuit that tested its attempt to scrub public education of diversity, equity and inclusion. The motion to dismiss was jointly approved Wednesday by both parties in the case, ending a nearly yearlong court battle over a Dear Colleague letter sent out by the department last February, which threatened to pull federal funds from colleges that failed to scrap all race-based curriculum, programs and financial aid.
The department gave no explanation as to what led to its withdrawal.But, it's important to note that another guidance document released by the Department of Justice in July maintains the same threats and goes a step further by suggesting that programs relying on what the agency described as stand-ins for race could violate federal civil rights laws.
Still, the American Federation of Teachers and other plaintiffs in the case declared this court filing a major victory.
On Tap for Next Week:
- The clock runs out for Congress’s continuing resolution on Friday. If all the budget legislation or another stopgap bill is not passed by midnight, we will enter the second shutdown of Trump 2.0 (though this one would be partial).
- We are also continuing to keep a close eye out for the opening of public comment on each negotiated rule-making topic.
That’s it for Week 53. As always, if news breaks this afternoon or over the weekend, you can find the latest at InsideHigherEd.com. In the meantime, I’ll be letting my inner child loose and enjoying the major snowstorm forecast for the East Coast. Stay warm, enjoy your hot cocoa and send me a picture of the best snowman or igloo you see!
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