Trump questions whether key funding source for historically black colleges is constitutional

Trump expresses ‘unwavering support’ for historically black colleges, after questioning constitutionality of funding source

President Trump pledged “unwavering support” to historically black colleges Sunday night, after some university leaders and advocates expressed alarm at a statement he made Friday in which he questioned whether a funding source for such schools was constitutional. Many leaders of historically black colleges had been pleased by overtures from the administration from the earliest days of Trump’s presidency, including an Oval Office meeting with university presidents in February. But some were startled by a signing statement connected to a recently approved federal funding measure, released Friday, in which the White House said it would treat a program that helps such schools get low-cost construction loans in a manner consistent with the constitutional requirement to afford equal protection of the laws. Advocates worried that meant the president might scrap a capital financing program, approved in 1992, that helps historically black colleges build, repair and renovate. That prompted an outcry from people such as Rep. John Conyers Jr. (Mich.), the ranking Democrat on the Judiciary Committee, and Rep. Cedric L. Richmond (D-La.), chairman of the Congressional Black Caucus. They called the signing statement “stunningly careless and divisive,” adding: “We urge him to reconsider immediately.” On Sunday night, Trump said in a statement: “The statement that accompanied my signing of the Consolidated Appropriations Act, 2017, sets forth my intention to spend the funds it appropriates, including the funds for Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs), consistently with my responsibilities under the Constitution. It does not affect my unwavering support for HBCUs and their critical educational missions.” He noted past commitments: “In February of this year, I signed an executive order pledging to strengthen the capacity of HBCUs to provide the highest-quality education; to ensure equitable opportunities for HBCUs to participate in federal programs; and to increase the number of college-educated Americans who feel empowered and able to advance the common good at home and abroad. “My commitment to the above-stated goals remains unchanged. “In a few days, my Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos will give the commencement address at Bethune-Cookman University, a school founded by the great Mary McCleod Bethune and committed to leadership and service. Secretary DeVos chose an HBCU as the venue for her first commencement address to demonstrate my administration’s dedication to these great institutions of higher learning. “I look forward to selecting an executive director and board for my HBCU initiative and continuing this important work with HBCUs throughout the nation.” The statement misspelled the name of civil rights activist and educator Mary McLeod Bethune. Harry Williams, president of Delaware State University, said he could easily imagine a staffer making a mistake while typing the release. He said familiarity may be an issue, as well. “In the African American community, I’m sure people are very familiar with that name.” But he said he was thinking of the substance of the message, which pleased him. “People make mistakes.” A White House official did not respond to a question about the misspelling, but wrote Monday afternoon: “The signing statement is not intended in any way to suggest that there will be any change with the program or that it is unconstitutional.  It is intended merely to indicate that the program will continue to be implemented based on the traditional definition of HBCUs, which is based on mission and history and thus consistent with equal protection principles.  The President and Secretary DeVos unambiguously reiterated their complete, unwavering support for HBCUs. So it should be clear that this is in no way a policy change or suggestion that the provision will not be implemented.” College presidents were pleased to see the statement of “unwavering support” for HBCUs, said Johnny C. Taylor Jr., president and chief executive of the Thurgood Marshall College Fund. When people saw the statement Friday evening, he said, many were upset and asking questions. “They’re still bothered that it happened,” he said, but they were glad the president responded so quickly to their concerns. “There was a lot of noise in the community” after the signing statement, said Williams, the Delaware State University president. He said he was wondering about it, too. “This is not a new program,” he said. “It’s something that’s been here for a while, so to question whether or not it is discriminatory, I felt, is a little bit odd. So when I got the statement last night I felt much better, because he came out and basically reinforced what he had said when we were at the White House about his support for HBCUs.” Williams said he is cautiously optimistic about the administration. He felt it was responsive to HBCU requests that Pell grants for students from low-income families be available year-round. Since about 70 percent of students at historically black colleges, on average, are eligible to receive the grants, Williams said they could help students continue their studies during the summer and graduate more quickly. “There’s some dialogue here that is helpful…. We need to keep the conversation going.” Richmond and Conyers responded with a statement Monday afternoon, dismissing Trump’s words as “just PR.” “He held a meeting with more than 70 HBCU presidents in February and then said after the meeting that they didn’t ask him for anything even though they did. He signed an executive order that moves the HBCU initiative into the White House but does little else.” They wrote that the funding for programs such a year-round Pell grants in the bill signed Friday was the result of negotiations by congressional Republicans and Democrats that began before President Trump took office. The National Association for Equal Opportunity in Higher Education (NAFEO) responded to the president’s statement on Monday: “NAFEO appreciates the clarification by President Trump. We are pleased that President Trump underscored his unfaltering commitment to investing in HBCUs.” The United Negro College Fund said in a statement Monday afternoon: “We are gratified that the administration has reaffirmed its support for HBCUs; however, the signing statement has suggested that the administration has some doubt about the constitutionality of HBCU programs and that doubt needs to removed. “The FY 2017 omnibus appropriated funds in the U.S. Department of Education and other federal agencies, including the HBCU Capital Financing Program, and we look forward to the administration executing those funds as quickly as possible for the benefit of the nation’s HBCUs and the 300,000 students they serve.” The administration reached out early, and eagerly, to historically black colleges and universities. During the Oval Office meeting, Vice President Pence expressed the administration’s support for such schools. DeVos’s first visit to a school in the United States as education secretary was to Howard University, a historically black university. That outreach was welcomed by many, and greeted with skepticism and protest by others. Some students — as at Howard, where there were demonstrations — called on university presidents to reject the overtures. DeVos struck a discordant note for many when she described historically black colleges, in a statement, as pioneers of school choice. She clarified the next day that the schools were founded at a time of limited, if any, educational opportunities for African Americans. Taylor said people were upset by that, but he noted that when then-Vice President Joe Biden referred to the “nation of Africa” in a speech to African leaders in 2014, “you didn’t see this total meltdown.” Many took it as a misstatement, Taylor said, a gaffe rather than a revelation of ignorance. A group of students, alumni and others said they plan to present petitions to the Bethune-Cookman administration Tuesday, calling on the university’s president to revoke DeVos’s invitation to speak at commencement. DeVos released a statement Sunday night expressing her support for historically black colleges and the critical role they play, saying she would continue to be an advocate for them and that she was looking forward to visiting Bethune-Cookman this week.

After White House courts HBCUs, budget disappoints school leaders

There is no mention in the budget of any federal investment in scholarships, technology or campus infrastructure for historically black colleges that leaders requested. And instead of expanding Pell grants for low-income students to cover summer courses as they had asked, the budget raids nearly $4 billion from the program’s reserves. “Less than three weeks ago, this administration claimed it is a priority to advocate for HBCUs but, after viewing this budget proposal, those calls ring hollow,” Rep. Alma Adams (D-N.C.), a graduate of the largest HBCU, North Carolina A&T State University, said in a statement. Johnny Taylor, president of the Thurgood Marshall College Fund, said the proposed appropriations could be a lot worse considering the total amount of cuts on the table for the Education Department. He said HBCU advocates had to fight the Obama administration for funding, and stressed that the lines of communication remain open with the current administration. “This is a process,” Taylor said. “We’re already had phone calls with the administration to say that as we go into the specific lines of this budget, this is where we’d like you to consider increases. This is only stage one.” There was plenty of skepticism when the Trump administration made overtures toward black school leaders, including from students who questioned whether their college presidents were only being used for photo ops. It didn’t help when Education Secretary Betsy DeVos called historically black institutions “real pioneers when it comes to school choice,” a statement that HBCU advocates said ignored that the schools were a response to racist Jim Crow laws that enforced segregation. Despite the controversy, HBCU leaders remained focused on funding and held out hope that Trump’s executive order regarding their schools would include some money. It did not. The order, signed in February, directs the White House initiative on HBCUs to operate from the White House instead of the Education Department. While some viewed the move as a signal that the more than 100 historically black schools were a priority for the administration, others said it was purely symbolic without monetary support.  “President Trump pledged to do more for HBCUs than any other president has done before. However, this budget is not reflective of that sentiment,” Lomax said Thursday. “Without strong federal investments, President Trump’s commitment to HBCUs and the rebuilding of African American communities will be promises unfulfilled.” Historically black schools educated nearly 300,000 students in 2014, the latest figure available from the National Center for Education Statistics. Education Department data shows that three-quarters of all doctorates awarded to African Americans and 80 percent of black federal judges earned an undergraduate degree at historically black schools.  “You can’t just have a photo op for HBCUs and not create more funding for them,” Randi Weingarten, president of the American Federation of Teachers, said on a call with reporters Thursday. “These schools have been under austerity for years, and if they’re going to compete with others, they need more funding.”

Trump, DeVos and GOP lawmakers are reaching out to historically black colleges

After Education Secretary Betsy DeVos visited Howard University this month in one of her first official actions, a group of student protesters called for President Trump to be barred from the D.C. campus and for the school to reject federal funding during his administration. It was a moment that showed the suspicion and hostility some people at a prominent and historically black university feel toward the new president and the Republican-controlled Congress. In the 2016 election, exit polls showed black voters overwhelmingly opposed Trump. But DeVos’s overture was symbolic of a visible outreach from the GOP to historically black colleges and universities, known as HBCUs. “This is important to me personally,” said Rep. Mark Walker, a Republican from North Carolina who along with Sen. Tim Scott (R-S.C.) plans to lead a discussion with more than 85 presidents and chancellors of HBCUs Tuesday at the Library of Congress. House Speaker Paul D. Ryan (R-Wis.) and Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) are expected to attend, and DeVos will deliver the keynote address. The White House also is said to be planning an executive order related to HBCUs. On Monday, Trump greeted dozens of HBCU leaders in the Oval Office. Soon after, Vice President Pence met with many of them elsewhere at the White House. “You’ve transformed lives through education and helped to lead our country to a more perfect union,” Pence told them. “The president and I admire the contributions of historically black colleges and universities.” He said the Trump administration is “committed” to ensuring that HBCUs “get the credit and attention they deserve.” Johnny Taylor, president of the Thurgood Marshall College Fund, said he and other advocates of HBCUs welcomed the support. The advocates are also aware of some skepticism about the outreach from Republicans. “It is unprecedented,” Taylor said. “It’s really, really bizarre, is the only thing I can say. It’s so counterintuitive you can’t make it up.” Taylor said he has spent a lot of time on the phone in recent days, talking with presidents and chancellors who are skeptical of the motives. “People said, ‘What’s this about? Is it just a photo op? … Is this some sort of a planned effort to convert our campuses to support the Republican Party?’ “People were really, really suspicious about it.” But Marybeth Gasman, a professor of higher education at the University of Pennsylvania and director of the Penn Center for Minority Serving Institutions, said that over the past 50 years, such schools have had bipartisan support. Funding levels have stayed relatively the same, by and large, over that time. Meetings with members of Congress happen routinely, she said. Both Bush presidencies were supportive of historically black colleges, Gasman said. And every president since Jimmy Carter has issued an executive order about them. She was dismissive of the idea that Omarosa Manigault, director of communications for the White House Office of Public Liaison and an alumna of historically black universities, would be a powerful ally for the schools. “She may have gone to HBCUs,” Gasman said, “but she really knows nothing about education.” Last month, billionaire Charles Koch, well known for his support of conservative political causes but also a major donor to education, announced he would give nearly $26 million to help launch a research center with the Thurgood Marshall College Fund. During the Obama administration, HBCU leaders applauded the expansion of Pell grants and other steps taken to support access to higher education. But many hoped that the first black president would do more for their schools. Some were upset a few years ago by a decision by the Education Department — later revised — to tighten lending standards for parents borrowing money for their children’s educations. Student and parent debt and low graduation rates have plagued many of the schools, but university officials are ready to make their case for the importance of the more than 100 historically black colleges and universities in supporting and educating African American leaders. Three-quarters of all doctorates awarded to black people, three-quarters of all black officers in the U.S. military and 80 percent of black federal judges got their undergraduate degree at such a school, according to the Education Department. The United Negro College Fund has asked Trump, in an executive order, to move the White House initiative on HBCUs from the Education Department to the White House to be led by someone “who reports to a senior adviser to the president.” The UNCF also wants Trump to “commit to an aspirational goal that HBCUs be awarded five percent of total federal grant, internship and cooperative agreement funding; and 10 percent of total federal contract funding awarded to colleges and universities, which would nearly double federal support to HBCUs.” The group said in a statement: “When only six percent of African American children graduate from high school college-ready, and only 22 percent of African American young adults have earned bachelor’s degrees, it is clear that our nation’s promise to provide equal opportunity for higher education for students of diverse backgrounds is still unfulfilled, while the need for that education grows more essential each year.” A spokesman for the White House declined to comment on possibilities for the executive order. Taylor said, “We want the president to then put his money where his mouth is.” He said advocates will be watching the budget process to see whether an executive order ultimately translates into funding from Congress. Federal documents show that the government spends more than $320 million a year on initiatives that seek to strengthen HBCUs. Taylor said he was encouraged by a bipartisan committee on historically black colleges that has been meeting for about a year. Walker, he said, has gone to every meeting. The largest HBCU in the country, North Carolina A & T State University, is in Walker’s district. The stakes are especially high for Howard, the elite private university celebrating its 150th year, which gets substantial annual funding from the government. Federal documents show the 2016 appropriation for Howard and its hospital totaled $222 million.  Frederick said he would like to see a day of independence for Howard when it’s no longer reliant on a line item in the federal budget. But the school is a long way from that, with a massive backlog of deferred maintenance costs and uncollected tuition. When asked about loans, Scott said, “Stay tuned.” He said, “I will put an emphasis  on the importance of funding,” at the meeting Tuesday. He said he was also interested in talking with presidents about efforts to recalibrate their schools to put more emphasis on science, technology, engineering and math, given estimates of millions of job openings in such fields. Walker said he wants to push back on the notion that historically black colleges can only benefit the minority community. “It’s not true,” he said. It’s personal for him: His wife, who is white, graduated from historically black Winston-Salem State University. “HBCUs can benefit all communities. We’ve got to move beyond the stereotypes.” The alliance isn’t a natural fit for the Republican Party, he said, but that shouldn’t stop leaders in the party from building relationships. “I hope this is a precedent to move past some of the toxicity in the current climate, and move on some of the real issues.”

At Howard University graduation, Trump administration policies loom large

At Howard University, a school known for its activism and commitment to social justice, Sen. Kamala D. Harris implored graduates at Saturday’s commencement to fight the policies of the Trump administration. “You are graduating into a very different time than it was when you arrived a few short years ago,” said Harris (D-Calif.), a graduate of Howard. “We have a fight ahead. It’s a fight to determine what kind of country we will be. And it’s a fight to determine whether we are willing to stand up for our deepest values.” Harris’s remarks at the historically black college in the District tapped into the political discord the Trump administration has sown through its controversial decisions, including directing prosecutors to pursue mandatory minimum prison sentences , a hard-line approach that has kept thousands of African American men behind bars. Her address also served as a bulwark against the uncertainty President Trump created by his wavering support for historically black colleges and universities (HBCUs) like Howard. “When voices at the highest level of our government seem confused about the significance and even the constitutionality of supporting HBCUs, I say look over here at Howard University,” Harris said. “We need you. Our country needs you. The world needs you.” During this year’s graduation season, commencement speeches have been particularly political, mirroring stark divisions across the country. Trump himself spoke to graduates at Liberty University, a Christian school in Lynchburg, Va., on Saturday, telling them to “challenge entrenched interests.” HBCUs have had a fraught relationship with the Trump administration. University leaders headed to the White House earlier this year with the hope of increased funding and aid for students, but many were disappointed when the president’s budget did not include any of their requests. Tensions rose when Education Secretary Betsy DeVos called historically black institutions “real pioneers when it comes to school choice,” a statement that advocates for HBCUs said ignored that the schools were a response to racist Jim Crow laws that enforced segregation. Although DeVos walked back her statement, the damage was evident in the chilly reception she received this week at Bethune-Cookman University in Florida, a historically black school where some students booed during the secretary’s commencement speech. Just days before the incident at Bethune-Cookman, Trump alarmed leaders and advocates of HBCUs by questioning the constitutionality of low-cost construction loans for repairs, renovations and new buildings at such schools. “HBCUs are trying to walk a delicate line because they realize that they have to be supportive of the administration to some extent because funding comes from the Department of Education,” said Robert T. Palmer, a professor of education at Howard. “But Trump and his administration have very little understanding of historically black universities, their value or importance.” Celebrating its 150th anniversary, Howard is widely considered a flagship among the nation’s HBCUs. Its business and law schools are revered, and the university produces among the highest number of African Americans who earn doctorates. This year, Howard awarded 2,173 degrees, including 318 master’s and 105 doctorates. More than 375 students received degrees in law, medicine, pharmacy and dentistry. Saturday’s commencement brings to a close a tumultuous year at Howard. A visit in February from DeVos sparked student protests, with some calling for the school to reject federal funding from the Trump administration. Students were infuriated that Howard President Wayne A.I. Frederick gave no notice of DeVos’s visit, and in their estimation played down the significance of hosting an appointee of an administration that many see as hostile to African Americans. “You shouldn’t have people here who are a part of an administration that is against us,” said Imani Ruby Glenn, who earned a bachelor of fine arts from Howard on Saturday. “Do we want money that they really don’t want to give us?” In an interview on WAMU’s Kojo Nnamdi show in late February, Frederick said it was important for schools to interact with people with whom they disagree, as well as those who share their values. He said he would welcome a time when Howard is no longer reliant on federal appropriations, but that is not on the horizon as the university contends with millions of dollars in uncollected tuition and a massive backlog of deferred maintenance costs. Howard and its hospital receive about $222 million in annual federal appropriations. Despite Frederick’s call for engagement, student activists were unmoved and made it clear with a message scrolled on a campus sidewalk weeks later: “Welcome to the Trump plantation. Overseer: Wayne A.I. Frederick.” Dissatisfaction with Frederick came to a head in April, when a leadership group in the faculty senate took a vote of no confidence in the president and Provost Anthony Wutoh. The group cited concerns about the university’s finances, failures in leadership and a lack of transparency. Other faculty leaders challenged the validity of the vote and pledged support for Frederick and Wutoh, as did many students. “The previous president, Sidney Ribeau, handed Frederick a lot of problems. We can’t expect him to turn it around in four years,” said Alexis Orr, who graduated Saturday with a bachelor’s degree in business administration. “I’ve seen a lot of good things come from him, but he’s also had to make a lot of hard calls. We just have to be patient. He’s a three-time Howard grad, and he has the school’s best interest at heart.” Frederick hinted at the trials of the past few months on Saturday but kept the focus on the Class of 2017. His address, nevertheless, alluded to the ongoing debate at the school and at other HBCUs over engaging the Trump administration. “The journey of one’s academic pursuit will at times be uncomfortable, it will ensure that students and faculty alike gain insights into the variety of experiences of the human condition, the essence of which is engagement and not isolation,” he told graduates.

Trial focuses on whether Md. black colleges receive enough state funding, support

A trial began Tuesday in Baltimore to settle a federal lawsuit that alleges that Maryland’s historically black colleges receive too little funding and institutional support to fully overcome past generations of state-sponsored discrimination. The case hinges partly on whether Maryland spends enough money on its historically black public institutions to correct decades of disparity, a point the litigants dispute. It also poses a more complex question: For historically black schools to prosper, must they be protected against undue competition from other schools? Maryland’s public higher-education system operated for decades under a succession of desegregation plans. Blacks were mostly barred from several public colleges until the mid-1950s, and the institutions remained deeply segregated into the 1970s. Today, more than two-fifths of black students enrolled in Maryland public universities attend what were known as “traditionally white” institutions. Among them are Towson University and the University of Maryland Baltimore County, which have drawn national recognition for closing racial disparities in graduation rates. Yet leaders of the state’s four historically black public institutions — Bowie State, Coppin State and Morgan State universities and the University of Maryland Eastern Shore — say they are unable to compete with those schools for talented students of any race. “From the beginning, [historically black] universities were treated as second-class institutions,” said Jon Greenbaum, chief counsel for the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights under Law. He is representing the plaintiffs, who are students and alumni of the four schools. The lawsuit, filed in 2006, alleges that Maryland has failed to “honor its obligations” to historically black schools. Under a civil rights agreement approved in 2000, state leaders were to “enhance” those schools, partly by favoring them in funding for instruction and construction. Instead, the lawsuit contends, state funding has risen more quickly at Towson and UMBC than at the historically black schools. Construction projects have taken, on average, three years longer at historically black schools than at historically white ones, the lawsuit says. The suit was filed in U.S. District Court by a group of students and alumni from historically black schools called the Coalition for Equity and Excellence in Maryland Higher Education. The primary defendant is the Maryland Higher Education Commission, a state agency that sets higher education policy. State officials contend that historically black schools have received relatively more state dollars than other public institutions in the past decade. From 2001 to 2006, they said, state funding to historically black schools rose by 7 percent a year, while support to other comprehensive public universities rose 2 percent annually. New construction also has proceeded at a faster pace, and the population of African American students has grown across the university system, according to state data. “No current state policies or practices have restricted the choice of any student to attend any institution of higher learning in the state of Maryland,” Craig Thompson, an attorney for the defendants, said in opening statements before U.S. District Judge Catherine C. Blake. The most heated part of the debate has centered on how far the state should go to protect historically black schools against competition from other schools. The 2000 agreement called for Maryland to avoid “unnecessary program duplication” between historically black institutions and other colleges as a way to promote “program uniqueness and institutional identity” at historically black schools. The language comes from a 1992 U.S. Supreme Court decision. That provision has hindered Towson, UMBC and other schools in opening new programs that might compete directly with ones at historically black institutions. The state higher education commission has blocked several proposals for such programs in an effort to protect the historically black schools. But some have been approved, including, in 2005, a joint master of business administration program at Towson and the University of Baltimore, which competes with a program at Morgan State. Morgan State and its historically black peers cannot easily compete with rival specialty programs at better-funded schools, Greenbaum said. “We want them to be schools that are able to compete for students of all races,” he said. Universities in other states have been blocked from starting “duplicative” programs for similar reasons. Some of Maryland’s higher education leaders have fought such policies. Robert Caret, a former Towson president, told the Chronicle of Higher Education in 2007, “I fully support our [historically black colleges and universities], but they have to realize that they are in a capitalistic society, and at some point they need to be working with these programs to make them competitive.”

Rand Paul: ‘I’ve never wavered’ in support for Civil Rights Act

Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) said Wednesday in speech at a historically black college in Washington that he has never wavered in his support of the 1964 Civil Rights Act -- an issue that cropped up in his 2010 Senate campaign and could once again if he runs for president in 2016. During that 2010 campaign, Paul suggested that private businesses should not be forced to abide by the Civil Rights Act. He quickly clarified that he supported the act and would not want its repeal.    *[WSU]: Wayne State University “No Republican questions or disputes civil rights," Paul said Wednesday. "I’ve never wavered in my support for civil rights or the Civil Rights Act.”    *[WSU]: Wayne State University Paul explained that the question Republicans ask is to what extent federal government should be involved and how much should be left to the states. He noted the 14th Amendment was a case in which federal action was warranted. At the same time, Paul recognized that his first foray into race relations as a politician was hardly a success. "Here I am a guy who once presumed to discuss a section of the Civil Rights Act," Paul said. "It didn't always go so well." Here are the 2010 comments on the Civil Rights Act that launched the controversy: Paul delivered the speech at Howard University's School of Business, on the campus of one of the nation's premier historically black colleges. The speech was billed as an effort to reach out to young and minority voters who have eluded the GOP in recent elections. Paul continues to build buzz for a potential 2016 presidential bid. Previously, he delivered a foreign policy address at the conservative Heritage Foundation, which is headed by former senator Jim DeMint (R-S.C.), and earned acclaim on the right for waging a nearly 13-hour filibuster while seeking a clarification on the Obama administration's potential use of drones against American citizens.    *[WSU]: Wayne State University The crowd at Howard, however, was clearly resistant to Paul's message. A protester with a banner using the words "white supremacy" was forcibly removed from the speech early on, and the crowd was taken aback during a later question-and-answer session when Paul asked whether they knew that the founders of the NAACP were Republicans. "We know our history!" said one student. "I don’t mean that to be insulting," Paul said. "I don’t know how much you know…” Paul also defended the GOP's push in many states to require voters to provide identification at the polls -- something Democrats say is geared toward suppressing the black vote. Paul said that people who compare providing driver's licenses to the voting abuses of the past, including requiring black voters to pass tests, "demean the horror of what happened." One area of agreement between Paul and the crowd was on his bill seeking to repeal mandatory minimum sentences for drug offenders. When Paul mentioned it during his speech, most of the audience applauded. Paul told a story about two people of different socio-economic and racial backgrounds who both used drugs, before revealing that the two people he talked about were former president George W. Bush and President Obama. “We should not take away anyone’s future over one mistake," Paul said. "Barack Obama and George Bush were lucky. (If they had been arrested) neither one of them would have been employable, much less electable.”

Historically black schools say Obama’s policies have fallen short

The country’s first African American president is finding himself increasingly at odds with a cornerstone of the African American community: historically black colleges and universities. Leaders at these schools and some black lawmakers say the Obama administration has been pushing policies for years that hurt students at a time when historically black colleges are already cash-strapped and seeing a drop in enrollment. Tensions spilled over after a recent Congressional Black Caucus meeting with Obama and Vice President Biden in which the president said that historically black schools, also known as HBCUs, needed to do a better job graduating students and not saddling them with debt, according to several people at the meeting. Some Black Caucus members bristled at those remarks since they say the president didn’t acknowledge that his own administration was also pursuing policies that advocates say are hurting the schools. “The president thinks that HBCUs — and there may in fact be some — are failing our students,” said Rep. Marcia L. Fudge (D-Ohio), who was in attendance. “But there needs to be an open dialogue about higher education and why HBCUs have historically gotten short shrift when it comes to resources and recognition.” On Friday, President Obama visited Benedict College, a historically black, liberal arts college in Columbia, S.C., as part of a push for his initiative called “My Brother’s Keeper” aimed at helping young black men. But he did not mention historically black schools that have been hailed for their work educating young African Americans. Many of the schools are strapped for cash after years of financial mismanagement, poor alumni giving and fluctuating levels of government support. They are seeing a drop in enrollment, and many are struggling to graduate students on time. Critics of the administration say that rather than help these schools at a time of acute need, the president keeps ignoring them or enacting policies that hurt them. At last month’s meeting of the White House’s advisory board on historically black colleges and universities, the board’s chairman delivered some blunt criticism to the administration. “We are not consulted when it comes to policy changes and decisions impacting — in a major way — the institutions on whose behalf we are to advocate,” Hampton University President William Harvey, who chairs the advisory board, said at a board meeting in February. “Overall support to black colleges is down.” HBCU advocates also point to a restrictive federal loan policy that they say has shut out many families interested in sending their children to historically black colleges. The administration is also getting ready to unveil a new college ratings system that HBCU leaders say could unfairly keep their schools from getting more aid. And when the president recently unveiled a new initiative to pay for community college tuition, he did it without consulting HBCU leaders, who say their schools should also be eligible for help since they also serve low-income students. The White House declined to comment on the meeting with Black Caucus members. But not everyone at the meeting took offense to Obama’s comments on the performance of historically black schools. “It wasn’t a dig at HBCUs,” said Rep. Danny Davis (D-IL). “We need to direct as much assistance to these schools because what they’re doing is invaluable.” The Education Department points out that revenue to HBCUs from the federal government decreased during the recession, prior to Obama taking office, and increased across the board during the first two years of his administration. Federal funding of the schools from the Department of Education has increased 40 percent since 2007, including grants for more African American students. “The administration is strongly supportive of historically black colleges and universities,” said Education Undersecretary Ted Mitchell. “We have been strong supporters in word and deed.” The nation’s 105 historically black schools, including Howard University and Morehouse College, account for just 3 percent of student enrollment at two- and four-year colleges. Yet they enroll 9 percent of black undergraduates and award nearly 20 percent of the bachelor’s degrees earned by African Americans, according to the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES). Obama started off his presidency on a high note with historically black schools. His stimulus package earmarked millions of dollars for infrastructure projects, academic research and overall operations at black colleges. But budget fights, across-the-board cuts in federal spending and changes in education policy reversed many of those gains. Supporters of the schools say they have been hit particularly hard by a 2011 decision from the Education Department to tighten lending standards to parents for federal loans covering their children’s tuition. Federal parent loans have a 7.9 percent interest rate, compared with 3.4 percent to 6.9 percent for student loans. The United Negro College Fund estimates that about 28,000 students at black colleges dropped out during the 2012-13 academic year because their families could not get loans. After two years of discussions with black lawmakers and educators, the department relaxed the lending criteria. Starting in July, it will only check the past two years of parent credit histories, down from the five originally proposed. But HBCU administrators say the damage was already done, costing black schools more than $150 million in revenue. Another source of contention between the administration and HBCUs is a new college ratings system being fleshed out by the Education Department that would grade schools on their access, affordability, completion rates and graduate employment, among other things. By 2018, schools with high ratings could be eligible for larger Pell Grants and lower rates on student loans. Many higher-education experts worry that the system will favor selective schools with deep pockets that serve students with means. That could deal a blow to historically black schools that enroll students who are not academically or financially prepared, said David Wilson, president of Morgan State University. “I just don’t see how you can have a system that is going to be fair . . . especially when you have one set of schools doing the heavy lifting and another set fishing in a different pond,” he said. About 72 percent of students at historically black schools are eligible for Pell Grants, a form of federal aid that goes to the neediest applicants, and nearly as many take out federal loans. Many are the first in their family to go to college and often have to work and take courses. Education Secretary Arne Duncan told the president’s advisory board on HBCUs that the ratings “will take account of the degree of difficulty that many institutions, including HBCUs, face in educating significant numbers of underprepared, disadvantaged students.” “I understand why HBCUs would be apprehensive,” said Ivory Toldson, deputy director of the White House initiative on HBCUs. “But what the administration is saying is we need a system that rewards the success of institutions that take greater risk with students, that do a better job with lower-income students.” Advocates of historically black schools were disappointed again when Obama presented an ambitious new plan to cover tuition at the country’s community colleges — and many say they were not consulted before the policy was presented. Facing flagging enrollment and strained finances, some black college leaders view Obama’s proposal for two years of free community college as a threat. “If you’ve got $60 billion to spend over the next 10 years, send it to Pell [Grants],” said Michael L. Lomax, president and chief executive of the UNCF, referring to the projected cost of Obama’s community college initiative. He said he is also disappointed that the president would steer minority students to community colleges that often have lower graduation rates than historically black schools. Still, as student debt has surpassed the $1 trillion mark, Morgan State’s Wilson said Obama is right to demand better results from higher education. “He really wants to see a more streamlined system, one that is more accountable,” Wilson said. “Perhaps if some conversations had taken place with institutions serving a large swath of first-generation, low-income students, some of the unintended consequences could have been avoided.”

Trump doesn’t care about affirmative action. So why restart the war?

The Justice Department apparently wants to revisit the perennial issue of affirmative action in university and college admissions — remarkable news for many reasons, not the least of which is: President Trump was the first Republican since the civil rights revolution to reach the White House _without_ campaigning against “quotas.” Trump went out of his way to inflame racial and ethnic sore spots — but not this one. “Affirmative action: Should we keep it? Yes or no?” NBC’s Chuck Todd asked Trump on the Aug. 16, 2015, edition of “Meet the Press.” “I’m fine with affirmative action,” Trump replied. “We’ve lived with it for a long time.” On “Fox News Sunday” two months later, Chris Wallace asked Trump how that reply squared with conservative doctrine. “You know, it has served its place, and it served its time,” he equivocated. “Some people have loved it, and some people don’t like it at all.” Though still “fine with” affirmative action personally, Trump allowed it “would be a wonderful thing” if its necessity someday faded. When Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia commented, during December 2015 oral arguments on race-conscious university admissions, that some African Americans might be better off at “less-advanced schools,” Trump joined those denouncing the conservative icon. “Very tough to the African American community,” he scolded. _Jeb Bush_ is the one who boasted during the Republican primaries that he abolished race-conscious admissions in Florida’s state universities while governor. If Trump’s intuition told him that voters generally, and whites specifically, aren’t that riled up about “reverse discrimination” in higher ed anymore, his intuition was probably right. In heavily populated California, Florida and Michigan, race-conscious admissions in state universities have been banned for years. More than a quarter of the U.S. population lives in the eight states with no affirmative action in public higher ed. Trump’s core constituency is the white working class — usually defined as those without a college degree. And it’s far from clear that blacks getting into college ahead of whites ranks at, or even near, the top of this group’s grievances. To be sure, some 52 percent of white working-class voters believe discrimination against whites is as bad as, or worse than, discrimination against African Americans and other minorities, according to a study by the Public Religion Research Institute (PRRI). Yet 54 percent of them think investing in a college education is “a gamble,” suggesting admission is not the prize they eye. And 56 percent disagree that “efforts to increase diversity almost always come at the expense of whites.” Furthermore, the belief that whites are victims of discrimination did not statistically predict support for Trump in 2016, according to the PRRI survey; deporting illegal immigrants and general fear of “cultural displacement” did. There’s little evidence that the broader U.S. public wants more higher-ed affirmative-action wars of the kind that equivocal but supportive Supreme Court decisions have tried to defuse — including the June 2016 4-to-3 ruling in favor of the University of Texas program that so exercised Scalia. Significantly, Trump, then the presumptive Republican nominee, had no comment on that ruling, pro or con. Americans are ambivalent about this genuinely difficult issue, with 70 percent of the public telling Gallup last year that only “merit” should affect college admissions and 63 percent telling the Pew Research Center in 2014 that it’s “a good thing” for colleges to have programs designed to boost minority enrollment. Candidate Trump’s views on affirmative action channeled those contradictions. He was indeed not far from restating, crudely, the pragmatic position Justice Sandra Day O’Connor expressed on behalf of the Supreme Court majority in a 2003 case that upheld race-conscious admissions to assure diversity on campus. “Governmental use of race must have a logical end point. . . . We expect that 25 years from now, the use of racial preferences will no longer be necessary to further the interest approved today,” she wrote. Late Wednesday, a Justice Department spokeswoman denied there’s a broad attack on race-conscious admissions brewing, just a review of a complaint against Harvard University filed by Asian Americans who believe that school’s efforts to ensure “diversity” in admissions result in a de facto cap on their admissions. Of course, that would hardly diminish the potential impact, because similar issues are being raised by Asian American plaintiffs in lawsuits, backed by conservative activists, against Harvard and the University of North Carolina. Those cases could undo the settlement O’Connor established, or tried to, apropos cases brought by white plaintiffs. With 11 years left before O’Connor’s target date, someone at the Justice Department seems drawn to an old conservative crusade in which the president himself has heretofore shown little interest. Whoever that is must really believe in the cause, because the political upside is not necessarily that big — as Donald Trump, of all people, has demonstrated. _Read more fromCharles Lane’s archive, follow him on Twitter or subscribe to his updates on Facebook._ **Read more on this topic:** Paul Waldman: The Trump administration takes up the cause of oppressed white people The Post’s View: Why the Supreme Court should uphold affirmative action — again The Post’s View: The Supreme Court makes an uneasy but fair decision on affirmative action Valerie Straus: Five myths about college admissions Harold O. Levy: We need poverty-based affirmative action at America’s colleges

Why Trump’s executive order on sanctuary cities is unconstitutional

The order indicates that sanctuary cities “that fail to comply with applicable Federal law do not receive Federal funds, except as mandated by law.” More specifically, it mandates that “the Attorney General and the [Homeland Security] Secretary, in their discretion and to the extent consistent with law, shall ensure that jurisdictions that willfully refuse to comply with 8 U.S.C. 1373 (sanctuary jurisdictions) are not eligible to receive Federal grants, except as deemed necessary for law enforcement purposes by the Attorney General or the Secretary.”        The constitutional issues raised by Trump’s executive order are not mere technicalities. If the president can make up new conditions on federal grants to the states and impose them without specific, advance congressional authorization, he would have a powerful tool for bullying states and localities into submission on a wide range of issues. Such an executive power-grab also undermines separation of powers. Congress, not the president, has the constitutional authority to attach conditions to federal grants to state governments. Even if the power-grab is limited to withholding funds when states or localities violate other federal laws and regulations, it is still a grave menace. There are literally thousands of federal laws and regulations on the books. No jurisdiction can fully comply with all of them. If the president can withhold funds from any state or locality that violates any federal law, without needing specific authorization from Congress, he would have sweeping authority over state officials. Trump’s order is exactly the kind of high-handed federal coercion of states and undermining of separation of powers that outraged conservatives under Obama. In fact, Obama did not go as far as Trump seems to do here. Obama never claimed sweeping authority to impose new conditions on federal grants beyond those specifically imposed by Congress. Even those who sympathize Trump’s objectives in this case should pause to consider whether they want presidents to have this kind of power going forward. Trump’s use of it today could easily serve as a model for a liberal Democratic president tomorrow.  The administration could potentially avoid these constitutional problems if they interpret the order very narrowly. The text states that federal funds will only be withheld from sanctuary cities “to the extent consistent with law.” Taken literally, that might bar any withholding of funds not explicitly conditioned on compliance with Section 1373. After all, the Constitution is the law, and the Constitution does not allow the president to impose grant conditions not specifically authorized by Congress. But such a narrow interpretation would make the order largely superfluous. After all, the federal government is already required to withhold funds from jurisdictions that disobey conditions specifically imposed by Congress. Still, it is better that the order be redundant than that it mount an assault on federalism and separation of powers. If Trump does not withdraw this order or adopt a narrow interpretation of it, sanctuary cities should fight him in court. And all who care about constitutional federalism and separation of powers should support them.    Brian also argues that the anti-commandeering principle is irrelevant irrelevant to the constitutionality of Trump’s order because “Withholding funds clearly isn’t commandeering.” But if Section 1373 is in itself unconstitutional under the Tenth Amendment, then the president cannot use it as leverage to impose a spending condition.

President Trump’s claim that he has done ‘far more than anyone’ for ‘inner cities’

After delivering remarks on an infrastructure plan, President Trump spoke about violence at the Aug. 12 white supremacist rally and counterprotest in Charlottesville, where a woman who was protesting racism was killed. When asked whether he is concerned about race relations in the United States, Trump said race relations have “gotten better or the same.” Trump claimed his administration is “spending a lot of money on the inner cities,” and that “fixing the inner cities” is a priority. Is that the case? First, let’s set the record straight on “inner cities.” Trump constantly — and incorrectly — uses the term as a synonym for black Americans, and as areas ravaged by crime and poverty. “Inner cities” generally is used to describe low-income urban neighborhoods. But there was a big shift among black residents in recent decades, out of urban cities and into the suburbs. And it ignores the large black population in the rural South.     Let’s start with the Department of Housing and Urban Development. Trump proposed a $6.2 billion decrease to the HUD budget, broadly resulting in a nearly 12 percent reduction, targeting programs that support revitalization of lower-income and urban neighborhoods, and also support affordable housing for poor American families. Trump’s proposal for HUD would result in the largest reduction the agency has seen since the 1980s, according to Solomon Greene, senior fellow at the Metropolitan Housing and Communities Policy Center at the Urban Institute. Trump’s HUD budget would include eliminating the $3 billion Community Development Block Program, which gives federal money to states and local governments to revitalize and rebuild their communities. It would eliminate the Low Income Home Energy Assistance Program, the Choice Neighborhoods Program, HOME Investment Partnership Program, and more.  How about education? Trump would reduce spending on the Education Department by 14 percent. Among its effects, this would downsize or eliminate a series of grants, including ones that provide aid to low-income and minority college students.   Meanwhile, Trump has started using unemployment figures that give the impression that employment among black youths has substantially improved under his presidency. During the campaign, Trump repeatedly used a striking and misleading measure of black youth unemployment to make a case to black voters: “Fifty-eight percent of your youth is unemployed, what the hell do you have to lose?”  Trump was asked whether he has concerns about race relations — particularly between black and white communities, in the context of Charlottesville. His answer was that he was spending more money to fix and prioritize “inner cities.” This is incorrect on many levels. “Inner cities” is not synonymous with black communities, so he gets a basic fact wrong about where black Americans are concentrated in this country. Moreover, Trump proposed steep reductions to a variety of programs that disproportionately affect minority communities and lower-income Americans, from education to housing. There is a $225 billion backlog to fix America’s inner cities, yet Trump’s budget does not reflect a genuine prioritization of projects to reduce this backlog. Trump’s claim reflects a misunderstanding of black communities and is incongruous with his budget proposals. Actions speak louder than words.        Share the Facts 2017-08-17 11:51:24 UTC

Trump moves program on historically black colleges into the White House

President Trump signed an executive order Tuesday that moves a federal initiative supporting historically black colleges and universities directly into the White House, a move depicted as an effort to give the schools more clout within the government. HBCU leaders said they were cautiously optimistic about the shift. They are eager for the government to raise its investment in their schools but wary of promises devoid of action. “The proof of the pudding is in the taste, and I’m not going to get excited until we see some real numbers,” said David Wilson, president of Morgan State University in Maryland. Trump’s action directs the White House Initiative on HBCUs to operate from the White House instead of the Education Department. The initiative, begun under President Jimmy Carter, assists colleges in accessing federally sponsored programs, including government research projects and student aid. Some view the move as a signal that the more than 100 historically black schools are a priority for the administration, but others said that without monetary support, it is purely symbolic. “If we relocate that office and support to HBCUs goes down or stays the same, then it will have meant nothing,” said John Silvanus Wilson Jr., the departing president of Morehouse College, who led the initiative during President Barack Obama’s first term. “We want to give the administration a chance, so we’re not exactly cynical, but nor are we super-confident that the right things are going to happen.” Absent from the order was any commitment of federal dollars to bolster support for HBCUs, although it does call on the executive director of the initiative to identify ways to increase the capacity of such schools to compete for grants and contracts. According to a recent report, HBCUs received $4.7 billion in federal financial assistance from some 28 federal departments in 2013. The schools received $3 billion more in federal funding in Obama’s first six years in office, than in George W. Bush’s last six years — setting a high benchmark for this administration. On Tuesday, Education Secretary Betsy DeVos pledged solidarity with HBCUs in a speech to several university leaders. “And in President Donald Trump, and this administration, you have a strong partner in fulfilling your mission,” she told them. The day before, DeVos drew criticism for a prepared statement about HBCUs in which she asserted that the colleges and universities “are real pioneers when it comes to school choice.” Many HBCU advocates said that the statement on Monday glossed over the historical context that gave rise to the schools: Jim Crow laws that for generations enforced racial segregation in the South, barring black students from attending the most prestigious institutions. But HBCU leaders gathered in Washington sought to focus on funding. On Monday, they asked administration officials for a $25 billion federal investment for scholarships, technology and facilities. They also pressed for full-time students who qualify for Pell grants to receive them three semesters a year instead of two, according to several presidents in attendance. Morgan’s Wilson said he wants the White House to build up historically black research universities that are often shut out of federal contracts. “The federal government has purposefully invested billions of dollars in making [historically white research universities] stronger at the neglect of institutions that have been in the space even longer,” Wilson said. “Why I participated in the meeting was to present a case for why it is critically important for the federal government to correct the wrong.” Some were disappointed that an hour-long listening session they were promised lasted only about 15 minutes because they were shuttled off to the Oval Office to meet Trump. Walter M. Kimbrough, president of Dillard University in New Orleans, said he’ll reserve judgment until he sees the president’s budget. He said he worries whether possible cuts in domestic spending would jeopardize funding for programs that help HBCU students. “I’m just trying to figure out the math. How do you pay for all of this? Something is going to be cut, we know that, so where will the cuts come from?” Kimbrough said. As it stands, historically black colleges receive roughly $320 million a year in federal funding to strengthen their operations, according to Education Department data. The government also provides Howard University in the District about $222 million in annual appropriations. “Historically our country discriminated and oppressed African Americans, and HBCUs throughout history were not funded in any equitable way,” said Marybeth Gasman, director of the University of Pennsylvania’s Center for Minority-Serving Institutions. “The federal government gives funding to make up for past discrimination and provide resources to institutions that are deeply tuition-driven and also educate many low-income students.” Historically black schools educated nearly 300,000 students in 2014, the latest figure available from the National Center for Education Statistics. Education Department data shows that three-quarters of all doctorates awarded to African Americans, three-quarters of all black officers in the U.S. military and 80 percent of black federal judges earned an undergraduate degree at historically black schools.

Falwell says Trump administration has tapped him to lead a higher-ed panel

The Trump administration has asked Liberty University President Jerry Falwell Jr. to lead a panel on reform of higher education regulations, the leader of the evangelical Christian school said Tuesday. “In the Department of Education, there’s too much intrusion into the independent accreditation,” Falwell told The Washington Post in a telephone interview. “There’s too much intrusion into the operation of universities and colleges. I’ve got a whole list of concerns. It mainly has to do with deregulation.” Falwell’s latest connection with the Trump team was first reported by the Chronicle of Higher Education. The Liberty president was an early endorser of Trump during the Republican primaries in 2016 and a steadfast supporter during the general election, including when Trump faced withering criticism over his crude remarks about women and sex on a 2005 videotape that surfaced in October. Some within the Liberty community were critical of Falwell’s support of Trump, saying at the time that his endorsement risked linking the school too closely to a divisive politician. After the election, Falwell said that he had discussions with Trump about the job of education secretary. The nomination ultimately went to Betsy DeVos, a billionaire from Michigan who supports charter schools and taxpayer-funded vouchers to help pay for private school. Falwell, son of the late television preacher the Rev. Jerry Falwell, has overseen major growth at Liberty during the past decade. The school now has more than 80,000 students, the majority of them enrolled in online courses. He also has drawn attention for urging students and faculty to obtain permits to carry concealed guns, a position that he says will make the campus a safer place. There is significant support among college and university presidents for deregulation, in general. Many chafed at the Obama administration’s efforts to increase federal oversight of higher education in various matters, ranging from how schools respond to sexual violence reports to how they prepare graduates for gainful employment with minimal debt burdens. However, some consumer advocates say that the heightened federal scrutiny has benefited students, providing them with more assurance that their investment in higher education will pay off. Others point out that the government must be assured that billions of dollars a year in federal education funding is not misspent. The chancellor of Vanderbilt University, Nicholas Zeppos, co-chaired a task force that concluded in 2015 that federal education regulations are “unnecessarily voluminous” and that compliance is “inordinately costly.” That report drew a degree of bipartisan support from lawmakers on Capitol Hill. But it did not appear to have much influence with the Obama administration. Now, with Trump in the White House, a new deregulation push seems about to start. “We think many regulations published in the last decade need to be rolled back,” Falwell said. “I’ve got notebooks full of material from professors, from heads of accrediting bodies, from people in the financial aid department who have seen problems first-hand.” Falwell said he wants to support DeVos, assuming she will soon be confirmed by the Senate. He said the task force he will lead will be a presidential task force. Further details on when it would be convened, who would participate and exactly how the task force would work were unavailable.

DeVos called HBCUs ‘pioneers’ of ‘school choice.’ It didn’t go over well.

Many advocates of historically black colleges and universities were apoplectic after Education Secretary Betsy DeVos called the group of schools forged at the height of racial segregation “pioneers” of  “school choice.” DeVos issued a statement Monday evening after a meeting with HBCU leaders, praising their schools for identifying “a system that wasn’t working” and taking it “upon themselves to provide the solution” from the outset of their founding. DeVos said in the statement that HBCUs “started from the fact that there were too many students in America who did not have equal access to education.” But the statement did not delve into the historical context behind the creation of HBCUs: that they were a response to racist Jim Crow laws that enforced segregation in the South, barring black students from attending traditionally white institutions. Instead, DeVos said HBCUs are “living proof that when more options are provided to students, they are afforded greater access and greater quality.” On Tuesday, DeVos spoke at more length with HBCU leaders during a luncheon in Washington. In her prepared remarks, discussing civil rights activist and educator Mary McLeod Bethune, DeVos noted that “the traditional school system systemically failed to provide African Americans access to a quality education — or, sadly, more often to any education at all.” DeVos also said in the Tuesday speech: “HBCUs have always been more than simply institutions of higher learning. You have long represented a challenge to the status quo, starting by providing a necessary opportunity to African Americans following the Civil War.”  Marybeth Gasman, director of the University of Pennsylvania’s Center for Minority-Serving Institutions, accused DeVos of whitewashing HBCU history in a Twitter post: Others concurred: The Trump administration’s outreach to historically black colleges has been met with skepticism as critics accuse the president of using the schools for political gain. DeVos’s Monday statement appeared to give further fuel to that criticism. The Education Department’s website covers some of the history of HBCUs, including a statement from President George H.W. Bush describing their unique mission: “At a time when many schools barred their doors to black Americans, these colleges offered the best, and often the only, opportunity for a higher education.” Historically black colleges date to the pre-Civil War era when public policy in parts of the nation barred blacks from education. The Second Morrill Act in 1890 required states with racially segregated public higher education systems to provide land-grant institutions for black students.  Nevertheless, most HBCUs remained segregated, with poorer facilities, including libraries and research labs, and budgets than traditionally white colleges. When the Civil Rights Act was passed in 1964, 19 states were operating racially segregated higher education systems. States gave pennies on the dollar to public historically black colleges for decades, leaving them with a fraction of funding lavished on predominantly white public institutions. That legacy has kept many HBCUs at a disadvantage to this day.

How crucial are historically black colleges? Just look at who’s graduated from them.

From Thurgood Marshall to Oprah Winfrey, the nation’s historically black colleges and universities have educated generations of African American pioneers and professionals — doctors, lawyers, scientists, ministers, writers and thinkers. The most famous graduate of a historically black college, slain civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr., has a monument on the Mall and a federal holiday to celebrate his birthday.   But on Wednesday, students at historically black Bethune-Cookman University in Florida booed Education Secretary Betsy DeVos as spoke at the historically black school’s commencement. About half the graduates turned their backs on her as she delivered the keynote address. Two historically black colleges — Cheyney and Lincoln universities in Pennsylvania — were founded before the Civil War. Dozens more followed after emancipation  as African Americans were barred from many white colleges and universities well into the 1960s. According to the National Center for Education Statistics, there are now 100 HBCUs in 19 states, plus the District and the U.S. Virgin Islands; and the number students enrolling at them has risen by 32 percent since 1976. HBCUs continue to play an outsized role in placing African American students in graduate and professional schools. And their most accomplished alumni continue to dazzle and inspire. Here are just a few of the most impressive graduates of historically black colleges and universities.      Chief Justice Earl Warren delivered the unanimous ruling on May 17, 1954: “We conclude that, in the field of public education, the doctrine of ‘separate but equal’ has no place.”   King was admitted to Morehouse after his junior year in high school, according the King Institute. During King’s tenure at Morehouse, the college president was Benjamin E. Mays, who instilled in the students his philosophy that “Morehouse men were distinctive in their talent” and must maintain a commitment “to racial uplift.” King became president of the sociology club and a member of the debate team. King joined the college’s chapter of the NAACP. The Morehouse College Martin Luther King Jr. Collection has more than 10,000 King artifacts, including hundreds of King’s handwritten notes, manuscripts and sermons.  Shuttlesworth, who founded the Alabama Christian Movement for Human Rights, led a challenge to segregated buses in Birmingham, Ala. A bomb exploded at his house on Dec. 25, 1956. A year later, he was beaten with chains and whips while leading a protest to integrate an all-white public school. Shuttlesworth, who began preaching at the First Baptist Church in Selma in 1952, was a founder of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, where he was secretary from 1958 to 1970.    At Lincoln, the Langston Hughes Memorial Library holds the contents of Hughes’s personal library, which was bequeathed to the university after Hughes died in 1967.   Although she rapidly became successful as a talk-show host, Winfrey’s father kept reminding her that she would never be successful until she finished her degree. “I thought, I’m going to let this college thing go and I only had one credit short. But, my father, from that time on and for years after, was always on my case, because I did not graduate,” Winfrey told graduates. “He’d say, ‘Oprah Gail,’ that’s my middle name, ‘I don’t know what you’re gonna do without that degree.” And I’d say, ‘But, Dad, I have my own television show.’ And he’d say, ‘Well, I still don’t know what you’re going to do without that degree.’ “And I’d say, ‘But, Dad, now I’m a talk-show host.’ He’d say, ‘I don’t know how you’re going to get another job without that degree.’ ” Tennessee State invited Winfrey back to be the 1987 commencement speaker. “By then, I had my own show, it was nationally syndicated. I’d made a movie, had been nominated for an Oscar and founded my company, Harpo,” she said. “But I told them, I cannot come and give a speech unless I can earn one more credit, because my dad’s still saying I’m not going to get anywhere without that degree. So, I finished my coursework, I turned in my final paper and I got the degree.” In 1986, Winfrey received her degree from Tennessee State.

Violence erupts at protest against former KKK leader David Duke at La. historic black college

A planned protest on the campus of Dillard University, a historic black college in New Orleans, led to police pepper-straying and arresting demonstrators. On Wednesday night, Dillard held a U.S. Senate debate, which included candidate David Duke. Duke is best known for his time as a Ku Klux Klan grand dragon and later, a KKK grand wizard, the head of the white supremacist organization.  Many were angered by Duke’s inclusion in the debate, particularly since it was held at a historic black college and Duke has a past as a white supremacist. In reaction to this, one group of students, calling itself the Socially Engaged Dillard University Students, planned a protest of the debate.  “Everything David Duke promotes is an anathema to us, a Historically Black College & University,” the letter said. “Instead of denying the presence of this terrorist onto our campus, our school’s president has assured his safety by Dillard University armed police, against us, the Dillard University student body.” The protest lasted hours on Wednesday, but eventually turned discordant as protesters attempted to force their way into the building housing the debate. “No Duke. No KKK. No fascist USA,” yelled one protester. Police confronted the protesters, pepper-spraying some.   No serious injuries were sustained during the protest. Meanwhile, during the debate, Duke fought with the moderator and called Jews “tribalist” after being asked about his earlier remarks about “CNN Jews.” “There is a problem in America with a very strong, powerful, tribal group that dominates our media and dominates our international banking,” Duke said. “I’m not opposed to all Jews.” Later in the debate, Democratic candidate Caroline Fayard called Duke a “bad man” and a “snake” who had “slithered out of the swamp.” At one point, Duke said, “I will be Donald Trump’s most loyal advocate.” Duke has always been a contentious figure in Louisiana politics. When he ran for Louisiana governor in 1991, his opponent Edwin Edwards, who had previously stood trial on charges of charges of mail fraud, obstruction of justice and bribery, defeated him. Edwards’s unofficial campaign sticker read, “Vote for the crook; it’s important.”

Scalia stirs controversy again with questions in affirmative action case

It is unknown whether the Supreme Court will approve or reject the race- conscious admissions plan at the University of Texas at Austin, but there is no question about what has emerged as the most controversial moment of Wednesday’s hearing. It came courtesy of Justice Antonin Scalia, the reigning champion of provocation at the high court. Scalia lit up social media and was denounced Thursday on the Senate floor for comments he made that seemed to scoff at the value of diversity at selective universities by sharply questioning whether African Americans might instead be helped by “having them go to a less-advanced school . . . a slower-track school where they do well.” It is hardly surprising that Scalia stirred controversy at the hearing: If anything, his recent public comments about the court have become even more blunt and the criticism of his colleagues when he is on the losing side ever more stinging. Senate Minority Leader Harry M. Reid (D-Nev.) used his morning remarks on the Senate floor to say that the only difference between Scalia and Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump is that “Scalia has a robe and a lifetime appointment.” “These ideas that he pronounced yesterday are racist in application, if not intent,” Reid said. “I don’t know about his intent, but it is deeply disturbing to hear a Supreme Court justice endorse racist ideas from the bench on the nation’s highest court.” That prompted a rush from his conservative defenders, who said that, like other justices, Scalia might have been playing devil’s advocate, asking UT’s lawyer Gregory G. Garre to respond to a popular — if disputed — conservative academic theory. That theory holds that granting preferences to minority candidates who have not been prepared for the rigorous academic challenges at elite universities is self-defeating and sets up the students for failure. Justice Clarence Thomas expressed exactly those sentiments two years ago when the court first considered UT’s program. As a result of race-based affirmative action, Thomas wrote in a separate opinion, “many blacks and Hispanics who likely would have excelled at less elite schools are placed in a position where underperformance is all but inevitable because they are less academically prepared than the white and Asian students with whom they must compete.” Thomas has said that he thinks his degree from Yale Law School is tainted because he was admitted under an affirmative action program, and he has wondered whether he would have been better off going to law school in his home state of Georgia. But as is often the case with Scalia, the court’s longest-serving justice and a lightning rod for liberals, it is as much how he said it as what he said. “There are those who contend that it does not benefit African Americans to — to get them into the University of Texas where they do not do well, as opposed to having them go to a less-advanced school . . . a slower-track school where they do well,” Scalia said. He added: “I’m just not impressed by the fact that — that the University of Texas may have fewer [African Americans]. Maybe it ought to have fewer . . . you know, when you take more, the number of blacks, really competent blacks admitted to lesser schools, turns out to be less.” Scalia was equally provocative last month when addressing law students at Georgetown. He has criticized the Supreme Court’s recent decision that said same-sex couples have a constitutional right to marry. He told the students that the courts should not define which minorities are protected if the Constitution is not specific. “It’s up to me to decide deserving minorities?” Scalia asked. “What about pederasts? What about child abusers? So should I on the Supreme Court [say]: ‘This is a deserving minority. Nobody loves them.’ “No, if you believe in democracy, you should put it to the people,” he said. Scalia’s comments about what is called the “mismatch” theory of affirmative action also seemed to be unconnected to what the court was debating at the time. In UT’s unique system, the flagship university admits about 75 percent of its freshmen based on their graduation rankings from Texas high schools, under the “top 10 percent” rule. Because many of the state’s high schools are dominated by one race or ethnicity, that has created a diverse applicant pool. The court is considering the method used to select the other 25 percent of freshmen. In UT’s “holistic” evaluation of those applicants, race is one of several considerations, along with leadership, obstacles overcome and socioeconomic factors. The students in that applicant pool, according to UT’s brief in the case, are more like the ones Scalia might think would be successful: They are more likely to have higher SAT scores, to have attended integrated and higher-ranked schools, and to have a parent who went to college, a general indicator of future success. If nothing else, Scalia’s comments prompted a new round of academic debate on the mismatch theory. There were several briefs to the court on both sides of the issue. Just as strongly as opponents of affirmative action contend that racial preferences hurt their intended beneficiaries, so do supporters claim that the academic research is sloppy and that it does not take into account the benefits that come from graduating from an elite university.

Trump administration plan to sue schools for anti-white bias would reinforce white supremacy

It’s important to note which institutions we’re talking about. There are approximately 5,000 colleges and universities in the United States. Affirmative action debates center on access to the 200 or so institutions that accept fewer than half of applicants. Critics of race-conscious admissions seem to care less about how many white students are admitted to California State University campuses or community colleges in my state; instead most conversations about race-conscious admissions are about access to Stanford and the 10 University of California campuses.  So then why is the Trump administration taking on this “project” under the guise of civil rights? Why this particular issue, instead of correcting the persistent racial segregation of America’s schools or fixing racial disproportionality in school discipline? It seems the administration is invested in protecting white student overrepresentation at the most elite, most-resourced institutions — universities whose students tend to earn higher starting salaries than graduates of less selective schools and who are better positioned to ascend to positions of leadership in every sector of our economy. Consider that whites make up 93 percent of the Senate and 78 percent of the House of Representatives. Ninety-two percent of governors are white. The majority of Trump administration Cabinet members and political appointees at the Justice Department are white. Almost all these white officials are college graduates. Therefore, investigating and suing institutions of higher education for bias against whites would help preserve white supremacy in our nation’s political leadership. Our country has and will continue to become more racially diverse. This is a fact. Hence, any effort to sustain white overrepresentation and limit college access for students of color is a threat to democracy. Our economic wellness, national security, innovation and global competitiveness depend almost entirely on increasing the educational attainment of all our citizens, not just white Americans.    If the Trump administration wants to represent the best interest of white students, it should leave legally sanctioned affirmative action programs alone.

‘Totally nuts’: Senators blast DeVos for historically inaccurate comments about black colleges

There she goes again. Education Secretary Betsy DeVos has sparked a new controversy, this time making comments about historically black colleges and universities that betrayed ignorance of the history of HBCUs and racial segregation in the United States. DeVos, who has been education secretary for only three weeks, issued a statement Monday evening after meeting HBCU leaders. The statement said this about historically black colleges and universities: DeVos has been focused on promoting school choice — vouchers, charter schools, private schools and other alternatives to the traditional public education system for decades, but this was a step apart from other statements she has made in support of  “choice.” This time she touted HCBUs as choice “pioneers” rather than a reaction to institutionalized racism that prevented blacks from attending white schools. Although she made a speech on Tuesday — noting that “the traditional school system systemically failed to provide African Americans access to a quality education — or, sadly, more often to any education at all” — she didn’t really clean up the mess, and she wound up  adding ammunition to critics who say that DeVos does not understand fundamental aspects of public education and its history. During her Jan. 17 confirmation hearing before the Senate Education Committee, she could not discuss a key federal law protecting students with disabilities — and didn’t seem to know that it was a federal law — and could not discuss how student progress on standardized tests is measured. She was confirmed by the Senate only after Mike Pence became the first vice president in American history to break a tie for a Cabinet nominee. She recently drew the wrath of teachers at a D.C. public school that she had visited, saying that they seemed to be in “receive mode,” waiting to be told what to do. The HBCU comments by DeVos — presumably written by  someone at the Education Department — adds to criticism that the Trump administration has no real connection to African Americans and their history. On Feb. 12, someone at the Education Department posted a tweet that misspelled the name of W.E.B. Du Bois, a black sociologist, historian, civil rights activist and co-founder of the NAACP, the oldest civil rights organization in the United States. That followed comments by President Trump in which he seemed to think that black abolitionist Frederick Douglass — who died in 1895 — was still alive: Not surprisingly, DeVos’s comments about HBCUs sparked a strong reaction on Twitter from academics and others. Among the most critical comments came from Democratic senators, including Patty Murray of Washington, Claire McCaskill of Missouri, Chris Murphy of Connecticut, and Robert P. Casey Jr. of Pennsylvania. — — — — And here are some other comments: — — — — —

Would Trump violate the Constitution by making Obamacare fail?

And some say this would violate the very oath of office that Trump pledged when he was sworn in. But does it?  But Republicans have argued that this arrangement is illegal and have sued. Trump has continued to make the payments — which would amount to about $7 billion in 2017 — but he has also made no promises about continuing to do so and is openly suggesting that the payments may stop. Incidentally, this comes as Trump is also urging the GOP to “let Obamacare fail” in the wake of the Senate GOP's failure to pass a replacement. In other words, it looks a lot like he's threatening to force the law to fail. Trump suggested in a pair of tweets in recent days that the payments amount to bailouts for insurers. White House counselor Kellyanne Conway, meanwhile, said Sunday on Fox News that Trump would announce soon whether the payments would continue. “He's going to make that decision this week, and that's the decision that only he can make,” she said. As president, Trump swore to “take Care that the Laws be faithfully executed,” in accordance with the Constitution. And some have suggested that withholding these payments would violate that oath by effectively sabotaging the law.  Here's what we can say: There is no legal requirement that Trump make the payments, but the fact that they are already being made and he might rescind them would be the clearest sign yet that he's willing to force Obamacare to fail, rather than simply let it. He may claim it's a principled stand, but the implications are unmistakable, and some experts say it would violate the oath he took. “The question of at what point a president's supposed enforcement of a law transforms into illegal legislative action is a hard one,” said Michael Gerhardt of the University of North Carolina School of Law. “But when the president is making clear he is deliberating not enforcing a duly enacted federal mandate, he has made clear that he is violating the Constitution.”  “The Obama administration ordered billions of dollars to be paid out of the Treasury without congressional authorizations and in violation of the Constitution,” Turley said. “When it comes to unilateral executive action, what a president giveth, a president can taketh away.” He added: “To the extent that the Trump administration cuts off the money unilaterally ordered by Obama to be paid to insurance companies, Trump would be on stronger ground since that money was never appropriated by Congress and was found by the district court to have been unconstitutionally paid out from the Treasury.” Mark Major, an expert on presidential powers at Penn State University, said the move would violate Trump's oath. But he also said that's not entirely unusual for a president. “President Trump would definitely be sabotaging Obamacare by not paying the CSRs,” Major said. “He's explicitly said so himself, because he thinks it will give him leverage over the Democrats. Trump's not paying the CSRs definitely runs afoul of his constitutional duty to faithfully execute the laws of the land.” Major compared such a decision to the Obama administration not defending the federal ban on same-sex marriage, called the Defense of Marriage Act, or DOMA. And he said it's up to Congress to force the issue. “Whether it's informed by morality, practicality or politics, most presidents do not faithfully execute every law on the books,” Major said. “Think Obama's refusal to defend DOMA in the courts or vigorously enforce federal marijuana laws at the state level, recognizing that some states have legalized it. This is why Congress is the crucial factor here. They can force the president to act — most dramatically, through the threat of, or voting on, articles of impeachment for undermining the constitutional order — or take the CSRs out of the president's hands and pass a law to make the payments automatic. Congress's actions or lack thereof is largely what shapes the scope of presidential powers.” So there's a lot to unpack there, legally speaking.  And that may be the biggest takeaway here. If Trump cancels those payments, he may not be in legal or constitutional jeopardy, but he would certainly risk looking like he's doing something that is very controversial and overwhelmingly at odds with the will of the American people. In that context, the fact that he's even entertaining such a move is pretty remarkable.

A black college’s marching band makes controversial decision to play at Trump inauguration

The marching band of Alabama’s oldest private, historically black liberal arts college has been included on a list of groups that have accepted invitations to perform at the presidential inauguration of Donald Trump later this month, news that was greeted with criticism on social media.  Officials at the school, which is about 50 miles east of Birmingham, have not addressed the performance publicly and have not responded to email requesting comment. Nor has the Presidential Inauguration Committee responded to an email request for comment. Across social media and on Talladega’s accounts, reaction was mixed. “After how black people were treated at Trump’s rallies, you’re going to go and shuck and jive down Pennsylvania Avenue? For what?” Seinya SamForay told the AP. “What they did is a slap in the face to other black universities.” Howard University, a historically black university in the nation’s capital, played during President Obama’s inauguration but did not apply to march in Trump’s parade. John Newson, Howard’s band director, told NBC 4 that the band was facing “budgetary constraints,” but added that he thinks political beliefs factor into the decision for many band directors and school administrators. “I think everybody knows why, and no one wants to say and lose their job,” Newson said.   “We were a bit horrified to hear of the invitation,” Shirley Ferrill of Fairfield, Ala., a member of Talladega’s Class of 1974, told the AP. “I don’t want my alma mater to give the appearance of supporting him. Ignore, decline or whatever, but please don’t send our band out in our name to do that.”    Six to eight members of Marist College’s 100-member band plan to skip the trip. “They don’t want to have anything to do with the inauguration of President Trump and we respect that and that’s their right,” he told the Associated Press. The band will march without them.

Trump tests new message on college affordability, a key issue for Clinton

ASTON, Pa. — Donald Trump said Thursday that he would make lower college tuition a priority in his administration, his most extensive remarks to date on college affordability, an issue that Hillary Clinton has made central to her pitch to millennial voters. Addressing a rally here, the GOP nominee said that universities should use their tax-free "multibillion-dollar endowments" to help students with tuition and debt, but that instead too many sit on the funds or invest them. “Instead these universities use the money to pay their administrators, to put donors names on their buildings, or just store the money, keep it and invest it. In fact, many universities spend more on private-equity fund managers than on tuition programs,” he said. “But they should be using the money on students, for tuition, for student life and for student housing. That's what it's supposed to be for.” Trump said that he would work with Congress to encourage universities to lower tuition costs — or risk losing federal tax breaks. But he offered few other specifics Thursday night. “The students are choking on those loans. They can't pay them back. Before they start, they're in trouble. And it's something I hear more and more and it's one of the things I hear more than anything else,” he said. Clinton has put forward a detailed plan to make public colleges and universities tuition-free for students in families earning up to $125,000 a year and to make the college years debt-free for all students. She also promises to help students refinance existing debts at more favorable interest rates. Her campaign has created an online “calculator” so students can see how much they would save under her proposals. The college affordability plan is a key part of Clinton’s recently stepped-up appeal to millennials. During a speech at Temple University in Philadelphia this week aimed at young voters, she lamented that “as you know better than most, tuition keeps going through the roof and debt keeps piling up.” During that speech, Clinton gave a shout-out to Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont, the runner-up in the Democratic primaries, with whom she collaborated on her current college affordability plan. Sanders routinely outperformed Clinton among voters under 30 during the primaries and caucuses. A political committee supporting Clinton, Correct the Record, characterized Trump’s college-affordability remarks as an empty gesture. “Trump introduced what appeared to be an attempt at a college affordability proposal, which is ironic coming from the man behind the student-swindling Trump University and Trump Institute,” a statement from the group said.

The future of historically black colleges

_Daryl Michael Scott is a professor of history at Howard University._ Ron Stodghill’s exploration of the status of historically black colleges and universities (HBCUs) comes at a moment when our entire university system is imperiled. Since the rise of globalism, policymakers have insisted that the nation’s continued greatness depends on being the brains, rather than the brawn, of the world economy. Despite this, the federal government, reeling from war debt and the Great Recession, has joined states in limiting its investment in higher education. Increasingly, the justification for funding has shifted from the need for an educated citizenry to workforce development. We are witnessing the decline of the American research university and an existential threat to all but a handful of HBCUs. A journalist and a professor at Johnson C. Smith University, an HBCU in Charlotte, Stodghill is committed to the future of HBCUs but calls on them to get their houses in order before it’s too late. While acknowledging that state policies and those of the Obama administration, especially changes in the Plus Loan Program, have created an economic hardship on HBCUs, Stodghill sides with reformers who, in general, believe in less dependence on government money, increased standards for admissions, merging and consolidating colleges, more accountability for administrators and boards of trustees, and constructing majors tailored to the marketplace. Unlike some of his interviewees, however, Stodghill believes in the standard justification for HBCUs: providing a more nurturing environment for students. Unfortunately, Stodghill bases his case on historical myths. He holds the view that majority-white schools “poach” the best black students. (Who owns them?) He seems unaware that those deemed the best students often attended majority-white colleges even during the segregation era. Phi Beta Kappa keys from the Ivies and small Northern colleges were treated much like Olympic medals, while many HBCUs were considered a continuation of high school — which, given their inadequate funding, they often were. Without doubt, desegregation, along with new federal programs, brought better funding and transformed most HBCUs into viable colleges. Stodghill also promotes the myth that once upon a time, dynamic, committed faculty members and administrators led HBCUs and pursued the path to progress. In this golden age, Howard’s Mordecai Johnson , Morehouse’s Benjamin Mays and Fisk’s committed faculty functioned with integrity and challenged backwardness. This leaves us with a false impression. Those reformers told of a different, more pervasive reality. According to progressive educators, the state HBCUs were run by sycophants who served the white supremacist governors loyally and ensured that black students would not get out of line. In religious schools funded by the American Missionary Association, the paternalism was often stultifying. Most black educational leaders, like our modern-day reformers, preached a gospel of make do with less. Back then, however, the black intelligentsia outright condemned that gospel as part of what Carter G. Woodson referred to as “the mis-education of the Negro.” While Stodghill’s book has the feel of investigative journalism, the author’s greatest shortcoming is that he is often a captive to his sources, especially in his treatment of the financial crisis at Howard University, where I teach. Most major universities sold their hospitals decades ago to avoid financial devastation, but Howard hasn’t. In 2006, D.C. Mayor Anthony Williams unilaterally rejected Howard President H. Patrick Swygert’s partnership proposal to build a second hospital and spin them both off under a separate corporate entity, which would have ended the university’s responsibility. Since 2013, the financial burden of the hospital has been a matter of public discussion as a result of a leaked memo written by Renee Higginbotham-Brooks, then a long-standing trustee. Based on an interview with her, Stodghill provides a salacious but largely irrelevant account of the dispute she had with then-Board of Trustees Chairman A. Barry Rand and never explores the larger question of whether the board has a viable plan to save the hospital without doing perhaps irreparable damage to the other colleges in the university. Given that the book focuses on the shortcomings of boards, we would have expected more investigation of the HBCU that is the best funded by far and considered the capstone of them all. Stodghill does not ask what motivates trustees and what limits their ability to make the truly hard decisions. Even more than presidents, they sign on to do good and to virtually never do harm, or even risk it. This can paralyze or even prevent them from seeing, let alone making, the toughest decisions. No one joins to close programs that have been at the heart of a school’s mission, to do away with the things that gave meaning and purpose to their own lives. Who wants to close history and philosophy departments — fields at the heart of promoting democracy — in favor of criminal justice and medical records-keeping? What trustee wants to close or merge a university out of existence? And sometimes these issues are all too personal to be seen clearly. Higginbotham-Brooks credits Howard’s hospital and medical school with saving her life when she had breast cancer. It is easier to pass the problem along and hope for an intervention from without before death comes from within. For the most part, Stodghill ignores any principled opposition to change. At Howard, Dillard and other HBCUs, the liberal arts tradition is in jeopardy. Ironically, Stodghill invokes the recent history in which protesters demand that HBCUs embrace the changes being mandated by our national obsession with science, technology, engineering and math, the STEM fields. As in the age of industrial education and Booker T. Washington, college is increasingly seen as a place for workforce development rather than intellectual growth and citizenship training. These Bookerites of STEM seem unaware that the fight to save and advance the humanities and social sciences at American universities stands in the age-old tradition of Thomas Jefferson, W.E.B. Du Bois, Carter G. Woodson and John Dewey. A nation reduced to a workforce will lack self- knowledge and will have trouble remaining a democracy. This old African American debate is the new American educational crisis. By Ron Stodghill Amistad. 258 pp. $26.99

What Trump University has in common with another failed for-profit college

Newly disclosed records in an ongoing lawsuit against Trump University reveal some striking similarities between the company and another controversial for-profit: Corinthian Colleges.  It also implored staff to pepper prospective students with questions such as: “Do you like living paycheck to paycheck? … Do you enjoy seeing everyone else but yourself in their dream houses and driving their dream cars with huge checking accounts? Those people saw an opportunity, and didn’t make excuses, like what you’re doing now.” Exploiting desperation is the same kind of strategy employed by Corinthian, the defunct for-profit chain that operated Everest, WyoTech and Heald Colleges. An investigation by California Attorney General Kamala Harris uncovered a Corinthian marketing plan targeting single mothers, veterans and people with low incomes. The company went so far as to say its ideal students were “isolated, impatient people with low self-esteem and few people in their lives who care about them, and who are stuck and unable to see and plan well for their future.” Corinthian lured students with promises of jobs that it failed to deliver, charging tens of thousands of dollars for degrees that many say are worthless. Along the same lines, former Trump students claim that in some cases they paid upward of $34,000 for seminars assuring success in real estate that never materialized. Trump University is facing a $40 million lawsuit from New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman for deceptive marketing, including touting the mogul’s involvement in hand-picking instructors and claiming consumers would receive access to private sources of financing. Corinthian, meanwhile, ran afoul of federal regulators for falsely advertising job placement rates and career services that it couldn’t deliver. Allegations that the company lied about the success of its programs ultimately led to the loss of its access to federal funding and its bankruptcy last year. Trump University was never licensed as a school nor sanctioned to receive federal financial aid like Corinthian, but both institutions made millions of dollars off of people believing that education would be their key to upward mobility. Before it shut down in 2010, Trump University pulled in an estimated $40 million from about 7,000 students, an amount that is dwarfed by the billions in taxpayer dollars that the Department of Education funneled to Corinthian in the form of federal loans and Pell grants.

Trump’s courtship of black voters hampered by decades of race controversies

CLEVELAND — Donald Trump’s campaign has tried to use this week’s Republican National Convention to court African Americans by arguing that President Obama has failed them on jobs and crime. But when the GOP presidential nominee delivers his acceptance speech here Thursday, he will address an estimated 18 blacks out of 2,472 delegates. Although that handful includes some of Trump’s most vociferous backers, the overall lack of ethnic diversity at the convention illustrates one of his greatest challenges: how to court black voters after four decades of controversy over his racial views, including campaign-trail rhetoric that has alienated many minorities. Twelve years ago, the GOP seemed on its way toward broadening its base, boasting 167 black delegates at its convention. That year, President George W. Bush drew 16 percent of the black vote here in Ohio, unusually high for a Republican, to help secure his reelection, as well as 11 percent nationally, and party leaders had hoped to increase minority engagement in 2016. But as Trump heads to the general election, a Washington Post-ABC News poll found Democrat Hillary Clinton leading Trump among blacks by 89 percent to 4 percent, and a recent NBC News/Wall Street Journal/Marist poll said Trump has zero support among African Americans in Ohio. That is frustrating to the black delegates here, several of whom said in interviews that Trump has a compelling case to make to African Americans. “The rest of America has to see the person I sat down with,” said James Evans, the chairman of the Utah Republican Party, who last month met privately with Trump after unsuccessfully trying to draft Mitt Romney to seek the nomination. “The Democratic playbook is that if you are a white Republican candidate, you are a racially insensitive candidate. Let’s look at the policies of the political left and how they devastated the black community, and you tell me who is more racist.” Bruce LeVell, a delegate who heads Trump’s National Diversity Coalition, said he faces discrimination as a Trump supporter. “To be a black American in Georgia, and to be a Republican and to be for Trump, I can’t even tell you all the things I’ve been called,” he said. Trump’s outlook on race has come under new scrutiny in recent days as he has stepped up his criticism of the Black Lives Matter movement, saying it is “very divisive.” He asserted that after a black man shot five white police officers in Dallas before being killed, adding, “I have seen, you know, moments of silence called for . . . this horrible human being.” The assertion came despite the fact that leaders of Black Lives Matter condemned the killing of police officers. Trump has vowed that he would unify the races as president. “I am not a racist,” he told The Washington Post in an interview earlier this year. “I’m the least racist person that you’ve ever interviewed.” Trump, however, faces many challenges in winning over black voters, in part because he has been at the center of controversies regarding his racial views for decades. The first front-page news story about Trump was a 1973 report about the federal government’s lawsuit against him and his father in a racial bias case. Trump denied discriminating against black housing applicants and settled the case without admitting guilt. Several years later, after Trump had expanded his real estate empire by building casinos in Atlantic City, a former executive from his business accused him of making racist statements. John O’Donnell, who was president of the Trump Plaza Hotel and Casino and later wrote a memoir about his experience, said Trump blamed ****financial difficulties partly on African American accountants. “I’ve got black accountants at Trump Castle and at Trump Plaza — black guys counting my money!” O’Donnell’s book quoted Trump as saying. “I hate it. The only kind of people I want counting my money are short guys that wear yarmulkes every day. Those are the kind of people I want counting my money. Nobody else. . . . Besides that, I’ve got to tell you something else. I think that the guy is lazy. And it’s probably not his fault because laziness is a trait in blacks. It really is; I believe that. It’s not anything they can control.” O’Donnell said in an interview that he admonished Trump not to talk that way. “You’re sitting there listening to him talk in stereotypes about black people being lazy and that it was a trait in his mind. And you just go, ‘Oh my God,’ ” O’Donnell said. Trump told Playboy magazine that O’Donnell’s memoir was “probably true.” He told The Post earlier this year that the book was “fiction,” although he hadn’t read it. Trump said he fired O’Donnell, but O’Donnell said he quit. In 1989, Trump inserted himself into a racially charged case in New York City. Five boys, four black and one Hispanic, ages 14 to 16, had been arrested for the brutal attack and rape of a woman who had been jogging in Central Park. Two weeks later, Trump paid for a full-page ad in four New York newspapers urging the return of the death penalty and warning of “roving bands of wild criminals.” The jogger suffered permanent damage. The boys were convicted and served six to 13 years in prison. But years later, a career criminal confessed to the rape, providing a DNA match. The convictions were overturned, and the city paid $41 million to settle a wrongful-imprisonment suit that the men had filed. Trump called the settlement “a disgrace,” refused to apologize, and said, “These young men do not exactly have the pasts of angels.” A few months after the Central Park incident, Trump appeared on an NBC-TV special called “Racial Attitudes and Consciousness Exam,” hosted by Bryant Gumbel. He appeared to criticize affirmative action. “A well-educated black has a tremendous advantage over a well-educated white in terms of the job market,” Trump said on the program. “I think sometimes a black may think they don’t have an advantage or this and that. I’ve said on one occasion, even about myself, if I were starting off today, I would love to be a well-educated black, because I believe they do have an actual advantage.” During Trump’s time as the star of his reality show, “The Apprentice,” he worked with a number of African American contestants. Kwame Jackson, a Harvard Business School graduate who was on the first season of the show, said he saw the “Dr. Jekyll-Mr. Hyde” nature of Trump. During the taping of the show, Jackson said, Trump was respectful and Jackson didn’t think of him as racist. But when Trump became a leading voice of the “birther” movement and questioned whether Obama was born in the United States, and then spoke critically of Mexicans and Muslims, Jackson said he sadly came to a different conclusion. “People thought he is flirting with racism, or manipulating American anger, then it became pure racism,” he said. “My distance [with Trump] grew to true disdain.” In November, Trump drew criticism when he retweeted a tweet that said blacks killed 81 percent of white homicide victims. The claim quickly was shown to be false. The actual number was 15 percent; 82 percent of whites were killed by whites. The number of black delegates was disclosed last month in a Republican Party email reported by Post columnist Jonathan Capehart. A party official did not respond this week to a request for comment. Trump declined an invitation to speak to the NAACP’s annual convention, which was held in Cincinnati this week. The civil rights organization said Trump’s campaign cited a scheduling conflict with the Republican convention. Although only a handful of African American delegates are at this week’s convention, a number of blacks have been given prominent speaking roles, On Monday night, Milwaukee County Sheriff David Clarke Jr., who has called Black Lives Matter a “hate group,” praised Trump as “the steadfast leader our nation needs.” Trump, meanwhile, said in the interview earlier this year that his candidacy would be best for African Americans. “Somebody said Make America Great Again is a very negative theme,” he said. “I said, ‘No, it’s a very positive theme because people have been disenfranchised.’ Look at African Americans. I mean, I’m going to be so great. I think I’m going to do great with African Americans.”

The marching band of Alabama’s oldest private, historically black liberal arts college has been included on a list of groups that have accepted invitations to perform at the presidential inauguration of Donald Trump later this month, news that was greeted with criticism on social media.  Officials at the school, which is about 50 miles east of Birmingham, have not addressed the performance publicly and have not responded to an email requesting comment. Nor has the Presidential Inauguration Committee responded to an email request for comment. Across social media and on Talladega’s accounts, reaction was mixed. “After how black people were treated at Trump’s rallies, you’re going to go and shuck and jive down Pennsylvania Avenue? For what?” Seinya SamForay told the AP. “What they did is a slap in the face to other black universities.” Howard University, a historically black university in the nation’s capital, played during President Obama’s inauguration but did not apply to march in Trump’s parade. John Newson, Howard’s band director, told NBC 4 that the band was facing “budgetary constraints,” but added that he thinks political beliefs factor into the decision for many band directors and school administrators. “I think everybody knows why, and no one wants to say and lose their job,” Newson said.   “We were a bit horrified to hear of the invitation,” Shirley Ferrill of Fairfield, Ala., a member of Talladega’s Class of 1974, told the AP. “I don’t want my alma mater to give the appearance of supporting him. Ignore, decline or whatever, but please don’t send our band out in our name to do that.”    Six to eight members of the 100-member band from Marist College in Poughkeepsie, N.Y., plan to skip the trip. “They don’t want to have anything to do with the inauguration of President Trump and we respect that and that’s their right,” he told the Associated Press. The band will march without them.

Teacher: Here’s the history lesson Betsy DeVos needed on black colleges and the Ku Klux Klan

President Trump and Education Secretary Betsy DeVos have reached out to the leaders of America’s more than 100 historically black colleges and universities, with Trump inviting them to the White House and DeVos issuing a statement about their importance. But the administration’s initiative didn’t go quite as well as it might have hoped. Trump has directed that the White House Initiative on HBCUs — started under President Jimmy Carter to help colleges access federal resources — no longer operate from the Education Department but instead from the White House, but he didn’t promise additional resources to the schools. Some HBCU leaders at the White House were disappointed that their time there was much shorter than had been promised. Then DeVos issued a statement in support of the initiative that was being taken away from the department she runs and said “HBCUs are real pioneers when it comes to school choice,” ignoring the fact that black colleges and universities were founded for black students because white institutions wouldn’t accept them. There was significant backlash to her statement. One of her critics on that score is Paul Horton, a history instructor at the University High School at the University of Chicago Laboratory Schools, who gave a presentation on the subject last week at the Illinois Council for History Education conference. In this post, he offers a lesson with materials he uses in class that he said could help DeVos better understand why her statement about the creation of historically black colleges and universities was so pilloried. As Horton explains, the Bureau of Refugees, Freedmen, and Abandoned Lands, commonly referred to as the Freedmen’s Bureau, was created by the federal government in 1865 to assist freedmen and poor white war refugees in the South during the Reconstruction era with food and other resources, including education. There were more than 1,000 schools created in the South by 1870, but the bureau fell apart with the rise of the Ku Klux Klan, whose members attacked schools and teachers educating blacks. The Klan did not accept the idea that African Americans should be educated; they wanted to continue the pre-Civil War prohibition on black education. Jim Crow laws were then passed that legalized segregation in public places, and blacks couldn’t attend schools with whites. HBCUs were created by whites and blacks, mostly by churches and philanthropists in the Deep South because state governments had no interest in educating blacks. Here’s Horton’s lesson for DeVos:   Secretary Betsy DeVos can learn all she needs to learn about the evolution of school choice for African American students in the South following the Civil War if she would consult the primary sources and encourage the rest of the students, teachers, parents, policy makers in the United States to do the same. The teachers who taught in these schools deserve a national memorial and those who died at the hands of the Klan should be seen as national heroes.

So what if Trump’s travel ban order might be constitutional if another president issued it?

Consider a government agency that requires all job applicants to have a college degree in order to reduce the number of African-Americans eligible to apply. Given that motive, the employment policy would be unconstitutional. And that is true regardless of the fact that a college diploma requirement might be perfectly legal if adopted for a different purpose. Or consider southern states’ use of literacy tests to exclude African-American voters from the franchise. Few doubt that literacy tests might be constitutional if adopted for nonracial reasons. There is good reason for courts to strike down seemingly neutral policies that are proven to have a discriminatory motive. Otherwise, the government would have a blank check to target unpopular racial, ethnic, and religious minorities, so long as the the law or executive order in question did not explicitly mention race, ethnicity, or religion. And there are many ways to target such groups without directly mentioning them. The government can easily find characteristics that strongly correlate with membership in the group and then disadvantage people who have that trait. That is exactly what the segregationist Jim Crow states tried to do in many situations where courts began to strike down explicit racial classifications.

Tighter rules on for-profit colleges protect the most at-risk students

The April 28 editorial “Blocking the college door” criticized regulations recently proposed by the Obama administration, suggesting that they unfairly single out for-profit colleges and will hurt minority and low-income students who attend these schools. This argument misses the mark: The regulations appropriately target the riskiest form of higher education debt and protect students from predatory lending. As has been well-documented, many for-profit colleges have engaged in high-pressure and deceptive tactics to entice students to take out loans to attend expensive courses that fail to prepare them for employment. Since students of color disproportionately enroll in for-profit colleges, they have been disproportionately harmed. The proposed regulations appropriately focus on the source of unsafe, predatory lending — exactly as regulations should have focused on risky subprime mortgage lending a decade ago. That a certain financial sector claims to serve the needs of low-income and minority borrowers does not give it license to engage in predatory tactics. ****Maura Dundon** , Washington ** The writer is senior policy counsel at the Center for Responsible Lending.

Charles Koch teams with black colleges on education and criminal justice research

Billionaire Charles Koch, a prominent backer of conservative political causes, is giving $25.6 million to enable scholars at historically black universities to research education, criminal justice and entrepreneurship in communities plagued by high crime and other social ills. The donation, made through Koch’s foundation and his family business, will help launch a research center affiliated with the Thurgood Marshall College Fund. Named for the first African American justice to serve on the U.S. Supreme Court, the Marshall fund supports dozens of historically black colleges and universities, or HBCUs. Among them are Howard University and the University of the District of Columbia in the nation’s capital, and Bowie State and Morgan State in Maryland. “Education transformed my life, and I’ve committed to do all I can to give others that same opportunity,” Koch said in a statement Wednesday evening. The Marshall fund has made that same commitment, he said, “giving students and scholars the chance to discover new ways to overcome barriers holding too many people back. As they succeed, so does our society.” Koch, 81, of Wichita, is perhaps best known for working with his brother David Koch to promote conservative politicians and causes aligned with his free- market views. But the Kansas businessman also is a major academic philanthropist, which has generated controversy on some campuses. Last year, the Charles Koch Foundation pledged $10 million to George Mason University in Northern Virginia as part of a $30 million package of gifts that led GMU to rename its law school for late Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia. The foundation also has spread millions of dollars to numerous other schools to support research into economics and other topics. Some say the largesse compromises the independence of universities. “Koch’s presence in higher ed is not educational, but strictly political in purpose,” said Ralph Wilson of Tallahassee, co-founder of a group called UnKoch My Campus. Wilson said donations come with strings attached. “When they give the donor control, the trade-off is academic freedom,” he said. Brian Hooks, president of the Koch foundation, denied that the organization, based in Arlington, Va., is seeking to advance a political agenda through academic gifts. “Our commitment across the board with all of our grants . . . is to open inquiry,” he said in an interview Tuesday at the D.C. office of the Marshall fund. “We’re looking to support great scholars.” The partnership with the Marshall fund is not the first academic initiative Koch has sponsored for HBCUs. In 2014, the Koch foundation and Koch Industries pledged $25 million to the United Negro College Fund for student scholarships and other aid to HBCUs. The new gift, distributed over five years, will enable the Marshall fund to launch what is called the Center for Advancing Opportunity. Based in Washington, the center will support HBCU faculty researching education, criminal justice and entrepreneurship in “fragile communities” — defined as places where residents face “significant barriers” to opportunity. These communities would typically have high crime, troubled schools and various other economic and social problems. The center also will award scholarships to HBCU students, sponsor academic forums and work with Gallup to survey targeted communities on issues of interest and develop a metric called an “opportunity index.” Gallup’s chairman, Jim Clifton, is also chairman of the Marshall fund’s board. Johnny C. Taylor Jr., president and chief executive of the Marshall fund, traced the genesis of the gift to a television interview he heard two years ago in which Koch was discussing the perils of “over-criminalization” and other barriers to opportunity. Taylor said he found Koch’s views intriguing and sent him a letter soon afterward. He was surprised to get a call from a Koch representative within a few days. That started a dialogue. In late 2015, Taylor attended a conference Koch sponsored in New Orleans called “Advancing Justice.” Taylor said that even though some HBCUs were represented at the conference, it struck him that relatively few people of color were participating in a discussion of issues critical to minority groups. “You need to bring more of the community in and listen to them,” Taylor told Koch’s team, which led them to ask Taylor what more should be done. In October, Taylor flew to Wichita to discuss a grant proposal with Koch. Taylor said Koch insisted in their meeting that the leader of the Marshall fund should sit at the head of the table. “This guy is really concerned about America,” Taylor said. “He’s a patriot. And so am I. That was something that really struck me.” Taylor said he is unconcerned about the possibility that the Marshall fund will face criticism for working with Koch. He said he is focused on solving problems in Chicago, Charlotte, Ferguson, Mo., and other places where recent tensions between police and minority communities have underscored long-standing social and economic challenges. Universities can play a role, Taylor said. “Part of our mission is to figure out what’s going wrong” and search for solutions, he said. “To be clear, that costs money.”

Does President Trump want a constitutional crisis?

It's time to start talking seriously about a constitutional crisis, because apparently President Trump is talking about one.  The White House is emphasizing that the prospect of pardons has only been raised hypothetically. According to them, it was simply Trump being curious about his legal powers.   So on the day that marked the sixth month of his presidency, Trump's White House both asserted that it was possible he might try to fire a second person investigating him and/or his campaign (Comey wasn't probing Trump personally at the time of his firing) and was reported to be entertaining the possibility of pardoning himself.  On the surface, that looks a whole lot like Trump being very concerned about what might become of all of this. If he's done nothing wrong, after all, why not let the investigation play out and let the evidence speak for itself?  Trump's combativeness is rooted in those sensibilities, but also in his professed belief that the entire Russia investigation is an effort to undermine him and question his legitimacy as president. And if Trump believes this is truly a witch hunt that is meant to take him down — fairly or not — it would seem he's liable to do anything to prevent that from happening, up to and including possibly testing his powers as president using unprecedented means. If he thinks this is going to destroy his presidency, would he not try anything to stop it? Trump may never pardon himself, but the fact that he even asks about it is a huge story in and of itself. This whole thing seems to be moving in one direction — a direction that is decidedly not away from a constitutional crisis.

African Americans are ‘in the worst shape they’ve ever been,’ Trump says in North Carolina

KENANSVILLE, N.C. — Donald Trump faced a swift backlash Tuesday after declaring that African Americans are “in the worst shape they’ve ever been” during a campaign event here. "We're going to rebuild our inner cities because our African American communities are absolutely in the worst shape they've ever been in before. Ever, ever, ever,” Trump said during a campaign event at the Duplin County Events Center, where thousands of supporters gathered. The comments drew immediate criticism on social media from critics who accused him of failing to consider the United States’ history with slavery and North Carolina’s history with Jim Crow laws and segregation. Kenansville itself is named after a man whose family owned a slave plantation. Trump has been regularly blasted for the way he has spoken about the struggles facing black Americans around the country. Black leaders have accused Trump of stereotyping African Americans. He has compared American inner cities to war zones, has overstated unemployment among blacks, and has often asked several times, “What do you have to lose?” “You take a look at the inner cities, you get no education, you get no jobs, you get shot walking down the street. They're worse, I mean honestly, places like Afghanistan are safer than some of our inner cities,” Trump said Tuesday. “And I say to the African American communities and I think it's resonating, because you see what's happening with my poll numbers with African Americans. They're going, like, high." President Obama on Saturday tore into Trump on that very issue, suggesting that Trump lacked historical awareness. "You may have heard Hillary [Clinton]'s opponent in this election say that there's never been a worse time to be a black person. I mean, he missed that whole civics lesson about slavery or Jim Crow," Obama said during the Congressional Black Caucus gala in Washington. Obama urged voters to support Clinton over Trump. "If I hear anybody saying their vote does not matter, that it doesn't matter who we elect, read up on your history. It matters. We've got to get people to vote," Obama said. "I will consider it a personal insult, an insult to my legacy, if this community lets down its guard and fails to activate itself in this election. You want to give me a good sendoff? Go vote."

Clinton turns Trump’s ‘What the hell do you have to lose?’ appeal to African Americans into campaign ad

Donald Trump's appeal to African American voters is now a campaign ad for Hillary Clinton.  In a series of video clips, Trump is shown saying "Look at my African American over here!" and "I have a great relationship with the blacks. I've always had a great relationship with the blacks." At the same time, the ad raises the issue of federal lawsuits accusing Trump and his companies of housing discrimination against black applicants. It will air in Florida, North Carolina, Ohio and Pennsylvania, key swing states.  "A man with a long history of racial discrimination, who traffics in dark conspiracy theories drawn from the pages of supermarket tabloids and these kind of white supremacists, white nationalist, anti-Semitic groups should never run our government or command our military," Clinton said on MSNBC's "Morning Joe" on Friday. She warned that Trump poses a unique threat and said that he has taken "fringe groups" and tried to make them mainstream. The message, like the ad, is targeted at voters across the political spectrum — an effort by Clinton and her campaign to highlight Trump's most controversial statements. "I am reaching out to everyone, Republicans, Democrats, independents — everyone who is as troubled as I am by the bigotry and divisiveness of Donald Trump's campaign," Clinton added. "This is not a normal choice between a Republican and a Democrat." In an interview on Thursday night, Trump responded to Clinton's speech, denying that he had discriminated against black applicants in the 1970 case. "Well, it's an incorrect statement. First of all, we were sued many, many years ago, when I was very young, by the government, [which] sued many, many companies. You know that. It wasn't me. They sued many companies," Trump told CNN's Anderson Cooper. When Cooper asked if the applications of black prospective tenants were marked with a "C" for "colored," Trump said that he didn't know. "I don't even know," Trump said. "Honestly, what a superintendent does in a building, that I can't tell you. But I can just tell you that they settled the case and that was the end of it. It was many years ago."

So much for Trump’s outreach to African Americans

Donald Trump’s outreach to African Americans is as phony as anything he has said or done in this campaign (including the promise to make Mexico pay for the border wall). Until a couple of weeks ago, he showed little interest in African American voters, declining to give any speeches to predominantly black audiences. He comically refers to these Americans as “the blacks” (as in “The blacks love me!”) and insists their lives are a “disaster.” He imagines they all live in poverty and have “no jobs.” He offers nothing of substance to address any issue of concern, from school reform to criminal justice reform. To the contrary, he shows disbelief or outright contempt for complaints from African American communities across the country about unequal treatment by the police.   There is no explanation for this other than pure cowardice. He is showing up; he just won’t meet in public with the congregants. (“Trump’s first foray as a presidential candidate into a church of African Americans  was initially billed as a speech to the congregation to lay out his policies that impact minorities, followed by the interview with Jackson.”) He was rightly blasted by Michigan state Sen. Coleman Young (D) and Detroit’s mayor. Denise Horn, Hillary Clinton’s director of African American media, told Right Turn via email, “Today we learned that Donald Trump will bypass yet another opportunity to speak directly to the Black community. This comes as a surprise to no one. In every way imaginable Donald Trump has bucked the tradition of presidential candidates, including his Republican predecessors.” She recounted, “He declined the opportunity to speak at the NAACP convention, the National Urban League, and the National Association of Black Journalists, yet he still has the nerve to ask African Americans ‘what we have to lose’ under his agenda.” She added, “Donald Trump continues to show us who he really is: an attention seeking opportunist with no real regard for the well-being of Black people.” According to the Clinton campaign, Clinton has held 100 African American-focused events, including conferences for the National Urban League and NAACP and the Congressional Black Caucus gala. It certainly would have been better for Trump not to have promised an appearance, indeed not to go with his fingers-crossed-behind-his-back promise to go into neighborhoods Republicans do not campaign in. It was not going to help him with those voters anyway. Now, he has done something rare — shown a lack of confidence and fear of a media event that could spin out of control. The implicit message could not be any clearer. He loves, loves, loves speaking to huge audiences of whites. He talks off the top of his head. He needs no notes. He’ll go to Washington state to talk to them. However, he cannot bring himself to make a single public appearance — even with a script in the teleprompter — to reassure African Americans that he cares about them.  Trump’s real problem — aside from the number of groups he has offended and his lack of money or campaign infrastructure — is that he is not only doing worse than Mitt Romney did with minorities but he is doing worse with white women and college-educated whites. He’s trying to convince white voters he’s losing that he really isn’t a bigot. This sure isn’t going to help.

Hillary Clinton’s ‘alt-right’ speech, annotated

Thank you, Reno! It’s great to be back in Nevada…  Because I believe that in America, if you can dream it, you should be able to build it. We’ll be talking a lot more about our economic plans in the days and weeks ahead. But today, I want to address something I hear from Americans all over our country. Everywhere I go, people tell me how concerned they are by the divisive rhetoric coming from my opponent in this election. It’s like nothing we’ve heard before from a nominee for President of the United States. From the start, Donald Trump has built his campaign on prejudice and paranoia. He’s taking hate groups mainstream and helping a radical fringe take over one of America’s two major political parties. His disregard for the values that make our country great is profoundly dangerous. In just the past week, under the guise of “outreach” to African Americans, Trump has stood up in front of largely white audiences and described black communities in insulting and ignorant terms:  Those are his words. Donald Trump misses so much. He doesn’t see the success of black leaders in every field… The vibrancy of black-owned businesses…Or the strength of the black church… He doesn’t see the excellence of historically black colleges and universities or the pride of black parents watching their children thrive…And he certainly doesn’t have any solutions to take on the reality of systemic racism and create more equity and opportunity in communities of color. It takes a lot of nerve to ask people he’s ignored and mistreated for decades, “What do you have to lose?” The answer is everything!  Trump is reinforcing harmful stereotypes and offering a dog whistle to his most hateful supporters. It’s a disturbing preview of what kind of President he’d be. This is what I want to make clear today: A man with a long history of racial discrimination, who traffics in dark conspiracy theories drawn from the pages of supermarket tabloids and the far reaches of the internet, should never run our government or command our military. If he doesn’t respect all Americans, how can he serve all Americans?  After all, it’s hard to believe anyone – let alone a nominee for President of the United States – could really believe all the things he says. But the hard truth is, there’s no other Donald Trump. This is it. Maya Angelou once said: “When someone shows you who they are, believe them the first time.” Well, throughout his career and this campaign, Donald Trump has shown us exactly who he is. We should believe him. When Trump was getting his start in business, he was sued by the Justice Department for refusing to rent apartments to black and Latino tenants. Their applications would be marked with a “C” – “C” for “colored” – and then rejected. Three years later, the Justice Department took Trump back to court because he hadn’t changed. The pattern continued through the decades. State regulators fined one of Trump’s casinos for repeatedly removing black dealers from the floor. No wonder the turn-over rate for his minority employees was way above average. And let’s not forget Trump first gained political prominence leading the charge for the so-called “Birthers.” He promoted the racist lie that President Obama isn’t really an American citizen – part of a sustained effort to delegitimize America’s first black President.   Since then, there’s been a steady stream of bigotry. We all remember when Trump said a distinguished federal judge born in Indiana couldn’t be trusted to do his job because, quote, “He’s a Mexican.” Think about that. The man who today is the standard bearer of the Republican Party said a federal judge was incapable of doing his job solely because of his heritage. Even the Republican Speaker of the House, Paul Ryan, described that as “the textbook definition of a racist comment.” To this day, he’s never apologized to Judge Curiel. But for Trump, that’s just par for the course. This is someone who retweets white supremacists online, like the user who goes by the name “white-genocide-TM.” Trump took this fringe bigot with a few dozen followers and spread his message to 11 million people. His campaign famously posted an anti-Semitic image – a Star of David imposed over a sea of dollar bills – that first appeared on a white supremacist website. The Trump campaign also selected a prominent white nationalist leader as a delegate in California. They only dropped him under pressure. When asked in a nationally televised interview whether he would disavow the support of David Duke, a former leader of the Ku Klux Klan, Trump wouldn’t do it. Only later, again under mounting pressure, did he backtrack. And when Trump was asked about anti-Semitic slurs and death threats coming from his supporters, he refused to condemn them. Through it all, he has continued pushing discredited conspiracy theories with racist undertones. Trump said thousands of American Muslims in New Jersey cheered the 9/11 attacks. They didn’t. He suggested that Ted Cruz’s father was involved in the Kennedy assassination. Perhaps in Trump’s mind, because he was a Cuban immigrant, he must have had something to do with it. Of course there’s absolutely no evidence of that. Just recently, Trump claimed President Obama founded ISIS. And then he repeated that nonsense over and over. His latest paranoid fever dream is about my health. All I can say is, Donald, dream on. This is what happens when you treat the National Enquirer like Gospel. It’s what happens when you listen to the radio host Alex Jones, who claims that 9/11 and the Oklahoma City bombings were inside jobs. He said the victims of the Sandy Hook massacre were child actors and no one was actually killed there. Trump didn’t challenge those lies. He went on Jones’ show and said: “Your reputation is amazing. I will not let you down.” This man wants to be President of the United States. I’ve stood by President Obama’s side as he made the toughest decisions a Commander-in-Chief ever has to make. In times of crisis, our country depends on steady leadership… clear thinking… and calm judgment… because one wrong move can mean the difference between life and death. The last thing we need in the Situation Room is a loose cannon who can’t tell the difference between fact and fiction, and who buys so easily into racially-tinged rumors. Someone detached from reality should never be in charge of making decisions that are as real as they come. It’s another reason why Donald Trump is simply temperamentally unfit to be President of the United States. Now, some people will say that his bluster and bigotry is just over-heated campaign rhetoric – an outrageous person saying outrageous things for attention. But look at the policies Trump has proposed. They would put prejudice into practice. And don’t be distracted by his latest attempts to muddy the waters. He may have some new people putting new words in his mouth… but we know where he stands. He would form a deportation force to round up millions of immigrants and kick them out of the country.  And he’d ban Muslims around the world – 1.5 billion men, women, and children –from entering our country just because of their religion.  And then what?  Ever since the Pilgrims landed on Plymouth Rock, America has distinguished itself as a haven for people fleeing religious persecution. Under Donald Trump, America would distinguish itself as the only country in the world to impose a religious test at the border. Come to think of it, there actually may be one place that does that. It’s the so-called Islamic State. The territory ISIS controls. It would be a cruel irony if America followed its lead. Don’t worry, some will say, as President, Trump will be surrounded by smart advisors who will rein in his worst impulses. So when a tweet gets under his skin and he wants to retaliate with a cruise missile, maybe cooler heads will be there to convince him not to. Maybe. But look at who he’s put in charge of his campaign. Trump likes to say he only hires the “best people.” But he’s had to fire so many campaign managers it’s like an episode of the Apprentice. The latest shake-up was designed to – quote – “Let Trump be Trump.” To do that, he hired Stephen Bannon, the head of a right-wing website called Breitbart.com, as campaign CEO. To give you a flavor of his work, here are a few headlines they’ve published: “Birth Control Makes Women Unattractive and Crazy.” “Would You Rather Your Child Had Feminism or Cancer?” “Gabby Giffords: The Gun Control Movement’s Human Shield” “Hoist It High And Proud: The Confederate Flag Proclaims A Glorious Heritage.” That one came shortly after the Charleston massacre, when Democrats and Republicans alike were doing everything they could to heal racial divides. Breitbart tried to enflame them further. Just imagine – Donald Trump reading that and thinking: “this is what I need more of in my campaign.” Bannon has nasty things to say about pretty much everyone. This spring, he railed against Paul Ryan for, quote “rubbing his social-justice Catholicism in my nose every second.” No wonder he’s gone to work for Trump – the only Presidential candidate ever to get into a public feud with the Pope. It's truly hard to believe, but according to the Southern Poverty Law Center, which tracks hate groups, Breitbart embraces “ideas on the extremist fringe of the conservative right." This is not conservatism as we have known it. This is not Republicanism as we have know it. These are race-baiting ideas, anti-Muslim and anti-immigrant ideas, anti-woman –– all key tenets making up an emerging racist ideology known as the ‘Alt-Right.’ Now Alt-Right is short for “Alternative Right.” The Wall Street Journal describes it as a loose but organized movement, mostly online, that “rejects mainstream conservatism, promotes nationalism and views immigration and multiculturalism as threats to white identity.” The de facto merger between Breitbart and the Trump Campaign represents a landmark achievement for the “Alt-Right.” A fringe element has effectively taken over the Republican Party. And this is part of a broader story -- the rising tide of hardline, right-wing nationalism around the world. Just yesterday, one of Britain’s most prominent right-wing leaders, a man named Nigel Farage, who stoked anti-immigrant sentiments to win the referendum to have Britain leave the European Union, campaigned with Donald Trump in Mississippi. Farage has called for a bar on the children of legal immigrants from public schools and health services, has said women are and I quote “worth less” than men, and supports scrapping laws that prevent employers from discriminating based on race -- that’s who Donald Trump wants by his side when he is addressing an audience of American voters. And the grand godfather of this global brand of extreme nationalism is Russian President Vladimir Putin. In fact, Farage regularly appears on Russian propaganda programs. Now he’s standing on the same stage as the Republican nominee. Trump himself heaps praise on Putin and embraces pro-Russian policies. He talks casually of abandoning our NATO allies, recognizing Russia’s annexation of Crimea, and of giving the Kremlin a free hand in Eastern Europe more generally.  All of this adds up to something we’ve never seen before. Of course there’s always been a paranoid fringe in our politics, steeped in racial resentment. But it’s never had the nominee of a major party stoking it, encouraging it, and giving it a national megaphone. Until now.  No one should have any illusions about what’s really going on here. The names may have changed… Racists now call themselves “racialists.” White supremacists now call themselves “white nationalists.” The paranoid fringe now calls itself “alt-right.” But the hate burns just as bright. And now Trump is trying to rebrand himself as well. Don’t be fooled. There’s an old Mexican proverb that says “Tell me with whom you walk, and I will tell you who you are.” We know who Trump is. A few words on a teleprompter won’t change that. He says he wants to “make America great again,” but his real message remains “Make America hate again.”  Next time you watch Donald Trump rant on television, think about all the kids listening across our country. They hear a lot more than we think. Parents and teachers are already worried about what they’re calling the “Trump Effect.” Bullying and harassment are on the rise in our schools, especially targeting students of color, Muslims, and immigrants. At a recent high school basketball game in Indiana, white students held up Trump signs and taunted Latino players on the opposing team with chants of “Build the wall!” and “Speak English.” After a similar incident in Iowa, one frustrated school principal said, “They see it in a presidential campaign and now it's OK for everyone to say this.” We wouldn’t tolerate that kind of behavior in our own homes. How can we stand for it from a candidate for president? This is a moment of reckoning for every Republican dismayed that the Party of Lincoln has become the Party of Trump. It’s a moment of reckoning for all of us who love our country and believe that America is better than this. Twenty years ago, when Bob Dole accepted the Republican nomination, he pointed to the exits and told any racists in the Party to get out. The week after 9/11, George W. Bush went to a mosque and declared for everyone to hear that Muslims “love America just as much as I do.” In 2008, John McCain told his own supporters they were wrong about the man he was trying to defeat. Senator McCain made sure they knew – Barack Obama is an American citizen and “a decent person.” We need that kind of leadership again. Every day, more Americans are standing up and saying “enough is enough” – including a lot of Republicans. I’m honored to have their support.  Because I believe we are stronger together. It’s a vision for the future rooted in our values and reflected in a rising generation of young people who are the most open, diverse, and connected we’ve ever seen.  When I was growing up, Simone Manuel wouldn’t have been allowed to swim in the same public pool as Katie Ledecky. Now they’re winning Olympic medals as teammates. So let’s keep moving forward together. Let’s stand up against prejudice and paranoia. Let’s prove once again, that America is great because is America is good. Thank you, and may God bless the United States.

Trump vows to defend free speech on campus

Donald Trump talked about lower tuition and a dramatic student loan repayment plan Thursday at a rally in Ohio, but his loudest applause came when he promised to protect the right to free speech on campus. “Do you want free speech?” the Republican presidential nominee asked the crowd of young people in Columbus. “You’ll have it.” As the crowd cheered, he seemed to marvel at the reaction. “Wow. Wow. You like that more than the lower costs!” Trump, who has gotten in trouble for his own comments — including a 2005 video in which he bragged about kissing and groping women, which has put his campaign in crisis — decried political correctness and derided the press in his message about protecting students’ rights to free speech. Freedom expression debates have intensified on many campuses in the past year or two. Some students have asked for, or demanded, trigger warnings before professors raise sensitive topics such as rape, and have created “safe spaces” where they can gather to support one another and avoid speakers they find offensive. During protests last year at the University of Missouri, for example, a professor tried to shield student activists from student journalists. At Emory University this spring, some students said they no longer felt safe after someone wrote Trump campaign slogans in chalk on campus. People have debated where to draw the line between hate speech and protected speech, as well, with some pushing to have students expelled after making racist remarks, as has happened at several colleges recently. Some university officials have pushed back, affirming the importance of academic freedom and debate. At the University of Chicago this fall, the dean of students made clear before students arrived on campus that they should expect a rigorous, challenging and sometimes uncomfortable exchange of ideas.

Obama administration delivers ‘a nasty surprise’ to black college students, parents

When it comes to dashing the hopes of thousands of college-bound African Americans, you’d hardly think of President Obama as a culprit. Maybe the right-wing-dominated Supreme Court. But not Obama, the black Harvard law grad who likes to cite higher education as a path into the middle class and who pledges to make student loans more accessible to black scholars. And yet, in what United Negro College Fund President Michael Lomax calls “a nasty surprise,” the Obama administration has begun denying student loans to disproportionately large numbers of black parents because of blemished credit histories. Talk about audacity. Obama blames malfeasance by big banks for plunging the nation into a recession, then bails them out — and proceeds to punish black people for not making it through the economic maelstrom unscathed. An angry-sounding Obama actually called Tuesday’s Supreme Court ruling against a key part of the Voting Rights Act a “setback” for blacks. You want to know what a real setback is, Mr. President? It’s using some bureaucratic fiat to prevent black students from going to college. Obama declared that he will press for restoration of the portion of the Voting Rights Act the justices ruled on. But let’s face it: He’s a lame duck. Why not leave as part of his legacy tens of thousands of newly minted black college graduates to carry on what is sure to be a decades-long struggle? “We’re getting calls and e-mails from parents, at least two and three a day, saying the denial of their student loans is a disaster,” said Johnny Taylor, president of the Washington-based Thurgood Marshall College Fund. “You have black students from low-income households about to enter college or already there and pressing towards graduation, persisting just as Obama urged them to do, only to have his administration pull the rug out from under them.” In the past year, for historically black colleges and universities (HCBU), the Obama administration’s policies have led to a 36 percent drop in the volume of parent loans. That translated into an annual cut of more than $150 million. The reason, according to Education Secretary Arne Duncan, is to prevent parents from taking on too much debt — which is as patronizing as it is hypocritical. In April, Obama announced that he was pushing to make more home loans available to people with weak credit. He says it’s part of an effort to improve the economy, as if having an educated workforce is not. Moreover, according to the Congressional Budget Office, the federal government stands to rake in $51 billion in profits from student loans this year. That means a whole lot of parents are paying off those loans. Nevertheless, from Howard University in the District to Morehouse and Spelman colleges in Atlanta, enrollment at HBCUs is declining as the realities of Obama’s revamped loan policies make a mockery of his high-flung rhetoric. “It is particularly ironic that at a time when this administration has set a goal to increase the nation’s college graduation rate to 60 percent by 2020, this policy shift occurs that will make reaching the goal impossible,” said Cheryl Smith, senior vice president for public policy and government at the United Negro College Fund. “The tougher credit criteria are having a disparate impact on underrepresented minority students, the very ones that stand to benefit the most from a college education.” Obama himself has yet to address these concerns. He’s leaving that up to Duncan, who told radio-show host Roland Martin that parents who have been denied could be reconsidered by calling a toll-free number and that approval was possible “sometimes within six minutes.” Countered Smith: “This reconsideration process has been largely ineffective, and if the Education Department continues on this path, we will have another debacle this coming academic year.” Imagine any other president, say George W. Bush, trying to bamboozle black people the way the Obama administration has. Students from every HBCU in the country would be marching on the White House. Obama, on the other hand, can go to Morehouse — which is being racked by staff furloughs because of his restrictive loan program — and tell graduates, as he did at a recent commencement, “Nobody is going to give you anything you didn’t earn.” And he gets a standing ovation. Bush would have been hit with a shoe. For the most part, Obama’s most loyal supporters blame right-wing obstructionists in Congress for thwarting progressive ideas. But this time, nobody made Obama turn the screws on black folks. Instead of heeding calls for relief, however, Obama has taken to doing TV spots promoting the importance of a college education. In one, Obama looks out at the camera with a photograph of himself as a student at Harvard in the background. “If I hadn’t gone there, I would’t be here,” he says. Which must raise a question in the minds of those disappointed black college kids: So what?

Donald Trump makes a play for black voters in brief remarks at Detroit church

DETROIT — Donald Trump made a rare direct appeal to African Americans on Saturday, visiting a predominantly black church in Detroit amid efforts to improve his standing among minority voters, who polls show overwhelmingly favor Democrat Hillary Clinton. The brief visit marked one of the few times that Trump has campaigned in a heavily African American area. Although his recent speeches have included more outreach to black voters than in the past, Trump has mostly delivered his remarks before heavily white audiences in predominantly white neighborhoods. Speaking at Great Faith Ministries International on Saturday, Trump read from prepared remarks, saying that “for centuries the African American church has been the conscience of our country." "I fully understand that the African American community has suffered from discrimination," Trump said, adding that there were “many wrongs” that still needed to be “made right.” Trump, who has argued that black voters have nothing to lose by supporting him — a line that has been widely criticized by Democrats — also vowed to improve economic conditions across the country. Bishop Wayne Jackson, who introduced Trump on Saturday, said Great Faith Ministries International was the first black church the Republican nominee had visited. “This is the first African American church he's been in, y'all! Now it's a little different from a Presbyterian church!” Jackson said. Trump, who did an interview with Jackson before his speech, said he was “here today to learn so that we can together remedy injustice in any form." The interview will be broadcast at a later date. Trump said that the nation is "divided" and that "those who seek office do not do enough to step into the community and learn what's going on." Afterward, Trump accompanied Ben Carson, a former presidential rival turned supporter, on a visit to his childhood home in southwest Detroit. The business executive viewed the outside of Carson's home, according to a pool report of the event, which was not opened up to a broad press corps. Trump and Carson spoke briefly with Felicia Reese, who has owned the home since 1992, according to the pool report. Trump asked Reese: "It's been a good house?" He joked that since Carson grew up there, the location was famous. "This house is worth a lot of money!" he said, according to the pool report.

Historians: No, Mr. President, Washington and Jefferson are not the same as Confederate generals.

President Trump on Tuesday equated the statues of Confederate generals with the monuments of two past presidents, suggesting that if the former were removed, then the latter might also be at risk. After all, Trump told reporters, they all owned slaves. “This week it’s Robert E. Lee. I noticed that Stonewall Jackson is coming down,” Trump said about the statues of two Confederate generals that have been the subject of controversy. “I wonder, is it George Washington next week and is it Thomas Jefferson the week after? You know, you really do have to ask yourself, where does it stop?” But historians say those statements completely gloss over key differences among the men, what they did and what they accomplished. On Saturday, white supremacists from around the country descended on Charlottesville, a college town more than 100 miles southwest of Washington, to protest the removal of a statue of Lee. The unrest turned deadly when a car allegedly driven by a Nazi sympathizer plowed into a crowd of counterprotesters, killing 32-year-old Heather Heyer and injuring more than a dozen others.  When a reporter said that Washington and Lee are not the same, Trump responded: “George Washington was a slave owner. Was George Washington a slave owner? So will George Washington now lose his status?” “Are we going to take down — excuse me — are we going to take down statues to George Washington? How about Thomas Jefferson? What do you think of Thomas Jefferson? You like him? … Are we going to take down the statue? Because he was a major slave owner.” To make an equivalency between two of the Founding Fathers and Confederacy leaders is not only “absurd,” but also “unacceptable for the president of the United States,” said Jim Grossman, executive director of the American Historical Association. “They accomplished something very important. Washington and Jefferson were central to the creation of a nation … Lee and Stonewall were not being honored for those types of accomplishment,” Grossman said. “They were being honored for creating and defending the Confederacy, which existed for one reason, and that was to protect the right of people to own other people.”  Douglas Blackmon, an author and senior fellow at the University of Virginia’s Miller Center, said Trump either does not understand the history of the Confederacy or he’s sympathetic to white nationalist views. “It’s the difference between a monument to the founder of our nation, and a monument to a key figure in an effort to break apart the nation,” Blackmon said. “The most kind explanation of that can only be ignorance, and I don’t say that to insult the president.” To suggest that association with slavery is the only criteria on whether a historical figure should be honored is an equally faulty argument, Blackmon said, because one would be hard-pressed to find any 18th- and 19th-century leader of great consequence to American life who never owned slaves. “It would be impossible to remember them if an association with slavery is the only criteria,” Blackmon said.   But that does not mean they should be equated with people who worked to destroy the union they helped to create, said Denver Brunsman, a history professor at George Washington University. “In terms of race and slavery, in Washington’s case, he set up a framework that, while not perfect, is dedicated to universal liberty. He set up the prospect of future equality,” Brunsman said. “We can look at Washington and say that he foresaw a multiracial America.”  “He freed their slaves, provided for their education, which is what we would call job training,” Brunsman said. “And again, that vision is quite different from the vision of the Confederacy, which was founded on the premise of slavery forevermore.” Jefferson was different and, by many accounts, his views on slavery were more complex and often conflicting.   “If we think of Washington evolving on this issue, in many ways, Jefferson devolved. He became worse over the course of his life,” Brunsman said. “But that doesn’t take away from the universal language of freedom that he provided us in the Declaration of Independence.” Some say that while Confederate statues should be removed, they should not be destroyed. Instead, they should be moved to museums as a reminder of what they symbolize. “These statues are an important part of history,” Grossman said. “The argument to keep them to remind ourselves of what we did when we created these statues, that’s not a ridiculous argument.” Blackmon said he used to have a more moderate view that attempts to reconcile varying interests: Keep the monuments but add signage or adjacent exhibits that explain their origin. But that has changed in light of recent events, and Blackmon said he now believes Confederacy statues should be taken down. “If the president of the United States can’t understand that these statues are offensive to millions of citizens that he governs … then there is no way that the people who agree with him are going to be persuaded to understand it any better than he can. It’s simply not going to be resolved,” he said. “When you reach a point that there are hate groups that engage in terrorist attacks, that these statues are being appropriated and used in those way … simply take [them] down.” After the violence this weekend, compounded by widespread criticism of the president’s response to it, Grossman said he can only hope that Confederacy symbols and statues will someday be unequivocally delegitimized. “We can debate forever all sorts of things,” he said. “What we should stop debating is whether the Confederacy itself offers legitimacy to any political position.”

As college leaders wonder what to make of Trump, one takes comfort in what he hasn’t said

Higher education lobbyists have been torn over President Obama during his eight years in the White House. They cheered his support of funding for student financial aid and scientific research but they chafed at his efforts to hold colleges accountable for results and to expand civil rights enforcement to combat sexual assault. Now, they wonder what to make of President-elect Donald Trump. Many of the nation’s academics worry about Trump’s rhetoric on climate change, immigration, health care and other issues following a divisive campaign. But Mary Sue Coleman, president of the Association of American Universities, said she takes comfort in what Trump has not said. “We haven’t heard anything from the president-elect that says he’s anti-science,” Coleman said this week in a visit to The Washington Post’s newsroom. “I’m not going to make any presumptions.”  What that statement will mean when the Republican-led Congress starts sending budget bills to the Trump White House is an open question. But Coleman said AAU will join with other groups to push for federal investment to keep the United States in a position of global leadership on research. The National Science Foundation reported in November that federal funding of higher education research and development had declined for a fourth straight year — to $37.9 billion in fiscal 2015, down from $40.8 billion in fiscal 2011. The AAU, a group of 62 prominent research universities, is an influential voice in Washington. Its membership, including some state flagships and top private universities, is by invitation only. The AAU has for decades helped push for federal funding of scientific research, a cause that generally draws bipartisan support on Capitol Hill. But debates have arisen over research funding in recent years, especially following the steep budget cuts that took effect in 2013, known as the sequester. “Sequestration scares us to death,” Coleman said, noting that the AAU and other groups worry that budget cutting could resume. “We understand we are still vulnerable.” Also unknown is how federal funding for Pell grants will fare during the Trump administration. Those grants, which grew under Obama, are a cornerstone of college access for economically disadvantaged students. In general, Coleman said, she wants federal and state governments to keep in mind the strategic importance of higher education. She said she worries about the nation “turning its back” on a sector that serves an enormous public good. Coleman, a biochemist, became AAU president in May. She was president of the University of Michigan from 2002 to 2014, and before that she led the University of Iowa. The AAU in recent years has sought to help universities understand the prevalence of sexual assault among students. It organized a groundbreaking survey on that topic in 2015 of 150,000 students at 27 prominent schools. The survey found that more than 20 percent of female undergraduates said they had been victims of sexual assault and misconduct. The AAU survey came as the Obama administration was pressing a campaign to stop sexual violence at colleges. The Office for Civil Rights in the Education Department has opened investigations of more than 220 colleges and universities for their handling of sexual violence complaints. Republicans on Capitol Hill have urged the incoming Trump administration to rein in the OCR, and in coming weeks colleges will be watching closely for signs of a new federal approach on sexual assault and other civil rights issues. “It is hard for me to envision that OCR would simply abandon” enforcement, Coleman said. For many colleges and universities, another key question as Trump prepares to take office on Jan. 20 is whether he will follow through on a campaign promise to reverse certain Obama policies on immigration. In particular, academic leaders worry about the fate of undocumented students who immigrated to the United States before age 16 and obtained protection against deportation through the policy called Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, or DACA. Coleman told The Post she was encouraged when Trump appeared to soften his position toward these students in an interview with Time magazine published in December. “We’re going to work something out that’s going to make people happy and proud,” Trump told Time. Exactly what will happen to DACA beneficiaries and other young immigrants in similar circumstances — sometimes called “dreamers” —  remains unknown. But higher education leaders hope to nudge Trump toward a position that will leave their undocumented students unharmed. Soon after Trump was quoted in Time, the AAU released a statement from Coleman: “As the President-elect said, this is a situation that calls for a humanitarian approach. We stand ready to work with the incoming administration as it seeks to implement such an approach, which we hope will permit students to continue their education and contribute to American excellence.” This episode reflects a tactic that might be repeated often as higher ed lobbyists seek to work with a man few had anticipated would win the White House: Sift through Trump’s various, sometimes conflicting, statements on a given issue. Find one that matches your objectives. Highlight it, push for it, and hope. “The results of the election did surprise me,” Coleman said. “But the electorate spoke. Here we are.”

Trump threatens UC-Berkeley’s funding after violent protests shut down a speaker

President Trump picked a fight with California’s flagship public university Thursday, threatening to pull funding from a school that has long symbolized the fight for free speech, on the day after violent protests shut down a controversial speaker. “If U.C. Berkeley does not allow free speech and practices violence on innocent people with a different point of view — NO FEDERAL FUNDS?” Trump tweeted. University of California police canceled an event by Milo Yiannopoulos and put the Berkeley campus on lockdown Wednesday after about 150 people wearing masks swarmed into a group of about 1,500 students who had been peacefully protesting the speech, and began setting fires, smashing windows, and throwing rocks and firecrackers at police. The fight was emblematic of the tensions over academic freedom and cultural issues that have been simmering on campuses across the country — and it exploded on a campus where students fought for free speech decades before. Yiannopoulos, a provocative and polarizing figure, writes for the Breitbart website, which until recently was led by Stephen K. Bannon, Trump’s chief strategist. Yiannopoulos has a large following as a self-proclaimed “free-speech fundamentalist” crusading against political correctness. His detractors call him a hatemonger. He was banned from Twitter last summer after sending tweets targeting actress Leslie Jones, who is black. His campus speeches usually spark intense protests. In January, a man was shot and seriously wounded as fights broke out during one of those events at the University of Washington. When the events are canceled, some call it censorship. Others counter that universities aren’t required to pay security and other expenses for speakers invited by student groups. After his Berkeley event was canceled, the 32-year-old Yiannopoulos posted on Facebook: “One thing we do know for sure: the Left is absolutely terrified of free speech and will do literally anything to shut it down.” When Trump raised the possibility of cutting funds, California Lt. Gov. Gavin Newsom (D) **** tweeted in response: “As a UC Regent I’m appalled at your willingness to deprive over 38,000 students access to an education because of the actions of a few.” Student loans and grants make up the vast majority of federal funding to colleges and universities, along with research grants from agencies such as the National Institutes of Health. Whether or how Trump could target Berkeley for funding cuts is unclear. Free speech is an exceptionally volatile issue now, with debate over code words, safe spaces, implicit bias and microaggressions on campuses across the country. That debate has particular resonance at Berkeley, where the Free Speech Movement began with student protests in 1964. Some members of that original movement wrote an op-ed about Yiannopoulos last month in the student newspaper, the Daily Californian. They described him **** as a bigot who baits students “in the hopes of sparking a speaking ban or physical altercation so he can pose as a free speech martyr. His campus events are one long publicity stunt designed to present himself as a kind of hip, far right, youth folk hero — sort of Hitler Youth with cool sunglasses.” They argued that banning him would just play into his hands. On Wednesday night, the Daily Californian reported that protesters were chanting, “No Milo, no Trump, no fascist USA,” setting off fireworks, throwing rocks and bricks, and pounding on windows, and that university police tried to disperse the crowd by firing rubber bullets and tear gas. UC police canceled the speech that night. Berkeley’s administration said it went to “extraordinary lengths” to plan for the event, working with the Berkeley College Republicans and adding dozens of additional police officers. Security officials said that 150 people disrupted a peaceful demonstration, setting fires, throwing molotov cocktails and rocks, and attacking some people in the crowd. Such “black bloc” masked protesters, difficult for police to recognize at first sight, have frequently been seen elsewhere, including in Washington on the day of Trump’s inauguration. **** Campus officials said in a statement that “they regret that the threats and unlawful actions of a few have interfered with the exercise of First Amendment rights on a campus that is proud of its history and legacy as the home of the Free Speech Movement.” Some at Berkeley had worried that Yiannopoulos would single out individual students as examples of illegal immigration, because a Breitbart story Tuesday said he would kick-start a campaign at Berkeley to take on “sanctuary campuses” and call to withdraw federal grants to such schools. In advance of the event, more than 100 faculty members signed letters urging Berkeley Chancellor Nicholas Dirks to cancel the speech. They argued that Yiannopoulos’s views could change from protected speech to “incitement, harassment and defamation once they publicly target individuals in his audience or on campus.” Nils Gilman, an associate chancellor, responded that “our Constitution does not permit the university to engage in prior restraint of a speaker out of fear that he might engage in even hateful verbal attacks.” The Berkeley College Republicans, who sponsored the sold-out event, wrote on social media after the protests, “The Free Speech Movement is dead. “Today, the Berkeley College Republicans’ constitutional right to free speech was silenced by criminals and thugs seeking to cancel Milo Yiannopoulos’ tour. . . . It is tragic that the birthplace of the Free Speech Movement is also its final resting place.” Get updates on your area delivered via e-mail

Did Terry McAuliffe just invite a school law suit?

Could Virginia Gov. Terry McAuliffe’s (D) executive order automatically restoring voting and other rights for released felons lead to a landmark education decision?   However, as University of Virginia Law Professor A.E. Dick Howard — who helped write the new Constitution — has explained, the drafters made clear they intended this goal to be “aspirational” only. An “aspirational” goal, unlike a right, isn’t enforceable in court should the state shirk its constitutional duty. Howard knew the drafters’ intent could be key should education advocates bring a lawsuit. Virginia’s politicians applauded their own cleverness, taking campaign credit for promising equality while constitutionally shielding themselves from legal accountability. Bravo! Mr. Goldman once accompanied former governor Doug Wilder to Richmond’s George Mason Elementary School, built during the Jim Crow era. Wilder went there as a child, in the Great Depression. Despite additions, the facility has never been modernized. We discussed in previous columns the fact Virginia’s public school stock, on average, is obsolete. More than half, including Wilder’s boyhood school, are old enough to qualify as historic structures under state and federal law. Virginia Tech professor Glenn Earthman, a nationally acclaimed authority on dysfunctional school buildings, warns that students in antiquated or unsafe facilities lose the statistical equivalent of one year of learning. Other researchers have raised similar alarms. Despite this, state leaders hide behind their constitutional shield. But McAuliffe’s felon rights order may have inadvertently lowered that shield. Republicans are challenging the order in the Virginia Supreme Court, saying the governor exceeded his constitutional authority. They cite the constitutional practice of all previous governors acting on the advice of their attorneys general: Felons seeking restorations of rights must petition the governor individually, although the form of such inquiry is up to the chief executive. No previous governor claimed the power to issue a blanket order restoring rights to more than 200,000 felons, including violent felons. Professor Howard’s book on the last revision to the Virginia Constitution says the drafters intended to incorporate the existing individualized practice into the new document. McAuliffe doesn’t deny the prior practice or intent. He says the only relevant issue is whether the Constitution’s plain wording says he can’t do it. Could McAuliffe’s plain wording doctrine morph into an educational game-changer? Article VIII, Section 1 of the Virginia Constitution reads in part: “Shall” is well-defined legally as a mandatory, not aspirational, command. “Ensure” means “make sure or certain” or “guarantee.” There is no definitive, precedent-setting legal decision on the meaning of “shall seek to ensure.” As Earthman and others make clear, a high-quality education, much less an equal one, isn’t remotely possible in unmodernized, Jim Crow-era facilities.   The governor and attorney general say Virginia has a moral obligation to end the last vestiges of Jim Crow. Surely students across our state have a claim on that morality. So we ask: If education advocates sue the state under Article VIII, Section 1 to end 62 years of knowing failure, would he order the attorney general to defend the state or stand down?

The president whose ghost is haunting the White House

The ghost of Andrew Johnson, America’s 17th president and the first to be impeached, is haunting the White House. Echoes of Johnson’s footsteps can be detected in the 45th president’s policies and conduct, including Donald Trump’s rash, ill-advised decision to unceremoniously fire FBI Director James B. Comey. That act is reminiscent of Johnson’s discharge of his secretary of war, Edwin M. Stanton, in 1867, which led to impeachment by the House of Representatives. Whether Trump’s firing of Comey could contribute to a similar fate in the House remains to be seen. Nonetheless, in thought, word and deed, Johnson may be a spirit manifested in Trump. Johnson has been described by historian Eric Foner as “intolerant of criticism, and out of touch with political reality.” Labeling Johnson “self- absorbed,” Foner cited a one-hour Washington’s Birthday speech by Johnson in which he “referred to himself over 200 times.” Sound like anyone we know? This much can be said: The crooked, nefarious pathways blazed by Johnson on enforcement of civil rights and justice are routes that Trump is faithfully following. Johnson laid his tracks early. Had Johnson’s policies prevailed for the past 150 years, the District of Columbia would never have had African American mayors or council members — or even any blacks among the city’s electorate. In 1867, Johnson vetoed legislation giving African American men the right to vote in the District. That precious right was, thankfully, granted three days later, but only because Congress overrode Johnson’s veto. (Johnson expressed his strong anti- black feelings in his message about a veto of the first Reconstruction Act: “The negroes have not asked for the privilege of voting; the vast majority of them have no idea what it means.”) And no thanks to Johnson, Howard University and St. Mary’s Episcopal Church, in Foggy Bottom, are celebrating their sesquicentennials. One hundred and fifty-one years ago, Johnson vetoed a bill renewing the charter of the Freedmen’s Bureau, which was created to provide assistance to Howard University and the fledging African American colleges and universities in the emancipated South. Johnson described such assistance as “Africanizing the southern part of our territory.” Howard’s charter, awarded by Congress in 1867, was signed by Johnson, but only because Congress overrode that Johnson veto, too, and forced the Freedmen’s Bureau down his throat. St. Mary’s Church, the city’s first African American Episcopal congregation, also had a near-death experience with Johnson. The church, located in the 700 block of 23rd Street NW, has the aforementioned Stanton to thank for its original building. Hearing about the newly formed congregation’s search for a place of worship, Stanton provided the chapel materials that became the first building exclusively for the city’s black Episcopalians. Like Howard University, St. Mary’s had dodged a Johnson bullet. The church held its first service on June 9, 1867. It was just two months later, in August, that Johnson fired Stanton. But Johnson was a scourge of America far beyond the District of Columbia. Frowning upon giving full rights and privileges of citizenship to freed African Americans, Johnson vetoed a stream of civil rights bills, most of the vetoes were overridden by Congress. He undercut the positive measures of Reconstruction. He gave former Confederate states freedom to manage their affairs, which allowed them to enact Black Codes that imposed plantation-like conditions on former slaves. Now Trump, as boorish, undisciplined, racially insensitive and bullying as Johnson was, is not missing a beat when it comes to lax civil rights enforcement and ignoring racial, ethnic and religious injustices. Under Trump’s agenda, states will be allowed to take protection of minority rights into their own hands. Trump’s administration will look the other way. In Trump’s Washington, the Labor Department unit that monitors discrimination by federal contractors is being disbanded, the Education Department’s office that investigates discrimination complaints in school districts is being gutted, police departments that have whipped up on blacks will receive dialed- down Justice Department oversight, and environmental polluters may get the Environmental Protection Agency’s green light to contaminate minority communities . White supremacists are as emboldened today as they were during Andrew Johnson’s era. Discrimination is getting the same blind-eye treatment it received during the post-Civil War white Southern pushback. Acts of racially and religiously motivated violence are enjoying a resurgence reminiscent of the day the White House was ruled by Andrew Johnson — an apparition that seems to be making daily appearances in the Oval Office. _Read more fromColbert King’s archive._ **Read more on this topic:** E.J. Dionne Jr.: Trump doesn’t understand how to be president. The Comey story shows why. Juliet Eilperin, Emma Brown and Darryl Fears: Trump administration plans to minimize civil rights efforts in agencies Richard Cohen: Trump’s presidency is doomed J. Gerald Hebert, Joseph D. Rich and William Yeomans: Jeff Sessions says he handled these civil rights cases. He barely touched them.

New questions about how much ‘Black Lives Matter’ really matters on the trail

Criminal justice pushed its way into the forefront of the 2016 presidential conversation this summer when activists disrupted candidates on the campaign trail, demanding that they acknowledge the disproportionate impact of law enforcement on black communities. Yet only three of the 17 Republicans and Democrats running for president have agreed to participate in the first national candidates forum focused on criminal justice, sponsored by a bipartisan group of black political, business and civic leaders. The event takes place Saturday at Allen University, a historically black college in Columbia, S.C. Neither Hillary Clinton nor Donald Trump, the two major party front-runners, is scheduled to appear. And of the 14 candidates vying for the Republican nomination, only Ben Carson has agreed to show up to discuss what is a major concern for many black voters. The cable network Black Entertainment Television, a co-sponsor, will stream the event live. The sparse participation by candidates underscores the question of whether the issue has gotten the full attention of the 2016 field despite several highly publicized incidents, including one last month in Atlanta when activists chanted for 15 minutes while Clinton described her plans for criminal justice reform. Instead, the debate that has roiled the country for three years has often been reduced by some to whether candidates are willing to utter the three words that have come to symbolize the movement: “Black lives matter.” Democrats have generally come to embrace the slogan, while Republicans have avoided it — some calling it racially divisive and insisting instead that “all lives matter.” Some GOP candidates — notably Sen. Ted Cruz (Tex.) and New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie — have called the movement and the politicians who support it hostile to law enforcement officers. Other groups affiliated with the Black Lives Matter movement are working with the national political parties to hold town halls and party debates focused on criminal justice. “It’s a missed opportunity that the top candidates for both parties will not be here to discuss in depth the issues we think are paramount in this election cycle for black Americans,” said Ashley D. Bell, a co-founder of 20/20 Leaders of America. The group takes its name from the makeup of its leadership: 20 Democrats and 20 Republicans who have agreed to work together to push candidates for the presidency to be accountable to the black community. But Carson, who is African American and whose personal story of rising from poverty to become a renowned neurosurgeon has resonated with many black people, is the only Republican candidate who agreed to participate in the forum. Former Florida governor Jeb Bush is sending a surrogate, Kay Coles James, who was director of the Office of Personnel Management during the administration of his brother, former president George W. Bush. Trump, who declined to participate in the event, is set to speak Friday at the Commander-in-Chief Presidential Forum series in Spartanburg, S.C., about 90 miles from Columbia. Sen. Rand Paul (Ky.), who before announcing his campaign earlier this year often went before black audiences to talk about criminal justice reform, is not attending. On the Democratic side, Clinton will be campaigning in Charleston on Saturday and will be represented at the forum by Mayor Sly James of Kansas City. Her two rivals for the Democratic nomination, Sen. Bernie Sanders (Vt.) and former Maryland governor Martin O’Malley, will be on the stage in Columbia. Bell, a former president of the College Democrats of America who switched to the GOP in 2010, said the 20/20 group and the criminal justice forum are efforts to “make sure that one party doesn’t take us for granted and the other sees us as a vote that can and should be fought over.” The three contenders for the Democratic nomination, who have been directly challenged by Black Lives Matter activists at campaign events, have responded by promising to pursue policies that address concerns of the movement, which grew out of protests over the slayings of unarmed black men by law enforcement officers or gun-wielding civilians. One of Clinton’s first major speeches after launching her campaign was to declare the “need to restore balance to our criminal justice system” and call for “an end to the era of mass incarceration.” In recent weeks, she has fleshed out her plans, which include legislation to ban racial profiling and to prohibit the federal government and its contractors from asking job candidates about their criminal records in the initial stages of the application process. During the summer, Sanders and O’Malley came out with more-detailed plans for criminal justice reform. O’Malley’s plan calls for addressing the disproportionate rate of school suspensions and expulsions, as well as arrests and detention, of children of color. Sanders’s proposals, which he has framed as “racial justice,” include tackling the high rate of unemployment and poverty in communities of color. No mention of criminal justice reform was found in the issues sections of campaign Web sites for top Republican contenders, including Trump, Carson, Bush and Sen. Marco Rubio (Fla.). Rubio said in an interview several months ago that the issue has legitimacy, citing black friends who have recounted being frequently stopped by police for no apparent cause. During a campaign rally for Bush in Las Vegas, activists began chanting “Black lives matter” after being dissatisfied with how he answered a question about racial inequality. One of the founders of Black Lives Matter, Patrisse Cullors, said candidates need to do more than just say the words. “It’s extremely narrow and extremely dismissive when candidates sort of blurt out ‘Black lives matter’ and don’t give any real substance to what that means,” Cullors said. She and other activists are working on a platform that “really does calculate the ways in which black people have been impacted in all our lives, not just police killings,” she said. She cited the ongoing campaign by fast-food workers for a $15-an-hour minimum wage and black domestic workers’ fight for recognition. “There is a larger conversation to be had.” In Gallup polling during the past three months, black respondents have cited unemployment and the economy as issues that are as important as race relations, according to pollster Jeff Jones. He also noted that race relations “are of much greater concern” for blacks than for whites. Candidates were asked one question about racism or the Black Lives Matter movement in each of the two Democratic debates, and on the Republican side, the subjects came up only once, in their first debate. Cullors is among a group of activists still pushing the Democratic National Committee to host a debate focused on issues affecting black communities. The DNC has said it will not add a debate, but it has welcomed the idea of a town hall. Cullors said that given several Republican candidates’ reaction to the movement, she is even less hopeful about the chances of the Republican National Committee agreeing to a debate. “I think it’s great that a town hall is happening that focuses on criminal justice reform. We’re not against town halls. We just don’t think they are a substitute for a debate,” Cullors said. “We don’t believe the DNC should get away with not listening to the community’s needs, and we want to challenge them in this moment.”

Trump lashes back at Berkeley after violent protests block speech by Breitbart writer Milo Yiannopoulos

President Trump raised the threat of pulling federal funds from the University of California at Berkeley on Thursday after university police canceled a talk by provocateur Milo Yiannopoulos and put the campus on lockdown after intense protests against the planned speech. While Trump framed his early-morning tweet around free speech and opposition to violent demonstrations, his critics are likely to interpret the message as indirect support for Yiannopoulos, a polarizing figure who portrays himself as a champion of open expression. His detractors view him as a hatemonger. “If U.C. Berkeley does not allow free speech and practices violence on innocent people with a different point of view — NO FEDERAL FUNDS?” Trump tweeted. Berkeley is the flagship school in the University of California’s public university system. Student loans and grants make up the vast majority of federal funding to colleges and universities, along with grants for research given by institutions such as the National Institutes of Health. California Lt. Gov. Gavin Newsom reacted on social media: Yiannopoulos writes for the Breitbart website, which had been led by Stephen K. Bannon, a key Trump adviser. Yiannopoulos has a large following as a self-proclaimed “free-speech fundamentalist” crusading against political correctness. He was banned from Twitter last summer after sending tweets targeting actress Leslie Jones, who is black. Some schools have canceled or indefinitely postponed events featuring Yiannopoulos because they often generate such intense responses. In January, a man was shot and seriously wounded as fights broke out during one of those events at the University of Washington. When the events are canceled, some call it censorship. Others counter that universities aren’t required to pay security and other expenses for speakers invited by student groups. “The event has been canceled,” the 32-year-old Yiannopoulos posted on his Facebook page. “I’ll let you know more when the facts become clear. One thing we do know for sure: the Left is absolutely terrified of free speech and will do literally anything to shut it down.” Free speech is an exceptionally volatile issue right now, with debate over code words, safe spaces, implicit bias and microaggressions on campuses across the country. Yiannopoulos’s events are flash points, and his cross-country tour touched off intense opposition Wednesday in Berkeley.  “Amid violence, destruction of property and out of concern for public safety, the University of California Police Department determined that it was necessary to remove Milo Yiannopoulos from the campus and to cancel tonight’s scheduled 8 p.m. performance,” the university announced Wednesday night. The decision was made about two hours before the event to a crowd of more than 1,500 protesters gathered outside the venue. Berkeley’s administration said it went to “extraordinary lengths” to plan for the event, working with the Berkeley College Republicans and adding crowd-control measures and dozens of additional police officers. Security officials said that more than 100 “masked agitators” joined the demonstration, setting fires, throwing molotov cocktails and rocks and attacking some members of the crowd. Officers from the city of Oakland and Alameda County arrived at 7:45 p.m. to help the university and Berkeley city police. Sgt. Sabrina Reich, UCPD public information officer, said campus police made one arrest last night of a non-student, on charges of failure to disperse. The “shelter in place” order was lifted about 10 p.m., although campus police warned that protests were still going on in the surrounding community and advised people to avoid neighboring streets. University police rescued many people in the crowd who were being attacked, trapped or injured, according to the university, and are collecting video to try to identify suspects. Two Berkeley College Republicans were attacked Thursday morning while conducting an interview by two men not affiliated with the campus. The men were arrested by university police. University officials estimated $100,000 in damage to the campus, and the city’s Downtown Business Association reported damage to more than 10 businesses. The demonstrators included “Black bloc” protesters, who wear masks and black clothing to present a unified front as they disrupt events, making it difficult for police to recognize individuals in the group. They are often seen at protests organized by groups such as Black Lives Matter and Occupy Wall Street, destroying property and setting fires. They torched a limousine in Washington last month on the day of Trump’s inauguration, and a group spray-painted buildings and smashed electrical boxes during a demonstration in Portland, Ore., earlier in January. When a group of them arrived at Berkeley, it swiftly changed the tenor of the peaceful demonstration. Some students organized to try to protect the campus and businesses nearby, and then to pick up broken glass, scrub graffiti off buildings and clean the campus after the violence. William Morrow, president of the Associated Students of the University of California, said in a statement that the cleanup effort showed what Berkeley students care about. “Last night was not reflective of that,” he said; students were expecting a peaceful protest, an exchange of opinions and a dance party, “but outside agitators infiltrated our community and didn’t treat it with the respect for our historic tradition of non-violence.” Campus officials said in a statement that “they regret that the threats and unlawful actions of a few have interfered with the exercise of First Amendment rights on a campus that is proud of its history and legacy as the home of the Free Speech Movement.” Some at Berkeley were worried that Yiannopoulos was using the event to begin a campaign against “sanctuary campuses” and that individual students would be identified and targeted as examples of illegal immigration.  More than 100 faculty members signed two letters to Berkeley Chancellor Nicholas Dirks. One said: “Although we object strenuously to Yiannopoulos’s views — he advocates white supremacy, transphobia and misogyny — it is rather his harmful conduct to which we call attention in asking for the cancellation of this event.” The faculty members said that Yiannopoulos “has labeled Black Lives Matter a form of ‘black supremacism’ and argues that the protest movement should be labeled a ‘terrorist organization’; he refers to principles of diversity at college campuses as ‘anti-White racism.’ He has also denounced rape culture as a myth propagated by feminists ‘aimed squarely at undermining masculinity.’” They noted that Yiannopoulos sometimes singles out people on campus and cited an event in Milwaukee when he projected an image of a transgender student on a screen. Nils Gilman, associate chancellor and chief of staff to Dirks, responded that while the administration was sorry that some speakers would upset some people on campus, “our Constitution does not permit the university to engage in prior restraint of a speaker out of fear that he might engage in even hateful verbal attacks.”   “The Free Speech Movement is dead,” the group wrote on social media after the protests. “Today, the Berkeley College Republicans’ constitutional right to free speech was silenced by criminals and thugs seeking to cancel Milo Yiannopoulos’ tour. Their success is a defeat for civilized society and the free exchange of ideas on college campuses across America. We would like to thank UCPD and the university administration for doing all they could to ensure the safety of everyone involved. It is tragic that the birthplace of the Free Speech Movement is also its final resting place.”

Trump thinks college leaders get paid too much, ‘as if they’re running a business.’

Donald Trump said he gets this question all the time — in fact it’s probably the question he hears most on the campaign trail: At a campaign rally Tuesday night, a young woman asked: “I’m going to college in a couple of months. How will you make college affordable to the middle class?” And a follow-up he hears: What will he do about all these students who take out huge student loans, go to good schools, graduate, then can’t find jobs? And Trump — whose namesake university, really a series of real-estate seminars, folded and is embroiled in lawsuits — had some answers for her. _[He billed Trump University as a road to riches, but critics called it a fraud]_    *[WSU]: Wayne State University   *[Tue]: Tuesday   *[Wed]: Wednesday   *[UNM]: University of New Mexico He said, “These colleges, they’re going through the roof. Why are they going up so much? … “I think one of the reasons they’re going through the roof, very simply, is these college loans given out by the United States.” He said they need to bring interest rates down because “the kids can’t afford it.” He’ll make sure that graduates get jobs, he said. And he said, “You look at the salaries paid to the heads of colleges, it’s like they’re running a business — a real business, a big business. “And we have to stop, we have to stop that from happening.” The audience in Waterville, N.H., burst into loud applause. But some in higher education circles bristled at that — especially the “real business” part, as if university presidents were just nodding off in their armchairs reading Proust all the while. “I thought, ‘Well, that’s unfortunate,'” when he saw the quote, said  Joseph Johnston, a senior consultant with the compensation evaluation service of AGB Search. University presidents have very public, very demanding, very complex jobs, he said, with multiple constituencies to please, fundraising and budget pressures and, as this tumultuous fall has illustrated, anything from paralyzing student protests to mass shootings possible. _[University system president and chancellor forced to resign after protests]_    *[WSU]: Wayne State University   *[Tue]: Tuesday   *[Wed]: Wednesday   *[UNM]: University of New Mexico _[Man arrested for threatening to “kill white devils"‘ at the University of Chicago]_    *[WSU]: Wayne State University   *[Tue]: Tuesday   *[Wed]: Wednesday   *[UNM]: University of New Mexico But part of the public nature of the role is their salaries, which are readily available. And every year, there are headlines about some whopper of a paycheck for some president somewhere. The Chronicle of Higher Education does an annual survey of executive compensation, with ever-higher salaries reported. Many college presidents earn more than $500,000 a year, and quite a few get more than $1 million a year. _[The University of Chicago’s president earned $3.4 million in 2011]_    *[WSU]: Wayne State University   *[Tue]: Tuesday   *[Wed]: Wednesday   *[UNM]: University of New Mexico _[Virginia Tech’s former president among the most highly-paid public university leaders in the country]_    *[WSU]: Wayne State University   *[Tue]: Tuesday   *[Wed]: Wednesday   *[UNM]: University of New Mexico The median salary for the top leader of public and private colleges and universities was $290,000 in a recent national survey of 1,100 institutions, Johnston said. The schools’ annual operating budgets range from somewhere around $5 million to more than $500 million. As the job of a university leader becomes more demanding, he said, the market places a premium on “the people that can do it — as Donald Trump would know … “Institutions really have to walk a line, on the one side of fairness and appropriateness, on the other of being competitive in order to secure and retain that kind of individual.” Alexander Yaffe, the president and chief executive officer of Yaffe & Co., a consulting firm advising universities on leadership issues, said, “I don’t believe that presidential salaries in not-for-profit higher education are what is driving our cost issues.” Many salaries were frozen during the recession, he said, and in the last five years the median compensation has increased 2-4 percent. “While they make a good living, they are not making exorbitant sums. There is a basic cost associated with running a multi-million-dollar organization. Even though it’s a non-for-profit organized for the purpose of education, there still need to be management principles, to operate profitably, build their endowment, invest for the future .. there is a degree of business acumen that is needed to make them sustainable.” A spokesman for the Trump campaign did not immediately respond to a request for comment Wednesday. Executive pay is one factor driving up prices, in Johnston’s view, but a small one. There is an out-of-control arms race in another area of higher ed though, he said: athletic directors. Their salaries often dwarf those of academic leaders. “If a presidential candidate wanted to point to a real problem, that would be one,” he said.

Trump administration reopens volatile debate over race and college admissions

The Trump administration’s planned investigation into affirmative action in a college admissions case has reopened a volatile debate over the role of race in the scrap for seats at the nation’s best schools — a fight that the Supreme Court had seemed to settle just one year ago. In June 2016, the high court ruled in a case involving a white student protesting affirmative action at the University of Texas that schools could continue using race as one among many factors in admissions decisions. Colleges and civil rights advocates celebrated the decision as a recognition of their right to — and the need to — promote diversity on the nation’s campuses. Now, activists worry that an internal Justice Department job posting seeking lawyers to work on “investigations and possible litigation related to intentional race-based discrimination” will sow new fears among college officials that they may be targeted for admissions policies that promote racial diversity. The memo was first made public Tuesday evening in a report in the New York Times. On Wednesday evening, the department said the posting was not an indication of a broad policy change but rather an effort to prioritize a complaint filed by Asian Americans in May 2015, alleging discrimination in university admissions. John B. King Jr., who was education secretary under President Barack Obama and now helms the advocacy group Education Trust, said Wednesday he is “deeply disappointed” that the administration is choosing to spend its energies on challenging affirmative action “rather than focusing on addressing the persistent opportunity gaps facing students of color and low-income students.” “Now is not the time to slow down on diversity initiatives or deter university leaders from doing the right thing for their communities, campuses and for our nation’s future prosperity,” King said in a statement. Higher education leaders are mindful that for generations, until the civil rights movement, black students were systematically denied admission to leading colleges and universities. In recent decades schools have sought to widen access not only to black students but also to other groups that are underrepresented on their campuses, including those who are from low-income families or have parents who did not graduate from college. On Wednesday, representatives from more than a half dozen colleges, stunned by news of Justice’s initiative and unclear what it meant, declined immediate comment. Susan Sturm, director of the Center for Institutional and Social Change at Columbia Law School, said she worries that some universities may stop using race in admissions decisions, a problem “at a time when leadership around addressing a polarized racial environment in our country is just so critically important, and where the capacity to bridge these growing economic, racial, educational divides is critical to the prosperity of our democracy.” Some states have outlawed race-conscious admissions policies at public universities, and some schools profess to approach admissions decisions without considering race or ethnicity. But many selective schools do consider race in their effort to create diverse classrooms and campuses. That has spurred tension and resentment — particularly at the most elite schools, where competition for seats is fierce.  Edward Blum, who played a key role in bringing the University of Texas case to the Supreme Court, said he hopes the high court eventually falls into line with public opinion. Blum, president of the anti-affirmative action Project on Fair Representation, has since brought two additional federal cases challenging admissions policies at Harvard University and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. The Harvard case is emblematic of a new tack in the push to end affirmative action: Rather than focusing on how talented white students are rejected in favor of less-qualified minorities, the case alleges that Harvard unfairly discriminated against talented Asian American students, elevating less-qualified blacks, Hispanics and whites, in its zeal to maintain a predetermined racial balance. “Affirmative action in America today is no longer a black-white issue. We are a multiracial, multi-ethnic nation,” Blum said. He hopes that one or both cases will eventually reach the Supreme Court and persuade the justices to put a stop to the use of race in college admissions — and he said he would welcome the Trump administration’s support. Harvard has denied the allegations of racial discrimination. “To become leaders in our diverse society, students must have the ability to work with people from different backgrounds, life experiences and perspectives,” the university said Wednesday in a statement. “Harvard remains committed to enrolling diverse classes of students. Harvard’s admissions process considers each applicant as a whole person, and we review many factors, consistent with the legal standards established by the U.S. Supreme Court.” The federal government has at times investigated complaints of racial discrimination in college admissions outside of the courts — including at Harvard. The Education Department examined whether Harvard discriminated against Asian Americans nearly three decades ago, concluding in 1990 that it did not. Though Asian Americans were admitted at a lower rate than white students, that was the result of prioritizing the admission of children of alumni, the department found, not the result of racial quotas. In 2015, the department concluded in another case that Princeton University had used race as one of many factors in its effort to assemble a diverse student body — and therefore did not discriminate against Asian American students. While conservatives have long pushed to do away with race-conscious admissions policies, the debate over race-conscious admissions policies does not always cleave neatly along political lines. Richard Kahlenberg, a senior fellow at the left-leaning Century Foundation and self-described progressive, has long argued that colleges could achieve more diversity by focusing on socioeconomic class rather than race. Affirmative action policies to date have benefited mostly middle- and upper-class students, Kahlenberg said, while students from low-income backgrounds remain drastically underrepresented. “It will be tempting for progressives like me to say that a challenge to affirmative action at elite universities is another example of Donald Trump beating up on minorities, like the Muslim ban or the transgender bar in the military or voter suppression,” Kahlenberg said. But in his view, Trump’s critics should reconsider their allegiance to race-based affirmative action. “I would strongly argue that advocating for policies on behalf of disadvantaged students, who are disproportionately students of color, is far more progressive than advocating for the current set of policies which tend to benefit advantaged students of all colors.”

Could Trump set off a constitutional crisis? Here’s what we can learn from Latin America.

As a scholar who has extensively researched separation of powers and checks and balances in Latin America, let me outline some lessons the United States can draw from constitutional crises in this part of the world.        But if the president is constitutionally strong, the probability of this sort of constitutional crisis under divided government jumps to one in five.   But concentrating constitutional power in the president can also destabilize other institutions, as well. Strong presidents are the most vulnerable when they lose their own parties’ support. And so, my research finds, that’s when they are more likely to act preemptively to attack against both legislative supremacy and judicial independence.  The same shift in presidential power more than quadruples the threat to courts, whether government is divided.     If that is true, then there are at least two ways that the difficult combination that underlies constitutional crises in Latin America might eventually emerge here.   But here’s the point to keep in mind. Constitutional crises may be triggered by any number of particular causes, but what matters more deeply is how institutions are constructed. Because partisan support in presidential systems is inherently fragile, limiting the president’s constitutional powers helps downgrade the potential for the sorts of constitutional crises that often beset presidential systems in other parts of the world.

Evangelical leader Falwell: It was Steve Bannon’s idea that I lead education task force

Evangelical leader Jerry Falwell Jr., the president of Virginia’s Liberty University, says that it was White House senior strategist Stephen K. Bannon who offered him a role with the Trump administration as the head of a not-yet created task force on higher education. President Trump and Falwell have known each other for years. Falwell was an early supporter of Trump’s campaign last year, saying that he was the “best qualified” candidate and giving the Republican some credibility in the evangelical community. In 2012, Trump was invited to deliver a convocation speech at Liberty, and Falwell introduced the real estate mogul by saying in part: “Mr. Trump singlehandedly forced President Obama to release his birth certificate.” Falwell said in a recent interview that Bannon gave him permission in January to tell the public about the role as head of a higher education task force even though the White House has not in fact talked to him about its mission. Falwell said that he was the one interested in investigating regulations on institutions of higher education but that the ultimate charge of any panel is not clear. He also said he recently spoke to Trump but not about the task force, despite reports that they had discussed it.  Asked for comment over a few weeks, the White House said it did not have information about the task force. It also did not respond to questions about what Falwell said were talks by the Trump team, shortly after the presidential election, to split up the job of U.S. education secretary into two: one for K-12 and the other for higher education. Falwell said he was offered the job of higher education secretary in November but declined. Trump did not split up the department, which DeVos is now running. Falwell has been president of Liberty, which calls itself the largest Christian university in the world, since his father, the Rev. Jerry Falwell, the founder and pastor, died in 2007. The senior Falwell founded it as a Baptist college and turned it into a university. In 2016, Forbes ranked Liberty on its “America’s Top Colleges” list at 651 out of 660. Falwell said that he and his wife, Becki, met with Trump; Bannon; Ivanka Trump, the president’s daughter; and Reince Priebus, Trump’s chief of staff, on Nov. 17 at Trump Tower, to discuss what role he could play in the administration. Falwell said that during that discussion, he told Trump he could stay away from Liberty for only one or two years, something he had previously told Jared Kushner, Trump’s son-in-law and presidential senior adviser. Falwell said Trump told him that anyone running the Education Department would have to commit to four to six years. Falwell said he told Trump he could not take that much time away from Liberty. Trump then asked Becki Falwell what she thought and she agreed with her husband, Falwell said. Bannon then told him, Falwell said, that Trump really wanted him to serve at the Education Department, and Falwell said he would like to serve in another capacity to help the administration. The idea of a higher education task force was mentioned, Falwell said, by Bannon, who at that time asked him not to talk about it publicly. Falwell said that reporters had been asking him what role he would play in the administration, so he called Bannon recently and asked if he could publicize the idea of him leading a task force. Bannon told him that he could, he said. The Associated Press reported recently that Falwell said that the task force would be “to get the government off the backs of higher education.” But Falwell reiterated in the interview that the administration has not discussed with him the specific aims of a task force. “It’s all very preliminary,” Falwell said. “It’s all something that the administration will formally announce when they are ready.” Read more:

Obama urges black turnout, mocks Trump for missing ‘civics lesson’ on Jim Crow

“If you care about our legacy, realize everything we stand for is at stake,” Obama, the nation’s first African American president, said in an address to an annual dinner of the Congressional Black Caucus Foundation. “My name may not be on the ballot, but our progress is on the ballot." During his remarks to a packed ballroom at the Washington Convention Center — where Clinton preceded him at the lectern — Obama also mocked Republican nominee Donald Trump for advancing questions about the validity of his birth certificate and for claiming that this is the worst time to be a black American. “He missed that whole civics lesson about slavery and Jim Crow,” a beaming Obama said, though he also acknowledged that African Americans still face significant challenges. “We do have challenges, but we’re not stupid,” Obama said. “We know the progress we’ve made.” Obama began his remarks by saying, sarcastically, that he had “an extra spring in my step” given that Trump had finally acknowledged that he is an American citizen. Trump, who for years advanced the notion that Obama was not born in the United States, sought to put the issue behind him this week by acknowledging the president’s citizenship — but instead reignited a firestorm by falsely claiming that Clinton sparked the controversy in 2008. “And to think with just 124 days to go, under the wire, we got that thing resolved,” Obama said to laughter from the predominantly African American audience. “In other breaking news, the world is round, not flat.” Obama’s remarks came at a time when polls have shown the race between Clinton and Trump tightening and amid concerns among Democrats that African American turnout will not match what it was under Obama’s historic 2008 and 2012 elections. Despite being battered all summer by his own missteps as well as a barrage of attack ads from Clinton, Trump has been surging in the battleground states in recent weeks. “If I hear anybody saying their vote does not matter,” Obama told the crowd, “read up on your history. It matters. We’ve got to get people to vote.” During her remarks, Clinton — who left the event before Obama spoke — paid tribute to the Democrat she is seeking to succeed, calling him “one of the best presidents this country has ever had.” Clinton also made a couple of passing references to the birther controversy and was an award recipient at the dinner, picking up the organization’s “trailblazer” award in recognition of her status as the first female presidential nominee of a major party in the United States. “It’s not about golf promotions or birth certificates," she said of this year's race. "It comes down to who will fight for the forgotten, who will invest in our children, and who will really have your back in the White House.” Saturday night marked Obama’s final appearance at the annual dinner. He joked that the “next time I show up I’ve got to buy a ticket.”

Five myths about historically black colleges and universities

When Education Secretary Betsy DeVos cast historically black colleges and universities (HBCUs) as “pioneers” in “school choice” this past week, her critics scoffed at the notion that black students could choose to matriculate wherever they wished during the days of segregation. In a series of tweets, DeVos attempted to adjust her statement, focusing instead on the schools’ birth from necessity. But the episode revealed just how many misconceptions persist about the nation’s more than 100 HBCUs. According to DeVos, HBCU founders “saw that the system wasn’t working, that there was an absence of opportunity, so they took it upon themselves to provide the solution.” Presumably, “they” means African Americans. But some of today’s most well-known HBCUs were founded by white Americans. Washington’s Howard University, which celebrates its sesquicentennial this year, is named after one of its founders, Gen. Oliver O. Howard, a white Union officer who led the federal Freedmen’s Bureau after the Civil War. Spelman College was founded in 1881 as the Atlanta Baptist Female Seminary by Sophia B. Packard and Harriet E. Giles, two white teachers from Massachusetts. Later renamed, the all-female college had among its early benefactors John D. Rockefeller and the family of his wife, Laura Spelman Rockefeller. The Rockefellers and the Baptist organization that underwrote the teachers’ mission also provided major financial support to the nearby all-male HBCU, Morehouse College. In a 2012 story about public HBCUs in Maryland, World Net Daily’s Les Kinsolving asked, “Why is any Maryland college identifying itself as ‘historically black’ not an example of racism?” Last year, African American talk show host Wendy Williams eventually apologized after saying, “I would be really offended if there was a school that was known as a historically white college.” In 2008, Georgia state Sen. Seth Harp proposed merging two historically black colleges with two mostly white state schools, purportedly in the name of closing “the chapter of segregated schools.” (In 2015, one merger was approved.) But these sentiments obscure a key distinction. As Morehouse graduate Martin Luther King Jr. put it in 1957, “Although Negro colleges are by and large segregated institutions, they are not segregating institutions.” There’s a reason “HBCU” stands for “historically black” and not simply “black” colleges and universities. Although they were originally founded to educate black students who were shut out of white schools, they have always enrolled non- black students. According to the Department of Education, “In 2014, non-Black students made up 21 percent of enrollment at HBCUs, compared with 15 percent in 1976.” White students account for most of the non-black HBCU student population, but schools such as Howard increasingly attract international interest. More than two dozen students from Nepal joined Howard’s freshman class in 2014, the largest delegation from any country that year. No HBCU is on U.S. News & World Report’s list of top 100 national universities, and only one, Spelman, is ranked among its 100 best liberal arts colleges. HBCUs also have a relatively low graduation rate (30 percent) compared with all black college students nationwide (42 percent ), according to a 2015 New America report. But nearly 73 percent of HBCU students qualify for Pell grants and in many cases come from low-income households where the cost of college is a high barrier to completion. HBCUs see their mission as serving these students, many of them first-generation college students who otherwise might not attend. And these schools, which represent only 3 percent of post-secondary institutions, produce about 20 percent of all African American graduates — and 25 percent of those in the STEM fields, according to the United Negro College Fund. A 2015 Gallup report measured five elements of well-being — social, purpose, financial, community and physical — and found that black HBCU grads were “thriving ,” to a greater degree, in all categories, than their black counterparts who attended other institutions. The gap was largest in financial well-being. Black HBCU grads were also more likely to tell Gallup that they strongly agreed that their colleges prepared them for life after graduation (55 percent) than were black graduates of other institutions (29 percent). A 2013 National Science Foundation report said that “of the top 50 baccalaureate-origin institutions” of black science and engineering PhD recipients, “21 are HBCUs.” In 2015, the New York Times looked at Xavier University of Louisiana, which “has some 3,000 students and consistently produces more black students who apply to and then graduate from medical school than any other institution in the country.” In a 2015 feature, Newsweek’s Alexander Nazaryan wrote that “colleges without students do as well as airlines without passengers, and as black students snub HBCUs, HBCUs face the first true existential crisis in their collective history.” That same year, Forbes ran an article enumerating enrollment declines at several HBCUs and concluding that African American students were “voting with their feet to go to schools they think fit their needs better.” Indeed, some HBCUs have seen declining enrollment. But writing for The Washington Post last year, Dillard University President Walter Kimbrough pointed to an uptick in enrollment at a number of HBCUs, which he called the “Missouri Effect” — social consciousness emblematic of renewed campus activism in the past few years. “Freshman enrollment is up 49 percent at Shaw University, 39 percent at South Carolina State, 32 percent at Tuskegee University, 30 percent at Virginia State University, 22 percent at Dillard University, 22 percent at Central State University, 20 percent at Florida Memorial University, and 19 percent at Delaware State University. Dillard, Philander Smith College (overall enrollment up 29 percent) and South Carolina State University all rely on overflow housing to accommodate the influx of students,” he wrote. “Everything happening with police brutality and Black Lives Matter,” student Alversia Wade told “PBS NewsHour,” “pushed me to want an environment where I could talk to other students about all these things.” President Barack Obama’s first budget called for a $73 million cut in funding for HBCUs. (The next year, that money was restored .) In 2011, the administration tightened loan standards, resulting in a 36 percent reduction in federal PLUS loans available to HBCU parents and causing a number of students to unexpectedly interrupt their college educations. The new rules disproportionately affected schools that served a high share of disadvantaged students. A Post analysis found that the move translated to an annual cut of more than $150 million for HBCUs. The Obama administration acknowledged the unintended impact and took steps to adjust the loan rules. But black observers were shocked. As economist Julianne Malveaux, former president of historically black Bennett College, put it last year, “You never thought that when a conservative white man put more money in for HBCUs that a progressive black man would take it out.” In a Post op-ed in 2016, Johnny C. Taylor Jr., president of the Thurgood Marshall College Fund, asked, “Do black colleges matter to Obama?” But Morehouse President John Silvanus Wilson Jr., a former director of Obama’s initiative on HBCUs,  told Inside Higher Ed last year: “It is a fact that just before President Obama took office, total annual federal funding to HBCUs was under $4 billion. During his first term, that figure climbed to nearly $5.2 billion, largely based on a very intentional boost in federal grants and loans to HBCU students. To this day, HBCUs are getting nearly $1 billion more per year than they were getting when Obama took office. That is not the behavior of a leader who thinks these institutions do not matter.” Correction: The online version of this article previously referred to Xavier University of Louisiana as Xavier College. **_Twitter: @shirleycarswell_ ** Five myths is a weekly feature challenging everything you think you know. You can check out previous myths, read more from Outlook or follow our updates on Facebook and Twitter.

Omarosa Manigault is in Trump’s White House because of her loyalty. But what is she doing there?

Omarosa Manigault was incredulous. As she was leaving a gathering of African American members of Congress in the Oval Office, a group of reporters cornered her. For months, the Trump administration had sent strong signals that it would increase support to historically black colleges and universities. But President Trump’s recent budget request contained no new cash for the schools. The reporters wanted Manigault — a top White House aide and one of Trump’s most high-profile African American supporters — to explain what happened. “Everything got cut, but did HBCUs get cut? No! . . . And I think that we should be applauded for that,” Manigault said last week in a video posted on Politic365.com. “Seriously. This is a lean budget. This is a very aggressive and lean budget, and yet, HBCUs were protected. “Can a sister get props?” That is the central question of Manigault’s brief tenure as assistant to the president, as she has worked to bridge a divide between black America and the man she has long supported. **** Manigault, 43, is fiercely loyal to Donald Trump, whose decision to cast her as an alpha-female villain in the first season of “The Apprentice” more than a decade ago made her a reality television celebrity. Manigault also appears to have Trump’s ear, and some black political observers see her as an important ally in a White House that is overwhelmingly white and male. But if her devotion explains how Manigault wound up in Trump’s White House as the highest-ranking African American in the West Wing, it is far less easy to explain exactly what she’s doing there. Some African American political insiders already have concluded that she is ineffective, and she is routinely derided on social media as simply providing cover for a president deeply unpopular with African Americans. Some black Republicans were particularly critical of the Trump administration’s handling of the HBCU initiative, which included a White House meeting with the school officials that some viewed as little more than a photo op for the president. “She raised expectations too high, and now it’s turned into a negative,” said Raynard Jackson, a longtime Republican strategist. “This shows a lack of political understanding. This is Politics 101.” Manigault was among the first black people with any name recognition to publicly support Trump’s presidential bid. She forcefully defended the New York businessman against criticism that he is racist and sexist. Manigault has granted some media interviews since arriving in Washington, but she canceled a meeting with The Washington Post and did not respond to requests for comment. The White House also did not respond to questions about Manigault’s official responsibilities, which so far have publicly been centered on issues relating to black America. None of those events has gone especially well. Shortly after Trump’s inauguration, Manigault said during an appearance on ABC’s “The View” that as director of communications for the Office of Public Liaison she was planning an event at the White House to celebrate Black History Month “and it’s going to be extravagant.” On Feb. 1, she sat smiling next to Trump as he stumbled into a major gaffe, when he talked about abolitionist Frederick Douglass as if he were still alive. He said Douglass — who died in 1895 — “is an example of somebody who’s done an amazing job and is getting recognized more and more, I’ve noticed.” When the black college presidents came to seek more funding on Feb. 27, new Education Secretary Betsy DeVos issued a statement applauding HBCUs for being “real pioneers when it comes to school choice.” Most of the colleges were founded to serve black students in response to Jim Crow segregation. And when Trump signed an executive order the next day that moved a task force on HBCUs from the Education Department to the White House, neither the order nor Trump’s subsequent budget request included the 5 to 10 percent funding increases the college presidents sought. Far from the “extravagant” celebration Manigault touted, the administration’s opening and closing events for Black History Month were met with ridicule. Jackson penneda blistering column in February for Black Press USA arguing that Manigault doesn’t represent the Republican Party and isn’t a credible go- between for the black community and Trump. Not only is she a recent convert to the GOP who does not know or appreciate black Republicans’ struggle to make the party more inclusive, he argued, she doesn’t have the relationships or the political acumen to be an effective advocate. “I have a personal relationship with my physician, but I don’t go to him for tax advice,” Jackson said in an interview, rejecting the notion that her friendship with Trump makes her a powerful force for the black community. But because she is one of the few African Americans in Trump’s immediate orbit, others caution against dismissing her. “It’s important that we take Omarosa seriously, irrespective of how we feel about her,” said Leah Wright Rigueur, a professor of public policy at Harvard. “The idea of having access to the White House in ways that people of color and civil rights agencies had under Obama — that’s gone. She appears to be the black person who is closest to Donald Trump. So it’s important to think very seriously about what she represents.” The HBCU initiative was an opportunity for Manigault to showcase her influence within the Trump administration. Manigault and her supporters pointed to the fact that she attended three HBCUs as evidence of her passion concerning the issue and determination to fight for it. And it was a chance to show African Americans, who as a group voted solidly against Trump, that the new president could be more responsive to black colleges than former president Barack Obama, who oversaw a decline in funding for HBCUs during his first term. Morehouse College President John Silvanus Wilson, who served as executive director of a White House initiative to support the colleges under Obama, said the outcome of the meeting with Trump was underwhelming. “The funding that was implied by the warm greeting that we got in late February has yet to be realized,” he said. But he described Manigault as an asset regardless. “The best advocacy HBCUs can have is someone who understands HBCUs in the inner circle of the president,” Wilson said. “Omarosa Manigault certainly understands the value of HBCUs, and she is certainly in the president’s inner circle.” But has Manigault oversold her influence with the administration? Right after the college presidents’ visit, Manigault went on the Tom Joyner radio show and argued that under the Obama administration there had been “a ton of unclaimed Pell Grants,” a reference to a $10 million surplus in the subsidy program for students in financial need. She vowed that Trump would make that money available for students to “fund their educations at historically black colleges and universities.” Instead, the Trump budget seeks to spend nearly $4 million in other areas. **** Manigault doesn’t publicly display a strong political or ideological identity; she was supporting Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton’s presidential bid before Trump announced his candidacy. Neither does she have any strong public ties to any individual charities or causes. She said in an episode of “Oprah: Where Are They Now?” several years ago that, while on a humanitarian trip to Africa, she stared into the eyes of a child dying of AIDS and heard her calling to become ordained, which she achieved in 2011. She was an assistant minister at the Weller Street Missionary Baptist Church in Los Angeles when she left to join the Trump campaign last year. It is Trump himself who compels Manigault to his side. She asks people to look at her as evidence that the president is inclusive and wants to see minorities succeed. “I am living the American Dream because of Donald Trump,” she told the Hollywood Reporter in December. “Look at my career, the wealth and exposure that I’ve had; it’s very difficult to make the argument that Donald Trump doesn’t like black people and black women.” Black Republicans often face extra scrutiny because “they are minorities in their political community and political minorities in their racial community,” Wright Rigueur said. She said black voters want to know: “Are you representing our interests?” That’s an even bigger question for a black person supporting Trump, who, despite friendly relationships with individuals such as Manigault and boxing promoter Don King, has drawn scorn for his racially charged rhetoric against African Americans. Among the more sensational was Trump’s longtime call for Obama to prove he is a U.S. citizen. (About two months before the election, Trump conceded that Obama was born in the United States.) Besides Manigault, the only high-ranking African American in the Trump administration is Ben Carson, the secretary of housing and urban development. Armstrong Williams, another longtime Republican strategist and close adviser to Carson, said Manigault’s influence goes beyond “the so-called black agenda.” He said Manigault has input on press secretary Sean Spicer’s daily briefings and that “she carries a lot of weight” with candidates seeking ambassadorships. He also marveled at her relationship with and access to Trump. “It’s just amazing to watch,” Williams said. “Not only does he trust her, he’s comfortable with her. It’s almost as if she’s like a daughter to him.” Manigault’s loyalty might be a more valuable currency to Trump than her experience, said Sophia Angeli Nelson, an author and political commentator who has worked in GOP administrations and in Congress. Of course, there are African American politicos and wonks who have more history with the Republican Party and its agenda. But in this White House, “they might last 10 minutes,” she said. “They may be more knowledgeable, but Trump wouldn’t respect them and wouldn’t listen to their opinion,” she said. “In Trump’s world, loyalty means everything to him. And, if that’s the case, Omarosa is the right person.” When “The View’s” Sunny Hostin, who is Puerto Rican and African American, suggested to Manigault that Trump was “using you for optics,” she retorted, “No one uses me.” She then talked about growing up in public housing in Youngstown, Ohio. “I grew up on welfare, on Section 8 housing. My father was killed when I was 7 years old,” she said. She went to public schools and then Central State University and Payne Theological Seminary, both historically black schools in Wilberforce, Ohio. She also earned a master’s degree and did additional graduate work toward a doctorate — but did not complete the degree — at another historically black college, Howard University. “So I earned my way to sit in the White House,” Manigault said. “No one gave me anything, okay?” Before being tapped for “The Apprentice,” she worked briefly in the White House during former president Bill Clinton’s tenure. She received mixed reviews on her stints in low-level support positions in logistics and personnel, with some describing her as smart and hard-working and others saying she was disruptive and struggled with assigned tasks. It has been seven years since Manigault’s last major role in a reality TV show, but her reality TV alter ego still makes cameo appearances from time to time. Last month, while shopping with friends at a mall in suburban Washington, she called store security to report that two “fat ladies” were harassing her. The following week,she had a heated, public argument with White House reporter April Ryan, a former friend who said Manigault was trying to smear her name by planting stories that she was being paid by the Clinton campaign. Allyson Carpenter, student government president at Howard, said that the public perception of Manigault doesn’t match the person she has gotten to know during the past several months; they met at an event last year and have had numerous conversations since. Although Carpenter is highly critical of how the Trump administration has managed the HBCU initiative, she does not question Manigault’s commitment to black schools. “I think she’s absolutely a genuine person,” Carpenter said. “I think she really does care about the issues facing the black community.” Michael Steele, the first black chairman of the Republican National Committee, serving from 2009 to 2011, said the episode with the historically black colleges was a “classic example” of how the Trump administration is hurting itself by not connecting with more-experienced black Republicans. “The response from the HBCU presidents has been ho-hum, and some have referred to it as disappointing. That is not the kind of response you want after the president makes a big production around signing an order like that,” Steele said. Last week, seven members of the Congressional Black Caucus met with Trump in the Oval Office. They told Trump they are concerned about his budget and policy positions, and they related how they don’t appreciate his characterization of black communities as rife with crime and poverty. Sources said Manigault made it clear that the attendance — seven of 49 Black Caucus members — was irritatingly small. Trump tried to get the group to stand behind him at his desk. The lawmakers declined, ruining a potentially powerful photo op. _**Correction:** An earlier version of this story did not note that Manigault earned a master’s degree at Howard University. She has pursued, but has not completed, a doctorate there. The story has been updated._

Jeff Sessions can try to stop affirmative action, but he’ll fail. Here’s why.

The department hopes to allege that by factoring race into college admissions decisions, universities are violating the civil rights of white and Asian applicants who are denied admission. But their case will be incredibly difficult to make. Affirmative action in college admissions uses race in quiet and indirect ways — treating race as one of several factors in a holistic review of applicants instead of the “predominant factor” — making claims of direct discrimination against individual applicants nearly impossible to prove.     As long as race-neutral programs fail to deliver a racially diverse student body and universities consider race indirectly and applicants individually — as they currently appear to do — affirmative action is safe. The Justice Department cannot rely solely on gaps in enrollment statistics, test scores or dropout rates among racial groups to demonstrate unconstitutionality.    None of this means that affirmative action is immune from constitutional challenge. But for now, the law is clear: The Constitution allows limited, indirect uses of race in college admissions. And the same indirection that makes affirmative action constitutional should also keep it safe from Jeff Sessions.

Betsy DeVos to speak at historically black Bethune-Cookman University commencement

Education Secretary Betsy DeVos will deliver the keynote address next week at the commencement of Bethune-Cookman University in Florida, the historically black institution announced Monday. The announcement signals the Trump administration’s continued outreach to historically black colleges and universities, an effort that has been both welcomed and criticized. Many leaders of historically black schools were pleased with a meeting at the White House in February, while others were skeptical that it would result in increased financial support. And many were startled when DeVos issued a statement after the meeting that praised historically black colleges as pioneers of school choice, because the schools were started at a time of racial segregation in the South. The following day in a meeting with HBCU leaders, DeVos noted that the school system at the time failed to provide African Americans access to a quality education or, more often, any education at all. Still, her selection as commencement speaker touched off controversy at the college in Daytona Beach, which was founded by civil rights activist and educational icon Mary McLeod Bethune. In a news release Monday, the university said: “Much like Dr. Bethune, Founder of Bethune-Cookman University, Secretary DeVos deems the importance of opportunity and hope for students to receive an exceptional education experience. Her mission to empower parents and students resonates with the history and legacy of Dr. Bethune.” “Dr. Bethune’s love for students started with five little girls and grew to over 250 students during her time as university president,” Edison Jackson, the college’s president, said in the statement. The release also noted the importance of funding from the Education Department, and praised DeVos for her charitable contributions. A spokesman for the Education Department did not immediately respond to a request for comment.  The petition argues that the Trump administration’s actions on lending make it more difficult for students to pay for college and pay down their debt, and that DeVos does not have an understanding of the importance of historically black colleges: Others expressed frustration over the choice on social media. Jackson, the president of Bethune-Cookman, also noted in the release that, “The legacy of Dr. Bethune is that she was not constrained by political ideology, but worked across all parties to support B-CU.”

Is this a ‘Muslim ban’? Look at the history — and at Trump’s own words.

Now here’s another similar example.  Now, in one sense, Trump is indeed saying his new proposal is different from the old one: He explicitly confirms that he’s now expanding it — he’s talking about “territory instead of Muslim.” But Trump also mocks the criticism of his original proposal as politically correct — “oh, you can’t use the word Muslim” — and then appears to suggest that the new proposal is designed to get around that criticism and vault it over constitutional hurdles.   “We’ll be offering a variety of constitutional and non-constitutional arguments, but one principal argument will be that this executive order discriminates on the basis of religion,” Lee Gelernt, a senior lawyer at the ACLU’s national office and one of the main lawyers on the case, tells me. “President Trump has made numerous statements that show he intended this to be a Muslim ban.” It may be that no one quote from Trump or any of his advisers sufficiently proves the point, but rather that the totality of his statements throughout the campaign do. “Even if the government were to try to pick apart ambiguities in each individual statement, there’s no question that all of the statements together prove discriminatory intent,” Gelernt added.  But beyond the legal battle to come, the argument over the true motive driving the measure also matters for the purposes of our political argument. That argument will continue — not just in the courts, but also in the political arena — and this will be particularly true if it is ultimately extended or even expanded to other countries, which Trump might be tempted to do if there were a major terrorist attack.  Whatever assurances the White House now offers, this measure is hopelessly tainted by its own history — including Trump’s own rhetoric about it.

The Daily 202: Has Trump never read the Constitution?

But, in all seriousness, it is increasingly unclear that the presumptive Republican nominee has ever actually read the foundational document for the republic he aspires to lead. One of the most puzzling talking points that top Republicans, including Paul Ryan, have used to justify their support is that Trump respects “the separation of powers.” In May, the Speaker said it was one of “the core principles that tie us all together.” What that’s based on remains unknown. During his closed-door meeting with House Republicans yesterday, Michigan Rep. Tim Walberg asked Trump what his understanding is of Article I (which enumerates the powers of Congress). “I think his response was, ‘I want to protect Article I, Article II, Article XII,’ going down the list. There is no Article XII,” Rep. Mark Sanford (R-S.C.) told reporters afterwards. “It was the normal stream of consciousness that’s long on hyperbole and short on facts.” [Sanford, who said in May he’ll vote for Trump, added: "He may be loose on some facts, reckless on some, but there’s not malicious intent there.”] Other sources in the room confirmed the episode.  The Constitution, as every school child is taught, has only seven articles. Those trying to excuse Trump’s flub charitably suggested that he was confused between the articles and the amendments. If so, it seems odd to emphasize his support for the Twelfth, which merely clarified how the Electoral College should work. Either way, Trump clearly did not understand that he was being asked by Walberg about how he views the relationship between the executive and legislative branches. It was reminiscent of when Trump quoted “Two Corinthians” during a January speech at Liberty University. And it was another moment that gave intellectually-honest movement conservatives heartburn.  He wants to “loosen” libel laws, so he could more easily sue news organizations who write “nasty” articles about him. There are centuries of First Amendment jurisprudence that would restrict his ability to do this. He’s said he would push military commanders to go further than water boarding, even though that has been banned by federal law. Many scholars believe Trump’s proposed ban on Muslims would be struck down as unconstitutional (due process, equal protection, religious freedom, etc.). The candidate also insisted on “Meet the Press” earlier this year that the 14th Amendment does not guarantee birthright citizenship. His attacks on Judge Gonzalo Curiel over his Mexican heritage raise alarm bells about his respect for the independent judiciary. Trump has at times suggested that he might somehow be able to initiate the prosecution of Hillary Clinton over her emails if he’s elected, another signal he doesn’t understand the role of each branch. In March, asked about the kind of justice he’d name to the Supreme Court, he said he’d “probably appoint people that would look very seriously at [Clinton’s] email disaster because it’s criminal activity.”    “You’ve been very critical of me,” Trump said after Flake introduced himself. “Yes, I’m the other senator from Arizona — the one who didn’t get captured — and I want to talk to you about statements like that,” Flake responded, referring to John McCain. Trump noted that he has not attacked Flake very hard on the campaign trail but threatened to begin doing so.                                       1. Opposing the Trans-Pacific Partnership, including during the lame-duck session 2. A $15 federal minimum wage 3. A national ban on fracking 4. Guarantee workers at least 12 weeks of paid family and medical leave through an insurance fund 5. Support for legislation to ban any cuts in earned pensions 6.  Criminal justice reform 7. Immigration reform 8. Bulk up the Clean Power Plan “to replace old dirty coal plants” 9. A national carbon tax 10. Rejecting the Keysyone XL Pipeline and requiring that all future pipeline projects face the same scrutiny 11. A phase out of the extraction of fossil fuels from federal lands 12. Reduce spending on nuclear weapons             Here's a word cloud of Clinton mentions: A former Illinois Republican congressman is taking heat for this deleted tweet: Protests erupted in D.C., New York and elsewhere after the shootings of Alton Sterling and Philando Castile: A shot from inside Trump's House meeting: David Perdue was upbeat in his estimation: Meanwhile, from #NeverTrump's Rick Wilson: Is Trump actually interested in being president? This old quote might shed some light: Trump promised he was going to release the convention speaking schedule yesterday and then didn't follow through. But the RNC convention app had fake speakers listed: A note as Clinton campaigns: Joyce Beatty threw up the Delta Sigma Theta hand sign with colleagues: More celebrations for John Dingell: Judy Chu also celebrated a birthday: Check out this note passed to Ben Sasse: Finally, a Throwback Thursday photo from Harry Reid:               Watch Obama's statement on the shootings of Sterling and Castile by police: Beyoncé held a moment of silence for police shooting victims: Here's Comey's opening statement before the House Oversight Committee: Clinton released two new ads: John Dingell spoke about turning 90: And gave advice to young people:

Morehouse faces controversy over Obama critic’s role in graduation ceremonies

In the run up to President Obama’s May 19 commencement address at Morehouse College, the college president is struggling to quell a growing controversy over what role a critic of the president will play at the college's graduation ceremonies.    *[WSU]: Wayne State University Morehouse College President John S. Wilson, who headed the White House Initiative on Historically Black Colleges before assuming the presidency in January, changed the baccalaureate address format after the invited speaker, Bright Hope Baptist Church senior pastor Kevin Johnson, published an opinion piece questioning the lack of diversity in Obama’s second-term Cabinet. Wilson asked Johnson to speak as part of a three-person panel instead of by himself "to reflect a broader and more inclusive range of viewpoints."    *[WSU]: Wayne State University In his first interview with a journalist on the subject, Wilson said Thursday he was engaged in negotiations with Johnson but "commencement weekend is for the graduates, their families and the visit by the president of the United States. Everything revolves around that precious principle."    *[WSU]: Wayne State University "We're not entirely happy that the baccalaureate program is not resolved," Wilson said. "This is a delicate situation. But you can be confident we will resolve the situation, because we are Morehouse men." Johnson, who is African American, published a piece in the April 14 edition of the Philadelphia Tribune titled “A President for Everyone, Except Black People.” The piece suggested President Clinton — and to a lesser extent, President George W. Bush — had done more to help African Americans than Obama.    *[WSU]: Wayne State University “When one compares President Obama to his predecessors, the decrease in African-American appointments is astounding,” Johnson wrote. “Obama has not moved African-American leadership forward, but backwards.” Obama has come under criticism from several groups, including the Congressional Black Caucus, for not doing enough to assemble a diverse Cabinet in his second term.    *[WSU]: Wayne State University Two of the Cabinet’s four African Americans and both of its Hispanic members have left or have announced that they are leaving. Only one of the two Asian Americans who served during the first Obama term remains. On Monday, the president nominated Charlotte Mayor Anthony Foxx, who is African American, as transportation secretary, and he has nominated Thomas E. Perez, a first-generation Dominican-American and assistant U.S. attorney general for civil rights, to serve as labor secretary. Neither have been confirmed yet.    *[WSU]: Wayne State University After Johnson’s op-ed ran Wilson subsequently asked the pastor — who was scheduled to speak on May 18, one day before the president — to share the stage with two other speakers during the baccalaureate ceremonies. In an April 17 letter, Johnson questioned Wilson's decision.    *[WSU]: Wayne State University "Dr. Wilson, it is incredibly disheartening, in my view, that Morehouse College appears to be deviating from its 146-year-old proud tradition of promoting well articulated, analytical, and thoughtful leaders who have changed the world for the better and who have a heart for those that do not have the means or the tools to speak for themselves," Johnson wrote. Wilson's critics posted a video on YouTube accusing him of trying to silence any criticism of Obama, saying the president was “marginalizing Johnson by inviting two additional speakers to share the baccalaureate stage.”    *[WSU]: Wayne State University “Is this the leadership we want for dear old Morehouse?” the narrator asked. Wilson published a letter on the school’s Web site Monday, urging members of the college community to “focus our attention on important matters to the exclusion of distractions,” such as any flap concerning Johnson’s.    *[WSU]: Wayne State University He added that he “opted for a more creative, multi-speaker approach that is used by many leading institutions.” “In this instance, I decided to ask this invited speaker to share the baccalaureate stage with two other speakers so as to reflect a broader and more inclusive range of viewpoints,” he added. Johnson, who spoke with Wilson about the matter Wednesday, said Thursday that he was not involved in the video mocking the Morehouse president. "That video had nothing to do with me," he said. In his interview, Wilson noted that this year marks the 150th anniversary of the Emancipation Proclamation, the 100th anniversary of the college being named Morehouse, and the 50th anniversary of the Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. — a Morehouse graduate — delivering his "I Have a Dream Speech" on the National Mall. "What a treasure it is for the more than 500 African American men to be with the most powerful African American man in the free world as their commencement speaker," he said. "This is a magical moment, a magical time for us. We are honored to have the president of the United States as our commencement speaker." RELATED: The biggest commencement speakers of 2013    *[WSU]: Wayne State University

Where Justice Scalia got the idea that African Americans might be better off at ‘slower-track’ universities

Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia, no stranger to controversy, drew fire Wednesday after suggesting that African American students might be better off attending “slower-track” universities.  He went on to say: “One of the briefs pointed out that most of the black scientists in this country don’t come from schools like the University of Texas…. They come from schools where they do not feel that they’re being pushed ahead in classes that are too fast for them.” To many, the justice appeared to be arguing that black students are not qualified to attend higher-tier institutions and would in turn benefit from enrolling in “slower” ones — the suggestion seemed to be — “where they belong.”  While many dismissed Scalia’s statements as a classic provocation from one of the Supreme Court’s most vocal conservative judges, his argument has roots. Scalia was referring to a friend-of-the-court brief filed in the case, which details a notion popular among affirmative action opponents: the “mismatch” theory. In the past decade, some scholarship has gathered around the idea that affirmative action in fact hurts its “intended beneficiaries,” defined in the research as minority students, who are “mismatched” to universities that grant them admission in part because they belong to an underrepresented demographic at those institutions.  This scenario, according to Sander, has a ripple effect that causes these students to opt for a less difficult major or decide not to pursue further education because of the perception that they are not suited to an academic environment. Sander concludes that had these same students enrolled at a less-competitive school — one for which they were awarded admission independent of race-conscious criteria — they may have achieved greater success in the long run. Using data on the academic distribution of black students who would qualify for law school under race-blind policies and the difference between black and white law school attrition as well as bar exam passage rates, Sander estimates that 7.9 percent more black law students would pass the bar if racial preferences were eliminated from admissions.   Though the researchers acknowledge that mismatch exists as a result of race-conscious admissions, they disagree with the claim that it necessarily has a negative effect on the minority students who arrive on campus less prepared than their white peers.  Sander’s affirmative action study cites the disproportionately low average grades among black law school students as evidence that they may fare better in less rigorous learning environments, but Brooks countered that striving alongside those who appear at first to be more capable can productively encourage growth.   Fisher, who is white, claims she was rejected from the college because of her race in a way that violates the Supreme Court’s previously established guidelines on race-based admissions.  Justice Anthony M. Kennedy, who will likely be the deciding vote in the case, seemed to express exasperation during the hearing over the lack of wholly convincing claims from either side. He said the arguments were just a repetition of what they had been when the court first considered Fisher’s claim two years ago. “We’re just arguing the same case,” Kennedy said. “It’s as if nothing had happened.”

Obama, Trump and the perils of illegal Obamacare subsidies

The Constitution clearly mandates that only Congress has the power to appropriate federal funds, not the executive. Article I, Section 9, cl. 7 states that “No Money shall be drawn from the Treasury, but in Consequence of Appropriations made by Law.” Instead of simply putting an end to these illegal appropriations, Trump is trying to use them as leverage against Congress, to get it to resuscitate the stalled GOP effort to “repeal and replace” Obamacare. As Suderman explains: Suderman is absolutely right to point to the potentially dangerous precedent here. If it is illegal for the executive to spend money on X, it is also illegal for him to offer to continue to spend it on X so long as Congress does what he wants on some other issue. If, on the other hand, the payments are mandated by Congress, after all (as the Obama administration dubiously claimed), then Trump has no right to withhold them.   So far, at least, it does not appear that Congress will give in to Trump’s threats. But a future president may be more popular and more skilled at legislative deal-making than this one, and might therefore be able to use such leverage more effectively.  Any of these approaches is better than letting the executive continue to use the Treasury as a slush fund for its own priorities (as Obama did) or – even worse – use illegal appropriations as a tool to pressure Congress, as Trump is trying to do. Hopefully, Congress and – if necessary – the courts, will enforce legislative control over appropriations. The time has come to make the separation of powers great again!

When Donald Trump jokes about separating out a religious minority, where does the joke end?

Sometimes, Donald Trump jokes. He jokes a lot, sometimes because he is actually joking, and sometimes he is joking retroactively in an effort to wave away something he said that annoyed people.     There are two important flags Lupu identified that would push the specific action Trump took over the line into constitutionally questionable. The first would be if Trump were a representative of or an official with the federal government. But even then, he categorized the question as more unwise than risky. "Let's pretend it was the president of the United States, in office, speaking in his official position," Lupu said, "who did something as sort of divisive, clumsy and stupid as that. No one would say there was something unconstitutional about it." Were Trump as president raising the question in a "coercive setting" -- say, if he were addressing members of the military — the situation shifts. It's all a bit gray, but that's the combination Lupu identified: government actor seeking explicitly or implicitly to be acting based on religious qualifications.  Our system is designed to prevent the president from having too much power to act on his own, limiting the number of ways in which any president can influence or target particular groups. (You remember this from fifth grade. Checks and balances.) An example: Trump's proposal to surveil mosques would be carried out by the FBI, presumably, and those affected by it could petition the judicial branch to curtail the process (probably successfully). Other proposals with different aims probably would need to go through Congress, and even then be reviewed by the Supreme Court. Trump has proposed one idea that would shift the relationship between the religious community and the government. He has repeatedly called for the repeal of the Johnson Amendment, a policy that prohibits 501(c) (3) nonprofits from expressly advocating for the election or defeat of a political candidate. (It's not clear how Trump seized on this issue, but it seems likely that it was raised by evangelical leaders and was seen by Trump as a fairly simple way to demonstrate his support for their concerns.) The reason the barrier exists is because contributions to nonprofits are tax deductible, Lupu said. If you give a church $20,000 that the church spends on a political campaign, you're paying less in taxes because of that giving. That gives churches an advantage in fundraising — and, therefore, in their ability to influence politics. What's more, he added, "no one talks about getting rid of this restriction for all charities, but only about houses of worship. If only houses of worship got this break where they could spend money on politics and people could still deduct the donations, you would be advantaging religious voices over other voices in the political process." "I think that would be an unconstitutional preference of a religion," he added, a violation of the establishment clause codified in the First Amendment. But let's reel this all back in. The prompt for this line of questioning was an off-handed comment from a candidate who prides himself on such things. It was a simple joke about whether non-Christians or nonconservatives (it's not clear which) should be allowed to stay and hear Trump speak. Nothing more, nothing less. And because he's not president, the constitutional ramifications aren't applicable. For those inclined to be cautious about Trump's familiarity with the Constitution and understanding of the powers of the presidency, though, other questions naturally followed. Maybe in his joke, as the corny old saying goes, was a kernel of truth.

How far does Trump’s racism take him?

Donald Trump’s assertion that the American-born Judge Gonzalo Curiel is “Mexican” and inherently conflicted in a case against Trump University’s wall-obsessed leader raises some further questions as to Trump’s intentions, if elected. Any administration is party to thousands of lawsuits over the course of a presidency. Every agency, every federal prosecution and every Cabinet department implicates the president’s appointees and, ultimately, the chief executive in reams of litigation. Since Trump presumably will stick to his wall-building schemes, does this mean he will seek to recuse every Hispanic judge in every case involving the federal government? It does not stop there. Trump has insulted POWs, women and people with disabilities. Is any judge falling into those categories also unfit to hear cases involving the Trump administration? Let’s carry this out. Since a president’s own judicial appointees wind up hearing cases involving the federal government, would Trump not appoint Hispanics, women, persons with disabilities and former POWs? If he is going to recuse them anyway, it would seem to be foolish to nominate them. It is not just judges who could be “unfair” to a Trump administration. Think of all the jurors in all the cases involving the federal government. Will Trump unconstitutionally attempt to rid juries of certain categories of people? Then think of the professions Trump has said are filled with “terrible” or “disgusting” people. Journalists would need to be kept off juries and former journalists kept off the bench. Interviewers should start questioning Trump about the extent of his prejudices. It may soon become evident that Trump cannot possibly fulfill his constitutional oath. That, if you recall, requires the president to “faithfully execute the Office of President of the United States, and will to the best of my ability, preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States.” That, of course, requires equal enforcement of the laws and enforcement of the entire Constitution (even that pesky 14th Amendment). It sure sounds as though Trump would struggle to do so.  And while you are thinking of that, consider how Trump would do with the powers of the Internal Revenue Service, National Security Agency, FBI, CIA and every regulatory agency and board under him. It is hard to imagine him overseeing the fair and impartial operation of all of those bodies. In his hands, every power becomes a weapon to settle scores and punish people being “unfair” to him. Hillary Clinton is no angel when it comes to rigging the system for her own benefit. Nevertheless, she generally has manipulated the system for her own and her husband’s benefit, to protect their secrecy and their pocketbooks. It’s hard to imagine her seeking to refashion the federal government by institutional bigotry or trying to warp its powers into instruments of revenge. She may be somewhat corrupt (judging from the conflicts of interest emanating from her foundation and speech-giving), but she isn’t a threat to the republic. I do not think you can say the same about Trump with any degree of confidence.

Trump’s win leaves Obama’s higher education reforms in doubt

Donald Trump’s defeat of Hillary Clinton in the election places eight years of higher-education reform under President Obama in doubt, raising questions about the direction of policies governing financial aid and for-profit colleges. The Obama administration has enacted sweeping changes to the way the federal government provides and collects student loans, kicking banks out of the lending process and expanding a suite of repayment plans tied to income. Those moves rankled Republicans, as did a set of policies pushing tough employment and student-debt-forgiveness rules aimed at for-profit colleges. Now, advocates fear that there is nothing preventing the GOP from overturning those regulations. Trump’s “presidency will open the door for conservatives to weaken, gut or completely dismantle any regulations that have been created in the last eight years,” Tariq Habash, a policy associate at the Century Foundation, said. “It’s not bright for the future of higher-education policy from a consumer-protection standpoint.” Trump spent much of the election season ignoring higher education, even as Clinton touted her college-affordability plan on the campaign trail. Trump adviser Sam Clovis provided some insights that reinforced long-standing Republican positions on limiting the government’s role in higher education. Clovis told Inside Higher Ed, a trade publication, that Trump would get the government out of student lending and hand the market over to banks. It’s unclear whether that would mean a return to the days of the federal government’s subsidizing bank loans to students or whether the government would simply cede more of the market to private lenders. Neal McCluskey, director of the right-leaning Center for Educational Freedom at the Cato Institute, said as much as Republicans talk about the old bank-based model, few would want to return to paying private lenders to make loans. If anything, he suspects the Trump administration could eliminate federal loans for parents and graduate students, while raising loan limits for undergraduates. “There may be a reduction to one program, and that program would be better focused on lower-income students,” he said. “There is a fair amount of agreement that Parent Plus and Grad Plus are skewed toward upper income people … getting rid of those programs would be consistent with what Republicans say they want to do, which is reduce the size, scope and expense of government.” While Parent Plus loans are widely considered onerous because of the high interest and origination fees, a 2011 attempt by the government to tighten lending standards hurt enrollment at historically black colleges and universities as families struggled to get loans. Eliminating the program entirely could create further havoc for minority-serving institutions. Sara Goldrick-Rab, a higher education and sociology professor at Temple University, worries that Trump will completely hand over education loans to private banks, whose lending criteria will shut out lower-income and minority students.   “Privatizing student loans would be disastrous,” said Maggie Thompson, executive director of Generation Progress at the Center for American Progress. “It would roll back consumer protections and increases the cost of borrowing.” There are conflicting messages coming out of the Trump camp. Although his advisers have said he will dial back federal lending, Trump himself has called for the government to pour more money in the federal-loan program on the back end. A month out from the election, Trump proposed enrolling all borrowers in a plan that would cap their monthly student-loan payments to 12.5 percent of their income and forgive all remaining debt after 15 years. Republicans have pilloried Obama’s expansion of income-driven repayment programs as fiscally irresponsible, yet the party’s leader promised to lower the repayment period, which would probably cost hundreds of billions of dollars. Even the latest income-driven plan, known as Revised Pay as You Earn (REPAYE), only forgives debt after 20 years of payment, though it caps borrowers’ monthly bills to 10 percent of their income. “Republicans have said in many budget resolutions that Obama’s changes to income-based repayment should be rolled back, but Trump’s changes seem to roll them forward,” said Jason Delisle, a resident fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, a conservative think tank. “I don’t know if he didn’t run the numbers, but it is a bad direction to go in.” Alexander Holt, an education-policy analyst at the New America Foundation, said Trump will probably change the terms of his repayment plan and could institute automatic payroll deduction to streamline the process. He suspects that the president-elect may adopt some elements of former Florida governor and onetime GOP presidential candidate Jeb Bush’s higher education platform, such as providing high school graduates access to a $50,000 line of credit to pay for college and holding colleges accountable by forcing them to pay up when their students default on loans. Holt and other higher-education experts agree that some of the most significant policy changes in a Trump administration would be the repeal of regulations targeting for-profit colleges. The president-elect is embroiled in lawsuits and fraud claims tied to his defunct Trump University, a for-profit venture that offered business seminars. What’s more, Trump has railed against government regulation squeezing business interests, aligning with popular rhetoric espoused by the for-profit-college industry. “Trump hasn’t addressed the misrepresentations, the outright fraud and abuse that has existed in a specific subset of higher education,” said Habash of the Century Foundation. “Given that and his role in creating Trump University, I can’t imagine this coming administration is going to yield anything good to students, consumers and families across the board.” Congressional Republicans and the for-profit lobby have fought unsuccessfully to prevent the Obama administration from moving forward with rules limiting the amount of debt students can carry in career-training programs, known as gainful employment. Trump’s administration could kill the law and halt the overhaul of a student-debt-forgiveness program that would have an outsized impact on the for-profit industry. Thousands of former students of Corinthian Colleges and ITT Technical Institute are waiting to receive debt relief through the so-called borrower defense to repayment process, but advocates say their chances are now in jeopardy. “We have a huge fight on our hands to protect the gains for students,” said Thompson of the Center for American Progress. “There is a path to protect these regulations, but we’re going to have a fight with this administration.”

Sometimes, Donald Trump jokes. He jokes a lot, sometimes because he is actually joking and sometimes he is joking retroactively in an effort to wave away something he said that annoyed people.     There are two important flags Lupu identified that would push the specific action Trump took over the line into constitutionally questionably. The first would be, of course, if Trump were a representative of or official with the federal government. But even then, he categorized the question as more unwise than risky. "Let's pretend it was the president of the United States, in office, speaking in his official position," Lupu said, "who did something as sort of divisive, clumsy and stupid as that. No one would say there was something unconstitutional about it." Were Trump as president raising the question in a "coercive setting" -- say, if he were addressing members of the military -- the situation shifts. It's all a bit gray, but that's the combination Lupu identified: government actor seeking explicitly or implicitly to be acting based on religious qualifications.  Our system is designed to prevent the president from having too much power to act on his own, limiting the number of ways in which any president can influence or target particular groups. (You remember this from fifth grade. Checks and balances.) An example: Trump's proposal to surveil mosques would be carried out by the FBI, presumably, and those affected by it could petition the judicial branch to curtail the process (probably successfully). Other proposals with different aims would likely need to go through Congress, and even then be reviewed by the Supreme Court. Trump has proposed one idea that would shift the relationship between the religious community and the government. He's repeatedly called to repeal the Johnson Amendment, a policy that prohibits 501(c)(3) non-profits from expressly advocating for the election or defeat of a political candidate. (It's not clear how Trump seized on this issue, but it seems likely that it was raised by evangelical leaders and was seen by Trump as a fairly simple way to demonstrate his support for their concerns.) The reason the barrier exists is because contributions to non-profits are tax deductible, Lupu said. If you give a church $20,000 that the church spends on a political campaign, you're paying less in taxes thanks to that giving. That gives churches an advantage in fundraising -- and, therefore, in their ability to influence politics. What's more, he added, "no one talks about getting rid of this restriction for all charities, but only about houses or worship. If only houses of worship got this break where they could spend money on politics and people could still deduct the donations, you would be advantaging religious voices over other voices in the political process." "I think that would be an unconstitutional preference of a religion," he added, a violation of the establishment clause codified in the First Amendment. But let's reel this all back in. The prompt for this line of questioning was an off-handed comment from a candidate who prides himself on such things. It was a simple joke about whether or not non-Christians or non-conservatives (it's not clear which) should be allowed to stay and hear Donald Trump speak. Nothing more, nothing less. And since he's not president yet, the constitutional ramifications aren't applicable at all. Those inclined to be cautious about Trump's familiarity with the Constitution and understanding of the powers of the presidency, though, other questions naturally followed. Maybe in his joke, as the corny old saying goes, was a kernel of truth.

Trump talks of ‘ghettos’ in describing urban African American areas

TOLEDO — Donald Trump on Thursday referred to urban areas populated by African Americans and plagued by violence and economic struggles as “ghettos” during an afternoon rally. “And we’re going to work on our — ghettos, are in so the, you take a look at what’s going on where you have pockets of, areas of land where you have the inner cities and you have so many things, so many problems,” Trump said, appearing to catch himself and fumble over his words. “So many horrible, horrible problems. The violence. The death. The lack of education. No jobs.” “Ghetto” is not a word that public officials and candidates tend to use to describe struggling urban areas, as some find it troubling or outdated in that context. The Republican presidential nominee pledged to “work with the African American community” and “solve the problem of the inner city.” Polls show Democrat Hillary Clinton holds a wide lead among African Americans over Trump. The GOP nominee has emphasized his outreach to the black community in recent months. But his efforts have not been smooth. And he continues to address mostly white audiences. Trump zigged and zagged in his remarks at the rally, sarcastically suggesting at one point that the election be called off and the presidency be handed to him. “What a difference this is. I’m just thinking to myself right now — we should just cancel the election and just give it to Trump, right?” he said as he compared his candidacy with Clinton’s. Trump also polled his crowd about who is lower energy: Clinton or Jeb Bush. He dubbed the former Florida governor “low energy” during the Republican primary and has repeatedly questioned Clinton’s stamina. “You know what I say, doesn’t matter,” Trump said, ans‘wering his own question.

Inside the hectic scene when black protesters were removed from a Donald Trump rally

In the past 48 hours, Donald Trump has failed on national TV to resoundingly reject the support of David Duke, a former member of the KKK and white supremacist radio host. He's said he could not hear the question well. His supporters insist he _did_ distance himself from Duke on Friday. But these people either do not care or are not aware of Trump's long and also recent history of rather equivocal statements about Duke and the KKK. We encourage you to click on the link below. Read it with care.    *[WSU]: Wayne State University   *[Tue]: Tuesday   *[Wed]: Wednesday   *[UNM]: University of New Mexico Folks, if this is your idea of a disavowal, you do not know the meaning of the term. As a result, prominent Republicans around the country have rejected him and his campaign for the White House outright and begun to talk openly about third-party candidates and even casting votes for Hillary Clinton, who they presume will be the Democratic presidential nominee. And Louis Farrakhan, the semi-retired leader of the Nation of Islam, has said he too appreciates Trump for running a self-financed campaign free of money from the “Jewish community.” To be clear, both the KKK and the Nation of Islam are included on the Southern Poverty Law Center's list of hate groups operating in the United States, and Duke as well as Farrakhan have been described by the SPLC and the Anti-Defamation League as purveyors of hate and hate speech. And while neither man has offered Trump an official endorsement, they have both said that they like various aspects of his campaign. If all of that has not graced the American public with enough to think about, on this the day on which Trump could gain an nearly insurmountable delegate lead thanks to Super Tuesday, there is also this: All over cable news, there is footage of two groups of mostly black students in two different states from two different colleges being removed from Trump rallies. One group, in Georgia, sat quietly and says they were singled out by people they believed to be Secret Service officers and removed. The Secret Service has said that it does not engage in the removal of protesters. A local law enforcement official said his officers and Trump security were involved in the removals there. A second group, at Radford University, were also removed by what they believed to be Secret Service officers after standing up and chanting in protest to Trump's comments — or rather a question, really — put to another protester. The Fix thought it might be interesting to find out exactly what went on at that second gathering at Radford — to hear it from one of the young protesters, an admitted part of the Trump opposition camp but also someone too young to remember previous presidential campaigns in great detail. Is he horrified, amazed, overwhelmed or enraged by Trump and his campaign? Did the environment inside the Trump rally strike him as hate-filled or likely to inspire hate? What follows is a Q&A with Joshua Nehemiah Bester, a 19-year-old media studies major at Radford. **THE FIX: So Trump spoke at a facility that belongs to Radford University on Monday. You all decided to protest. Why?**    *[WSU]: Wayne State University   *[Tue]: Tuesday   *[Wed]: Wednesday   *[UNM]: University of New Mexico ** **Bester** :** I think they assumed Southwest Virginia would be receptive to his message. And he would come here and just be met with nothing but cheers or something. But I think a lot of us felt like we cannot stand silent. That is not going down. I feel like we have to show him that there are black students and Muslim students and Latino students at Radford that are not going to be silent. He is a completely disrespectful and a destructive force in our country. We felt like we had an obligation to send a message.    *[WSU]: Wayne State University   *[Tue]: Tuesday   *[Wed]: Wednesday   *[UNM]: University of New Mexico We're students, yes. But students at Radford are beginning to know, more and more, how big a voice we have, even though we were small in number. We did stand up for what we believe is right. And we exercised our right to protest. **How long did you all have to plan?**    *[WSU]: Wayne State University   *[Tue]: Tuesday   *[Wed]: Wednesday   *[UNM]: University of New Mexico ** **Bester** :** We didn't have time, not much. It was actually more like a surprise. I think, if I remember correctly, that we found out Trump was coming out on Thursday. And we just got together and talked about it. We brainstormed some ideas. We came up with some rules and some plans about how we would handle different situations and then, you know, it was Monday.    *[WSU]: Wayne State University   *[Tue]: Tuesday   *[Wed]: Wednesday   *[UNM]: University of New Mexico **What did you all have in mind yesterday when the day began?**    *[WSU]: Wayne State University   *[Tue]: Tuesday   *[Wed]: Wednesday   *[UNM]: University of New Mexico ** **Bester** :** We'd been told that the rally started at 10 a.m., but we also thought there would be a long line; a lot of people who wanted to get inside. So we decided to get there at 7. Well, some of us got there at 7 to make sure we would get inside. And it's a good thing we did, because the rally actually started at noon. But some of our friends who got there at 11 — they didn't get in at all. But those of us who did, I think there were 30 to 40 of us, we had decided we were going to get in there and let Trump speak for at least a half an hour unless someone did or said something to trigger us. We weren't wearing black or matching colors or anything like that. We went in there with dress shoes and bow ties; we were dressed professional, that's all. We decided we were going to sit quietly be there long enough to be seen and be heard, if we thought it necessary. We would speak if something triggered us.    *[WSU]: Wayne State University   *[Tue]: Tuesday   *[Wed]: Wednesday   *[UNM]: University of New Mexico **Please walk me through what happened?**    *[WSU]: Wayne State University   *[Tue]: Tuesday   *[Wed]: Wednesday   *[UNM]: University of New Mexico ** **Bester** : **Well, I think we kind of made ourselves obvious from the beginning, because when Trump came out everyone stood up, they gave him a standing ovation, and there was a lot of cheering and all that. We just stayed in our seats and were silent. But we decided to stick to our 30-minute plan. But I think, between that and all of the reporters that had come over to ask us questions before the rally began, that the Secret Service [Bester used the term Secret Service although the agency has denied that their officers remove protesters from campaign events] had noticed us. And at that point, one of the officers, he came over and stood at the end of one of the rows where we were sitting. He was really watching us. And so we started texting back and forth with each other. I told some people, "Let's practice patience here. Otherwise this will be a wasted opportunity."    *[WSU]: Wayne State University   *[Tue]: Tuesday   *[Wed]: Wednesday   *[UNM]: University of New Mexico But really, almost as soon as Trump got started, he was having protesters booted left and right. The thing was at right about the half-hour mark when he asked one of the protesters if she is Mexican, or from Mexico. And that was it. That was the trigger. We just stood up and started with the first chant we had discussed. **Wait, you all had pre-planned protest chants? What were you chanting?**    *[WSU]: Wayne State University   *[Tue]: Tuesday   *[Wed]: Wednesday   *[UNM]: University of New Mexico ** **Bester** : **Yep. I mean, we were doing this because we wanted Trump to know that not everyone at Radford — not everyone in this area is perfectly okay with the things he stands for, with the things he says. We were there for all POCs [people of color] we have to stand against all injustice not just our own. So we stood and held hands and — CNN got this wrong, but at this point we didn’t say "black lives matter." We were chanting "No more hate. No more hate. Let’s be equal. Let’s be great." That's what we were saying until the point right before they moved us outside. That's when we switched to "black lives matter."    *[WSU]: Wayne State University   *[Tue]: Tuesday   *[Wed]: Wednesday   *[UNM]: University of New Mexico **What happened next? How did you wind up outside of the facility? Were you manhandled?**    *[WSU]: Wayne State University   *[Tue]: Tuesday   *[Wed]: Wednesday   *[UNM]: University of New Mexico ** **Bester** :** Actually, I would say, yes, they [the security officers] put their hands on us — yes, they moved us off the floor over to a staircase and then out. But they weren't rough. Nobody was injured. I wasn't hurt. They just removed us. And honestly, it all happened really fast. It was really loud in there because at that point people in the crowd started reacting to us, screaming at us and Trump, I think we actually stumped Trump, because he stopped talking for a little while.    *[WSU]: Wayne State University   *[Tue]: Tuesday   *[Wed]: Wednesday   *[UNM]: University of New Mexico **What were people in the crowd saying to you?**    *[WSU]: Wayne State University   *[Tue]: Tuesday   *[Wed]: Wednesday   *[UNM]: University of New Mexico **Bester** : It was loud, so a lot of it was hard to hear. But I heard a lot of "Trump, Trump, Trump." Some of my friends told me they heard racial slurs — "n*****" and some other stuff. But we knew going in there that was a possibility. We also knew the only way out was probably going to be with an escort. So I expected all of that.    *[WSU]: Wayne State University   *[Tue]: Tuesday   *[Wed]: Wednesday   *[UNM]: University of New Mexico **Were you scared?**    *[WSU]: Wayne State University   *[Tue]: Tuesday   *[Wed]: Wednesday   *[UNM]: University of New Mexico **Bester:** You know what? there was so much hate in there in the air, in the atmosphere that it felt surreal. A lot of times, it's covert. Hate is covert. Racism is certainly covert. But people get really bold when they are together. And it was just unreal inside that rally. I turned around a saw the magazine photographer trying to move around and then I saw him get slammed to the ground.    *[WSU]: Wayne State University   *[Tue]: Tuesday   *[Wed]: Wednesday   *[UNM]: University of New Mexico **So someone — Trump security or the Secret Service, depending on whom you believe — moved you all out of the rally. What happened next?**    *[WSU]: Wayne State University   *[Tue]: Tuesday   *[Wed]: Wednesday   *[UNM]: University of New Mexico **Bester:** Well, there were a lot of people outside, and they had set up screens so that people could watch Trump. I saw a guy with a sign that said, "Thanks Trump You are Bringing White Supremacy Back." But there were also a lot of people out there who don't agree with this man and his message. When we came out, the LGBT student's group and women's studies group and some of the Latino Student Alliance kids that didn't make it inside were out there. We did start chanting "black lives matter," but mostly we did "RU [Radford University] Is Not For You" and "Estados Unidos, We Are United." There were a lot of reporters around asking us questions like, "Are you a Trump supporter. Why are you here? Who do you want to win?"    *[WSU]: Wayne State University   *[Tue]: Tuesday   *[Wed]: Wednesday   *[UNM]: University of New Mexico **Well, maybe we should talk a little about that. As you know, Trump is the leading Republican candidate, by far. What do you think that your protest can accomplish, what did it accomplish? Why do it? I'm sure you know some people think it was disruptive or maybe rude.**    *[WSU]: Wayne State University   *[Tue]: Tuesday   *[Wed]: Wednesday   *[UNM]: University of New Mexico **Bester:** I think what he says is rude. His ideology is rude. His platform is rude. His agenda is disrespectful. I’m not one to stand by and say nothing. This man is to leading in the polls. So the rest of us, we can’t just stand in silence while a madman continues to gain momentum and continues to gain support. We just can't. We did have some students, mostly white students, say some stuff to us on campus. They didn't like that we went in there and protested. Some of them felt like it was wrong to interrupt Trump. But we are not okay with him, and we believe that this man is not what America needs. And we do have a right to express that. We're hoping that everywhere he goes, people are going to stand up and do the same.    *[WSU]: Wayne State University   *[Tue]: Tuesday   *[Wed]: Wednesday   *[UNM]: University of New Mexico

Former Va. governor Wilder proposes VCU site for national slavery museum in Richmond

Former Virginia governor L. Douglas Wilder has proposed a new site for a national slavery museum: A Richmond building central to the city’s black history now owned by Virginia Commonwealth University. Wilder’s announcement on Thursday came as a surprise to university officials. The building, in the heart of downtown, once housed First African Baptist Church, long a focal point for the black community in Richmond, and is a site on the city’s historic slave trail. Wilder proposed a museum that would be state-owned and funded by the state and private donors. In a casual conversation with VCU’s president at lunch last week, Wilder mentioned the idea of using the building for a national slavery museum, university spokeswoman Anne Buckley said in a statement. “No commitment was made, and no formal or informal discussions or negotiations are underway,” she said. A spokeswoman for Richmond Mayor Dwight Jones, who has pushed to mark the city’s slave history as part of a controversial development project and had lobbied the governor for the funding, said only that city officials had not had formal or informal discussions with Wilder about this. Gov. Terry McAuliffe (D) has consistently supported state funding for a slavery heritage site, his spokeswoman said. She did not respond to a question about whether the governor would support Wilder’s proposal. Wilder has been talking about creating a national slavery museum for 20 years, but the project foundered in Fredericksburg when millions of dollars in debt and taxes piled up. Most of the land donated for the museum is expected to be sold in June, clearing the national slavery museum organization to move forward with another plan. Wilder’s proposal comes as momentum is building to fully explore and dramatically mark Richmond’s role as an epicenter of the slave trade in the mid-1800s. The city has budgeted $5 million toward the slave trail and efforts to highlight a notorious slave trader’s prison. But the mayor’s proposal has sparked protests because of its ties to a stadium and other development that opponents say would desecrate the history there. That history is intensely personal for Wilder, who remembers walking to the church for Sunday school as s a child. His father was one of the trustees who approved the building’s sale. His grandfather attended the church as a freed slave. By some accounts, Wilder said, a slave climbed onto the roof to wave a flag for freedom when Union troops marched in. Wilder said that neither he nor his foundation would control this proposed slavery museum; they would raise money and help however they could but let the university and the General Assembly determine how to run it.

Why is Trump reluctant to condemn white supremacy? It’s his racism — and his megalomania.

Even if Trump says the right thing today, the question will linger: Why does Trump resist condemning white supremacy? The most obvious answer is that he’s encouraging the racism of some of his supporters, after a campaign that derived initial energy from his racist birther conspiracy theories and in many ways was framed around the narrative that white identity and white America are under siege. White nationalism is now alive and well in the White House; we are reaping the inevitable consequences. I’d like to suggest an additional reason for Trump’s reticence that is intertwined with this one: Trump does not recognize that his service as president confers on him any obligations to the public of any kind. This does not supplant Trump’s racism as an explanation. It throws its potential effects going forward into even sharper, more alarming relief.  Trump’s resistance appears rooted in part in an instinctual sense that so doing would constitute some form of capitulation. In his remarks, Trump repeated the phrase “on many sides” in a pointed tone, as if to signal that he will not be bullied by any objection to his false equivalence or any pressure to single out anti-black racism.    There is a reason we generally want our presidents to speak out against racism against African Americans amid outbreaks of racial strife and violence. They are well positioned to remind the nation of our founding creed, and of our most conspicuous betrayal of it — of the historically unique experience of African Americans as targets of centuries of violent subjugation, as well as sustained domestic terrorism and deeply ingrained racism, which continues today.   “The president is supposed to be, and sometimes is, a kind of spokesman for the nation,” Foner continued. “Trump has repudiated that role from the beginning. His inaugural address was completely focused on his voters. It made no effort to appeal to anybody who hadn’t already voted for him.”      Well, we’ve been warned.  Which means default on the debt ceiling and financial calamity are very possible. So is a government shutdown over Trump’s desire to fund his fantasy wall. So much winning!  Indeed, Trump often dismisses efforts to get to the bottom of that meddling — separate from whether collusion occurred — as nothing but a hoax, because he believes they reflect poorly on him.  It would be so tragic if this Breitbart-fueled campaign against McMaster ended up taking down Bannon instead.

Trump campaign’s claim that Republicans ‘usually aren’t bold enough’ to do black community outreach

In this interview, Conway was asked about Trump’s speech last week on the state of black communities, delivered to a mostly white audience. She said that Trump deserves credit for “taking the case directly to the people,” and that even though the audience was mostly white, she hoped black voters were listening. The Trump campaign has begun its outreach to black communities. In the interview, Conway pointed to an Aug. 25 meeting held at Trump Tower with African Americans in a Republican National Committee leadership program. There were 13 people who were not with the RNC or the Trump campaign there. Conway painted Trump’s outreach as unique, because “Republican presidential nominees usually aren’t bold enough to go into communities of color and take the case right to them.” Readers wanted to know: Is that accurate? Richard Nixon narrowly lost his first presidential bid in 1960, winning the white vote 51 percent to 49 percent over John F. Kennedy. But Nixon lost the nonwhite vote by 32 percent to 68 percent, and attributed his loss to his results in the black community. (Republican Dwight Eisenhower, whom Nixon served as vice president, won 39 percent of the black vote in 1956.)  Nixon said that Republicans can’t just sit and assume that black voters would judge them based on their record, whatever it may be. He learned he had to go out and make a case. “We can’t say to Negroes, ‘Come to us,’ we’ve got to go after them,” Nixon said in the 1962 interview. “We’ve got to change the image of the GOP among Negroes. The Democrats are well organized and well financed — but we’ve got to get into the Negro areas if we expect to mold a party for all people. We’ve got to convince Negroes they’re better off economically under a GOP president.”  Every Republican presidential nominee since Nixon has made a direct overture to make their case to the community. They weren’t always greeted with enthusiasm, but black leaders and audiences nonetheless heard them out. At the very least, nominees attended conventions of major gatherings of African American professionals or communities, such as the NAACP, National Urban League and National Association of Black Journalists (NABJ). They also have gone to black religious organizations or talked to pastors. By contrast, Trump has declined the invitation of the NAACP, National Urban League and NABJ to speak at their 2016 conventions.  George H.W. Bush spoke to the NAACP during his 1988 campaign but not during his reelection campaign in 1992. George W. Bush spoke to the NAACP during his first run for the presidency in 2000. In 2004, he attended the National Urban League’s meeting.   Talking directly to African American communities and audiences has been a routine part of general-election campaigning for both parties, said Leah Wright Rigueur, an expert on black Republican politics and professor at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government. It hasn’t always been sophisticated or nuanced, and it doesn’t always work, but the candidates have still made their pitch. There’s been no such direct outreach effort by the Trump campaign, Wright Rigueur said. “One of the constants, one of the common threads that run throughout all of this is actually getting up and going into black communities, and not just talking about black people,” Wright Rigueur said. “Not just lecturing. Not preaching. But actually listening to African Americans and saying, these are the kinds of issues that you’re facing and I want to put forward solutions to really address these issues.”  “It is important that Mr. Trump is taking his message to these communities of color,” Conway said. “In the past, Republicans have occasionally shown up at different forums, but they do not continue with this message trying to reach all Americans.” Up against Barack Obama, the first African American president, “John McCain got 4 percent of the African American vote, and Mitt Romney improved that to a whopping 6 percent. We are fighting for every single vote,” Conway added. “That includes going where the voters are and not just checking the box; taking the case directly to them. Detroit is the first step; in the coming weeks you will continue to see Mr. Trump becoming more active in these communities.” We noted to her our finding that every previous Republican nominee made a direct case in some way, such as the forums she mentioned, and our conclusion that her claim was inaccurate. Conway responded: “The claim is correct, unless one conflates official forums with ‘communities of color.’ They are different. We are saying the same thing, but your conclusion is different.” As a longtime Republican pollster, Conway should know more about the history of Republican outreach to black communities than most others at the Trump campaign. On its face, this claim is not correct. Republican presidential nominees have routinely made a direct pitch to communities of color, taking their case right to them — at the most basic level, they have done so through a speech to the NAACP, National Urban League or religious groups. Conway clarified her claim to say that Republicans “have occasionally shown up at different forums, but they do not continue with this message trying to reach all Americans” in communities of color. Trump is gearing up his black community outreach, and he certainly is doing it in his own way — like he has done so with the rest of the campaign. It remains to be seen whether Trump deserves credit, or whether he’ll go beyond what Republicans have done in the past. So far, by declining to speak at the NAACP, National Urban League and NABJ, Trump  has not met the basic level of what his predecessors have routinely done.

Obama urges black turnout, mocks Trump for missing ‘civics lesson’ on Jim Crow

“If you care about our legacy, realize everything we stand for is at stake,” Obama, the nation’s first African American president, said in an address to an annual dinner of the Congressional Black Caucus Foundation. “My name may not be on the ballot, but our progress is on the ballot." During his remarks to a packed ballroom at the Washington Convention Center -- where Clinton preceded him at the lectern -- Obama also mocked Republican nominee Donald Trump for advancing questions about the validity of his birth certificate and for claiming that this is the worst time to be a black American. “He missed that whole civics lesson about slavery and Jim Crow,” a beaming Obama said, though he also acknowledged that African Americans still face significant challenges. “We do have challenges, but we’re not stupid,” Obama said. “We know the progress we’ve made.” Obama began his remarks by saying, sarcastically, that he had “an extra spring in my step” given that Trump had finally acknowledged that he is an American citizen. Trump, who for years advanced the notion that Obama was not born in the United States, sought to put the issue behind him this week by acknowledging the president’s citizenship -- but instead re-ignited a firestorm by falsely claiming that Clinton sparked the controversy in 2008. “And to think with just 124 days to go, under the wire, we got that thing resolved,” Obama said to laughter from the predominantly African American audience. “In other breaking news, the world is round, not flat.” Obama’s remarks came at a time when polls have shown the race between Clinton and Trump tightening and amid concerns among Democrats that African American turnout will not match what it was under Obama’s historic 2008 and 2012 elections. Despite being battered all summer by his own missteps as well as a barrage of attack ads from Clinton, Turmp has been surging in the battleground states in recent weeks. “If I hear anybody saying their vote does not matter,” Obama told the crowd, “read up on your history. It matters. We’ve got to get people to vote.” During her remarks, Clinton -- who left the event before Obama spoke -- paid tribute to the Democrat she is seeking to succeed, calling him “one of the best presidents this country has ever had.” Clinton also made a couple of passing references to the birther controversy and was an award recipient at the dinner, picking up the organization’s “trailblazer” award in recognition of her status as the first female presidential nominee of a major party in the United States. “It’s not about golf promotions or birth certificates," she said of this year's race. "It comes down to who will fight for the forgotten, who will invest in our children, and who will really have your back in the White House.” Saturday night marked Obama’s final appearance at the annual dinner. He joked that the “next time I show up I’ve got to buy a ticket.”

Trump opposes federal involvement in education. But do his plans ensure a ‘Race to the Bank’?

President-elect Donald Trump has said repeatedly that he doesn’t support a strong federal involvement in public education. It’s a district and state responsibility, he says, and that’s how it should be. But what will the upcoming Trump administration actually do to ensure that this vision is implemented? In this post, Carol Burris, a former New York high school principal who is executive director of the nonprofit Network for Public Education, looks at the signs that Trump and his allies have been waving about his education reform priorities and paints a disturbing picture of where the education world may be headed.  By Carol Burris Donald Trump had little to say about education during the campaign, but that does not mean that he and those who surround him do not have a plan. There are clear indications that President Obama’s Race to the Top will be replaced with something that could be called “Race to the Bank,” as the movement to privatize education seems certain to accelerate under an administration run by Trump and his vice president, Mike Pence. Trump’s disdain for public schools is apparent. The Trump/Pence website uses the adjective “government” instead of  “public” when referring to community schools. It claims that school choice is “the civil rights issue of our time.” Donald Trump Jr. used the convention as an opportunity to denigrate public schools by comparing them to “Soviet-era department stores that are run for the benefit of the clerks and not the customers.” Trump Jr.’s rhetoric belongs to a long-standing, right-wing belief that public education is a socialist institution and that schools should be run by the private sector. Let’s stop for a moment and think about the “government” that runs public schools. It is not, as the slogan implies, a Washington cabal. Except in those cases where mayors have grabbed control, public schools are governed by locally elected school boards. The origin of the school board dates to 1647, when the Massachusetts Bay Colony required every town to establish a public school. Committees of school governance sprang up, becoming autonomous, local governing boards as early as the 1820s.  The elimination of democratically governed schools is the true agenda of those who embrace choice. The talk of “civil rights” is smoke and mirrors to distract.  The idea is not novel. Market-based reformers have referred to this for years as “Pell Grants for kids,” or portability of funding. Portability, vouchers and charter schools have been hallmarks of Pence’s education policy as governor of Indiana. Unlike the Trump-Pence website, which frames choice as a “civil rights” initiative, Governor Pence did not limit vouchers to low-income families. He expanded it to middle-income families and removed the cap on the number of students who can apply.      The post-Pinochet government is banning for-profit schools, tuition and test-in criteria to try to fix the deep inequality caused by privatization, but progress is slow. Putting a public school system back together when it has been systematically disassembled is no easy task.  Both nations show us the outcome of choice. Americans need to consider some tough questions, before embracing its allure. Do we want our schools to be governed by our neighbors whom we elect to school boards, or do we want our children’s education governed by corporations that have no real accountability to the families they serve? Do we to want to build our communities, or fracture them, as neighborhood kids get on different buses to attend voucher schools, or are forced to go to charters because their community public school is now the place that only those without options go? Do we believe in a community of learners in which kids learn from and with others of different backgrounds, or do we want American schools to become further segregated by race, income and religion? The most shocking instances of charter school scandal and fraud consistently appear in states that have embraced the choice “market” philosophy. Are we willing to watch our tax dollars wasted, as scam artists and profiteers cash in? When it comes to improving education, we have been engaged in work avoidance for too long. Rather than putting our efforts into creating better, safer and more diverse neighborhoods with excellent schools, we have pretended that the marketplace offers the only solution. We gave up the dream. And the privatizers and billionaires who dismiss democracy as an annoyance cynically jumped in. True community public schools cannot survive school choice. There are only two paths. Will we choose the path chosen by a Chilean dictator, or will we rebuild and nurture a system with deep roots in American tradition and idealism? We cannot have both. —

Clinton’s urgent call to black voters in N.C.: ‘Do any of us have a place in Trump’s America?’

WINTERVILLE, N.C. — Hillary Clinton urged African American voters here to turn out to vote, warning them that Donald Trump's vision for his presidency would leave them behind. “He has spent this entire campaign offering a dog whistle to his most hateful supporters,” Clinton told a crowd of about 1,800 at Pitt Community College. “He retweets white supremacists and spreads racially tinged conspiracy theories.” Clinton noted that Trump had been endorsed by the Ku Klux Klan, an endorsement his campaign rejected. But Clinton painted it as part of a broader pattern of Trump appealing to the worst elements of American society. “They said it was about preserving white identity, and they have placed their faith in him,” Clinton said. She noted that Trump had been repeatedly accused of housing discrimination at his real estate properties and that he had continued to proclaim the guilt of five black and Hispanic men, called the Central Park Five, on assault and rape accusations even after DNA evidence had exonerated them. “Do any of us have a place in Trump’s America?” Clinton asked. Clinton was introduced on Thursday by Mae Brown Wiggins, who was allegedly denied an apartment in a Trump building because she was black and was a part of a federal housing discrimination suit against Trump. “If he were to win, he would be in charge of the Housing and Urban Development Department,” Clinton said. “If he doesn’t respect all Americans, how an we trust him to serve all Americans?” Clinton's appeal to black voters here has become increasingly urgent as early voting results show turnout among African American voters in North Carolina has fallen, compared with turnout in 2008. A combination of fewer early voting sites, lower enthusiasm for Clinton, and legal disputes about voter registration records are likely causes. The Clinton campaign has pointed to higher black turnout in recent days, after the number of polling places in the state was dramatically increased, as a sign that the situation is improving. The state voted for President Obama in 2008 but returned to being a red state in 2012. Polls show that this year, Clinton and Trump are locked in a virtual tie. And high black turnout is considered the key to Democrats being able to perform well. President Obama will make two stops in North Carolina for Clinton on Friday, and he campaigned in the state on Wednesday. In recent days, Clinton has begun urging voters to picture a Trump presidency. She painted him as unsteady and unprepared for the job. And in Winterville, Clinton mocked Trump for seemingly acknowledging that he has been unable to stay on his own campaign message when he urged himself to “stay on point” at his campaign rally on Wednesday. “His campaign probably put that into a teleprompter: 'Stay on point, Donald. Stay on point,' " Clinton said. Clinton reiterated her pledge to address gun violence, police shootings of African Americans and systemic racism as president. “We are going to take on systemic racism with a full commitment and real follow-through,” Clinton said. “We’re going to roll up our sleeves and get to work!”

Trump’s personal, racially tinged attacks on federal judge alarm legal experts

Donald Trump’s highly personal, racially tinged attacks on a federal judge overseeing a pair of lawsuits against him have set off a wave of alarm among legal experts, who worry that the Republican presidential candidate’s vendetta signals a remarkable disregard for judicial independence. That attitude, many argue, could carry constitutional implications if Trump becomes president. U.S. District Judge Gonzalo Curiel, who is handling two class-action lawsuits against Trump University in San Diego, has emerged as a central target for Trump and his supporters in recent weeks. The enmity only escalated after Curiel ordered the release of embarrassing internal documents detailing predatory marketing practices at the for-profit educational venture; that case is set to go to trial after the November election. “I have a judge who is a hater of Donald Trump, a hater. He’s a hater,” Trump said at a campaign rally in San Diego, adding that he believed the Indiana-born judge was “Mexican.” He also suggested taking action against the judge after the election: “They ought to look into Judge Curiel, because what Judge Curiel is doing is a total disgrace. Okay? But we will come back in November. Wouldn’t that be wild if I am president and come back and do a civil case? Where everybody likes it. Okay. This is called life, folks.” The courtroom proceedings come with high stakes for Trump, whose likely tough general-election fight against Hillary Clinton will leave him open to intense scrutiny of his character, business practices and temperament. Clinton said Wednesday that the Trump University allegations are “just more evidence that Donald Trump himself is a fraud.” Trump’s strikingly personal attacks on Curiel are highly unusual and have prompted questions about how he would react to adverse judicial decisions should he become president. Trump’s remarks also stand out because he has a personal financial stake in the case. “Having a presidential candidate embroiled in litigation totally unrelated to the political system . . . that is what is so novel about this. And then you add to this the personal criticism,” said Arthur Hellman, a law professor at the University of Pittsburgh. “It’s personal all the way, and that’s what makes this different.” Conflicts between the courts and the political branches are common and, to some degree, expected. The Constitution mandates lifetime tenure for federal judges who serve in “good behavior” and protects them against recrimination by forbidding that their salaries be diminished. Judicial appointments are among a president’s most lasting legacies, and in the current presidential campaign, candidates from both parties have gone beyond the comfort level of many legal experts by issuing litmus tests. On the Democratic side, Clinton and Sen. Bernie Sanders (Vt.) have said overturning the Supreme Court’s controversial _Citizens United_ ruling should be a priority, while Republican candidates went after Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. for his votes upholding the Affordable Care Act. President Obama prompted outrage among conservatives in 2010 when he blasted the _Citizens United_ ruling in his State of the Union address. Republican members of Congress criticized the president for attacking the decision with members of the court seated just feet away from him, while Democrats defended the comments as within the bounds of policy debate. Trump’s attacks on Curiel stand out for their personal nature, for the racial remarks and for the suggestion by a potential president that someone “ought to look into” the judge. Charles Gardner Geyh, a professor at Indiana University’s Maurer School of Law, said he has no problem with presidents or presidential candidates criticizing judges or judicial decisions. But, he said, “there’s a line between disagreement and sort of throwing the judiciary under the bus that I think is at issue here.” One of Trump’s earlier jeremiads came in February, when he told Fox News that Curiel was biased against him because of his controversial immigration comments and proposals, including his promises to build a giant wall on the U.S.-Mexico border and deport 11 million illegal immigrants. “I think it has to do with perhaps the fact that I’m very, very strong on the border,” Trump said then. “Now, he is Hispanic, I believe. He is a very hostile judge to me.” Trump returned to ethnicity at last week’s San Diego rally, where he erroneously suggested Curiel was from Mexico: “The judge, who happens to be, we believe, Mexican, which is great. I think that’s fine. You know what? I think the Mexicans are going to end up loving Donald Trump when I give all these jobs, okay?” Curiel, who through his office declined to comment, was born in East Chicago, Ind., and is a 1979 graduate of the Indiana University law school. He gained acclaim prosecuting drug traffickers along the Tijuana corridor and was reportedly targeted for assassination by the Felix cartel; he joined the federal bench in 2012 after being nominated by Obama. Katrina Pierson, a spokeswoman for Trump, has expanded on the accusations of bias, wrongly suggesting Curiel is part of a group organizing protests at Trump rallies around California. Curiel is a member of the San Diego La Raza Lawyers Association, a professional group that she appeared to confuse with the National Council of La Raza, an advocacy group. Luis Osuna, the president of the lawyers association, said the group is not an advocacy group and supports candidates on both sides of the aisle. He said Trump’s attempts to discredit Curiel should give voters serious pause, not least because his comments reduce Hispanics in the legal profession to their heritage. “Every time there is a comment like this, it is disheartening,” Osuna said. “It is not, unfortunately, surprising, given the source of the comments. But it displays a complete lack of understanding of the role that we have as attorneys and judges and the role that we have in upholding the Constitution.” “He’s definitely using it as a dog whistle to his supporters,” he added. “Obviously, I don’t know what is in his heart. I can only judge based on the way he has acted in the past, but this has been a recurring theme in his campaign.” Trump is not without recourse if he thinks that Curiel has engaged in misconduct. Russell Wheeler, a visiting fellow at the Brookings Institution, said Trump could file a complaint with the federal court of appeals. He said Trump would have to provide evidence that Curiel was biased in his behavior against the real estate mogul and could then proceed with a disqualification motion. Wheeler said Trump could also ask Curiel to recuse himself from the case because of a lack of impartiality. If Curiel declined, Trump could file an appeal. But Wheeler added that, based on what he has seen, Curiel “has been nothing but fair in this case.” As part of the ongoing class-action lawsuit against Trump University that he is overseeing, Curiel ordered the release of internal documents that showed Trump played a key role in the marketing for the business and how staff members were guided to push customers to purchase expensive follow-ups costing up to $35,000 after taking free introductory courses. The order came in response to a request by The Washington Post, which argued that Trump’s presidential bid made the documents a matter of public interest. In the order, Curiel said that Trump had “placed the integrity of these court proceedings at issue.” ****

Black people aren’t keeping white Americans out of college. Rich people are.

__ The 200th day of Donald Trump’s presidency draws near, and his legislative failures have become all too apparent. What better time to change the conversation and re-energize the base? And what better way than by raising the lightning rod that is affirmative action? According to a memo leaked to the New York Times, the Trump administration is planning to redirect Justice Department resources to investigate and potentially sue colleges that use “intentional race-based discrimination” in admissions. The project was quickly understood to be targeting affirmative action policies that many on the right see as “discriminating” against white applicants — in particular, ones that might give black and Latino students an edge. This move comes despite the Supreme Court upholding the use of affirmative action to diversify campuses just last year. Justice Department officials attempted to play down the initiative after the story broke, stating that they planned to investigate a single complaint involving Asian American applicants, not whites. But it barely mattered. The message was sent. Affirmative action is a consistent hobbyhorse on the right because it combines real anxieties with compelling falsehoods. College admission — especially to the elite institutions most often hit with affirmative action lawsuits — has become more selective and is an increasingly important factor in the creation and perpetuation of wealth and opportunity. Elite colleges serve as steppingstones into politics, finance, law and Silicon Valley; higher incomes tend to follow. Even so, 80 percent of top students who apply are accepted into at least one elite school, if not their No. 1 choice. But measures that help historically disadvantaged populations to take advantage of the same opportunity are nonetheless characterized as zero-sum. What is essential to understand is that it’s not a vast crowd of black or brown people keeping white Americans out of the colleges of their choice, especially not the working-class white Americans among whom Trump finds his base of support. In fact, income tips the scale much more than race: At 38 top colleges in the United States, more students come from the top 1 percent of income earners than from the bottom 60 percent. Really leveling the admissions playing field, assuming the Trump administration actually cares about doing so, would involve much broader efforts to redistribute wealth and power. A focus on fringe campaigns against affirmative action suggests it does not. Addressing inequalities in K-12 education, for instance, could help at-risk students of all races increase their chances of attending a top college — or any college at all. Policies such as property-tax-based funding for schools and the curiously slanted allocation of talented teachers (in Louisiana, for instance, a student in the poorest quartile of schools is almost three times as likely to be taught by an ineffective teacher as a student in the wealthiest quartile is) give a tremendous boost in college admissions to children from high-income families, often at the expense of their lower-income peers. And right up to the application-writing doorstep, the beneficiaries of the biggest extra edge in admissions are more often than not the children of alumni. At Harvard, Yale, Princeton, Georgetown and Stanford universities, the acceptance rate for legacy applicants is between two and three times higher than the general admissions rate. Pressing universities to drop legacy preferences, following the example of other elite schools such as the University of Oxford and University of Cambridge, could free up spots for those without that built-in advantage. Trump’s own wealthy-parent-sponsored education at the University of Pennsylvania, followed by the subsequent admission of three of his four adult children, makes that particular initiative seem unlikely. In many ways, the Trump Justice Department’s proposed attack on affirmative action is a microcosm of how the president won the 2016 election and continues to maintain a base of support. First, Trump taps into a mainstream concern, one tied to how America’s economic system is changing and how some individuals are left at the margin: Employment? Immigration? College? Take your pick. Then, instead of addressing the issue in a way that embraces both its complexity and well-established research, officials opt for simplistic talking points known to inflame an already agitated base: Immigrants are sneaking into the country and stealing your jobs! Minorities are pushing you out of college! The Trump administration assumes that picking race-focused fights is the most successful way to distract from its failures and to pander to a grievance-inspired base. The level of support for this latest attempt may prove it right. **Read more on this topic:** Charles Lane: Trump doesn’t care about affirmative action. So why restart the war? The Post’s View: The Supreme Court makes an uneasy but fair decision on affirmative action Robert J. Samuelson: Is the upper middle class really hoarding the American Dream? Catherine Rampell: Why getting rid of grades would help rich students — and hurt poor ones

What a Trump presidency means for America’s public schools

Republican President-elect Donald Trump spoke about education only in broad terms on the campaign trail, leaving plenty of uncertainty about how his administration now intends to handle policy questions ranging from standardized testing and school accountability to the treatment of transgender students. But Trump’s stunning election is likely to mean a clear contrast with some key Obama administration policies, including a vigorous push for federally funded private school vouchers and a downsizing of the Education Department, which has arguably exercised more influence under Obama than at any other point. Trump’s most substantial campaign proposal on education was a $20 billion grant program that he’d use to encourage states to expand school choice — giving parents more control over the kind of education their children receive — including through vouchers, charter schools and magnet schools. The money would come from somewhere else in the federal budget, but it’s not clear where; Trump has not said. In the run-up to the election, Randi Weingarten — president of the American Federation of Teachers and adviser to Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton — said that Trump’s proposal, if enacted, would mean the “decimation of public education.” On Wednesday, she said she is holding out hope that Trump will not follow through. “He really never ran on that proposal. He mentioned it a few times and that was it,” she said. “Unlike his economic proposals, which were very populist in nature, his education proposal was very ideological in nature, and if one looks at the other results from yesterday, it is in defiance of where the will of the people are.” Weingarten was referring to the resounding defeat of two ballot initiatives: One in Massachusetts that would have allowed for the expansion of charter schools, and another in Georgia that would have allowed for state takeovers of struggling schools, presumably easing their conversion to charter schools. “By pretty much equal amounts, by a two-to-one margin, they said ‘no, don’t touch our public schools,'” Weingarten said. Gerard Robinson, a fellow at the conservative American Enterprise Institute and a former state education chief in Florida and Virginia, said he believes Trump will make a priority of expanding choice programs — even if the $20 billion proposal doesn’t get traction — because the president-elect fundamentally believes that families should have more control. “He’s going to make a push for parental choice,” Robinson said. The nation currently spends about $15 billion on Title I, the federal program meant for the education of poor children, and analysts attempting to understand the impact of Trump’s proposal have assumed that these are the dollars that would be redirected to vouchers. Robinson underscored that Trump has never specified that the money would be related to Title I, and that there are plenty of children who are not poor who could benefit from more choice.  Trump’s election could also affect how the federal government interprets the new Every Student Succeeds Act. Education Secretary John B. King Jr. is in the middle of finalizing regulations to implement the law, including a hotly contested rule that would govern how districts allocate billions of federal dollars meant to educate poor children. The Obama administration argues that the regulation would protect the civil rights intent of the law and give disadvantaged children access to better education, while GOP leaders and state education chiefs have argued that the rule defies the spirit of a law meant to hand authority over schools back to the states. A spokeswoman for Sen. Lamar Alexander (R-Tenn.), chairman of the senate education committee and a chief critic of the Obama administration’s approach, said he is hopeful that the Trump administration will take a different tack. “The Trump Administration has a prime opportunity to significantly reduce the intrusion of the Education Department into our local schools and classrooms,” the spokeswoman said. “When the Trump Administration enforces the Every Student Succeeds Act as written, the size of the Education Department will be necessarily and appropriately diminished.” Trump has said alternately that he would scale back or eliminate the department altogether. Robinson said he expects Trump to “at minimum, streamline” the agency. “Will he decide to abolish it as we know it? That remains to be seen,” Robinson said. The Trump administration could also scale back the work of the department’s Office of Civil Rights, which under Obama has stepped up investigations of college sexual assault and of schools that disproportionately suspend and expel students of color. OCR also has enforced the Obama administration’s stance that Title IX protects transgender students from discrimination, and has handled a fast-growing number of complaints about discrimination based on race, sex and disability. Trump is likely to follow Republican precedent and use the Department’s Office of Civil Rights in a “less expansive way,” Robinson said, but he said he did not know whether the new president would change course on any specific policy areas. He also said he anticipates a Trump administration would seek to promote entrepreneurship and create problem-solving in education, and would do so in part by serving as a “partner, not so much as a dictator” with school districts and states. As president, Trump will not have the legal authority to make good on one of his campaign promises: Getting rid of the Common Core State Standards, the academic standards that are deeply unpopular with Trump’s political base. Federal law expressly forbids the federal government from interfering with states’ decisions about academic standards. Michael Petrilli, president of the conservative Thomas B. Fordham Institute and a Common Core supporter, said he anticipates another wave of backlash against the standards in the states — so it won’t be helpful to have a president using his bully pulpit to rail against them. Petrilli said he anticipates that questions about how Trump will proceed on early childhood and K-12 education won’t be settled anytime soon, in part because of the amount of time it takes an incoming administration to staff up. “I would not be surprised if on many of these issues there’s just uncertainty for a long, long time,” he said.

A brief history of Donald Trump addressing questions about racism and anti-Semitism

From the beginning of his campaign, President Trump has been asked repeatedly to offer his thoughts on vocal support for his candidacy from white supremacists or on incidents of racial or religious harassment that have occurred. This week, for example, he was twice asked to respond to questions about anti-Semitic acts. In each case, many observers felt his responses left something to be desired. Below, a catalogue of each time Trump was asked to weigh in on a question of racial or religious sensitivity and his response.  Asked if he would repudiate Duke:   Trump was asked to comment on the incident on “Fox and Friends.”  The afternoon after that “Fox and Friends” interview, Trump retweeted a false and racially charged image about black crime. Fox’s Bill O’Reilly asked him about it.   Trump was being interviewed by CNN’s Jake Tapper. Tapper asks if Trump won’t unequivocally condemn support from racist groups and individuals. Tapper presses him on it. The Klan? David Duke?    Trump was asked by CNN’s Wolf Blitzer about online harassment of reporter Julia Ioffe by Trump supporters after she profiled Melania Trump. Blitzer pressed the point. Trump replied:   Trump was speaking with CBS’s Lesley Stahl, who asked him about a number of incidents that had received national media attention. Trump was asked what he’d say to those committing the violence.  He continued.  A reporter from a Jewish publication asked about Trump’s response to a recent spate of bomb threats at Jewish organizations. After criticizing the reporter, he continued.  Trump was again asked by NBC News to address anti-Semitic incidents. “So you’re denouncing now, once and for all,” NBC’s Craig Melvin asked.

Trump’s budget boosts funding for school choice. So why are charter school chiefs unhappy about it?

An unexpected thing happened when President Trump recently proposed cutting the Education Department budget by some 14 percent while spending a mountain of new money on charter schools and other school-choice options: Some prominent operators of charter schools announced that they weren’t happy with the plan. Trump and his education secretary, Betsy DeVos, have said their top priority in education is expanding school choice, and Trump’s 2018 budget proposal calls for a $168 million increase for charter schools, a 50 percent funding increase. It is also possible that the administration will push for the first-ever federal tax credit program that would steer public money into private schools. Such programs exist now in a number of states, and DeVos has repeatedly called a Florida tax-credit program a model for the nation. Under the draft budget, the 14 percent proposed reductions at the Education Department would cut or eliminate grants for, among other things, teacher training, after-school programs, and aid to low-income and minority college students. Trump would spend $1.4 billion on school-choice initiatives, including charters.  The authors of the piece are Dacia Toll, co-chief executive officer of Achievement First, a network of charter schools in New York, Connecticut and Rhode Island; Richard Barth, chief executive of the KIPP Foundation, a network of charter schools in numerous states, including Maryland, New York, Texas, California, North Carolina, Illinois, Colorado and Ohio, as well as in the District; and Brett Peiser, chief executive of Uncommon Schools, a charter network in New York, New Jersey and Massachusetts. These other charter networks were mentioned in the piece as being on board with the sentiment: Alliance College-Ready Public Schools, Aspire Public Schools, Breakthrough Schools, Brooke Charter Schools, Blackstone Valley Prep, Camino Nuevo Charter Academy, D.C. Prep, DSST, Green Dot Public Schools, IDEA Public Schools, RePublic Schools, Rocketship Education, STRIVE Prep, Summit Public Schools, Uplift Education and YES Prep Public Schools. And Greg Richmond, president of the National Association of Charter School Authorizers, released a separate statement saying:  The disagreement among charter operators underscores the variety of opinions they have about just how far policymakers should take school choice. Some charter operators oppose using public money for private and religious school tuition — which is what vouchers and tax-credit programs do. Charter schools are publicly funded but privately operated; some of them get substantial financial help from philanthropists and foundations.

Will the Supreme Court give a big boost to the Trump-DeVos ‘school choice’ agenda?

Will the Supreme Court boost the Trump-DeVos “school choice” agenda? It just may.   The current Missouri governor has reversed the policy, but lawyers for both sides said the case is not moot because the policy could be changed again by another governor. So what does this have to do with President Trump and Education Secretary Betsy DeVos’s big push to expand school choice? DeVos is a longtime advocate of charter schools, which are publicly funded but privately run, as well as voucher and other programs that use public money for private and religious school tuition and expenses. She has made clear that expanding school choice is her top priority, and has referred to traditional public schools as a “dead end” for students. Trump has said he wants to spend $20 billion to help states expand voucher programs and other school alternatives. The Supreme Court has several options with the Trinity case. It could decide not to rule, or issue a narrow ruling that doesn’t directly affect the current interpretations of the Blaine Amendments, or hand down a broader ruling that declares them unconstitutional. The Blaine Amendments — which are worded differently in various state constitutions — are part of the constitutions of a majority of states. They have prevented some legislatures from adopting and implementing school voucher programs. Lower courts have offered different interpretations of Blaine Amendments; for example, the supreme courts in Wisconsin and Arizona upheld voucher programs in their states, while the high court in Colorado declared one unconstitutional. If the court were to declare these amendments unconstitutional, voucher programs could proliferate. According to the National Conference of State Legislatures, 14 states provide state-funded school vouchers to qualifying students. There is one federally funded voucher program, which is in the District of Columbia.    The Supreme Court has already declared scholarship tax-credit programs constitutional. They have the same goal of using public money for private education, but they work differently. They allow individuals and corporations to receive full or partial tax credits when they donate to nonprofit organizations that provide private school scholarships. In some states, donors get a dollar-for-dollar state tax deduction and are then allowed to take a deduction on their federal income tax, too. The National Conference of State Legislatures says that as of January, 17 states have scholarship tax-credit programs, with some of the states having more than one such program.  The newest member of the Supreme Court, the conservative Justice Neil M. Gorsuch, could be the deciding vote in favor of a ruling that could lead to the expansion of voucher programs.

Clinton blasts ‘disrespectful’ Republican stance on Supreme Court nomination

SUMTER, S.C. – Republicans are mounting a “deeply disrespectful” effort to deny President Obama his right to nominate the candidate of his choice for the Supreme Court, Hillary Clinton said Wednesday. “The president is absolutely right to send a nominee to the United States Senate,” Clinton said angrily. “I find this argument absolutely unbelievable” that Obama should not send up a nominee in this final year of his presidency, Clinton said. “You have one president at a time.” It was hardly lost on the overwhelmingly African American audience at a small black college that Clinton was talking about the country’s first black president. “To say don’t even send us a nominee is at variance to the Constitution and deeply disrespectful to the office of the president of the United States,” Clinton thundered, to roaring applause. “I’m backing the president. He will send, as he always does, a well-qualified nominee.” Clinton is making strong support for Obama a cornerstone of her stump speech in South Carolina this week, as she tries to bolster her already-strong support among black voters. “What I’m going to do is build on the progress we’ve made under President **** Obama and go further,” she said Wednesday.    *[WSU]: Wayne State University   *[Tue]: Tuesday   *[Wed]: Wednesday   *[UNM]: University of New Mexico Clinton invoked the names of civil rights icons Rep. John Lewis and the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. as she railed against what she called efforts to curtail voting rights in some states. Democrats allege that new voting rules in Texas and other states are primarily aimed at limiting the African American vote, although Clinton did not spell that out Wednesday. “I thought those battles had been fought and won,” she said. “The only way to beat back these kinds of cynical maneuvers is at the ballot box. Vote people out who don’t want you to vote, that’s the best remedy.” Clinton told an enthusiastic crowd at historically black Morris College that she would expand federal help for historically black institutions under her plan to offer debt-free public education. The private school, founded in 1908, is among the small private historically black colleges and universities Clinton says would be threatened by her Democratic rival Bernie Sanders’s signature plan for free public college. Clinton is campaigning heavily across South Carolina ahead of the Democratic primary Saturday, and focusing squarely on African American voters and issues of race, poverty and inequality. She is far ahead of Sanders here and expects to notch a solid victory among African American voters that would establish momentum going into Southern states that vote in March. Clinton visited a program for ex-prisoners, addressed an all-black union audience and an alumni meeting of the influential African American sorority Alpha Kappa Alpha in the state capital Columbia on Wednesday. "I do need your help on Saturday," she said at a local office of the Longshoreman’s Association. She helpfully provided the polling hours – 7 a.m. to 7 p.m. “Or you can vote absentee." Also Wednesday, Clinton debuted a new ad in South Carolina featuring Columbia Mayor Steven Benjamin telling his young daughters that Clinton “will fight for an America where all of our sons and daughters can live up to their God-given potential.”    *[WSU]: Wayne State University   *[Tue]: Tuesday   *[Wed]: Wednesday   *[UNM]: University of New Mexico Benjamin, president of the African American Mayors Association, introduced Clinton with his daughters’ help at the sorority luncheon Wednesday. A Clinton testimonial ad narrated by actor Morgan Freeman and featuring the candidate talking with African Americans is also playing frequently in South Carolina. Former president Bill Clinton, who is overwhelmingly popular among black voters, is barnstorming the state Thursday and Friday on his wife’s behalf. Hillary Clinton barely mentioned Sanders during public appearances Wednesday, but her campaign sent out a fund-raising appeal that highlighted Sanders’s votes against immigration reform and in favor of legal immunity for gun manufacturers. "I think these votes mattered," Clinton says in the email appeal. “Right now, Senator Sanders is running a campaign based largely on a single issue -- but I don’t think we’re a single-issue country,” Clinton’s appeal said, as she asked for donations as small as $1.

Trump could reverse Obama’s actions on college sex assault, transgender rights

President Obama has wielded civil rights enforcement powers aggressively in the education arena for the past eight years, pushing colleges to toughen policies on sexual assault and schools to eliminate racial bias in student discipline. His administration also declared that transgender students must be allowed to use bathrooms consistent with their gender identity — a question now before the Supreme Court. President-elect Donald Trump could reverse much of that, if he chooses, after he takes office in January. With the stroke of a pen, Trump or his senior officials could revise or rescind Obama administration statements on transgender rights and sexual assault. The Trump administration and a Republican Congress also could starve civil rights enforcement funding, slowing hundreds of open investigations and narrowing their scope. Republican lawmakers have repeatedly criticized the U.S. Education Department’s Office for Civil Rights, accusing it of overstepping its legal authority. They say they want OCR to give more deference to colleges and local schools. With political control in Washington, they might be able to rein it in. “Whoever is selected to lead OCR must restore its daily operations to their original construct and stop the unchecked regulatory overreach,” said Sen. James Lankford (R-Okla.). The office “should be a valuable asset to our nation rather than a dreaded regulatory bully.” Trump said relatively little about education during the campaign and even less about the intersection of civil rights and schools. At one point he asserted that the Education Department “is massive and it can be largely eliminated.” Whether that was just campaign hyperbole remains to be seen. The GOP platform was more specific, attacking “bureaucrats” in the Obama administration for interpreting a federal law barring sex discrimination, Title IX, as including protections related to “sexual orientation or other categories.” “Their agenda has nothing to do with individual rights; it has everything to do with power,” the platform stated. “They are determined to reshape our schools — and our entire society — to fit the mold of an ideology alien to America’s history and traditions.” The Trump transition team did not respond to requests for comment. Education Secretary John B. King Jr. has strongly defended OCR. In February, he told Congress that the office “has been actively protecting the rights of all students through comprehensive strategies,” including efforts to stop bullying, harassment and sexual assault. Last week, King told reporters that it was “crucial” for any future secretary to “have a strong commitment to the historical goal of the department in protecting students’ civil rights.” Trump on Wednesday named billionaire conservative Betsy DeVos as his nominee for Education Secretary. DeVos is known as a staunch advocate for vouchers and charter schools, but it is not clear what tack she will take with civil rights enforcement. The Office for Civil rights, one of the department’s largest units, had about 540 employees in 2015 at its headquarters and 12 regional offices. Its mission is to enforce laws barring discrimination on the basis of race, sex, national origin, disability and age. The staffing level has shrunk 24 percent since 2000, even as complaints have risen. In fiscal 2015, OCR fielded more than 10,000 complaints and opened more than 3,000 investigations. Some of OCR’s highest-profile investigations have scrutinized how colleges and universities respond to sexual violence. The Obama administration in 2011 advised colleges in a guidance letter that sexual violence is a form of sexual harassment prohibited under Title IX. The letter also said that schools must respond promptly and equitably to reports of sexual violence and use a standard common in civil law, known as “preponderance of the evidence,” when deciding whether a student broke rules against sexual misconduct. **** That is a lower standard of proof than the “clear and convincing evidence” benchmark some schools had used. Together with student activism and growing public awareness, the letter helped fuel a surge in complaints alleging that colleges had mishandled sexual violence reports. The Obama administration in May 2014 made public the names of 55 colleges and universities under investigation in connection with sexual violence. Since then the list has nearly quadrupled, to 216. In that time, two dozen investigations affecting 21 schools have been resolved. Cynthia Garrett, co-president of Families Advocating for Campus Equality, which supports due-process rights for accused students, said colleges too often trample those rights. Garrett said she hopes the Trump administration will set a new tone. Obama’s OCR “basically created an atmosphere of fear among colleges rather than cooperation,” Garrett said. “We think they’ve gone too far.” Mahroh Jahangiri, executive director of Know Your IX, a group pushing to end sexual violence in schools, said she fears funding for OCR could dwindle. “Our biggest worry is that a Trump Department of Education just simply doesn’t do enforcement work,” she said. If pending sexual violence investigations are dropped, she said, it would be “an immense setback for student activists and survivors.” Whatever the new administration decides, many colleges are unlikely to scrap initiatives developed in response to pressure from student activists and Washington to prevent sexual assault and punish misconduct. “Colleges and universities will not be backing off their efforts to combat sexual abuse on campus,” said Terry Hartle, a senior vice president for the American Council on Education. “It is simply unacceptable in the 21st century.” In May, the Office for Civil Rights teamed with the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division on a letter of administration policy. It stated that Title IX’s protections extend to transgender students, allowing them the right to use school bathrooms and locker rooms in line with their gender identity. Conservatives say that position distorts the law and violates student privacy and traditional values. The Supreme Court last month agreed to take up the issue through a case originating in Virginia. Gavin Grimm, a transgender teenager from Gloucester, sued his school board after it barred him from using the boys’ bathroom. Joshua Block, an attorney with the American Civil Liberties Union who represents Grimm, said that Trump officials should think twice about overturning the Obama administration’s guidance on transgender rights. “I think the guidance was very important in giving sort of a clear road map to schools about what best practices are, and I think the guidance provided a sense of certainty,” Block said. “The more certainty and clarity there is for students, the better their lives are going to be, and the more they’re going to be protected.” Even if Trump withdraws the guidance, Block said, transgender students would be able to sue for access to bathrooms and locker rooms. But they would do so without the Education Department as an ally. Block said he hopes Grimm’s case will move forward and settle constitutional questions about transgender rights. Other observers think that without the Obama administration’s guidance in place, the high court probably will send the case back to a lower court. Trump has appeared to side with transgender rights, voicing skepticism in April about North Carolina’s controversial “bathroom bill,” which mandates that people use public restrooms aligned with the sex on their birth certificate. That bill led businesses, performers and organizations, including the NCAA, to boycott the state. “People go, they use the bathroom that they feel is appropriate,” Trump said at the time. “There has been so little trouble. And the problem with North Carolina has been the strife and the economic punishment that they’re taking.” But Vice President-elect Mike Pence told a prominent social conservative leader in October that he and Trump oppose the Obama administration’s position. Pence told James Dobson, founder of Focus on the Family, that the federal government has no business telling schools how they should accommodate transgender students. “Donald Trump and I believe that all of these issues are best resolved at the state level, by the people, the community,” Pence said. Long before Obama took office, civil rights advocates had complained that harsh school discipline policies were sending too many students into the criminal justice system. Those students were disproportionately minorities. Obama’s Justice and Education departments urged schools to adopt less-punitive measures and in 2014 released a joint guidance warning that schools could face legal action if their policies led to disproportionate suspension or expulsion of students of color, students with disabilities, or any other subgroup. The federal intervention helped push many schools to seek alternative discipline strategies. Suspensions fell 20 percent from the 2011-2012 school year to 2013-2014, according to federal data, although stark racial disparities persisted. Black students were still four times as likely as white students to be suspended, and nearly twice as likely to be expelled. Some say the administration overreached. Joshua Dunn, a political science professor at the University of Colorado at Colorado Springs, has called Obama’s approach “profoundly misguided.” The administration’s guidance encourages schools “to tolerate disruptive and dangerous behavior lest they have too many students of one race being punished,” Dunn wrote last year in the journal Education Next. “Perversely, the students most harmed by these guidelines will be minority students in urban districts. Minority students who want to learn will see their education hijacked by troublemakers, and the troublemakers will learn that they can misbehave, with limited consequences.” Supporters of Obama’s initiative fear the new administration will change course, either revising the guidance or cutting OCR’s staff and funding. They also are concerned that OCR could scale back efforts to collect vital data on suspension and expulsion rates, access to advanced coursework and chronic absenteeism. “Over the past eight years, we’ve seen an OCR in the Department of Education that has been very proactive, and we’re certainly expecting that same level of proactiveness will not be the case” under Trump, said Kaitlin Banner, an attorney for the Advancement Project, which seeks discipline policy revisions. “Based on the rhetoric of the campaign, we can guess that it will not be a priority for them to vigorously enforce civil rights in schools.”

FYI, Alabama’s constitution still calls for ‘separate schools for white and colored children’

Alabama has been in the news of late, what with Jeff Sessions, President Trump’s controversial attorney general, hailing from there, and the state’s Republican governor, Robert Bentley, in possible danger of impeachment after he was found to have had a sexually explicit conversation in 2016 with his then-chief adviser.  Yet in the 116 years since it was written, and after all of the efforts to modernize the document — many of those efforts aimed at revising or eliminating racist language — these racist words still reside in the document:  But the language is still there, and a ballot initiative in 2012 to eliminate it, called the Alabama Segregation Reference Ban Amendment, or Amendment 4, was defeated by voters who worried less about the language, which is now symbolic given federal law, and more about what they believed would be new language that could reduce funding for public education.  A ballot referendum in 2004 to get rid of the racist language from the Jim Crow era lost by just a few thousand votes.  Some people in Alabama say that because the language has no legal force, it doesn’t really matter. But words have meaning — even if they are only symbolic and not legally enforceable — especially at a time when public schools are more segregated than at any time since the 1960s and school choice policies favored by President Trump and Education Secretary Betsy DeVos have been found to increase school segregation. Key members of the Trump administration, including the president himself and DeVos, have displayed how little they know about African American history; the education secretary said last week that historically black colleges and universities were “real pioneers when it comes to school choice,” displaying no understanding that these schools were created because blacks were not allowed to attend white institutions. For 116 years, the people of Alabama have left that language in their state constitution. Words matter.

How Trump just completely undermined the legal argument for his travel ban, in 4 tweets

Yet another morning, yet another instance of President Trump's Twitter account undermining his own administration.  How? Let's take the president's four travel ban tweets one by one. This is the first of several times in Trump's series of tweets that he's going to call into question courts' judgment and authority. It's something Trump does almost every time a court rules against one of his initiatives, and it's a practice that even the person he picked for Supreme Court, Justice Neil M. Gorsuch, said was “disheartening” and “demoralizing.” Courts are made up of people, too, and some legal scholars think that in antagonizing them, Trump risks inviting even more legal scrutiny on the intentions of his ban. “The justices will likely feel an instinct to protect their institution,” said Austin Evers, director of the government corruption watchdog group, American Oversight, and a former top State Department lawyer. “And to assert their coequal role in upholding the Constitution.”  Top Trump officials, like press secretary Sean Spicer and counselor to the president, Kellyanne Conway, have repeatedly asserted Trump's travel executive orders are not a “ban,” because they know the word draws connections to Trump's religion-focused rhetoric on the campaign trail. But here the president is using it, in all caps no less. Okay, next tweet. Central to travel ban opponents' legal arguments is that Trump is trying to ban Muslims from the country, which most courts would agree is a discriminatory policy that violates the Constitution's freedom of religion. No court has actually decided on whether Trump's ban is discriminatory. Judges have looked at whether there's a reasonable legal argument to pause it while the discriminatory question gets worked out; most decided there is reason to pause it.  That, ostensibly, means his tweets, too. And there, Trump's words and his policies don't always match up. Let's take these tweets. The travel executive order Trump signed — especially the second one — called for temporary travel restrictions for some people from six Muslim-majority countries, not a total travel ban. As for implying this travel ban is too “politically correct?” Evers said it will be up to the courts to decide what Trump meant by that. If Trump is concerned his executive order is too "politically correct," then where does he fall on religious discrimination? Given all Trump's campaign rhetoric, Evers said it's a fair question.  But Trump is distancing himself from the lawyers who will be arguing on his behalf. He seems to disagree with his own Justice Department's legal strategy — and the actual travel ban that they are arguing for. (A travel ban that has Trump's signature on it, BTW.) From there, it's fair game for justices to ask whether Trump's lawyers are really representing the president. “I think he is kneecapping his lawyers in the Department of Justice,” Evers said. This war of words between Trump and his administration has played out before. In May, Trump fired his FBI director, then completely undermined his administration's arguments for why. (Vice President Pence and others said it was because of James B. Comey's handling of the Hillary Clinton email investigation; Trump said it was “that Russia thing.") At one point, a reporter asked deputy White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders whether journalists can even trust the information from White House press briefings anymore, given nearly everything they said about Comey's firing was undercut the next day by the president. Here we have yet another direct shot at the courts. And yet another opportunity for the courts to exert their independence from a president who seems intent at chipping away at it.

The potential effects of repealing the Johnson Amendment

Since 1954, federal law has prohibited tax-exempt organizations from participating in partisan political activities. Recently, President Trump promised to “totally destroy” this law, having lamented during his acceptance speech at the Republican National Convention that it “threatens religious institutions with a loss of their tax-exempt status if they openly advocate their political views.” As Catherine Rampell noted in her Feb. 3 op-ed, “Here comes Christian sharia,” this is part of Mr. Trump’s effort to “blur the line between church and state.” But that line is not so easily blurred. Mr. Trump fails to understand that the government cannot change the law to allow churches to engage in political activities while continuing to prohibit other tax-exempt organizations from doing the same. This would favor religious organizations and violate the establishment clause of the Constitution. Will the Trump administration pursue this unconstitutional policy, or will it abandon it, recognizing that if churches are to benefit from tax-exempt status while engaging in political activities, so too must all tax-exempt groups, including the ACLU Foundation, Environmental Defense Fund and Planned Parenthood? ****Abby Raphael** , Arlington** **The Johnson Amendment** , which provides that a tax-exempt institution loses that exemption if it promotes political candidates, does not forbid an institution from having a political action committee or a super PAC, but only sensibly states that the institution will not promote candidates through tax- exempt funds. If the amendment were rescinded, these institutions’ support for political activities would not only be tax-exempt but would constitute “dark money” because, unlike with PACs, donors need not be identified. ****Henry Geller** , Washington**