Progressive Breakfast: Betsy DeVos Harms Higher Ed More Than K-12 in 2017
MORNING MESSAGE
Betsy DeVos Harms Higher Ed More Than K-12 in 2017
DeVos calls loudly for K-12 "school choice" and neglects younger students' civil rights, but she has proven far more effective at gutting regulations that protect the rights of college students and college student loan borrowers.
Negotiations On DACA Fix Turn Into Standoff
Political agenda keeps Trump and Congress apart on a fix for immigrant ‘Dreamers’“President Trump will convene a bipartisan group of lawmakers Tuesday to discuss immigration at the White House, but leaders remain far apart on a resolution to protect nearly 800,000 young people from deportation. A compromise deal that once appeared within reach — passage of the Dream Act coupled with some enhanced border security measures — now appears to have slipped as the administration backtracks on Trump’s earlier agreement with Democratic leaders and piles on fresh demands. In the balance are young immigrants brought to the U.S. illegally as children, the so-called Dreamers, who are working, serving in the military or going to school with temporary permits under the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program. They now face deportation under Trump’s plan to end DACA. Hopes for a quick resolution by Jan. 19 as part of legislation Congress must pass to avoid a government shutdown have dimmed as the administration instead has pushed for a more ambitious rewrite of the nation’s immigration laws.”
Trump Says Salvadorans Must Leave
Trump administration says nearly 200,000 Salvadorans must leave. NYT:“Nearly 200,000 people from El Salvador who have been allowed to live in the United States for more than a decade must leave the country, government officials announced Monday. It is the Trump administration’s latest reversal of years of immigration policies and one of the most consequential to date. Homeland security officials said that they were ending a humanitarian program, known as Temporary Protected Status, for Salvadorans who have been allowed to live and work legally in the United States since a pair of devastating earthquakes struck their country in 2001. Salvadorans were by far the largest group of foreigners benefiting from temporary protected status, which shielded them from deportation if they had arrived in the United States illegally. The decision came just weeks after more than 45,000 Haitians lost protections granted after Haiti’s 2010 earthquake, and it suggested that others in the program, namely Hondurans, may soon lose them as well. Nicaraguans lost their protections last year.”
Bid To Prop Up Nuclear And Coal Providers Blocked
Trump-appointed regulators reject plan to rescue coal and nuclear plants. WaPo:“The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission on Monday unanimously rejected a proposal by Energy Secretary Rick Perry that would have propped up nuclear and coal power plants struggling in competitive electricity markets. The independent five-member commission includes four people appointed by President Trump, three of them Republicans. Its decision is binding. At the same time, the commission said that it shared Perry’s stated goal of strengthening the “resilience” of the electricity grid and directed regional transmission operators to provide information to help the commission examine the matter ‘holistically.’ The operators have 60 days to submit materials. At that time, the agency can issue another order.”
ACLU Challenges NJ’s Book Ban For Prisoners
ACLU Says New Jersey Prisons’ Banning of “The New Jim Crow” Is Unconstitutional. The Intercept:“America’s Jails prisons have long since banned and censored books that the institutions determined posed a material danger to the safety of inmates and employees. There is a logic, at least, to prohibiting how-to manuals on crafting homemade weapons or escaping confined spaces. But at least two prisons in New Jersey have gone a step further, deciding to ban Michelle Alexander’s groundbreaking work on the rise of mass incarceration in America, ‘The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness,’ according to a letter from the American Civil Liberties Union of New Jersey to the state’s Department of Corrections.”
More from OurFuture.org:
Twenty Quotes for the #Resistance in 2018. Harvey J. Kaye:“We who will oppose tyranny in all its guises this year don’t yet have our own Thomas Paine, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Frederick Douglass, Abraham Lincoln, Franklin Roosevelt, Eleanor Roosevelt, or Martin Luther King, Jr. – but we do have their words. Keep them close. Make them your own. Speak them often. Share with friends and family. Remix at will. And please add to this roster if you feel the urge! One thing is sure in 2018: the struggle continues.”
Progressive Breakfast is a daily morning email highlighting news stories of interest to activists. Progressive Breakfast and OurFuture.org are projects of People's Action. more »
Comments
Post a Comment