News from Higher Ed | May 2025

President Donald Trump wants to load his legislative agenda into “one big, beautiful bill,” and now House Republicans are trying to ram through a budget reconciliation bill that cuts basic needs for children, seniors, veterans and low- and moderate-income Americans to fund big tax breaks for the wealthy. In her latest column, AFT President Randi Weingarten lists the “ugly” ways this bill is threatening the most vulnerable people in our country and charges Congress to do better: “How they vote on this bill will determine whether hospitals will be forced to close, whether our parents and grandparents will lose funding for lifesaving care, and whether students in public schools will lose the resources and services they need.”

 

AFT members were hungry for action at the mass mobilization training held at AFT headquarters May 9, where leaders from our higher ed affiliates gathered to build skills that will meet the moment. As resistance continues to build against the Trump administration’s harmful actions, participants learned how to use all the tools of the movement to grow the fight to protect our communities—and protect our democracy.

 

As the Trump administration continues to trample the rights of immigrants in this country—and nonimmigrants wonder how long it will be before they’ll be targeted too—AFT members are particularly shaken as students and faculty around them are illegally detained, stripped of their legal status and frightened by the prospect of deportation. This article reviews some of the most egregious arrests and outlines how the AFT and its affiliates are fighting back.

 

Asian American, Native Hawaiian and Pacific Islander communities have long enriched our classrooms, campuses, workplaces and neighborhoods—often despite exclusion, invisibility and injustice. This AANHPI Heritage Month, we honor their contributions, lift up the voices and stories of AFT members, and reaffirm our commitment to inclusion, respect and opportunity for all—even in the face of unprecedented challenges. From education to activism, AANHPI leaders are helping to build a better future. Read more here.

 

As the Trump administration takes aim at higher education, withholding federal funding from colleges and universities that won’t bend to Trump’s will and squelching free speech in the process, it is also attacking student debt relief—a tool that makes college more accessible and affordable to those who might benefit most. With policies changing and threats spreading across all different aspects of student aid, we hear from two AFT members about their personal experiences with student debt and share this news article to help untangle the latest changes in student debt relief policy.

 

President Donald Trump has declared war on America’s colleges and universities. The administration has launched investigations into dozens of colleges and universities and stripped billions in research grants from schools. And it is disappearing students who are in the U.S. legally for exercising their First Amendment rights. Three professors and union leaders join AFT President Randi Weingarten on the AFT’s podcast, "Union Talk," to provide a view from the frontlines of Trump’s war on knowledge and discuss how we can fight back.

 

The AFT, along with AFT-Maryland, the American Sociological Association and Eugene (Ore.) School District 4J, has won a temporary pause on the Trump administration’s threat to take funding away from universities and school districts that teach lessons referencing race and racism, or provide support to students through diversity, equity and inclusion programming. The preliminary injunction addresses a “Dear Colleague” letter from the Department of Education that required institutions to demonstrate compliance or lose funding. Read more here.