News from Higher Ed | June 2025

On a day when President Donald Trump was holding a military parade—and as arrests of protesters, including elected officials, made headlines—millions of people, including countless AFT members, took to the streets in peaceful protests to defend democracy and oppose deep cuts to public schools, healthcare and other vital services in Trump’s budget bill. "On this day, where we celebrate the flag, where we celebrate America, we are fighting for democracy,” said AFT President Randi Weingarten at a 150,000-person rally in Philadelphia. “The throughline in America is that the people are governed not by a king, not a tyrant, not nobility, but the people.” Watch this inspiring video that sums up the day.

 

 

The AFT has long advocated for investment in the SUNY Downstate healthcare system, a teaching hospital that trains thousands of doctors—many, doctors of color—and cares for the Brooklyn community. After years of rallies, letters and activism from members of the AFT-affiliated United University Professions, who work at the hospital, and others, New York Gov. Kathy Hochul announced a historic $1 billion investment to modernize and expand the hospital. “Eighteen months ago, the future of Brooklyn’s SUNY Downstate University Hospital was murky and its prospects bleak,” said Frederick Kowal, president of UUP, which has been key in the fight to fund the institution. “But the community and labor came together and now we have more than $1 billion in capital funding that will be used to renovate the hospital and enhance its inpatient services. We thank Gov. Kathy Hochul and the state Legislature for understanding the importance of Downstate University Hospital to the Brooklyn community and for taking action to secure the hospital’s future.”
 

 

As Donald Trump continues to implement his authoritarian agenda, students and professors are being stripped of the freedoms to learn, think, express themselves and be informed—and the impact on our society is grave. “It is not hyperbole to say that the survival of democratic government and a free civil society in the United States is at risk,” writes AFT President Randi Weingarten in the Summer 2025 American Educator. In this article, Weingarten explains how we can fight collectively to strengthen the freedom to teach and learn.  

 

While it’s easy (and fun!) to get caught up in rainbow glam and snapping fans, Pride is more than a party, “it is action,” as one of the AFT’s LGTBQIA+ task force members put it. So in addition to parades and protests, the task force spent several days this month lobbying on Capitol Hill, networking with other advocacy organizations and planning for continued action on behalf of LGBTQIA+ people and their communities. Here are their reflections on this moment of both celebration and fear, and here is the AFT’s Pride page of resources and inspiration.

The budget reconciliation bill—Trump's so-called big, beautiful bill that threatens to harm working families in favor of giving tax cuts to the very wealthy—is still making its way through Congress, so it's not yet law. But even if the Senate manages to moderate some of its worst elements, there are still huge cuts in the “big, ugly bill,” said AFT President Randi Weingarten at a virtual teach-in hosted by Sen. Edward Markey June 11. Read more about the harm the bill could do and why our leaders are fighting back.

Immigration policy is not just a hot-button issue, it is a life-threatening sea change for millions of people we work with. The urgency of the moment has crystalized in Los Angeles, where U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement raids have threatened U.S. residents, people have risen up to protest, and the Trump administration has unlawfully sent in the National Guard. Meanwhile families continue to be torn apart, legal residents are being sent to prisons in foreign countries, and students are being arrested and deported for exercising their right to speak out. To help navigate it all, the AFT has created a three-part guide: a glossary, a list of threats we are facing, and a list of the actions we have already taken to address the situation. For international faculty and students, we have this travel guide as summer sets in. And our immigration hub has resources like Know Your Rights fliers to keep our immigrant communities safe.

 

When Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis appointed Marva Johnson as president of Florida’s historically Black university, Florida A&M, AFT Secretary-Treasurer Fedrick Ingram recognized the imprint of Donald Trump’s practice of harming Black institutions. With no experience in teaching or educational administration, Johnson’s sole qualification for the job, writes Ingram in the Tallahassee Democrat, is that “she is cozy with MAGA Republicans” and likely to institute “retrograde ideas” about race, equity and fairness. Read more about this “blatant power grab” in Florida, Ingram’s home state. Photo credit: Urbantallahassee / Wikimedia Commons