Wisconsin Right Now

Through more than 140 executive orders, President Donald Trump in his first 100-plus days in office has used his signing pen like a battering ram to undo sometimes decades-old policies and practices that have shaped the federal government, including in public and higher education.

On day one, the administration banned diversity, equity and inclusion programs from federal agencies and institutions receiving federal funding, targeting schools like Harvard University that refuse to comply with his policies. But Trump also is attempting to move schools away from such practices by requiring them to hire for “viewpoint” or “intellectual” diversity – a move that has been met with varying degrees of skepticism and support.

The administration included such terms in both its list of demands to Harvard and in an executive order on reforming accreditation in higher education.

Among the 10 demands outlined in a letter from the administration to Harvard in April, it directed the university to facilitate an audit of the “student body, faculty, staff and leadership” for “viewpoint diversity” and to submit that audit to the federal government.

“Each department, field, or teaching unit must be individually viewpoint diverse,” the letter reads.

The university is to hire or admit for viewpoint diversity until a “critical mass” is reached in each arena.

Within a handful of recent executive orders on education was one meant to hold accreditors accountable for “unlawful discrimination in accreditation-related activity under the guise of ‘diversity, equity, and inclusion’ initiatives.”

“A group of higher education accreditors are the gatekeepers that decide which colleges and universities American students can spend the more than $100 billion in Federal student loans and Pell Grants dispersed each year,” the order reads.

The order accuses accreditors of prioritizing “discriminatory ideology” in accreditation standards over strong graduation rates, return on investment and other important criteria. As an antidote, the order commissions the secretary of education with devising new accreditation standards, including one that requires institutions to “prioritize intellectual diversity among faculty in order to advance academic freedom, intellectual inquiry, and student learning.”

Heather Mac Donald, a scholar at The Manhattan Institute who’s written on a number of topics over the years, including higher education, is supportive of the goal but thinks the means are “problematic.” Mac Donald authored "The Diversity Delusion: How Race and Gender Pandering Corrupt the University and Undermine Our Culture" in 2018.

“I agree with the substantive critique entirely. I think universities are the enemy of Western civilization,” Mac Donald told The Center Square. “They are perpetuating an ideology of hatred and of ignorance. They are betraying their fundamental obligation, which is the pursuit of truth, by embracing a one-sided, ignorant understanding of the West’s contributions and its relative position regarding other civilizations.”

In addition, Mac Donald believes universities have discriminated against certain racial groups for years.

“The universities have been blatantly discriminating against whites, white males, Asians, Asian males. They’ve introduced grotesque double standards for admissions and hiring,” she said.

Despite her numerous and serious critiques of contemporary American universities, she thinks a mandate from the federal government for intellectual diversity represents bureaucratic overreach. The administration’s demands to Harvard were provided mostly on the basis that the university has violated discrimination laws through expressions of and responses to anti-semitism on campus, she said.

“We are a government of limited powers. It’s true that the government does oversee civil rights violations under Title VI, but it’s a stretch to say that what’s going on with the left-wing bias in academia constitutes a civil rights violation that the Trump administration has the authority to correct by withholding funds,” she said.

“As necessary as it is to make a course correction, I don’t think that we should be doing so in a way that will justify further left-wing incursions,” she added.

The Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression has also been critical of how the administration has gone after Harvard, saying it has flouted the lawful procedure for resolving such issues, despite also being critical of Harvard at times. But Tyler Coward, the foundation’s lead counsel on government affairs, isn’t as quick to oppose the administration’s mandate in the executive order on accreditation.

“We’re still thinking of what it looks like in practice for accreditors to have some sort of mandate for institutions to show ideological diversity. We at FIRE think that ideological diversity is a good thing. In its best form, it helps foster a true learning environment, a true marketplace of ideas that we expect our universities to be,” Coward told The Center Square.

While the executive order may appear heavy-handed, Coward said the government’s relationship with accrediting institutions has already occupied a kind of gray space for a long time.

“The government is the one empowering these accreditors in the first place. The reason these accreditors exist is because the government licenses them to exist. So it’s this weird thing where the government is involved sort of but not really, and so what is the appropriate response from the government if things aren’t going well. These are age-old tensions,” Coward said.

Scott Yenor, a scholar with California-based think tank The Claremont Institute, thinks, like Mac Donald, that American universities have strayed far from their original purpose and need correcting.

“This is a classical liberal solution with kind of non-classical liberal means,” Yenor told The Center Square.

Yenor agrees that universities need to be a marketplace of ideas but believes most no longer are, and he thinks the administration’s attempt at requiring it might be a step in the right direction.

“I don’t know that there’s any other way of actually achieving intellectual diversity besides a demand that you achieve it,” Yenor said. “The government has been doing that when it comes to racial diversity, and always with the justification that increasing racial diversity will actually increase the intellectual diversity on campus.”

“What the Trump administration is doing is what has been done for a long time already, which is making explicit demands for ideological diversity but more direct than the indirect way it’s been done on racial stuff.”

In a case that could have major implications for the American public school system, the U.S. Supreme Court is considering whether religious charter schools, which are taxpayer-funded, are constitutional.

The St. Isidore of Seville Catholic Virtual School v. Drummond case involves a 2023 decision by the Oklahoma Statewide Virtual Charter School Board to allow St. Isidore to join the dozens of charter schools in the state.

Oklahoma Attorney General Gentner Drummond sued the charter school board, arguing that allowing St. Isidore to join the public charter school program amounts to state-sponsoring of religion.

The Oklahoma Supreme Court ruled in Drummond’s favor, but St. Isidore is arguing before the Supreme Court that contracting with the state to provide free and public education options as a privately run entity does not mean its religious activities constitute “state actions.”

Lori Windham from Becket law firm, which filed a friend-of-the-court brief in support of St. Isidore, told The Center Square that a major question in the case is whether charter schools are closer to traditional public schools or instead function as private schools that are eligible for public funds like scholarships.

“There are already a lot of programs that taxpayers fund for things like federal student loans or federal scholarships that go to religious schools and non-religious schools alike,” Windham said. “Funds to help disabled students, funds to help schools have better security measures to prevent school shootings and hate crime – those go to religious schools and non-religious schools alike.”

“So in that way, this charter school isn't so different from lots of other programs that are out there where many different people can come in and ask to be part of that program, regardless of whether they're religious or not,” she added.

Though identifying as a Catholic school, St. Isidore accepts nonreligious students and does not require a statement of faith. Accordingly, the school also argues that an exclusion of St. Isidore from the state’s charter school program, simply because it is religious, violates the First Amendment’s free exercise clause.

“When you have a generally available program, you can't kick out religious people or religious groups just for being religious. You have to allow them to compete on the same basis as everybody else,” Windham told The Center Square. “And that's the main argument that the charter school is making here, that they're just trying to compete for that charter on the same basis as any other private group who wants to start running a school as part of that program.”

If precedent is any indication, St. Isidore has a high chance of winning the case. In 2022, the Supreme Court overturned the state of Maine’s ban on state tuition assistance to students attending religious schools.

But if SCOTUS does rule in Drummond’s favor, other areas where religious students and schools are currently receiving state funds – such as assistance for students with disabilities – could be jeopardized.

In one week, U.S. attorneys for four border states charged more than 1,220 defendants with immigration crimes.

The Trump administration is prosecuting illegal entry and illegal reentry cases in accordance with federal law. The base sentence for illegal reentry is two years in federal prison. Those with felony convictions who were previously deported face up to 10 years in prison, and those convicted with aggravated felonies face up to 20 years in federal prison.

The greatest number of illegal foreign nationals charged, nearly 600, were in Texas, followed by 329 in Arizona, 169 in California and 133 in New Mexico.

In the Southern District of Texas, 216 cases were filed from April 11 through 17. The majority, 119, face illegal entry charges; 11 involve human smuggling; 86 face felony illegal reentry charges after previously being deported, with the majority having felony narcotics, firearms or sexual offense convictions.

Juries also recently handed guilty convictions and indictments in human smuggling cases, including smuggling of children and possessing child sexual abuse material.

In the Western District of Texas, federal prosecutors filed 378 immigration-related criminal cases from April 11 through 17. Those charged also include convicted felons who were previously deported multiple times. Their convictions include lewd or lascivious acts with a child under age 14, assault causing bodily injury, DWI, possession of a controlled substance, domestic assault, aggravated assault, among others.

The U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of Arizona charged the next greatest number of 329 over the same time period. The most were charged with illegal entry, 179, followed by 130 with illegal reentry and 18 with “smuggling illegal aliens” into Arizona.

One was charged with assaulting, resisting, or impeding a Border Patrol agent. One Mexican national was arrested after refusing to register with the federal government after being arrested for driving under the influence and previously being deported five times.

Many charged were previously deported, including a Latin Kings and MS-13 transnational criminal gang member who’d been deported seven times and convicted of racketeering and conspiracy to possess with intent to distribute methamphetamine.

In another case, an alleged human smuggler was charged after authorities uncovered a scheme using the Telegram phone app and burner phones to recruit alleged smugglers in the U.S. to travel to the Arizona-Mexico border to drive illegal border crossers to Phoenix. In another case, a Mexican national was arrested after illegally reentering the U.S. after he was previously deported and convicted for trafficking heroin.

The next greatest number charged, 169, were in California. The Southern District of California filed 135 border-related cases, including for “transportation of illegal aliens, bringing in aliens for financial gain, reentering the U.S. after deportation, deported alien found in the United States, and importation of controlled substances.”

Prosecutors are prioritizing charging drug and firearms offenses, drug, firearm, and human smugglers, those with serious criminal records, those with active warrants, and those who endanger and threaten the local communities and law enforcement officers, the office said.

In a separate case, four indictments were unsealed charging 16 people in San Diego County with distributing large quantities of methamphetamine, fentanyl and heroin and laundering the drug-trafficking proceeds. In a coordinated takedown, more than 115 federal, state and local law enforcement officials executed search warrants and made arrests in three San Diego neighborhoods after a 16-month investigation.

Using court-authorized wiretaps, undercover agents and confidential sources, the investigation uncovered a distribution network of drugs, including fentanyl, throughout the U.S., including in Ohio and Kansas. The San Diego County-based drug trafficking organization used shell companies to gather and launder the proceeds from other states, including Colorado, Minnesota and Nebraska, according to the indictment.

In the Central District of California criminal charges were filed against 34 defendants for illegal reentry after they’d been previously deported. Many are felons with domestic violence, unlawful sex with a minor and assault with a deadly weapon convictions, are registered sex offenders, and served prison time.

In one case, four illegal foreign nationals were charged with stealing $10,000 in cash from a victim at a gas station in East Hollywood after following the victim from a Los Angeles bank branch. Law enforcement officers engaged in a high-speed pursuit, eventually caught them even after two bailed out and fled on foot. Officers recovered the $10,000 hidden in one defendant’s underwear as well as several fake passports.

In the District of New Mexico, 133 were charged with immigration crimes. The most, 68, were charged with illegal reentry after deportation, 55 with illegal entry and 10 with “alien smuggling.” Many charged are felons convicted of possession of a dangerous weapon by a restricted person, aggravated driving under the influence and possession of a forgery writing/device.

“Enhanced enforcement both at the border and in the interior of the district have yielded aliens engaged in unlawful activity or with serious criminal history, including human trafficking, sexual assault and violence against children,” the U.S. Attorney for New Mexico said.

(The Center Square) – Wisconsin taxpayers will see a tax increase of, on average, $2,229 per filer if the federal Tax Cuts and Jobs Act expires Jan. 1, according to a new report from the National Taxpayers Union.

If the bill expires, it would increase taxes for 80% of Americans, the report says.

The largest tax increases would hit people in Massachusetts ($4,848 annual tax increase), Washington ($4,567) and California ($3,768).

If the cuts are extended, it is projected to cost the federal government about $4 trillion in revenue.

If the legislation expires, it will cut in half the federal standard deduction, reduce child tax credits, reintroduce higher federal tax brackets and lower the threshold for federal estate taxes while cutting several business tax benefits.

“Wisconsin does not adopt full expensing business investments,” the report says. “State policymakers could adopt 100% full expensing regardless of whether federal full expensing is renewed.”

If the cuts expire, individual and business taxes would go up $500 billion each year while reducing the federal gross domestic product 1.1% and wages by 0.5%, the report says.