Politics
Opinion: Will children's constitutional right to a public education prevail?

Immigrant children are facing a new form of playground bullying: The Trump administration and its allies are trying to scare them away from school.
One of the Trump Department of Homeland Security’s first actions was to discard a core restraint on immigration enforcement. For decades, Democratic and Republican administrations have abided by policies, formalized in memoranda, that limited immigration enforcement in so-called sensitive locations: churches, hospitals, daycares and schools. But on the day after the inauguration, the new administration abandoned those protections against raids and arrests.
Now California legislators are fortifying the state’s bulwarks against Immigration and Customs Enforcement and the administration’s tactics. California already prohibits public schools from collecting immigration information about pupils and families, and in December, state legislators introduced bills further requiring schools and daycares to refuse consent for ICE to enter without a judicial warrant. Another bill, introduced in late January, would use schools’ emergency notification systems to alert students and parents of the presence of immigration officers.
The state laws can slow ICE, but they can’t override federal law. Even if denied entry, ICE could wait in schoolyards or conduct raids at football games. According to estimates from the Migration Policy Institute, about 5 million children in the United States live with at least one undocumented parent, potentially transforming school dropoffs into deportation launchpads. (Not to say that the Trump administration could, much less should, muster the hundreds of billions of dollars required for wide-scale immigration arrests.)
Ending the “sensitive locations” policy has nothing to do with necessity. When pressed on the wisdom of ICE terrorizing schoolchildren, Vice President JD Vance invoked the boogeyman of a “violent murderer in a school.” But the previous policy already allowed ICE to make arrests in schools and elsewhere in an emergency, or when its officers had no other alternative.
So what’s the point? For the most part, making a flashy show of toughness and sowing fear among immigrants. Surely part of the goal is self-deportation.
Some state and local jurisdictions were ahead of Homeland Security when it comes to intimidation.This fall, the Saugus, Mass., school district began demanding proof that new students were legal residents. The Oklahoma State Board of Education just voted to require that parents and legal guardians “provide proof of their citizenship when they enrolled children in school.” Such requirements may ring a bell for Californians: Similar surveillance and limitations on immigrant education were core to Proposition 187, the 1994 ballot measure pushed by Republicans that is often credited with the demise of the GOP in the state.
Proposition 187 did not stand up to judicial scrutiny. Neither did a similar law in Alabama in 2012. Both were thwarted by Plyler vs. Doe — a 1982 Supreme Court case establishing the constitutional right of equal access to public education regardless of immigration status.
But the current court has already demonstrated its willingness to reverse longstanding precedent, including by overturning Roe vs. Wade. So the conservative Heritage Foundation is pressing for other states and districts to follow Oklahoma’s and Saugus’ lead, with hopes that the Supreme Court will reconsider Plyler.
Oklahoma school superintendent Ryan Walters, like many, frames his attacks on immigrant children and “sanctuary schools” as economic. He demanded reimbursement from the federal government for educating immigrant children.
The Plyler decision didn’t buy into such logic. In that case, Texas argued that its resources were being stretched too thin because of immigrant schoolchildren. But the court pointed out that unauthorized immigrants were “contributing their labor to the local economy and tax money to the state.” And, it added, the savings Texas sought were “wholly insubstantial in light of the costs involved to these children, the State, and the Nation” of creating “a subclass of illiterates within our boundaries.”
Plyler’s holding applies today just as it did 40 years ago, but courts are not the only institutions that can stand up for students. California legislators should pass the legislation to further protect schools against ICE intrusion. Local schools can also directly help protect their communities. Los Angeles Unified School District has a plan for mandatory teacher training, and it will provide “know your rights” cards to parents. While these efforts cannot fully protect against school-site arrests, school staff can give families tools to stand up for themselves and their communities.
Educational leaders also must speak out. California’s former Chief Justice Tani Cantil-Sakauye, appointed or elevated by three different Republican governors, raised the alarm during the first Trump administration that ICE agents “stalking” courthouses were instilling fear in victims and witnesses, jeopardizing the administration of justice. We need to hear from school leaders when public education is being similarly jeopardized.
Surveillance and stalking undermine children’s education. Attendance and learning suffer when schools no longer feel safe. Kids, native-born and newcomers alike, should not be sacrificed to reckless immigration enforcement. States and localities must fulfill their constitutional and moral mandate to educate all students, even if that means standing up to the president.
Shayak Sarkar is a professor of law at UC Davis. Josh Rosenthal is a lawyer in Los Angeles who has represented local governments, immigrants and unions.

Politics
Opinion: Someday, most likely, the buck will stop with Trump

Since taking office last month, Donald Trump has governed like a man with a sledgehammer and a checklist. He’s moving at a breakneck pace — executive orders flying, agencies gutted, norms obliterated. USAID workers? Put on ice. The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau? Unprotected. Low-flow toilets? Flushed. The Gulf of Mexico? No longer found on Google Maps. And that’s just a brief sampling.
Sure, the courts will put the brakes on some of it, but this is political whack-a-mole at its finest. That’s the genius of it: While first responders are scrambling to stamp out dozens of small fires, who will realize the whole city has burned down around them?
This is a stark contrast to the messier way things started the last time Trump won election. In 2016, he stumbled into the White House like a guy who had somehow wandered into the cockpit of a 747, started pushing buttons, and figured the autopilot would handle the rest. This time, he’s got a plan and a highly motivated flight crew — co-pilot Elon Musk, advisor Stephen Miller, Office of Management and Budget Director Russ Vought — and they are shutting down the “deep state” faster than a Georgetown cocktail party when the open bar closes.
Trump and Co. are using two time-tested strategies to pull it off: “flooding the zone” and “expanding the Overton window.” The first overwhelms the opposition with an avalanche of activity, so no single scandal sticks. The second is an old-school haggling trick: Start with something extreme, and when you scale it back just a notch, your new position — although still extreme by the standards of a few moments before — suddenly seems conceivable.
Take Trump’s executive order on birthright citizenship. The courts will probably bounce it faster than a bad check. But by the time that happens, we’ll all be debating the mechanics of mass deportation as though that were just another line item in the budget. “Should we fix potholes or round up a few million migrants?” That’s how this game works.
But here’s the thing: Throwing a million strings of spaghetti at the wall to see what sticks is exhausting. Not only for stunned onlookers, but also for the guys doing the throwing.
Think of it like a football team that sprints through their first 15 scripted plays, running a hurry-up offense with precision. Then reality sets in. The defense adjusts. The playbook runs dry. Suddenly, your players are gasping for air, getting sacked at every turn, and hastily throwing interceptions.
Which brings us to Musk’s plan to inject Silicon Valley’s “move fast and break things” ethos into government.
The problem? When you break things in government, lots of people get hurt — people who did not choose to speculate in tech investments or work at a startup. You can’t just gut the Federal Emergency Management Agency and then reboot it right before hurricane season and expect the federal disaster response to function. You can’t lay off half the FBI and then roll out a “patch” to protect national security as well as those experienced professionals did. And if you’ve decimated the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, there’s no “undo” button available when the next pandemic hits.
Now, I’m all for cutting waste, streamlining bureaucracy and making the system work better. But any self-respecting conservative (as in “to conserve”) should understand that there’s a difference between fixing a leaky pipe and blowing up the water main.
The problem with the “government should run like a business” mantra is that, in business, when things go south, you can declare bankruptcy, pivot to selling NFTs or just ghost your investors. Last I checked, the United States of America doesn’t have a “going out of business” option built into its framework.
And here’s the real kicker: When you take a sledgehammer (instead of a scalpel) to the government, guess who gets crushed under the debris? Well, everyone. But among the folks down there in the rubble you’ll find the very people who orchestrated the destruction.
The folks who slashed FEMA? They’ll be the ones on TV explaining to incredulous Trump voters why no one showed up to offer relief after the next Category 5 hurricane. The guys who gutted the FBI will be shocked — shocked! — when a major terrorist attack “somehow” slipped through the cracks. And the ones who slashed National Institutes of Health funding will fumble their way through a public apology when the next mystery virus starts making the rounds.
I know what you’re thinking: Trump has a remarkable talent for dodging responsibility, always finding someone else to blame. Whether it’s Musk or a Biden administration DEI hire — just as he did after the recent midair collision near Washington, D.C. — he’ll find a scapegoat. But at some point, the “You break it, you buy it” rule kicks in, and the buck stops with the president. Trump’s failure to respond adequately to COVID-19 likely cost him the 2020 election. In that moment, at least, he was held accountable. It could happen again.
Then again, it’s possible the next four years will pass without some major test or system failure that would spark a backlash. Maybe the rules don’t apply to Trump and everything will work out fine. Maybe he’s magic, in which case he is about to redefine everything we think we know about American politics. Again.
Regardless of how this all shakes out, one thing’s for sure: Trump’s back. And this time, he’s not just pushing random buttons — he’s got a plan. Or at least a crumpled cocktail napkin with a zillion half-baked ideas scribbled on it.
And at the top, in all caps? “SHOCK AND AWE.”
Matt K. Lewis is the author of “Filthy Rich Politicians” and “Too Dumb to Fail.”
Politics
Trump Agriculture pick confirmed as president racks up Cabinet wins

President Donald Trump secured two more Cabinet confirmations on Thursday, including his pick to lead the Department of Agriculture (USDA), Brooke Rollins.
Rollins was easily confirmed by the Senate shortly after Robert F. Kennedy Jr. was confirmed as Trump’s Health secretary.
Most recently, Rollins has served as president and CEO of the America First Policy Institute (AFPI) think tank, which she co-founded after Trump’s first term.
In Trump’s first administration, she was his director of the Office of American Innovation and acting director of the Domestic Policy Council.
TULSI GABBARD SWORN IN AT WHITE HOUSE HOURS AFTER SENATE CONFIRMATION
Brooke Rollins, U.S. President Trump’s nominee to be secretary of agriculture, testifies before a Senate Agriculture, Nutrition and Forestry Committee confirmation hearing on Capitol Hill in Washington, U.S., January 23, 2025. (Kaylee Greenlee Beal/Reuters)
The newly elected president announced his selection of Rollins for USDA chief in November, recalling she did “an incredible job” during his first term.
“Brooke’s commitment to support the American Farmer, defense of American Food Self-Sufficiency, and the restoration of Agriculture-dependent American Small Towns is second to none,” he said.
DOGE ‘PLAYBOOK’ UNVEILED BY GOP SENATOR AS MUSK-LED AGENCY SHAKES UP FEDERAL GOVERNMENT

A side-by-side image of President Trump and the United States Department of Agriculture (Getty Images)
“As our next Secretary of Agriculture, Brooke will spearhead the effort to protect American Farmers, who are truly the backbone of our Country. Congratulations Brooke!”
The USDA nominee had a hearing before the Senate Agriculture, Nutrition and Forestry Committee last month, before advancing past the key hurdle.
DEM LOOKS TO CODIFY NEW AG BONDI’S DESIRED CRACKDOWN ON ‘ZOMBIE DRUG’ XYLAZINE

Brooke Rollins is sworn-in for a Senate Agriculture, Nutrition, and Forestry Committee hearing on her nomination for Secretary of Agriculture, Thursday, Jan. 23, 2025, in Washington. (Getty Images | iStock)
The committee decision to move her nomination forward was unanimous, giving her bipartisan backing going into her confirmation vote.
Rollins is now the 16th Cabinet official confirmed to serve in Trump’s new administration. With the help of the Republican-led Senate, Trump has managed to confirm his picks at a pace far ahead of either his first administration or former President Joe Biden’s.
TRUMP LANDS KEY TULSI GABBARD CONFIRMATION FOLLOWING UPHILL SENATE BATTLE

Biden and Trump during his first term lagged behind with confirmations. (Left: Pete Marovich/Getty Images; Right: Oleg Nikishin/Getty Images)
At the same point in his first term, Trump only had 11 confirmations and Biden had seven. Neither had 16 confirmed until March during their respective administrations.
Politics
Solutions: Here's how the Trump administration can curb housing costs
One reason American voters handed the country’s reins back to President Trump was the extreme inflation in housing prices that took place under his predecessor. The federal government has less influence over this issue than, say, California mayors and legislators — but whoever is in the White House can take certain steps to push prices down. The federal government can lower construction material costs, release more land for homebuilding and ensure that federal grants are used efficiently.
Unlike American manufacturing, residential construction has missed out on productivity improvements for decades. One reason is that building code updates, which are written by an industry group, increase costs more often than they decrease them. As a result, cost-conscious states usually stick with older, cheaper building codes. But that means they miss out on productive innovations. The Trump administration could start by creating a building code innovation module, consisting only of cost-decreasing updates, which states and cities could then adopt.
U.S. building codes have fallen behind peer countries in construction techniques for mid-rise buildings, which provide important, dense housing supply using little land. The administration could help California, Tennessee and several other states already in the process of identifying safety standards for the construction of four- to six-story buildings with a single staircase. A related innovation would adopt lower-cost elevator standards for small buildings, which would enable cost-effective accessibility in more new construction.
As the new administration sets tariff rates, it should balance construction costs among its priorities. The Biden administration doubled Trump’s original tariff on Canadian lumber, adding thousands to the cost of each new house. Cutting that tariff to its 2020 rate — or better yet, eliminating it and aiming tariffs at strategic opponents instead of America’s strongest ally — would bring immediate relief to builders and buyers. Instead, in his first few weeks back in office, Trump has scheduled higher tariffs on Canadian goods, including lumber, and added a 25% global steel tariff, which will make it much more expensive to build the next Trump Tower.
In addition to material costs, another factor that has driven up home prices and limited inventory is a chronic scarcity of construction workers, and the federal government has more control over this labor supply than states and cities do. Through immigration policy, the Trump administration could either aggravate the shortage or ease it, which would either raise or lower housing costs.
In land use, as in construction productivity, the federal government plays a quietly influential role. Trump has proposed building new “freedom cities” on federally owned land across the country. That’s one of several ways that huge federal landholdings could be opened for housing and jobs relatively free of local politics and NIMBYism.
Another idea is to expand nationwide the successful Southern Nevada Public Land Management Act, which allows the sale of federal land to support suburban growth. So far it has been limited to the Las Vegas area, where it has been successful and has generated funding to conserve and improve other valuable public land.
Other regulations and agencies influence the use of privately owned land. For instance, federal rules on storm water drainage are not only strict, but also complex and scattered. A first step would be to unify those rules in a single place. Once unified, they can be analyzed and streamlined as appropriate.
Some agencies, such as the Federal Aviation Administration and the Department of Defense, quietly influence local land use. An administration-wide directive could nudge them to affirm more homebuilding where appropriate rather than reflexively blocking it.
Yet the federal government’s most immediate connection to cities is through grant-making for a range of purposes. Many federal regulations require grantees to undergo expensive planning exercises to qualify for funding. Experience shows that the plans usually have no influence on subsequent actions. The new administration must ensure that money is used well by emphasizing outcome-based reporting for federal grantees instead.
Some grants are openly ill-spent. Several states waste federal funding for removing lead paint hazards by preventing out-of-state workers from contributing to that work. And some of the richest cities skirt the rules of the Community Development Block Grant program, using funds in ways that make housing more expensive, not more attainable. Federal agencies can easily curtail these inefficiencies.
Even better, the Department of Housing and Urban Development should find funding to offer technical assistance to small cities and towns that want to allow more housing. When I advised Auburn, Maine, on its nation-leading reforms, the limiting factor was local staff time. For municipalities that share Auburn’s goals, HUD can be a valuable resource.
Regulators at the Federal Housing Finance Agency have an outsize role in determining who gets a mortgage and why. The agency should seriously investigate the possibility that its own well-intended regulations have cut off mortgage lending to working-class families. My colleague Kevin Erdmann argues that unreasonably strict credit standards have eliminated most buyers for lower-cost homes and created a new constituency for single-family rentals. They would rather buy, if anyone would give them a mortgage.
Despite these many touchpoints, Americans should remember that the fault is not in our presidents, but in ourselves, that we are underbuilding. In California, for example, obstacles to construction include strict local zoning, NIMBY resistance and laws that require builders to pay above-market wages and force landlords to collect below-market rents. Such factors have aggravated a housing shortage and contributed to outmigration, homelessness and even more deferred dreams. Federal innovation and efficiency can support local efforts but cannot replace them.
Salim Furth is a senior research fellow and director of the urbanity project at the Mercatus Center at George Mason University.
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