HIGHLIGHTS:
- Pushback on Trump admin’s nonprofit pressure
- One Big….Privatization Threat?
- The other government shutdown
JUMP: EDUCATION | INFRASTRUCTURE | PUBLIC SERVICES | THE REST
First, the Good News
1) National: More than 3,700 nonprofit and nonpartisan organizations from all sectors of civil society across the U.S. have released a letter rejecting presidential attacks on nonprofit organizations. “No president–Democrat or Republican–should have the power to punish nonprofit organizations simply because he disagrees with them. That is not about protecting Americans or defending the public interest. It is about using unchecked power to silence opposition and voices he disagrees with. That is un-American and flies in the face of the Constitution, including the First Amendment bar on targeting organizations for their advocacy.”
2) National: One Big Beautiful…Privatization Threat? A new brief from In the Public Interest looks at the ways the sweeping new act could lay the groundwork for creeping privatization. “The harm that the One Big Beautiful Bill Act (OBBBA) will bring to healthcare programs, clean energy efforts, food assistance, the tax system, and more has been analyzed and well-documented. But another threat to localities and states lurks in the background. The OBBBA creates conditions that could incentivize or pressure local and state governments to increase or broaden current contracting of core public programs and services, especially social safety net programs—or privatize them completely. This would result in corporations and billionaires taking control of an ever-increasing share of our public goods, while extracting more money from cities and states to increase profits.”
3 National/Idaho: As part of National Banned Books Week, Idaho held a banned books community read-in on the Capitol steps in Boise. Oct. 11, next Saturday, is Let Freedom Read day: “The freedom to read is under attack—let’s do something about it! On October 11, 2025, we’re asking everyone to take at least one action to help defend books from censorship and to stand up for the library staff, educators, writers, publishers, and booksellers who make them available! Show us how you’re taking action on social media by using the hashtags #LetFreedomReadDay and #BannedBooksWeek! We’ll continue to add resources in the coming days, so bookmark this page! And don’t forget: Censorship won’t stop just because Banned Books Week does—you can take action any day of the year!”
4) Colorado: Thanks to state and local action, national parks are to stay largely open during the government shutdown. “Colorado’s Democratic Governor Jared Polis was on board with keeping national parks open. ‘Rocky Mountain National Park is a major draw for visitors from around the world, especially now during leaf-peeping season, and a major economic driver for Colorado’s rural communities,’ he said in a statement Tuesday, noting he was willing to use limited state funds to keep the state’s biggest park fully operational. Under the shutdown plan, states, tribes or other third parties can enter into agreements with the Department of the Interior for donations to keep parks open with more services. Colorado, Arizona and Utah have done this in the past. Arizona Gov. Katie Hobbs said this week she did not plan on dedicating state funds to this purpose.” Here’s a list of the attractions that will remain closed.
5) Connecticut: Connecticut East reports the regional expansion of adult education “with the opening of a new location in Wauregan, providing greater access to free educational services for residents throughout the Plainfield area. The new site, located at 303 Putnam Road in Wauregan, operates through a partnership with United Services and offers morning classes in high school completion and English Language Learning (ELL) to accommodate working adults and parents. Free childcare is available during classes to support parents pursuing their educational goals. ‘We’re excited to expand our services to the Plainfield area through this wonderful partnership with United Services,’ said Kristin Hempel, Director of EASTCONN Adult and Community Programs. This new location allows us to better serve learners throughout the region and removes transportation barriers that might otherwise prevent adults from pursuing their educational goals.’”
6) Illinois: A model for the nation? As an enormous quantum computing facility breaks ground in Chicago, the public is pushing for a community benefits agreement to be included. “Some Southeast Side residents are pushing back, concerned the project could bring their neighborhoods further environmental contamination, higher energy bills and displacement, and they question whether new jobs from the facility will go to local residents. The project has faced skepticism and calls for greater transparency for months, with some people opposing it altogether while others call for developers to guarantee investing in environmental and affordability protections and job opportunities for the community. A coalition of residents on Tuesday reiterated that they want the park’s developers to enter into a Community Benefits Agreement, a legally binding contract to ensure that existing neighborhood residents are not pushed out and that the business tenants will invest in the community.”
7) Maryland: Governor Wes Moore announces that the state will take steps to protect workers during the federal shutdown. “First, I’ve directed state agencies to employ contingency plans that will help to make sure that federal programs can continue to operate in our state for now, Moore said. “We will ensure that state employees supported with federal funding continue to get paid for as long as possible. Federal programs administered by the state will continue to support working families through Medicaid and SNAP. We will also provide greater flexibility to Head Start programs and ensure that veterans maintain access to essential resources. But I do want to be very clear. The longer This unnecessary federal government shutdown goes on, the harder it is for us to keep services going. We will continue to monitor the situation closely. And we will adjust accordingly. Second, we are working with the private sector to shield federal workers impacted by the shutdown. From eviction, foreclosure. And utility shutoffs. This morning, I sent letters to the state judiciary and our state utility companies reminding them of their statutory legal protections for federal, state, and local government employees who are not receiving paycheck or at risk of eviction or foreclosure. And third, we are protecting and expanding emergency assistance programs. For federal employees.”
8) Utah: Utah’s ‘Mighty 5’ national parks will stay open amid the shutdown—but with limited services. “Utah’s five national parks — Arches, Bryce Canyon, Canyonlands, Capitol Reef and Zion—are still open to the public, the Utah Office of Tourism said in a news release Wednesday, while also directing Utahns and visitors to VisitUtah.com for more information about how the federal shutdown is impacting Utah’s parks. While the parks will remain open, ‘visitors should expect reduced services and reduced staffing’ during the shutdown, state tourism officials said. State tourism officials also pointed out that Utah’s 46 state parks will remain open and unaffected by the shutdown.”
9) Wisconsin: The state steps in to address privatization problems. “Less than a month after Lincoln County sold Pine Crest nursing home to a private company, state regulators cited the facility for failing to provide timely medications to a resident who was later hospitalized. A Wisconsin Department of Health Services (DHS) complaint survey conducted Aug. 26-27 at Pine Crest Health and Memory Care found the facility ‘did not provide pharmaceutical services, including acquiring, receiving, and dispensing medications to meet the needs’ of one of two residents reviewed, according to documents shared by the Wisconsin Department of Health Services with [the Wausau Pilot and Review].”
10) Think Tanks/National: Democracy Forward’s Rob Shriver has been Elected to the National Academy of Public Administration’s 2025 Class of Academy Fellows. Shriver says “public servants are essential to a functioning government, and deserve better than what they are receiving from their current government. Democracy Forward is committed to protecting and perfecting our democracy, and this fellowship will allow us to expand this work as we collaborate to build a better future together.” He is Managing Director of the Civil Service Strong and Good Government Initiatives. “Civil Service Strong is leading a comprehensive response to the Trump-Vance administration’s dismantling of the civil service through advocacy, storytelling, organizing, resources, data, and policy.”
11) National: The American Federation of Government Employees is suing the Trump-Vance administration “for forcing civil servants at the U.S. Department of Education to engage in partisan political rhetoric during the current federal shutdown. The American Federation of Government Employees (AFGE) sent a cease and desist letter and filed a lawsuit today in District Court for the District of Columbia. AFGE is represented by Democracy Forward and Public Citizen Litigation Group in the matter.”
12) National/Hawaii: Writing in Honolulu Civil Beat, a nonprofit organization, E. Brook Chapman de Sousa says a well-informed citizenry benefits everyone. “Public schools help to create a stable and more equitable society for all of us. We must rally around public education and halt the current trend to dismantle this critical piece of our democracy. It is time for us to collectively invest, with our taxpayer dollars, energy, and voices, in the tremendous work of public educators. Public schools provide infrastructure for different communities to engage with one another in productive ways. As a former Waiʻanae Elementary School teacher who now helps prepare future teachers, I’ve seen firsthand how public education creates opportunities for interaction across communities—essential in our current climate of siloed information systems.”
13) Louisiana/National: Twenty years after Katrina, the New Orleans all-charter schools system is failing many families, Ashana Bigard and Elizabeth K. Jeffers report. The receipts?
- The Near Obliteration of Democratic Public Schooling
- Shadow Suspensions and ‘Behavior Problems’
- Community-Rooted Educators Replaced by Managers
- The Cruel Reality of ‘Choice’
- Propaganda Masquerading as Research
- Cultural Destruction
- Success for Whom?
- Redefining Success
See also, Jesse Chanin’s “Throwing Away Educators: The Post-Katrina New Orleans School Reforms,” in the Jesuit Social Research Institute’s August 2025 issue of JustSouth Monthly.
14) New Jersey: S&P Global Ratings has downgraded the Tom’s River school district’s rating, Patch reports. “”Toms River Regional Schools’ credit rating moving from A to A- is the direct result of State Bill S2, the millions of dollars in cumulative losses it has imposed on our district during its seven-year run,” district spokesman Michael Kenny said in a response to a request for comment, “and the State of New Jersey’s unwillingness to reconsider the clearly flawed funding formula on which the bill is based.”
The Toms River Regional Board of Education in the spring unanimously rejected — in two separate votes — a final $293 million budget for the 2025-26 school year over a 12.9 percent tax increase as part of the state’s Tax Levy Incentive Program, where it agreed to provide more aid if the district agreed to raise its tax levy above the 2 percent cap.
Toms River Regional has been fighting with the state over S2 since the law was put in place for the 2017-18 school year to address what were alleged to be inequities in the distribution of state aid.”
15) Oklahoma/National/Revolving Door News: Oklahoma Voice reports that State Superintendent Ryan Walters has formally tendered his resignation to become the CEO of the Teacher Freedom Alliance, an anti-teacher-union nonprofit. For more on the Teacher Freedom Alliance see the Center for Media and Democracy’s report, Freedom Foundation Launches Anti-Union Network for Teachers. “Last year, the Freedom Foundation helped fund an alternative employee organization to compete with the Miami Dade teachers’ union in Florida. But the effort failed decisively: teachers voted overwhelmingly — 83% to 17%—to keep their existing union representation with United Teachers of Dade, a local union of the Florida Education Association affiliated with the national American Federation of Teachers. The Freedom Foundation poured extensive resources into the campaign to unseat the existing teachers’ union, as CMD previously reported, and claimed that its efforts were going to bring the union ‘to the brink of extinction.’ The Dunn Foundation, founded and run by billionaire futures trader William Dunn, donated $100,000 for the Freedom Foundation’s “Miami Dade School District” work, according to disclosures in its 2023 IRS filing.”
16) Think Tanks: Back to school is better without “AI,” says Mystery AI Hype Theater 3000: The Newsletter. “There are some bright spots of resistance. At the end of August, members of the California Faculty Association, which represents over 29,000 higher education workers in the state, attended a joint oversight hearing with California Assembly members and pushed back on plans to make the California State University system the country’s first ‘(AI)-empowered university system.’
Elaine Villanueva Bernal, a chemistry and biochemistry lecturer at CSU Long Beach, told the hearing they were concerned about the plan’s implications for their students’ data privacy, their critical thinking abilities, lack of faculty input in ‘AI’ adoption, and budget inequity.” See also the Wallace Foundation’s “What Do School and District Leaders Need to Know About AI?”
17) National/Illinois: Targeting race and gender fairness, the Trump administration halts $2.1 billion in Chicago infrastructure projects amid the government shutdown. “According to Vought, the projects ‘have been put on hold to ensure funding is not flowing via race-based contracting.’ He called out the Red Line Extension and the Red and Purple Modernization Project as ones that have been especially hit hard. A statement from the U.S. Department of Transportation (DOT) cited an interim final rule that was issued last week banning race-and-sex based contracting from federal grants.”
18) National: High Country News asks if the coalition defending public-lands from privatization can hold together. “Months later, pieces of that coalition continued to hold together. But not all of it, said Land Tawney, co-chair of American Hunters and Anglers, citing the administration’s recent attempts to overturn the Roadless Rule, which restricts road construction and logging on nearly 60 million acres of land managed by the U.S. Forest Service. ‘There’s a lot of people who aren’t speaking up about the Roadless Rule that did speak up about public lands,’ he said. ‘So as far as (the coalition) pivoting to other things, I think it depends on the issue.’”
19) National: FCC chair Brandan Carr, fresh off his defeat in the Jimmy Kimmel censorship scandal, ends federal funding for Wi-Fi hotspots and access on buses. “But proponents of these programs argued they had merit, especially after the COVID-19 pandemic brutally exposed the digital divide. A 2023 survey by the American Library Association found that 46.9% of public libraries offered hotspot loan programs, a figure that has increased by 14.6% since 2020. ‘Libraries have offered hotspot lending for a decade, and their experience proved transformative for people facing emergency situations,’ ALA President Sam Helmick said in a statement before the vote. ‘While libraries and schools are working hard to bridge digital learning gaps, Chairman Carr is tossing out the bricks of those bridges. Withdrawing the opportunity for people to check out Wi-Fi hotspots from their library is a step backwards.’ After the vote, Helmick said there had been a ‘lack of due process,’ which left little time for interested groups to comment on Carr’s proposal.”
20) National: Rushing to privatize Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac would make housing more expensive while putting the entire U.S. economy at risk, say Americans for Financial Reform. “Their failure to appropriately balance their pursuit of profits with their duty to promote a safe and stable housing finance system in the leadup to the 2008 foreclosure crisis should leave the U.S. public highly wary of how they will behave once returned to shareholder control. Prior to the 2008 financial crisis, Fannie and Freddie aggressively lobbied to undermine any effective regulation, and took excessive risks in search of profit while failing to maintain adequate capital reserves to absorb any losses. Ultimately, this pattern of recklessness and indifference to their public responsibilities resulted in their overexposure to toxic subprime mortgages and their severe undercapitalization.”
21) California/National/International: Will the renovation of the LA Convention Center be finished before the Olympics open in February of next year? “Multiple city officials have raised red flags. In March, the city administrative officer and the chief legislative analyst said in a letter to the members of an economic committee that getting the project done before the Olympics was not feasible. The city controller also warned that Los Angeles will not generate revenue from the convention center for 30 years. When the City Council took a vote on the project’s final approval in September, dissenting Councilmember Katy Yaroslavsky called the expansion unrealistic, unaffordable and irresponsible.”
22) California: The California 6th District Court Appeals rules against Aptos HOA’s privatization of a beachfront walkway. “The homeowners association is unsure whether it will appeal. John Erskine, the HOA’s attorney with California-based firm Nossaman LLP, did not respond to Lookout’s request for comment, but told the Santa Cruz Sentinel last week that his side was mulling over what to do next. To challenge the ruling would mean taking the issue to the California Supreme Court. However, whether the state’s highest court would accept the case is uncertain.”
23) New York: Pointing to racial and gender fairness principles in the project requirements, President Trump has frozen $18 billion in funding on two infrastructure projects, the Hudson Tunnel and the extension of 2nd Avenue subway. “These are funds that were appropriated by the House of Representatives under the Biden’s infrastructure bill.” For background see “Train v. City of New York: A Landmark Case in Budgetary Authority.”
24) Washington: The Walla Walla Board of county Commissioners has approved, 2-1, a proposal to privatize courthouse security. “Kimball and Commissioner Gunner Fulmer voted to accept the proposal while Clayton voted to deny it. Sheriff Mark Crider’s plan is to have private security in place at the courthouse at the end of October.”
25) International/Japan: Twenty years after privatization, free expressways are still 90 years away. “The privatization was a key policy of then Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi. In October 2005, the public corporations were reorganized into six private companies and the Japan Expressway Holding and Debt Repayment Agency, an independent administrative body.”
26) International/United Kingdom: The disastrous privatization of water infrastructure continues to create problems. The Guardian reports that “the creditors also said that ‘a full return to legal, regulatory and environmental compliance’ under their plan would not be completed until at least the 2035-2040 period, raising the prospect of sewage levels above legal limits in some places for at least a decade. They will argue for further leniency on fines from the regulator, Ofwat, during that period, and that it will be impossible for the company to make upgrades across London and south-east England more quickly because of the scale of the work needed after years of neglect.”
27) National: Suzanne Gordon and Steve Early say privatizing the Veterans Administration will be a disaster for rural vets. “That’s precisely what the Veterans Healthcare Policy Institute (VHPI) found. In a study, which one of us (Suzanne) authored, VHPI discovered that rural veterans seeking care in the private sector face even greater barriers than those in the VA. While these providers may be well-intentioned, few have enough expertise to recognize veterans’ complex health care problems, much less treat them. This was also the conclusion of not one but two RAND Corporation studies of private sector providers.”
28) National: The government shutdown is creating chaos in the contracting world, Federal News Network reports. “Stephanie Kostro, president of [Professional Services Council], said the association provided an early September briefing to members that urged them to identify a point of contact within the government if a shutdown were to happen. But staffing reductions under the Trump administration—through terminations, early retirements and deferred resignations—have left contracting offices even more short staffed than usual as the government hurdles toward the Tuesday midnight funding deadline. ‘We are facing what I would term a perfect storm,’ Kostro told reporters Monday.”
29) National: The GEO Group’s subsidiary, BI, has received a two year contract extension “to continue operating the Intensive Supervision Appearance Program (ISAP).
30) National/Think Tanks: America’s aging prison population is posing challenges for states, Stateline reports. “A new report from the American Civil Liberties Union and the Prison and Jail Innovation Lab at the University of Texas at Austin warns that this trend is straining correctional systems that were not designed to care for older adults. If current trends continue, the authors estimate that by 2030 as much as one-third of the U.S. prison population will be over 50. ‘It puts it into perspective how bad that this has gotten,’ said Alyssa Gordon, the report’s lead author. Gordon is an attorney and legal fellow with the ACLU National Prison Project. ‘People don’t realize that prisons are woefully equipped to handle this crisis.’”
31) National: CoreCivic has received new contract awards for the California City Immigration Processing Center and the Midwest Regional Reception Center. “Once fully activated, we expect to generate total annual revenue at the two facilities combined of nearly $200 million.” This weekend, NBC Bay Area reported, multicity protests took place about expanding ICE detention. “The Investigative Unit recently followed a caravan of immigrant rights advocates and families on a multi-city protest of ICE detention centers. Hilda Gutierrez reports.” [Watch the video, about 6 minutes]
32) National: How much is the GEO Group raking in from Trump’s immigration crackdown? Details will be provided on the private, for profit company’s third quarter 2025 financial results on November 6 .
33) Arizona/National: Arizona PBS reports that a Medicare pilot program in Arizona is sparking privatization concerns. “The plan, called the Wasteful and Inappropriate Service Reduction Model, is sparking controversy, with critics warning it could be a step toward privatizing Medicare. The six-year pilot will begin in January and has already drawn opposition from lawmakers, former officials, and physician groups. Dr. Swapna Reddy from ASU’s College of Health Solutions joined ‘Arizona Horizon’ to explain what the program could mean for Medicare patients in Arizona.”
34) Illinois/National: Chicago Reader reports on the consequences of a failure to implement criminal justice reform. “Even those prisoners who get out know that time behind bars destroys wealth, creates debt, perpetuates cycles of homelessness, and makes finding a job or housing prohibitively difficult. Why? The answer, while vast and complex, boils down to one thing: money. I think just about everyone has heard the term “prison industrial complex.” Many people hear or say it, but don’t understand what it really entails. The prison industrial complex is a vast network of thousands of businesses that profit from mass incarceration. According to a 2018 report from the Corrections Accountability Project, over 3,100 corporations profit from the U.S. prison system.”
35) National: Nothing to hide? Responsible contracting? The Trump administration has knocked out at least 15 oversight websites. “The CIGIE’s homepage, which was operating normally on Tuesday evening, has been replaced with a single line of text: ‘Due to a lack of apportionment of funds, this website is currently unavailable.’ The same line is displayed by the Office of Inspector General websites for the Departments of Agriculture, Education, Justice, Interior and Veterans Affairs, and by those of AmeriCorps, Export-Import Bank of the United States, Federal Trade Commission, International Trade Commission, National Archives and Records Administration, Nuclear Regulatory Commission, Office of Personnel Management, Smithsonian Institution, and Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration. The watchdog website for the National Labor Relations Board’s OIG page gives a 404 error. The Architect of the Capitol’s IG page says ‘Not found’; a new page offers only hotline information and blames the change on a ‘funding issue impacting Oversight.gov functions.’”
36) National: Military Times reports that “a U.S. senator who has been an outspoken critic of the military’s privatized family housing wants answers from the Defense Department about its plans to privatize more barracks. ‘Given the significant challenges that privatization has imposed on military family housing for decades, directly resulting from the substantial failures of private housing providers, I am alarmed that the Department of Defense is considering expanding privatization to unaccompanied military housing (i.e., barracks),’ wrote Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., in a letter Sunday to Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth.”