HIGHLIGHTS
JUMP: EDUCATION | INFRASTRUCTURE | PUBLIC SERVICES | THE REST
First, the Good News
1) National: In the Public Interest’s Communications Director Jeff Hagan says public libraries have widespread public support and it’s time to shout it from the top of the shelves. “Public libraries are among the few free, indoor, community spaces we have in the country—there is no expectation that the library user will buy a cup of coffee or a cocktail to justify their stay. In fact, library users are loftily called ‘patrons,’ not customers. Libraries are offering an ever-widening range of services—from 3-D printing, to tool-lending libraries, to seed banks, to toy-lending libraries (not to mention, you know, books). Until recently, libraries also enjoyed nearly unanimous community support. But now libraries face threats that are numerous and coming from many directions. They include outright funding cuts, reconfigurations of funding streams that make them more vulnerable, and privatization.”
2) National/California: The Daily Journal reports that San Francisco Supervisor Bilal Mahmood has called for a hearing into the private, for-profit prison corporation that “operates a local reentry facility at the center of a dispute between transgender rights activists and the corporation after the death of one of its residents. (…) The multibillion-dollar corporation, which also operates Immigration and Customs Enforcement facilities, is one of the largest in the industry across the country and has been accused of having poor conditions in their facilities.”
3) Arizona: Albuquerque Public Schools (APS) students facing homelessness or in foster care “were treated to a special New Mexico United coaching session on Wednesday as part of a partnership aimed at helping them build confidence, teamwork and leadership skills. (…) The clinic was made possible by the New Mexico Oil and Gas Association, New Mexico United, the APS McKinney-Vento and Foster Care teams and Kids First. “I’m so excited to be able to see how the community is coming together for all of our students,” Albuquerque Public Schools Superintendent Gabriella Blakey said. ”
4) National: Veterans Administration nurses will be hosting a town hall in Augusta, Georgia, to protect veterans’ care and federal workers this Thursday. “‘We are calling on our communities to stand with us and the nation’s veterans as we fight back against this administration’s policies that threaten the very existence of the VA,’ said Irma Westmoreland, RN, chair of NNU’s VA division. ‘There is a group of rich and powerful people in Washington, D.C. who want to pour billions of taxpayer dollars into giant health care corporations and the pockets of billionaires instead of into the care of those who served our country. Nurses, federal workers, and veterans are saying, ‘Absolutely not!’ We need everyone to join with us to save the VA.’”
5) Maryland: Anne Arundel public library workers have ratified their first contract. “AALWU was recognized as a chapter of the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees in July 2024. Contract negotiations began the following October and finished Wednesday. The new contract runs from July 1, 2025, through June 30, 2027. The contract includes 12% raises, stronger protections against discrimination, establishment of a fair process for discipline and two oversight committees dedicated to addressing workplace concerns. ‘I’m so proud of this contract and to be a part of a union that fought to the very end to ensure we have strong protections against discrimination’ said Ryan Morris, a part-time worker at the Severn library branch.”
6) Oregon: The Daily Barometer’s Marina Kandas reports that “Summer reading is in full swing at the Corvallis-Benton County Public Library. From June 1 to Aug. 31, the library offers summer reading for people of all ages. The program is broken into three age groups: kids (newborn to fifth grade), teens (sixth through 12th grade) and adults (18 and over). The process is simple: kid and teen participants are given a free book, bag, reading log and calendar of events when they sign up, according to the library’s website. (…) According to Andrew Cherbas, the library’s deputy director for public services, summer reading encourages literacy in the community. ‘I know people are looking for options that carry on and promote literacy, and that really is the main focus.’”
7) International: Public Services International and UNISON have released a new guide in their “Building Inclusive Public Services” program showcasing disability inclusion. “This first-of-a-kind guide showcases successful case studies such as UNISON’s (UK) Guide on Disability Leave or CCOO’s (Spain) Guide to Occupational Health and Disability, while offering clear pathways for improvement, emphasizing that disability inclusion is not merely an ethical obligation but a crucial component of social justice.”
8) Think Tanks: The Economic Policy Institute has submitted commentary “in response to the House Education and Workforce Committee’s Request for Information (RFI) on improvements to the Labor‑Management Reporting and Disclosure Act of 1959 (LMRDA).”
9) National: law360 reports that “a Delaware bankruptcy judge on Friday allowed Charter School Capital Inc. , a company that provides funding for charter schools across the country, to sell its business for $80 million, $15. 5 million of that in cash.” The sale was under Chapter 11 of the bankruptcy code.
10) Arizona: ABC15 Arizona reports a new “AI-powered charter school” begins operation this school year. “Students will be learning from home and will be guided by a teacher. For two hours, they’ll be learning their core classes and then for the rest of the afternoon, they’ll be learning different life skills. Those courses range from financial literacy to public speaking and more.” [Video, about two minutes]. The model is going nationwide, The New York Times reports, focusing on an Austin school. “To detractors, Ms. Price’s “2 Hour Learning” model and Alpha School are just the latest in a long line of computerized fads that plunk children in front of screens and deny them crucial socialization skills while suppressing their ability to think critically. ‘Students and our country need to be in relationship with other human beings,’ said Randi Weingarten, the president of the American Federation of Teachers, a teachers’ union. ‘When you have a school that is strictly A.I., it is violating that core precept of the human endeavor and of education.’”
11) California: ABC10 in Sacramento reports “The entire board of directors overseeing Highlands Community Charter and Technical Schools (HCCTS) announced their resignations Monday, just weeks after an audit by the California State Auditor released its findings on the charter school.”
12) California: The Los Angeles Times reports that “In a victory for Los Angeles charter schools, [an LA County judge] has struck down a sweeping Los Angeles Unified policy that would have prevented charters—the school of choice for 1 in 5 L.A. public-school students—from using classroom space at nearly 350 campuses.” But “supporters of traditional schools say their campuses need more space to operate an expanded array of programs that help students succeed. They say the old formula for determining what can be handed over to charters is unfair and undermines their work—especially the important efforts of the Black Student Achievement Plan, the priority schools and community schools.”
13) Florida: Dr. Colleen Conklin, a Flagler Beach resident and Flagler County School Board member for 24 years, has written an op-ed saying “Stop the Grift: Florida’s School Vouchers Are Scamming Taxpayers and Sabotaging Democracy.”
Conklin makes the case against school vouchers, honing in on transparency, not helping kids leave “failing” public schools, an “accountability gap,” and a lack of democracy: “Public schools are the great equalizer—the one institution required to take every child, regardless of disability, income, language, religion, or behavior. They are also the civic glue where kids from different backgrounds learn to live in a pluralistic society. Undermining that common space with a shadow system that can pick and choose students—and hide its books—weakens the fabric of our democracy, not just our budgets.”
14) Florida: A Palm Beach County charter school is set to close, leaving parents and students scrambling. “The closure comes on the heels of a series of poor academic performance reports. CBS12 News reported that the school had received grades below a “C” for three consecutive years. In the 2022-2023 school year, the Academy was rated a D, followed by an F in 2023-2024, and another D in the 2024-2025 school year. These academic struggles seemingly led the school’s administration to make the closure decision just weeks before the new term was set to begin.”
15) Ohio: In a letter to the editor of The Columbus Dispatch, Ray Watford of Hilliard takes aim at the destructive effects of school vouchers on the public school system. “I wholeheartedly support Judge Jaiza Page’s ruling that Ohio’s EdChoice voucher program is unconstitutional. Public education is the cornerstone of our democracy because it ensures every child, regardless of belief or income, access to a thorough and efficient education. When public funds are siphoned off for private schools—often religious, selective and lacking accountability—that promise is betrayed.”
16) Rhode Island: The Providence City Council has rejected a proposed charter school lease, WPRI reports. “Less than 24 hours before the full City Council was set to hold a vote, Miller released a statement saying she would vote no on the proposed lease Thursday night. ‘Mayor Smiley’s lease proposal attempted to solve two challenges at once – ensuring Providence students with already assigned charter seats have a suitable place to learn and finding a path forward for a vacant historic building,’ Miller said on Wednesday. ‘After careful consideration, I’ve determined that such an arrangement would not be in the best interest of the neighborhood or city. The City Council will not hand the keys of a shuttered public school building to a charter school.’”
17) National/Tennessee: In an outpouring of opposition to the privatization of the Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA), a host of public interest organizations “condemn privatization as a reckless corporate power grab that threatens the livelihoods, security and financial well-being of millions of families, businesses and communities across the Southeast. ‘TVA was originally created because the private sector failed rural America,’ said Daniel Tait, Executive Director of Energy Alabama. ‘Turning TVA over to private, for-profit interests would mean higher electricity rates, destruction and loss of access to outdoor recreation areas, and other devastating consequences for families and businesses across the Tennessee Valley.’”
18) National/Colorado: Public News Service reports that ICE plans to add six immigrant detention centers in Colorado. “Centers are planned for Hudson and La Junta, and Colorado Springs and Walsenburg would each get two facilities, all run by private firms. Tim Macdonald, legal director for the ACLU of Colorado, said ICE should not be outsourcing centers to for-profit companies such as GEO Group, which runs a facility in Aurora with a history of civil rights abuses and lack of medical care. ‘That’s a terrible model,’ Macdonald contended. ‘We should not put profits on the backs of immigrants, it creates an incentive to detain more innocent men, women and children.’”
The Colorado Sentinel has weighed in with an editorial saying ICE officials broke the law by thwarting Aurora jail inspections by Rep. Crow. “The Aurora GEO facility has been under a dark cloud for years. Two detainees have died. Numerous others have suffered injuries and alleged mistreatment. The need for surprise inspections is not abstract. Crow and others have consistently pointed out that only unannounced visits can reveal what is truly happening inside immigration detention centers. Warning a facility days in advance undermines the point of oversight. It lets abuses be cleaned up and facts hidden.”
19) National: See No. 34 below on the implications for public infrastructure construction and control by Trump’s new AI policy document.
20) Iowa: In a letter to the editor of the Gazette, Fred Easker of Cedar Rapids says clean water must be a priority. “During the bank bailouts 2008 the phrase ‘privatize the profits, socialize the losses’ came to describe crony capitalism. It seems an appropriate term to describe the stance of big agriculture in Iowa. They are poisoning our water for bigger yields and efficient hog production and the rest of us are paying with high rates of cancer, high medical costs, the high cost of water treatment and the loss of safe water recreation.”
21) Missouri: More headaches for Boeing, this time with a toxic spill at a facility it owns near St. Louis Lambert International Airport. “The Missouri Department of Natural Resources later said that nitric acid breaks down in water and cannot be removed, so they do not anticipate a cleanup in Coldwater Creek. They are taking environmental sampling to assess impacts on the creek and advised residents to not be in and around the creek.” In other news, the Trump administration announced it will “allow 25 chemical manufacturers, including 12 with sites in Louisiana, to ignore new federal rules meant to contain harmful emissions,” the Louisiana Illuminator reports. “Trump issued what the White House labeled ‘regulatory relief for certain stationary sources to promote American chemical manufacturing security.’”
22) Florida: The Sunshine State’s privately owned and operated Brightline rail line, once touted as a well-financed superb example of the superiority of privatized rail transport, has seen the value of its bonds decline, rattling investors. “The concerns have amped up since Bloomberg reported earlier this month that Brightline was going to delay an interest payment on $1.2 billion of bonds it issued through the municipal-bond market, one of several different types of debt issued by various arms of the company.”
23) National: America is outsourcing its gulag, says Jeff Crisp in The New York Times. “At a recent summit of West African leaders, President Trump pressed them to admit deportees from the United States, reportedly emphasizing that assisting in migration was essential to improving commercial ties with the United States. All told, administration officials have reached out to dozens of states to try to strike deals to accept deportees.”
24) National: Further attempting to fragment national constitutional federalism, the Trump administration has agreed to pause its “efforts to block immigrants who are living in the U.S. illegally from accessing certain federally funded social services in 20 Democratic-led states that sued over the policy changes. (…) More than 20 Democratic attorneys general had sued on Monday arguing that the policies, which implement an immigration-focused executive order from Trump, are unconstitutional and that the Republican president issued them without following the required federal rulemaking process.”
The Providence Journal reports that “a nationwide coalition of dozens of organizations, including six from Rhode Island, sued the government on July 21 in U.S. District Court. The state groups include the Rhode Island Coalition Against Domestic Violence, House of Hope Community Development Corporation, Community Care Alliance, Foster Forward, Rhode Island Coalition to End Homelessness and Haus of Codec. ” [Read the complaint]
25) National: The Washington Post reports that “two high-ranking officials at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration were placed on leave last week, including one official who said he had recently clashed with officials over the Trump administration’s proposals for the agency. (…) The Trump administration has not publicly endorsed privatizing satellite or weather operations. A conservative blueprint for Trump’s second term outlined proposals to privatize some of the National Weather Service work while breaking up NOAA.”
The Associated Press has reported that Trump appointees could benefit from privatizing forecasts. “What’s drawn less attention is how the downsizing appears to be part of an effort to privatize the work of such agencies. In several instances, the companies poised to step into the void have deep ties to people tapped by Trump to run weather-related agencies. Privatization would diminish a central role the federal government has played in weather forecasting since the 1800s, which experts say poses a particular harm for those facing financial strain who may not be able to afford commercial weather data.”
26) National: American Postal Workers Union President Mark Dimondstein is sounding the alarm on privatization of the service. “‘There is an intensified effort really coming from the billionaires and Wall Street about privatizing the public United States Postal Service,’ APWU president Mark Dimondstein said in an interview with the Daily Montanan. ‘Which means either breaking it up in whole or piecemealing it out whole or in part to private companies that then decide who gets mail under what conditions, based on whether somebody can make a profit.’”
27) National: ICE is moving to greatly expand its efforts to shackle some 180,000 immigrants with GPS ankle monitors, The Washington Post reports. “The expansion will drive business to GEO Group, the Boca Raton, Florida-based private prison conglomerate that previously employed at least two of Trump’s top immigration officials and donated over $1.5 million to the president’s 2024 campaign and inaugural committee. The tracking program is entirely run by BI Inc., a subsidiary of GEO that got its start in the 1970s by selling a device farmers used to monitor their cattle. However, in one sign of ICE’s widening ambitions, agency officials recently began looking for additional technology vendors because BI’s capacity may not be able to meet the agency’s full needs.” See also Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington’s report on private, for profit companies’ donations to support Trump.
Writing in Gizmodo, Matt Novak says “while ankle monitors may sound preferable to getting locked up in some ICE detention facility, it’s still a dehumanizing process. The ankle monitors are also known to leave bruising and rashes and reportedly have a terrible battery life, making them inconvenient for people trying to go about their day without being flagged as in violation of the terms of their release.”
28) National: State militias are to guard private, for-profit immigration lockups. CNN reports that “it’s unclear when the troops will be mobilized, though the US official said the move, which is still under deliberation, could come as soon as this week. Both sources said the troops will be placed on Title 32 status, which puts them under the command of their governors and not subject to the Posse Comitatus Act, which prohibits the use of the military for domestic law enforcement purposes.”
29) National/Maryland/Delaware: There has been a spike in heat-related deaths. “The 2024 death of Baltimore City Department of Public Works trash collector Ronald Silver also ignited conversations in the region about monitoring the health of people working during high heat indexes. (…) AFSCME Maryland Council 3—a union representing state, municipal and county employees in Maryland, of which Silver was a member—has also not heard any reports of heat-related deaths at workplaces in the state. Still, leaders do have concerns over a lack of heat safety plans from some of their employers, according to a union spokesperson. The plans are required under the heat safety standards, which became law in September 2024.”
On heat-related deaths in private industry, see the Center for American Progress’ report last summer, “Extreme Heat Is More Dangerous for Workers Every Year,” calling for tighter regulation.
This week, Spotlight Delaware reported that “The Delaware Department of Correction relocated an outspoken inmate and blocked his telephone access to his mother weeks after he brought attention to a lack of air conditioning within a building at the state’s largest prison during a blistering heatwave. ”
30) Iowa: Guest columnist Thomas Hansen, writing in the Des Moines Register, says privatizing health care in prison costs us all. “After Florida privatized its prison health care, costs ballooned by 36% over four years while the annual inmate death rate skyrocketed by over 1,000%, according to Prison Legal News. The state of Iowa is quietly moving toward a decision that would harm hundreds of dedicated public servants, endanger thousands of incarcerated Iowans, and cost the taxpayer dearly. The Department of Corrections has issued a Request for Proposal (RFP) seeking bids from private companies to take over health care services across all nine state prisons—eliminating roughly 300 state positions currently held by nurses, doctors, and mental health professionals.”
31) New Jersey: Truthout reports that a federal appeals court has struck down New Jersey’s ban on private prisons. “New Jersey Attorney General Matt Platkin called the ruling disappointing and noted the recent controversies at Delaney Hall, an immigration jail in Newark run by private prison company GEO Group. Protesters have been outside the jail for months, decrying the lock-up’s inhumane conditions. In May, federal agents arrested two Democratic politicians, Newark Mayor Ras Baraka and New Jersey Congresswoman LaMonica McIver, outside the jail.”
32) Ohio: Writing in Cleveland.com, Anna Staver explains how Ohio’s budget became the state’s most powerful policy document. “Tucked between funding for schools and roads are dozens of other policies: rules about abortion, education governance, prison privatization, even what SNAP recipients can buy with food benefits.” Ohio was the first state to sell a public prison to a private, for-profit corporation. See the ACLU of Ohio’s primer on prison privatization in Ohio.
33) Wisconsin: Colin Gillis, a registered nurse at University Hospital and a leader of UW Nurses United of SEIU Wisconsin, a union of health care workers in Wisconsin, says that despite a state Supreme Court ruling, nurses will fight for their rights. “For more than 14 years, UW Health nurses have been stuck in legal limbo when it comes to our right to organize and collectively bargain. We keep going because we love being UW Health nurses. We’re proud to work at Wisconsin’s flagship teaching hospital, and we want to make it the best possible place for our patients and community. Our experience illustrates something larger that is happening among working people across America. Even as the systems meant to empower us are breaking down, we’re finding new ways to claim our place at the table.”
34) National: One of the drivers of privatization and the blocking of responsible contracting and regulation has been the use of preemption, either federal or state, of state or local laws that advance the public’s interest in maintaining control of public services and infrastructure. The Trump administration is using this tactic to get ahead of efforts by the states to regulate artificial intelligence programs. National Law Review says the new Trump AI policy blueprint “represents a significant departure from previous approaches, emphasizing deregulation, infrastructure development and international AI diplomacy while raising fundamental questions about the impact of rapidly evolving AI systems,” and provides “an analysis of the AI Action Plan’s three policy pillars, along with business implications, compliance considerations and strategic recommendations for businesses.” But the legal pushback is coming.
35) Florida: Rules for thee, but not for me, public services edition. The Tallahassee Democrat reports that “Gov. Ron DeSantis’ assault on local government spending comes even as his own office has spent millions of taxpayer dollars through no-bid contracts distributed under authority he gains by keeping Florida under a continued state of emergency.”