DOES YOUR STATE SUFFER FROM ED ISSUES? The Center on Budget Priorities and the States keeps a close watch on state education spending, and it recently brought focus to the impact of two federal policy realities.
The first are the sweeping cuts to federal health care and food assistance programs along with broad tax cuts. “Unlike the federal government, states must balance their budgets each year, so when Congress pushes new costs onto states and provides less funding, states must either raise new revenue or cut services.” While the cuts led some states to rein in spending on state school voucher programs, 11 states increased funding or expanded eligibility for school vouchers in 2026.
The second is the federal voucher program funded by federal tax credits. “Opting into the program won’t directly affect state education funding, but funding for local school districts could decline if the federal program incentivizes more students to leave public schools for private schools and state funding formulas don’t otherwise adjust. When public school enrollment declines, schools often must stretch fewer dollars over a similar amount of fixed expenses.”
(GUARD)RAILING AGAINST VOUCHERS Speaking of the federal voucher program, Peter Greene writes in Forbes (sorry, paywall) that the program may prompt a round of state regulations and guardrails for states opting into the optional program. “(T)hose states may move to insure that federal vouchers do not bring with them the fraud and abuse seen in other states.
EXPLOSIVE NEWS Guess what lab at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention was gutted last year by DOGE? That would be the one that deals with the diarrhea-causing parasite cyclospora that’s making its way through digestive systems all over the country. According to a molecular parasitologist who led the team, it was downsized from 11 people to just three, WIRED reports.
PROJECT 2025 IRL The Trump administration is implementing another page from Project 2025, the blueprint that Trump disavowed during his campaign: aggressively working to privatize the Transportation Safety Administration (TSA). Project 2025 called for, at best, TSA privatization and, at least, ridding the TSA workers of labor union representation. And so, in addition to expanding the TSA Gold+ initiative to more airports (Des Moines and Tampa international airports most recently), the Department of Homeland Security has attempted to terminate the collective bargaining agreement that covers TSA airport screeners. Thanks to a federal judge ruling in January, that attempt has failed. Last week, Trump added to the already significant roster of Project 2025 alumni in his administration when he nominated one of the document’s co-authors, Dennis Kirk, to serve as inspector general in the Interior department.
ENDQUOTE “Now, if today, you and I were to introduce the idea of a building that lends out books for free, we would be slandered in the same way that so many new ideas are slandered today, and yet that’s the library. And the same thing with the Fire Department [and] the same with public schools.”–New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani on The Weekly Show with Jon Stewart