Political Glance
The University of Arizona has become the seventh US university to reject a Trump administration proposal that would grant schools funding priority if they agreed to support the administration’s conservative agenda.
The decision follows the administration’s push for nine universities to sign a “Compact for Academic Excellence in Higher Education,” which seeks to make sweeping changes to campus culture, hiring and admissions practices and foreign student enrollment. Demands from the Trump administration’s 10-point compact include reforms to the way race or ethnicity are used in admission and hiring practices, as well as a commitment to strict definitions of gender, among others.
The deadline for universities to provide their initial feedback on the draft of the compact is 20 October.
In a letter to the Department of Education sent Monday, Suresh Garimella, the University of Arizona president, said that “principles like academic freedom, merit-based research funding and institutional independence are foundational and must be preserved”.
“We seek no special treatment and believe in our ability to compete for federally funded research strictly on merit,” Garimella said in the letter.
Paul Ingrassia, President Donald Trump’s embattled nominee to lead the Office of Special Counsel, told a group of fellow Republicans in a text chain the Martin Luther King Jr. holiday should be “tossed into the seventh circle of hell” and said he has “a Nazi streak,” according to a text chat viewed by POLITICO.
A city councilmember in Florida is facing backlash from national Indian American organizations, members of Congress, and local residents after posting a series of social media messages that insulted Indian people living in the US and called for them to be deported en masse.
Lately, on any given day, you'll find Leann Villaluz knocking on doors around Kansas City to get people to sign a petition that would let voters decide the fate of the state's new congressional map.
A Vermont state lawmaker has resigned over racist and antisemitic chat messages that circulated within the Young Republican political group, another substantial consequence in a scandal that on Friday saw the New York state Young Republicans’ charter revoked.
Millions of people turned out nationwide on Oct. 18 to protest actions by the Trump administration and celebrate their Constitutional rights to freedom of speech and assembly.
