When one judge blocks a president’s policies nationwide, alarm bells ring. Should a single judge wield this much power? Can they halt policies across the entire country after just a quick first look at whether they might be illegal? The Supreme Court now .

Up first: An order for schools to kill diversity, equity and inclusion — or else. 

Schools and universities were given 14 days to end diversity initiatives or risk losing federal funding. But the order’s vague language, civil rights advocates argue, could have a chilling effect and encourage schools to eliminate everything related to race. |

• Suggesting statewide resistance to the DEI order, Massachusetts Gov. Maura Healey responded by saying “we are going to stay true to who we are in Massachusetts.” |
• Michigan state Superintendent Michael Rice said a review of Trump’s letter “will take time,” but as of now, the state education department “continues to support diversity in literature, comprehensive history instruction and broad recruitment to Grow Your Own programs for students and support staff to become teachers.” |
• Meanwhile, in Louisiana, state Superintendent of Education Cade Brumley endorsed Trump’s DEI directive, noting in a letter this week that his department is working to “stop inherently divisive concepts, like Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI), from infiltrating Louisiana’s K-12 public education system.” |
• Trump’s order applies a broad interpretation of a recent Supreme Court ruling that struck down affirmative action in college admissions and could be leveraged to restrict content taught in classrooms. |
• My colleague Linda Jacobson reported this week on the Education Department’s abrupt decision to terminate $600 million in teacher training grants, many specifically designed to recruit future educators of color, who are underrepresented in the classroom. | ����Ӱ��

• After PBS scrubbed a video series on LGBTQ history in response to Trump’s DEI orders, the content has a new home: the New York City school district’s website. |
• A new lawsuit by college professors and diversity professionals alleges the order is unconstitutional. “In the United States, there is no king,” they write in their complaint. “In his crusade to erase diversity, equity, inclusion and accessibility from our country, President Trump cannot usurp Congress’s exclusive power of the purse, nor can he silence those who disagree with him by threatening them with the loss of federal funds and other enforcement actions.” |
• A coalition of civil rights groups filed suit against the Trump administration on Wednesday, arguing the DEI order infringed on their free speech rights. NAACP Legal Defense Fund President and Director-Counsel Janai Nelson said that “beyond spreading inaccurate, dehumanizing and divisive rhetoric,” Trump’s orders tie the hands of organizations that are “providing critical services to people who need them most.” |

More from Washington: Trump’s executive order to end birthright citizenship for children whose parents are undocumented or on work visas remains blocked after an appeals court declined to reinstate it — and paved the way for a potential battle in the Supreme Court. |

• A majority of Amerians in a recent poll opposed ending birthright citizenship and another Trump order allowing immigration agents to make arrests in churches, schools and other sensitive locations once considered off limits. |

Two federal courts have blocked a Trump executive order that sought to restrict transgender youth from receiving gender-affirming care, with a Washington judge writing the directive violated the Constitution’s Equal Protection Clause and disregarded Congress. |

‘It looks like a zoo’: Children are among the nearly 100 migrants who were recently deported from the U.S. to Panama and placed in a detention camp with “fenced cages” on the outskirts of the jungle. |

Trump issued an order on Thursday to end “all taxpayer-funded benefits for illegal aliens.” But undocumented immigrants generally don’t qualify for federal benefits with one major exception: In 1982, the Supreme Court found that all children, regardless of their immigration status, are entitled to a free K-12 education. |

More in the news

A judge has ordered the Milwaukee school district to station police officers on campuses within 10 days or face sanctions. Amid a dispute over school police funding, the district has not complied for more than a year with a state law that mandates police in schools. |

School police in Texas have opened an investigation into the suicide death of an 11-year-old girl after her mother said the middle school student suffered pervasive bullying from classmates who claimed her family was in the country illegally and threatened to have them deported. |

Sandy Hook Promise was credited with helping to thwart an 18-year-old Indiana student’s plot to commit a mass school shooting on Valentine’s Day. Police reports note a tipster to the nonprofit’s anonymous reporting system said “their friend has access to an AR15 and has just ordered a bulletproof vest.” |

Missouri public schools would be required to develop cardiac emergency response plans and equip campuses with automated external defibrillators under bipartisan legislation. |

Fewer than half of Texas school districts are in compliance with a 2023 law requiring armed security at every campus. |

Graduates of a Kent, Connecticut, boarding school have sued the institution on allegations its former IT administrator accessed financial records, medical information, photos and videos from hundreds of former students and employees. “There are potentially many hundreds of former Kent School students and employees who are victims of [the school official’s] personal invasion and sexual exploitation,” the complaint alleges. |

Kept in the Dark

For a recent investigation for ����Ӱ�� and Wired, I fell down a dark web rabbit hole and chronicled more than 300 school cyberattacks in the last five years — and revealed the degree to which school leaders in virtually every state repeatedly provide false assurances to students, parents and staff about the security of their sensitive information. 

This week, I highlighted my investigation into a ransomware attack on the Minneapolis school district — an “encryption event,” according to school officials — which led to the widespread exposure of students’ sensitive data. What the district told the public and the FBI, documents I obtained through public records requests show, differed drastically. 

ICYMI @The74

• Students Fearful After Posts Threaten to Report Undocumented Peers to ICE

• Parents, Medical Providers, Vaccine Experts Brace for RFK Jr.’s HHS Takeover

• ‘Evict Elon’: Teachers Union, Others Sue to Stop DOGE’s Access to Ed Dept. Data

• After Declaring NAEP Off-Limits, Education Department Cancels Upcoming Test

Emotional support

If Kathy Moore’s pup Sinead knows one thing, it’s how to build a good fort to ride out these cold winter days. 

A federal judge in Washington state today President Donald J. Trump’s three-day-old executive order to end birthright citizenship. U.S. District Judge John C. Coughenour, a Reagan appointee, called the order .” He agreed with the four state plaintiffs that it would cause irreparable harm to those denied their right to citizenship, subjected to the risk of deportation and family separation and deprived of federally funded medical care and public benefits that “prevent child poverty and promote child health,” also impacting their education. A separate federal lawsuit is pending in Massachusetts.

— plus San Francisco and Washington, D.C. — and several civil rights groups are suing to block President Donald J. Trump’s move to undo birthright citizenship through executive order, a constitutional challenge education leaders say could transform public schools. 

Trump, who rode a to a second term, argues that to any child whose mother is unlawfully present in the United States or lawfully present on a temporary basis — such as foreign students — and whose father is neither a citizen nor a lawful permanent resident. 

The move garnered immediate backlash: Birthright citizenship is guaranteed by the 14th Amendment, ratified in 1868. It states that “all persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the state wherein they reside.” 

“If you lose the protections of birthright citizenship and is overturned or somehow ignored, then I think a lot of families would withdraw their children from school out of fear of deportation,” said immigration advocate and policy expert Timothy Boals, referring to the 1982 Supreme Court case which forbids schools from denying enrollment based on a child’s or their parents’ immigration status. 

Conservative forces aligned with the Trump administration have been strategizing an end to Plyler . That potential threat is now being amplified with the affront on birthright citizenship and Tuesday’s announcement that Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers are now free to , churches and other once-protected areas. The president has already pledged and a return to .

“What that means is more children are denied an education and that’s not good for our society if they end up staying,” said Boals, “and it’s certainly not good for the students wherever they end up going.”

Speaking specifically about the ICE enforcement change, Laura Gardner, who founded Immigrant Connections, a consulting group that works with educators, said the policy will create “intense fear” and could negatively impact student attendance and family engagement. It will also be difficult for teachers, whom she said can’t do their job when children aren’t in school. 

“As educators, we always remind students and families that schools are a safe space and now we can’t really guarantee that,” she told ����Ӱ��. “Ultimately, all this is going to do is hurt innocent children.”

About lived with an unauthorized immigrant parent in 2022, according to the Pew Research Center. About 250,000 babies were born to unauthorized immigrant parents in the United States in 2016, the latest year for which information is available, according to . This represents a 36% decrease from a peak of about 390,000 in 2007.

The president also seeks to prohibit government agencies from issuing documents recognizing an infant’s citizenship if born under the circumstances he outlined — or from accepting documents issued by state, local or other authorities acknowledging their citizenship. 

The controversial order could go into effect Feb. 19, leaving children born on U.S. soil to non-citizen parents, from that date on, without any legal status. “They will all be deportable and many will be stateless,” according to . 

It said Trump has no right to rewrite or nullify a constitutional amendment, “Nor is he empowered by any other source of law to limit who receives United States citizenship at birth.”

Anthony D. Romero, executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union, one of the groups fighting the move, called it a reckless and ruthless repudiation of American values.

“Birthright citizenship is part of what makes the United States the strong and dynamic nation that it is,” he said. “This order seeks to repeat one of the gravest errors in American history, by creating a permanent subclass of people born in the U.S. who are denied full rights as Americans.”

Romero’s remarks harken back to one of the Supreme Court’s most reviled rulings: . In that 1857 case, the court ruled that enslaved people, including Dred Scott, were not citizens of the United States and, as a result, could not expect any protection from the federal government or courts, according to the . 

The ruling, which pushed the nation toward civil war, was essentially undone by the 13th and 14th amendments. 

New York Attorney General Letitia James lambasted Trump for trying to reverse what has been a hallmark of the nation for more than 150 years.

“This executive order is nothing but an attempt to sow division and fear, but we are prepared to fight back with the full force of the law to uphold the integrity of our Constitution,” she said. “As Attorney General, I will always protect the legal rights of immigrants and their families and communities.”

If Trump’s order is implemented, the U.S. would join other nations that do not allow birthright citizenship — or greatly restrict such protections — including and Australia. 

As of 2022, reported that unauthorized immigrants represented 3.3% of the total U.S. population and 23% of the foreign-born population: Immigrants as a whole comprised 14.3% of the nation’s population that year, below the record high of 14.8% reached in 1890.

At an inaugural prayer service Tuesday, an Episcopal bishop made to reconsider his views on immigrants and their kids. 

“… they may not be citizens or have the proper documentation, but the vast majority of immigrants are not criminals. They pay taxes and are good neighbors,” the Rev. Mariann Edgar Budde said. “… I ask you to have mercy, Mr. President, on those in our communities whose children fear their parents will be taken away …”

The next day Trumpand described Edgar Budde as a “so-called Bishop” and a “Radical Left hard line Trump hater” who was not compelling or smart.