Georgia House panel adopts contingency plan for end of U.S. Department of Education
New Orleans activists demand release of Mahmoud Khalil, pro-Palestine protester being held in Louisiana ICE facility
Good morning. It's Friday, March 14, 2025 and in this morning's edition we're covering a Georgia House panel adopting a contingency plan for the end of U.S. Department of Education, New Orleans activists demand release of a pro-Palestine protester being held in a Louisiana ICE facility, Florida's governor installing allies at state universities, San Francisco city agencies "manipulated" nonprofit bidding process, House GOP votes to cut D.C.'s budget, California is enduring a lot of federal layoffs, Texas Tech closes after fires and power outages, Arkansas lawmakers target ballot initiatives, Arizona Republicans want chaplains in schools, a new bill in North Carolina that would allow the state's largest utility to abandon the state's climate goals and the most likely Medicaid cuts hurting North Carolina's rural residents the most.
Media outlets and others featured in this edition: Georgia Recorder, Florida Phoenix, Mission Local, The 51st, Verite News, The Texas Tribune, Bolts, Arizona Mirror, Inside Climate News, NC Newsline.
To continue reading the rest of each article, please click the link at the end of the excerpt.
A new resource from the State Democracy Research Initiative makes the current text of all 50 state constitutions available and searchable on one site. This was from State Court Report.
If you're a North Carolina resident and voted in the N.C. Supreme Court race that is still not certified, please check the list of over 60,000 votes that Jefferson Griffin is trying to discard after narrowly losing to Allison Riggs.
Stephen Whitlow from Triangle Blog Blog has more information. Readers can also visit the Orange County, N.C. group's website The Griffin List to search names and more.
Ga. Senate Bill 154 changes references to the U.S. Department of Education throughout state code
By: Ross Williams - March 12, 2025
A bill aimed at preparing Georgia for the potential dissolution of the U.S. Department of Education passed through a House subcommittee Wednesday with an addition from a Democratic state representative.
Senate Bill 154 changes references to the department throughout state code, adding “or its successor.”
The bill’s author, Cornelia Republican Sen. Bo Hatchett, said the change will allow Georgia to keep accrediting professionals like dentists, nurses, optometrists and others if the agency is abolished.
“Who its successor is, we are not aware of right now,” he said. “It may be kicked back to the states or maybe another federal agency, but that’s not for us to decide. What’s for us to decide is do we want Georgia to be prepared or not? And this will help Georgia to be prepared if and when the U.S. Department of Education is disbanded.”
Hatchett said he began work on the bill after President Donald Trump made campaign trail pledges to get rid of the department, but recent developments have made the measure more urgent.
“Timing is everything, and I had no way of knowing this was going to happen, but if you haven’t seen the news lately, I think the U.S. Department of Education is probably on its last few weeks if not days,” he said.
On Tuesday, the department announced it will be cutting about half of its current workforce.
Democrats and education advocates say gutting the department would risk programs Georgia students benefit from like speech services, career counseling and after school programs.
Newly sworn-in Education Secretary Linda McMahon has indicated she intends to wind the agency down and return its duties to the states, though eliminating it entirely will require an act of Congress.
Powder Springs state Rep. David Wilkerson said that’s not likely to happen.
“Defunding something does not remove the agency,” he said. “And I can pretty much be assured, as much as the president has made promises, you’re not going to get the votes in the (United States) Senate to do this. So you may have an empty building, you may have half of the staff, but I would be shocked if one side of the aisle decides to abolish the Department of Education. And they need that in the Senate, as we know how it works there. So is this just encouraging the behavior that we see coming from D.C. to say, ‘Look, states are already passing things to anticipate this?’”
“I don’t know of any other state that has done this yet,” Hatchett said.
“So every other state is going to be out of work, except for Georgia?” Wilkerson asked.
“I honestly haven’t looked at other states’ laws,” Hatchett answered. “What I’m doing is just trying to make sure – I mean, I looked at our laws, and the way they’re written, we would not technically be able to license a nurse moving forward if we don’t make this change. What happens in D.C., like you said, I can’t read their mind, but at least we know – and it looks like it’s going in this direction – we’re gonna be ready. And if nothing happens, we’re still gonna be ready.”
Wilkerson moved to amend the bill so that the relevant parts of it would not go into effect unless the department is officially abolished. He pitched it as a way to get Democratic support in the House after it passed along mostly party lines in the Senate.
Hatchett demurred at first, but eventually gave his support to the amendment because he said it would mean the bill could go into effect sooner if the Trump administration drops the ax on the department before the summer.
“Now that I’m thinking about it, I probably support this, because if it is to be dissolved faster, if it were to be dissolved tomorrow, his amendment would help that. So right now it’s effective on July 1, 2025, and if it were to be dissolved in the next couple of weeks, this would actually help us out.”
Before the bill can become law, it will need to pass out of the full House Education Committee as well as the full House before April 4 and receive Gov. Brian Kemp’s signature.
Ross Williams
New Orleans activists demand release of Mahmoud Khalil, pro-Palestine protester being held in Louisiana ICE facility
Khalil is being held at an ICE facility in Jena, Louisiana, according to the agency’s detainee tracker.
by Arielle Robinson March 11, 2025
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New Orleans activists took to the streets on Tuesday (March 11) to demand the release of an alumni of Columbia University who was arrested by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents over the weekend for leading pro-Palestine protests at Columbia.
ICE records show that Mahmoud Khalil, a Syrian-born Palestinian who is a lawful permanent resident of the United States, is being held at the Central Louisiana ICE Processing Center in Jena, about four hours northwest of New Orleans.
Khalil was arrested by ICE on Saturday. His arrest follows calls from President Donald Trump to cancel student visas and deport foreign students who have participated in recent college protests that the Trump administration and others have labeled as “antisemitic,” a label that protest participants have largely disputed, saying that they are supporting the Palestinian people.
If the administration follows through, students around the country involved in last year’s high-profile protests against Israel’s war in Gaza could be at risk.
Neither representatives at ICE headquarters in Washington nor in the agency’s New Orleans field office responded to requests for comment.
Khalil was arrested as a result of his involvement with student protesters at Columbia, who last spring erected a pro-Palestinian protest encampment that remained on university grounds for about two weeks.
During the Columbia protests, Khalil negotiated on the side of student protesters, who were lobbying the university to divest from its ties to Israel. In a news release, a top official with the ACLU called the detention of Khalil, a green card holder, “unprecedented, illegal, and un-American.”
“The First Amendment protects everyone in the U.S.,” Ben Wizner, director of the group’s Speech, Privacy, and Technology Project, said in the statement. “The government’s actions are obviously intended to intimidate and chill speech on one side of a public debate. The government must immediately return Mr. Khalil to New York, release him back to his family, and reverse course on this discriminatory policy.”
On Monday, a federal judge temporarily blocked the government from deporting Khalil. He was transferred hundreds of miles from an ICE facility in New Jersey to Jena. His wife is eight months pregnant.
Members of groups including Palestinian Youth Movement’s (PYM) New Orleans chapter, New Orleans Stop Helping Israel’s Ports and Union Migrante rallied in front of U.S. Rep. Troy Carter’s Poydras Street office on Tuesday, calling on the New Orleans Democrat to join 14 of his congressional colleagues in formally demanding that the Trump administration free Khalil.
Activists with the Palestinian Youth Movement also want Carter to meet with them, Palestinian elders and its coalition partners to find out if he’s doing anything about Khalil’s situation.
Carter released a statement on X, formerly known as Twitter, condemning Khalil’s arrest as a violation of the First Amendment. Carter also said he has been monitoring Khalil’s situation since he had been moved to Louisiana.
And in a Tuesday news release, Carter said he remained “deeply troubled” by Khalil’s arrest, emphasizing Khalil’s legal permanent residency status and free speech rights.
“Our focus should be on protecting students from harassment, whether antisemitic, anti-Black, anti-Arab, or any other form of hate,” the statement said.
Carter then went on to criticize what he called the “Musk-Trump administration,” saying that Trump had failed to improve the nation’s economy — as he pledged to do as a candidate — since he was inaugurated in January.
“I call on the Musk-Trump Administration to do the job you were supposedly elected to do, to address the economic concerns of the American people. Egg prices are still skyrocketing and the stock market is crashing. Do better.”
Arielle Robinson
