Free Republic

SAN FRANCISCO (AP) — The federal government is reversing the termination of legal status for international students around the U.S. after many filed court challenges against the Trump administration crackdown, a government lawyer said Friday.The records in a federal student database maintained by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement had been terminated in recent weeks, often without the students or their schools being notified. Judges around the country had already issued orders temporarily restoring the students’ records in dozens of lawsuits challenging the terminations.More than 1,200 students nationwide suddenly lost their legal status or had visas revoked, leaving them at risk...

A Congressional delegation traveled to Louisiana on Tuesday to demand the release of Rümeysa Öztürk, a PhD student at Tufts University, and Mahmoud Khalil, a 2024 Columbia University graduate, and to examine conditions at their separate detention facilities. It’s the first time a delegation has visited with either detainee. The visit was first reported by CNN. Sen. Ed Markey (D-Mass.) shared on X that he was heading to Louisiana to demand the release of Ozturk, one of his constituents. Markey was joined by fellow Democrats, Reps. Troy Carter (La.), Bennie Thompson (Miss.), Ayanna Pressley and Jim McGovern (Mass.). Ozturk’s arrest...

The Department of Education is poised to resume collections on defaulted federal student loans in May for the first time since 2020. While the first Trump administration paused referring federal student loans to collections in March 2020 at the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, the extended lapse has prompted Trump administration officials to worry that the federal student loan portfolio is "headed toward a fiscal cliff if we don't start repayment in collections," according to a senior department official. "The result has been that the federal government student loan portfolio has continued to grow, and we've got a record number...

Millions of student loan borrowers are expected to see their credit scores drop by summertime, reversing progress made under pandemic-era protections that lifted credit scores but expired last year.New York Fed research released Wednesday found that over 9 million borrowers with past-due balances could see "significant" decreases in their credit scores. The warning comes after many student loan borrowers' credit scores increased during the period of federal student loan forbearance, which temporarily suspended payment requirements and interest during the COVID-19 crisis. The typical borrower's score jumped 11 points in 2020, rising from 662 to 673.Ads by Money. We may be...

A sophomore at Brown University is facing the school's wrath after he sent a DOGE-like email to non-faculty employees asking them what they do all day to try to figure out why the elite school's tuition has gotten so expensive. "The inspiration for this is the rising cost of tuition," Alex Shieh told Fox News Digital in an interview. "Next year, it's set to be $93,064 to go to Brown," Shieh said of the Ivy League university. Brown's website estimates the total charges to attend the school for the 2025-2026 school year is even higher at $95,984. "‘And I think...

An Ohio substitute teacher was busted for allegedly offering a high school student $2,000 to kill her estranged husband in a bizarre murder-for-hire plot – that was foiled by the teen’s mother. Stephanie Demetrius, 44, was arrested Wednesday on first-degree conspiracy after the student’s mom discovered texts between her son and the sub at Academy for Urban Scholars High School discussing the lethal plan and contacted the police, according to court documents obtained by WSYX. “This particular teacher was attempting to groom this young person into committing murder,” Sgt. James Fuqua, with the Columbus Division of Police, told the outlet....

I’m Gen X. I was pretty young when I earned my PhD, so I’ve been a professor for a long time—over 30 years. If you’re not in academia, or it’s been awhile since you were in college, you might not know this: the students are not what they used to be. The problem with even talking about this topic at all is the knee-jerk response of, “yeah, just another old man complaining about the kids today, the same way everyone has since Gilgamesh. Shake your fist at the clouds, dude.”1 So yes, I’m ready to hear that. Go right ahead....

The U.S. student charged with 'child homicide' after allegedly throwing her baby out of a Paris hotel window has been moved to a secure psychiatric unit. Mia McQuillin, 18, was on Thursday out of formal police custody and in a specialist care unit. She was arrested on Monday in her second floor room at the Ibis Styles Hotel in the French capital's 20th arrondissement after a newborn was found on the street below. The child still had 'the umbilical cord' attached and was wrapped in a single sheet. Passers-by saw the baby lying on the pavement, and noticed the hotel...

Senate Democrats are very worried about just one Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) aide set to gain access to an IRS system after the Biden administration authorized 53 researchers and student volunteers – and hundreds of additional individuals – to access unmasked IRS data, an inspector general report detailed in September. The contradiction underscores the political success of DOGE’s initiative to cut waste, fraud, and abuse. Not only is the Trump administration seeking to save taxpayers money, but it is also forcing Democrats into a corner to presumably support waste, fraud, and abuse. Democrat Sens. Ron Wyden (D-OR) and Elizabeth...

The U.S. 8th Circuit Court of Appeals put a final end to former President Joe Biden's student loan forgiveness plan on Tuesday. Missouri Attorney General Andrew Bailey originally sued the Biden administration over its $500 million effort to wipe away student loans, known as the SAVE plan. The court's Tuesday ruling found that Biden's secretary of education had "gone well beyond this authority by designing a plan where loans are largely forgiven rather than repaid." Bailey noted in a statement that the ruling has no active impact beyond blocking future presidents from attempting Biden's maneuver. "Though Joe Biden is out...

Score another win for parental rights and common sense. Three school districts in New Jersey were given the green light to drop a controversial transgender student policy after years of legal wrangling. On Monday, a state appellate court issued the ruling allowing Monmouth County districts Middletown, Manalapan-Englishtown and Marlboro to remove from their books the state’s guidelines on how parents are notified if their child decides to transition. The decision was welcomed by members of the Middletown school board. On Thursday night, they voted 7 to 1 to toss controversial policy 5756 in the dustbin — and simply deal with...

If you have a complete and total disability, you may not be liable for repaying certain types of federal student loans. This is based on eligibility for the Total and Permanent Disability (TPD) Discharge Program, which is offered through the United States Department of Education and overseen by student loan servicer Nelnet. You need to meet specific disability requirements to qualify for loan forgiveness through this program, and there are three main ways you can get approved. If you are experiencing a total disability and you struggle to repay federal student loans as a result, read on to find out...

President Donald Trump’s executive order on foreigners who “support designated foreign terrorists” could be the start of a previously promised crackdown on radical pro-Palestinian students on American college campuses. The Monday directive from Trump orders the U.S. government to deport foreigners who “bear hostile attitudes toward [American] citizens, culture, government, institutions, or founding principles, and do not advocate for, aid, or support designated foreign terrorists and other threats to our national security.” That could describe plenty of foreign students advocating for Hamas and other terrorist groups at American universities, an analyst told the Daily Caller News Foundation. “If a student...

That relief includes nearly 85,000 people who attended schools that “cheated and defrauded their students,” 61,000 borrowers with a total and permanent disability and another 6,100 public service workers, Biden said in a statement.

A UCLA student is suing multiple California health care providers and hospitals for medical negligence, alleging she was wrongly diagnosed with gender dysphoria and then “fast-tracked onto the conveyor belt of irreversibly damaging” puberty blockers, cross-sex hormones and surgery, according to her lawsuit. Kaya Clementine Breen, 20, said she experienced sexual abuse as a young child, and by the time she was 11, she “began struggling with the thought of developing into a woman and began to believe that life would be easier if she were a boy,” according to her suit filed last week in Los Angeles County Superior...

Texas taxpayers pay an average of more than $50,000 per pupil for the state’s government-run schools. Vance Ginn, an economist who runs the Texas-based Vance Ginn Economic Consulting firm, highlighted Tuesday on X that when maintenance and operations (M&O) and debt service (I&S) taxes are combined with current levels of outstanding debt, the total per-pupil cost is $50,334. The average private school tuition, meanwhile, is only $11,340 annually per pupil. In Birdville Independent School District alone, “Texas has taxpayers funding $42K+ per student at ‘public schools,’” wrote Ginn. “1) $15,125 per student for M&O and debt service. 2) $27,504 per...

One day after Democrats fumed about his absence on the world stage and from his own administration, retiring President Biden has announced he will roll out even “more student debt cancellation,” work to “achieve a ceasefire in Gaza with the hostages released” and send further military assistance to Ukraine, according to an internal White House memo. The memo from Biden’s chief of staff Jeff Zients, which was addressed to all White House staff, outlined the 46th president’s foreign and domestic priorities for his remaining 42-day “sprint” before President-elect Donald Trump assumes office, a copy of the memo obtained by The...

A former Laramie High School student who was arrested over a dispute over masking had her lawsuit against the local school district revived Tuesday. It had been dismissed by a lower court in 2023... The former Laramie High School student who sued her school district for having her arrested after she refused to wear a mask has standing and can keep waging her lawsuit, an appeals court ruled Tuesday. Grace Smith and her parents Andy and Erin Smith sued the Albany County School District in August 2023, in federal court, over the district’s 2021 mask mandate. Smith had refused to...

WASHINGTON — The Biden administration announced a milestone Thursday in its effort to cancel Americans' student debt: It has provided relief to more than 1 million borrowers who work in public service. Through the Education Department's Public Service Loan Forgiveness program, the administration approved about $4.5 million in additional student loan relief for more than 60,000 borrowers, bringing the total relief through that program to $74 million for more than 1 million people. That brings the total amount of student debt relief under the administration to $175 billion for more than 4.8 million borrowers over the nearly four years President...

KAPOLEI (Hawaii News Now) -- The race for the White House is reaching local classrooms and one lesson has some parents raising their eyebrows. The controversy is over a two-page document that was handed out to classrooms at Kapolei Middle School. It broke down where the U.S. presidential candidates — Democratic Vice President Kamala Harris and Republican former President Donald Trump — stand on the issues. The state Department of Education confirms the document was put together by a group of teachers at the school who simplified the information in a candidate comparison article in the New York Times. The...