Last week, Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos confirmed what we have long suspected: she and President Trump are prioritizing private education at the expense of an equitable K-12 public education for all. 

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In DeVos’s America, this is what education looks like:

• Before- and after-school programs and anti-bullying and student health initiatives are relics of a more equitable time;
• Latinx and Black students—who are historically most impacted by the achievement gap—are left behind in public schools, where classrooms are without consistent instruction and libraries full of outdated materials;
• Drop-out rates skyrocket and graduation rates plummet for students of color; and
• Wealthy families continue to send their children to private and religious schools, but tuition is cheaper because the federal government is picking up part of the tab.

Here’s what this means for California:

• Black, Latinx, and American Indian youth in low-income schools will lose some 3,600 teachers, making classes bigger and individual supports rare;
• Highly qualified teachers and administrators will be harder to come by in low-income schools, which typically have high Black, Latinx and American Indian student enrollment rates; 
• Millions of dollars in much needed resources are derailed away from California’s students; and
• School vouchers become the norm, putting money in the pockets of religious organizations, investors and wealthy families.

Secretary DeVos is actively pushing your federal representatives to not only support her draconian cuts to education, but also funnel the limited remaining funds into private and religious schools that operate free from the educational and anti-discrimination standards. 

Here’s how you can help us stand behind California’s students:

• Resist the budget. Tell your congressperson and senator that this budget will harm our students and must not be passed;
• Demand more money for our kids. The Department of Education, which accounts for less than 3% of the entire federal budget, is already underfunded. There is no denying it—students need adequate educational materials to learn, and schools need money to provide those resources. 
• Educate your friends and family and challenge the school choice myth that the administration is peddling.   

Trump and DeVos want to dismantle programs that help bridge educational gaps that exist both nationally and locally. California received $4.09 billion in federal funds for elementary and secondary education programs this year, and stands to lose over $450 million dollars—about 10% of the existing budget. Far from fake news, this budget confirms an objective truth: Trump and DeVos are abandoning America’s needy and vulnerable children.

> Learn more: Download a factsheet on Trump's proposed education cuts (.pdf)

Trump’s reaction to the recent London terrorist attack was not only arrogant and tasteless. It was frightening.

Before issuing any message of condolence to or solidarity with the British people, he exploited the London attack to defend his Muslim ban and bully the U.S. courts. He accused the courts of taking away “our rights.” Think about that.

The Constitution protects the basic rights of all Americans. The courts, in citing the establishment of religion clause as a reason to strike down a religious test for entry to our country, are protecting our right to live in a country that does not “favor or disfavor one religion over another.”

Yet Trump seeks to use the fear of terrorism to divide Americans into “us” and “them,” suggesting that the courts, in striking down the ban as unconstitutional, have been defending their rights at the expense of our rights.  

Trump has to know – or at least his attorneys must have told him – that his repeated tweets about Muslims undermine his beloved travel bans. And yet he persists to the point that it becomes apparent his real goal is to stoke fear and division. Just last weekend he tweeted, “we are EXTREME VETTING people coming into the U.S.” So, then, why do we need the travel ban? What other purpose does this posturing serve but stoking anti-Muslim sentiment?

What is the endgame to all this?

A chilling possibility came from Trump’s favorite “news” source. On Fox News, British politician and commentator Neil Farage called for internment camps for terrorist suspects. Sounding a lot like Trump, he blamed “political correctness” for preventing “genuine action.”

You might think it is farfetched that an American politician would even mention internment camps as a solution. But, remember, during the presidential election campaign, then-candidate Trump refused to say whether he would have supported or opposed the internment of Japanese Americans during World War II.

“I certainly hate the concept of it,” he said. “But I would have had to be there at the time to give you a proper answer.”

Incredibly, Kris Kobach, a Trump transition team member, later cited the internment of Japanese Americans as “precedent” supporting a Muslim registry. Then-Fox host Megyn Kelly struck back, “You can’t be citing Japanese internment camps as precedent for anything.”

Sadly, the legal basis for sending Japanese Americans to camps has never been completely erased. The ACLU lost its constitutional challenge to the wartime orders that authorized the internment – Korematsu v. United States. The disgraceful 1944 Supreme Court decision has never been overturned. At the time, Justice Robert Jackson wrote in dissent that the decision “lies about like a loaded weapon, ready for the hand of any authority that can bring forward a plausible claim of an urgent need.”

What would happen if this country suffered an attack like those that have recently hit Europe? Would Trump reach for the “loaded weapon?”

In 1988, Congress passed and President Reagan signed legislation apologizing to the approximately 120,000 placed in U.S. detention camps during World War II and authorizing reparations. The legislation declared of this shameful chapter in our nation’s history: “The internment of the individuals of Japanese ancestry was caused by racial prejudice, war hysteria and a failure of political leadership.”

That last sentence, in quotes, is exactly 140-characters – the maximum length of a tweet. If only our current president could tweet anything that true, vital and just.

Imagine you just moved to Los Angeles. You can’t find a job and are temporarily homeless. And just when you think things can’t get worse, you’re arrested for blocking a sidewalk when you set up a tent to sleep. You appear at your court date and because you can’t afford a lawyer, the judge tells you to speak with a public defender.

But that’s not free. The public defender immediately hands you a form that says that you must send a check for $50 to a private collections agency to “register” for an attorney. The fee is due in five days, and the form doesn’t say anything about what to do if you can’t pay it.

For many years, low-income defendants in Los Angeles who needed a public defender have faced this dilemma. But today, all of that changed when the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors voted to end the collection of upfront “registration fees.”

The ACLU of Southern California, which recommended the elimination of the fee in Los Angeles County, has released a report on the little known fee requirement that exists in many courts. The report calls for the elimination of registration fees statewide.

Forty-three states charge fees for using a public defender, and 27 of these charge upfront “registration fees” like the one that was just repealed in Los Angeles. These upfront fees can range from $10 all the way up to $480 in some states, and defendants can be charged thousands of dollars after a case is over.

The Supreme Court has made it clear that the Sixth Amendment requires the government to provide a lawyer for everyone who is too poor to hire one. Charging a “registration fee” to indigent defendants violates this right.

It also undermines effective representation. In investigating this issue, the ACLU spoke to many public defenders who are deeply troubled by this practice. When a client walks in the door, public defenders almost immediately have to hand the person a form saying that they owe a fee and could be sent to collections if they don’t pay it. This isn’t exactly a recipe for building trust between an attorney and a client.

Even worse, some people may opt to represent themselves when they hear about the fee.

It’s time for other counties in California to follow Los Angeles’s lead. Public defender fees are still authorized in many large counties in California, including San Diego, San Bernardino and Riverside, and these counties should take swift action to end public defender fees.

Across California, there are several fees that shift the costs of our criminal justice system onto members of our communities who can least afford to pay them. When a person is convicted of a crime, a multitude of fees are added, often dwarfing the original fine that is the intended as a punishment. These include things such as a “state penalty assessment” to fund state projects, a “court facilities fee” to fund new courthouse building projects, and a fee for the “DNA identification fund,” even if no DNA was collected in the case. These fees add up to a mountain of court debt that can prevent people from getting a job or housing after a criminal conviction.

Eliminating unjust court fees can protect access to justice for low-income residents throughout California.