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The House of Delegates passed four Maryland health care bills this week aim to ensure protections under the Trump administration.
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President Donald Trump on Wednesday defended his administration’s decision to lay off about half of the U.S. Department of Education’s staff, citing the department’s own data on the U.S.’s relatively low academic rankings compared to other countries.
Speaking to reporters at the White House, Trump backed Education Secretary Linda McMahon’s efforts while reiterating his goal to move the government’s oversight of the nation’s academic efforts from federal to state leaders. Trump said he’s concerned that students in China, Norway, Denmark and Sweden are performing better than those who go to schools in the U.S.
“We have a dream. And you know what the dream is? We’re going to move the Department of Education,” Trump said during a bilateral meeting with Ireland Prime Minister Michael Martin. “We’re going to move education into the states, so that the states — instead of bureaucrats working in Washington — can run education.”
The timing of the workforce cuts align with Trump’s expected upcoming executive order attempting to dismantle the agency.
McMahon has also said that she supports a reduction of the Education Department’s workforce, noting the move reflects its “commitment to efficiency, accountability, and ensuring that resources are directed where they matter most: to students, parents, and teachers.”
The president and the Education secretary’s efforts to dismantle the federal agency has ignited opposition from Democrats, the national teacher’s unions and other activists who believe the federal government needs to support its students.
The move has garnered support from conservative parents rights groups and others who support state oversight of education.
Contributing: Zachary Schermele; USA TODAY
Contact Kayla Jimenez at kjimenez@usatoday.com. Follow her on X at @kaylajjimenez.
Mental health challenges continue to grow and can have a significant impact on employees. According to new data from America’s Health Rankings, nearly 15% of adults in Florida reported experiencing frequent mental distress in 2024, according to Dr. Danielle Madril, Chief Medical Officer at UnitedHealthcare of Florida, To focus on just one condition, 40 million American adults suffer from anxiety disorders that can impact quality of life both inside and outside the office, and anxiety is now the no. 1 mental health issue among American workers, Dr. Madril said. Workload and working long hours can have a negative impact on overall mental health, happiness, and well-being, according to the American Psychological Association. Supporting Employee Mental Health Needs Surveys shows that employees overwhelmingly believe support for mental health at work is important. In fact, 92% of workers said it is very or somewhat important to them to work for an organization that values their emotional and psychological well-being. Having affordable mental health care is, therefore, crucial to promoting well-being and a positive employee experience. Offering employees modernized health plans can help the workforce more readily access needed services to support their overall health, wellbeing and experience, she said. Modernized Health Plans Offer Better Access The Surest health plan from UnitedHealthcare gives employees the tools to search for mental health care through an easy-to-use digital shopping experience that can help improve access and lower the total cost of care. Surest eliminates deductibles and coinsurance. Instead, members have copays that vary based on the provider and facility, with higher-value options costing less. Providers are evaluated on how they have performed historically on certain criteria like effectiveness and cost efficiency. Recent studies found the Surest model lowered consumer out-of-pocket costs by 54%. For employers, total cost per member per month was 11% lower with Surest. Women who choose Surest paid 88% less for anxiety-related provider visits and 82% less for depression-related visits compared to members on a conventional health plan, according to one recent study. Data also shows that Surest members interact with the health system more frequently when they need care, including 20% more physician visits, a 9% increase in preventive physical exams, a 15% increase in preventive mammograms and a 34% increase in preventive colonoscopies. They also tended to opt for better provider options with 92% of members selecting high-efficiency providers. Digital Resources Offer Support and Convenience Studies show that Surest members also have improved access to care. Eligible Surest members can now access digital tools such as Calm Health, as a part of their mental health benefits. Calm Health offers an entry point for eligible Surest members to connect with personalized resources to help support their mental health in-the-moment or as a supplement to engagement with a licensed professional. Calm Health is an evidence-based mental health app, designed to help members access personalized mental health support, including mental health screenings, therapy referrals, personalized programs and daily self-care content. By offering more modern health plans and digital resources, employers can enhance their employees' access to mental health care. These types of resources reduce out-of-pocket costs, improve health outcomes and can help create a more engaged, productive and satisfied workforce.
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This article has been updated to include additional information about IDEA funds and to correct an incorrect quote.
It’s a national issue with a broad local impact: With half of the U.S. Department of Education’s staff cut, what does that mean for Brevard students?
On Tuesday, President Donald Trump announced that about half the DOE workforce would be slashed, with the Federal Student Aid Office and Office for Civil Rights being most impacted. The Federal Student Aid Office handles student loan and financial aid distribution, while the Office for Civil Rights protects students and teachers from discrimination.
The move was part of the Trump administration’s goal to shut down the agency to cut federal bureaucracy, a mission Secretary of Education Linda McMahon has vowed to carry out.
“We have a dream. And you know what the dream is? We’re going to move the Department of Education,” Trump said during a bilateral meeting with Ireland Prime Minister Michael Martin Wednesday. “We’re going to move education into the states, so that the states — instead of bureaucrats working in Washington — can run education.”
But some see major risks with the effort, which has potential to affect everything from VPK programs to how Brevard students receive, or pay, student loans.
That’s because the Department of Education handles funds that go to districts, students and universities for numerous purposes, such as providing equal education for students from poor communities, loaning college students money to complete a degree, ensuring disabled students receive access to education and helping young kids from low-income households receive a VPK education through programs like Head Start. Without the department, those funds would instead go to states to divvy up. It would be up to each state how the money would be used.
Andrew Spar, president of Florida Education Association, raised concerns about how each state might decide to use those funds.
“In a state like Florida, where we already woefully underfund our public schools, and where we divert dollars away from our public schools on a daily basis, that’s a concern for schools and for districts that they all of a sudden can find themselves significantly short of resources to serve our most at-risk student populations,” Spar said. “That, I think, is the biggest concern that anyone in Florida would have, is … what happens with those dollars?”
Here’s a glance at different areas in which federal funds are utilized by pre-K through post-secondary Space Coast students.
Title I is a program that provides supplemental financial assistance to school districts for kids from low-income families. Ultimately, it should help these students receive a fair education and close educational achievement gaps, according to the National Center for Educational Statistics.
In Brevard, Title I funding goes toward helping unhoused students, providing services to migrant children, engaging families in their children’s schooling, staff development and Step FOUR ward VPK and Head Start. Funding comes from the federal department of education, and it’s also generated by the number of low-income students who live in Title I school attendance areas but attend private school.
This year, Brevard has 41 public and charter Title I schools and 33 private schools, according to BPS’ website.
FLORIDA TODAY reached out to Brevard Public Schools’ communication department, Superintendent Mark Rendell and the school board for comment on how they would approach the potential loss of Title I funds. Board member Katye Campbell was the only one to respond via email, saying she believes that those who believe that the dissolution of the Department of Education will mean the end of Title I or IDEA are misinformed or being purposefully inflammatory.
“Both streams of funding are federal law, and the DOE is basically a pass through of those funds to the states,” she said. “In the unlikely event that those funding sources go away, it will be up to the state of Florida, not the individual school boards, to find a way to comply with federal law for students with disabilities and economically disadvantaged students.”
The Individuals with Disabilities Education Act, or IDEA, is a law governing special education in the United States. It guarantees a free, appropriate public education for disabled children and ensures they’ll receive special education and related services such as early intervention, according to DOE.
The law authorizes formula grants to state and discretionary grants to applicants such as state educational agencies, institutions of higher education and nonprofit organizations.
State formula grants are sent to states annually for early intervention services and special education. These grants go to state programs, preschool programs and infants and families programs.
Discretionary grants are awarded through a competitive process. There are six possible grant programs for which agencies, educational institutions and nonprofit organizations can apply.
Special education in Florida is called Exceptional Student Education, or ESE. In her email to FLORIDA TODAY, Campbell said the district does not receive full federal funding for ESE students. The funding they do receive is enough cover about 13% of necessary services, she said, adding that IDEA was supposed to cover 40% originally.
During the 2024 fiscal year, the approved budget showed that the district received revenue funds for IDEA that amounted to $28,316,964.
Lindsay Kubatzky, director of policy and advocacy at the National Center for Learning Disabilities, said the staffing cuts will impact the more than 7 million public school students with disabilities.
“The primary role of the Department of Education is to protect and uphold the rights of students and their families,” she said, adding that in the 2023 fiscal year, the Office of Civil Rights handled 6,749 disability-related complaints and resolved about 6,400 of them.
“Slashing the number of committed public servants who work at OCR leaves our students vulnerable to discrimination, harassment, bullying and a lack of a free and appropriate education as codified under law 50 years ago,” Kubatzky said.
“These cuts are not ‘focused on unnecessary or reductive teams,’ as reported. The Department laid off nearly 250 attorneys, many of whom work in states across the country to protect the rights of students with disabilities. This is fundamentally about rolling back hard-fought protections for our most vulnerable and disenfranchised youth.”
How student loans will be handled — and who will handle them — is up in the air. Both Trump and McMahon have said DOE will likely not handle loans in the future, but rather the Small Business Administration or another agency.
“(Student loans) will likely be brought into either Treasury or Small Business Administration or Commerce,” Trump told reporters earlier this month. “I don’t think the education should be handling the loans, that’s not their business.”
McMahon told NewsNation that loans, as well as Pell grants — funds awarded to students who display “exceptional financial need” and generally haven’t earned a degree, according to DOE — “might be best served in another department.”
A March 7 executive order will also make it harder to achieve loan forgiveness through public service, with Trump ordering that individuals not have their loans forgiven if they worked with organizations that “engage in activities that have a substantial illegal purpose.”
The list of the type of activities organizations couldn’t take part in focused on work with migrants, transgender children and protests, with the order laying out that loan forgiveness would not be available to those who aided in the violation of immigration laws, supported terrorism or took part in violence to influence federal government policy, engaged in the “chemical and surgical castration or mutilation” of children or the “trafficking” of children to transgender sanctuary states, took part in “aiding and abetting illegal discrimination” or engaged in violating state state tort laws like obstructing highways or being a public nuisance.
On his first day in office, Trump begun slashing funding for research, starting with threatening grants related to DEI and later cutting funds to the National Institute of Health.
The reimbursement rate from NIH to universities for indirect costs of research would be capped at 15%, the Trump administration said, according to a post by NIH to X. This would be down from an average of about 27% to 28% and would save the government about $4 billion a year.
On March 5, a judge blocked Trump’s administration from carrying out the cuts to federal funding for NIH research. But universities are still bracing for the impact.
Florida Tech has a contingency plan should they lose funding through NIH, according to Hamid Rassoul, chief research officer and senior associate provost for research at the university.
“Florida Tech Facilities & Administrative costs are broad categories of spending in the name of conducting research,” Rassoul said in a statement to FLORIDA TODAY, adding that the school negotiates the rate with the federal government. Right now, the rate for on-campus federal grants and contracts is 44.87%. The proposed reduced rate is 15%.
“With our current F&A rate of approximately 45%, the eight NIH projects generate indirect costs totaling $616,000,” Rassoul said. “Under the proposed reduction of the F&A rate to 15%, the overhead would decrease to $215,000, resulting in a difference of just over $400,000.”
At this point, Florida Tech holds seven active NIH grants. They also received a small NIH subaward as part of a Vanderbilt University-led NIH project. All research projects and their deliverables will be completed as planned, Rassoul said.
University of Central Florida did not respond to FLORIDA TODAY’s request for comment.
Finch Walker is the education reporter at FLORIDA TODAY. Contact Walker at fwalker@floridatoday.com. X: @_finchwalker.
Watch CBS News
By Ahmad Mukhtar
/ CBS News
A Canadian woman who had appeared in an “American Pie” movie was detained for several days by U.S. immigration officials while attempting to cross the border from Mexico to the U.S. to renew her work visa, according to her mother. The woman’s father expects his daughter to be able to return to Canada as early as Friday.
Jasmine Mooney, a 35-year-old business consultant who appeared in several TV and movie roles including 2009’s “American Pie Presents: The Book of Love,” was detained by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement on March 3, her mother Alexis Eagles said Wednesday on Facebook. Eagles said Mooney attempted to cross the border with her visa paperwork and a job offer from a company in the U.S. An ICE spokesperson confirmed Mooney’s detainment in a statement to CBS News, saying she didn’t have legal documentation to be in the U.S.
Mooney was crossing the border to apply for a temporary visa known as a TN visa, which she had previously obtained successfully, according to Canadian broadcaster Global News. The TN visa is a nonimmigrant visa that allows Canadian and Mexican citizens to work in the U.S. in certain professional jobs under the terms of the North American free trade pact known as the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement.
Her visa was denied, and she was held at the San Ysidro border crossing in Southern California for three nights, according to Eagles. She was then transferred to the Otay Mesa Detention Center in San Diego and held for another three nights.
On Sunday, an online detainee locator system showed that Mooney had been released, according to Eagles, but 24 hours later, there was still no sign or communication from her, leaving her family and friends in a state of uncertainty and worry.
“We eventually learned that about 30 people, including Jasmine, were forcibly removed from their cells at 3:00 am and transferred to San Luis Detention Center in Arizona,” Eagles said on Facebook. “They are housed together in a single concrete cell with no natural light, fluorescent lights that are never turned off, no mats, no blankets, and limited bathroom facilities.”
Mooney’s friend Brittany Kors told Canadian newspaper The Globe and Mail that the U.S. Customs and Border Protection agency suddenly informed Mooney of her visa denial and she was detained as she was in the process of booking a flight back to Canada.
“Without any warning about what was about to transpire, I was literally just taken,” Mooney told CTV News in a phone interview from the Arizona detention facility. “I feel like I’ve been kidnapped.”
On Friday, the ICE spokesperson told CBS News that Mooney was processed in accordance with one of the many executive orders President Trump signed after starting his second term. “All aliens in violation of U.S. immigration law may be subject to arrest, detention and, if found removable by final order, removal from the U.S., regardless of nationality,” the spokesperson said in the statement.
Mooney’s father, Stephen Mooney, said in an interview with CBC Radio that he expected his daughter will be brought to a detention center in Tijuana, Mexico, and released. He’s expecting her to fly back to Vancouver, British Columbia, on Friday evening.
In a Facebook post on Thursday, Eagles said she purchased a plane ticket for her daughter and was waiting for ICE to approve it. She also said she was cautiously optimistic that Mooney will be home in the next couple of days.
Mooney’s mother said she was very concerned about her daughter’s living conditions in detention. She called ICE’s treatment of her daughter “inhumane and deeply concerning.”
“Being detained is one thing, but there’s NO excuse for the way people are treated while in custody or for the delays in deportation,” she said. “They are not criminals, and they just want to go home.”
Dina Destin, a spokesperson for Global Affairs Canada, told CBS News in a statement that they are aware of a Canadian’s detention in the U.S. and that consular officials are in contact with local authorities to gather information and provide consulate assistance.
“Every country or territory decides who can enter or exit through its borders. The Government of Canada cannot intervene on behalf of Canadian citizens with regard to the entry and exit requirements of another country,” Destin said in the statement.
Ahmad Mukhtar is a producer for CBS News based in Toronto, Canada. He covers politics, conflict and terrorism, with a focus on news from Canada and his home nation of Afghanistan, which he left following the Taliban’s return to power in 2021.
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