Thought of the Day
Hana yori dango means practical things over pretty things.
March 8th 2025
Edna Mae’s Sour Cream Pancakes
Edna Mae’s Sour Cream Pancakes
Edna Mae’s Sour Cream Pancake Recipe from The Pioneer Woman
Prep time: 10 minutes
Cooking time: 20 minutes
Serving size: 2 servings
Ingredients
- 2 large eggs
- 1/2 tsp. vanilla extract
- 7 Tbsp. all-purpose flour
- 2 Tbsp. sugar
- 1 tsp. baking soda
- 1/2 tsp. salt
- 1 cup sour cream
- Butter, for frying and serving
- Warm syrup, for serving
Directions
- In a small bowl, whisk together eggs and vanilla. Set aside.
- In a separate small bowl, stir together flour, sugar, baking soda, and salt.
- In a medium bowl, stir together the sour cream with the dry ingredients until just barely combined (don’t over-mix.) Whisk in the egg mixture until just combined.
- Heat a griddle over medium-low heat and melt some butter in the pan. Drop batter by 1/4 cup servings onto the griddle. Cook on the first side until bubbles start to form on the surface and edges are starting to brown. Flip to the other side and cook for another minute. (Pancakes will be a little on the soft side.)
- Serve with softened butter and syrup.
A South Carolina man executed by firing squad is the first US prisoner killed this way in 15 years
By JEFFREY COLLINS Associated Press
COLUMBIA, S.C. (AP) — A South Carolina man who killed his ex-girlfriend’s parents with a baseball bat was executed by firing squad Friday, the first U.S. prisoner in 15 years to die by that method, which he saw as preferable to the electric chair or lethal injection.
Three volunteer prison employees used rifles to carry out the execution of Brad Sigmon, 67, who was pronounced dead at 6:08 p.m.
Sigmon killed David and Gladys Larke in their Greenville County home in 2001 in a botched plot to kidnap their daughter. He told police he planned to take her for a romantic weekend, then kill her and himself.
Sigmon’s lawyers said he chose the firing squad because the electric chair would “cook him alive,” and he feared that a lethal injection of pentobarbital into his veins would send a rush of fluid and blood into his lungs and drown him.
The details of South Carolina’s lethal injection method are kept secret in South Carolina, and Sigmon unsuccessfully asked the state Supreme Court on Thursday to pause his execution because of that.
On Friday, Sigmon wore a black jumpsuit with a hood over his head and a white target with a red bullseye over his chest.
The armed prison employees stood 15 feet (4.6 meters) from where he sat in the state’s death chamber — the same distance as the backboard is from the free-throw line on a basketball court. Visible in the same small room was the state’s unused electric chair. The gurney used to carry out lethal injections had been rolled away.
The volunteers all fired at the same time through openings in a wall. They were not visible to about a dozen witnesses in a room separated from the chamber by bullet-resistant glass. Sigmon made several heavy breaths during the two minutes that elapsed from when the hood was placed to the shots being fired.
The shots, which sounded like they were fired at the same time, made a loud, jarring bang that caused witnesses to flinch. His arms briefly tensed when he was shot, and the target was blasted off his chest. He appeared to give another breath or two with a red stain on his chest, and small amounts of tissue could be seen from the wound during those breaths.
A doctor came out about a minute later and examined Sigmon for 90 seconds before declaring him dead.
Witnesses included three family members of the Larkes. Also present were Sigmon’s attorney and spiritual advisor, a representative from the prosecuting solicitor’s office, a sheriff’s investigator and three members of the news media.
Sigmon’s lawyer read a closing statement that he said was “one of love and a calling to my fellow Christians to help us end the death penalty.”
Prison spokeswoman Chrysti Shain said Sigmon’s last meal was four pieces of fried chicken, green beans, mashed potatoes with gravy, biscuits, cheesecake and sweet tea.
The firing squad is an execution method with a long and violent history in the U.S. and around the world. Death in a hail of bullets has been used to punish mutinies and desertion in armies, as frontier justice in America’s Old West and as a tool of terror and political repression in the former Soviet Union and Nazi Germany.
Since 1977 only three other prisoners in the U.S. have been executed by firing squad. All were in Utah, most recently Ronnie Lee Gardner in 2010. Another Utah man, Ralph Menzies, could be next; he is awaiting the result of a hearing in which his lawyers argued that his dementia makes him unfit for execution.
In South Carolina on Friday, a group of protesters holding signs with messages such as “All life is precious” and “Execute justice not people” gathered outside the prison before Sigmon’s execution.
Supporters and lawyers for Sigmon asked Republican Gov. Henry McMaster to commute his sentence to life in prison. They said he was a model prisoner trusted by guards and worked every day to atone for the killings and also that he committed the killings after succumbing to severe mental illness.
But McMaster denied the clemency plea. No governor has ever commuted a death sentence in the state, where 46 other prisoners have been executed since the death penalty resumed in the U.S. in 1976. Seven have died in the electric chair and 39 others by lethal injection.
Gerald “Bo” King, chief of the capital habeas unit in the federal public defender’s office, said Sigmon “used his final statement to call on his fellow people of faith to end the death penalty and spare the lives of the 28 men still locked up on South Carolina’s death row.”
“It is unfathomable that, in 2025, South Carolina would execute one of its citizens in this bloody spectacle,” King said in a statement. “But South Carolina has ended the life of a man who has devoted himself to his faith, and to ministry and service to all around him. Brad admitted his guilt at trial and shared his deep grief for his crimes with his jury and, in the years since, with everyone who knew him.”
In the early 2000s, South Carolina was among the busiest death penalty states, carrying out an average of three executions a year. But officials suspended executions for 13 years, in part because they were unable to obtain lethal injection drugs.
The state Supreme Court cleared the way to resume them in July. Freddie Owens was the first to be put to death, on Sept. 20, after McMaster denied him clemency. Richard Moore was executed on Nov. 1 and Marion Bowman Jr. on Jan. 31.
Going forward the court will allow an execution every five weeks.
South Carolina now has 28 inmates on its death row including two who have exhausted their appeals and are awaiting execution, most likely this spring. Just one man has been added to death row in the past decade.
Before executions were paused, more than 60 people faced death sentences. Many of those have either had their sentences reduced to life or died in prison.
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Associated Press writer Adrian Sainz in Memphis, Tennessee, contributed.
Why are clocks set forward in the spring? Thank wars, confusion and a hunger for sunlight
By JAMIE STENGLE Associated Press
DALLAS (AP) — Once again, most Americans will set their clocks forward by one hour this weekend, losing perhaps a bit of sleep but gaining more glorious sunlight in the evenings as the days warm into summer.
Where did this all come from, though?
How we came to move the clock forward in the spring, and then push it back in the fall, is a tale that spans over more than a century — one that’s driven by two world wars, mass confusion at times and a human desire to bask in the sun for a long as possible.
There’s been plenty of debate over the practice, but about 70 countries — about 40% of those across the globe — currently use what Americans call daylight saving time.
While springing the clocks forward “kind of jolts our system,” the extra daylight gets people outdoors, exercising and having fun, says Anne Buckle, web editor at timeanddate.com, which features information on time, time zones and astronomy.
“The really, really awesome advantage is the bright evenings, right?” she says. “It is actually having hours of daylight after you come home from work to spend time with your family or activities. And that is wonderful.”
Here are some things to know so you’ll be conversant about the practice of humans changing time:
How did this all get started?
In the 1890s, George Vernon Hudson, an astronomer and entomologist in New Zealand, proposed a time shift in the spring and fall to increase the daylight. And in the early 1900s, British homebuilder William Willett, troubled that people weren’t up enjoying the morning sunlight, made a similar push. But neither proposal gained enough traction to be implemented.
Germany began using daylight saving time during World War I with the thought that it would save energy. Other countries, including the United States, soon followed suit. During World War II, the U.S. once again instituted what was dubbed “war time” nationwide, this time year-round.
In the United States today, every state except Hawaii and Arizona observes daylight saving time. Around the world, Europe, much of Canada and part of Australia also implement it, while Russia and Asia don’t currently.
Inconsistency and mass confusion
After World War II, a patchwork of timekeeping emerged across the United States, with some areas keeping daylight saving time and others ditching it.
“You might have one town has daylight saving time, the neighboring town might have daylight saving time but start it and end it on different dates and the third neighboring town might not have it at all,” says David Prerau, author of the book “Seize the Daylight: The Curious and Contentious Story of Daylight Saving Time.”
At one point, if riders on a 35-mile (56-kilometer) bus ride from Steubenville, Ohio, to Moundsville, West Virginia, wanted their watches to be accurate, they’d need to change them seven times as they dipped in and out of daylight saving time, Prerau says.
So in 1966, the U.S. Congress passed the Uniform Time Act, which say states can either implement daylight saving time or not, but it has to be statewide. The act also mandates the day that daylight saving time starts and ends across the country.
Confusion over the time change isn’t just something from the past. In the nation of Lebanon last spring, chaos ensued when the government announced a last-minute decision to delay the start of daylight saving time by a month — until the end of the Muslim holy month of Ramadan. Some institutions made the change and others refused as citizens tried to piece together their schedules. Within days, the decision was reversed.
“It really turned into a huge mess where nobody knew what time it was,” Buckle says.
What would it be like if we didn’t change the clocks?
Changing the clocks twice a year leads to a lot of grumbling, and pushes to either use standard time all year, or stick to daylight saving time all year often crop up.
During the 1970s energy crisis, the U.S. started doing daylight saving time all year long, and Americans didn’t like it. With the sun not rising in the winter in some areas till around 9 a.m. or even later, people were waking up in the dark, going to work in the dark and sending their children to school in the dark, Prerau says.
”It became very unpopular very quickly,” Prerau says.
And, he notes, using standard time all year would mean losing that extra hour of daylight for eight months in the evenings in the United States.
A nod to the early adopters
In 1908, the Canadian city of Thunder Bay — then the two cities of Fort William and Port Arthur — changed from the central time zone to the eastern time zone for the summer and fall after a citizen named John Hewitson argued that would afford an extra hour of daylight to enjoy the outdoors, says Michael deJong, curator/archivist at the Thunder Bay Museum.
The next year, though, Port Arthur stayed on eastern time, while Fort William changed back to central time in the fall, which, predictably, “led to all sorts of confusion,” deJong says.
Today, the city of Thunder Bay is on eastern time, and observes daylight saving time, giving the area, “just delightfully warm, long days to enjoy” in the summer, says Paul Pepe, tourism manager for Thunder Bay Community Economic Development Commission.
The city, located on Lake Superior, is far enough north that the sun sets at around 10 p.m. in the summer, Pepe says, and that helps make up for their cold dark winters. Residents, he says, tend to go on vacations in the winter and stay home in the summer: “I think for a lot of folks here, the long days, the warm summer temperatures, it’s a vacation in your backyard.”
Bragg to Liberty and back again: Ceremony to rechristen Army post once named for a Confederate
By ALLEN BREED and MAKIYA SEMINERA Associated Press
FORT BRAGG, N.C. (AP) — The short-lived existence of Fort Liberty came to an end Friday when the nation’s largest Army installation officially returned to its former name: Fort Bragg.
Christened a century ago in honor of Confederate Gen. Braxton Bragg, the post in North Carolina was renamed in 2023 amid a drive to remove symbols of the Confederacy from public spaces.
But last month Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth signed an order reinstating the Bragg name, only this time it will honor Army Pfc. Roland L. Bragg, a World War II paratrooper and Silver Star recipient from Maine. A few hundred people — made up of active servicemen and members of the public — gathered under black and yellow tents in front of the base’s command center headquarters to watch the renaming ceremony.
“Today we honor a hero worthy of the name Bragg,” Lt. Gen. Greg Anderson said during the ceremony. “It is synonymous with excellence.”
Among the attendees were several members of Bragg’s family, including his daughter, Diane Watts, and his granddaughter, Rebecca Amirpour, who spoke on the family’s behalf during the ceremony. Amirpour described her grandfather as a “strong, hardworking and proud” man who didn’t discuss his military service in World War II very openly.
Bragg, who served with the 17th Airborne Division, received the Silver Star and a Purple Heart for exceptional courage during the Battle of the Bulge. He was captured by Germans and commandeered an ambulance back to safety with a few wounded paratroopers, one of which survived, Anderson said.
“Rank doesn’t mean a thing when you’re in a tight spot,” said Amirpour, who was reading an excerpt from a letter her grandfather had written while recovering from an injury in an Army hospital.
Before his deployment, Bragg — of Nobleboro, Maine — trained at the North Carolina post, Watts said.
When the redesignation was announced Feb. 10, some critics saw it as a cynical sop to President Donald Trump, who criticized the removal of Confederate names as “woke” and made restoring them part of his reelection campaign.
Fort Bragg’s name being restored was like a “phoenix rising from the ashes,” said retired Mjr. Al Woodall, who served at Fort Bragg at several points during his service. Woodall, who is Black, said he wasn’t bothered by the installation’s initial name origin. Instead, he felt connected to the name because it had been that way for more than 100 years.
Carl Helton, who served at Fort Bragg from 1962 to 1964, said he was “ecstatic” about the name change. The 80-year-old, who traveled about an hour to attend the ceremony, refused to call the installation Fort Liberty after it was initially renamed, he said.
“It should have never been changed to start with. It was all political anyway,” Helton said.
Hegseth signed the order during a flight to Europe and said in a video, “That’s right. Bragg is back.”
It took an act of Congress — overriding Trump’s 2020 veto — to remove Confederate names from military installations, including nine Army facilities. Although several lawmakers complained about the switch back to Bragg and its potential costs, it is unclear whether any lawmaker intends to challenge it.
The name changing continues.
Hegseth announced this week that Georgia’s Fort Moore would revert back to Fort Benning. Originally named for Confederate Brig. Gen. Henry L. Benning, it will now honor Cpl. Fred G. Benning, a recipient of the Distinguished Service Cross who served in France during World War I.
The Liberty-to-Bragg reversion was made without first consulting with Roland Bragg’s family, but his daughter was delighted by it.
The Army said in 2023 that changing the name to Fort Liberty would cost $8 million. North Carolina’s Department of Transportation said last month that it anticipated replacing dozens of roads signs at a cost of over $200,000.
Changing the name to Fort Liberty was a waste of money to begin with, said Mike D’Arcy, who served at Fort Bragg through the 1990s. He said a solution to having to pay more to revert Fort Bragg’s name should be cutting politician salaries instead.
To Woodall, the money spent on returning to Bragg is a well-spent investment.
“Just like coming back home again,” he said.
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This story has been corrected to reflect that Roland Bragg trained at the North Carolina post, not that he had no known connection to the post.
Angry Birds, Frogger and others are finalists for the World Video Game Hall of Fame
ROCHESTER, N.Y. (AP) — This year’s finalists for the World Video Game Hall of Fame include trailblazers in esports, electronic pets and portable gaming, as well as the arcade favorite brought to life in a 1998 episode of “Seinfeld.”
The Hall of Fame revealed the 12 finalists up for induction on Thursday and opened a week of public voting. The winners will be enshrined May 8 at the hall’s new space inside The Strong National Museum of Play in Rochester.
The 2025 finalists are: Age of Empires, Angry Birds, Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare, Defender, Frogger, Golden Eye, Golden Tee, Harvest Moon, Mattel Football, Quake, NBA 2K and Tamagotchi.
“This year’s finalists span the decades and range from arcade classics to one of the most popular mobile games of all time,” Jon-Paul C. Dyson, director of The Strong’s International Center for the History of Electronic Games, said in a news release. “All of these games have enormously influenced pop culture or the game industry itself.”
Released in 1977, Mattel Football was the first blockbuster handheld electronic game. It paved the way for systems like Nintendo’s Game Boy and today’s mobile devices, according to the hall. Three decades later, cellphones put another nominee into the hands of countless players. Rovio’s 2009 Angry Birds was downloaded billions of times and launched movies and merchandise.
Notable for their influence on esports, according to the Hall of Fame, are nominees: Golden Tee: Fore! by Incredible Technologies, the 1989 arcade golf game whose sequels included a 1995 version that allowed for tournaments; Sega’s 1999 NBA 2K, which inspired a professional esports league, and Id Software’s Quake, one of the first esports whose first-person shooter’s 3D engine became an industry standard.
Tamagotchi, which created a digital pet for its owner to raise, earned a nomination for bridging toys and video games in 1996. It was reborn as an app in 2013.
The nominees also include two arcade games released in 1981: Defender, by Williams Electronics, which the Hall of Fame said proved players would embrace more complex and challenging games; and Frogger, developed by Konami. Frogger cemented a place in pop culture with a 1998 episode of “Seinfeld,” in which George navigates a Frogger-style arcade cabinet across a busy road, mimicking the game’s frogs.
Microsoft’s 1997 Age of Empires was the company’s bestselling PC game to that date and is still played by millions around the world, the Hall of Fame said. Farming game Harvest Moon, released in 1996, offered a peaceful alternative to the combat and action games that dominated the industry — and would be central to fellow nominees Goldeneye 007, released by Rare and Nintendo in 1997; and Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare, the 2007 installment of Activision’s hit franchise.
The World Video Game Hall of Fame gets thousands of nominations online each year for arcade, console, computer and handheld games. Staff members choose the finalists based on the their longevity, geographical reach and influence on game design and pop culture. The inductees are then chosen in a ballot vote by an international committee of experts.
The three games that receive the most public votes count as one ballot in the final tally. Public voting closes March 13.
March 7th 2025
Thought of the Day
Friday. The golden child of the weekdays. The superhero of the workweek. The welcome wagon to the weekend.
Homemade Pasta
Homemade Pasta
Homemade Pasta Recipe from Love & Lemons
Prep time: 30 minutes
Cooking time: 2 minutes
Serving size: 3-4 servings
Ingredients
- 2 cups all-purpose flour, spooned & leveled
- 3 large eggs
- ½ teaspoon sea salt
- ½ tablespoon extra-virgin olive oil
Directions
- Place the flour on a clean work surface and make a nest. Add the eggs, olive oil, and salt to the center and use a fork to gently break up the eggs, keeping the flour walls intact as best as you can. Use your hands to gently bring the flour inward to incorporate. Continue working the dough with your hands to bring it together into a shaggy ball.
- Knead the dough for 8 to 10 minutes. At the beginning, the dough should feel pretty dry, but stick with it! It might not feel like it’s going to come together, but after 8-10 minutes of kneading, it should become cohesive and smooth. If the dough still seems too dry, sprinkle your fingers with a tiny bit of water to incorporate. If it’s too sticky, dust more flour onto your work surface. Shape the dough into a ball, wrap in plastic wrap, and let rest at room temperature for 30 minutes.
- Dust 2 large baking sheets with flour and set aside.
- Slice the dough into four pieces. Gently flatten one into an oval disk. Run the dough through a pasta maker three times on level 1 (the widest setting) or use a rolling pin.
- Set the dough piece onto a countertop or work surface. Fold both short ends in to meet in the center, then fold the dough in half to form a rectangle (see photo above).
- Run the dough through the pasta roller three times on level 2, three times on level 3, and one time each on levels 4, 5, and 6.
- Lay half of the pasta sheet onto the floured baking sheet and sprinkle with flour before folding the other half on top. Sprinkle more flour on top of the second half. Every side should be floured so that your final pasta noodles won’t stick together.
- Repeat with remaining dough.
- Run the pasta sheets through the Pasta Cutter Attachment or use a knife to cut the pasta into strips. Repeat with remaining dough. Cook the pasta in a pot of salted boiling water for 1 to 2 minutes.
Note: Fresh pasta can be store in the fridge in plastic wrap up to 2 days.
Judge orders Trump administration to pay nearly $2 billion in USAID and State Dept. debts
By ELLEN KNICKMEYER and MICHAEL KUNZELMAN Associated Press
WASHINGTON (AP) — A federal judge on Thursday gave the Trump administration until Monday to pay nearly $2 billion owed to partners of the U.S. Agency for International Development and the State Department, thawing the administration’s six-week funding freeze on all foreign assistance.
U.S. District Judge Amir Ali ruled in favor of nonprofit groups and businesses that sued over the funding freeze, which has forced organizations around the world to slash services and lay off thousands of workers.
Ali’s line of questioning suggested skepticism of the Trump administration’s argument that presidents have wide authority to override congressional decisions on spending when it comes to foreign policy, including foreign aid.
“It would be an “earth-shaking, country-shaking proposition to say that appropriations are optional,” Ali said.
“The question I have for you is, where are you getting this from in the constitutional document?” he asked a government lawyer, Indraneel Sur.
Thursday’s order is in an ongoing case with more decisions coming on the administration’s fast-moving termination of 90% of USAID contracts worldwide.
Ali’s ruling comes a day after a divided Supreme Court rejected the Trump administration’s bid to freeze funding that flowed through USAID. The high court instructed Ali to clarify what the government must do to comply with his earlier order requiring the quick release of funds for work that had already been done.
The funding freeze stemmed from an executive order signed by President Donald Trump on Jan. 20. The administration appealed after Ali issued a temporary restraining order and set a deadline to release payment for work already done.
The administration said it has replaced a blanket spending freeze with individualized determinations, which led to the cancellation of 5,800 USAID contracts and 4,1000 State Department grants totaling nearly $60 billion in aid.
Trump wants to dismantle the Education Department. Here’s what it does
By ANNIE MA and COLLIN BINKLEY AP Education Writer
WASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trump has said he wants his new education chief, Linda McMahon, to “put herself out of a job” and close the Education Department.
McMahon was confirmed by the Senate on Monday, and an executive order to shutter the department could come as soon as this week. McMahon told employees it was the department’s “final mission” to eliminate bureaucratic bloat and turn over the agency’s authority to states.
Eliminating the department altogether would be a cumbersome task, which likely would require an act of Congress.
Already, the Trump administration has started overhauling much of the department’s work.
Trump adviser Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency has cut dozens of contracts it dismissed as “woke” and wasteful. It gutted the Institute of Education Sciences, which gathers data on the nation’s academic progress, and the administration has fired or suspended scores of employees.
The agency’s main role is financial. Annually, it distributes billions in federal money to colleges and schools and manages the federal student loan portfolio. Closing the department would mean redistributing each of those duties to another agency. The Education Department also plays an important regulatory role in services for students, ranging from those with disabilities to low-income and homeless kids.
Indeed, federal education money is central to Trump’s plans for colleges and schools. Trump has vowed to cut off federal money for schools and colleges that push “critical race theory, transgender insanity, and other inappropriate racial, sexual or political content” and to reward states and schools that end teacher tenure and support universal school choice programs.
Federal funding makes up a relatively small portion of public school budgets — roughly 14%. Colleges and universities are more reliant on it, through research grants along with federal financial aid that helps students pay their tuition.
Here is a look at some of the department’s key functions, and how Trump has said he might approach them.
Student loans and financial aid
The Education Department manages approximately $1.5 trillion in student loan debt for over 40 million borrowers. It also oversees the Pell Grant, which provides aid to students below a certain income threshold, and administers the Free Application for Federal Student Aid ( FAFSA ), which universities use to allocate financial aid.
President Joe Biden’s administration made cancellation of student loans a signature effort of the department’s work. Even though Biden’s initial attempt to cancel student loans was overturned by the Supreme Court, the administration forgave over $175 billion for more than 4.8 million borrowers through a range of changes to programs it administers, such as Public Service Loan Forgiveness.
The loan forgiveness efforts have faced Republican pushback, including litigation from several GOP-led states.
Trump has criticized Biden’s efforts to cancel debt as illegal and unfair, calling it a “total catastrophe” that “taunted young people.” Trump’s plan for student debt is uncertain: He has not put out detailed plans.
Civil rights enforcement
Through its Office for Civil Rights, the Education Department conducts investigations and issues guidance on how civil rights laws should be applied, such as for LGBTQ+ students and students of color. The office also oversees a large data collection project that tracks disparities in resources, course access and discipline for students of different racial and socioeconomic groups.
Trump has suggested a different interpretation of the office’s civil rights role. Under his administration, the department has instructed the office to prioritize complaints of antisemitism above all else and has opened investigations into colleges and school sports leagues for allowing transgender athletes to compete on women’s teams.
In his campaign platform, Trump said he would pursue civil rights cases to “stop schools from discriminating on the basis of race.” He has described diversity and equity policies in education as “explicit unlawful discrimination” and said colleges that use them will pay fines and have their endowments taxed.
Trump also has pledged to exclude transgender students from Title IX protections, which affect school policies on students’ use of pronouns, bathrooms and locker rooms. Originally passed in 1972, Title IX was first used as a women’s rights law. Last year, Biden’s administration said the law forbids discrimination based on gender identity and sexual orientation, but a federal judge undid those protections.
College accreditation
While the Education Department does not directly accredit colleges and universities, it oversees the system by reviewing all federally recognized accrediting agencies. Institutions of higher education must be accredited to gain access to federal money for student financial aid.
Accreditation came under scrutiny from conservatives in 2022, when the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools questioned political interference at Florida public colleges and universities. Trump has said he would fire “radical left accreditors” and take applications for new accreditors that would uphold standards including “defending the American tradition” and removing “Marxist” diversity administrators.
Although the education secretary has the authority to terminate its relationship with individual accrediting agencies, it is an arduous process that has rarely been pursued. Under President Barack Obama, the department took steps to cancel accreditors for a now-defunct for-profit college chain, but the Trump administration blocked the move. The group, the Accrediting Council for Independent Colleges and Schools, was terminated by the Biden administration in 2022.
Money for schools
Much of the Education Department’s money for K-12 schools goes through large federal programs, such as Title I for low-income schools and the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act. Those programs support services for students with disabilities, lower class sizes with additional teaching positions, and pay for social workers and other non-teaching roles in schools.
During his campaign, Trump called for shifting those functions to the states. He has not offered details on how the agency’s core functions of sending federal money to local districts and schools would be handled.
The Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025, a sweeping proposal outlining a far-right vision for the country, offered a blueprint. It suggested sending oversight of programs for kids with disabilities and low-income children first to the Department of Health and Human Services, before eventually phasing out the funding and converting it to no-strings-attached grants to states.
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Associated Press education writer Collin Binkley contributed to this report.
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