By COLLIN BINKLEY, AP Education Writer

WASHINGTON (AP) — The U.S. Education Department is handing off some of its biggest grant programs to other federal agencies as the Trump administration accelerates its plan to shut down the department.

Related Articles

Foreign enrollment at US colleges holds steady, for now, despite Trump’s visa crackdown

Tribal college leaders are uneasy about US financial commitments despite a funding increase

Judge indefinitely bars Trump from fining University of California over alleged discrimination

Critics warn Florida’s new teaching standards rehabilitate aspects of the anti-communist Red Scare

Can federal immigration agents go in schools? Here’s what to know. 

It represents a major step forward for the administration’s dismantling of the department, which has mainly involved cutting jobs since President Donald Trump called for its elimination with an executive action in March.

Six new agreements signed by the Education Department will effectively move billions of dollars in grant programs to other agencies. Most notable is one that will put the Department of Labor over some of the largest federal funding streams for K-12 schools, including Title I money for schools serving low-income communities.

Department officials said the programs will continue to be funded at levels set by Congress. They did not say whether the changes would bring further job cuts at the department, which has been thinned by waves of mass layoffs and voluntary retirement offers.

“The Trump Administration is taking bold action to break up the federal education bureaucracy and return education to the states,” Education Secretary Linda McMahon said in a statement. “Cutting through layers of red tape in Washington is one essential piece of our final mission.”

The action leaves in place the Education Department’s $1.6 trillion student loan portfolio and its funding for students with disabilities, though McMahon has suggested both would be better managed by other federal departments.

McMahon and her staff have spent months hammering out the deals, which allow the department to lop off large parts of its footprint without action from Congress. It’s being done through formal agreements that agencies often make with one another when their work overlaps.

The Education Department tested the idea in June with a deal that moved adult education programs to Labor. The new agreements take it a step further and lay the groundwork for more.

Officials say the new agreements provide a “proof of concept” as the administration works to persuade Congress to close the agency. The goal is to convince Congress that the deals should be cemented into legislation, eliminating a need for the department.

Under the new plan, Labor will oversee almost all grant programs that are now managed by the Education Department’s offices for K-12 and higher education. Along with the $18 billion Title I program, that includes smaller funding pools for teacher training, English instruction and TRIO, a program that helps steer low-income students to college degrees.

It will effectively outsource the department’s Office of Elementary and Secondary Education and Office of Postsecondary Education, two of the agency’s largest units. Two major roles of the postsecondary office will remain with the Education Department: oversight of student loan policy and the accreditation of colleges for eligibility to receive students’ federal financial aid.

States and schools should not expect any disruptions in their funding, the department said, but their federal money will now come from the Department of Labor.

Another deal will put Health and Human Services in charge of a grant program for parents who are attending college, along with management of foreign medical school accreditation. The State Department will take on foreign language programs. Interior will oversee programs for Native American education.

Opponents have urged against such a shake-up, saying it could disrupt programs that support some of the nation’s most vulnerable student populations. Some argue that other agencies don’t have the expertise that schools and families rely on at the Education Department. Some also question the plan’s legality, noting that legislation requires the Education Department to oversee some of its operations in-house.

Department officials say their plan is legally sound and argue it will make programs more efficient.

McMahon has increasingly pointed to what she sees as failures of the department as she argues for its demise. In its 45 years, she says it has become a bloated bureaucracy while student outcomes continue to lag behind. She points to math and reading scores for the country’s K-12 students, which plummeted in the wake of pandemic restrictions.

Her vision would abolish the Education Department and give states wider flexibility in how they spend money that’s now earmarked for specific purposes, including literacy and education for homeless students. That, however, would require approval from Congress. The task is complicated by the fact that some of the department’s core work has long had bipartisan support.

The new deals are part of a broader plan to prove that America’s schools and colleges can operate without the department. As part of the plan, officials say McMahon will continue touring the country to highlight the successes of local schools — and she will also spend more time making her pitch to lawmakers on Capitol Hill.

The Associated Press’ education coverage receives financial support from multiple private foundations. AP is solely responsible for all content. Find AP’s standards for working with philanthropies, a list of supporters and funded coverage areas at AP.org.

By MICHAEL HILL, Associated Press

ALBANY, N.Y. (AP) — A judge has dismissed a Trump administration legal challenge to New York policies that block immigration officials from arresting people at state courthouses, saying the federal government can’t force states to cooperate with those enforcement efforts.

Related Articles

Neo-Nazi leader admits plot to give poisoned candy to Jewish kids in New York City

Mayor says federal immigration agents will expand enforcement action in North Carolina to Raleigh

Honda recalls 256,600 Accord Hybrids due to software error that may lead to loss of drive power

Wall Street drops again as Nvidia, bitcoin and other stars keep swinging

LA County sheriff investigating new sex battery claim against Sean ‘Diddy’ Combs

U.S. District Judge Mae D’Agostino late Monday granted New York’s motion to dismiss the government’s lawsuit, one of several legal actions from the Republican administration targeting state and local policies over immigration enforcement.

The lawsuit challenged a 2020 state law banning federal immigration officials from arresting people who are coming and going from New York courthouses or in court for proceedings unless they have a warrant signed by a judge. The law, called the Protect Our Courts Act, was approved in response to enforcement actions at courthouses during President Donald Trump’s first term.

In its lawsuit, the Department of Justice claimed that the New York law and two related state executive orders were unconstitutional because they obstructed the execution of federal immigration authorities.

D’Agostino, though, found that New York’s decision not to participate in enforcing civil immigration law is protected by the 10th Amendment, which sets boundaries on the federal government’s powers.

“Fundamentally, the United States fails to identify any federal law mandating that state and local officials generally assist or cooperate with federal immigration enforcement efforts. Nor could it,” the judge wrote. “No such federal laws exist because the Tenth Amendment prohibits Congress from conscripting state and local officials and resources to assist with federal regulatory schemes, like immigration enforcement.”

The Justice Department didn’t immediately respond to a Tuesday email seeking comment about the ruling, including whether it plans to appeal.

New York Attorney General Letitia James, a Democrat whose office argued for the lawsuit to be dismissed, said she was fighting for the “dignity and rights of immigrant communities.”

“Everyone deserves to seek justice without fear,” James said in a statement. “This ruling ensures that anyone can use New York’s state courts without being targeted by federal authorities.”

NEW YORK (AP) — The leader of an Eastern European neo-Nazi group who tried to recruit an undercover federal agent to dress as Santa Claus and hand out poisoned candy to Jewish children and racial minorities has pleaded guilty to soliciting hate crimes.

Federal prosecutors said they would seek a sentence of up to 18 years for Michail Chkhikvishvili, a 22-year-old from the Republic of Georgia who also goes by “Commander Butcher.” He pleaded guilty Monday before a federal judge in Brooklyn to soliciting violent felonies and distributing information about making bombs and ricin.

Prosecutors described Chkhikvishvili as the leader of the Maniac Murder Cult, an international extremist group that adheres to a “neo-Nazi accelerationist ideology and promotes violence and violent acts against racial minorities, the Jewish community and other groups it deems ‘undesirables.’”

They said the group’s violent solicitations — promoted through Telegram channels and outlined a manifesto called the “Hater’s Handbook” — appear to have inspired multiple real-life killings, including a school shooting in Nashville, Tennessee, earlier this year that left a 16-year-old student dead.

He was arrested in July 2024 in Moldova. He was extradited to the United States in May.

Related Articles

Mayor says federal immigration agents will expand enforcement action in North Carolina to Raleigh

Honda recalls 256,600 Accord Hybrids due to software error that may lead to loss of drive power

Wall Street drops again as Nvidia, bitcoin and other stars keep swinging

LA County sheriff investigating new sex battery claim against Sean ‘Diddy’ Combs

Cloudflare outage impacts thousands, disrupts transit systems, ChatGPT, X and more

Since 2022, Chkhikvishvili has traveled on multiple occasions to Brooklyn, where he bragged about beating up an elderly Jewish man and instructed others, primarily through text messages, to commit violent acts on behalf of the Maniac Murder Cult, according to court papers.

When he was approached by an undercover FBI agent in 2023, Chkhikvishvili recruited the official to a scheme that “involved an individual dressing up as Santa Claus and handing out candy laced with poison to racial minorities and children at Jewish schools in Brooklyn,” according to the Justice Department.

He later suggested narrowing the focus to “dead Jewish kids,” prosecutors said, after noting that “Jews are literally everywhere” in Brooklyn.

Describing his desire to carry out a mass casualty attack, Chkhikvishvili said he saw the United States as “big potential because accessibility to firearms,” adding that the undercover should consider targeting homeless people because the government wouldn’t care “even if they die,” according to court papers.

By ANTON L. DELGADO, Associated Press

BELEM, Brazil (AP) — At the U.N. climate talks in Brazil, artificial intelligence is being cast as both a hero worthy of praise and a villain that needs policing.

Related Articles

EPA moves to limit scope of clean water law to reduce amount of wetlands it covers

Nations hit by natural disasters tell ministers at climate talks to act

Twin Cities hit 72 degrees Friday, the warmest temperature on record so late in the season

Business groups ask Supreme Court to pause California climate reporting laws in emergency appeal

Preliminary findings show a fatigue crack caused a Keystone Pipeline oil spill in North Dakota

Tech companies and a handful of countries at the conference known as COP30 are promoting ways AI can help solve global warming, which is driven largely by the burning of fossil fuels like oil, gas and coal. They say the technology has the potential to do many things, from increasing the efficiency of electrical grids and helping farmers predict weather patterns to tracking deep-sea migratory species and designing infrastructure that can withstand extreme weather.

Climate groups, however, are sounding the alarm about AI’s growing environmental impact, with its surging needs for electricity and water for powering searches and data centers. They say an AI boom without guardrails will only push the world farther off track from goals set by 2015 Paris Agreement to slow global warming.

“AI right now is a completely unregulated beast around the world,” said Jean Su, energy justice director at the Center for Biological Diversity.

On the other hand, Adam Elman, director of sustainability at Google, sees AI as “a real enabler” and one that’s already making an impact.

If both sides agree on anything, it’s that AI is here to stay.

Michal Nachmany, founder of Climate Policy Radar, which runs AI tools that track issues like national climate plans and funds to help developing countries transition to green energies like solar and wind, said there is “unbelievable interest” in AI at COP30.

“Everyone is also a little bit scared,” Nachmany said. “The potential is huge and the risks are huge as well.”

Attendees walk past boxes made to look like the Eiffel Tower with a sign that reads “1.5 degrees Celsius under threat” talking about the Paris Agreement during the COP30 U.N. Climate Summit, Monday, Nov. 17, 2025, in Belem, Brazil. (AP Photo/Andre Penner)

Many sessions on AI

The rise of AI is becoming a more common topic at the United Nations compared to a few years ago, according to Nitin Arora, who leads the Global Innovation Hub for the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, the framework for international climate negotiations.

The hub was launched at COP26 in Glasgow to promote ideas and solutions that can be deployed at scale, he said. So far, Arora said, those ideas have been dominated by AI.

The Associated Press counted at least 24 sessions related to AI during the Brazil conference’s first week. They included AI helping neighboring cities share energy, AI-backed forest crime location predictions and a ceremony for the first AI for Climate Action Award — given to an AI project on water scarcity and climate variability in the Southeast Asian nation of Laos.

Johannes Jacob, a data scientist with the German delegation, said a prototype app he is designing, called NegotiateCOP, can help countries with smaller delegations — like El Salvador, South Africa, Ivory Coast and a few in the Association of Southeast Asian Nations — process hundreds of official COP documents.

The result is “leveling the playing field in the negotiations,” he said.

In a panel discussion, representatives from AI giants like Google and Nvidia spoke about how AI can solve issues facing the power sector. Elman with Google stressed the “need to do it responsibly” but declined to comment further.

Nvidia’s head of sustainability, Josh Parker, called AI the “best resource any of us can have.”

“AI is so democratizing,” Parker said. “If you think about climate tech, climate change and all the sustainability challenges we’re trying to solve here at COP, which one of those challenges would not be solved better and faster, with more intelligence.”

Princess Abze Djigma from Burkina Faso called AI a “breakthrough in digitalization” that she believes will be even more critical in the future.

Bjorn-Soren Gigler, a senior digital and green transformation specialist with the European Commission, agreed but noted AI is “often seen as a double-edge sword” with both huge opportunities and ethical and environmental concerns.

Booming AI use raises concerns

The training and deploying of AI models rely on power-hungry data centers that contribute to emissions because of the electricity needed. The International Energy Agency has tracked a boom in energy consumption and demand from data centers, especially in the U.S.

Data centers accounted for around 1.5% of the world’s electricity consumption in 2024, according to the IEA, which found that their electricity consumption has grown by around 12% per year since 2017, more than four times faster than the rate of total electricity consumption.

The environmental impact from AI, specifically the operations of data centers, also includes the consumption of large amounts of water in water-stressed states, according to Su with the Center for Biological Diversity, who has studied how the data center boom threatens U.S. climate goals.

She said these operations will increase the national emissions of the U.S., historically the world’s largest polluter.

Environmental groups at COP30 are pushing for regulations to soften AI’s environmental footprint, such as mandating public interest tests for proposed data centers and 100% on-site renewable energy at them.

“COP can not only view AI as some type of techno solution, it has to understand the deep climate consequences,” Su said.

Associated Press writer Seth Borenstein in Belem, Brazil, contributed to this report.

The Associated Press’ climate and environmental coverage receives financial support from multiple private foundations. AP is solely responsible for all content. Find AP’s standards for working with philanthropies, a list of supporters and funded coverage areas at AP.org

This story was produced as part of the 2025 Climate Change Media Partnership, a journalism fellowship organized by Internews’ Earth Journalism Network and the Stanley Center for Peace and Security.