By COLLIN BINKLEY, Associated Press Education Writer

At first, Clemson University took a stand for free speech. It condemned employees’ remarks that made light of Charlie Kirk’s death on social media, but the school said it was committed to protecting the Constitution. Three days later, under pressure from conservatives in the Statehouse, it fired one of the employees. As an outcry grew and the White House took interest, it fired two more.

The swift developments at the public university in South Carolina reflect the intense pressure on college leaders nationwide to police insensitive comments about the conservative activist’s assassination, which leaves them with no easy choices.

Colleges can defy the Republican backlash and defend their employees’ speech rights, risking the kind of federal attention that has prompted billions of dollars in cuts at Harvard and other universities. Or they can bow to the pressure and risk what some scholars see as a historic erosion of campus speech rights.

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A campaign among the right to punish those disparaging Kirk has cut across industries, with some conservatives calling for the firing of private sector employees, journalists and others they judge as promoting violence. But the stakes are especially high for colleges, which are already under intense scrutiny from an administration that has sought to reshape campuses it describes as “woke” and overrun by leftist thinking.

The White House coordinated a call with federal agencies Monday to discuss “funding options” at Clemson and other universities, according to a person with knowledge of the call who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss the private meeting. The White House did not provide details.

The federal government’s increasing appetite to dictate what can and can’t be said on campuses — from protests over the Israel-Hamas war to commentary on Kirk’s death — violates the First Amendment, said Lara Schwartz, an American University scholar on constitutional law and campus speech. Distasteful as they may be, she said, many comments provoking outrage are clearly protected speech.

“This could very much signal the end of free expression in the United States,” Schwartz said. “People should be reading this not as like a little social media battle, but as a full-on constitutional crisis.”

Conservatives across government targeted Clemson

Over the weekend, Clemson became the epicenter in a battle between those who revered and those who reviled Kirk. Republicans at all levels rushed to support a campus GOP club that shared social media posts from campus employees mocking Kirk’s death. State lawmakers showed up on campus with signs demanding the employees’ firing.

One screenshot circulated by college Republicans showed a professor of audio technology reposted a message on X the day of the killing that said: “According to Kirk, empathy is a made-up new-age term, so keep the jokes coming. It’s what he would have wanted.”

In Congress, Republicans on the House Judiciary Committee responded to Clemson’s statement defending free speech with a two-word social media post: “Defund Clemson.” State lawmakers threatened to cut funding, including one whose post was circulated by President Donald Trump.

South Carolina Republican Rep. Nancy Mace, who’s running for governor, sent a letter to the Education Department on Monday urging it to pull all federal funding from schools and universities that fail to swiftly terminate employees “who would celebrate or justify political violence.”

Ahead of an emergency meeting by Clemson’s governing board Monday, the state’s Republican attorney general sent a letter assuring leaders the firings would be permitted under state law. Alan Wilson said fired employees can challenge the dismissals in civil cases, but Clemson or other universities would not be prosecuted under a state law that forbids firings based on political opinions.

“Fear of criminal prosecution should not deter the President of a state university, such as Clemson, from taking the appropriate corrective action against university employees for such vile and incendiary comments on a public platform,” Wilson wrote.

One employee was fired prior to the meeting, and Clemson announced Tuesday it had dismissed two others, both faculty members.

Several colleges have fired staff over Kirk comments

Conservatives calling for the firings have said glorifying and celebrating violence also incites it, crossing into speech not protected by the Constitution. Attorney General Pam Bondi vowed to go after those whose speech threatens violence in the wake of Kirk’s killing.

“For far too long, we’ve watched the radical left normalize threats, call for assassinations and cheer on political violence,” she said. “That era is over.”

Education Secretary Linda McMahon on Wednesday encouraged schools and colleges to crack down on anyone celebrating the killing. In a video statement, she said such comments are the product of universities and schools that breed “divisive ideologies.”

“I commend the institutions and leaders who have acted swiftly to condemn and hold accountable those who have crossed this ethical line,” she said.

Several colleges have fired or suspended employees over comments on Kirk, including the University of Miami, the University of Tennessee, Auburn University and the University of California, Los Angeles.

Others have warned they are investigating social media posts. Iowa’s Board of Regents, for one, empowered the state’s public universities to take immediate action, including termination. President Sherry Bates said posts made last week were “offensive, inappropriate, and above all, unacceptable.”

“We expect more from those who work at our institutions,” she said.

Some university leaders have sought find a balance, condemning callous comments while pledging commitment to First Amendment principles. In Georgia, Columbus State University’s president, Stuart Rayfield, said a professor’s post that received attention online was regrettable but faculty and students are “entitled to their own personal views under the First Amendment.”

University of Missouri leaders on Wednesday said they respect the rights of employees to speak as citizens, but they encouraged staff “to use those freedoms responsibly, especially when engaging on social media.”

Associated Press writer Alanna Durkin Richer contributed to this report.

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.

Recently released state school ratings reveal that five Texas school districts are at risk of a takeover by the Texas Education Agency (TEA)—the most since a 2017 state law expanded the state’s takeover powers. The new ratings cover the 2022-23 school year, released in April following legal delays, and the 2023-24 and 2024-25 school years, released last month. One Fort Worth ISD school received its fifth consecutive failing rating for 2022-23. Schools in Beaumont, Connally, Wichita Falls, and Lake Worth ISDs, which have a total of 32,000 students, all received a fifth consecutive failing grade for the 2024-25 school year.

Some parents in Fort Worth have already organized to fend off a takeover: Zach Leonard, a parent of three children in the district, told the Texas Observer he does not want Fort Worth to lose its elected leadership and staff the way Houston ISD has under its 2023 takeover and the state-appointed leadership of superintendent Mike Miles. “It’s not a sustainable model for the future. It’s not true education. It’s just test prep,” Leonard said. “Fort Worth ISD has room to improve, but we can do it our way, and we don’t have to do it the way that TEA is prescribing.” 

In the past decade and a half, 13 districts have been taken over and run by a state-appointed board of managers, under public school accountability laws which have empowered TEA to step in and depose an elected school board if its schools do not meet academic, governance, or financial accountability standards. In 2017, the state made it easier for TEA to intervene by allowing the agency to take over an entire school district if just one school receives failing ratings for five consecutive ratings. 

An Observer analysis of school ratings at those districts before and after TEA takeovers reveals that, while some districts have recently reduced their number of failing schools under state control, others racked up more failing schools and even ended their time under state control by being gobbled up by other districts.

“You’re getting people that they’re putting in there to sabotage everything that we were trying to do.” 

The state agency currently controls Houston ISD as well as four smaller school districts because of governance issues or consecutive failing ratings at one or more schools. Four of those districts have shown some progress in their state scores, 2024-25 data shows. After eight years of TEA control, Marlin ISD, near Waco, received no F or D ratings this past school year and will return to full local control in January 2026. In East Texas, Shepherd ISD’s three F-rated schools improved to D-rated schools in the five years under state takeover. And for the first time since the A-F system began in 2017, Houston ISD had no F ratings last school year. South San Antonio ISD, which TEA took over due to governance issues in February 2025, also had fewer failing schools in 2025 than 2024. 

But other school districts that were subject to TEA control in the past reported more problems following takeovers, based on the agency’s own metrics for academic performance, records show. Four out of eight districts where state takeovers have ended were dissolved entirely: North Forest, La Marque, Kendleton, and Wilmer Hutchins ISDs were all shut down and absorbed into other school districts. One of those districts, North Forest, was absorbed into Houston ISD, itself now taken over.

Two other districts returned to local control with more failing schools than before: Beaumont and Edgewood ISDs, which had been taken over for governance or financial accountability issues. In the case of Edgewood, taken over for failure to hire a superintendent, the number of failing schools increased from one to 10. In the two remaining cases, the results were better: Southside ISD, taken over for financial accountability reasons, had no failing schools pre- or post-TEA, and El Paso ISD, taken over for a state test cheating scandal, emerged with fewer failing schools.

When presented with the Observer’s findings, TEA spokesperson Jake Kobersky suggested TEA is not responsible for the outcome of state takeovers. “The agency does not ‘take control’ or manage the operations of school districts,” he said. “In the event a Board of Managers is appointed, the locally appointed board members and the district administration, consistent with the operating structure of districts statewide, make all operational and curricular decisions—not TEA,” Kobersky wrote, clarifying in a separate email that “locally appointed” referred to the state “appointing board members from the local community.” Kobersky continued: “Classifying the district as being under agency leadership is an incorrect characterization and would mislead your readers.”

Kobersky emphasized that TEA removed the elected boards at Edgewood and Beaumont ISDs mainly because of financial and governance issues, not academic issues. Though school ratings slipped, he noted that the percentage of all Beaumont ISD students who met overall standards at their grade level was only 30 percent when the takeover began, and it remained the same afterward. In Edgewood, a district in west San Antonio that was the center of a historic 1989 court ruling on school finance equity, the percentage of all district students who met grade level increased from 24 to 29 percent, Kobersky said. 

In the first year of the state takeover at Edgewood, TEA’s appointed board of managers named Emilio Castro as superintendent. But Castro resigned only two years later, after a district employee accused him of sexual harassment. Timothy Payne, who served as an appointed board manager from 2016 to 2019, told the Observer the board then selected TEA’s recommended replacement—Eduardo Hernández, a former Chief of Schools for Duncanville ISD, though Hernández had no prior experience as a superintendent.

By 2019, Hernández pushed for private operation of some campuses under a state law that allows school districts to hand over their schools to private charter operators or public university programs in exchange for extra funding and a break from state sanctions. The district inked private partnerships with four operators to run eight elementary, middle, or high schools. But only one of those schools, run by Ridgeline Education Corporation, received passing ratings in the 2024-25 school year. Winston Intermediate School of Excellence, which was operated by the Texas A&M San Antonio Institute for School and Community Partnerships, closed following the 2023-24 school year, after receiving a F rating. 

Payne blames TEA for the district’s declining ratings. “TEA is the problem,” he said.  “You’re getting people that they’re putting in there to sabotage everything that we were trying to do.” 

Kobersky, the TEA spokesman, reiterated that it was the state-appointed Board of Managers, not TEA, who hired Hernández as Edgewood ISD superintendent.

Edgewood ISD parents have now collected 200 signatures for a petition that demands a performance review for Hernández and more transparency on academic performance, school discipline, teacher vacancies, and district spending. Edgewood parent Jessica Martinez told the Observer that her sons’ school—Gus Garcia Middle School, another campus run by the Texas A&M program—has had a different principal each year her kids have attended and that substitute teachers are running classes “all year round.” 

Henrietta Muñoz, the CEO of the Texas A&M program, told the Observer via email that staffing shortages are a statewide concern and that the state ratings “highlight areas for continued improvement” but do “not fully reflect” the accomplishments made at the school.  A spokesman for Edgewood ISD did not respond to the Observer’s request for comment. 

Protesters against the Houston ISD takeover (Courtesy of Community Voices for Public Education)

During its TEA takeover, from 2014 to 2020, Beaumont ISD saw its number of failing schools increase from four to eight. Right before the takeover ended, the district contracted with nonprofit charter operators to run three schools. The district terminated these partnerships in 2023 after all three received F ratings, then turned them over to another charter operator—Third Future Schools, a school network founded by Miles, now the Houston superintendent—which in turn ended its partnership with the district last school year, reverting control to the Beaumont ISD. Only one of the former Third Future Schools partnership campuses in Beaumont ISD received a passing rating in 2024-25. One of those three campuses, Fehl-Price Elementary, received its fifth consecutive failing rating, putting the district at risk of yet another takeover.

Thomas Sigee, who joined the Beaumont ISD board as an elected trustee in 2019 and is now the board chair, previously told the Observer that TEA directed the board’s selection of private partners: “We chose charter schools based on what TEA told us we could use,” Sigee said. But Kobersky, the TEA spokesman, countered that districts have always been in charge of selecting operators: “The decision-making authority has always rested with the district.”

Sigee told the Observer the district has not yet received any information from TEA regarding whether Beaumont will face another takeover. He said the district would close Fehl-Price and transfer its students to another school if needed to avoid state control. Until then, he said, “We will continue to educate the students in BISD.” 

The post A Wave of School District Takeovers Could Be Coming. Some Past Interventions Ended with More Failing Schools. appeared first on The Texas Observer.

Day and night will get equal time for a brief moment Monday as much of the world heads into fall.

The autumnal equinox arrives Monday, marking the start of the fall season for the Northern Hemisphere and the spring in the Southern Hemisphere. On the equator, the sun will be directly overhead at noon. Equinoxes are the only times when both the north and south poles are lit by sunshine at the same time.

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In the Northern Hemisphere, sunlight will gradually diminish each day until the winter solstice on Dec. 21.

Equinoxes have been marked and celebrated worldwide for centuries. The fall equinox is often connected with harvest festivals in the Northern Hemisphere. For example, Dozynki, the harvest festival celebrated in Poland and other Eastern European countries, was thought to have been originally tied to the equinox. At the Mayan site Chichen Itza in Mexico, people gather during the equinox to watch the sun create a shadow pattern that resembles a serpent descending a building called El Castillo.

This year, there’s a bonus for some: Antarctica, New Zealand and a sliver of Australia may be able to see a partial lunar eclipse during their Monday.

But what is happening in the heavens? Here’s what to know about how we split up the year using the Earth’s orbit.

What is the equinox?

As the Earth travels around the sun, it does so at an angle.

For most of the year, the Earth’s axis is tilted either toward or away from the sun. That means the sun’s warmth and light fall unequally on the northern and southern halves of the planet.

During the equinox, the Earth’s axis and its orbit align so that both hemispheres get an equal amount of sunlight.

The word equinox comes from two Latin words, meaning equal and night. That’s because on the equinox, day and night last almost the same amount of time — though one may get a few extra minutes, depending on where you are on the planet.

The Northern Hemisphere’s fall — or autumnal — equinox can land between Sept. 21 and 24, depending on the year. Its spring — or vernal — equinox can land between March 19 and 21.

What is the solstice?

The solstices mark the times during the year when the Earth is at its most extreme tilt toward or away from the sun. This means the hemispheres are getting very different amounts of sunlight — and days and nights are at their most unequal.

During the Northern Hemisphere’s summer solstice, the upper half of the Earth is tilted in toward the sun, creating the longest day and shortest night of the year. This solstice falls between June 20 and 22.

Meanwhile, at the winter solstice, the Northern Hemisphere is leaning away from the sun — leading to the shortest day and longest night of the year. The winter solstice falls between Dec. 20 and 23.

What’s the difference between meteorological and astronomical seasons?

These are just two different ways to carve up the year.

While astronomical seasons depend on how the Earth moves around the sun, meteorological seasons are defined by the weather. Meteorologists break down the year into three-month seasons based on annual temperature cycles. By that calendar, spring starts on March 1, summer on June 1, fall on Sept. 1 and winter on Dec. 1.

The Associated Press Health and Science Department receives support from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute’s Department of Science Education and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. The AP is solely responsible for all content.

By AUDREY McAVOY and HALLIE GOLDEN, Associated Press

Jon Stewart, Stephen Colbert and Jimmy Fallon opened their late-night shows Thursday using a mix of humor and solidarity with suspended ABC host Jimmy Kimmel.

Stewart opted for satire to critique ABC suspending “Jimmy Kimmel Live!” indefinitely following comments he made about the assassination of conservative activist Charlie Kirk. Colbert took a more serious approach, calling his suspension “blatant censorship.” Fallon praised Kimmel and vowed to keep doing his show as usual. Then an announcer spoke over him and replaced most of his critiques about President Donald Trump with flattery.

FILE – Jon Stewart poses in the press room with the award for outstanding talk series for “The Daily Show” during the 76th Primetime Emmy Awards on Sept. 15, 2024, at the Peacock Theater in Los Angeles. (AP Photo/Jae C. Hong, File)

Their guests the day after Kimmel’s suspension — which also came two months after CBS said it would cancel Colbert’s show — varied widely. Fallon’s guests were actor Jude Law, journalist Tom Llamas and actor and singer Jonathan Groff — none of whom addressed Kimmel’s situation.

Stewart and Colbert interviewed guests who could address censorship concerns raised by Kimmel’s suspension. Journalist and Nobel Peace Prize recipient Maria Ressa spoke to Stewart.

When Stewart asked Ressa, the author of “How to Stand Up to a Dictator,” tips on coping with the current moment, Ressa recounted how she and her colleagues at the news site Rappler “just kept going” when she was faced with 11 arrest warrants in one year under Philippine then-President Rodrigo Duterte.

“We just kept doing our jobs. We just kept putting one foot in front of the other,” Ressa said.

Stewart makes special appearance to skewer Kimmel suspension

Stewart’s show opened with a voice-over promising adherence to the party line.

“We have another fun, hilarious administration-compliant show,” it said.

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He lavished praise on the president and satirized his criticism of large cities and his deployment of the National Guard to fight their crime.

“Coming to you tonight from the real (expletive), the crime-ridden cesspool that is New York City. It is a tremendous disaster like no one’s ever seen before. Someone’s National Guard should invade this place, am I right?” Stewart said.

“The Daily Show” set was refashioned with decorative gold engravings, in a parody of gold accents Trump has added to the fireplace, doorway arches, walls and other areas of the Oval Office.

Stewart fidgeted nervously as though he was worried about speaking the correct talking points. When the audience members reacted with an “awww” he whispered: “What are you doing? Shut up. You’re going to (expletive) blow this for us.”

He took on a more stilted tone when he started describing Trump’s visit to the United Kingdom, calling the president “our great father.”

“Gaze upon him. With a gait even more majestic than that of the royal horses that prance before him,” he said.

Stewart normally hosts only on Mondays. The Emmy winner helmed “The Daily Show” from 1999 through 2015, delivering sharp, satirical takes on politics and current events and interviews with newsmakers. He returned to host once a week during the run-up to the 2024 U.S. presidential election.

Fallon opened his “Tonight Show” monologue addressing Kimmel’s suspension. “To be honest with you all, I don’t know what’s going on. And no one does. But I do know Jimmy Kimmel, and he’s a decent, funny and loving guy, and I hope he comes back.”

Swift suspension after remarks on Kirk’s assassination

Kimmel made several remarks about the reaction to Kirk’s killing on “Jimmy Kimmel Live!” Monday and Tuesday nights, including that “many in MAGA land are working very hard to capitalize on the murder of Charlie Kirk.”

ABC suspended Kimmel’s show after a group of ABC-affiliated stations said it would not air the show, and Federal Communications Commission Chairman Brendan Carr said his agency had a strong case for holding Kimmel, ABC and network parent Walt Disney Co. accountable for spreading misinformation.

Kimmel has not commented. His supporters say Carr misread what the comic said and that nowhere did he specifically suggest that Tyler Robinson — the man Utah authorities allege fatally shot Kirk — was conservative.

In July, CBS said it would cancel “The Late Show With Stephen Colbert” next May. The network said it shut down the decades-old TV institution for financial reasons. But the announcement came three days after Colbert criticized the settlement between President Donald Trump and Paramount Global, parent company of CBS, over a “60 Minutes” story.

‘The Late Show’ hosts past and present address suspension

Colbert started his monologue on Thursday with the animated song “Be Our Guest” from Disney’s “Beauty and the Beast,” but replaced the lyrics with “Shut your trap. Shut your trap.”

He later addressed Kimmel directly, saying that he stands with him and his staff.

“If ABC thinks that this is going to satisfy the regime, they are woefully naive,” he said.

He also responded to remarks Carr made that it is important for broadcasters to push back on Disney programming “they determine falls short of community values.”

“Well, you know what my community values are, buster? Freedom of speech,” Colbert said to loud applause from his audience.

When Colbert talked with New Yorker editor David Remnick about Kimmel’s suspension, he said: “What we are seeing now is the government acting at the direction of the president of the United States to put pressure on, to manipulate, to silence and even to shut down institutions of the free word.”

David Letterman, Colbert’s predecessor on “The Late Show,” lamented the networks’ moves.

“I feel bad about this, because we all see where see this is going, correct? It’s managed media,” Letterman said during an appearance Thursday at The Atlantic Festival 2025 in New York. “It’s no good. It’s silly. It’s ridiculous.”

He added that people shouldn’t be fired just because they don’t “suck up” to what Letterman called “an authoritarian” president.