By COLLIN BINKLEY, Associated Press Education Writer

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Trump administration says its plan to dismantle the Education Department offers a fix for the nation’s lagging academics — a solution that could free schools from the strictures of federal influence.

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Yet to some school and state officials, the plan appears to add more bureaucracy, with no clear benefit for students who struggle with math or reading.

Instead of being housed in a single agency, much of the Education Department’s work now will be spread across four other federal departments. For President Donald Trump, it’s a step toward fully closing the department and giving states more power over schooling. Yet many states say it will complicate their role as intermediaries between local schools and the federal government.

The plan increases bureaucracy fivefold, Washington state’s education chief said, “undoubtedly creating confusion and duplicity” for educators and families. His counterpart in California said the plan is “clearly less efficient” and invites disruption. Maryland’s superintendent raised concerns about “the challenges of coordinating efforts with multiple federal agencies.”

“States were not engaged in this process, and this is not what we have asked for — or what our students need,” said Jill Underly, Wisconsin’s state superintendent. Underly urged the Trump administration to give states greater flexibility and cut down on standardized testing requirements.

Education Secretary Linda McMahon said schools will continue receiving federal money without disruption. Ultimately, schools will have more money and flexibility to serve students without the existence of the Education Department, she said.

Yet the department is not gone — only Congress has the power to abolish it. In the meantime, McMahon’s plan leaves the agency in a version of federal limbo. The Labor Department will take over most funding and support for the country’s schools, but the Education Department will retain some duties, including policy guidance and broad supervision of Labor’s education work.

Similar deals will offload programs to the Department of Health and Human Services, the State Department and the Interior Department. The agreements were signed days before the government shutdown and announced Tuesday.

Inking agreements to share work with other departments isn’t new: The Education Department already had dozens of such agreements before Trump took office. And local school officials routinely work with other agencies, including the U.S. Agriculture Department, which oversees school meals. What’s different this time is the scale of the programs offloaded — the majority of the Education Department’s funding for schools, for instance.

Yet Virginia schools chief Emily Anne Gullickson, for one, said schools are accustomed to working with multiple federal agencies, and she welcomed the administration’s efforts to give states more control.

Where some see risk of upheaval, others see a win over bureaucracy

Response to the plan has mostly been drawn along political lines, with Democrats saying the shakeup will hurt America’s most vulnerable students. Republicans in Congress called it a victory over bureaucracy.

Yet some conservatives pushed back against the dismantling. U.S. Sen. Lisa Murkowski, an Alaska Republican, said on social media that moving programs to agencies without policy expertise could hurt young people. And Margaret Spellings, a former education secretary to Republican President George W. Bush, called it a distraction to a national education crisis.

“Moving programs from one department to another does not actually eliminate the federal bureaucracy, and it may make the system harder for students, teachers and families to navigate and get the support they need,” Spellings said in a statement.

There’s little debate about the need for change in America’s schooling. Its math and reading scores have plummeted in the wake of COVID-19. Before that, reading scores had been stagnant for decades, and math scores weren’t much better.

McMahon said that’s evidence the Education Department has failed and isn’t needed. At a White House briefing Thursday, she called her plan a “hard reset” that does not halt federal support but ends “federal micromanagement.”

Education Secretary Linda McMahon speaks as White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt listens during a press briefing at the White House, Thursday, Nov. 20, 2025, in Washington. (AP Photo/Evan Vucci)

Randi Weingarten, president of the American Federation of Teachers union and one of McMahon’s sharpest opponents, questioned the logic in her plan.

“Why would you put a new infrastructure together, a new bureaucracy that nobody knows anything about, and take the old bureaucracy and destroy it, instead of making the old bureaucracy more efficient?” Weingarten said at a Wednesday event.

Schools fear the impact of lost expertise on education laws

The full impact of the shakeup may not be clear for months, but already it’s stoking anxiety among states and school districts that have come to rely on the Education Department for its policy expertise. One of the agency’s roles is to serve as a hotline for questions about complicated funding formulas, special education laws and more.

The department has not said whether officials who serve that role will keep their jobs in the transition. Without that help, schools would have few options to clarify what can and can’t be paid for with federal money, said David Law, superintendent of Minnetonka Public Schools in Minnesota.

“What could happen is services are not provided because you don’t have an answer,” said Law, who is also president of AASA, a national association of school superintendents.

Some question whether other federal departments have the capacity to take on an influx of new work. The Labor Department will take over Title I, an $18 billion grant program that serves 26 million students in low-income areas. It’s going to a Labor office that now handles grants serving only 130,000 people a year, said Angela Hanks, who led the Labor office under former President Joe Biden.

At best, Hanks said, it will “unleash chaos on school districts, and ultimately, on our kids.”

In Salem, Massachusetts, the 4,000-student school system receives about $6 million in federal funding that helps support services for students who are low-income, homeless or still mastering English, Superintendent Stephen Zrike said. He fears moving those programs to the Labor Department could bring new “rules of engagement.”

“We don’t know what other stipulations will be attached to the funding,” he said. “The level of uncertainty is enormous.”

Other critics have noted the Education Department was created to consolidate education programs that were spread across multiple agencies.

Rep. Bobby Scott, D-Va., the ranking member on the House Education and Workforce Committee, urged McMahon to rethink her plan. He cited the 1979 law establishing the department, which said dispersion had resulted in “fragmented, duplicative, and often inconsistent Federal policies relating to education.”

AP education writers Moriah Balingit in Washington, Bianca Vázquez Toness in Boston and Makiya Seminera in Raleigh, N.C., 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.

By MICHAEL LIEDTKE, Associated Press Technology Writer

Google will confront the U.S. government’s latest attempt to topple its internet empire in federal court on Friday as a judge considers how to prevent the abusive tactics that culminated in parts of its digital ad network being branded as an illegal monopoly.

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The courtroom showdown in Alexandria, Virginia, will pit lawyers from Google and the U.S. Department of Justice against each other in closing proceedings focused on the complex technology that distributes millions of digital ads across the internet each day.

After a lengthy trial last year, U.S. District Judge Leonie Brinkema ruled in April that pieces of Google’s ad technology had been rigged in a way that made it an illegal monopoly. That set up another 11-day trial earlier this fall to help Brinkema determine how to remedy its anti-competitive practices.

Friday’s closing arguments will give both Google and the Justice Department a final chance to sway Brinkema before she issues a ruling that probably won’t come until early next year.

The Justice Department wants Brinkema to force Google to sell some of the ad technology that it has spent nearly 20 years assembling, contending a breakup is the only way to rein in a company that the agency’s lawyers condemned as a “recidivist monopolist” in filings leading up to Friday’s hearing.

The condemnation refers not only to Google’s practices in digital advertising but also to the illegal monopoly that it unleashed through its dominant search engine. Federal prosecutors also sought a breakup in the search monopoly case, but the judge handling that issue rejected a proposal that would have required Google to sell its popular Chrome web browser.

Although Google is still being ordered to make reforms that it’s resisting, the outcome in the search monopoly case has been widely seen as a proverbial slap on the wrist. The belief that Google got off easy in the search case is the main reason the market value of its parent company Alphabet surged by about $950 billion, or 37%, to nearly $3.5 trillion since U.S. District Judge Amit Mehta’s decision came out in early September.

That setback hasn’t discouraged the Justice Department from arguing for a breakup of an ad tech system that handles 55 million requests per second, according to estimates provided by Google in court filings.

The huge volume of digital ads priced and distributed through Google’s technology is one of the main reasons that the company’s lawyers contend it would be too risky to force a dismantling of the intricate system.

“This is technology that absolutely has to keep working for consumers,” Google argues in documents leading up to Friday’s hearing. The company’s lawyers blasted the Justice Department’s proposal as a package of “legally unprecedented and unsupported divestitures.”

Besides arguing that its own proposed changes will bring more price transparency and foster more competition, Google is also citing market upheaval triggered by artificial intelligence as another reason for the judge to proceed cautiously with her decision.

In his decision in the search monopoly case, Mehta reasoned that AI was already posing more competition to Google.

But the Justice Department urged the judge to focus on the testimony from a litany of trial witnesses who outlined why Google shouldn’t be trusted to change its devious behavior.

The witnesses “explained how Google can manipulate computer algorithms that are the engine of its monopolies in ways too difficult to detect,” the Justice Department argued in court papers.

By ELLIOT SPAGAT, Associated Press

CHICAGO (AP) — The massive Border Patrol presence on a recent Saturday morning in Chicago’s Little Village neighborhood didn’t faze Ofelia Herrera even though she and her husband are in the United States illegally.

She waited for agents to move a few blocks away, then opened their stand serving Mexican-style corn on the cob and “aguas frescas” flavored with cucumber, pineapple and strawberry in the heart of the Mexican immigrant community, just as they’ve done for 18 years. Sirens blared through a chaotic day as Chicago police responded to a Border Patrol call for help and confronted demonstrators.

Herrera, 47, and Rafael Hernandez, 44, have refused to alter their routines during an immigration enforcement blitz in Chicago that has caused many without legal status to stay home since it began in early September. Even some U.S. citizens of Latino heritage are afraid to go outside.

Ofelia Herrera, left, and her husband, Rafael Hernandez, both originally from Mexico, stand inside their home, Nov. 6, 2025, in Chicago. (AP Photo/Erin Hooley)

The couple says working not only pays the bills but helps avoid depression, making them stand out from others gripped by fear in Chicago’s immigrant communities.

“The only thing you can do is have faith in God and not be afraid,” Herrera said in an interview at the couple’s South Side house, already bedecked with Christmas decorations just days after Halloween. “Fear gives way to depression and other things. At the end of the day, they don’t deport you to Mexico but you are sick with depression and other things because you didn’t have faith in God.”

Hernandez agreed. “We know people who have fallen into depression. They don’t leave the house. It’s very sad.”

From an Arizona desert trek to Chicago homeowners

The couple’s Little Village food stand, adorned with American flags, is in a bustling area the Border Patrol has visited often. The two-lane commercial drag is lined with family-owned restaurants serving birria and chilaquiles, and clothing stores with displays of Mexican sports team jerseys and white dresses for quinceañera parties — a coming-of-age celebration for 15-year-old girls in Latino families.

Vendors sell sliced fruit and pottery from parked vehicles. Strains of ranchera music from cars and shops add to the festive atmosphere, drawing Mexican immigrant visitors from across Chicago and beyond. A family from Waterloo, Iowa, nibbled corn smothered in mayonnaise, cotija cheese, lime and chili powder at the couple’s stand under a cold drizzle.

Ofelia Herrera, originally from Mexico, grills corn at her family’s street food stand in Little Village, Nov. 8, 2025, in Chicago. (AP Photo/Erin Hooley)

Many of the couple’s friends haven’t ventured outside in more than two months. That fear has sparked a grassroots effort to buy out street vendors, allowing them to go home early and avoid public exposure.

Sidewalk traffic on 26th Street is livelier than many commercial areas in Chicago, even with the immigration crackdown. It is lined with barber shops, groceries and other businesses that have signs in Spanish and English demanding immigration authorities stay away unless they have a court warrant.

The couple knows people who were arrested by heavily armed agents asking about their legal status — an egg vendor here, a tamale vendor there. They described the sting of tear gas unleashed by agents on demonstrators at a shopping center parking lot last month.

Many immigrants, even some with legal status, are loathe to speak with reporters, especially if identified by name, fearful it may lead to deportation. Herrera and Hernandez say they are eager to share their story to foster understanding of how the Trump administration’s push for mass deportations is playing out.

Herrera crossed the border in 2004, followed later by her two children who are now adults living in Chicago. Hernandez made the journey in 2005. Both paid smugglers thousands of dollars for dayslong treks through the Arizona desert. Acquaintances enticed them to head to Chicago, the second-highest U.S. destination for Mexican immigrants after Los Angeles.

The couple met while working at a Mexican restaurant in Little Village. They have two U.S.-born children; their 10-year-old son speaks little Spanish and has been largely oblivious to the immigration crackdown.

Rafael Hernandez, originally from Mexico, sells food from his family’s food truck, Nov. 6, 2025, in Chicago. (AP Photo/Erin Hooley)

Their 16-year-old daughter fears prolonged detention for her parents even more than the possibility of them being deported to Mexico.

The couple took a class at City Hall for a municipal certificate to become street food vendors and bought a house for $39,000 in 2017 that badly needed repairs.

From 3 p.m. to 9 p.m. on weekdays they serve tacos and burritos from a yellow truck in the dirt driveway of their home in Englewood, a predominantly Black neighborhood and one of Chicago’s poorest. Once home to a thriving shopping district, parts of the neighborhood have fallen into disrepair with boarded-up houses. Crime is persistent.

On weekends they head to Little Village, where they work 11-hour days.

Sales plummet after immigration raids frighten customers

They have thought about trying to obtain legal status but they don’t have a strong case and could never afford an attorney. They obtained Illinois driver’s licenses. They say they paid taxes, stayed out of trouble and generally lived without fear of being deported.

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“Chicago is nice,” Hernandez said. “The crime is difficult but Chicago is marvelous. There are many opportunities for those of us who are immigrants. It’s painful what is happening.”

The couple’s sales have plunged about 75% since the Trump administration began “Operation Midway Blitz” in Chicago on Sept. 8, Herrera said. Like almost everyone they know, their phones constantly alert them to warnings about where immigration officers are making arrests and to stay away.

It appears that authorities are arresting “everyone,” Hernandez said, even though the administration vows it is pursuing “the worst of the worst.” More than 70% of people in U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement custody in the 12-month period through September were not convicted of a crime in the U.S.

U.S. authorities say they are making criminals a priority but that anyone in the country illegally is subject to arrest. That includes street vendors, according to Gregory Bovino, the Border Patrol official who led enforcement blitzes in Los Angeles, Chicago and, now, Charlotte, North Carolina.

“Those folks undercutting American businesses, is that right?” Bovino, a frequent presence in Chicago’s Little Village, said in a recent interview. “Absolutely not. That’s why we have immigration laws in the first place.”

The couple’s memories of how the COVID-19 pandemic kept them inside are a reminder to stay active, allowing only small adjustments. They recently headed to Little Village to buy supplies for their business when word came on social networks that Bovino was in the area making arrests. They decided to shop in another neighborhood.

They have been back to Mexico only once in more than 20 years, a family visit in 2012 that included crossing the border illegally in Eagle Pass, Texas. They want to stay in Chicago but say they are prepared to return to Mexico if arrested. They would bring their American citizen children with them.

“People are frightened because they have lives here, they have kids here, including us,” Herrera said. “We don’t want to go to Mexico but, if we have to, we will. What else is there to do?”

By MARK SHERMAN, Associated Press

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Supreme Court is to meet in private Friday with a high-profile issue on its agenda — President Donald Trump ’s birthright citizenship order declaring that children born to parents who are in the United States illegally or temporarily are not American citizens.

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The justices could say as soon as Monday whether they will hear Trump’s appeal of lower court rulings that have uniformly struck down the citizenship restrictions. They have not taken effect anywhere in the United States.

If the court steps in now, the case would be argued in the spring, with a definitive ruling expected by early summer.

The birthright citizenship order, which Trump signed on the first day of his second term in the White House, is part of his administration’s broad immigration crackdown. Other actions include immigration enforcement surges in several cities and the first peacetime invocation of the 18th century Alien Enemies Act.

The administration is facing multiple court challenges, and the high court has sent mixed signals in emergency orders it has issued. The justices effectively stopped the use of the Alien Enemies Act to rapidly deport alleged Venezuelan gang members without court hearings, while they allowed the resumption of sweeping immigration stops in the Los Angeles area after a lower court blocked the practice of stopping people solely based on their race, language, job or location.

The justices also are weighing the administration’s emergency appeal to be allowed to deploy National Guard troops in the Chicago area for immigration enforcement actions. A lower court has indefinitely prevented the deployment.

Birthright citizenship is the first Trump immigration-related policy to reach the court for a final ruling. Trump’s order would upend more than 125 years of understanding that the Constitution’s 14th Amendment confers citizenship on everyone born on American soil, with narrow exceptions for the children of foreign diplomats and those born to a foreign occupying force.

In a series of decisions, lower courts have struck down the executive order as unconstitutional, or likely so, even after a Supreme Court ruling in late June that limited judges’ use of nationwide injunctions.

While the Supreme Court curbed the use of nationwide injunctions, it did not rule out other court orders that could have nationwide effects, including in class-action lawsuits and those brought by states. The justices did not decide at that time whether the underlying citizenship order is constitutional.

But every lower court that has looked at the issue has concluded that Trump’s order violates or most likely violates the 14th Amendment, which was intended to ensure that Black people, including former slaves, had citizenship.

The administration is appealing two cases.

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit in San Francisco ruled in July that a group of states that sued over the order needed a nationwide injunction to prevent the problems that would be caused by birthright citizenship being in effect in some states and not others.

Also in July, a federal judge in New Hampshire blocked the citizenship order in a class-action lawsuit including all children who would be affected.

The American Civil Liberties Union, leading the legal team in the New Hampshire case, urged the court to reject the appeal because the administration’s “arguments are so flimsy,” ACLU lawyer Cody Wofsy said. “But if the court decides to hear the case, we’re more than ready to take Trump on and win.”

Birthright citizenship automatically makes anyone born in the United States an American citizen, including children born to mothers who are in the country illegally, under long-standing rules. The right was enshrined soon after the Civil War in the first sentence of the 14th Amendment.

The administration has asserted that children of noncitizens are not “subject to the jurisdiction” of the United States and therefore not entitled to citizenship.

“The lower court’s decisions invalidated a policy of prime importance to the president and his administration in a manner that undermines our border security,” Solicitor General D. John Sauer wrote in urging the high court’s review. “Those decisions confer, without lawful justification, the privilege of American citizenship on hundreds of thousands of unqualified people.”