CONGRESS

By a 217 to 213 vote, the House passed a Fiscal Year (FY) 2025 Continuing Resolution (CR) that would fund the government through September 30. The Senate subsequently passed this measure by a 54 to 46 vote, sending it to the President for his signature to become law.

The Senate voted 67 to 32 to confirm Lori Chavez-DeRemer to serve as U.S. Secretary of Labor.

The Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee voted 12 to 11 to advance the nomination of Jayanta Bhattacharya to serve as Director of the National Institutes of Health.

House Education and Workforce Committee Member, Rep. Raúl Grijalva (D-AZ), passed away after a long battle with cancer.

ADMINISTRATION

President Donald Trump issued an Executive Order titled “Restoring Public Service Loan Forgiveness.”

President Trump issued a memorandum titled “Ensuring the Enforcement of Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 65(c).” The memorandum asserts that “it is the policy of the United States to demand that parties seeking injunctions against the Federal Government must cover the costs and damages incurred if the Government is ultimately found to have been wrongfully enjoined or restrained.”

The U.S. Department of Education (ED) began a reduction in force (RIF), which coupled with previous actions, impacted nearly 50 percent of the Department’s workforce. Subsequently, a group of 21 Democratic attorneys general sued the Trump administration over this executive action.

The studentaid.gov website, which houses the Free Application for Federal Student Aid (FAFSA) application activity, was down for several hours on Wednesday.

The ED Office for Civil Rights (OCR) sent letters to 60 institutions of higher education currently under investigation for Title VI violations relating to antisemitic harassment and discrimination.

OCR directed its enforcement staff to make resolving the backlog of complaints alleging antisemitic harassment and violence an immediate priority.

OCR opened investigations into 45 universities for Title VI violations related to “allegedly engaging in race-exclusionary practices in their graduate programs,” as well as 7 universities for “alleged impermissible race-based scholarships and race-based segregation.”

The U.S. Department of Labor announced senior-level appointees.

ED Deputy Assistant Secretary for Communications Madi Biedermann stated that the Department planned to restructure Institute of Education Sciences (IES) to provide “states with more useful data to improve student outcomes while maintaining rigorous scientific integrity and cost effectiveness.”

COURTS

A Federal judge ordered the Trump Administration to temporarily reinstate the Seeking Effective Educator Development (SEED) and Teacher Quality Partnerships (TQP) grant awards that ED terminated last month in California, Illinois, Maryland, Massachusetts, New Jersey, New York and Wisconsin.

A Federal judge ordered Elon Musk and the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) to produce a variety of records and respond to questions about plans to downsize Federal agencies, fire employees and suspend Federal contracts.

A Federal judge issued a preliminary injunction, ordering the U.S. Departments of Defense, Treasury, Energy, Agriculture, Veterans Affairs, and Interior to immediately offer all probationary employees that were let go of in mass agency RIFs their jobs back.  In a related, but different case, another Federal judge issued a temporary restraining order, requiring the reinstatement of probationary employees across multiple agencies, including the U.S. Departments of Labor, Health and Human Services and Education.