By Mike Bilfinger, Assistant Director, Public Policy, AACRAO
On the final day of the 110th AACRAO Annual Meeting in Seattle, AACRAO’s Government Relations team presented a federal update. This is a session conducted by the GR team at every Annual Meeting, with the goal of providing an overview of current federal issues affecting higher education.
This year's federal update covered a wide range of topics, including a discussion on closing the U.S. Department of Education, recent executive actions taken by the Trump administration, and the ongoing budget resolution and reconciliation process in the 119th Congress at the time this article was written.
On the topic of closing the Department, the GR team covered the March 20, 2025, Executive Order titled Improving Education Outcomes by Empowering Parents, States, and Communities. This EO directs Secretary McMahon to “take all necessary steps to facilitate the closure of the Department of Education.” While this is of great concern to AACRAO, the EO doesn’t actually go as far as some were initially expecting. It does not, in and of itself, mandate the closure of the Department, a step that Secretary McMahon has acknowledged would require an act of Congress, and it does not specify where component parts of ED would be relocated (e.g., FSA to Treasury, OCR to DOJ).
Several bills, with varying levels of detail, have been introduced in this Congress that would shutter the agency. AACRAO is tracking these, along with other proposed legislation at both the federal and state levels, in our Advocacy Center. Additionally, AACRAO’s Advocacy Center allows you to take action to support the U.S. Department of Education by sending a letter to your Congressional representatives. You simply need to input your address, and the system takes care of the rest.
Beyond closing the Department of Education, the GR team also discussed several executive actions taken by the Trump administration that impact higher education. For example, we covered the DHS directive that rescinded the “sensitive locations” policy, which had prohibited ICE enforcement action from taking place at hospitals, churches, courthouses, and college campuses. Since this directive was announced earlier this year, there has been an explosion of news related to international students studying in the US. In particular, thousands of international students and recent graduates have had their legal status changed with little to no explanation.
AACRAO has joined community letters to the U.S. Department of State and Homeland Security, as well as to Congressional leaders, expressing concern over these actions. Furthermore, AACRAO recently co-hosted a joint webinar with the National Association of College and University Attorneys on immigration enforcement on campuses and the sharing of personally identifiable information. The recording of this AACRAO/NACUA webinar is publicly available on the website along with a new resource page.
Our AACRAO leadership team believed that the recording of the GR federal update should be made available to all AACRAO members, regardless of whether they attended the Annual Meeting, given the current federal policy landscape and the Trump administration's focus on higher education. You can access the session recording here using your AACRAO Community account login through May 30, 2025.