Incoming president Donald Trump has confirmed reports that Sriram Krishnan, until recently a general partner at Andreessen Horowitz (a16z), will serve as senior policy advisor for AI at the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy. Trump said in a statement that Krishnan will βhelp shape and coordinate AI policy across government, working with [β¦]
Two big defense tech players, Palantir and Anduril, are talking to tech companies including SpaceX, OpenAI, Saronic, and Scale AI about forming a consortium to bid on Pentagon contracts, according to a report in the Financial Times. The goal, the FT says, is to challenge the dominance of βprimeβ defense contractors like Lockheed Martin, Raytheon, [β¦]
With a US TikTok ban scheduled to take effect in less than a month, President-elect Donald Trump said Sunday that heβd like to keep the app around, according to Reuters. βWeβre going to have to start thinking because, you know, we did go on TikTok, and we had a great response with billions of views, [β¦]
Alrena Dale, 61, got $155,000 in student loans discharged through bankruptcy.
Biden's new bankruptcy guidance, aimed at easing the process for borrowers, made that possible.
Some attorneys told BI that the new guidance is a big help, but more outreach would be helpful.
Alrena Dale, 61, had her six-figure student-loan balance wiped out after decades of payments. She's one of hundreds of borrowers who have received relief after new changes to theΒ bankruptcy process.
Though Dale filed over five years ago, President Joe Biden's new bankruptcy guidance, which streamlined the information she needed to provide in order to qualify for relief, was a turning point in her case.
In August 2023, Dale was finally relieved of her $155,000 balance, according to documents reviewed by Business Insider.
"There were no words. I was excited. I cried," Dale, who'd attended an online business bachelor's and master's program but struggled to findemployment in her field, told BI. She worked multiple minimum-wage jobs at a time to afford her student-loan payments alongside her monthly expenses."I really honestly didn't believe it until I got my discharge papers."
The reason it was so difficult for Dale and many other student-loan borrowers to seek relief in bankruptcy court before 2022 is thatborrowers had to prove an "undue hardship" standard, in which they hadto show that they cannot maintain a minimal standard of living, that their circumstances aren't likely to improve, and that they have made a good-faith effort to repay their debt.
That standard was an extremely high bar for borrowers to meet. The Biden administration's guidance changed that by establishing clearer guidelines for borrowers to meet undue hardship, and it allowed borrowers to complete a self-attestation form, allowing the bankruptcy process to move quicker and avoid investigations into their backgrounds.
Some bankruptcy attorneys told BI that the new guidance has made student-loan bankruptcy much more achievable for borrowers, with some having seen quick success after decades of stagnancy. Still, they said many lawyers are reluctant to lean into the new process, and more outreach and education on navigating bankruptcy for student loans would help.
Dale said the overwhelming emotion she now feels is relief.
"Knowing that I don't have to go out and work a second job just to pay it back because they've removed it for me, I really can't thank them enough," Dale said. "I have no words because I'm just happy and grateful and thankful."
'It's given us so much hope'
Bob and Tammy Branson, a bankruptcy attorney and senior paralegal, respectively, successfully represented Dale in her bankruptcy proceedings.
Tammy said that over the past 25 years, it was nearly impossible to discharge their clients' student loans in bankruptcy β but after the new guidance, she said their law firm has successfully discharged over $1 million in student loans.
"Now we're actually getting people not just to the point of treading water, but we're getting them out of the water," Bob said.
Dustin Baker, a bankruptcy attorney in Iowa, has seen similar success with the new guidance. Baker told BI that before November 2022, he advised his clients that considering a student-loan discharge wasn't worth their effort because it was so difficult to achieve, and he didn't want to take his clients' money for litigation he wasn't confident would be successful.
But once the guidance was announced, Baker said he's eliminated student debt for about a dozen of his clients, with a few more in the pipeline. He said his "biggest excitement" with the new process is the self-attestation form, which directly tells borrowers the questions they need to answer to get approved for a discharge, making communication between the borrower and the government easier.
The Justice Department released new data in July on how the process was going since the new guidance was announced. It showed that 588 new cases were filed from October 2023 to March 2024 β a 34% increase from the prior 6-month period. New data BI obtained from Sen. Elizabeth Warren in October showed that nearly 900 borrowers sought out the process in fiscal year 2024, and 85% of borrowers who filed using the new guidance received a full or partial discharge.
Baker said his experience incorporating the new guidance into his work was "very easy," and he added thatmembers of the Justice Department gave attorneys in his area training sessions. However, Tammy and Bob said more education and outreach would be helpful because some lawyers are unsure if the new process is worth it.
Still, it's clear the guidance works, and Tammy said she hopes that continues.
"It's given us so much hope," she said.
'I would've had to work another job'
The new bankruptcy process for student-loan borrowers still isn't perfect. Igor Roitburg, a former attorney and senior managing director at Stretto β a bankruptcy services and technology firm β told BI that the timeline for borrowers to receive a bankruptcy decision can still widely vary and that uncertainty is a roadblock for some borrowers and attorneys to participate.
"For them to invest time and effort into a new process that they're uncertain about if they don't see results for months and months and months, makes it hard for them to commit to the process and offer it as a global service to all their clients," Roitburg said.
Dale said she saw no other option but to file for bankruptcy, regardless of whether it would be successful. Once the new guidance was released, the self-attestation form allowed Dale to prove that her financial circumstances were unlikely to improve, qualifying her for relief.
She now works at a call center and said she can't afford to retire yet. If she had the opportunity to do things differently, she might have considered going to a trade school to avoid the student-debt burden.
"I'm just making the best of what I have to work with right now," she said, adding that if she didn't see success through bankruptcy, "I would've had to work another job just to pay the student loans."
Have you successfully discharged your student loans in bankruptcy? Are you struggling with the process? Share your story with this reporter at [email protected].
Google has offered up its own proposal in a recent antitrust case that saw the US Department of Justice argue that Google must sell its Chrome browser. US District Court Judge Amit Mehta ruled in August that Google had acted illegally to maintain a monopoly in online search, with the DOJ then proposing a number [β¦]
President-elect Donald Trump has called on Congress to raise or eliminate the debt ceiling.
He said doing so before his term would put the onus on Joe Biden and let him avoid an early fight.
Going over the debt ceiling could lead to a default and a deep recession.
The debt ceiling is the unexpected debate in Washington this week after President-elect Donald Trump threw the annual holiday-season government-funding talks into disarray.
Trump said he wanted to raise or eliminate the limit on how much the federal government can borrow. Doing so now would mean the much-debated move would happen on President Joe Biden's watch and be resolved before Trump takes office, when he'll want to implement his agenda without a fight over borrowing limits.
"Congress must get rid of, or extend out to, perhaps, 2029, the ridiculous Debt Ceiling," Trump wrote Friday in a Truth Social post. "Without this, we should never make a deal. Remember, the pressure is on whoever is President.'"
This all comes amid a chaotic scramble to reach a funding deal for the US government and avoid a shutdown when Friday ends. The debt ceiling was one of the sticking points Trump used to scrap a bipartisan deal to keep the government funded through March. Now he's revisiting a much-used political tool.
"Trump is right to identify that he doesn't want his fingerprints on increasing the debt ceiling, and he doesn't want to have to deal with it in six months while he's trying to pass what he considers a must-pass tax-extension bill," Elizabeth Pancotti, the director of special initiatives at the left-leaning Roosevelt Institute think tank, told Business Insider.
A debt-ceiling breach has become a political tool β one that Trump is trying to wield for the last time
The debt ceiling limits the amount of money the federal government is allowed to borrow to pay for its programs and operations. If it's not regularly raised or suspended, the US government risks defaulting on its debt and failing to pay its bills.
This could compromise everyday Americans' access to crucial government programs such as Social Security, Medicaid, and housing vouchers. Len Burman, a fellow at the think tank Urban Institute, told BI that a default could also cause interest rates to rise drastically if investors no longer viewed the US government as a creditworthy borrower. That would mean Americans may face higher rates on mortgages and credit cards, which could lead to a broader financial crisis and deep recession.
Because of these widespread consequences, the debt ceiling has evolved into a political bargaining chip, and the US has repeatedly come close to breaching it over partisan disagreements, most recently in 2023. That's why some Democrats have long advocated abolishing the ceiling, arguing that Republicans weaponize it to push spending cuts. Sen. Elizabeth Warren capitalized on Trump's recent comments, writing Thursday morning on X that she agreed with him on terminating the debt limit.
During recent debt-ceiling standoffs, various plans to sidestep the limit were floated. Democratic Rep. Jamie Raskin told BI that the president could invoke a clause in the 14th Amendment that would declare a default and the debt ceiling that caused that default unconstitutional.
Other ideas to eliminate the debt ceiling have included minting a $1 trillion platinum coin, which some economists have said would allow the Treasury secretary to deposit the coin to pay off debts.
In an interview with Fox News Digital on Thursday, Trump said that Republicans who didn't support repealing the debt limit could face primary challenges; many Republicans have historically opposed getting rid of it, arguing that it's a check on borrowing. Trump told NBC News that Democrats had signaled they wanted to get rid of the debt limit and that he would "lead the charge" to do so.
The country will technically hit the debt ceiling at the start of next year, but the Treasury Department can hold off default and keep paying the bills through various accounting tricks, likely until late spring or early summer.
Craig Wright, the man who claims he invented bitcoin and has been filing lawsuits asserting intellectual property rights, was sentenced to a year in prison yesterday for committing contempt of court.
The sentence is suspended and can be enforced if Wright continues violating court rulingsβbut he may be able to avoid imprisonment by staying away from countries that have extradition agreements with the UK. Wright defied an order to attend a court hearing in person this week and said he is in Asia.
Wright "was sentenced for contempt of court on Thursday" for bringing a 911 billion pound ($1.1 trillion) lawsuit "against Twitter founder Jack Dorsey's payments company Block in Britain," Reuters wrote.
Biden's administration posted notices to withdraw its broader student-loan-forgiveness plans.
Amid lawsuits, the Education Department wrote that it stands by the legality of its debt-relief plans.
The plans aimed to cancel some student debt for over 38 million borrowers.
President Joe Biden's administration has officially scrapped its unfinished rules for broad student-loan forgiveness.
The Education Department posted notices to withdraw its plans to cancel student debt for over 38 million borrowers. The withdrawal notices were for two of the department's unfinished debt-relief rules. The first rule was Biden's Plan B for broader debt relief after the Supreme Court struck his first plan down in summer 2023. The second rule was a proposal to provide relief to borrowers facing financial hardship.
In the notices to withdraw the unfinished rules, the Education Department said it is focused on helping student-loan borrowers manage the remaining elements of the return to repayment that began last year following the pandemic pause.
The department said that withdrawing these regulations will give future stakeholders the flexibility to craft new forms of relief, especially with the uncertainty the incoming administration brings. Trump has previously criticized broad relief and is unlikely to continue Biden's efforts.
The department also said that the withdrawal of these rules is not a result of the questions surrounding their legality, saying that it believes the relief "is authorized by the Secretary's longstanding and existing authority" under the Higher Education Act.
Biden's Plan B for student-loan forgiveness would have benefited over 30 million borrowers. It proposed full or partial relief for categories including borrowers with unpaid interest and those who have made at least 20 years of payments. While the rule was never finalized, a group of GOP-led states filed a lawsuit in September to block its implementation.
Meanwhile, the Education Department proposed a separate rule in October to provide relief to 8 million borrowers facing financial hardship. Those categories would have included borrowers facing challenges with childcare or medical expenses.
The Education Department did not immediately respond to a request for comment from Business Insider on the withdrawal of the plans.
Biden is still pursuing other avenues for debt relief before his term is up. On Friday, his administration announced an additional $4.28 billion in debt relief for 54,900 borrowers in Public Service Loan Forgiveness β a result of ongoing improvements to the program. Despite not being able to pass broad relief, Biden, over the course of his term, has provided relief to nearly 5 million borrowers through changes to various programs.
Some Republican lawmakers lauded the withdrawal of the plans. Sen. Bill Cassidy, the top Republican on the Senate education committee, said in a Friday statement that Biden's "student loan schemes were always a lie."
Meanwhile, some advocates criticized the GOP-led challenges to Biden's relief efforts. Persis Yu, the deputy executive director of the advocacy group Student Borrower Protection Center, said in a statement that Biden's plans "would have freed millions from the crushing weight of the student debt crisis and unlocked economic mobility for millions more workers and families."
"We are deeply grateful to President Biden for the work he did to fight for the 40 million borrowers trapped in student debt," Yu said.
Yesterday, US Senators Jeff Merkley (D-OR), Elizabeth Warren (D-MA), and Joshua Hawley (R-MO) sent letters to the heads of Ford, General Motors, and Tesla, as well as the US heads of Honda, Hyundai, Nissan, Stellantis, Subaru, Toyota, and Volkswagen, excoriating them over their opposition to the right-to-repair movement.
"We need to hit the brakes on automakers stealing your data and undermining your right-to-repair," said Senator Merkley in a statement to Ars. "Time and again, these billionaire corporations have a double standard when it comes to your privacy and security: claiming that sharing vehicle data with repair shops poses cybersecurity risks while selling consumer data themselves. Oregon has one of the strongest right-to-repair laws in the nation, and thatβs why Iβm working across the aisle to advance efforts nationwide that protect consumer rights."
Most repairs arenβt at dealerships
The Senators point out that 70 percent of car parts and services currently come from independent outlets, which are seen as trustworthy and providing good value for money, "while nearly all dealerships receive the worst possible rating for price."
Biden announced $4.28 billion in student-debt cancellation for 54,900 borrowers in Public Service Loan Forgiveness.
The relief is a result of the Education Department's ongoing fixes to PSLF.
President-elect Donald Trump is unlikely to continue Biden's student-debt relief efforts.
President Joe Biden announced more student-loan forgiveness with one month left until he leaves the White House.
On Friday, Biden and his Education Department said they have approved $4.28 billion in student debt for 54,900 borrowers in the Public Service Loan Forgiveness program, which forgives student debt for government and nonprofit workers after 10 years of qualifying payments.
The relief is a result of ongoing improvements to PSLF, including a waiver that expired in October 2022 that allowed payments that previously did not qualify for relief to count toward borrowers' forgiveness progress.
"Four years ago, the Biden-Harris Administration made a pledge to America's teachers, service members, nurses, first responders, and other public servants that we would fix the broken Public Service Loan Forgiveness Program, and I'm proud to say that we delivered," Education Secretary Miguel Cardona said in a statement.
This latest relief brings the total student-loan forgiveness under Biden to about $180 billion for nearly 5 million Americans, including $78 billion for just over 1 million borrowers enrolled in PSLF.
It's unclear if the Biden administration will announce more student-debt relief before President-elect Donald Trump takes office on January 20. Still, it caps off a tumultuous past few years for student-loan borrowers hoping for broad debt relief β Biden's first student-loan forgiveness plan was struck down by the Supreme Court last summer, and his Plan B for debt relief is now in court following legal challenging from Republican-led states.
On top of that, 8 million borrowers enrolled in the SAVE plan β Biden's new income-driven repayment plan intended to make monthly payments cheaper with a shorter timeline to forgiveness β are in limbo as they wait for a court to decide if the plan can move forward.
Even if Biden's plans for broader relief do survive their legal challenges, it's unlikely Trump's administration would continue those efforts. Preston Cooper, a senior fellow at the conservative-leaning American Enterprise Institute, previously told Business Insider that Biden "has taken a stance of, 'We want to try and forgive as much debt as possible through various different programs.'"
"And to put it mildly, we're not going to see that same attitude under the Trump administration," Cooper said.
Trump proposed eliminating PSLF during his first term, but doing so requires congressional approval. Republican control of Congress and the White House means that Trump would likely have more success achieving his goals.
"From Day One of my Administration, I promised to make sure that higher education is a ticket to the middle class, not a barrier to opportunity," Biden said in a statement. "Because of our actions, millions of people across the country now have the breathing room to start businesses, save for retirement, and pursue life plans they had to put on hold because of the burden of student loan debt."
Joshua McGoun, a K-12 public-school teacher in Frederick, Maryland, first noticed a change in his students about 10 years ago. They began to struggle with focus.
Increasingly, younger kids were not nailing basic reading skills before third grade β a crucial window. Those who miss it have a tough road ahead in middle and high school. Even adept readers in their tweens and teens have become afraid of complex or extended reading tasks and more comfortable with short texts or bite-size summaries.
McGoun, who has a doctorate in education, shared one stark example. With struggling readers, he hands each child a book upside down and backward. "They should be able to turn the book the right way up and open it at the first page," he said. These days, "some students aren't able to do that."
This is not unusual. Across the US, kids are struggling to read. Last year, reading performance for fourth graders hit its lowest level since 2005, and teachers expect that number to keep tumbling.
The panic to turn things around quickly is driving a wedge between teachers, politicians, and parents, all pointing the finger of blame at one another.
The Senate education committee, calling it a crisis, is pushing school districts to retrain teachers in a trendy new teaching style called "the science of reading," which has dramatically improved literacy in some areas (scroll down for more detail on that). Parents with resources to do so are moving their kids to schools that tout science-backed teaching styles.
Some teachers and policy experts worry this frenzy may have an ironic side effect, putting pressure on public schools to resolve a problem that cannot be tackled in the classroom alone.
"It makes the task of teaching harder," McGoun said, referring to new literacy programs and a focus on test results. "We're burning out at a faster rate, and it's causing a lot of apathy."
Gen Alpha kids, aged 2 to 12, need to discover the joy of reading, he and other teachers say. It's doable, but it's a more creative and slower process that many parents don't have time to wait for.
Teaching a 6-year-old to read is political
There has never been a golden age for reading scores in America. The record high was in 2017, when 37% of US fourth graders pass their NAEP reading test β just 5% higher than the most recent results.
Still, this new low raised alarm among lawmakers who were already concerned about screens and loneliness among Gen Alpha.
βThe long-term implications will be direβ if literacy does not improve, Sen. Bill Cassidy, the top Republican on the Senate education committee, said in February. βWe are at risk of having an entire generation of children, those who were in their prime learning years during the COVID-19 pandemic, fail to become productive adults if reading proficiency does not improve.β
His proposed solution? Get all teachers to use the same, evidence-backed teaching style.
Teaching styles have served as political footballs for over 100 years. The fierce, ongoing debate β known as the βreading warsβ β dates back to at least the mid-19th century, when Horace Mann, then Massachusettsβ education secretary, slammed the alphabet as βskeleton-shaped, bloodless, ghostly apparitionsβ and said children should be taught whole words rather than their structure.
While teaching unions maintain that teachers should be able to draw from various teaching styles, itβs a tough sell with parents.
βParents and others are getting upset about their kidsβ literacy curriculum because they've heard that there's a certain way to teach kids how to read, and that might not be properly implemented in schools,β Carly Robinson, a senior education researcher at Stanford University, said.
Recently, the βscience of readingβ method (see chart below) has been touted as a silver bullet that transformed literacy rates in Mississippi between 2013 and 2019 β even in areas with high child-poverty rates, which typically correlate with lower literacy levels. It became known as the βMississippi Miracle.β
In a February report, the Senate education committee said teachers who still used other methods β particularly the three-cueing system β were setting students βup for failure in the long run.β
TEACHING STYLES
Style
Whole language
Three-cueing
Science of reading
How it works
Popular in the 1980s and β90s, this style is about learning words through immersion.
A teacher practicing this approach repeatedly shows students a set of words, using photos to help them remember the meanings.
Critics said the whole-language approach made students rely on context instead of learning to sound out unfamiliar words.
Popularized in the 1960s, this model blends contextual, visual, and grammar techniques.
Kids are given three cues: semantic (the meaning of the word), syntactic (how the word is used in a sentence), and graphophonic (letters and sounds).
Critics of three-cueing say it could teach students to interpret words incorrectly. For example, a student could look at a photo of a horse and read "pony." They might not be corrected because the meaning makes sense within the context of the sentence and the photo.
The βscience of readingβ places emphasis on decoding words.
It is rooted in an approach developed in the 1930s by the neuropsychiatrist Samuel Orton and the psychologist Anna Gillingham. Take the word βchip."
Instructors focus on teaching students to identify the individual sounds each letter makes alone and those they make when combined β like βchβ instead of βcβ and βhβ individually. Given the word chip's multiple meanings, you may be able to identify the major challenge with methods that focus on flashcards or context clues.
Where it's used
These days, elements of the whole-language method are used, particularly in Montessori and Waldorf schools, but it is no longer popular as a singular method.
At least eight states, including Florida, Texas, and Wisconsin, banned three-cueing last year in favor of the science-of-reading method.
A growing number of states across the country are adopting the science-of-reading methods.
In other states, parents want a Mississippi Miracle of their own.
Susie Coughlin, a mom in Falmouth, Maine, found herself going down rabbit holes about literacy techniques after her 5-year-old daughter, Carter, repeated kindergarten. Despite spending a second year at that level, the little girl had fallen behind in reading and writing.
One day, near the end of the school year, Coughlin saw a piece of Carterβs homework where she had written, βI went to the osen,β rather than, βI went to the ocean.β The teacher had not corrected the mistake because the emphasis was on visual cues β a picture of the sea β rather than spelling. Coughlin was appalled; spelling was why Carter struggled to keep up in other classes. The mom took up her concerns with the teacher, who, she said, defended the visual method.
Coughlin said that the impression the teacher gave off was that the school was "just going to let your child slide through." "So we hit the brakes."
Carter finished the year, but her parents elected to send her to a private Catholic school for first grade. In her new school, Carter was taught to βsound it outβ β articulating the word as she read it rather than scanning pages for context cues.
Her progress was dramatic, Coughlin said. Now 8 years old, Carter thrives in her second-grade reading classes. βIt broke my heart when her confidence was in the toilet at her old school, but her bucket of self-esteem is filling up,β Coughlin, who has since enrolled Carterβs younger brother at the same school, added.
Coughlin said her family was fortunate to have the resources to go private because the annual fees at the Catholic school are relatively low: $10,000 a child, compared with about $40,000 for secular private schools in Falmouth.
Forty-five states and Washington, DC, are considering bills that would retrain public school teachers in new, evidence-based reading practices. Susan Neuman, a professor of childhood and literacy education at New York University and an education official under President George W. Bush, said the bills represented βthe biggest, boldest, and most inclusive effort to date to promote high-quality, scientifically supported reading instruction for all children,β adding: βWe cannot fail.β
Educators are not so bullish about another initiative that requires retraining and devotion to new materials that cost hundredsor thousands of dollars a year, preventing creativity with the syllabus.
βThe problem is that some school districts think: βWe pay for this program, and therefore you have to use this program.β You can't use anything else,β McGoun said.
While his school allows for flexibility, heβs seen panic take over in other districts, he said: βAs a teacher, you can't even make your own materials. Itβs because the school district attended a conference and learned about a particular program β they promised XYZ outcomes if you only use its resources.β
Nailing the right method is not a teacherβs biggest concern, McGoun said. βThe most important thing an educator can do is provide good pedagogy by focusing on the studentβs interests,β he said. βWhen you have motivated students, they will read.β
Kids are falling out of love with the written word
Students, McGoun said, have βfallen out of loveβ with the written word because the march of technology has made it seem βalienβ and βoutmodedβ to them.
Parents know tearing a school-age child away from a phone is no easy feat. No matter what literacy technique you employ, the pull of screens tends to be stronger.
There are efforts to leverage technology to help with literacy. Some artificial-intelligence programs, already appearing in classrooms, listen to students read aloud and give them instant feedback on pronunciation and comprehension, an alternative to having students play a reading game for 10 minutes on their own.
Subtitles on TV shows have proved beneficial for early readers by presenting words on a screen that a child will read, sometimes without even realizing it β so much so that the actor Jack Black joined a campaign to promote subtitles to boost kidsβ literacy.
Tara West, a former kindergarten teacher and the founder of the literary-coaching organization Little Minds at Work, believes the benefits of constructive tech could outweigh the harm of kids spending too much time on screens. βKids gravitate toward anything thatβs digital,β so teachers can take advantage of that, West said, adding: βTechnology is going to go far.β
Getting teachers on board may not be easy. In a recent Pew survey of elementary-school teachers, 47% of respondents said they werenβt sure how AI in classrooms would influence their studentsβ learning.
Jeff Jarvis, a public-school teacher in Los Angeles, is skeptical about the tech method. Sure, it might work in small groups, βbut youβd almost definitely be struggling to use it effectively in a large class with 25 kids,β he said.
Educational digital media is βoften attached to visuals, not texts,β Jarvis said, adding: βTheyβre getting quick blurbs from Snapchat and TikTok but nothing in-depth.β
Teachers like Jarvis and McGoun say that, at the most basic level, kids should be surrounded by books to simply learn how they work β turning physical pages instead of swiping on an iPad, for example. Thatβs where parents come in.
Pavel Buyeu, a 43-year-old dad from Seattle, said that when his daughter, Liza, now 15, began to show a reluctance to read, he feared sheβd miss out on the joy and satisfaction of discovering books as a kid.
βLiza and I are from different generations with different interests,β Buyeu said. Still, he said he would like to see her enjoy some of the books he loved when he was younger. βMy favorites were βThe Adventures of Tom Sawyer,β βThe Adventures of Huckleberry Finn,β and βThe Little Prince,ββ he told Business Insider.
Buyeu devised a βgameβ to make reading fun for Liza. Heβd take his daughter to the bookstore and have her pick a title in return for privileges like sleeping in on weekends. The pair read and discussed the books before writing an alternative ending to the plot. Family members voted on a winner, which motivated Liza even more.
βReading became a joy for her,β Buyeu said, adding that Lizaβs reading speed and spelling improved, said.
Buyeuβs game speaks to the power of parental involvement β a luxury not afforded to every kid.
Parents with means are paying for tutoring
Learning to read isnβt just about getting a grade; it can reverberate throughout someoneβs career and personal life. Want to vote? It helps to be able to read and comprehend complex material.
If not all students become readers in school, you will start to see βthe haves and the have-nots,β Neuman, the former education official, said β people with the money to pay for extra help moving ahead in school and life, and those relying on public resources falling behind.
Kumon, a private company that provides after-school math and reading tutoring, has recorded a recent surge in its number of new students, with enrollment increasing by 56% between 2020 and 2024. The companyβs methodology incorporates both meaning-based instruction and phonics.
Kalisha Brooks of Indian Land, South Carolina, enrolled her son, Corey, at Kumon when he was in kindergarten during the COVID-19 pandemic. She was worried that the disruption of the health crisis might set him back.
βIβd read articles about children being home and getting further and further behind,β Brooks said. So she bit the bullet, budgeting an extra $200 a month for Corey to have twice-weekly reading classes. Sheβs glad she did. Corey, now 8, performed above average in second grade and is now in third with a renewed confidence in reading.
Jessica Mercedes Penzari, a 40-year-old mom in New York City, can relate to Brooksβ dilemma. Her son Hendrix's kindergarten report card showed that he had dramatically fallen behind in reading within months. βIt was a moment of panic,β Penzari said. βOnce you fall behind, getting caught up is so difficult. I thought, βIβm slipping as a mom because my eye isnβt on the ball.ββ
Penzari secured a private tutor β a special-education teacher who lived in her building. She babysat the womanβs kids in exchange for the typically $75-an-hour lessons. It proved successful. Hendrix, who recently entered second grade, is back at proficiency level and above grade level in some subcategories.
Children who have fewer educational resources find themselves a step behind their peers at the outset. Just 10% of multilingual students can read proficiently by fourth grade compared with 33% of fourth graders overall, the NAEP found.
Last year, Nichelle Watkins, who lives in public housing in Baltimore, told Fox 45 News that her fourth-grade son, Logan, still could not read and that they couldnβt afford tutoring.
βHow is he supposed to be productive if he canβt read?β she said in the news segment.
βThey go there to be babysat for eight hours and come home,β the mom added, referring to Loganβs elementary school. She said legislators β to whom she later wrote pleading for improvements β ignored the problem.
βI feel like they donβt care. Itβs not their children,β she said.
What now?
Linda McMahon, President-elect Donald Trumpβs pick to lead his Education Department, will have a mammoth managerial job on her hands if she is confirmed.
McMahon, a former wrestling executive who sat on the Board of Trustees for Sacred Heart University and served one year on Connecticutβs Board of Education, supports Trumpβs plans to deliver funds for education directly to states, giving them the authority to choose how to spend the money. Sheβs sparked anger from some educators who argue her plans would hurt public schools. She has also been accused in a recent lawsuit of enabling sexual abuse of kids in the WWE. McMahon has denied the allegation, and the lawsuit is on hold while another court rules on the constitutionality of such cases.
In an emailed statement, Trump-Vance transition spokesperson Liz Huston told BI that McMahon "is ready to deliver on President Trump's agenda to restore America's education system and prepare our next generation for the future."
Robinson, the Stanford researcher, said teachers would need much more funding to implement all the new bipartisan reading policies coming through states. Still, itβs not enough to simply shower schools with cash β smart policies are key. βJust giving money without any guidelines isn't actually that helpful if you want it to be directed in a certain way,β Robinson said.
In the meantime, all of these moving parts have created a divide between parents and teachers, who point the finger of blame at each other. Itβs easier to take on someone close to you than to tackle unanswerable questions, such as, βhow much have screens derailed attention spans?β, and βhow much education funding is enough to make a difference?β
Jarvis, the special education teacher in LA, said he understands parentsβ frustration that something so fundamental to modern life now feels impossible. He agreed that federal funding for literacy programs is essential to stop reading rates from tumbling further.
In the meantime, he said that parents can make a major difference by engaging in reading with their children at home. Take your kids to libraries, the teacher said. Let your kids see you reading books at home, he added, to create motivation and a rich environment for βreading to flourish.β
βPut down your own electronic devices and read with your kids, even if itβs just for 15 minutes a day,β Jarvis said. βLet them read aloud to you and then ask questions about the text. Itβs important to have parent-child time away from technology.β
For months, popular fighting game YouTubers have been under attack. Even the seemingly most cautious among them have been duped by sophisticated phishing attacks that hack their accounts to push cryptocurrency scams by convincingly appearing to offer legitimate sponsorships from established brands.
These scams often start with bad actors seemingly taking over verified accounts on X (formerly Twitter) with substantial followings and then using them to impersonate marketing managers at real brands who can be easily found on LinkedIn.
The fake X accounts go to great lengths to appear legitimate. They link to brands' actual websites and populate feeds with histories seemingly spanning decades by re-posting brands' authentic posts.
As President-elect Donald Trump prepares to return to the White House next month, what sort of foreign policy can Americans expect during his second stint in the Oval Office?
Trump will pursue an "America first foreign policy," J. Michael Waller, senior analyst for strategy at the Center for Security Policy, suggested during an interview with Fox News Digital, describing Biden's approach as "America last."
Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell is advocating for the soon-to-be commander in chief to significantly increase military spending in a bid to build up the nation's "hard power."
The long-serving lawmaker is also warning against an isolationist approach to foreign policy, asserting in a piece on Foreign Affairs that "the response to four years of weakness must not be four years of isolation."
"Trump would be wise to build his foreign policy on the enduring cornerstone of U.S. leadership: hard power. To reverse the neglect of military strength, his administration must commit to a significant and sustained increase in defense spending, generational investments in the defense industrial base, and urgent reforms to speed the United Statesβ development of new capabilities and to expand alliesβ and partnersβ access to them," McConnell contended.
"To pretend that the United States can focus on just one threat at a time, that its credibility is divisible, or that it can afford to shrug off faraway chaos as irrelevant is to ignore its global interests and its adversariesβ global designs," he argued.
Waller, who authored the book "Big Intel," explained that America-first foreign policy does not mean isolationism.Β
"It means for the United States to define its national interests very strictly," without suggesting that every crisis around the globe is "of vital, existential interest to our country," he noted.
Waller opined that in Foreign Affairs McConnell was seeking to "maintain the uniparty consensus for the United States' present global commitments that are stretching us beyond our means β¦ without even stepping back to reassess what is really in our national interests and how can we best marshal our resources to ensure them."
Fox News Digital attempted to reach out to request comment from McConnell, but did not receive a response.
Trump has tapped Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla., for secretary of state, a choice Waller graded as a "really good pick."Β
Regarding the ongoing Ukraine-Russia conflict, Rubio has said that the U.S. is funding a "stalemate war."
Trump has called for a ceasefire.
"There should be an immediate ceasefire and negotiations should begin. Too many lives are being so needlessly wasted, too many families destroyed, and if it keeps going, it can turn into something much bigger, and far worse," he declared in a post on Truth Social.
Trump has also called for the release of hostages in the Middle East, warning in a post on Truth Social that if they are not released by when he assumes office, "there will be ALL HELL TO PAY in the Middle East, and for those in charge who perpetrated these atrocities against Humanity. Those responsible will be hit harder than anybody has been hit in the long and storied History of the United States of America," he declared.
Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy pressured Republicans to scrap their bill to keep the government funded.
The US government is now set to shut down early Saturday morning if Congress doesn't act.
A shutdown would furlough thousands of federal workers, impacting programs many Americans rely on.
The US is once again on the brink of a government shutdown following intense pressure from President-elect Donald Trump and his newly created DOGE commission.
It would mean federal workers are temporarily out of work, and Americans could experience slowdowns at airport security and customer-service delays for programs like Social Security. During the last government shutdown under Trump, national parks shuttered and flights were delayed or rerouted because of limited transportation staffing.
The possibility of a shutdown starting at 12:01 a.m. Saturday comes after the House of Representatives seemed poised this week to approve a continuing resolution to keep the government funded through March. However,following intense criticism on social media from Trump and the leaders of his new Department of Government Efficiency, Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy, House Republicans scrapped the bill.
They took issue with the inclusion of a range of items in the bill that they said were not relevant to government funding, including pandemic preparedness and a pay raise for lawmakers.
Ramaswamy posted on X on Wednesday morning that the bill is "full of excessive spending, special interest giveaways & pork barrel politics."
Musk also wrote on X on Wednesday that a government shutdown is "infinitely better than passing a horrible bill."
Trump and his vice president-elect, JD Vance, released a jointΒ statementΒ Wednesday saying the resolutionΒ would "give Congress a pay increase while many Americans are struggling this Christmas."
Now, Congress must find a new funding solution in just over 24 hours, leaving Americans on the brink of the first government shutdown since 2018. Here's what that could mean.
What happens in a government shutdown
Every federal agency is required to prepare for a government shutdown by creating contingency plans to submit to the Office of Management and Budget. Each agency outlines how it will structure its workforce in a shutdown, including how many workers it will furlough and for how long.
This means federal workers would be affected first, with many finding themselves temporarily out of work. The longer the shutdown lasts, the more severe the consequences for Americans would be, but if federal workers are furloughed, agencies will be strained to carry out their usual daily functions.
For example, the Social Security Administration's latest contingency plan said it expects to furlough 8,103 of its 59,000 employees at the start of a shutdown. This means that while Social Security payments would still continue to reach Americans, customer service would be limited for beneficiaries dealing with payment issues.
During a government shutdown, active-duty military service members would remain on duty but may go unpaid until funding is restored. The Department of Education's latest contingency plan, from 2023, said that it would have to pause most of its grantmaking activities during a shutdown, including its review of grant applications from local school districts.
The Department of Transportation's contingency plan in 2024 said that while facility service inspections and air-traffic-controller training would cease, essential services like air travel would continue. The Department of Homeland Security's most recent contingency plan said that the Transportation Security Administration would furlough over 2,000 workers, likely resulting in longer wait times for travelers at airports.
The US Postal Service, however, would not be affected by a shutdown because it's an independent agency.
Additionally, a 2023 brief from the progressive think tank Center for American Progress said that a number of federal programs "immediately cease" during federal shutdowns, including the processing of new small business loan applications, workplace safety inspections, NASA research programs, and federal loans to farmers.
The collapse of the previous deal means the clock is ticking for both parties to come to an agreement on avoiding a government shutdown before the weekend.
Karine Jean-Pierre, the White House press secretary, criticized the recent government shutdown threats in a statement Wednesday.
"Triggering a damaging government shutdown would hurt families who are gathering to meet with their loved ones and endanger the basic services Americans from veterans to Social Security recipients rely on," she said. "A deal is a deal. Republicans should keep their word."
The Federal Aviation Administration temporarily banned drones over parts of New Jersey yesterday and said "the United States government may use deadly force against" airborne aircraft "if it is determined that the aircraft poses an imminent security threat."
The FAA issued 22 orders imposing "temporary flight restrictions for special security reasons" until January 17, 2025. "At the request of federal security partners, the FAA published 22 Temporary Flight Restrictions (TFRs) prohibiting drone flights over critical New Jersey infrastructure," an FAA statement said.
Each NOTAM (Notice to Air Missions) affects a specific area. "No UAS [Unmanned Aircraft System] operations are authorized in the areas covered by this NOTAM" unless they have clearance for specific operations, the FAA said. Allowed operations include support for national defense, law enforcement, firefighting, and commercial operations "with a valid statement of work."
When the federal government shuts its doors, Americans get a glimpse at a long-debated question in Washington: How much government is too much? Here's what happens during a partial government shutdown, which typically happens when Congress has failed to pass new bills authorizing spending.
Federal agencies and services deemed "nonessential" can expect to halt their operations, while "essential" services continue to function. ExamplesΒ of "essential" agencies include national security, Border Patrol, law enforcement, disaster response and more.Β
What's more, funding for certain programs, like Social Security, and some agencies such as the Postal Service, operate separately from the yearly appropriations process.
A shutdown lasting less than two weeks would likely have minimal impact, as federal employees would still receive their paychecks on schedule. Longer shutdowns, meanwhile, are usually accompanied by retroactive pay for government workers and congressional staff. As a result, the actual effects of a shutdown tend to be far less severe than how it's typically described.
Partial government shutdowns can also be seen as an opportunity by some lawmakers to address unsustainable federal spending. The U.S. national debt exceeds $35 trillion, and many argue that allowing the government to function indefinitely without addressing wasteful spending is irresponsible. Shutdowns can thus force Congress to make decisions about funding priorities and eliminate bloated programs.
The federal governmentβs fiscal year runs from Oct. 1 to Sept. 30, requiring Congress to pass a set of appropriations bills by the end of September to fund operations. If Congress fails to act, legal safeguards prevent executive agencies from spending money without legislative approval, effectively limiting government functions.
The annual congressional budget process begins in early February, when the president submits a budget proposal to Congress, offering recommendations for federal spending across all areas of government.Β
By mid-April, Congress is expected to adopt a budget resolution that establishes overall spending limits and guidelines. Throughout late spring and summer, House and Senate Appropriations Committees work on drafting 12 bills to allocate funding for specific federal agencies and programs. These bills must be passed by Congress by Sept. 30 to prevent a partial government shutdown.
The deadline to pass a continuing resolution (CR), which is a temporary funding patch, is 11:59:59 pm ET on Friday. Without one, the federal government enters a partial shutdown on Saturday, Dec. 21.
Amazon workers at seven warehouses walked out Thursday morning, launching a strike ahead of the holidays after Amazon failed to meet a bargaining deadline set by the Teamsters union representing the workers.
In a press release, Teamsters declared it "the largest strike against Amazon in US history." Teamsters general president, Sean O'Brien, warned shoppers of potential delays, saying "you can blame Amazonβs insatiable greed."
"We gave Amazon a clear deadline to come to the table and do right by our members. They ignored it," OβBrien said. "These greedy executives had every chance to show decency and respect for the people who make their obscene profits possible. Instead, theyβve pushed workers to the limit and now theyβre paying the price. This strike is on them."
The European Commission has published draft proposals for how Apple must meet interoperability requirements flowing from the blocβs Digital Markets Act (DMA), inviting feedback on proposed measures targeted at areas like iOS notifications, data transfer, and device set-up by January 9, 2025. European Union regulators have until around mid-March to adopt final decisions on what [β¦]
Apple and Meta are warring in Europe over the balance between interoperability and privacy, Reuters reports. The fight focuses on the European Unionβs Digital Markets Act (DMA), a competition regulation that requires designated gatekeepers (including Apple and Meta) not to restrict rivalsβ access to so-called core platform services. In Appleβs case, this means: iOS, iPadOS, [β¦]