The Treasury Department and IRS proposal would apply to private schools and colleges.
Page F2From§Eachthe supper edition — 3 September 2026
Treasury calls new rule race-neutral; The Hill reads the same filing and finds a target: minority students
As it ran on the front
I want to say something nice about a federal proposal, which is not a sentence I get to write often. The Treasury Department and the IRS put out a proposed regulation this week on school tax exemptions, and whoever drafted the phrase clear standard was reaching for something real. A rule that does not bend depending on who is asking, I respect that on paper. I liked the sentence enough to write it down: a clear standard, and the institutions that continue to use discriminatory practices will no longer receive the benefits of federal tax-exempt status. I have it right here, somewhere in this coat. Hold on.
Found it. Now the second sentence, from a different page, about the same proposal, filed the same day. This one describes what the rule actually does: end tax-exempt status for private schools that provide preferential treatment to minority students. I read that one twice, because the first sentence and the second sentence are describing the identical Treasury filing, and they are not the same sentence. One is a standard that does not ask what race a student is. The other is a standard about schools that help a specific kind of student. I wrote both of them down, and neither page has a note attached telling me which one is wrong.…
…(cont) I went out to the car after I read it, mostly because I needed the air, and I ended up thinking about the toll plaza on the turnpike, the one with the two lanes side by side. Above one lane there used to be a sign that said E-ZPass only. Above the other, a sign that said cash only. Two signs, two lanes, and the car behind you knows exactly which one to get into, because the signs tell you different things and you believe both of them, because they are hanging over asphalt paid for by the same toll authority. The signs are not neutral just because they are both signs. They are instructions, and the instructions are different depending on which one you are standing under.
I keep going back to that filing the way you go back to check a door you already locked. A federal proposal is one document. It cannot be a race-neutral standard, applied evenly to any school that so much as mentions race, and also, on the same Thursday, a rule aimed at ending help for minority students specifically. A rule is a lane. You cannot hang two signs over it and call the argument settled because one of the signs sounds better read aloud at a podium.
I called my insurance guy about something unrelated, an oil change reminder that turned into a twenty minute conversation, the way those calls do, and I told him about the two sentences. He did not have an answer. Why would he. He sells car insurance.
So here is what is sitting in my glovebox along with the registration I can never find: a proposal from the Treasury Department and the IRS, and a question about which of its two descriptions the schools losing their exemption are supposed to believe when the letter arrives. Does the letter say clear standard, the way Treasury's own quote reads? Or does it say what The Hill's headline says the same filing does, that this proposal ends the tax break for schools that help minority students?
Excuse me, before you go. One more thing on the page I almost missed. If the standard really does not see race, it should not be possible to write, accurately, in one sentence, which students lose help when it is enforced. Somebody already wrote that sentence. It ran Thursday, about the same filing, same department, same day. So which page does a school holding that letter get to keep, the clear standard, or the minority students?
“Two press offices, one filing. Treasury hands out the version that sounds like fairness, the paper hands out the version that says who actually loses the check, and both of them are reading the same page. That is not confusion, that is a rule built to be described two ways depending on who is asking. Somebody's kid loses a tax break either way; the only question is whether you are told the neutral story or the true one.”
“Look, a race-neutral standard is exactly that, neutral, it does not target anybody, it just happens to apply to schools that, and okay, I see the headline, but the regulation itself does not say minority students, it says discriminatory practices, which, did I just read that quote back to myself? That is not the gotcha you think it is. It is a clear standard. That is the whole point of calling it that.”
The receipts
The Trump administration moved on Thursday to end tax-exempt status for private schools that provide preferential treatment to minority students. The Treasury Department and IRS issued a proposed regulation that would provide a “clear standard, and the institutions that continue to use discriminatory practices will no longer receive the…
This page is a back-issue: the story as it ran, receipts as they were. The current edition is at the front.