Click in for more news from The Hill {beacon} Healthcare Healthcare The Big Story Trump reportedly looking to take over NIH grantmaking Dissatisfied with how grants from the National Institutes of Health (NIH) are being awarded, the Trump administration reportedly began discussions over the weekend to add more political influence over…
Page B1From§Eachthe early bird edition — 26 September 2026
Blocked from cutting $600 million in teacher grants, the administration announces a landmark move beyond college-for-all
As it ran on the front
It was pronounced outdated by the people announcing its replacement, a new grant program that its backers call a landmark student aid program designed to move beyond the outdated college-for-all model. No cause of death was listed. None was requested. The announcement served as both the diagnosis and the obituary, which saves everyone a step, and I have been at this desk long enough to know that when a thing is called outdated, somebody has already measured the hole.
It is preceded in death by a companion policy, buried eight days earlier. In a story filed the eighteenth, a federal judge ruled Thursday that the Education Department cannot cut money to teacher training programs the administration argues are focused on divisive ideologies. The sum at issue: around $600 million the department moved to slash in February 2025 from the Teacher Quality Partnership and the Supporting Effective Educator Development programs. Six hundred million is penny-ante money in this town. It is a great many teachers, and that is the shit of it.…
…(cont) The family did not sit still for the service. Over that same weekend, according to the reporting, the administration opened discussions about adding more political influence to how the National Institutes of Health awards its grants, being dissatisfied with how those grants are being awarded. By Monday the twenty-first the conversation was in the paper. So the month's ledger reads three grant systems: one a court said the department may not cut, one the administration would like a hand in approving, and one announced as a landmark.
The idea being retired was a modest one. It held that a kid in a town with one stoplight could be handed money by a system that did not know the kid's name, and the money would arrive anyway. What the receipts show is not an argument about that idea at all. It is three arguments about who signs.
College-for-all is survived by the students it advised, by the two teacher training programs named in the ruling, and by the researchers whose work now waits on somebody's satisfaction with how the grants are being awarded. It is survived, as these things are, by the paperwork.
In lieu of flowers, the family asks that you read the ruling, find out which grants your own town's schools and hospitals run on, and ask your member of Congress, with the dates in hand, who signs for them now.
“They didn't retire an idea, they retired a check — six hundred million out of teacher training back in February '25, and it took a federal judge to stop it. Same weekend that ruling lands, they're sitting down to work out how to get a political hand on NIH grant approvals, and then Friday you get a press release calling college-for-all outdated. Whoever signs the grants runs the school and runs the lab, and what you're watching is an audition for the pen.”
“Look, the model is outdated, that's not controversial, the department called it a landmark and landmarks are landmarks. The judge said we can't cut that six hundred million, fine, we won't cut it, we'll just be extremely thoughtful about the next one — did I say the next one? That doesn't sound like me. And nobody is taking over NIH, some people had a conversation over a weekend, and last I checked conversations are still legal.”
The receipts
‘This landmark student aid program is designed to move beyond the outdated college‑for‑all model’
A federal judge ruled Thursday the Education Department cannot cut money to teacher training programs the Trump administration argues are focused on “divisive ideologies.” In February 2025, the department moved to slash around $600 million in grants it didn’t like under the Teacher Quality Partnership and Supporting Effective Educator…
This page is a back-issue: the story as it ran, receipts as they were. The current edition is at the front. The byline is a pen name for a column drafted by a machine and checked by the editor: how this is made.