Trump in debate again denies involvement in Project 2025

(WASHINGTON) — The White House is touting its American Rescue Plan (ARP) COVID emergency funding program as a win for public education with nearly 90% of its funds exhausted by Monday’s deadline, according to senior Department of Education officials.

The final $122 billion phase of the Elementary and Secondary School Emergency Relief fund (ESSER), a part of the ARP law signed by President Joe Biden in March 2021, was distributed to state and local education agencies to reopen schools and promote physical health, safety and mental health and well-being.

In total, that funding and two prior installments of ESSER during the 2020 pandemic is roughly $190 billion. It has been obligated or used on school recovery projects that are wrapped up. Senior Department of Education officials said about 12% of ARP projects that are still underway are expected to be finished by the end of a January, 2025, liquidation extension window.

The ESSER package that was doled out to states as discretionary funding sparked controversy over how the funds were being spent. Many conservatives speculated whether it was being utilized at all, blaming the federal Education Department for a lack of academic recovery and low test scores on national assessments coming out of the pandemic.

Education finance expert Jess Gartner, who has been tracking school spending projects, told ABC News that school districts had planned for the window closing on ESSER funding.

“The reality is, the vast majority of school districts turned the page on Fiscal Year 25 on July 1: that means budgets for the year are done and dusted. They were approved in May or June,” Gartner said, adding, “It’s not like September 30 is going to catch CFOs by surprise. You know, they’ve been planning for this deadline for three, four years, and they have a budget for the whole year that’s already in motion and fully approved.”

What is ESSER?

ESSER was granted by the Department of Education’s Education Stabilization Fund. It was meant to meet the challenges of the pandemic and academic recovery, according to the COVID relief data website.

In ESSER I, Congress allotted about $13 billion through the Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security (CARES) Act when the pandemic first closed schools for in-person learning in March 2020.

In ESSER II, the Coronavirus Response and Relief Supplemental Appropriations (CRRSA) Act provided an additional $54 billion in December 2020.

The final installment of nearly $122 billion, or ESSER III, came under the American Rescue Plan Act — the fund enabled states to reopen schools and for students to recover from the pandemic. ARP provided additional FY 2021 funding for the Department of Education to assist states with addressing the impacts of COVID-19 on elementary and secondary schools.

ESSER III brought the total to about $190 billion in emergency funding for state and local education departments.

How is ESSER III being used?

That $122 billion was tacked onto the roughly $68 billion in money in ESSER I and ESSER II the previous year. As discretionary funding, states could distribute the allotment however they chose. In the last 3 1/2 years, school districts have used it on infrastructure projects, school enrichment and summer programs, and staff positions where needed.

Baltimore City Superintendent Dr. Sonja Santelises said her district’s large projects — critical in supporting an urban school population — included building bathrooms, expanding summer programs and providing tutoring sessions.

“We didn’t want to leave money on the table,” Santelises said. “There was an intentional decision [in some urban school districts] to invest one-time money in building back what was already an under-resourced infrastructure in the school district — these are the districts that are least likely to have the funding to do the capital projects,” she added.

Despite critics ridiculing the spending practices in some states — leading to tense debates about learning loss — education experts told ABC News the summer programming and high-impact tutoring proved to be vital in academic recovery. Students who were socially isolated and fell behind used robust tutoring programs to not only catch up, but to also return to school if they were showing attendance issues, according to FutureEd Director Thomas Toch.

“Tutoring creates connections between students and adults and one of the things that we’ve learned in the wake of the pandemic is that kids are feeling more alienated, more isolated, than ever,” he said. “An important sort of antidote to these high levels of chronic absenteeism is connecting kids to adults more fully than they have in the past.”

A recent Pew Research Center survey of public K-12 teachers found more than 90% of teachers said their students are chronically absent. Of the teachers surveyed, about half of them said in five years the American education system will be worse than it is now.

Despite gains from the academic recovery programs ESSER provided during the pandemic, Harvard’s Center for Education Policy Research Faculty Director Tom Kane said students are potentially facing permanent damage from the closures if learning loss ceases to improve.

What happens to ESSER now?

The obligation deadline for the last portion of ESSER funding is today — Sept. 30 — more than four years after the start of the pandemic and three years after ARP became law.

New emergency funding will not be granted to aid in the effort to help school communities recover from COVID. As U.S. Education Secretary Miguel Cardona fights attacks on public education writ-large, he told ABC News “the recovery dollars were intended to prevent further exacerbation.”

Jess Gartner believes school districts, by and large, handled the lump sum money well. With FY 2025’s budget already in the books, school district leaders shouldn’t panic and should be prepared to rely on the funds they would have typically received before COVID, Gartner said.

“These budgets are planned years in advance,” Garner told ABC News. “It’s kind of like if you were planning to buy a house, right? You don’t show up at the closing, like, ‘Oh man, how am I gonna pay for this?'” she quipped.

Now school districts have to make due with the chunk of funding they annually receive from the federal government, which is on average about 10%. Similar to before the pandemic, they will be supported by state and local governments, which make up roughly 90% of public school funding.

But the COVID-19 emergency exposed infrastructure and workforce problems that public schools were dealing with before the pandemic and were exacerbated on a large scale during it, education experts said.

Some leaders like Santelises are calling for more help as the pandemic’s impact on students continues.

“It’s the federal government’s responsibility to champion looking at the long term impact and to not take the posture that somehow three years you wave a wand and all the kids are back, ” Santelises said. “The kids are not all back.”

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(WASHINGTON) — While the House Ethics Committee will meet behind closed doors on Wednesday to discuss its investigation into former Rep. Matt Gaetz, President-elect Donald Trump’s pick for attorney general, it’s possible that Congress could go around the committee to release the panel’s findings.

According to House rules, any member of Congress can go to the floor and tee up a vote on a “privileged resolution” that would force the Ethics Committee to release its report on Gaetz within two legislative days.

The member would only have to argue that not releasing the report impacts the “dignity” or “integrity” of the House or “reputation” of its members.

The action would be unusual, but not unprecedented. In the 1990s, Democrats repeatedly tried to force the Ethics Committee to divulge information about investigations into then-Speaker Newt Gingrich.

Those efforts came up short because Republicans closed ranks around Gingrich and the majority. But Gaetz is incredibly unpopular on Capitol Hill, and it would only take a handful of Republicans — along with all Democrats — to pass the resolution.

“If you’re a member of Congress, do you really want to be in the business of defending Matt Gaetz?” former Rep. Charlie Dent, R-Pennsylvania, who led the Ethics Committee, told ABC News Monday.

Rep. Susan Wild of Pennsylvania, the ranking Democrat on the committee, said there are “plenty” of precedents of the committee disclosing reports even after a member has resigned.

Wild said that all members of the committee have access to the report and hopes that “one or more” Republicans will vote with Democrats for its release.

Asked if that’s a possibility, Wild said, “I don’t know. I haven’t talked to all of them. I mean, everybody, everybody on the committee now has the report, so they’ve got the opportunity to be reviewing it.”

House Speaker Mike Johnson has opposed releasing the report, saying he’s protecting an “important guardrail for out institution” that any ethics investigation ends once a member leaves the House.

On Tuesday, Johnson denied that Trump or Gaetz have pressured him to bury the report or that he had discussed it with them or Ethics Committee Chairman Rep. Michael Guest, R-Miss.

“I wouldn’t have that conversation with [Gaetz]. Because that’s not appropriate for us to do that,” Johnson said. “President Trump respects the guardrails of our institution as well, and I’m very guarded about those things. So neither of those gentlemen would breach that.”

“I haven’t talked to Michael Guest about the report. I talk to all my colleagues, but I know where the lines are. I have no idea about the contents of the report,” Johnson told reporters as he walked back to his office from a news conference.

House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries gave a brief “Yes” when asked Tuesday if the Gaetz report should be released to the public.

If the Ethics Committee doesn’t vote to release its findings, Democrats could raise the possibility of forcing a floor vote – which would put Republicans on the record about Gaetz.

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(WASHINGTON) — A historic election that saw an incumbent president drop his campaign, a woman rise to the top of the Democratic ticket and multiple assassination attempts against the Republican candidate will come to an end on Nov. 5.

But the outcome may not be known on election night.

It took four days for the race to be called for President Joe Biden in 2020 as mail-in voting expansions, and other changes made to help Americans participate during a global pandemic, delayed counting in several key states.

“It can take a few days and sometimes more,” said Barry Burden, the director of the Elections Research Center at University of Wisconsin-Madison.

An especially tight race, as expected this year, can make it even more difficult to call a winner in the hours after polls close, experts told ABC News. Polls show Vice President Kamala Harris and former President Donald Trump neck-and-neck heading into Election Day.

Each state has its own rules to administer elections, including different ways to process mail ballots and deadlines for curing signatures or other issues, which means some may take longer than others to tabulate results.

538 has compiled a complete guide to poll closing times, vote counting and when to expect results in every state.

“There are a variety of things that have to be done because there are these safeguards in place to try and minimize the possibility of fraud,” said Mitchell Brown, a professor of political science at Auburn University. “And so in states that have those rules, it takes a while in order to process all the ballots.”

Trump, in 2020, prematurely declared victory before all votes were counted. Misinformation spread online about the integrity of the election as the country awaited a final result and Trump or his allies later challenged the outcome by baselessly claiming widespread fraud, particularly with mail ballots.

“Not knowing the result on election night is not an indication of election malfeasance ever,” Brown emphasized.

All eyes will be on the seven swing states that will likely determine whether Harris or Trump win the Electoral College: Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, North Carolina, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin.

In two of those states — Pennsylvania and Wisconsin — mail or absentee ballots cannot even begin to be processed until the morning of Election Day. That includes opening envelopes, verifying voter information and preparing them to be scanned before they can be counted, which can lead to delays.

In 2020, Wisconsin wasn’t called for either candidate until the day after Election Day and Pennsylvania was called the Saturday after Election Day.

In other key battleground states, mail or absentee ballots may be processed but cannot be counted until Election Day, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures. That includes Georgia, Michigan and North Carolina.

In Arizona, a state that votes heavily by mail, mail or absentee ballots received before Election Day can be processed and counted upon receipt. But a sizable portion of those ballots get placed in drop boxes on Election Day, and those results may not be collected or counted until polls close, which may hold up a clear result depending on how close the race is.

In Nevada, another state where the presidential race wasn’t called until the Saturday after Election Day in 2020, some changes were made to help speed up vote counting — including allowing mail or absentee ballots to start being counted 15 days before Election Day.

“It’s really a product of the laws and depending where the Electoral College spotlight is in any given year, it can mean a faster count or a slower one,” Burden said.

While news organizations often call a winner based on analysis of the vote count as its reported, results are not official until states certify them. States have their own certification deadlines, some of which extend into December, according to the Election Assistance Commission.

Recounts and legal challenges, especially litigation related to certification, could arise between a race being called by media networks and the results being certified.

On Dec. 17, electors will meet in the states to vote for president and vice president.

Election officials in some key states are already warning that results may not come in on election night, and that it is normal.

“We will always prioritize accuracy and security over efficiency,” Michigan’s Democratic Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson recently said on CBS, estimating her state will be able to have a result by end of day on Nov. 6. “Understanding how much people will want those results, we’re still going to make sure the process is secure and accurate before we put anything out to the public.”

“We want to make sure we have an accurate count, and like we did in 2020, have a free and fair, safe and secure election,” said Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro on ABC’s “This Week.”

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