A negotiating committee convened by the U.S. Department of Education (USDE) agreed to a recent proposal that excludes education from being considered a “professional degree,” according to the National Association of Student Financial Aid Administrators. A lowered cap on federal student loans available to certain graduate students was approved in the “One Big, Beautiful Bill,” which established the term “professional degrees” to be used internally by the agency to distinguish programs that qualify for higher student loan limits, according to a USDE fact sheet released November 24, 2025. The law also directed the USDE to identify “professional degree” programs that will be eligible for the higher federal lending limits, which resulted in education being omitted.

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Moving control of federal career, technical, and adult education from the U.S. Department of Education (USDE) to the U.S. Department of Labor (DOL) as part of an agreement earlier this year was meant to centralize and streamline government workforce programs. However, critics say issues with accessing federal career and technical education (CTE) funding could foretell bigger problems when the Trump administration starts to outsource more of the USDE’s responsibilities to other agencies.

According to Politico, a combination of technical problems, communication lapses, bureaucratic hurdles and scant preparation related to new grant payment systems snarled the process of distributing money from a $1.4 billion program for CTE initiatives for schools and local governments. The record-breaking government shutdown also contributed to the problems. “The shift is like asking states to fly with no air traffic control,” said Richard Kincaid, an assistant state superintendent for college and career pathways at the Maryland State Department of Education, which is among the states that experienced difficulties with its funding from the Carl D. Perkins CTE program. “When you put these sort of programs into agencies that are not well-equipped with the subject matter expertise to take on a number of these large educational programs, the result is going to be a lot of confusion. We’ve now shifted not only to a new grant system but an entirely new grantmaking agency. And now we’ve injected all this chaos into the system, trying to fix something that wasn’t broken to begin with.” he added.

Many of the issues regarding the Perkins program transition are linked to a decision to abandon a unified USDE system that managed federal grants for schools and local communities in favor of what are now two DOL systems.

“The administration’s decision to transfer these congressionally mandated responsibilities and programs to other agencies that lack the necessary policy expertise may have lasting negative impacts on our young people,” Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska) said in a recent social media post. “And simply moving the administration of these programs to other agencies will not return control of education to the states.”

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On Nov. 29, the landmark Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) turns 50. President Gerald Ford signed the legislation, originally known as the Education for All Handicapped Children Act (EAHCA), guaranteeing students with disabilities the right to a free and appropriate public education.

Before then, no federal requirement existed that schools must educate students with disabilities. In addition to opening public schools to a whole population of children, the law became the catalyst for legions of innovative practices and tools cultivated from both public and private sources. The transformations, special education experts say, were spurred by an ongoing need to individualize student supports while helping children with disabilities progress in general education classrooms.

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The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has made a dramatic change in its position on the relationship between vaccines and autism. The CDC’s website now says a link between vaccines and autism cannot be ruled out, which is contrary to the CDC’s longstanding stance that there is no link. The change comes even though a connection between vaccines and autism has long been debunked by a large body of high-quality research. U.S. Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has long promoted the discredited claim, and that appears to be the impetus for the revised CDC statement.

The CDC’s change has rung alarm bells among public health experts who are already worried about a drop in childhood vaccination, which has led to a resurgence of dangerous childhood diseases such as  measles and whooping cough.

“The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention website has been changed to promote false information suggesting vaccines cause autism,” said Dr. Susan J. Kressly, president of the American Academy of Pediatrics, in a statement. “Since 1998, independent researchers across seven countries have conducted more than 40 high-quality studies involving over 5.6 million people. The conclusion is clear and unambiguous: There’s no link between vaccines and autism. Anyone repeating this harmful myth is misinformed or intentionally trying to mislead parents. We call on the CDC to stop wasting government resources to amplify false claims that sow doubt in one of the best tools we have to keep children healthy and thriving: routine immunizations.”

In a statement to NPR, Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) spokesperson Andrew Nixon repeated one of the changes to the website: “The claim ‘vaccines do not cause autism’ is not an evidence-based claim because studies have not ruled out the possibility that infant vaccines cause autism.” Nixon also said HHS “has launched a comprehensive assessment of the causes of autism, including investigations on plausible biologic mechanisms and potential causal links.”

“The new statement shows a lack of understanding of the term ‘evidence,'” the Autism Science Foundation said in a statement the organization provided to NPR, adding, “No environmental factor has been better studied as a potential cause of autism than vaccines.”

It’s a statement that’s confusing by design, said Dr. Paul Offitt, a pediatrician and director of the Vaccine Education Center at the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia (CHOP). “These are the usual anti-vaccine tropes, misrepresentation of studies, false equivalence,” he says. “They might as well say chicken nuggets might cause autism because you can’t prove that either.”

The changes on the website “blindsided” career scientists at CDC, says Dr. Demetre Daskalakis, a former top CDC official who resigned from the agency in August. “The scientists did not participate in its creation,” he says. “And the data are unvetted.”

Two current CDC staffers, who contacted NPR on November 20th, say the updates are a glaring red flag that indicate the vaccine information on the agency website is no longer credible, and is instead “anti-science.” They requested anonymity out of concern they could lose their jobs for speaking to the press.

Vaccine proponents say the moves are recklessly undermining public confidence in vaccines and fueling vaccine hesitancy, putting the nation’s children at risk. The U.S. appears to be poised to lose its status as having eliminated measles.

The CDC acknowledges in a footnote on its main webpage on autism and vaccines that it still carries a header reading “Vaccines do not cause autism*” and says it hasn’t “been removed due to an agreement with the chair of the U.S. Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee that it would remain on the CDC website.”

In a November 20, 2025 statement, the Chair of the Senate HELP Committee Bill Cassidy (R-LA) said, “I’m a doctor who has seen people die from vaccine-preventable diseases. What parents need to hear right now is vaccines for measles, polio, hepatitis B and other childhood diseases are safe and effective and will not cause autism. Any statement to the contrary is wrong, irresponsible, and actively makes Americans sicker.”

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