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25 states and DC sue Education Department over loan limits, citing health system strain

The Hill

Max Rego
May 19, 2026
Democratic attorneys general in more than 20 states and Washington, D.C., on Tuesday filed suit against the Education Department over new limits set to go into effect for graduate student loan borrowers.
The lawsuit, filed in U.S. District Court in Maryland, states that the new limits will strain the healthcare workforce by discouraging students from pursuing degrees in the medical field.
Starting on July 1, graduate students can borrow up to $20,500 in federal loans annually and $100,000 in aggregate under the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, which President Trump signed into law last July. Professional students, meanwhile, will be able to borrow up to $50,000 annually and $200,000 in aggregate under the law.
The Education Department will also begin phasing out the Graduate PLUS program in July, which is unsubsidized and has no annual or aggregate limits.

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Hilton and Becerra lead in new California governor poll. Steyer trails but isn’t out

Cal Matters

Dan Walters
May 19, 2026
Two weeks from now we’ll probably know which of the 61 candidates for governor have finished 1-2 in the primary election and will face each other in November for the dubious honor of governing a state that may be ungovernable.
The weasel adverb “probably” is warranted because three would-be governors are in a close race, and California is notorious for taking a long time to produce a final election count.
The latest Democratic Party poll, released Tuesday, has Republican Steve Hilton, a British-born former Fox News commentator, and Democrat Xavier Becerra, a former attorney general, virtually tied at 22% and 21% respectively. Billionaire Tom Steyer is still alive at 15%, but all other once-viable candidates are trailing in single digits.

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California colleges are seeing a rise of conservative voices. Some classes are tense

Cal Matters

Kahani Malhotra
May 16, 2026
Despite being a political junkie and longtime fan of conservative commentator Charlie Kirk, Shasta College senior Raymond Randolph hesitated to speak up about politics on campus. But Kirk’s assassination during a Turning Point USA event at a Utah university in September 2025 changed that.
“God was calling me up to the plate,” said Randolph.
The day after Kirk’s death, Randolph reached out to Turning Point, which Kirk had founded, to start a chapter at his college in Redding. As the chapter’s president, he said he’s not alone in feeling mobilized after Kirk’s assassination.
“It drove a lot of people like me to get up and do something,” he said.
While conservative students say they’ve felt hesitant to speak aloud in the past, they now say emerging Turning Point chapters have helped them break out of their shells in California, with one student even describing them as a “safe space.”

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Institutions Prepare for New Accreditation Regulations

Inside Higher Ed

Jessica Blake
May 18, 2026
As the second week of accreditation negotiations gets underway, experts say the operational cost of the new regulations may be high for institutions—but the payoff could be worth it.
As the Department of Education heads into its second week of negotiations over accreditation policies, the proposed regulations remain largely unchanged, higher education experts say. That has triggered concerns among institutions and their accreditors about the operational burdens that the sweeping regulatory proposal could impose.
The draft—first released in mid-April and updated on May 11—could dramatically change how accreditors oversee colleges and what institutions need to do to comply.
So far, the Trump administration’s regulations have faced significant pushback from accreditation agencies, colleges and universities—
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