The Biden administration is disadvantaging working, minority and underprivileged students by ‘weaponizing’ the federal student aid process to target for-profit trade schools, according to a conservative watchdog group.

The American Accountability Foundation (AAF) released an explosive new report using research and documents obtained by public records requests to argue the Education Department is working with a network of left-wing figures and Democratic state attorneys general to pursue a ‘witch hunt’ against career colleges — also known as trade, vocational, or proprietary schools.

‘Actions of the Biden Department of Education have weaponized the department and the student aid process for political purposes,’ the report states. ‘The administration’s biased focus on forcing students to choose state-run or traditional private colleges and universities, even when those may not be the best fit, has driven them to build a biased Federal Student Aid office that appears to exist nearly exclusively to prosecute its director’s vendetta against career colleges. Specifically, the administration has undertaken several steps that are putting working class students at a disadvantage by unfairly targeting career colleges.’

Much of the AAF’s report focuses on Richard Cordray, the Education Department’s chief operating officer of federal student aid. He previously served as director of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) and attorney general of Ohio. According to the AAF, Cordray is a leading force behind the Biden administration’s alleged targeting of career colleges.

‘Richard Cordray is up to his old tricks again. After politicizing and weaponizing the CFPB under Obama to attack and harass the left’s enemies, now he’s doing the same at the Department of Education,’ AAF President Tom Jones told Fox News Digital. ‘This report reveals in shocking and disturbing detail how he is trying to force students to choose state-run or traditional private colleges and universities, instead of career or vocational schools, even if it means blocking opportunities for working-class Americans who benefit the most from these institutions. Once again, he’s been caught red-handed trying to force Americans to run their lives as the leftist elite deem proper.’

According to the report, Cordray has staffed his office with ‘left-wing ideological warriors’ to pursue an agenda against career colleges, most of which are for-profit institutions.

‘AAF’s research shows that Richard Cordray has aggressively staffed his office with partisan ideologues. His hires — while all ideological leftists — tend to split into two camps: first, a reconstitution of his team from the CFPB, and a cadre of activists from state attorneys general offices and outside activist groups,’ the report states. ‘When brought together into the office, Cordray has assembled an experienced team of political appointees, advocates with ties to left-wing groups, and liberal attorneys who know how to use the tools of government and its allies on the left to punish businesses they disfavor.’

The report specifically describes many of these individuals by name, providing brief descriptions of their backgrounds.

The AAF also obtained emails from state attorneys general offices showing Cordray’s office reaching out to significantly more Democrats than Republicans to discuss student loan amnesty at a time when there were more Republican attorneys general in office — a discrepancy that, the report argues, was due to politics.

‘Despite Republicans holding the majority of the attorney general offices in the United States when Cordray was recruiting for an enforcement position, his office reached out to 21 Democrat offices while only reaching out to 11 Republican offices,’ the report added. ‘A particularly problematic bias when the position was listed as ‘fully remote’ and could have been in a state like Texas, whose office was not on the email.’

AAF’s research indicates Cordray has been in close contact with a wide network of left-wing groups, advocates, lobbyists and lawyers that support large-scale student loan forgiveness and have been outspoken against for-profit colleges. The report details many of these by name and how they connect to Cordray.

The AAF report additionally calls out what it describes as a ‘revolving door’ of left-wing partisans switching between government and outside special interest groups to make money and push their agenda against career colleges. The report specifically details several individuals that it describes as being part of this revolving door. 

Toby Merrill, for example, is currently earning a comfortable salary with the Education Department after recently working for the Project on Predator Student Lending. She also worked to sue the Education Department in the past and is married to a top deputy handling student loan and career college issues in the office of the Massachusetts attorney general.

The Education Department dismissed the AAF report as an effort by a ‘dark money group’ to undermine its work to protect students.

‘It’s no surprise that special interests and partisan dark money groups object to the department’s relentless work to protect students and taxpayers,’ a spokesperson told Fox News Digital. ‘Any institution that breaks financial aid rules and cheats students into a lifetime of unaffordable debt will be held accountable, period.’

Career colleges first came under fire with the Obama administration, which in 2016 started the Federal Student Aid Enforcement Unit. While the office was purportedly created to conduct oversight on all federal education funds, most of its focus was directed toward for-profit schools.

The Obama administration also adopted a ‘gainful employment’ rule allowing the Education Department to cut off aid to a school’s students if a certain number of them had too much debt relative to their earnings.

The Obama Education Department additionally launched the Borrower’s Defense to Repayment (BDR) program, which allows students taking out loans to receive debt relief if they can demonstrate their school misled or otherwise defrauded them.

These policies had a devastating effect on for-profit career colleges. The value of the seven largest publicly traded proprietary education school operators plummeted from a combined $51 billion to $6 billion during the Obama administration, according to DC Journal.

In contrast, the Trump administration effectively closed the student financial aid enforcement office and raised the threshold for students to be able to seek BDR relief.

Then, the Biden administration relaunched an enforcement office under federal student aid and in its 2024 budget request asked for a 600% increase in funding from the prior year. The administration also tightened regulations on how much revenue for-profit schools can generate from federal programs and sought to impose a more rigid ‘gainful employment’ rule on privately-owned schools. The latter rule would not have applied to public and private colleges.

In March, the administration issued new guidance outlining plans to require private college leaders to assume personal liability for unpaid debts that institutions owe to the government when they ‘fail to operate in a financially responsible way.’ Weeks later, the Education Department said it was cutting off Florida Career College, a for-profit institution, from participating in federal student aid programs for improperly allowed students without a high school diploma or equivalent credential to test into eligibility for federal aid. As a result, the school will be denied revenue essential to its survival.

The Biden administration, Democrats in Congress and various advocacy groups argue they want to ensure students get good value for their education when they take out loans. Last month, progressive House lawmakers called on the administration to use executive power to ‘curb predatory behaviors’ among for-profit colleges. They also said the Education Department should warn students who apply to ‘low-value’ colleges — schools that leave them with high debt and low earning potential. The administration has created but not yet published a list of schools it deems as bad value in a bid to shame them to do better.

Researchers have found that some for-profit colleges leave students with high debt and low pay. According to the left-leaning think tank Third Way, for example, more than 60% of for-profit institutions ‘show their low-income students earning less than the average high school graduate within 10 years of entering their institution.’

However, traditional colleges often leave students in a similar situation. In a 2020 Wall Street Journal column, economist Richard Vedder and policy analyst Andrew Gillen highlighted several prestigious public and nonprofit colleges that fail the gainful employment test, such as Columbia University’s bachelor’s program in rhetoric and composition and a master’s degree in fine and studio arts at Yale. The column even flagged law and optometry degrees from distinguished universities.

Meanwhile, according to a 2020 report from the National Center for Education Statistics, just two-thirds of students who begin a traditional four-year college program earn a degree from that school in six years or less, while only one-third of students who enroll full-time at a two-year community college finish a degree in four years or less.

The AAF also notes in its report that parents, full-time workers, minorities, veterans and first-generation college students often choose career colleges in higher proportions than traditional college students from middle- or upper-class homes.

‘By way of providing an education to many low-performing high school students and nontraditional adult learners, the academic achievement of many career colleges students will fail to match traditional college students, but this is an unfair comparison, given the differing foundation for each of these student types,’ the report states. ‘In contrast, and a better comparison, is that career college students tend to perform as well or better than community college students.’

Because career colleges reportedly enroll only about 7.5% of students, the AAF and other critics argue the Biden Education Department and others who support its efforts are devoting an unreasonably disproportionate amount of time and resources to for-profit proprietary schools.

In January, the Government Accountability Office reported the Education Department’s enforcement office has not ‘completed work vital to improving oversight of colleges’ and hasn’t completed or updated ‘procedures for selecting colleges for investigations, conducting investigations, and imposing penalties on colleges that are found to be engaging in substantial misrepresentation. Education has lacked these complete and updated procedures for at least 6 years.’

Trace Urdan, managing director at the investment firm Tyton Partners, was similarly critical of the Education Department’s enforcement efforts.

‘It would go a long way toward Richard Cordray’s credit if he were to actually use this same initiative to hold some nonprofit schools accountable by similar standards,’ Urdan said in 2021. ‘But I’m not holding my breath for that outcome.’

According to the AAF, Cordray ‘has taken the Department of Education’s Federal Student Aid office from an objective protector of students to a partisan shop pursuing a witch hunt against an industry Cordray personally opposes.’ The report claims Cordray and like-minded individuals in positions of influence want to ‘force students and parents to attend traditional colleges and universities staffed and run by their friends on the left even if it means denying options to students.’

In contrast, the Education Department says its investigations into for-profit schools are meant to probe potential violations of laws and regulations.

A town once deemed ‘most hippie’ in Washington recently outlawed drug use after a spike in fentanyl overdoses that included the death of a 5-year-old girl.

Edwin Williams, a city council member in Bellingham, Washington, said overdoses became so commonplace in his city that one dead body was left on a bench for 12 hours.

‘A man was sitting on the curb in a parking lot with his head bowed, right out in the open … and a police officer told me that he had been dead for at least 12 hours,’ Williams told The New York Post in a report on Bellingham published Sunday. ‘It shocked me to my core.’

The Bellingham City Council voted in April to make open drug use an arrestable crime — a decision that came two years after the Washington legislature decriminalized hard-drugs in response to a decision at the state’s Supreme Court. 

The reversal from city leaders came after a 5-year-old overdosed on fentanyl in March, as well as two teenagers. The Bellingham Fire Department said it responded to more than two overdoses per day from January to April 12 — a rate nearly double that of the year prior, according to Cascadia Daily.

‘I have lived here for 30 years, and no, I haven’t seen anything like this,’ Williams told The New York Post. ‘I would characterize our city as one that is trying and willing to bend over backwards to help and provide people with programs to address either addiction or homelessness.’

‘But at this point— the combination of COVID, the pervasiveness of fentanyl and the state law being changed— pushed everything to the limit,’ Williams continued. ‘It was just the perfect storm and at some point, something had to be done.’

In 2018, local media boasted that Bellingham in particular was named by the site OnlyInYourState as ‘the most hippie town in Washington.’ Since then, however, casualties from drug use have spiked.

Overdose deaths in Bellingham jumped from 11 in 2018 to 89 in 2022, according to the Whatcom County Medical Examiner’s Office.

A decision at the Washington Supreme Court in 2021 struck down a law that made simple drug possession a felony. State legislators responded to the decision with a drug decriminalization law that is set to expire in July. The state Senate attempted but failed to push through a bill criminalizing drug use last month. 

Gov. Jay Inslee, D-Wash., has pushed to end decriminalization in the state in response to the fentanyl crisis.

Texas Gov. Greg Abbott blasted President Biden’s move to send 1,500 troops to the southern border, saying the president is sending soldiers to fill out paperwork and not enough to realistically secure the border.

The Republican governor appeared on ‘Fox News Sunday’ to address the chaos at the U.S.-Mexico border ahead of expiring pandemic-era Title 42 policies, which have allowed U.S. officials to turn away tens of thousands of migrants crossing the southern border.

‘Only when Biden came in and eliminated all those [Trump-era] policies and put out a welcome mat to the entire world that the border is now open, that we suddenly have the chaos that’s caused solely by policies put into place by Joe Biden,’ Abbott said.

The governor slammed Biden’s decision to move troops as ‘a day late and tens of thousands of soldiers too few.’

‘President Trump sent soldiers to the border to secure the border,’ Abbott said. ‘President Biden is sending 1,500 quote soldiers to do paperwork. That is not going to secure the border. We need 15,000 or 150,000 to secure the border because of the open border policies of the Biden administration.’

To address the migrant surge, the Biden administration is sending 1,500 active-duty troops to the U.S.-Mexico border to perform data entry, warehouse support, and other administrative tasks so that U.S. Customs and Border Protection can focus on fieldwork, White House officials have said.

The troops ‘will not be performing law enforcement functions or interacting with immigrants, or migrants,’ White House spokeswoman Karine Jean-Pierre said Tuesday. ‘This will free up Border Patrol agents to perform their critical law enforcement duties.’

U.S. Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas visited the Rio Grande Valley last week, saying the situation at the border was ‘very serious’ and ‘very challenging,’ while reiterating that the ‘border is not open.’

‘The border is not open, it has not been open, and it will not be open subsequent to May 11,’ he said.

Title 42 is set to expire on May 11.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

President Biden is calling for ‘more action’ after a gunman in Allen, Texas, killed eight people, including children, and injured seven others at a mall on Saturday.

Biden released a statement Sunday saying that ‘tweeted thoughts and prayers are not enough’ from lawmakers, and urged Congress to send a bill to his desk that bans assault weapons and magazines.

‘Too many families have empty chairs at their dinner tables,’ the president’s statement said. ‘Republican Members of Congress cannot continue to meet this epidemic with a shrug.’

Biden touted that his administration has ‘made some progress’ in stemming the tide of gun violence, noting that some states have banned assault weapons and are expanding red flag laws.

Biden said ‘it’s not enough,’ going on to call  for universal background checks, requiring safe storage of firearms, and ending immunity for gun manufacturers.

‘I will sign it immediately,’ he said of such a bill. ‘We need nothing less to keep our streets safe.’

Six victims were declared dead at the Allen Premium Outlets mall, while two more died of their injuries during or after being rushed to a hospital. Seven people remain injured from the attack and three were still in critical condition as of Sunday morning.

A police officer at the mall heard the gunshots and rushed toward the sound. The officer then engaged the shooter and killed him.

‘Jill and I are praying for their families and for others critically injured, and we are grateful to the first responders who acted quickly and courageously to save lives,’ Biden said.

The shooting suspect is believed to be in his 30s and lived at home with his parents, according to local reports. On Sunday morning, the FBI and local police reportedly began searching the suspect’s home.

Authorities did not immediately release details about the suspect’s identity or a possible motive.

Fox News’ Anders Hagstrom contributed to this report.

Four Senate Democrats sent fundraising emails Friday to capitalize on allegations that Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas took gifts from a GOP mega-donor friend. 

Fundraising emails from Sens. Dick Durbin, D-Ill., Chris Murphy, D-Conn., Mazie Hirono, D-Hawaii, and Sheldon Whitehouse, D-R.I., which were reviewed by Fox News Digital, cited the news of reported gifts to Thomas as they called for passage of the Supreme Court Ethics Act, which would require a code of conduct for Supreme Court justices. 

‘In order to restore the public’s faith in the Supreme Court, there must be a clear code of ethics that holds a Justice accountable for their actions if they engage in conduct that crosses the line,’ Durbin, who serves as the chair of the Senate Judiciary Committee, said in the email.

A series of stories on Thomas’ alleged history of gifts from GOP mega-donor Harlan Crow sparked outrage from Democrats. A report from ProPublica Thursday detailed how Thomas took his great-nephew into his care in 1997, who then had his tuition paid for by Crow at two private schools. An earlier report showed Thomas took luxury vacations with Crow.

Whitehouse described the allegations as a ‘clear violation of existing ethics rules.’

‘You’ve got creepy right-wing billionaires, phony front groups, justices amenable to overtures, large sums of money, and secrecy,’ Whitehouse said in his email. ‘And in recent months we’ve had a front row seat, thanks to Justice Thomas, to see how these ingredients mix to tarnish the judicial branch.’

Thomas, in an April statement, described Crow as a ‘dear friend’ and said there was never a need to report their travels together.

‘As friends do, we have joined them on a number of family trips during the more than quarter century we have known them. Early in my tenure at the Court, I sought guidance from my colleagues and others in the judiciary, and was advised that this sort of personal hospitality from close personal friends, who did not have business before the Court, was not reportable,’ Thomas said.

Mark Paoletta, a close friend of Thomas and an attorney who served in the Trump and George W. Bush administrations, defended the Supreme Court justice in a statement Thursday. Paoletta said Crow recommended Randolph-Macon Academy, his alma mater, for Thomas’ great-nephew. Crow, Paoletta said, then paid for one year of tuition and later paid another year when he switched to a boarding school. 

‘This story is another attempt to manufacture a scandal about Justice Thomas,’ Paoletta said. ‘But let’s be clear about what is supposedly scandalous now: Justice Thomas and his wife devoted 12 years of their lives to taking in and caring for a beloved child – who was not their own – just as Justice Thomas’ grandparents had done for him.’

Hirono, in her fundraising email, complained Thomas has ‘zero consequences for his corruption.’

‘The Supreme Court – whose justices are among the most powerful people in the country, has shown no interest in adopting a Code of Ethics that ensures they are held to the same standards and transparency that anyone would expect in their own workplace,’ Hirono said. ‘So if they won’t, Congress must require them to.’

All nine Supreme Court justices in April signed a letter that declared they adhere to a general code of conduct and that individual oversight by Congress is unnecessary. 

Murphy, in his fundraising email, stated the Supreme Court justices must be held accountable. 

‘This is outrageous,’ Murphy said of the Thomas story. ‘Congress cannot allow for Supreme Court justices to so brazenly flout the conflict of interest rules that apply to every other federal judge.’

‘My Supreme Court Ethics Act fixes this by requiring the Judicial Conference, which governs federal courts, to create a binding code of conduct that applies to all federal judges and justices,’ Murphy continued. ‘Support for this legislation is growing in Congress by the day, but we cannot lose momentum.’ 

President Biden is facing significant headwinds at the start of his re-election campaign, with the vast majority of Americans saying he doesn’t have the physical or mental capacity to serve another term, according to a new poll.

An ABC News/Washington Post poll released Sunday found that 63% of American adults do not think Biden, 80, has the ‘mental sharpness’ it takes to serve effectively as president, compared to only 32% who believe he does and 5% who have no opinion. The number shot up nine percentage points since the same poll was conducted a year ago when 54% said he didn’t have the mental capacity for the job.

The poll found that 62% of Americans do not think Biden is in ‘good enough physical health’ to serve either, compared to 33% who believe he is and 5% who have no opinion.

Respondents were asked the same questions about former President Donald Trump, 76, who is the current front-runner in the GOP presidential primary. Fifty-four percent said he does have the mental sharpness, compared to Biden’s 32%, and 64% said he has the physical health to serve as president, compared to Biden’s 33%.

The poll found that 26% of Americans believe ‘only Biden’ is too old for the presidency, compared to 1% who said the same for only Trump. However, 43% believe both men are too old for the office.

Biden’s job approval rating also hit a new low at 36%, down six points since the same poll was conducted in February, compared to 56% of respondents who disapprove of Biden’s performance so far. 

The majority of Americans also think Trump did a better job at handling the economy than Biden, with 54% supporting Trump’s performance compared to only 36% who think Biden is doing a better job. 

The poll comes nearly two weeks after Biden announced in a video that he and Vice President Harris would seek re-election.

In the video titled ‘Freedom,’ Biden echoed his 2020 campaign message of battling for the ‘soul of our nation,’ uniting the country, and supporting the middle class, his campaign said. The video opens with footage of the Jan. 6 U.S. Capitol protest.

‘Freedom. Personal freedom is fundamental to who we are as Americans. There’s nothing more important. Nothing more sacred,’ Biden said in the video. ‘That’s been the work of my first term: To fight for our democracy. This shouldn’t be a red or blue issue.’

Sunday’s poll, which was conducted between April 28 and May 3 via landline and cellphone among a random national sample of 1,006 U.S. adults, had a margin of sampling error of plus or minus 3.5 percentage points.

Texas Democratic Rep. Henry Cuellar mourned the tragic mass shooting in his home state over the weekend, arguing the U.S. needs to understand the ‘root problems’ of mass shootings as the tragedies can unfold even in blue states with strict gun laws.  

‘There’s always a reason why certain people [carry out mass shootings] and there’s always telltale signs before. There’s indicators that we should have looked out for. But again, to the law enforcement that put a stop to this, again, I thank them’ Cuellar told Shannon Bream on ‘Fox News Sunday.’

Eight people were killed and seven others injured on Saturday afternoon during a shooting at the Allen Premium Outlets, which is located about 20 miles north of Dallas. A local police officer ‘engaged the suspect and neutralized the threat,’ according to Allen Police Chief Brian Harvey. 

It was the second mass shooting in Texas in the span of roughly a week, following the execution-style shooting that left five people dead in the town of Cleveland last Friday. 

Cuellar said the U.S. needs to ‘get at the root problems’ of mass shootings, citing mental health programs to assist those in crisis, and arguing against calls to simply tighten gun laws. 

‘If people talk about just… making the law stricter. You got to look at, you know, in states that are blue, very strict laws, you still get this type of mass shootings. So it does happen across the nation, and we have to get to the bottom of this,’ he said. 

Republican Texas Gov. Greg Abbott released a statement Saturday on offering resources to investigate the shooting. 

GAVIN NEWSOM SLAMS CONGRESS FOLLOWING TEXAS MASS SHOOTING: ‘MORE FOCUSED ON RIGHT TO KILL THAN RIGHT TO LIVE’ 

‘Our hearts are with the people of Allen, Texas, tonight during this unspeakable tragedy,’ Abbott said in the statement. ‘I have been in contact with Mayor Fulk and DPS Director McCraw as well as other state and local leaders and offered the full support of the State of Texas to local officials to ensure all needed assistance and resources are swiftly deployed, including DPS officers, Texas Rangers, and investigative resources.’

The shooting has led some Democrat officials to call for increased gun control measures, including California Gov. Gavin Newsom, who argued that the U.S. has ‘​​become a nation that is more focused on the right to kill than the right to live.’