Dear Commons Community,

Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell endorsed Donald Trump for president on yesterday, a remarkable turnaround from the onetime critic who blamed the then-president for “disgraceful” acts in the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol attack but now supports his bid to return to the White House.

McConnell, who was the last top GOP leader in Congress to fall in line with Trump, declared his support in a short statement after Super Tuesday wins pushed the GOP front-runner closer to the party nomination.

The two men have not spoken since 2020 when McConnell declared Democrat Joe Biden the winner of that year’s presidential election. But more recently, their teams had reopened talks about an endorsement.   As reported by The Associated Press.

“It is abundantly clear that former President Trump has earned the requisite support of Republican voters to be our nominee for President of the United States,” McConnell said in the statement.

McConnell said, “It should come as no surprise that as nominee, he will have my support.”

The nod from McConnell, who has criticized Trump as “morally responsible” for the 2021 mob siege of the Capitol, lends an imprimatur of institutional legitimacy to the indicted former president’s bid to return to the White House.

It comes after McConnell made his own sudden announcement last week he would step down after this term as leader, a position he has held longer than any other senator, and as he tries one more time to win back Republican control of the Senate, with Trump likely at the top of the GOP ticket.

Trump now counts the GOP leaders in Congress, including Speaker Mike Johnson and Senate Republicans vying to replace McConnell as leader, as backing his bid for the White House. Another Republican in leadership, Sen. Joni Ernst of Iowa, announced her support for Trump yesterday after the last major GOP challenger Nikki Haley suspended her campaign.

While McConnell said early in the election cycle he would support the eventual Republican presidential nominee, his endorsement of Trump is a striking reunion for the two men, who have put political interests ahead of any personal displeasure with one another.

Trump routinely bashed McConnell as an “Old Crow” in public, and Trump hurled racist insults at the senator’s wife, Elaine Chao, who served as Trump’s Transportation Secretary and stepped down in the aftermath of the Jan. 6 attack — which McConnell labeled an insurrection.

With McConnell’s endorsement of Trump, it gives the green light to other remaining skeptical Republicans — and the deep-pocketed donors who fuel campaigns — to fall in line despite any reservations they may have about a return to the Trump era.

After the Jan. 6 attack of the Capitol, McConnell issued a grave rebuke of Trump’s behavior, blaming the defeated president for spreading “wild” claims of a stolen election.

While McConnell refused to convict Trump in the Senate trial on House impeachment charges of inciting the insurrection at the Capitol, which could have left him ineligible to serve again as president, he warned that Trump was not immune from civil or criminal prosecution once he left the White House.

“He didn’t get away with anything yet — yet,” McConnell said in the Senate at the time.

“We have a criminal justice system in this country. We have civil litigation, and former presidents are not immune from being accountable by either one,” he said.

Trump has been indicted on federal charges of conspiring to defraud Americans and obstruct an official proceeding in his efforts to overturn Biden’s victory and the Jan. 6 attack, but he has claimed immunity in a challenge that is now before the Supreme Court.

Despite his concerns about Trump’s behavior in the White House, McConnell appears ready to set aside those issues in favor of the outcomes he said the former president was able to accomplish during his term.

Another Republican leader putting party before country.  Disgraceful!

Tony

Kyrsten Sinema

Dear Commons Community,

Senator Kyrsten Sinema (I-Ariz.) announced on Tuesday she won’t be seeking reelection in November, ending months of speculation about her political future.

In a video released by her office, Sinema complained about the death of civility and compromise in American politics.`As reported by The Associated Press.

“The only political victories that matter these days are symbolic, attacking your opponents on cable news or social media. Compromise is a dirty word,” Sinema said. “I believe in my approach. But, it’s not what America wants right now.”

“Because I choose civility, understanding, listening, working together to get stuff done, I will leave the Senate at the end of this year,” she added.

Sinema’s decision not to run for reelection means that Rep. Ruben Gallego (D-Ariz.) is now set for a one-on-one race with election denier Kari Lake, the likely Republican candidate, in November.

National Republicans believe Sinema’s exit will boost Lake’s chances of flipping the seat and winning control of the Senate next year.

“An open seat in Arizona creates a unique opportunity for Republicans to build a lasting Senate majority this November,” Sen. Steve Daines (R-Mont.), who chairs the National Republican Senatorial Committee, said in a statement. “With recent polling showing Kyrsten Sinema pulling far more Republican voters than Democrat voters, her decision to retire improves Kari Lake’s opportunity to flip this seat.”

Earlier public polls of a hypothetical matchup between Lake and Gallego have found Gallego leading or the two candidates neck-and-neck, with a large number of undecided voters.

Lake, who is backed by former President Donald Trump, has been the outspoken supporter of Jan. 6, 2021, rioters, characterizing those prosecuted for their actions as “political prisoners.” She has also been a vocal critic of the late GOP Sen. Arizona Sen. John McCain.

Gallego on Tuesday invited Sinema to help him defeat Lake in November.

“Protecting abortion access, tackling housing affordability, securing our water supply, defending our democracy — all of this and more is on the line,” Gallego said in a statement. “That’s why Democrats, Independents, and Republicans alike are coming together and rejecting Kari Lake and her dangerous positions.”

Sinema left the Democratic Party and became an independent in 2022. She has been fiercely criticized by some on the left for standing in the way of progressive priorities in the Senate, including a higher minimum wage, higher corporate tax rates, and the elimination of the filibuster. Those positions helped to effectively sour her standing with Democratic voters in Arizona. Her only path forward, had she chosen to run for reelection, would have been gathering enough signatures to appear on the ballot as an independent ― a difficult and risky campaign.

Still, Sinema was deeply involved in crafting all the major bipartisan bills that passed in Congress in recent years, including the gun safety overhaul, infrastructure reform, new protections for gay marriage and improvements to the Electoral Count Act, to name a few.

But it was the most recent negotiation over U.S. immigration and border policy that seemed to shake Sinema’s belief in bipartisan compromise.

Senate Republicans ― many of whom Sinema was closest to ― rejected her border bill at the last minute, leaving her fuming and now heading for the exits.

“These solutions matter,” Sinema said of her bipartisan accomplishments on Tuesday. “They make an impact in the lives of everyday Americans. And this is how government should work. It has been an honor to serve Arizona for the past 20 years.”

We wish her luck in her future endeavors!

Tony

(Bloomberg – Getty Images)

Dear Commons Community,

President Joe Biden and his predecessor, Donald Trump, romped through more than a dozen primary states yesterday on Super Tuesday, all but cementing a November rematch and increasing pressure on the former president’s last major rival, Nikki Haley, to leave the Republican race.

Their victories from coast to coast, including the delegate-rich states of California and Texas, left little doubt about the trajectory of the race. Haley won Vermont, denying Trump a full sweep, but the former president carried other states that might have been favorable to her such as Virginia, Massachusetts and Maine, which have large swaths of moderate voters like those who have backed her in previous primaries.

Not enough states will have voted until later this month for Trump or Biden to formally become their parties’ presumptive nominees. But the primary’s biggest day made their rematch a near-certainty. Both the 81-year-old Biden and the 77-year-old Trump continue to dominate their parties despite facing questions about age and neither having broad popularity across the general electorate.  As reported by various news media.

Haley watched the election results in private and had no campaign events scheduled going forward. Her campaign said in a statement that the results reflected there were many Republicans “who are expressing deep concerns about Donald Trump.”

“Unity is not achieved by simply claiming ‘we’re united,’” spokesperson Olivia Perez-Cubas said.

Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate, meanwhile, was packed for a victory party. Among those attending were staff and supporters, including the rapper Forgiato Blow and former North Carolina Rep. Madison Cawthorn. The crowd erupted as Fox News, playing on screens around the ballroom, announced that the former president had won North Carolina’s GOP primary.

“They call it Super Tuesday for a reason,” Trump told a raucous crowd. He went on to attack Biden over the U.S.-Mexico border and the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan. After beginning the night with victories in Virginia and North Carolina, he wrapped Super Tuesday by winning contests in Alaska and Utah.

Biden didn’t give a speech but instead issued a statement warning that Tuesday’s results had left Americans with a clear choice and touting his own accomplishments after beating Trump.

“If Donald Trump returns to the White House, all of this progress is at risk,” Biden said. “He is driven by grievance and grift, focused on his own revenge and retribution, not the American people.”

Haley fought a good fight but it appears we are now left with Biden and Trump!

Tony

Dear Commons Community,

Donald Trump gained a clear win at the U.S. Supreme Court yesterday, which unanimously ruled that states don’t have the ability to bar him — or any other federal candidates — from the ballot under a rarely-used constitutional provision that prohibits those who “engaged in insurrection” from holding office.

The decision shuts down a push in dozens of states to end Trump’s candidacy through a clause in the 14th Amendment, written to prevent former Confederates from serving in government after the Civil War.

But it may open the door to further electoral uncertainty, exposing more state officials to disqualification under the provision and setting up a constitutional showdown should Trump win the election.

Facing four separate criminal trials, Trump’s legal peril may just be beginning. So is the Supreme Court’s role in that process.

Here are some takeaways courtesy of The Associated Press.

A TECHNICAL, BUT STILL BIG, WIN

The most significant thing the court did Monday was to overturn a Colorado Supreme Court ruling from December that Trump was not eligible to be president because he violated the insurrection clause, Section 3, of the 14th Amendment.

This will also stop efforts to kick him off the ballot in Illinois, Maine and other states. Had the Supreme Court let the Colorado ruling stand, it could have triggered a new wave of litigation that might have left Trump disqualified in many states.

The high court avoided addressing that politically contentious issue of whether Trump played a role in the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol that would have barred him from seeking office. The ruling is almost devoid of references to Jan. 6 or insurrection, and doesn’t address whether Trump committed such an act by sparking the attack on the Capitol.

Instead it focuses on the technical, procedural question of who gets to decide an election challenge under Section 3.

All nine justices agreed that is the purview of Congress. But a narrower majority of five went further, ruling it can only be done through legislation. That exposes significant splits underneath the unanimous majority, and points toward the greatest uncertainty the ruling creates.

A TIME BOMB FOR JAN. 6, 2025?

One possible outcome that the case presented was the prospect of unelected judges disqualifying the man dominating who has already received hundreds of thousands of votes in the nominating process.

But another potential nightmare is that if Congress is the only entity that can determine whether a presidential hopeful is indeed disqualified for engaging in “insurrection,” that it makes that determination on Jan. 6, 2025, when required to certify a possible Trump victory in the presidential election.

The high court shut down the first possibility, but may have left the door open to the second one. The five-justice majority — all from the court’s conservative wing — said Congress can implement Section 3 through legislation, “subject of course to judicial review.” (That means the court reserves for itself the right to have the final say.)

That triggered a dissent from the court’s three liberals, who complained that that “shuts the door on other potential means of federal enforcement.”

That would appear to include a rejection of Trump’s electors should he win the election — but multiple legal experts said Monday that it wasn’t that clear, and the only way to know may be for Congress to try.

FEELING THE HEAT

The 14th Amendment case is one of two putting the high court squarely in the midst of the ongoing presidential election. Last week, the court agreed to hear Trump’s appeal of a federal ruling that he’s not entitled to immunity from criminal charges for his attempt to overturn the 2020 election.

Trump’s trial on those charges was originally scheduled to begin Monday, but has been postponed because of the battle over his immunity challenge. The high court taking up his appeal in late April raises the possibility that trial won’t conclude until after the presidential election.

The justices’ discomfort over being put in the middle of the nation’s partisan divide came through in a brief, but notable, concurring opinion by Justice Amy Coney Barrett.

Though one of the court’s conservatives, she didn’t agree with the majority’s ruling that Congress can only enforce Section 3 through legislation. But she didn’t want to sign onto the liberals’ dissent, either, instead warning against focusing too much on partisan divisions.

“…this is not the time to amplify disagreement with stridency,” Barrett wrote. “The Court has settled a politically charged issue in the volatile season of a Presidential election. Particularly in this circumstance, writings on the Court should turn the national temperature down, not up.”

“For present purposes, our differences are far less important than our unanimity: All nine Justices agree on the outcome of this case,” she concluded. “That is the message Americans should take home.”

ACTION IN THE STATES

The court’s ruling shuts off using Section 3 against federal officials absent action by Congress but it leaves open the ability of states to use the provision against their own state officials, noting there’s a rich record after the Civil War of just those sorts of actions.

That’s already begun anew in the post-Jan. 6 era. The first disqualification under Section 3 in more than a century came in 2022, when a New Mexico court removed Couy Griffin, who was convicted of entering the Capitol grounds on Jan. 6 while leading a group called “Cowboys for Trump,” from his rural county commission.

The group that brought that case, Citizens for Ethics and Responsibility in Washington, next filed the Colorado case against Trump. They said they were eager to continue filing Section 3 cases against lower-level Jan. 6 participants.

TRUMP’S LEGAL TRAVAILS AHEAD

Few observers expected the Supreme Court to keep Trump off the ballot. But he’s facing far more perilous legal road ahead.

The first of Trump’s criminal trials, for allegedly falsifying business records to pay hush money to an adult film actress during the 2016 presidential campaign, is scheduled to start in New York later this month. The former president is also appealing a New York judge’s ruling that he pay $355 million for fraud committed by his businesses, and verdict that he pay a writer $83 million for defaming her after she sued him for sexual assault.

Depending on how and how quickly the high court rules on Trump’s immunity claim, he could still face charges for trying to overturn the 2020 election in Washington DC before this November’s election.

Two more cases are more likely to come later – in Atlanta where Trump faces state charges for his 2020 election plot, and in Florida where he’s tentatively scheduled for a May trial on improper retention of classified documents after leaving the presidency, but the trial date is expected to be postponed.

Monday’s decision was a win Trump needed to continue his campaign, but his days in court are far from over.

Tony

Dear Commons Community,

A new report entitled, “Corporate Tax Avoidance in the First Five Years of the Trump Tax Law” from the nonprofit Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy, found that the vast majority of 342 companies examined from 2018 to 2022 used loopholes and tax breaks to avoid taxes on profits. In total, these companies dodged $275 billion in federal corporate income taxes.  Some paid zero federal taxes. All of them were profitable in all five years covered by the report.

These companies paid an effective federal income tax rate well below 21%, the rate they were required to pay on paper. And 109 — or nearly one out of every three — found a way to pay zero federal income taxes in at least one year out of the five. Those same 109 corporations scored $14.34 billion in federal tax rebates over the five year period. As reported by The Huffington Post.

The findings underscore that the 21% corporate tax rate is “a fiction,” said Matt Gardner, the lead author and an ITEP senior fellow — particularly for huge multinationals.

“The companies most successful at doing this international tax evasion dance… have a roomful of lawyers and accountants whose job it is to redefine taxable income, to move income around on paper in a way you hope will avoid taxes.”

Giants like AT&T, Bank of America, Citigroup, Duke Energy, FedEx, General Motors, Molson Coors, Netflix and T-Mobile enjoyed an effective rate of less than 5%. The industries paying the smallest overall tax rates were utilities, fossil fuel companies, car makers, and telecom companies.

All told, the companies in the study paid an average federal income tax rate of 14.1%. But just 25 of them gobbled up $155 billion of the total $275 billion saved by avoiding their full tax bill.

Major companies have leveraged loopholes and tax breaks for years. But the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act, signed in 2017 by then-President Donald Trump, dramatically slashed their starting tax rate to 21% from 35%, giving them a head start on dodging their tax bills.

“People like me were wondering, would there still be this gap between the sticker price of our corporate tax rate and what they actually pay?” Gardner said. “And the gap appears to be just as big as it ever was.”

In the three years after the law passed, 55 major companies, including Dish Network, FedEx, Nike and Salesforce, avoided federal income taxes on more than $40 billion in corporate profits, a previous ITEP report found.

There are opportunities to rein in runaway corporate tax avoidance.

The 2022 Inflation Reduction Act that President Joe Biden signed into law imposed a minimum corporate tax rate of 15% that took effect last year. The tax only applies to companies with a three-year average income of more than $1 billion worldwide.

And in 2021, the Biden administration negotiated a global minimum tax with other world governments, which could prevent multinationals from offshoring their profits in order to avoid taxes in the U.S. But fully implementing the taxes in the United States would require an act of Congress.

The House of Representatives has other plans, such as repealing the very few tax increases imposed in Trump’s Tax Cuts and Jobs Act. A bipartisan tax bill that passed the House in January would retroactively reinstate a tax break for corporate research and development that would cost taxpayers an estimated $34.3 billion.

As with the original Tax Cuts and Jobs Act, a small number of companies would split an enormous share of the savings if this tax break were revived. Microsoft and Meta alone could each net about $6.5 billion.

I just filed my income tax return for 2023 and paid 20% of my earnings in federal taxes.

Tony

Dear Commons Community,

The University of Florida is in the process of terminating  all positions associated with diversity, equity and inclusion in compliance with new state regulations, according to a university memo released on Friday.

The move comes almost a year after Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida signed a bill that largely banned the state’s public universities and colleges from spending federal or state money on D.E.I. initiatives. In accordance with that law, Florida’s Board of Governors, which oversees the State University System of Florida, also voted to prohibit state spending on such programs at public universities.  As reported by The New York Times and other news media.

The University of Florida’s terminations included closing the office of the chief diversity officer and halting all D.E.I. contracts with outside vendors, according to the announcement on Friday. Thirteen full-time positions were eliminated, along with administrative appointments for 15 faculty members, a spokeswoman for the university said in an email.

The university is just the latest school in the state to eliminate D.E.I. programs. Both the University of North Florida and Florida International University have already removed or started to phase out such programs.

Last year, Florida became one of the first states to enact laws restricting or eliminating D.E.I. initiatives. That prompted other Republican-led states to follow suit, including Texas, where a ban on D.E.I. initiatives and offices at publicly funded universities and colleges took effect on Jan. 1. In Utah, the governor last month signed a bill paring back D.E.I. programs at state universities and in state government. And the Alabama Legislature is considering similar legislation.

Universities across the country have vastly expanded diversity programs in recent decades amid concerns over underrepresentation on campus. Supporters of D.E.I. have said that the initiatives are a good way to foster inclusion and that they help students from all backgrounds succeed on campus.

But more recently, D.E.I. efforts have become the center of a culture war and part of a fight by conservatives against “wokeism.” Critics say that the programs are discriminatory to those who may be left out in an effort to boost representation of other groups and that they aim to advance left-wing ideas about gender and race.

Under Florida’s regulation, state universities are barred from using government funds to “advocate” D.E.I. initiatives, which is defined as “any program, campus activity or policy that classifies individuals on the basis of race, color, sex, national origin, gender identity or sexual orientation, and promotes differential or preferential treatment of individuals on the basis of such classification.”

On Friday, the University of Florida said that it would reallocate the approximately $5 million in funds previously reported for D.E.I. expenses into a faculty recruitment fund.

The university added that the terminated employees will receive 12 weeks’ worth of pay. It encouraged them to apply for different positions within the school, saying they would receive “expedited consideration.”

“The University of Florida is — and will always be — unwavering in our commitment to universal human dignity,” school officials said. “As we educate students by thoughtfully engaging a wide range of ideas and views, we will continue to foster a community of trust and respect for every member of the Gator Nation.”

Conservatives in the state praised the decision by the university.

“Florida is where DEI goes to die,” Mr. DeSantis wrote on social media. Senator Rick Scott also praised the school’s president, Ben Sasse, on social media. He said Mr. Sasse, a former U.S. senator of Nebraska, “continues to do all the right things” at the university. “Every university should follow his lead,” Mr. Scott said.

Those who support D.E.I. programs lamented the university’s move.

State Representative Yvonne Hayes Hinson, a Democrat who represents Gainesville, said in a statement that she was “stunned but not surprised” by the elimination of the D.E.I. staff at her alma mater.

And Nikki Fried, the chairwoman for the Democratic Party in Florida, warned that the impact of the decision “will be felt for generations.”

Indeed it will be felt for generations!

Tony

Dear Commons Community,

The University of Idaho is in discussions to purchase the for-profit University of Phoenix.

Scott Green, the president of the University of Idaho, said he viewed the negotiation with a price tag of $550 million as a hedge against what is known as the “demographic cliff,” an expected drop in the number of college-age students. As reported by The New York Times.

But critics of the university’s plan, like U.S. senators including Elizabeth Warren, nonprofits and a union, have questioned why the state’s top public university would team up with the University of Phoenix, known historically for its low graduation rates and misleading claims, so much so that it was recently ridiculed on “Saturday Night Live.”

The University of Idaho is just the latest publicly funded state school to consider partnering with a for-profit company as a way to develop online enrollment. Arrangements at Arizona State, Purdue and, most recently, the University of Arizona have delivered varying results as higher education faces an existential crisis.

“There are going to be lots of universities that don’t survive,” Mr. Green, an alumnus of the University of Idaho and of Harvard Business School, said in an interview.

Mr. Green, who inherited a deficit when he became president in 2019, set out to run the university as a business. He cut spending, laid off employees and merged programs. He has also worked to entice students to the campus in Moscow, a city in a remote area of the state called the Palouse, which is distinctive for its vast rolling hills covered in wheat. He even published a book on navigating the university through crisis.

College enrollment across the country is expected to peak by next year and then fall precipitously as a result of lower birthrates after the economic downturn, according to research by Nathan D. Grawe, a professor at Carleton College.

Undergraduate enrollment at Idaho has inched up recently, to around 7,400 last fall, an increase of 3.4 percent since 2022. But the future is cloudy, especially for a state with one of the country’s lowest rates of students enrolling in college immediately after high school.

Mr. Green says the University of Phoenix can deliver enrollment and revenue. But it comes with its own complicated legacy.

Founded in 1976, the University of Phoenix grew rapidly, and by 2010, it enrolled more than 450,000 students, mostly online. It aggressively promoted its brand, even acquiring naming rights to an N.F.L. stadium.

Because its enrollment skews toward lower-income students and veterans, its operations have been fueled by billions of dollars in federally backed loans and grants. But along with its growth came allegations of deceptive representation. Thousands of students said they had enrolled and amassed debt, but never gotten degrees.

In 2019, the University of Phoenix reached a $191 million federal settlement following allegations that, from 2012 to 2016, it promoted nonexistent deals with companies such as Microsoft and Twitter that would help students get jobs. The Federal Trade Commission said it would reimburse 147,000 students as a result of those claims.

Alphi Black, an Army veteran from Los Angeles, is trying to have her student loans forgiven after having enrolled at the University of Phoenix following what she said were misleading sales pitches. After earning her degree in 2018, she came to view it as a handicap.

Prospective employers “kind of laughed,” she said. “They said, ‘It’s not a real school.’”

Other University of Phoenix graduates, though, say their degrees have been valuable. In December, more than 200 of them wrote to Miguel Cardona, the education secretary, in support of Idaho’s acquisition.

“We are often dismayed at the level of focus and vitriol directed at our alma mater. It seems certain officials believe we should have pursued our degrees at a different institution,” the letter to Mr. Cardona said.

Jake Searle, a former Army pilot who lives in Kuna, Idaho, was one of the graduates who signed the letter. A working father who found it difficult to attend a traditional campus, Mr. Searle, now 41, obtained two University of Phoenix degrees, including an M.B.A. in 2019.

“The University of Phoenix was the first out of the gate,” said Mr. Searle, who now works in petroleum marketing. “They were the ones that designed and developed the online platform that I would argue every other program has adopted.”

The University of Phoenix has transformed itself, according to Andrea Smiley, a spokeswoman for the school. It has closed low-performing programs and has seen higher graduation rates since 2016, when it was acquired for $1.1 billion by a group of investors, including funds associated with Apollo Global Management. Apollo Global is led by the billionaire Marc Rowan, who directed the recent donor revolt at the University of Pennsylvania that resulted in the resignation of its president, M. Elizabeth Magill.

“The University of Phoenix is proud of who we are today and the value we offer our students and alumni,” Ms. Smiley said in an email, citing “improving student outcomes, positive external reviews by our accreditor, the satisfaction of our students with our career-focused education, and our fiscal health.”

Emphasizing the value of its enrollment, which the university says it has intentionally shrunk to a more manageable 85,000 students, and its net income of about $75 million, the University of Phoenix has been shopping itself around.

It has not been a smooth process. Last year, the University of Arkansas’s board of trustees rejected a proposal, despite the chancellor’s push for a $500 million agreement.

“Why would you lie down with a dog? You’re going to get fleas,” said C.C. Gibson III, an Arkansas lawyer and former member of the university’s board, citing Phoenix’s reputational problems.

In Idaho, the plan has roiled state politics. While Gov. Brad Little has endorsed it, Raúl Labrador, the state’s attorney general, is suing to block it. Mr. Labrador is questioning the secrecy surrounding the Idaho State Board of Education vote last year that approved the complex arrangement, in which the University of Phoenix would technically be acquired by a newly created nonprofit organization.

Members of the Idaho Legislature are questioning the deal, bolstered by a legal opinion from a lawyer with the state government who says the board lacked authority to approve it. The controversy was fanned when Idaho Education News disclosed that the University of Idaho had paid the law firm Hogan Lovells, where Mr. Green was formerly the chief operating officer, more than $7 million for advice on the deal.

“From everything I can see, and from what I know about corporate acquisitions and restructurings, this deal carries substantial risk,” said Rod Lewis, a former general counsel for a major technology company who also once headed the board that oversees the state’s public universities.

In a recent opinion piece describing his reservations, Mr. Lewis asked whether the state could be on the hook for a $685 million bond issue that is being planned to finance the deal.

There is also the sense that the University of Idaho may be late to the party. Arizona State University and Purdue already sponsor major online programs, said Byron Jones, the former chief financial officer for the University of Phoenix.

“The online market itself is kind of flattening out because of the saturation rates,” Mr. Jones said.

At the University of Arizona, a budget crisis has raised questions about its acquisition of the for-profit Ashford University in 2020. Robert Shireman, a former deputy under secretary at the U.S. Education Department, points to the program, currently operating at a loss, as a cautionary sign that public universities face “innumerable hazards and complications” when teaming up with for-profit schools.

Still, the enrollment cliff is not going away.

Even though Idaho isn’t among the states expected to be hit the hardest, Mr. Green said that other universities were already trying to poach his prospective students. At a recent recruitment event at a high school in Idaho Falls, universities from as far away as Tennessee showed up, he said.

“Our competitors are already here,” Mr. Green said. “I mean, it was unbelievable. So, you know, people are going to come for our students, because they’re going to be desperate.”

The coming enrollment cliff is real.  However, the University of Idaho should be cautious in moving forward in this endeavor.

Tony

Susan Collins, Nikki Haley and Lisa Murkowski.       Credit:  AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite; AP Photo/Chris Carlson; AP Photo/Becky Bohrer

Dear Commons Community,

 Nikki Haley got her first US Senate endorsement on Friday from Alaska Republican Lisa Murkowski, a vocal critic of former President Donald Trump.

“America needs someone with the right values, vigor, and judgment to serve as our next President — and in this race, there is no one better than her,” Murkowski said in a statement ahead of the Alaska GOP primary on Tuesday. As reported by The Huffington Post.

“Nikki will be a strong leader and uphold the ideals of the Republican Party while serving as a President for all Americans,” the senator added.

Senator Susan Collins (R-Maine) swiftly followed, telling the Bangor Daily News that she considered Haley to be “extremely well-qualified.”

“She has the energy, intellect, and temperament that we need to lead our country in these very tumultuous times,” Collins told the outlet.

Both Murkowski and Collins voted to convict Trump in his Jan. 6 impeachment trial.

Collins has offered only mild criticism of the former president in recent months, and spoke out against Maine’s decision to leave him off the GOP primary ballot.

Murkowski, meanwhile, has been sharply critical of the former president’s tone and conduct, saying recently that his rhetoric is “poisoning our country.”

She and Collins are only Haley’s second and third congressional endorsements so far. Rep. Ralph Norman (R-S.C.) is the lone House member backing her 2024 campaign.

Republicans who oppose Trump are on an island in their party right now. Trump swept all four early GOP presidential nominating states and he has the backing of more than 130 Republicans in the House and over 30 Republicans in the Senate, despite facing 91 criminal charges across several jurisdictions.

Haley acknowledged earlier this week it’s “very possible” the GOP has fully become the party of Trump.

“What we’re doing is if 70% of Americans say they don’t want Donald Trump or Joe Biden, we are giving them an option,” the former U.S. ambassador to the United Nations said on CNN.

This week’s announcement by Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) that he will step down as his party’s leader in the Senate after nearly two decades in the post also underscored the GOP’s stunning transformation from the traditional conservatism of Ronald Reagan to Trump’s brand of populist isolationism.

His replacement is likely to be far more closely aligned with Trump even if he loses the 2024 presidential election.

Republicans need more of their leaders to step up and support Haley and Ronald Reagan values.

Tony