The unusual duo who’s aiming to disrupt college sports

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Mar 04, 2024 View in browser   By Juan Perez Jr. Dartmouth's Romeo Myrthil stands next to Duke's Caleb Foster during the second half of an NCAA college basketball game in Durham, N.C., on Nov. 6, 2023. | (AP Photo/Ben McKeown, File) FAIR GAME — What can a college basketball team learn from a Starbucks franchise? Ask the former university regent and onetime White House counsel who joined forces to tear down college sports’ business model. — Michael Hsu and Richard Painter will be watching alongside the higher education community tomorrow when Dartmouth men’s basketball players are scheduled to vote on whether they want to be represented by the Service Employees International Union. Even if the outcome of Tuesday’s scheduled vote in Hanover, New Hampshire, is contested as expected, Hsu hopes the act itself prompts a wave of organizing. — “A basketball team is just like a Starbucks store in terms of numbers,” Hsu told Weekly Education. “Once people realize what's happening, we think a lot of teams are going to try to unionize just like a lot of Starbucks stores have unionized.” — Still, both men stress their efforts are not intended to represent athletes at a bargaining table. Their goal is to get athletes recognized as employees. — Hsu and Painter are something of an odd couple. Hsu co-founded the College Basketball Players Association; his outspoken tenure as a University of Minnesota regent ended when the state legislature declined to reappoint him. He found both a kindred spirit and legal counsel in Painter, a former chief ethics lawyer for George W. Bush’s administration who now serves as a University of Minnesota law professor. — The pair have since peppered the National Labor Relations Board with a series of complaints against the Ivy League and private schools to challenge college athletes’ lack of employment status. — Hsu and Painter said they are now preparing to target other sports at Dartmouth and in the Ivy League, with the hope that one of their cases is appealed into the federal court system — and possibly up to the Supreme Court. (They have other interests, too: Hsu and Painter also successfully petitioned the Education Department to investigate antisemitism allegations at the University of Minnesota in the wake of the Israel-Hamas war). — “For the NLRB to make a determination that players are employees, if we can get there in all of these sports, is going to be a major development,” Painter said. — POLITICO's Nick Niedzwiadek has more on the Dartmouth election in today’s Weekly Shift. IT’S MONDAY, MARCH 4. WELCOME TO WEEKLY EDUCATION. The new National Institutes of Health director wants to repair a breach in public trust opened by the pandemic. Reach out with tips to today’s host at jperez@politico.com and also my colleagues Michael Stratford (mstratford@politico.com), Bianca Quilantan (bquilantan@politico.com) and Mackenzie Wilkes (mwilkes@politico.com).   DON’T MISS POLITICO’S HEALTH CARE SUMMIT: The stakes are high as America's health care community strives to meet the evolving needs of patients and practitioners, adopt new technologies and navigate skeptical public attitudes toward science. Join POLITICO’s annual Health Care Summit on March 13 where we will discuss the future of medicine, including the latest in health tech, new drugs and brain treatments, diagnostics, health equity, workforce strains and more. REGISTER HERE.     Want to receive this newsletter every weekday? Subscribe to POLITICO Pro. You’ll also receive daily policy news and other intelligence you need to act on the day’s biggest stories. Appropriations House Speaker Mike Johnson | Francis Chung/POLITICO BUDGET PROGRESS — House Speaker Mike Johnson is cheerleading budget language that bars the Justice Department from investigating “parents who peacefully protest” at school board meetings. — Appropriators released bill text for a half a dozen spending measures Sunday afternoon, marking a critical step toward funding the government after months of political turmoil. Johnson is under pressure to tout GOP "wins," POLITICO’s Jennifer Scholtes and Caitlin Emma report, as his conservatives claim he came away empty-handed from budget negotiations with Democrats. — In touting the funding package finalized on Sunday, Johnson praised budget language that prohibits the Justice Department “from targeting or investigating parents who peacefully protest at school board meetings” as long as if they “are not suspected of engaging in unlawful activity.” — Top lawmakers hope to pass the six-bill package this week to head off a partial government shutdown just after midnight Saturday morning. Six other budget measures — affecting budgets for the Pentagon, health programs, education and about 70 percent of overall funding — are still set to expire after March 22 and are expected to be far more difficult to negotiate and pass. — Language released Sunday would also provide $7.97 million for the Office of Science and Technology Policy, which is equal to the FY23 enacted level. It would also provide $9.06 billion for the National Science Foundation, which is $479 million below the FY23 enacted level. — In a win for Democrats, the final deal would provide $7 billion for the WIC nutrition assistance program for moms and babies, a $1 billion increase over current levels. The package does not include a proposal pushed by Rep. Andy Harris (R-Md.) to create a voluntary pilot program aimed at restricting SNAP food aid purchases. Technology WEIGHING IN — Influential education, technology and media organizations want the Federal Communications Commission to modify its proposed three-year, $200 million pilot school cybersecurity program. — Suggestions submitted to the agency through a just-completed regulatory comment period often fall into three buckets: Requests for more money, more flexibility, and a faster timeline. — NCTA — The Internet & Television Association is one of several groups pushing the commission to consider a bigger budget. — “For a three-year program, $200 million may not be enough to enable a wide cross-section of schools and libraries to participate and purchase the needed cybersecurity equipment and services for their networks,” the powerful trade group headed by former FCC chief Michael Powell said in recent comments to the FCC. — Education organizations — including the Consortium for School Networking, the State Educational Technology Directors Association, American Library Association and the Council of Chief State School Officers — also pressed for changes when their representatives met with FCC Chair Jessica Rosenworcel’s staff in late January. — They want the FCC to update its definition of network security firewalls, and let schools tap the widely-used E-Rate program to purchase advanced firewall technology. They’re also asking to boost E-Rate’s current budget with an extra $200 million and open a “special filing window” for that program later this year so schools can access money to quickly protect their networks. — As for the cybersecurity pilot, the groups want to slash the FCC’s proposed three-year timeline down to 18 months and devote more money to the program. — “Given this huge pool of schools and libraries, and based on the significant number of cyberattacks on schools and libraries, more than $200 million is needed to help more schools and libraries in the near term, and to ensure the pilot program produces a comprehensive evaluation of the investment’s impact on schools and libraries access to sufficient cybersecurity,” the groups wrote. — One twist: A separate cluster of school administrator organizations and the country’s biggest teacher unions also want far more money for the program. But they’re breaking with the school technology groups’ firewall purchasing requests — describing them as a “premature proposal” in joint comments to the FCC. IN THE STATES VETO SESSION — Florida Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis on Friday vetoed legislation that would have created strict social media prohibitions for minors, triggering lawmakers to reconfigure the top legislative priority of GOP House Speaker Paul Renner in the final days of the annual legislative session. — DeSantis for weeks signaled that he wasn’t fully on board with the legislation and decided to block the proposal even as lawmakers made several changes with the hopes of quelling the Republican governor’s concerns, POLITICO’s Andrew Atterbury reports. DeSantis’ veto this week went from a possibility to a foregone conclusion as senators, bracing for the move, cleared a path for lawmakers to alter the proposal once again after reaching a deal with the governor. — “I have vetoed HB 1 because the Legislature is about to produce a different, superior bill,” DeSantis wrote on social media Friday. “Protecting children from harms associated with social media is important, as is supporting parents’ rights and maintaining the ability of adults to engage in anonymous speech. I anticipate the new bill will recognize these priorities and will be signed into law soon.” In Congress IN THE LOBBY — Security trade group officials will spend this week lobbying Congress on national school safety standards and workforce legislation. — The Security Industry Association wants federal grant guidance to encourage school districts’ use of its Partner Alliance for Safer Schools (PASS) benchmarks. — “When there are federal grants that can be used for school security and safety purposes, we believe that the grant guidance should allow states to leverage best practices such as PASS,” said SIA CEO Don Erickson. — The association is also supporting pending House and Senate legislation that would allow the expanded use of 529 college savings plans for workforce certification programs. Report Roundup — A brief from the conservative Manhattan Institute has set out four proposals to eliminate federal programs for minority-serving institutions by amending the Higher Education Act.   Don’t sleep on it. Get breaking New York policy from POLITICO Pro—the platform that never sleeps—and use our Legislative Tracker to see what’s on the Albany agenda. Learn more.     Syllabus — NCAA abandons ‘NIL’ enforcement after antitrust court loss: Sportico — Voucher expansion leads to more students, waitlists and classes for some religious schools: The Associated Press — Nex Benedict's school will be investigated over possible federal civil rights violations: The Oklahoman — The University of Idaho needs more students. Should it buy an online school? The New York Times   Follow us on Twitter Delece Smith-Barrow @DeleceWrites Michael Stratford @mstratford Bianca Quilantan @biancaquilan Juan Perez Jr. @PerezJr Mackenzie Wilkes @macwilkes   Follow us

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