Trump Admin Guts School Safety Committee Created to Combat Mass Shootings

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Senior Trump official tells The 74 Dept. of Homeland Security will “no longer tolerate” any committees that “undermine its national security mission.”

When a broad group of parents, educators and activists met in late October at a government office building in Arlington, Virginia, they gathered around a shared goal: Make America’s schools safer. 

There, three parents whose children were killed in mass school shootings sought to bolster student mental health and crisis intervention services. Some advocates favored increased school policing and physical security while others sought to limit how those hardening measures can harm children’s civil rights. Each was there as a check on recommendations being made by the federal government.

But membership on the 26-person committee, which was created through the Bipartisan Safer Communities Act of 2022 — passed in the wake of mass shootings at a Uvalde, Texas, elementary school and a Buffalo, New York, supermarket — was short-lived. On Monday, the first day of President Donald Trump’s second term, all members were terminated. For members of the Federal School Safety Clearinghouse External Advisory Board, the October gathering was the group’s first time meeting — and also its last. 

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