NEWS OF THE DAY
From Across the Nation
1 Student loans: A group of former Obama education officials started a legal aid organization Thursday in Washington to challenge the Trump administration’s policies on student lending and civil rights. The National Student Legal Defense Network will partner with state attorneys general and advocacy groups to file lawsuits on behalf of students who were defrauded by for-profit colleges or faced discrimination. Since coming to office, Trump’s education secretary, Betsy DeVos, has halted two key Obama-era regulations written to protect students from fraud and predatory actions by for-profit universities and has frozen review of tens of thousands of student loan discharge applications.
2 Plugging leaks: Employees at the Environmental Protection Agency are attending mandatory training sessions this week to reinforce their compliance with laws and rules against leaking classified or sensitive government information. It is part of a broader Trump administration order for anti-leaks training at all executive branch agencies. Relatively few EPA employees deal with classified files, but the new training also reinforces requirements to keep “controlled unclassified information” from unauthorized disclosure. President Trump has expressed anger over repeated leaks of potentially embarrassing information to media organizations in recent months.
3 Slaying defendant: The teen accused of killing two people and seriously injuring four at a New Mexico library has waived a scheduled arraignment and pleaded not guilty to all charges. Nathaniel Jouett, 16, has been charged with two counts of murder and numerous other crimes stemming from the Aug. 28 shooting at the Clovis-Carver Public Library.
4 Sex assaults: A convicted sex offender who was sentenced last week to 48 years in the 1975 killings of two young Maryland sisters has pleaded guilty to sexually assaulting two other girls in Manassas, Va., in 1996. Lloyd Lee Welch Jr. entered his guilty pleas Thursday in Prince William Circuit Court as part of a plea agreement with prosecutors to resolve the 1996 cases as well as the 1975 slayings of 10-year-old Katherine Lyon and 12-year-old Sheila Lyon.
5 Ban ends: Mormon churchowned Brigham Young University ended a six-decade ban Thursday on the sale of caffeinated soft drinks on campus, surprising students by posting a picture of a can of Coca-Cola on Twitter and just two words: “It’s happening.” The move sparked social media celebrations from current and former students, with many recalling how they had hauled their own 2-liter bottles of caffeinated sodas in their backpacks to keep awake for long study sessions. The university in Provo, Utah, never banned having caffeinated drinks on campus, but held firm to the ban on sales even when the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints clarified in 2012 that church health practices do not prevent members from drinking caffeinated soft drinks.
Chronicle News Services