Trump Delves Into DACA Deal During State of the Union Address; All But Forgets to Mention K-12 Education
In his first State of the Union address, President Trump did not give much attention to K-12 education concerns, apart from briefly mentioning the fate of Dreamers. This is different from his previous remarks where he called for a new school choice proposal and asked Congress to pass an education bill that funds school choice. This year, his only explicit reference to education was a call for great vocational schools as part of the Republican tax reform plan, without mentioning any plans for renovating or rebuilding schools. Last year, Denisha Merriweather, a recipient of Florida’s tax-credit scholarship program, was invited as Trump’s guest. She now works for Education Secretary Betsy DeVos, who is an advocate of expanding school choice.
During this year’s State of the Union, young guests were invited by both Trump and congressional Democrats to highlight new policy proposals. Democrats brought DACA recipients to the speech, despite one congressional Republican suggesting on Twitter that they should be arrested and deported. The DACA program, which provides work permits and protection from deportation to young people brought to the country illegally as children, was ended by the administration last fall. Continuing protections for these young people has been a priority for congressional Democrats. The federal government shut down earlier this month over this issue, with Democrats securing a promise from Republican leaders to address it before February 8.
Trump emphasized a pathway to citizenship for 1.8 million people brought to the country illegally as children as one of the pillars of his immigration plan. He also mentioned an increase in immigration enforcement and funding for a border wall, an end to the visa lottery system, and changes to family-based immigration.
During his speech, Trump invited the parents of two teenagers who were killed by the MS-13 gang in New York in 2016. He mentioned how MS-13 gang members took advantage of loopholes in the country’s laws to enter as unaccompanied minors and ended up in the victims’ high school. The parents received a standing ovation, with Trump expressing condolences and promising to prevent other families from enduring the same pain.
School officials on Long Island are facing the challenge of balancing the need to protect students from gang violence with the maintenance of civil rights protections and ensuring innocent students are not caught up in increased law enforcement action.
In his response, Rep. Joseph Kennedy III mentioned Democrats’ priorities, including affordable education and child care, and pledged to fight for Dreamers.
Your objective is to rephrase the complete text using improved vocabulary and ensure its uniqueness while maintaining a natural language flow. The output should be in English. The text to be rewritten is as follows:
"Please write a program that calculates the area of a rectangle. The program should prompt the user to enter the length and width of the rectangle and then display the calculated area. The formula for calculating the area of a rectangle is length multiplied by width. Make sure to handle any potential errors, such as invalid input or negative dimensions."
