…which is so dang friendly and delightfully nerdy that I’m expecting a collection of woodland creatures to drop off coffee for me in the morning then rap with me for half an hour about the impacts of tariffs on Trump II’s manufacturing policy.

First, thank you so much to the folks at TradesFutures for inviting me to moderate a fantastic panel at its National Apprenticeship Feadiness Forum last week with Virginia Labor Secretary Jessica Looman, National Skills Coalition CEO Brooke DeRenzis, and NABTU Education Director Tom Kriger. Just an awesome conversation about workforce policy and where it needs to go next along with an exceptionally engaged crowd. Great, great event to be part of.

Second, this is a reminder that—news and/or calamity pending—the next time you’ll find me in your inbox is next Wednesday, July 1, for a special Wednesday edition of THE MONEY. We should have some big grants announcements to unpack, but if one of the aforementioned woodland creatures were to throw a smoke bomb and try to impound apprenticeship funds or whatever, I’m not sure I would be shocked given how funding’s gone in Trump II…

I don’t want to overstate it, but I think we’re going to know a lot about where American workforce policy is likely to go in the next few years by the time Trump II awards a big newsy batch of money, which, based on appropriations deadlines, must happen in the next five days.

The big thing to watch for is, of course, the Trump Administration’s $145 million investment in pay-to-train incentives. This competition, again, isn’t for the incentives, but the organizations that will work closely with Trump II to pay out the incentives in five-ish sectors.¹

With those big awards in sight, on Wednesday, the House Education and Workforce Committee was back for another opportunity for the current majority to say apprenticeship is good and there’s not enough of it, but not really seem to articulate how they’re going to do anything about any of it. This isn’t really me making a joke. That was pretty much the hearing.

Which is a shame because it was a great list of witnesses. That included my former colleague John Ladd, the long-time head of the Department of Labor’s Office of Apprenticeship (and currently a senior advisor at Jobs for the Future), and Reach University head Joe Ross, who I think incredibly highly of and spoke with last year about apprenticeship degrees.

At the same time, the hearing was framed in part to plug the Administration’s apprenticeship policies, but the Administration doesn’t really have anything to show from those policies—or not yet, anyway. The Administration hasn’t updated its public-facing figures in months, so we don’t know how close it is to its big one million apprentices goal.

And in the vacuum of tangible information on apprenticeship growth we have now from the Administration, its critics’ points come off a whole lot stronger because they have specifics.