In this essay I conduct a Critical Discourse Analysis of the language surrounding the California State University (CSU) Chancellor's Office latest plan to curb remediation, the Early Start program. I consider Early Start in the context of what I argue is the evolution of three major frameworks for Basic Writing in the CSU: the CSU Chancellor's Office Remedial Writing Framework that focuses on deficiency and gatekeeping; the Basic Writing Framework that developed in the 1970s as a way for CSU's writing teachers to defend access for underserved students; and the emerging Advanced Writing Framework, which eliminates Basic Writing and redefines one semester of composition as advanced and a two semester stretch course as mainstream. I trace three themes in the "discourse event" of Early Start: Early Start's relation to historical discourse on remediation, replication of discourse norms by the media, and faculty complicity in the discourse of the Remedial Writing Framework. Based on my analysis of the ways that it disrupts the dominant discourse of remediation and basic skills, I argue the Advanced Writing Framework provides hope of changing the nature of the discourse.