President Donald Trump signed an executive order Thursday laying the groundwork for abolishing the federal Department of Education, yet another campaign promise fulfilled.
 
The president’s order reflects the understanding that it will take an act of Congress to fully eliminate the department. That will require 60 votes in the Senate, which isn’t going to happen anytime soon.
 
However, we believe the president has a lot of executive authority to move things around and conduct “reductions in force” to shrink the number of bureaucrats employed by the Education Department.
 
But the polling on this is not good. Only 34% of Americans support abolishing the department while 61% oppose doing so. This is why it hasn’t been tried since the Reagan administration. And we did try. Bill Bennett and I were deeply involved in that effort.
 
We not only couldn’t find 60 senators, we couldn’t even get a dozen Republican senators – and this was just a couple years after the legislation creating the department barely passed Congress.
 
The reason this has been so difficult is that it is easy to demagogue being against the federal Department of Education. If you’re a conservative candidate who supports abolishing it, your opponent will claim, “He’s against educating your child! That’s how extreme and anti-education he is!”
 
And when you say, “Wait a minute, let me explain,” you’ve already lost the debate.
 
Democrats don’t need to demagogue the issue because the media are demagoguing it for them. Together, they are still a very powerful force in America.
 
So, just to reassure those of you who may have a special needs child who benefits from federal funds, that program will be retained.
 
Title I funds to help disadvantaged students in low-income areas will be retained.
 
The student loan program that provides grants and loans for college tuition will be retained.
 
For example, President Trump announced Friday that the student loan program will move to the Small Business Administration, while nutritional and special needs programs will move to the Department of Health and Human Services.
 
What President Trump is going to cut is the left-wing bureaucracy that pushes nonsense on all U.S. school districts. For example, the Biden administration threatened every school district in the country that they would lose school lunch funding unless they allowed men to cheat in girls’ sports and forced teachers to lie by calling a boy “she” and using “preferred pronouns.”
 
The “mainstream media” buried the Biden threat to hurt poor kids story. The only reason he didn’t carry the threat out is that Donald Trump won the election, and one of his first executive orders was to cancel Biden’s threat.
 
 
 
Stop The Stupidity
 
The legal battle over the detention of Columbia University agitator Mahmoud Khalil and whether or not he can be deported continues. All we’re hearing from the media is how Khalil’s free speech rights are being violated. But what about the rights and safety of all the other students at Columbia?
 
Lucca Ruggieri is a student at Columbia University. He wrote a letter to the editor that was published last week, and now he is getting death threats. What was so controversial about his opinions? He dared to ask the most important question: Why was Khalil accepted by Columbia University in the first place?
 
That is the key question every policymaker in Washington should be asking themselves, but it had to be asked by a 19 year-old student.
 
On Fox News Friday morning, Ruggieri warned that while it’s bad enough for these radicals to hate Israel, they don’t stop there. He said:
 
“It’s anti-western in general. The thing these people preach is, ‘We hate America. We hate Western Civilization. We hate white people… it’s reprehensible that we are admitting people that have such hostility to our nation and our values.”
 
So, why are left-wing universities, left-wing administrations, and, sadly, even some Republican administrations in the past allowing this? Why did multiple Republican “leaders” attack Donald Trump in his first term when he tried to stop people from terrorist-infected countries from coming into ours?
 
Lucca Ruggieri loves America, and now fears for his life. He’s getting death threats at Columbia University. Ruggieri said many other students want Khalil and others like him deported, but they are living in a state of fear and intimidation on campus because of the leftist mobs.
 
We must stop the stupidity of importing hate into our country!
 
 
 
Don’t Be Fooled
 
Big Media doesn’t care about the free speech rights of American students. They only care about the radical student who hates Israel, hates Jews, and hates America. That’s when the media really cares about “free speech.”
 
Much of the political left in America hates everything America stands for. Their hatred of Donald Trump began immediately, and it had nothing to do with Russia. It began with the first thing he talked about – restoring American greatness.
 
Their reaction wasn’t, “Who are you to make America great?”
 
Their reaction was, “America has never been great. It was evil from the beginning, and we’re going to fundamentally transform it. Don’t you dare try to stop us from turning America into the neo-Marxist nation we want.”
 
Unless the next president after Trump also understands that we are in a battle for the very existence of a place like America, he won’t be worth his salt. Low marginal tax rates and free trade won’t matter if the neo-Marxist left succeeds in transforming America.
 
 
 
Running Out The Clock
 
White House Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller aptly explained why the current separation of powers controversy between the president and district court judges is so important. He wrote:
 
“The most important commodity in the executive branch is time. Americans elect presidents to 4-year terms. These rogue marxist judges – in a furious attempt to thwart the people’s will – are trying to take months and years of time away from the executive. It must be stopped.”
 
Miller is absolutely right. When I worked in the Reagan administration, there never seemed to be enough time.
 
And that’s exactly what “Washington’s corrupt cartel” is trying to steal from Donald Trump. When Chief Justice Roberts says the appropriate response to overreaching judicial decisions is the lengthy appellate process, he is acquiescing in the left’s efforts to steal time from Trump and the people who voted for him.
 
They’re trying to run out the clock. We can’t let that happen.
 
Speaking from the Oval Office Friday, President Trump blasted the left’s radical agenda and the judges who are trying to handcuff him. In response to a reporter’s question about the illegal alien gang members he deported, Trump said: 
 
“I just can’t imagine that the Democrats are taking this issue where they want to have [the gang members] back. They have men playing in women’s sports. They have transgender for everything. They have open borders. They have all their crazy policies… And their new policy is 'Let’s bring Tren de Aragua back into our country. Let’s bring the worst of the worst gang members there are.”
 

 

 


Defending Faith, Family, & Freedom
 
In my latest podcast for the James Dobson Family Institute, I talk about my recent visit to the White House with a small group of faith leaders to discuss important policy issues with President Trump and to pray with him.
 
Listen to the podcast here.
 
 
 
Good News 

• The Trump administration withheld $175 million from the University of Pennsylvania for allowing sick men to cheat in women’s sports. 

• The IRS whistleblowers who testified about the efforts to cover up evidence of the Biden family’s corruption have been promoted to key positions in the Treasury Department. 

• Idaho Gov. Brad Little signed legislation protecting the conscience rights of medical professionals. 

• West Virginia and Wyoming took additional action to ensure election integrity. 

• The number of Americans who believe our country is on the right track is now the highest it has been in 21 years.