The Ben Shapiro Show
Ep. 2156 - Trump SLASHES AND BURNS Through Department of Education!
Wed, 12 Mar 2025
The Trump administration slashes half the workforce at the Department of Education; the Trump negotiation team says Ukraine has accepted a 30-day ceasefire; and the stock market continues to tumble. Click here to join the member-exclusive portion of my show: https://bit.ly/3WDjgHE Ep.2156 - - - Facts Don’t Care About Your Feelings - - - DailyWire+: We’re leading the charge again and launching a full-scale push for justice. Go to https://PardonDerek.com right now and sign the petition. Now is the time to join the fight. Watch the hit movies, documentaries, and series reshaping our culture. Go to https://dailywire.com/subscribe today. Get your Ben Shapiro merch here: https://bit.ly/3TAu2cw - - - Today's Sponsors: Perplexity is an AI-powered answer engine that searches the internet to deliver fast, unbiased, high-quality answers, with sources and in-line citations. Ask Perplexity anything here: https://pplx.ai/benshapiro ExpressVPN - Go to https://expressvpn.com/ben and find out how you can get 4 months of ExpressVPN free! Home Title Lock - Get a FREE Title History Report & access to a Personal Title Expert after signup – a $250 Value at https://hometitlelock.com with promo code SHAPIRO250 Grand Canyon University - Find your purpose at Grand Canyon University. Visit https://gcu.edu today. Tax Network USA - For a complimentary consultation, call today at 1 (800) 958-1000 or visit their website at https://TNUSA.com/SHAPIRO - - - Socials: Follow on Twitter: https://bit.ly/3cXUn53 Follow on Instagram: https://bit.ly/3QtuibJ Follow on Facebook: https://bit.ly/3TTirqd Subscribe on YouTube: https://bit.ly/3RPyBiB
Chapter 1: What actions is Trump taking against the Department of Education?
Folks, as you know, tons going on in the news. Everything from tariff wars to the Department of Education being slashed and burned first. You've seen the headlines, I'm sure. The Daily Wire has stirred up the usual nutjob leftist voices on CNN and MSNBC talking about our new effort to attain a pardon for Officer Derek Chauvin.
No matter how much the new Trump administration works to undo the damage caused by Joe Biden and Kamala Harris over the last four years, the woke movement in American politics won't be over truly until this injustice is righted. Derek Chauvin was railroaded to appease a mob.
President Trump does have the power over the federal part of Chauvin's charges to relieve those charges, but he does need to hear. from you. Go to pardonderrick.com right now. Sign the petition. When we fight, we win. With your support, we'll do it again. All right, so President Trump is winning big victories.
His big victory of the day is slashing and burning his way through the Department of Education. So according to CNN, the U.S. Education Department announced on Tuesday it is cutting nearly 50% of its entire workforce. President Trump, of course, has proposed eliminating the agency altogether. Now, people don't seem to understand what it is that the Department of Education actually does.
They seem to believe that all public schools all over the country are paid for by the federal government. That is not true. The vast majority of public school spending is state and local spending, as it should be, because there is legitimately no reason why a taxpayer in Florida should be subsidizing the public school education of a student in California, at least in the main.
The truth is that the vast majority of spending that happens via the Department of Education is federal student aid on college loans. In other words, what you have seen is the cost of college skyrocket because of the gigantic subsidies that are paid for by your taxpayer dollars to the colleges that are then churning out good little left-wing apparatchiks.
If you look at the Department of Education by subcomponent for fiscal year 2025, what you find is by far, by far, the largest outlay is the Office of Federal Student Aid. You can see that their total budgetary obligations, $68.77 billion just on that federal student loan aid. Remember, Joe Biden wanted to radically expand that. Why? Because those are all his friends. They're all his friends.
When you talk about the pipeline of dollars flowing from permanent employees in the federal government to permanent staffers in the blue infrastructure around America, the number one place this happens is in higher education, which is in fact subsidized by the American taxpayer. It should not be. This could all be done privately. All of it. And it would be better if it were done privately.
I've made this case before. The reason it would be better is because then you would actually be forced to consider whether you need a degree in lesbian dance studies as opposed to simply taking the money from the federal government subsidized over the course of 30 years to go get a degree in lesbian dance studies. We have artificially inflated. the necessity for a degree in this country.
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Chapter 2: How does federal student aid impact college costs?
He came to the United States to study at Columbia after receiving his undergrad degree in computer science at the American University of Beirut. Apparently, he worked for the British government as an intern at its embassy in Beirut and for an NGO called Jasur, which is Arabic for bridges.
But apparently, he also worked as a public affairs officer for the UNRWA, which is basically a terrorist front group for Hamas. Last spring, at the apex of the pro-Khamas agitation in Colombia that followed the October 7th atrocities, Khalil reportedly told The Verge, quote, I am here on a foreign visa. That's why for the past six months I barely appeared on the media.
That's why I'm not suspended. I did not participate, fearing I will be arrested and ultimately deported from the country. So, does he have a student visa? Does he have a green card? Not totally clear at this point. But, again, a permanent green card holder can be deported if that person espouses terrorist activities.
Section 1182 of federal immigration law controls the categories of aliens who may be excluded from the United States. In the category of national security, the statute mainly targets aliens who have engaged in terrorist activities, but there's additional latitude. An alien may be excluded if he has endorsed or espoused terrorist activity.
That includes violent attacks and the planning of such attacks. So if you support Hamas, you have now violated that under the law. Once an alien has entered the United States and then has residential status, then they have some additional rights.
However, the claims should fail because when it comes to support for terrorism, our law does not privilege green card holders over other classes of aliens. So, yeah, again, the reality is that Secretary Rubio is correct. An alien, even a green card holder, has no right while in the United States to join with groups that endorse or espouse terrorist activity.
So all the government has to do is show that Khalil was in a campus group that endorsed or espoused Hamas atrocities. And as we talked about yesterday on the show, he did that like a lot, like a lot, and he didn't hide it.
And yet you see people who are out there defending Mahmoud Khalil on, again, the bizarre right and the entire left, the Senate Judiciary Democrats, put out a tweet yesterday saying, free Mahmoud Khalil. I noticed they didn't have a similar tweet saying, free Idan Alexander, the actual American hostage still being held by Hamas in terror tunnels.
In any case, Caroline Lovett was asked about this, and here was her answer yesterday.
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