From Washington: President Trump's Dismantling Of The Education Department
31:40 Share

The second half of the basketball season is here and the race to the playoffs is heating up on PrizePix, the best place to cash in on your favorite sports. With over 10 million members and billions of dollars in awarded winnings, PrizePix has made daily fantasy sports accessible to all. The app is really simple to use.

Pick two or more players across any sport, pick more or less on their projection, and you can win up to 1,000 times your money. Don't miss your chance to cash in as the league's best fight for playoff positioning. Join PrizePix, America's number one daily fantasy sports app, available to play in more than 40-plus states, including California and Texas. Don't miss your chance to win up to 1,000 times your money. Download the PrizePix daily fantasy sports app today and use code CHAMPION. That's code CHAMPION and get $50 instantly when you play $5.

That's co-champion on PrizePix to get $50 instantly when you play $5. Win or lose, you'll get 50 bucks for just playing. Guaranteed. PrizePix. Run your game. Must be present in certain states. Visit PrizePix.com for restrictions and details. This episode is brought to you by Progressive Insurance. Fiscally responsible. Financial geniuses. Monetary magicians.

These are things people say about drivers who switch their car insurance to Progressive and save hundreds. Visit Progressive.com to see if you could save. Progressive Casualty Insurance Company and affiliates. Potential savings will vary. Not available in all states or situations.

Saturday, March 22nd, 2025. I'm Jared Halpern. President Trump is taking steps to seriously reshape the Department of Education, but it could signal more legal fights. To render it ineffective.

You simply take parts of what the Department of Education was doing and assign it to other agencies. And that's what's being done. A partial ceasefire after President Trump has phone calls with the leaders of Russia and Ukraine, but there's no deal on a broader peace agreement. In any negotiation, sometimes you apply pressure. Sometimes you also show the carrots, right? It's a carrot and a stick approach.

in which we're trying to show both countries there's a better path forward ahead for you with the United States if you'll stop this war. This is the Fox News Rundown from Washington. Education Secretary Linda McMahon hopes to be out of a job soon. First things first, let's take care of the Department of Education. Let's make sure our students are well taken care of.

McMahon spoke on special report with Brett Baer shortly after President Trump signed an executive order directing the secretary to take steps to dismantle the Department of Education.

WHAT I'M GOING TO DO IS I'M GOING TO TAKE THEM TO THE STATE OF NEW YORK AND WHAT MY DESIRE IS AND WHAT I'M GOING TO BE WORKING TO DO IS TO WORK IN CONJUNCTION WITH CONGRESS. I THINK IF WE CAN SHOW THEM THAT THE BEST PLAN IS TO HAVE STATES IN CONTROL OF EDUCATION FOR THEIR COMMUNITIES, FOR THEIR STUDENTS, FOR THEIR TEACHERS, FOR THEIR PARENTS, THAT IS THE BEST THING BECAUSE THE PRESIDENT BELIEVES, AS DO I, THAT THE BEST EDUCATION IS CLOSEST TO THE

McMahon is working with Congress because a president's executive order cannot eliminate the Department of Education. Republican lawmakers say they soon will introduce legislation, but that will require 60 votes in the Senate, a bipartisan majority, to overcome the filibuster. In the meantime, President Trump says core functions of the Education Department are moving. The Small Business Administration will handle the trillions of dollars in federal student loans for millions of borrowers.

And the Department of Health and Human Services will now lead special education and nutrition programs that were run out of the Education Department. So I think that'll work out very well. Those two elements will be taken out of the Department of Education. But both of those moves could trigger legal challenges. President Trump and the administration have spent much of this week critical of federal judges they accuse of overreach to stonewall the president's agenda.

Alexandria Hoff is a Washington correspondent for Fox News and has spent this week covering those court clashes and President Trump's Doge agenda. I think it's pretty symbolic here in this case involving the alleged Trende Aragua members being deported on Saturday. I think it symbolizes the frustrations that this administration has had with feeling they've been improperly delayed, that their priorities have been upended.

ended by district court judges who they say are not elected then coming in and disrupting what they believe is simply executive action the question i guess kind of is about

appropriateness, right? That seems to be where a lot of the criticism has been focused with President Trump. And certainly you saw the Chief Justice weigh in. That doesn't seem to be a concern from the administration, though, does it? Yeah, I mean, maybe not when you're just kind of very casually going on Truth Social and saying that district court judges should be impeached, although there have been district court judges who have ruled in the president's

favor and also who upended some of the priorities of the Biden administration. I mean, it's the current administration or the candidate at the time, I think, had no problem at that point. But this case, I mean, there's been so much back and forth in the deportation flights. But the bottom line, you know, as you were mentioning, is the priority and the ability of a president to

make that determination to deport somebody without due process is that you know under his authority or not and there's a frustration i think as well because you obviously that the chief justice is right that the the appropriate remedy is the appeals process but that can take weeks that can take months

um time seems to be that the main frustration here for the administration that's such a good point and and yeah and i was saying this back and forth because there's you know hearings and then these motions filed and this entire process is something that the administration doesn't want to have to deal with for better or for worse the executive power isn't the only power so you do have to go through courts in in certain measures on certain

ideas that the administration may have. But the timing is what they don't like. They think a delay is obstruction. Have you heard from Republicans in Congress if there's an appetite for going down this road of impeachment?

Well, impeachment seems a bit far off, but we do know right now that there is legislation being proposed, at least, that would try to undo the power of U.S. district court judges to singularly get in the way of priorities of this administration. So we don't know exactly how they're going to do that, but that has been teased as something that will be introduced. Because that's the other kind of...

beef that the administration has is that you have a district court judge who represents a fairly small, limited geographic area able to impose these nationwide injunctions. And this has been done. Listen, this happened. Republicans kind of did judge shopping during the Biden administration. You have Democrats not doing this judge shopping where they think they'll get a more favorable ruling. That's been something that's been a frustration of lawmakers for a long time. I'm just curious kind of what the remedy they think might be.

Well, I think as far as remedy, they're seeing urgency there. I don't know exactly the mechanism they would use to do that because this would impact, again, rulings that had been in their favor, quite frankly. But if you look back at the history of injunctions that

have disrupted a president's priorities. And you look back a couple of ministrations, the Harvard Law Review did this calculation. And in that, you see that President Trump, his agenda has been disrupted by injunctions. There have been twice as many disruptions that he has been dealt.

than all of the other presidents combined. All of them not coming from George Washington, but Bush. I think it goes back about 25 years. Yeah, it does. So they are seeing this as being lopsided. And so that's the other frustration is kind of why.

what they call activist courts, it does raise questions. And I've heard this asked, like, these are cases that are still going on, right? They're in the early stages. And, you know, some of these judges, I guess, ultimately could rule in the favor of the administration. You're so right. And when it comes to these flights being on Saturday, it became a whole big deal because the judge said, I ordered them to be halted. The administration said it's out of airspace. You don't have jurisdiction. They already started taking flight. That situation,

I mean, that's just a small part of this. And his entire what he's considering would just be a temporary delay in what the president seeks to do. So this is all a temporary thing. But we've gotten so caught up in the minutiae because there is so much back and forth, because, as you said, it's become so casual to kind of criticize both sides. Well, and usually federal judges don't become household names. And it seems like the president is pretty focused on Judge James Boasberg specifically. Yeah, it's ironic that the president makes somebody a celebrity, but he also says

Is that in getting involved and being so outspoken that these judges perhaps seek some celebrity? Well, it's been interesting to see. I mean, it is rare for the chief justice of the United States to weigh in on these issues. And certainly we saw that this week as well. The other big doings here at the White House this week certainly had to do with the Department of Education.

The president introducing a cabinet secretary is hopefully the final office holder of that position. And we're starting to get a little bit more meat on the bones here about what this executive order to dismantle the Department of Education will look like. Yeah. And dismantling is the key word because the president cannot unilaterally shut it down. That would have to take an act of Congress, which the administration might pursue Congress in doing that. And they need 60 votes in the Senate. Right. Yeah. They've toyed with that idea. They'd eventually go down that line. But

Right now it seems like they wouldn't really need to because to render it ineffective, you simply take parts of what the Department of Education was doing and assign it to other agencies. And that's what's being done. Yeah, we're seeing that with student loans, which is a big part of what the department does, sending that to SBA.

to SBA. And let me tell you, the texts that I've gotten from my friends this week, they're not asking about Judge Boasberg. They're not. They're asking about what's going to happen to my student loans. The administration says the $1.6 trillion that the Department of Education manages will be unaffected by this, that it's going to just kind of be shipped off to

SBA, and they feel that people will not feel that hiccup. But there are a lot of people concerned. There are a lot of people who had those payment plans. They're ready to pay them off. And they're like, wait, I got just a couple of payments left. Like, don't don't leave me hanging. Well, with the last administration, a lot of those student loan payments were in limbo, too. So there's not a lot of clarity. Yes, they've been put through it. And then we also know the Department of Education, some of their nutritional programs, that's going to be handed off

to Health and Human Services. So they're dividing it up. Congress may play a role, though, because they're going to have to ultimately like fund those programs through new departments. That's a good point. You know, and I hadn't really thought about that because when you think of something like HHS, they are managing such an enormous budget as is. Like, could this get caught up? Will there be concerns? I mean, clearly, yes. And especially for low income students. I think that's where we're hearing the most from Democrats right now. Title one funding. Exactly. Yeah.

That sort of leads down the road again to this idea of court challenges. Are you hearing from Democratic governors, from teachers unions, from education advocates that lawsuits are going to be mounted here? I assume they will be mounted. I don't know that we've seen anything in writing at this point yet. And what's happening, I think, with this administration too and on the local level is

People don't quite know who to sue anymore. Do you just sue the administration? Do you sue the Department of Education? It's going to exist in some form. And then you have all those investigations that the Department of Education has launched. They are managing kind of the jump off for the Title IX stuff. So...

We know with Maine and all of that, this has been a priority of the administration to tackle men and women's sports. So what are they going to do with that? That's a great point because it is the Department of Education that is leading the charge against University of Maine over Title IX, the transgender athletes, over anti-Semitism and hate speech allegations. Where do those investigations go?

I assume they'll be. I think as the way I understand it, as the Department of Education continues in some form, I think they still might have an observational body that is able to say this is a violation. We find this to be an issue. We know they got rid of a lot of staff.

But, yeah, I mean, we'll see where that gets handed off to. There is a department within the White House that that is checking up on a lot of the transgender issues, at least for one. So they could take this on. That issue is not going away either. Those are big cases that are going to be in front of courts, we would think, in a short amount of time. Yeah. And that's something we've heard from.

It's interesting. Not only Republicans have been pushing like, hey, we've got to get this settled once and for all. But you're hearing from some Democrats now this kind of shying away from some of the language they were nervous about before and saying, let's maybe tackle the biological males and women's sports at the local level. So they want to pass it off. They want it dealt with. But they don't maybe want to be the ones to deal.

You saw the Fox News poll out this week where voters were asked about all of these policies that the president has put in place. It's kind of mixed bag form, but the most popular policy was that executive order on transgender athletics. I mean, and I think we saw that coming on the campaign trail and many, especially in the Democratic Party, are wondering why didn't our politicians see it coming?

But I thought that was really interesting, that Fox News polling, because the president is doing better than he was at this point in his first term. He's seeing it as a win that nearly half of Americans think he's doing a good job. But the pieces of the puzzle here...

they don't necessarily love. Some of the doge work people have concerns with, but they still are holding pretty high marks for the president. Yeah. Notable that some of the renaming things weren't high polled either. Maybe that's just because they're not a big priority, right? I mean, people do care about the economy. They care about these tariffs that are coming. April 2nd, the president says he's calling it, what, Liberation Day? He is. Yeah, he put out a truth social on that one celebrating it like a national holiday.

But, yeah, the tariffs are where people you saw that divergence with how they're ranking the president and his approval with a lot of concern. People, by and large, the majority feel like this is going to hurt the economy. Majority of Americans feel that this is going to make goods more expensive. And that carries over with the majority of Republicans and Democrats.

And that'll be, I think, the question moving forward. How's this implemented? Because there's still some uncertainty. There have been exemptions. There have been waivers. The president on Friday used the word flexibility. That is something the markets generally do not like.

They call it inconsistency. Yeah, and now we're hearing kind of more from other countries wanting to weigh on this. They're understanding that they might feel the byproduct of some of these prices going up, like England, that special... Did you say that? The special invitation from... I saw it, yeah. From...

King Charles. We could be like an honorary member of the realm. Yes. And I guess that the thought is that that is to kind of cool some tension between the U.S. and Canada. Yeah. Notable that it would come 250 years after we kind of removed ourselves from Philadelphia. I don't know about signing back on. Not not going to be popular up there.

But it does show that these tariffs are being used largely as a negotiation tactic, right? The issue, yes, is bringing in revenue through tariffs. But the president believes that ultimately companies are going to move to the United States or other countries are going to just remove their tariffs on American goods. Yeah, I think the long term plan, of course, is to boost American production. But you're right, in the very short term, that is a negotiation tool. And I think we've seen it.

played out somewhat successfully in certain circumstances, at least when it came to Ontario and the mayor who kind of backed down. Put the electricity back on. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So he sees this as a long term vision. But we just want to know. I think the American people want to know how long is this long term vision? Does it take 50 years to get this up and running? Nobody wants to see that. And the other I mean, yeah. And I've heard from, you know, industry leaders, business leaders, business

investors that their worry is just kind of the inconsistency. They just kind of want to know what to expect in the next year ahead. Yeah, and maybe April 2nd will give us some insight into what actually happens, what takes place, and then what we feel a month from then. Well, the president says that will be a big day, so we'll have plenty to discuss then as well. Alexandria Hoff, appreciate the time. Thank you so much for having me.

The second half of the basketball season is here and the race to the playoffs is heating up on PrizePix, the best place to cash in on your favorite sports. With over 10 million members and billions of dollars in awarded winnings, PrizePix has made daily fantasy sports accessible to all. The app is really simple to use.

Pick two or more players across any sport, pick more or less on their projection, and you can win up to 1,000 times your money. Don't miss your chance to cash in as the league's best fight for playoff positioning. Join PrizePix, America's number one daily fantasy sports app, available to play in more than 40-plus states, including California and Texas. Don't miss your chance to win up to 1,000 times your money. Download the PrizePix daily fantasy sports app today and use code CHAMPION. That's code CHAMPION and get $50 instantly when you play $5.

That's co-champion on PrizePix to get $50 instantly when you play $5. Win or lose, you'll get 50 bucks for just playing. Guaranteed. PrizePix. Run your game. Must be present in certain states. Visit PrizePix.com for restrictions and details.

President Trump spent a few hours this week on the phone with two leaders at war with one another for more than three years. And following separate conversations with Russian President Vladimir Putin and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, a limited ceasefire was announced, with both sides agreeing to stop strikes on energy infrastructure targets. So hopefully we can save thousands of people a week from dying. That's what it's all about. They're dying every

So unnecessarily. And I believe we'll get it done. We'll see what happens. But I believe we'll get it done. President Trump says delegations are meeting in Saudi Arabia on expanding a ceasefire and ultimately ending the war launched after Russia's full scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022. It's

limited for now. And I thi towards is a permanent a is the president's deput for the Middle East. We s in Ukraine in the end of a Israel and Hamas. The pre about this. The vice pre

Steve Whitcough, my boss, Marco Rubio and others, says, you know, we want a real and lasting peace and a peace for Putin doesn't think that he can go back in and evade again, invade again in a few years. I mean, I think everybody's very clear-eyed and cognizant. And I think what we are trying to do is to show both countries that there's a better way ahead, right? That this doesn't have to continue for bloodshed years on end. And it's kind of befuddling to me that some

partner nations, you know, don't necessarily understand this. You know, they have been, they fought to a standstill. They've been fighting for three years. You know, you could keep funding a war where more and more people die, more infrastructure is destroyed. And

What are you really going to get out of it at the end? So President Trump's a president of peace, and that's what he's trying to get to in this situation is a peace that is durable and lasting. And anyone who wants this war to continue on like this is just I think it's rather inhumane.

There are questions about whether or not Putin specifically is an honest broker here. And I ask that because President Trump said that following his conversation with Zelensky, the two did agree to this 30 day deal.

Full ceasefire. But Putin hasn't. Right. He was the one that kind of called for a more limited ceasefire in scope. What sort of pressure can be applied to get the Russian side to be, I guess, as accommodating on the ceasefire front as the Ukrainian side?

I don't know that I would agree that one side has been more accommodating than the other. I mean, it really took sort of an embarrassing moment for President Zelensky in the Oval Office to realize that we were serious about getting to peace. And for him to realize, listen, there's not an appetite in the United States, or I would really say in a lot of Europe, to continue to funding a war that's never going to end. So, you know, the Vice President has talked about sanctions and other actions

that could be unleashed if Russia doesn't come to the table. But again, you know, in any negotiation, sometimes you apply pressure. Sometimes you also show the carrots, right? It's a carrot and a stick approach in which we're trying to show both countries there's a better path forward ahead for you with the United States if you'll stop this war.

the president did say uh this week that he thought that they were close to signing that minerals deal that was sort of part of what was going to happen in that oval office meeting that you talked about is that back on we'll see i'm not going to scoop the president we'll see but i mean but the idea behind that is still the same right that the united states wants to show what kind of a a long-term financial economic partnership with ukraine

By the way, that's something that most countries on this planet would die for, right? I mean, we have people in a queue. In the Biden administration, they negotiated zero trade deals. They made no movement on improving trade. You see, obviously, President Trump taking that on. And I think most clear-eyed countries around the world

would be thrilled to have a long-term economic and financial relationship with the United States. I mean, that's something that's probably maybe the most sought after thing next to a defense agreement with the United States.

Let's talk a little bit about the Middle East as well. Obviously, the ceasefire is over, right? That is no longer the case. We have seen these new operations in Gaza by the Israelis. Was that at, I guess, was the United States briefed, told ahead of time that the Israelis were going to return to these Gaza operations?

We have ongoing negotiations and consultations with our closest ally in the Middle East, Israel, on a daily basis. And I don't get into those and preview those to the media, but we have no closer friend or relationship in the Middle East than with the state of Israel. But our day-to-day back and forth is not something we really talk about in the media. But does this complicate the ongoing efforts to get hostages out?

Hamas complicates the ongoing effort to get hostages out. It's incumbent upon Hamas. We've given them deals and proposals in order to get the remaining hostages out. President Trump has threatened several times that there would be consequences if they didn't release the remaining hostages. And now they are feeling, you know, what happens whenever you don't release hostages.

Is there an expectation that your boss, Special Envoy Witkoff, is going to be able to kind of get all sides back to the table? Is there a desire to kind of get back to that ceasefire protocol? Or is everybody kind of moving on from that? I guess I'm just trying to sort of understand what's the state of play. What can we expect now moving forward in this conflict? Yeah.

Yeah, Steve Woodcoff is meeting in person and on the phone throughout the day and evening, almost 24-7 working to resolve this issue and to get all the hostages home. And he remains committed to that. Has anything changed in the president's thinking in the future of Gaza?

I don't think so. I mean, I think he's laid it out very clearly for everybody, the vision that he has for Gaza. And we know, I mean, listen, one of the most, the two, you know, really important things to come out of this conflict is that Hamas cannot govern. Hamas has to be disengaged.

that Gaza has to be demilitarized, which means that Hamas cannot have weapons and that they cannot be able to commit acts of terror against Israelis, Americans or any of our friends and allies in the region. And you also have to de-radicalize the population. So I think President Trump's vision for Gaza clearly lays out how we achieve and meet those goals. And I think with it, we're all going to be pretty firm on those goals. You know, you can't

Never again after October 7th is something that I think everybody's very resolute and very clear about. And I think Israel has the kind of response that we would have in the United States if this happened to us. And by the way, it did happen to us. Over 40 of our citizens were killed. They still hold four bodies of victims.

americans in gaza they still hold an american hostage they took dozens of american hostages so the biden administration never made them a pro never made them pay a price really personally for what they did to harm americans and we will ensure that that is that that never happens again is there um

Talk to me a little bit, too, about what we're seeing happening with the Houthis. We have seen a ramped up operation now U.S. led. Is that in consultation with other allies or is this a U.S. operation specifically to go after the Houthis? And what's the end goal here? What's sort of the mission operation focused on doing as it relates to the Houthis in Yemen?

Yeah, so I think the president's but was pretty clear in his tweet last Saturday when he confirmed the operation has started. And essentially, you have an issue that has really never happened in modern history, which is that a terrorist group is able to close off the waterways and shoot ballistic missiles, drones and other sophisticated weapons.

military weaponry at U.S. Navy ships, at U.S. commercial vessels. And they've essentially been able to stop anybody from going through there, right, because of their own safety. So you're impeding free and fair trade and commerce. You're prohibiting or trying to attack the U.S. Navy as we do freedom of navigation around the world and specifically there. And that's just not tolerable for us.

So until the Houthis learn that they can attack US Navy ships and they can attack commercial vessels and they can't control those waterways, this operation will continue. And so we hope that the Houthis will come to their senses sooner rather than later. But we're prepared to make sure that we have freedom of navigation and freedom of the seas around the world. And you can't shoot at the United States of America and expect that we're just going to take it, not in this administration.

The Houthis control or govern pretty large swaths of Yemen. Is there a policy shift at all on that component, on kind of what we used to call, I guess, regime change in Yemen?

No, we're not getting involved in that. You know, there's been a civil war there basically for a long time, and we're not taking sides in that. We're not trying to install an American, someone who's favored by the U.S. We are ensuring that a terrorist group doesn't shoot at our U.S. Navy ships or commercial vessels.

Any update on the letter that President Trump sent to the Ayatollah asking for nuclear negotiations or any headway on that? And what would that look like? Who would sort of lead that effort? That's all up to the president. So he'll decide in due course who would lead that effort and what negotiations will look like. And I assume and hope we'll hear back from the Iranian regime soon to the president's letter.

Are you working, is the administration using allies, Arab allies in the region to kind of put pressure on Iran? What does that diplomacy look like? Obviously, a lot of partners in that part of the world have similar concerns about Iran obtaining a nuclear weapon.

Yeah, we always work through our allies and partners in the region and around the world. The Europeans, the E3, UK, Germany, France were obviously signatories to the JCPOA. And they also have a vested interest in what happens with these negotiations. So we work with all of our

partners and allies around the world. But we don't really have to speak through them. I think President Trump is very clear and very direct in what he thinks. Mike Waltz has done a lot of interviews on this. The president said in his first term and then reiterated in his second term that Iran was not going to get a nuclear weapon on his watch. We hope to resolve that peacefully, but all options are on the table. And it sounds like this administration, this president is open to direct engagement with Iran.

You know, I'll let the president decide for himself what he wants the negotiations to look like. But I think he sent a gracious letter to the Ayatollah saying, let's resolve this peacefully. And we hope that they will extend the hand of diplomacy to us as we have to them. It'll certainly be something we follow in the weeks ahead. A lot on the foreign policy front. Morgan Ortegas, appreciate you spending a few minutes helping us better understand the thinking of the president and the administration on all of these issues. We'll talk soon.

Anytime. Happy to. Thank you.

Start your next California adventure behind the wheel of an exciting new Toyota Hybrid. With the largest lineup of hybrid, plug-in hybrid, and electrified vehicles to choose from, Toyota has the one for you. Every new Toyota Hybrid comes with ToyotaCare, a two-year complimentary scheduled maintenance plan, plus an exclusive hybrid battery warranty and Toyota's legendary quality and reliability. Visit your local Toyota dealer today. Toyota, let's go places. See your local Toyota dealer for hybrid battery warranty details.

Tomorrow on the Fox News Rundown from Washington, Doge continues to cut federal spending and shrink the federal workforce. It is becoming an election issue in places like Virginia, where voters elect a new governor this year. We'll speak with the Commonwealth's Lieutenant Governor, Republican Winsome Earl Sears, about how she's answering questions and concerns.

And Fox News senior congressional correspondent Chad Pergram reports on Democratic backlash towards Senate leader Chuck Schumer after his support of a Republican spending bill. This is the Fox News Rundown from Washington.

Stay up to date by subscribing to this podcast at foxnewspodcasts.com. Listen ad-free on Fox News Podcasts Plus on Apple Podcasts. And Prime members can listen to the show ad-free on Amazon Music. And for up-to-the-minute news, go to foxnews.com.

It is time to take the quiz. It's five questions in less than five minutes. We ask people on the streets of New York City to play along. Let's see how you do. Take the quiz every day at the quiz. Fox. Then come back here to see how you did. Thank you for taking the quiz.