21-03-2025
Trump signs order aimed at dismantling Department of Education
Trump signs order aimed at dismantling Department of Education | The Excerpt
On Friday's episode of The Excerpt podcast: President Donald Trump signed an order Thursday aimed at dismantling the Department of Education. Check out our special Deep Dive episode on what's next. USA TODAY White House Correspondent Francesca Chambers takes a look at what might be on the way in an expected travel ban. A U.S. judge blocked Elon Musk's DOGE from accessing Social Security records. USA TODAY Money and Personal Finance Reporter Medora Lee discusses why cash poor Americans often fail to get ahead. Let us know what you think of this episode by sending an email to podcasts@
Hit play on the player below to hear the podcast and follow along with the transcript beneath it. This transcript was automatically generated, and then edited for clarity in its current form. There may be some differences between the audio and the text.
Podcasts: True crime, in-depth interviews and more USA TODAY podcasts right here
Taylor Wilson:
Good morning. I'm Taylor Wilson. And today is Friday, March 21st, 2025. This is The Excerpt.
Today, as expected, Trump ordered his administration to dismantle the education department. Plus, what might be on the way an expected travel ban. And we take a look at the challenges for cash-poor Americans.
President Donald Trump ordered his administration yesterday to dismantle the Department of Education looking to achieve a top campaign promise. Even though the White House acknowledged the agency can't and won't entirely be dissolved. Trump signed the long anticipated executive order at a ceremony in the White House's East Room, attended by several Republican governors and state education commissioners, along with students seated at school desks. Trump directed his education Secretary Linda McMahon to take all necessary steps to facilitate the closure of the department and return education authority to the states according to a White House summary of the order. But the order's immediate impact is unclear since only Congress can eliminate a federal agency, and the federal government does not set school curriculum. That's long been up to states and local school districts.
You can read more on and check out our special deep dive episode on What's Next for Education with education reporter Zach Schermele. We have a link in today's show notes.
♦
President Donald Trump is expected to ban or severely restrict travel to the United States by citizens of more than a dozen countries as soon as today. I caught up with USA TODAY White House correspondent Francesca Chambers for more.
Hello, Francesca. Thanks for hopping on.
Francesca Chambers:
Hey, Taylor. Thanks for having me.
Taylor Wilson:
So Francesca, what do we know about this travel ban as of now?
Francesca Chambers:
So the president on the campaign trail said that he would reinstate the travel ban that he put in place during his first administration. On his first day in office in January, the president signed an executive order telling his administration to put together a new set of recommendations as well as a list of countries that could have travel banned to the United States or partially suspended. But the Trump administration appears to be looking at doing things differently this time. Two separate memos that were leaked to reporters show that the list was much more expansive and could be up to 43 countries this time around as they look at all their potential measures and add visa restrictions on top of that outright ban for some countries.
Taylor Wilson:
So I know courts initially blocked his travel ban last time around before the Supreme Court then upheld a later version, Francesca. I mean, what's the expectation this time around in terms of maybe how this one differs from Trump 1.0?
Francesca Chambers:
So Taylor, this executive order explicitly says that the administration should identify countries throughout the world for which vetting and screening information is so deficient as to warrant a partial or full suspension of the admission of nationals from those countries. Now, that is where the administration could draw on a larger list of countries than it did the first time.
Individuals, Taylor, who worked on the earlier version of the travel ban, so that they learned a few things from that experience and they would do things differently. Now, the administration appears to be looking at a three-tier list where there would be the group of red countries where travel would be totally banned to the United States, as well as an orange list in which travel would be restricted and visas would be restricted. And then a third tier, which essentially is the administration putting countries on notice if this goes into effect.
Now, those countries could get off the list by providing United States with the information it is seeking, or they could go up on the list because the administration deems them a national security threat.
Taylor Wilson:
So obviously a big question here is, who's going to be on the list? But another question is, when would this ban actually go into effect, Francesca. I know we've heard as soon as today, later today. What are you hearing, I guess, there on the ground.
Francesca Chambers:
Well, it wouldn't necessarily go into effect immediately. Even if the State Department as well as the other departments that the president tasked with putting together this report does submit its recommendations on Friday, the president wouldn't have to enact a travel ban immediately. Now Taylor, I do want to stress that the versions that have been floating around were not finalized. It's not clear if the administration had completely approved of the list of countries that have been publicized. Those were made by staff, I was told by someone who worked on an earlier version of a travel ban. And they may not have even cleared the administration yet. So there could be countries that appeared on that list that might not be on the final one.
Taylor Wilson:
All right. Lots to still keep an eye out for. Francesca Chambers covers the White House for USA TODAY. Thank you, Francesca.
Francesca Chambers:
Thank you so much. Taylor.
♦
Taylor Wilson:
A federal judge has said the Social Security Administration likely violated privacy laws by giving Elon Musk's aides unbridled access to millions of Americans' private data. US District Judge Ellen Lipton Hollander of Maryland ordered a stop to any further record sharing and said that Musk's department of government efficiency was intruding into the personal affairs of millions of Americans as part of its hunt for fraud and waste. A White House spokesperson criticized the decision in a statement and said Trump will continue to seek all legal remedies available to ensure the will of the American people goes into effect.
♦
It's often difficult for cash-poor Americans to get ahead. I spoke with USA TODAY Money and Personal Finance Reporter Medora Lee for a look at some of the factors at play. Hello, Medora.
Medora Lee:
Hi, how are you?
Taylor Wilson:
Good. Thanks for hoping on today, Medora. So just starting here, I want to ask you just kind of point-blank, we're talking about cash-poor Americans. How many Americans are, Medora? Do we have numbers there? And what does it mean really to be cash-poor?
Medora Lee:
So cash-poor means that you don't have enough liquid cash on hand to cover any sort of emergency expenses, like if your car breaks down or you have to get to the doctor and things like that. These are people who are living paycheck to paycheck basically. And there are more of these Americans than you would even realize. A lot of people think that that's something that's limited to the working class, but really a lot of middle class Americans now are falling into this category, including people with college degrees, who own homes, people who invest money, even people who have six-figure incomes. And most of them are women. More than half of them are women. Two-thirds generally tend to be millennials or Gen X, and 14% are generally Black. So there are a lot of people who fall into this category that you may not even realize.
Taylor Wilson:
You outlined bad financial products in this story, Medora? Can you just help us understand what those are and how they fit into this conversation?
Medora Lee:
When most people, when they're down and out, they don't expect someone to kick them in the knees again, right? But that's basically what happens when your back is to the wall for a lot of these people. They will need to borrow some short-term money and they'll discover that these bad financial products, that these companies that are willing to give them that loan really are going to charge them a lot of money. And so there was a report, a study done by SoLo. They did what they called a cash-poor report, and they said, because of people who had to take out these types of loans, Americans paid more than $39 billion in fees to borrow money to help pay for these unexpected expenses last year. And those fees were on top of the advertised APRs, which were already really high. I mean, when you think about high credit card rates, you're thinking in that 20% and higher range. Some of these would maybe even get into the 600% range. So that's a lot of money.
Taylor Wilson:
So Medora, for the folks you spoke with, what's been their experience with some of these "bad financial products"?
Medora Lee:
It's kind of interesting. So for example, one woman I spoke to in Mesa, Arizona, I mean she's kind of like that middle class American. She had everything going for her. She graduated with a degree in advertising, in public relations with honors. She worked 20 years as a healthcare executive, earning as much as a six-figure salary for half of that time. And she, like a lot of people do, she hits a rough patch. She had three years where she changed careers. She had a flooding of her home and property that she had to pay for. She got into a legal battle and she had a falling out with some family members. And during those three years, just three years of her whole life, she's 44, things were rough and she ended up having to deplete her savings. And as she said, she had an 806 credit score, which is pretty high and nearly $150,000 saved before this all happened. And she went through every penny of it. She ended up having her cars repossessed and she lost her home to foreclosure. She became homeless for about five years.
So during those five years, she ran into all sorts of crazy things. When her pickup truck broke down, she said that was her first introduction to bad financial products. She said she didn't want to be stuck somewhere, so she called someplace and they were willing to pay her $2,200 bill to get her truck fixed, but she had to pay it back full within three months or else the interest would go to. And then here we go from 0% to 169%. They needed it back three months of interest due immediately. And so she felt she had no choice because would you want to be stuck out nowhere? So she did it. Things like that keep setting these people back because they can never catch up because they can't ever dig themselves out of the hole.
Another single mom in Connecticut, she's always had a full-time job her whole life, at least a full-time job, if not more jobs. And she... Because of the way the paychecks structure is, it's very rigid, you get paid every two weeks or once a month, her bills would come due and she wouldn't have enough money to cover it, and then she would end up having to pay all these late fees and then interest on top of it. And the late fees alone are sometimes $50 each. And so she said that ended up eating up a lot of her money, so she couldn't really catch up just because of that. A lot of people, they're not necessarily poor and they're not spending their money unwisely, but it's just kind of the way things go. She tried shuffling credit cards and going through the credit card cycle, but that didn't really work. She considered payday loans. But those are outrageous interest rates and really hard to pay back so people get stuck.
Taylor Wilson:
I mean, you can see how just a little bit of bad luck and really spiral out of control. Medora Lee covers money and personal finance for USA TODAY. Listeners can find this full piece with a link in today's show notes.
Medora, I think folks will really appreciate the spotlight you're bringing to this issue. Thanks for hopping on.
Medora Lee:
Thank you so much.
♦
Taylor Wilson:
Thanks for listening to The Excerpt. We're produced by Shannon Rae Green and Kaely Monahan, and our executive producer is Laura Beatty. You can get the podcast wherever you get your audio. And if you're on a smart speaker, just ask for The Excerpt. I'm Taylor Wilson, and I'll be back tomorrow with more of The Excerpt from USA TODAY.
