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President Donald Trump ran on closing the border and taming inflation. Done.
And by “done” on the border, that means completely done: It is closed. Period. No new law was needed as former President Biden, Vice President Harris and Democrats coast to coast claimed in their failed effort to dupe voters in 2024.
Deportations will require years of efforts even if only violent migrants are targeted, but the consequences of President Biden’s open border are being reduced on a daily basis.
MORNING GLORY: JUST HOW BAD WERE THE BIDEN AND HARRIS CAMPAIGNS?
President Trump had promised for more than a decade that Iran would not be allowed to have a nuclear weapons program. Trump sent the B-2s and obliterated it. If Iran tries again to build them, Trump or a strong president down the road will dispatch the B-2s again if Israel doesn’t do it herself.
President Trump told elites that he would stand with the forgotten men and women passed over and sneered at by the coastal “bigs.”
And Trump has done so by crushing the cherished projects of the elites —DEI and CRT —programs that ignore merit and our Constitution’s mandate to be color-blind. Trump is in court with Harvard and soon more elite universities will be obliged to comply with color-blind admissions and safe campuses. Trump wants American higher education to be for Americans and to be made available on the basis of merit.
The Trump promise of “no tax on tips” is done. Ditto for overtime and Social Security. The tax rates he put in place in 2017 have been made permanent.
President Trump’s “One, Big, Beautiful Bill” includes worlds within it, including tax credits for gifts to scholarship granting schools —who wouldn’t use this?— and taxing Big Education endowments. Both are achievements, as is the defunding of NPR and PBS. But there is so much more to do.
Reconciliation is a narrow path that includes a ruling by the Senate parliamentarian that any given legislative proposal meets the “Byrd Rule.” Here’s where the GOP should start: The tax credits which crossed the parliamentarian’s goal line in round one of reconciliation.
Senator Cruz’s carefully crafted provision got the parliamentarian’s approval and is a huge victory for proponents of school choice: A $1,700 annual tax credit for individuals that contribute to nonprofits that grant scholarships to elementary and secondary school students.
As wonderful as that is, it is also just a start on reforming American K-12 education. It also provides a blueprint for moving a second reconciliation agenda, the centerpiece of which should be education reform. Raise the $1,700 tax credit and make it available to home-school consortiums/co-ops.
The tax code also needs to evolve to penalize colleges and universities that admit too many foreign students at the expense of American nationals or which use metrics for admission that are forbidden by the Constitution and the Civil Rights Act of 1964.
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The tax code may also have to be changed by Congress to deny tax-exempt status to any college or university found to discriminate against Americans on the basis of race, religion or ethnicity. Because such a tax code change which raise revenue by taxing previously untaxed entities, it should travel the same path of approval through the parliamentarian that Cruz’s first proposal did.
Finally, federal education spending should favor states that have robust school choice options. Engineering a course through the Parliamentarian when only revenue issues are involved should be relatively easy as states without such programs —17 states have them, 33 do not— would lose a percentage of their federal education dollars. What a spur to school choice this would be.
President Trump is already the modern-era president who accomplished the most with his first six months of a term. Becoming the education president in his second six months back would leave an indelible and positive legacy for parents and children extending long into the future.
Hugh Hewitt is a Fox News contributor, and host of “The Hugh Hewitt Show,” heard weekdays from 3 pm to 6 pm ET on the Salem Radio Network, and simulcast on Salem News Channel. Hugh drives America home on the East Coast and to lunch on the West Coast on over 400 affiliates nationwide, and on all the streaming platforms where SNC can be seen. He is a frequent guest on the Fox News Channel’s news roundtable hosted by Bret Baier weekdays at 6pm ET. A son of Ohio and a graduate of Harvard College and the University of Michigan Law School, Hewitt has been a Professor of Law at Chapman University’s Fowler School of Law since 1996 where he teaches Constitutional Law. Hewitt launched his eponymous radio show from Los Angeles in 1990. Hewitt has frequently appeared on every major national news television network, hosted television shows for PBS and MSNBC, written for every major American paper, has authored a dozen books and moderated a score of Republican candidate debates, most recently the November 2023 Republican presidential debate in Miami and four Republican presidential debates in the 2015-16 cycle. Hewitt focuses his radio show and his column on the Constitution, national security, American politics and the Cleveland Browns and Guardians. Hewitt has interviewed tens of thousands of guests from Democrats Hillary Clinton and John Kerry to Republican Presidents George W. Bush and Donald Trump over his 40 years in broadcast, and this column previews the lead story that will drive his radio/ TV show today.
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