The President Puts Higher Education On Defense
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I'm Steve Ducey. I'm Sandra Smith. I'm Jimmy Fallon. And this is the Fox News Rundown. Tuesday, July 1st, 2025. I'm Jessica Rosenthal. How are the nation's most elite universities navigating the Trump administration? And how should they navigate it moving forward? The concerns that the administration has, I think, quite legitimately raised are

Higher Ed is in for a shakeout and a reckoning, and this is no time to insist that all is well, and it's the critics who are out of bounds. I'm Dave Anthony.

It was a win for President Trump at the Supreme Court, limiting the power of federal judges in challenges to his executive actions. The dissent says this is like this revolutionary finding by the majority. It's really a return to normalcy and letting the time that's necessary for justice to take place on individual cases. And I'm Jason Chaffetz. I've got the final word on the Fox News Rundown.

Harvard University's been informed in a letter by the Trump administration that it's violated federal civil rights laws over how it treats Jewish and Israeli students. The letter says they've acted with deliberate indifference. It's the kind of letter from Health and Human Services that could precede a formal lawsuit or a settlement, and Harvard has been talking to the administration for a few weeks now about a settlement. Jewish and Israeli students were assaulted and spit on. They head their kippahs for fear of being harassed and concealed their Jewish identity from classmates.

White House spokeswoman Caroline Leavitt addressed the letter Monday, saying the demonstrations at Harvard had become violent. The Harvard campus was wracked by demonstrations, as you all know, violent protests that violated the university's rules of conduct. The demonstrations caught

called for genocide and murder, denied Jewish and Israeli students access to campus spaces. These are all facts that Harvard cannot dispute, and that's why the administration has found them in violation of Title VI and has threatened to withhold their federal funding because if you break federal law, you should not be receiving federal tax dollars.

Allegations of Title VI violations. That's just the latest for Harvard. Columbia University received a similar letter in May. Last week, the president of the University of Virginia stepped down. The university's governing board of visitors voted in March to end its DEI office, but there were accusations the DEI programs had not stopped, and two weeks ago, another letter was sent to the university.

Research funding has been frozen to a number of campuses, including Harvard, Columbia, Northwestern, Penn, Brown and others. While judges have ordered cut funding restored from NIH and the National Science Foundation, the fight is ongoing. And dozens of universities have been under investigation and had letters sent to them this spring telling them to do a better job of protecting their Jewish students. Other Department of Education investigations have focused on university DEI programs, with a big focus being on Columbia and Harvard.

The charge of anti-Semitism is valid, and we've seen evidence of that at both these schools and others. Please note that the Supreme Court case Harvard lost was actually over Asian American students being discriminated against in admissions. Mitch Daniels is president emeritus of Purdue University, former governor of Indiana, and Liberty Fund distinguished fellow. So I think that it's hard not to agree that they are in violation. I guess that leaves open questions about

what the right response and punishment should be, but these wounds are self-inflicted. The president of the University of Virginia stepped down over the school's failure to really dismantle their DEI programs. Lots of universities have been targeted for investigation over DEI, right, under this administration, but multiple judges have said, you know, you can't withhold money to universities over their DEI programs. They've ruled that that's federal overreach.

The administration is going too far. This is their academic freedom. What do you say to the withholding of research dollars and grants and more over these programs in particular? I think some of it is fully legitimate.

If you're in violation, there ought to be sanctions or consequences for that. Now, I do hope in so many of these issues that we can discuss, Jessica, that we try to separate babies from bathwater here. For instance, in the case of research,

I have no problem at all with ending some of the so-called woke research or the politicization even of scientific research. They're absolutely right to go after that. But still, the nation benefits tremendously from investments in basic research of the right kind.

We've got national security and defense issues right now that I really want our best minds studying very hard. We have obviously a number of health care untreated illnesses to worry about. So, you know, I hope for some discretion and some selectivity, you know, a surgical approach as opposed to something that's too broad and ham-handed.

A surgical approach, as you know, takes time. How do you do that? And who's in charge of doing that? Who do you put in charge of doing that? Who you trust if you're the Trump administration to say, go take the scalpel and tell me which program survives scrutiny. I don't think it's that hard. I mean, I just named a couple areas where I think most people, I would hope most people in the administration agree that we really need to be making major investments in

in the newest forms of warfare. We're seeing the nature of warfare and threats to our security change rapidly right in front of us. If there are people on American campuses, and there are, who know a lot about those subjects and can help, we ought not be preventing them from doing so. Ditto for some of the unmet medical needs on which there's so much exciting progress in prospect. So I don't think it'd be too hard to

to segment some of the more essential items from those that are in many cases either useless or even counterproductive.

I'll mention one other thing. I think it's entirely justified to have a good hard look at the overhead dollars that many of these schools are charging. Now, 15% for everybody across the country, it may be a little bit, as I say, too broad and ham-handed, but no question that in many, many cases, these percentages ought to come down and I'd give somebody the responsibility for negotiating those.

Homeland Security separately is revoking Harvard student and exchange visitor program over who's being allowed in, as well as trying to stop them from accepting new students. A judge is blocking the Trump administration there. But who should have the final say on who's allowed into the country? Like a student visa is still a form of immigration, right? It is.

Here, too, I think we need some careful and selective thought. My own view is that in the broadest sense, attracting talent from other countries to our universities has been a positive thing. A high percentage of these young people stay and build their careers here.

You don't need me to tell you how much the American economy in the last generation or so has been built by people not born in the United States, some of our greatest companies, the tech companies and others. Now, I would make a different case entirely, for instance, for Chinese students.

many of whom are being trained here to go back and compete with us, many of whom pose a security threat all by themselves. Many of them have been either enlisted or, in some cases, I believe, coerced into becoming de facto agents of the Chinese state. So I think you can make a very, very different case there than young people from China

you know, let's say India or or Europe or South America. Sure. You were the president of university. So just want your thoughts on this as we learn more about this aspect of things since since the mid 80s, 60 billion dollars that we know of has been donated to American universities from foreign governments or foreign entities. Most of it, at least as of late, from China and Qatar. What does that mean to you? And should that be allowed to continue?

I think it's a subject for great caution and merits the kind of close look that it's getting now. I think that, I'm not saying every dollar of that was not proper, was improper, but you had to wonder what its intentions and motives were. We did see, for instance, in the case of China, that they created institutes at a number of schools

And that I do believe in had the objective of propagandizing on behalf of the Chinese government. Not all of them. We had one for a short time at our university. It was very tightly managed and supervised. So we didn't do any of those things. But I know what other schools it did. Those are gone now. And I think that was a good decision. Finally, sir, tell me about you wrote a recent op ed about.

essentially, and everybody should read it. I love the book of Lamentations comparisons, but you're urging universities to have some humility, really, to have some introspection about the way they run things, but that they don't, that they simply sort of, you know, in the face of the Trump administration, get angry, lash out. What sort of introspection should universities have, especially given what we know about

high tuition, that overhead you referenced, what would you tell them to look at? - Themselves. I think the very beginning of any progress here in terms of the, I think the single biggest problem they're facing among so many is the collapse of public confidence.

And arrogance, a no problem here attitude in the face of what most people can see are very legitimate criticisms of both value, what are they charging in relation to the quality of the education they're delivering, and values. Are they living up to the American principles of free speech and education?

And freedom of inquiry. So that column and other answers I've given to this question start with recognizing that maybe not all, but many of these criticisms are fully legitimate and valid. And rather than, as you say, lash out at the critics, a much better starting point is to say, yeah, well, you have a point there.

And we're prepared to do a little something about it. The alternative to that, of course, is that others will make you change and perhaps in ways that here and there go too far or misguided. You know, before I let you go, one of the things President Trump had said was he wanted to take $3 billion in grant money to Harvard and give it to trade schools.

I've wondered, as we have this debate about what should happen at the four-year university, you know, we've seen student loans go up. We see people complain about what their degree gets them in the real world. Has there been, should there be, especially, I mean, you've got insight because of Purdue, concerted effort to offer different sorts of programs, including maybe trade programs at a liberal arts school? Maybe not there, but certainly the system is changing.

recognizing the validity of what you say here. I think probably over the last generation or two, we have encouraged too many young people to pursue the four-year degree when in many cases, other paths would have been better suited to them.

But, you know, the problems we just discussed are the problems of yesterday and today. Schools tomorrow may look nothing like those of today. AI is already changing the nature of education very, very rapidly, for instance. And

Meanwhile, demography is working against our schools. Fewer students, fewer young people in the first place, fewer of them wanting to go to college. So with or without the concerns that the administration has, I think, quite legitimately raised, higher ed is in for a shakeout and a reckoning. And, you know, this is no time to insist that all is well and it's the critics who are out of bounds.

President Emeritus at Purdue University, Mitch Daniels, thank you so much for joining us. Appreciate it. Yes, ma'am. Thanks for listening. Do you like true crime podcasts? If so, check out Unsolved with James Patterson.

Listen ad-free on Amazon Music or just say, Alexa, play the podcast Unsolved with James Patterson on Amazon Music. Every weekday, it's your go-to source for staying informed and entertained. The Fox News Primetime Highlights Podcast. The Ingram Angle, Jesse Waters Primetime, Hannity, and Gutfeld. Listen and follow now at foxnewspodcasts.com. This is Jason Chaffetz with your Fox News commentary coming up. The Supreme Court just finished its term.

But the justices are already planning for the next one starting in October, agreeing to consider a Republican challenge to a campaign finance law restricting how much money political parties can spend in coordination with candidates.

This after the court's final rulings last term were victories for the Trump administration related to abortion funding, parental rights in schools, and limiting the power of federal judges to stop a president's agenda. Attorney General Pam Bondi cheered that on Friday. These injunctions have blocked our policies from tariffs to military readiness to immigration to foreign affairs, fraud, abuse, and many other issues.

The judges have tried to seize the executive branch's power, and they cannot do that no longer. Though one dissenting justice, Ketanji Brown Jackson, warns it's not difficult to predict how this all ends. A president's power could become uncontainable.

The 6-3 majority, however, thought it was U.S. District judges who had too much power. Very overdue, and it's kind of an interesting opinion from Justice Coney Barrett tracing the history, or really the lack of history, associated with what she calls universal injunction. Jim Trustee is a former federal prosecutor. And what we've seen in recent years, and Justice Barrett, Coney Barrett, really maps this out,

is an increasing use of this across different administrations. When Elena Kagan was the Solicitor General during the Biden administration, she questioned whether this was a fair use of federal courts, that district court judges should not have universal jurisdiction when they make their pronouncements of injunctions.

So it's something that's kind of crept up since the 1960s, conspicuously absent, as Justice Coney Barrett says, from the 18th and 19th century. And it's become an increasing problem in recent days for President Trump. The first 100 days, according to this opinion, there were 25 universal injunctions that were issued. He had about 64 during his first term altogether. So the severity of the consequence, as well as the number of these things,

has been on the rise up until Friday. Does this end what people have decried over and over again as judge shopping, trying to find someone who's going to side with you and stop an order or an action? I think it goes a long way, but it doesn't totally end the practice. You know, what we saw with the injunctions for President Trump's second term

where they were heavily filed in D.C., Maryland, and I think maybe Northern California, to name a few. And there was definitely a whiff of forum shopping and even judge shopping within those districts there.

that they were finding activist mentalities, judges who were more prone to go out on a limb and not just give a preliminary injunction early into the litigation, but to make it universally applicable across the country. So she does leave the door open a crack, and it's a pretty small crack. And that is essentially, at least as I read it, class actions. You know, if you came into court for a preliminary injunction,

saying I'm not just representing, say, a particular immigrant in Maryland, but I'm representing a class of similarly situated immigrants across the country. There's at least some room to argue that that could lead to a universal injunction. But I tell you what, I mean, I don't think it's going to play well in the long run.

Justice Sotomayor, in her dissent, said and wrote the parents of children covered by the citizenship order would be well advised to file promptly class action suits and request temporary injunctive relief. So this is a game plan now.

Yeah. And I've heard some legal pundits kind of echo that. And again, that's the minority position that Sotomayor led with two other dissenters. And we're going to see it. But I think, you know, realistically, there's a very good chance of universal injunctions get granted based on class actions that have hurriedly been formed over the course of a couple of days to rush into court.

that the same majority is going to have a problem with that as a basis. So we'll see. It's open as a possibility, but it's going to greatly narrow the lawfare efforts within district courts over the long run. We talked about Justice Amy Coney Barrett. She had some very pointed things to say about Katonji Brown-Jackson, the other justices in the dissent,

who wrote, it is not difficult to predict how all this ends. Eventually, executive power will become completely uncontainable and our beloved constitutional republic will be no more. And then Coney Barrett wrote that that's a startling line of attack. The argument is extreme. She decries an imperial executive while embracing an imperial judiciary policy.

And so she really pretty much should be ignored on this. It's not often we have justices sniped like that, is it?

No, I mean, look, you can go back and see some tension in the court, like maybe a Justice Scalia, although he was very good friends with Ruth Bader Ginsburg. You know, there'd be some some snark or some sort of kind of intellectual high level ridicule. This is a punch across the chops. I mean, and look, I think it's interesting coming from Justice Coney Barrett, who, you know, everyone viewed properly as kind of an academic person.

of justice rather than somebody who's used to the courthouse brawling that can take place. And she went on when she was kind of discussing Justice Jackson's dissent and said something about or mocked the fact that the justice had said analyzing a governing statute is boring legalese. I mean, she really kind of calls out Justice Katonji Brown Jackson for her

making a comment like that in any context. You know, boring legalese is called lawyering. It's called being on the Supreme Court. And, you know, the fact that Justice Jackson would suggest that

you know, this is kind of the end of the world in terms of jurisprudence. I think there's just a general aversion from some of the conservatives on the Supreme Court to hyperbole. And we get it kind of every day. This is the end of democracy. This is the end of the Supreme Court. This is the end of the district court. I think it was a pretty serious rebuke and, um,

Yeah, I wouldn't expect them to be vacationing at the beach together this summer. No, but now we still have what happens in the birthright citizenship case because the justices didn't rule on the validity of the challenge to what President Trump's trying to do. And now they have 30 days to try to come up with a way to block this order even more.

But you could have the president's order take effect in some places, not others, right? Yeah, exactly. I mean, look, the alternative to these universal injunctions, you could still win your case as a plaintiff taking on the administration. It just means that the repercussions are limited to the people in the courtroom. In other words, your client.

And so we may very soon see different district court opinions bubbling up the different circuit court opinions. And the whole issue, the whole substantive issue of birthright citizenship, I think, has a very strong chance of reaching the merits on the Supreme Court someday. But in the meantime, we will have this patchwork of opinions that come through. Maybe some district courts denying, maybe some district courts granting opinions.

and it will play out, but it'll be at the regular pace. And I think that's really the takeaway from all this is we don't need to have, you know, forum shopping manufactured emergencies. We're a better system. We have a better chance of getting real justice on any issue, whether it's substantive or procedural. If we allow the courts and the courts are willing to take some time, hear the argument, read the pleadings, develop a factual record, and then let the case, you know, let

make its way through the appellate process. That's the normal process that we see in criminal cases and a lot of civil cases. And I think in some ways, although the dissent says this is like this revolutionary finding by the majority, it's really a return to normalcy and letting the time that's necessary for justice to take place on individual cases.

Now, even though this Supreme Court ruling Friday stems from a challenge to the Trump birthright citizenship order, the justices did not decide on that issue itself yet. The 14th Amendment, which dates back to the Civil War era, allows a baby born in the U.S. to automatically be an American. The president insists, though, that was meant for the babies of slaves. It wasn't meant for people trying to scam the system and come into the country.

on a vacation. And his order would not allow a baby born to parents who've come to the U.S. illegally to be an American citizen. This is going to be, I think, a fairly uphill battle for the administration to win on the merits no matter where they are, because there is a case from a couple of hundred years ago that kind of describes who the people are that would fall outside of birthright citizenship. But the magic phrase that's being fought about under the 14th Amendment is not just that they were born in the United States, but

but that they subjected themselves to the jurisdiction of the United States. And that's a little bit of an interesting academic argument to be made, that if you've come into the country illegally and you're not, you know, perhaps not paying taxes or not doing things that we associate with typical citizenship responsibilities, that you have not let yourself succumb to the jurisdiction of the United States. I think that's the gist of

of where this thing is going. Again, there's at least one case that's going to make that a little bit of a challenge. But I could see the Supreme Court wanting to weigh in on it. I think it's a fair issue for them to resolve at some point. Now, of course, President Trump has a lot of challenges to his executive orders and his executive actions, and some of them related to deportations and the immigration raids.

I know you back in March were at a hearing and a challenge to the president using the Alien Enemies Act to deport these alleged gang members to El Salvador. One of them came back and there's a whole legal process involving Camara Brego Garcia. The Supreme Court has allowed the president to deport some of these immigrants to third party countries where the country they're from doesn't want them back.

Do you think that the president's going to have more victories on the deportation issue? I think there's a lot of room for the Supreme Court and their perspective to say, look, we're a limited branch of government. And we're not going to second guess kind of operational things that are broadly authorized by Congress to the executive branch. So I think there's a little bit of an allergy, at least at the Supreme Court level, to

to micromanaging the immigration process. And the only other thing I'd say is I think there's a lot of people throwing around the phrase due process and suggesting that what illegal immigrants receive within the United States is not due process. Well, you just have to recognize due process is different depending on what's at stake. I mean, my parking ticket is a very different case than my death penalty trial.

And if you are barely associated with this country, like if you cross a border and get caught, you don't have the right to say, well, due process, I need a couple of years of litigation before you kick me back out. So there are some kind of practical differences in the immigration field that I think the Supreme Court takes into consideration, but it's mostly about separation of powers. And they're going to give the presidency, I think, a pretty loose leash to pursue some of these issues.

to dust off some statutes and to use them for purposes of immigration enforcement. Jim Trustee, former federal prosecutor. Great to have you back on the show. Thanks a lot. Yeah, great talking to you.

It's Will Kane Country. Watch it live at noon Eastern, Monday through Thursday at Fox News dot com or on the Fox News YouTube channel. And don't miss the show. Listen and follow the podcast five days a week at Fox News podcasts dot com or wherever you download your favorite podcasts. Subscribe to this podcast at Fox News podcasts dot com.

It's time for your Fox News commentary. Jason Chaffetz. What's on your mind? New York City. Oh, my goodness. Democrats in New York City have now nominated Zoran Mamdani, a 33-year-old state assembly member from Queens.

He was originally born in Uganda, but now he is leading the field as they go into the election for New York City mayor. Of course, former three-term New York State Governor Andrew Cuomo lost the runoff for the Democratic nomination, which means a lot in New York City. And so you have this self-proclaimed socialist who is now leading the field, and this puts Democrats in quite a position. I think there are a lot of people in New York City that lean to the left.

That is not breaking news. But what is different is how radically left this person is. Mayor Eric Adams will be on the ballot. He's running as an independent. But it'll be interesting to see how Democrats nationally embrace or reject this candidate to lead the United States' largest city in this election that's coming up this year.

The National Republican Congressional Committee was one of the first ones out of the gate, and they said, quote, the new face of the Democrat Party just dropped, and it's straight out of a socialist nightmare. This poses a major problem for the Democratic Party. They have lurched to the left. This person was endorsed by AOC. How will Chuck Schumer, who's up for his election in 2026, do under this set of circumstances?

How radically left has New York come? Well, New York's made this decision. They could have had Lee Zeldin as their governor, but instead they went with Kathy Hochul. And now they're going to have to deal with Zoran Mamdani leading the ticket in the election in New York City for the election to become the next mayor. Quite a mess. I'm Jason Chaffetz, host of the Jason in the House podcast and a contributor at Fox News.

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Hey, I'm Trey Gowdy, host of the Trey Gowdy Podcast. I hope you will join me every Tuesday and Thursday as we navigate life together and hopefully find ourselves a little bit better on the other side. Listen and follow now at foxnewspodcast.com.