CBS Evening News, 03/12/25
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Good evening, I'm John Dickerson. I'm Maurice Dubois. President Carter created the Education Department in 1979, keeping a campaign promise. Now nearly half a century later, President Trump is taking it apart. He too, keeping a campaign promise. When Mr. Trump was sworn in to his second term, there were just over 4,000 employees in the DOE. Now there are half that number. Nearly 600 accepted

buyouts, the rest were laid off. - The Associated Press reports nearly half the department's civil rights branch is gone. It handles such cases as sexual violence complaints in schools and parents trying to get services for students with disabilities. - Nancy Cordes tells us the DOE's principal function is funneling education aid money to states and local school districts. So Nancy, what is the impact of all these cuts?

Well, Maurice, the immediate impact is that there are going to be far fewer people to allocate these funds that go to nearly every public school in America. Now, will that cause delays? Nobody seems to know. And agency leaders haven't shared their game plan. How does it typically feel inside of a greenhouse?

Katz Zogby is a seventh grader in Baltimore. She has Down syndrome, but the speech therapy and occupational therapy she receives on site enable her to attend her local charter school. She does a reading pullout every day. She gets extra help in math.

Hope's mom, Liz Zogby, says the extra support is only possible thanks to a $15 billion program at the Department of Education. It helps states cover the cost of educating students with disabilities. She's benefited from being in an inclusive classroom, and I think her classmates and her teachers have benefited from her being there as well. You're saying she's going to need to operate

in the wider world at some point. - Absolutely. - And so this is giving her the... - The tools.

She's worried about what will happen now that staffing at the agency has been nearly slashed in half. We want education to be moved back where the states run education. The states already do run education, according to former Secretary of Education Margaret Spellings, who was appointed by George W. Bush. You know, the Department of Education essentially is a channel that funds states and school districts to do this work on behalf of students.

What kinds of educational standards does the Department of Education set for local schools? None. There are express prohibitions for curriculum mandates coming from the Federal Department of Education, period. President Trump's education secretary, Linda McMahon, says the cuts reflect a commitment to efficiency and accountability. But

The goal, she says, is to get rid of the department altogether. I think parents all over the country are terrified by that prospect. It takes a lot and some extra to do right by a disabled kid. And it's exhausting for our families to imagine that our government will pull the rug out from underneath the supports and services that our kids need to be successful in their schools.

Nancy, one big thing the Department of Education handles is student loans. What happens to that now? Well, they insist that the funding is going to continue uninterrupted. They haven't said how exactly that is going to happen. Keep in mind that the agency actually oversees about $1.5 trillion worth of student loans and FAFSA and Pell Grants and all the rest.

And the big concern is that it's gonna be a lot more difficult for people to get answers when they have problems with those loans. Another big thing, John, that the agency does is to fund research so that states can make better decisions about how they use the money that they are given. But a lot of that research was already cut a few weeks ago. - So Nancy, if the department were downsized even more or even eliminated, what would happen to all these programs?

Well, agency officials say they would simply migrate to other departments like the Treasury Department or Health and Human Services. And that, Maurice, has led a lot of educators to ask, well, then what exactly are

are the savings here? Where's the efficiency if you're simply picking up programs from one department and moving them somewhere else? Why not have all of the programs having to do with education in one place, run by people with expertise in education, rather than spreading them throughout the federal government? So many questions, Nancy Cordes at the White House. Thank you.

One of the president's first actions when he took office in January was to freeze refugee programs. Margaret Brennan tells us those left in limbo by that executive order include about 40,000 Afghans. Some of them worked with the U.S. military and now face retribution from the Taliban. The Trump administration may soon decide their fate.

In the chaos of the American exit from Afghanistan in 2021, Tamim Satari was separated from his wife and newborn baby. A captain in the Afghan army who worked with U.S. forces, Satari was evacuated to New Jersey. His wife and child escaped to Pakistan, where she was too afraid to show her face on camera.

For three years, Sotari lobbied the U.S. government to bring them over. I live behind them and they are in a bad situation. I keep trying and struggle to reunification my family. In January, the family finally reunited. Their baby, now a little boy.

Since then, scenes like these have virtually stopped because President Trump signed an executive order suspending the refugee program and his administration froze financial support for the more than 40,000 Afghans in the pipeline already approved to leave Afghanistan.

Veteran Sean VanDyver coordinated with the State Department to help Sitari's family. The fact is, is that these commitments were made to these folks, and now it's becoming some sort of political football, which it just shouldn't be. So, Tamim told us if he didn't leave Afghanistan, the Taliban would have killed him. That's absolutely true.

How do you know that? Because we've seen people be hunted down and killed. These people are in danger because of us. The Trump administration says it is trying to prevent terrorists from entering the country. You want to vet them again? Go ahead. But they've already been vetted.

and probably the most thorough vetting in American history. These are not the terrorists. These are the ones who fought the terrorists alongside our military. Republican Congressman Mike McCaul of Texas voted for the program that resettles Afghan wartime allies. This goes to the core of who we are as Americans.

for God's sakes, and our allies and our word. If our word means nothing, then who is going to trust us in the future? And should it be on the American taxpayers to help pay for things like the plane tickets to get there? We spent a lot of money on a bunch of, you know, dumb things, but this is not one of them. Margaret, I want to pick up on what Congressman McCaul said about the vetting. Can you tell us a little more about this kind of vetting, what the vetting process is like?

Well, John, vetting and scrutiny of these Afghans who worked in sensitive projects with the U.S. military has long been a priority. Add on top of it the fact that refugees undergo 18 to 24 months worth of background checks.

These particular group of refugees undergo a tremendous amount more of the scrutiny than you would see, for example, for a migrant who showed up at the southern border and just tried to claim asylum. They do not go through these standards.

Margaret Brennan in Washington. Thank you, Margaret. Now more of the top stories from around the world in tonight's Evening News Roundup. President Trump's trade war escalated today. Canada hit back with tariffs on American steel, aluminum and other goods. And the European Union said it will put new import taxes on U.S. beef, poultry, bourbon, motorcycles,

and other products. - The Labor Department says inflation slowed last month for the first time since September. Consumer prices rose 2.8%. Money Watch correspondent Kelly O'Grady has a look at what's driving prices higher and what isn't.

Well, after increasing four straight months, the rate of inflation has fallen. Here's what's driving the biggest price swings. Let's start with a necessity for all of us, groceries. Okay, while prices for most categories of groceries went down last month, meat, poultry, fish, and eggs were up more than 1.5%.

That was because of beef and eggs. Eggs alone are up nearly 10.5%, largely the result of the bird flu. Gasoline prices dropped 1% in February after rising for three straight months, and airline fares fell 4%. Analysts say this could be tied to energy prices coming down and the airlines adjusting prices to counter weaker demand. All this could change quickly, though, as today's data does not account for the impact of the new tariffs.

The head of the Environmental Protection Agency is working to roll back more than 30 key rules and decisions that have been aimed at protecting public health and fighting climate change. These include rules about power plant emissions. EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin says cutting regulations will lower costs for consumers and businesses.

You'll find details of these and other stories at CBS News dot com and streaming at CBS News 24 7. Still ahead here on the CBS Evening News, Lonnie Quinn on the dangerous storms in the West. And we'll have these stories. I'm Jim Axelrod near Fayetteville, North Carolina. What could possibly be wrong with the name Fort Liberty? Turns out enough to change it. That's tonight's Eye on America.

I'm Janet Chamblee, and in Savannah, Georgia, the in vitro fertilization industry is regulated by a patchwork of rules critics say don't go far enough. One woman's heartbreaking journey. That's next on the CBS Evening News.

One thing President Trump and Democrats in Congress agree upon is the need to make in vitro fertilization treatments more accessible and affordable. But there are concerns that a lack of regulation of IVF and the IVF industry can have rare but devastating consequences. Janet Chamleon has the story of a Georgia woman who is suing a fertility clinic after a big mistake.

It's like a life dream coming true. Christina Murray was over the moon when she became pregnant through IVF in 2023. I was bonded before he came. You know, you already love your child before you meet them. She had chosen a sperm donor who looked like her, but in the moments after her son's birth, Murray knew something wasn't right. I was immediately scared because it was very apparent that something didn't go as it should have at the clinic. At that moment, you didn't think he was yours?

My son was very dark. It was very apparent the second they held him up that he was African-American. An at-home DNA test later confirmed the clinic had transferred the wrong embryo. I feel like in my heart I kind of knew. And when you got that validation that he was not in fact yours, what did you do? After losing it for a little bit, I called a friend and we

basically decided what to do. She contacted the clinic, Coastal Fertility Specialist in Savannah, Georgia, about the mistake. After five months of being his mom, she surrendered custody to his biological parents. It was one of-- it was the worst day of my life, having to hand over your son, your life, your world.

to strangers and knowing that I would probably never see him again. Barber shops, nail salons have more regulations than laboratories or fertility clinics. Adam Wolf is her attorney. He specializes in fertility cases. He says the industry has a loose patchwork of regulations and doesn't have to report when something goes wrong. This was an entirely preventable tragedy.

If there were regulations that governed the labs of fertility clinics, this could have been avoided. You walk into a fertility clinic and the lobby looks like a Four Seasons. And you go back into the laboratory for the clinic and it can be a complete disaster. Coastal fertility specialist in a statement said it deeply regrets the distress caused by an unprecedented error. And we extend our sincerest apologies. I have hope that I will be a mom and

my dreams of a family will come true and i have hope that this won't happen to anyone else in the future and janet shamley and joins us now from houston so excruciating janet how often does this kind of thing happen no one knows for sure because there is no responsibility to report however the attorney we talked to says he is representing at least a half a dozen of these cases and janet this is not these are pricey procedures

$15,000 per cycle or more. It often takes more than one cycle for a woman to become pregnant. Many people go into debt doing this. But for Christina Murray, she's hopeful. She's working with a new clinic and now has five embryos in storage. Wishing her the best. Janet Chamblee, and tonight, thank you so much. There is some dangerous weather in the West. And it's about to move east. Lonnie Quinn is tracking it all for us tonight. Lonnie?

All right, guys, right now, California experiencing some rain. This is San Francisco's Bay Bridge, cloudy skies with rain falling. When you look at the radar picture, we've got rain falling right now anywhere from, say, Portland, Oregon, through San Luis Obispo. It's going to make its way farther south. Right now, L.A.'s not into the heaviest stuff, but tonight, and this is going to be the problem, it starts pouring in Los Angeles, maybe two, possibly three inches of rain. So flooding, mudslides are concerned tonight. As that line pushes to the east, it's got to climb over mountains, right? Well, as an air mass climbs up

over a mountain, it pulls the moisture out. That's a lot of snow for the Wasatch. I mean, two, maybe three feet of snow. As an air mass slides down a mountain, it dries out. So it looks like the storm starts to weaken a bit. This is Friday night, maybe like 11:55. And look at the southern tier. It's almost all gone. This, however, is the area I'm watching because any one of those cells can percolate, grow into a thunderstorm as it rises in the atmosphere. Now it starts hitting the jet stream. The jet stream creates some twist.

Lo and behold, you get a thund- a funnel cloud, eventually a tornado out of it. Most likely spots on Friday anywhere from St. Louis down to Jackson, Mississippi. Saturday, New Orleans over towards Atlanta. And Sunday, Savannah up to Philadelphia. One storm going from coast to coast and not losing its strength because it picks up some of that Gulf moisture. Gentlemen. Lonnie Quinn walking us across the nation. Thank you, Lonnie. All right. Eye on America is next. Tonight, how renaming a fort became the president's forte. Yeah, sure thing.

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- School kids learn about homonyms, words that are spelled and sound the same but have different meanings. For instance, B-O-O-K. You read a book and book a reservation. Now President Trump is seizing on homonyms for political purposes, to bring back names his predecessor removed because they were linked to the Confederacy. Jim Axelrod has tonight's Eye on America.

For the second time in less than two years, the largest U.S. military base has a new name. Today we honor a hero worthy of the name Bragg. The new name is also its old name, Fort Bragg, which for more than a century honored General Braxton Bragg, a Confederate general and slave owner.

A ceremony in 2023 changed Fort Bragg to Fort Liberty. Then, last fall... Should we change the name from Fort Liberty back to Fort Bragg? Donald Trump made a promise that Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth kept. That's right. Bragg is back. But not that Bragg. The Army found a much more palatable one. Private First Class Roland L. Bragg

a World War II Silver Star and Purple Heart recipient. At first I thought it was a joke. Rebecca Amirpour and Jennifer Bell are Roland Bragg's granddaughters and plenty proud of their grandpa. But if his name was Roland Jones, I don't think we'd be sitting here. No, we wouldn't. While the military also sees Bragg as a brand, a place where some of the nation's fiercest warriors trained,

It doesn't see any issue in the workaround that preserves the Bragg name. Gregory Anderson is the fort's commanding general. To the extent that this was a painful name for people, what do you say to them? Roland L. Bragg is someone that they can be proud of. Do you feel at all used or manipulated?

I went through some different thoughts about it. I feel like using our grandfather's name is a way of bringing it back in a respectful way. It's an absolute loophole. Steve Moore's family is on the other end of the Army's re-renaming decision. When I look back to my grandfather, between him, my father, myself, and my brother, we've got 110 years of service.

They were busting their buttons two years ago when the Pentagon changed Fort Benning, also named for a Confederate general, to Fort Moore for both their father. I have two battalions on this valley. Lieutenant General Harold Moore, a highly decorated 32-year infantry commander, and their mother, Julia. When your family found out that the original Fort Benning was going to become Fort Moore? I broke down and cried.

not because it was going to be named after dad, but finally the Army was going to recognize the value of the military spouse. But now that too is being reversed and renamed for a corporal, Fred Benning, who served with honor for a couple of years during the First World War. When I compare his short service in World War I to mom and dad's lifetime of service and everything they did and influenced,

I have to ask the question, why? There is no answer that will satisfy the family of Hal and Julia Moore, whose lifetime of valor and service to the Army lost out to a soldier who had one thing they did not, the right last name. For Eye on America, I'm Jim Axelrod in Fayetteville, North Carolina.

Fort's Hood, Bragg and Benning were among nine military installations with names linked to the Confederacy that were renamed in 2023. In tomorrow's Eye on America, why it may soon cost more to put maple syrup on your pancakes. And up next, will it be red, white and blue and Greenland too? Maurice and I will be right back.

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The way the story goes, Greenland got its name from the Norwegian explorer, Erik the Red. He thought it was a pleasant name and would attract settlers. All these years later, Greenland has attracted President Trump. Not for its pleasant name, but for its minerals and strategic location. The other day, Mr. Trump had a message for the people of Greenland. We strongly support your right to determine your own future.

And if you choose, we welcome you into the United States of America. The answer? No, thanks. The leader of the center-right party that won Greenland's parliamentary elections yesterday said, "We want to be Greenlanders, not Americans." Still, the president said, "We're gonna get Greenland one way or the other, so it'll have to be the other," whatever that turns out to be. If it's a real estate deal, remember, Alaska was purchased from Russia in 1867 for the equivalent of

more than $130 million in cold cash. And that's the news. I'm Maurice Dubois. I'm John Dickerson. See you on Plus. Have a good night. We'll see you tomorrow.

Survivor 48 is here and alongside it, we're bringing you a brand new season of On Fire, the only official Survivor podcast. If you're a Survivor super fan, you won't want to miss this deep dive into every episode where we break down how we design the game, the biggest moves, your burning questions. It's the only podcast that gives you inside access to Survivor that nobody else can. Listen to On Fire, the official Survivor podcast with me, Jeff Probst, every Wednesday after the show, wherever you get your podcasts.

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From clutch performances to the stories shaping the game on and off the court, Triple Threat has you covered with it all. Culture, drama, and social media buzz. We're locked in just like you're locked in. Watch weekly on CBS Sports Network at 1 p.m. Eastern or on the CBS Sports YouTube channel as we break it all down fast and fresh. This is Triple Threat, where basketball meets culture.