Bonus Pod: Democrats hold Government Hostage plus Trump vs the Department of Education
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We have a dream. And you know what the dream is? We're going to move the Department of Education, we're going to move education into the states so that the states, instead of bureaucrats working in Washington, so that the states can run education. You're listening to a 47 Morning Up

date special government shutdown edition with Ben Ferguson. Good Thursday morning, Ben Ferguson with you. It's nice to have you on the 47 Morning Update as we have a special show for you this morning. So many of you that listen to the show want to know the facts about what the president's actually accomplishing. This is one of those special shows that I hope you will share everywhere on social media. It's the 47 Morning Update and it starts right now. Story number one. A government shutdown is now likely after Chuck Schumer says the Senate

Democrats will block a GOP funding bill. The Speaker of the House, Mike Johnson, making it very clear that the same Democrats who've always said we can never shut down the government and it hurts Americans and poor people and the world is going to end. Now that Donald Trump is in charge, they've decided, nah, we'll just throw that all out the window and go with the government shutdown just to try to hurt Donald Trump. Take a listen to the Speaker in his own words.

they're planning to vote down the simple bill. They are going to try to shut the government down. Every House Democrat will participate in this, it looks like. That would be a shame if it's true. I hope some of them will have a moment of clarity themselves and do the right thing, but it looks like they're going to try to shut down the government. It's a striking new posture for Democrats who have always said they've just been apoplectic about the prospect of government shutdowns.

So just think for a second about what the speaker just said. It's very clear that Democrats are solely doing this for political reasons and they want America to suffer. They want Americans to suffer because they want you to blame Donald Trump for any inconvenience whatsoever.

or real pain that comes from a government shutdown. You can also look at it this way. They're advocating for tanking the American economy because they don't actually care about Americans. In fact, listen to the Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer in his own words about why they're doing it. Funding the government should be a bipartisan effort, but Republicans chose a partisan path, drafting their continuing resolution without any input, any input from congressional Democrats.

Because of that, Republicans do not have the votes in the Senate to invoke cloture on the House CR. Our caucus is unified on a clean April 11th CR that will keep the government open and give Congress time to negotiate bipartisan legislation that can pass. We should vote on that. I hope.

I hope our Republican colleagues will join us to avoid a shutdown on Friday. Translation, Chuck Schumer saying we, the Democratic Party, are holding Congress and the American people hostage. Because of that, as he said, Republicans do not have the votes in the Senate to invoke cloture on the House continuing the resolution. So now it is a government shutdown that will be created solely by the Democrats.

with Republicans holding a 53 to 47 advantage in the Senate. Chuck Schumer also understands that, guess what? You don't always work together with the other side. Because when the American people voted in Donald Trump and gave the Senate back to the Republicans and the House control in the hands of the Republicans, they didn't ask.

Donald Trump to, quote, compromise with Democrats. They said to Donald Trump, go to Washington, save us money and go with a mandate to do what we're sending you there to do. Now, the question is, how long could this last? Only the Democrats can answer that question as they're holding all of us hostage. Next, story number two. Donald Trump ran on a issue that actually saw incredible engagement.

in the presidential election cycle. It was the issue of education. American schools are failing. In fact, we are the lowest in many categories with the rest of the world in reading and writing and arithmetic. There are quite a few failing schools virtually everywhere you go in the

and public education has been a disaster. We've continued to throw more money at it, and we've seen no increase on test scores or a return on our investment, where students are getting better at the basics, like reading, writing, and arithmetic. The president has made it clear he believes that the...

federal Department of Education is a disaster, something that you cannot fix. Now let's be clear, the president has not said that we can't fix education and he believes it should be going back to the states. Well the president was in an Oval Office meeting and the conversation came up about education and here's what the president said. They're not doing a good job and if you take a look at our education process,

And if you look at the charts, because they have numerous charts where they do the top 40, we're at number 37, 38, 39, and 40. And recently they hit during Biden's last few days, they hit last. So they were number 40 and yet we're number one in cost per pupil.

So it's pretty bad. But we have a dream. And you know what the dream is? We're going to move the Department of Education, we're going to move education into the states so that the states, instead of bureaucrats working in Washington, so that the states can run education.

Now, this goes back to a basic promise that Donald Trump had made during the campaign. He believes that on the local and state level, they can run education in a much more efficient way than the federal government can with all of the corruption in Washington, D.C., which brings me to something else.

Linda McMahon, the education secretary, has now come out and had a major round of layoffs gutting the civil rights office as well. The education department's civil rights branch is losing nearly half of its staff in the Trump administration's layoff round one, effectively gutting an office that already faced a backlog of thousands of complaints from students and families, they say, from across the nation.

Among a total of more than 1,300 layoffs that were announced this week, roughly 240 in the department's Office for Civil Rights were in that group. That, according to a list obtained and verified by the Associated Press. Seven of the civil rights agency's 12 regional offices were entirely laid off, including busy hubs in New York.

Chicago and Dallas. Despite assurances that the department's work will continue unaffected, huge numbers of cases, Democrats now say appear to quote-unquote be in limbo. Insert fear-mongering right here. What Democrats do well. Now, the Trump administration has not said

how it will proceed with these cases being handled by its staff and many of those around them that have been eliminated. The cases will involve families trying to get school services for students with disabilities, and that is something the Trump administration has said is important. We also know, though, that the entire Department of Education is, well...

bloated and it's time to dismantle it piece by piece so that the president united states of america can then hand control back to the states it's exactly what he said about martin luther king and his dream now which is to give every kid a quality education and an education they can be proud of and an education that has a return on our investment

and an education that prepares kids for college and the future. We have far too many public schools in America, and the president's made this clear, that are handing out basically worthless pieces of paper after you, quote, graduate the 12th grade, even though you're not reading at that level, writing at that level, or doing math and science at that level. So for Donald Trump, this is another step in that promise from his campaign, and a step

that many parents will be happy about in states when they actually get back control of their public school system. And finally, story number three. I want to take you back to 2016. It was the very first time that the media and Democrats used Russia to try to attack Donald Trump. You may remember the Russian collusion, Russia, Russia, Russia hoax, as Donald Trump has said countless times with good reason. Well,

Now, the Democratic Party is trying to use Russia again to undermine Donald Trump and his popularity, all because he wants to see a ridiculous war be ended between Russia and Ukraine. They're trying to drive a wedge between the president and the American people, claiming that Donald Trump favors Vladimir Putin and that there's some sort of shady, corrupt business going on between the two men, which...

We all know is obviously a massive lie, a lie that's been orchestrated by the Democratic Party. Well, there's a new story that you probably haven't heard about, and I hope you'll take this show and share it everywhere, because what I'm about to tell you is something that literally no one is covering. Donald Trump...

has threatened devastating financial penalties now for Russia. I didn't say Ukraine. I said for Russia and Vladimir Putin, President.

President Trump on Wednesday threatened the, quote, devastating financial penalties for Russia if the president, Vladimir Putin, does not agree to a ceasefire with Ukraine that Ukraine has agreed to. Quote, there are things that wouldn't be pleasant in a financial sense. I can do things financially that would be very bad for Russia. I don't want to do that because I want to get paid.

peace. That is what Donald Trump told reporters in the Oval Office. Quote, in a financial sense, yes, we could do things that would be very bad for Russia, that would be devastating for Russia. But I don't want to do that because I want to see peace. And we're getting close to maybe getting something done. We got Ukraine done. And as you know,

Ukraine might have been the more difficult party here. You were here a week ago when some interesting things happened, referring to the Zelensky meeting in the Oval Office. Trump went on to say, I had somebody who didn't seem to want peace. Now he's agreed to peace. Trump also said people are going to Russia right now.

as we speak and hopefully we can get a ceasefire from russia if we do i think that would be 80 of the way to getting this horrible bloodbath to end so the question that all of us should be looking at and asking now is this why is the media not reporting this story number one and number two a

A president is trying to bring peace. Why aren't they celebrating this? Why is the world media not celebrating this? And why is it that this isn't the number one leading story on every news channel recently?

right now that the president got Zelensky to agree to peace after one week of him being in the White House angry and yelling and arguing with Donald Trump. And then the other question is this. Why aren't Democrats, if you really want to talk about Russian collusion, why? And this may be the most important part. Why are they not demanding peace from Vladimir Putin? Why are world leaders not demanding peace?

peace from Vladimir Putin. Let's be clear, there is now an official deal on the table. Why is it that foreign leaders aren't walking out in front of microphones and demanding that Vladimir Putin agree to the ceasefire deal which Zelensky and Ukraine have agreed to? And why aren't any of them talking about how quickly this deal was done by Donald Trump? Now look, I expect the media to hate Donald Trump. I

I expect many world leaders to, well, be jealous of him. But this should be bigger than that. This is about saving kids.

countless lives and so many families that have been destroyed in Russia and Ukraine in a senseless war from the very beginning. This is what leaders do. They lead. And the sad thing is, apparently in this country right now with our media, if his name is Donald Trump and he does something incredible like work for a peace deal, they will at best

say something negative about him, or maybe just not tell you the story at all. Thank you for listening to the 47 Morning Update with Ben Ferguson. Please make sure you hit subscribe wherever you're listening to this podcast right now. And for more in-depth news, also subscribe to the Ben Ferguson Podcast, and we will see you back here tomorrow.