Trump to sign order Thursday aimed at eliminating Education Department | The Excerpt
On Thursday’s episode of The Excerpt podcast: President Donald Trump is set to sign an order aimed at delivering on a key campaign promise - elimination of the Education Department. Paste BN Justice Department Correspondent Aysha Bagchi explains how Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts' rebuke this week marks a growing Trump showdown with the judiciary. The Federal Reserve leaves interest rates unchanged. Paste BN Youth Mental Health Reporting Fellow Rachel Hale talks about sextortion and the prevalence of individuals or companies that charge a fee to retrieve explicit photos, and then may fail to do so. Get your brackets in for March Madness!
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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.
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Taylor Wilson:
Good morning. I'm Taylor Wilson, and today is Thursday, March 20th, 2025. This is The Excerpt.
Today Trump is set to sign an order aimed at eliminating the education department. Plus what the Supreme Court chief justice's rebuke of Trump this week tells us about a showdown in the courts, and as sextortion grows in the US, so does the prevalence of individuals or companies that charge to retrieve explicit photos and then may fail to do so.
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President Donald Trump today is set to sign a long anticipated executive order that seeks to eliminate the Department of Education. Trump is expected to sign the order, which has been in the works for weeks at a White House ceremony attended by several Republican governors and state education commissioners. In doing so, he will deliver on a signature campaign promise to dismantle the agency. The order, which is almost certain to invite legal challenges from the left, sets up a new test for the bounds of presidential authority. After the Trump administration's efforts to shut down the US Agency for International Development were blocked this week by a federal district judge in Maryland.
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Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts' rebuke this week marks a growing Trump showdown with the courts. I spoke with Paste BN Justice Department correspondent, Aysha Bagchi for more. Aysha, it's a treat having you back on. How are you?
Aysha Bagchi:
Thanks Taylor. I'm doing well. It's good to be here.
Taylor Wilson:
Thanks for making the time. So let's just start here. I mean, what happened with this rebuke from Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts?
Aysha Bagchi:
John Roberts issued a public statement Tuesday. It was within hours of President Donald Trump posting on truth social calling for the impeachment of a judge who's ruled against him when it comes to some of the tactics he's used to execute his mass deportation policies. Trump called for the impeachment of that judge and suggested that other judges should be impeached too. And John Roberts decided to issue this public statement that said basically for two centuries, we haven't impeached judges because we disagree with their rulings, that the proper way to handle that is to appeal the decision. It'll go up to an appellate court, eventually it could make it to the Supreme Court and that's the way to handle it. So it was really a striking kind of statement because implicitly, even though he didn't mention Donald Trump's name, he seemed to be calling out the President of the United States for starting to target the way that the judicial system traditionally works.
Taylor Wilson:
And Aysha, taking a step back, how have some judges already decided really that this administration has likely violated either the constitution or federal laws?
Aysha Bagchi:
It looks like this administration is going to be caught up in the courts for a long time with a lot of what it's doing. It has issued a blistering array of executive actions on day one. Donald Trump issued more executive orders than any president in US history did on the first day in office, and that has a lot of lawsuits. Already judges have at least temporarily halted all sorts of policies. That's not just about deportation, that's about trying to fire tens of thousands of federal workers where judges are questioning whether the Trump administration went through the right legal process and really looked at whether all of these workers could be fired. That includes a ban on transgender troops serving in the military. That includes the Trump administration going after Mahmoud Khalil. This is a Columbia University student who was protesting Israeli military actions in Gaza and Trump administration is trying to deport him based on that activity. And a judge just Wednesday said that the Trump administration couldn't get his challenge to those actions tossed out of court.
So we're seeing a lot of activity where the courts are at least putting a halt on a lot of stuff. That also includes the Trump administration's challenge to the idea of birthright citizenship. The idea that if you're born within US territory, then you are automatically a citizen. And there are several judges who've said that it looks like a lot of these policies weren't enacted, at least through the right process.
Taylor Wilson:
Well, you're right about this showdown, Aysha. As for Trump and his allies, how are they pushing back in this moment?
Aysha Bagchi:
This is kind of an unprecedented situation in terms of just the degree to which these things are getting caught up in the courts and how directly, how quickly administration officials are really taking on the courts in this process. We've seen a couple Trump administration officials who even seem to be hinting at the idea that you could defy a court order. It's important to say Donald Trump did an interview on Tuesday with Laura Ingraham on Fox News and he said, "You can't defy court orders." He said, "No, that's not what we're going to do," even though he continued to complain about judicial decisions.
But we saw Tom Homan, who is his border czar, basically suggest that they're going to go forward with deportations even in the face of judges ruling against them. Kim Bondy and also suggested that they were going to go forward with invoking the 1798 law, the Alien Enemies Act to deport people without having to go through the normal kind of procedural steps to make sure that you're deporting people who are deportable in the face of a judicial ruling to the contrary.
Now that doesn't mean the Trump administration actually is going to be defying court orders. That remains to be seen. But it's interesting just to see kind of a flirtation with the idea that you could do that. And then you definitely see a lot of officials who are arguing with these decisions. That's pretty normal. When you do something and a judge rules against you, it's normal to take issue with that. But what is a little less normal is this idea of calling for the impeachment of judges, attacking the system of the judiciary itself based on getting rulings that you don't like or that are slowing down the priorities of your administration.
Taylor Wilson:
Well, you've touched on this a bit here, Aysha, but I mean why might Roberts' statement this week mark a new chapter? Is that fair to say in this saga over the court?
Aysha Bagchi:
The chief justice of the US Supreme Court, the highest court in the land has decided to step in and weigh in on the comments of the US president. That is highly unusual, especially from John Roberts. He's the type of chief justice who has always been mindful of the court's institutional position and the idea that it should be outside the political fray. He did issue a rebuke back in 2020 when Chuck Schumer made some statements about Supreme Court Justices releasing kind of a whirlwind when they were an abortion case and that would have consequences is basically what Chuck Schumer was saying. And John Roberts called those statements dangerous. It's a really unusual thing for him to be commenting on a political figure's public statements, and that suggests that John Roberts was sufficiently concerned that what's going on here is something that challenges the institutional independence of the judiciary.
Taylor Wilson:
Lots to chew on. Aysha Bagchi covers the Justice Department for Paste BN. Aysha, always appreciate picking your brain on this kind of stuff. Thanks so much.
Aysha Bagchi:
I always love being here. Thanks, Taylor.
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Taylor Wilson:
The Federal Reserve took a wait-and-see approach to an uncertain economy yesterday, opting to leave interest rates unchanged. The move leaves the benchmark federal funds rate at a range of four and a quarter to four and a half percent where it's been since December. The Fed has now stood on the economy's sidelines for two consecutive meetings dating to January after an unusually busy period of interest rate increases and reductions over the previous three years. Stock indexes meanwhile closed sharply higher yesterday in response, at least partially to the Fed's non-move. You can read more with a link in today's show notes.
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As Sextortion grows in the US, so does the prevalence of individuals or companies that charge a fee to retrieve explicit photos and then may fail to do so. I spoke with Paste BN Youth Mental Health Reporting Fellow, Rachel Hale, to learn more and take a closer look at one company in particular. Rachel, thank you so much for hopping back on the show.
Rachel Hale:
Thanks for having me on.
Taylor Wilson:
Rachel, your story reads really like someone's worst nightmare two times over. Tell us if you would, how this played out for one of the victims you spoke with and just give us a refresher. I know you were on previously, but can you help us understand what Sextortion really is?
Rachel Hale:
So this story is a continuation of our reporting on financial sextortion, one of the fastest growing crimes in the country that especially targets teenage boys age 13 to 17. The crime happens when predators who are usually based abroad pretend to be someone they're not eventually convincing victims to send over their nude images or getting on a video live stream and then threatening to release those out to their friends, families, schools, or places of employment if they don't pay up, sometimes asking for thousands of dollars in ransom. In some cases, these victims go and look for help at for-profit assistance companies. My colleague Nick Penzenstadler and I spoke with around three dozen people who after being sextorted went on to look for help at one of these companies, the main one being Digital Forensics Corporation.
One 44-year-old man that I spoke with had already paid $2,000 to his scammer in eBay gift cards that he had bought at CVS before he came to DFC in a state of heightened emotions looking for help immediately. The blackmailer was waiting on the other line and he knew that he needed to do something fast and didn't think to go to the FBI at the time, really desperate for a way out and he ended up paying DFC $3,000 under the guise that they could get those photos deleted. But it turned out that after communicating with the scammer, they still weren't able to do that. So in his case as well as many others, he thought it was the situation of over-promising and under-delivering. And when he looked back, he felt that the sales tactics that had been used while he was in that state of heightened emotions had been predatory.
Taylor Wilson:
Well, as you say, Rachel, the state of heightened emotions. I mean, what are the mental health implications really for victims?
Rachel Hale:
A lot of the victims that I spoke with said they were feeling suicidal, were having trouble eating and sleeping, and in many cases hadn't told anyone what was happening. So they were really dealing with this on their own. For a lot of those victims who haven't told someone, it can be really appealing to have a hotline like DFC's where you can talk to someone when you've been dealing with this on your own. And in that heightened state, sometimes people make rash decisions that they wouldn't otherwise, and many of the victims I spoke with said that looking back, if they hadn't been in that heightened state, they wouldn't have contracted with a for-profit company like DFC.
Taylor Wilson:
You took your findings directly to DFC, Rachel, right, to get their response. What did they say?
Rachel Hale:
Yeah. DFC defended their business practices. They said that their company works diligently to address consumer complaints and that a majority of the nearly thousand customers per month that they work with leave satisfied. DFC told us that they don't allow any minor to contract or become a direct client of theirs. Their process involves making sure that they know the client's age early on at the call, and if they confirm that a minor's on the phone, they said that they will either advise that minor to get a parent or a legal guardian on the call for further discussion, or they'll direct that minor toward other resources.
They sent us a list of 51 clients who Nick and I then reached out to. So far we've been able to speak with more than 20 from that list. And many of them said that while DFC gave them peace of mind at the time, if they realized that police or the FBI could have helped, they may have started there. And some said that they paid exorbitant fees, up to $20,000 in one case. So in many cases it was a situation where even if DFC was initially helpful, it might've been a service that someone else could have done for free.
So one thing that the FBI has already said in April of 2023 about these for-profit companies is that they don't work with them and they do not recommend using these services, which often come with exorbitant fees while law enforcement and nonprofit agencies will provide assistance for free. Instead, victims can report to the FBI and to their cyber tip line. And victims under the age of 18 can go to the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children's tip line. They have a service called Take It Down that helps to get any nude photos or videos that have been put on social media apps deleted. And victims over the age of 18 can go to ncii.org, which also has a service to do that same thing. So even if DFC can be appealing and might offer peace of mind quickly, it does come at a high cost. And that's why experts and leading groups that are working to stop sextortion recommend going to the FBI first.
Taylor Wilson:
All right, Rachel Hale, Paste BN's Youth Mental Health Reporting Fellow. I thank you Rachel for the time and just great journalism on this. Thanks so much.
Rachel Hale:
Thank you so much.
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Taylor Wilson:
Today marks the first day of spring and what better way to celebrate than the start of March Madness. The Men's College basketball tournament will tip off in earnest today before the Women's tournament kicks into high gear tomorrow. For full coverage and a last minute chance to get your brackets in, head to USA Today Sports. You have until noon eastern time today to get in your picks for the men's tournament.
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And thanks for listening to The Excerpt. You can get the podcast wherever you get your audio. 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.