Trump Nukes the Ivory Tower: Merit In, Ideology Out
The president launches a full-blown crusade to gut woke academia and restore American excellence.
Good Morning, it’s Monday, October 13th, 2025.
The revolution won’t be televised — it’ll be defunded. President Trump just declared an academic reckoning, vowing to rip “woke socialism” out of America’s universities and rebuild them on merit, free speech, and love of country. Meanwhile, John Fetterman just broke with his own party on the shutdown, China’s throwing mineral punches, and the NRA’s sharpening its legal knives. Buckle up — it’s going to be a week for the record books.
Don’t keep this to yourself — forward it to a friend who still thinks Harvard runs the country.
And as always, hit reply — what do you think of Trump’s college purge plan?
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TRUMP’S ACADEMIC RESET
The president declares war on “woke universities.”
The campus meltdown is officially underway. President Trump just declared open season on America’s university elites — cutting off billions in funding, rewriting Title IX, and putting “woke ideology” on academic probation. The left calls it fascism. Millions of parents call it overdue.
Trump dropped a Truth Social nuke Sunday night, vowing to “end the woke, socialist, and anti-American rot” in U.S. higher education.
He’s tying federal funding to merit-based admissions, free speech protections, and institutional neutrality — while stripping cash from schools accused of ideological bias or foreign entanglement.
Why It Matters:
This is the first systemic rollback of campus wokeism in decades.
The Trump administration is weaponizing federal leverage — using funding as both a carrot and a stick.
Harvard, Columbia, and others are already bleeding money and scrambling to comply.
Trump’s reform blitz is both cultural and constitutional. After a federal judge called his freeze on Harvard’s $2 billion grant “ideologically motivated,” the White House doubled down — appealing the ruling and expanding the purge.
Here’s the kicker: universities that ditch DEI programs get priority for new funding. Those that cling to “race and sex-based preferences”? Expect the hammer.
The new “forward-looking agreements” force schools to:
Guarantee ideological neutrality and free speech.
Disclose all foreign donations.
Slash tuition and prove affordability.
Meanwhile, Trump’s plan to dismantle the Education Department and redefine Title IX to exclude transgender athletes has triggered full-blown panic in faculty lounges from Cambridge to California.
Supporters call it a return to sanity — merit, hard work, and American excellence. Critics warn it’s the death of academic freedom.
Trump’s response: “Our nation will be unstoppable.”
What They Don’t Want You to See:
“These Institutions will commit to High Quality Standards, an Intellectually Open Campus Environment (including the protection of Free Speech and Debate), Institutional Neutrality, major steps toward Affordability for Students, and an end to the entanglement of Foreign Money.” — President Donald J. Trump, Truth Social, Oct. 12
Bottom Line:
Trump isn’t just defunding DEI — he’s detonating the entire academic cartel. The university system built to produce citizens now manufactures activists. That era may be ending.
The battle for America’s mind just moved from the ballot box to the classroom.
FETTERMAN FLIPS THE SCRIPT
Democrat senator breaks ranks on shutdown — calls party’s stance “the wrong message.”
John Fetterman just did what few Democrats dare: told his own party to grow up.
On Fox News Sunday, the Pennsylvania senator blasted his colleagues for keeping the government shuttered over expiring Obamacare tax credits — saying the shutdown “sends the wrong message for the world and for Americans.”
Fetterman — hoodie and all — said he’ll “never vote to shut the government down,” and reminded viewers he said the same thing back in March. “It’s wrong when Republicans do it, and it’s wrong now,” he said.
Translation: Schumer’s hardline isn’t just bad optics — it’s losing middle America.
The shutdown entered week two on Monday, with national parks, museums, and thousands of paychecks frozen.
Three senators — Fetterman, Catherine Cortez Masto (D-NV), and Angus King (I-ME) — crossed the aisle to back a Republican stopgap bill that would’ve kept Washington open.
The left torpedoed it anyway, demanding new Obamacare tax credit extensions as leverage.
The optics are brutal: Democrats are protecting subsidies, not paychecks. Fetterman’s defection punctures the “Trump’s fault” narrative the DNC’s been clinging to since day one.
Even worse for Schumer — Fetterman’s blunt style connects with blue-collar voters Biden once owned. If more Dems follow suit, the Senate majority starts looking very fragile.
Bottom Line:
When John Fetterman sounds more reasonable than Chuck Schumer, you know the brand is broken. The “party of workers” just got outflanked by one of its own — for siding with the people still working.
TRUMP TO XI: “IT’LL ALL BE FINE!”
The president shrugs off China’s mineral squeeze — and doubles the tariffs anyway.
Donald Trump is playing poker with Beijing — and smiling while raising the stakes.
After China moved to choke off U.S. access to rare earth minerals (the lifeblood of tech manufacturing), Trump hit back with a 100% tariff hike. But on Sunday, he downshifted the tone, calling Xi Jinping a “highly respected” leader who just had a “bad moment.”
“Don’t worry about China, it will all be fine!” Trump wrote on Truth Social.
Just days earlier, he’d accused China of holding “the world captive.” Now he’s projecting calm — part confidence, part psychological warfare.
Here’s what’s really going on:
China’s export curbs threaten American chipmakers and EV producers.
Trump’s tariffs effectively double costs for imports in retaliation.
A planned APEC meeting between Trump and Xi next month? Reportedly off the table.
Insiders say Trump’s “don’t worry” tone masks a bigger strategy — keeping markets stable while forcing Beijing to blink first. The White House calls it “pressure without panic.”
If history is a guide, he’s daring Xi to retaliate harder… so he can hit back louder.
Bottom Line:
Trump’s calm isn’t weakness — it’s stagecraft. While Beijing tightens supply chains, it’s tightening the screws. For all the noise, one message is clear: the U.S. isn’t playing defense anymore.
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NRA Puts Newsom on Notice.
The National Rifle Association is gearing up to sue California Gov. Gavin Newsom over his state’s Glock ban, calling it an “unconstitutional assault on the Second Amendment.” Read more »
Left-Wing Paper Torches Free Bus Plan.
A liberal New York editorial board just shredded Assemblyman Zohran Mamdani’s proposal for free city buses, warning it would “attract vagrants and drug addicts” and drive paying riders away. Read more »
Dems Quietly Retreat on Illegals’ Medicaid.
Democrats are backing off their push to expand Medicaid for illegal immigrants, with internal memos warning it’s become “politically toxic” heading into 2026. Read more »
Together with The Ledger
“THE IVORY TOWER JUST GOT FORECLOSED”
For fifty years, the university racket printed two things: debt and dogma.
Kids walked in curious and walked out convinced their country was evil.
Professors got rich blaming America for everything from hurricanes to heartbreak.
And the taxpayers? They just kept paying the ransom.
Trump finally did what every “education reformer” was too scared to try — he hit the funding cord.
No DEI, no check. No foreign donors, no grant. No ideological monopoly, no mercy.
The regime calls it “authoritarian.”
But authoritarianism is when tenured radicals decide what your children can think.
Trump’s version is simpler: If you hate the country, stop cashing its checks.
The ivory tower was the last untouchable corner of the swamp — the one institution that thought it could outlast every administration.
Now it’s learning that the free ride’s over.
Read The Ledger
Before the next sacred cow gets turned into steak.
America’s universities spent decades teaching kids what to think instead of how. Trump’s flipping that script with federal funding as his hammer — and the campus cartel is cracking. From the Senate floor to Beijing to Sacramento, the establishment’s armor is showing dents.
If this issue taught us anything, it’s that common sense — once a banned concept in the Ivy League — is making a comeback. The merit revolution just might outlast the protests.
~ Scott 🇺🇸
P.S. The headlines are the noise. The Ledger is the blueprint.
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