Trump: Education Ranked Bottom but #1 in Cost; “Not Touch Social Security”; Gold Card; Noem on Family Separation

President Trump covered education, entitlements, and immigration in a March 2025 interview, reiterating that “we’re ranked at the bottom of the list and yet we’re number one when it comes to cost per pupil” and pledging to return schools to the states. He guaranteed again: “I’m not going to touch Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid — now, we’re going to get fraud out of there.” Trump promoted the Gold Card as “a green card on steroids” that would let companies buy signing bonuses for top graduates. DHS Secretary Noem shut down a reporter’s “family separation” framing by saying “President Biden didn’t follow the law — it’s always been equally applied until his administration.”

Education: Bottom-Ranked, Top-Costed

Trump returned to the education argument that had been a centerpiece of his domestic agenda.

“We want to bring the schools back to the states because we have the worst — literally, we have the worst education department and education in the world,” Trump said. “We’re ranked at the bottom of the list, and yet we’re number one when it comes to cost per pupil.”

He outlined the dual approach: “We want to not only have school choice, which is important, but we want to bring it back to the states so the states can run the schools, and they will be every bit as good as the top educational departments anywhere in the world.”

When asked if he was confident states could handle education, Trump was characteristically honest about the uneven landscape. “You can go back to the states, but I can tell you, 40 states will have great education,” he said. “And then the same ones we have problems with everything else — they probably won’t do as well, but we’ll help them.”

The admission that some states would struggle was refreshingly candid. Trump was not promising that every state would achieve Scandinavian-level results overnight. He was saying that 40 out of 50 states would perform well, and the remaining states — which already had problems across multiple policy areas — would receive federal assistance while managing their own schools.

The math remained devastating for the federal education establishment: last place in outcomes, first place in spending per pupil. The Department of Education had been in existence since 1980, had consumed nearly a trillion dollars, and had presided over a steady decline in American students’ performance relative to international peers. Trump’s argument was that the federal layer added cost without adding value, and that removing it would free states to innovate and compete.

”Not Going to Touch” Entitlements

Trump reiterated his entitlement guarantee with the clarity that the question’s persistence demanded.

“I’m not going to touch Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid,” Trump said.

He then drew the line: “Now, we’re going to get fraud out of there. You know, you see where I talk about it all the time — people 250 years old and all, you know, tremendous fraud. But that has nothing to do with that.”

Trump connected fraud reduction to program improvement: “We’re going to get the fraud out, and everybody wants us to get the fraud out. And therefore you’ll make it better.”

He then pivoted to the economic growth that would sustain entitlements long-term: “But we’re going to have tremendous growth. When you look at all of the car companies that are now coming into the United States, and they’ve been announcing like on a daily basis, they’re going to build their plants and they’re going to create tremendous numbers of jobs.”

The growth argument was the administration’s long-term answer to entitlement sustainability. Rather than cutting benefits (which Trump refused) or raising taxes (which contradicted his economic agenda), the administration’s strategy was to grow the economy fast enough that the expanding tax base generated sufficient revenue to fund entitlements without structural reform.

The combination of tariff-driven manufacturing reshoring, DOGE spending cuts, and the Gold Card revenue represented a multi-pronged fiscal strategy: reduce wasteful spending, increase productive economic activity, and generate new revenue streams — all without touching the benefits that millions of Americans depended on.

Gold Card: “A Green Card on Steroids”

Trump provided the most vivid description yet of the Gold Card’s competitive advantage over existing immigration pathways.

“I’m doing something that I think is very exciting — maybe I’m wrong,” Trump said. “A gold card. For $5 million, you buy a path to citizenship in this country.”

He described the specific use case that had driven the program’s development. “Apple and all these companies that can’t get people to come out of college and stay — because they get thrown out. Think of it. You graduate number one at the Wharton School of Finance or Harvard or Stanford, and you get thrown out of the country,” Trump said. “You can’t stay more than one day, and they want to hire these people, but they can’t. They’ve complained to me about it.”

Trump described how the Gold Card would solve the problem: “Now they can buy a gold card and they can take that gold card and make it a part of their deal to get these top students. No different than an athlete — like a bonus. It’s a signing bonus.”

He positioned the Gold Card relative to the green card: “You can’t get a green card. A green card — this would be a green card on steroids. This would be much better than a green card.”

Trump was pragmatic about the outcome: “If we sell a lot of them, it’s a lot of money when you add it up. If we don’t, it’s nothing ventured, nothing lost. But I think it’s going to be very successful.”

The “signing bonus” analogy for top graduates was a new framing that made the Gold Card program accessible to anyone who followed professional sports. Just as teams paid signing bonuses to attract the best athletes, companies would pay for Gold Cards to attract the best minds. The competition for global talent was real, and America was giving itself a tool that no other country could match.

Noem: “Biden Didn’t Follow the Law”

DHS Secretary Noem addressed a reporter’s question about “reviving the policy of separating families from their children at the border” by rejecting the premise entirely.

“I don’t know that we’re actually reviving it,” Noem said. “It’s that President Biden didn’t follow the law. He didn’t follow the law in the fact that it’s always been equally applied until his administration.”

The reframing was significant. Rather than defending “family separation” as a policy choice, Noem characterized the current approach as a return to the law as it had always existed before Biden selectively stopped enforcing it. The implication was that Biden’s refusal to detain families together or separately — instead releasing them into the interior — was the deviation from law, not Trump’s enforcement of it.

Noem then announced the ICE leadership changes: Acting Director Todd Lyons and Deputy Director Madison Sheahan, both described as “workhorses” who would “partner with local law enforcement officials to make sure that we truly are following through on enforcing the law.”

She concluded: “If you break our law, then there’s going to be consequences.”

Key Takeaways

• Trump said education was “ranked at the bottom” globally but “#1 in cost per pupil,” pledging to return schools to the states where “40 states will have great education.”
• He guaranteed: “I’m not going to touch Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid” but would “get the fraud out,” citing payments to people “250 years old.”
• Trump called the Gold Card “a green card on steroids” and described it as “a signing bonus” companies would use to retain top foreign graduates from elite universities.
• DHS Sec Noem rejected the “family separation” framing: “Biden didn’t follow the law. It’s always been equally applied until his administration.”
• Trump connected economic growth from tariff-driven manufacturing to long-term entitlement sustainability: “We’re going to have tremendous growth.”