John Stossel

President Biden has issued an order that cancels up to $20K per person in college loans. Terrible idea! Unless a court throws it out, workers will pay for privileged students to go to overpriced colleges. Mike Rowe tells me students who demand debt forgiveness are “self-involved."

The co-head of the White House's “scientific integrity” team just got caught lacking scientific integrity. Tell me why I should “trust their science” again?

Politicians say give kids a “head start.” But the much-lauded program makes no difference in kids’ lives. Lisa Snell explains how the government’s own research found that Head Start did not help poor kids. Government’s response? Spend even more. A Classic Stossel from 2012.

In #Ukraine, governments and big bureaucratic charities often MISS problems on the ground. Fortunately, bands of volunteers such as "Ukraine - We are here" fill that void. My producer Maxim Lott travelled with them in Ukraine:

The government sometimes arrests parents for giving kids responsibility. In South Carolina, mom Deborah Harrell was jailed for letting her 9-year-old daughter play in a park for the day. Local media outlets breathlessly reported that Harrell left her daughter at the park "for hours at a time," and that she "confessed" to that. A police interrogator lectured Harrell: "You can't leave a child who is nine years old in the park by herself. What would you do if some sex offender came by?" Yet despite media scare stories, kidnappings are extremely rare and are way down. "I felt like she'd be safer in the park than she would at home," Harrell told Stossel. Plus, her daughter Regina enjoyed playing at the park. But the state wasn't okay with Deborah's parenting. Not only was she arrested, but Regina was taken away from her for weeks Deborah was charged with "willful abandonment of a child," which carries up to a 10-year jail sentence. Fortunately, attorney Robert Phillips heard about her case and found it so outrageous he took it for free. "The way you want to raise your child should be left up to you," he told Stossel. "We should not have unreasonable intrusions by the government telling us every little detail how to raise our children."

In academia today, there are few conservatives. A study of professors found 12 Dems for each Republican. In sociology, it was 44 to 1. In communications, 108 to zero! Spending most of your time with people who think alike can create hatreds, Rob Henderson points out:

“If I didn’t allow them in, I’m the one going to jail!” rants a farmer after a California law allowed dozens of union activists to storm onto his farm. “You don’t know if they’re mad, if they’re going to get violent,” says one employee who was working when the union arrived with flags and bullhorns, “It was a scary situation.” The union wanted the workers to strike. Few were interested. “It is asinine!” says Mike Fahner, the farm’s owner. He points out that unions don’t have the right to access private property without permission in any other industry. “If they came back every day I would have been paralyzed.” Mike and another business are challenging the law in the Supreme Court. But they lost in two lower courts. California officials argue that unions must be allowed to go onto farms because "workers remain isolated from the flow of information characteristic of modern society.” Mike says that’s not true. “Every person has a cell phone in their pocket. [Workers] know how to communicate through Facebook and … Twitter much better than most. “This is trespassing,” he adds, “You should be going to jail for doing this.”

No federal taxes! “It’s just a magical place to live,” says Melissa DaSilva. And it’s in America! People like Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez want to shut the tax break down.

What’s the biggest predictor of success in life? Rich parents? Strict parents? Good looks? Many experts told us... none of those. The biggest predictor is: can you delay gratification. A Stossel Classic from 2014.

Professor John McWhorter, author of "Woke Racism," argues that condescending leftist ideology hurts black people. I learned a lot from this full, half-hour interview with Columbia linguist John McWhorter.

The U.S. sugar program costs consumers billions, while rich politically-connected sugar industry CEOs get richer. The program is “Stalin-style price controls," Ross Marchand of the Taxpayers Protection Alliance tells me. The U.S. government uses a complex system of loans, domestic quotas, and limits on how much sugar we can import. The goal is to control the price of sugar. I call it “Welfare for the rich."

Celebrities and environmentalists want to ban plastic straws. That makes them feel good, but will it accomplish anything? I asked Kristin Tate to find out:

Did you notice the beef shortages? “You’d go to Wendy’s to buy a hamburger and they were out,” complains Rep Thomas Massie. "Yet you could see cattle from the drive-thru.” Dumb government rules are to blame. Massie says he has a solution.

Government planners slow innovation with burdensome rules. In 1931, workers built the Empire State building in just over a year. Now it takes 13 years to finish the new World Trade Center. Entrepreneur Peter Thiel America is lucky that today’s FDA wasn’t around when the polio vaccine was invented. A Stossel Classic from 2016

Politicians express "admiration" for dictatorships. (Yes, really.) It's dictator envy! Johan Norberg sets them straight:

The Southern Poverty Law Center claims it protects us from"hate groups." But it's a scam... a money grabbing slander machine:

I asked lawyers and media folk like Glenn Beck, Michael Malice, and Dave Rubin, how they would improve the Constitution. Surprisingly, some of the best responses came from strangers on the street.

Politicians promised that Title IX would end discrimination of women in sports, but instead it has taken sports away from both men AND women. A Stossel Classic from 2010. Note: After this piece first aired, supporters of Cal athletics raised enough money to convince Cal to re-instate the 5 teams they planned to cut. Unfortunately student athletes at many other schools have not been as fortunate.

California is the Biden Administration’s role model for America. What are they thinking? The state loses 170,000 people every year. "People are just emptying out of California!” says Kristin Tate, who reports on why so many abandon the state: "exorbitant tax rates, the high crime rates, the failing public school systems, the exorbitant cost of living.”

The #SupremeCourt just ruled that states can ban #abortion. But should they? Here's my new video about that--Abortion: The Liberty Debate. @avensobrien and @MereLiberty debate, and I give my take.

Politicians promise to help everyone go to college. But they just make college more EXPENSIVE. Did you know that the University of Missouri is proud to have a “leisure resort” on campus? Naomi Riley, author of The Faculty Lounges: And Other Reasons Why You Won't Get the College Education You Pay For, explains how government aid led to massive tuition hikes. A Stossel Classic from 2012.

Stop! You need a license for that! Bottleneckers screw us in the name of “protecting” us.

In my new video, I confront socialist politician Aisha Chughtai about rent control. “You’re not gonna get more apartments by pushing this,” I say. Her answer is an unexpected moment that reveals so much...

Edward Snowden tries to convince me to worry more about privacy. "They're trying to shape your behavior!" he warns. I rudely say: "Americans by and large don't care, and I mostly don't care. I figure that teenage boy across the street could be picking up the stuff I send. The cork's out of the bottle. What difference does it make?" Snowden has good answers.

After the shooting in Uvalde, politicians predictably demand gun control. But might trained, armed, teachers be a better solution? (Not arming all teachers -- just those who volunteer.) One school district in Texas tried that: