CSPAN - Washington Journal 05/28/2025

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May 28, 2025 07:00-10:00 - CSPAN

02:59:54

Washington Journal 05/28/2025

Participants

Main

pedro echevarria

cspan 32:43

Appearances

jeanne shaheen

sen/d 00:41

linda mcmahon

00:58

marco rubio

admin 00:59

tammy bruce

01:22

Clips

bernadine smith

00:09

donald j trump

admin 00:18

jason riley

00:24

patty murray

sen/d 00:04

rachel maddow

msnow 00:07

richard c hoagland

00:13

Callers

adam in fort worth

callers 00:04

jonathan in new york

callers 00:07

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Speaker	Time	Text
unidentified		Coming up on Washington Journal, we'll take your calls and comments live.
		Then Randy Weingarten, president of the American Federation of Teachers, discusses the Trump administration's proposed changes to public education.
		And Robert Enlow of EdChoice on education policy and its impact on the school choice movement.
		Washington Journal is next.
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		It's the Washington Journal for May the 28th.
		Both President Trump and Russian officials have recently ramped up rhetoric towards each other as concerns about the war in Ukraine continue.
		It comes as U.S. legislators and others are urging President Trump to be more aggressive towards Russian President Vladimir Putin with hopes of stopping the over three-year war between the former Soviet Union and Ukraine.
		To start the program today, has President Trump been tough enough on Russia when it comes to Ukraine?
		Here's how you can let us know your thoughts this morning.
		Democrats, 202-748-8000.
		Republicans, 202-748-8001.
		And Independents, 202-748-8002.
		If you want to comment on if the president has been tough enough on the Russian president over Ukraine and you want to do that via text, that's 202-748-8003 to text us those thoughts.
		You can also post on our social media sites, facebook.com slash C-SPAN.
		And on X, it's at C-SPANWJ.
		This war of words, so to speak, started over social media with the president on his true social site posting this over the last day.
		He writes this, saying, what Vladimir Putin doesn't realize is that if it weren't for me, lots of really bad things would have already happened to Russia.
		And I mean really bad.
		That's all in caps.
		He's playing with fire.
		That drew a response from the former Russian president Dmitry Medvedev in writing this on X.
		He wrote this in English, saying regarding Trump's words about Putin, quote, playing with fire and quote, really bad things happening to Russia, I know we know of one really bad thing, World War III.
		I hope Trump understands this.
		This happened in the last day or so.
		The Washington Post this morning in their opinion section, their lead editorial, get tougher with Putin.
		The editor's right.
		Here's some of the case they make saying the U.S. should not bow to Russia's recalcitrance and abandon peace talks.
		The conflict in Ukraine is the proxy war of our time between the free world and autocratic regimes that disdain America and Europe.
		North Korea provided some of the missiles that rained down over the weekend.
		Iran designed the drones.
		Trade with Russia pays for weapons.
		It's no surprise that Mr. Trump has found it difficult to end the war.
		No one would have been able to achieve peace within 24 hours as he promised on the campaign trail.
		Mr. Trump is not only the first president to learn the hard way, that Putin is difficult to read.
		George W. Bush looked into his, quote, soul and saw someone trustworthy and straightforward.
		Barack Obama tried a quote reset, then failed to respond forcefully when Russia annexed Crimea in 2014.
		Putin hasn't changed.
		But if claiming that the Russian leader has gone, quote, crazy helps Mr. Trump's safe face and get tougher, that's fine.
		Putin is more likely to respond to strength than the niceties.
		Mr. Trump should understand this.
		That's the editors of the Washington Post this morning talking about the flexing of muscle, so to speak, when it comes to the Russian president from our president, President Trump.
		If you think that the president has been tough on Russia on these matters of Ukraine or not, again, you can call and let us know on the phone lines.
		Democrats 202-748-8000.
		Republicans 202-748-8001.
		And Independents 202-748-8002.
		You can always text us at 202-748-8003.
		This news comes as the Washington Post also reporting on what's expected to be the summer offensive from Russia into Ukraine.
		They picked this up by Isabel Khushwe out of Kyiv saying that controlling the dunks reason, Reed's reason, in its entirety has been a priority since Putin, since he failed to capture Kyiv at the start of the war in 2022.
		In September of that year, Mr. Putin declared the whole of the region, along with three other Ukrainian regions, to be part of the Russian Federation, despite not having completely conquered any of them.
		Accompanying the main push in Dunst, which controls about 70%, it controls about 70%, the Kremlin plans to carry out smaller attacks along the border of Ukraine's North Assumi and Kharkiv regions to put more pressure on Ukraine's already overstretched frontline troops, according to analysts.
		That's the latest when it comes to Russia and Ukraine, the president's role, excuse me, the president's role, and if he's been tough enough on Russia when it comes to these matters, that's what we're asking you, Doug in Ohio, independent line, you're up first.
		What do you think?
unidentified		I think that we're not supporting Ukraine near enough with the fool on the hill.
		I mean, he's too big a dummy to realize.
		And the only way to stop Putin is get the whole world behind him and sanction him to death and make sure he's got to learn to stay in his own country.
		If he wouldn't be after the breadbasket of the whole Europe and everything, it might be different.
		But the Antichrist is over there trying to take control.
		And we got the false prophet over here just giving him whatever he wants.
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		Well, what should the president do differently when it comes to Mr. Trump or when it comes to the Russian president and the matters of Ukraine?
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		What should the president do differently?
unidentified		And we should put our full might and strength behind Ukraine.
		Remember the Truman doctrine?
		Let's stop him now.
		You know, don't let them take over the world.
		Ukraine's their own country, and Putin has no right in there.
		Just like Canada's their own country, and Greenland's their own place, and they should be able to live on their own too.
		But the dummy on the hill, he don't know what he's doing.
		I think the best thing to do is stop Putin in his tracks and make sure he don't become play the dictator he thinks he is.
		Okay.
		And that's all I got to say about the matter.
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		Doug in Ohio, let's hear from California, Republican line.
unidentified		Hello.
		Hello.
		I would say no, and I'm a staunch Republican.
		I voted for Trump twice.
		We keep talking about ratcheting up the sanctions.
		The sanctions should have been ratcheted up to the maximum when Trump first took office.
		And I want to make three points.
		That's point number one.
		Point number two is Putin, about six months prior to the invasion, told us in a memorandum that was very lengthy what he intended to do.
		He intended to take over Latvia, Estonia, Lithuania, and Poland.
		That is a given.
		And point number three, I don't understand.
		Putin keeps complaining that Ukraine, he doesn't want Ukraine to be a part of NATO because NATO would be right up against his border.
		But if he takes over Ukraine, it will be right up against his border.
		I don't understand that.
		Those are the three points that I want to make.
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		Steven, California, let's hear from Frank in Georgia, Democrats line.
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		You're next up.
unidentified		Okay, yes, thank you.
		As always, back to the universe for our C-SPAN.
		It's the one essential news network.
		Okay, I don't know why people are asking this question.
		Of course, he's never been tough on Putin until now.
		He said the other day that Putin had gone crazy because he had bombed Ukraine more on one day than he'd ever done before.
		But the thing is, they've been bombing and shelling every day or every other day for two or three years.
		And that doesn't seem to bother him.
		So I don't know what his mental processes are.
		Yeah, I think the thing is, Putin just doesn't recognize Ukraine as an independent country.
		He doesn't want to.
		And I think these sanctions, they've been tough, but they haven't worked.
		And I heard overnight a conservative getting mad at Germany because they're going to send these long-range Paris missiles to Ukraine, which can actually hit Moscow.
		And he's upset about that.
		Well, we should have done that a long time ago.
		For Putin, there's nothing you can't, no crime he can't commit.
		But why Ukraine had to be restrained all the time?
		And Hashword, this caller, he was a good caller previously.
		He said, you know, Putin does like to have idea of taking over La Via, Eskeonia, Poland, Lithuania.
		But see, that's just the dream of this.
		The fact is Ukraine has just terribly mauled the Russian army, which is mostly their fault, the Russians' fault, because they hollowed out the army.
		so corrupt and um but the thing is okay okay gotcha frank Got you, Frank.
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		Frank bringing up the sanctions.
		The New York Times calls and reports on renewed efforts by some Republican legislators for more sanctions towards the former Soviet Union.
		This is by Robert Jimison this morning saying the shift intensified over the weekend in the wake of Russia's most aggressive wave of attacks since the war began, but it has been building for weeks as Senate Republicans and Democrats alike have signed on to legislation that would impose sweeping sanctions on Moscow.
		The bill now has 80 co-sponsors, more than enough to override a veto in that chamber.
		The same measure in the House, according to the New York Times, has garnered little backing in either party, making a showdown with Mr. Trump on the issue unlikely, at least in the short term.
		Let's hear from John.
		John in California, Independent Line.
		Has President Trump been tough enough on Russia when it comes to Ukraine?
		John, hello.
unidentified		Hello.
		Good morning, America.
		No, absolutely not.
		Trump has been nothing but a hot windbag, and Putin knows it.
		Trump is even afraid to hammer down on sanctions.
		I mean, yeah, I'm going to mention it's been like, you know, 130 days now, and Trump said that he knew Putin good enough that he could end the war in one day.
		Trump, the only way that Putin is going to end the war is that he understands he's up against an immovable force, and that's that the world gets behind Ukraine.
		The Ukrainians are keeping a huge, enormous country at bay already.
		So supply them with the arms and the materials to defeat him.
		They need to strangle his supply lines and kill his troops.
		That's how you defeat peace through strength.
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		Harvey joins us from Wisconsin.
		Democrats line.
		Hi there.
unidentified		Good morning.
		No, I don't think the president's been firm enough.
		One thing I know is that I don't know enough about politics, but if there's a way that we can hit them financially, shut off Russia's finances, that will get their attention more than anything.
		That's been trying to improve it.
		Shut the finances down.
		They will start to want to talk to you.
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		So, you're saying go beyond current sanctions that are already in place in Russia?
unidentified		Most definitely.
		Anything we can do to cut off any financial support for them, we should do it.
		If it means selling oil to people that buy oil from Russia, we should eliminate them and sell the oil to them ourselves.
		Make them hurt financially.
		They can't support a war.
		It will end.
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		Harvey, there in Wisconsin, that editorial from the Washington Post highlights that effort in Congress on sanctions.
		The editors write that that effort underway would give Mr. Trump more leverage.
		Senators Lindsey Graham, Republican of South Carolina, and Richard Blumenthal, Democrat of Connecticut, have introduced that bill that would authorize Mr. Trump to impose tariffs on up to 500% on countries that buy Russian oil, gas, and uranium.
		The legislation has 81 Senate co-sponsors, could sail through the House.
		The threat of strong secondary sanctions might persuade India and China to stop buying Russian energy, weakening Russia's war machine, along with stricter direct sanctions against Russia leaders and greater support for Russia.
		It could force Mr. Putin to seek an end to the war.
		We heard from Harvey.
		Let's hear from Frank.
		Frank's in Florida, Independent Line.
unidentified		Oh, hi.
		You know, like I work down here in Florida, and on my way down here, I drive down the street, the highway at 121.
		And on there from Memorial Day, they have like, I mean, I'm talking about like hundreds of flags with people's names that died in war.
		You know, people want to be peace to strength.
		All we're doing is having people get killed the way that people are talking about it, shooting missiles into, you know, we need to, we're smart people.
		We could talk about why we're having a war.
		Why, why look at the last word that we have.
		If people don't know, maybe only 7,000 Americans died in the Afghan-Iraq war.
		But if you look it up, over 32,000 Americans committed suicide, they served in those wars.
		You want to stand up for America and American people?
		You need to stop having wars or have a draft where we don't have people going back for the second time and being killed.
		I know people that served more than one tour and were killed.
		And I know people that served more than one term and came back over here and after a while committed suicide.
		Okay.
		So that, you know.
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, Frank, there in Florida, the State Department yesterday is where the briefing took place on world affairs, including the president's change of tone when it comes to the Russian president with spokesperson Tammy Bruce commenting on that yesterday.
tammy bruce ▲ ● ▼		He's doing something he cares passionately about.
		He knows what he wants to accomplish.
		He inherited a world that was on fire and is determined to stop those things.
		We've heard his remarks about all of this, clearly indicating a personal interest in the nature of what is occurring.
		And I think that that's what we all appreciate about him.
		If the Russians cared about the nature of how this is proceeding, they would be thinking less about that and more about what they could do, which is in their hands to stop the carnage and the slaughter that's happening right now.
		And so it's, I think, pretty clear where both sides are at this point.
unidentified		Given the president's public frustration of Putin, is it fair to expect some immediate policy adjustment?
tammy bruce ▲ ● ▼		I wouldn't call it frustration.
		It is a statement of the man who has led the effort for peace in so many different regions, making it clear and being completely transparent about his opinion about what's transpired.
		And I think that is something Russia should take seriously.
		Americans certainly do.
		And there are, as I've mentioned last week, that there are many different things that the president has at his disposal to make sure that our position is felt and that can be used to make an impact to stop this carnage.
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		Has President Trump been tough enough on Russia?
		Let's hear from Randy Randy in Michigan, Democrats line.
		You are next up.
		Hello.
unidentified		Good morning, Pedro.
		I'd like to start by thanking you and all the other men and women it takes to bring us this great program.
		You're doing a great service for the nation.
		No, I don't think Trump, Mr. Trump, has been tough enough up to this point, but I also think he was trying to get negotiations going and giving Putin some room so he could.
		Now it's time to get tough.
		But when you keep changing your mind, this is a side effect.
		These leaders are starting to try to wait him out because, yes, he might change his mind.
		Tariff one day, next day, no tariffs.
		You can't do that.
		You have to always go after something with a bulldozer and then stop and get out and quit pushing the dirt.
		You have to live up to your word.
		And when you tell somebody you're going to do something, do it.
		But when you tell them that, and then two days later, you change your mind or make a different decision, well, then that's opening up the door to the fact that, oh, maybe, wait a minute, I might be able to wait this guy out because he doesn't stay on topic.
		He doesn't stay behind his first statement.
		Yeah, that's a nice way to negotiate, but you've got to do something to show you're willing to push it and not just say, okay, well, now I'll change my mind.
		You've got to live up to your word.
		And when you keep saying something and don't follow through, people are going to start picking up on that.
		And I think that's the one negative about what I see on his approach to Russia.
		I wish he would follow through on some of the stuff he says.
		Even though I'm a Democrat, you got to follow through on your word.
		You can't always keep changing your mind, or I'm going to start waiting you out.
		It's just a simple negotiation thing.
		Ben here done that on the school board.
		Thank you.
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		Randy there in Michigan giving us his thoughts.
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		Mike from New York on the line, independent line.
unidentified		Hi.
		Hi.
		I'm independent, and Russia was declining.
		Trump gets tough, and it'll just make him stronger.
		Putin will get stronger by being tough on him.
		You'd be tough on Putin.
		He'll start thinking about using some of his weapons.
		And he's got weapons that are nuclear from a pistol to an aircraft carrier that circles the globe.
		It's nuclear-powered.
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		The war in Ukraine has been going on for over three years.
		Why do you think that weapons would come into the equation now?
		The weapons that you talk about.
unidentified		Well, the tougher you get on him, the stronger Putin will get.
		The stronger the Russians will get.
		Their entire society is militaristic.
		I don't think the American people understand how different Russian is.
		It's the Russian Federation, not the Soviet Union.
		As NATO gets closer and closer, George H.W. Bush warned us, don't go closer to NATO.
		He wanted us to back off as we, the American people, think that Russia's like America.
		It's not like, it's totally the opposite of America.
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		Okay.
		Mike there in New York.
		Greg's in Pennsylvania, Independent Line.
unidentified		Good morning.
		I'd like to make a note about the parts of Ukraine that have been held by Putin and the reason why.
		Russia's economy is 60% of their economy is 60% dependent on oil, and their exports are 40% of oil and natural gas.
		Now, Ukraine, the two areas in Ukraine, the Luhansk and Dubas area, those two areas hold so much natural resources.
		It's the bottom, the deepest part of the Lublin oil basin, which is a big oil basin.
		And that's in the Luhansk and Donetsk area.
		And those two areas are the two areas that Putin's held all this time and put thousands, a million, almost a million soldiers so far, just to hold those two areas.
		Don't think he wants it.
		He would love to take all Ukraine, sure.
		But he needs those two areas because they hold so much oil, natural gas, and shell.
		And the thing is, it does hold, as far as coal, it holds 80% of Ukraine's coal in those two areas.
		Those two areas are so important to Russia that if the oil and gas from those two areas would feed Europe, Europe wouldn't need Russia anymore.
		And Russia knows it.
		And that would ruin their, that would just devastate their economy.
		Because like I said, it's 60% of their imports, but that is up to 40% of their economy.
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		Okay.
		Greg there in Pennsylvania, Dennis in Wisconsin, Independent Line.
		Go ahead.
unidentified		Good morning.
		You know, I couldn't believe, but Adam Schiff wrote the book Midnight in Washington.
		I urge everybody.
		Before Trump left office, he went and saw Putin, and he told everyone to leave the room, including his personal interpreter.
		How was 20 minutes, half an hour, an hour he spent alone with Putin and all his people?
		As far as I'm concerned, Putin wouldn't have gone in Ukraine in the first place, except Trump told him to if he lost the election.
		Have a nice day.
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		Dennis there in Wisconsin, it was the Secretary of State, Marco Rubio, in front of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee recently on testimony about the budget and other things.
		But one of the questions was this idea of increasing sanctions towards Russia to gain some leverage in Ukraine.
		Here is the Secretary of State from earlier this month.
marco rubio ▲ ● ▼		On the issue of Ukraine, here's what we can all agree on.
		There is no military solution to this crisis.
		It will have to end in a negotiated settlement.
		And the fundamental challenge we have in Ukraine is this.
		Russia wants what they do not currently have and are not entitled to, and Ukraine wants what they cannot regain militarily.
		And that's been the crux of the challenge.
jeanne shaheen ▲ ● ▼		I don't disagree with that at one level, but on the other hand, what Vladimir Putin is doing now is playing for time, and he's playing this president like a fiddle.
		And the more longer he plays it, the more opportunity he has to gain territory in Ukraine, and the harder it's going to be to get him to the table.
		What we need to do is to put pressure on Vladimir Putin in every way we can to ensure that we can get them to the negotiating table.
marco rubio ▲ ● ▼		Well, I disagree with this playing with a fiddle analogy because the truth of the matter is when Vladimir Putin woke up this morning, he had the same set of sanctions on him that he's always had since the beginning of this conflict.
		And Ukraine was still getting armaments and shipments from us and from our allies, and the European Union is about to impose additional sanctions, and the U.S. is looking for no patriot batteries to be able to transfer from other NATO nations, from NATO nations into Ukrainian hands.
		And what the president is trying to do is end a war.
		He's trying to end a bloody, costly war that neither side can win.
		People are dying every single day.
		But this notion that I don't know what has Putin gained throughout this, he hasn't gotten a single concession.
		He hasn't gotten a significant lift.
jeanne shaheen ▲ ● ▼		And the more time he gets without additional pressure on Russia, the more incentives he's got to continue to gain territory and continue to play for time.
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		You can see that full hearing on our website at c-span.org.
		Find it there and talk to us about your thoughts when it comes to President Trump.
		Been tough enough on Russia when it comes to Ukraine.
		202748-8,000 for Democrats.
		202-748-8001 for Republicans.
		And Independents.
		202-748-8002.
		Even as all this is going on, the Washington Times highlighting the fact, a story by Mallory Wilson, that the U.S. and Russia have agreed to a prisoner swap amid those tensions between President Trump and the Russian president.
		It was the foreign minister announcing the swap Tuesday in Turkey, according to NBC, saying that President Trump is a man who wants results.
		No other details regarding the swap were announced.
		The Washington Times reached out to the White House for comment.
		If the swap goes through, it will be the third prisoner swap with Russia since the start of Mr. Trump's second term.
		American teacher Mark Vogel was returned in February after three and a half years in Russian prison and Russian-American Ballerina, I won't attempt the name, my apologies, was flown back to the United States last month.
		So more there from the Washington Times if you want to read that story.
		When it comes to the idea of if the president's been tough enough on the Russian president over these matters of Ukraine, let's hear from Sandy.
		Sandy in New Jersey, Democrats line high.
unidentified		Hi, thanks for taking my call.
		Honestly, I think Trump is doing exactly what he wants to do.
		I mean, he loves autocrats, and I think he's just making it easier for Putin to gain more land.
		Look at the things he did with Congress.
		He stopped aid for six months before he was president.
		I'm not sure the exact amount of months, but with Congress, he stopped aid when they were trying to pass a bill on Ukraine.
		Once he was president, he stopped aid again for a month plus intelligence.
		I kind of wonder, is this all for retribution for that phone call years ago about Biden and Hunter, the business in Ukraine?
		I really think he's playing this like he's playing Harvard.
		This is a personal thing for him.
		Before he was even in office, who came to Mar-Laugh?
		It was all autocrats.
		These are the people he loves.
		He doesn't care about this country.
		He cares about him.
		The only thing he's proving is that he's not the negotiator he wants to be, unless he really knows what he's doing, unless he's doing this on purpose, stalling to give Russia more land.
		Might have a deal about another Trump hotel in Russia.
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		Okay.
unidentified		Trump is for himself, nobody else.
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		Let's go to James in San Diego, Republican line.
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		You're next up.
unidentified		Hi.
		Well, good morning.
		Washington Journal.
		You have the answer.
		Yes, you have the answer at hand.
		This is how we got into the Second World War.
		This is how we got into the Second World War.
		Economics against Japan.
		Japan wanted to take an expand?
		Yes, we cut off the oil.
		We cut off the iron.
		We cut off everything.
		And what did we have?
		The Second World War.
		So all these warmongers that are talking about all of this, think about it.
		Are you ready to put on a uniform and go down and start fighting?
		Because that's what Putin's going to do.
		And that's what we're walking into.
		The Second World War just started over economics.
		Thank you very much.
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		From Tim in Kentucky, Democrats line.
unidentified		Hi.
		Good morning, C Spann, and thank you all for everything you do.
		I think you're wonderful.
		I think the whole world, all the world leaders have figured out that Trump is full of baloney.
		He don't know what he's doing.
		The only way to end all this is to gain allies, and he's put them all on the back burner.
		He's aggravated the whole world.
		He's not going to get anywhere unless he gains all the allies.
adam in fort worth ▲ ● ▼		And like I said, he's not the negotiator.
unidentified		He's full of baloney.
		And everybody's figured it out.
		And he's in trouble.
		So that's my statement.
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		Here's the editorial this morning from the Wall Street Journal.
		Talks about foreign policy at large under the headline Trump's Foreign Policy Crossroads.
		But when it comes to the section of Russia and Ukraine, the president entered office promising to end the war in short order.
		But Vladimir Putin isn't cooperating.
		The Russians seem intent on continuing the war until Ukraine submits to his term and he is mobilizing forces for a summer offensive.
		Ukraine will soon confront weapons shortages that will make it more vulnerable to a Russian breakthrough.
		That's especially true for air defenses, including U.S.-made Patriot missiles and interceptors.
		The editorial also adding, saying, Mr. Trump has mused about leaving the two countries to fight it out, but walking away won't insulate America from the consequences.
		If Ukraine succumbs, Mr. Putin will advance his forces closer to more of the NATO border.
		As important, Mr. Trump will send a message to the Chinese president, Xi Jinping, that the U.S. can't sustain support for an ally under siege.
		That's the headline of the editorial from the Wall Street Journal this morning.
		You can find it online.
		We're hearing from you about the level of toughness, so to speak, when it comes from the president to the Russian president, Raul in North Carolina.
		Republican line, hi.
unidentified		Good morning.
unidentified		Independent line.
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		Okay, well, I'll stop you there then, and I'll invite you to call back on the line.
		It's 202-748-8002 for independence.
		If you want to call that line, Republicans, 202-748-8001.
		Democrats, 202-748-8000.
		Apologies, Raoul, but we ask people to call on the line because people wait in line, so to speak, to call in and pick that line that best represents them.
		We ask you to do that.
		If you've also called within the last 30 days, if you can hold off from doing so today, we invite you to do that too.
		Susan in Pennsylvania, Democrats line.
		Hello.
unidentified		Hey, good morning, Pedro.
		No, I don't think Donald Trump has done enough on Russia, but I start by blaming President Biden.
		When Russia first invaded Ukraine, we would only sell Ukraine defensive weapons, which I think is kind of interesting.
		We're telling Ukraine how to fight a war, but yet no one wants to tell Israel how to fight their war.
		Second, I think this Russian superpower, I think it's a myth.
		We have to have a boogeyman to justify our trillion-dollar Pentagon budget.
		I don't believe Russia to be the global superpower that they are.
		According to the World Almanac Book of Facts, Russia has a $4 trillion economy.
		The state of California has a $3 trillion economy.
		So that doesn't scream superpower to me.
		Russia started this war, what, two years ago, and this mighty superpower hasn't been able to get the Kiev in two or three years.
		This mighty superpower went to China and they went to Iran to buy weapons.
		This mighty superpower is importing soldiers from Korea and China.
		None of that screams global superpower to me.
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		Okay.
		Susan there in Pennsylvania.
		Let's hear from James in Virginia, Republican line.
unidentified		Hi.
		Good morning, Patrick.
		I wish you'd get somebody on there to do the history after the Cuban crisis because people fail to realize after the Cuban crisis, China actually invaded Russia because Russia appeared to be weak.
		And that's when they sent Rushov off on vacation.
		The other leader came in and kicked China out.
		I don't think Putin is even thinking about Trump.
		He's more worried about what's going to happen if he does not win.
		And that's the biggest problem that's going on right now.
		This war could have been prevented altogether if we would have just had reports when Russia was building up on the border of Ukraine.
		And the second thing is they went in the Crimea back in 2014.
		Where is Ukraine's responsibility of not building up their own military in Europe?
		And who knows what's going to happen?
		Now it's America's problem.
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		Okay.
unidentified		We have no dog in the hunt.
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		James there in Virginia, Republican line, a recent YouGov poll conducted and some questions relating to the conflict there of Russia and Ukraine asking the question in that conflict who do you sympathize with more?
		It's 4% overall of U.S. citizens saying it was Russia.
		It was 61% with Ukraine with 26% neither.
		And then it divides it by political lines.
		And then asked the question, in the conflict between Russia and Ukraine, who do you think that President Trump sympathizes with more?
		Of all U.S. citizens, 39% said it was Russia.
		26% neither.
		Only 15% of those, of over all U.S. citizens, saying that of those sympathies or perceived sympathies of the president go to Ukraine.
		There's more there.
		That youGov poll has other questions when it comes to Ukraine, military aid, which the caller alluded to.
		This is the question.
		Do you favor either increasing military aid, maintaining the amount, decreasing?
		27% of those overall U.S. citizens saying that there should be an increase of military aid, 23%, maintaining the same amount.
		12% saying decrease that military aid, 19% saying stop all military aid.
		And then it divides it by a political party if you're interested in reading more there.
		Let's hear from Steve in Florida, Democrats line.
		Has President Trump been tough enough on Russia?
		Good morning, Steve.
unidentified		Good morning.
		No, and he shouldn't be.
		And here's why.
		Vladimir Putin has more nuclear weapons than any nation on the planet.
		And they are strategically placed around the world, just like the United States.
		He's a very dangerous man.
		He can start World War III at any moment of the day.
		This man can hit anywhere in the world.
		He has the submarines, the service ships, and the planes to do that kind of thing.
		So President Trump should step back and mind his business because this man is the most dangerous man on the planet.
		Thank you.
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		Independent line from Patricia in Ohio.
		Hi there.
		Patricia in Ohio.
		Hello, Independent Line.
		One more time for Patricia in Ohio.
		Okay, Kenneth in Virginia, Independent Line in Louisa, Virginia.
		Hello.
unidentified		Yes, good morning, all.
		The way this Mr. Trump of ours is dealing with global politics and all these issues as though it's all a big reality show.
		This pompous buffoon needs to get some folks in gear who know what they're doing, or he's going to end up getting a Nobel Priest Prize for curing global warming.
		Well, what exactly do you think he should be doing in the way of nuclear winter?
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		Well, that's what I'm saying.
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		What do you think he should do specifically when it comes to Ukraine then?
unidentified		You got to go both out.
		The guy only understands power.
		I'm sure we can agree.
		That's the only way to deal with it.
		Trump thinks he's like a wannabe gangster running his mouth.
		Sorry, state of affairs.
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		All right, Kenneth in Virginia, Senator Todd Young from Indiana, from OnX saying that I share the president's frustration with Russia escalating the violence in Ukraine.
		Mr. Putin continues to show us that he isn't serious about agreeing to a lasting and just peace.
		Representative Jake Auschensloss saying that Vladimir Putin is not crazy.
		He's evil and he's strategic and he sees in Mr. Trump exactly the weakness he needs.
		Chuck Grassley, Republican from Iowa, Senator from Iowa, I believe President Trump was sincere when he thought his friendship with Mr. Putin would end the war.
		Now, that being the case, it's time for sanctions strong enough to, so Putin knows game over.
		And as you can see, a homeless of those in caps.
		And then Representative Don Bacon saying that it's time for honesty.
		Peace talks are having zero effect on Putin.
		His goal is to dominate Ukraine.
		He won't stop until he realizes he cannot win.
		The U.S. and allies must arm Ukraine to the teeth, sanction Russia to the max, and confiscate the $300 billion in overseas Russian assets.
		So there's some thoughts from legislators when it comes to the back and forth between President Trump, the Russian president Vladimir Putin.
		We're also hearing from you too, Missouri, Republican line.
		This is Jeff High.
unidentified		Hi.
		I just think it needs to be a cold reminder that President Biden said a small incursion would be no big deal, as we have Germany and Europe buying oil from Russia.
		So as Europe funds the war from both sides, you know, and blames Russia, as we were offering Ukraine membership to NATO, which was always a red line.
		And then they were putting battleships in the ports in Crimea.
		And that was crossing a red line because it allowed the UN to have missiles that would reach Moscow.
		There's a lot of bad actors, but as far as anybody acknowledging the fact that the One World Order is trying to put One World Order rules on Russia, as if how much oil they could produce with the Paris Accord, with the idea that they're even offering Ukraine with NATO.
		I think we need to look into the one world order, knowing the fact that they're trying to push their agenda.
		And the one person in the world who has an agenda to stop that is Putin.
		Putin don't want to be controlled by a one-world dictator.
		And that one-world dictator being the World Banking Order, China, the WHO.
		Everybody needs to pay attention.
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		Gotcha.
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		Jake in at Virginia, Alexandria, Virginia, Independent Line.
unidentified		Hi.
		Hey, Pedro.
		How are you?
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		Fine, thank you.
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		Go ahead.
unidentified		Hey, so I hear these callers call in and talking about all this.
		The problem I see is that, you know, the president is doing the best he can in a very turbulent geopolitical environment.
		You know, President Biden had the opportunity to get the European countries behind him when the Russians had all of their vehicles lined up and no supply lines to supply them.
		Everyone keeps saying, hey, we want to support them, send more military equipment, send all this stuff.
		But that's all U.S. dollars going out the door to support another nation.
		And to be frank, the military needs the equipment we have to revamp and restage the U.S., or we could be in serious trouble in the future if we were to get into a world war.
		That's all I've got, Pedro.
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		Greg is up next.
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		Greg in Ohio, Republican line.
unidentified		Yeah, thanks, Pedro.
		You know, this all started a long time ago.
		When the Democrats had Biden elected, he was not qualified.
		And now there's a lot of things about its mental state.
		How about when Russia, this is a fact, look it up, Pedro.
		Russia spent three months when the Winter Olympics was on building up their military at the border.
		You thought they were doing that for fun?
		Biden hadn't know.
		I mean, the news media all knew about it, even the liberal-based ones.
		So it began there.
		And then you had the North Stream pipeline that Biden okayed.
		Transferring the natural gas under the Baltic Sea from Russia to Germany, bypassing Poland and Ukraine.
		You don't think that was a setup?
		And people are blaming President Trump?
		Are they allowed to do that?
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		Well, how do those things relate to the modern day when it comes to not only the back and forth?
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		Hold on, hold on, the back and forth between the president and Ukraine.
unidentified		How does it relate to the common sense, please?
		This all wouldn't have happened if President Trump was re-elected, just like he said.
		This would never happen.
		This stuff would never happen.
		It's just common sense.
		Just to, you know, look, look at all you have to have a beginning to get to where we're at now.
		We're at a perilous time, and people are blaming President Trump when Biden was in office four years, and there's all kinds of media about his mental state.
		Come on, let's get real.
		Okay.
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		Robert is next in Kentucky Democrats line.
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		Hi there.
unidentified		Good morning.
		Morning.
		So I wanted to touch on the fact that, yeah, Trump is not being tough enough on Russia whatsoever.
		The only person to blame for this war is Putin at the end of the day.
		It's not Biden's fault.
		It's not Trump's fault.
		But at the end of the day, Trump also has been enabling Putin, pulling us out of NATO.
		I just want to go back to the last caller.
		I mean, come on, we couldn't enter Ukraine and build up a line against Russia on Ukraine's line.
		That would have been World War III right there.
		So that's why Biden didn't do anything about it from outside of there other than sending weapons.
		But no, Trump is not being tough enough on Putin.
		He finally just realized that he's a bad person all of a sudden.
		And so basically he's been enabling our enemies is what he's been doing.
		He could have made horrible things happen to Russia this whole time.
		That's aiding an enemy.
		That's all I got to say.
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		That's Robert in Kentucky.
		If you want to continue calling in, it's 202-748-8000 for Democrats, 202-748-8001 for Republicans, and Independents 202748-8002.
		The question is if the president has been tough enough on Russia when it comes to matters of Ukraine.
		It was before he sent his truth social post.
		He was traveling on Sunday, the president talking to reporters about Vladimir Putin on attacks in Ukraine.
		Here's a small section from Sunday.
unidentified		Yeah, I'll give you an update.
		I'm not happy with what Putin's doing.
		He's killing a lot of people, and I don't know what the hell happened to Putin.
donald j trump ▲ ● ▼		I've known him a long time, always gotten along with him, but he's sending rockets into cities and killing people, and I don't like it at all.
unidentified		Okay?
donald j trump ▲ ● ▼		We're in the middle of talking, and he's shooting rockets into Kiev and other cities.
unidentified		I don't like it at all.
		President, what do you want to do about it?
		I'm surprised.
		I'm very surprised.
		We'll see what we're going to do.
		What am I going to tell you?
		You're the fake news, aren't you?
		You're totally fake.
		All right, any other questions?
donald j trump ▲ ● ▼		I don't like what Putin is doing, not even a little bit.
unidentified		He's killing people.
		And something happened to this guy, and I don't like it.
		I mentioned you're unhappy with President Putin.
		You've talked before about putting more sanctions on Russia.
marco rubio ▲ ● ▼		Is that something you're considering more truth?
unidentified		Absolutely.
		He's killing a lot of people.
		I don't know what's wrong with him.
		What the hell happened to him, right?
		He's killing a lot of people.
		I'm not happy about that.
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		On our line for Republicans from Tennessee, this is Ann.
unidentified		Hello.
		I want to say good morning first to my good friend Carol.
		And I have this to tell you about Zelensky.
		He has just been a salesman shopping around everywhere he can go to get more money.
		I don't think he wants peace or he would not have attempted that stupid assassination of Putin that he just did.
		He is the one that is stirring up this war, I think, only to keep the money coming in.
		He tried to have Putin assassinated, and that's why Putin is mad.
		And all these people that want to go to war, I have a beautiful grandson that's in the military.
		He's an officer in the Navy.
		If you had someone you cared about, you would not be with all this fighting, bombing, and screaming that you want to go to war.
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		And they're in Tennessee.
		Let's go to Larry, Larry, Democrats line.
		He's in Texas.
		Hello.
unidentified		Hey, thanks for taking my call, Pedro.
		Yes, he's definitely, I mean, I thought he was going to stop the war before they got in office.
		He definitely have.
		And I mean, if you look at it, the bomb has increased.
		I fought in two laws.
		And all these people with this, oh, they should have been, we should have been at the Ukraine front line when they, it does not work like that, people.
		It does not work like that.
		First of all, the company, the people have to offer you, invite you into their country.
		And all these people, I wish you would get a bunch of people that have been to war, Pedro.
		Because a bunch of these people that is talking is clueless.
		This lady talking about her nephew, her son up in the Navy, ma'am, you don't have to worry about him.
		He won't even touch the ground.
		But the second thing is, it's sad that we are the reason that really Ukraine is in the problem they are.
		We're the ones who told Ukraine to get rid of their nuclear weapons.
		You know what I'm saying?
		I want you to answer some of this questions, Pedro.
		And all these other people out here hollering about war.
		When was the last time America attacked a country that was a nuclear power?
		Never.
		And it won't happen.
		Okay.
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		That's Larry there in Houston, Texas.
		Robert joins us from Beaumont, Texas.
		Republican line.
unidentified		Hi.
		Hello.
		I just want to make a comment about probing the lion over there in Russia with a sharp stick.
		He's got China backing him.
		He's got North Korea helping Russia.
		He's got Iran on the brink.
		And it seems like he was, whenever Biden was in office, he emboldened Russia and Putin.
		And Putin has changed.
		He's got to be dealt with a whole lot different than the way we're doing right now.
		And we need to not probe this.
		They're strategically placed all over the world.
		If they wanted to hit us, punch the codes in and send a missile this way, they could do it.
		We need to rethink about what we're doing and how we're dealing with this idiot.
		That's all I got to say.
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		Republican Senator John Barrasso, with his comments on X, saying Vladimir Putin does not respond to statements.
		Apologies for that, viewers.
		Sorry about that.
		Vladimir Putin does not respond to statements.
		He responds to strength.
		If Russia stalls, the Senate will act decisively to move to bring lasting peace.
		And then this is Connecticut Democrat Richard Blumenthal saying America is complicit in these hideous war crimes.
		If Mr. Trump or Kranaid, military, economic, diplomatic, and war, including immediate, quote, shock and awe, stiff sanctions to stop Chinese and others from buying oil products as our Russian sanctions bills provide.
		He co-sponsored that bill, by the way, with Senator Lindsey Graham, stressing for the need of more sanctions on top of already what exists when it comes to Russia.
		Jeanette in Virginia, Democrats line, good morning.
unidentified		Good morning.
		I am shocked that the other caller called Vladimir Putin an idiot because I think the true idiot sold America a bill of goods in being naive about who Putin really was.
		Before and during the campaign, everyone was saying Putin was very clear about his political agenda and his world domination goal and all of the terrible things.
		And it was Trump who said, oh, he's a great guy.
		We get along great.
		I'm going to end the war on day one.
		Well, that comment now seems like it came from a person who was totally misguided, ill-informed, and not smart about the issues and the actions.
		The price of eggs yesterday was seven bucks.
		Bringing costs down, ending the war in Ukraine, protecting those lives is just something he was not capable of.
		It's a promise broken.
		And the only idiot in that situation is really clear and is trying to tell us that Putin changed.
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		Okay.
unidentified		No, I think Trump was wrong.
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		Jeanette, there in Virginia, mentioning that the jest claim, this was CNN back in April saying that, and it starts by saying he wasn't joking.
		When President Trump was reminded in an interview with Time magazine this week that he had said he would run the Russian war on Ukraine in day one, and that's in quotes, he claimed he hadn't been speaking literally or seriously.
		Quote, well, I said that figuratively, and I said that as an exaggeration because to make a point, as you know, it gets, of course, by the fake news.
		Obviously, people know that when I said that, it was said in jest, but it also said it would be ended.
		The CNN story saying that this quote ingest claim is a lie was on the campaign trail in 2023 and 24.
		But the candidate Trump said on dozens of occasions, that in serious, in entirely serious tone, manner, and context, that he would end the war in Ukraine either within 24 hours of his return to the White House or even sooner than that.
		He said over and over again, including at both presidential debates of 2024, that he would have the war, quote, settled when he was president-elect before his inauguration.
		Let's go to John.
		John in Wisconsin, Democrats line.
unidentified		Yeah, he, you know, I was like, far as I'm concerned with Putin is send a message over there,
		stop the war, give back the land, or we're sending up, have Trunt push the button on his desk and send a nuke over there and before it gets to his palace and then delete it before it gets over there,
		unless he wants to stop and re go back, you know.
		But anyway.
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		Yep, that's John in Wisconsin.
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		Let's hear from Marion, North Carolina, Republican line.
unidentified		Hi.
		Hi, good morning.
		Here's what I think.
		Have you ever heard the old adage that keep your friends close, but keep your enemies closer?
		I sort of think that our president was kind of trying to give Putin a chance in that direction.
		But I think he's very smart, and I do think that he does have it under control.
		I think that Putin is testing him, but I really think that he's going in the right direction.
		And at least he's doing something, you know, with the issues.
		And so we'll see what goes on from here.
		But I think that he is doing a great job.
		I'm 76.
		I was a Democrat from 1967 until 2025.
		And I switched over to Republican because I could see that my party, they just, I don't feel like I left my party.
		I feel like they left me.
		They just weren't doing anything.
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		From Chris in Cherry Hill, New Jersey, Independent Line, you're next up.
unidentified		Hello.
		Thank you for taking the call.
		When the Soviet Union broke up, we really want Putin came in and he wants to reconstitute.
		He stated it.
		The Russian Empire is coming back.
		The issue of Ukraine was a no-brainer from day one.
		It's in America's national interest, 100%, to give Ukraine all it needs to defeat the invasion by Russia.
		That has not changed.
		It was the way it was when Trump came into office the first time, and it remains no different now.
		However, I propose to you that Mr. Trump never, never had the interest of America's interest, that he has always taken the side of Russia.
		It was difficult for him to appear to take Russia's side until he spent years now cultivating his pro-Russian constituency.
		And he has never done anything to help Ukraine, except when he had to make an appearance that he was.
		If he had maintained aid, Putin would have been defeated.
		Russia would have been stopped, but they kept pulling aid back.
		Even when he was out of office, he stopped the funding through his control of the MAGA congresspeople.
		They came up with every reason in the world.
		We need the money.
		We can't afford it.
		We have to take care of our own country first and border one reason after another.
		Now he's reached the pinnacle.
		He's moved.
		He's moved.
		He's never moved, but he has moved the country's policy from helping Ukraine into taking the side of Russia.
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		Okay, Chris there in New Jersey in West Virginia, Democrats line.
		This is Jim.
		Hello.
unidentified		Hello.
		Good morning.
		Yes, I agree with the caller that just called in from New Jersey 100%.
		You know, what you're hearing on your phone lines this morning is a lot of embarrassed, disappointed Republicans.
		They're having a little bit of buyer's remorse.
		If you look clear back to 2014, when the Ukrainian people overthrew Yanukovych, he was considered a Russian puppet president, and he jailed his presidential opponent.
		And that's when the Ukrainian people overthrew him.
		He escaped back to Russia.
		And, you know, the United States was interested.
		The Obama administration, Biden, they were interested in trying to help Ukraine join the EU and have true freedom and independence.
		And the Democrat Party stood for that all along.
		Like the caller from New Jersey said, the U.S. House under Republican control blocked Biden's $61 billion in aid for seven months.
		And it scared NATO.
		It scared Ukraine that U.S. support was dwindling.
		And it has.
		You know, and to see President Trump standing out on that runway and acting like he just understood finally that Putin is going to do, he has his own, you know, Russian national interest in trying to expand his territory into further, you know, westward into Europe.
		That's pretty obvious.
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		Okay, one more call.
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		Ursula in North Carolina, Democrats line.
unidentified		Hi.
unidentified		Good morning, Pedro.
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		Morning.
unidentified		Good morning to all our C-SPAN listeners.
		Pedro, I'm listening to this, and I think Trump is not tough enough.
		He let Russia get by with too much since he became president.
		What worries me, Pedro, and I know people think I'm going to be crazy, but I hope he does not, I hope Putin does not use Hitler's playbook where he starts and beats the Ukraine and tries to take places back into Russia.
		And then we're going to hear some from China and Taiwan, and that's going to be a bad thing for all of us in America.
		Thank you, Pedro.
		Have a good day.
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		That's Ursula in North Carolina finishing off this hour of your calls on this topic.
		Thanks to all of you who participated.
		Coming up during the course of the program, two segments taking a look at various education issues later on in the program.
		We'll hear from Ed Choice President and CEO Robert Enlow.
		He will discuss education policy changes at the Trump administration, particularly when it comes to the impact on the school choice movement.
		But first, and up next, American Federation of Teachers, President Randy Weingarten, on the Trump administration's proposed changes to public education.
		Those conversations coming up on Washington Journal.
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		Washington Journal continues.
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		Our first guest of the morning, Randy Weingarten, with the American Federation of Teachers.
		She serves as their president here to talk about education policy under the Trump administration.
		Good morning to you.
unidentified		Good morning, Pedro.
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		What measurable changes have you seen to policy from the beginning of the administration to now?
unidentified		They've just made things harder.
		That's the, I mean, whether it's the, you know, cutting the Department of Education by a thousand cuts.
		I mean, that's why a judge just basically said, you can't actually do your mission if you have no employees.
		Like, everybody wants efficiency.
		I want, everybody wants efficiency.
		My members hate bureaucracy.
		We want efficiency.
		But efficiency and evisceration are totally different.
		So it's that.
		It's the dear colleague letter in the middle of February that basically said, you know, you have to look through a lens about everything you're teaching based upon is it what we believe is, you know, equity or diversity or inclusion, and therefore you can't teach it or you can't have this program.
		And if you do, then we're going to cut all your funding.
		So we sued about that because why would you do that to teachers?
		Like, how do you do that to teachers in the middle of their curriculum?
		If they're answering a question of a child, how do they not answer that question?
		And then if they're teaching about Jim Crow, how do they not teach about Jim Crow?
		So, but in particularly, it's students going to college.
		And we already have young people feeling like we don't do enough for them, and we don't in terms of their future.
		And so you take the student loan information off the website.
		You basically send it to debt collectors.
		You don't let them pay their loans.
		Mohila doesn't answer the phone, the loan servicer, you don't actually make them answer the phone.
		And now we see from the Washington Post that virtually everyone who has a student loan has seen their credit report go down 100 points.
		So when I say that for kids and for teachers, they've just made things harder.
		Like we should get the support to make things, it's hard enough to teach.
		It's hard enough in this environment for kids to learn, particularly, sorry, I asked your producer if I could just have this.
		When we are competing with the phone, it's hard enough to compete with loneliness, anxiety, and the phone.
		The federal government should make, should be a supportive role.
		They don't run schools.
		They should be a supportive role.
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		You said you hate bureaucracy.
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		Republicans would say the Department of Education is the epitome of bureaucracy and let the states do it or let other factions do it because they could do it more efficiently than a department in Washington, D.C. Let's put it this way.
unidentified		I was a teacher in New York City and I was the president of the teachers union in New York City for a long time.
		That bureaucracy was terrible.
		And the state, and look, I admire the person who is that chancellor and the head of the New York State Department of Education.
		I mean, look, it took me longer to get my, you know, my provisional certification as a teacher than to get my bar, my certification as a lawyer because of the bureaucracy there.
		So, you know, send it somewhere else that the bureaucracies are better somewhere else.
		The states, you know, we should make bureaucracy more efficient.
		We should.
		It should be more efficient.
		It should be more effective.
		I mean, that point about getting rid of waste and doing more efficiency, everybody wants that.
		But you don't do that with a chain saw, and you don't basically eviscerate things.
		And that's, and unfortunately, what the federal government is supposed to do, they don't run schools except for the Department of Defense schools, which they run.
		And frankly, the ones that we represent in southern Italy are the best schools, sometimes the best schools in the world, certainly the best schools in the nation.
		That's the only schools that the federal government really runs.
		So the issue really becomes they fill opportunity gaps.
		Like all that money, that federal money, it's to actually help poor kids.
		It's to actually help kids with disabilities.
		It's to help kids who are going in, who are in rural areas, help kids who are going into career tech ed, help kids who are trying to get English language acquisition.
		I love this.
		We've made English the law of the land, and then we cut all the money and all the people who are in the Department of English Language Acquisition.
		How are we going to help kids learn English?
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		Would you say that the current size and scope of the department is needed, or could there be reductions?
unidentified		Of course, there could be.
		Look, I never, I'm a union person.
		I never want people to be fired if they're doing a good job.
		Never.
		I mean, my father was laid off as an engineer when I was growing up.
		He was doing a good job.
		They fired the people who were working in the defense industry.
		I watched the pain and suffering that he went through trying to get another job.
		So, you know, you don't do this thousands of people that you fire.
		But what happens is, of course, it could be better run.
		And of course, there could be more efficiency.
		But frankly, there should be a whole lot more people who are actually supervising Mohila, who is the loan servicer who doesn't answer their phones when somebody is saying, I don't know what my loan payment is this week or this month.
		You've taken it off the website.
		I have to call Mohila.
		I'm on the phone with Mohila for hours and hours, and they won't give me the right information because there's not a person to be found.
		It's all push the buttons.
		So how do you not do that?
		If a child, if a parent has a child with disabilities, say, needs a wheelchair, and the district is not doing it, the Department of Education, the Office of Civil Rights, is who you go to.
		So if you're that parent, and you can't get somebody on the phone who kind of guides you, what are you going to do?
		You're going to now call a lawyer and spend all that money to try to get the district to do this kind of stuff.
		That's the things that the Department of Education does.
		It's to fill opportunity gaps.
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		Let me invite the viewers into the conversation.
		Democrats 202-748-8000.
		Republicans 202-748-8001.
		And Independents 202-748-8002.
		Randy Weingarten of the American Federation of Teachers.
		I want you to listen to a little bit of Linda McMahon from her testimony, spoke about at least her perspective on reducing the amount of bureaucracy, as you described it, and we talked about it at the Education Department and get your response to it.
linda mcmahon ▲ ● ▼		We seek to shrink federal bureaucracy, save taxpayer money, and empower states who best know their local needs to manage education in this country.
		We have reviewed our programs and identified spending that does not fulfill the mandate of trust the American people have placed in President Trump.
		We've reduced a department that was overstaffed by thousands of positions, cut old contracts that were enriching private parties at taxpayer expense, suspended grants for illegal DEI programs, and now we're putting forward a budget request that reduces department funding by more than 15%.
		At the same time, we're working to make American education great again.
		In our conversations with governors, teachers, and parents across the country, we hear calls for accountability and more local control.
		That's our goal: to give parents access to the quality education their kids deserve.
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		That's Randy Weingarten or the education.
		I'm sorry, Linda McMahon, the Education Secretary.
		You're Andy Weingarten.
		How do you respond to that?
unidentified		Look, I'm still waiting for Linda McMahon, who said she was going to call me.
		We share the, you know, we share a view about career tech ed.
		I still haven't gotten that call.
		Betsy DeVos actually called as soon as she became the superintendent.
		She and I went to a school together.
		We actually saw a civics program in rural Ohio that I taught in New York City, the We the People program, which, by the way, they have now cut.
		You know, something, so Supreme Court, you know, Chief Supreme Court Justice John Roberts says we need to have more civics.
		We need to do, you know, we need to teach more about the rule of law in school.
		I completely agree.
		We do.
		We really do as a civics teacher.
		So one of the cuts that they made is to the premier civics program that rural red districts and deep blue districts all use, which is the We the People competition.
		So, you know, you can say things publicly, all of what she said, let's cut waste, let's cut bureaucracy, let's move local control.
		All of that we agree with.
		The devil is in the details.
		So let's look at the skinny budget or the budget.
		They say they want to do career tech ed.
		We need to have more pathways for kids.
		It shouldn't just be, you know, college or bust.
		We should actually think about the other kinds of pathways we have for kids from high school, community college on.
		They didn't put one dime into Career Tech Ed.
		They're actually transferring or trying to transfer all the Career Tech Ed programs to the Department of Labor.
		The Department of Labor knows nothing about educating children.
		Pre-apprentices, yes, the apprenticeship programs that the trades do are fantastic.
		We need to do that for advanced manufacturing, for culinary, for healthcare.
		Not a dime in there.
		Not a word about that.
		Number two, Title I. Title I is a premier program.
		Sorry for being so factual.
		Title I is a premier program started by Lyndon Johnson in the aftermath of Brown versus Board of Education to help lift up all kids from poverty.
		They have cut that program by about $5 billion.
		That program disproportionately serves red states.
		Mississippi gets about 20% of its funding from Title I, New York about 7%.
		What does Title I go for?
		And why does it go as a per-child allocation?
		For reading instruction, for lowering class size, for summer school, for after school, for computers.
		They've cut that.
		And then they want to give the rest of it to the states as opposed to directly to schools for kids.
		So I can go on and on and on about that budget.
		They cut all of the grants that after Uvalde, the grants that went to schools for trying to deal with all these issues that Republicans often say, this is an emotional distress issue.
		These grants went for those reasons.
		They cut them.
		They cut grants to actually improve ventilation programs.
		The big issue in COVID was we need to make sure schools that are 50, 60, 70, 80 years old have good ventilation.
		They cut those programs.
		So the devil is in the details.
		You know, let's actually then work together with kids, with parents, with teachers about what should stay and what shouldn't stay.
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		Okay, we've set aside, by the way, for educators and students, if you want to call in too, 202-740-8003.
unidentified		Pedro, can I just say, when you said that about educators, can I just say to educators before we start the calls, just thank you.
		They are doing humans work.
		Whether they're in a public school or a private school, educators are really the people who have the future in their hands with parents.
		And if Linda McBannon is listening, support them.
		Don't make it harder.
		And for students, thank you for being in school.
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		And a New York State Democrats line, you'll start us off.
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		Good morning.
unidentified		Good morning.
		I just really want to thank you, Randy.
		I am a proud retiree from New York State public schools.
		I had a 35-year career, and it was really a great career.
		And I don't think the average person understands what it entails, what entails in educating a child.
		Public schools don't have the luxury like private schools to say, you have too many physical disabilities.
		You are too poverty-stricken.
		You have behavior issues.
		We can't educate you.
		So, really, this voucher system is basically yet another wealth transfer.
		Also, talking about student loans, it should be a no-brainer that anyone who becomes certified as a public school teacher and works in public education for a certain number of years, especially the high-needs schools, should have their loans forgiven.
		Thank you so much.
		So, first off, thank you for teaching.
		And, you know, I hear this, Petro, all the time, you know, that the statistics are, you know, teaching is a really hard job, and a lot of people leave in the first seven years.
		If somebody stays for about seven years, they'll stay for their career.
		And, you know, teachers who, you know, you end up having a sixth sense.
		Your job as a teacher is to create a safe and welcoming environment.
		You want to try to create a curriculum that is engaging and relevant.
		And you do it despite all the things that are thrown at you.
		You know, I noticed that one of the things that Lyndon McBann didn't say is that there's too much paperwork and there's too much testing in schools.
		And they didn't say that they were going to deal with that or cut those kind of things.
		But so teachers like our colour right now, you know, they don't ask for much.
		They just want support and they want the materials and resources to do their job.
		So thank you very much, this particular teacher who didn't give us her name from New York.
		And the last thing I'll say is the Public Service Loan Forgiveness Program, which was a Bush program sponsored by Kennedy and Hillary Clinton in the Senate, but a Bush program, basically said that if you teach or if you nurse or if you're in the Army for 10 years and you pay your student loans for 10 years, then the rest of them are getting forgiven.
		Even that program is, I mean, it's law, it's statute, it's not regulation, it can't be on the chopping block.
		You know, the Congress passed it, but even that program is on the chopping block.
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		Another resident of New York State, this is Charles and Syracuse, Republican line.
unidentified		So another guest here, I love calling in when you have people like Jeron, Randy on.
		She wants everything to go through the federal government because then you only have to win one election.
		You don't have to win 50.
		You want the federal government to take care of everything and have parents do what?
		And my final comment is you mentioned Lyndon Johnson, a Democrat, who is credited for passing the Civil Rights Act.
		He said the reason he wanted the Civil Rights Act passed and Democrats to do it was those N-word got to vote.
		I'll have them voting Democrat for the next 200 years.
		So I'm not surprised that Lyndon Johnson is one of your heroes.
		You're a disgrace.
		So, my friend, let me just say this.
		I just wrote a book, and I have lifted up Lyndon Johnson.
		I did a bunch of research on it.
		Lyndon Johnson was a school teacher before he was a politician.
		He taught in rural Texas, and he taught kids, mostly Mexican-American kids, who didn't have, who went to school without shoes.
		And he basically understood that if you actually created ways in which the federal government can supplement what states do and what localities do because this locality couldn't afford what the kids needed, that would be a good thing.
		So let me just say to you, my friend, I want local control.
		The federal government actually does is what the federal government does is a supplement.
		And I think that local control and local elections are really, really important.
		I don't want the federal government to control everything.
		And I obviously was a bad teacher in this back and forth with Pedro because I didn't say any of the things that you thought I said.
		So the question I have is, what is it about what I am saying that you're not hearing from me because then I need to change my language to make sure you hear it.
		You may still disagree with me, but I don't disagree about locals controlling schools.
		And I don't think this should be electoral.
		I think this should be about what we do for our kids.
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		You mentioned this lawsuit that came down stopping at least the attempts to stop layoffs at the Education Department.
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		Is this the end of the situation or it goes further from here?
unidentified		And this lawsuit was about stopping the dismantlement of the Education Department.
		And the court was our lawsuit helped by the fabulous lawyers at Democracy Forward and the AGs.
		And this was a lawsuit in Massachusetts with several school districts.
		And it essentially, we essentially said, Congress, this is your job.
		The Department of Education, you know, and the Trump administration can't basically proclaim that they are dismantling the Department of Education.
		If you want to dismantle it, that's your job.
		You created it, but you can't make it null and void.
		You can't basically eviscerate it.
		And the judge said, yeah, you're right.
		It's a separation of powers thing.
		Like, there's three branches of government.
		The courts, the Congress, and the president.
		And the founders, who really, really, really didn't want a king to emerge as president, the founders basically said, we have to split up power.
		So if the Congress passes it, the Congress is the only one who can pull it back, yank it back, not the president.
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		But this doesn't end it, though.
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		Why do you think that is the?
unidentified		It doesn't end it because under the federal court system, again, I'm sorry that I'm being such a social studies teacher.
		Sorry, I'm being so yarmish here.
		But the first court, the trial court, is the district court.
		The district court judge said, enjoined the actions, preliminary injunction, enjoined the action.
		So there's an injunction, and then there's, you know, there's the work on the merits.
		But basically, the court said, they really can't do this.
		Stop it.
		That immediately goes up to the appellate division of the appeals court.
		And given what the Supreme Court has done recently with their very expedited shadow docket, our anticipation is because this was a challenge of an executive order, then the Trump administration is going to want to get it up to the Supreme Court as quickly as possible, particularly on the immediate action of stopping it.
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		Randy Weingarten, our guest from the American Federation of Teachers, she serves as their president.
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		Let's hear from Andrew in Texas, Democrats line.
unidentified		Hi, good morning, Pedro, and thank you, Ms. Weingarten, for being on this morning.
		Andrew, just call me Randy, not Ms. Weingarten.
		Okay, Randy.
		Thank you.
		Sorry about that.
		No problem.
		I'm an educator here in Texas, and I would like to say that I believe that the impact that the Trump administration will have on public education, unfortunately, will be a negative impact.
		We're already seeing here in the state of Texas that things are starting to take an ideological turn, the attitude of the state government towards its education.
		They're trying to pass a bill in the Texas State House to require every classroom to display the Ten Commandments.
		We're also seeing in Congress that in the United States Congress that they're trying to pass the big beautiful bill, which is, you know, basically has so many things in it and so many things that are saying, well, it's not cuts, but it actually is cuts.
		And I'm really, really concerned that that's going to happen with education here.
		I work at a Title I school.
		I have students that have special needs.
		I have one student that's in a wheelchair that has an aide with him.
		And I'm really concerned that if the Department of Education is dissolved and that as they're saying, okay, then these funds are all going to be kicked to the states, that the state's going to decide, well, we want to use these funds somewhere else.
		So I was hoping, Randy, that you could comment on that.
		Thank you.
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		Andrew in Texas, thank you.
unidentified		So Andrew, look, again, this is why I said to Pedro at the beginning when he asked me the question about what has the Trump administration done, it's just made things harder.
		So listen to Andrew.
		If that child who has a wheelchair and an aide doesn't have the aid anymore, what's going to happen to their child?
		What's the effect on that child, that child's parents, and that child's teacher?
		That aid really helps the child.
		If there's no aid in the classroom, what is the teacher who's teaching also 20 other people going, 20 other children going to do, or 30 other children going to do?
		These are the real life things that teachers are going through.
		So what Andrew was talking about is that for the last two sessions in Texas, basically rural educators who understand that they want their public schools and there's not going to be a private school competitor.
		They're just going to lose money.
		There's no private schools in rural areas.
		They're just going to lose the money that goes to vouchers.
		So rural educators and urban educators, rural Republicans and urban Democrats actually joined together to stop vouchers in Texas five times last session.
		Then some rich billionaires got in, got rid of all those, basically all those rural educators, got them out.
		This time, rural educators and urban educators joined again together, and Donald Trump got on the phone with them and said to the rural educators, if you vote against the voucher bill, I will go and find a way to get you out of office.
		So that voucher bill that he's talking about passed in Texas.
		And what we see in Arizona and in Florida, where this similar kind of bill passed, it's just a funnel of money out of the public school system.
		So, and basically, Arizona and Florida actually have seen the funding of their public schools because the money has basically gone to 70% of the money.
		We've seen this in data now, goes to people who already had their kids in private schools.
		And that's what he's worried about.
		The second thing he's worried about is when he talks about reconciliation, there's a lot of reconciliation has been the bill that passed the Congress last week.
		Basically, people have talked about the tax, the tax breaks that billionaires have gotten or no taxes on tips or no taxes on overtime.
		Let me just say, we should have a working class tax break.
		Instead of just having a billionaire tax break, let's have a working class tax break.
		And let's do something that, frankly, the patriotic millionaires have done, which is let's have a cost of living tax exemption.
		Let's do that for the working class.
		Let's do that.
		That should be, if we're going to do tax breaks, let's do a new tax break like that.
		That's what we would be for.
		But on reconciliation and things like that, what they did to pay for it was they heightened the debt by about $6 trillion, and they basically have cut two essential programs for kids.
		One is Medicaid.
		A third of kids get their medical care and attention through Medicaid and through CHIPS and through these things.
		That's been cut by about $800 billion.
		And the whole nutrition program is so completely revamped that we are very concerned.
		It's been cut hugely.
		We are very concerned that we're no longer going to be able to provide meals in schools or meals to families.
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		Let's hear from Denise.
		Denise joins us from Maine, Republican Line.
		Go ahead.
unidentified		Good morning.
		Good morning.
		And I'm so glad, Randy, that you're on here because I've been wanting to say several things to you.
		You have done more to ruin my grandchildren's education than any other person in the world.
		You have lowered standards.
		I have eight grandchildren.
		Four are in school in Florida, four are in school in New Jersey.
		You keep teachers, child molesters on the books because they're not allowed to be fired.
		So that means that the local school boards have to keep them paying.
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		Sorry, you're going to have to stop listening to the television and finish your thought, please.
unidentified		Sorry, I meant to shut it off.
		I apologize.
		Okay.
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		Go ahead and finish.
unidentified		I am just so angry with you.
unidentified		You're nothing but a Democratic.
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		I have to watch the language, too.
		So you made several points there.
		We'll let our guests respond to it.
unidentified		So first off, I'm sorry that you feel that way.
		I've been in education, I don't know, I think my whole adult life.
		And so let me just say that when I was the president of the teachers' union in New York City, we actually negotiated a revamping of tenure so it could not be used as an excuse for managers not to manage or to provide lifetime employment if somebody was not qualified.
		It just, and I agree with you, if somebody can't teach, they shouldn't be there.
		But what they should get is due process.
		That's really, and so, you know, if there are problems and if there are people who shouldn't be teaching, then we should really be dealing with that because most of the teachers in the United States or America are amazing people and some need more support and most are, and frankly in Florida right now, they're yearly contracts.
		So I'm surprised that that's the issue in terms of Florida.
		So that's number one.
		Number two, you know, we may differ in terms of opinions about what to teach or how to teach or whatever, but in a million years, you know, you're, I'm wondering why we have had this, why we have created this kind of divisiveness and this kind of anger at each other when we may disagree on political party or disagree on these kind of things.
		So if there are issues that you have in your local schools, which local schools run, frankly, my union is not actually the dominant union in New Jersey.
		But let's talk about it.
		If there's things that we can do in terms of your local schools that we can help your grandchildren, we want to do that.
		And so the real question becomes, how do I help facilitate conversations with a local school board, with a local union, so that you feel like your kids are getting a decent education?
		That's my job, and that's what I want to do.
		So I don't know how we do that, Pedro, in terms of this, but if there are real issues that I can help facilitate, because I don't run any of these school districts and I don't run any of these schools, but if there's things that our local unions can help facilitate, let's try and do that, Richard.
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		It was former Staffer Rahm Emanuel recently writing a column on education in the Washington Post.
		He said this, my real point is we're facing a Sputnik moment in education.
		Almost no one among the nation's purported adults seemed to want to solve the problem.
		Democrats can't be the party that believes in equity as a core principle while simultaneously being complacent about math scores still languishing below pre-pandemic levels and reading scores hitting their lowest in more than 30 years.
		We need to shape up real fast.
		What do you think of that assessment?
unidentified		So look, I agree with Rahm that they should have a Sputnik moment, but when he was mayor of the city of Chicago, he actually closed 50 schools.
		And he actually, you know, instead of doing the kinds of things that he's talking about now, I understand he's going to run for president.
		What is that Sputnik moment?
		How do we do that?
		Why are test scores where they are right now?
		Take Florida, which has done all the things that President Trump, you know, they look at Florida.
		That's all the things that President Trump values.
		Their NAIPE scores went down more than any others.
		So what is really going on?
		Like if you don't understand the question, like if you don't understand the what, then you can't figure out the why and the how.
		So what we think, as we've been looking at this, is that kids don't read anymore.
		We don't, there's no, there's a sense that, you know, post-COVID that you have to go to school, but you don't really have to go to school.
		COVID really broke us all.
		I think it really broke us all.
		So the real question becomes for schools to get to that sputnik moment, you got to make sure that kids are engaged, that they feel like school is important to them.
		So, and that, again, I'm going to look at this.
		We are competing with this.
		We're competing with the phone.
		We are competing with social media.
		So how do we make schools engaging?
		How do we make schools relevant?
		What do we do to create the kind of problem solving and critical thinking and resilience and relationship building that we know kids need to succeed in life?
		Project-based learning.
		That would create the Sputnik moment.
		Remember, there used to be a Westinghouse scholarship and competition across the country.
		There used to be civics competitions across the country.
		We don't do any of that stuff anymore.
		Those things are now viewed as, oh, they're too expensive.
		Let's actually, if you want to create the sputnik moment, let's have project-based instruction.
		But not just for the smarty pants.
		Let's do it for the rural kid in New Lexington, Ohio, who somebody says, oh, you know, we're never going to give them it.
		Yes, give them a chance.
		Have them do advanced manufacturing like Chase Dumont is doing right now.
		Watch them soar.
		So let's actually do the Sputnik moment, but you do project-based instruction.
		You do things that kids really want.
		You actually stop for a second, fixating on the test scores and fixate on what kids need and what they want and creating a safe and welcoming environment.
		So I'd be happy to talk to Rom, but when he was in charge, he didn't do so well.
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		Let's go to George.
		George is in Kentucky Democrats line.
		George, you're on.
		Go ahead.
unidentified		Okay.
		Nice to talk to you, Randy.
		And you don't deserve the verbal attacks you've had against you today at all.
		I believe this.
		Kids in dirt poor areas of a lot of large municipalities, especially really don't get a fair chance at all.
		And we don't, well, we need to fund our public schools, not by property taxes, but by all a general fund where it goes equally to each district, and we don't do that at all.
		The way we do it, it's almost like giving the Super Bowl winners the first-round draft pick.
		But other than that, the GLP, the upper brass, the GLP, for probably a century or more, they just literally ideologically do not believe in public sector functions to help people.
		They believe the only role, basically a lot of them, they'll never come out and admit it.
		They believe the only role for our government, or we the people government, is military and police.
		They want to run everything like a business, like a for-profit business, and they want to privatize absolutely everything.
		So one of their methods of getting this goal is to foment distrust, disbelief, lack of faith in various areas of influence like germ academia, school science and health,
		and the media, and to make the public, they want to make things to where they cannot work so they can foment distrust because their goal is to completely abolish or eliminate the public sector altogether if they could.
		They want to privatize absolutely everything.
		And that was part of Newt Gingrich's, I call it the contract on America.
		And after they started privatizing, taking public money out of public funding, tuition rates absolutely skyrocketed.
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		Gotcha.
		Thanks, George.
		Thank you.
		Thank you.
		So I apologize.
unidentified		So let me just say, first off, thank you.
		But look, I was saying to Pedro before the show started that we don't do enough of talking with people who disagree with us.
		And so part of what you learn as a school teacher is when I say create a safe and welcoming environment, you have to create an environment where people feel like people with each other, regardless of what their ideological bent is.
		And in some ways, that's what pluralism means.
		That's why, you know, when I talk about and think about pluralism, why public schooling is so important, it becomes a public square.
		And it doesn't, and no teacher I know looks at the registration of their kids' parents to decide where they're going to sit or what they're going to do or things like that.
		And we have to have the muscle to do more of that.
		So I appreciate what you said, but I also appreciate the show and people calling me names and whatever.
		But let me just say something about Kentucky.
		Kentucky voted for Donald Trump in 2024, but there was a voucher ballot initiative funded by a bunch of people who said that they were about school choice.
		It failed in every county in Kentucky.
		It failed significantly.
		So the voucher initiative failed.
		There and the two other places, it was on the ballot.
		But yet in Kentucky, they voted for Donald Trump.
		So what you heard from our caller is that people want their public schools, they want them funded, and regardless of what their particular ideology is, this battle over public schooling and whether or not one has it is frankly much more of a battle of ideologues versus the rest of the people.
		And frankly, I do think he's right that there is a war on knowledge.
		And if I go back to the founders and the framers, and again, I've just spent a year writing a book, so I've spent a bunch of time thinking about this war on knowledge.
		Like I spent a bunch of time answering the question that George said, which is why?
		Like, what is going on here that there is this smearing of teachers, that there is this undermining of public schools?
		Yes, public schools need to be strengthened.
		Yes, we need to do a better job to help every single kid succeed.
		We're not, our goal is every kid, opportunity for all, not opportunity for some.
		So what is going on here?
		And there is this war on knowledge.
		And the framers, the founders, they understood that kids needed to know critical thinking.
		They needed education in order to have a democracy.
		And so this is a fight to have democracy.
		It's a fight for equal opportunity for all kids.
		It's a fight to ensure that every single child can actually discern fact from fiction regardless of what they believe.
		They can actually problem solve.
		They can actually, if they fall down, they can get up and figure out what to do.
		So that's what public schools do when we need the support and the money to do it.
		And it shouldn't be ideological.
		It should be bipartisan.
		And the last thing I'll say is this.
		Before Brown versus Board of Education, it was bipartisan.
		So what happened when we had the Brown case?
		What happened?
		You heard this from a caller.
		Johnson, the civil rights laws.
		It was not about whether you have Democrats versus Republicans.
		It was about whether or not we are helping all kids.
		Are we giving that kid that comes to school without shoes?
		Can we give that kid some shoes?
		I run a charter school.
		I run a charter school in New York City.
		We had to buy a washing machine and a dryer to make sure that we could help our kids have clean clothes.
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		Let's go to Mark in Minnesota, Republican line.
unidentified		I had three quick questions for the guest.
		Number one, I believe the general consensus these days is that the school closures due to COVID had a negative impact on educating the children.
		Number two, I'm curious as to what role the guest role, the guest played in advocating for the school closures.
		And number three, is the guest a Marxist or a socialist?
		Thank you.
		So number one, my grand, let me answer it in the inverse way.
		Number one, my grandparents, my grandfather, who was in medical school at the time, escaped from pogroms in Russia and in Ukraine.
		And every time somebody actually calls me a Marxist, I think about my grandfather and that he would be rolling in his grave.
		So that's number one.
		Please give me a break.
		I am a person who believes in opportunity for all and dignity for all, and I fight for it every single day of the week.
		And I am actually a progressive capitalist.
		So that's who I am.
		Number two, I believe that COVID closures did hurt kids.
		And I have said that over and over again.
		And in April of 2020, we were the first ones to actually put out a report about how to reopen schools and reopen them safely and tried to make schools the priority, not, look, I understand why bars and why the economics had to be a priority, but we wanted schools to be a priority.
		And so, you know, regardless of whether people put words in my mouth or not, if you look at the evidence, we actually tried.
		What we wanted to do, and nobody knew very much about anything, is we wanted people to be safe.
		We wanted our kids to be safe.
		We wanted their families to be safe.
		And we wanted teachers to be safe.
		But literally, we believe in public schooling.
		We believe that they should have been open, you know, far earlier than they were, and that they should have been a priority.
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		Did AFT advocate for closures initially?
unidentified		AFT advocated for closures in March when, but we were not the first ones to advocate for closures.
		We didn't know, you know, so we advocated for closures in March when we saw what was going on.
		But by April, we were advocating, by the end of April, we were advocating for schools to be reopened and reopened, but reopened safely.
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		You hinted on it and talked about it a little bit, but the administration and this administration, what do you think their emphasis is for school vouchers, even as seen as the recently passed House bill?
unidentified		I mean, they just want school aid to be a piggy bank for vouchers.
		They don't actually have an education.
		I mean, they don't have an education policy other than take money from the public schools and give it to private schooling or give it to religious schooling.
		I mean, the other, the caller from, you know, Texas was talking about the issues of the Ten Commandments in Texas.
		And look, I'm, spoiler alert, you know, I'm married to a rabbi.
		I'm a pretty, I mean, I'm not, you know, I'm not an Orthodox Jew, but, you know, I'm a, I love going to, I love celebrating Shabbos.
		I love going to Shul on Friday nights.
		I'm, you know, pretty observant in that way.
		Our Constitution has in some ways enabled more church going people in the United States than almost any other place in the world because of two clauses, the free exercise clause and that the state will not establish a religion.
		And so when you put the First Amendment, when you put the, when you put the Ten Commandments in a classroom, you're basically establishing a religion.
		And it's basically creating a division and saying that one religion or two religions, Judo Christianity, is preferred over everything else.
		That's a clear violation of both the ethos of our founders and the reason and the plain words.
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		Don in Oregon, good morning, Independent Line.
unidentified		Yes, I've been waiting for a while.
		I was educated back in the 60s and early 70s.
		And in those days, you've got basically a free education, even into college.
		I got my college degree in 1971, and I didn't pay a single penny of tuition.
		Yet by the time the Department of Education was established 10 years later, the cost of education skyrocketed.
		I hate to say it, but I was a farm.
		My father was a farmhand, and my grades were horrible, but I ended up getting a good education for very little money.
		And I just wanted to say that, you know, the Department of Education has not really done the job that it was designed to do in 1980.
richard c hoagland ▲ ● ▼		But so, and I can see in kids getting their education, their education is substandard, and it needs to be upgraded.
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		Okay, thanks, Caller.
unidentified		Look, I don't, I think what you're actually saying, and I don't mean to walk into this controversy, but the federal policy significantly changed in 2000 to have No Child Left Behind.
		And basically, what the Department of Education basically became is a test monitoring agency.
		And then, and then the federal role became much more about testing and accountability as opposed to the supports for children to learn.
		Now, I disagree with the policy from No Child Left Behind and from Race to the Top.
		I disagree with those policies.
		My point about the money and about the funding and about education is a much more basic point, which is every country in the world wants its children, I hope, wants its children to do well.
		And that's the future of your country.
		Your future of your country is not, you know, in what's happening today.
		It's in what's happening tomorrow.
		So, the symbolic emphasis of getting rid of the only department you get rid of is the one that's about the future and the one that's about the kids.
		You know, it doesn't control schools.
		It just controls the money that goes to schools.
		It's just wrong if you care about the future.
		And that's why, overwhelmingly, people are against the closure of the Department of Education.
		So, it's ironic.
		I've said a lot of negative things about the way in which the department operates over the course of time.
		But there's a difference between throwing out the baby with the bathwater and just throwing out the bathwater.
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		The website for the American Federation of Teachers is aft.org.
		Randy Whitegarten serves as the president.
		Thanks for your time.
unidentified		Thank you.
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		Another discussion taking a look at education matters.
		We're going to meet Ed Choice President and CEO Robert Enlow talking about policy changes under the Trump administration, particularly what it does for the school choice movement.
		We'll have that discussion when Washington Journal continues.
unidentified		George is being scared to death and saddling up anyway, as John Wayne said.
		Y'all made it.
		You climbed that mountain.
		Take the risk, push yourself onto a new challenge.
		This week, watch commencement speeches from across the country featuring inspirational messages from political leaders, sports personalities, and celebrities.
		Hear remarks by Veterans Affairs Secretary Doug Collins at Piedmont University, Maryland Governor Wes Moore at Lincoln University, New Hampshire Governor Kelly Ayot at Nashua Community College, Minnesota Governor Tim Walz at the University of Minnesota Law School, singer and songwriter Usher at Emory University, rapper and record producer Snoop Dogg at the University of Southern California Marshall School of Business, and former basketball star Carmelo Anthony at Syracuse University.
		Watch 2025 Commencement Speeches this week beginning at 8 p.m. Eastern on C-SPAN 2 or online at cspan.org.
		Sunday night on C-SPAN's Q&A.
		Wall Street Journal columnist Jason Riley, author of The Affirmative Action Myth, argues that the racial preference policies of the 1960s and 70s have had an overall negative impact on the success of black Americans.
		There are racial differences in America, in our society, cultural differences, ethnic differences.
		But when it comes to public policy and how the government treats us, treats the population.
jason riley ▲ ● ▼		No, it should not be picking winners and losers based on race or treating people differently based on race.
unidentified		It's been a disaster.
jason riley ▲ ● ▼		Whether the effort was under Jim Crow to elevate whites or the effort was under racial preferences to elevate non-whites, it's been a disaster.
unidentified		You know, people like to say that diversity is our strength in America, but I disagree.
jason riley ▲ ● ▼		Our real strength in this country has been to overcome our racial and ethnic differences and focus on what unites us as a country.
unidentified		That has been the strength of America.
		Jason Riley with his book, The Affirmative Action Myth.
		Sunday night at 8 Eastern on C-SPAN's Q ⁇ A. You can listen to Q ⁇ A and all of our podcasts on our free C-SPAN Now app.
		Washington Journal continues.
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		Robert Enlow is the president and CEO of EdChoice, joining us now when it comes to administration, education policies, particularly when it comes to school choice.
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		Mr. Enloe, good morning.
unidentified		Good morning.
unidentified		Thanks for having me.
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		Could you talk a little bit about your organization, what it does, and how you're also financially supported?
unidentified		Sure.
		So EdChoice is the legacy foundation of Milton and Rose Friedman.
		Milton Friedman, as you might know, was the 1976 Nobel Prize winner in economics.
		And he had the idea back in 1955 that it's fairer, more equitable, more efficient to separate the government financing of education from the government administration of schools.
		So we support funds that go to parents.
		We do research, data analysis, and polling to make sure the American public understands the importance of school choice.
		And like most nonprofits, we're funded by anyone that is willing to support our cause.
		We take money from anyone except the government.
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		And I suppose when it comes to the matter of school choice, when you say that, everybody has a perception of it.
		What do you think that perception is?
		What's the reality from your perspective and what you do?
unidentified		I mean, the reality is that parents want their children to be in the best option possible.
		And that often is by moving to a district and buying a house.
		And we think that's patently unfair, right?
		The idea of American education, of public education, should that we should have an educated public, not an income segregated system of schooling based on where you live.
		And so what we're trying to do here is separate that funding from where you live and allow parents to choose.
		And that's what parents want.
		They want the ability to get the best option for their kid, regardless of whether that's in a public, private, or charter school.
		We're really sector agnostic.
		We just want families to have more choices.
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		Our previous guest talked about vouchers, and I suppose it's not the first time you've heard an argument that if you impose some type of voucher system, it ultimately takes away from public education overall.
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		What do you think of that argument?
unidentified		That's just patently false, and we know it to be false over time.
		Every single study that has ever been done on the impact of school choice on a public school finances has shown that it has not had a negative impact on public schooling finances at all.
		Moreover, we've seen dramatic increases in funding to traditional public schools over the last 10 years, a 13% increase.
		It's now $17,000 or so per kid, $850 billion.
		It's not like we have a spending problem.
		We have an outcome problem, and that's why parents are demanding more options.
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		When you say outcome problem, are you specifically looking strictly at testing and results that way?
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		Or are there other factors that determine that?
unidentified		Oh, there's tons of other factors.
		Testing, testing is important, but families care about academic quality.
		But what they really are starting to care about is they want their kid in a safe school where the kid's not bullied.
		They want the kid in a school where they're not anxious and overworried.
		These are the number two, one and two reasons why families are choosing right now.
		They're saying, Don't have my kid bullied.
		I want a safe school.
		Don't have them anxious.
		And by the way, give me some academic quality as well.
		And that's why you're seeing millions of parents moving away from their traditional school options to other school options, including across the district or charter schools or private schools, or now we call them ESAs.
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		According to the folks at Education Week, they tell us that 20 states currently, when it comes to school choice options, have tax credit scholarships, 18 have education savings accounts.
		10 states, including the District of Columbia, have voucher systems.
		Two have tax credit education savings accounts, and five have direct tax credit.
		That's a lot of waterfront there.
		What do those mean as far as options for parents in most states when it comes to school choice?
unidentified		Well, I love it when Ed Week uses our data.
		So they're collecting that data.
		We appreciate that's what EdChoice collects.
		We collect this data across the country.
		What it means for families is that there are multiple ways that families can access options, right?
		You can get money off your tax code.
		You can get a nonprofit to give you a scholarship.
		You can get direct assistance in the form of a voucher.
		Or in the modern case, you can get money put aside onto a digital platform where you can customize your education.
		That's education savings accounts.
		Look, we as taxpayers agree to fund education.
		That's important.
		The idea, however, that it needs to go to one school system where one size fits all is what we're trying to stop.
		And that's why education savings accounts and school choice are the national move right now.
		There are 36 states that have school, 35 states that have school choice.
		Over half of all Americans now have access to school choice.
		There are 18 states with universal school choice, meaning everyone can choose.
		This is a movement that is growing from small to big, and particularly since COVID, from zero programs that were universal in 2020 to 18 programs now.
		So families are demanding more options.
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		You may have said this already, but if those vouchers take place and those options are there, is it the private schools that benefit the most?
unidentified		So I think it's families that benefit the most.
		I mean, that's the point.
		Families, there's not a single dollar that goes to a private school unless a family chooses that private school or chooses that charter school or chooses to go across a school district or chooses to buy a house in a public school or chooses to customize their education through an ESA.
		All of this funding that we believe should go to families, not systems, is used through private school choice and through parents making those choices.
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		This is Robert Enlow joining us with Ed Choice.
		He's their president and CEO.
		If you have questions about him, about school vouchers and other related matters, 202748-8000 for Democrats, 202-748-8001 for Republicans and Independents.
		202748-8002.
		If you are an educator or a student and you want to give perspectives on the conversation, 202-748-8003.
		Mr. Enlow, in the House version of their budget that was passed, there is something called the Educational Choice for Children Act.
		Can you talk a little bit about that and talk about actually the addition of such a thing in this legislation?
unidentified		So efforts to try and create school choice on the federal level have been going on since Ronald Reagan and maybe even before that.
		This proposal is a tax credit scholarship proposal that will allow individuals to claim a dollar-for-dollar tax credit to contributions they make to scholarship organizations that give out scholarships or tuition or reimbursement for curricula.
		It's a national effort to allow school choice into all 50 states.
		You know, it does a great job of balancing that the role of education is truly at the state level and that the role of education should be placed in the hands of parents.
		And so it's a truly private choice program that allows private individuals to help private nonprofits to give out to families who choose.
		This is all a very positive direction.
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		As far as the approach that act does, is it a good approach?
		Are there issues with the approach?
		Could it be improved?
		How would you interpret that?
unidentified		Well, for D.C., it's the best possible approach, right?
		So it's as minimal invasion as possible right now.
		Although there's some challenges to that bill, like there are challenges to every bill, which we would like to see changed over time in the reconciliation.
		But the reality is, is if D.C. is going to do something like this, then it's probably a better option than other things they could do because we all know about federal overreach into schools.
		I have a friend of mine who is a superintendent for years, and she used to say, I get about 9% to 11% of my budget from the federal government, but 50% of my staff is compliance.
		And so there's a problem here in the sort of reach of the federal government, and this program does a good job so far of minimizing that.
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		You probably won't be surprised in response to the addition of that act.
		It was the National Education Association's Becky Pringle putting out a statement saying when they redirect public dollars to fund private school vouchers, they weaken public education and limit opportunities for students.
		They siphon crucial funding from public schools serving 90% of students and redirected to private institutions with no accountability.
		Access to affordable quality higher education will slip further out of reach for countless students.
unidentified		Yes, so that's just patently not true and based on the data.
		First of all, it's taxpayer funding.
		It's not funding for public schools.
		It's funding that we agree to fund kids and fund education.
		Second, every single study, this is something serious researchers agree to, when there's a school choice program operating in a state, public schools get better faster.
		So there's a real benefit.
		They call it competitive effects.
		There's tons of studies that show public schools get better faster.
		There's also tons of studies that show that children do better.
		They also, tons of studies that children become more tolerant of other people's opinions.
		So this idea of unaccountability really doesn't trust parents because parents are the best in final accountability.
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		Robert Enlow joining us for this discussion from Florida.
		We'll start off with Ross.
		He's on our independent line.
		You're on with our guests.
		Good morning.
unidentified		Morning.
		Yes, I was hoping to get more specificity on evidence-based successes that you can repeat as far as what has already worked.
		As far as going with etymology, with education, educare, to learn from within rather than without,
		I was going to ask what, for instance, by having more responsibility with the parents to get more, get the PTA more active again and have information rather than the disinformation that is permeating.
		I was going to ask with specificity what you can add to that.
		Okay.
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		Also, Ross from Florida, thanks.
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		Mr. Enloe.
unidentified		Hey, Ross, that's a great question.
		Here's some answers to that.
		Regarding parents and their involvement, we have done studies in the state of Indiana of parents who receive scholarships and sort of try to find out how they're behaving differently after they got a scholarship than before they got a scholarship.
		What they tell us over time and in multiple studies is that as a parent, they get more involved in their child's education.
		They get more involved in their child's homework and they get more involved in their community.
		It's a very positive benefit for parents to have that power and control again.
		It gives them a sense of empowerment.
		It gives them a sense of belonging.
		And they do a lot more with that by getting involved in their schools.
		As related to the evidence that we know, at EdChoice, we collect all of the studies, pro and con, of the high-quality studies onto school choice.
		We have found of the 188 studies, there are 166 that show positive gains and only 11 that show neutral gains, and very few that show anything negative.
		And here's what that means: we study and find studies that show how many students do in school in voucher programs.
		And the evidence is that overall they perform slightly better statistically on state tests.
		This is true in every state except Louisiana and Indiana, although the new data out of Indiana is showing positive results.
		We study whether kids graduate at higher rates, matriculate, and persist in college at higher rates.
		School choice is finding tremendously positive results for that, particularly from the urban institutes studied most recently by David Figlio.
		We study whether competitive effects exist, whether public schools in areas with high concentrations of choice do better on standardized tests.
		That evidence is overwhelming.
		We study whether families and children are more tolerant and have more civic engagement.
		Those studies are also overwhelming.
		So there's tremendous amounts of data you can look at.
		It's called the one, two, threes of school choice.
		I encourage anyone here, go look at the data, read the studies for yourself, and make your own determination.
		But the overwhelming majority of studies show positive results from school choice.
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		In New York, Democrats lying.
		Gloria is next.
		Go ahead, please.
unidentified		Hello, can you hear me?
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		You're on.
unidentified		Go ahead.
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		Yes, we can.
unidentified		Thank you.
		I have to make a separation here.
		Public education is a public good for communities, as is police and fire and all of our other public goods.
		This is how Americans as a nation educate.
		To start to parse out these monies to different types of school systems corrodes the foundation and the public good and then becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy: oh, yeah, public schools don't work.
		If you look at the massive bulk of the population of this country, it is in public schools.
		And this idea that parents only should be the users and deciders of the education is giving, parents are the advocate for their children.
		It is their job.
		But educators stay in, and over the long term, we have become a testing mill.
		Why?
		Because that's the best way to say, oh, it doesn't work.
		Oh, it doesn't work.
		And everything that was said, especially during Randy, one caller spoke about the fact that they're just pulling apart all of our public goods, all of these things to say, government is no good.
		Let's just do whatever we want.
		And here we are.
		We have made so much progress in education, and parents have a gigantic voice in public schools.
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		Okay.
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		Gloria, thank you.
unidentified		Gloria, Alec, I really appreciate that.
		Believe it or not, I'm a huge fan of the idea of an educated public and a public education.
		I just don't necessarily think that's done in one place in a one-size-fits-all traditional government-run district-run system, right?
		So for us, it's the idea that parents should be in more power.
		And if we're looking at other countries, by the way, I heard the previous caller talk about other countries.
		Every other Western democracy all across Europe believes in pluralism, and they fund private education.
		They fund religious education in a way that's basically universal choice and universal vouchers.
		So what we're really talking about here is we believe that education is a public good, but that public good is not delivered only by a government-run school system.
		It's delivered by any system that educates the public.
		We believe in an educated public for the public interest, and that's important for us.
		That's why we support charter schools and private schools and traditional public schools.
		We just think that you've got to separate that connection between a district-run system where you're buying a house to choose a school and then letting parents choose.
		And I think that's the big difference here.
		We believe in an educated public.
		We just don't believe in a traditional government-run system only.
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		Mr. Enlow, I don't know if you had a chance to listen to our last guest, but she brought up the fact that it was Kentucky voters who turned down a school voucher amendment.
		She mentioned other states as well.
		Is this anecdotal of it, or at least in these three states, is it specific to these three states, or does it reflect a larger picture of how states feel about vouchers?
unidentified		So that was really interesting.
		So the Kentucky and Nebraska cases, there was a, just for your listeners, there were referendum on the idea of school choice.
		And in those states that don't have any school choice at all, Kentucky and Nebraska, hardly any at all, they saw crushing defeats.
		And let's be honest, they saw crushing defeats.
		But in Colorado, where you've had examples of school choice for a long time, where you've had charter schools and you've had lots of new micro schools springing up, where you've had tremendous amount of opportunities for families, you saw the referendum basically get to 50% of the popular vote.
		It needed 51% or more to pass.
		So you're seeing in states with school choice a greater level of support for school choice.
		Look, otherwise, there wouldn't be 36 states or 35 states in America that have school choice, and you wouldn't see the growth in the school choice in the way it's gone, particularly since COVID.
		So we understand that there's no system is perfect.
		We accept that Kentucky and Nebraska have made their choices.
		And now we believe that the rest of the country is making its choice.
		And education is primarily a state function.
		Let's remember that.
		80 to 90% of the funding comes from state and local governments.
		And that's where it should be, because that's where the focus of education is.
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		Of the states that you know that have school voice, is there a standout state, the state that does it right on a lot of different fronts?
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		And what would that state be?
unidentified		Great question.
		The states that we think do it right are Arizona, Florida, West Virginia, and Arkansas.
		And that's because what they do is they allow all families to choose.
		They give them all the options.
		They don't just say you could choose one private school or another private school or a charter school.
		They say customize, allow your family to go to one school and then maybe get a tutor or go to a micro school and then come back and get educated at home for a while.
		And then they give all the money.
		They connect the dollars to the families.
		And so it's not like a program that has a cap of a billion dollars like Texas, which is great, but it's still a cap.
		And so when they do those three things with it's all kids, all options, and all dollars, those four states of Arizona, West Virginia, Florida, and Arkansas are the standouts to us.
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		Let's hear from Sarah.
		Sarah joins us from New Hampshire.
		Independent line for our guests.
		Go ahead.
unidentified		Hey, good morning, and thank you.
		Yeah, I'm from New Hampshire.
		We have a voucher system type of thing happening.
		And our legislature just lifted the cap.
		So if you're a wealthy family, you already have the money to send your kid to private school, you can still tap public funds.
		So I'm in a cooperative school district.
		We have a problem with filling our classrooms now because children are being siphoned off, low birth rate, immigrants are getting kicked out of the country.
		And we're closing some fairly new schools.
		A threat of closing them because we don't have enough funding.
		Our cooperative has had to go to the state to sue for equal funding where wealthy towns get more money than our group of towns.
bernadine smith ▲ ● ▼		And personally, I think that, yes, some kids do benefit from this, but there should be a cap.
unidentified		Now it's just going up and up and up.
		It's like a water faucet.
		The state of New Hampshire has a constitutional obligation to fund and adequately educate every student in a public school system.
		They are not getting the funding to do that because the money's getting siphoned off.
		And I'd like to say how we got here.
		The extremism of the two-party, dysfunctional two-party system.
		We need ranked voting.
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		Okay, okay, Sarah, before we go too far down the road, we'll let our guest respond to what you said.
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		Thank you, Hill.
unidentified		Sarah, I really appreciate that.
		New Hampshire, yes, might be the fifth most state for us to have all of the universal options with universal kids and universal funding.
		Let me take a couple of those points you made, and I appreciate them.
		One, the concern about wealthy families getting access to choice.
		Well, wealthy families already get access to choice is through public taxpayer dollars.
		We fund $17,000 or so dollars per kid in public schools, and those go to billionaires and millionaires.
		And so one of my challenges back on this issue is, so why are we okay with a child who gets in my third grade state of Indiana $17,000 to go to a traditional public school?
		He's a millionaire.
		He wants to go to a charter school.
		He can get $9,000 to $10,000.
		But we balk at giving that same person $5,000 to go to a non-public school and have them pay the rest.
		Somehow we're okay with funding billionaires and millionaires as long as they buy a house in a sort of income segregated community.
		That's a difference for me.
		I find that an unjust way of looking at organizing society.
		When he looks at the spending in New Hampshire, we know that spending in New Hampshire has increased over time.
		In America, and nationally, here's one of the real challenges.
		Nationally, we've seen for the first time ever more non-teachers in classrooms than teachers or more non-teachers in K-12 education than teachers.
		We've seen a bloat in the bureaucracy, and we needed to really change that.
		And so the goal here is to allow families to choose.
		The families that choose are the ones that need it most.
		And a family that has a child who's bullied, like the ones we know in New Hampshire, or is not in a safe environment, like the ones we know in New Hampshire, we need them to have options too.
		And so that's, I appreciate your point, but look, we seem to be okay with giving millionaires a ton of money to go to income-segregated community schools.
		I think we should be okay with educating all kids regardless of who they are.
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		From North Carolina, Michael, Republican Line, go ahead.
unidentified		Hey, good morning, Pedro, Mr. Elo.
		I believe school choice gives parents the freedom to find the right learning environment, whether it's in a public school, another district, or homeschooling.
		Instead of a one-size-fits-all system, families can choose what works best, helping every child reach their full potential while respecting their individual dignity.
		And if I could make a couple quick points, Pedro, I actually had called when Mrs. Randy Weingord was on the show.
		She said she agreed with getting rid of all the bureaucracy that her successor has now incorporated.
		She agreed that parents' issues should be discussed on a local level with local school boards, which is also what the current administration is attempting to do by giving the power back to the states.
		She had all these great ideas, but she didn't incorporate any of them when she was in charge.
		And two more points.
		I think the closing of schools during COVID was definitely a bad decision for such a long time.
		And then finally, as a teacher in North Carolina, I'm a third grade teacher in a local school.
		They have books in our school system that, to say mildly, is like child pornography.
		That's too provocative to mention the contents of the book on this adult program today.
		Thank you.
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		That's Michael there in North Carolina.
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		Mr. Enlow, you can address anything you brought to the table.
unidentified		Michael, thanks for your question.
		First of all, thanks for being a teacher and thanks to all the teachers out there.
		EdChoice, for those of you who don't know, has since 2020 been doing monthly polling of 2,000 adults and 1,000 parents and biannual polling of teachers.
		And so we have, since COVID, the most comprehensive data set of parental attitudes towards school choice, towards issues of education, and probably the most comprehensive set of teacher attitudes.
		And here's a positive thing that I would say about teachers, because we just released our most recent teacher poll.
		Teacher optimism is on the rise for the first time in the last four years.
		So four years previously, it was on the downgrade, down, very pessimistic.
		Now it's going up six.
		And here's a really interesting thing I'd like to make.
		We ask in our questions an unaided question.
		Do you support vouchers?
		Do you support education and savings accounts?
		Just no definition at all.
		Teacher union members support unaided the idea, do you support an ESA?
		60% of teacher union members support the idea of an ESA unaided.
		When you actually give them a description, that support jumps to 74%.
		So teacher support for the idea of choice is really strong.
		That's because they know what's happening in classrooms and they want more options.
		You're seeing optimism beginning to rebound.
		You're seeing parents starting teachers starting to say we want more opportunities.
		You're seeing teachers starting more micro schools.
		I think we're on the cusp of something great because of what families and teachers are doing and because of school choice.
		So appreciate Michael's work in North Carolina and keep going.
		Teachers are on your side.
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		You talked about teachers.
		One of the categories for your spring poll about public support for school choice programs, the headline says it's dipped since last year, though overall support levels remain high.
		We're showing people the chart, but fill in the blanks.
unidentified		Yeah, so what's really important is you could see a consistency of support of school choice from 2020 all the way to today.
		And it goes up and down over time.
		And it's dipped a little bit from its highs and it's going to probably going to go back up.
		The reality is, is if you look at it over time, the majority of families support school choice.
		The majority of teachers support school choice.
		The majority, like this is not even partisan.
		Democrats support the idea of ESAs.
		Republicans support ESAs.
		Low-income support ESAs.
		There is a tremendous amount of support for the idea of school over time.
		And so you see individual dips, but over time, what you're seeing is a pattern.
		For example, another pattern we see over time is since COVID, families want to have their kids not in brick and mortar schools five days a week.
		About half of the families say, I'd like my kid to be educated outside of a brick and mortar school for one day a week or more.
		This is a really important movement right now, a moment in the K-12 education where schools need to start responding to these desires from families.
		And if they don't, they're going to find themselves in a situation like our friend in New Hampshire where schools are not being responsive or like our friends in Indianapolis where our public schools are not being responsive fast enough.
		And our goal is to make sure more families have more options and the public schools get better.
		So this is why competition works.
		It actually lifts all boats.
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		Mr. Enlow, the first chart in that spring poll talked about the majority of Americans not supporting the closing of the Department of Education.
		Were you surprised by that result?
		And can I ask you also if your organization or you take a position on if the education department should be dismantled?
unidentified		So we support the fact that the administration is trying to do something with a very giant, overbloated bureaucracy, right?
		It is important that they do something about it.
		It is important that they recognize that the federal overreach has been around for a long time and to really get to the core functions of the Department of Education.
		Look, it's really clear from our polling that when asked whether they should close the Department of Education, only 36% supported closing it and 49% opposed it.
		However, if you dig deeper, a majority of Republicans, about 58%, supported closing the Department of Education and 69% of Democrats opposed it.
		So you're seeing a partisan split.
		But what's really important is there's a clear majority for Americans saying that we support the core functions of the Department of Education, i.e. funding schools, protecting civil rights, and promoting equal opportunity.
		That's true across all party lines.
		And so the real question for the Department of Education closure isn't if it's going to be closed.
		It's what functions need to be preserved and where.
		And we support this administration's efforts or any administration's efforts, by the way, to stop this overreach and bloat that happens through an over-regulated public school system.
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		Joining us today for this conversation, Robert Enlow, the president and CEO of EdChoice.
		Let's hear from Ted.
		He's in Chicago.
		Democrats line.
		Thanks for waiting.
		Go ahead.
unidentified		Thank you so much for having me.
		I was going to say initially that I'm a teachers union member and I actually support school choice.
		So I do agree with you on the data that you provided.
		I was going to ask you, however, I've got children that go to private schools as well, and I do support the opportunity for options, but I was going to ask you about the history of segregation in the public schools post-1954 and Brown versus Board of Education.
		And I was with you, my brother, up until you started talking about dismantling Department of Education, suggesting that somehow states are going to figure out this civil rights stuff by themselves.
		They're going to figure out how to support anti-discrimination measures and funding by themselves.
		The only reason why we have the Department of Education is because the states were not doing that.
		And before 1954, I'm an African-American.
		Someone that looks like me had no shot of getting a quality education across half the states in the country.
		So while I do support some level of school choice, I think you've got to fund public schools.
		But I think there's a slight, I think we're being slightly disingenuous when you suggest the Department of Education can be closed and all that civil rights stuff will happen by itself.
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		Ted in Chicago, thanks for the call.
unidentified		Ted, that's a great point.
		Let me be clear about what I meant on this.
		I really appreciate you bringing this points up.
		We think that the protection of civil rights can be done at the Department of Justice.
		We think that that's an important role and a core function of the federal government to do that and fulfill the protection of civil rights and equal opportunity.
		And the American public is behind that.
		So we support that at the federal level.
		Whether that's done in our current U.S. Department of Education or not, I think is an open question.
		Remember, the Department of Education started in 1867, became an office in 1868, then got reinvigorated in 1979.
		And so there's a lot of growth and change that can happen in these departments.
		The core functions of the department, however, including the protection of civil rights, needs to stay at the federal level.
		And I think the American public agrees to that.
		I would also add on the one question about the choice and the teachers.
		I really appreciate hearing you say that.
		One of the challenges that we had from Brown v. Board is the fact that American traditional schools for a long time were not only income segregated, because look, you have to buy a house.
		And as you reduce the number of school districts in America, which we have done dramatically, if you look at the number of school districts in 1970 versus today, you'll see a dramatic reduction.
		From 1950 today, you'll see a dramatic reduction for a population that's twice as large.
		And so when you centralize like that, it's really impossible to make your housing price actually not out of the reach of most families.
		And so that mere fact of the income segregation also had a knock-on effect on racial segregation for a long time.
		We think choice stops that voluntarily.
		We see what's going on with Milwaukee, Wisconsin, and Cleveland and Florida.
		We see families of color starting new schools.
		This is all the steps in the right direction that we hope choice will lead to.
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		Let's hear from Kathy in Florida, Independent Line.
unidentified		Hi.
		Hello.
		Thanks for taking my call.
		I just want to say it seems like the way this is going, that it's basically defending public schools to establish religious schools, which, of course, goes against everything that our country was founded on.
		But my main concern is protecting the children because there's so much bullying and targeting of kids right now.
		I can't believe, and I live in the South, in central Florida, and people don't have money here to buy a house.
		You keep saying buy a house.
		We have people from all over the world that buy houses here because Disney World is here.
		Lots of big, expensive houses.
		So there's lots of money going into the schools through those taxes, but they can't afford to take $5,000 and send their kid to a safer school.
		That's not even an option.
		And the problem in Florida saying that it really worked out well in Florida, it hasn't worked out well.
		I can tell you that I personally, with my kids, because we've had it since the 90s, excuse me, when Jeff Bush was governor, and we had schools close down, charter schools close down, just throw everything into disarray.
		And it's very difficult on people.
		And I know many other people that they happen to, so it hasn't been good.
		It's been awful.
		And the thing that they keep doing is taking money.
		The state takes money out of the schools.
		It's the first thing they do.
		Every governor that comes in, they takes money out of the schools.
		And we need a federal government to handle that.
		That's what the federal government is for.
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		Kathy, thank you for your members.
		Kathy in Florida, thanks for your comments this morning.
		We'll let our guests respond.
unidentified		Kathy, I really appreciate your point.
		And I'm sorry that school choice hasn't worked out for you as well as it's worked out for so many other families.
		And that's, frankly, I think I hope the beauty of choice.
		If it doesn't work out, you have the ability to move and the ability to choose a new option.
		And Florida does provide those options.
		Your point about defunding public schools, though, look, we're for funding families.
		And if you look at Florida, they call it a per-pupil funding unit, right?
		It's not a per school funding unit or per public school funding unit.
		It's a per pupil allotment.
		It's a daily attendance allowance, right, or a daily allowance.
		The idea of it's based on the number of kids that go to your school.
		And so we agree as a society that we should fund kids already.
		The question is, is we just don't think they should go to one school system.
		And we think in Florida, where they have increased funding for public schools almost every year, like they've increased it all over the country.
		This is a big myth.
		When you ask families in our poll, how much do we spend on education?
		Almost no one gets it right.
		No one really says $17,000.
		They say somewhere in the region of $3,000 to $4,000.
		So this idea that we continue to talk about the funding of public education, I want to talk about the funding of an educated public, wherever that is, much like Europe does already.
		They fund their kids to go wherever.
		It's not to one religion or another religion.
		In fact, Milton Friedman thought very clearly, and I believe we'll show this over time, that the more choice you have, the more irreligious, the more secular that schools will become.
		And I think that's true over time if we allow choice and opportunity to operate.
		This is how the micro-school movement is happening across America.
		And we think it's a really important idea to allow families more freedom to choose and have the capability to have that power.
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		Mr. Arnold, I was interested in thinking, you're thinking the Supreme Court recently weighed in on that case when it comes to Oklahoma wanting to establish a public religious private school.
		It was a 4-4 split.
		Asides the split itself, what do you think about the merits of the case?
unidentified		Well, it was a giant punt by the Supreme Court, and I understand that, and I get it, right?
		Look, the question of this Drummond case, and it's called Isidore versus St. Isidore versus Drummond, was this.
		Is a charter school a state actor or not a state actor?
		And that's the question I think for us is important.
		And I think the answer to that is no.
		We think all schools that are not government-run should be considered non-state actors.
		That's our opinion.
		But look, I think what this bodes is it doesn't set a precedent.
		And we think that just any charter school could start.
		We're not about the idea of establishing a religious charter school is not about establishing a religion.
		It's about giving parents more options and giving districts and states more options to choose different schools.
		If the state chooses not to do that, that's fine with us.
		The reality is we just want every tool in the toolbox.
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		The governor of Oklahoma said another case will probably rise to the Supreme Court in this level.
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		And this time, Amy Coney Barrett, who sat out on this case, may be the swaying factor on it.
unidentified		You know, certainly her absence mattered in this case, and I think we haven't seen the last of this conversation.
		Again, one of the things I think your listeners need to realize, and they probably do, we didn't have what we call public education in this country until the mid-1840s, right?
		It's called the common school movement with Horace Mann.
		Prior to that, education was primarily privately run and parent-directed.
		Certainly highly unequal, right?
		But it wasn't government-run, right?
		In the 1840s until the 1910s is when we established a system of common schools or public schools as we call them today.
		And if people look at the history of those, you see that they were started a lot because there was a second wave of immigration coming in America.
		And that wave of immigration was primarily browner and more Catholic.
		And so there's a lot of anti-Catholic bigotry in the establishment of our schools.
		And so when we talk about the idea of public schooling, we've got to not remember, we have to remember it does not go back to 1776.
		It goes back to more like 1846.
		And it's important that we can change this and do what's right for American families by giving them more choices.
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		Here is Jeannie from Kentucky, Republican line.
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		Jeannie, good morning.
unidentified		Yep.
		Yeah.
		I'm a retired teacher of 30 years.
		I kind of have a great story to tell.
		I was sent to a private school.
		My mother paid for it, Notre Dame Academy, the best of the best.
		My daughters both went to public schools.
		I'm a public school teacher for 30 years, and I'm a little bit convoluted on EdChoice.
		I do believe the schools need to, there are issues with schools because in the 30 years I knew when I first started, things changed rapidly as the 30 years progressed.
		I saw too many ancillary people coming in, too many of the big, big people coming, taking over my opportunity to teach.
		And I can remember I was trying to teach as fast as I can because I could not get the other people out of my classroom.
		And my contention is, let's save the public schools, but also let's have opportunity for Ed Choice, too.
		I was so frustrated that I had a curriculum to follow.
		I'm a very dedicated teacher.
		I could have been on to being a supervisor.
		I could have been at administration because I had all the certifications needed.
		But my vocation was to teach the children and to educate.
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		Thank you, Jeannie.
unidentified		What a great story.
		And what a fantastic way to think about this.
		Like, we want our public schools to be as best as possible, but we also need more options.
		And thank you for being the teacher that you were.
		And we hope to give teachers more freedom by allowing them to have more choices.
		So I think you hit the nail on the head.
		We want great public schools.
		We want great schools for all families, and we just want more options.
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		One more call, William in Georgia, Democrats line.
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		Hello.
unidentified		Hey, how you doing?
		I think what they're doing, this is called elite flight.
		We had white flight before out of the school system.
		Now they want elite flight paid for by taxpayer money.
		There's not enough spots in these schools.
		If these schools want to be a school system, they must be in every county.
		Give everybody the opportunity to go see schools because there's just not enough seats for everybody to go to these private schools.
		And they will turn down people based on grades.
		They will have their own admissions.
		They will have endowments.
		If your grandparents went here, you get it.
		They're going to have all those.
		I'm not funding that with my tax dollars.
		Okay.
		Because we're going to leave out a segment of society.
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		William there in Georgia.
unidentified		Go ahead, William.
		Appreciate the question and the comment.
		We already are funding it through Pell Grants because that's what happens.
		Pell Grants go to religious private schools and religious schools all over into higher ed institutions of choice where you test in.
		So we're okay with it in the higher ed, it seems, with our taxpayer dollars.
		As to the elite flight comment, look, the vast majority of these programs prior to 2023 were for families in the middle and lower income.
		So we know that those were families that were not the elites that were needing more options and choosing.
		That's who benefited first and foremost from choice.
		And then lastly, you know, there's not enough spots.
		I hear that a lot.
		But the great news is we just did a study of Arizona and Florida and a number of states that have school choice.
		Here's what we found.
		In states with private school choice, robust programs, private schooling grew at a faster rate than in states that didn't have school choice.
		And in Arizona, you see dramatic growth of the number of private schools from 550, I think, to 661.
		You see dramatic growth in the number of opportunities for vendors like tutors and curriculum providers to come in to the state.
		That's just year-over-year gain.
		That's what happened in one year.
		So we believe the opportunity will create new spots, and it is proving to be the case based on the evidence.
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		The website for our guest is edchoice.org, Robert N. Lowe, the president and CEO joining us this morning.
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		Mr. N. Lowe, thanks for your time.
unidentified		Thanks for having me.
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		We will finish off the program today by going to Open Forum.
		And if you want to participate, here are the numbers: 202-748-8000 for Democrats, 202-748-8001 for Republicans, and Independents, 202-748-8002.
		Go ahead and make those calls now, and we will start with open forum when Washington Journal continues.
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pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		It's time for open forum, and again, you can comment on matters of politics by calling the line that best represents you, 202748-8000 for Democrats, Republicans, 202748-8001, and Independents, 202748-8002.
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		Nancy in Ohio, Independent Line, you start us off.
		Good morning.
unidentified		Good morning.
		Thank you.
		I'm sorry I missed your previous guest.
		I have never heard such smooth talking, flim flam foolery from a guest as I did the previous 20 minutes.
		He's a snake oil salesman.
		And I'll tell you why I believe this.
		There's nothing wrong with government-run schools.
		The majority of suburban schools are doing an excellent job.
		What they're doing is destroying urban area schools where there's greater poverty.
		And instead of using that money, aligning their pockets with private capital, they could be using that money to enrich the kids living in the poor areas on field trips, you know, better equipment, guest speakers, books, and so on, paying teachers living wages and so on.
		This is an atrocity, and I'm just disgusted that they use the flag parent choice.
		Well, guess what?
		Americans have a choice, not just the parents.
		We all support and pay for public schools, so everyone should have a voice.
		And I'm disgusted that you guys, C-SPAN, which I love, you know, is putting these salesmen on instead of someone who's actually able to give qualified factual information.
		Thank you, and have a good day.
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		Pat is from Florida, Independent Line.
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		Hi, you're next.
unidentified		Hi, good morning.
		I agree with the caller that was just previously to me with every word she said.
		As well as I believe that's the objective of this administration and perhaps a few before on the conservative side per se, there's two things.
		One is profit, and the other one is turning everything towards a religious aspect.
		For profit here in Florida, we keep on saying send it back to the states.
		To me, that would be a big mess.
		Look at abortion.
		Look what happened to abortion when it was sent back to the states.
		But getting back to this is that, for example, here in Florida, elementary school kids in charter schools are being educated at a fee of $25,000 a year.
		My tax dollars are going to educate kindergartners for $25,000 a year.
		That makes no sense whatsoever.
		Everyone needs a good education, but for that amount of money, that's ridiculous.
		Also, here, the school voucher system that DeSantis implemented, if you school your child at home, you get a voucher also.
		I don't understand that you made your choice to school your child at home, neither in the school or in the public school system.
		One last thing I'd like to say that's very dear to my heart is: I am 70 years old, been paying taxes for so many years, no kids, and I'm paying into a system, and I have no say-so as to what happens with this.
		And one last thing I'd like to say.
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		Okay, Pat, thank you.
		Let's go to Sheila.
		Sheila in California, Republican line.
unidentified		Hi.
		Hi.
		Well, I'm glad I called.
		I thought it was too late to comment on the school of choice topic, and I adamantly disagree with the prior two callers.
		I was president of our PTA when my grandson was in kindergarten, and we could not get parents involved.
		We couldn't even really get teachers involved.
		There were three people that ran the PTA, did the events, did so much.
		There's so much apathy in, at least in the school that I was PTA president for.
		And that had a lot to do with the income of the parents that were in a school.
		Most of the parents both worked.
		They only got involved if they felt their child was being harmed in some way.
		If they didn't, you know, they weren't at the forefront.
		And I believe that school of choice will give parents, one, an opportunity to have a voice early on and to be involved in the education of their children.
		If you have a choice, then you already have some buy-in in the outcome.
		And secondly, yeah, religion, I believe, doesn't really have a place in public school, but parents should have a choice of how they raise their children.
		Parents really are the ones that are responsible for raising their own children.
		So I strongly disagree with the prior callers, and I really appreciate the opportunity to express that.
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		Gotcha, gotcha.
		That's Sheila there in California, The Hill, reporting that it's tech billionaire Elon Musk, who spearheaded the cost-cutting efforts at the Department of Government Efficiency, saying he was, quote, disappointed to see the massive legislative package of Republican priorities make it through the House.
		I was, he, quote, I was like disappointed to see the massive spending bill, frankly, which increases the budget deficit and it undermines the work that the Doge team is doing.
		He said in a preview of an interview that's set to air this weekend on CBS Sunday morning, the bill titled the One Beautiful Big Beautiful Bill Act, adopting Mr. Trump's slogan for the measure, passed the House last Thursday after a series of last-minute negotiation and text changes that proved critical in coalescing GOP support for the legislation.
		That's from the Hill.
		Also, when it comes to the president himself announcing yesterday he's planning to pardon those TV stars Todd and Julie Christley, famous for Christley knows best.
		They were convicted in 2022, conspiring to defraud banks in the Atlanta area out of more than $30 million in loans by submitting false documents.
		It also goes on to say that the move continues a pattern of the president offering pardons of high-profile friends.
		On Monday, he pardoned Scott Jenkins, the former Virginia sheriff who was sentenced to 10 years in prison after being convicted on fraud and bribery charges.
		And the president also moved to pardon Paul Walzak, a Florida healthcare executive imprisoned on tax charges.
		Let's hear from Gaston in Illinois, Democrats line.
unidentified		Hello.
		Yes, good morning, Pedro.
		How you doing?
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		I'm fine.
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		You're on.
unidentified		Yes.
		I will let this is my first time.
		Sorry.
		When it comes to this type of conversation, the charter school, there's a problem.
		Many of this, there are private companies that they're using the state funds.
		And people, they don't realize each state has their own responsibilities, not the federal government, 100%.
		So one of the problems that I have is when it comes to special education.
		Most of those charter schools, they tend not to provide any services to special ed.
		So that's a way to discriminate in a sense.
		And people criticize public schools for not taking care sometimes of this kid.
		And also, teachers, the requirements for teaching in each state, most of the time when it comes to charter school, they are not the same.
		So the quality of teaching sometimes is not the same because they are following some other state, even private corporations payment, you know, that is totally different from the teachers that they have to fight for their salaries.
		So that's my comment.
		And thank you.
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		I've heard from Illinois, another one from California, Azad, Independent Line.
unidentified		Hey, good morning.
		Thank you very much for taking my call.
		So I was just calling to speak on an observation that hit me when that very sweet and kind woman from Florida called, I believe the gentleman's name was Endo, and she asked him, what if your plan doesn't work for me?
		You know, she was expressing her poverty situation.
		What if your plan doesn't work for me?
		And his answer was, well, if you don't like our plan, if you have the means, you can move from the community, uproot yourself.
		And to me, this was a clear let them eat cake moment.
		Yes, so thank you.
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		Linda from Connecticut, Democrats line.
unidentified		Yes, good morning, Pedro.
		I didn't actually call to say this, but in all honesty, I also was the president of PPA, and I found that by creating programs like a preschool school supply store, that working mothers and fathers were more than happy to participate.
		You just had to provide them with the opportunity because, true, most of them were working full-time.
		But if you did things after hours and before hours, parents were really happy to be able to participate.
		But my main reason to call was with the student loans and people trying to track them down and anything really with the federal government.
		I have over the years contacted my Congressman's office, you know, the local office here, and they are so helpful.
		If you're stuck trying to track down anything with the federal government, you could call your congressional representative, and they are really a great resource that we overlook.
		And I just wanted to throw that out there for today.
		Have a good one.
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		Linda in Connecticut, Alabama Republican Senator Tommy Tuberville announcing Tuesday that he's launching a website to campaign for the governor of Alabama in 2026, ending months of speculation about his political future.
		This is at AL.com.
		He goes on being quoted as saying, like President Trump, I'll continue to protect common sense and stand up for our shared conservative values in Montgomery.
		He has said for months that he's considering a run for governor instead of seeking a second term in the Senate.
		He made the announcement on Fox News.
		This story also adds that no Republican candidates have announced for next year's primary, which is May 19th of 2026.
		If he's elected, he will succeed Governor Kay Ivey, who will have been governor just a few months shy of a decade when her term ends in January of 2027.
		Olympia from the Bronx, New York, Republican line.
unidentified		Hi, good morning to you.
		Thank you so much for taking my call.
		I wanted to kind of piggyback off of what the previous, one of the previous gentlemen said about not having standardization and also not being able to offer the services that some of our government-run school systems do.
		There's a standardization that is observed for baseline in education and a choice.
		I'm not sure if that's just another ploy to increase the privatization across the education system and then also by allowing some sort of discriminatory and exclusion processes in that way.
		Like the gentleman had mentioned, if you don't like what's being offered, you can leave the district.
		You can move.
		I can't understand how someone would be able to create a policy that drives people away from where they live in order to get education that they want for their children.
		It's kind of like us trying right now to get our children in other districts and they keep us out.
		I just think this is a whole big topsy-turvy mess and it's increasing the ability for people to get better education for their children.
		It's just increasing the chances that they're not able to get that for their children.
		And I just think that privatization is the end goal for just about everything.
		And in saying in privatization, I'm thinking that Trump wants to create a less government controlled environment for everyone, right?
		But government is doing more to control education and just about every other sphere of American life.
		Look at what's happening with the university, right?
		You're telling folks you can't bring in international students.
		Is that a bit much government intervention?
		And now it's pushing for privatization.
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		Yep, that's Olympia from New York.
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		Rachel in Delaware, Independent Line.
unidentified		Hi.
		Yes, good morning.
		I was very surprised this morning when I caught the end of that gentleman regarding school choice.
		My father was a university professor.
		My mother taught nursing.
		My sister's a teacher.
		My niece is a teacher.
		I come from teachers.
		And I went to a private school because it was a busing issue was a big deal.
		And that was back in the 70s.
		So I was fortunate, very fortunate enough to receive a private education.
		However, you know, I agree with the lady from Ohio when she stated that this guy, you know, he never got into how his, what he was saying, you know, why he was saying, you know, all these positive things about charter schools and choice.
		You know, he never went into details.
		He says things show that it was better.
		And then he only went up to 2023 at one of the comments he was talking about, never talked about currently.
		And both my sister and my niece started out in public schools, but ended up going to a charter school because the pay was better, but they still were able to keep their teachers' union.
		The other thing, I'm sorry I'm jumping, but there's so many things about this.
		The other thing the gentleman talked about was kept talking about government-run school.
		And I really think that that was not like a real appropriate way to talk about it.
		I would have preferred to hear district or locally run school.
		Yes, local government is local government, but there's a lot of people that perceive that big government, you know, the U.S. government actually, you know, controls curriculum and things like that.
		They don't.
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		Okay.
		Rachel there in Delaware, the New York Times reporting that Trump Media and Technology Group, the parent company of Truth Social, said Tuesday that it would raise $2.5 billion from institutional investors to invest in Bitcoin, continuing its transformation from a social media company into a financial services and crypto play.
		Trump Media, whose largest shareholder is President Trump, said it would raise $1.5 billion from about 50 institutional investors by selling roughly 58 million shares.
		The company is planning to raise an additional billion from the sale of bonds that can be converted into shares at a later date.
		From the Washington Times this morning, announcement from the FBI saying that it will revisit three high-profile unsolved political mysteries, including who brought cocaine into the White House during the Biden administration.
		The Bureau will reopen or invest more resources into the cases that FBI Deputy Director Dan Bongino said points at the potential public corruption.
		In addition to the White House cocaine case, the FBI will take another look at who left a pair of undetonated pipe bombs at the Democratic National Committee and the Republican National Committee headquarters on January 5th of 2021 and the leak of the draft of the Supreme Court opinion overturning Roe v. Wade in early of 2022.
		Lynn is next in Wisconsin Democrats line.
unidentified		Yes, I find it interesting that Mr. Inlaw Linlo of the Trump administration education policies in that school choice that he went on about all the goals of having school choice.
		But one significant point he left out that he should have mentioned is that this is what happens.
		The money, yes, goes to that family or goes, follows the child.
		But when the child is accepted at the voucher school and the voucher school finds that they can't serve that child or that the parents are realizing that they're not serving that child, the child then, the parents decide to take him out of the voucher school, the religious school as in this community, and then they move the child back to the public school,
		but the money stays at the voucher religious school, does not come to the public school or return to the public school.
		So I think that was one important point that he forgot.
		He was talking pretty fast about all the family this and family that and doing this and doing that.
		But he forgot about how our public schools are then robbed of the money that is rightfully theirs when they are educating that child.
		And that money does not come with that child when it's asked to leave the voucher school, the religious school.
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		Okay, Independent Lion is next.
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		Eric from Mississippi.
unidentified		Hello.
		Hello.
		Thank you for taking my call.
		I just want to talk about President Trump's recent tweet on Memorial Day.
		First of all, he shouldn't say happy Memorial Day.
		It's a time of remembrance of those who had lost their lives.
		So that's one of the things.
		In the midst of him supposedly honoring those in Memorial Day, he began a rant on his former political opponent, President Biden, identifying him as a scum, an incumbent president.
		And those things may have, to some degree, a place in your attacking your opponents.
		But Memorial Day, come on, man.
		And the fact that no one calls him out, none of his political ally, the Republican Party, did not call him out and let him act as a dictator.
		It's just sad, sad day in America.
		See him with these nasty, vindictive tweets.
		Did the same thing on Easter doing Easter celebration, these nasty, vindictive, ignorant tweets.
		Okay.
		Thank you.
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		Eric in Mississippi, this is from Betty.
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		Betty in Austin, Texas, Democrats line.
unidentified		Hi.
		I'm a teacher.
		I'm 72.
		I've taught for over 50 years now.
		I've always worked in the public school.
		And I just like to say that the, quote, religious voucher, whatever you want to call it plan is bogus.
		I am all for churches getting money from the government if they have to follow the same rules that public schools do.
		I'm a special ed teacher.
		And when you work in a public school, your student comes to you, you may not turn them away for any reason.
		If you have a child who's abusive or has autism or needs tube feeding, you may not shut the door on that child.
		It's illegal.
		You can get fired.
		Now, if you go to a private school, they'll tell you we don't offer special ed.
		We only want typical kids here and mostly white kids.
		Now, the other thing they'll say is, you're welcome to come to our school.
		We're going to give you money to come, but you live across town.
		Do we bus our kids to our private schools?
		No.
		Is there busing for charter schools?
		No.
		Who has to bus the kids across town?
		Independent school districts do.
		It's obscene to think that our country was founded on the reason.
		I mean, the reason we were founded was for the division of church and state.
		And now we're going back to that.
		Private schools in Austin, well, if you know anything about Austin, Texas history, during the time when we were trying to stop racism, schools in Austin bused children, minority children across towns to white schools and vice versa.
		We call it white flight.
		Westgate, the little area of Westgate, we call it White Flight.
		All these white people moved immediately because they didn't want their kids on a bus with a black kid.
		Okay.
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		Okay, Betty, I apologize.
		We're running close to time.
		I want to get more calls on Jerry in Virginia, Republican Line.
		Hello.
unidentified		Yes, good morning.
		Yeah, I would like to remind all these Democrats out there watching that in 2014, Russia invaded Ukraine.
		They took Crimea.
		That's under the Obama-Biden administration.
		And that territory was probably a thousand times as much territory as they've taken in this slave war.
		The Obama-Biden administration did absolutely nothing to deter Russia.
		When Donald Trump took office, his first term, he started giving Ukraine weapons.
		He gave them damn missiles.
		And if I remember right, that conflict ended very quickly.
		And then Joe Biden takes office, and Russia starts lining up to go into Ukraine again.
		Joe Biden says, oh, well, if they take a little bit of territory from Ukraine, that'll be just fine.
		And look where we are today.
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		Okay, Jerry in Virginia.
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		Let's hear from Jacqueline in West Virginia, Independent Line.
unidentified		I thank you for your time and consideration.
		I'm originally from the great state of Pennsylvania.
		I lived in Delaware when Biden was governor.
		He sorted us out to China then.
		There's no two ways about it.
		Anyway, I just want to say something.
		I just turned 64 years old, April 17th.
		And I was the greatest kept secret.
		I worked for the Secret Service in the 60s.
		And I grew up with the Cisco kids.
		And it amazes me because I have been all over the world.
		I was welcomed into my tribe, banana cokes, when I lived in Delaware.
		I had no idea I was in dead.
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		One more call, and this will be from John in California, Republican line.
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		Go ahead.
unidentified		Yeah, I just wanted to say, you know, a lot of these teachers and everybody are talking about, you know, the school of choice.
unidentified		Well, the teachers should have thought about, you know, their actions and the disservice that they, you know, that they that they had on the kids during COVID.
jonathan in new york ▲ ● ▼		You know, Trump was voted in to take drastic measures and harsh actions.
unidentified		So, you know, the access to, you know, you know, school choice, there's vocational specialized programs that you can get directly plugged right into when you graduate from high school.
		You know, these kids are going to college and they're leaving college with all this debt and indoctrinated.
		It's no wonder why you teachers are under attack.
		So rethink that you're rethink the way that you're educating the kids.
		Thanks.
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		That's John in California.

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