Trump Can't Destroy The Dept. Of Education But He Will
This is a preview of the Patron-only Weekender episode. To gain full access to these episodes, as well as special post-event and live recordings, and to keep the show editorially independent and ad-free, head over to Patreon and become a subscriber today.
Co-hosts Jared Yates Sexton and Nick Hauselman talk about Donald Trump's desire to kill the Department of Education, despite the law being crystal clear that only an act of Congress can do that. They go in depth on the Right's war on education as it aligns with their fascistic goals. They then discuss the tariffs Trump imposed but then paused on Canada and Mexico.
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Welcome to the Weekender Edition of the Great Podcast.
I'm Jared Yates.
I'm Nick.
I don't have power.
Is that metaphorical or you don't really have power?
I have no power.
I've got no juice.
Oh, no.
I'm sorry to hear that.
I hope you're staying warm.
I'm staying warm.
We'll talk more about...
I watched the Netflix miniseries Zero Day, which was about a major cyber attack that shuts down power.
And so in my head, I'm just like, is it ever coming back?
Is this the end?
I know.
I mean, imagine a world where you didn't have internet.
Like, you would cease to be...
Oh, Nick, I think constantly about a world without internet.
Don't threaten me with a good time, my friend.
Okay.
All right, everybody.
We got a jam-packed show.
My God, is there a lot going on?
A reminder, go over to patreon.com slash mcgregpodcast if you're listening to the free preview.
We know everybody listens to the free preview.
Everybody.
And we need your help.
We need your support.
Independent media needs your support.
Now more than ever, patreon.com slash mygregpodcast.
Nick, we got some goings-ons that we have talked about a little bit.
We sort of saw this coming.
But reports are now coming out that Donald Trump is preparing to sign an executive order that will dissolve the Department of Education.
We've also seen this paired with...
I can't believe I'm getting ready to say this.
Secretary of Education Linda McMahon, who sent out a memo titled, quote, our department's final mission, which singled out critical race theory, DEI, gender ideology, and what she called anti-American radicalization, saying that parents are the primary decision makers, called out once more DEI, and said that post-secondary education is a path to a well-paying career aligned with workforce needs.
Nick, it appears...
That one of the biggest major actions of the Trump administration is probably imminent.
This is something the right has worked on now for decades, which we'll talk about more in a second.
But there is a very real possibility we will see the end of the Department of Education.
Before I forget, you're the guy that asked this question to.
You know the guy that goes, let's get ready to rumble!
Michael Buffer.
Is that Linda McMahon's husband?
No?
It's not the guy who does that.
I thought that's the guy.
No, they have similar hair.
Her husband is Vince McMahon, who anybody who's familiar with the wrestling world also knows that he's no longer with World Wrestling Entertainment because, let me check here, oh, he is being investigated for sex trafficking.
Oh, yikes.
I don't think I knew that either.
Yikes.
Yeah, isn't that great?
All great.
Anyway, my initial reaction to this is that it's illegal and Donald Trump, by executive order, cannot dismantle the Department of Education.
So say it with me, Jared.
He cannot do what he keeps saying he's going to do.
Man, I love saying he can't do this while I watch earbuds sink three after three and do 360 dunks.
Just everybody is so ready for the institutions and the legal order to put this entire thing to right.
No, he can't do this, but it seems like he will do it.
Right.
I mean, because an act of Congress needs to be in charge of this.
Now, there are other things he could do by, like, trying to strangle it from money.
But again, that's also Congress's job, is to appropriate the money as well.
So this is where we got into this weird twilight zone where they're doing things that are patently against what the Constitution has outlined.
And as we'll see a little bit later in the show, this is where judges become involved as one of the co-equal branches of government, which I don't remember.
Does co-equal mean subordinate now?
Is that what it means?
I don't know.
The definition's changed on me.
Tell you what, you fuck around with unitary executive theory, whether or not it's George W. Bush or decades of executive orders, which is a blight on the presidency.
All of a sudden, co-equal doesn't really mean what it used to mean, particularly when you have a judicial branch that is completely enthralled by the wealth class that owns these people.
And on top of that, you have a Congress that has no interest whatsoever in getting in the way, and you have total, not just partisanship, but ideological solidarity more.
I would agree with you that the arguments they've been putting up about Unitarian presidential theory or power, because they've been...
Argued for so long, it does seem easier now for Trump to be able to take that power for himself, whereas if they hadn't been pushing it this long, it might have been pushed back.
But I will also say that there does seem to be quite a bit of the judiciary who is not interested in playing along.
And we've seen that in 2020 with the election, and her Republican-appointed judges as well.
But we'll get to that in a second, I suppose.
I don't want to get ahead of our skis on this one, but...
The bottom line is, I do feel like, I mean, obviously there's going to be a big lawsuit to block this, right?
And they're going to try and stop them from dismantling the Department of Education with executive order, right?
Right?
I mean, there will be an attempt.
Whether or not it matters or not is a different conversation.
I mean, this is, it's the raptor in Jurassic Park trying to see if they can get out of the electric fence.
That's a good reference.
Well, unfortunately, it's apt here.
A little bit of historical background, then we'll get into exactly what's happening here.
The Department of Education has been around since 1867. Why?
Because it's important.
To have an educational foundation for a country and its future and society in the whole.
What we've been dealing with now for the last 70 years is the fallout from 1954 Supreme Court decision Brown v.
Board of Education.
And so what immediately happened after desegregating public schools, you saw this push by the right segregationist, white supremacist, who then started creating private schools.
This was also a joint effort between not just segregationists but the evangelical right.
The anti-abortion movement actually has its roots in the segregationist philosophy.
Nick, you know, and everybody listening to this has heard states' rights.
This was the origin of it, the idea that all power should be taken from the federal government so that the states can determine whether or not you're able to discriminate, which is, again, being re-litigated.
So what are we seeing at this point?
The right is trying to throw this back to the states so that we can have not just segregationists, I think?
She knew when she took this position, one, she wasn't qualified, and two, she was delivering the Department of Education to its death.
So what are we dealing with at this point?
We are dealing with a hierarchical authoritarian movement that wants to make sure that some students are not going to get an education at all, or at least the scant minimum so that they can be productive workers and be exploited and never understand what's going on, while controlling curricula so that they can hide their history or at least the scant minimum so that they can be productive workers and be exploited and never understand what's going on, while controlling curricula so that they can hide their history and their own actions so they can further mystification, which you
and I have talked about ad nauseum, and basically create this oligarchical paradise, and basically create this oligarchical paradise, which is a nightmare, in which you have all of these owned curricula and institutions and schools, and in That's what this is all about.
Well, the irony is that when they try and make it seem like it's states' rights, they want to have each individual community control what their kids learn.
There is a centralized notion to what they want to teach with the curriculum, right?
We're talking about, they don't want to, they didn't mention slavery.
They probably will go back and get rid of creationism.
And wait, wait, they want, they don't want creationism.
They'll also get rid of the genocide of the Native American population as well.
At least.
That's the top three.
There's got to be another five or six in there that they're going to throw in there that are awful stuff.
In reality, this isn't any sort of local thing that they want to control.
This is some sort of nefarious mind-control propaganda arm that they're trying to establish, which you need to have, I suppose, if you want to form an oligarchy or an authoritarian government.
You need to have that kind of control over what the kids are learning.
Yeah, and this is how authoritarian movements always work.
It's a matter of institutional capture, right?
While you're taking over state power, you're also then going down the chain.
I keep referring to this as the avalanche coming down the mountain.
So they go into the schools, whether or not it's higher education or lower tier education, and basically go in and intimidate everybody to go along with them.
And we're seeing a lot of that right now, Nick.
We're seeing the leveraging of federal funding being tied to ideological conformity.
Basically, administrators at all levels are being told that they will lose all funding and all support if they don't fall in line and capitulate and collaborate.
And this is what we see with all authoritarian movements.
There are all these sort of signs that come together.
The weird nefarious part of this, though, Nick, is it's not just authoritarian white supremacist patriarchal ideology and also possibly Christian nationalist ideology.
The weird component now is there is this private sector that has already created this curricula.
Right.
It's basically handing out patronage to places that are going to come in and supply that curricula that is going to go ahead and push the authoritarian state power, which just sort of underlines the complicated nightmare that we're currently dealing with.
Yeah.
And we'll talk about this letter that Linda McMahon wrote earlier.
And the first thing that they do, they list in their convictions, is that parents are the primary decision makers in their children's education.
That's all about school choice.
Right.
Now, as far as I can understand how that means, they're the primary decision makers in the curriculum itself.
But I'm curious, as a professor for a lot of years, did you ever do, like, the training, the teacher training, you know, for, like, maybe graduate-level stuff that they have for, you know, teaching in the classroom?
Or were you just sort of an expert in your field and you were a professor for that way?
No, you got training.
Yeah, no, like, they train you basically how to put these things together, yeah.
Right, and I ask that because I had a lot of experience doing that at the high school level, and you start to realize that, you know, I know that schools are failing us, and we can talk all about the reasons for that, but I have to tell you, a lot of the infrastructure built into helping and supporting teachers and educating kids is pretty good.
You know, it is well thought out, and there are experts who are designing how we need to educate kids in the classroom, and it's very dynamic, and they're always updating, and they're always examining.
And so to hear someone like this who is coming from a whole different spectrum of thought...
You know, convinced that what the teachers are teaching and how they're being trained, I suppose the connection or the similarity would be how police are trained and how you and I would say we need to radically change that.
This is what they feel like.
They feel like these teachers are like what we feel cops are like now.
Well, and that is the present moment.
And the really frightening thing here, Nick, and it's becoming more and more, you know.
How much of what's going on with the Trump administration and the oligarchical coup that we've been covering is that they're just setting the ground for AI. They're basically creating a market need for AI to handle everything.
So not only are teachers going to lose funding, not only are they going to lose training and materials and studies that we're talking about with the Department of Education, eventually the solution is going to be the usage of AI. Which is why, and I know a lot of teachers and a lot of educators listen to this show, this is unacceptable.
This is a red line.
And with this happening, you know, I think I said it was in I think it was during our live coverage of the post address to Congress.
I said this is the equivalent of, you know, an attempted kidnapping where they're trying to move you to another location, you know, where like you're really, really in danger.
This is the point where you don't put your head down and say this is inevitable.
This is going to happen.
If you are not in a union, you need to get together right now.
And quite frankly, you're right, there are going to be lawsuits that are going to challenge this, but this is the type of thing, the walls are closing in.
And if you are going to make a difference, it needs to be made now.
So my advice to everybody listening to this who is an educator, a teacher who's involved in any of this, you need to get in the ears of your administrators, the ears of your bosses, and you need to start talking to your colleagues about stepping out of this.
Because this is, it's not just getting rid of funding and the training, it's also completely changing this over to another system that once we get there, I don't know how we get back.
Oh, I agree.
And I think that that's a really good way of trying to fight back on this.
You know, and the point I was also making, I think, is that the notion of what the kids are learning should be left to professionals.
That is why you go through that kind of training, to learn that, right?
As a parent of two kids, I don't think, I mean, having been a teacher, okay, I might have a sense of maybe one of the classes I taught, I have a sense of what that would be at that age.
But you're talking about...
And we've seen some of these parents who are speaking at some of these council meetings, right?
These are people who should be nowhere near deciding what the curriculum should be for anybody's kids, much less their own, which is why we have to have laws that will protect kids who are experiencing gender dysphoria, for instance, and they don't necessarily have to tell the parents.
The kid can tell the parents, as that should be an open communication method.
But we've seen this time and again, where these parents...
Abuse their roles as parents and ultimately make horrible decisions that are related to this.
And again, it's sort of related to the whole mindset that they have, that they want to control everybody, right?
This isn't a thing where my kid, I don't want them to learn about, you know, dinosaurs dying off, flying, whatever.
You can send them to a private school then.
But why they think that they have dominion over anyone else's kids for all these different reasons is beyond me.
You've been listening to the free part of this episode.
If you'd like to hear the rest of this great conversation, head over to patreon.com slash muckrakepodcast and subscribe for lots more additional content including a Discord server and live shows.
We'd really appreciate it if you could give it a try.
