How does that figure in?

Just the way that you would think, like people are devastated.

And it's not just that suddenly your symbolic center of your town is gone.

You know, the place where you go to to watch theater and the arts and the place where you go to vote.

It's not just that, but when you pay attention to what happens in these rural communities, when the school closes, the town basically dies.

And so this is another reason why I just feel there is going to be a real reckoning that it was the libertarian, the real free market zealots who within the Republican Party, the Kochs and the Americans for Prosperity, who were on the leading edge of ushering this into policy at the state level.

You know, it was so obvious that rural people in particular were not happy about this.

What is it?

How does that figure in?

Just the way that you would think, like people are devastated.

And it's not just that suddenly your symbolic center of your town is gone.

You know, the place where you go to to watch theater and the arts and the place where you go to vote.

It's not just that, but when you pay attention to what happens in these rural communities, when the school closes, the town basically dies.

And so this is another reason why I just feel there is going to be a real reckoning that it was the libertarian, the real free market zealots who within the Republican Party, the Kochs and the Americans for Prosperity, who were on the leading edge of ushering this into policy at the state level.

You know, it was so obvious that rural people in particular were not happy about this.

What is it?

You said not just because of racism or because of opposition to the federal government, because of a desire to deepen inequality, right? What do you mean by that? Why would that be the reason for getting rid of the DOE in particular?

So when you think about the role that the Department of Education plays, why we have it, it was intended to smooth out inequality.

And what's so fascinating is that I don't think most people are aware that that the first Department of Education did not come during Jimmy Carter's administration.

It actually came in the wake of the Civil War.

And the idea was that federal officials were going to monitor how good of a job the southern states were doing teaching newly freed slaves to read.

And as you can imagine, that did not go over very well with a lot of the Southern legislators.

And so what they did is basically exactly what we're seeing now, right? They cut the budget, they cut the staff.

What takeaways do you have for what seems to be promising as ways to push back on all of this?

Kentucky parents deserve a voice in what their children learn in the-

I think we have to think about this in terms of what the MAGA movement claims to be.

And it really does claim to be a populist movement.

And we see tensions in all kinds of areas between this self-styled populist movement and the influence of billionaires.

And school vouchers is really at the top of that list.

In a state like Texas, you have a, a billionaire like Jeff Yass, hedge funder, richest man in Pennsylvania, big stake in TikTok, and he basically works with the governor to engineer an effort to knock out all of the Republicans in the state House who were opposed to vouchers.

A lot of these were rural Republicans.

You say that the far right both wildly overstates the power of federal education and understates what it means to get rid of it.

S- talk about children with disabilities. You know, there's the whole discussion of DEI, of diversity, um, equity, and inclusion, but it really actually is DEIA, diversity, equity, inclusion, and accessibility. Can you explain, Jennifer?

Yes, absolutely. So, people don't realize just how recent it is in this country that students with disabilities are guaranteed the right for a free and appropriate education. You can still meet people who came of age in the '70s and had, you know, siblings who didn't have... Uh, a school could just turn them away because they had a disability. And, and because we have a law in the books called IDEA, uh, Linda McMahon did not know what it, what it stands for, but it is the, uh, the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act. And, and so basically, y- students have a right that's enforced through the Department of Education. And so, it's no coincidence at all that in those layoffs that you mentioned, they went really hard at the division that enforces civil rights. The overwhelming majority of civil rights complaints are from parents who are seeking services and access for kids with disabilities, and basically the department is saying now, "You know what? We're no longer going to enforce your right. Instead, we're gonna turn what's left of our civil rights division into a sort of a weaponized lean machine that goes after alleged acts of antisemitism, and then also things that they suspect of having to do with gender ideology."

Jennifer Berkshire, how does this executive order fit into the broader war on public education?

It was really telling to see who Trump picked to join him in that weird scene where he signed the orders. So you have the kids at the desk, but then you have some of his favorite governors. Now, why are they his favorite governors? Because they are all in states that either have or are in the process of implementing what are called universal school vouchers. So this means that the state now picks up the tab for parents to send their kids to private religious schools. And most importantly, like, that money is not going for, to pay the, the cost of kids who are leaving public schools. It's now going to pay the tuition for parents who already sent their kids to private religious schools, which means that increasingly, in states like Ohio and Indiana, you have the government paying for the very wealthy to send their kids to private religious schools. So, why, why would this be your vision? Because if, if Trump had wanted to assemble, uh, you know, like the states that are doing the best on, say, standardized tests, this would not be the crew you'd have, right? Florida was so unhappy with how it fared on the latest round of what we call the nation's report card that the secretary of education wrote to complain that the test was rigged. And think about somebody like Indiana, your governors there. Indiana stopped investing in public education, K-12 and higher education, 15 years ago, and as a result, college attendance has plummeted and the state is doing really poorly economically. I think it's actually very indicative of where Trump sees us heading, which is to a sort of a meaner, less prosperous, more divided, and inequitable future, and you saw it right there on that weird set.