Relatable with Allie Beth Stuckey - Ep 361 ｜ Teachers' Unions vs. Our Kids & Pastors vs. 'Jezebel' Harris

00:00:00.000 Hey guys, welcome to Relatable. Happy Monday. Hope everyone has had a wonderful day and had

00:00:15.260 a wonderful weekend. Today we've got a jam-packed episode. First, I will be talking to Corey

00:00:20.180 DeAngelis. He is an expert in school choice and in our public education system and the solutions

00:00:28.100 that we need in order to improve public education in this country. He is a strong advocate of the

00:00:35.060 dollars following the child rather than just funding a building so that parents can decide

00:00:40.920 for themselves with the resources that they have, our tax dollars, what education is actually best

00:00:48.280 for their child. And so we're going to talk about how this all relates to the school closures that

00:00:55.000 are happening across the country, supposedly, allegedly due to the coronavirus, but the

00:01:00.660 disparities that we're seeing in these public school systems that are forcing their schools to

00:01:05.980 stay closed versus charter schools and versus private schools that are opening their doors and

00:01:12.320 are not seeing a magnificent rise in infections, in infection. So we're going to talk about what's

00:01:20.000 behind that, what parents can do. If you're a parent of a child in public school to try to

00:01:26.780 open the schools in your district, the consequences that unfortunately are going to be suffered by

00:01:33.660 underprivileged students disproportionately whose schools are refusing to open thanks to the policies

00:01:39.900 of these teachers' unions. And then we are going to talk about a scandal that happened last week

00:01:48.240 in regards to Pastor Tom Buck and another Baptist pastor. These are churches in the Southern Baptist

00:01:55.060 Convention. They referred to, Tom Buck specifically, referred to Kamala Harris as Jezebel and why that

00:02:02.600 blew up into this huge deal. So we're going to talk about that and I'll give you my take on it.

00:02:08.520 First, let's talk to Corey DeAngelis.

00:02:10.560 Corey, thank you so much for joining me. We're going to talk today about the craziness that's

00:02:20.500 going on in our school system and the teachers' unions, especially as it surrounds this just

00:02:26.980 continuing frustration that a lot of parents have with their public schools refusing to reopen

00:02:32.420 despite the data and the science that says, hey, you know, this is basically okay. You can do this.

00:02:38.500 Tell me what's behind it. Why are there so many teachers' unions and public schools that are just

00:02:42.140 refusing to open their doors to students?

00:02:45.380 I just want to say you're totally correct that the data do suggest that schools are not main

00:02:50.740 contributors of the virus and they're one of the safest places to be. You look at data from the CDC,

00:02:56.140 you look at statements from Anthony Fauci himself recently, you look at data from UNICEF and Brown

00:03:03.760 University as well, finding that schools are not major contributors of the virus. One example of

00:03:09.260 this is New York City. They've opened some of their schools up and the community positivity rate is

00:03:14.180 about 9%, but the in-school positivity rate is about a 20th of that, about 0.5%. So schools aren't a

00:03:23.060 problem when it comes to being major contributors of the virus and they can safely reopen. And what's

00:03:29.100 interesting to me is the stark contrast that we've seen between the private sector and the public

00:03:33.760 sector. The private schools and other businesses, private daycares, restaurants, and grocery stores,

00:03:39.380 they've either been open the whole time or they've been open for a long time, or they've been fighting

00:03:45.000 hard to reopen for in-person instruction or other types of services for their customers. And in some

00:03:51.500 cases, you have the private schools fighting against governments, taking the battle to the courts

00:03:57.360 to try to reopen. Whereas in the public sector, you have the public schools and the teachers unions

00:04:02.000 fighting for the opposite. They've been fighting to keep their doors closed. And the one difference

00:04:06.280 there is one of incentives. One of these sectors gets your money regardless of whether they open

00:04:10.460 their doors for business. And so that's the main problem here. It's one of incentives.

00:04:16.620 So you're saying that the public education system, just to be clear for those who don't know,

00:04:21.180 the public education system gets our tax dollars no matter what. Whether or not the teachers are

00:04:27.140 giving quality education, whether or not the teachers are in classroom or remote, whether or

00:04:31.300 not the teachers just are remote and allow the students to basically teach themselves all day

00:04:37.300 or not. So there's not only a whole lot of incentives to open the doors, there's also not

00:04:41.180 a whole lot of incentives for, I don't want to say certainly not all public school teachers or even

00:04:46.660 most public school teachers, but some public school teachers and these teachers unions to make sure

00:04:51.120 that they're providing quality education and that the students are meeting the standards that they're

00:04:55.420 supposed to meet at the end of the year, correct?

00:04:59.200 Yeah, totally. I mean, it's because of these geographic monopolies. You're essentially

00:05:03.120 residentially assigned to a particular school just based on where you live. And so that school

00:05:07.840 district doesn't have a particularly strong incentive to cater to your needs. And then this

00:05:12.060 year that's becoming more obvious than ever because the schools aren't even open their doors and

00:05:16.560 they're still getting your money through the property tax system. And again, this is all has to do with

00:05:21.280 incentives. Doesn't mean that the people in the system are bad people or that they're

00:05:24.240 incompetent or anything like that. It's just that the way that I think about it is, you know,

00:05:29.260 if your grocery store, for example, doesn't reopen their doors, it would be inconvenient,

00:05:33.280 but it wouldn't be devastating because you could take your money elsewhere. If Walmart didn't open

00:05:37.540 their doors, you could take your money to Trader Joe's. And so that would give each individual

00:05:41.340 grocery store a strong incentive with a form of bottom-up accountability because they know that

00:05:47.320 you can shop somewhere else. With the public school system, it's not like that if you don't have a

00:05:51.820 school choice mechanism, such as an education savings account, they get your money regardless.

00:05:57.260 And so they benefit from that monopoly power, which is great for the school system, but it doesn't do

00:06:03.220 a lot to benefit individual families. And this year in particular, families are seeing that they're

00:06:07.640 getting the short end of the stick. All across the country, we're seeing this where families are

00:06:11.980 left scrambling at the 11th hour with the school district sending their families emails hours before

00:06:18.360 they're supposed to return in-person instruction to tell them, well, the teachers aren't going to

00:06:22.380 show up today because of a teacher strike. I think another sad thing about it, and I want to talk a

00:06:27.460 little bit more in just a second about how this is affecting students, but also how this misrepresents

00:06:33.220 a lot of public school teachers who would love to teach in person or who have been working really,

00:06:39.520 really hard under the present circumstances and the present restrictions to make sure that their

00:06:43.940 students are getting as good of an education as they possibly can remotely. A lot of these teachers

00:06:51.020 unions are not representing all of their teachers who are working really hard or who want to teach

00:06:56.700 in person. Can you talk about what I think is a misunderstanding that teachers unions do not

00:07:02.960 necessarily represent all or even most public school teachers? No, they have a different set of

00:07:09.060 incentives. If you look at the data on this across the country between 1992 and 2014, real inflation

00:07:16.240 adjusted per pupil education expenditures actually went up by 27 percent, but inflation adjusted teacher

00:07:22.020 salaries over that same period actually dropped by 2 percent. And so we throw more and more money into

00:07:26.580 the system, but it goes towards administrative bloat and increases in support staff, which is great for

00:07:31.360 teachers unions because it increases the numbers in the system, which gives them a larger voting block and

00:07:36.620 more political power and it gives them more revenues through union dues. But it's not good for

00:07:41.800 individual teachers because they don't have any particularly strong incentive to funnel that

00:07:45.640 additional money into the classroom towards the most important educational resource, which happens to be

00:07:51.140 the teachers. So if there's only five studies that I know of on this topic that find that school

00:07:55.900 choice competition through charter schools or through private school competition as well leads to higher

00:08:01.700 teacher salaries in the public school system because the public schools start to allocate resources

00:08:06.600 more efficiently once they have an incentive to do so through that bottom-up accountability

00:08:12.160 through competition. But there's another thing here. If you look at the past year, there have been these

00:08:17.460 calls to safely reopen schools from the teachers unions, but they've included all of these political

00:08:23.100 demands that don't align with the individual teachers in the system. For example, the Los Angeles

00:08:27.860 Teachers Union was probably one of the first ones to do this. In their report to safely reopen schools,

00:08:33.040 of course, they called for more money and more people in the system. We expected that. But then

00:08:37.860 they started calling for all these political things like defunding the police and Medicare for all

00:08:42.320 and a wealth tax. And we saw dozens, at least a dozen teachers unions a couple of times in the past year

00:08:49.200 band together with the Democratic Socialists of America to call for similar political demands and

00:08:54.840 and also things like banning their competition, banning charter schools and banning new private

00:09:00.020 school choice initiatives, which does everything to benefit the monopoly at the expense of families.

00:09:06.560 Right. And I guess that's the real why. Yes, you said that there's not an incentive for them to open

00:09:12.820 up, but still I find myself, OK, even if there's not an incentive, why do you want to create such a burden

00:09:20.600 to place both on teachers and students to have to try to learn remotely and and parents? What's the

00:09:26.620 reason? I guess it's for that bargaining power for them to kind of hold the students hostage and say,

00:09:31.880 look, we're not coming back until you do X, Y, Z, both related and unrelated to the virus.

00:09:38.620 It seems like a lot of politicians are just falling for that, though.

00:09:42.740 Well, yeah, totally. And then part of it's because the teachers unions have so much political power in the

00:09:47.180 United States today. The largest union in the United States, period, labor union, is the NEA,

00:09:52.340 the National Education Association. I think it has about three million members or more.

00:09:57.600 And so they have a lot of power. And that's just one teachers union in the United States at the

00:10:00.880 national level. And so the politicians tend to listen to them. And, you know, look, the teachers

00:10:06.220 unions have just been kicking the can down the road over the past year because, again, they know that

00:10:11.160 they can keep your money through the property tax system, regardless of whether they open their doors

00:10:15.160 for business. And recently in my area, for example, the Fairfax Education Association president,

00:10:20.720 the teachers union in the area, their president even admitted that they would oppose returning

00:10:26.060 in person full time, even if all the teachers are vaccinated. They would oppose it even for next fall.

00:10:33.960 So the goalposts have been completely moved out of the stadium at this point. And I think families

00:10:41.540 are seeing this. They're saying it's absolutely ridiculous. I don't know if you've seen the video of the

00:10:44.940 the livid Virginia parent that spoke up against the school board saying that, look, everybody else is

00:10:52.480 returning to work. Why can't you guys return to work? And again, I don't think it's because there's a lot of

00:10:57.220 bad people in the public school system. I think it's just they're rationally responding to the messed up

00:11:02.500 set of incentives that are baked into the public school monopoly system. And the only way that we're ever going

00:11:07.880 to fix that is to fund the students directly so that real incentives are introduced into the market for K

00:11:14.660 through 12 education. Then the public schools would get better. They'd have a better a better incentive

00:11:19.760 structure set up and they would probably be much more likely to open their doors right now than than

00:11:25.100 they currently are. Yeah. One of the myths that we hear so much from people who are anti school

00:11:30.620 choice is that, look, we just need more. We just need more funding. We need to fund schools the way that we

00:11:36.420 fund the police, kind of perpetuating this myth that you talk about so often that it's not a lack of

00:11:42.660 funds. It's a lack of efficiency in spending. It's a lack of competition problem. I mean,

00:11:48.900 Barack Obama spent, I think it was $7 billion, according to the Washington Post, on the country's

00:11:55.140 most failing. I don't know if I should say the worst. I don't want to say worst, but the least

00:12:00.560 successful public schools. And after the four years of this program, there was no benefit that could be

00:12:09.240 seen. There was no improvement in test scores, no improvement in student success whatsoever.

00:12:15.000 And I think that's just one of the many proofs that it's not a lack of funding issue, correct?

00:12:21.820 I think you're absolutely right. And when it comes to the police, we spend way less on police than we

00:12:25.820 do on education in the United States. At the state and local level, about a third of the budgets go

00:12:30.800 towards education. But about a tenth of that, about three to five percent, depending on the location,

00:12:36.120 actually goes to policing. So we already do spend more on education. And then if you look over time

00:12:42.680 in the United States, we've thrown more and more money at the problem without the results getting

00:12:46.460 much of any better in the public school system. For example, between 1960 and 2017, we've increased

00:12:54.180 real inflation adjusted per pupil education expenditures per student by 280 percent. That's

00:13:01.040 after adjusting for inflation. And every single decade since 1960, we've thrown more and more money

00:13:06.020 at the problem. Today, we spend over $15,000 per child. And in my area, in D.C. public schools,

00:13:12.540 they spend over $31,000 per child per year. And these schools aren't open either. And then if it was

00:13:18.820 all about the money, why are families flocking to charter schools, which are defined as public schools

00:13:23.700 as well, but they tend to get a lot less money? My latest report on this out of the University of

00:13:27.940 Arkansas looked at 18 different locations across the United States. And the charter schools tend to

00:13:32.420 get about two thirds of the funding that the students would have gotten in the traditional

00:13:36.640 public school system. So if it was all about the money, why do we have hundreds of thousands of

00:13:40.800 families and their students on charter school waitlist begging for a chance to get in? It's

00:13:45.960 probably because they have a stronger incentive to do a good job. Underperforming charter schools shut

00:13:50.940 down. Underperforming traditional schools get more money.

00:13:53.680 And that reminds me of something that Joe Biden said recently and has repeated that he's going to

00:13:59.240 go after these, quote, for-profit charter schools, which I would love for you to break down what that

00:14:04.840 is and what that means. And that we're going to make sure that we're closing down those charter

00:14:08.660 schools that aren't performing well. And I've seen you post this question, what about public schools

00:14:12.920 that aren't performing well? They don't get any kind of repercussion whatsoever.

00:14:17.560 Yeah. In the latest interview with Biden's national policy director, Steph Feldman, she had a

00:14:24.460 conversation with the Education Writers Association pretty recently. And they asked her their stance

00:14:29.660 on charter schools. And she did say charter schools that don't provide results would lose federal

00:14:34.860 funding. But then they asked her about, well, what about the failing traditional schools? And they said,

00:14:40.420 she said, oh, no, they just need more resources. They're only failing because they need more money.

00:14:43.940 It was the first time I'd ever seen someone in the same interview admit this double standard here where

00:14:50.920 the charter schools that already get less money, we're going to take their money away. But the

00:14:54.560 traditional schools, which already get more money, if they're failing, the solution is obviously they

00:14:58.960 just need more money. That'll magically fix everything, even though they don't have any

00:15:02.160 particularly strong incentive to do a good job. But in that same interview, she did go after

00:15:07.140 for-profit charter schools as well. But only about 12 to 15 percent of public charter schools are

00:15:12.800 managed by for-profit entities. And even then, who cares if they're for-profit or not? If they're

00:15:17.960 meeting the needs of families and families are voluntarily selecting those schools, I don't

00:15:22.320 have an issue if they're labeled as for-profit or not. What I do have an issue with is a system

00:15:27.800 that benefits from getting your children's education dollars and profits off of getting your child's

00:15:32.920 education dollars, regardless of how well they do. And then this year, regardless of whether they even

00:15:36.920 open their doors for business, that's the kind of profit that's messed up. The kind of profit

00:15:40.940 that is a good thing and that is a strong incentive to do the right thing is when schools make a profit

00:15:47.100 through voluntary selections.

00:15:49.780 Yep. And Joe Biden has recently, I think, voiced support for these teachers' unions and public

00:15:55.420 schools who say that they're going to remain closed and has said, OK, yeah, you know, they're

00:15:59.680 just scared of the virus. We need to make sure that we provide resources for them. Is his stance just

00:16:05.900 because he knows that the Democratic Party and he in particular have to have the support of

00:16:10.200 teachers' unions? What do you think is behind him supporting these school closures?

00:16:16.060 Well, if you look at the Open Secrets website, they show you where campaign donations go to.

00:16:22.060 And if you look at the American Federation for Teachers, which is the second largest teachers'

00:16:26.240 union in the United States, about over 99 percent of their campaign contributions in the latest election

00:16:31.200 cycle, went to Democratic candidates. So that's part of it here. And then also, Joe Biden, yes,

00:16:37.700 he voted against the D.C. voucher program, which serves low-income students in the district in 1997

00:16:44.200 when he was a senator. It's still in operation today. He didn't get what he wanted back then.

00:16:49.880 But if you look at the Biden-Sanders Unity Task Force, they're calling to get rid of the D.C.

00:16:53.660 voucher program. And then if you look at the conversations with his national policy director,

00:16:57.580 they're calling to get rid of federal funding for public charter schools, which, although it's only

00:17:02.240 about a tenth of per-pupil education expenditures nationwide, that could make it or break it for

00:17:07.780 particular schools. And that could mean fewer options for families going forward. But if you do

00:17:13.380 look at his first hundred days plan, he did say that he wants to reopen the majority of K-12 public

00:17:18.560 schools, which sounded good at first. But when you started looking at what that actually meant was he

00:17:23.720 wanted to throw more and more money at the problem and he wanted to put more staffing into the K-12

00:17:31.000 education system, which is exactly what the teachers unions want. And I bet when they get additional

00:17:36.100 dollars, they're not actually going to reopen their doors because they'll just change the goalposts

00:17:39.940 again like they've been doing all along. And we've already allocated tons of money to the K-12 public

00:17:46.320 school system in the past year or so. The CARES Act, we allocated over $13 billion to K-12 education

00:17:53.380 system. And then the latest stimulus bill, we allocated over $50 billion to the K-12 public

00:17:59.440 education system. They haven't even spent that yet. But now Biden's already talking about

00:18:03.240 allocating $130 billion more on top of what we already allocated, which is a ton of money. It's about

00:18:10.260 the size of the Marshall Plan, the amount the United States dedicated to Europe to rebuild Europe after

00:18:16.080 World War II. So it's a ton of money we're talking about, and it does nothing to change the incentives

00:18:20.460 that are in place. Yeah, I would love to hear the consequences that you see and that you project

00:18:27.200 on these kids who are either forced into remote learning, some are even in more dire circumstances.

00:18:34.680 If you're in a situation as a child where you've been dealing with domestic abuse, being isolated in

00:18:40.360 your home with these domestic abusers is obviously going to put you in an even more precarious

00:18:45.680 situation. We've read reports of things like that. We've read reports of mental health declining in

00:18:51.780 students as young as five years old. Hospitalizations for mental health problems, I just read a report on

00:18:59.100 that, has increased even in kids as young as five years old. And we're hearing from the teachers

00:19:05.880 unions, from some people in the public school system, from Democrats that know keeping the schools

00:19:10.740 closed. It's for the health of the kids. It's for the good of the kids. But that just doesn't seem to

00:19:15.180 be the case. Well, that's not aligned with the science. There are pretty low costs associated with

00:19:21.200 reopening schools. And UNICEF even put out a report of 191 different countries. There's no consistent

00:19:27.320 link between reopening schools and community transmission of the coronavirus. So the schools

00:19:32.460 are some of the safest places. And look, if the private schools can do it, the public schools can do it

00:19:36.340 too. But the difference is they get your money regardless. That's the problem here. If we have

00:19:42.420 school choice, I bet you'd see a lot more of the public schools reopening. But you're right, there's

00:19:46.260 a lot of costs to keeping the schools closed. And the costs are not evenly distributed. The least

00:19:50.920 advantages in society are bearing the largest amount of costs at the moment. If you look at Fairfax

00:19:56.560 County public schools in my area, for example, the number of students failing two or more classes this

00:20:01.380 year has increased by 83% since last year. And if you look at nationwide, there's a report by

00:20:07.180 McKinsey and Company that have found that students are losing about one to three months of learning

00:20:12.140 this year, which obviously has long-term negative effects. You look at Clark County in Vegas area in

00:20:19.920 Nevada, the number of student suicides has doubled this year since last year. So there are so many

00:20:27.060 unintended consequences that are associated with keeping schools closed. And my take on

00:20:32.860 it is, if you're not going to open the schools, give families the money, let them take their

00:20:37.320 children to a school that's actually going to meet their needs. If the public school learning

00:20:41.760 environment through remote learning is great, you should still be able to pick that. But for so many

00:20:46.580 kids this year, it's just not working. And this affects all sorts of families. And I think that's why

00:20:52.420 there's such a huge support for school choice right now. I think the teachers unions have overplayed their

00:20:56.640 hand. Yeah, absolutely. And like you mentioned, this disproportionately affects and hurts poor

00:21:04.300 students and poor families. I remember you saying this, and this has stuck with me, that rich families

00:21:09.780 already have school choice. It's called having money. And when you're in an area where you have

00:21:14.620 this, what you call this geographic monopoly, where you don't have a school choice program and you're

00:21:19.220 forced to go to a school in your school district that may or may not be open or may or may not be

00:21:24.800 meeting the needs of your child. If you are a family that can't afford to send to private school

00:21:30.320 or you can't afford for the mom or dad to stay home from work and homeschool your child, you're

00:21:36.120 stuck in that situation. And your child is going to fall farther behind than the child of parents who

00:21:42.800 can't afford to stay home or can't afford to send to a private school, can't afford to do one of these

00:21:47.500 pods. And so what we're creating in this time where we're talking so much about equity,

00:21:52.420 we're talking so much about equality and social justice, and especially helping communities that

00:21:57.920 are disproportionately black and brown communities, is we're seeing a creation of greater disparities

00:22:04.060 through this push by the teachers unions to keep schools closed. And it's just crazy that from the

00:22:11.120 party who says that they care so much about the poor and the vulnerable and social justice, I mean,

00:22:17.060 it just seems to me like we're seeing the exact opposite in their actions.

00:22:20.300 Well, the people that are being left behind right now are the least advantaged, because as you said,

00:22:24.700 the most advantaged are seeking out things like pandemic pods or micro schools, small communities

00:22:29.360 of families of five to 10 students together in a household. They're banding together to form these

00:22:34.580 pods. And so they're getting that in-person interaction. They're getting that in-person

00:22:38.000 instruction from a private tutor. You can allow more families to have access to that to fund the

00:22:42.180 students directly. Just imagine what good service you could get from having about $15,000 per child

00:22:48.420 follow you into the household or even to a private school. Average private school tuition in the

00:22:52.960 United States is about $11,000 per child per year. And that's just the sticker price. A lot of the

00:22:58.680 times the private schools charge a lot less than the sticker price. And so if you had the money following

00:23:03.000 the child, that would lead to more equity by allowing more families to have access to alternative

00:23:08.820 options. Yes. And when we say equity, unfortunately, that's become like a buzzword that the left and the

00:23:14.420 right mean two different things. Typically when conservatives, I don't want to put definitions

00:23:18.100 in your mouth. We're talking about fairness. We're talking about equal opportunity. As Kamala Harris

00:23:22.960 has said that when she says equity, she says forcing everyone to end up in the same place,

00:23:28.620 which obviously, I mean, from my perspective, that's not something we control. The best we can do

00:23:33.020 is to give families the tools that they need and the help that they need to make good decisions for

00:23:39.300 themselves. We're not talking about government social engineering, trying to make everyone the

00:23:43.840 same. What you're talking about and what you advocate for so well is just making sure that

00:23:48.300 parents have all the opportunities in the world, all the resources that we can give in order for them

00:23:53.360 to make the choice that is best for their family and best for their kids. And that's what they're

00:23:58.220 missing out on right now. It's any kind of choice for their child. And to me, that's just really

00:24:03.880 heartbreaking. And it should matter for people who say that they care about civil rights, care about

00:24:08.980 equality, and care about justice, right? Well, and a ton of these politicians who do not support

00:24:14.460 school choice for others exercise it for their own families. Kamala Harris went to a private

00:24:18.880 preschool in California. She sent her stepchildren to private schools. Joe Biden attended private

00:24:24.400 schools. He sent his children to private schools. Elizabeth Warren sent her son to private schools

00:24:30.440 in Austin, Texas and in Pennsylvania. Why shouldn't other people have that same opportunity to send

00:24:35.160 their children to private schools? We're just advocating that everybody should have access to

00:24:39.680 educational alternatives. We're already spending the money. Why allocate the money to buildings,

00:24:44.140 especially when they're closed, when that money can go directly to the students instead? I think this

00:24:48.640 just makes so much sense, especially when you start to think of other programs that already fund people

00:24:54.140 directly that a lot of other people will support, but then don't support it when it comes to K-12.

00:25:00.400 For example, with higher education, you have the Pell Grant where the money goes to the student and

00:25:05.060 the student can pick a public or private provider of the service. Same thing with the GI Bill for

00:25:08.960 veterans with higher education. Same thing with pre-K programs that are state funded, including the

00:25:14.440 Head Start Federal Program and other state funded pre-K initiatives. The funding goes to the family and

00:25:20.100 the family can pick a public or private religious or non-religious affiliated provider of the pre-K

00:25:25.460 services. Why is it that in the in-between years, the other side gets all up in arms when we start

00:25:31.200 talking about funding students directly? And the only reason for this that I can come up with

00:25:35.060 is that the power dynamics differ. Exactly. Choice is the norm when it comes to higher education and

00:25:40.580 pre-K and essentially any other sector of the economy, but choice threatens an entrenched special

00:25:46.720 interest that profits from getting your children's education dollars regardless of their choice. So they get

00:25:52.040 really worked up and they fight really hard against any change to that system because they want to get

00:25:57.720 your money either way. And so I think the best way forward is to fund the students instead of the

00:26:04.060 system and we should get our priorities right. The whole education system is supposed to be built

00:26:08.720 for educating children. The education funding is supposed to be meant for educating children. It's not

00:26:14.460 supposed to be meant for protecting a government monopoly. Let's get our priorities right.

00:26:18.700 Right. A couple more quick questions because one pushback that I typically get when I talk about

00:26:23.100 the problem with teachers unions and the problem in some cases with the public school system is that

00:26:29.720 I'll get people who say, well, I live in Texas or I live in Georgia. We don't have teachers unions,

00:26:33.160 so there must be no problem with the public education where I live. Or people will ask me, well,

00:26:38.980 how come I live in a place without teachers unions and our public schools are still closed? Or how come my

00:26:45.360 kids are getting indoctrinated with critical race theory and, you know, curriculum that I don't agree

00:26:50.400 with if we don't have teachers unions? So speak to that. It's not just teachers unions that are the problem,

00:26:56.500 right?

00:26:57.800 Yeah, it's not just teachers unions. And it's true that it's worse in some places as opposed to others.

00:27:04.460 For example, in Florida, most of their school districts are open, but in California, most of them are not.

00:27:09.620 And the main difference there is that Florida has much weaker teachers unions than California,

00:27:13.900 which has much stronger teachers unions. But in Texas, they actually do still have teachers unions,

00:27:18.260 even though they're not as powerful as they are in California. But the other problem,

00:27:23.240 and you're right, it's not just the teachers unions, is that geographic monopoly that gets your

00:27:28.100 money regardless. And that gives more power to the teachers unions. I don't have a problem with

00:27:32.500 teachers unions per se. What I have a problem with is them getting to implement crappy policies in the

00:27:38.680 public school system, and then not being held accountable for those crappy policies.

00:27:43.040 Right.

00:27:43.180 And the best way to hold them accountable is to say, okay, if you want to implement X,

00:27:47.440 Y, or Z curriculum that I'm not aligned with, or if you want to keep the schools closed for in-person

00:27:51.460 instruction, you go ahead and do that. But I'm going to take my money somewhere else to a private

00:27:55.940 school that's doing a better job, or a charter school, or hey, maybe I want to do it in the home,

00:28:00.680 and do some type of tutoring situation, or micro school, or pandemic pot, or home-based learning,

00:28:06.160 and just let me take my money with me. That way, the teachers unions would have a stronger

00:28:10.120 incentive to do a good job. And so I think it's both of those things. It's the power of the union,

00:28:15.200 but that's propped up even more so by their geographic monopoly. I mean, so it's like in

00:28:22.040 the private sector, I have no problem with unions, for example, because if Walmart employees decided

00:28:26.500 to go on strike, that would be kind of inconvenient, but I could take my money to Trader Joe's,

00:28:30.600 and then the employer would have an incentive to change things. But in the current situation,

00:28:34.560 like in Chicago, where the teachers are going on strike this week and last week,

00:28:39.020 the parents are the ones that get the short end of the stick. In what other industry does an employee

00:28:45.260 strike negatively affect the customers where the customers feel all the pain? That's not how it

00:28:50.280 should be. The employer should feel the pain. Right, and they're trapped. And that's, I mean,

00:28:54.680 just to say I do have a problem with teachers unions per se, I have a problem with public unions in

00:29:00.580 general. I think it's just a bad principle that our tax dollars are going to a union that are then

00:29:05.380 turning around and funding candidates that I don't agree with. I don't think that should be true either

00:29:10.700 way. Even if, for example, a police union was funding the campaign of a Republican candidate,

00:29:16.800 I don't think it's fair that a Democrat should be giving tax dollars to that union that then goes to

00:29:21.300 a candidate that they don't like. Same for me with teachers unions and just public unions in general.

00:29:27.780 But I do think even just your solution of the money following the child would break up the power

00:29:33.780 that teachers unions have so much that I wouldn't be quite as concerned with their political influence

00:29:40.200 because their influence would be minimized. One last question that I have for you that I know people

00:29:46.160 are wondering about. Okay, they're a parent in the public school system. They want to do something.

00:29:51.080 They want to fight back, but they feel so small and insignificant, like they can't say anything.

00:29:56.620 But you've talked a lot about how parents do still have power. Can you give encouragement or give

00:30:01.420 advice to those parents who are ready to talk to their school board or whomever about this issue and

00:30:07.320 try to make some kind of change? Well, and look, the teachers unions, as I've said, have overplayed

00:30:12.160 their hand in the past year. They've done more to advance school choice than I'll ever be able to do

00:30:16.240 in my lifetime. In the last year, they've done more than anyone that could have ever wished for.

00:30:21.960 And that's because, again, they've kept the schools closed. They've prioritized the employees

00:30:27.320 over the students. And families are seeing this. The latest Real Clear Opinion Research poll on this

00:30:32.800 found that in just a few months in the past year, that support for school choice has actually increased

00:30:38.380 a ton by 10 percentage points, from 67% in April 2020 to 77% in August 2020. And EdChoice has similarly

00:30:47.180 done a nationwide survey finding that 86% of parents currently support education savings accounts

00:30:54.660 or allowing the funding to follow the child to wherever they're getting an education.

00:30:58.660 And every single form of school choice support has gone up since last year. And this is the

00:31:05.440 teachers union's own fault. They've caused a lot of these problems. And so families are fired up right

00:31:10.500 now. They're saying that there's no good reason to fund the system when you can fund the student

00:31:15.080 directly instead. And a lot of the things that they can do are they can take the fight to the courts.

00:31:20.440 An Arlington public school parent actually sued the school district because they're not reopening for

00:31:26.020 in-person instruction. And they're saying, well, one, either reopen the school so that I can have that

00:31:30.220 choice to go back or give me my children's education dollars and let them take them elsewhere.

00:31:36.320 Then also, not just the courts. Yeah, there are school board initiatives. Parents in Colorado,

00:31:41.280 for example, are doing a recall for the school board members to try to hold them accountable.

00:31:48.040 And then another way is through legislation. There have been 14 states at least that I've been

00:31:52.180 tracking over the past month alone where legislators have introduced bills to fund students directly

00:31:59.220 as opposed to the system. Some of these states include New Hampshire, Iowa, Missouri, Kentucky,

00:32:05.440 Kansas, Nebraska. Tons of states are introducing bills to fund students directly. And I think it's

00:32:11.520 partially because families are waking up to this idea that it's just the public school system just

00:32:18.860 isn't there for them and they need options right now. And so families can support these kinds of

00:32:24.060 initiatives by calling their legislators and telling them what they think about these initiatives.

00:32:28.260 And I think this is the best, you know, 2020, 2021 might be the year of school choice and it might

00:32:35.920 be the teachers union's own fault. Yeah, absolutely. And unfortunately, we don't necessarily have a

00:32:42.040 champion for school choice in the executive branch or in the legislative branch right now because they're

00:32:47.780 dominated by Democrats. But that does not mean that things can't happen on your local and state level.

00:32:53.200 Honestly, I think that we kind of have an outsized priority on our federal government when really so

00:33:00.400 much of the change can happen right in your neighborhood, right in your area, in your community,

00:33:05.800 in your state. Because, you know, these public school systems might not have an incentive to change,

00:33:11.240 but your representative who wants your vote does have probably at least partly an incentive to listen to

00:33:18.440 you and to try to make some change. And so don't think that your voice doesn't matter.

00:33:23.560 Corey, how can they support you and follow you and make sure that they're reading the latest

00:33:28.220 data, the studies that you're putting out about school choice?

00:33:32.280 Yeah, follow me on Twitter. It's at DeAngelis Corey, just my last name and my first name. And you

00:33:36.620 could also find my work on the Reason Foundation website. You could just Google Corey Reason

00:33:42.480 Foundation. You'll find my longer form articles. And then you could also check out my latest co-edited

00:33:46.360 book with the Cato Institute's Neil McCluskey. It's called School Choice Myths, Setting the Record Straight on

00:33:52.020 Education Freedom. We take down 12 of the biggest myths in the school choice debate because none of

00:33:57.060 them hold up to any of the slightest bit of scrutiny based on clear logic and tons of empirical data as

00:34:04.100 well. Awesome. And where can they get that book besides Amazon? Is there anywhere besides Amazon

00:34:08.720 they can get it? It's also on the Cato Institute website. So if you just Google Cato Institute

00:34:13.200 school choice myths, you'll find tons of different outlets that are selling the book as well.

00:34:17.420 Awesome. Well, thank you so much, Corey, for taking the time to talk to us.

00:34:21.140 Thank you, Allie.

00:34:26.380 All right. Hope you guys enjoyed that conversation. Please support Corey by his book. This really is,

00:34:32.800 I would say, school choice and abortion are the two civil rights issues of our time. Joe Biden recently

00:34:41.520 said that transgenderism is the civil rights issue of our time. I disagree with that. I would say the

00:34:50.580 slaughtering of children in the womb and the inability for underprivileged, for disproportionately

00:34:58.240 poor students, disproportionately black and brown students to not be able to have the choice to receive

00:35:04.640 an education that works best for them. I would say those are the two biggest issues that we are

00:35:11.060 facing. So I encourage you, if you haven't already, to educate yourself on that issue. I've got several

00:35:16.340 episodes, not just with Corey, but with Christopher Rufo and a few other episodes on education, on

00:35:22.140 education policy and the importance of school choice. So make sure you go back and you listen to

00:35:27.140 those. All right. Now I want to talk about this drama that happened. Let's see. It originally

00:35:33.440 happened on January 22nd, so a couple of weeks ago, but it really continued to bleed into last week

00:35:39.180 and people were calling on the Southern Baptist Convention to discipline these Baptist pastors who

00:35:44.860 called Kamala Harris Jezebel. So January 22nd, Pastor Tom Buck of First Baptist Church in Lindale,

00:35:51.180 Texas tweeted, I can't imagine any truly God-fearing Israelite who would have wanted their daughters to

00:35:57.780 view Jezebel as an inspirational role model because she was a woman in power. Now people got very

00:36:03.280 angry at him about this. Now I will address the Jezebel part in just a second, but he is right

00:36:09.260 in that we shouldn't just be telling our daughters and we shouldn't ourselves just be praising Kamala

00:36:14.640 Harris because of her genitalia, because she's a woman. Now I think it's an amazing feat to be an

00:36:20.900 accomplished woman. I don't see anything wrong with that. Sure. That is all well and good. And that

00:36:26.700 speaks to, um, really where we are in the country, um, that we really are not as, um, as a lot of

00:36:36.740 feminist critics say as just dogmatically patriarchal and as oppressive and sexist towards

00:36:45.020 women as, uh, some of them say. So that's all well and good, but am I going to be excited about the

00:36:51.840 fact that the most pro abortion Senator, a very pro abortion attorney general of California

00:36:57.760 is now vice president? No. Why would I be excited about that? I mean, values are much more important

00:37:04.780 to me, um, than her anatomy values are much more important to me than so-called breaking the glass

00:37:10.900 ceiling. Um, the policies that she stands for are diametrically opposed to the policies I believe in.

00:37:16.280 So why should I care about her anatomy when her leadership has resulted in more access to killing

00:37:23.200 unborn children? Why would I celebrate that? That seems so short-sighted to me, so superficial to me.

00:37:29.060 And the fact that we are so often asked only as conservatives to compartmentalize, to say, um,

00:37:37.240 to compartmentalize and to say, okay, yeah, this person is totally against my values, but at least

00:37:42.300 they're a woman. And, uh, we are then expected to celebrate that when the other side never does

00:37:48.300 that. I mean, with Amy Coney Barrett, they were wearing their hands, a handmaid's tail outfits,

00:37:53.040 and they were refusing to, um, they were refusing to celebrate the fact that a, you know, a mom of

00:38:00.800 seven has accomplished this much this quickly in her life. Why? Because they didn't agree with her.

00:38:06.580 They didn't like her values. They, they didn't like the decisions that she had made as a judge.

00:38:11.640 And they were worried about her, uh, the decisions that she would make as a justice. Okay, that's fine.

00:38:17.540 But they're always telling us that we need to celebrate politicians and leaders just because of

00:38:24.460 their gender and they don't do the same thing. So I think that we should all just say, look,

00:38:29.840 we're not going to celebrate someone just because of their gender. We're not going to celebrate someone

00:38:35.860 just because they're of their identity politics. We are going to celebrate the leadership

00:38:40.360 of people whose values and policies that we actually believe in. That's what the left does.

00:38:45.760 Why can't the right also do that? Like, why are we the ones who are bullied into saying, okay, yeah,

00:38:50.780 I don't care about my values. I'm just going to celebrate someone because of their anatomy. It

00:38:55.500 seems very silly. So I don't have any problem with Tom Buck saying, yeah, you know, I I'm not going to

00:39:01.020 celebrate this. I'm not going to have my daughters celebrate this so-called accomplishment. I don't agree

00:39:05.700 with her. And actually he is going on to say that. I think that her policies in the belief system that

00:39:10.380 she has is very, uh, wicked. Uh, he goes on to say he, he tweeted doubling down, uh, for those torn

00:39:17.040 up over my tweet, I stand by it. 100%. My problem is her godless character. She not only is the most

00:39:22.280 radical pro abortion VP ever, but also the most radical LGBT advocate. She performed one of the

00:39:28.300 first lesbian quote marriages pray for her, but don't pray, uh, praise her. He then said,

00:39:34.100 I fully stand by the point of my original tweet. Should Jezebel who governed in godless ways

00:39:38.060 have, have been a role model simply because she was a woman in power. If not, why should Kamala

00:39:43.200 who's governing godless ways be a role model just because she is a woman in power. And then there

00:39:48.740 was a, another pastor, pastor, Steve Swofford of Rockwall first Baptist church in Texas to Texas

00:39:54.780 Baptist pastors. He preached about president Biden calling him cognitively dysfunctional and then added,

00:40:01.880 what if something happens to him? Jezebel has to take over Jezebel Harris. Isn't that her name? So

00:40:06.880 you might be wondering, listening to this, okay, why, why did this turn into a news story? These are

00:40:12.420 too random. And I don't mean that in a pejorative way, but you know, random pastors out of many,

00:40:19.200 many pastors in the United States who called Kamala Harris Jezebel. Tom Buck does have a good

00:40:24.800 number of followers on social media. So I'm not saying these people are obscure, but there are lots of

00:40:29.640 pastors, I'm sure, who don't like Kamala Harris. There are lots of pastors who didn't like Donald

00:40:34.180 Trump, who probably said things about Donald Trump. And so why is this turning into news? Well, that's

00:40:39.980 because we're having this whole conversation right now, especially since January 6th, about the dangers

00:40:45.300 of Christian conservatism, about the dangers of white evangelicalism. We've been talking about that,

00:40:50.280 especially for the past few years, as white evangelicals tended to vote for Trump in large numbers.

00:40:58.280 And so there's been this conflation of racism and white nationalism and white supremacy with white

00:41:04.100 evangelicalism. And these statements are being used to kind of advance that narrative. So

00:41:09.880 religionsnews.com explains Jezebel appears in the Hebrew Bible as evil incarnate, a non-believer

00:41:15.220 who has become a catchword for female cunning. But it's not only that. In the United States,

00:41:23.240 Jezebel has become a racist trope for a sexually promiscuous black woman.

00:41:26.760 I did not know that. This is what religionsnews is saying. I have never heard that before,

00:41:32.480 but this is what they're saying. A description that began in slavery extended through the Jim

00:41:36.580 Crow period and continues today. Lisa Sharon Harper, writer and activist who is also an evangelical,

00:41:41.840 said the use of the Jezebel trope is a window into the beliefs of white Southern men. Harper

00:41:47.320 said they legitimize their own racist white supremacist worldview by placing it on top of a biblical

00:41:51.920 reference. This could be a way of white men trying to put black women in their place,

00:41:55.700 which is under them. Christian writer Sarah Bessie says this. She wrote about the misuse of the

00:42:08.000 trope to smear women in her 2013 book. She said, this is just what happens when a woman exhibits

00:42:14.920 leadership. She's accused of having that Jezebel spirit. I look forward to the day when women with

00:42:21.520 leadership and insight, gifts and talents, callings and prophetic leanings are called out and celebrated

00:42:26.500 as a Deborah, a biblical judge, instead of silenced as a Jezebel. Bessie said, well, the problem is that

00:42:33.220 Kamala Harris is not a Deborah. I mean, she's not. I'm not saying that I am either, but she's not a

00:42:38.620 Deborah. I'm not saying that Sarah Palin was a Deborah, but I wouldn't say that Kamala Harris is a

00:42:42.560 Deborah either. Again, just because a woman takes power doesn't mean that we need to hail her as a hero.

00:42:47.660 Just like I think it's wrong that just because a woman takes power doesn't mean that we need to say

00:42:51.960 castigate her or condemn her as a Jezebel. I also think that that's wrong, but I'm not sure that that

00:42:58.380 is what Tom Buck is doing here. I think he is literally, I don't think he is thinking at all

00:43:03.620 about any kind of racial euphemism. I highly doubt that he sees any kind of racial aspect interwoven to

00:43:11.620 what he said. I think he is literally probably saying, I haven't talked to him. Maybe there's more

00:43:16.240 context that I don't know, but I think he's literally saying this woman is like Jezebel in

00:43:22.220 the Bible, and therefore I think it's bad. Now, you probably disagree with him if you were on the

00:43:27.700 left side of the aisle. If I were a betting person, I would bet money that you disagree with this

00:43:32.520 assessment. If you consider yourself a moderate or if you consider yourself a progressive Christian,

00:43:37.640 or maybe you are on the right side of the political aisle, but you just think that this

00:43:41.040 language was too harsh, you might disagree with him. My question is, I mean, who really cares?

00:43:47.020 I mean, I think that he's literally talking about Jezebel from the Bible. I don't think that he meant

00:43:51.700 anything racist by this whatsoever. I mean, he can correct me if he thinks, if I'm wrong on that,

00:43:58.440 I'll correct myself if I'm wrong on that. But I think he's literally talking about Jezebel that we

00:44:05.020 read about in 1 Kings. The Jezebel in 1 Kings was married to King Ahab of Israel. She was outside

00:44:12.420 of Israel, and the marriage that she had with Ahab helped move Israel in the direction of idolatry.

00:44:21.600 They were idolaters. They were murderers. They were thieves. They were adulterous in many ways.

00:44:26.440 Elijah was the prophet God called up to oppose them. And so I think Tom Buck is probably saying,

00:44:32.380 not literally that she has done necessarily all of the things that Jezebel did, but I think he's

00:44:37.960 probably trying to make the point that, look, she is going to push the country into idolatry in the

00:44:43.520 same way that Jezebel did, and we shouldn't be celebrating that. Or he might not even be going

00:44:49.180 that far. It sounds like from the clarity that he offered in his subsequent tweets was that he just

00:44:54.460 thinks, hey, look, if we're not going to celebrate Jezebel just because she's a woman leader in the Bible,

00:44:58.700 then why should we celebrate Kamala Harris? If she's not, you know, just because she's a woman

00:45:03.840 leader in the Bible, to him, from his perspective, from his Christian conservative perspective,

00:45:08.580 the policies that Kamala Harris stands for is wicked. Like he didn't make any reference as far

00:45:14.240 as I know to, you know, the whole Willie Brown thing that happened in the 1990s. She dated a guy

00:45:20.720 who apparently helped her advance her career. I will say some people say that he was married at the

00:45:25.600 time. He wasn't actually married. He was estranged from his wife. I think that whole thing with Kamala

00:45:30.280 Harris in the 1990s is also overblown. But I also think that this accusation of Tom Buck and this

00:45:36.600 other pastor, because they called these, because they called Kamala a Jezebel, is also overblown.

00:45:43.980 They're making a biblical reference. You could totally agree with it or disagree with it. You can

00:45:48.460 think that it's way too harsh. You can think that it's a mischaracterization. You might even go so far,

00:45:54.520 you from your perspective might call it sexist. You might call it racist, whatever. But the reason

00:46:00.000 why this is turning into a big thing is to try to make a larger point about white evangelicals and

00:46:07.320 the dangers of white evangelicalism and its nature as white supremacist or as a perpetuation of white

00:46:18.140 nationalism. People are trying to get these churches removed from the SBC. They are calling

00:46:26.480 on J.D. Greer, who is the president of the SBC, the Southern Baptist Convention, to discipline these

00:46:32.600 two pastors. Honestly, I want to know under what pretense, because they compared one of our leaders

00:46:39.600 to a character in the Bible? I want to bring up this headline. I thought I had a clip, but I don't

00:46:46.280 think that I do have a clip. So Hillary Clinton at Elijah Cummings' funeral just last year compared

00:46:55.160 Trump to King Ahab and to Queen Jezebel. No one had a problem with this, by the way. Absolutely no one

00:47:03.600 had a problem with this. This wasn't last year. This was in 2019. So this is according to Daily Mail,

00:47:09.220 and there is a clip in the article. Our Elijah could call down fire from heaven, but he also

00:47:16.020 prayed and worked for healing, Hillary Clinton said. Like that Old Testament prophet, he stood

00:47:20.920 against corrupt leadership of King Ahab and Queen Jezebel. She's referencing Trump there because

00:47:26.240 Elijah Cummings was a leader in the impeachment trials at the beginning of 2020 against President

00:47:31.440 Trump. That's what she's referencing. And after she said this, she was met with a loud applause at

00:47:37.460 Elijah Cummings' funeral. So Trump was compared to King Ahab and Queen Jezebel. I don't know who's

00:47:43.720 Queen Jezebel in this context. Is it Melania Trump? Is it supposed to be Mike Pence? But Hillary Clinton

00:47:49.060 was directly making this comparison at Elijah Cummings' funeral. I guarantee she wasn't the only

00:47:54.860 Democrat to do that. I guarantee that there were probably some liberal pastors who also made that

00:48:00.100 comparison. So is it okay when we level that charge and make that comparison against Donald Trump?

00:48:05.120 And it's not okay when it's against Kamala Harris? I mean, that seems like a double standard to me.

00:48:10.860 Or is it wrong in both cases? I'm open to hearing that. I'm certainly open to hearing that case that

00:48:16.860 maybe we shouldn't compare, you know, leaders today to bad leaders in the Bible. I think that's kind of

00:48:22.480 a weak case to make. I really don't understand why people can't have that opinion and state that

00:48:29.740 opinion. But if it's wrong for the pastor to do it, then it's wrong for Hillary Clinton to do it. And just

00:48:35.440 saying, well, he's a pastor and so it's different. Or, well, Kamala Harris is a woman of color so it's

00:48:41.100 different. That's not a very good argument. That doesn't seem very logical to me at all. But I don't

00:48:46.100 remember people getting upset about Hillary Clinton comparing Donald Trump to King Ahab and Queen

00:48:52.540 Jezebel. Now, I will say, if there were conservatives who are very angry about that, but are not angry

00:48:58.940 about this, then that would be hypocrisy or vice versa. Like, I think that if liberals were not

00:49:05.640 angry about that, but they are angry about this, well, then that's hypocrisy too. I think in both

00:49:11.080 cases, it's really not that big of a deal. I mean, Hillary Clinton, I think probably knows just as much

00:49:16.980 about the Bible as Donald Trump does, which is probably very little. And so it's a little bit

00:49:23.100 laughable for her to be making those kinds of biblical references. However, I don't care. It's

00:49:29.060 not that big of a deal. It's her opinion that she compared Donald Trump to King Ahab and Queen

00:49:33.840 Jezebel. It's Tom Buck's opinion that Kamala Harris is going to lead the country into idolatry and is an

00:49:42.040 idolater herself like Jezebel. Apparently, I'm just kind of reading in between the lines. I guess

00:49:47.040 that's his opinion. I mean, it just seems kind of silly to me that we are blowing this into something

00:49:53.560 that it's really not. This is an opinion of a pastor comparing a leader that he seriously disagrees

00:50:00.640 with to a negative character in the Bible. I think the insistence upon attaching it to a larger narrative

00:50:07.640 and a larger agenda that you're trying to push, to me, it comes across as desperate and hypocritical

00:50:13.240 and not at all accurate. Remember, Trump was called Hitler. Hitler, responsible for the slaughter

00:50:21.280 of millions and millions of Jews and other types of people who were seen as not part of the pure

00:50:28.260 German Aryan race. I mean, Trump was compared to Hitler incessantly, and that was all well and good,

00:50:35.740 according to the people that are now very upset that a pastor compared Kamala Harris to Jezebel in

00:50:42.480 the Bible. I mean, remember, there's a reason why people think that the policies that Kamala Harris

00:50:49.400 stands for and fights for are wicked and are idolatrous. I just want to read you this from

00:50:58.020 National Review talking about Kamala Harris's stances on abortion. This is written by Alexandra

00:51:05.720 DeSanctis, whom I had on this podcast in December. She writes a lot about abortion,

00:51:10.400 and the title of the article is Kamala Harris's abortion absolutism. And the article says this,

00:51:16.100 as a senator, Harris has co-sponsored the most aggressively pro-abortion piece of federal

00:51:20.440 legislation ever introduced, the Women's Health Protection Act, which would override state restrictions

00:51:25.720 on abortions in the last three months of pregnancy, well after fetal viability. The bill would

00:51:30.700 invalidate any state law that prohibits abortion after fetal viability when, in the good faith

00:51:36.640 medical judgment of the treating physician, continuation of the pregnancy would pose a risk

00:51:40.720 to the pregnant woman's life or health. Now, let me take a pause right here because I saw

00:51:45.140 an account that asserts itself or presents itself as only the facts, kind of present this side of the

00:51:55.720 argument that, you know, sometimes late-term abortion or late-term abortion doesn't happen

00:52:00.440 unless it threatens the woman's health. Well, fetal viability is 24 weeks, but babies have been known

00:52:06.820 in the womb who are delivered early, as early as 21 weeks, to survive outside of the womb. So if the

00:52:12.940 woman's life or health is at risk any time after, I would say probably if you're a labor and delivery

00:52:19.920 nurse or if you're a doctor, you can correct me, but from my research and what I've talked to you

00:52:24.200 it's about 23 weeks, the doctors will try everything they can, even sometimes before that, to save that

00:52:30.060 baby because there's a really good chance that baby can survive outside of the womb with the help

00:52:34.940 of medicine. So if a woman, after 21 weeks, 22 weeks to 24 weeks, if any time after that, which is still

00:52:42.640 the second trimester, like the middle of the second trimester, by the way, this is not even the third

00:52:47.200 trimester yet, any time after say around 22 weeks that woman's life or health is at risk, the option

00:52:55.660 is delivery. Because remember, abortion delivers a baby too. Like in an abortion, the baby has to come

00:53:02.380 out. In a delivery, the baby has to come out. And actually, it's a lot quicker to have an emergency

00:53:08.960 c-section so that the baby comes out at say 23 weeks than it is for that baby, that 23 week old

00:53:16.120 baby to be aborted. I mean, that process takes around two days. And so it is much safer if the

00:53:22.580 woman's life and health is at risk to deliver the baby rather than to kill the baby in the process.

00:53:29.760 Either way, the baby comes out. And so there's no logical or medical or scientific reason for the

00:53:35.000 baby to be killed in the process if the woman really needs the baby to come out because of

00:53:40.740 her life or health. We're talking about any time after that age of viability in the middle of the

00:53:46.000 second trimester. And so the only reason that a woman might have an abortion after fetal viability,

00:53:54.740 well, there could be a variety of reasons, but it wouldn't be for life or health. And under the

00:54:01.220 pretense of life and health, Kamala Harris is trying to push, was trying to push as senator,

00:54:06.960 this bill that said that, look, you have to allow unrestricted third trimester abortion for the sake

00:54:14.960 of the life and health of the mother. I mean, it's just false pretense. That's not the reason.

00:54:20.300 And Alexandria goes on to say, according to reporting from my colleague, John McCormick,

00:54:24.240 the bill's co-sponsor or the bill's sponsors has said that it does not distinguish between the

00:54:27.560 physical and mental health. Read in conjunction with the Supreme Court's ruling and Doe v. Bolton

00:54:32.880 defining maternal health as all factors, physical, emotional, psychological, familial,

00:54:37.480 and the person's age. The Women's Health Protection Act would invalidate any and all state level

00:54:43.220 protections for unborn children after the point of viability. Indeed, up until birth, it is also worth

00:54:50.040 noting that Harris has twice voted against the Born Alive Abortion Survivors Protection Act,

00:54:54.640 which would simply require doctors to provide the same care to infants who survive abortions

00:54:59.120 as they would to any newborn. So she has voted in favor of infanticide. We're talking about babies

00:55:05.520 who have who have survived an abortion. We're talking about babies outside the womb. She voted

00:55:11.060 against protecting them. She voted for taking away all state restrictions for abortion in the last

00:55:17.060 trimester. Also, when she was attorney general of California, she targeted David Delighted, who

00:55:24.860 uncovered through his reporting that the Planned Parenthood clinics in California were selling the

00:55:32.480 body parts of aborted babies. He uncovered that. That's a fact. This is not, by the way, some conspiracy

00:55:39.520 theory that has been debunked. It hasn't been debunked at all. They're on the record now,

00:55:43.840 unknowingly on the record, but they're on the record in public saying that, yes, they harvest

00:55:48.100 and they sell these baby parts of aborted babies, Planned Parenthood does. Well, as attorney general

00:55:53.860 of California, Kamala Harris went after him, ruined his life because of this. She also was behind the

00:56:00.200 measure to force pro-life pregnancy centers in California to advertise, force them to advertise

00:56:06.020 for free or cheap abortions at their clinics. I mean, how bloodthirsty is that?

00:56:11.220 So I don't think that it's the worst thing in the world that you can say about someone like Kamala

00:56:18.940 Harris that, hey, she's an idolatrous or, hey, some of the policies that she stands for are very

00:56:24.300 bloodthirsty. That's true. You might disagree with that assessment. You might disagree with that

00:56:29.540 characterization. That's fine. I understand people said a lot of things about Donald Trump, a lot of

00:56:34.400 critical things that I did agree with, some like comparisons to Hitler that I thought was just too far,

00:56:38.880 but whatever. I mean, that's your opinion. Just understand that the takedown of these pastors

00:56:44.620 for saying something, which is well within their rights to say it, the insistence upon disciplining

00:56:51.260 them by the SBC, that it's all attached to a larger narrative. It's all attached to a larger agenda.

00:56:58.600 And remember, these are the same people that likely had nothing to say when Hillary Clinton,

00:57:02.560 at Elijah Cummings' funeral compared Donald Trump to King Ahab and to Queen Jezebel.

00:57:10.300 All right. That's my entire take on that. I'd love to hear your opinion. You might

00:57:16.140 push back on what I have to say. That's fine. But I'd be interested to hear another perspective

00:57:22.740 on that. I understand that it's harsh. I probably, I mean, I don't think I wouldn't have said it.

00:57:28.420 That's just not necessarily how I would say things. But do I think that this, these particular tweets

00:57:34.840 and this particular chairman is blown out of proportion? Yeah, I do. And I think that we know

00:57:40.760 why that is. And quite frankly, I think it's very hypocritical and counterproductive.

00:57:47.060 All right. We've got a lot of big shows this week that I'm really excited about. We're going to talk a

00:57:51.840 little bit more about the COVID vaccine this week. I kind of made a mistake on last week's episode,

00:57:56.380 and I want to clarify that. A lot of you, some of you pointed that out about the use of fetal cells

00:58:02.040 in the vaccine and the Christian response to that and whether or not they're actually present in the

00:58:07.320 vaccine. I didn't make a mistake, but I didn't, I wasn't clear enough in my explanation. So we're

00:58:12.240 going to talk a little bit more about that. We're going to talk to a Baylor professor who is being

00:58:17.820 targeted by the cancel mob because she basically said, hey, look, I don't want my daughter to share

00:58:21.980 a bathroom with a biological boy. We've got a lot of good interviews, a lot of good stuff coming down

00:58:25.980 the pipeline this week. I'm really excited about it. So I will see you tomorrow for all of that.

Relatable with Allie Beth Stuckey - February 01, 2021

Ep 361 ｜ Teachers' Unions vs. Our Kids & Pastors vs. 'Jezebel' Harris ｜ Guest： Corey DeAngelis

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