Breaking News! President Trump is Abolishing the Department of Education. Breaking news! We explain what it means, as we go deep into the history of education and its ramifications. Dr. Pastrito from Hillsdale College also joins us to explain the progressive era and the nationwide education crisis.
00:00:03.000We explain what it means as we go deep into the history of the Department of Education and its ramifications.
00:00:10.000Dr. Pastrito from America's greatest college, Hillsdale College, also joins us to explain the progressive era and the nationwide injunction crisis.
00:00:18.000You guys can support Hillsdale College and learn from their incredible online courses at charlieforhillsdale.com.
00:00:25.000That's C-H-A-R-L-I-E for Hillsdale.com.
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00:00:56.000We will not embrace the ideas that have destroyed countries, destroyed lives, and we are going to fight for freedom on campuses across the country.
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00:01:34.000Today, momentarily, imminently, right around the corner, President Donald Trump will be signing an executive order, a major executive order, to keep one of his campaign promises, one that we care about deeply here on The Charlie Kirk Show, which is the abolishment, the abolition, the elimination of the Department of Education.
00:01:56.000The Department of Education was created in the 1970s under President Jimmy Carter, who separated from what it was previously called the Department of Health Education.
00:02:07.000Now, I think that is worthy of a little bit of a pause.
00:02:10.000That means we were able to send a man to the moon, win two world wars, become an industrial superpower, a world superpower, balance our budget, build the world's greatest middle class, have a well-read, well-grounded citizenry without a federal Department of Education.
00:02:32.000We were able to become the envy of the planet without a centralized bureaucracy called the Department of Education.
00:03:43.000We went from an education system that would explore eternal truth, one that would challenge children to go after what is beautiful and what is good.
00:03:56.000And instead, we gravitated away towards an administrative state model of education.
00:04:00.000The Germans, which have a tendency to introduce the worst ideas imaginable, introduced this idea of historicism.
00:04:08.000Coupled with historicism, which is an idea that history has an endpoint, and we must keep on growing the state to get us closer to that endpoint, it is Hegelian in nature, was this idea of the administrative approach to education.
00:04:23.000This was largely authored by people such as John Dewey, Woodrow Wilson.
00:04:28.000They wanted the centralization of education, that no longer should parents be in charge of education, no longer should churches or synagogues or communities, but we need to prepare students to become good worker bees.
00:04:45.000Now, every time I hear a Republican politician say, well, we want our education system to create the best workers of the future, I cringe.
00:06:43.000So today, he is signing an executive order, ordering Education Secretary Linda McMahon to do everything possible to make herself the last Education Secretary.
00:06:54.000Now, of course, there are some obvious caveats.
00:06:57.000The department was created by Congress, so it probably can't be completely abolished.
00:09:13.000The budget plan I submit to you on February 8th will realize major savings by dismantling the Departments of Energy and Education and by eliminating ineffective subsidies for business.
00:09:38.000That was before it was this beast that it is today.
00:09:42.000I had the opportunity to walk the halls of the Department of Education, and Linda McMahon is doing a phenomenal job a couple weeks ago.
00:09:49.000That is a sad, depressing, Stalinistic Soviet building.
00:09:54.000You walk, and it is a massive building.
00:09:58.000Massive. And you gotta wonder, what are these people doing all day long?
00:10:04.000What? And I thought to myself, as I walked the halls of the Department of Education, and I stared at five or six, Bureaucratic worker bees that wouldn't even look up from their work to look at who was coming by.
00:10:17.000I said, what does that person, right there at that computer screen, what business does that human being have over my daughter in Arizona?
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00:13:08.000Is that we have become a bloated, overweight country.
00:13:13.000Both metaphorically and literally, by the way.
00:13:16.000But that's a whole separate topic for a different time.
00:13:18.000And our institutions have found themselves to be a little bit lethargic.
00:13:25.000Getting a little bit slow, a little bit slug, and not caring about the delivering of the education for our kids.
00:13:34.000You can walk into any local high school.
00:13:37.000The high school I went to was falling victim to this.
00:13:39.000I saw it happening at Wheeling High School when I was sophomore, junior, senior.
00:13:45.000I saw this trend really accelerate towards the end part of my high school years, which was...
00:13:55.000All of the extra money that District 214 was receiving, where I grew up, District 214, very well-funded, incredible, unbelievable amounts of money going to schools.
00:14:06.000Teachers were earning $100,000, $120,000, $130,000 a year.
00:14:25.000And I started to see this trend where the more money that Wheeling High School would receive, it wasn't going towards teachers or teachers' assistants.
00:14:40.000It was going towards a part of the building that I rarely visited.
00:14:45.000A part of the building that I wasn't really even sure who all these people were.
00:14:50.000And it was right in the administrative bloat.
00:14:53.000And they would be adding on new offices and they'd be adding on new areas.
00:15:00.000And we were wondering, who are all these people?
00:15:03.000I think I saw my guidance counselor like twice throughout my four years.
00:15:10.000And boy, these guidance counselors would make a ton of money.
00:15:13.000And some of them were nice, wonderful people.
00:15:14.000It's not an indictment of them, but their role is largely unnecessary and would cost the taxpayers.
00:15:21.000Hundreds of thousands of dollars and then pensions for the rest of their life.
00:15:27.000Our nation's report card is a failure.
00:16:11.000Yet these teachers keep on getting paid.
00:16:13.000And the administrators, they keep on getting paid.
00:16:15.000And the administrators are there allegedly to try to keep standards up for the kids.
00:16:20.000And a whole different topic for a different time is how public sector teacher unions have done more damage to America than Vladimir Putin ever will.
00:16:32.000How public sector teacher unions, like the National Education Association and the American Federation of Teachers, they operate as a cartel.
00:16:47.000They are poisoning them with bad ideas.
00:16:50.000Public sector teacher unions, run by Randy Whitegarten, who might as well be Education El Chapo, has sent tens of millions of kids' lives backwards.
00:17:03.000And they are an arm of the Democrat Party.
00:17:07.000Eliminating the Department of Education is a death blow against the education cartel that has been harming our country.
00:17:16.000Private student loan debt in the United States totals about $300 billion.
00:17:20.000About $45 billion of that is labeled as distressed.
00:17:24.000YReFi does not care what your credit score is.
00:17:26.000YReFi refinances distressed and defaulted private student loans, which are different from federal loans.
00:17:39.000Why Refi can get them released from the loan.
00:17:42.000I guarantee you, everybody in this audience, you guys have a son, a daughter, a sister, a nephew that has private student loan debt that is distressed.
00:18:20.000Our next guest, who is the professor of politics, the dean of the Van Andel Graduate School of Statesmanship, and the Charles and Lucia Shipley Chair in American Constitution at Hillsdale College, Dr. Ronald J. Pastrito.
00:18:57.000How should we think, from a constitutional perspective, the very rapid use of nationwide district court injunctions?
00:19:08.000Well, there's a little bit of recent history on this, actually.
00:19:11.000And to be honest, I think Republicans have to look in the mirror a little bit because back when we got the Obama administration, came into office and was not able to get its program through the Congress, they decided to go very aggressive with administrative power.
00:19:32.000Instead of using the powers constitutionally that Congress has, instead of fighting the Obama administration itself, especially through the budget process, the power of the purse, instead the Republicans ran from that and decided to go crying to the courts.
00:19:48.000And so they took the Obama administration to the courts.
00:19:51.000Now that's been a practice in both Republican and Democratic administrations since then.
00:20:00.000It's been ramped up massively now that we have the second Trump presidency.
00:20:05.000But it's really a practice that unfortunately probably even Republicans have relied upon too much instead of using the Article 1 powers that they do have.
00:20:15.000And so it seems as if the growth of this is very disturbing and is compromising Article 2 specified powers.
00:20:25.000Does a district court judge have any jurisdiction over foreign policy decisions made by a president?
00:20:34.000And the federal courts have been, including the Supreme Court historically, have been very, very reluctant to involve themselves in any kind of question that might involve foreign policy or what one might...
00:20:51.000Say, or even some of the core discretionary powers of the executive under Article 2. And so that's why some of the reasons taken by some of these district court judges...
00:21:03.000Ordering the turning around of airplanes or instructing the Department of State to disperse funds even while they're just taking a pause, you know, the $2 billion funding order that we had recently reviewed by the courts.
00:21:20.000These things are typically way out of bounds for federal courts.
00:21:25.000And, you know, I have to say, I do think that...
00:21:29.000A good amount of this will ultimately end up being reversed at the Supreme Court level or at the higher court level.
00:21:40.000But the question is, how long is that going to take?
00:21:43.000And how much trouble and harm to our country is going to be done while we wait for the Supreme Court to get into the ring?
00:21:55.000We heard Chief Justice Roberts come out just recently and make the case that, hey, the impeachment isn't appropriate kind of language to use.
00:22:04.000The appellate process is the way in which we handle potentially rogue district court judges.
00:22:10.000And in one sense, he's right about that.
00:22:12.000But if his own court is going to be so reluctant to police the lower courts, then he really is almost...
00:22:22.000Setting the situation up for this kind of rhetoric.
00:22:26.000And the other thing that I haven't heard mentioned very much is, of course, there's a layer of courts in between the district court level and the Supreme Court level, and these are the courts of appeal.
00:22:38.000And where most of these cases are being brought, and they're being brought here for obvious reason, they're being brought in the District of Columbia.
00:22:50.000In the District of Columbia, the Federal Appeals Court, is the one that was notoriously stacked with Democrats by Harry Reid.
00:22:57.000And so it's not as if once these district court decisions get up to the appellate court level, there's not likely to be a terribly sympathetic hearing there either.
00:23:08.000And so these are really matters that should be...
00:23:12.000In front of the Supreme Court, the Supreme Court should be policing this.
00:23:15.000You saw four justices in the case on the USAID funding get really quite angry.
00:23:23.000Justice Alito was quite angry at the court for not intervening in that case sooner.
00:23:30.000So it'll be a matter of when the Supreme Court wants to get involved.
00:23:33.000So the lower court judges are making these decisions.
00:23:39.000They seem to have a little bit of an arrogance where they know they're going to probably get slapped down and get an angry judgment, but they don't really care.
00:23:47.000That's what's so disappointing is the naked partisanship here.
00:23:52.000Deep down, I think these district court judges know they're acting improperly, but they justify it because Trump is so bad and we have to do what we possibly can to stop him.
00:24:04.000Is there any recourse that can be delivered against these?
00:24:49.000They know how to judge shop, quite frankly.
00:24:52.000The Republican lawyers, when President Obama and President Biden were in office, they knew how to judge shop as well.
00:25:00.000It's very easy to do at the district court level.
00:25:02.000There are 90-some-odd district courts, and you only need to win in one of them, right?
00:25:09.000That's the great problem with a lot of these universal injunctions, is you can go district court to district court to district court and lose, lose, lose.
00:25:18.000And then if you find just one district court judge, Who's willing to enjoin the government, then that's it.
00:25:26.000They only have to go for one out of 94, essentially.
00:25:31.000It's like getting an indictment, you know, a prosecutor getting an indictment, you can indict a ham sandwich.
00:25:37.000And getting an injunction in district court, especially in D.C., if you can't do that and you're a Democratic attorney, you should consider a new line of work.
00:25:46.000And that's so disappointing for the Republic and bad for the country.
00:25:49.000So another big case happening right now is that Trump has fired two members of the FTC, which Democrats are claiming is illegal.
00:25:57.000Can you explain the case of Humphrey's executor to our listeners?
00:26:03.000And in one sense, it is illegal under existing Supreme Court precedent, under the Humphrey's executor precedent from 1935 that you just named.
00:26:14.000The Trump administration knows that, and one has to guess that the very reason that they have decided to go after these officers from the FTC is they know that that will put the question squarely before the Supreme Court of the United States.
00:26:33.000The case of Humphrey's executor was about the question of whether or not Congress could create an agency like the FTC, but...
00:26:44.000And the way in which, principally, it is protected from presidential control is by the president not being allowed to remove the commissioners whenever he likes.
00:26:57.000FDR tried to remove Mr. Humphreys, who was a pre-New Deal commissioner.
00:27:03.000And the court came in and said, no, Congress can, when it wants to create independence for these agencies, Carve out a special zone of protection from presidential control.
00:27:16.000And of course, the obvious problem with that is, well, where are they if they're not in the executive branch?
00:27:22.000The president has the executive power, according to our constitution.
00:27:27.000And so if they're not controlled by the elected executive, then by whom are they controlled?
00:27:33.000And so for years, constitutionalists have really wanted to get the court to look anew.
00:27:42.000And the good news is, it's pretty clear if you follow the jurisprudence over the last several years, the court is pretty sympathetic with Humphrey's executor,
00:28:05.000I've said many times, perhaps other than Dred Scott, is probably the worst decision in the history of the Supreme Court in terms of its historical ignorance and constitutional incompetence.
00:28:18.000So I think there's going to be a sympathetic I want everyone to check out...
00:28:46.000Your latest book, America Transformed, The Rise and Legacy of American Progressivism.
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00:30:03.000Chronicles how we got to the place that we currently are.
00:30:07.000So people might wonder, you know, we were talking about the FTC and the Humphreys executive decision.
00:30:14.000People might wonder, well, why is it that Congress would have wanted to kind of wall off an agency and protect it and apparently make it unaccountable?
00:30:26.000And the story of how that happened and what a just...
00:30:31.000Incredible departure that is from the original Republican vision of our founders really goes through the progressive era, the original progressive era, back to the likes of Woodrow Wilson especially, and also folks like Teddy Roosevelt.
00:30:47.000And so what I try to do in the book is to say, all right, all of this...
00:30:52.000All of these developments today, these rogue agencies, the fact that you have hundreds of thousands of people governing us and they go on doing it regardless of election.
00:31:05.000Elections come and go and the administrative state just sort of chugs on.
00:31:11.000It wasn't just in the last five years or ten years.
00:31:15.000It's been a project underway in this country for a hundred years.
00:31:19.000It goes back even into the end of the 19th century.
00:31:23.000And so the book basically traces the very different arguments about the purpose of government, the great critique of the Constitution, the progressive argument that Hey, the time of the founding has passed and we've got to get some new ideas here.
00:31:38.000Traces that into what they did then to institutions in the 1930s and how the law changed and how we ended up here, you and I, today talking about, you know, why can't the president go ahead?
00:31:52.000He's elected, after all, by the majority of the country.
00:31:54.000Why can't he go ahead and control other people in the executive branch?
00:32:00.000And so the short version is the book tries to tell that story.
00:32:03.000Over the last hundred years, power seems to have concentrated in the unelected bureaucracy and the unelected judiciary, both of which seem to be the protectorate of progressivism and the grovel.
00:32:15.000What would you say is the philosophical foundation for progressivism that led towards...
00:32:33.000What did Wilson, what did Dewey, what did these people believe?
00:32:36.000Well, what they did, Charlie, was they imported a philosophy of government that was a real novelty to America.
00:32:45.000American government, as you know very well, was founded on the principles of the Declaration of Independence.
00:32:52.000The point of government is to secure the God-given rights that individuals have.
00:32:57.000And government by consent of the governed is the only legitimate form of government.
00:33:02.000Well, what the progressives argued was that That was perhaps an appropriate way of thinking for the late 18th century, but that we had now been presented with a whole new host of problems, economic problems, social problems.
00:33:22.000For the crisis that they faced when they came on the scene in the latter part of the 19th century.
00:33:29.000And so the dominant philosophy, to get at your question, the dominant philosophy was that of the German state.
00:33:36.000Woodrow Wilson, for example, wrote very admiringly of the bureaucratic system of government in Bismarck's Prussia and wondered how we might Bring that kind of government by expertise, not government by consent, but government by expertise.
00:33:57.000People have different opinions and they want their interests to be respected.
00:34:03.000Much better, the progressives argued, if we could just bring in a kind of scientific elite.
00:34:09.000And, you know, often when I'm doing this for longer than I want to admit, And often when I used to bring it up, people's eyes would kind of glaze over, talking about the Germans and bureaucracy and state theory and so on, until we got COVID.
00:34:24.000Until we got told basically that, hey, elected people should get out of the way.