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00:03:43.380Welcome. It is verdict with Senator Ted Cruz, Ben Ferguson with you as well.
00:03:47.780Senator, we've got a lot to talk about today's show as we're getting closer and closer to the midterms and things that the Democrats are doing, they get weirder and weirder by the day.
00:03:58.780Well, there are certain things that are tells, you know, when you're playing poker, a tell reveals what kind of hands you have.
00:04:05.700And in politics, there's a tell that tells you whether a campaign is in trouble or not.
00:04:11.100And on the Democrat side, there is a tell that I think has a pretty close to 100 percent accuracy, which is if you're a Democrat running for office, your campaign is in real, real trouble.
00:04:23.560If you have to ask Kamala Harris to come campaign for you, that is a sign that your campaign is a dumpster fire on fire, going off a cliff into a giant pile of manure.
00:04:39.040And Abdul Al-Sayed, a candidate who is tied with James Tallarico as the most radical and dangerous Democrat nominees in the country,
00:04:49.360Abdul Al-Sayed, every day his campaign keeps getting worse.
00:04:52.780He keeps having more and more extreme facts.0.73
00:04:55.300His sister, the facts how much she hates America, his father-in-law, the fact that he's founded a charity linked to the Muslim Brotherhood,
00:05:02.560the the fact that his pal hasan piker says america deserves 9-11 yeah it's so radical
00:05:10.000that i'm sure they sat down at a strategy session and said what do we need how do we
00:05:14.940save this failing campaign i know let's invite kamala harris and amazingly they did and even
00:05:25.720more amazingly but to the surprise of nobody and amazingly is thoroughly tongue-in-cheek
00:05:30.160her appearance only made things worse we're going to bring you into this absolute nightmare0.88
00:05:38.040of a round table yeah between kamala harris and abdul al-sayed and and and spoiler alert
00:05:44.980kamala looked at him and said wow you're even whacker than i am she didn't actually say that
00:05:49.440but she implied it we're going to break it down right now yeah it's a it's a very interesting
00:05:53.940story we got that for you a second something just happened in massachusetts by the way most
00:05:58.560the country has no idea. The state just passed a law allowing abortion through the eighth
00:06:03.620and ninth months of pregnancy, right up until birth, based on any reason an abortion doctor
00:06:10.440gives. No exceptions, no limits, and this could include babies capable of easily surviving
00:06:16.780outside the womb. And under this law, the fact would not stop it. The law also strips away
00:06:22.580formally mandatory safety requirements for abortion providers and removes specific
00:07:43.380The only question is whether you'll be part of that fight as well.
00:07:47.120All right, Senator, so let's get to this really interesting moment.
00:07:50.380I agree with you completely, by the way.
00:07:52.420If you're bringing in Kamala Harris, you've got a really big problem,
00:07:56.800and that is either people aren't excited about you or you're desperate for funds
00:08:01.280or all of the above, or maybe even, I guess, Kamala Harris is more mainstream
00:08:06.460than you are, El Saeed, so therefore you're like, all right, let's bring her in
00:08:10.080and maybe I won't look as radical as many are afraid that I actually am.
00:08:13.600Yeah, look, I think Abdul thinks Kamala moves it more to the middle, which really speaks volumes.
00:08:19.540But, you know, look, if you think about where the country is and what the country is longing for, if the very first thing on your list of what the country is longing for is more DEI, that we were just not woke enough at peak wokeness, we need DEI everywhere.
00:08:36.540And by the way, we're not talking Berkeley. We're not talking Vermont. We're talking Michigan. We're talking a swing state. We're talking a state that voted for Donald Trump twice.
00:08:45.620And if you're saying, well, what the people of Michigan want is more DEI, well, that was the central point of the roundtable.
00:08:55.400So Kamala Harris said that any criticism of DEI, diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives, is a, quote, attack on maternal care.
00:09:10.060Quote, the attack on DEI is an attack on maternal care, including the need to protect black women in connection with their pregnancy, childbirth and postpartum care.
00:09:19.880She says in a roundtable event with El Saeed on black maternal health.
00:09:25.420Quote, these are the facts when we talk about what is at stake in this moment as it relates to these midterms and who occupies seats in one of the most important bodies in our nations, if not the world, which is the United States Senate.
00:09:37.640um now there there are several things that are interesting uh do you know in 2024
00:09:46.100who el saeed backed for president i'm gonna guess it was joe biden slash kamala harris
00:09:53.800well you would think so but but but if you were guessing that you'd be wrong
00:09:57.580so el saeed was part of the uncommitted movement in michigan and these were the islamists who were
00:10:06.720so radical that they were furious with Joe Biden because he wasn't anti-Israel enough. Now, mind
00:10:14.020you, Joe Biden is the most anti-Israel president this country has ever seen. And yet the Dearborn
00:10:20.160Michigan radicals, he was not full-throatedly pro-Hamas. And so there was this whole movement
00:10:29.140uncommitted in Michigan to say, we're not going to vote for the Democrats because they are not
00:10:33.540as anti-Israel as we want them to, and one of their key leaders was Abdul El-Sayed. And so I
00:10:39.880want you to listen to this exchange, because El-Sayed gets very unhappy when he gets asked
00:10:46.780about his support for the uncommitted movement and not supporting Joe Biden and Kamala Harris.
00:10:52.060Here, give a listen. Yeah, in fact, Senator, we've got two clips. The first one I'm going to play for
00:10:56.520you, this goes back to the uncommitted movement and what he had to say back in 2024. So here's
00:11:01.920else they had then proudly saying i'm in this uncommitted group look you know in in all of the
00:11:07.560states that you named um they did not have the kind of tumultuous uh uh 2024 election season
00:11:16.020that we had in michigan and as folks know if you look back to 2024 one of the hardest issues to
00:11:21.080deal with uh was the genocide in gaza and i was um proudly supportive of uncommitted because i
00:11:27.840understood that I wanted the party to understand that this was going to be a devastating situation
00:11:32.640for a lot of folks. So you listen to that center. And now let's go to that clip you were mentioning
00:11:37.660where else I loses it when he was pressed about his support for the 2024 uncommitted movement,
00:11:42.700even though in that last clip, he was totally proud of it. Here he is in his own words. Now,
00:11:47.720can you explain what uncommitted was? What was it about? And who was the president? We were
00:11:52.740uncommitted to? Is Vice President Harris the same as President Biden? Wait, wait, wait, wait. Was
00:11:57.760Vice President Harris running for president at the time we were uncommitted? Answer the question.
00:12:03.460I mean, ask a fact-based question, and then I'll answer your question. No, no, but who were we
00:12:07.460uncommitted to who was the actual leader of the presidential ticket? Who was that? Yes. So we
00:12:12.400were uncommitted to President Biden, and then he did what? What did he do? No, no, no. What did he
00:12:18.220do? You're asking a question based on false premises, so I'm just getting you to clarify
00:12:22.320your premise what did he do he dropped out of the race correct and then there was a new person
00:12:27.380running for president right so factually is the premise you're basing this question on actually
00:12:32.280a real premise thank you next question he was not happy there senator at all goes back to the point
00:12:39.300you were making he was furious he was even having to answer the question at all well look he was
00:12:45.580in his own word proudly supportive of the uncommitted movement when the ticket was joe
00:12:51.280biden kamala harris he was like very proud to say we ain't voting for her and the dumpster fire is
00:12:58.640so bad he's like hey you know the person that that i wasn't willing to vote for uh now now i
00:13:04.240really need her help now uh you know it's interesting you you know that that it's a
00:13:13.780problem when even the new york times admits it i'm just gonna read this headline from the new
00:13:19.700York Times. Many Democrats are avoiding Kamala Harris. Abdul Syed welcomed her. The former vice1.00
00:13:28.000president wants to help her party in the midterms, but not many are taking her up on the offer,
00:13:31.880except for the Senate nominee in Michigan, who appeared with her on Tuesday, when even the New
00:13:37.780York Times is saying, wow, this Kamala character, I'm not sure she's going to help in a whole lot0.92
00:13:44.140of these races maybe you ought to like uh if she calls and offers it ought to be a new phone who0.84
00:13:49.740sorry the wrong number yeah yeah yeah but if you want to know why if you want to know why
00:13:57.740abdul al-sayed says well maybe kamala will help moderate me help me seem more in the middle
00:14:04.740i want you to think and i want you to listen to this bizarre discussion at their round table
00:14:14.080I'm just going to play it and then we'll comment afterwards here. Give a listen. This is this week, Kamala Harris and Abdul Syed. And I'm going to give you a preview. They're just like you. They relate to you and your family just like anyone else would. Give a listen.
00:14:27.760and that's what the people of michigan need from you from our leaders that's what black women and
00:14:35.280black birthing people need in order to move themselves forward their families forward
00:14:41.420the communities forward the state forward in this country forward senator birthing people0.95
00:14:48.440that said it that's it they haven't let that go have they that with these birthing people so that's
00:14:53.420a dude who's acting like a chick that they want you to believe can get pregnant if we're
00:14:58.140translating what a birthing people are so look i'm just gonna say right now if you have ever used
00:15:06.080the phrase black birthing people unironically but like actually to describe something you know what0.99
00:15:12.940you probably ought to vote for abdul you you are clearly a whacked out nut job but but for the rest0.97
00:15:20.900of us this really does tell you how extreme these people are they're unable or unwilling to say the0.96
00:15:29.000word mother yes like mom and and i will tell you several years ago we had a hearing the senate
00:15:35.040judiciary committee where one of the senate democrats made a reference to birthing people
00:15:39.500and i pulled him aside afterwards on the senate floor and i said is your party's base really that
00:15:47.000whacked out that you can't say mom yeah and he just looked at me and nodded and said yeah
00:15:54.380yeah like i mean that's a staffing call right that's somebody in the staff's like hey you can't
00:15:59.260say that anymore you got to say birthing people and that'll give us cover with the with the with
00:16:03.220the hardcore primary radical lefty voters that's that's a political decision this is six weeks out
00:16:09.740from the general election this is when they're trying to pivot to the middle and their campaign
00:16:14.360is we are fighting for black birthing people that's how extreme everybody everybody listening
00:16:20.300to this if you go watch the clip uh we've got this one up on youtube this episode you can watch0.99
00:16:25.980no one's shocked by what was said in that moment it was as normal as it's saying welcome good
00:16:31.260tuesday morning it's so good to have you here at this harris el saeed event like there was no pause
00:16:36.960like what are they talking about what is she saying why are we going here like this was check
00:16:41.500the box radical leftist organization 101 stuff look this is embodying something we've talked
00:16:46.920about on verdict for a long time which is the the power center the center of gravity of the
00:16:53.180democrat party has moved from the union hall it used to be in the fdr era the union guy was the
00:17:00.860the heart of the the democrat party it's moved from the union hall to the faculty lounge and
00:17:07.200And birthing people is the sort of thing that that that woke communists in in the Ivy League or Berkeley say it's the kind of thing, you know, people who snap instead of applauding or who hiss if you dare deviate from their orthodoxy.0.62
00:17:25.260those are the people who say black birthing people and that is abdul that is especially abdul's sister
00:17:31.620who is a professor at the university of chicago who says she hates the university of chicago hates0.94
00:17:35.760thanksgiving hates the fourth of july and hates america and that is kamala harris as well by the
00:17:41.580way that's just tenure now isn't it isn't that how you get tenure at one of these universities
00:17:45.040you just tell them you hate them and and this is and you hate everything about this country they'll
00:17:48.320give you a job for life uh you know it it is sad it is extreme it is radical now i'll tell you what
00:17:54.500though unfortunately the radical is not exclusively on the left listen the democrat party is facing a
00:18:01.800hostile takeover from the islamists and the communists and that's something that that we
00:18:09.200have to fight back and defeat but there's also a separate group on the right that the the the
00:18:14.600so-called woke right yeah uh that that have decided that and this is the tucker carlson's
00:18:20.700of the world these are the people who are embracing number one anti-semitism hatred of
00:18:26.580israel hatred of jews hatred of donald trump uh hatred of america hatred of capitalism and they're
00:18:33.700calling themselves uh they claim they are on the right but there is nothing that they are saying
00:18:40.440that is remotely conservative and and this week i i went on will kane on fox news and he actually
00:18:46.200asked me about the woke right embracing socialism uh and and i gotta admit i didn't know the question
00:18:53.020was coming and when he asked me it it pissed me off uh so i want you to hear my answer because
00:18:58.720i did get pissed off yeah before we get to that i do want to talk to you real quick about a
00:19:04.000organization that you should know about and the amazing work they're doing it's called compassion
00:19:08.820international if you're going to change someone's life you want to know what actually lasts and
00:19:14.000that's one reason Compassion International has become one of the most trusted child development
00:19:19.340ministries in the world. Independent research shows children sponsored through Compassion
00:19:25.180stay in school significantly longer. In fact, they're 40% more likely to graduate from high
00:19:30.700school. And this stat's amazing. 80% more likely to finish college. And that's because sponsorship
00:23:29.560The way to be a populist is not get in the Bernie Sanders game of giving away free stuff.
00:23:34.300The way to be a populist is fight for the jobs of working men and women, fight for small businesses.
00:23:40.220Bernie Sanders and Kamala Harris' tax policy and economic policy does not work.
00:23:45.880And you are right. There are some misguided voices in MAGA saying, let's embrace socialism light.
00:23:53.180You know what? If we campaign and say we'll be just like the Democrats, except not as a generous Santa Claus, that's a path to lose.
00:24:01.860You know, the parallels that you talked about there about the young people that were behind Castro, they're 14, 15 years old.
00:24:08.180They didn't realize or have the historical context of of what they were supporting.
00:24:12.360and then they started watching what actually happened afterwards.
00:24:15.400I think there's a lot of truth to that here in this country.
00:24:17.560And look, I have people that I know well that are in this kind of Republican, socialist, isolationist,
00:24:25.180kumbaya, giveaway stuff, campaign strategy for MAGA.
00:24:29.860I think it's, like you mentioned, a disaster for election of conservatives
00:24:34.660that this is where we allow the party to go, and we've got to stop it right now.
00:24:38.320Well, and listen, I think it is still fringe.1.00
00:24:40.780There are a handful of vocal so-called influencers that are promoting it, but there is a danger of young people.
00:24:47.900Young people are susceptible to indoctrination, and it's why the Bernie Sanders and AOCs of the world target young people, and it's also why you have the woke right targeting young people.
00:24:58.820And this podcast, look, the answer to lies is truth.
00:25:03.080The answer to socialism is the facts and reality that every time it's implemented, it doesn't work.
00:25:09.080And the result is poverty and misery and suffering.
00:25:11.900And the single greatest engine for prosperity the world's ever seen is the American free enterprise system.
00:25:19.000The greatest engine for opportunity for lifting people out of poverty is the American free enterprise system.
00:25:25.800And we need to respond with facts to the lies the other side is saying.
00:25:31.760Canadian women are looking for more, more of themselves, their businesses, their elected leaders, and the world around them.0.98
00:25:38.120And that's why we're thrilled to introduce the Honest Talk podcast.
00:28:43.180Join me and an all-star cast of analysts for everything you need to know from around the league.
00:28:48.940Get new episodes of the NFL Report Monday through Friday, all season long.
00:28:53.600Listen to the NFL Report podcast on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
00:29:01.100A shocking crime and a cover-up at the highest levels of the United States Marine Corps.
00:29:07.120Someone opened the door and was the primary shooter.
00:29:10.400Is it possible you could do that and then suppress the memory?
00:29:12.540A new podcast series, Faultline Haditha, tells the story the United States government wants to keep buried.
00:29:19.860How can you not know there were women and children in there?
00:29:22.600Are you going to tell us here that you don't know what happened that day?
00:29:25.400Based on thousands of pages of previously classified documents and over a hundred hours of secretly filmed video,
00:29:33.040the truth about one of the most infamous crimes in Marine Corps history can finally be told.
00:29:38.440If you've got five players, and one of them is guilty of murder at least, and you offer immunity to the other four, you better be right about the fifth.
00:29:46.960Because if you're not, then you've just given immunity to your killer.
00:29:50.500Listen to Faultline Haditha on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
00:34:48.640Her body slung in adolescent impertinence
00:34:52.180against the front passenger seat door.
00:34:55.080Shoulders turned so she could face me fully.
00:34:58.400Usually, when I picked up my daughter, Najah,0.99
00:35:01.100from middle school, she'd tumble into the car1.00
00:35:04.180and bombard me with a day's escapades,
00:35:06.240chattering nonstop about her friend group or complaints about an annoying teacher or a wonder
00:35:10.940at the test she'd aced despite thinking she'd failed it. But not this day. Did you know my
00:35:18.300school was bad like this when you decided to put me here? She asked. My hands tightened on the
00:35:25.520steering wheel as I worked to keep my face neutral, buying a few moments to gather my thoughts.
00:35:32.100As they neared the end of her seventh grade year,
00:35:34.720Naja and her closest girlfriends were thinking about their futures.
00:35:39.740Honor students, they searched the nation's top colleges,
00:35:43.500and that led to a curiosity about New York City's highest-ranked public high schools.
00:35:49.080Wondering about their chances of getting in,
00:35:50.780they decided to Google their own school and its ratings.0.99
00:35:54.320And in doing so, Naja and her tight trio of black girl nerds0.96
00:35:58.780confronted not only the reality of the city's deeply segregated educational landscape,0.90
00:36:04.600but also that the Brooklyn school they all attended existed firmly on the wrong side of the divide.
00:36:12.160By dismissal time, nausea's shock had turned into boiling,0.99
00:36:17.920and the seatbelt was barely clicked before she was confronting me.
00:36:22.460I had braced myself for this moment, spent nearly a decade expecting it, preparing for it.0.99
00:36:28.780When Najah was entering pre-K, my husband, Faraji, and I decided to send her to the type of school that wealthier families with choices uniformly avoid, one that is low income and mostly black.0.85
00:36:43.760Our decision had been informed by values shaped by my years of reporting on the enduring and too often seemingly hopeless battle for school integration.0.99
00:36:53.180I've lost count of how many times I've written some version of this sentence.
00:36:58.380Nationally, a black student is less likely to have teachers who are qualified and experienced
00:37:03.120and to be offered rigorous and college prep curriculum to have up-to-date technology
00:37:08.540and attend school in modernized facilities.
00:37:11.980In New York, a combination of housing segregation and academic sorting, called school choice,
00:37:18.160that begins as early as pre-K means most black students, even middle class ones,
00:37:24.040are forced to attend racially segregated schools with high rates of poverty.
00:37:28.640And nationally, schools in predominantly non-white districts receive $23 billion less in annual
00:37:34.160funding than their heavily white counterparts, according to a 2019 analysis by NBUILD.
00:37:39.720In everything that we measure, these schools have less, even though the economically struggling
00:37:44.460student bodies they serve need more. And so the test scores and poor academic performance
00:37:49.780they typify, and that typify these schools, reflect not just the disadvantage of the students,
00:37:55.880but more essentially the disadvantage of the schools. New York City is a diverse school system.
00:38:02.180All right, I'm going to skip forward a little bit. So, like the generations of black parents0.98
00:38:07.660who came before us, Farage and I felt an obligation to make educational decisions
00:38:12.380based on the collective good, and not just our individual advantage. New York is considered one
00:38:19.160of this nation's most liberal cities while operating a school system that is among the
00:38:22.880most racially segregated. This segregation exists because policymakers and affluent parents,
00:38:28.260even those who profess a belief in integration and equality, shed their advocacy at the schoolhouse
00:38:33.860door and refused to take or support any substantial action to integrate the city schools.
00:38:39.560Faragey and I decided that our role in this struggle meant upending the status quo and
00:38:44.160sending our child not to a wealthy white school but to a poor black one. That may appear paradoxical0.55
00:38:51.200but only if we forget that the battle for school integration wasn't catalyzed by the desire to put
00:38:56.000black students next to a white student but by an effort to ensure that black children received
00:39:01.100access to equal educational resources. We thought by sending NAJA to a mostly low-income and black
00:39:08.940school we could help improve it for all the children there. From my past reporting I knew
00:39:13.560that PTAs at poor schools often can raise only a few thousand dollars, but Faragey and I could
00:39:18.860write checks that exceeded the annual PTA budget. I witnessed how dismissive school officials could
00:39:24.880be to lower-income parents who lodged complaints or made demands for resources, and how deferential
00:39:30.040they were to the wealthy ones. I believe Faragey and I could bring some of that power with us.
00:39:35.740We had connections and time and status that should not matter, but we all know do. And more than that,
00:39:42.120we believe strongly that if families like ours went into schools like this one, it would challenge
00:39:46.180other families with similar values to do the same. After much internal debate in our household in
00:39:52.0802015, we enrolled nausea in pre-k at public school 307, a segregated high poverty school across from
00:39:58.560the Farragut housing projects in Brooklyn. I hadn't intended at first to write about our decision,
00:40:04.540but a few months into the academic year, PS 307 became embroiled in an integration battle when
00:40:10.300parents protested the reassignment of their children from a wealthy and predominantly white
00:40:14.360school to ours. It felt impossible for me not to weigh in. In 2016, I wrote an essay in this magazine
00:40:21.600called, quote, choosing a school for my daughter in a segregated city about our experience in a
00:40:27.180system in which educational inequality was widely accepted. Our daughter, then a kindergartner with
00:40:33.240afro puffs a plaid school uniform and jordan clad feet appeared on the cover the piece struck a
00:40:42.000chord in a way i could not have predicted readers flooded my inbox and posted hundreds of comments
00:40:47.360okay and i'm going to skip forward a little more in the outside world my choice had earned me valor
00:40:54.280and yet that day under the withering glare of my daughter the words that i was formulated
00:41:00.800formulating sounded hollow to my ears, even before they passed my lips.
00:41:08.300Your school is not bad, I told her, modulating my voice. What are you talking about?
00:41:15.600Naja grew agitated. You know what I'm talking about. We looked up our school. We saw the test
00:41:22.060scores. We saw the ratings. She ticked off the school's below average reading and math scores,
00:41:27.040and that it ranked poorly on a popular school rating website.
00:41:30.800I said I was aware of her school's academic rankings,
00:41:33.660but the test scores alone do not define a school.
00:41:57.040I talked about the deep inequality in New York schools and how, like black families who came before us, we had an obligation to be part of the struggle of our larger community.
00:42:06.240Even if her schools were not academically the strongest, I explained, her father and I knew we could provide for her tutoring and any other assistance to make up for what her school may have lacked.
00:42:17.300But my child just shook her head, her face a mask of disbelief.
00:42:22.880and something else betrayal so you had the money to send me to one of the best schools
00:42:33.140and you chose not to wow she said her voice hurling the words because other kids
00:42:44.700are disadvantaged. You didn't want to put me in a great school?
00:42:51.820Najah was asking what I'd accomplished by not choosing the quote best school for her.
00:42:59.200And the honest answer is, I don't know. When it comes to the choices my husband and I have made
00:43:06.280about public education, these days I feel that I failed both my values and my child.
00:43:12.780I did not, when we chose PS307, go into this with naivete. I understood exactly what we would face,
00:43:21.800could cite studies and statistics by heart. But when I wrote my essay, we were in the propitious
00:43:28.440years. It was Naja just a kindergartner with two caring and astute co-teachers. The district had
00:43:35.180placed one of its new universal pre-K programs at Naja's school, and it had attracted other
00:43:40.160well-off families who enrolled their children the year we did, and many had stayed for kindergarten.
00:43:45.580Najah adored school and seemed to be reading and doing math on grade level. She was also developing
00:43:50.820a strong sense of herself as a black girl in a classroom that, unlike the rest of the school,
00:43:56.660was multicultural and economically diverse, a reflection of the city and the world. At the
00:44:01.500start of each year, the students created self-portraits, and I chuckled with my husband
00:44:05.980when our light-skinned child chose to draw her with a chestnut-colored crayon and not the beige
00:44:11.740one because that's how she saw herself. But this did not, I suppose could not, last. The dynamic
00:44:20.440exceptional principal who headed the school when we enrolled Najah into pre-k, a woman who had0.99
00:44:25.300herself grown up in the public housing across the street and had turned this high-poverty school0.97
00:44:29.440into a vibrant learning community, retired at the end of the year. It was soon clear that the new
00:44:35.380principal was not up to the task of sustaining the work of the veteran educator she had replaced.
00:44:41.180Towards the end of first grade, Najah started sometimes saying she didn't like her school
00:44:46.800and complaining about how chaotic it was at lunch. I decided to visit during the lunch period,
00:44:53.120and I was shocked by what I saw. Najah's class and another class were sitting at their tables
00:45:00.760in the cafeteria with no lunch and no adult supervision. Children were running wild, chasing,
00:45:10.440hitting, and pushing each other, while the teachers, aides, and cafeteria workers stood by
00:45:16.100looking bored. Several times, I had to instruct children to stop striking each other and to sit
00:45:22.960down, at one point physically pulling two boys apart. When I asked one of the aides why the
00:45:28.660children weren't being supervised, she told me the lunch period was short-staffed. After I sat
00:45:35.340back down with nausea, she told me, it's always like this, and that's why I don't want to go to
00:45:41.060this school. It was not that the children horrified me. Kids of all incomes are rambunctious at
00:45:47.720lunchtime. It was the callous disregard of the adults. Students respond to the high or low
00:45:56.380expectations of institutions and the grown-ups who operate them. And it was clear that these
00:46:01.760messages, that these children were getting the message. After lunch, I headed straight to the
00:46:09.280principal's office to meet with her. Afterwards, I sent a lengthy email about what I had witnessed
00:46:13.560and demanded the unsafe lunchroom conditions be addressed. And what had become a pattern when we
00:46:19.160raised concerns, it took several days before the principal responded and several more weeks of
00:46:24.580emails and calls before she announced a plan to address the lunchtime issues. Okay, and I'm going
00:46:29.980to scroll forward a little more, and I know this is lengthy, but I just think this is so incredibly
00:46:35.180powerful that it's worth really listening to her words. She continues, but fourth grade was the
00:46:43.080worst year. At the first parent-teacher conference in November 2019, Najah's teachers told us that
00:46:49.040she was not performing on grade level in any of her academic subjects, and that her assessment
00:46:55.520given at the start of the school year had shown she was not a proficient reader. We were perplexed.
00:47:02.720Najah was always a good student, and her past reading assessments were always at or above grade
00:47:07.060level. When I got home that night, I emailed her teachers and copied the principal. We needed to
00:47:12.720understand why our daughter was suddenly floundering. I told them we wanted to see Najah's
00:47:18.000reading assessment and all the graded classroom work so we could determine what she didn't
00:47:21.860understand and get her tutoring. I was trying to signal that we were active and involved parents
00:47:26.900and that we wanted to be partners with them in our daughter's success. Neither of Naja's teachers
00:47:32.080nor the principal bothered to respond. What follows was a series of emails and phone calls
00:47:40.300and meetings trying to get basic items, copies of Naja's graded work, her reading assessments,
00:47:44.640her test results and receiving nothing then one day in december nausea came home and excitedly
00:47:52.200informed me that she had suddenly jumped three grade levels in reading in one month
00:47:56.120knowing that this was virtually impossible i reached out to the school's literacy coach
00:48:05.060and learned that after we began asking reading assessment nausea's teacher had instructed the
00:48:10.380coach to perform the evaluation and that she found Najah was reading just fine. What became clear to
00:48:16.120me was that Najah's teacher most likely never performed the school's mandatory reading assessment
00:48:21.120for Najah or any of her classmates, but instead it assumed the flagging competency of these mostly0.64
00:48:27.800low-income black children. Finally, a few days before school let out for winter break, I received0.99
00:48:35.160a folder from Najah's backpack with the math assignments I'd been requesting since our
00:48:38.880conference. Once I tucked her into bed, I sat at my dining room table and scanned one page,
00:48:44.520then another, then another. None of them were graded. I started checking Najah's work
00:48:52.540and discovered most of her answers were wrong. Najah believed herself to be good at math.0.98
00:49:01.600It was her favorite subject. But now I understood she thought she was correctly solving all her0.72
00:49:07.340problems because her teacher was not checking her work. Similarly, Najah's writing assignments
00:49:15.280were rife with uncorrected punctuation, capitalization, and grammar errors. I sat
00:49:22.180there silently for several minutes, conjuring the image of my little girl thinking she was soaring
00:49:27.740in class when she was failing, and my devastation morphed into hot rage. All right, now I want to
00:49:36.260skip forward to the end she describes continued challenges in the public school essentially she1.00
00:49:42.060eventually she transfers to another school because her daughter insists and then she has
00:49:46.380enormous difficulty at the more challenging school because she failed to get the education
00:49:51.140she needed as a young girl yeah here's how the article ends one day one day in june as i was
00:49:59.240immersed in writing this essay. My phone rang. It was Najah. She was 16 and was finishing the
00:50:06.440final weeks of her sophomore year. She was making her daily call for lunch money, a ritual I created
00:50:13.200to force her to check in with me once during the school day. Hello, baby cakes. I tried to sound0.99
00:50:18.480cheery. I failed. What's wrong, mommy? She asked immediately. I'd been making my way through pages
00:50:25.580and pages of email exchanges with Najah's principals and teachers, and this had jostled
00:50:30.160loose a truth I could no longer suppress. For years, I had been defending my decision to Najah,
00:50:37.260trying hard to balance empathy for her with the justification of her father's and my choices.
00:50:43.880I wanted my child to see it my way, to see the struggle she was having as part of a lineage and
00:50:49.140a mandate, to understand the tremendous privilege that I believe inoculated her
00:50:53.540against the worst consequences of the dysfunction and at times educational malpractice that she and
00:51:00.880classmates experienced. But now I felt overcome with regret. Naja deserved better. They all did,
00:51:10.340but she was mine. This girl, my only child, looked to me to protect her, to give her what
00:51:21.220she needed to thrive, and I had not chosen her. I almost cannot type the words, because when I do,
00:51:33.680an image of her in her blue school uniform, her hair in beaded cornrows that clicked when she
00:51:39.860swung them, with her sweet baby-toothed smile springs to mind, and the tears come. On the phone,
00:51:47.220I knew that if I tried to brush off Naja's question, she would simply keep asking. She was
00:51:53.940like me in that way, relentless. So I told her that I'd been reading through the old emails and
00:51:59.240that I was feeling really sad that she had gone through so much and that I hadn't listened to
00:52:03.280her more. I feel like you got cheated, I said, and I'm sorry for that. For a moment, Naja said
00:52:12.000nothing then she told me sometimes I wish instead of always thinking about other kids
00:52:19.300you would have thought about me I never really got the education I wanted I gotta tell you Ben
00:52:26.000that that is one of the saddest essays I've ever read and and and I left out quite a bit it's it's0.97
00:52:31.160substantially longer than that but look Nicole Hannah-Jones is still a left-wing ideologue0.98
00:52:39.100She still passionately opposes school choice.0.89
00:52:42.120She opposes giving scholarships to kids in failing schools to attend better schools.
00:52:46.820She's fighting to close the door on other kids that want to get an education, want to learn to read, want to learn to write.
00:52:52.780And she's doing it because she embraces the hardcore leftist ideology.
00:52:57.140But I will say those words, you can feel her pain.
00:53:00.080You can feel the tragedy of sacrificing her own child.