This is Busted Pencils, fully-ledded education talk.
Here are your hosts, Dr. Tim Slecker, and Dr. Johnny Lupinacci,
educated educators talking education.
That's what we're trying to do here all the time.
Busted Pencils fully-ledded education talk,
educated educators talking education,
home room, Monday morning, Johnny Lupinacci has the flu.
Like, you know, has the flu.
What is in very deep denial about it?
What was I supposed to reveal that because Johnny is using the,
if I don't admit I have the flu, then I don't have it.
Right, he's trying on science denialism for size,
just to see what it feels like.
Yeah, see if it works.
But considering that when we went to record,
which we'll admit too,
we're actually recording this Monday home room on a Friday.
But Johnny actually was admitted that the non-fluidity has,
is stopping him from recording.
Right, right.
So we send Dr. Lupinacci to go rest and we'll take care of this.
Right, right.
And, you know, maybe he can find a dose of Ivermectin
or something.
Oh, goodness.
I, you know, he's going to go science denialist.
He might as well go all the way.
Yeah.
Yeah.
But Jess, yeah.
You know, here it is, home room.
Really appreciate this and to spend time with you because,
you know, we try to actually bring people up to date on what's happening.
We can lay out that, you know,
it's been challenging because what isn't happening?
When is it not happening?
And we're probably going to have to get used to that.
But, you know, the news that we're covering today,
it reminded me, though, too, of back to that really powerful interview,
we had last Wednesday's class and classes in session with AFT president,
Randy Winegarden.
Absolutely.
And I know that, that a lot of that was really on immigration status and things like that.
But she brought up, again, what we continue to hear,
which is the Trump administration in some way,
shape, perform wants to do away with the department of education.
Yes.
You know, Randy kind of pointed out that,
do they really want to get rid of it?
Because it seems like they also want education to do a lot of things.
There's all kinds of confusion.
But the other news though that came out was,
is that Donald Trump, and I'm paraphrasing his quote,
that actually he has tasked Linda McMahon,
the will will be potentially can be secretary of education.
Right.
Let's take a moment to acknowledge that at this moment,
she is not the secretary of education.
Right.
We currently do not have a secretary of education.
Right.
We don't, we don't have.
And I think official confirmations and titles also seem to not be a problem
with this administration.
That's a fair point.
Yeah.
We just put them to work anyway.
But president Trump, you know,
reminded us that he informed the potential would be
secretary of education, Linda McMahon,
that her job number one is to make sure that she
creates the situation where she will lose her job.
He's implying is is that her,
he's hiring her to shut down the department of education.
So that she no longer will have a job.
Yeah.
Yeah.
And, you know, what does that mean?
What a job maker.
Right.
You know, it must be nice to be in the position of a Linda McMahon
to be hired to get yourself fired.
Well, Linda McMahon is not someone who needs to worry about employment.
This is someone who is rich beyond the reckoning of any of us mere mortals.
She has no need of this for monetary security.
Right.
This is, this is certainly a case where sure hired the mega millionaire
in order to do a job where she will no longer have a job.
Yeah.
Yeah.
It's, well, you know, one of these days when I achieved that status,
I am available, anybody out there, you can hire me.
Now, I got to get to that multi million dollar status.
But I also need to get you much more corrupt if you're going to be a
great administration.
I don't want to be, but I'm just saying I might be interested to find out
what it means.
No, I'm, let's stop this.
Yes.
Okay.
Breaking news though.
And who knows what it is going to be like.
At the time you guys are all listening to this episode.
But back to the department of education.
Yeah.
Let's have some headlines.
Why don't you listen?
Let's let's dig into this a little bit.
From news nation, you can also find this on many other news sources.
But we're going to, we're going to go with news nation for now.
And then we'll bounce over to see how this is being covered on a couple
other platforms.
Lawmakers denied entry into department of education.
Democratic members of Congress were denied entry into the department
of education on Friday morning.
The doors were locked and a security guard could be seen having a
tense conversation.
I guess that's what we'll call it with a lawmaker.
Quote, they are blocking members of Congress from entering the
Department of Education.
Elon, referring to Musk is allowed in and other people illegal.
And quote from a representative Maxwell Frost, Democratic from Florida,
said in a social media post in another post he said armed federal
officers were called to the scene quote, we aren't dangerous.
Frost said, we are here to represent our people to defend public
education.
This is an authoritarian regime end quote.
The incident comes as president Donald Trump reportedly considers
using an executive order to abolish the department an issue he
campaigned on during the 2024 election.
Now shutting down the Department of Education would require an act of
Congress.
The Department administers congressionally appropriated funding
and provides oversight for K-12 schools, administer student loans
and grants and creates federal rules.
Well, okay, so the executive order pathway is at least according to law.
That's not the way you get rid of the Department of Education.
Right.
And this is also I know that you remember this, but as we were preparing
to record with Randy Weingarten last week, when we got her on onto our
room in order to record, she said, hang on, I need to check something.
We're expecting potentially the EO to come down, referring to the executive
order dismantling the Department of Education.
Right.
Yeah.
So everybody's been waiting for this.
And in fact, yeah, I'm glad you brought that up just to remind us, you know,
that we actually had to take a pause before we could record that show
because Randy was in the moment of going like, okay, this executive
order is about to drop.
Right.
This is this is imminent.
Yeah.
This is imminent.
And so I think what we can look at here is is that potentially
Democrats might now be thinking that it's a good time to put up some resistance.
It certainly is.
That is understatement of the administration goes to Tim's lecker.
Larry, you know, I mean, it's it's now at that point, you know, we've
woken up and I don't know.
So so they're there.
And so we've been blocked.
And you know, the the statement that, you know, Elon, first man, Elon,
or whatever, what do we call Vice President or shadow president, shadow president,
King Elon, you know, he's allowed in there, but Democratic lawmakers are not allowed in there.
Now I can I want to point this out, you know, back in 2011, 2012, when
I was a member of the organization United opt out.
That was a parent group that were pushing against high stakes testing.
We actually, you know, for two years in a row, did an occupy the Department of Education event,
where we were outside of the Department of Education.
But to point this out is that the doorway in the entryway to the Department of Education
is actually a public access point.
This is not a forbidden point.
Now, when you get in there, there are places that are, you can't go because of things,
but the ability to get in.
And so anybody looking at the story, this is what is actually happening is,
is that the Democratic lawmakers are being forbidden to get into the public access area
of the Department of Education.
And this is very similar.
If not quite identical to what was happening over at the US Agency for International Development at USA,
that the department was informed that they were being shut down.
And Democratic lawmakers attempted to actually enter the building to find out what the hell is going on here.
And we're physically blocked from entering.
So we're seeing this happening again, where our unelected billionaires have free access.
They are free roaming, but our elected lawmakers are not able to go to the places where policy is enacted.
You just made me think of that, that it's kind of like they went to Disney and bought the ticket that allows you to skip the lines.
The billionaires dad.
Yeah, yeah, you know, the billionaires, you know, it's just like, and maybe more importantly that actually they're where the only ones who are allowed to access these points.
So even the way you and I just talked about that, you know, we, we tried our best to make it largely factual.
But I think what's interesting here, though, too, just you, you know, putting this on.
What are the news sources saying as we're covering this?
And I know you got a couple, you know, headlines that you might want to share with.
So I'll recall for us all the headline that I read for us before was from news nation, which as we were talking before the show, this is not a news source that I'm overly familiar with.
But you Tim said that this is one that tends to trend a little bit towards the right a little bit more conservative.
And our headline here is lawmakers denied entry into Department of Education doesn't mention political affiliation right.
All right, let's hop over to NBC News House Democrats denied entry to the Department of Education.
We've got a short video there of the actual encounter. I'll make sure to link that into the podcast notes so that you can watch this.
And now let's go over to the right, shall we?
Okay, over at Fox don't call it news.
We have Democrats ambush education department in attempt to force meetings.
Democrats ambush ambush.
Education department in attempt to force meetings.
That that reeks of violence.
It does. It does. In fact, ambush is a word very strongly associated with violence.
Right.
And implies that they have no right to be there.
Well, because the other word force.
Right.
You know, and so this is kind of that sense of going so what what is happening out there.
And to you know you the listener and the potential that you know you have family members crazy uncle who likes to get their news from other sources.
When we go to talk about these issues, you know what is it that they are actually listening to and learning about because we do want to reveal this that once you get beyond the headline of Fox News and actually get into the video clip and the conversation between the news anchors and the people that are on the spot.
It's actually not too bad discussion of what's actually happening on the ground who's there what they're saying.
And indeed in sort of scanning through that a quote that you had pulled up was that one of the anchors was theorizing that this was some performative politicking happening.
Right.
And what stood out to me was a minute later, she says.
Well, we haven't heard specifics from President Trump on the Department of Education.
And so in this uncertainty.
This is what is happening.
Right.
And I had a moment of going, Fox don't call it news.
You're damn right for once.
Yeah, you know, and kudos to them, but not kudos to them because I know being like any other person when it comes to the news, there are times when I skim and there are times when I dig in.
Well, absolutely.
Right.
And this here then says, you know, again, the headline Democrats ambush.
Democrats ambush.
And so this really plays into particularly a certain audience that my guess is that all they need to see is a headline like that.
And that headline announces to them no need to dig any deeper.
Democrats are promoting violence.
Democrats are violent.
We need to take the most extreme measures possible.
And I can almost guarantee you this.
Again, we are recording here on Friday.
I still have a broadcast show to do today.
I can almost guarantee you that I will get a call today.
Did you hear that those Democrats?
They're ambushing.
Yes.
They're attacking people at the Department of Education.
You know, and this is.
I'm going to try to make this this link why public education then is so darn important.
Because this what you and I are talking about is actually what is necessary in a democracy from a public education is the ability to have critical analysis of media sources.
Yes.
What we're doing here, we're demonstrating out loud for our listener that this is actually a skill set, something that needs to be taught to identify your sources to potentially have a bit of a history lesson behind those sources.
And also look at multiple sources, which we did here to try to find out is there some form of an objective truth here that we can kind of make sense of.
And this is why the attack on the Department of Education, because now I'm using a violent term.
But I, you know, Trump's announcement and wanting to absolutely do away within dismantle, maybe that's a more gentle word is why.
And for me, one of the reasons why is this because what you and I just did could then be controlled.
And in fact, even eliminated because 1776 committee that he just reinstilled.
I could hear somebody listening to mine in your conversation, Jess, and saying they're being very unpatriotic.
Yeah, disparaging. And in fact, this type of conversation is verboten, right?
And so this is why, you know, I'm probably not even bringing the type of passion the listeners used to from me, but I'm doing my best also to try to come at this from a calm analytical standpoint that says this is a danger.
And so when Randy, again, was just to point it out Wednesday before we recorded classes in session, her, you know, kind of anxious stance waiting for that executive order to come across.
You can see that what she was concerned about is.
And Randy is a strong woman.
Randy is a woman who has been in politics a long time, who knows the ebb and flow. She knows how to weather the storms.
It knocked me off of my, my path, just a moment to see her so rattled and so tense in this anticipatory moment of at any moment.
Everything could come crashing down.
And I think even the rattling would be more just realizing too that she was going to get flooded with multiple new sources when this came down, because you could see that she was interacting with some of the people that she is with because you know people get this.
Yeah, just the deluge of information that's coming, you know, and this is what we think now, how do we move forward in realizing that we're going to, in one way, get have to get used to the deluge and kind of put our way through it, pick our time, spend some extra time, what matters, what doesn't, what is news, what is, you know, clickbait, what is outrage.
Because this is our job in this moment that we have, and I like the moment because you know one of our favorite guest Kevin Kumasheros is one of the ways that we resist is by being truthful by naming the moment.
And this is a moment right now that needs to be named described so that we recognize it and say, so what's our next move.
So listener, thank you for coming by.
Just you got a little closing you want to jump on there.
And now for your moment of zen.
I have no right to despair. I insist on hope.
Make sure you carry that hope with you all week here. Thanks for coming by on home room.
Hey classes in session on Wednesday coming up Friday, face awesome free throws Saturday, one whole hour busted pencils across all the media civic media apps networks, you get it there.
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