Lovett or Leave It - Bill Barr, Deep State Warrior

Episode Date: December 5, 2020

Nicole Byer is back to break down the week's news and play OK, Stop! Ari Berman talks about the census, the failed coup, and how we defend voting rights. Plus Kaya Henderson joins to discuss the latest on schools and what we can expect from a new education secretary who isn't a disgrace. And we play a game about The Crown because Charles actually fell off a horse and while we are anti-monarchy like good Americans, there is blood in our veins and we deserve this show.

Welcome to Love It or Leave It're chilling in the closet with friends. John Lovett is going to spit facts about the ways we can work to get the country on track and interview people and make us all laugh while we're back in the closet again. Until COVID comes to an

end and the nation starts to mend. Or we're back in the closet again. That song, which was awesome, was by Matthew Burris. If you want to make a back in the closet elect theme song, please send it to leaveit at

cricket.com. They have been awesome. I am still committed to my plan of creating a playlist, but I always remember at this moment in the week, and that I take no action. I'm going to do it. We're only a few weeks away from the Georgia runoffs on January 5th that will determine control of the Senate. Early voting starts on December 14th. And if you're looking for ways to support groups on the ground who are making sure every voter makes their voice heard, you can sign up to adopt Georgia. We'll be sending new opportunities to donate and to volunteer every week between now and January. So please head over to votesaveamerica.com slash Georgia

to learn more about what you can do today. We really have a shot. I know that you're tired. I know you're burnt out. I am too. But do a little bit of something to help in Georgia so that we have the chance of winning these Senate seats because the amount of good we can do if we win these seats is transformative. If we could win the Senate, it makes so much more possible. So please go to votesaveamerica.com slash Georgia and do your part today. Also, the holidays are here. And you know what that means, right? It's holiday merch season. So please go to the Quirk Kids store. Not only do we have new merch for Love It or Leave It? We also have merch from the original show that Love It or Leave It spun off from, which is Emily's Garden Show.

Obviously Emily's Garden Show is the cheers to Love It or Leave It, the Frasier. So, you know, that's cool. So there's merch for both. Place your order by December 11th so that you can get it by Christmas Eve. Or if, you know, you don't celebrate Christmas, just order anytime. Head to crooked.com slash store. Later in the show, we'll be joined by journalist Ari Berman to talk about the census and the failed coup. And I talked to Kaya Henderson, the former chancellor of DC schools and co-host of Posse of the People, about what she hopes to see in a Biden education department.

And we played a very silly game about the crown because we all deserve it. But first, she is an actress, comedian, writer, and host of the podcast, Why Won't You Date Me? Please welcome back, returning champion, Nicole Byer. I'm a champion. So good to see you. Thank you for being here. You judged the monologue. Let's get into it. What a what a week uh i'm gonna start with a topic and i'm gonna give you three jokes about it okay and you can just pick which one you think uh we shouldn't have done okay all right okay perfect joe biden fractured his foot while playing with his dog major over the weekend here we go number one which is a shame because now biden has to wear a boot in one of

those cones a boot in one of those cones you know like the big cones that a dog has to wear yeah to stop from gnawing on his ankle i guess i don't get it so that one that one's bad all right let's try again joe biden because he has to wear one of those cones you know chew on his ankle yeah but a boot on his cone no he's gonna wear a boot on you know, chew on his ankle. Yeah, but a boot on his cone? No, he's going to wear a boot on his ankle. A boot on his ankle and a cone on his head? And a cone around his neck. Okay.

Okay, I get it now. It's not for me. Joe Biden fractured his foot while playing with his dog Major over the weekend. Maybe there's a reason Major will be the first rescue dog in the White House. All I'm saying is you get what you paid for. Yes. See, that's a joke I get. Rescue dogs are free 99 and might not be good at playing because they came from a broken house. I get it. Okay. Final joke on this topic. Joe Biden fractured his foot while playing with his dog Major over the weekend. When she heard about the injury, Vice President-elect Kamala Harris dropped off some cupcakes.

And apparently Major will get more when he finishes the job. Yes, I get that. That one's the best one. That one is the best one. I like that one a lot. That one is the best one. You didn't laugh. Oh, yes, that happens.

You didn't laugh. Oh, yes, that happens. My dear, dear friend Nick gets very upset with me because I've started to say, ooh, that's very funny instead of audibly laughing. But I just think I'm laughing so much. I don't know. I do comedy. Here, tell it again and I'll laugh.

Oh, no. I think people will think that's pitiful of my part. No, no. Just one more time. I'll do a different joke. I'll do a different joke. I'll do a different joke. Oh, come on. Give me the same one.

Come on. Come on. Give me that same one. I can't do it. I can't do it. I can't do it. Okay. President-elect Joe Biden fractured his foot playing with Major, a rescue dog.

And then Kamala Harris brought over cupcakes and she said, soon you'll finish the job. I butchered it. No, I didn't think you did better than I did. L.A. Mayor Eric Garcetti announced that the city's only public transportation accessible coronavirus testing site would be closed so it could be used as a film location in a She's All That remake. Did you see this? Wait, is that real?

Yeah. The She's All That remake part is real? That's real, that they tried to shut it. Then, of course, I think it's all TikTok stars. I think they're trying to remake it with a bunch of TikTok people. Yikes. Who wants that? But they did have to reverse the decision because people were upset. I mean, I could see why they're upset.

You know, LA, Mr. Garcetti, dare I say, is doing a bad job. He's bad. I don't envy anyone trying to figure out how to get through this clusterfuck of like, how do you do lockdowns? How you tell businesses they can't be open when they're saying their whole lives will be ruined if their businesses are closed. But like, man, the way in which L.A. has given people direction is so confusing. It is so confusing. And they're overlapping.

And it's like certain places are closed that don't make any sense. And you can't go to playgrounds, but you can't go to the mall. What are we doing? What are we doing? Well, I think it's we're prioritizing consumerism over happiness and the well-being of people. I just don't understand why the government doesn't give people. Every other country has given people money.

Well, that's the thing. It's like that would require the federal government to like give people money so that people don't face these like terrible choices at the local level of like having to keep their businesses open versus like being able to keep schools open. Like, you know, it's just, it's a very, it's very sad. It's very sad. Yeah, it's real fucked up.

We were halfway through this joke about she's all that. Oh, yes, yes, yes. I'm so sorry. He told LA citizens that he only did it because his friends dared him to. We were just a bet to you, said LA. You know? Mm-hmm, mm-hmm, mm-hmm, mm-hmm, mm-hmm, mm-hmm, mm-hmm, mm-hmm, mm-hmm, mm-hmm. I like it.

I like it. I likehmm. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. They'll call their agents to see if they have any secret connects. That's funny. Nicole, I have definitely heard tell of way too many secret big parties by rich people. And I am very frustrated that you know those same exact people hosting secret weddings. They're going to get it first. They're going to get it first. They're going to find a way. They're going to go right from having secret big weddings to secretly trying to get their doctors to find them the vaccine by taking it off the back of a truck

heading to a nursing home. I mean, if anything, this pandemic really should open the eyes to middle-class people to be like, you will never be afforded the same things as these rich people whose lives have not changed. Your life has changed extremely. It's just so much has changed for middle class people and lower middle class people that like the rich, if anything, are getting richer and they're having a really great time while you're starving. really great time while you're starving. It's also the, you know, there's been a lot of like attention on like the anti-mask rallies and like Trump being anti-mask and that's absolutely terrible. And there's been attention, I think, on some Democratic politicians that have been like,

now don't leave your houses. I'll be at French Laundry if you need me. You know, very frustrating. I got to go. I got a plane to catch, but you people stay still. You stay very still. Don't go anywhere. And I like, that's incredibly frustrating. It's incredibly awful. But like, I'm in Connecticut where Ronan grew up and I drove to pick something up curbside from a Chipotle. Cause. Ooh, come on. Did you get extra guacamole? Come on. Did I get extra guacamole? Of course I got extra guacamole. You have to look in these times you have to treat yourself and I want to not, I don't want to run out. I want guacamole in the bowl and I want it on the side of the bowl. All right. I want extra in and I want extra out. And that's just how it

has to be. That's how it has to happen. The parking lot was full. You, it was full. Like the mall, the mall, like a big, good-fashioned american mall was jam-packed i had to wait for a space at the back of the mall like it would normally be like right before christmas because the mall was jammed and i didn't go into the main part of the mall all right but apparently according to sources close to me uh there was a line for Wetzel's pretzels that was very tight. Very tight. And look. So we are through the looking glass.

People have just said, if I go, I go. Yeah, I think everyone's fucking given up. I mean, I'm lucky. I have to stay inside. I injured my leg. So I'm just like kind of house ridden. But I'm pretty thankful for it. I don't want to be out here with these people. People are so poorly behaved. No.

Trump pardoned former National Security Advisor Michael Flynn, who pleaded guilty to lying to the FBI of any and all possible offenses related to the Mueller investigation. We also learned this week that the Justice Department is investigating a potential presidential pardon bribery scheme. And Trump is said to have talked about preemptively pardoning Donald Jr., Eric, and Ivanka Trump. Wait, preemptively? Yes. As in he's going to say, I hereby pardon you for any crimes you may have committed. If you committed a crime, not like in the future, it's not a permission slip for future crimes. Oh, I thought it was for future crimes.

I was like, this is nuts. This can't be. I wouldn't put it past him. I wouldn't put it past him. I wouldn't put it past him to have a list and say like, and also I pardoned myself in advance for these few crimes.

Wait, can he pardon himself for past things? It's never been tried, right? Like no president has ever pardoned him or herself. There is no herself, but a guy can dream, right? But it doesn't really make sense. Like it shouldn't be constitutional because that would mean that the constitution, like the founders, like they delicately balanced all the different priorities and they made sure that Congress was strong and the executive was weak and there was a judicial system. But loophole, the president can kill the Speaker of the House in the Oval Office at any moment. That doesn't seem like the way they had intended it. So no, I don't think that Trump should be allowed to pardon himself. And I don't think that should be accepted. But he still might try it.

Man. He still might try it. What a full-blown lunatic and i say that yeah it's not great truly in the most loving way he's literally he's insane he's crazy oh boy it's um a couple things one no pardon for tiffany tough i mean nobody gives a shit about tiffany that must suck can't even get a pardon they're. Can't even get a pardon. They're free. Can't even get one. I do think, though, one thing is obviously Jared and Ivanka must want the pardons. Who wouldn't want a pardon? But it's not totally in his interest to pardon his children, because if you pardon someone for a crime, they no longer can invoke the Fifth Amendment because they're afraid they'll be prosecuted for that crime.

So if Trump and Jared and Ivanka did a bunch of crimes together, if Ivanka and Jared are pardoned, they may have to testify against him. Oh, wow. And so I imagine they're trying to keep that from him right now. Like, don't. Dad, it's all upside. Wow. Dad, come on. I mean, it's a lot of work to be a criminal.

Yeah. Right? It's a lot. You got be a criminal. Yeah. Right? It's a lot. You got to keep up with rules and shit. Do you ever have a dream where like you've done a terrible crime and you know you're going to be caught and you're like afraid? That must be what it's like to be them all the time. All the time.

Just like every corner you're like, they're going to catch me? They're going to catch me. Do they know? Even if they do get the pardon, they'll still be susceptible to charges at the state level, right? Like New York State can still prosecute them. But what prosecutor would want to be a fucking legend? What prosecutor would have the urge to be a hero for fucking ever? And I'm not saying, look,

Attorney General of New York, Tish James, she's great. And I am sure she would never do anything to use politics to influence her prosecutions. She'll do the right thing without fear or favor. But she can get them. Get them. Get them.

Get them, girl. To encourage more compliance with their guidelines, the CDC said the 14-day coronavirus quarantines can be cut to just 7 to 10 days. In a follow-up statement released shortly after, the CDC said, you know what? Just try not to cough in each other's mouths.

Just please. Please listen to us. I mean, yeah, they seem exhausted and tired. Fauci's almost 80. That's too old. We gotta get somebody else up in here. But he Fauci's almost 80. That's too old. We got to get somebody else up in here. But he looks good for almost 80. He does look good.

He looks better than, dare I say, Donald Trump. But then again, like most people, like an old hamburger looks better than Donald Trump. Man, he is so ugly and I can't wait to not look at him anymore. At least Joe Biden had good work done, you know? Yeah. Joe Biden's very smooth. Yes, very, very, very smooth. Very smooth. It had good work done, you know? Yeah. Joe Biden's very smooth. Yes. Very, very, very smooth. Very smooth. It's good work. It's nice. It's impeccable. He looks great. And he's very trim. I saw him with that. He had the boot on. He had the boot on his

foot and he was like standing with his foot raised, showing everybody the boot. And it's like, man, being a tall guy is cool. You got a boot on. You look kind of cool. You put me in a boot. Being a tall guy is cool. You got a boot on. You look kind of cool. You put me in a boot. I look ridiculous. Like, I just, I, like, the idea of me looking, like, athletic in any form is, like, basically impossible.

You put a boot on my foot, it's over. It's over. But then you could just lie about how you got the boot. You could be like, I was skiing down a mountain, and I, you know, I hurt my leg, and now I'm in a boot. Everybody will know it's because I tripped getting the door for some chicken parmesan. Well, I broke my leg because I fell down the stairs of my own house. Oh, no.

Oh, no. Yeah. Well, of all the periods of time to be stuck at home with a broken leg. Yeah, now is the time. It's not bad. The social network Parler became popular with conservatives because it lacks moderation

and other restrictions on free speech. But thanks to those same policies, the platform has reportedly become overrun by pornography. When reached for a comment, Senator Ted Cruz said, sometimes you just have to take the good along with the very good. Because he got colloquial and pornos.

Oh, he did? Yeah, he hit like. Oh, no, on Twitter. On Twitter, yeah. He hit like on some incest porn. Oh, okay. Maybe also some sort of, it was very risque. You know, I just, it's wild that we hold government officials

to this higher standard. It's like, they're just horn dogs. Come on. They trying to get their dick wet? They are. Everybody is. Yeah, apparently. No, I know.

It's just, it's not, you know, I have to keep two things. I totally agree with the sentiment you're expressing. I also am totally repulsed by thinking of Ted Cruz as a sexual being. The artificial intelligence group DeepMind has cracked a protein folding problem that scientists have been studying for over 50 years. The solution to this protein folding problem? Two tortillas.

It's just terrible. It's just terrible. I think I get it. Because there's extra protein in your burrito, so you gotta get two tortillas. I get it. Okay. It was, for me, a thinker.

Yeah, yeah. No, it was... No thinker. Listen, and I think you're right about it. Also, also this week, in a bizarre hearing before Michigan legislators, Rudy Giuliani and a group of witnesses, he seemed to have picked up in a minivan outside an anti-mask rally organized by eHarmony and QAnon leveled bizarre unfounded allegations about the election to continue Trump's effort to overturn the results. So you know what that means. Now it's time for OK Stop. Here's how it works, Nicole.

We'll roll a clip, and then you can say OK Stop at any point to comment. So have you seen this? Yeah, she's wild. I love her. I know we're not supposed to love her, but I love her. I'm honestly rooting for her. I hope she's right. I hope she finds those ballots.

All right, let's roll the clip. The poll book is completely off. Completely off. Off by 30,000? I'd say that poll book is off by over 100,000. Okay, stop. I just love her. I say it's off by 100,000.

You know, I just got to say, I am so proud of this drunk woman for finding the perfect red lipstick for herself. It is a beautiful blue based red and it compliments her like her hair. She looks incredible. She looks great. I actually agree. I think she looks great. I love her hair because it's it's done, but it's a bit wild. It's done, but it's a bit wild.

It's hard to tell if it is done to look wild or was done and is becoming undone. It's like a messy bun that she did two days ago and slept on it. She was like, still looks good. I got to get to court. That poll book. Why don't you look at the registered voters on there? How many registered voters are on there? Do you even know the answer to that? No, I guess it's... I'm trying to get to the bottom of this here. Zero. Zero. There's zero.

Okay, stop. Is this Professor Xavier? Who is this man? Look, I like him. It's an intense vibe that he's really going for. Yes. And what I appreciate about him is that he might be 15.

He does look very young. He looks very young. He's very young. It's really hard to tell how old this person is. I don't know how old you have to be to be a legislator in Michigan, but he could be 15. Could be 15. He could be 42. It could be 42.

We don't know. It's anyone's guess. I'm here for it. I think he looks pretty... I'm here for it. I think he looks pretty. I'm here for him. I like him. My question then is if the. Guess how many.

Wait. What about the turnout rate? 120%. Okay, stop. Just. This is the moment where Rudy shushes this woman. Yeah, and I'm like, if Rudy Giuliani is telling you to pull back, lady, you've gone off the deep end.

This reminds me, it's like when Jodie Foster spoke at some award show and it was like, oh no, Mel Gibson's your fucking emergency contact? You're in trouble. No, Mel Gibson's your fucking emergency contact. You're in trouble. Like if Rudy is your safety, safe harbor, Rudy's your voice of reason. Yeah. You've made some mistakes.

Things aren't going well. Let's let Representative Johnson ask his question. So why? We're not seeing the poll book off by 30,000 votes. OK, so just that little that little laugh that she does, that little contemptuous. She's perfect. So good. I love her so much. She's great. And you know, just to make a serious point about it, it's like, throughout this, there's actually applause behind her. Like everybody, you know, everybody's making fun of what this person did. And, you know, us too. Great. I'm in on it. But like, she's doing a performance based on what a lot of

right wing people have been doing, right? Like this is a kind of like, she's doing a version of Laura Ingraham. She's doing a version of Sean Hannity. She's doing a version of Lou Dobbs. And it's like, there are people behind that they're eating this up like this kind of smirk saying, like, you're not being honest. I know what's really going on here has like a huge audience. It's how we got into this mess. Like, I am sure that when this woman finished her presentation, she was greeted like a hero back there. She was a hero.

That's not the case. What did you guys do? Take it and do something crazy to it? Stop. Okay, stop. I love her. Do something crazy. I just love that she is like slurring,

like openly slurring in a public forum. And she like, she like legitimately might be drunk. And like, that is okay with that crew too. A lot of these people are slurring through life. Like these Karen Gone Wild videos, just like slurring and screaming at people. I, what a way to live. He said like, there aren't 30,000 extra votes. Like, what are you talking about? She said like, there aren't 30,000 extra votes. Like, what are

you talking about? She's like, actually it's a hundred thousand extra, but just making it up as she goes. And then, and then, and then he says like, but we have the, that doesn't make sense. Like we know who voted and we know how many votes there are. What are you talking about? And she's like, maybe you did something to it. Maybe you took that book. He's like, I'm just a guy. I'm just a legislator. I'm not part of your deep state. You explained to me how this happened. Now I'm doing it. Now I fucked with the books. I love

that. I love that it's like, well, maybe you're involved. Maybe you're one of the, maybe you're part of this. Rudy Giuliani was the mayor of New York. Yeah, it's wild how far he's fallen. Well, he wants a pardon too. He must be really worried about something very serious if he's willing to do this day after day what did he do embarrassing

what did he do what do we do i guess we'll never know because i'll get the pardon i'm just saying the numbers are not off by 30 000 votes so i know what i'm saying that they're filling in i know what i saw and i signed something saying that if I'm wrong, I can go to prison. Did you? Okay, stop. What document is that? That if I'm wrong, I will go to prison? That's not a document that I've ever seen. I think

that Rudy had them sign like affidavits or something, like some legal document. Because they weren't sworn under oath. I don't think these people are under oath at this hearing. So they signed something else to be to sit under penalty of whatever. So she's taking that. She's taking that on a ride. I suppose. They told me that I would be parking in a parking lot and I would be shuttled in through a shuttle. I.

OK, stop. So this is the hair that was left over. This is before. This is what the hair is supposed to look like. She has not washed, combed, or taken her hair down since this. Yes. This is pre, we are now back in time. The bun is higher. It is fuller. Yes, and she's wearing the same scarf and the same cardigan. She just added lipstick.

She's not okay. All right, when did this, I wonder when she added the lipstick. Maybe this was the day before. Oh, man. Maybe. She's having a ride. She's not okay. Everything that happened at that TCF center was fraud. Every single thing. Every avenue was taken to commit it.

Please appreciate your passion. Are the courts also tied up in that fraud? Let me tell you what I did by accident, okay? I gave Channel 7 an interview that they tied in to that and made me the witness that's uncredible. Do you have a point of order? The answer that I gave you is they didn't bother to interview a single witness, just like you.

OK, is that real? Like that? Here's the thing, Nicole. That is real. That is real. We put these videos came to our attention because of Ryan J. Riley, who's a Huffington Post reporter. He posted that without edits.

He is a journalist. This is not this is not some viral tweet retweet machine. This is a journalist. This is not some viral tweet, retweet machine. This is a real moment. And people were sharing that moment because obviously what it captured was Rudy Giuliani, the former mayor of New York, farting during the hearing because he is on an absolutely epic run of self-humiliation. But there are other videos where if you actually you're like wait a second he's farting throughout this entire hearing oh no

i don't mean his life is really all together a lot of these people are really sick like and i mean like not sick in the head but like physically ill in their bodies. They're not healthy. No. They're not healthy. You just got to worry about yourself. And it's okay that your friend lost the election. It's okay. He didn't. It's okay. You know, like it happens.

He lost by like the same electoral votes as, you know, Hillary, you know. It's okay. It's okay. It's okay. And you'll have to find some other meaning in your life. And I guess for someone like Lou Dobbs, talking to the president all the time was very cool. It was a cool part of his day.

He liked it. And now he's just a guy on Fox business that nobody cares about. But, and Rudy Giuliani, I guess he's worried about being prosecuted. But man, it's like, how little do you have going on? Yeah. That you're subjecting yourself to this.

Yes, and it's so public. How much younger do you think that dye is going to make you look? Hee hee. Oh, I like that video of him melting away. That was funny for me. Truly, these people look sick. And I'm like, how are you OK with looking like? I don't know.

I just, oh boy. Oh boy. And that's OK, stop. It's good to and that's okay stop it's good to see you nicole it's good to see you you know um in the pandemic i've really enjoyed going back to listening to episodes of uh you and sashir on your other podcast where which is just about you being best friends and listening to episodes from before because it's just two people going Italy and just like you know like there's no it's like there's um it's like we're all dinosaurs and like we're having a good time we're eating leaves and like the meteor is getting

bigger and bigger and you're like I wonder when we'll go on another vacation. You're like, no, not for a while. Not anytime soon, my friend. Not anytime soon. Oh, boy. No, no. Yeah, I miss the before times and I can't wait to go back to it. I know, I know.

I want to get that vaccine. Right. I want to get that vaccine and go to Vegas. Yeah, give me that yummy, yummy, yummy, yummy vaccine. Okay. me that yummy, yummy, yummy, yummy vaccine. Nicole Byer, everybody. Thank you so much. Thank you for having me. Thank you to Nicole Byer for joining us. When we come back, we talk about the failed coup and the fight to protect voting rights with Ari Berman. Hey, don't go anywhere. There's more of Love It or Leave It coming up.

And we're back. He is a writer for Mother Jones and author of the book, Give Us the Ballot, The Modern Struggle for Voting Rights in America. Please welcome back Ari Berman. Good to see you. Hey, John. Good to see you again. Thank you. So there were arguments this week in front of the Supreme Court around the Trump administration's goal of excluding undocumented immigrants from the census, despite the plain language in the constitution that we count everybody, all persons. It seems like even conservative justices were skeptical. Some were skeptical on the merits. Some were skeptical that it was even a case that should be in front of the court right now. What is the latest on the census and Trump's efforts to exclude undocumented immigrants? Well, you're right.

It's kind of an insane case because it seems like it's so cut and dry. So Trump basically said we want to exclude undocumented immigrants from the census count so that they're not counted when it comes time to decide how many house seats states get. So that would mean, for example, states that have a lot of immigrants, including a lot of undocumented immigrants like California, they could get fewer seats. And states that are whiter and more Republican and have fewer immigrants like Alabama, they could get more seats. But the 14th Amendment is really, really clear that representation is based on the whole number of persons, which means everyone, which includes immigrants, both documented and undocumented.

So even at oral arguments, Amy Coney Barrett was basically saying history and practice go against your argument. So even when Amy Coney Barrett is against you, you probably don't have the strongest argument if you're the Trump administration. So the Trump administration was basically saying there are so many unknowns, like we don't know if we're going to be able to produce the citizenship

agenda. Like we don't know if we're actually even going to be able to tell you how many undocumented people there are in this country. And then we don't know if we're gonna be able to do it in time because this has to be sent to President Trump by the end of the year or else he can't do anything about it. And so they're basically telling the Supreme Court, we're so disorganized that you can't rule on it because we don't have our shit together. I mean, that was basically the gist of what they were saying. Yeah, it's interesting too. It's a reminder. I think actually this conversation would sound very different if we were not talking about Joe Biden becoming president because the actual data on apportionment may be delayed for something having to do with errors in the tabulation. I'm not totally, I don't totally understand it myself.

I don't think we know totally what happened. But the fact that receiving the census information made to be delayed till after Joe Biden is sworn in gives us a little bit of a reprieve, especially because some of the conservatives kind of were entertaining the idea, like almost like kind of providing a little bit of a roadmap that like, well, what if they tried to restrict some undocumented immigrants? What if they tried to, well, maybe they'll come up with a rule that isn't so broad and sweeping and then we might want to consider that. While the conservatives were skeptical, there is reason to be nervous about what they might ultimately rule on something like this case? I mean, I think anytime there's a case before the Supreme Court now, when it's six to three, there's a reason to be nervous. Like, I think we're going to be saying that a lot over the coming years.

And the question is just like, how nervous are you? And I was less nervous about this case than maybe some other ones, just because time is kind of running out. And basically, the Solicitor General for the Trump administration was essentially saying, we can't actually exclude the 10 million undocumented people. Like, the Census Bureau is not even going to be able to do it, even if we wanted to. Now, I don't think he wants to tell Trump that. But like, clearly, Trump told the Census Bureau to do something that's basically impossible. So now they're saying, well, we might exclude a small number of people, we might try to exclude people that are in ICE detention centers or something

like this. And all of this is probably illegal anyway. Like, I don't think you can just start excluding people from representation when clearly representation is based on counting everyone and the census is based on counting everyone. But the fewer people you exclude, the less of an impact it has, right? Like you're probably not going to transform that many House seats or transform that many electoral votes if you're talking about a small population of people compared to trying to exclude 10 million people from the overall count. So, yeah, it was concerning that some of the justices were even entertaining it. I think the bigger issue here is the census is super, super important. We only do it once every 10 years. And the Trump administration completely screwed it up.

And so now the question is just how badly did they screw it up? And I think when the House gets that data and when Joe Biden becomes president, they're going to have a really tough decision to make about, do we even accept this? Or is it so flawed that we have to try to fix it somehow? How does that play out? Because obviously the census is mandated by the Constitution. It sounds like they're already going to miss the deadline of December 31st to deliver the apportionment data. What are the next steps? So that data is delivered to Joe Biden and to Congress? It's delivered to the House first. And so the House can decide whether or not to accept it. There has been one time in history where the House declined to accept the census data

for a portion of it, which was in 1920. And they did it for really bad reasons. Basically, it showed that the country was more urban than rural for the first time. And the House didn't like the fact that all of these immigrants were moving to cities. And so they basically said, we're not going to accept the census data. And then we're going to pass a law restricting virtually all immigration. So like that was really bad. However, there is a precedent for saying that we don't have to accept census data if we don't like it. And so the House could decide we're not going to accept it.

Joe Biden could say it's flawed. It would be very, very difficult to redo the entire census. I mean, that's a huge undertaking. Maybe they could try to count people in certain places where there was really obvious errors. Maybe they could go back and look at the data and try to clean it up more. I mean, but it was very, very clear to a lot of people that the census was going to have a lot of problems because first off, COVID hit in April when the census rolled out. So like that was a problem that was going to be no matter who the president was. But like Trump has tried to sabotage it

from the very beginning. He tried to add this question about citizenship to depress immigrant participation. They cut it short by a month, even though there was more time. There were lots of anecdotes about like census workers being really rushed and just like filling in information that was probably really inaccurate.

So I think all of that stuff's starting to show up now on the data. And they're saying, like, between the pandemic, between the Trump administration screwing around with it and having less time, probably we're not getting as accurate of a census as we should be, meaning that if people aren't counted, those areas that aren't counted, they're going to lose both political and economic power. Those are about future efforts to suppress the vote. Let's talk about some of the ongoing efforts to suppress the vote. As we've seen this clown show run by

Rudy Giuliani, it seems like there's been two lessons. One, it's easier to suppress votes before an election than after. Yes. And two, we should take Republicans at their word. When they say they will not respect the legitimacy of elections, they don't win. So I want to sort of take each part of that. It's amazing to see people like Kemp or Raffensperger in Georgia fighting back against Trump when these are two of the people that have worked so hard to prevent people from voting in the first place. What would you like to see the Biden administration do administratively to protect voting rights in advance of future elections? What are some steps they should be taking right away?

You're right. I mean, it's crazy to see that Bill Barr and Brian Kemp and Brad Raffensperger are members of the deep state when these are the people that were leading the voter suppression crusade in the Republican Party for so many years. You die a Trumpist or you live long enough to become the deep state. Yeah. That's sort of, to me, the lesson. When people were chanting, lock him up for Brian Kemp, you knew we had truly jumped the shark. I want to get to the substance about the policy, but what's amazing to me is these Senate Republicans who are so callous and cowardly, like, don't you see how quickly

this can come for you? Don't you see how it is not totally partisan, that it is partisan until it stops being useful? Like, do you not see how nationalism, how right-wing fashion, how it works? You are a supporter of it. You are an enabler of it. You are a beneficiary of it until you are a victim of it too. Of course. And it's amazing to me that they can't see that even now. And even with Georgia, I mean, the whole reason supposedly given that Mitch McConnell said that Donald Trump shouldn't concede was because they didn't want to alienate the Trump base in Georgia. Well, what happened with the Trump base in Georgia? They're now telling Republicans not to vote for the Republican Senate candidates. So like, was that a smart play by Mitch McConnell? Like he's basically unleashed a civil war in Georgia by letting things get so out of control within the Republican party. And like, we don't know how the politics of this are going to be.

Like it may be very well that despite all this, Republicans will still win those Senate races in Georgia. But I don't think you could argue this has helped their chances. That the two candidates fighting with their own governor and secretary of state and Mitch McConnell doing nothing in the meantime, I don't think is helping their chances. So yeah, they've unleashed forces way beyond their control that are probably bad for their party and that are certainly bad for democracy. I mean, what I want to see Biden do is first off, just appoint competent people at the Justice Department who will enforce voting rights again because the Justice Department under Trump didn't file a single lawsuit to enforce the Voting Rights Act.

So yes, if you file those lawsuits, you're going to have to go before conservative courts. That said, there's still a big role for the administration to play in protecting the right to vote, both in terms of actually filing litigation, but also saying to states and localities, if you do this kind of thing, we're going to sue you, which could have some sort of preventive effect in making bad

things go away. So I think doing that, building on what President Obama did when he basically had a, you know, bipartisan commission to try to propose ways to make it easier to vote. But I mean, the fact is there's only so much the president can do. I mean, we're seeing that right now. In the same way that Donald Trump can't just magically invalidate millions of votes, the next president's not just going to magically be able to make it easier to vote either. I mean, that's the problem. We live in a very, very decentralized system. So that's good when you have a president trying to massively suppress votes and overturn election results because he doesn't actually have the power to do that in Georgia or Michigan or Pennsylvania. But it's bad when you have Joe Biden wanting to get in there and making it easier to vote and he's going to run to resistance from Brian Kemp and from the Republican legislature in Wisconsin and the Republican legislature in Pennsylvania and all of these entrenched forces that unfortunately either got stronger in 2020 or haven't gone away.

Yeah, and the only hopes of passing legislation that would make it easier to vote or protect or revive some of the portions of the Voting Rights Act that could pass the 6-3 conservative court as it exists right now would require winning both of those seats in Georgia. Exactly. And then if you win those both seats in Georgia, then it's a completely different conversation. And then you can start to say, maybe we can pass a new Voting Rights Act. Maybe we can pass legislation making it easier to vote. You can start to do a lot more things. But obviously, if Mitch McConnell's still in charge of the Senate, democracy is going to continue to die. You know, we've seen now the Trump campaign and its allies losing, what is it, 48 to 1 now in court. That's welcome news.

They've lost even amongst right-wing judges. It is worth, I think, keeping in mind moving forward that there is still a distinction between right-wing judges and right-wing hacks. At times, it is hard to see, but here it has, I think, been evident. But I think it's also been quite chilling that with an election that wasn't very close, with results that far exceeded the victory margins that Trump won in 2016, how far this has still been able to get, not necessarily with judges, but with legislators, with local officials, with people inside of administrations. Obviously, I think we're all learning in real time. Look, we've never been through a process like this before. There's never been a president who launched a coup in this way before. As you see this unfold, are there steps that you're thinking about

that could help secure our elections after the voting is done? Well, there's just way too many different ways you can try to launch a coup in this country as we're learning. And it's just way too long in terms of how much time there is for it to play out. Like, why is Donald Trump still allowed to file lawsuits

when states have been certified? Like, that should be, unless you're in an extreme situation, like in Iowa, where there's a House race that's cited by six votes, there shouldn't be any efforts to try to overturn the result once it's certified. And really, we should try to certify these results much quicker so we don't have this level of uncertainty. Like, 2020 was crazy in terms of just so many people voting by mail and then states not being able to count their results quickly and all that stuff. But if we said to states, you can count the mail ballots when they arrive. And also, we don't even know how many mail ballots there's going to be in future elections

when and if the pandemic ends. I think a lot of people are going to go back to voting in person. So I don't know if we're going to necessarily have the same issues. But Florida, for all its problems, is a state that allowed people to count mail ballots early. And we basically knew who the winner of the election was on election night in Florida. And if Michigan and Wisconsin and Pennsylvania had had those same laws, we would have known who won those states pretty quickly. And then they could have finished counting in a couple of days. The results could have been certified a few days after that. And this whole process could have been condensed in a much quicker way to the point where one or two weeks after the election, everything could be done

as opposed to, you know, it's almost a month after the election and most things are now done, but we still have to wait for the safe harbor date for the electoral college. Right. Then we have to wait for the electoral college to be, then we have to wait till this house meets January 6th. It's like, why are there all of these steps? Like, we know who won the election. Like, can't we just get it done with in a week or two, unless there's some extreme circumstance

where it's really, really close, like Florida 2000? I think you have to separate two, right? where it's really, really close, like Florida 2000. I think you have to separate two, right? That I don't think we should be making decisions based around bad faith arguments and lies during this period, right? Because I think that's a sucker's game. They will always come up with more bad faith arguments.

But if we are going to have a transition and we are going to have a situation where heads I win, tails you lose, basically is their philosophy on elections, then this needs to be contracted so that the process can be resolved despite these objections so that the transitions can begin, so that people can begin the process of governing. Exactly. I mean, and just, this is all taking place behind a backdrop of thousands of thousands of Americans dying every day. And Joe Biden not even being able to get that information until really recently. And this is what's so crazy about it.

It was a canvassing board in Michigan that essentially ended the process and began the transition. Like, that's what it came down to. It came down to one Republican on the Michigan canvassing board saying, I'm going to certify the results, which they've always done for Republicans to realize it's finally over. Like it should have been obvious it was over when Joe Biden won Michigan by 154,000 votes. Like why was there all this suspense with the canvassing board in Michigan for the transition process to begin? Like it was obvious within a week after the election that Joe Biden was president. Everything should have started immediately then.

And also, why should that person have to show courage? It should require zero courage to certify an election. Like Emily Murphy at GSA deciding basically that she faced a conundrum where none existed. We have to figure out how to inoculate our system against situations in which unelected people deep inside of these institutions suddenly find the weight of a propaganda machine directed at them because they crumble. You know, two of those Wayne County canvassing board members, they went all over the place. They behaved like buffoons, but they did crack. The other person, you know, we talk about that Michigan canvassing board Republican who spoke eloquently about doing the right thing. His colleague abstained to avoid the wrath of Trump. Yeah. So like this is not going

anywhere. This is a new front in the efforts to deny the right to vote to millions of people. Exactly. And then that's what really concerns me because I think a lot of us have been focused on all of the suppression that takes place before the election. And now we have to think about all the suppression that's going to take place after the election as well. And it just seems like it's never ending. You're always going to find some new way to attack the process. And if a few things had gone differently, if a few judges had written some crazy opinions, or it was closer and a few state legislatures decided they were not going to follow the popular vote winner in their state, or Bill Barr did some things differently. Or we lost a few local elections. We lost a governorship in a place like Michigan or a place like Pennsylvania or a secretary of state race or what have you.

Exactly. I mean, all of those things, it could have gone differently, even though Biden was winning by 5 million votes and then 6 million votes and 7 million votes. And that was the ridiculous thing to me about this entire process is like, Biden's winning a massive, massive, massive landslide nationwide.

And we're fretting about 10,000 votes, 12,000 votes. Like it's such an absurd, ridiculous system. And I understand this is the system we have, but when you step back andting about 10,000 votes, 12,000 votes. Like it's such an absurd, ridiculous system. And I understand this is the system we have, but when you step back and think about it, it really makes no sense. No, and I do think it's like, I understand. Look, I find it's the electoral college is ridiculous. You're right.

You know, it itself is an anti-democratic procedure that prevents people from having their voices counted. Of course, we all know that. The deeper question, right, is first of all, you know, not just how do we fight against these kinds of anti-democratic forces before and after election, but also, man, we got to start talking about democracy and figure out how to get people to care because one way to stop Republicans from trying to steal elections is them believing there's a political price. And right now they clearly do not.

Kevin McCarthy, Mitch McConnell, Ted Cruz, Tom Cotton, all these people, none of them believe that there is a price to be paid for not believing in democracy. And that I think is also, that is to me is the deeper terrifying reality of this moment, even as we win, because we do need to look to the next election.

Yeah, that is a really good point. I mean, I do think that we made a lot of headway in terms of making voting and democracy a central issue in the election. And there was so much more organizing around protecting the right to vote in 2020 than in 2016. And I think that's a big reason why the margin shifted. I think there's a lot of reasons

why Michigan went from 10,000 votes to 154,000 votes. I think there's a lot of reasons why Michigan went from 10,000 votes to 154,000 votes. I think there's a lot of reasons why Wisconsin went from 20,000 votes in one direction to 20,000 votes in another. But I think a lot of people were able to vote who might not have been able to vote in 2016, but then there was also just a lot of clarity in terms of people making sure their votes were counted.

And so actually one of the good things about the election was there were very few ballots thrown out. Yeah. And so actually one of the good things about the election was there were very few ballots thrown out. Yeah. And we actually had- It's amazing. A remarkably smooth election given a pandemic with record turnout.

And if we lived in a normal country, the lesson coming out of November 3rd was we actually did this pretty well. Yeah. And let's figure out how to do it better next time. Let's figure out how to do universal mail voting and have early voting in every state and have people get automatically registered to vote.

And let's have a system where we have high turnout every time, but people aren't worried about if their votes are gonna be counted. We obviously haven't had that conversation. We've been having a, let's debunk every single lie over and over and over for 30 days.

That's what we're doing instead. And that's not gonna lead to a good outcome for democracy. No. Well, hopefully we can start having that better conversation starting January 21st. Ari Berman, so good to see you. Thank you so much for coming on. Good to see you, John. Thanks so much for having me again. Don't go anywhere. This is Love It or Leave It, and there's more on the way. And we're back. It's December, which means we're just one month away from being able to worry about the pandemic, the climate crisis, and far-right nationalism without also having to see fluid leak from Rudy Giuliani's head. We're so close to not having to organize our lives around

the most disgusting, craving people in the world while still having to worry about them a great deal. Even Giuliani must be ready for this to end so we can go back to drinking doers and smoking cigars with Bernie Kerik, Mike Flynn, and Smeagol. But look, I'll be honest, I'm burnt out. Not tired, not depressed really, and I'm genuinely grateful for how good I have it compared to a lot of people who have lost so much. But I am existentially burnt out. So this week, I don't feel like quizzing somebody on Republican Mo Brooks claiming Trump won the Electoral College or David Perdue's corrupt stock trades. And by the way, please go to votesaveamerica.com slash Georgia because we need people to make calls. We're trying to reach 100,000 people who are unregistered who can

register to participate in the runoffs. So do that. But regardless, today, in my best gay voice, I want to talk about everybody's favorite historical melodrama where no one tweets the crown. We're not thinking about Rudy's wet head because we've got a one-way ticket to crown town. Here to join us for this game, we have Amanda. Hi, Amanda. Hi. Where are you? I'm in Maine right now, but I'm from Philly. You're from Philly and you're in Maine.

Yeah. Do you watch The Crown? I do. I do, unfortunately. Before The Crown, did you consider yourself someone who kept up with the ongoings and the goings-on of this family about which we shouldn't really care? I tried not to. I watched The Wedding in 2011 because, you know, it was a dress. It was a dress.

It was nice. I know, I know. But yeah, I've been watching the show. Okay, okay. It's very entertaining. It's very entertaining. And here's the thing, it's very entertaining. So I love the first season.

Yeah. I thought the second season, it's like, I don't know. We're on a trip. I'm not sure about any of this. Yeah, the second season, it's like, I don't know. We're on a trip. I'm not sure. Yeah. The second season was like a bit of a slug to get through. And I know that there were some people that missed Claire Foy, but I'm like, how dare you? It's Olivia Colman. It's Olivia Colman.

You've been given a gift. Yeah. A great gift. Helena Bottom fucking Carter. A delight. So I understand missing your faves, but let's give these wonderful people a chance. And we did, and I'm glad I did,

because now we're in the fourth season and we have met Princess Diana and we are seeing what a shit heel Prince Charles is. Look, obviously it ultimately is a terrible tragedy, but like what we are seeing now play out, the thing that's so strange about it is that like this woman finds out she's gonna to be the queen of England. All her friends are freaking out and so happy. Everybody's so happy. It's like it's a fairy tale. And then the music

is Hans Zimmer Inception because it's like, oh, my God, it's it's so depressing. It's so well done. I I love a good score. I'm glad we're revisiting this in such detail. Yeah. I remember being at the improv back when there were crowds and I talked about how I was frustrated with the crown because I felt it was a little too serious about the job of the royal family, which again, the goal of Queen Elizabeth is consistently to do nothing. Yeah. But here's what I think. I think they were playing a long game because now we've heard their every argument. We've taken them so seriously and I am rooting against them so fucking hard. So much. So much. I went into it like hating them as a concept. And now I hate all of them individually, too. That's really good. So now it is time, Amanda, for a game we're calling True, False, or Netflix. For each event, I describe, say, true if it happened in real life, but not on The Crown.

Say Netflix if it happened on the TV series, but not in real life. Or false if it's just something we made up. Are you ready? It's going to go great. Princess Diana confronted Camilla about her affair with Prince Charles at a birthday party of a mutual friend. True. Correct. After Prince Charles refused to share his figgy pudding with one of the Corgis, the Queen Mother retaliated by putting boot black in his pomade. That feels true. They feel vindictive enough to do that.

Queen Elizabeth visited Winston Churchill's deathbed and said goodbye to him with a kiss on the forehead. That feels Netflix. Correct. Queen Elizabeth visited Winston Churchill's deathbed and said goodbye to him with a kiss on the forehead. I feel the Netflix. Correct. Queen Elizabeth visited Winston Churchill's deathbed and said goodbye with a bag of gherkin-flavored crisps, his favorite. Is that true? No, it's false. Did you just make that up? I made it up. We made it up.

Margaret Thatcher refused to back sanctions against South Africa during apartheid and later said Nelson Mandela had rather a closed mind. That's true, isn't it? True. Yes. Princess Anne's love letters were stolen and leaked to closed mind. That's true, isn't it? True. Yes. Princess Anne's love letters were stolen and leaked to the press. That's true.

Oh, that sucks. A man broke into Buckingham Palace to talk to the queen about the consequences of Margaret Thatcher's policies for everyday working people. He broke in. I'm not sure if they actually talked about that though. Did he? That was Netflix.

A man broke into Buckingham Palace because he was high on shrooms. When he couldn't find a bathroom, he peed in a bin labeled corgi food. I think you made that one up. No, that's true. No, that's the real one. That's the real one. He didn't sit there and talk to her about economic policy. He was, he was messed up, dude. He was a messed up dude. Princess Diana and Camilla competed in a charity bocce ball tournament. True. False. Margaret Thatcher was motivated to go to war over the Falkland Islands, in part by her son's mysterious disappearance. I know that he did disappear like in real life. So I'm going to say true. Netflix. Prince William was hit in the head

with a golf putter. True. True. During a tense discussion, Margaret Thatcher and the Queen almost kissed, but were interrupted when Prince Philip burst into the room to talk about his birding trip. False. Yeah, that's false. The Queen, Mother, and Lord Mountbatten conspired to split up Prince Charles and Camilla.

I wanna say true. Netflix. In a desperate attempt to hold onto power, Margaret Thatcher asked the Queen to dissolve Parliament. Netflix. In a desperate attempt to hold on to power, Margaret Thatcher asked the Queen to dissolve Parliament. Netflix? Correct. Margaret Thatcher earned the nickname the Iron Lady by using a mechanized suit of armor to fight crime.

That was you. Yeah, that's us. Amanda, you've won the game. You did it. Thank you. You did it. Thank you so much for playing. It was so nice to meet you.

Thank you. It was so, so nice to meet you. Hey, don't go anywhere. There's more of Love It or Leave It coming up. Love It or Leave It is brought to you by Lorde Jones. We have a new sponsor that we are really excited about. Lorde Jones, makers of the world's finest CBD products. CBD is all the rage these days,

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And we're back. She is the former chancellor of DC Public Schools and the co-host of Crooked's Pod Save the People. Please welcome back Kaya Henderson. Thanks for being here. Thanks for having me, John. So there's a lot to talk about. I want to start by taking out the trash.

We're about to remove the worst education secretary, perhaps in American history. And there's a lot. Look, I'm eager to talk to you. The last conversation we had, it's a hard conversation about what's happening to kids right now. It really is. And I know you're in it. But I did want to start with something genuinely positive, which is how important it is that we're removing Betsy DeVos and replacing this awful person with someone who actually believes in public education. Can you just talk a little bit about

how important that is on day one of the Biden administration that we're going to get rid of Betsy DeVos? John, I mean, you try to take me places. I try to be diplomatic. I try to be above the fray. Here's what I will say, I guess. I had heard things about Secretary DeVos before she came in. But you know, people say things about all kinds of folks. And I'm I feel like you should give people a chance. And very shortly thereafter, I was incredibly disappointed because after she visited a school, a D.C. public school that actually had made a significant turnaround, she kind of talked trash about the teachers there and the principal there. And when you know how hard people are working every day under really difficult circumstances, and when you know that the Federal Department of Education is actually supposed to help people on the front line doing their job, that was a shot too far for me. And I think that is actually indicative of how this education department, this administration, frankly, treated education as if it was disposable, as if they didn't care about the people who are doing the important work of educating our kids. And so it is critical.

I mean, I think, I don't think, I've met President-elect and First Lady Biden when they were Vice President and Second Lady. We did a lot of work with them when I was at DC Public Schools. And so their commitment to education is clear and, you know, unmatched. And so I think that they are going to signal very clearly that education is a huge priority. I know for sure that people on a transition team literally have a list of things that they immediately are going to roll back by executive order, if possible, or whatever. They will start the machinations to put protections back in place for our special education students and to deal with some of the gender policy issues that got undone. But I think they will boldly reassert the federal government's leadership role and protection role in managing our education system.

People say that the education department, it's one of the weaker parts of the federal government, that the federal government doesn't have as much of a role in schools as some other departments. And yet, even though this role is more limited in some sense, it did seem as though Betsy DeVos basically abdicated any form of leadership. And that became especially clear during the pandemic. I mean, she absconded to her lake house in Michigan and schools were really kind of left alone. And she acted as though there was no real role for the federal government. What do you hope to see from the Biden administration on helping schools figure out best practices,

even this school year, as the vaccine's beginning to roll out, but schools are still facing shutdowns and quarantine and what have you? I want to be clear that the Federal Department of Education does not have the kind of direct management of schools. Schools are managed locally, right? Yet, there are a number of really important roles that the feds play in education. At the very least is the bully pulpit, right? There is vision for where we want to go with education. There is leadership in terms of providing recommendations, like there was no guidance at the national level in managing this pandemic. And so literally every school system everywhere had to figure it out. The Department of Education could have given guidance that would

have helped folks deal with that. They could have shared what scientists were saying, which early on was that, in fact, opening schools is safer than we think. When you look at examples around the world, while they shut everything else down, many places kept schools open and managed. I'm not saying that nobody got COVID or whatever, but they managed the outbreak. And that could have been an important piece for us, especially as people were deeply pursuing a reopening of the economy.

I think that the federal government has a role in terms of highlighting and spreading best practices. And there are some schools who did really innovative things and we should have been sharing those, you know, broadly. One of the things that I think about when I think about Secretary Duncan's administration, it was a very, it was an activist ed department. It challenged us on the ground to innovate, right? Race to the top and the I3 grants and whatnot. It literally

promoted local innovation. And this is a time where in fact, like we could have really thought not how do we just provide enough PPE or not just how do we do as much old school as we possibly could. But like this was the time to say, where is innovation? How could we think about this whole thing differently? Testing, right? School, different school districts are doing different things with testing. The feds could have issued guidance around it. There were so many ways that the feds could have been helpful, I think, in the education space, not the least of which is to continue to sound the alarm with the administration that our kids are falling behind. Like, we actually need real resources.

We should be at a point where we're not arguing about how ubiquitous it is that every kid have a device, right, a laptop or something or whatever, because, like, who knows, we might see waves of pandemics over the coming years. And just like you need a paper and a pencil, at this point, having a laptop or a tablet is necessary to do your work. And so I think the department could have advocated for schools with the federal government, could have lobbied Congress. I mean, I feel like I'm thankful for our Congress people who worked really hard to get money into the hands of schools and who are still stymied because we need another CARES Act, right? Like, we just do. And so there was so many things I think that the department could have done and could still do to, you know, mitigate the deep, deep learning loss,

to mitigate the scrambling. Just, yeah. You know, you see people critical of schools that were doing these kind of half closed, half open, different versions of it across the country. Some of them make sense. Some of them seem like they don't make sense based on the science. And there were many times where this was true, but like, as just somebody who worked for Hillary Clinton, like that world was very passionate about the power to convene, right? Like you can bring people together. You can not just use the bully pulpit, but you can get people in a room together to figure this sort of thing out. Hey, what school districts are doing something that works? What school district does? I mean, Race to the Top. So just for people listening, Race to the Top was basically a program by which the federal government didn't tell schools what they had to do, but it set benchmarks and competitive standards.

And if schools hit those standards, they would receive funding. So it allowed school districts to make choices as to how to achieve these goals. It was a very official version of what you're talking about, the role that the education department can play. You know, one thing you mentioned was kids falling behind. So NWEA, which is a testing group, they put out a report on the impact of school closures on kids. And this is something we talked about when we spoke over the summer. But, you know, they found that there was a drop in math scores, a small drop in math scores.

But the most chilling part of the report is the data that's not there. It says, across subjects and grades, the same pattern was observed. A larger fraction of attritters, kids that didn't take the test, were ethnic racial minority students, students with lower achievement in fall 2019, and students in schools with higher concentrations of socioeconomically disadvantaged students. That's right. So basically what they're saying is there is a big group of kids who have disappeared. Yes. Who have disappeared. Yeah. I mean, this is an acute crisis. Like what are you, what are you thinking about? What are you seeing as a way that a Biden administration or that leaders can at the local level kind of go and find those kids, this part of this sort of COVID generation that are not just falling behind, but missing. Yeah. I mean, I was looking at an article

in the 74 million, which estimates that one to 3 million kids have been missing since March, right? The average attendance in many large urban school districts this fall was 25 to 27%. New York City, which has 1.1 million kids, literally saw like 25% of kids coming to school. Boston was something like 27. I talked to a superintendent friend from a smaller district who literally said, I have 6,000 kids missing. And like, I am knocking on doors. I am right in a, in a pandemic moment. This has significant, this first of all, the attrition piece, I'll get to the academic, you know, failure in a minute, but the attrition piece is huge because school budgets are based on how many kids show up. So if you lose a couple hundred kids, that's actually a lot of money in most places. If you're losing

thousands of kids, it literally means there will not be enough money in the budget to hire teachers next year to whatever, whatever. And so, I mean, we saw the federal government step up in really meaningful ways with ERA after the 2008 recession. We saw the federal government come in to fill gaps. I can remember we were looking at massive budget cuts at DCPS, right? Budget cuts that would have caused us to cut a significant portion of our staff. portion of our staff, but ERA and I can't remember what the other program were. There were programs that Congress and the president authorized to fill those gaps so that we knew it's not like these kids have disappeared off the face of the earth. They will show up again once school is reopened or once things are back to normal. And so you've got to be able to continue to operate

at steady state. And so we've got to hold schools harmless that way. And let's also talk about the kind of supports and services you're going to have to give to kids who are literally missing a full year of school, right? That's going to require a different kind of service provision. But the other thing, and I think this is what we're seeing, not just with our most vulnerable kids or our most colorful kids. We're seeing this across the board. Kids are failing. Kids are failing in urban districts, suburban districts, rural districts.

When you look at these test scores, even these diagnostic tests, the NWEA talks about small decreases in math, but we're not talking at all about reading, right? And my guess is whatever the reading tests that are happening, I could tell you what's happening because this is what my friends are doing with their kids. They sit next to the kids and they help their kids because they're at home with their kids. And so it's not common sense to think that kids are going to continue reading at the same levels that they were reading when they're really not being taught reading and they're Zooming all day. And they're taking the test under completely different circumstances. It speaks to a larger problem about standardized tests in general, because this report has

all this data in it. You're looking at this and it's like, how do we trust any of this? How do we trust any of what we're seeing right now? I actually believe in standardized tests. I believe that they are a really important marker. I understand that there are lots of flaws, and I think that there are ways to mitigate, deal with, whatever, whatever. But I would rather a flawed standardized test than no test at all, because I remember how

it was when we did not know where our kids were. That being said, I don't know why we live in these binary worlds, standardized tests or no tests, right? There are common sense approaches when there was a time where it made sense for us. We were moving from one test to another test, right? We were holding our teachers accountable by using their test results. But if you're going to have a new test, it's a test that nobody's ever seen before. I'm not going to fire teachers who don't perform well on that test. I suspended the use of that test in teacher evaluations because that was the right thing to do. And I got all kinds of flack from people who said DCPS was leading on teacher evaluations and now we're

rolling back. No, we had a very clear plan for how we were going to continue, but we have to have common sense about this. So why are we testing right now? What is it telling us? Do we deeply believe what this is telling us? No, we don't. And kids are stressed out and parents are stressed out. And so why would we do this? Why wouldn't we take a common sense approach and say, look, let's stop. Let's do diagnostic tests. Let's do developmental tests. Let's work formatively, right? These are all edgy speak, but let's use assessments to help figure out where kids are lacking and to create plans for them and deal with that, right? But not for accountability, right? This is a crazy year. And so we shouldn't be holding people accountable in

this way in a global pandemic. And we can do two be holding people accountable in this way in a global pandemic. And we can do two things at once. We can do hard things. But we live in these all schools open, no schools open. There are families for whom if they do not feel comfortable sending their kids to school, they should be able to keep their kids home. And there are families who rely on school, who keeping kids at home is a real problem for them. We can figure out how to do two things at once. We can provide for our families who want to stay at home, and we can provide safe environments for our families who want to send their kids to school. There are teachers who want to come to school. There are teachers who are

depressed because they are not engaging with their kids. And they're being shamed by some of their union friends because the union stances keep schools closed until everybody has a brand new ventilation system and whatever else is on their list, right? But in fact, like, none of this is monolithic. If we don't have multiple ways to solve these problems, then we all lose. It does seem, based on what we have learned learned that closing schools is among the most damaging things

we could have done. Absolutely. And I don't think teachers should be forced to take on risks that they don't feel comfortable taking on. Of course not. Of course not. That's right. But a situation where we're in now, which is that in a lot of places, everything is open but the schools. Yep. Right. When we know that kids are less contagious than certainly adults going into all kinds of places that we've reopened. Yes. It seems to me like, is it just a tragedy? It's a terrible tragedy.

It really is. It also shows you where our priorities are, John. And I look out at countries all around the world who literally were like, at least we're going to make sure that these kids are okay, right? Countries around the world also took the opportunity to innovate. We saw Denmark where they moved everything outside, right? And did a lot of experiential work. And I mean, this is a time to rethink English class. Take a standardized test? No, read 50 books. I don't care. You don't have a standardized test? No. Read 50 books. I don't care.

You don't have to be on Zoom to read the 50 books, right? Interview your grandmother or your grandparents. You can't see them. Ask them, did they immigrate? When did they come? What did it up? We could have provided interesting, engaging, still academic activities for our kids that actually reflected the realities of our current situation, right? If we had been a little bit more inventive, but we were so busy

trying to either get back to what we were doing, which wasn't working anyway, or like stop doing everything altogether. And I just, I mean, this is my lament about the way we approach education in the US. It is with a total lack of imagination, a total lack of creativity, a total lack of urgency. You know, I am saying broadly, I am not saying every single day there are teachers, there are principals, there are superintendents who are out there knocking it down for kids. They are urgent, they are inventive, whatever. But as a country, we lack a vision, we lack urgency, we lack creativity. Like in the same way that we left states to do whatever they were going to do for COVID, we've left schools to do whatever they do. And we can't be mad when we look at all of these international tests and we lag other countries. We are not committed.

It seems like you're getting into this problem that long precedes the pandemic, which is we're in these ideological fights about how to achieve certain ends in our schools, right? And those are really hard questions about how to get test scores up,

how to make education fair and equitable and how to succeed according to the standards that we've set. But there's less time, there's less energy devoted to this harder question, which is like, what is the goal here? Like, what do we want kids to learn? Why do we

care about how they're doing in these classes? How do we instill a love of learning, not just the facts, but a love of learning? And it seems like we're making a mistake inside of this pandemic that we make all the time. What are examples of places that are doing that, that you've heard or seen of schools that have thought about how to make learning possible and innovative and successful in this moment? I can't speak to specific school names, but I see how teachers are totally reinventing their classes, right? And doing just more engaging activities. There's a lot of focus on social and emotional learning and on ensuring kids' mental health. If kids don't feel safe and secure and feel like they have the ability to build relationships and engage, we never even get to academics.

And so I see teachers going out of the way. I see school districts that are thinking, okay, I have five fourth grade classrooms, right? Across these five schools. What if one teacher is responsible for delivering all of the fourth grade instruction, right? Because now it's not like you have 25 kids in your classroom. You could have lots of kids in your Zoom room, right? And what if the other four teachers are working with kids in small groups, following up on the thing, right? And you don't have to have five amazing teachers. You could have one amazing teacher, and then these other teachers could do the deep, deep relational work, help kids catch up if they're struggling, have one-on-one time or do small group time, right? We could be rethinking human capital.

One of the things that we're seeing is it doesn't just take teachers to man these classrooms or to support kids. And so there are ways for community members to come in. There are ways for parents. I mean, this is the revolution, I think, that has happened is that parents have a front row seat in terms of what's happening in education in America in ways that they never had before. And what I would tell you, if I were a superintendent today, is you might not have valued family engagement before, but if you don't recognize right now that you literally cannot do your job without families, then you're toast. These families, the people closest to the problem actually have the best solutions. And so if you're not saying to families, how do we work together? What do we need to put our kids on the right track? These parents have great ideas, great ideas. And so if you're not pulling all your parents together, I looked at groups of parents creating

pods, right? And I watched schools fight those. Why fight? Why not enable them, right? Why not make resources available for parents who want content and who want to do the pod stuff and use your teachers for something? Again, this one size fits all model. We can have a lot of different strategies working at the same time and allow people to choose the best situation for them. And I think that's not what we do. But I think that there are pockets of that happening around. I think we have to lift that up, make it more permissible, make it easier, let money flow to people who are doing things like that. I mean, we also have institutions, civic institutions. Why weren't our museums deployed in different ways?

Why weren't our museums deployed in different ways? Why weren't we using spaces in churches? I mean, there were lots of places that were closed. And so even if school, you didn't have enough room, I mean, we have rec centers. Why weren't we inventive? And all of these creative ideas I've heard from parents and from pastors and from whatever. If we don't sit down with our community members and ask them, what should we be doing together for our kids, then we're not going to win. Hopefully what's been missing is activist leadership from the top all the way down to

kind of elevate these kinds of interesting ideas and best practices. So hopefully in the coming months, we can see a shift and people can start employing those kinds of things. But Kai Henderson, thank you so much for taking the time. It's always good to talk to you. Thanks, John. Always a pleasure. You rile me up. Oh my gosh. I'm glad I do. I'm glad I do. See you soon. See you soon. Thank you. Don't go anywhere. This is Love It or Leave It, and there's more on the way. And we're back. Because we all need it this week, here it is, the high notes submitted by our listeners. Hey, John Lovett. I'm calling from Ann Arbor, Michigan. My high note of this week was that I successfully passed my dissertation defense and have a degree in epidemiology during a global pandemic. So that was during the same week as Biden won the election.

So big week here in Ann Arbor. Hope you're great. Bye. Hello, John Lovett. This is Brandon from New Lenox, Illinois. My bright spot of the past week has been a conversation my wife and I had with our three kids. So they are five, six, seven years old. And somehow we got on the conversation of men loving men and women loving women and

why it is. And we were able to kind of share with the kids the example of a couple we know and their little girl and how she has two mommies. And it kind of dawned on me that the kids never even really asked anything about that or even seemingly realized that she had two mommies. And I just kind of loved that idea that it wasn't even something odd to them. They just saw it as this little girl has two moms who love her a whole lot. two moms who love her a whole lot. And that was just really good for me as a father to realize that my kids just saw that as perfectly normal and okay.

And yeah, thanks a lot for everything you guys are doing. Hi, Love It. My name is Sammy. And what gave me hope this week is that my 87-year-old Republican grandfather told me that he donated to Stacey Abrams Fair Fight to help the runoffs in Georgia. He said the first time that he's ever donated to a political campaign in his life. He never voted for Trump in either election, and he just felt like this is his time that he needed to do something. And he loves Stacey Abrams and wanted to support the Democratic candidates in Georgia.

So hearing that gave me hope this week. Thank you for all you do. I love it. I'm calling because my dad's head would explode if he heard me on your podcast. My name is Tasha and my high note is my friend and I have been trying to create a club to organize classmates at our school to help out with the election and to advocate for us that they believe in. But the thing is, my school doesn't let you submit a club application until super late in November. So in October, we decided that there was just too much at stake

if we stayed silent. So we organized. We wrote 40 letters to minority voters and have made over 500 calls to swing states. So don't tell my advisor. I'm 15, and this was the last election I consulted, and I think that's why it was so important. My classmates and I weren't given a voice, even though our generation will live with the damage of a poorly managed

pandemic and climate crisis. But we organized, and we won. So far, we're still fired up. We're making our voices heard through activism. We're inheriting the world that you guys are running. But I realize that doesn't mean we don't get a say. It just means we have to work harder. Next week, we're trying to organize calls to the neighbors and neighboring towns that haven't banned their police departments from using chokeholds. And we're going to try and help win those two Georgia Senate seats. I also just wanted to thank all your listeners who voted and who organized. The work hasn't ended.

We're just getting started. And I know there's a whole lot of fight left in all of us. Thanks. Thanks to everybody who sent a high note in. If you want to leave us a message about something that gave you hope, you can call us at 323-521-9455. Thank you to Nicole Byer, Ari Berman, Kaya Henderson, and everyone who called in. There are 31 days until the Georgia Senate runoff. Go to votesaveamerica.com to help and have a great weekend. Love It or Leave It is a Crooked Media production.

It is written and produced by me, John Lovett, Elisa Gutierrez, Lee Eisenberg, our head writer, and the person whose gender reveal party started the fire, Travis Helwig, Jocelyn Kaufman, Pallavi Gunalan, and Peter Miller are the writers. Our assistant producer is Sydney Rapp. Bill Lance is our editor, and Kyle Seglin is our sound engineer. Our theme song is written and performed by Sure Sure. Thanks to our designers, Jesse McClain and Jamie Skeel,

for creating and running all of our visuals, which you can't see because this is a podcast, and to our digital producers, Jesse McLean and Jamie Skeel for creating and running all of our visuals, which you can't see because this is a podcast. And to our digital producers, Nar Melkonian and Milo Kim for filming and editing video each week so you can.