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

Episode Date: February 1, 2021

Today we're joined by school choice advocate Corey DeAngelis to discuss the driving force behind the closure of public schools. Here's a hint: It's not really because of the pandemic. Corey has tons of information to share regarding the problems that teachers' unions pose to an efficient and effective education system. Then, we delve into the controversy surrounding two Texas pastors who referred to Kamala Harris as "Jezebel." -- Previous Episodes on School Choice: Ep 353: Our Kids Are Learning What?! | Guest: Chris Rufo Ep 343: Equipping Yourself to Homeschool | Guest: Leigh Bortins Ep 329: Exposing the Mafia-Like Tactics of Teachers Unions | Guest: Rebecca Friedrichs Ep 279: The Corruption of Public Education & the Need for School Choice | Guest: Corey A. DeAngelis -- Show Links: Religion News Service: "Some Southern Baptist pastors are calling Kamala Harris 'Jezebel.' What do they mean?" DailyMail.com: "Hillary Clinton compares Donald Trump to the Bible's evil and 'corrupt' King Ahab and Melania to Jezebel at Elijah Cummings' funeral as Barack Obama and Bill Clinton lead mourning for Democratic 'north star'" National Review: "Kamala Harris's Abortion Absolutism" Corey DeAngelis' book is available here: https://bit.ly/3cwouhp -- Buy Allie's book, You're Not Enough (& That's Okay): Escaping the Toxic Culture of Self-Love: https://alliebethstuckey.com/book Relatable merchandise: https://shop.blazemedia.com/collections/allie-stuckey

Hey guys, welcome to Relatable. Happy Monday. Hope everyone has had a wonderful day and had a wonderful weekend. Today we've got a jam-packed episode. First, I will be talking to Corey DeAngelis. He is an expert in school choice and in our public education system and the solutions that we need in order to improve public education in this country. He is a strong advocate of the dollars following the child rather than just funding ability. so that parents can decide for themselves with the resources that they have, are our tax dollars, what education is actually best for their child. And so we're going to talk about how this all relates to the school closures that are happening across the country, supposedly allegedly due to the coronavirus, but the disparities that we're seeing in these public school systems that are forcing their schools to stay closed versus charter schools and versus. is private schools that are opening their doors and are not seeing a magnificent rise in infections in infection. So we're going to talk about what's behind that, what parents can do.

If you're a parent of a child in public school to try to open the schools in your district, the consequences that unfortunately are going to be suffered by underprivileged students disproportionately whose schools are refusing to open thanks to the policies of these teachers' unions. And then we are going to talk about a scandal that happened last week in regards to Pastor Tom Buck and another Baptist pastor. These are churches in the Southern Baptist Convention. They referred to Tom Buck specifically referred to Kamala Harris as Jezebel and why that blew up into this huge deal. So we're going to talk about that and I'll give you my take on it.

First, let's talk to Corey DeAngelis. Corey, thank you so much for joining me. We're going to talk today about the craziness that's going on in our school system and the teachers' unions, especially as it surrounds this just continuing frustration that a lot of parents have with their public schools refusing to reopen. Despite the data in the science that says, hey, you know, this is basically okay. you can do this. Tell me what's behind it. Why are there so many teachers unions and public schools that are just refusing to open their doors to students? I just want to say you're totally correct that the data do suggest that schools are not main contributors of the virus and they're one of the

safest places to be. You look at data from the CDC. You look at statements from Anthony Fauci himself recently. You look at data from UNICEF and other and Brown University as well, finding that schools are not major contributors of the virus. One example of this is New York City. They've opened some of their schools up, and the community positivity rate is about 9%, but the in-school positivity rate is about a 20th of that, about 0.5%. So schools aren't a problem when it comes to being major contributors of the virus, and they can safely reopen. And what's interesting to me is the start contrast that we've seen between the private sector and the public sector. The private schools and other businesses, private daycares, restaurants and grocery stores, they've either been open the whole time or they've

been open for a long time or they've been fighting hard to reopen for in-person instruction or other types of services for their customers. And in some cases, you have the private schools fighting against governments, taking the battle to the courts to try to reopen. Whereas in the public sector, you have the public schools and the teachers unions fighting for the opposite. They've been fighting to keep their doors closed. And the one difference there is one of incentives. One of these sectors gets your money regardless of whether they open their doors for business. And so that's the main problem here. It's one of incentives. So you're saying that the public education system, just to be clear for those who don't know, the public education system gets our tax dollars no matter

what, whether or not the teachers are giving quality education, whether or not the teachers are in classroom or remote, whether or not the teachers just are remote and allow. And, the students to basically teach themselves all day or not. So there's not only a whole lot of incentives to open the doors. There's also not a whole lot of incentives for, I don't want to say certainly not all public school teachers or even most public school teachers, but some public school teachers unions to make sure that they're providing quality education and that the students are meeting the standards that they're supposed to meet at the end of the year, correct? Yeah, totally. I mean, it's because of these geographic monopolies. You're essentially residentially assigned.

to a particular school just based on where you live. And so that school district doesn't have a particularly strong incentive to cater to your needs. And then this year, that's becoming more obvious than ever because the schools aren't even open their doors and they're still getting your money through the property tax system. And again, this is all has to do with incentives. It doesn't mean that the people in the system are bad people or that they're incompetent or anything like that. It's just that the way that I think about it is, you know, if your grocery store, for example,

doesn't reopen their doors, it would be inconvenient, but it wouldn't be definitely. devastating because you could take your money elsewhere. If Walmart didn't open their doors, you could take your money to Trader Joe's. And so that would give each individual grocery store a strong incentive with a form of bottom-up accountability because they know that you can shop somewhere else. With the public school system, it's not like that. If you don't have a school choice mechanism such as an education savings account, they get your money regardless. And so they benefit from that monopoly power, which is great for the school system, but it doesn't do a lot to benefit individual families. And this year in particular, families are seeing that they're getting

the short end of the stick. All across the country, we're seeing this where families are left scrambling at the 11th hour with the school district sending their family's emails hours before they're supposed to return to in-person instruction to tell them, well, the teachers aren't going to show up today because of a teacher strike. I think another sad thing about it. And I want to talk a little bit more in just a second about how this is affecting students. But also how this misrepresents a lot of public school teachers who would love to teach in person or who have been working really, really hard under the present circumstances and the present restrictions to make sure that their students are getting as good of an education as they possibly can remotely.

A lot of these teachers unions are not representing all of their teachers who are working really hard or who want to teach in person. Can you talk about what I think is a misunderstanding that teachers unions do not necessarily represent all or even most public school teachers. No, they have a different set of incentives. If you look at the data on this across the country between 1992 and 2014, real inflation adjusted per pupil education expenditures actually went up by 27%. But inflation adjusted teacher salaries over that same period actually dropped by 2%. And so we throw more and more money into the system,

but it goes towards administrative bloat and increases in support staff, which is great for teachers unions because it increases the numbers in the system, which gives them a larger voting block and more political power, and it gives them more revenues through union dues. But it's not good for individual teachers because they don't have any particularly strong incentive to funnel that additional money into the classroom towards the most important educational resource,

which happens to be the teachers. So there's only five studies that I know of on this topic that find that school choice competition through charter schools or through private school competition as well, leads to higher teacher salaries in the public school system because the public schools start to allocate resources more efficiently once they have an incentive to do so through that bottom-up accountability through competition. But there's another thing here. If you look at the past year, there have been these calls to safely reopen schools from the teachers unions, but they've included

all of these political demands that don't align with the individual teachers in the system. For example, the Los Angeles Teachers Union was probably one of the first ones to do this. and their report to safely reopen schools, of course they called for more money and more people on the system. We expected that. But then they started calling for all these political things like defunding the police and Medicare for all and a wealth tax. And we saw dozens, at least a dozen teachers unions a couple of times in the past year banned together with the Democratic Socialists of America to call for similar political demands and also things like banning their competition, banning charter schools and banning new private school, voice initiatives, which does everything to benefit the monopoly at the expense of families. Right. And I guess that's the real why. Yes, you said that there's not an incentive for them to open up, but still, I find myself, okay, even if there's not an incentive, why do you want to

create such a burden to place both on teachers and students to have to try to learn remotely and parents? What's the reason I guess? It's for that bargaining power for them to kind of hold the students hostage and say, look, we're not coming back until you do X, Y, Z, both related and unrelated to the virus. It seems like a lot of politicians are just falling for that, though. Well, yeah, totally. And then part of it's because the teachers unions have so much political power of the United States today. The largest union in the United States period, labor union, is the NEA, the National Education Association. I think it has about three million members or more. And so they have a lot of power. And that's just one teacher's union in the

United States at the national level. And so the politicians tend to listen to them. And, you know, look, the teachers unions have just been kicking the can down the road over the past year because, again, they know that they can keep your money through the property tax system, regardless of whether they open their doors for business. And recently, in my area, for example, the Fairfax Education Association president, the teachers union in the area, their president even admitted that they would oppose returning in person full time, even if all the teachers are vaccinated. They would oppose it even for next fall. So the goalposts have been completely moved out of the stadium at this point. And I think families are seeing this. They're saying it's absolutely ridiculous. I don't know if you've

seen the video of the livid Virginia parent that spoke up against the school board saying that, look, everybody else is returning to work. Why can't you guys return to work? And again, I don't think it's because there's a lot of bad people in the public school system. I think it's just they're rationally responding to the messed up set of incentives that are baked into the public school monopoly system. And the only way that we're ever going to fix that is to fund the students directly so that real incentives are introduced into the market for K-12 education. Then the public schools would get better. They'd have a better incentive structure set up, and they would probably be much more likely to open their doors right now than they currently are.

Yeah, one of the myths that we hear so much from people who are anti-school choices that, look, we just need more, we just need more funding. We need to fund schools the way that we fund the police, kind of perpetuating this myth that you talk about so often that it's not a lack of funds. It's a lack of efficiency in spending. It's a lack of competition problem. I mean, Barack Obama spent, I think it was. $7 billion, according to the Washington Post, on the country's most failing. I don't know if I should say the worst. I don't want to say worst, but the least successful public schools. And after the four years of this program, there was no benefit that could be seen. There was no improvement in

test scores, no improvement in student success whatsoever. And I think that's just one of the many proofs that it's not a lack of funding issue, correct? I think you're absolutely right. When it comes to the police, we spend way less on police than we do on education in the United States. At the state and local level, about a third of the budgets go towards education, but about a tenth of that, about three to five percent, depending on the location, actually goes to policing.

So we don't, we already do spend more on education. And then if you look over time in the United States, we've thrown more and more money at the problem without the results getting more. much of any better in the public school system. For example, between 1960 and 2017, we've increased real inflation-adjusted per-people education expenditures per student by 280 percent. That's after adjusting for inflation. And every single decade since 1960, we've thrown more and more money at the problem.

Today, we spend over $15,000 per child. And in my area in D.C. public schools, they spend over $31,000 per child per year. and these schools aren't open either. And then if it was all about the money, why are families flocking to charter schools, which are defined as public schools as well, but they tend to get a lot less money. My latest report on this out of the University of Arkansas

looked at 18 different locations across the United States, and the charter schools tend to get about two-thirds of the funding that the students would have gotten in the traditional public school system. So if it was all about the money, why do we have hundreds and thousands of families and their students on charter school waitlist begging for a chance to get in? It's probably because they have a stronger incentive to do a good job.

Underperforming charter schools shut down, underperforming traditional schools get more money. And that reminds me of something that Joe Biden said recently and has repeated that he's going to go after these, quote, for profit charter schools, which I would love for you to break down what that is and what that means and that we're going to make sure that we're closing down those charter schools that aren't performing well. And I've seen you post this question, what about public schools that aren't performing well? they don't get any kind of repercussion whatsoever. Yeah, in the latest interview with Biden's national policy director, Steph Feldman, she had a conversation with the Education Writers Association pretty recently. And they asked her their stance on charter schools, and she did say charter schools that don't

provide results would lose federal funding. But then they asked her about, well, what about the failing traditional schools? And they said, she said, oh, no, they just need more resources. They're only failing because they need more money. It was the first time I'd ever seen someone in the same interview admit this double standard here where the charter schools that already get less money. We're going to take their money away. But the traditional schools, which already get more money, if they're failing, the solution is obviously they just need more money.

That'll magically fix everything, even though they don't have any particularly strong incentive to do a good job. But in that same interview, she did go after for-profit charter schools as well, but only about 12 to 15 percent of public charter schools are managed by four-profit. entities. And even then, who cares if they're for-profit or not? If they're meeting the needs of families and families are voluntarily selecting those schools, I don't have an issue if they're labeled as for-profit or not. What I do have an issue with is a system that benefits from getting your children's education dollars and profits off of getting your child's education dollars regardless of how well they do. And then this year, regardless of whether they even open their doors for business, that's the kind of profit that's messed up. The kind of profit that is a good thing and

that is a strong incentive to do the right thing is when schools make a profit through voluntary selections. Yep. And Joe Biden has recently, I think, voiced support for these teachers unions in public schools who say that they're going to remain closed and has said, okay, yeah, you know, they're just scared of the virus. We need to make sure that we provide resources for them. Is his stance just because he knows that the Democratic Party and he in particular have to have the support of teachers unions? What do you do? think is behind him supporting these school closures? Well, if you look at the open secrets website, they show you where campaign donations go to. And if you look at the American Federation for

teachers, which is the second largest teachers union in the United States, about over 99% of their campaign contributions in the latest election cycle went to Democratic candidates. So that's part of it here. And then also Joe Biden, yes, he voted against the D.C. voucher program, which serves low-income students in the district in 1997 when he was a senator. It's still in operation today. He didn't get what he wanted back then. But if you look, the Biden-Sanders Unity Task Force, they're calling to get rid of the D.C. Voucher program. And then if you look at the conversations with his national policy director, they're calling to get rid of federal funding for public charter schools, which, although

it's only about a tenth of per pupil education expenditures nationwide, that could make it to break it for particular schools and that could mean fewer options for families going forward. But if you do look at his first 100 days plan, he did say that he wants to reopen the majority of K through 12 public schools, which sounded good at first. But when you started looking at what that actually meant was he wanted to throw more and more money at the problem and he wanted to put more staffing into the K through 12 education system, which is exactly what the teachers' unions want. And I bet when they get additional dollars, they're not actually going to reopen their doors because they'll just change the goalpost again like they've been doing all along. And we've already

allocated tons of money to the K-12 public school system in the past year or so. The CARES Act, we allocated over $13 billion to K-12 education system. And then the latest stimulus bill, we allocated over $50 billion to the K-12 public education system. They haven't even spent that yet, but now Biden's already talking about allocating $130 billion more dollars on top of what we already allocated, which is a ton of money. It's about the size of the Marshall Plan, the amount the United States dedicated to Europe to rebuild Europe after World War II. So it's a ton of money we're talking about, and it does nothing to change the incentives

that are in place. Yeah, I would love to hear the consequences that you see and that you project on these kids who are either forced into remote learning. Some are even in more dire circumstances. If you're in a situation as a child where you've been dealing with domestic abuse, being isolated in your home with these domestic abusers is obviously going to put you in an even more precarious situation.

We've read reports of things like that. We've read reports of mental health declining in students as young as five years old, hospitalizations for mental health problems. I just read a report on that has increased, even in kids as young as five years old. And we're hearing from the teachers unions, from some people in the public school system,

from Democrats that know keeping the schools closed. It's for the health of the kids. It's for the good of the kids. But that just doesn't seem to be the case. Well, that's not aligned with the science. They're pretty low cost associated with reopening schools. And UNICEF even put out a report of 191 different countries. There's no consistent link between reopening schools

and community transmission of the. the coronavirus. So the schools are some of the safest places. And look, if the private schools can do it, the public schools can do it too, but the difference is they get your money regardless. That's the problem here. If we have school choice, I bet you'd see a lot more of the public schools reopening, but you're right, there's a lot of cost to keeping the schools closed and the costs are not evenly distributed. The least advantage in society are bearing the largest amount of cost at the moment. If you look at Fairfax County public schools in my area, for example, the number of students failing two or more classes this year has increased by 83% since last year. And if you look at nationwide,

there's a report by McKinsey and Company that have found that students are losing about one to three months of learning this year, which obviously has long-term negative effects. You look at Clark County in Vegas area in Nevada, the number of student suicides has doubled this year since last year. So there are so many unintended consequences that are associated. with keeping schools closed. And my take on it is if you're not going to open the schools, give families the money. Let them take their children to a school that's actually going to meet their needs. If the public school learning environment through remote learning is great, you should still be

able to pick that. But for so many kids this year, it's just not working. And this affects all sorts of families. And I think that's why there's such a huge support for school choice right now. I think the teachers unions have overplayed their hand. Yeah, absolutely. And like you mentioned, disproportionately affects and hurts poor students and poor families. If you've, you, I remember

you saying this and this is stuck with me that rich families already have school choice. It's called having money. And when you're in an area where you have this, what you call this geographic monopoly, where you don't have a school choice program and you're forced to go to a school in your school district that may or may not be open or may or may not be meeting the needs of your child. If you are a family that can't afford to send to private, school or you can't afford for the mom or dad to stay home from work and homeschool your child, you're stuck in that situation. And your child is going to fall farther behind than the child of parents who can't afford to stay home or can't afford to send to a private school,

can't afford to do one of these pods. And so what we're creating in this time where we're talking so much about equity, we're talking so much about equality and social justice and especially helping communities that are disproportionately black and brown communities is we're seeing a creation of greater disparities through this push by the teachers unions to keep schools close. And it's just crazy that from the party who says that they care so much about the poor and the vulnerable and social justice, I mean, it just seems to me like we're seeing the exact opposite in their actions. Well, the people that are being left behind right now are the least advantage because, as you said,

the most advantage are seeking out things like pandemic pods or micro-school, small communities of families of five to ten students together in a household. They're banding together to form these pods. And so they're getting that in-person interaction. They're getting that in-person instruction from a private tutor. You can allow more families to have access to that to fund the students directly. Just imagine what good service you could get from having about $15,000 per child follow you into the household or even to a private school. Average private school tuition in the United States is about $11,000. $1,000 per child per year. And that's just the sticker price. A lot of the times the private schools charge a lot less than the sticker price. And so if you had the money following the child, that would

lead to more equity by allowing more families to have access to alternative options. Yes. And when we say equity, unfortunately, that's become like a buzzword that the left and the right mean two different things. Typically, when conservatives, I don't want to put definitions in your mouth, we're talking about fairness. We're talking about equal opportunity. As Kamala Harris has said that when she's she says equity, she says forcing everyone to end up in the same place, which obviously, I mean, from my perspective, that's not something we control. The best we can do is to give families the tools that they need and the help that they need to make good decisions for themselves. We're not talking about government social engineering trying to make everyone the same. What you're talking about

and what you advocate for so well is just making sure that parents have all the opportunities in the world, all the resources that we can give in order for them to make the choice that is best for their family and best for their kids. And that's what they're missing out on right now. It's any kind of choice for their child. And to me, that's just really heartbreaking. And it should matter for people who say that they care about civil rights, care about equality and care about justice, right?

Well, on a ton of these politicians who do not support school choice for others, exercise it for their own families. Kamala Harris went to a private preschool in California. She sent her stepchildren to private schools. Joe Biden attended private school. He sent his children to private schools. Elizabeth Warren sent her son to private schools in Austin, Texas, and in Pennsylvania. Why shouldn't other people have that same opportunity to send their children to private schools?

We're just advocating that everybody should have access to educational alternatives. We're already spending the money. Why allocate the money to buildings, especially when they're closed, when that money can go directly to the students instead? I think this just makes so much sense, especially when you start to think of other programs that already fund people directly, that a lot of other people will support, but then don't support it when it comes to K-12.

For example, with higher education, you have the Pell Grant where the money goes to the student, and the student can pick a public or private provider of the service. Same thing with the GI Bill for Veterans with higher education. Same thing with pre-K programs that are state-funded, including the Head Start federal program and other state-funded pre-K initiatives. The funding goes to the family,

and the family can pick it, public or private, religious or non-religious-affiliated provider of the pre-k services. Why is it that in the in-between years, the other side gets all up in arms when we start talking about funding students directly? And the only reason for this that I can come up with is that the power dynamics differ. Choice is the norm when it comes to higher education and pre-K and essentially any other sector of the economy, but choice threatens an entrenched special interest that profits from getting your children's education dollars regardless of their choice. So they get really worked up and they fight really hard against any change to that system because they want to get

your money either way. And so I think the best way forward is to fund the students instead of the system. And we should get our priorities right. The whole education system is supposed to be built for educating children. The education funding is supposed to be meant for educating children. It's not supposed to be meant for protecting a government monopoly. Let's get our priorities right. Right. A couple more quick questions because one pushback that I typically get when I talk about the problem with teachers unions and the problem in some cases with the public school system is that I'll get people who say, well, I live in Texas or I live in Georgia. We don't have teachers unions. So there must be no problem with the public education where I live. Or people will ask

me, well, how come I live in a place without teachers unions and our public schools are still closed? Or how come my kids are getting indoctrinated with critical race theory and, you know, curriculum that I don't agree with if we don't have teachers unions? So speaking, to that. It's not just teachers unions that are the problem, right? Yeah, it's not just teachers unions, and it's true that it's worse in some places as opposed to others. For example, in Florida, most of their school districts are open, but in California, most of them are not. And the main difference there is that Florida has much weaker teachers unions than California, which has much stronger teachers unions. But in Texas, they actually do still

have teachers unions, even though they're not as powerful as they are in California. But the other problem and you're right it's not just the teachers unions is that geographic monopoly that gets your money regardless and that gives more power to the teachers unions i don't have a problem with teachers unions per se what i have a problem with is them getting to implement crappy policies in the public school system and then not being held accountable for those crappy policies right and the best way to hold them accountable is to say okay if you want to implement x y or z curriculum that i'm not aligned with or if you want to keep the schools closed for in-person instruction, you go ahead and do that. But I'm going to take my money somewhere else to a private school as doing a better job or a charter school.

Or, hey, maybe I want to do it in the home and do some type of tutoring situation or microschool or pandemic pot or home-based learning. And just let me take my money with me. That way the teachers unions would have a stronger incentive to do a good job. And so I think it's both of those things. It's the power of the union, but that's propped up even more so by their geographic. graphic monopoly. I mean, like, so like in the private sector, I have no problem with unions, for example, because if like Walmart employees decided to go on strike, that would be kind of inconvenient, but I could take my money to Trader Joe's, and then the employer would have an

incentive to change things. But in the current situation, like in Chicago, where the teachers are going on strike this week and last week, the parents are the ones that get the short in the stick. Yeah. In what other industry does a employee strike negatively affect the customers where the customers feel all the pain. That's not how it should be. The employers should feel the pain. Right. And they're trapped. And that's, I mean, just to say I do have a problem with teachers unions per se, I have a problem with public unions in general. I think it's just a bad principle that our tax dollars are going to a union that are then turning around in funding candidates that I don't agree with. I don't think that should be true either way. Even if, for example, a police

union was funding the campaign of a Republican candidate. I don't think it's fair that a Democrat should be giving tax dollars to that union that then goes to a candidate that they don't like. Same for me with teachers unions and just public unions in general. But I do think even just your solution of the money following the child would break up the power that teachers unions have so much that I wouldn't be quite as concerned with their political influence because their influence would be minimized. One last question that I have for you that I know people are wondering about, okay, they're a parent in the public school system. They want to do something. They want to fight back, but they feel so small and insignificant. Like they can't say anything. But you've talked a lot about

how parents do still have power. Can you give encouragement or give advice to those parents who are ready to talk to their school board or whomever about this issue and try to make some kind of change? Well, and look, the teachers unions, as I've said, have overplayed their hand in the past year. They've done more to advance school choice than I'll ever be able to do in my lifetime in the last year. They've done more than anyone could have ever wished for. And that's because, again, they've kept the schools closed. They've prioritized the employees over the students. And families are seeing this. The latest real clear opinion research poll on this found that in just a few months in the past year, that support for school choice has actually increased a time. ton by 10 percentage points from 67% April 2020 to 77% in August 2020. And Ed Choice has similarly done a nationwide survey finding that 86% of parents currently support education savings accounts or allowing the funding to follow the child to wherever they're getting an education. And every single form of school choice support has gone up since last year. And this is the teachers' union's own fault. They've caused a lot of these problems.

And so families are fired up right now. They're seeing that there's no good reason to fund the system when you can fund the student directly instead. And a lot of the things that they can do are they can take the fight to the courts. An Arlington public school parent actually sued the school district because they're not reopening for in-person instruction. And they're saying, well, one, either reopen the school so that I can have that choice to go back or give me my children's education dollars and let them take them elsewhere. Then also not just the courts. There are school board initiatives. Parents in Colorado, for example, are doing a recall for the school board members to try to hold them accountable. And then another way is through legislation.

There have been 14 states at least that I've been tracking over the past month alone, where legislators have introduced bills to fund students directly as opposed to the system. Some of these states include New Hampshire, Iowa, Missouri, Kentucky, Kansas, Nebraska, states are introducing bills to fund students directly. And I think it's partially because families are waking up to this idea that it's such a, it's just the public school system just isn't there for them and they need options right now. And so families can support these kinds of initiatives by calling their legislators and telling them what they think about these initiatives. And I think this is the best, you know, 2020, 2021 might be the year of school choice and it might be the teachers union's own fault.

Yeah, absolutely. And unfortunately, we don't necessarily have a champion for school choice in the executive branch or in the legislative branch right now because they're dominated by Democrats. But that is not mean that things can't happen on your local and state level. Honestly, I think that we kind of have an outsized priority on our federal government when really so much of the change can happen right in your neighborhood, right in your area, in your community, in your state. you know, these public school systems might not have an incentive to change, but your representative who wants your vote does have probably, at least partly an incentive to listen to you and to try to make some change. And so don't think that your voice doesn't matter. Corey, how can they support you and follow you and make sure that they're reading the latest data, the studies that you're putting out about school choice? Yeah, follow me on Twitter. It's at DeAngelis Corey, just my last name and my first name. You could also find my work on the Reason Foundation website. You could just Google Query Reason Foundation.

You'll find my longer form articles. And then you can also check out my latest co-edded book with the Cato Institute's Neil Mubusky. It's called School Choice Myths, Setting the Record Straight on Education Freedom. We take down 12 of the biggest myths in the school choice debate because none of them hold up to any of the slightest bit of scrutiny based on clear logic and tons of empirical data as well. Awesome. And where can they get that book? besides Amazon. Is there anywhere besides Amazon they can get it? It's also on the Cato Institute website. So if you just Google Cato Institute's School Choice

Miss, you'll find tons of different outlets that are selling the book as well. Awesome. Well, thank you so much, Corey, for taking the time to talk to us. Thank you, All right. Hope you guys enjoyed that conversation. Please support Corey by his book. This really is, I would say school choice and abortion are the two civil rights issues of our time. Joe Biden recently said that transgenderism is the civil rights or the civil rights issue of our time. I disagree with that. I would say the slaughtering of children in the womb and the inability for underprivileged for disproportionately poor students, disproportionately black and brown students to not be able to have the choice to receive an education that works best for them.

I would say those are the two biggest issues. that we are facing. So I encourage you, if you haven't already to educate yourself on that issue, I've got several episodes, not just with Corey, but with Christopher Rufo, and a few other episodes on education, on education policy and the importance of school choice. So make sure you go back and you listen to those. All right, now I want to talk about this drama that happened. Let's see, it originally happened on January 22nd, so a couple weeks ago, but it really continued to bleed into last week and people were calling on the Southern Baptist Convention to discipline these Baptist pastors who called Kamala Harris, Jezebel. So January 22nd, Pastor Tom Bug of First Baptist Church in

Lindale, Texas tweeted, I can't imagine any truly God-fearing Israelite who would have wanted their daughters to view Jezebel as an inspirational role model because she was a woman in power. Now, people got very angry at him about this. Now, I will address the Jezebel part in just a second but he is right in that we shouldn't just be telling our daughters and we shouldn't ourselves just be praising Kamala Harris because of her genitalia because she's a woman. Now I think it's an amazing feat to be an accomplished woman. I don't see anything wrong with that. Sure, that is all well and good.

And that speaks to really where we are in the country that we really are not, as a lot of feminist critics say as just dogmatically patriarchal and as oppressive and sexist towards women, as some of them say. So that's all well and good. But am I going to be excited about the fact that the most pro-abortion senator, a very pro-abortion attorney general of California is now vice president? No. Why would I be excited about that? I mean, values are much more important to me than her anatomy. Values are much more important to me than so-called breaking the glass ceiling. The policies that she stands for are diametrically opposed to the policies I believe in. So why should I care about her anatomy when her leadership has resulted in more access to killing unborn children?

Why would I celebrate that? That seems so short-sighted to me, so superficial to me. And the fact that we are so often asked only as conservatives to compartmentalize to compartmentalize and to say, okay, yeah, this person is totally against my values, but at least they're a woman. And we are then expected to celebrate that when the other side never does that. I mean, with Amy Coney Barrett, they were wearing their hands, a handmaid's tail outfits, and they were refusing to, they were refusing to celebrate the fact that a, a mom of seven has accomplished this much this quickly in her life. Why? Because they didn't agree with her.

They didn't like her values. They didn't like the decisions that she had made as a judge and they were worried about her the decisions that she would make as a justice. Okay, that's fine. But they're always telling us that we need to celebrate politicians and leaders just because of their gender. And they don't do the same thing. So I think that we should. should all just say, look, we're not going to celebrate someone just because of their gender. We're not going to celebrate someone just because of their identity politics. We are going to celebrate the leadership of people whose values and policies that we actually believe in.

That's what the left does. Why can't the right also do that? Like, why are we the ones who are bullied into saying, okay, yeah, I don't care about my values. I'm just going to celebrate someone because of their anatomy. It seems very silly. So I don't have any problem with Tom. saying, yeah, you know, I'm not going to celebrate this. I'm not going to have my daughters

celebrate this so-called accomplishment. I don't agree with her. And actually, he is going on to say that I think that her policies and the belief system that she has is very wicked. He goes on to say he tweeted doubling down. For those torn up over my tweet, I stand by it 100%. My problem is her godless character. She not only is the most radical pro-abortion VP ever, but also the most radical LGBT advocate. She performed one of the first lesbian, quote, marriages, pray for her, but don't praise her. He then said, I fully stand by the point of my original tweet. Should Jezebel, who governed in godless ways, have been a role model simply because she was a woman in power? If not, why should Kamala, who's governing godless ways, be a role model just because she is a woman in

power? And then there was another pastor, Pastor Steve Swofford of Rockwall First Baptist Church in Texas, to Texas Baptist pastors. He preached about President Biden calling him cognitively dysfunctional and then added, what if something happens to him? Jezebel has to take over. Jezebel Harris, isn't that her name? So you might be wondering and listening to this. Okay, why did this turn into a news story?

These are too random, and I don't mean that in a pejorative way, but, you know, random pastors out of many, many pastors in the United States who called Kamala Harris to Jezabel. Tom Buck does have a good number of followers on social media. So I'm not saying these people are obscure, but there are lots of pastors, I'm sure, who don't like Kamala Harris. There are lots of pastors who didn't like Donald Trump, who probably said things about Donald Trump. And so why is this turning into news? Well, that's because we're having this whole conversation right now, especially since January 6th about the dangers of Christian conservatism, about the dangers of white evangelicalism. We've been talking about that, especially for the past few years, as white evangelicals tended

to vote for Trump in large numbers. And so there's been this conflation of racism and white nationalism and white supremacy with white evangelicalism. And these statements are being used to kind of advance that narrative. So religions, news.com explains Jezebel appears in the Hebrew Bible as evil incarnate, a non-believer who has become a catchword for female. but it's not only that. In the United States, Jezebel has become a racist trope for a sexually promiscuous black woman. I did not know that. This is what religion's news is saying. I have

never heard that before, but this is what they're saying. A description that began slavery, extended through the Jim Crow period and continues today. Lisa Sharon Harper, writer and activist, who is also an evangelical, said the use of the Jezabel trope is a window into the beliefs of white southern men. Harper said they legitimized their own. racist white supremacist worldview by placing it on top of a biblical reference. This could be a way of white men trying to put black women in their place, which is under them. Christian writer Sarah Bessie says this. She wrote about the misuse of the trope to smear women in her 2013 book.

She said, this is just what happens when a woman exhibits leadership. She's accused of having that Jezebethel. spirit. I look forward to the day when women with leadership and insight, gifts and talents, calling to prophetic leanings are called out and celebrated as a Deborah, a biblical judge, instead of silenced as a Jezebel. Bessie said, well, the problem is that Kamala Harris is not a Deborah. I mean, she's not. I'm not saying that I am either, but she's not a Deborah. I'm not saying that Sarah Palin was a Deborah, but I wouldn't say that Kamala Harris is a Deborah either. Again, just because a woman takes power doesn't mean that we need to hail her as a hero. Just like I think

it's wrong that just because a woman takes power doesn't mean that we need to say, castigate her or condemn her as a Jezabel. I also think that that's wrong, but I'm not sure that that is what Tom Buck is doing here. I think he has literally, I don't think he is thinking at all about any kind of racial euphemism. I highly doubt that he sees any kind of racial aspect interwoven to what he said. I think he is literally probably saying, I haven't talked to him. Maybe there's more context that I don't know. But I think he's, He's literally saying this woman is like Jezbel in the Bible, and therefore I think it's bad. Now, you probably disagree with him if you were on the left side of the aisle.

If I were a betting person, I would bet money that you disagree with this assessment. If you consider yourself a moderate or if you consider yourself a progressive Christian, or maybe you are on the right side of the political aisle, but you just think that this language was too harsh. You might disagree with him. My question is, I mean, who really cares? I mean, I think that he's literally talking about Jezebel from the Bible. I don't think that he met anything racist by this whatsoever. I mean, he can correct me if he thinks, if I'm wrong on that, I'll correct myself if I'm wrong on that.

But I think he's literally talking about Jezebel that we read about in First Kings. The Jezebel in First Kings was married to King Ahab of Israel. She was outside of Israel. and the marriage that she had with Ahab helped move Israel in the direction of idolatry. They were idolaters, they were murders, they were thieves, they were adulterous in many ways. Elijah was the prophet God called up to oppose them. And so I think Tom Buck is probably saying, not literally, that she has done necessarily all of the things that Jezabel did, but I think he's probably trying to make the point that, look,

she is going to push the country into idolatry in the same way that Jezebel did, and we shouldn't be celebrating that. Or he might not even be going that far. It sounds like from the clarity that he offered in his subsequent tweets was that he just thinks, hey, look, if we're not going to celebrate Jezebel just because she's a woman leader in the Bible, then why should we celebrate Kamala Harris? If she's not, you know, just because she's a woman leader in the Bible, to him, from his perspective, from his Christian conservative perspective, the policies that Kamala Harris stands for is wicked. Like, he didn't make any reference, as far as I know, to, you know, the whole Willie Brown thing that happened in the 1990s. She dated a guy who apparently helped her advance her career.

I will say, some people say that he was married at the time. He wasn't actually married. He was estranged from his wife. I think that whole thing with Kamala Harris in the 1990s is also overblown. But I also think that this accusation of Tom Buck and this other pastor because they called these, because they called Kamala, Jezabel is also overblown. They're making a biblical reference. You can totally agree with it or disagree with it. You can think that it's way too harsh. You can think that it's a mischaracterization. You might even go so far.

You from your perspective might call it sexist. You might call it racist, whatever. But the reason why this is turning into a big thing is to try to make a larger point about white evangelicals and the dangers of white evangelicalism. And it's nature as white supremacist or as a perpetuation of white nationalism. People are trying to get these churches removed from the SBC. They are calling on J.D. Greer, who is the president of the SBC. BC, the Southern Baptist Convention to discipline these two pastors. I just honestly, I want to know, like, under what pretense, because they compared one of our leaders to a character in the Bible,

here's, I want to, I want to bring up this headline. I thought I had a clip, but I don't think that I, I don't think that I do have a clip. So Hillary Clinton at Elijah Cummings' funeral just last year compared Trump to King Ahab and to Queen John. Jezebel. No one had a problem with this, by the way. Absolutely no one had a problem with this. This wasn't last year. This was in 2019. So this is according to Daily Mail, and there is a clip in the article. Our Elisha could call down fire from heaven, but he also prayed and worked for healing, Hillary Clinton said. Like that Old Testament prophet, he stood against corrupt leadership of King Ahab and Queen Jezebel. She's referencing Trump there because Elijah Cummings was a leader in the impeachment

trials at the beginning of 2020 against President Trump. That's what she's referencing. And after she said this, she was met with a loud applause at Elijah Cummings funeral. So Trump was compared to King Ahab and Queen Jezabelle. I don't know who's Queen Jezabel in this context. Is it supposed to be Mike Pence? But Hillary Clinton was directly making this comparison at Elijah Cummings funeral. I guarantee she wasn't the only Democrat to do that.

I guarantee that there were probably some liberal. pastors who also made that comparison. So is it okay when we level that charge and make that comparison against Donald Trump? And it's not okay when it's against Kamala Harris. I mean, that seems like a double standard to me. Or is it wrong in both cases? I'm open to hearing that. I'm certainly open to hearing that case that maybe we shouldn't compare, you know, leaders today to bad leaders in the Bible. I think that's kind of a weak case to make. I really don't understand why people can't have that opinion and state that opinion. But if it's wrong for the pastor to do it, then it's wrong for Hillary Clinton to do it and just saying, well, he's a pastor and so it's

different or, well, Kamala Harris is a woman of color, so it's different. That's not a very good argument. That doesn't seem very logical to me at all. But I don't remember people getting upset about Hillary Clinton comparing Donald Trump to King Ahab and Queen Jezebel. Now, I will say, if there were conservatives who are very angry about that but are not angry about this, then that would be hypocrisy or vice versa. Like I think that if liberals were not angry about that, but they are angry about this, well, then that's hypocrisy too. I think in both cases, it's really not that big of a deal. I mean, Hillary Clinton, I think probably knows just as much about the Bible as Donald Trump does, which is probably very little. and so it's a little bit laughable for her to be making those kinds of biblical references.

However, I don't care. It's not that big of a deal. It's her opinion that she compared Donald Trump to King Ahab and Queen Jezebel. It's Tom Buck's opinion that Kamala Harris is going to lead the country into idolatry and is an idolatir herself like Jezebel. Apparently, I'm just kind of reading in between the lines. I guess that's his opinion. I mean, it just seems kind of silly.

to me that we are blowing this into something that it's really not. This is an opinion of a pastor comparing a leader that he seriously disagrees with to a negative character in the Bible. I think the insistence upon attaching it to a larger narrative and a larger agenda that you're trying to push, to me it comes across as desperate and hypocritical and not at all accurate. Remember, Trump was called Hitler. Hitler responsible for the slaughter of millions and millions of Jews and other types of people who were seen as not part of the pure German Aryan race. I mean, Trump was compared to Hitler incessantly. And that was all well and good. According to the people that are now very upset that a pastor compared Kamala Harris to Jezbel in the Bible. I mean, remember, there's a reason why, People think that the policies that Kamala Harris stands for and fights for are wicked and are idolatrous. I just want to read you this from National Review talking about Kamala Harris's stances on abortion. This is written by Alexandra Dysanktist, whom I had on this podcast in December.

She writes a lot about abortion, and the title of the article is Kamala Harris's abortion absolutism. And the article says this, as a Senator Harris has co-sponsored the most aggressively pro-abortion piece of federal legislation ever introduced, the Women's Health Protection Act, which would override state restrictions on abortions in the last three months of pregnancy well after fetal viability. The bill would invalidate any state law that prohibits abortion after fetal viability when in the good faith medical judgment of the treating physician continuation of the pregnancy would pose a risk to the pregnant woman's life or health. Now, let me take a pause right here because I saw an account that is asserts itself or presents itself as only the facts, kind of present this side of the argument that, you know, sometimes late-term abortion or late-term abortion doesn't happen unless it threatens the woman's health. Well, fetal viability is 24 weeks, but babies have been known in the womb who are delivered early as early as 21 weeks to survive outside of the womb. So if the woman's life or health is at risk any time after, I would say probably if you're a labor and delivery nurse or if you're a doctor, you can correct me. But from my research and what I've talked to you about, it's about 23 weeks. The doctors will try everything they can, even sometimes

before that, to save that baby because there's a really good chance that baby can survive outside of the womb with the help of medicine. So if a woman, after 21 weeks, 22 weeks to 24 weeks, If any time after that, which is still the second trimester, like the middle of the second trimester, by the way, this is not even the third trimester yet, any time after, say, around 22 weeks that woman's life or health is at risk, the option is delivery. Because remember, abortion delivers a baby too. Like in an abortion, the baby has to come out. In a delivery, the baby has to come out.

And actually, it's a lot quicker to have an emergency C-section. so that the baby comes out at, say, 23 weeks, than it is for that baby, that 23-week-old baby to be aborted. I mean, that process takes around two days. And so it is much safer if the woman's life and health is at risk to deliver the baby rather than to kill the baby in the process. Either way, the baby comes out. And so there's no logical or medical or scientific reason for the baby to be killed in the

process if the woman really needs the baby to come out. because of her life or health. We're talking about any time after that age of viability in the middle of the second trimester. And so the only reason that a woman might have an abortion after fetal viability, well, there could be a variety of reasons, but it wouldn't be for life or health. And under the pretense of life and health, Kamala Harris is trying to push, was trying to push as senator, this bill that said that, look, you have to allow unrestricted third trimester abortion for the sake of the life and health of the mother. I mean, it's just false pretense.

That's not the reason. And Alexandria goes on to say, according to reporting for my colleague John McCormick, the bill's co-sponsor, or the bill's sponsors has said that it does not distinguish between the mother's physical and mental health. Read in conjunction with the Supreme Court's ruling and Dovey Bolton defining maternal health is all factors, physical, emotional, psychological, familial in the person's age, the women's health protection act would invalidate any and all state level protections for unborn children after the point of viability. Indeed, up until birth, it is also worth noting that Harris has twice voted against the born-alive abortion Survivors Protection Act, which would simply require doctors to provide the same care to infants who survive abortions as they would to any newborn. So she has voted in favor of infanticide. We're talking about

babies who have survived at abortion. We're talking about babies outside the womb. She voted against protecting them. She voted for taking away all state restrictions for abortion in the last trimester. Also, when she was the Attorney General of California, she targeted David Delighted, who uncovered through his reporting that the Planned Parenthood clinics in California were selling the body parts of aborted babies. He uncovered that. That's a fact. This is not, by the way, some conspiracy theory that has been debunked.

It hasn't been debunked at all. They're on the record. Now, unknowingly on the record, but they're on the record in public saying that, yes, they harvest and they sell these baby parts of aborted babies, Planned parenthood does. Well, as Attorney General of California, Kamala Harris went after him, ruined his life because of this. She also was behind the measure to force pro-like.

pregnancy centers in California to advertise, force them to advertise for free or cheap abortions at their clinics. I mean, how bloodthirsty is that? So I don't think that it's the worst thing in the world that you can say about someone like Kamala Harris that, hey, she's an idolatress. Or, hey, some of the policies that she stands for are very bloodthirsty. That's true. You might disagree with that assessment. You might disagree with that characterization. That's fine. I understand people said a lot of things about Donald Trump, a lot of critical things that I did agree with, some like comparisons to Hitler that I thought was just too far, but whatever. I mean, that's your opinion. Just understand that the takedown of these pastors for saying something, which is well within

their rights to say it, the insistence upon disciplining them by the SBC, that it's all attached to a larger narrative. It's all attached to a larger agenda. And remember, these are the same people that likely had nothing to say when Hillary Clinton at Elijah coming to funeral compared Donald Trump to King Ahab and to Queen Jesbel. All right. That's that's my entire take on that. I'd love to hear your opinion. You might push back on what I have to say. That's fine. But I'd be interested to hear another perspective on that. I understand that it's harsh. I probably, I mean, I don't think I wouldn't have said it. That's just not necessarily how I would say things. But do I think that these particular tweets and this particular chairman is blown out of proportion?

Yeah, I do. And I think that we know why that is. And quite frankly, I think it's very hypocritical and counterproductive. All right. We've got a lot of big shows this week that I'm really excited about. We're going to talk a little bit more about the COVID vaccine this week. I kind of made a mistake on last week's episode. And I want to clarify that a lot of you.

Some of you pointed that out about the use of fetal cells in the vaccine and the Christian response to that and whether or not they're actually present in the vaccine. I didn't make a mistake, but I didn't, I wasn't clear enough in my explanation. So we're going to talk a little bit more about that. We're going to talk to a Baylor professor who is being targeted by the cancel mob because she basically said, hey, look, I don't want my daughter to share a bathroom with a biological boy. We've got a lot of good interviews, a lot of good stuff coming down the pipeline this week. I'm really excited about it. So I will see you tomorrow for all of that.