The Daily Beast Podcast - Betsy DeVos Is Still Making Moves to Destroy Public Schools

Episode Date: April 2, 2023

Betsy DeVos is no longer wreaking havoc as former President Donald Trump’s Secretary of Education, but even without the title, the Republican donor is still actively making moves to “destroy” the public school system. Randi Weingarten, president of the American Federation of Teachers, came on this bonus episode of The New Abnormal podcast to share exactly how DeVos, “one of Michigan’s least popular people,” is doing so as well as her take on mass shootings in schools (“They’ll ban a book before they’ll even talk about what to do with assault weapons.“) and the state of teaching in America because of it all. Plus! Hosts Danielle Moodie and Andy Levy listen to clips of Lauren Boebert getting owned over “public urination” and Trump saying truly dumb things, including that he may not love his children. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Hi, I'm Andy Levy, former Fox News and CNN-HLN guy, and current cable news conscientious objector. I'm a former libertarian who now sits pretty comfortably on the left. Hi, I'm Danielle Moody, former educator and recovering lobbyist. But today, I'm an unapologetic, woke commentator on America's threats to democracy. And I'm producer Jesse Cannon, and I'm here to make sure things don't go too far off the rails. We're here to have fun, smart conversations with some of the most knowledgeable and entertaining people in politics, media, and beyond. goal is to try and make sense of our current crazy world, our new abnormal, and hopefully even make you laugh through the tears.

Hello and welcome to another bonus episode of The New Abnormal. We thank you so much for being here. Today we have an extra special guest with Randy Weingarten, who's of course the president of the American Federation of Teachers and a member of the AFL-CIO. And she's going to talk to us about Betsy DeVos's attempts to dismantle education and what's been going on ever since she left office. But first, let's have some fun. Are you guys ready to listen to some clips?

Yes. Yes. Guys, do you know Donald Trump's running in 2024 as a Democrat? What? What? I don't know. That's what it sounds like here. They can't win because he voted against Social Security.

He voted against everything. I mean, he voted against things that are so important. Medicare. He voted against Medicare. He wanted to raise the age substantially for people getting Social Security. The things that he's voted against are devastating because after, you know, everyone thought he did great on COVID, but if you look at the list, he did poorly on COVID. He was in the numbers, the same numbers as New York, a little bit worse than New York.

He's bad on education, bad on COVID, bad on many different things that people don't know about. What did I tell you? I mean, if nothing else, he's cutting really good ads for the Democratic Party if Descentus is the nominee. Yeah. I don't know if Trump knows what his administration did, though. That begs the question of maybe the fifth. fitness test that Nimrada, Nikki Haley, was calling for for older candidates because I'm confused. The whole entire party's platform is wanting to get rid of all of the things that he is pointing

the finger at Rondasantis for actually doing in Florida. Make it make sense. The only slight way it makes sense is this is populism. The older white people don't want their Social Security taken away and they get scared if you talk about that because they have earned. that, unlike the people of color who might get, you know, help from the government, who haven't earned it. So I think that's the only way I can think of to explain this. I always find it amusing that he really keeps defending the Medicare and Medicaid because he's

so needs to be liked so much that he's like, no, you guys, this thing you've been working for your entire lives that donors love, you can't do it. I need to be popular. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, again, that's populism, you know? I really wish his parents had just hugged him, you know? Like, we wouldn't be here if they had been better fucking parents. Yeah. Just saying. Go back in time and force Fred to be a better dad.

Well, I have to say, Trump's also doing a little bit more of a rebrand. He now thinks he's Elvis. Thanks for being here. I want to ask you whether I should call you, Mr. President, or I saw you on Hannity the other night saying, you're the new Elvis. I helped put that song together. Justice for All. How does it feel to be number one on the Billboard chart, sir?

Well, you know who are is the J6 prisoners? They're number one because they ask me if I do that, and the money goes to them, and it's a beautiful thing, and it was number one on every chart, including Billboard. It started off on iTunes, and it went to Amazon, and then it hit Billboard. That's the big, and number two was Taylor Swift, and number three was Molly Cyrus.

I was very honest. I said, maybe I'm the new Elvis. we've now that we've gone into show business with the apprentice and now we do this we've covered a lot of territory in a life but most exciting is being president does he mean like a billboard or like the billboard charts as the resident music business expert they basically gamed the charts in a way where no one's are actually streaming this song because they buy them and buying as more weight he got very high on the charts Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Did he say Molly Cyrus, or did I miss hear that? He didn't say Molly Cyrus. Okay, that's what I thought. I mean, still one of my favorite things is when Will Pump, the rapper, ruined his guy coming out for him and couldn't even say his fucking name right. But I have to say, I think Trump is like Elvis, bloated, washed up right at the end, and probably will die on a toilet. And, you know, while we're talking about Trump's move to good things, you know, the one

The thing we always have to say nice about him is he's the most unintentionally funny person on Earth. And as well, a person who always says the quiet part loud. Let's hear him talk about how he feels about his children. And I made farmers happy and rich again, and they're doing a fantastic job. And you know what? Someday it'll become time for them to leave this beautiful Earth, and they'll be able to leave their farm without taxes. taxes to their children. I got rid of the death tax on farms

so that when you do pass away, on the assumption that you love your children, you can leave it to them and they won't have to pay tax. But if you don't love your children so much, and there are some people that don't, and maybe deservedly so, it won't matter because frankly, you don't have to leave them anything. Thank you very much.

Have fun. Who is he talking about? Is it Eric? Is it Time Jr.? Is it Tiffany? It's all of them except maybe... Ivanka. Yeah.

Because if you don't love your children and, you know, there are reasons for that. Wow. How much better for the country would it be if he just went to therapy instead of running for president? God. The best part of that clip is

you probably couldn't hear it because we were laughing at the very end. And he says that whole thing about having reason not to love their children and you don't have to leave it to them. And then he closes by saying, have fun. You're talking about the death tax. And then he closed by saying have fun. Oh, my God. What I really love, too, is that he could be literally talking about farmers and he just does that rambling thing where he's like, something comes into his brain.

Oh, yeah. You know, like a fucking tension span of a gnat. Oh, it's fantastic. And then as usual, his in kicks in and he says, the fucking quiet part loud. Yeah, I hate my kids. I hate them. You know, I wish he would have ended with, have fun. I love you, Abanka.

Jesus. Everything could be solved with therapy. I'm just saying. Could have been solved. All right. Shifting away from Mr. Trump to one of his biggest fans, one Lauren Bobert, who brings the energy to her job each day that I would bring to dates when I was single and a girl would bring up astrology. That's to say an energy that is totally incompetent, bullshitting my way through all discussion and getting everything wrong along the way.

Let's listen to her at the House Republicans hearing where they were trying to demean Washington, D.C., so it shouldn't get statehood. Mr. Allen, based on these statistics, I would like to talk to you about, some other things that are going on here in Washington, D.C., specifically an initiative that you led. In November of 2022, you led the charge to reform D.C.'s crime laws. Is that correct? I chaired the committee that that proposal came to. You led this charge, yes, sir. And these charges, these changes are now law here in D.C., correct? Do you mean the revised criminal code? Yes. No, those are not the law. Those are not the law. The revised criminal code was rejected by...

Excuse me, Mr. Chairman. I talked to Mr. Allen. Yes, ma'am. Did you or did you not decriminalize public urination in Washington, D.C.? Did you lead the charge to do so? No, the revised criminal code left that as a criminal charge. Did you lead the charge to decriminalize public urination in Washington, D.C.? No, ma'am.

Did you ever vote in favor of decriminalizing public urination? in Washington, D.C. The revised criminal code that was passed by the council kept it as a criminal offense. Did you, and you support this? Criminal. I voted for it, yeah. You voted to keep it as a criminal offense. That's correct.

The full counsel did me. We have records that show that you were in favor of removing that criminal offense and allowing public urination. No. Is that something that you intend to pursue in the future? No. The legislation that you're referring to.

to that came from the Criminal Code Reform Commission, changed public urination from a criminal to a civil offense. The council then changed that to maintain it as a criminal offense at the request of the mayor. Thank you. I yelled. God, she's dumb, huh?

I mean, it's funny until you realize that, holy shit, she's in charge of shit. A member. Yeah. Yeah. Like, she has power. I just want to remind people that whenever you think that you are not smart enough.

You don't have the resume to run for Congress. I want you to roll that tape back, okay? And remind yourselves of who is in there right the fuck now. You got Space Laser, Marjorie Taylor Green, and then you got this dumb dumb.

Got to tell Amanda Lippman to cut an ad for run for something using that online. Look, I listen to that. My only thought is I don't have the patience to be in Congress. I could not sit there and listen to that drivel. At best, I would get up and quietly leave. And at worst, I would just grab a microphone and say, are you fucking kidding me? Yeah. Are you fucking kidding me right now with this?

I would be held in contempt or something like that. But I just, I couldn't do it. That's what Jamie Raskin's been doing to her pretty constantly. Pretty much. Yeah, he's just been more polite about it. But, yeah. Jared Moskowitz to Marjorie Taylor Green this week. You know, they're all, I think, getting your energy there. Yeah. I just, I don't. know how much longer you think it's going to be before one of them just completely explodes. I think the funniest part of this, though, is, you know, it's like, as always, these people have no self-awareness. It's like, honey, your husband got arrested for exposing himself in public, which is basically public urination. But worse. Much worse. But actually worse.

But maybe this is not the rock to pick up in your glass house. Lord. Folks, I am very happy to welcome to the new abnormal Randy Weingarten, who is the president and CEO of the American Federation of Teachers. And Randy, I got to tell you that as I always start this out when I get to speak with other educators and people in the education field, is that as a former teacher who also has a sister who is a current classroom teacher here in New York where I am, every time. that there is a school shooting. As a former educator, I am outraged. As a citizen, I am outraged. I'm outraged about what we are putting our students through, our children through, and what we are asking of our teachers and our administrators and our custodians and our bus drivers. And I just wanted to give you an opportunity before we jump into specifics on how you are doing.

as the leader of a federation that represents over, you know, close to 2 million teachers, how you are feeling after this latest horrific event in America. Well, thank you for asking that. I feel a great responsibility to solve this. I know that we're a union. We probably have a lot more agency, certainly than most individuals, and certainly the most individual teachers and individual. parents. But I have long past the fury stage and the anger stage. And you hear an intention in my

voice that we have to solve this. A great country, a great nation does not have as its number one cause of death in children gun violence. It's not just nuts. It's not just in human. It is not what a great nation does. And frankly, no other democracies in the world do this. And so I feel a great responsibility right now. And I think that there's a lot of learning and teaching we have to do again of adults in America because all of our rights come with responsibilities. The first course I ever taught at Clara Barton High School in Brooklyn, New York, I went back to look at my lesson plan. this summer to see how much I could actually teach in Florida. And frankly, most of my APGov course, I could not teach in Florida right now. I taught 10 years ago, 20 years ago. So you think about

what's going on. But my first lesson was on the Lockean social contract. John Locke, and the point was with freedom comes responsibility. And frankly, one of those responsibilities is that weapons of war belong in war. Assault weapons do not belong in civilians' hands on the streets of any of our either great cities or great towns or great villages or great rural communities. And I think we owe it to our children to actually fight for a ban on assault weapons. And I don't care how much intimidation, how much the NRA attempts to stop this, we need to rekindle that fight

for a ban on assault weapons. And the last thing I'll say about this is think about the irony of this, that these governors in these states They'll ban a book. Yep. A book doesn't harm anyone. A book gives you knowledge.

They'll ban a book before they'll even talk about what to do with assault weapons. Ban the assault weapons. Keep the books. We continue to say or continue to hear about American exceptionalism and how wonderful America is. And we are exceptional and we are great. And we hear this pushback coming from this desire to ban curriculum, to ban books, to erase black history, to erase LGBTQ history, to deny people the ability to talk about their lived experiences by not saying gay. We've seen this version up out of Virginia with the governor's race that Glenn Yonkin was able to win because of quote unquote parental choice. And then we've seen it spread across this nation and find a home in Florida, which has been the peachery.

dish of the Republican Party to test out some of their most egregious and dangerous policies as it pertains to education. You right now, the AFT, is launching a campaign and you addressed at the National Press Club where you said this, Randy, quote, attacks on public education are not new. The difference today is that the attacks are intended to destroy it, to make it a battlefield, a political cudgel. Can you speak more to that? Sure. Think about 100 years ago. And again, I'm a social studies teacher and I'm an APGov teacher. So I think about things in historical terms as a way to understand a country's current situation or the world's current situation. Think about scopes and the scopes trial and that fight a hundred years ago between creationism and evolution. And again, that was a moment.

a time of great change in society where people thought, oh, my God, if you learn biology, what does that mean in terms of church teachings? Well, religion has a really important role in America, and so does education. And they can sit side by side. One does not overtake the other, which is what the anti-evolution forces were thinking. and created a lot of fear about. So you fast forward to now. We have a diverse nation. And to learn about our history, the good, the bad, the struggles, what it means,

to learn about our diversity, to see each other, to understand that you can be proud about one's heritage if one is white and still believe. that there was a problem when George Floyd was murdered by a white cop. You can hold those two things together at the same time. But what has happened is in this crevice comes fear, in the conflict comes fear, add COVID, and you have the recipe for the culture wars that you have in places. And I would say, Ron DeSantis has done. nothing about property insurance affordability. The things that were wrong with Florida before

in terms of economic security for low and middle income folk, they're still wrong in Florida. So rather than address kitchen table issues, they're creating a culture war that is trying to exploit the fear. And so, you know, what I tried to do on Tuesday this week, was I wanted to tell the story of the effect of that fear, of what it means when a teacher can't answer a question, what it means when you censor someone's lived experience or history. But what I also wanted to do is say, how do we get beyond it? How do we actually do what teachers want to do, what parents need teachers to do, what frankly the overwhelming number of parents want? poll after poll shows parents love their kids' teachers. They don't want their kids to become teachers because they see what teachers go through, but they love their kids' teachers. And if you

ask a parent, do you want to support public schools or do you want more choice? The last polling we've seen, 80 to 20 split, they want to support public schools. So the key is, and that's the campaign, is a campaign for common sense solutions. It's a campaign to make every public school place where parents want to send their kids, educators want to work, and kids thrive. And what we know from all of our lived experience and from the teachers and the bus drivers and the school staff is that if we do these four things, expand community schools. So we have wraparound services and extended learning opportunities and schools become hubs of community. Expand them. Have 25,000 of them instead of 2,500 of them right now.

The second is, let's make learning fun. Let's make sure that kids enjoy it, work with their hands, do teamwork, do experiential learning. And in the places we do that, like in career tech ed, we have a 94% graduation rate and 74% of kids go to college. Then let's actually deal with issues like, you know, making sure we recruit and retain enough teachers and a diversified teaching force. And the last thing is, as they're trying to divide, we've got to deepen the relationship between parents and educators. And let's work on that. So what I've tried to come up with based upon everything I see in America right now, in schools right now, and what I see in terms of research and common sense is how we're going to overcome the mental health crisis and how we're going to overcome learning loss.

And more importantly, how we actually help. kids, kids and their families be prepared for life, career, college, and citizenship. So I'm trying to say, this is not ideological, and frankly, no one on the right has attacked the four strategies that I push forward this week because they're unimpeachable. So let's do them at scale. Let's actually break through this ideological logjam and focus on kids and families. Everything that you laid out, Randy, it makes sense. I have long said, I don't understand why schools can't be the community hubs. I don't understand why we can't bring the resources that communities need and put them in our public schools, whether it be doctors visits and regular

dental visits and all of these things that families actually need in order to thrive, have them be at their public school. But then we look at and we see news like what has come out this week as well, which is around the former Secretary of Education under Donald Trump, Betsy DeVos, we find that their whole desire is around the expansion of private schools, the destruction of public schools as a way to privatize and monetize education to create, in my humble opinion, I won't put words in your mouth, a permanent underclass, working class, and create a caste system without calling it that in America. Can you speak to the latest news of a Betsy DeVos-backed group, deciding now to support the campaign of the Republican running in Chicago for mayor?

Yes, I can. And Danielle, think about what Betsy DeVos is all about. He's not about helping all kids learn. No. Whatever the end result is, from Jefferson to Franklin to King, there is a sense in America that the reason we have universal public schooling is that we believe in all of our children. And DeVos was the first Secretary of Education who, even though that was her sworn duty, refused to do that. So what they're about is they are about, basically vouchers and privatization. And one of her acolytes, Christopher Rufo,

put it bluntly last year. And I quote him, to get to universal school choice, you really need to operate from a premise of universal public school distrust. So this is what the most does. This is what she does. They starved public schools of the funds they need to succeed.

They then criticize them for their short. Cummings. They erode the trust in public schools by stoking fear and division. And then they replaced public schools with private religious online and home schools. So the point here is that once she was giving this money to Valis, you and Valas accepted it, then that's all you need to know about Paul Valis. That this is not about a guy who's running to help everyone. in Chicago, this is about someone who wants to balkanize and atomize. And frankly, that's been his history. Ask anybody who worked with him in New Orleans or who worked with him in Chicago or who worked with him in Philly. It was all about division, division, division. And frankly, that's how he's

running right now, a fear campaign in Chicago, creating this kind of division now paid for by people like the richest former people who lived in Illinois, people like Ricketts, people like Rounder, who now are all in Florida. They're all funding Dallas's campaign and people like Betsy DeVos. So she's not happy with trying to have undermined education in Michigan. She's one of the least popular people, by the way, in Michigan. She's not happy with trying to sidle up to DeSantis and undermine public schools. in Florida. They just passed $4 billion of vouchers. What do you think that's going to do in Florida?

She wants to now try to undermine the opportunity of every single child in Chicago and Paul Valis, instead of rejecting that money, took that money. Sorry, I'm really angry about this. No, no, no. I'm, I too. I'm disgusted because I, you know, like you, have seen. it. I've seen the playbook. I've seen the pattern of what Republicans in power with Uber wealth have been able to do to destroy public education. And I believe, because they know that public education is the great equalizer. Public education is when young people have critical thought, they grow up to be critical adults who are less likely to be controlled by authoritarian by people who don't have their best interests in mind. There's a longer goal that is

here. But my last question for you is around teachers who are leaving the profession or who are not deciding to enter the profession because of fear. Fear that they can be criminalized for teaching a child that love is love, teaching about equity and justice, or that they'll be mowed down in their classroom and be forced to use their bodies as a shield against bullets to save the lives of their students. So what do you say to teachers who are not paid enough, who are not credited enough for what they do? We did for five minutes during COVID with remote learning. When all parents across the country realized how hard a teacher's job was, but then that went out the window as soon as the school buses came back and schools were open again. So what do you say

to teachers who are either thinking about leaving the profession or not entering it at all? So what I say to teachers, and I'm so glad you just said this, is thank you. Teachers are the first responders to everything that society throws at them. It's really remarkable that people stay in the profession. You know, we used to have about 300,000 people leave each year. We're closing it on 400,000 because of all of this. And we all have seen that the pipeline is collapsing because look at what teachers satisfactions, went from in the mid-60s in 2008 to down to 12% right now.

Wow. So the pay has never been good. But what's happened is these cultural wars and the worsening environment, including the fact that, you know, the powers that be in this country or the extremist powers that be in this country, don't want to deal with weapons of war. It is really cutting at Putin. teachers are and what they want to do and how they want to do things. Yet we still have every single day millions of people in classrooms really trying to meet the needs of kids. So they're my Shiro's.

They're my heroes. And it's part of the reason why teachers are more densely organized than virtually any other group of workers in America because teachers get that together we can accomplish what is impossible to do alone. It's why organizing as a union and doing things as a community and working together with parents is so important because we are the stewards of society. And so it goes back to your first question, which is, how do I feel every day? I feel a tremendous amount of responsibility to actually help turn this around and make sure that that teachers get the respect and dignity to which they truly deserve and they truly need. Randy Weingarten, thank you so much for making the time to join the new abnormal.

And thank you for all of the work that you are doing right now and have been doing for well over a decade. I appreciate you. Thank you. Hope you enjoy checking out this episode of the new abnormal. We're back every Tuesday, Friday, and Sunday. If you enjoyed it, please share it with a friend. and keep the conversation going.

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