The Daily Signal - RFK Hearing, Trump Rescinds Federal Aid Freeze Memo, Abysmal National Report Card | Jan. 29

Episode Date: January 29, 2025

On today’s Top News in 10, we cover:    Robert F. Kennedy Jr. testifies before the Senate Finance Committee. There has been a lot of confusion over the Trump administration’s order to freeze federal aid, so much confusion in fact that the memo announcing the freeze has now been rescinded.  The new national report card shows abysmal math and reading scores among U.S. students.    Links From Today’s Show: Keep Up With The Daily Signal Sign up for our email newsletters: https://www.dailysignal.com/email     Subscribe to our other shows:  The Tony Kinnett Cast: https://www.dailysignal.com/the-tony-kinnett-cast  Problematic Women: https://www.dailysignal.com/problematic-women  The Signal Sitdown: https://www.dailysignal.com/the-signal-sitdown    Follow The Daily Signal:  X: https://x.com/DailySignal  Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/thedailysignal/  Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/TheDailySignalNews/  Truth Social: https://truthsocial.com/@DailySignal  YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/user/DailySignal  Rumble: https://rumble.com/c/TheDailySignal    Thanks for making The Daily Signal Podcast your trusted source for the day’s top news. Subscribe on your favorite podcast platform and never miss an episode. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Robert F. Kennedy Jr. was under fire today during his first hearing to become the next HHS secretary. I'm Virginia Allen and this is the Daily Signal's top news in 10 for Wednesday, January 29th. Robert F. Kennedy Jr. testified before a Senate committee today. Trump has tapped Kennedy to be the next secretary of health and human services. Kennedy was before the Senate Finance Committee today. The hearing had some very contentious moments and was even interrupted by a protester. early on. Kennedy said during his opening remarks that he is not anti-vaccine, to which a protester in the crowd shouted, you are. News reports have claimed that I'm anti-vaccine or any industry. I am neither. Once the protester was removed, Kennedy said that he believes that vaccines play a critical role in health care. Kennedy received questions from senators on topics, ranging from nutrition, abortion, and AIDS. He addressed the need to improve the health of young people and use tools like school lunch programs to do so. We shouldn't be giving 60% of the kids in school

processed food that is making them sick. We shouldn't be spending 10% of the SNAP program on sugar drinks. So we have a direct ability to change things there. On abortion, Democratic Senator Michael Bennett confronted Kennedy on his position. Did you say on a podcast, and I quote, I wouldn't leave it abortion to the states. My belief is we should leave it to the woman. We shouldn't have the government involved even if it's full term. Did you say that, Mr. Kennedy? Senator, I believe that every abortion is a tragedy.

Did you say it, Mr. Kennedy? This matters. It doesn't matter what you come here. and say that isn't true, that's not reflective of what you really believe, that you haven't said over decade after decade after decade. The questioning is not over for Kennedy. Tomorrow, he will testify before the HELPS Committee, also known as the Health Education, Labor and Pensions Senate Committee.

Kennedy can only lose three Republican votes to still be confirmed. Democrats are expected to vote against him, but Pennsylvania Democrat John Federman is a maybe vote that Kennedy might receive from Democrats. Stay tuned. There has been a lot of confusion in Washington, D.C., and really across the nation, over Trump's order to freeze federal aid. And a lot of the confusion only increased today because the Trump administration announced it was rescinding that memo that directed the government to freeze that federal aid. So here with us to discuss what exactly is going on is the Heritage Foundation's director for the Center for the Federal Budget, Richard Stern. Richard, thank you for being with us.

Thank you for having me on. It's an important topic. So this feels like, okay, we're going forward. Wait, no, no, no. Kessel that. We're moving back. We had the judge ruling last night. So let's just, big picture here. Trump, the Trump administration has now rescinded this memo to freeze federal aid. Where do things stand right now? What does this mean? Well, the first thing I'll say is the technical terminology for the whole combination of what's going on is called a cluster dumpster. So. Yes, yes. The technical term.

The technical term. Super technical, budget walk term. So let me walk you through the kind of the whole thing on this. So as we all know, as we've all talked about, there are trillions and trillions of dollars spent by the federal government really on a lot of wasteful, inappropriate things, things outside the Constitution. Every single one of those dollars is stolen from the American public through taxes or through inflation taxes through the,

deficit, and then a repurposed to the whims of bureaucrats. For obviously decades, conservatives from the Tea Party movement through to President Trump and Doge have, of course, have tried to tackle this issue and make sure that those wasteful and appropriate dollars are not stolen, they're not spent by the government that you get to keep them. So, pursuant to that, the administration issued a memo to federal agencies that very clearly said, we would like you to pause effectively new grant making. So it would not touch, it would expressly not touch any benefits going to people.

So whether there's be welfare benefits, health care, Medicare, Social Security, VA benefits, all of that would not be touched. Student loans, none of that would be touched. Then beyond that, and this gets kind of the wonkery of it, but there's federal spending that hasn't gone out the door yet, but it's been obligated. So this is like you're standing at the grocery store, they've scanned your groceries, you haven't handed them your credit card yet, but unfortunately you've already scanned the groceries. So any obligated funds wouldn't have been touched either. This was really just when

Planned Parenthood shows up and says, hi, I'd like more money to not, you know, perform abortions that we could not send those grants at the door. When you have NGOs coming to get money to not traffic humans across the border, we could stop those grants. So that was the original memo. It was done very thoughtfully and carefully to make sure we didn't hit those benefits to people that we got at that kind of new grant making that is going to these most nefarious left wing organizations, and then pursuant to all of the chaos and the consternation that's come because of confusion over the memo, they rescinded it today. So I'm sure they'll come back at bad again, but that's kind of where we stand right now.

Okay. So right now, things that seem like at least are on pause with them moving forward because the memo has been rescinded. Thank you for bringing some clarity. Thank you, yes. Well, Richard, another action from the White House that you've seen that relates to the federal government and federal government workers, this one specifically, is that the White House has issued another memo to federal workers, giving them a chance to accept a deferred resignation. In other words,

to resign, but they would still be paid through September. This offer is for federal employees, but does not include some individuals like members of the military, employees of the U.S. Postal Service, positions that are related to immigration, national security, those types of things. So what exactly is the Trump administration aiming to do here? What's the point of this? Of course. So again, this is another one of these. And, you know, the theme I think of a lot of our conversations is ultimately that the deep state set the rules up to preserve the deep state. There's the swamp and then there's the swamp within the swamp. So part of this again is we're trying to find clever ways of being able to get rid of workers who are regulating Americans to death, who are not doing their jobs, who many of them, frankly,

have committed violations that they would have been fired for. But frankly, they are privileged workers. They have the safest jobs on the planet and you cannot fire them, even if they are incompetent, even if they break the law, frankly, half the time, and even if they purposely try to undermine the jobs they were hired to do. So what the Trump admin has done is saying, well, with dollars that have already been appropriated through the end of the fiscal year, we're going to offer to some of these workers that you can go and you'll continue getting your pay. So in that sense, it's a buyout, but you can go find a job elsewhere. And so part of this is it's a way of trying to convince some of these workers to go now

and go with pay before the Trump admin figures out other ways to really protect the American public and to actually go after these workers that are not doing their jobs or, frankly, that doing their jobs is regulating other Americans to death. So that's what we're looking at here. And it's, I think, a very clever strategic way of trying to pare down the federal workforce. and with it, get rid of the bureaucracy and the regulations. Oh, it's going to be fascinating to see how many of these federal employees actually take the Trump administration up on this offer. Very fascinating.

Fingers. Fingers. Heritage Foundation's Richard Stern. Richard, thank you, as always. Thank you. It was a pleasure. The latest National Report Card was published today. Every two years, the National Assessment of Educational Progress publishes a National Report Card. It assesses the average reading and math scores for four.

fourth and eighth graders. When this report came out two years ago, it was pretty abysmal. But the thought was that the scores were so bad because we just recently had experienced the COVID-19 pandemic. While the latest report card shows very little improvement. Let's start with math scores for our fourth graders. In 2024, 39% of fourth grade students performed at or above the proficiency level that is set by the National Assessment of Educational Progress. So only 30,000, of U.S. fourth graders are considered proficient or better in math. This is 3% higher compared to 2022, but 2% lower than 2019. For 8th grade math scores, in 2024, the average score at 8th grade was about the same as it was back in 2022,

but it's 8 points lower compared to 2019. In 2024, 28% of 8th grade students performed at or above the National Assessingescent. of educational progress proficiency rate in math. Reading scores showed even greater decline than the math scores. 31% of fourth grade students performed at or above that proficient level on the 2024 reading assessment. This is a two percentage point decline compared with 2022 and four percentage points lower than 2019.

Among eighth graders, 30% of eighth grade students performed at or above the proficiency level in 2024. This was not significantly different from that of what it was back in 2022, but it was lower than what it was back in 2019. These poor educational scores are one of the reasons why school choice programs are advocated for. And today, Trump is expected to sign an executive order that sends more federal dollars to support school choice and ends funding for public schools that support critical race theory and other divisive measures in their curriculum. Up next is today's newsflash. At Desjardin, we speak business. We speak startup funding and comprehensive game plans. We've mastered made-to-measure growth and expansion advice, and we can talk your

ear-off about transferring your business when the time comes. Because at Desjardin business, we speak the same language you do, business. So join the more than 400,000 Canadian entrepreneurs who already count on us and contact Desjardin today. We'd love to talk to Business. Today, President Trump signed the Lake and Riley Act. This was the first piece of legislation that Trump signed since he was sworn in as the 47th president. The bill is named after Georgia nursing student Lake and Riley, who was murdered by Jose Abara, an illegal alien from Venezuela back in February 2024. The bill directs immigration and customs enforcement to arrest and detain illegal aliens charged with theft.

assaulting a law enforcement officer or other crimes causing death or serious bodily injury. It received bipartisan support in both the House and the Senate. Speaking of actions from the president, Trump announced today that federal employees have to come back to work. Trump said federal workers can no longer work from home and must return to in-person work by February 6th or they will be terminated. We're going to leave it right there for the Daily Signal's top news in 10. Thanks for being with us. Today's show was produced and edited by Katrina Trinko and John Pop. Don't forget to hit that subscribe button so you never miss out on brand new shows from the Daily Sickle Podcast.

Thanks again for being with us. We'll see you right back here tomorrow.