The Young Turks - Money On Fire - May 28, 2025

Episode Date: May 29, 2025

Sign up for your one-dollar-per-month Shopify trial and start selling today at ⁠shopify.com/tyt UK Town Holds INSANE Cheese Roll Competition. Republicans BAIL On Their Pretend Populism. Elon Musk SLAMS Trump’s Big Beautiful Bill. San Francisco Schools Adopt RIDICULOUS “Grading For Equity” Plan. How A Shady Nonprofit GOBBLED UP LA Fire Relief Funds. SUBSCRIBE on YOUTUBE ☞  https://www.youtube.com/@TheYoungTurks FOLLOW US ON: FACEBOOK  ☞   https://www.facebook.com/theyoungturks TWITTER  ☞       https://twitter.com/TheYoungTurks INSTAGRAM  ☞  https://www.instagram.com/theyoungturks TIKTOK  ☞          https://www.tiktok.com/@theyoungturks 👕MERCH  ☞      https:/www.shoptyt.com Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

You're listening to The Young Turks, the online news show. Make sure to follow and rate our show with not one, not two, not three, not four, but five stars. You're awesome. Thank you. Hello. Welcome to the Young Turks. I'm your host, Anna Kasparian. And ladies and gentlemen, I believe we're about to have our finest hour. Okay, I'm so looking forward to the first hour today. It's going to be a little different, a little different.

Yes, we're going to cover the big news stories of the day as we usually do. But there are some stories involving a particular form of grift that I have been trying to raise awareness about. This is a grift that unfortunately has infected democratic institutions in particular. And it really, really needs to be called out because it's infuriating to see where money that's specifically raised for, you know, charity or money that has been granted to charitable foundation. to do good things out in the world. When you find out that that money is really just used to pad the pockets of the individuals running these nonprofits, you'll understand where the fury comes from. So we're going to get into that later on in the first hour of the show.

We're also going to talk about equity and grading. What does that mean? And why do I hate it? It has a great label, but don't let the label mislead you because it is a form of curriculum that I think is actually doing a lot of damage to kids all across the country and could eventually destroy public education in America, which I would like to, you know, avoid. I would like to keep public education intact and, in fact, improve upon it. But we'll get to all of that later in the first hour.

In the second hour, Jen Cougar will be joining me from a remote location. We're going to interview Congressman Roe Kana in the bonus episode. Usually it's for our members, but it'll be public for everyone today. so please check it out. And please help support the show and everything that we do here at TYT by going to join. Dot. Join.com slash TYT. Yeah, join. No, tYT.com slash join. Wow. All right. I'm just excited to do the news. Okay. Enough with the housekeeping. Let's get to it. A wheel of cheese, a steep hill and broken bones. Winters have officially been crowned in this year's cheese rolling race, the most famous and important cheese rolling race in the world.

It's also a people rolling race. This is a centuries old tradition in Gloucester, England. No wonder they lost the empire. What you just witnessed on your screen with dozens of people rolling down a hill and injuring themselves is real. But more shockingly, it's not in the United States. It's in a different country. And you know what? I'll allow it. I love it when people in other countries do things that give Americans a little bit of a pass because we do a lot of embarrassing things. Sometimes I don't feel so good about how we come across on the international stage. But this is such a fun story, right? Who doesn't want to break their bones for a wheel of cheese? Now, what you witnessed is

the so-called cheese roll. It's unclear how old this tradition in England is, but But apparently it is a tradition, and the winner gets a big reward. So I'll tell you what that is in just a minute. But if you thought that was crazy, just wait until you hear what the winners of the cheese roll had to say for themselves. Participants race 200 yards down a dangerously steep hill to catch a wheel of double gloss to cheese. And you can see they kind of get injured often in the process. A German man won for the second year in a row. He said, quote, I worked for this.

I risk my life for this. It's my cheese. All right. In the women's category, a woman from London won. And she told the BBC after the race, she doesn't even like cheese. I don't know what to say to that. That's the most shocking bit of the whole story. The cheese can get and go like 80 miles an hour.

Listen, if you like to get roughed up, just say you like to get roughed up. Okay, you don't have to pretend like you're in this tradition, you're into it. I like that this woman is like, I don't even like the cheese. I just want to get roughed up. I want to harm myself. Anyway, the winner gets a huge prize. It's literally just the wheel of cheese. And then they're crowned the winner, but that's it. I don't really understand it. But the man who won this year is a YouTuber by the name of Tom Kopke. Here's more of what he had to say after his He says last year the hill was muddy and this year it was dry and dangerous and people got injured. Wow. The cheese roll used to be an official tradition, but it was canceled in 2010, likely because people realize not all traditions are good and maybe this is a bad idea of people are getting injured.

But local authorities now state the event, well, is too dangerous. Clearly they decided to hold it again. So this year's event prompted a safety warning from the local ambulance police and fire services who warned they could be overwhelmed if there was a mass casualty incident. So there was some concern that people might die from literally rolling down a steep hill in order to capture and win a wheel of cheese. But the cheese rollers have kept this tradition going clearly and two of this year's contestants had to be taken to the hospital. So regardless of the bad decisions you've made in your life, when you feel like being too hard on yourself, I want you to think about these ladies and gentlemen who decided to roll down a steep hill and injure themselves all in the name of cheese. That's it. That's all they got. And one of them didn't even like cheese to begin with. Incredible.

I now want to get to the serious news of the day because there are some updates and some GOP infighting in regard to the big, beautiful bill that Donald Trump managed to get passed in the House of Representatives. Now it's headed over to the Senate. I'll give you some details on what's likely going to happen there. But before we get to that, we should talk about this plan of a tax. I don't understand why they didn't move to higher taxes on the very, very wealthy. That would be politically expedient. It would go down well with everybody except David Banson. Well, me too.

I'm mine with David on this. And not only because I think it would be bad, with bad policy, those people are already paying high level, high rates of tax. 37% top rate of tax percentage points. I just don't want anybody in our audience to think that I would want higher taxes on wealthy people. I'm just saying it would be politically expedient. That's all I'm saying. No, no, no, no, Stuart, don't worry.

No one would make the mistake of thinking you personally would. want to increase taxes on yourself as a television anchor who's probably raking in quite a bit of money in your television contract. But nonetheless, give credit where credit is due because Fox business host Stuart Varney admitted the obvious yesterday. He admitted that raising taxes on the ultra wealthy would be a popular thing to do. In fact, that's something that Trump realized as well, which is why he decided to sheepishly float the idea of increasing taxes on the ultra wealthy in his big, beautiful bill. Let's talk a little bit about the fate of what happened when he made that proposal. So Republicans love, absolutely love giving handouts to the ultra-rich

and, of course, they're elite donors, so much so that, of course, they're refusing to do what's politically popular in this situation. And look, if you go back to 2017 and you look at public opinion polling on Trump's big bill back then, his tax bill, it did not poll well. And it's because most Americans, although the media likes to treat them like their idiots, most Americans are pretty savvy. And while they might have gotten a little bit of a tax break, you know, as ordinary working Americans, the bulk, the disproportionate amount of savings on taxes, of course, went to the rich and the ultra wealthy. So it would poll poorly for that reason. Now, Republicans hear what Trump has to say. They're like, yeah, maybe this would be politically popular. But

remember, we're just, we're whores for our donors. And our donors don't want to see their taxes raised. And so despite Trump briefly and timidly suggesting the GOP lawmakers should consider increasing taxes on the wealthiest Americans, the House officially rejected the idea. It was not included in their version of the tax cut and border funding bill that they've passed. And so the Senate is basically likely to do the same. That's my prediction. So we'll get to what they're saying in just a moment. But the legislation House Republicans approved last week excluded the millionaire tax and other proposals to raise taxes on top earners.

Now look, let's just pause for a second because I want to always make clear that I don't believe in raising taxes for taxes sake. Okay, I think the federal government and local governments for sure do squander a lot of our resources. It really depends on what the money is spent for. So if we're talking about raising taxes so we can send Israel another like $26 billion military aid package, yeah, I'm not interested regardless of where that tax money or revenue is going to come from. However, we have a lot of problems in this country, a lot of problems that need resources to solve. I just wish we had the politicians who were laser focused on solving those issues, because in that case, I can turn

to our tax system and say, no, no, we absolutely need to raise taxes because we need to fund this program. I'll give you a specific example. There's a lot of concern that our social security program will be insolvent soon. Well, there's a very specific tax. It's the social security tax that you can see on your pay stub every time you get paid. You see how much of your earnings go towards social security. Well, as we've talked about multiple times on the show before, there is a cap in regard to the amount of income. An individual can get taxed for social security. Why don't we raise that cap? Maybe even eliminate that cap. I don't know, but raise the cap to ensure that social security is fully funded and solvent. Easy. Okay, now let's get back to this big,

beautiful bill because I have some more details that I want to share with you. So now we're learning that the half-baked effort to include these measures to raise taxes on the rich, were put to bed by none other than a gentleman you might have heard of. We've talked about him on the show before, but it's been some time. His name is Grover Norquist, and he's an anti-tax advocate, an activist. He is a particularly loathsome person. I'm not a fan of his. He likes to launder his reputation by talking about how he likes to go to Burning Man as if like, you know, he's a human being who likes to have fun and do good things. In reality, he likes to strip the federal government of necessary resources so it can't function properly. And he has no problem with ordinary working Americans paying a disproportionate amount of their income toward taxes while the ultra wealthy basically get away with, you know, in some cases paying close to nothing because of,

of some of the deductions they're able to take advantage of. So Trump went to his daddy, Grover Norquist. He's like, Daddy, I'm thinking about doing something politically popular. I'm thinking about cutting taxes on working Americans. Okay, that would be popular. But also, in order to do something about this disastrous debt that we have in the United States, a debt so high that we spent a trillion dollars last year servicing. I want to do something about that.

So maybe I should raise taxes on the ultra rich. And you want to know what his daddy told him? No, don't do it. You think Grover Norquist is going to give Trump permission to raise taxes on the rich when his entire purpose in life has been to essentially be an activist to prevent that from happening? Of course Norquist was going to tell him no. And you know what?

Trump took orders. And so he dropped it. Now, according to the Washington Post on May 7th, Norquist got a call. from President Trump about 15 minutes before he boarded a flight to Poland. In the time before the plane took off, Trump gave his arguments for raising taxes on the rich. Norquist pushed back, arguing that such a maneuver would prove a politically disastrous attack on the small business community, he said, of the call. Okay, but if you're worried about the small business community, which I don't believe at all when it comes to Grover Norquist, there are certain deductions. there are certain ways you could help small businesses out.

We're talking about the ultra-rich here. The fact of the matter is Grover Norquist doesn't want to see taxes raised on the ultra-rich. It's never enough for them. Never enough. So shortly after landing in Warsaw, Norquist received a call from House Speaker Mike Johnson, just to ease any panic that Norquist might have. It's going to be okay, Norquist. We're looking out for you.

So what did Mike Johnson have to say? Well, that tax increase for the ultra-rich would not be in the final legislation. Now, let me just pause for a second because the fact of the matter is, while there might be a populist wing of the GOP electorate, the voters, I want to be absolutely clear in saying that the Republican Party still is what it has always been. The pro-corporate party, the party of millionaires, billionaires, the party that has no problem with working-class Americans paying a disproportionate amount of their income toward federal taxes. But they will fight like hell to ensure that the ultra-rich pay far less percentage-wise when it comes to their

income. So Norquist even bragged about the influence he has over our politicians, as if like it's something to really be proud about, as if it's really difficult to legally bribe our politicians to get them to do whatever they want. Now, he says, we showed how weak and non-existent this quote-unquote movement for higher taxes is within the Republican Party. The House and the Senate have been in lockstep. This is not happening, period. But I'm glad we had this movement because it allowed us to expose this little cancer cell in the party

pushing the idea. So Grover Norquist, I mean, you heard it here first, folks. Grover Norquist believes that Donald Trump, the president of the United States, is a little cancer cell. He's the one who pitched the idea of increasing taxes on the ultra wealthy, didn't he? Grover Norquist just called Trump cancer. And I just want to know, is Trump going to take that? First of all, why are you taking orders from Grover Norquist? I thought you were the president of the United States.

Pretty pathetic, isn't it? But let me continue. So he's right that the Republican movement for higher taxes is weak. I think it's non-existent. I mean, Republican politicians are not engaged in a movement to raise taxes on the ultra which they never have, they never will be. While the tax increase or increases were nixed, the legislation passed by the house, that was passed by the House, did include several measures that disproportionately benefit

Americans in the top income brackets. So I want to get into the details on that. So it extends the tax cut Republicans first approved in 2017 for the highest income bracket, those earning more than $626,000 per year. The bill passed by the House also extends the estate tax, which would not apply to fortunes of up to $15 million or $30 million for married couples. Oh, thank God. Thank God. I mean, how would that married couples survive if that $30 million they inherited was taxed? How would they survive? They'd be out on the streets. Think about the rich people who have inherited all that money. I mean, thank God, Grover Norquist saved them.

Now, because of those provisions, the wealthiest Americans will benefit and the poorest, obviously, will be hit, especially if they rely on our social safety net. Take a look. So take a look at this chart. That longest line there is how much the bill would increase income for the wealthiest. 0.1% of Americans while actually reducing income for the poorest 10%. This is according to Penn's Wharton School of Business. If you're in the top 20% of Americans, you're going to get roughly a 3.7% increase in your after tax income, really all from these tax cuts.

But if you go all the way to the bottom and everything in between essentially leads you to the bottom. If you're in the bottom 20%, you actually lose $800. Why do you lose $800? You get a very small tax cut and you get a very large cut in Medicaid and these other benefits that we were just talking about that affects the 20% disproportionately. So this is a highly regressive bill that essentially favors the wealthy, doesn't do much for the middle class, and hurts the poor. Thank God. I mean, all those poor people, do they really need that health care? They didn't need that health care. The rich people, though, they needed the tax cuts. They needed the tax breaks. Grover Norquist is right.

Screw the poor people. Screw all those kids who might want to, you know, see a dentist or might have an issue with chicken pox or an infection and might need to see a doctor. Who cares about them? We got to give the money the rich. I mean, they do so many great things with it. Like invest in the crypto industry. That really benefits society, doesn't it? Anyway, let's keep going. So the biggest beneficiaries of the bill would be those earning between $460,800 and $1.1 million per year, a category primarily composed of small business owners and high income professionals such as lawyers and doctors. according to Kyle Pomerlou, a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute,

which is actually a center-right think tank. So a center-right think tank is admitting, yeah, high-income earners are going to be the ones who benefit the most from these tax breaks. Now, after that, though, the top 1% are the biggest winners, and that's based on the same analysis. Analysts say Republicans in the Senate are even less likely to back higher taxes on the top income bracket. And that really should come as no surprise. The upper chamber or higher chamber tends to be a little more conservative than the House of Representatives. So it doesn't surprise

me at all that they're less likely to approve additional taxes or higher taxes on the ultra rich. Now, there was some hope that right-wing populace like Steve Bannon would be able to convince Trump to put more pressure on lawmakers to move in the direction of increasing taxes on the rich. And look, I probably would agree that Bannon is the one in his ear who put that idea in his head in the first place. But let's just make one thing clear. When Donald Trump wants something, he gets it. He fights for it. He'll stop it nothing.

Now, when it came to the House of Representatives passing the bill, Homeboy was in the house, okay, bullying Republican lawmakers every day until they had the votes to pass it. If he really wanted to raise taxes on the rich, he would have done it. He would have gotten it done. So I don't think he actually wanted it. I think he understands the political benefits. I think he understands that, you know, at least engaging in some behavior that gives his base the idea that he is a populist is beneficial for the Trump administration. But he didn't fight for it. He doesn't really want it.

And he probably thinks, whatever, I can probably spin this and make my base happy anyway, even though the bulk of this bill disproportionately, you know, benefits the richest among us. Now, Michael Strain, who's an economist at the American Enterprise Institute, also argues that what we're seeing is the center of gravity in the Republican Party is still much closer to where it was under Mitt Romney. then is commonly thought. There's support for Trumpian nationalism, but it's not the dominant disposition in the way a lot of people think it is. Rather than there being no Republicans who want to boost taxes on the rich, they're just very few. And look, guys, I want to reiterate, we're talking about the Republican politicians, the political class. We're not talking about

the voters. I would venture to say that if you sat down and talked to a huge, portion of Trump supporters, they're sick of corporate greed, they're sick of the tax breaks that the ultra-rich get to enjoy. I mean, they rail against the elite constantly. And the reason why a lot of them left the Democratic Party is because they were under the impression, an accurate impression, that the Democratic Party abandoned the working class. But the big scam here is that the Trump administration and some Republicans really position themselves as the party of the working class. But as we know, talk is cheap. You have to actually look at their actions. And the Republican political class has no interest in looking out for the working class at all. So I have a lot

of empathy for voters. I don't have any malice in my heart for them because, I mean, look, we don't have a lot of good options, as you can imagine. So they're doing the best with what we had in this last election cycle. But my ire is absolutely directed at these disgusting, phony politicians who like to fashion themselves as economic populace when in reality they're anything but they're little horrors for their donors, okay? And they themselves are rich. They themselves don't want to pay higher taxes. They're not going to raise their own taxes. I mean, think about how many of these politicians on both sides of the aisle have been in Congress for, in some cases, decades. Really, you're going to become a multi-millionaire earning $170,000 a

year in salary? Yeah, okay. So Senator Josh Hawley told reporters last week that Trump is still pushing legislation to raise taxes on private equity groups. But honestly, I would take that with a grain of salt. I don't think Trump is pressuring anyone to raise taxes on anything. Okay, so I think he floated the idea, Norquist, his daddy shut it down, no increased taxes on the ultra rich. They'll be able to continue hoarding their wealth to the detriment of this country. So congratulations. All right, we got to take a break. When we come back, we've got some statements from Republican senators who do not like the big beautiful bill. And even Elon Musk is complaining about it. We'll tell you why when we come back.

Welcome back to TYT. I'm your host Anna Casparian. And next, We're going to talk about this. You know, I was like disappointed to see the massive spending bill, frankly. In a recent interview with CBS, Elon Musk, President Donald Trump's homeboy slapped Trump's big beautiful bill. You just heard it. Now, CBS has only released a small portion of the interview, which will be released in full this coming weekend. But for now, we have a short clip. And in that short clip, well, I'm just going to say it packs a little bit of a punch.

Let's take a look. Which increases the budget deficit, not just decrease it. And I reminds the work that the Doge team is doing. I actually thought that when this big, beautiful bill came along. I mean, like, everything he's done on Doge gets wiped out in the first year. I think a bill can be big or it can be beautiful. But I don't know if it could be both. My personal opinion.

What Elon Musk is saying is true, the big beautiful bill, as it stands, and it was just passed by the House, absolutely increases our federal debt, our unruly current $36 trillion debt that last year cost a trillion dollars to service. That's a big problem. The only issue is with someone like Elon Musk, as we know from his behavior during the first months of the you know, Trump administration, his second term, he's laser focused on cutting things like Social Security. He calls it a Ponzi scheme. So while I agree with Elon Musk in that the big beautiful bill increases our federal debt, I disagree with what his priorities are. His priorities were not to raise taxes on the ultra rich. Of course not. He himself is the richest man in the

world. His solution was to just gut government programs. Now, there were, were some cuts that I didn't have a problem with. I know a lot of people got up in arms about some of the USAID programs. And honestly, some of those programs are good and I didn't want to see them cut. But there was a lot of waste in that program. So that was what he started with. I kept an open mind, but it all went downhill from there. But nonetheless, House Speaker Mike Johnson is now attempting to spin Elon Musk's comments as if we're all idiots. He wrote on the House made sure to build on Doge's success within the one big beautiful bill. Stephen Miller has made an important point. That's when I stopped reading the comment,

honestly. Stephen Miller has made an important point about the two efforts. Doge found savings in discretionary spending, such as funding agencies. I know. We all know about that. While our one big beautiful bill secured over $1.6 trillion in savings in mandatory spending such as Medicaid. So there you have House Speaker Mike Johnson admitting no, no, we totally did cut funding

to that really unimportant program called Medicaid. You know, the government-run, state-run health care program for people living in poverty who might, you know, want to see a doctor. Congratulations, Mike Johnson.

You're a piece of crap. But anyway, He conveniently left out this important information in his ex post. The committee for a responsible federal budget estimates the bill would add $3 trillion to the debt, including interest over the next decade. By the way, that's one of the more conservative estimates. The cuts done by Doge barely even scratched the surface of that number, by the way. Doge says it has saved the government $175 billion from a combination of asset sales. contracts, lease, and grant cancellations, workforce reductions, and other moves made since Trump's

January 20th inauguration. Now, President Donald Trump was asked about Elon Musk's comments today. Let's see how he responded. Yeah. Mr. President, Elon Musk in a television interview criticized the one big, beautiful bill saying he was disappointed. It didn't cut enough a century that undercut the Doge efforts. What's your reaction to that? Well, the reactions, a lot of things. Number one, we have to get a lot of votes. We can't be cutting. You know, we need to get a lot of support. And we have a lot of support. We had to get it through the House. The House was, we have no Democrats. You know, if it's up to the Democrats, they'll take the 65 percent increase. You know, if that doesn't get approved, this country is going to have a 65

percent increase in taxes. We will be negotiating that bill. And I'm not happy about certain aspects of it, but I'm thrilled by other aspects of it. That's the way they go. It's very big. It's the big beautiful bill, but the beautiful is because of all the things we have. So in other words, no direct response to Elon Musk accusing Donald Trump and the Republican Party of increasing the federal debt to the tune of $3 trillion. Okay. I mean, it's a difficult thing to answer to, so I understand. But Elon Musk kind of punched you in the mouth. Do you have anything to say about that? Now, what's going to happen moving forward? Because the big beautiful bill may have passed in the House, but it still needs to pass in the Senate. So there are three Republicans

who have stated outright that they oppose the bill in its current form. For anyone who's getting excited about that, don't, because Republicans tend to fall in line with enough bullying from Donald Trump, with the exception of Thomas Massey in the House. Massey is a the only principled Republican who is not willing to cave to pressure from anyone, including the president of the United States. And that's why he's beloved by his constituents. But I do want to kind of show you the senators who are really up in arms about this spending bill. And in order of appearance, you have senators Ron Johnson, Rand Paul, and Rick Scott, who defrauded our Medicare system. But nonetheless, let's watch.

care less than these are said. I'm concerned about my children, my grandchildren, and the fact that we are stealing from them. We are stealing from our children and grandchildren. Thirty-seven trillion dollars in debt, and we're going to add to it as Republicans, that is unacceptable. And that's why there's no way I'm going to vote for this bill in his current form. I think the cuts currently in the bill are wimpy and anemic, but I still would support the bill, even with wimpy and anemic cuts if they weren't going to explode the debt. The problem is the math doesn't add up. They're going to explode the debt by the House says $4 trillion. The Senate's actually been talking about exploding the debt $5 trillion. But I can't vote to raise the debt stealing $5 trillion.

There's got to be someone left in Washington who thinks debt is wrong and deficits are wrong and wants to go in the other direction. Would you say without any changes at its current composition, would you vote no? Oh, absolutely, I'd vote no. This bill doesn't have it. If they brought to the floor right now, there's not a change. There's not a chance that they'll get the 51 votes it needs. So there's, there's, look, we all know we have to balance the budget. Look, we know that it's getting harder to sell our treasuries.

We're not going to balance the budget. And look, I don't blame Rick Scott for being concerned here. I mean, how is he going to defraud the social safety net program when there are such deep cuts? He might get caught and he might face consequences the next time he does it. Anyway, Susan Collins, Lisa Murkowski, and Josh Hawley have all expressed some concern that the bill would change the Medicaid system. Holly also wants changes to the child tax credit. So the big beautiful bill would increase the child tax credit to $2,500 per child instead of $2,000 per child. But Holly wants it even higher.

He's pushing for a $5,000 per child tax credit. And I mean, look, if you want to encourage people in this country to have children, the best way to do it is to create a better economic situation in which having kids isn't out of the question. So it really depends on what your priorities are. So I agree with Holly. I think that even as someone who doesn't have kids who has no intention of having children, I want to support Americans. I want to support families. So my priorities would be similar to Hollies in that I would want to give parents a break in this bill. But in order to do that, well, you need to raise taxes on a certain group of

people who have been able to essentially get away with paying close to nothing, you know, compared to what working class Americans pay percentage-wise of their income toward taxes. Now, Senator Katie Britt is also pushing for a higher child tax credit. And finally, a number of senators don't like the big, beautiful bill because it would nuke tax credits for wind, solar, and geothermal energy projects, which is surprising because usually Republicans aren't the ones who are like vociferously supporting those types of programs. But Senate Majority Leader John Thune has argued that the credits should be phased out more gradually, stating if we don't do that, then we're no better than Joe Biden when he canceled

the Excel pipeline. We've got to figure out a way to strike that balance. I suspect that Senator Thune has some of these renewable energy projects going down over in his state. Just my guess. But nonetheless, you have a group of Republicans who are making a big stink about the big beautiful bill, alleging they're not going to vote in favor of it. As soon as Trump shows up to the Senate, gives a few of them a nice spanking, I'm sure they're going to go ahead and cave and do whatever the president wants. But that's what they're saying now. Do you give them credit for it? What do you think? Leave a comment in the comment section. I'm really curious to hear what you all have to say. For now, we've got to take a quick break. When we come back, two of my favorite

stories of the day. Wait, wait, wait, we got to wait for it to drop, guys. We got to wait for it to drop. It's coming. It's coming. Okay, I'm done now. I'm done now. All right. We've got more news to get to. So I want to get to a localized story, but it actually is something, it's a trend that's been catching on all across the country. And I think it's pretty disastrous. So let's talk about this new curriculum that's being pushed on all these public school districts across the

country that are, that I think is going to have terrible consequences. And I'll tell you why it's happening in just a minute. So San Francisco's superintendent of schools has decided to quietly implement a new system known as grading for equity, which severely lowers grading standards and will impact approximately 100,000 high school students in the city of San Francisco. Now, Superintendent Maria Sue didn't even bother seeking any approval from the San Francisco Board of Education before moving forward on this, in my opinion, terrible agenda. Now, the voice of San Francisco, which reported on this story, argues that grading for equity de-emphasizes the importance.

of timely performance, meaning turning in your assignments on time, completion of assignments, meaning finishing your assignments, and consistent attendance. So those three things are de-emphasized in regard to the final grade students will get. Because, hey, we're grading for equity. Let's pause for a second and just acknowledge the fact that what this curriculum messages to the world to the world is we don't think certain students can rise to the occasion. And so instead of finding ways to solve any issues that are standing in the way of them

excel, rather than doing something about those obstacles, we are going to lower the standards and then pat ourselves on the back with this ridiculous label of equity. This isn't equity. This is giving up on students. Okay? So let me give you more details about this because this specific curriculum includes, well, grading for equity eliminates homework or weekly tests from being counted in a student's final semester grade. Grades won't be impacted due to late assignments, showing up late to class, or not showing up at all. Only the score on a final exam counts, which by the way, students can take multiple times. So if you didn't like your original score, you can take it again until you get a score you like.

But there's also a catch to the way these tests are scored because a student right now in a regular traditional grading system would need a 90 in order to get an A or at least 61 to get a D. Well, under the San Landreau Unified School District's grading for equity system touted by the San Francisco Unified School District and its consultant, a student with a score as low as 80 can attain an A and as low as 21, 21 percent can pass with a D. I think that's crazy. So the school district is already negotiating with a consultant who is set to train the teachers about grading for equity by August. And the dude is a total idiot. If you don't believe me, I'll give you some of his quotes. In fact, the consultant they're referring to is the guy behind this whole grading for equity program. His name is Joe Feldman, the consultant. He wrote in 2019 that in Placer County, another jurisdiction with the grading system,

students who did not qualify for free or reduced price lunch had a sharper decrease in A's, reflecting how traditional grading practices disproportionately benefit students with resources because of the inequitable inclusion of extra credit and other resource dependent grading criteria? What? That statement made no sense. Okay, so if your argument is students who don't qualify for free or reduced price lunch tend to come from affluent families who have more resources. They could pay for tutoring. They could pay for extra things that help their kids excel. All right, we're having an interesting conversation. But then he like weirdly pivoted to extra credit opportunities.

Yeah, teachers offer extra credit opportunities to everybody in the class. So I don't know how he's connecting those two things. But if, again, if a teacher offers extra credit, it's offered to everyone in that class. And I don't understand like the point that he's trying to make here. This whole grading for equity scheme is a big racket, by the way, for Feldman himself and consultants like him. He's the CEO of something called crescendo education group, which works with schools and systems on grading practices, and he's selling a product. I believe that product is snake oil. So I looked at his website, very curious to see what kind of services they offer. So you're taking a look at a screenshot from their website as we speak. It says, build teacher capacity for improved grading. So they offer workshops. In the middle there, they talk about one.

one-on-one coaching that they offer. Their consultants can coach the teachers of this school district so they know how to lower standards for the entirety of their classroom and somehow rebrand that as equity. And then they offer online classes as well. So these are all services you can pay for. It's a for-profit private company. Feldman, a former teacher and principal with degrees from Stanford,

NYU and Harvard, you know, institutions that would never admit, students who, like, were able to pass high school but performed so poorly on their SATs because they, you know, maybe didn't learn anything thanks to this grading for equity program. Yeah. So he charges as much as $10,000 per day for his consulting work. $10,000 a day. Okay. Education consultants say their fee averages between $5,000 and $10,000. a day. Feldman says he might charge a couple hundred thousand dollars to help a district roll out his program over three years. Quote, we are not making much money, he said. If people think I'm buying a boat, that is not happening. I'm not trying to gouge districts. You're getting paid $10,000 a day. How many? $10,000 a day? Oh, it's not something I can

Florida yacht. Okay. Look, as you guys can tell, this stuff really infuriates me. And the reason why it infuriates me is because I'm sick of people grifting off very real issues that we have in this country when it comes to inequality. They have no interest in solving inequality. In fact, they make inequality worse, especially in this instance where kids are, if a school district goes along with this, kids are not going to be equipped with what is necessary to succeed in life. Because let me tell you something. Every single day, I'm expected to be on camera, camera ready, researched, ready to go, 3 p.m. Pacific, 6 p.m. Eastern, every single day. I would venture to say that if I just show up at like 3.30, 4 o'clock, show up whenever I want,

maybe my audience would not appreciate that. Because in real life, you don't get graded on a curve. Okay, in real life, there are expectations and you're supposed to meet those expectations. And this guy, through his grift, in my opinion, is totally screwing these students over. So Feldman also forces teachers that he trains to buy his book for the trainings. Let's take a look at that. The syllabus for professional development program, grading for equity, says it was designed to support educators in understanding the why and how of implementing equitable grading practices. It required teachers to read the book Grading for Equity by Joe Feldman and discuss

it during monthly faculty meetings. The course syllabus contains several links to resources, including reading assignments, TED talks, and podcasts about the idea of eliminating grading or changing the current grading system. And those resources is a slide. show on navigating resistance and how to respond to people who are critical of equity initiatives in different scenarios. The slide reads, a common refrain from white people engaging in this type of resistance is, but I grew up poor. The slide recommends using other people in the room to quote, dilute the fairness seeker's voice. Oh, that's nice. How about maybe addressing the substantive argument being made, but they can't, they can't address it. So instead,

they literally direct other people in the room to start screaming and shouting to dilute the person who's raising a concern. I mean, if you had a substantive rebuttal or response, you would engage in that response. But it appears there isn't a substantive rebuttal. In fact, if this is such a great curriculum and such a great idea, why was the school board not informed of what the superintendent intended to do by implementing this grading for equity curriculum or grading system, I should say. Why does she have to do it on the DL? Interesting, right? It is, by the way, buried in a three word phrase on the last page of a PowerPoint presentation embedded in the school board meetings 25 page agenda. The school district's office of equity homepage does not mention it and a page containing

the San Francisco Unified School District definition of equity has not been updated in almost three years. Why do this on the DL if this is such a great idea? Why hide this from the school board, from the parents? Interesting. There has been no outreach to parents, by the way, who clearly would not be in favor of their children getting passing grades they didn't deserve, that they didn't earn, because that would mean that after graduating their kids wouldn't be ready for life. teachers will have a choice to utilize grading for equity this fall. So it's somewhat voluntary. But once a school district implements this, it will impact all of the students across the board, especially if they're looking to transfer to a classroom with the traditional grading system.

The so-called equity program will also impact the class ranking, scholarship opportunities, daily study habits and assignments. I mean, it's just such a bad idea. But it's okay because Joe Feldman is making $10,000 a day pitching this garbage to school districts across the country. Listen, when you tell kids, I don't think that you can rise to the occasion. I don't think you're capable of earning an A. It becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy.

I think we can all remember when we were kids once. I've told this story before, I'm going to say it again. I was a very, very sensitive and easily discouraged fifth grader. I entered fifth grade just, oh, it was a pit, I was pity party Anna, okay? Just didn't think I was capable of anything, felt sorry for myself. But I had a fifth grade teacher. Her name was Miss Robson, she was from England, and she was a hard ass. And she had no interest in anyone's pity party.

She had a massive sign in the front of the classroom that said, I can and I will. She didn't want to hear any whining. She told every single student in that classroom that she believed that we were all capable of excellence. And when you have educators tell you that they believe in you, that they think you're amazing and you're going to do great things, that motivates students. When students know that they can literally not show up to class and get a passing grade anyway, they're not going to show up to class. They're kids, especially high school kids. Jeez, this is incredible. So parents would absolutely push back on this plan and for good reason. So data from two middle schools in San Lendro where this dumb grading system was implemented.

in 2016 show significant continued disparities among student populations when it comes to performance on statewide assessment tests, obviously. And in both English and mathematics, the gaps ranged from twice to triple to even four times as many students meeting or exceeding the statewide standard in some subgroups compared to others.

The children needing the most help and improvement are not getting it. The reality is that school district or this specific school district, the San Francisco Unified School District, they are currently facing a $100 million budget cut. You see, the state of California basically took tens of billions of hour dollars of Californians hard-earned tax money, and they wiped their ass with it. $24 billion allocated for homeless nonprofits, they took that money, patted their pockets with. it. Homelessness has exploded in California ever since. There's been no accountability.

There's been no reckoning with that theft of our taxpayer money. And now you have a major school district in the state of California paying large sums of money that they can't even afford considering that $100 million budget cut. And they're giving it to a snake oil salesman who's going to further deteriorate the education system in San Francisco. Congratulations. It's unbelievable to me that people fall for this trash, but they do. And kids suffer for it. When I was teaching at Cal State Northridge, teaching journalism classes there, I was actually kind of shocked at how many students didn't know how to write, didn't know proper grammar.

And I knew how they got all the way to college and didn't know how to write. I knew exactly what happened. It's called great inflation. It definitely exists. I could have engaged in that too. I could have just passed them and be done with it. But if you care about the future of these kids and in my case, college students, if you want them to be excellent, if you have chosen to be an educator of any form,

well, that's a huge responsibility. And so what I chose to do was work extra, have a breakout group of students who needed extra help. I worked extra unpaid hours to catch them up. That's the right way to do it. I'm not saying the teachers need to work extra hours and not get paid, but I would have preferred if that money that's going to go to Joe freaking Feldman was instead going toward teachers who were willing to take on these breakout classes to help students catch up, to help students rise to the occasion.

We should expect excellence from students in America. Instead, we're lowering standards, by the way, to the detriment of our public education system. So when you hear from parents who don't want to put their kids in public schools, can you understand why that's happening? You want your kids to succeed. And when you hear that an entire school district is literally going to pass students who don't even show up to class, you're not going to want your kids to go to that school. So if you're on the left, if you value the existence of public education as I do, you're going to want to protect it and you're not going to allow it to be deteriorated by a group of

grifters who charge $10,000 a day to consult teachers on how to pass students who don't deserve to pass. It's infuriating. But that's the reality of this. situation. I wanted you guys to be aware of it. Don't fall for the snake oil salesman. Just don't do it. All right. I'm going to do one more story and then we're going to bring Jank in. Sorry, Jank. Last January, tens of thousands of Los Angeles area residents lost their homes in two major fires. The Eaton Fire and the Pacific Palisades Fire. Now, in response, the fire aid benefit concerts raised $100 million in order to help out Angelinos who lost their homes.

I mean, we have a housing crisis. It's really bad in Los Angeles. There isn't enough housing to put everyone in a place to live. And so this money was desperately needed a hundred million dollars. Wow. But several months later, many fire victims are now wondering, yeah, so what happened to that money? Because no one helped us out at all. Now, some organizations, some nonprofits, did receive grants from the fire aid fund. So El Nito is one of them. Homegrown is another. Vision and Comprisimo is another one. LA's home for native people.

Those are specific nonprofits that receive some grants. But many residents impacted by the fires, and especially those who were living in rent controlled apartment units, want to know why they didn't get any help, why the fire aid fund didn't in any way go toward them and helping their situation out. And look, they've been reaching out to the administrators, the people behind this fundraising, effort to get some answers. And guess what? They are evading the questions and they won't give any clear answers on how they decide to allocate funds or where any of the funds were allocated to. And the problem is that nonprofits don't have the same standards or reporting requirements

that government agencies do. So there's been a lot of grifting happening, especially in a state like California, where NGOs have basically run amok. And I want to dig a little deeper into this particular fundraising effort to figure out what's going on here. Now remember that fire aid raised $100 million, yet this is what the Annenberg Foundation brags about on its site. The Annenberg Foundation, by the way, is basically the group that takes the money and makes the allocation decisions.

They're the ones who write the grants. So keep that in mind. You're going to want to know that as we get deeper into this story. So the Annenberg Foundation fire relief grants to nonprofits in Los Angeles. They write about it in their website. And they raised $100 million. Get a load of this. Since the fires began on January 7th, the Annenberg Foundation led by Chair Wallace Annenberg

and its directors with the Foundation's community grant making team has committed and begun to pay, wow, 3.175 million to more than 50 nonprofit community partners. Okay, what happened to the rest of the money? And more importantly, what are those other nonprofits that got the grants up to? What did they do to actually help the fire victims? We don't know. Reporter James Lee, who's also a contributor for breaking points, decided to dig in himself. And here's what he found. All direct donations will be distributed under the advisement of the Annenberg Foundation. According to the IRS 990 form, the Annenberg Foundation is a 501c 3 based in Konshaken, Pennsylvania, in this lovely office building.

One massive red flag right away is that only 33% of their annual expenses goes towards actual charity programs. The rest goes to administrative costs like executive compensation, and if you look at the numbers, they treat you pretty good over there. They're starting with top dog Cynthia Canard, who's making three quarters of a million dollars plus another six figures in bonuses, which is basically almost seven figures just for one person there. Anyway, just to give you a point of comparison with another nonprofit, Doctors Without Borders, they spend almost 90% of their money on actual programs versus less than 1% on administrative costs. There's this thing that people refer to called elite overproduction. Elite overproduction is when people who went to college, they got their bachelors, they got their master's, maybe they got their PhD. They then graduate, they look at the job market, and they're like, oh, wow, my education was worthless. And I don't know what to do with this fancy degree.

A lot of them end up working in NGOs or they launch. their own NGO. And a lot of those NGOs, big racket, huge. I believe it is my opinion that the Annenberg Foundation is a good example of what I'm talking about. So let's dig in a little deeper because he's right. The key executives and employees, the key employees do get paid handsomely at this foundation. Let's take a look. So this was what he was showing in the video. Yes, Cynthia Canard. She's the top dog, apparently. Her compensation is $735,612 a year.

And then on top of that, she gets a $135,000 more than $135,000 in bonus. Okay. Second, you have Allison Holmes, Senior Director of Operations and Strategy, $359,053 for compensation. And then nearly $90,000 for bonus. Allison Holmes. That was Allison Holmes. Then you have Paul Mangonielo. He's the treasurer, $333,455 for a salary. You get the point. You can see how the bulk of their money tends to go toward administrators, the cost of operating. The foundation also spent nearly $1.2 million on travel conferences and meetings in 2023. That was the last

year that we have tax filings for them. They also gave the Philadelphia Orchestra Association $2.7 million in 2023, which was interesting because if you look at their tax filing, you'll notice that a lot of these grants for things like social justice programs, they mostly amounted like $25,000. But then certain things like what you're seeing on your screen right now really, really stood out to me. So basically, the Annenberg Foundation spending in 2023, like a massive portion of it went to something called the Wallace Annenberg Legacy Foundation. Now, Wallace Annenberg is the chairman of the board for the Annenberg Foundation, also the president and CEO of the Annenberg

Foundation. She also happens to have all these other non-profits. And so the Annenberg Foundation raises money and they write grants. It's just that the bulk of their grants, they write to themselves, sort of, because Wallace has all these other nonprofits that this nonprofit funnels the money to. So let's take a look at that graphic again, because you'll see all of the different grants. This is all in one year, by the way. This is all in 2023. Okay.

So there were four grants to the tune of $1,975,000. Then there was another grant to the tune of $150 million. That was funneled to the Wallace Annenberg Legacy Foundation. Interesting. Okay. And then another $1,137,950 went to the Wallace Annenberg Legacy Foundation. So those are all the grants that went to Wallace owned and operated nonprofits. Not listed in that graphic, by the way, is the additional $4.1 million that was given to the Wallace Annenberg Legacy Foundation and the $1 million that was given to the Wallace Annenberg Center for the Performing Arts.

In sum, the Annenberg Foundation funneled nearly $159 million to other nonprofits belonging to Wallace Annenberg. So I explored the Wallace Annenberg Legacy Foundation's tax filings and get a load of this, okay? Because I was curious. Oh, wow, look at that. In 2023, the year that this, you know, non-profit got a huge influx of money, they had $172 million in revenue. So look, they basically had no revenue until 2023 when the Annenberg Foundation funneled money to the Wallace Annenberg Legacy Foundation. This is so crazy. By the way, they only had $15 million in charity-related expenses that year.

And I'm specifically talking about the total revenue for the Wallace Annenberg Legacy Foundation. So they get this massive influx of money, okay, $159 million, and they only spend $15 million in expenses that year. Now, getting back to the fire aid and the money that was raised specifically for victims of those devastating fires, let's see where the Annenberg Foundation is providing some of these grants, because they are providing some other grants, to be fair. And our buddy looked into it. Let's take a look. Local journalists have also been asking, where's the money? They found, quote, the fire aid website names only three Palisades organizations that receive grants. Among almost 120 organizations listed as receiving grants, none of whom are specific to Pacific Palisades.

And those three are Cahellate Israel, Haban of Pacific Palisades, and Palisades Charter High School. Others have tried to directly reach out to the Annanburg Foundation. They were kind of given the runaround, various extension numbers. somebody saying they would call them back, no one called back. Also referring them to some mysterious man named Philip, no last name, he was never found. This is just crazy. So essentially what they're doing is taking the $100 million, then paying themselves roughly 70% of it, and then the rest of the money, they're dishing out to various other nonprofits with their own administrative expenses,

and that's how $100 million just ends up disappearing. This is how $24 billion in taxpayer money in the state of California was allegedly allocated to help the homeless. But homelessness has exploded since we spent that money. And that money is unaccounted for because it was funneled to all of these grifting nonprofits that have no interest in solving a damn thing. There are a bunch of people who went to college, got their fancy degrees, can't find a job. job. So they end up working for NGOs and nonprofits. And they still want to be rich. I mean, they did the hard work. They got the education. It's just that they want to be rich based off of money that's been fundraised for legitimate purposes. And they want to get rich off of,

in a lot of cases, taxpayer money as well. Because these nonprofits get grants from both the federal government and also state and local government. And if we're going to do that, I think there needs to be a lot more oversight and reporting. And when it turns out that the money's unaccounted for, people should be prosecuted for that because they're stealing from us. I mean, I get that some people get real touchy about this because I'm talking about the state of California. I'm talking about a state that's completely controlled by Democrats, but guess what?

Democrats be thieving to. And it's about time we wake up to that reality. We got to take a break. We'll be right back.