WRFH/Radio Free Hillsdale 101.7 FM - Under the Radar: 02.01.25

Episode Date: February 10, 2025

This week on “Under the Radar,” hear about Trump’s new mandate to restore the death penalty, the new National Garden of American Heroes, a major win for school choice, and more. I’m your host, Luke Miller, and on this show we’ll cover the news you didn’t catch this week from the mainstream media. While they’re covering the President’s latest tweets, here you can hear about the new legislation, executive orders, and Supreme Court decisions that affect you. Welcome to “Under the Radar.”

Hear about Trump's new mandate to restore the death penalty, the new National Garden of American Heroes, a major win for school choice, and more. On this show, we'll cover the news you didn't catch this week from the mainstream media. While they're covering the president's latest tweets, here you can hear about the new legislation, executive orders, and Supreme Court decisions that affect you. I'm your host, Luke Miller, and this is under the radar. The first piece of news I have for you this week is a new executive order signed by the president on January 20th, which is meant to restore the use of the death penalty. There are three things that this executive order does. First of all, it requires the Attorney General to seek the death penalty for any cases that could be considered for capital punishment, which essentially means that for cases like first degree murder, things like that where they could pursue the death penalty. Sometimes they do, sometimes they don't.

The Attorney General is now required to pursue the death penalty in all of those cases. The second thing that it does is that it makes the Attorney General pursue the death penalty for any crimes, including murder of a police officer or capital crimes committed by an illegal alien. Now, the third thing that this executive order does is that it asks the Attorney General's office to evaluate the 37 commutations that former President Biden just gave to death row inmates, to evaluate the living conditions that were given to those prisoners, and ensure that they, quote, match the monstrosity of their crimes. Another part of that is that the Attorney General's office is supposed to reevaluate their cases.

and look into seeing if they can retry them to get the death penalty. Now, what are the ramifications of such an executive order? Well, first of all, it's in the very strong message. The Trump administration plans to deter crime before it even happens, and pursuing the death penalty in all capital punishment cases is a strong way of doing so. President Trump was also very critical of the Biden administration's way of handling criminal cases, the most prominent of which that comes to mind was the murder of Lake and Riley,

the Augusta University student who was, murdered by an illegal immigrant from Venezuela. Now, while the murderer was charged, convicted, and sentenced to life in prison without parole, Trump was critical of the Biden administration for not pursuing harsher punishments and for not doing enough to deter that kind of crime from happening in the first place. This executive order seems to address that issue. And so this really shows that he's trying to deliver on his campaign promises. Will it work? Will it help deter crime? Well, the death penalty has been shown to deter crime in the past. But there could be some problems with this executive order, namely that if the Attorney General is required to try to seek

the death penalty with every capital case, it's going to be harder to get convictions. So in most of these cases that deal with capital punishment, like a first-degree murder case, the Attorney General can either seek the death penalty or they can seek life in prison without parole or jail time, and they usually choose which one depending on the strength of the case, because judges tend not to want to sentence people to death when the case isn't quite as strong, but they still feel that the person is guilty. So, if the Attorney General is required to only seek the death penalty for certain cases, when they don't have as strong of a case to make against a particular criminal, you're not going to get as many convictions from judges, particularly judges who don't like to use the death penalty

in the first place. Also, the executive order is likely to run into some legal trouble with the Attorney General trying to retry the cases of the 37 death row inmates whose sentences were commuted by former President Biden. It essentially nullifies the power of the commutation if the next president who comes into office can simply retry the people for the same crimes, which is illegal. You can't try somebody for the same crime over again. I believe what this executive order is trying to do is to get the Attorney General's office to look into seeing if there's any other way around that where they can sue these particular criminals for other crimes they might have committed, other murders they might have committed to get the death penalty, I don't really see how that's going to work.

It's going to be really hard to not go into double jeopardy here. So overall, this executive order sends a very strong message that the Trump administration wants to pursue law and order. They want to deter crime and they're going to prosecute crime to the fullest extent of the law, but they might run into some trouble along the way. That's the first piece of news I have for you this week on Under the Radar. Stay tuned to hear more. The next piece of news I have for you this week is another.

executive order signed by President Trump on January 29th, which establishes a National Garden of American Heroes. This executive order reinstates a couple of executive orders that President Trump signed in his first term in 2020 to create a garden of monuments that are meant to honor historically significant Americans. President Trump signed the executive orders originally in 2020 as a response to the BLM riots when they were tearing down statues of Thomas Jefferson, George Washington, and the like. President Trump wanted to make efforts to show patriotism and to reestablish some new monuments. This time, however, the National Garden of American Heroes is a part of America's 250th birthday celebration. So we will see 250 statues of historically significant Americans in a national

garden of American heroes pretty soon. Here's what President Trump had to say about it. We must protect and preserve our history, our heritage, and our lives. great heroes. We will proclaim the ideals of the Declaration of Independence and we will never surrender the spirit and the courage and the cause of July 4th 1776. That is part of a broader plan laid out by the executive order to create a White House task force to celebrate America's 250th birthday. The task force is to be called Task Force 250. The president is going to be the chair of of it, the vice president will be on it and various other heads of state within the presidential

cabinet. So the stated goal of this task force is to, quote, execute an extraordinary celebration of the 250th anniversary of American independence and coordinate agencies communications with the United States semi-quincentennial commission. So the executive order doesn't give exact directions to the task force as to what that celebration should look like. The only thing we really do know that we're going to see as part of the 250th birthday celebration is this National Garden of American Heroes. And this idea might sound familiar to you because we were promised it in 2020, but it didn't really happen. In 2020, Congress never was able to appropriate the funding to create this Garden of American Heroes. And since it was done late in 2020, when President Biden came into office,

he revoked the executive order that Trump signed to create this. However, since Donald Trump now has both the House and the Senate. With a Republican majority, he will probably get the funding to make this happen. Also, interestingly enough, another part of this executive order charges the Attorney's General's office with prosecuting to the fullest extent of the law, people who vandalize monuments or memorials. This was another part of the executive order signed in 2020, in response to BLM riots, which had defaced a lot of the great monuments that we have across the United States. In that same vein, this executive order mentions the pro-Hamas protests of late. We've all seen the pictures of the spray painting going on, the vandalism that's happened, putting Palestinian flags over American

flags, burning American flags at American monuments. We've all seen this stuff happen and Americans are really frustrated by it. So overall, why sign an executive order like this? Well, it does something for President Trump and it does something for his supporters as well. First of all, it's certainly going to add to his legacy. If President Trump is successful in creating something like this, that's something that he's going to be remembered for. That would be a potential huge American landmark. That's a place that people are going to want to go visit for a long time. I know I'd want to go visit it, and that's certainly going to be something that he's remembered for. Secondly, this is also a nod back to his voters who are frustrated with how the left is painting American history right now.

This is also a gift back to a lot of Trump's supporters who are very patriotic, who are proud of America's history, and who have been frustrated in recent years by seeing the vandalism and the whitewashing of American history and the attempts to make people feel guilty about America's past. Trump's coalition is not for that. They've been really frustrated by that, and so Trump acknowledging them and giving them something to be proud of about their past is a gift back to those supporters, and I think that they're really going to appreciate it. I know I'm looking forward to going to this garden. I think it's going to be a great American landmark, and I'm excited to see what happens with it. Another thing I need to acknowledge about this executive order,

is how inclusive the list of historically significant Americans is. You see people like Martin Luther King Jr., Francis Scott Key, Ronald Reagan, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, Babe Ruth, and a personal favorite of mine, Alvin York. The list covers Democrats and Republicans, politicians, and culturally significant figures. It really does a good job of encompassing all different aspects of American history. It's something that both Democrats and Republicans can be proud of, And I think that's a great part of this executive order is how inclusive the list of names is. Now, the reason that I think this is significant is it's a show by the president that patriotism doesn't have to be one-sided.

Patriotism is something that both the left and the right can get involved in. President Trump very easily could have just picked names in the past that he liked. He could have picked people that Republicans liked and picked nobody who the Democrats liked. He could have picked only political figures and no culturally significant figures. But I think he did a good job of encompassing people that we all can be proud of as Americans. And I think that that's a good step towards showing that both sides can be patriotic. That's something that we can share and be unified in. And lastly, we should all be looking forward to see what this 250th birthday celebration

that the Trump administration plans to put on looks like. America's 250th birthday is coming up in 2026. And this executive order creates a task force, which is going to create some kind of celebration for it. This National Garden of American Heroes is going to be revealed as a task force. part of it, but is not going to be all of it. So keep a lookout in the coming months and years to see what's going to happen in 2026. We should all be looking forward to it. The third piece of news I have for you this week is that President Trump has ordered the Acting Secretary of Education to expand K-12 school choice funding. In an executive order signed on January 29th, President Trump

did two things. He directed the Acting Secretary of Education, Denise Carter, to, quote, issue guidance regarding how states can use federal formula funds to support K-12 educational choice initiatives within 60 days. It also directs a report to be made on educational discretionary grants and how the Department of Education can address low-income families and military families with those grants. Now, every year, the Department of Education has certain spending that they are locked in on, that they can't change, and then they're given discretionary spending funds. And a big part of what this executive order does is it directs those discretionary funds towards helping low-income families and military families be able to send their kids to particular charter schools or private schools.

Now, practically speaking, this will work in two ways. First, the Federal Department of Education will give funding to the states and to the schools to give financial aid to these particular kinds of families that could use it. And that's going to allow those families to pick whether they want to send their kids to this, charter school or that charter school or this private school instead of the public school that's their zoned for. Now the second way that this could work could get a little tricky. So anytime the federal government tells states guidance about how to do particular stuff, generally there is a funding requirement attached to it. So if the state doesn't really follow the guidelines, then their federal funding is going to get pulled. So the other way that this could work, depending on how the acting

secretary of education does these guidelines, is that it could require the states to issue particular vouchers or use their federal funds from the Department of Education to fund various charter schools and to send kids to private schools to offer more state-funded scholarships to get kids into non-public schools. Now, there's a few reasons why this is important. First of all, it's going to help the schools that train the children the best succeed. If parents have a choice in where they can send their kids, they're going to send their kids to the schools that produce the most college graduates that produce kids with the highest average income out of college. That's the schools that parents are going to want to send their kids to.

If a school is failing, if the school has bad literacy rates, et cetera, parents are not going to want to send their kids there. This is a meritocracy system within schooling. If it were to operate this way, the schools that train the children best are going to succeed and they're going to thrive and they're going to get more children, they're going to get more funding, they're going to become better and better. And the schools that are failing kids are going to fail. And that's a great thing for American education.

The bill cites a lot of America's standings within the world on reading and writing and how we're educating our children and we're just not doing it as well as we used to. The order cites the 2024 National Assessment of Educational Progress and says that 70% of our eighth graders are below proficient in reading and 72% are below proficient in mathematics. 50 years ago, we were first in the world in every educational statistic and now we've dropped to 24th, in spite of the fact that we spend more than the rest of the world does on education by a lot. school system is clearly failing our kids, and the best way to raise overall educational standards is school choice. School choice is a great way to help the good school succeed and to send more kids to those good schools. Another thing that this does is it allows parents to be more involved in their kids' education. So if a parent wants to educate their children in a religious setting, then they can send their kids to a Catholic school. If they want to educate their kids within a

public setting, they can send their kids to a public school, and so on and so forth. Now, this encourages parent involvement because when parents have a say in the kind of worldview and environment that their kid is going to be raised in essentially for 12 years of their life, the more that parents are going to be incentivized to get involved in the education of their children, and the more that parents are involved in the education of their children, the better. Now, the way the executive order accomplishes this is it allows Denise Carter as Acting Secretary of Education to issue guidance to states on how they can use their discretionary funds to send more of their kids to charter schools and to private schools

and allow the parents to actually have a say in that. When parents can only afford to send their kids to public schools, that tends to be the option that they choose because they have to. If they don't have to, that's better. And that's the goal of this executive order. Now, while there's a lot of potential for good in this executive order, there is one glaring red flag, which is that these guidelines are being created by the acting secretary of education,

Denise Carter, not Trump's pick for Secretary of Education, Linda McMahon. Linda McMahon has not been confirmed by the Senate yet. The date has not yet even been scheduled for her confirmation hearings. And the executive order specifies that this has to be done within 60 days. There's pretty much no shot that Linda McMahon is Secretary of Education in 60 days. So Denise Carter, who works within the Department of Education, is the one who's going to do this. Now, she has some experience in this role before. She filled the same exact role for President Biden in 2021 as acting Secretary of Education,

before President Biden's Secretary of Education took office. So while she has experience and is familiar with the system and how it works, she is not Trump's pick for Secretary of Education. I don't really see why this executive order could not have waited until Linda McMahon was confirmed, but that's how the Trump administration decided to do it. So depending on how Denise Carter decides to do this, this could be a big win for school choice advocates this week. We have more news coming up that fell under the radar this week.

Stay tuned to hear more. next piece of news, we move away from the executive branch to the Supreme Court. The Supreme Court has decided to hear an Oklahoma case that ruled that religious charter schools are in fact illegal. The case is called St. Isidore Catholic Virtual School v. Oklahoma, and in the case, the Oklahoma Supreme Court ruled that the Oklahoma Statewide Charter School Board violated the U.S. Constitution by allowing St. Isidore to become a charter school. In the case, the Attorney General of Oklahoma cited the Establishment Clause. of the U.S. Constitution, which prohibits government money from being used to establish religious

institutions. And since charter schools are publicly funded, and St. Isidore is a religious school that made the Oklahoma Supreme Court side with the Attorney General and ruled that it could not be a religious charter school. On the other hand, St. Isidore's school argued that the state was actually punishing the free exercise of religion by prohibiting federal aid from a public school just because of its religious practices. The Oklahoma Supreme Court suggested that the United States Supreme Court deny review of the case after citing against the religious school earlier this month. However, this week, the Supreme Court decided that it was going to pick the case up,

and I think that that is the most significant part about this news, is that the Supreme Court is going to make a decision on this one way or the other. So here's some things to consider for if the Supreme Court overturns the Oklahoma Supreme Court's decision and says that there can be a Catholic charter school. If you are a person who would like to see prayer in public schools, that would be one result of this case. So essentially, what this would have to establish is that charter schools that are religious are not actually religious institutions

and that religious practices within the school don't actually make it a religious institution. If that is the case, then any kind of religious action would actually be allowed in publicly funded schools, including things like prayer before meals and to start the day, etc. However, this opens up a bag of worms to all other sorts of quote-unquote religious practices. Depending on how those two words are interpreted by the United States Supreme Court,

you could see areas like Dearborn Michigan where the demographics are predominantly Muslim, where public schools require you to pray to a lie every day. If any belief system falls under this ruling, then you could see the, LGBTQ ideology that conservatives have complained about being taught in schools for a few years now, being completely fine to teach in public schools. So you've got to be really careful with how you address this if you're the Supreme Court. It'll be really interesting how a predominantly originalist Supreme Court looks at this case. And I think it's the best thing that the United States Supreme Court picked up this case,

so we will have a ruling from them once and for all. Last but not least, America is soon going to have its own Iron Dome, similar to the one that we've helped fund that protects Israel. In an executive order signed by the president on January 27th, the U.S. Department of Defense is to deploy and maintain a next-generation missile defense shield. So it looks like it's going to be pretty similar to the one that Israel has. When Iran launched missiles at Israel in 2024, we saw that the Iron Dome was able to block over 99% of them.

It's very, very effective. we're going to build something similar to help protect the United States. Now, according to the executive order, the reason that this is necessary is because long-range missiles are the predominant threat to the United States. We're not at a place in the world anymore where people are going to try to attack us with Navy ships. People are going to try to shoot long-range missiles at America if they're going to attack America at all. So that's the predominant threat we face. So we need to have as good a missile defense system as we possibly can have.

that's what this executive order aims to do. On the downside, the executive order does not list the cost of the project. However, it does require a funding plan to be made in conjunction with the Department of Defense and the Budget Office. So the Executive Order doesn't just throw a pile of money at the DoD and say, just go and do whatever you want with it. It requires the DOD to work in conjunction with the Budget Office and use the appropriations that have already been given to them in this fiscal year for the project. I think the project is a very important use of the Department of Defense funds. I think it's as good as anything that we can do to protect the United States. If anyone is going to attack the United States, that's the way they're going to do it.

And we've seen things like the Chinese spy balloon that happened in 2022 and the drones that were over New Jersey in the last few months. The American air defense honestly looks weak right now. And so if anyone were to try to attack us, that is the way that they would do it. So I think creating an Iron Dome for the United States, very similar to the one that Israel has, is a great move for the Department of Defense, and I think it is going to be crucial for American safety in the future. Well, that's all I have for you today on Under the Radar. I'm your host, Luke Miller, and I want to thank you for listening and encourage you to tune back in next time for more coverage of the news that fell under the radar.

You're listening to Radio Free Hillsdale 101.7 FM.