What is the Department of Education?

During his campaign, Donald Trump promised several times that he would dismantle the US Department of Education. So today we wanted to explore what such a dismantling would look like, as well as what the DoED does in the first place. Turns out, while the Department does an awful lot of things, there is much for which it is criticized that it does not do. Taking us through its creation, its history, and its powers is Adam Laats, professor of Education at Binghamton University. Link to our episodes on School Lunch here and here. And here are some good resources for anyone who wants to know a little more about Jonestown. My 8th grade report is, sadly, unavailable. https://www.npr.org/2017/04/11/523348069/nearly-40-years-later-jonestown-offers-a-lesson-in-demagoguery https://www.nytimes.com/1979/11/18/archives/jonestown-the-survivors-story-jonestown.html CLICK HERE: Visit our website to see all of our episodes, donate to the podcast, sign up for our newsletter, get free educational materials, and more! To see Civics 101 in book form, check out A User's Guide to Democracy: How America Works by Hannah McCarthy and Nick Capodice, featuring illustrations by Tom Toro. Check out our other weekly NHPR podcast, Outside/In - we think you'll love it! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

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• 1:14Nick Capodice?

  I do have a quick interruption that's not related to education. Is there any chance in your room you have a different chair?

• 1:20Speaker 00

  Oh, this one's squeaky.

• 1:22Nick Capodice?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 1:23Speaker 00

  Well, um.

• 1:24Nick Capodice?

  You don't have to.

• 1:25Speaker 00

  You got time, I'll get a different chair.

• 1:28Nick Capodice?

  Look at that old chair. Shut up.

• 1:32Nick Capodice?

  You're listening to Civics 101. I'm Nick Capodice. I'm Hannah McCarthy. And today we are talking about the United States Department of Education. Who is that in that squeaky chair just now? That was, that was repeat Civics 101 guest Adam Lats.

• 1:46Speaker 00

  Yeah, yeah, I'm Adam Lats. I'm a professor of education and history at SUNY Binghamton.

• 1:51Nick Capodice?

  Adam got another chair, by the way, so we were all set.

• 1:54Speaker 00

  All right, how's this one?

• 1:55Nick Capodice?

  Fantastic. I would like it if you came in with, like, a series of progressively older chairs.

• 2:02Nick Capodice?

  Enough about chairs, Hannah. Let us talk about the Department of Education. And some quick abbreviation clearing up. When we say the DOE, we are usually referring to the Department of Energy. So we can't say it for education. Most folks say Department of Ed or DOED. I'm going to say DOED a few times today, even though I'm not sure if it's right.

• 2:24Speaker 05

  And I know the Department of Education has been in the news as of late, primarily because President-elect Donald Trump has stated that he plans to dismantle it.

• 2:34Nick Capodice?

  And one other thing I'll be doing very early in the administration is closing up the Department of Education in Washington, DC. Yep, he has, and we are going to get to that, as well as his nominee for secretary.

• 2:46Speaker 05

  The woman he has chosen to lead that charge, Linda McMahon, a well-known businesswoman who helped to build the wrestling empire WWE. Can McMahon, if confirmed, bring the changes the president-elect is looking for? But as of right now, January 2025, the DOED is not DOA. So before we talk about why someone would want to dismantle it, what does the Department of Education do? Why was it created in the first place?

• 3:15Nick Capodice?

  Absolutely, Hannah, but I have to say upfront that this story takes a lot of pretty bonkers twists and turns.

• 3:24Speaker 00

  Is it, I don't know how much normal people know, like, there's a, there's a suicide cult involved. Like, do we want to talk about that?

• 3:30Speaker 05

  Suicide cult?

• 3:32Nick Capodice?

  Yeah, and that is just the beginning.

• 3:33Speaker 00

  There's also a anti-brotherhood school movement. Like, we can't teach the children that humans are all brothers. That's part of the story also, and bombing, blowing, blowing up schools is part of it.

• 3:46Speaker 05

  Wow, okay.

• 3:48Nick Capodice?

  But before all that, to your question, what does the DOED do?

• 3:54Speaker 00

  People, even if they know a lot about education and the United States, the Department of Education, I think, is, is sort of mysterious because it doesn't do what I think a, a, a smart layperson would think. It doesn't actually decide much about what's going to go on in K-12 schools, or colleges for that matter.

• 4:15Nick Capodice?

  So Hannah, pretty quickly, this interview became about what the department doesn't do. Now, there is an awful lot that they do do, but it is not what I had thought.

• 4:25Speaker 00

  That's the way the US works, which is different from like almost everywhere else. That's all, you know, district and state level, like mostly states. Like, what's the curriculum gonna be? Are they gonna, are we gonna have history tests like in New York to graduate? That's all state. And even, like, almost all of the money is local. So the, the Federal Department of Education doesn't pay for schools. It doesn't decide what's gonna go on in schools. Because it's so new, you know, only since the Carter administration. It exists as a kind of mishmash of different pre-existing federal programs that got put together under Carter as a, as a new cabinet-level post. And it matters.

• 5:10Speaker 00

  I mean, it matters that it's in the cabinet instead of like as part of the Department of Health, Education, Welfare. Like, it's symbolically super important that Carter, Carter did the same thing with energy. You know, we're gonna emphasize how much this matters to us by making this a cabinet-level post. That matters. But it doesn't do what I think a, a, a, a informed, intelligent observer would think, which is it doesn't decide what's gonna happen in K-12 schools or colleges.

• 5:41Speaker 05

  Now, just to clarify, the Department of Education does not decide what is taught in schools.

• 5:47Nick Capodice?

  Not in the slightest.

• 5:48Speaker 05

  I mean, I'm fairly sure that most people do think that the Department of Ed is in charge of all of that. I mean, if I'm not mistaken, much of the current outrage toward the department is tied to what schools teach and how they teach it, as well as how our schools are doing compared to other nations' schools.

• 6:06Nick Capodice?

  Yeah, and politicians reinforced that thought. At the Conservative Political Action Conference last year, Donald Trump said, quote, "Across the country, we need to implement strict prohibitions on teaching inappropriate racial, sexual, and political material to America's schoolchildren in any form whatsoever." And if federal bureaucrats are going to push this radicalism, we should abolish- The Department of Education.

• 6:34Nick Capodice?

  But that aside, Adam says one of the reasons why people might take issue with the department is due to people's interpretation of how schools are doing generally in the United States.

• 6:46Speaker 00

  Gallup polls, over and over, and this has been, you know, from the 80s till now, they've asked people, "How do you think America's schools are doing?" And large majority, 75%, 80% are like, "Oh, they're doing terrible." Like, "What grade would you give them?" "D." And then this follow-up question, "How are your kids' schools doing?" "Oh, fantastic." "A."

• 7:13Speaker 00

  And in the same proportion, 80% go A or B for their kids' schools, 80% go D or worse for the school in general. America's schools are fantastic, not all of them, but America's schools in huge proportions are very beloved by the people who use them. What's not beloved is this idea of a distant educational bureaucracy. And before the Department of Education, there were other bugbears out there for conservatives. And there are some for progressives, too. So, for example, ask a progressive what the danger is for school, and they have a list

• 7:52Speaker 00

  of distant bureaucratic, well-funded entities, the Heritage Foundation. For conservatives, it's been things like Teachers College at Columbia University, where, you know, left-wing professors were spreading these ideas. John Dewey, as like a, an idea, has always been seen as like, you know, harming local schools. Once there's a Department of Education, it takes on all that fear of a distant, out-of-touch elite harming my local schools. And so I think it becomes super unpopular, even though the things that it does in practice...

• 8:33Speaker 00

  Tend to be extremely popular.

• 8:35Speaker 05

  Has it pretty much always been this way? That the Department of Education is viewed by conservatives as, you know, as Adam put it, a bugbear, a quote unquote distant elite?

• 8:46Nick Capodice?

  Always. And this is where we get to how people viewed it at its creation in 1979. But I can't talk about its creation without mentioning its first incarnation.

• 8:57Speaker 05

  We had a different Department of Education?

• 9:00Nick Capodice?

  We did. We had an earlier one, right after the Civil War.

• 9:04Speaker 00

  Right after the war, Andrew Johnson started a Department of Education, being encouraged by congressional leaders. And he did. But it was extremely unpopular because the Freedmen's Bureau was actively and energetically educating former enslaved people. The Department of Education, even though it wasn't, that wasn't what it was doing, becomes very unpopular.

• 9:30Speaker 05

  So the Freedmen's Bureau was invested in educating formerly enslaved people, but the Department of Education was not?

• 9:38Nick Capodice?

  No, it wasn't. Adam said that the creation was sort of an empty gesture to appease northern politicians who asked for it.

• 9:46Speaker 00

  Henry Barnard, I was just working in archival materials. It's pretty sad. He, he was a Connecticut state superintendent. He was a colleague of Horace Mann in Massachusetts. He thought he was gonna ride in to this federal department and transform the United States education system. What he found, though, was not only did he, was he not able to do much? He did some stuff. He collected a lot of statistics, which is great. But when he asked for more than four employees, they took employees away and they cut his salary by 25%. So he just, Rodney Dangerfield his way out of that. I mean, he got no respect. Well, that's the story of my life. No respect.

• 10:32Speaker 00

  And they closed the office after, you know, 18 months, I think, about two years. They just closed it down.

• 10:38Nick Capodice?

  So, fast forward 111 years, and we get to our modern incarnation of the Department of Education under Jimmy Carter.

• 10:45Speaker 00

  Governor Carter made a deal with the National Education Association. If they swung to him in the election and gave him their support in 1976, he would push hard to elevate education to a cabinet-level post. And this was the, that kind of politics. Nothing illegal about it. It's just, you know, that's politics. An interest group promises you their support, they deliver. So then Carter was pressed to deliver a Department of Education. Again, not that it would have the power to actually do the kinds of things I think street-level people think it would, but it's a huge symbolic statement to say, "Education is up there with defense. This is a priority of our federal government."

• 11:31Speaker 00

  And it wouldn't happen if not for a suicide cult. Bum, bum, bum.

• 11:36Speaker 05

  I was waiting for this part.

• 11:38Nick Capodice?

  Okay, Jimmy Carter gets elected. He owes the National Education Association for backing him during the election, and he starts to advocate for creating the department.

• 11:48Speaker 05

  But he cannot do it all by himself because it's Congress and not the president who creates departments.

• 11:53Nick Capodice?

  Exactly. So, the Senate is pretty much for it. The House is a little more against it. Specifically, one man in the House of Representatives who is determined to block any legislation that creates a Department of Education. This is California Democratic Congressman Leo Ryan. Do you know that name?

• 12:13Speaker 05

  I don't think I do.

• 12:15Speaker 00

  He's not as famous now as he is once you get into the 20th century archives, but in the 60s, 70s, he was a very sort of high-profile congressperson. He did things like, at the time of the L.A. Watts riots, he was a teacher before he went into politics. He went undercover to teach at a school to see what the deal was.

• 12:38Nick Capodice?

  So Congressman Leo Ryan went to Newfoundland to investigate SEAL killings? He went undercover as an inmate at Folsom Prison to report on conditions there?

• 12:48Speaker 00

  Really?

• 12:48Nick Capodice?

  Yeah.

• 12:49Speaker 00

  So he's this like TV show perfect congressperson, Leo Ryan, and he hates the idea of a Department of Education, and he has a committee role that allows him to block it pretty successfully. Even though he's a Democrat, he's super opposed to the idea of a federal Department of Education, and he blocks it, and he has the power to block it. But because he's a crusading, high-profile congressman, he flies down to Guyana to investigate a murder cult led by the notorious James Jones.

• 13:24Nick Capodice?

  The charismatic Reverend Jim Jones controlled a cult based in San Francisco. To escape scrutiny, he moved the group to a jungle commune in Jonestown, Guyana. So for anyone out there who hasn't heard of Jonestown, it was a settlement in the jungle in Guyana, and it was also the topic of my very first history report in Mr. Zekka's class in 8th grade. Jonestown was a religious commune under the leadership of Reverend Jim Jones. And a lot of people who went to the commune came from San Francisco, so they were technically Congressman Ryan's constituents. And Ryan had heard of some horrible, horrible things going on down there.

• 14:00Speaker 00

  So he, as is his wont, he smells publicity. He takes a trip. There's journalists, there's hangers-on, there's relatives. They go down to Jonestown to investigate. They are ambushed. They are murdered in cold blood at the airstrip. Because of the murder of a US Congressman, Jim Jones knows their time is up. He dishes out the Kool-Aid, because he's like, "Well, they're coming for us, but we're gonna go out on our own ticket. We're gonna decide how we go out. We're not going out, we're not going to jail. We're not gonna fight the US. We're out."

• 14:39Speaker 01

  Good evening, here's what's happening. We're interrupting our special broadcasting to bring you this special report on UC Newsbreak on the People's Temple mass suicides in Guyana and the murder of Congressman Leo Ryan. I would mention to you now, tonight's movie will run in its entirety immediately following this special report. I also have to warn you, as we be-

• 14:56Nick Capodice?

  Again, this special report that what you're about to see almost defies description, and some of you may not want to watch it. So the oft-used expression is Kool-Aid, but technically it was called Flavor Aid. But that's not really the point. Jim Jones administered cyanide-laced Flavor Aid to his parishioners, killing about 900 people. Jones himself did not drink the cyanide. He died by a gunshot wound. It's a horrific story. It's a fascinating story. I'm going to put some links for anyone who wants to know more in the show notes.

• 15:29Speaker 00

  But because of that, the opposition to the Department of Ed disappears from the House of Representatives, at least on the Democrat's side. The legislation goes through.

• 15:39Speaker 05

  That is, I had no idea that that is how the DOED came about. I mean, that's a really remarkable turn of events.

• 15:50Nick Capodice?

  Isn't it?

• 15:51Speaker 05

  So Carter got his new department, right? What did he end up doing with it?

• 15:54Nick Capodice?

  Well, not a whole heck of a lot. Carter didn't do much because it was created towards the end of his administration. His first secretary was Shirley Hofstadler, and she had just gotten started establishing the department. And then Jimmy Carter lost reelection to Ronald Reagan, who had promised on the campaign trail, wait for it, that one of the first things he would do would be to eliminate the Department of Education, which we are going to talk about, as well as what the DOED is doing as of this minute, right after a quick break.

• 16:26Speaker 05

  But first, if you want to hear more about things like Nick's eighth-grade report on Jonestown, that is the sort of slightly tangential stuff that we put in our newsletter, extra credit. You can subscribe to it at our website, civics101podcast.org.

• 16:40Nick Capodice?

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• 17:25Nick Capodice?

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• 17:52Nick Capodice?

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• 19:30Speaker 05

  We're back. We're talking about the Department of Education. And Nick, we had just gotten to the creation of this department, the second creation, I should say.

• 19:40Nick Capodice?

  Right. And this new department didn't really create anything new right off the bat. The same thing happened with the newly created Department of Energy. It just sort of moved existing things from other departments under a new umbrella.

• 19:53Speaker 05

  And you said that Reagan wanted to dismantle it immediately?

• 19:56Nick Capodice?

  He sure did. Here again is Adam Laats, professor of education at Binghamton University.

• 20:01Speaker 00

  Reagan comes in swearing to get rid of it. Get rid of education, get rid of energy.

• 20:06Nick Capodice?

  We propose to dismantle two cabinet departments, energy and education. By eliminating the Department of Education less than two years after it was created, we can not only reduce the budget, but ensure that local needs and preferences, rather than the wishes of Washington, determine the education of our children.

• 20:24Speaker 00

  But he doesn't. It's kind of obvious in retrospect. He doesn't because as soon as Terrell Bell is his first secretary, Terrell Bell takes the job knowing he's supposed to dismantle this department. And so he makes it super popular, or he makes its work super popular among Reagan conservatives by assembling a commission to prove that Reagan policies are correct.

• 20:50Speaker 05

  Okay, so once they got a little taste of the power that comes with running a new department, they were not as interested in dismantling it.

• 20:59Nick Capodice?

  Exactly. And they get right to work and publish a famous, still cited report called, quote, "A Nation at Risk."

• 21:08Speaker 00

  And it says what a lot of conservatives at the time really wanted to hear, which is that American education had been hijacked by left-wing radicals. The phrase that pays back then, what really stuck was if this system had been imposed by a foreign power, we'd consider it an act of war. You know, there's a rising tide of mediocrity that has taken over our schools. So the Department of Education does that. That's like its first big thing, is to say that education in America has been attacked successfully by the left.

• 21:44Speaker 02

  The report states bluntly that the very future of our nation is at risk, sabotaged by a rising tide of mediocrity in our children's education. The statistics are alarming.

• 21:59Speaker 05

  But if the Department of Education didn't decide what was taught in schools, who took the blame for this so-called rising tide of mediocrity?

• 22:07Nick Capodice?

  No surprise, the teachers did.

• 22:10Speaker 00

  It was because of communist-leaning teachers' unions that the mediocrity had been so triumphant. But it's kind of surprising because we keep hearing, you know, conservatives attacking the Department of Education. And they still, and they did at the time. But even as they did it, conservatives always loved what the department did when it was in like their hands, like anything else. It's a government tool. And when it's been like in the Reagan administration and the first Trump administration, the Department of Education has done things that have been very popular among conservatives.

• 22:46Speaker 05

  Like what? What sorts of things?

• 22:48Nick Capodice?

  Well, for example, in Donald Trump's first term, Secretary Betsy DeVos advocated for block grants for all money from the department that went to schools. That gave them fewer restrictions on how to spend it. And also Donald Trump pushed for abolishing pre-existing loan forgiveness programs.

• 23:06Speaker 05

  Right, that's the thing where if you work in the public sector for 10 years, your loans get forgiven.

• 23:11Nick Capodice?

  Right, exactly that.

• 23:12Speaker 05

  How much money does the Department of Education get every year? What is their budget?

• 23:16Nick Capodice?

  Well, of course, it changes from year to year. But in 2024, they received $102 billion.

• 23:23Speaker 05

  And how is that money spent?

• 23:25Speaker 00

  Title I is huge, and that's, I think, probably the most obvious, biggest federal impact, but that came before the Department of Education.

• 23:34Speaker 05

  Can you give me a quick explanation of Title I?

• 23:36Nick Capodice?

  Yeah, sure. This goes back to Lyndon B. Johnson. Title I pays federal dollars to schools that have a certain percentage of students who are low income. That money is spent on meals for students, it's spent on classroom materials, teacher salaries, and a whole lot of other stuff.

• 23:52Speaker 05

  By the way, this is a fascinating rabbit hole. We have gone down the school lunch path before here on Civics 101. There's a link to those episodes in the show notes if you're interested.

• 24:01Nick Capodice?

  I do love those episodes, Hannah. But anyways, after Title I, the largest chunks of the budget are money for special education. That is money for grants that go to staff and facilities for students with special needs. And finally, as we just mentioned earlier, college funding. You know, this is federal loans, grants, and tuition forgiveness programs. But the department doesn't just give dollars to schools. Another role of the DOED is to enforce laws in an education setting.

• 24:33Speaker 00

  Here's some other things that every school everywhere knows about, and they're not, it's not money, but it's super physical. Every single school doorway has a ramp. So to get into any school, you have to be able to wheel your way in. That's federal. That's ADA. The feds don't provide the money for those ramps. The money is generally local and state, but the federal government said you have to do this stuff. And same thing with a lot of things like special education law. Those are federal things that really changed, dramatically changed schools.

• 25:08Nick Capodice?

  Your school must be ADA compliant, and if it's not, it can be sued.

• 25:13Speaker 00

  And let's not forget the most obvious one from the 20th century. Racial desegregation is a federal thing. States absolutely did not choose to desegregate. The federal government backed up with the 101st Airborne in Arkansas. You know, that's such raw federal power. It's direct federal soldiers implementing state and local school decisions.

• 25:39Speaker 01

  President Eisenhower sends 500 troops of the 101st Airborne Division of the United States Army to Little Rock by night. They are to keep order and to see that the law of the land is obeyed.

• 25:49Speaker 00

  So federal influence shows up all over the place.

• 25:54Speaker 00

  It's just not in the biggest ways that you think. Like, for example, what do you learn in 10th grade about math?

• 26:04Speaker 05

  One thing I am curious about is the relatively recent push toward what is called "school choice," where families can get vouchers to help pay for tuition at a private school, a charter school, a parochial school, or the like. Does that money come from the Department of Education?

• 26:20Nick Capodice?

  That's a great question. As of right now, it does not. Currently, money for programs like those come from state departments of education. Though I have to add, Donald Trump said in October, quote, "School choice is one of the most important things we're going to be doing." We're fighting for school choice, which really is the civil rights of all time in this country. Frankly, school choice is the civil rights statement of the year, of the decade, and probably beyond. School choice programs are in direct opposition to the Department of Education because the Department of Education supports free, public, K-12 schools.

• 27:03Speaker 00

  In Kentucky, for example, in Texas, in these red states, you have these voucher programs that are very popular among governors, among policymakers. They're very unpopular among conservative rural populations. So if you've-- the Texas story is really fascinating. Texas, very red, very conservative, they try to push, with billionaire funding from Pennsylvania, they try to push a new ESA-- Education Savings Account program, vouchers. It gets pushed back on by, you know, Trump-supporting "Make America Great Again" conservatives from rural districts because it would really take money away, directly away, from their

• 27:48Speaker 00

  public school districts. And nobody wants that. You know, the number of people who would advocate for, you know, getting worse schools for your children, that's vanishingly small. You know, choice works as a slogan when people can legitimately say, of course, I want a better public school for my child. Choice doesn't work in a rural New Hampshire, Kentucky, Colorado, Texas area when choice in practice means money taken away from your public school.

• 28:18Speaker 01

  School leaders across the state have been speaking up about possible ripple effects for public schools. Investigator Kelly Wiley takes us to Seguin, Texas, where the superintendent fears lawmakers are considering legislation that would deal a financial blow to an already strained system.

• 28:34Speaker 00

  But not just from the academic programs, but from community programs like football. Like if you threaten a town's football program, and I'm not, I'm not poking fun at all, that's, that's a center of their community. It's, it's, it's woven entirely into their public school culture. So no matter your politics, people really don't like the idea of having money taken away from their public school budgets.

• 29:06Nick Capodice?

  A last thing I want to add here about school choice programs, which I'm promising Hannah to do an episode on this year, is that the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy recently published a report on school choice credits. And this report revealed that wealthy families are the overwhelming majority of people that use them. This report said, quote, "In all three states providing data, most of the credits are being claimed by families with incomes over $200,000."

• 29:38Speaker 05

  Last thing, and who knows whether or not, you know, by the time this episode goes to air, things are going to be different. But as of this recording, right? So this is January 15th, 2025. The Department of Education exists. So I do think it's worth mentioning that Donald Trump's nominee for the department, Linda McMahon, is a staunch proponent for school choice programs, very much like Trump's former secretary, Betsy DeVos. Can you tell us more about McMahon's background in education? So she's not well-known as, as an education policy person. She's never worked in the field. She did graduate with a teaching certificate.

• 30:21Speaker 05

  But then she got married young and went into the wrestling promotion business with with her husband, Vince McMahon. So is this appointment a prelude to the end of the department? Is the D O E D in danger of being eradicated?

• 30:36Nick Capodice?

  Well, Adam doesn't think so.

• 30:40Speaker 00

  I will be shocked and amazed if the Department of Education goes away. I should mention, I've been shocked and amazed for about eight years now in general. So, but I will be again shocked and amazed if this actually if that if they actually get rid of the Department of Education. But it wouldn't get rid of other things. And it wouldn't get rid of a lot of the things that are already in the Department of Education. It would most likely just move them around and move this, get rid of the Cabinet Secretary. But the programs would just move, again, most likely to other departments because that's what they did to create the department.

• 31:15Nick Capodice?

  First off, like you said earlier, Hannah, it is Congress, not the president, that creates departments, and that goes for closing them as well. A president cannot do it by themselves. And secondly, a lot of Republican majority states get an awful lot of Title I funding for their schools. So I don't think it's something their constituents necessarily want. And last thing, Hannah, picking someone for a secretary for the intended dismantling of a department, we've seen this before.

• 31:46Speaker 00

  I think people now in 2024 are sometimes surprised that someone like Linda McMahon might come in and be a Secretary of Education. Someone like Betsy DeVos could come in and be a Secretary of Education. But Terrell Bell in the 70s, he was giving White House support to school boycotters in West Virginia who had firebombed and dynamite bombed school buildings and the district headquarters. After the bombings, Terrell Bell from the White House sent his support, implying the White House's support for this boycott of schools. So, you know, the idea that somehow suddenly school politics have gotten rough, school

• 32:31Speaker 00

  politics have gotten rough, but school politics have always been rough and the federal politics have always been. Pretty shockingly willing to get in bed with violent, aggressive, extreme school activists.

• 32:57Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, yeah. Oh, I know that chair.

• 32:59Speaker 00

  This one, I think, came from a Milwaukee Supper Club. If you're not a Midwesterner, you might not know the Supper Club scene, but now I'll have chairs like this.

• 33:08Nick Capodice?

  Well, this episode was made by me, Nick Capodice, with you, Hannah McCarthy. Thank you. Christina Phillips is our senior producer, Marina Hanke, our producer, and Rebecca Lavoy, our executive producer. Music in this episode from Epidemic Sound and also Kilo Kaz, Blue Dot Sessions, Lobo Loco, Bizu, BioUnit, and if music be the food of civics, play on, Chris Sabriski. Give me excessive it. Civics 101 is a production of NHPR, New Hampshire Public Radio.

• 33:45Speaker 01

  This is Phil Bradison, former Democratic governor of the state of Tennessee. If you love digging into how history shapes US policy, check out the new season of You Might Be Right. And this is Bill Haslam, former Republican governor. This season, we're asking the questions that have defined every pivotal moment in American political history. Is democracy really under threat, or is that just a story as old as the republic itself? We're tackling the biggest questions shaping the 2026 midterms, so join us. Follow You Might Be Right wherever you get your podcasts.

• 34:15Speaker 06

  Welcome to the 50th Hunger Games. Witness the beginning of the revolution.

• 34:19Speaker 07

  Hey Mitch, you've been trying to take down these games from the start.

• 34:22Speaker 06

  Filmed for IMAX.

• 34:23Speaker 07

  Make them remember you.

• 34:26Speaker 06

  The Hunger Games: Sunrise on the Reaping, November 20th, rated PG-13.

• 34:30Speaker 01

  Now streaming on Paramount+.

• 34:32Speaker 06

  I'm Dexter Morgan. I've been killing killers for half my life. It gets to you. You're having a midlife crisis. I'm not ready for this. He's back. I'm older. I'm wiser. And sharper than ever. Things are gonna get messy, but if I can't believe in myself, I can't believe in anything. Dexter Resurrection, new season now streaming on the Paramount Plus Premium Plan.