• President-elect Donald Trump announced more appointments on Tuesday, giving us a fuller picture of what his incoming administration is going to look like (tl;dr: It’s bad). One cabinet spot that’s still open, though: Secretary of Education. Whoever gets the job, they’ll likely be tasked with implementing Trump’s campaign promise to close the Department of Education, a long-time GOP goal that dates back to the Reagan Era. Erica Meltzer, national editor at Chalkbeat, explains why keeping that promise will be pretty difficult.
• And in headlines: Arizona Democrat Ruben Gallego is headed to the Senate, the New York judge overseeing Trump’s hush money trial delayed a decision on dismissing the president-elect’s conviction, and the chairman and CEO of Exxon Mobil says the incoming Trump administration should avoid drastic changes to American climate policy.

• Check out Erica’s reporting – www. chalkbeat.org/authors/erica-meltzer/
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TRANSCRIPT

Jane Coaston: It’s Wednesday, November 13th. I’m Jane Coaston and this is What a Day. The show that is lowering our flag to half mast in observance of west Virginia senator elect Jim Justice’s canine named Baby Dog being barred from the Senate floor. Dogs may not belong on the Senate floor, but they do belong in our hearts. [music break] On today’s show, the votes for the 119th Congress are still being tallied. And even oil executives are asking Trump not to overhaul the country’s climate change regulations. Let’s get into it. President elect Donald Trump made up a department for his good friends, Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy. The Department of Government Efficiency or DOGE? Get it? Like dogecoin. I’m sure Elon finds it very funny. Anyway, Trump says it’ll be the, quote, “Manhattan Project of our time.” I desperately, desperately hope it is not the Manhattan Project of our time for many, many reasons. And Trump continues to fill out his cabinet. He’s expected to choose Florida Senator Marco Rubio as secretary of state. But that hasn’t been made official yet. If Trump does choose Rubio, he would be the first Latino to hold the position. It would also make him the first secretary of state to have ever been called Little Marco by the president. Trump plans to nominate South Dakota Governor and Trump loyalist Kristi Noem for secretary of Homeland Security. She’s known for killing her puppy and writing about it in her memoir. Other cabinet picks as of Tuesday include former Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee for U.S. ambassador to Israel, former Congressman John Ratcliffe for director of the CIA, and Pete Hegseth, a Fox News host, to do the very unimportant job of secretary of defense. Hegseth was a major in the Army who served in Iraq and Afghanistan. For reference, the current defense secretary, Lloyd Austin, is a four star general. One of the Cabinet seats Trump has yet to announce is secretary of education. I wonder who he’s got in mind for that? Will they be the shittiest person alive? Probably. Well, whoever it is, they’ll be tasked with implementing something Trump, as always, talks about like it’s super easy when it’s definitely not. Eliminating the Department of Education. Here he is in a video posted Monday. 

[clip of Donald Trump] And one other thing I’ll be doing very early in the administration is closing up the Department of Education in Washington, D.C., and sending all education and education worker needs back to the states. We want them to run the education of our children because they’ll do a much better job of it. 

Jane Coaston: Trump also laid out a ten point plan for America’s education system in that same characteristically ranting and circular video that should have been called indoctrination. Coming to a school near you. 

[clip of Donald Trump] We will teach students to love their country, not to hate their country like they are taught right now. Fifth, we will support bringing back prayer to our schools. 

Jane Coaston: Sure. He also said he wants to make it possible for school districts to fire basically anyone who disagrees with him or encourages students to think critically. Awesome. But can Trump actually keep these promises? To find out, I called Erica Meltzer, national editor at Chalkbeat, who covers education policy and recently wrote about this very thing. Erica Meltzer, welcome to What a Day. 

Erica Meltzer: Thanks for having me. 

Jane Coaston: So Donald Trump has said that one of his first acts as president would be to, quote, “close the Department of Education, move education back to the states.” What exactly does he mean by that? And is that even something he could do? 

Erica Meltzer: So that’s a really good question. It’s something a lot of people have been talking about. Um. To actually shut down the Department of Education would require an act of Congress. Um. Whether there is support for that in Congress, a lot of people I’ve talked to, including conservatives who are skeptical of the Department of Education, are also skeptical that there would actually be the political will to undo the department. On the other hand, it’s been talked about a lot more in this campaign than we’ve ever heard it talked about before. And we probably do have a Congress that’s more um supportive and aligned with President elect Trump. And so that’s just an open question. And then there’s the question of does shutting down the department mean ending everything that the department does? Or do you reassign some of those things to other departments and what does that look like and how does that change what they do? 

Jane Coaston: What would this look like in practice? Because the Department of Education doesn’t do you know, there isn’t as much direct funding to schools, but there are things like title nine or helping students with disabilities. So what are the ramifications if the department is closed and everything gets spun out to different departments? 

Erica Meltzer: So I think people who would defend the Department of Education would say that you would lose a lot of expertise and understanding of what goes into education if you parceled out these different functions. So Title nine is a really good um example. I think the proposal in Project 2025 would be to move civil rights enforcement to the Department of Justice. Um I don’t think in and of itself that that’s necessarily a disaster. But you would lose potentially expertise in how schools function. And then I think there’s also the questions of who at Trump administration would appoint to oversee civil rights enforcement. They’ve been really clear that they are not supportive of the Title nine changes that were made under the Biden administration, which extended um new protections to transgender students. They want to repeal those. Um. That could happen without getting rid of the Department of Education. Um. There’s been proposals to basically take funding for special education students and turn it into a voucher like system where I think the funding that would be available to families would be a fraction of what would be necessary to meet their students needs. And then Title one funding goes to high poverty schools, would that continue, Project 2025 again proposes phasing out that funding over ten years and having the states pick up the balance. It’s not clear that the states would have the resources to do that or the political will to do it in some cases. Um. So I think it’s fair to say, would Title one funding go away, quite possibly it would just go away there. And that’s millions and millions of dollars to high poverty school districts that help pay for social workers and interventionists and paraprofessionals. Is that what it would look like? We don’t actually know, because the way that Trump has talked about it has been very vague. It’s just it’s going to go back to the states. We’re just going to check in on you every now and again to make sure you’re not teaching woke. And some states will do great and some states won’t. And so that just leaves a lot of questions of what it would actually look like. 

Jane Coaston: Right. Because in a video earlier this week, Trump laid out this ten point plan for education, which included things like teaching patriotism and bringing back school prayer and firing teachers who disagree. How do you implement that without a Department of Education working on the federal level? 

Erica Meltzer: That’s a contradiction that has been noted, including by many conservatives that I’ve talked to, that if you want to have this this federal role and be pulling the levers and using funding to get people to do what you want them to do, you need a bureaucracy to carry that out. If you get rid of the Department of Education, then you don’t have that bureaucracy. And then presumably um red states will keep doing what they’ve been doing and blue states will keep doing what they’ve been doing. And so it depends how much control does he want to have? Um would he rather keep a bureaucracy and exert that leverage, or would he rather get rid of it? Or will all of this sort of go away? Once he’s actually in office and focused on other things. 

Jane Coaston: You’ve been covering this issue and covering education for such a long time. And I just keep think, going back to George W. Bush and the No Child Left Behind Act and Common Core, what has been going on that has led to more and more people saying that they want to close the Department of Education, but like, where is all of this coming from anyway? 

Erica Meltzer: I think a lot of it does trace back to um disagreements about civil rights enforcement. I don’t think that’s the only thing. But I think that that’s the way that conservatives have seen the department show up in ways that they they most disagree with and would most like to do away with. There’s been a huge change since George W. Bush, where there was this sort of conservative vision for school accountability. And to some degree, we see that extending through the Obama years. There’s a lot of support for education reform and different approaches to accountability where there’s an expanded federal role. And I think you’ve actually seen a pulling away from that on both the right and the left. Like the left is less enthusiastic about testing and teacher evaluation and charter schools and types of things that they used to support. And um the right has really leaned into vouchers and um it’s just up to the parents. Give the parents money. The parents can if the parent is happy, then that’s a good education. And there’s been a real pulling away from an interest in accountability and improving school quality, I think, on both sides. And then that leaves this question of what is the department’s role?

Jane Coaston: I wanted to ask you about um a federal judge blocking the use of the Ten Commandments in classrooms in Louisiana. Um. I’ve always thought that I went to Catholic school. So uh if having the Ten Commandments around you all the time was supposed to make you into a specific type of person, it didn’t work on me. But I’m curious as to your thoughts on that, because that’s exactly the same type of state by state, different policies for different states kind of thing that sounds like the right would be into. But it seems like a federal judge says, no. 

Erica Meltzer: This is a point of a lot of contention right now of what is the role of religion in public schools. And there’s been all kinds of things that that seem for most of my professional life to be settled law, are now up in the air. Like public money can go to um to religious schools. You don’t have to have a school choice program. But if you do have a voucher program that you can’t discriminate against public schools except a judge in South Carolina just said that that would violate their state constitution um different cases are working their way through the courts. I think this is maybe one of the most contested legal areas right now when it comes to um education and the line between freedom of religion and freedom from religion. Um. I don’t know how much the Trump administration will actually have the ability to weigh in on something like that. But I think a lot of scholars believe that the Supreme Court we have now is much friendlier to um to religion in public life and to reli– and to public dollars supporting religious expression. 

Jane Coaston: Erica, thank you so much. This is so helpful. 

Erica Meltzer: Thanks so much for having me. 

Jane Coaston: That was my conversation with Erica Meltzer, national editor at Chalkbeat. We’ll get to more of the news in a moment. But if you like the show, make sure to subscribe. Leave a five star review on Apple Podcasts. Watch us on YouTube and share with your friends. More to come after some ads. [music break]

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Jane Coaston: And now the news. 

[sung] Headlines. 

[clip of Ruben Gallego] I’m a husband, a marine, a father, and a proud Arizonan. And with the results we saw tonight, your next senator from the great state of Arizona. 

Jane Coaston: Arizona Democrat Ruben Gallego is headed to the Senate. The Associated Press officially declared him the winner of the swing state Senate race late Monday, almost a week after Election Day. He defeated Republican Kari Lake, a MAGA acolyte who refers to herself as Trump in heels. You might recall her 2022 gubernatorial campaign, which she lost and then decided was stolen. Republicans clinched control of the Senate on election night, but Gallego’s win will help Democrats limit the GOP’s majority to, at most, 53 seats. Meanwhile, control of the House still hasn’t been finalized. More than a dozen races haven’t been called, mostly in California. Republicans seem likely to pick up at least four of those remaining seats, which would win them the majority. House Speaker Mike Johnson took the opportunity to gloat a little bit as lawmakers return to the Capitol Tuesday. 

[clip of House Speaker Mike Johnson] It is a beautiful morning in Washington. It is a new day in America. The sun is shining and that’s a reflection about how we all feel. This is a this is a very, very important moment for the country. And we do not take it lightly. 

Jane Coaston: But even if Republicans do keep control of the House, their majority looks like it will remain teeny tiny. We’re talking four or five seats. And if you subtract the two House Republicans Trump named to his administration. Yeah, Speaker Johnson will still have the worst job in Washington. Justice Juan Merchan, the judge presiding over Trump’s New York hush money trial, delayed a decision on whether to dismiss the president elect’s conviction. Merchan was set to rule Tuesday on whether or not the conviction can stand after the Supreme Court ruled that former presidents have some immunity from prosecution. Trump was convicted on 34 felony counts of falsifying business records. He tried to cover up payments he made to adult film star Stormy Daniels in 2016. But prosecutors said they need more time to deliberate in the wake of Trump’s victory. His lawyers argue the criminal conviction should be thrown out altogether. Merchan has until next Tuesday to rule. On the campaign trail, Trump repeatedly promised to gut policies and regulations aimed at mitigating climate change. But the head of a major oil and gas corporation says don’t do that. Darren Woods, the chairman and CEO of ExxonMobil, told CNBC Tuesday that a drastic change in American climate policy would be disruptive to business. 

[clip of Darren Woods] I think the point we’re trying to make is the world needs to have a, a long term approach to reducing emissions, that you can do it in a very cost effective way, but you need consistency of approach and policy. And so we’re here talking about what some of those approaches could be to help solve those problems. 

Jane Coaston: Woods was speaking from Baku, Azerbaijan, at Cop 29, the annual United Nations Climate Change conference. Trump has vowed to pull the US out of the Paris climate agreement again. He’s also vowed to ramp up fossil fuel extraction, even as the world is on pace to record its hottest year on record for the second year in a row. You know, things are not going great when we’re turning to oil and gas executives for hope on the climate front. Justin Welby, the archbishop of Canterbury, resigned on Tuesday after a new report found that he and other leaders of the Church of England knowingly covered up the abuse committed by the late John Smyth. Smyth physically and sexually abused more than 100 young boys from the ’70s up until his passing in 2018, including while running boys summer camps. He’s been called, quote, “the most prolific abuser with ties to the Church of England.” A survivor of Smyth’s abuse spoke to the UK’s Channel four News anonymously on Tuesday about Archbishop Welby’s resignation. He said that this was just the start of real accountability from the church. 

[clip of anonymous abuse survivor] This is a fifth of my life I’ve spent campaigning to get the truth out of what happened and to bring Smyth to justice. We failed on that. But now some more of the truth is in the public domain. 

Jane Coaston: The report names Archbishop Welby as someone who could have and should have reported Smyth to the police after he was informed of Smyth’s crimes in 2013. And that’s the news. [music break] One more thing. If I remember anything from the first Trump administration, it’s chaos. Every single day you’d check your phone at 5 p.m. Eastern and bam, the craziest shit you have ever heard of in your entire life happened. The director of the FBI got fired. There was a not so perfect, perfect phone call. Or maybe buying Greenland. I remember that whole let’s buy Greenland thing? Wild times. Well, Trump won the election a little over a week ago, and the chaos and confusion has already begun. That’s in part because, well, hiring is hard. But also it’s because Donald Trump did a very standard Donald Trump thing. He promised to be everything to everyone again. I’ve said before that he’s like the sixth grade class presidential candidate. Pizza and ice cream for everyone except pizza is deporting millions of people and ice cream is retribution against his enemies, which I hope are also yours. For example, how is RFK Jr planning to get seed oils and chemicals out of foods like gummy worms and Cheez-Its that Trump wants to deregulate the production of? Because I don’t know how he’d do that. Trump told Arab-Americans in Michigan that he was determined to end the war in Gaza and Lebanon, and he told Jewish donors to his campaign that he would decimate the pro-Palestinian rights movement in the United States, even deporting pro-Palestinian student protesters. And it worked. He won the election, and now he gets to figure out how to make a bunch of people happy who all generally hate each other. Already, MAGA fanboys are getting very upset about the potential for Senator Marco Rubio serving as Secretary of state, and Representative Mike Waltz, serving as national security adviser. Since Trump said a lot of nice isolationist things during the campaign and Mike Waltz literally wanted to relaunch the war in Afghanistan in 2021. Because 20 years of war just wasn’t enough, I guess. Donald Trump has twice convinced millions of Americans that he will do the things they want him to do and won’t do the things they don’t want him to do, even if he said he’s absolutely going to do those things. And Trump is, if he’s anything, a performer who plays to his audience, no matter what that requires him to say. And that works great in elections. But once again, we’re learning that that’s a pretty tough way to run a presidential administration. [music break]

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Jane Coaston: That’s all for today. If you like the show, make sure you subscribe. Leave a review. Think about the many, many, many, many, many, many times Donald Trump has made his loyalists look like idiots and tell your friends to listen. And if you’re into reading and not just about how Thanksgiving is a real holiday and we don’t need to put up Christmas or Hanukkah decorations yet because Thanksgiving is a real holiday like me, What a Day is also a nightly newsletter. Check it out and subscribe at Crooked.com/subscribe. I’m Jane Coaston. And good luck, little Marco. [music break] What a Day is a production of Crooked Media. It’s recorded and mixed by Desmond Taylor. Our associate producer is Raven Yamamoto. Our producer is Michell Eloy. We had production help today from Tyler Hill, Johanna Case, Joseph Dutra, Greg Walters and Julia Claire. Our senior producer is Erica Morrison and our executive producer is Adriene Hill. Our theme music is by Colin Gilliard and Kashaka. [music break]

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