Constitutional Law Professor Reacts

Garrison asks USC law professor Derek Black about attacks on the Department of Education and the dangers of expanding executive power.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:01):
All media.

Speaker 2 (00:06):
This is it could happen here. I'm Garrison Davis. Last
week I was working on an essay about how the
Trump administration is trying to shut down the Department of Education.
Now very quickly that project expanded to being about how
Elon Musk is actually trying to internally coop the federal
government and become the CEO of the United States. That

(00:29):
article is now published on Shatterzone dot substack dot com
and is also the previous episode of this podcast. But
during my research I talked with law professor Derek Black
about the Department of Education, the state of disunion in
the country, and if we still have a democracy Already,
some of the things we talked about have begun to happen,

(00:52):
like Republicans introducing legislation to expanding executive power while Trump
and Musk flirt with denying the authority of the courts.
I decided to publish the full interview because I believe
his perspective is still helpful and the conversational format alters
the way we process information compared to me just reading
a kind of depressing essay for forty minutes. So, without

(01:15):
further ado, here is the interview.

Speaker 1 (01:19):
I'm Derek Black. I'm a professor of law at the
University of South Carolina. My area focuses on education law
and policy and really sort of how that relates to democracy.
But I teach constitutional law and courses like that. Author
of a couple of books Schoolhouse Burning, Public Education, and
the Assault on American Democracy, and then more recently Dangerous
Learning the South long War on Black literacy.

Speaker 2 (01:40):
Let's start by discussing what's going on at the Department
of Education right now, and maybe let's actually start a
little bit further back. Attacks on the Department of Education,
like are not new. Reagan famously kind of pioneered the
rights focus on this, but it's been something they've struggled
to deal sizable blows against, especially in terms of wanting

(02:01):
to abolish the organization. Could you talk about like the
history of conservative attacks against the Department.

Speaker 1 (02:07):
Yeah, I mean, you know, there's always been this states
rights issue that's been with America since its founding. Obviously
was a big part of the Civil War, big part
of the Civil rights movement, you know, a big part
of the Affordable Healthcare Act debate. So you always have
this stage rights argument going on, and at least amongst
the folks that are worried about that public education comes

(02:28):
up as being a target because there's this argument always that, well,
education is not in the federal constitution, so what business
does the federal government have to be involved? And so
it's really more of a talking point as opposed to
any particular substantive reason why they want to get rid
of it. But that's really where it's come from. But
you know, it's often been not that serious of a critique,

(02:50):
but obviously it's gotten very serious here in the last
couple of weeks.

Speaker 2 (02:54):
Yeah, that's the general overall feeling I'm having is that
there's a lot of things going on that I would
have previously thought are kind of like pipe dreams. Calls
to abolish the Department of Education, even this rallying call
from the new right in the past few years to
like abolish the FBI, general claims of you know, like
draining the swamp, these types of like old it's almost

(03:15):
like stereotypical claims that now through musk they've been able
to like weasel their way into actually dismantling like large,
large systems that make the everyday functionality of the government possible.
What should people know, right, now about the current attacks
in the Department of Education. Trump is still allegedly drafting
in executive order. He'll probably have to work through Congress,

(03:38):
but we'll see the degree to which he even needs
to do that. What are you worried about, like right now?
And what do you think people should know about like
the current the current attacks on the dewy.

Speaker 1 (03:49):
Well, there's the sort of immediate worries and then there's
the larger worries. The immediate worries I'll have to say,
I'm not terribly worried about. I mean, if you look
at the reporting that we've seen, it is interesting that
the White House seems to distinguish between the things that
it can do unilaterally right without Congress, and those things
that would need Congress. And I mean, it's a weird

(04:10):
silver lining, but that gives me like some like measure
of comfortability in this weird, bizarre world, only because you know,
two weeks ago the administration was willing to do things
that it had no authority to do, right, just sort
of his claiming authority to do everything. And so there
is this at least recognition that there's not unbounded power.

(04:31):
So that's sort of the immediate threat is not that
huge because the White House, Trump's power over the Department
or to close it up is relatively narrow, Like most
of the department is established by statute, and he can't
just dissolve things or move things around that are created
by statute. He can't take money that's for poor kids
and spend them on vouchers. Right, these things you know,

(04:52):
the law dictates. And the fact that he's implicitly acknowledging,
or rather his advisors or you know, implicitly acknowledging they
need Congress has helped gives me a little bit of
comfort because I think that getting rid of the Department
is I'm not sure there's a majority in the House
for that, but there's certainly not a filibuster, you know,
sixty vote majority for that in the Senate. So that's

(05:13):
short term. But I think there's something far more disturbing
to me, and it's the long term, this sort of
idea that there's something illegitimate about the federal role in education,
that there's something illegitimate about public education itself. Those are
very dangerous ideas. And I have a piece that just
came out yesterday and Slate that says Look, you know,

(05:34):
the federal role in public education predates the Constitution itself.
You know, probably no one, not many listeners, probably familiar.
I ever heard of the Northwest Ordinances of seventeen eighty
five and seventeen eighty seven. But before we even had
a United States Constitution, this foundational document laid out how
are territory is going to become states, And without going
through all the details, Congress embeds public education and the

(05:58):
very fabric of what it means to be a state
before we even have a constitution. And so that's very important.
Is where we start. At the end of the Civil War,
right where we almost lost our democracy. Congress, as a
condition of readmitting Southern states into the Union, says that
one of the terms of readmission is that you create
public education system and you never take those rights away, right,

(06:20):
forcing public education into the South in places where it
never had been before. You know, people are more familiar
with the civil rights movement. So I won't go through
all that, but just to take one more pause, I mean,
Congress created a Department of Education in eighteen sixty seven,
right to get this public education project off the ground.

(06:40):
So this isn't some wild new sort of fantasy of
liberals or unions that we need a department so that
we can hand over the spoils to teachers. This is
an idea about what it means to have democracy in America,
and public education is a centerpiece of that, and the
federal government has been pushing it for two hundred and
fifty years. It's a good thing. It's a good thing.

Speaker 2 (07:02):
How do you think that relates to the administration's attempts
to centralize executive power? Though, Like, if you look at
like what happened with you said, right, this agency that
has been has been in tried in law that may
not be legally abolished now, but they've been effectively abolished,
Like all the employees are on leave, it's been hallowed out.
It essentially no longer exists. I feel like they're trying to,

(07:24):
at the very least test the bare limits of executive
power and bypass Congress when they can. Part of my
fear is like Congress is not willing to fight them
on that. Seemingly like they're not willing to call them
on that. They're almost willing to acquiesce their like appropriation's
ability as well as you know, the ability to have

(07:45):
actually have to like remove departments from existence or create
new ones.

Speaker 1 (07:49):
Yeah, so you're picking up on a thread that's much
bigger than a department. Right, So when Congress is willing
to hand the keys over to the president, then we
no longer really have have you know, a democracy, or
at least the constitutional democracy that was created you know,
a couple of centuries ago here in which the president
executes the law. The president doesn't make the law right,

(08:10):
Congress funds programs, not the executive. But if if ultimately
Congress is going to shift all that authority over like that,
that's a dangerous place for democracy to be. There are
no checks anymore. So I think what you're raising up
is the fear that there aren't any checks in place.
You know, Fortunately, there still is a legal apparatus. I mean,
even if Congress isn't standing up shouting and complaining, it's

(08:34):
still the case the president can't just do whatever he wants,
and hopefully the courts, you know, would would step in.
I use the word hopefully. I think courts will step
in to limit his ability to do things that go
beyond to statutory power. So the bigger danger, I think
is that through law itself, Congress seedes more and more
power to the president with a new legislation. So if

(08:56):
Congress were to pass new legislation giving the president more
centralized power, well that would be a concerning thing to me.
Let me just stop and we'll get to your next question.

Speaker 3 (09:05):
To go.

Speaker 1 (09:06):
But we have a larger phenomenon. It's just it's not
just about Trump, and people don't necessarily realize this. I mean, look,
I don't think that President Obama was a dictator or
had authoritarian tendencies. I was part of the Obama Biden
transition team, but I testified against Arnie Duncan in a
case or against the United States Department of Education in

(09:26):
twenty twelve or fourteen or something like that, because the
department was taking power that it clearly did not have
in regard to a no Child Left Behind waivers. And
you know, I told the current administration, as much as
I hate it, right, I wish we could just wipe
away student debt. I feel bad for my students who
have huge debt. But I said, it is beyond the
president's power to just wipe away all this debt, and

(09:48):
they did it. Anyway. The real point here is that
both Democrats and Republicans have been asking things of their
presidents that their presidents don't have the power to do,
and their presidents are doing it any right, And it's
because our Congress is broken. Our Congress isn't doing its job.
So citizens are demanding that our presidents do things that
they really don't have the power to do.

Speaker 2 (10:09):
And that's like the big thing that I'm concerned about
is we talk about these things that presidents are not
quote unquote like allowed to do. And I feel like
like both Trump and Muskre now are are speed running
like the limits of executive power, and they are willing
to test the boundaries a little bit, a little bit
more than previous presidents, and they're willing to break the
government temporarily to like their goals be enacted. And at

(10:33):
a certain point, it's really tricky when the thing that
you always hear is, you know, like hopefully the courts
will step in, hopefully they'll do something if things get
really bad, who will like literally stop them in terms
of like the courts told them to halt the funding freeze,
and there is there's still grants that they are refusing
to issue that were already approved legally need to be

(10:54):
followed through on that they are still withholding and it's
it's really frightening when it comes down to like basic
level of like is there are people military police who
will enforce this that things get really bad. That's something
I don't have like complete confidence in anymore.

Speaker 1 (11:08):
Well, you know, I deal with this every year at
the beginning of my constitutional law class. Right, this is
not a new problem. It seems more real and frightening,
but it's not a new problem. And so what I
tell my constitutional law students is that the rule of
law doesn't exist because of courts. Right, it doesn't exist
because of police officers. Right, that the rule of law,

(11:31):
when push comes to shove, exists in the hearts and
minds of Americans, and if they don't believe in it,
all is lost. Right. So, for when Brown versus Board
of Education was decided, it was reportedly the case that
the President said, you know, if the court wants to
desegregate schools, let it do it itself. Because guess what,

(11:52):
what's the Supreme Court. It's nine old people in one
building with a handful of capitol police do anything. They
don't have a power to do anything. Right, So our
entire system really rests on good faith, or, as I
tell my students, like what if due to something, you know,
President Trump or Biden or whoever had done, the Federal

(12:14):
District Court issued an order directing US Marshals to take
President Trump into a custody. So that order goes out,
the marshals receive it, they march over to the White House,
they come in the door, and they say, we are
here to take the president. Signed and it's already been
fast tracked by Supreme Court, signed by the Supreme Court.

(12:35):
The answer to whether we'll just use Biden, the answer
to whether President Biden is escorted out of the White
House by US marshals is not a function of military
It's not a function of police power. It's a function
of when that piece of paper is held up, does
the secret Service member believe that the rule of law

(12:55):
exceeds his loyalty to the man standing behind him. Yeah,
that's where it's at, right, And so you know, it
really is a good faith litmus test. And I think
we used to live in an era when I think
we all had maybe more faith in the idea that
people put fidelity and commitment to the Constitution and the
law above personal loyalty. But we increasingly live in a

(13:19):
congress and in a world, in a situation when it
seems that people put personal loyalty above the constitution at times.

Speaker 2 (13:37):
JD. Vance was interviewed on a far right podcast about
like two or three years ago, and he expressed desire
for what he called a quote unquote dewocification program. Jah like,
sounds silly, but this is basically happening now. He extrapolated
and said, quote, I think Trump is going to run
again in twenty twenty four. I think what Trump should

(13:58):
do if I was giving him one piece of advice,
fire every single mid level bureaucrat, every civil servant in
the administrative state. Replace them with our people. And when
the courts stop, you stand before the country and say,
the Chief Justice has made his ruling, now let him
enforce it. And I feel like we're getting closer and

(14:19):
closer to this scenario.

Speaker 1 (14:21):
I'm sorry, where did JD. Vance make this statement at
what context?

Speaker 2 (14:25):
On Jack Murphy's podcast Jack Murphy is like a farret commentator.
Vance is invoking the political philosophy of Curtis Jarvin, who's
becoming increasingly popular in the new Right. While lots of
what must and Trump, by extension, have been doing the
past few weeks. Is taken pretty directly out of Curtis
Yarvin's playbook for seizing executive power. And I feel like

(14:45):
we're getting closer and closer to this, and so much
of what's happening in various agencies it is about proving
loyalty to Trump so that if there is some kind
of constitutional confrontation, people side with him. Doge is basically
installing loyalty tests and running through communications to like see
what the loyalty to Trump is for different levels of

(15:07):
administrative employees the FBI are negotiations to stay on but
only if they can prove their loyalty to the president.
And like, it's all of these scenarios that again, like
originally would be kind of far fetched. When you're hearing
someone like Jdvans talk about this a few years ago
on some like right wing podcast. That's one thing to
watch this like happen in real time. For people like

(15:29):
me who study like this type of like more like
esoteric far right political theory, it's kind of surreal to
watch the type of thing that you've been like writing
about and thinking about, like on background for years now happen.
I just kind of rambled there. But do you have
any like, I guess, thoughts on like this idea that
like Vance is talking about in terms of like creating
this constitutional crisis.

Speaker 1 (15:51):
Well, I mean, look, I tend to be I tend
to be the guy in the room that says, let's
not let's not overreact, let's let's see what happens. You
know that there's a lot of you know, institutional history,
and there's a lot of Americans who I think the
majority are good and decent people, and they don't they
don't want authoritarianism. So this this is me right, this

(16:13):
is my predisposition. But a week or so ago I
had a huge crisis of confidence, shall we say. There
were just a few events in the news that I
was just like, I just never thought that this would
happen in America. I never thought a governor would I mean,
some of this was what governors were doing. I never
thought a governor would do that. I never thought a

(16:35):
president would do that. I just never thought, you know,
never thought, never thought. And so I said to myself,
you know, are any of my opinions or projections, you know,
valid anymore? Because I'm the guy who never thought. And
so that was that was you know, that was a
tough twenty four hours for me. I'll have to say. So,
you know, I don't know if like I just rebooted
and for self sanity and move forward, or you know, know,

(17:00):
whether there is still some truth and reason to believe
in certain stability. And I mean, I will say this,
you know, as we started this conversation, the fact that
the White House is conceding that it can't do everything
to the Department of Education that it wants to do
without Congress is a good thing. If you read the
five executive orders or for however many they've already issued there,

(17:23):
it's a good thing that actually, if you read them carefully,
it's mostly directing appointees to think about stuff, not actually
do stuff, but to think about stuff. And of course
the president can appoint them to think about stuff. If
they do the stuff they're thinking about, that becomes a problem.
But again, it is this sort of like can I

(17:44):
grab a headline about what would sound like an awful
you know, reality, But really all I've done is type
of to think about that reality. You know, that gives
me some faith, right, And notwithstanding the fact that this
United States Supreme Court, you know, granted an immunity to
all presidents that I never could have imagined. You know,

(18:06):
this court does, you know, issue opinions that surprise us
every single term, and they line up with the rule
of law. It's just it's unpredictable to some extent which
which opinions those are going to be. So I have
this faith, you know, these sort of pieces of of
the puzzle that still suggests we're still democracy and are
going to remain one. But you know, I have I

(18:28):
have my really bad days. I think, like you know,
I think a lot of people have a bad day
every day right now. It's you know, I just feel
thankful minor mineor fewer and further between than others. And
maybe that's just psychological coping. I don't know.

Speaker 2 (18:50):
Let's let's I guess close. We're talking about disunion and
and how that relates to the general feeling I think
a lot of people are experiencing around the country as
well as you know, linking back again to the attacks
on the Department of Education.

Speaker 1 (19:03):
Yeah, I spent a pretty good deal of time on
this disunion question in my new book, Dangerous Learning, because
I'm most of that book is focused on the three
decades leading up to the Civil War, so that like
the Civil War doesn't just happen overnight, it happens over
the course of late eighteen twenties to the eighteen sixty
with the South is saber rattling over and over again

(19:24):
openly talking about disunion. Right, so that you had a
South that actually was diverse in lots of ways in
its opinions about various things. I'm not going to say
that that there were a bunch of abolitionis, but there
was a manumissioned society in North Carolina in eighteen twenty
nine that had I think sixteen hundred members. Right. The
very idea of sixteen hundred you know, anti slavery advocates

(19:47):
in North Carolina the eighteen twenties is shocking to a
lot of people, right, But ten years later, only twelve
people show up to the final meeting, right, So you
had something that changed there, right, And so you have
this sort of period of escalating disunion and censorship and
propaganda and sort of policing what is publicly you know,

(20:07):
acceptable commentary in the South. All this stuff is happening
sort of going in and you know, editing, their sort
of censoring textbooks, you know, demanding that books only be
written by Southerners, like, oh, I make it go on
and on and on. We don't have time for it.
What I point out, though, in my analysis of what's
going on, you know right now over the last few
years of education, is that there are a lot of

(20:31):
policies that are attacking public education in the way that
they previously had, And a lot of them are symbolic
of disunion instincts, right, sort of just sort of anti government, right,
anti sort of whatever the current culture is. And then
there's actually policies that I argue are facilitating disunion. And
one of those that I talk about is our public

(20:53):
school voucher. I say, private school vouchers. You are so
upset with you're so raging at the public school system
that we need private school vouchers, right, and we are
effectively paying, We're going to pay individuals to leave the
public school system. And I call this a coded call
for disunion, even if people don't think that's what they're doing.

(21:15):
If we look back at where we started this conversation,
which is institution of public education as something upon which
American democracy has been built, of course it has lots
of flaws and it wasn't perfect, but it's been part
of how we build a democracy. It's always been a
bipartisan project. Now becoming the thing that we rage against,
now becoming the thing in which we are going to

(21:36):
finance exit from right, This is a step towards disunion
from a fundamental institution of American democracy. What happens to
us if they actually execute on that plan. I shudder
to think about where we might be, because it's not
just some private school that's the equivalent of the public school.
We're talking about people on the public dollar retreating into

(21:59):
the religious silos, into their racial silos, into their culture silos.
And if there's anything I think that we could all
agree on, is listening to only the people that you
like on Twitter or listening only to the people that
you like for the evening news is what got us here.
And if what we have is education that becomes the

(22:21):
equivalent of MSNBC and Fox News and Newsmax and you
know whatever else like that is a dangerous place. I
don't know how we build democracy on such a system.

Speaker 2 (22:33):
What's the solution here? I mean, like beyond people diversifying,
where they get their media from, and like for vast
pats of the country, I think that that line's been
crossed a long time ago if you look at the
way like Twitter functions, the way that people just exist
in their bubbles and are happy to like people don't
want to hear anything else, and with the most hostility

(22:56):
coming from like both extreme mends. Yeah, I don't know
how to.

Speaker 1 (22:59):
Get this problem.

Speaker 2 (23:00):
This is something that you know, we've thought about a
lot the past eight years, but certainly longer.

Speaker 1 (23:06):
Well, I'll say this, you know, public schools can't solve
all of democracy's problem. You know, be a fool to
say otherwise. But if what we're doing is talking about
education itself, I think number one is that I think
our leaders need to understand better understand the dangers of
you know, vouchers for instance, Like right now and I'm
writing about this, like they think it's just a policy dispute,

(23:28):
and like, if you just look at the surface level,
it's like, well, who cares if we give some more
vouchers and that makes the most far reaches of our
party happy. But like I think sort of really stepping
back and appreciating how dangerous this is to our democracy
is step one, and that's hard, right, I'm talking about
teaching adults to see things differently than what they currently
see them. But as to our schools, I mean, I've

(23:49):
got a little bit of stiff medicine for both sides.
I mean, I do think that in the push for
more justice in our public schools, and I think we
do need. I mean, that's what I've devoted my career to.
I do think that, well, I don't think our schools
did any of the any of the awful stuff that
you know that the right has said, but I do
think that they maybe were not as open to people

(24:11):
disagreeing with them as they should have been. And what
I really mean is in the push for justice, I
think there was a bit of shutting down conversation, not
teaching children to reach their own conclusions, but giving them
conclusions and expecting them to reach them. And so one
of the things I'm working on my new book is that, like,
I really think we have to rethink how we teach history,

(24:31):
you know, how we teach literature. Maybe not so much literature.
I think our literature teachers are pretty good, but rethink
how we teach those things such that we are not
committed to our children reaching particular conclusions. What we're committed
to is our children engaging in free and open thought
amongst themselves, right with hopefully an adult in the room
that can you establish some guidelines. But I think, you know,

(24:56):
public education didn't do that very well five years ago,
ten years ago, go thirty years ago when I was there.
But I think in this moment of cultural fracture, we
do really have to commit to free speech, open debate, inquiry,
listening harder, thinking harder, right, not just bullet points, not
just bullet points.

Speaker 2 (25:17):
What would cross the rubicon for you? People throw around
the term constitutional crisis? What would actually happen that would
make that something that you that you would be like
this like it, like like it is happening? What is
that like make or break moment?

Speaker 1 (25:33):
You wanted me to imagine a realistic one or just
sort of give you some sort of example that makes sense.

Speaker 2 (25:37):
No, like like, what what would that be like for you?
Because like, I think everyone has their own personal rubric
for like like what is too far in my mind?
Like what is something that's like this is this is
completely unacceptable? And for some people this this may have
already happened but like in terms of like legitimate like
constitutional crisis, what is that for you?

Speaker 1 (26:00):
Well, let's just rewind and this is I guess an
example of why you know, someone still got their finger
in the dam, holding back holding it together. You know,
the President of the United States asserted unilateral authority over
the entire federal budget when he came into office, right,
he does not have that power. Federal district court and

(26:22):
joined it. He then backed down from that. Right, but
let's say he didn't back down. It's like, well, okay,
you know maybe you know as a district court, but
if the United States Supreme Court or Court of Appeals
told the president you lack the authority to to quest
of those funds, and he still did it. So just

(26:42):
the budget, that's it. Just the budget, you know, just
the belief that the president can spend our money however
he wants, with no with no constraint, and that would
be crossing the rubicon. Now, I'll tell you. And this
is why you know you had to kind of be
like constant a law professor, or well, you don't have
to be a constitutional law professor, but you've been following it.

(27:04):
It's like, you know, I have been alarmed, And this
goes back, this isn't just a Trump problem, Like I
was alarmed with the NCLB waivers. Probably nobody in this
even knows what I'm talking about, right, like, you know,
a decade ago, not that like President Obama was like
going to take over the country, but alarmed that somehow
another he thinks he can do this, Like why is

(27:24):
he even testing the boundaries this way?

Speaker 2 (27:26):
Like executive power has been steadily expanding certainly.

Speaker 1 (27:30):
Yeah, and so but I was like, you know, you
can kind of get it. There was some gray area
this where he kind of need to be a constitutional
law professor to kind of figure out why that was
such a big deal. But when Biden, I mean think back,
and again I don't begrudge people needing their debts relief,
but when President Biden effectively asserted the power to allocate

(27:51):
federal dollars to pay off debts, that was like, you know,
half of the discretionary funds of the entire federal government,
Like that's a big move to just yeah, I can
commit this nation to a fifty percent increase it's in
its fiscal outlays tomorrow. That's not constitutional democracy. But now right,
we have a present going even further than that. But

(28:13):
he liked Biden at least thus far, stepped back at
least from the district court right when the court said can't.
So it's really that sort of defying of the court
at that point. Yeah, they've all been pushing the boundaries.
He's pushed them further thus far. They've all complied with
judicial orders, but it would be the refusal to comply
with judicial order.

Speaker 2 (28:32):
I mean, I guess the main difference there for me
relates back to what you said about acting in good faith.
Something that people on the left I think get mad
about sometimes is Democrats seeming a complete commitment to acting
in good faith sometimes. And it certainly appears that that
Trump is willing to push a little bit farther, especially

(28:54):
in terms of like tests for loyalty. And it's at
a certain point, like if he does something really bad
at least for these next two years, like I don't
see a way that he'll get like impeached or removed
from office, Like certainly not with this to send it,
not with this Congress, like that check and balance just
no longer is viable due to the last election, and

(29:16):
acting with that popular mandate has I think given them
a bit more courage on their side to go, you know,
a little bit further, play, a little bit more fast
and loose some of these like checks and balances than
what we've like previously seen. But this is certainly still
still developing.

Speaker 1 (29:35):
Well, the thing that really sort of jumps out at me,
and I was telling some you know, several reporters, is
that you're right, he's pushing it further. It looks scarier.
But part of why it's scarier, to be quite honest, well,
I think it's scarier is that he's doing it out
in the open. I mean, on some level, some of
this stuff like telling people to cook up crazy plans

(29:56):
to do this that like presidents have been doing that,
like you know, Nixon was, Yeah, Nixon was paranoid. He
was like, like, this is what presidents do, but it's
not appropriate to do it in public, right, you do
it behind closed doors. You know, offer some plausible rational
rationalization for what you're doing, and you know, you minimize it,
act like it's no big deal. What's startling here is

(30:17):
that he is out in the open expressing his designs
to us, giving us the sort of thoughts, and that's
very unusual, and it does show that what's acceptable from
public officials is much different now because had, you know,
had Nixon shared his designs with the American public, he
wouldn't have made it as long as he did, you know,

(30:37):
and probably true of a lot of other presidents, they
would have been gone. So what's actually acceptable as public
behavior has clearly changed, what's acceptable as a policy agenda
has clearly changed. And so he's just putting it out there.
He's putting his dirty laundry out there, and people are like, oh,
this is normal.

Speaker 2 (30:53):
Unless you have anything else to add. Do you want
to talk about where people can find you and your writing?

Speaker 1 (30:59):
Yeah, I mean I'm on Blue Sky more recently, still
on on Twitter, I sort of have, you know, just
lots of friends on there, so I'm still there. But
to me too, yeah, you know, I'm not on there
as often as I used to be. You know, I
give up blogging a long time ago, so, you know,
as we drink out of a fire hydrant, you know,
I spent a lot of time just trying to explain

(31:20):
basic things about public education to reporters. But you can
find me there. I'm a professor of law at the
University of South Carolina, and like I said, you know,
dangerous learning just came out, you know, a week or
so ago, really helping us, I think, helping us to
see this current moment through a long lens of war
on black equality, black freedom, and to be quite honest,

(31:40):
just free and open debate. We've had those wars before
and and we scarily are having them again.

Speaker 3 (31:46):
All right, thank as much, Thank you. It Could Happen
Here is a production of cool Zone Media. For more
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