Dan Mitchinson: US Correspondent on Trump's pledge to abolish the Department of Education

President-elect Donald Trump has pledged to shut down the Department of Education, a promise he made during his campaign. The President to be is also made Time’s person of the year.

Biden commutes roughly 1,500 sentences and pardons 39 people in the biggest single-day act of clemency. His son Hunter Biden is among those pardoned.

Gen Z to the rescue? How malls are winning over a generation of in-person shoppers.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Dan Mitchison is our US correspondent with US A something
non Dan, Good afternoon, Hey Ryan. How can Jim Carrey
be poor? It makes no sense to me. He's started
in so many big movies.

Speaker 2 (00:10):
How can anybody think Jim Carrey is really that funny?
I mean, I can think back to maybe the days
of in Living Color, where he was amusing when he
was on TV. But he's just one of those people
that I kind of scratch my head and go, well, Okay,
I guess it's sort of an acquiet taste I loved Aspen.

Speaker 1 (00:24):
Sure, let's go to Trump. Speaking of funny, I mean
a lot of people say he is, but he wants
to shut down the Department of Education and still gets
times Person of the Year.

Speaker 2 (00:36):
Well he did. Yeah, that was announced today and this
is the second time that he's received that. Barack Obama
has been named twice before as well. Out last year.
I mean to tell you how much we kind of
swung back and forth on his last year was Taylor Swift,
who was named Person of the Year. But yeah, he's
pledged to abolish the Department of Education. On the campaign trail,

(00:57):
he pointed out that this is kind of a symbol
of federal overreach, and you can argue that maybe there
is a little too much government involved, But there are
a lot of programs that parents and kids rely on
over here, Programs that helped children with mild or severe
disabilities that would be shut down, that would impact hundreds
of thousands or more of family. So what do these
people do right now? So I think there are a

(01:18):
lot of people that are nervous and they're concerned about this.
But we've also got to remember, we've got a president
here who can only serve one more term right now,
So a lot of these ideas of his may end
up getting caught in, you know, political backlasher or slowed
down by Democrats.

Speaker 1 (01:30):
Biden commuting more people's sentences fifteen hundred apparently the largest
single day pardon from any president in modern history, and
thirty nine people in the biggest single day act of
claiman say, how's it going down? I mean, this is
sort of standard practice, really, isn't it at threoutgoing presidents.

Speaker 2 (01:48):
Yeah, you're right, I mean this is customary for a
president to grant, you know, this kind of mercy at
the end of his term. He's using the powers of
the office to wipe away the record. So it's customary
also for the party that's not to complain about what
the president's doing, and Republicans are doing that right now.
Some Democrats are. These people range from thirty five I
think are thirty six years old to seventy five, half

(02:09):
for men, half or women. And as you mentioned in
the World Wires, they've a lot of these people are
out that they've been convicted of nonviolent crimes, you know,
drug offenses or fraud or theft, and the White House
has said they have turned their lives around. But I
think you're right also that we're going to have a
lot more of these before he steps down from office,
and I would imagine the last forty eight hours or
so of his presidency there's going to be a few

(02:30):
controversial names that are going to be tossed about.

Speaker 1 (02:32):
What's going on with these shopping malls. Apparently gen Z
is coming back to the shop, well probably visiting the
shops for the first time in their lives.

Speaker 2 (02:40):
Well, yeah, you know, if you grew up in the
eighties or in the nineties, I mean, malls were where
you hung out after school and you went shopping on
the weekends, and you know, your parents dragged you to
get closed for back to school, and then online came along,
and then Amazon came along after that and these malls
started to die. But something's happening and it's kind of
a head scratcher because gen Z, I mean, despite growing up,

(03:03):
you know, with digital and not having a lot of
impersonal friends, they want to get out now. They want
to shop as their baby boom or grandparents did. There's
a new survey that just came out and they're saying
they're looking for more of a social connection. They want
instant gratification and moments of course to post on social media.
So I think this is good for them because they're

(03:23):
interacting with real people and not just online. And I
think it's great too for the malls too, because a
lot of these local businesses had a tough time since
the pandemic and we're forced to close down not only
because of that, but because of skyrocketing rents.

Speaker 1 (03:38):
Thanks so much for that, Dan, danm it just and
now us correspondent. For more from Hither Duplessy Allen Drive,
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