November 18, 2024: Trump Nominates RFK Jr. as HHS Secretary. Kennedy's Potential Role, Policies, and Background. PLUS Answering Your Questions About Dismantling the Education Dept., and More.
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Welcome back to Unbiased. Today is Monday, November 18th, and this is your daily news rundown. In today's episode, we'll touch on Trump's nomination of RFK Jr. We'll then talk about the education department and what dismantling that could look like. That's actually where the bulk of this episode will be. And then

we'll finish per usual with some quick hitters. As always, if you love what you hear today, you are always welcomed and encouraged to leave my show a review on your preferred listening platform. It really helps me, so thank you very much in advance. And now without further ado, let's get into today's stories.

Since we last spoke, Trump announced a few more executive office selections and cabinet nominations. So let's talk about one specifically, which has been highly, highly requested by all of you. And that is Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who Trump nominated for the position of HHS Secretary, the head of the Department of Health and Human Services.

This is a cabinet position that requires Senate confirmation. So let's talk about the role of the HHS secretary, and then we'll get into Kennedy personally. As we discussed last week, the heads of each department oversee the agencies and offices within that department. So if confirmed, Kennedy would oversee the CDC, and if not, he would oversee the CDC.

the FDA, NIH, National Institutes of Health, Office of the Surgeon General, which is essentially the country's doctor, the Indian Health Service, the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration, and many others. Kennedy would also manage Medicaid and Medicare policies.

carry out new health related legislation and executive orders, advise Trump on what health related legislation should be signed. He'll also have a role in the quality of food here in America through his oversight of the FDA. He'll have a similar role in drugs,

that are brought to market and taken off the market. And yes, this includes vaccines. Now, that's not an exhaustive list of responsibilities of the HHS secretary, but that is a good starting point. So let's talk about Kennedy himself and what he plans to do if confirmed. Kennedy is the son of Senator Robert F. Kennedy and the nephew of President John F. Kennedy, both of whom were assassinated.

Kennedy himself, though, does not have a big background in politics, but rather environmental causes and children's welfare. He founded the Waterkeeper Alliance, which is the world's largest clean water advocacy group, and he also founded the Children's Health Defense, which is a membership organization that addresses childhood chronic disease and toxic exposures.

Many call the Children's Health Defense an anti-vax organization, but its stated vision is, quote, a world free of childhood chronic health conditions caused by environmental exposures, end quote. As a lawyer, Kennedy was on the trial team in very famous environmental cases like those against Monsanto in 2018 and DuPont in 2019.

In his earlier years, he dealt with drug addiction himself. He was ultimately arrested for heroin possession in 1983, thereafter entered a treatment program, passed the bar exam, and it was while he was on probation when he began his environmental work in New York.

He started off as a volunteer with the then Hudson River Fishermen's Association, and that was sort of his launching pad for this career that really centered around environmental safety. In 2013, he was arrested in D.C. while protesting the Keystone XL Pipeline, which was opposed by many indigenous groups throughout the United States and Canada, many indigenous groups which he actually defended in various environmental cases.

He entered the ring of politics when he sought the Democratic presidential nomination in 2023, but then he announced he would run as an independent instead, and eventually he did suspend his campaign and endorse Trump. As far as what Kennedy plans to do if he's confirmed by the Senate, he has said he wants good testing, first of all. So he said, quote, what I want is good testing, good safety testing for vaccines, good efficacy testing so that

everybody knows and can make informed consent about whether they want this product or not, whether it's good for their age group, whether it's good for their cohort, whether it's good for them, end quote. And speaking of consent, he said, quote, my vaccination policy will not take away a vaccine from anyone who wants to access them. My only issue is they should not be mandated, end quote. And we will touch on his vaccine stance specifically more in a

Kennedy also wants to remove toxic chemicals from our food and water. He wants to take specifically fluoride out of water, which has been linked to ailments like arthritis, bone fractures, bone cancer, IQ loss, neurodevelopmental diseases, and thyroid disease, though health experts have called fluoridation one of the public health's greatest achievements.

Kennedy wants to remove chemicals and additives in our food, saying, quote,

What they're ignoring is a food supply that's loaded with high fructose corn syrup and seed oils and hundreds of artificial additives and flavors. We're going to change the subsidies so that everyone can afford safe and wholesome food. We're going to get industry money out of the government so that consumers and doctors can actually trust our agencies again, end quote.

And that last point speaks to his desire to remove corruption and end conflicts of interest, which he has also been very vocal about. He also wants to ban pharmaceutical advertising on TV, citing the fact that there are only two countries that allow direct-to-consumer prescription drug advertisements, and that is the United States and New Zealand.

The day after the election, Kennedy wrote on X, quote, President Trump has asked me to do three things. Clean up the corruption in our government health agencies, return those agencies to their rich tradition of gold standard evidence-based science, and make America healthy again by ending the chronic disease epidemic.

End quote. Now, I know a lot of you had questions about his vaccine policies specifically. So here is what he has said, aside from what I have already covered, which is that he wouldn't ban or block vaccines, but rather give the public a choice as to whether to take them.

He has stated that he does not think the concept of vaccines is bad, but rather that vaccines need to have more stringent safety testing standards and that it's what's in modern vaccines that are the problem. He has discussed a possible link between autism as well as other neurological conditions and

including his own neurological condition, spasmodic dysphonia, and modern vaccines. But in speaking with the Science Journal in 2017, Kennedy said, quote,

I think vaccines save lives. But we are also seeing an explosion in neurodevelopmental disorders, and we ought to be able to do a cost-benefit analysis and see what's causing them. We ought to have robust, transparent science and an independent regulatory agency. Nobody is trying to get rid of vaccines here. I just want safe vaccines.

end quote. And I do have that 2017 interview linked for you in the sources. So that's a little bit about RFK Jr., his background, his potential role, and his views. We will cover a couple of other picks tomorrow, but after that, I think we're done covering picks. I do want to note that I have covered 11 other picks throughout the last week. So if you do want to hear about any other individuals, tune into my episodes from last week.

In some other news, non-election related news, it feels like forever since we've done that. The family of Malcolm X has filed a lawsuit against the NYPD, the federal government, and the estates of those that worked in the federal government at the time of his 1995 assassination in New York City, accusing the defendants of playing a role in his murder. A little bit of background here. Malcolm X was a political activist, most known for his work as a leader during the civil rights movement.

He was a minister, teacher, human rights activist, and founding member of the Organization of Afro-American Unity and Muslim Mosque Incorporated. He fought against racism, colonialism, and oppression, and advocated for Black people to engage in self-determination. He was also the nation of Islam's leading spokesperson for a period of time, but eventually broke away, finding its philosophy to be racist.

Afterwards, he continued to be a prominent spokesperson in the civil rights movement, combining religious leadership and political action. Now, while Martin Luther King Jr. was also a minister and civil rights activist around this same time, the two actually did not see eye to eye on everything. In fact, King Jr. was a minister and civil rights activist around this same time.

King wrote a letter to Malcolm's widow after his assassination, which said in part, quote, while we did not always see eye to eye on methods to solve the race problem, I always had deep affection for Malcolm and felt that he had a great ability to put his finger on the existence and root of the

Malcolm had different perspectives from MLK Jr. Most notably, MLK Jr. encouraged nonviolent protests, whereas Malcolm was critical of this approach. He felt it was a slow approach, and he argued that Black people should protect themselves, quote, by any means necessary, end quote.

The two men, MLK Jr. and Malcolm, only met once. It was a very brief encounter to shake hands and say hello on Capitol Hill. But just weeks later, on February 21st, 1965, three men opened fire inside the Audubon Ballroom in Manhattan as Malcolm was starting to speak and killed him.

Three men were ultimately convicted, but two were recently exonerated in 2021 after investigators reconsidered the case, found that there was inconclusive evidence, and that authorities had held back information. That third man who has had his conviction stand, he confessed at trial and he said at the trial and has maintained that those two other men were innocent.

But in this new lawsuit, the family of Malcolm alleges that the NYPD, in coordination with the federal government and those that worked within the federal government, had knowledge of threats to Malcolm's life before his assassination, yet failed to intervene on his behalf.

Furthermore, that the NYPD, in coordination with the federal defendants, intentionally removed their officers from inside the ballroom where Malcolm X was ultimately assassinated. The lawsuit also says that the defendants caused the arrest of Malcolm's security detail days before the assassination to leave him more vulnerable, that the defendants had personnel, including undercover personnel, in the ballroom during the assassination, and that the defendants'

failed to protect Malcolm from known harm, and that they actually encouraged the assassination of Malcolm X and thereafter engaged in a decades-long effort to cover up their wrongdoing. The family is seeking $100 million, and I do have that lawsuit linked for you in the sources of this episode if you are interested in reading it. Let's take a quick break here. When we come back, I'll answer your most frequently asked questions about the education department, and we'll do some quick hitters.

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Welcome back from the break. It is time now to get into the discussion you have all been so patiently waiting for, and that is the idea of dismantling the education department. This is the second of two highly, highly requested topics since the election, the first being the future of LGBTQ rights under a Trump administration, which I discussed last Wednesday, so be sure to tune into that episode if you have questions about that. Per a

Per usual, the best way for me to address these highly requested topics is by simply answering some of your questions. That way I know that I'm touching on all the right points. So last week, I asked all of you on Instagram to submit your questions and I chose the four most frequently asked. But before we get into these questions and answers, let's take a few notes.

Number one, dismantling the Education Department would require an act of Congress. Congress would have to be on board with this. That means 60 senators at least to get past the cloture vote in the Senate. 51 senators to pass the bill if it even gets to a vote in the Senate. 218 House representatives on board. And as we'll talk about in a bit, this wouldn't be easy.

Number two, second note, in my November 6th episode, I talk about the fact that dismantling the Education Department is not a new idea. Republicans have campaigned on it since the department was created in 1979, and this is because they feel the department violates the Constitution and creates, quote unquote, federal bloat. However, it has become a larger topic of discussion recently because the issue was not only part of Trump's campaign, but also mentioned in Project 2025.

And the third and final note I want to make is this. As I said in that November 6th episode, we don't know what dismantling the education department would actually look like. Trump has said in the past he would consider merging the department with other existing departments, but again, we just don't know. I cannot trust that enough because obviously we don't have clear-cut answers to these questions.

Despite much being unknown, let's try to answer the questions. So I picked the four most frequently asked, which were, will public schools still receive funding? How would dismantling the department affect Title I and IDEA? What does dismantling the department mean for teachers' pensions?

And what are the pros and cons of dismantling? Let's start with whether public schools would still receive funding if the education department were dismantled. Yes, they would. And here is why. Public schools currently receive funding from local, state, and federal funds. In fact, and many people don't know this, federal funds typically account for roughly just 10% of school funding. And the rest comes from state and local taxes.

But of those federal funds, only a fraction actually comes from the education department. Yes, some of the funding comes from the education department, but also from the Department of Labor, Department of Defense, Department of Agriculture, etc. With that said, the reason the funding from the education department specifically is so important is because it's those funds that support students at risk for not graduating high school. So we're talking Title I schools, students with disabilities, English language learners, etc.,

So that's actually a good segue into the next question. But to be clear, yes, public schools would still receive funding even if the education department were dismantled. The next question is how would dismantling the education department affect Title I and IDEA for students in K-12 schools? So a little bit of background here first, just so everyone's on the same page. Title I is a federal program that provides funding to schools for students from low-income families.

IDEA is a federal law, the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act, that governs special education services and policies for kids. So these are two of the biggest federal funding programs for K-12 schools when it comes to the education department. Together, these programs provide K-12 schools with about $28 billion per year. But keep in mind that these federal funding programs predated the creation of the education department. Before

Before the Education Department was even created, the federal government was giving funding to schools to support low-income families and special education services. So to give you some dates, Title I was created in 1965. IDEA was enacted in 1975. The Education Department was created in 1979. So it begs the question, where did the funding come from before? Well, the Education Department was actually the result of the splitting of the Department of Health, Education, and Welfare.

The Department of Health, Education, and Welfare became two different departments in 1979, the Education Department and the Department of Health and Human Services. So before the creation of the Education Department, the funding for these programs came from the Department of Health, Education, and Welfare, which means that if the Education Department were dissolved,

the funding would likely shift to another department. In fact, the Project 2025 leadership for mandate, not to say this is what's going to happen under Trump's administration, but I do just want to give you some insight from a perspective that, you know, is on the same side of dismantling the education department. Project 2025 says that Title I funding for high poverty schools should be turned into vouchers and then phased out over time, while the money from IDEA, the disability law, should be given directly to the

So again, not saying that's what would happen, just giving you an idea on that side of the political spectrum, which despite wanting to do away with the education department, wouldn't do away with this type of funding, but instead shift how that funding is processed.

So we have a few options here. And again, this is all hypothetical. Either the education department remains intact, funding stays the same, nothing changes, or the education department is dismantled and funding for these types of programs is either dispersed through other departments and doesn't change or dispersed through other means and may or may not change.

Now, some of you are going to ask, why are you so convinced that these federal programs like Title I and IDEA would not be entirely dissolved if the education department is dismantled? Here's why. In the past, Congress has consistently resisted the idea to even

cut this type of funding at all. So it's highly unlikely that Congress would do away with it completely. And this is on both sides of the aisle, by the way. When presidents have proposed cuts to the Education Department's budget in the past, Congress resisted and appropriated more than what the president asked for 71% of the time. That's according to an analysis from the Brookings Institution. And when Trump's first administration proposed

proposed cutting the department's budget, Congress, which was Republican-controlled at the time, both the House and Senate, ultimately increased funding. So hopefully that answers your question there. Now let's move on to teachers' pensions. This one is simple. Teachers' pensions will not be affected by a potential dismantling of the Education Department because the federal government is not responsible for teachers' pensions. Teachers' pensions are paid for by a combination of

of the teacher, their employer and the state. The amount paid for by the state varies by state. But all this to say that the dismantling of the education department would not have an effect on teachers' pensions. And then finally, pros and cons of dismantling the education department, or let's say arguments for and against.

These are no particular order, and this is definitely not an exhaustive list of arguments, but just some to get you thinking. For starters, those that tend to be in favor of dismantling the department tend to favor small government. Less is more for them, right? On top of that, because education isn't mentioned in the Constitution at all, proponents of dismantling say that this indicates the framers' intent to leave the issue of schooling and education to the states.

Along similar lines, some say that states are a source of innovation and the federal government distracts states from efforts to improve education and creates unnecessary bureaucracy. And then finally, they say that the department results in too much waste due to misuse and fraud. And they cite two reports from the nonpartisan government accountability office, which has repeatedly found that the department, quote, lacks a common system to track and manage potential misuse of funds.

End quote. On the other side of the coin, those in favor of keeping the education department like the idea of having one department to handle civil rights laws, student loans, FAFSA, the IDEA law we talked about, all of these things being handled in one place by one department. It's also a way to ensure schools are complying with civil rights laws because their federal funding is conditional on compliance. So if schools don't have federal funding at risk, they're not as incentivized to follow the law.

And then finally, there's just a lot of uncertainty surrounding the idea. Sure, funding might shift to other departments, as we've talked about, but there's always the what-ifs, right? What if it doesn't shift? What if the funding completely disappears? Who handles student loans? There's just a lot of unknown and uncertainty. So keeping the education department would ease concerns and keep things as they are.

Now, before we move on to quick hitters, I do just want to say this to give you a little more peace of mind about the situation. Let's go back to the idea that Congress has to pass a bill to dismantle the Education Department. Obviously, as I said, the idea of dismantling the Education Department is more popular among Republicans, not so popular among Democrats.

Given the narrow margins in Congress, the good majority, in fact, almost all Republicans would have to be on board with dismantling. But some Republican lawmakers actually have good reason for not wanting to dismantle the education department. If you look at the states that rely the most on Title I funding as a share of their per pupil education spending, it is the red states that get the largest share. Because of that, there's not only opposition from Democrats, but also congressional Republicans.

because doing away with that funding would affect their own constituents.

And actually in the past, Reagan, so Reagan made a similar promise to do away with the education department just one year after it was created. But he eventually backed away from that idea after opposition from Congress. And then more recently, Trump proposed merging the education department and the labor department into one agency. I briefly touched on that. But that proposal also didn't go anywhere despite Republicans controlling both the House and the Senate. So I'm not here to say that dismantling won't happen.

I'm just here to say that there's a lot below the surface of the idea that we have to take into account. Now, let's finish with just a few quick hitters. Biden has erased certain limitations on Ukraine's use of long range missiles provided by the United States, which allows Ukraine to use the missiles inside Russia. If used, it would be the first missile.

time Ukraine uses United States long-range missiles inside of Russia. And according to a senior U.S. official, Biden's decision was spurred by the Russian decision to invite roughly 10,000 North Korean soldiers into the fight against Ukraine. Putin has previously said that the U.S. approval of such missile strikes would constitute an act of war, but has yet to comment on Biden's recent announcement.

And on Friday, a federal appeals court granted special counsel Jack Smith's request to pause an appeal of Trump's classified documents case until December 2nd. This is in line with what we've talked about previously, which is that Smith is trying to figure out how to wind down these cases against Trump now that Trump has won the election.

The case was originally dismissed in the lower court after a judge found that Smith did not have the authority to bring charges against Trump as special counsel. But Smith thereafter appealed that dismissal, and that appeal is the one Smith is now asking the court to pause. And we'll likely see a dismissal of that appeal on or near December 2nd when this pause expires.

In an update to an episode last week, Spirit Airlines has filed for bankruptcy. This will come as no surprise to those of you that listen to the podcast regularly, but the bankruptcy filing is a result of the failed merger between Spirit and Frontier Airlines, as well as mounting losses on affordable debt and increased competition in the low-budget airline sectors.

Spirit will continue to operate as it restructures its debt, and it is confident it will come up with a bankruptcy plan that makes sense for its creditors. However, it is still possible that Spirit will end up being bought out by another airline or forced to liquidate. And finally, some relatively lighthearted news, AAA has released its latest projections on how busy the Thanksgiving travel season might be, predicting seven

79.9 million Americans will drive, fly, or take some other form of transportation 50 miles or further. This year's projection would be a 2% increase or an increase of 1.7 million travelers compared to last year. However, it's a bit misleading because it is worth noting that while this year's projection is higher, AAA also expanded its window for the Thanksgiving holiday. It now goes from Tuesday, November 26th

through December 2nd, which is the Monday after Thanksgiving. Historically, AAA only looked at the day before Thanksgiving until the Sunday after Thanksgiving. So there's an extra two days in there. That is what I have for you today. And I do just want to say, I know we haven't done critical thinking in a minute. We'll get back to it soon. Hopefully even tomorrow. I'm just waiting for the podcast to get back to its regular daily news format and not these, you know, big chunks of information I've had to throw in there. So have a great night and I will talk to you tomorrow.