David Bernhardt & Accountability For The Failing Administrative State
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All right, boys and girls, we are back with another edition of the Ben Domenech podcast brought to you by Fox News. You can check out all of our podcasts at foxnewspodcast.com. I hope that you will rate, review, and subscribe to this one and share it with some friends if you find it of interest to

Today, I have an interview with David Bernhardt. He is most recently the former Secretary of the Interior for Donald Trump. He is someone who's been within the world of natural resource management over the course of his career, lengthy career in government in a number of different roles.

mostly within the Interior Department. And he's someone who has a particular expertise when it comes to his new book, You Report to Me, Accountability for the Failing Administrative State, in which he outlines the different experiences that he had working within government and seeing how much the battle within that takes place between bureaucrats and those who are charged as political appointees with leading the path on policy and so many other fronts,

It plays out in administration after administration. This is the story and the different responses that you get from those bureaucracies to particularly Republican administrations is a major point of concern. David Bernhardt coming up next.

Pull up a chair and join me, Rachel Campos Duffy, and me, former U.S. Congressman Sean Duffy, as we share our perspective on the discussions happening at kitchen tables across America. Download from the kitchen table, the Duffys, at foxnewspodcasts.com or wherever you download podcasts. David Bernhardt, thank you so much for taking the time to join me today. Thank you for having me, Ben. I really appreciate it. So I've read your book, You Report to Me. I'm

Do you feel like most bureaucrats in America feel that they report to the American people?

Well, I think that many do, but many do not. And so that is why I sat down and wrote the book. I think at the end of the day, it's unbelievable if you work in government, and I've now spent over 12 years in one particular agency in a whole different set of responsibilities. And what has led...

the government to move from where we might have learned how the government worked in grade school.

to what we have today is quite a difference. And I wanted, number one, to lay that out for the American people and have them have a chance to see some of my own experiences and vignettes, but also offer some suggestions of how we might get right back to that place that we can get to, because I don't think it's that far away in all honesty.

I don't seem to recall the section of I'm just a bill on Capitol Hill that dealt with the administrative state. That seems to be left out a lot of the discussion about it. What do you think is the thing that, you know, to your point that Americans may need more information about in terms of how government actually works as opposed to what they may have been taught in grade school?

Yeah, I really think that, number one, most Americans probably simply aren't aware or are frankly that interested. And in fairness to them, look, they have a lot going on in their lives and they want one thing. They want better results.

for themselves and their communities from their government. And they simply expect that it should work. And frankly, it should work. My big concern is that over time,

Congress has written broadly defined and vague laws, turned that over to the executive branch to fill in and clarify gaps. And then the courts have allowed them to, those agencies to really defer, the courts have deferred to the agency's judgment. And then on top of that, as our government has grown,

to more than 2.2 million civil servants working in the government.

The civil servants have forgotten in some instances that, hey, there's a president who's elected, irrespective of party, he's chosen or she's chosen by the American people. And we may or may not like that person individually. But to the extent that there's policy discretion in the law, that rests with the president, whomever they are. And the job of the civil servants is to be the meritocracy that provides hope

for policymakers to move forward. And at times, it can feel like they're working in the reverse.

You related an anecdote to that point late in the book that I flagged. One of the more disheartening days of my public service occurred during the Bush administration, right after a congressional hearing. Senator Daniel Inouye of Hawaii, who I had greatly admired for decades, approached me about the subject of the hearing. David, he said, this issue was too complicated for Congress to deal with. How much of this is motivated by

that inclination and how much of it is motivated by a more subversive or cunning inclination which says I would rather not deal with the complexities of these issues I would rather outsource it and then complain about it because that's a good way for me to hold on to my job well Ben that is a very insightful question and that that that vignette that you describe is

was devastating to me personally because the issue at hand was something that only Congress –

could actually fix. And I realized that, you know, clearly, Senator Inouye was telling me they weren't going to, you know, he was being as nice as possible about it. And, and the truth of the matter is, that really is translated into this is a problem, but it's not big enough for us to deal with right away, because Congress has

an ability to move really, really quickly when they want to. But your point is very, very, very

astute and accurate. At times, Congress would like the flexibility to be able to say, hey, we didn't have to get into the nuts and bolts of figuring this out. We just said generally, hey, you ought to work on this. And if the agency does a good or bad job, we will complain. And actually, the same thing happens at a high level with policymakers. I, when I was the general count, the solicitor, which is essentially the chief legal officer at the Department of the Interior,

You can't imagine how disappointed a high-level political appointee would be when I would tell them they had the discretion to do whatever they wanted on this particular matter because they felt much more comfortable –

Being able to say to a constituency of some sort, oh, I couldn't do it. My hands were tied rather than I didn't want to do it. And we have policymakers and I try and point this out in the book. Policymakers have often enabled.

The behavior that then comes to bite the American people back by giving authority to folks within the agency so that they would not actually be held accountable for the decision that they made or that should be made. The Department of the Interior's duties for the secretary –

are that the secretary supervises all functions of the department. And I've always thought that Congress was really wise in writing it that way. You know, supervision to me says two things. Number one, it says it's an active activity. It's not a ribbon cutting or just passively sitting there. You're in charge of supervising all functions of

And two, it signifies an element of accountability. Hey, you know, I'm on this. And when's the last time you saw something happen in the executive branch and saw the leaders of the organization step forward and say, hey –

We blew it. We're going to take accountability for it. You know, what they do is they look around and say, I didn't even know I ran that agency. Who would have thought that would happen? And the reality is the job is to take accountability. I'll give you another vignette.

When COVID hit across the country, I was at the Department of the Interior responsible for the National Park Service. And one of the things that we had to deal with was after the few days of the stop the spread, are we going to keep them open? How are we going to manage them? And there was tremendous tension.

And I was pushed to find a way to close the national parks. And as a matter of fact, some parks suggested that they provide video cameras to their employees and lock the gates so that they could take videos and then just put them up so everybody can see them. And I sat down with the director.

Right. That's exactly what I thought. We sat down with the audio listeners. I just put my head in my hands. So I sat down with the X, some expert public health officials that I'd asked to be teach me every single thing I could know, learn about COVID. And I said to them, I'm going to make the decision. I want all of your information, but I will own the decision.

And ultimately, I became very confident that there was very little communability of this virus outside. So I said, we're going to change the way the internal practices work. We're going to keep the parks open. Now, that led to over 200 million people going to the parks in 2020 that might have not otherwise had that as an avenue. But you have to have the willingness to say to folks, hey, I'll own the decision.

I'll own it. I'll take the heat for it and I'll move forward. And one of the things that I felt really fortunate about in working with President Trump is, you know, he gave me clear direction and then allowed me to move forward and be accountable. And I think all of us need to recognize that that's a big part of the job of all public servants is accepting a little bit of accountability. I'm going to have a little cul-de-sac here because I want to get back to the discussion of the bureaucracy. But you bring up the national parks.

I'm curious a little bit about your perspective on the parks and how they're functioning currently and whether they're fulfilling the kind of

uh, American functions that we would like them to in terms of drawing people to them. Uh, you know, there've been all these reports, you know, in, uh, recent years of the kind of, uh, the, the parks that are super popular where, you know, you have to kind of line up or get a ticket or have a reservation in order to get in, uh, because of, of the number of people who flock to them. Uh, and then other parks that essentially go, uh,

rarely visited, you know, never really having any kind of engagement. I know that an enormous amount of American land is owned by the federal government and is under protection.

Should we have parks that are as sizable as they currently are? And should we do anything differently when it comes to the parks that we currently have in order to either encourage, you know, people making a greater use of them or to sort of say, you know, look, there's certain parts of the park system that –

don't actually function in a way that is designed to help the communities that are nearby. Perhaps that land should be used for other purposes. Well, first off, let me back up a little bit and explain to folks that the federal government does own a massive amount of land in the United States. The Department of the Interior by itself managed about one in every five acres of

of land in the United States. And that land, frankly, is administered by a number of different agencies, the national parks on one hand, the Fish and Wildlife Service on another. And there's also land that's just called, you know, used to be called public domain land, but it's a land of multiple uses. And so, you know, my view of the size of the national parks is

is often distinct from my view of the ownership of federal lands because Congress has specifically said these particular areas are

merit a specific designation as parks. And so I think that we have to recognize that like that is a status that has been often, you know, blessed by communities, sod in Congress, and they are particular places.

That's different than should those places be open, accessible, and valued. And my simple view of that is public land, that it's accessible of all sorts, places.

plays a great role in helping and fostering communities, fostering a love of the outdoors. And so I am a proponent for ensuring that there's access to these properties. I'm also a believer that there are many in both the advocacy space and within some of these agencies themselves that would like to minimize the number of people that

have an opportunity to visit and participate in the experience.

But I can tell you, I still remember to this day being a young child and elementary school age and getting to crawl in a Kiva in Mesa Verde. And what that did to inspire me, not only in the moment, but to learn about these ancient people that fascinated me. And so I'm a believer that these parks in particular can be used to inspire others.

learning, inspire history, there is also an effort at times to really try and prioritize what should be taught in these educational efforts. And I think we really should skip, you know, stick to the script of what actually happened in these places. But

But, but those are, that's probably more of a cul-de-sac than you wanted to go on. No, no, no, no. I have another, I have another question before we get out of the cul-de-sac, which is this. Okay. I have now, I've now done two pieces profiling. They're not out yet, but I've gone and done interviews and that kind of thing, profiling some rural members of the house and Senate and both of them separately and independently raise the issue of,

illegal marijuana growers using federal land in order to grow their stash. I was just curious if that was something that came up in your time at Interior as an issue that was affecting these parks. Because obviously, you know, with major swaths of land that people aren't typically going through on trails or the like,

That's something that is very much a viable way for illegal growers to do that kind of activity. Well, Ben, I'm going to really shock you. Not only was it an issue in the Trump administration, but if you were to go back, I remember working on it in the George W. Bush administration. Look, and to be fair, it's often a bigger challenge.

for some of the Forest Service areas because of the amount of water that they have. But there are interactions between hikers and people that are cultivating illegally or essentially guarding these things. People completely underestimate the amount of environmental damage

that illegal activity does up and down the border and in illegal cultivation of these marijuana and other things in other places. It is a very, very significant problem. And, you know, it's often areas that are very rarely, you know, policed in the way that a more urban area would be. Mm-hmm.

To get back to the subject of your book, one of the things that I think people assume is that, oh, yes, you have this large bureaucracy that's in Washington, but when a president comes in,

He's got all these political appointees and those are going to be people who he puts in charge of those bureaucracies. And they're going to have to answer to those political appointees and do things according to what they want, which is, you know, a trickle down effect of what we want in electing this president. Why doesn't it work that way? Well, it should and it can work that way, but it requires a couple of things. And I really try and highlight this in the book.

In the the my experience in the Trump administration, which was for four years, was very different than my eight in the George W. Bush administration. And I highlight this in the book that you could see a few days after the election of President Trump.

There were a series of articles and there was really an effort to highlight suggestions of, quote, resisting this new president. And and I think that that became somewhat acceptable. And so when I was in the Bush administration, you'd have folks that maybe didn't want to work with you in a way that was going to be helpful and you could work around them.

But I highlight in the book a whole series of different agencies, political appointees experiencing really activity that was counter to what they were trying to do. And that to me is a devastating effect of the civil service. But here's how you get around it.

Number one, you need clear policy direction from the president. Number two, you need to put people in place that understand these agencies and know how to understand the law, understand the processes and understand how to get facts. And then and then you really, really need.

um, to, to, I believe over time began to take away some of the self-inflicted, um,

efforts to not provide accountability. And so that requires some reform of the system. But I believe we can get right back there with a big nudge. But the reality is there's 3,000 political appointees, about 3,500, and there's 2.2 million civil servants. And so there's going to be some percentage at any given time

that are going to not want to be with the program. And that might be one thing when it's 1%. But when it's 2% or 5% or 10%, that ultimately is essentially frustrating the will of the American people. And we can't have that if we're going to have confidence in the outcome of elections.

You, I'm sure, are familiar with the the Russ vote approach advocated for from OMB in the latter days of the Trump administration that would have recategorized a number of different officials with authority over policy matters in order to make them fireable employees in a way that bureaucrats are not.

The Washington Post reacted to this by saying that it was an assault on democracy. They implied that it was a fascist approach. It was just the most over-the-top coverage. And Axios kind of did the same thing, but a little bit more muted, not delving into that kind of fascist kind of symbolism. How much of an effect would it actually have to increase the number of

fireable officials who could be replaced by the president by 50,000 or 80,000, depending on the estimate. Well, I think, um,

That what you're suggesting was was called Schedule F. And I think that could have had a significant effect. Rainey, you know, re-evaluating the relationship of unions in the disciplinary process or accountability to have an effect and frankly, eliminating some of the self-imposed mechanisms that.

that agencies have put on themselves in terms of dealing with accountability issues would have an effect. A lot of the reality is if you are, if you hold a few people accountable, the message gets across really quickly. When I was, when I was the solicitor at the department of the interior, I wanted to have an open door policy and you would think that's insignificant, right? I want everybody's door open.

And I had one person who really wanted to explain to me that he thought I didn't have the authority to tell him to keep his door open. And so ultimately, we went back and forth. And finally, I promised him a door and moved him to a cubicle. And after that, I had no resistance from anybody about my policies. And but in doing that.

I had to be willing to say I'm going to do it properly. I might have a complaint filed. I'll have to deal with that. And that infrastructure often leads managers to not even want to deal with accountability. And we just simply can't have that. But I think the Russ Vought approach was a great approach. It's not an attack on democracy. It's a restoration. And that's the bottom line.

You know, I'm curious, so you have this, you know, long, obviously, you know, very qualified record in terms of being somebody who, Ledge Affairs, Deputy Chief of Staff, Solicitor, Deputy Secretary, Secretary. It's kind of, you are in this lane within the work of Interior Affairs.

That's not typically the kind of person who actually gets to be a cabinet secretary. That's absolutely true. In this current administration, just to use one example, we have...

over at HHS, as I say, this is a former HHS Schedule C, someone who literally never interacted with health policy as the secretary, you know, before coming to Washington. They're a lawyer. They're somebody who, you know, didn't work in this area at all. They're just there to be a political rubber stamp on any policy that is put in front of them.

And, you know, I personally find that insulting because it's the exact opposite. It's like, you know, at least if you're going to embrace some kind of Wilsonian progressive approach, the administrative state, at least, you know, kind of do the very scant move of having someone who has some expertise in the area. But when it comes to that kind of role.

Doesn't it lead to a completely changed attitude toward the entity as opposed to just plucking a member of Congress, per se, and putting them on top of a department? Yeah.

I absolutely think it's a huge issue, Ben. And look, when I visited with the president about assuming the role of secretary, I had one big question for him. Well, I had two, actually. The one is the title of my book, Who Do I Report To? And he said, you report to me. But the second question I had was really important. It was, what do you expect out of a secretary?

Because I may not be the guy or the person for this job, depending on your expectations. So number one, that's important. Number two, I would not, believe me, you would not want me running the health HHS. It's a trillion dollar a year enterprise, right? And people need to understand that the problems we face in government are significant. Like if you believe that

The outcomes could be better for the American people. Why would you not try to find a qualified person? Because if you don't, all you're doing is turning over the agency to the folks that are in it. And they're wonderful people. But you know what they're not focused on? Doing better.

And we need to begin to get serious about the problems we face if we actually want to deal with them. And so the reason I wrote the book is to communicate that to the American people and say demand better, demand better. There are a lot of competent people that should be running things that aren't. And people should have the courage to communicate that they want better outcomes from the government. And it's time to give us –

It's time for them to get them. When it comes to the ways that the civil service, that bureaucrats interact with political appointees, one of the things that I observed in my brief time at HHS was the lengths to which they would go to slow walk policies or to work their way around doing the thing that maybe their political appointees above them wanted them to do.

What are some of the tactics? What are some of the approaches that are used by the, you know, entrenched bureaucratic system to get around those types of orders or direction from on high?

Well, in my book, You Report to Me, I lay out a whole host of them, to be honest. But the one that's the most stunning to me is one that I didn't witness and no one reported. But she actually wrote a book and reported it herself. And that is a vignette I have in the book about Deborah Birx. And this stunned me.

It stunned me that this person was really actively involved in the COVID response. She was developing documents that would go to the public. She had to send them for vetting to some task force. They were vetted and edited and sent back to her, and she would adopt the red lines that

the vetters had suggested, but then she would replace the language that they had excised into other portions of the document, send it back, and then see if she got caught. And if she didn't, she called it a workaround. Now, what's not surprising is that she did that. I used to tell my staff that the minute you give up the pen, you give up control. And so if you give up the

The pen, you better be accountable for what's in it. So number one, that was on somebody. But number two, and that's an expected practice. But number two, to feel that you can write a book and explain that you did it like in any other world, that would be viewed as blatant insubordination. And it just shows how far the career staff has gone to decide that they – their own views –

should be superior to even the office of the vice president. I mean, it's shocking to me. Um, there is a, uh, there's a story in the book about you, uh, picking up trash on the national mall. That's, that's right. Could you, could you relate, uh, what happened with that? Uh, absolutely. Um, you know, uh, in the, in, I took over as, um, as, uh, acting secretary during a government shutdown, uh,

And in 2018, and that government shutdown started in December and went for a while. But a few days before when the shutdown started in the middle of December, it became clear that it was going to be challenging in some ways. And we had a lot of trash on the National Mall. So actually on Christmas Day,

I went down to the mall and I got a dually pickup from the Park Service. And what's interesting is they didn't want to trust the then deputy secretary with any decent pickup. So they gave me, you know, they assigned me a pickup from, I think, probably 1985. It looked exactly like I had when I was a kid.

At the farm. So I went out and I started picking it, literally picking up trash and it taught me a lot. But, you know, number one, the food trucks on the mall are, are,

really, really, um, maybe they should be responsible for managing some of the trash, but that's a whole different story. But, um, you know, I had a lot of people ask, tell me, explaining to me how awful it was that I had to work on Christmas. Um, and, and that was all great. But, um, what it really did is solidified to me that maybe we ought to look for a better outcome. And as soon as I got back to the, um,

office and ultimately became acting secretary, I evaluated some legal authority we had to put the maintenance folks in

back to work during the shutdown. And in doing that, the big thing about it, honestly, the trash was important. But the other thing was these folks that are lower wage earners really are harmed in a shutdown if they're waiting for their pay that may or may not come later. And the fact that I could put them back to work, pay them and take care of some of the issues of the National Park Service, I thought was great. And so I basically called

I called the White House and basically said – I actually called the president's secretary and I said, hey, I have this idea but I need to talk to somebody in the White House about it before I do it so they're not surprised. The president called me back.

I explained to him what I was going to do, and he was absolutely incredible. He said, "Hey, David, number one, why didn't you do this sooner?" Which I thought was the . Number two, you're the new guy. I'm not sure you should take the heat for this. Maybe you should say that I ordered you to do it if it's going to be controversial, which I thought was incredible.

And then three, he said, hey, you're running the Department of the Interior. Get running it. You don't have to call me if you have to do something that makes sense. And I thought that was the best summary.

of what any manager wants to hear the president, you know, your boss has your back, get, get going on your job and don't wait around. If you're doing something, you see something that needs getting done. And I, and it really represented, um, I think his approach to, um, delegating to agencies. Uh, just, uh, uh, one final question before we go, uh,

Obviously, the Supreme Court has the potential to weigh in on Chevron deference here in a way that I think a lot of people are paying attention to. You know, the truth of the matter is that, you know, whether it happens now or whether it happens later, Chevron is something that seems to be the next big issue this court will have to deal with in terms of the ramifications that it would have for the federal government, for the bureaucracy. Right.

What do you think would happen should they come to a decision that either brings it back significantly or readjusts the way that that deference works? What would happen next?

Well, first off, you know, that particular case, it remains to be seen how far that will end up going, because here's the issue. It's kind of a question about what does silence mean in a in a statute as it relates to Chevron? And I but I think that my book, I really highlight what I believe Chevron has done fundamentally wrong.

is allowed agencies to want to be more aggressive in their interpretations. And the court, you know, in identifying the major questions doctrine as a doctrine last term, recently they made a decision in the Sackett case about a question of EPA's authority and its interpretation of a statute. And if they deal more with Chevron, what I really do believe it will do is

is begin to make agencies be more thoughtful and feel at least there's an element of accountability, which they don't really believe there is. And that has allowed them to move and stretch and stretch farther and farther because it's easier for them

either at a low level or at a senior level to say, hey, it would be much easier for us to just stretch the law than go ask Congress to give us the authority we want for our policy. And so I think it would be very meaningful for the court to move in this direction. And I think they're heading there. And I think that will be helpful. David Bernhardt, thank you so much. His book is You Report to Me. Thank you so much for taking the time to join me today. Thank you.

More of the Ben Domenech podcast right after this. I wanted to note something that's of interest coming out of a number of different reports over the past couple of months that I think we ought to be paying attention to. It's a trend line that I've noted before, but one that I think really is not receiving enough attention, especially during the month of pride, considering how at odds

at odds the approach of the United States of America is to that of the rest of the world when it comes to puberty blockers, the suppression of physical changes of adolescents, and a number of other treatments that are used when dealing with gender dysphoric youth across the world, particularly in the West. Quoting from a Wall Street Journal report this week,

The European medical community, by contrast, is expressing doubts about that approach. Having allowed these treatments for years, five countries, the UK, Sweden, Finland, Norway, and France, now urge caution in their use for minors, stressing a lack of evidence that the benefits outweigh the risks. This month, the UK's publicly funded National Health Service limited the use of puberty blockers to clinical trials, putting the drugs beyond the reach of most children.

These countries have done systematic reviews of evidence, said Lior Sapir, a fellow who studies transgender care at the conservative-leaning Manhattan Institute. They've found that the studies cited to support these medical interventions are too unreliable and the risks are too serious.

Many countries still allow puberty blockers as a clinical option, including Canada, Spain, and Australia. Some of those countries also are urging curtailment. In Italy, for example, the president of the Italian Psychoanalytic Society wrote a public letter to the Italian prime minister in January, expressing serious concerns over the use of puberty blockers.

In a congressional hearing last week, GOP politicians and their expert witnesses repeatedly cited European examples of increased caution and portrayed Democrats and the U.S. medical community as having gone too far in making treatments readily available for minors.

I was also interested to read a piece from Max Eden, also from the Manhattan Institute in City Journal this past week, which talked about the degree to which these approaches that are at odds with the European approach are now being applied at the state level. In New York State, for instance, the state is directing educators to lie to parents about it.

Earlier this week, he writes, The New York State Department of Education published a legal update and best practice document for how schools should serve transgender and gender expansive students. The key takeaway, if your child decides that he or she wants to socially transition to the opposite gender, it is now a best practice for the school to lie to you about it.

Only the student, the NYSED declares, knows whether it is safe to share their identity with a caregiver. The baseline assumption, then, is that unaffirming parents are dangerous to their children. If Kevin wants to go by Kimmy but doesn't want his parents to know, the best practice, according to the NYSED, is as follows. The teachers call her Kimmy and use she, her pronouns at school. When calling home for any reason, teachers use the name Kevin and he, him pronouns.

Leading experts like Hilary Cass, a medical doctor who documented rampant malpractice in England's Tavistock Child Gender Clinic, have explained that social transition is not a neutral act, but rather an active psychosocial and arguably even medical intervention. Finnish medical authorities have discouraged gender self-identification for children, recognizing its potential to disrupt healthy development and result in unnecessary medicalization.

While activists believe that transition is beneficial to mental health, a new study in the UK finds no improvement for socially transitioned kids relative to control groups. Evidence suggests that treating children as if they are the opposite sex can cause their feelings of gender dysphoria to persist and increase the likelihood that they will seek experimental hormonal intervention. If the NYSED had its way,

Schools will effectively market experimental hormonal interventions. Its new policy recommends that all schools, at a minimum, adhere to the guidelines of the National Sex Education Standards, which state that children should learn about puberty blockers by fifth grade.

It may be doubted whether schools would provide the full medical picture concerning the use of puberty blockers, including the lack of evidence for their benefits, the serious long-term side effects, and the near certain progression to cross-sex hormones that can cause permanent sexual dysfunction and sterility. The National Sex Education Standards also recommend introducing children to the concept of gender identity starting in kindergarten.

This is what we are talking about when we talk about wokeness. And so for all of those out there who might talk about the controversial nature of the culture wars, have distaste for the level to which they have invaded our lives in the past several years, understand how important these things are, how irreversible they are when it comes to these treatments.

It's one thing to stand up at the White House as Karine Jean-Pierre and as Joe Biden have, call the people in front of them courageous when they are flashing the cameras and hailing the flag of pride at the center of the White House. It's another thing to understand what that actually looks like in practice, not adults making decisions, whether you think those decisions are healthy or not.

but children being forced into a situation where they are guided towards these decisions far earlier than they can possibly understand them and where it is actual state policy for the educators who are driving them in that direction to lie to their parents about what is going on. I'm Ben Domenech. You're listening to another edition of the Ben Domenech podcast. We will be back soon with more to dive back into the fray.

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