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David Furst: It's The Brian Lehrer Show on WNYC. I'm David Furst, WNYC's weekend edition host, filling in for Brian today. Brian will be back tomorrow. On today's show, WNYC's lead Eric Adams reporter Elizabeth Kim will be here, as she always is on Wednesdays. Usually, she brings us an update on the mayor's weekly press conference, but today she'll be telling us all about the address the mayor delivered yesterday after the Department of Justice directed prosecutors to drop the corruption case against the mayor.

Later in the show, we kick off our annual Oscar documentaries series. The filmmakers for all of the Oscar-nominated feature length documentaries will join us to talk about their films in the next week or so. Today, the director of Black Box Diaries will join us. We wrap up with a conversation about the state of plastic pollution inspired by President Trump's executive order where he directed the federal government to use plastic over paper straws. Did we make any progress on plastic pollution in the last four years? Does President Trump have more rollbacks on the way that could make the environmental problem worse? We'll have the founder of the group Beyond Plastics here around 11:30 for that discussion.

First, the Senate takes up the confirmation hearing for secretary of education tomorrow. President Trump's nomination to lead the US Department of Education is Linda McMahon, the former CEO of WWE, World Wrestling Entertainment. She served in the first Trump administration as Administrator of the US Small Business Administration, and is currently chair of the America First Policy Institute. As NPR describes them, they are a think tank staffed by by veterans of Trump's first White House team. She doesn't have much education experience in her background. The nomination is happening within the context of President Trump making promises like these.

President Trump: We're going to end education coming out of Washington, DC. We're going to close it up. All those buildings all over the place and you have people that in many cases hate our children. I'm going to close the Department of Education and move education back to the states and we're going to do it fast.

David Furst: President Trump in a campaign video and speaking on the campaign trail. Meanwhile, as The New York Times reported yesterday, Elon Musk's cost cutting team announced cuts at the education department totaling over $900 million. As The Times writes, "The cuts were apparently aimed at hobbling the department's research arm, the Institute of Education Sciences." Here now with a preview of tomorrow's Senate hearing and to bring us up-to-date with everything that's going on at the Department of Education, we're joined by one of the two reporters who worked on that story I just mentioned, Dana Goldstein, who covers education and families for The New York Times. Hey, Dana, welcome back to The Brian Lehrer Show.

Dana Goldstein: Hey, David. I'm happy to be here.

David Furst: Listeners, we want to hear from you. To join this conversation, give us a call, 212-433-WNYC. That's 212-433-9692. You can call or text that number. Any educators or anyone who works with or has contact through work or your personal life with the federal Department of Education, give us a call. Again, the number 212-433-9692. Dana, can you give us a primer? Let's take this down here. What does the US Department of Education do? Most of the responsibility for funding and running schools is with the states and private institutions, right?

Dana Goldstein: Yes, you're absolutely right. I think this is something that's not really as well understood as it should be. Over 70% of the Department of Education's budget is devoted to federal student aid, so programs like Pell Grants and other, grants, loans, stuff like that. Only 10% of the funding for K12 public schools in this country flows through the federal government. The vast majority of that is a state and local tax funding stream. The control of schools is also at the state and local level. Although you played that interesting clip of President Trump saying we're going to get the federal government out of education and shut it all down, the truth is the federal government does not play all that much of an influential role in K12 schools.

David Furst: Looking ahead to tomorrow's Senate confirmation hearing for Secretary of Education, can you give us a little background on Trump's nominee, Linda McMahon?

Dana Goldstein: I think the most important thing about her is that she's a longtime donor and friend of President Trump and a true loyalist. When she served as head of the Small Business Administration under President Trump's first term, she was known as an enthusiast of vocational education, which is also a priority for the president and something that's bipartisan, by the way. It's not necessarily a super divisive issue, but she does have little education experience.

The Washington Post has a good story up this morning about her short time on the State Board of Education in Connecticut. She had very mainstream views during that time, including views in favor of diversity, equity and inclusion programs, which, as we know, are now totally targeted by this administration. What I expect from her really is to follow the president's lead and follow exactly what his current priorities are.

David Furst: What have we heard from her as far as her view of the department that she would lead and her role in that?

Dana Goldstein: That's something that's really important for the senators to drill down on with her because there is this fundamental paradox to the Trump agenda. He has repeatedly spoken about cutting this agency drastically, cutting its size, cutting its staff, or even abolishing it. Of course, who wants to take a job to lead an organization that is about to be abolished, canceled, or drastically cut? I think we will need to hear more from her about that. It's important to say that it's not very realistic to shut down completely the Department of Education, because only a vote in Congress would be able to do that, and Democrats would have to not filibuster that. That's unlikely. Very, very unlikely. There's even many Republicans who support the existence of the Department of Education tradition. That's not likely, but we know by what has just happened in the past few weeks that there is going to be cuts and changes to this agency's work. Just in the past 48 hours, we've had big news on that front.

David Furst: We're going to get to that in just a moment. Just focusing in on the hearing again. I know questions are going to be drilling down into all of the things we were just talking about, but how do you expect the hearing to go? There has been increasing pressure on Democrats to oppose Trump's nominees, even if their opposition doesn't end up having any impact on how it all turns out because Republicans already have the votes. Do you expect to see more of that tomorrow?

Dana Goldstein: I expect this to be a fiery hearing. I expect Democrats to come out swinging against this nominee and swinging against Trump's education agenda. There is reason to believe that this is among the more unpopular proposals of the Trump administration, the idea of abolishing the divor Department. When people hear that, it often sounds to them like an attack on public schools.

They have natural questions about how this will affect their own kids schools. They know that funding for stuff like disability services comes through this agency. Democrats are very prepared to fight. They've signaled that consistently, even during campaign season. This was something that Kamala Harris really liked to talk about. She really liked to highlight Trump's promise to dismantle the agency. I do expect to see Democrats come out swinging tomorrow.

David Furst: We're speaking with Dana Goldstein, education reporter for The New York Times. If you'd like to join this conversation, give us a call, 212-433-9692. That's 212-433-WNYC. Teachers, people who work in education in any way, call us if you want to talk about the cuts to the Education Department. 212-433-9692. Let's talk about those cuts that Elon Musk was announcing this week. As you reported in The New York Times, the education department had terminated 89 contracts as well as 29 grants associated with diversity and equity training. Tell us, what do we know about the cuts so far?

Dana Goldstein: This is a big story. It's almost $1 billion in cuts that are really aimed at decimating the government's traditional role, which has existed since the 1860s, of gathering data on education and pointing to effective practices. We're starting to understand exactly what types of research activities were affected by these cuts. It includes research into how American children perform relative to global peers. Every few years there are international tests which allow us to see how our kids are doing compared to those in England and France and Canada and China, et cetera. That's a major effort. The nonprofit that has been driving much of that work received a termination notice saying that this is basically ending.

That same organization, it's called AIR, also found out that their research into what are the most effective supports for disabled youth would be canceled and the work is going to stop immediately. This was a project to study intervention for disabled children. It was supposed to go through 2030. Really right in the midst of this long term project, the money is cut off. This is meaningful research. There are other programs to find out why has student absenteeism spiked so much in the post pandemic world and has not really gone back to pre-pandemic levels. What can be done about student behavioral challenges? These are big questions that are very important. The funding has been cut off for much of this work.

David Furst: You write that the cuts were really targeted at hobbling the department's research arm, the Institute of Education Sciences.

Dana Goldstein: Correct. It appears that the folks involved with Elon Musk's DOGE effort simply do not believe that there's much of a role for the federal government to play on education research.

David Furst: To join this conversation, 212-433-WNYC. That's 212-433-9692. Let's hear from Carol joining us from the Bronx. Welcome to The Brian Lehrer Show.

Carol: Thank you. Those of us who have student loans are now really in a quandary because now Musk has gotten access to our information, our Social Security numbers, our loans, our interest, everything that he can change. There's a movement to stop paying the student loans because we don't know what he can do with that information, whether he can change what our rates are, our loan amounts are. It's totally polluted.

David Furst: Dana, what about that? What about that access?

Dana Goldstein: We have heard from our sources in Washington that the DOGE staffers that are working inside the agency have some access to internal systems. It's not yet completely clear at what level of detail they have that access. There is a lawsuit that's in the works to try to find out more and to prevent this and protect borrower privacy. This will obviously be a big issue going forward and we are hoping to learn more.

David Furst: Dana, in your report, you write that Mr. Musk's team, part of the so called Department of Government Efficiency, DOGE, has been operating in the Education Department for more than a week. Team members were added to the agency's staff directory and have been working from the top floor of its main building in Washington. It's quite an image. How are longtime employees in the department reacting?

Dana Goldstein: We're starting to get more of a picture of that. There's basically three groups inside of this agency currently. There is the small DOGE team, there are the political appointees who have come in, appointed by President Trump to run the agency, who are not necessarily the same folks as the DOGE folks. It's a different group. Then there's the longtime civil servants. All of these groups are potentially at odds with one another.

David Furst: Let's take another call. This is Anna, a former teacher, I believe, calling from the Bronx. Welcome.

Anna: Thank you. I was going to say one of the things that they are cutting is the What Works Clearinghouse. Only intelligent and well-informed educators would even know what that is, but it's basically a website where you can look up programs and curriculums and see the research that is attached to those programs and curriculums. I can be sold a bill of goods by a curriculum company and they could say, "Hey, this curriculum works really well."

Then when you look it up on the website, there's no research to support that, or maybe the research says the opposite, and there are better curriculums or programs that do have research attached to them that do produce student gains. As far as efficiency goes, that seems like not the smartest thing to cut because that website tells us what works and what doesn't work. [unintelligible 00:14:57].

David Furst: Dana, what about that question of efficiency?

Dana Goldstein: This is such an important point and one we highlighted in our story yesterday. Yes, the What Works Clearinghouse is something that has always had bipartisan support up until now. It's just about a 20-year-old sub agency. It does play this role of pointing to best practices. Now, it's not perfect. I think sometimes the way it presents information can be a little hard to parse, and a lot of educators don't even know about it.

Some folks who've worked on these efforts in the past see the potential for reform. I do think that's important to say. The idea of cutting it entirely is contrary to the idea that the federal government can help spend taxpayer dollars more wisely. As the caller rightfully points out, this is a place where you can go to find out if something that's being marketed to you as an educator is effective for kids.

David Furst: If you want to join this conversation, you can call or text us, 212-433-9692. We're here with Dana Goldstein with The New York Times, and we have a lot of interesting texts coming through right now, one asking if you could please talk about the implications to Head Start programs or the funding for public preschools if the DOE is abolished or if funding is stripped. Any implications there?

Dana Goldstein: Interestingly, Head Start is not run through Department of Education. It's run through Health and Human Services. We do know that there have been problems for Head Start over the past few weeks. Some of those local Head Start programs have had trouble accessing their funds because of the freezes that President Trump and Mr. Musk have talked about. They have also indicated that the goal of these freezes is not Head Start. There's just a lot of nervousness in the world of Head Start because some programs have had trouble with their funds. From what we understand, most of those funds should be flowing currently.

David Furst: Here's a text. This is really a core Trump question. How can President Trump dictate getting rid of woke curriculum if he wants to cede power to the states?

Dana Goldstein: Correct. This is the core paradox that I've been talking about every day and writing about every day. He has put forward this very muscular view, which is really contrary to the tradition in the United States of local control of schools. He has told schools that he will attempt to punish them, investigate them, and withdraw funding from them if they teach what he calls woke stuff on race and gender. He has directed them to teach American history in a "patriotic" fashion.

This would be an unprecedented incursion of the federal government into the role that local districts and states play in setting curricular priorities. If you look at a state like California, they do have very progressive or liberal standards in terms of what should get taught, say, in American history or social studies courses. That is their right as a state in the traditional way that we think of American education. If you look at Texas, it's quite the opposite. There are way more conservative ideas that are through their state standards, their testing system, and their textbooks, which I've written about those differences for years.

President Trump has said he wants to impose his view from Washington. Of course, that is very contrary to what he has also said, which is that the federal role in education should be canceled, abolished, and devolved back to the local level. It is contradictory. Those who have tried to impose some rationale on it have struggled because it is so hard for him to abolish the agency because he doesn't have the power to do that. I think what is more likely that we will see is cuts to some of the agencies functions that are not related to his culture war type of priorities, while simultaneously beefing up any pressure that he can find on these issues that matter to him around transgender students, around race and racism, and around American history.

David Furst: Dana, you reported back in December that it's actually really hard to control what gets taught in public schools despite directives from states and now from President Trump with his executive orders. Can you talk a little bit more about that and what you found when you reported that story?

Dana Goldstein: We know that many of the Republican-run states over the past few years have passed laws that are very much in line with these Trump executive orders that have attempted to get rid of liberal ideas about race and gender from the curriculum. I have interviewed many teachers in states like Texas, Florida and Oklahoma that have these laws. Sometimes they do find ways to continue having complex conversations about, say, the history of racism in the United States with their students despite these laws. It's not necessarily that they're subverting the intention of these laws, but the laws are very vaguely written.

They'll say something like, you can't teach critical race theory, or you can't make students feel guilty about being white. Teachers will say, "You know what, when I shut my classroom door, I can have a conversation about white privilege with my students without really breaking this law, as long as I'm supported by my principal, by my superintendent and by parents in my community." Many times it is the case that teachers find that local support.

If even state level-laws have not necessarily been able to control this, and we see that the majority of teachers have not changed their curriculum or lesson plans in response to these laws at the state level, it is hard to see how the president is going to have more success when he has less funding control over the system, which is the power of the purse is ultimate power. That said, it is certainly intimidating and it could certainly lead to some self censorship.

Interestingly, right now we may be seeing more of that at the college level than in the K12 universe. The K12 sector is much more used to this long tradition of local control and local funding. Many colleges and universities, even the private ones, get more federal funding than K12 schools because they have so much funding for research grants, students with Pell scholarships. This can actually apply very effective pressure to colleges, some of this.

David Furst: That intimidation could be a real factor. What could change in how teachers teach in the classroom?

Dana Goldstein: For example, teachers could not teach about structural racism. That's a big target of the Trump administration. At the college level, we've seen some colleges cancel DEI conferences or make certain DEI-oriented courses optional that used to be required for students. The city of Denver's public schools are being investigated by the Trump administration for turning a single girl's bathroom at a single high school into a non-binary bathroom. Certainly, I do think schools will be taking a look at--

David Furst: The glare of that spotlight is hot.

Dana Goldstein: Yes. It's just one high school in a large city and a one bathroom. There's other girls bathrooms in this high school, by the way. When they had to choose which type of bathroom to convert to the non-binary bathroom, they didn't go for one of the boys rooms, they went for one of the girls rooms. Girls are a protected group under Title IX federal civil rights law. If I had to predict, I would certainly say that local districts are going to think twice about doing something like that. It is not pleasant to be federally investigated by this administration or any other administration. It's time consuming, it's burdensome, it's potentially expensive to be engaged in that process with the federal government. Certainly schools would like to avoid that.

David Furst: We're speaking with Dana Goldstein who covers education for The New York Times. If you'd like to join this conversation, 212-433-9692. I'm David Furst, filling in for Brian Lehrer today. We're going to take a quick break, and we will get to more of your calls in just a minute. Stay with us.

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David Furst: It's The Brian Lehrer Show. I'm David Furst in for Brian today. If you're just joining us, our guest is New York Times education correspondent Dana Goldstein. We are talking about cuts at the Department of Education. If you'd like to join this conversation, 212-433-9692. Dana, we have a text here, someone saying, "as a retired assistant principal who supervised special education services in my school, people who are against DEI, diversity, equity and inclusion, should know that includes equity and inclusion of special needs children."

Dana Goldstein: I think that that's how it's interpreted by many educators. The president has not spoken about DEI in that way, which is important to note. When he talks about DEI, he's really talking about gender and race issues.

David Furst: Okay. we're going to take another call. Avi calling from Flatbush. Welcome to The Brian Lehrer Show.

Avi: Hi. Good morning. I wanted to ask about and flag the executive order that was coupled with the one that was anti-indoctrination or whatever for K12 schools that was threatening pulling federal funding from schools. The other one had to do with vouchers, where they wanted to give people vouchers for private schools or religious schools. The idea that they're not just threatening cuts, but they want to provide funding to effectively undercut public education. I just wanted to hear a little bit about what that might look like, like legislation or if there's any movement on that.

David Furst: Dana?

Dana Goldstein: The caller's correct. The anti-indoctrination executive order was paired with a school choice executive order. Now, we know that President Trump and many who are close to him believe strongly in essentially the voucherization of public education, that as much of the money as possible should be devolved to parents, and they should be able to choose essentially how to spend that money, whether on private school tuition or homeschooling.

That is not something the federal government can enact at all. The federal government could pass some limited funding stream for vouchers, like through a tax credit. Remember, 90% of the funding for education comes from state and local taxes, and it is really a state issue as to whether there will be private school vouchers. Now, since 2019 to now, the number of American children using some type of private school voucher has doubled.

There are now over 1 million students using those vouchers. That is because there's been an incredible energetic burst of state-level policymaking around private school choice in Republican states. We are going to see more expansion there this year, most likely, whatever Trump does or doesn't do. Texas is likely to pass a major expansion of private school vouchers this year. That's a very large state. That is something that is going and it's going at the state level. It will just continue, most likely.

David Furst: We'll have another call. This is Michael from Brooklyn. Welcome to The Brian Lehrer Show.

Michael: Thank you. Thanks for taking my call. I have a question about, the Department of Education has funded certain programs like Title I programs, and yet we've heard repeatedly that math and reading scores have declined dramatically since after the COVID epidemic. Has the Department of Education really been effective in addressing those needs? I know, I was a teacher, so I know that there are programs that entitle students who can't read well to be in special classes and not do math while they have special classes. It's wonderful to take the student from where he or she is, but where does it lead him? I'm wondering how effective these programs have actually been, even though we think that they're wonderful to have, but I don't know the results.

David Furst: Dana?

Dana Goldstein: Thank you. This is a very important question. I just reported about two weeks ago on new federal test scores showing that reading performance is at historic lows and math performance is also not at all recovered from the hit that academic achievement took during the pandemic. It is extremely fair to ask questions about whether Americans are getting bang for their taxpayer buck on education.

I will say that from the 1990s until about 2014, 2015, there was plenty of evidence that education reform efforts were going pretty well. Achievement was going up and gaps between low performers and high performers and between low income and middle class kids were shrinking during that time. The past 10 years have told a much different story that is much more discouraging. Kids at the top levels of achievement are stagnant over the past 10 years. Those at the bottom, their achievement has dropped a lot.

Of course, we need to ask questions about what is being taught and how and the skill of our teachers, but more and more social scientists believe some of the explanation for this lies outside of the school system itself. Issues around attention for young people, especially with the rise of screen time and social media, there's an absenteeism crisis in our school system that was hugely exacerbated by COVID when schools shut down, in some cases for over a year.

A message was sent that school attendance in person was not necessarily a priority, and that loosened the ties between getting up every morning and getting to school. I'm a parent of two young children, and I know that's really hard. We haven't gone back to where we were as a country previously in terms of just doing that day in and day out. The absenteeism rates are extremely high. Yes, there's very important questions to ask about the effectiveness of federal funding for schools, but we also should be looking more broadly at what impacts kids when we're asking the questions about achievement that the caller brings up, which are very important.

David Furst: I'm a parent of a teenager, and I can tell you, it's not easy to wake him up in the morning either. I've got news for you. I know we talked about this a little bit earlier, but what about President Trump saying he wants to shut down the department, and as he says, do it very quickly? Let's get to how that would work. You touched on this, but can he just end the Department of Education? He can't lawfully eliminate it with an executive order, right?

Dana Goldstein: He cannot.

David Furst: How would that work?

Dana Goldstein: He cannot do that. Only Congress can abolish or create a cabinet-level federal agency. This particular agency, the Department of Education, was founded by President Jimmy Carter. President Reagan, for example, also wanted to abolish it, but he couldn't get support from Congress to do that, and so he didn't. Although we're in a much different political moment now, with a very empowered president in terms of Republicans in Congress not showing a lot of interest in standing up to him, I will note that most of my sources, Republicans and Democrats, still continue to believe that President Trump is not really close to having the votes to abolish the Department of Education.

David Furst: Even if he doesn't "end it", what could he do that would maybe really limit what the department is able to do?

Dana Goldstein: Exactly what he did Monday night, which was cut almost a billion dollars in research funding. That is an important activity of this agency. We've also heard that he may want to drastically reduce the Office for Civil Rights and really focus it on his priorities. Traditionally, the federal government plays a big role in looking at allegations of discrimination in schools. Are children with disabilities being discriminated against? Racial minorities, girls, LGBTQ kids.

Now, President Trump wants to continue that activity, but do it in his way. For example, he's most interested in the argument, which we alluded to earlier, that girls are being discriminated against when transgender girls are allowed to use bathrooms or join sports teams. That's very important to him. He will be pushing those types of investigations. We've seen that already. He's also very interested in allegations of anti-semitism and pursuing those aggressively, both in K12 and mostly at the higher education level with the pro-Palestinian protest movement and being more punitive to those student protesters. He wants to reduce the size of the staff and focus remaining staff on his priorities.

David Furst: We're speaking with New York Times education reporter Dana Goldstein, talking about big cuts to the federal Education Department. We're also looking forward to tomorrow's Senate confirmation hearing for Secretary of Education and Trump's nominee, Linda McMahon. If you'd like to join us and ask any questions on these topics, 212-433-9692. We're going to hear now from Kevin in Warren, New Jersey. Welcome.

Kevin: Thank you. I have two questions. Can you share what you've learned about the future of funding for special education? Second, what do you know about the status of the bill introduced on November 21st before the President took office by Senator rounds, I think it was, to close the Department of Education?

Dana Goldstein: Thanks, Kevin. There are bills that have been introduced to close the agency, but at least right now, they're not aggressively moving forward. As I said, Republicans and Democrats in Washington don't think that they are likely to pass, in terms of funding for disabled students, the IDEA program. Again, Congress would need to go in there to cut that program. That's not something the president can do. The same is true of Title I, the major funding stream that supports low income kids in public school.

Congress, if they would like to do that, can look at that. I will just note that the programs are popular not only in liberal areas or Democratic areas, but they're very popular in Republican regions. Rural schools get an enormous amount of money, for example, from these programs. It's just not clear that there's broad bipartisan support for really cutting or abolishing any of these funding streams.

David Furst: How are school districts responding, Dana, to announcements like these, everything we've been hearing over the last several weeks?

Dana Goldstein: That's a great question. Some Democratic education leaders like Tony Thurmond, the Head of California public schools have put out defiant statements saying there's absolutely none of this will change our policies on LGBTQ kids, for example. Then here in New York, the New York State Department of Education also put out a very strongly worded statement. They call Trump's executive orders ineffective given the limits of the president's power over local schools. They also said that the spirit of these executive orders runs really contrary to what the state of New York believes the federal role should be in education, which is support for marginalized kids, like low income kids and like disabled students.

We do see some defiance. Even charter school networks have put out letters to parents and said, "Don't worry, nothing is changing here." There's one Brooklyn-based charter school network, Prospect Schools, which has sent a letter to parents saying, "98% of our funds come from the state. Are we changing our practices overnight in response to President Trump? Absolutely not."

David Furst: Talking about some of the response, National Education Association President Becky Pringle released a statement on the president pushing to end the Department of Education. She writes, "Students across the country benefit from programs run by the Department of Education, especially lower income students in rural, suburban and urban communities, students who qualify for federal grants or loans to receive career training or attend two and four year colleges, and students with disabilities. If it became a reality, Trump's power grab would steal resources for our most vulnerable students, explode class sizes, cut job training programs, make higher education more expensive and out of reach for middle class families, take away special education services for students with disabilities and gut student civil rights protections." What about all of those ideas?

Dana Goldstein: Those are ideas that exist in Republican politics, but they're not necessarily that likely to come to pass for all the reasons we're discussing. I think progressive and liberal and Democratic interest groups are interested in highlighting these threats, because, look, you should never say never. That's totally fair and we hear that a lot from them. Also, these are unpopular proposals. Democrats are eager to highlight the elements of the Trump agenda that are unpopular.

David Furst: I think we can take another call. Let's hear from Crystal in Queens. Welcome to The Brian Lehrer Show.

Crystal: Hello.

David Furst: Crystal, can you hear us? Welcome to The Brian Lehrer Show.

Crystal: Oh, hi. Can you hear me?

David Furst: Yes, hello?

Crystal: Okay. I work in a community college, and at least if there is cuts to Pell funding, that would really impact a lot of the low income students as well as community colleges. Most of our operating budget comes from student tuition. If student tuition isn't paid, it could lead to some colleges having to close down. It's one of those things where I am, that's something that we're really concerned about. The cuts to the NIH and NSF has already impacted us, especially with research.

I know a lab that had to stop work because they were told, "That budget is done. You're not getting any more money." We had to lay off a couple people in that lab. These cuts, they're already having some impact. Right now, a lot of colleges are just bracing for impact. I don't see it getting any better, especially if Linda McMahon is confirmed.

David Furst: What about that, Dana? Bracing for impact?

Dana Goldstein: Absolutely, the impact on research has been most immediate and is being felt everywhere. In fact, I just spoke over the weekend to someone who does research on LGBTQ youth and has not been paid in several weeks because of these cut. Not only is it impacting learning, what we learn from research, but the livelihoods of those folks doing that work. In terms of Pell Grants, it's not necessarily that the Trump administration is heavily pushing the idea of not having Pell Grants or drastically reducing them right off the bat.

Now, Republicans do believe in reducing the size of that program, to be sure, but what they're doing is they are threatening colleges and saying, "If you don't hew to our priorities on, say, getting rid of DEI, we will cut federal funding from you as a punishment for that." The Pell Grants are a main way that these institutions are vulnerable to the federal government because, as the caller rightfully points out, they are paying the students tuition. That is a very real threat.

David Furst: Just to wrap up, let's bring it back to the Department of Education. We're always hearing that things are going to be moving very, very fast with President Trump. What's next? What changes are coming around the corner?

Dana Goldstein: We are working so hard on reporting that today, myself and my colleague Zach Montague.

David Furst: Thank you very much for your work.

Dana Goldstein: Thank you. We're always happy to talk about it. We are just hearing constantly about further cuts. I can't really say more right now, but please keep reading us. Please subscribe to news organizations whose work you are relying on. It is really so important in this media climate. Just have to say that. If you know anything, please reach out to us. You can go to our bio pages and get information on The New York Times website, how to do that. We are hearing every day. We are hearing from sources every day telling us about further cuts to programs inside the Department of Education and other agencies. It is moving very, very quickly.

David Furst: Yes, we will keep reading. Dana Goldstein covers education and families for The New York Times. Thank you for joining us.

Dana Goldstein: Thank you. Have a good one.

 

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