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10 Minute Drill
Wednesday Special: Congress and their rough september; Chicago defends crime status quo; special guest Nicki Neily
00:18:28
Washington is back — and so is the shutdown theater. Congress is facing another funding fight, with Democrats showing no incentive to help, while Trump’s National Guard deployment in Chicago has leaders like JB Pritzker and Brandon Johnson...
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Congress is back in session, so we are bringing you a special Wednesday episode to lay out what they've got in front of them. We're going to talk about crime both in D.C. and in Chicago. We're going to talk about Tim Waltz and the latest foot in mouth moment. But most importantly, we have a special guest today for a special Wednesday episode. All that and so much more today on 10 Minute Drill.
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Everybody get up. Get up.
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The story of America is the story of an adventure. I can hear you. The rest of the world hears you.
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We are, we are a nation under God.
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And I believe God intended for us to be free. Congress is back in session after a Labor Day recess, which again is not so much a recess for vacation as much as an in state work period. People often mistake these they think that August recess is when members are just at home laying on the couch sitting by the pool, when in fact, hopefully they are hard at work selling their victories of the year so far. But now they're back in session and they've got a packed work period ahead of them. First things first, they're going to be focused on funding the government. We have a funding deadline coming up in just weeks. One challenge that Speaker Mike Johnson and Majority Leader John Thune face is the fact that these funding fights are one of the rare opportunities for Democrats to flex and make some requests because you cannot fund the government without the 60 vote threshold. So we will see if Democrats attempt to do a sort of Gavin Newsom esque yolo, let's shut down the government to demand what we want because they've got nothing to lose with a 25% approval rating or we'll see if they can all come together to find a path forward to responsibly fund the government. Another thing that Washington is focused on right now. Congress has to discuss whether or not to add additional funding to the National Guard deployment, Both in Washington, D.C. and elsewhere to support President Trump's efforts to stop crime around the country. With we will be tracking Washington's day to day very closely here from 10 Minute Drill. With his success in stopping crime in Washington, D.C. through his national Guard deployment, President Trump has been talking about doing a similar thing in Chicago. Here's J.B. pritzker on that. Just during the last week, I've been in neighborhoods across Chicago, from Bronzeville to.
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South Shore to Chatham to Little Village. The president's absurd characterizations do not match.
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What is happening on the ground here, unfortunately. Here's the news from Labor Day weekend.
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A violent holiday weekend. At least seven people were shot and killed and dozens more wounded.
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But JB Sausages isn't the only person eating his words. After that weekend, here is Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson.
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No federal troops in the city of Chicago. No militarized force in the city of Chicago. We're gonna defend our democracy in the city of Chicago. We're gonna protect the humanity of every single person in the city of Chicago.
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So as you hear Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson talk about protecting the humanity of the people of Chicago, recall the fact that he is defending murder status quo in Chicago. He is defending the massive, massive violent crime problem they have in Chicago and saying that the people of Chicago don't deserve to have the peace and safety that comes with extra resources that would come in and stop the murder. So they want to protect humanity, except when it comes to murder and except when it comes to things like helping kids learn how to read and write at grade level, where Chicago schools are notoriously failing. If Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson spent as much time trying to fix Chicago's failing schools as he's now spending fighting Donald Trump in trying to stop murders in his city, the kids of Chicago would all be rocket scientists. But here's MSNBC on this as well. You think that J.B. pritzker should do something radical? I think he should pick up the phone, call the president. And as is common knowledge, when a Democrat has lost msnbc, they've lost the argument. But just for good measure, here's one more clip of our friend JB sausages from yesterday morning.
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54 shot, seven dead.
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Yeah, they're gonna say the city's not safe.
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Would you ask your friends to ride the L after midnight or after, you know, 9 o' clock at night even to come down to the city from o'? Hare?
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Look, big cities have crime. There's no doubt about it. Last week we talked about teachers unions being exposed for giving $50 million in the dues they collect from taxpayer funded teacher salaries to Democrat political organizations. And as your kids are returning back to school this week, this month, here's one more reminder that teachers unions are focused on anything but schools and school performances.
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And today as we walk, we're going to fight a whole bunch of pharaohs. Whether it's Tesla or Target or velour.
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Not velour. But that's what Randy is focusing on. She's announced the American Federation of Teachers is joining a boycott against Target, the retail store, not for anything related to kids, schools, students, teachers, but because Target is no longer engaged in diversity, equity and inclusion dei and using the hiring and promotion racial quotas they previously had. And as part of their joining this boycott, they're demanding that target give $2 billion to the Black business community, which is intentionally vague because it will likely end up going to more Democrat nonprofits like the $50 million that teachers unions just gave out to Democrat political groups. Once again, teachers unions will do anything but focus on helping kids learn to read and write. As with our special Wednesday episode, we have a very special guest. This is Nicky Neely of Defending Education joining us today. We're going to go to that interview now. Joining us for today's special episode is a guest that I am very, very fond of. This is Nikki Neely, head of Defending Education. She is perhaps the most important, highest impact operative whose name you might not have heard of. She now leads Defending Education, which I believe is the most important parental rights group that does both looking out for your rights as a parent of children in school or anywhere else, but also as a watchdog group keeping an eye out on all these different entities. She works closely with government leaders, with nonprofit groups, with the entire ecosystem of parental rights organizations. She's a good friend of mine and I'm so, so grateful to have her. Nikki, thanks for joining us.
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Thanks for having me.
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This is very, very fun. We have not had a lot of guest segments, but I felt like you were a very natural fit because what you do is very fun to hear in long form in, you know, stories, things first. Just tell us, how did you get into defending education, parental rights, all of this?
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So I used to run a campus free speech organization called Speech first and that was one. It was structured much the same way that students were Fair Admissions was a membership association that sued universities based on unconstitutional speech policies. I did that for a few years. I sued my alma mater, I sued my husband's alma mater. My children would not be legacies anywhere. But during the at the beginning of the pandemic, I had a lawsuit queued up in the fourth Circuit and it felt a little bit petty to sue universities over free speech when students literally went home for spring break and could not go back and get their stuff. And then, you know, it was kind of a weird spring. We were all washing our groceries and stuff. And then fast forward a few months to when George Floyd was murdered and all these school districts started sending out all district emails saying we're so systemically racist, we commit to being an anti racist school. And I got all these text messages from my friends back home. I'm from Chicago. All my friends are Democrats. And they said I feel like is the district, like calling me names. And I think back to when you and I were growing up, you know, we didn't get emails about the Gulf War or the Challenger explosion or, I don't know, faxes, pigeons, whatever. And so, you know, we started to see schools really start to insert themselves into the political dialogue, which was interesting to me. For me, the thing that really flipped the switch and made me want to jump from doing higher ed to k to 12 was the wall Street Journal did a profile of a superintendent near a city where I grew up, Evanston, Illinois, where Northwestern is headquartered. And he said that fall he was going to open schools for in person education for black and brown students before white students in the name of anti racism. And I remember screaming at my computer saying, ah, you can't do that, that's unconstitutional. And then I thought, you know, this is the next frontier. It's K to 12. Let's do this.
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So I feel like we were talking about this before we started recording. My three year old started preschool today. I'm a little bit far out from where I need to worry about the politics in the classroom, but I still think about that because I live in Fairfax County. My kids are gonna go to Fairfax county schools if we go to public schools. And that's terrifying to me. What is the scariest, craziest thing you've seen in digging into this in the last few years just off the top of your head?
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I mean, I think the National School boards Association in 2021, when they had pretextually worked with the Biden administration to declare parents domestic terrorists, that was sort of astonishing, right? Suddenly we had the FBI having a threat tag, looking into parents that were raising valid questions about why schools were closed, why masks were being used still, et cetera. That was really astonishing. To watch the full weight of the federal government come down on critical parents, particularly in it was an off cycle election year. That was really, I think, one of the things that propelled Governor Youngkin to victory. So that was astonishing. But I mean, you look at some of these lesson plans. In Fairfax, there was a school that had students play privilege bingo. One of the squares on that was military family. My brother was in the army. My brother was buried at Arlington. It is not a privilege to wait every morning for a knock on the door for 18 months during that period. I mean, things like that, that are crazy. There was a district in Connecticut that had children do an exercise called pizza and consent, where you had to draw a pizza and then put on the side what your different. What the toppings would correspond to for your different kinks. I mean, like this is asking, you know, seventh graders, eighth graders to say like, you know, pineapple equals blank.
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And just I'm a grown up and I didn't want to hear about that story.
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It's a little bit much. And so it's the sex stuff, it's the race stuff, it's the teaching kids to hate each other. And at the end of the day, right, we want students to be treated as individuals, not as members of an identity group.
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So you guys are a phenomenal machine in finding these and blowing them up and sort of getting encouraging other parents to ask questions and look at documents. What's the process for a parent who might see this crazy thing their kid brought home and sort of bringing that to you guys and getting that all sort of, you know, blown up?
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Yeah, I mean, this is very much a see something, say something. So we have a tip line. People send us stuff. I mean, from our launch on, we were getting 50 to 200 tips a week from across the country. So just sorting kind of through the wheat from the chaff. And then we also love to file public records requests. And so sometimes we'll hear from parents who say, you know, this can't come from me, or teachers or administrators who say, say, I saw something, but I don't want this to be traced back to me. And so we will go trace it down, we will go track it down, we will file the requests and then we will expose it. I think, you know, sunshine is the best disinfectant. And a lot of these school officials, either at the K to 12 level or at the university level, don't think of themselves as state employees. But their tax, you know, their salaries are paid for with tax dollars. They are using taxpayer funded resources. And our children are sent to school to learn not to be filled with a bunch of poison. Pitted against their parents, pitted against each other. You look at what scores are for math, for reading, for all these things, they have fallen off a cliff. And this is even, I mean, you know, pre pandemic things are not in good shape. And so what are you filling our children's eight hours a day with? It's not reading, writing, arithmetic. It's a lot of ideology, it's a lot of nonsense. And our children deserve better, Our country deserves better. Because we cannot compete in a global economy if our children cannot perform basic functions 100%.
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So as parents are sending their kids back to school right now, I think one thing that radicalized you And a lot of other parents was kids doing remote learning during COVID and hearing, you know, over the speaker that their teachers were saying crazy things, injecting politics, more documents. But it's a little bit different now. Kids are primarily more back in the classroom. What should parents be looking out for? How can parents, you know, what kind of questions can they ask their kids to try and get into this to know if there's things they should be worried about going on in their kids classrooms.
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So I am someone who talks in war metaphors nonstop. So this is going to sound a little bit funny coming for me, but not every teacher is an enemy combatant.
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Sure.
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And so I think just, you know, make building relationship with a teacher early on, letting them know that you are going to be an involved parent. You will be looking at things. I think once if teachers, if principals know that somebody is looking over their shoulder, I think it makes them a little bit more conscious of the kinds of materials they're pulling off the Internet for lesson plans, for example. And we always tell people, you know, you don't have to drop like go straight to a federal lawsuit. Right. Start, start small, ask questions. Teachers are overburdened with regulations, they're overworked, they're underpaid, all these things. You know, they have a lot of crazy mandates that are being pushed on them too from the state, you know, fortunately not the federal government anymore. But you know, they have a lot that's on their plate because teachers right now are, they're an emotional support animal. They are a punching bag. They are a gender support transition counselor. They are supposed to be doing, you know, managing all their children's emotional needs in addition to teaching math and whatever. So we tell people, ask questions of the teacher sometimes maybe they'll just grab something and not think that this would be offensive. But if you don't get the answer you want, escalate it. Go to the principal, then from the principal, go to the superintendent, from the superintendent, go to the school board. And what we find is just frankly, a lot of people don't know how the system works. Even many school board officials think that they work for the superintendent. Absolutely not. It's the other way around. But at the end of the day, you are the consumer, you are the taxpayer, they are accountable to you. And so ask questions. And if you don't get the answers you want, come to us. I am always happy to be the bad guy. We are always happy to dog somebody out if they are acting improperly, if they are using resources improperly. Or if children are being treated badly.
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I love that when you talk about how not every teacher is an enemy combatant and we talk about who should be looking out for the teachers. One of the people that we continue to find out is not looking out for the teachers as much as they should be are the teachers unions. They have gotten very political. You guys had a very, very explosive report come out just in the last few weeks about teachers unions and their politics. What can you tell us about that?
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Yeah, so one of my coworkers dug through Unions LM2 forms. All unions have to file a bunch of paperwork with the Department of Labor every year just looking at what their expenditures were. So over the past two years, 2022 to 2023 and then 23 to 24, what the AFT and NEA national chapters were spending their money on. And so you see donations going to things like the Trevor Project, the Center for American Progress, as you said, nakedly political organizations that are not focused on excellence in the classroom. And you see that frankly playing out in how a lot of these union programs are run. Every year at the NEA and AFT annual conference, there are resolutions that are brought to the floor by all these delegates. And so you see them voting on pro Palestinian resolutions, abortion resolutions, Ukraine, Medicare for all things like that. A couple years ago they actually voted down a resolution that would recenter the union's focus on student achievement. And so, I mean, talk about putting your money where your mouth is. Their money and their mouths are going towards activism, not towards education.
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Kind of a quiet part out loud. And even on that note, just today as we're recording this, the American Federation of Teachers and Randy Weingarten announced that they are joining a boycott against Target, not for anything germane to students, but because of dei.
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Yeah, I mean again, this is. She wants to do everything except for educate children. And I think that's why it's such a slap in the face for families. When you think about all the effort that we put into getting our kids ready for school, sending them to school, trying to be supportive, helping them with homework, and then you find out that what are teachers learning during their professional development days? Why is the union skimming part of these teachers dues off not to go advocate for better treatment or better benefits, but for nakedly stuff that families don't agree with.
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For the most part, it's shocking to me, but also not shocking. We've gotten used to this idea that all of these different sort of lefty aligned groups, whether it's teachers unions, whether it's dark money. Nonprofits, whether it's usaid, all have some sort of tie that just their goal, their North Star is Democrat politics. And it's heartbreaking to see how can people learn more about you, learn more about what you're doing. Send a tip into the tip line. What's the best way to sort of engage with defending education, the important work you guys do?
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Our website is defendinged.org so all the resources are there. We have a map where we put all the incidents that we have come in through our tip line that we have obtained where we fact check everything. People can sort by state, they can find resources because we want to empower people. We want to give them the knowledge and the tools they need to be better advocates in their own children's school. This is not a one size fits all solution. Education is fundamentally a state and a local issue. And so how you change something in Taos is different than how you're going to change something in Tulsa. But we want to help people along the way. Not everybody has to be the front or the face of anything. So we want to work with people to figure out what is a happy solution, what is the best outcome for them and their child in their school, school system and to affect real lasting change.
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That's amazing. We talk a lot about politics here. We talk a lot about how to make change happen. You know, we all sort of talk about the issues we care about, the things that make us passionate. But you guys are actually, you know, you're a parental rights organization that is actually empowering parents. And I love to tell your guys stories on this podcast just because I think it's amazing that you actually like roll up your sleeves and do the work. You're holding people accountable, you're filing lawsuits, you're getting the information through foia. It's phenomenal. So I hope everybody will check out what you're doing at Defending Ed. Thank you for joining us. Thank you for all the work we do and we will have you back anytime you have another amazing update like this because it's so important. Thank you for our you can't make it up segment. Today we have a you can't make it up stalwart. This is Minnesota Governor former vice presidential candidate Tim Waltz once again making news for all the wrong reasons for background. Over the last few days, the blue and on left wing conspiracy theory corners of the Internet have posited that President Trump might be ailing in poor health or have even died because right after he did the three hour cabinet meeting all televised where he talked non stop. They haven't seen him for a few days. Part of it, he was golfing over the holiday weekend, things like that. But they have been hypothesizing that something was wrong. Here's Tim Waltz. You get up in the morning and you doom scroll through things.
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And although I will say this, the.
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Last few days, you woke up thinking there might be news. Just saying, just saying there will be news sometime.
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Just so you know, there will be news.
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Tim is not known for thinking before he talks.
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But I've not been perfect and I'm a knucklehead at times.
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But again, hypothesizing and kind of hoping that President Trump has died might be a new low even for Tim. That is all the time we have for today. Thank you, Sean much for joining us on this special episode. We will see you again tomorrow.