How the current regime’s plan to dismantle the U.S. Department of Education isn’t just policy—it’s a blueprint for entrenching power and shrinking opportunity.
I open with a simple filter: When this regime adopts a policy, ask: who benefits? From there, I map out how the push to gut the Department of Education turns learning into a luxury good—locking mobility, sidelining women, turbo-charging predatory lending, and eroding the systems that protect kids.
Chapters:
00:00 – The only question that matters: Who benefits?
02:00 – Outcome #1: Eliminating social mobility; my immigrant story as proof of what education makes possible.
05:00 – Outcome #2: Forcing women “back in their place” via reclassification of women-led professions.
07:00 – How “non-professional” labels choke access to loans and career paths.
12:00 – Closing challenge: connect the dots and act.
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Music Credit: Good_B_Music
Mentioned in this episode:
Left in Exile Intro
Left in Exile Intro
Transcripts
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And that has to do with the destruction of the Department of Education.
Now, this regime tried to. Dismantle the Department of Education through executive order, and that was stopped by the courts. So once that ruling was issued, they took a different approach to dismantle it anyways, and the approach that they're taking is by.
Draining it of all of its funding, not authorizing new funding, and then reallocating funds that were already approved to other departments.
that fall outside of direct [:
Who benefits? Let's take a look at what. Are the outcomes that are going to occur by the destruction of the Department of Education.
There are gonna be four things that this regime is gonna accomplish. If they're successful in their effort to fundamentally transform the role of public education in the us.
One, it's gonna completely eliminate. The opportunity for anybody that isn't a one percenter to ever improve their lives. Two, it's gonna create a situation where women of all stripes are stripped of the opportunity of being independent and are gonna be forced back into the kitchens and under the thumbs of their husbands.
edatory lending. And fourth, [:
Let's take a look at each of those outcomes and how they're actually realized. First and foremost, the destruction of the Department of Education removes the great equalizer when it comes to being able to be socially mobile. Those of us who are coming from immigrant communities know that. The value of education is that it can actually transform your life in less than a single generation.
And I'm a perfect example of what that looks like. I am a Generation Zero immigrant. I wasn't born in the US and I actually came to the US with my mom and my parents.
was the catalyst for my mom [:
We are in a position thanks to the opportunities that were provided by this country, but more importantly, thanks to the opportunities that were set up through the work of black people who fought for civil rights and set up through their efforts in creating a society that benefited everybody thanks to all of that effort.
My family and my kids, knock on wood, will never have to know a scenario where they can look at a piece of fruit in the store and have to worry about can they afford to buy it.
That is what education allows the, for the average person. If you work hard in school, study and get a good education and continue with that learner's mindset, you can transform.
nd the elite absolutely hate [:
That is why since the Nixon administration going forward, the Republican party has been consistently committed to destroying public education because they don't want to. People like us, and really anybody that isn't a white elite male in their circles, there are too many of these undesirable people that are coming into their circles and they can't have that.
So destroying the Department of Education and fundamentally transforming its function. Allows them to continue their monopoly, and maintain a white supremacist society.
The second outcome that can be realized by the destruction of the Department of Education is getting women, quote unquote, back in their place. The Republican party in general, MAGA in particular, and all of their white Christian nationalist backers do not want women in the workplace.
r bodies. In fact, they want [:
The most out of all of that legislation, and by virtue of all of that work, white women have actually been able to position themselves in society where they don't need men and they don't have to have kids. They don't have to go that traditional route that the white elites had baked into the system where you needed to be married to a man to have a chance at survival.
The Republican party by destroying the Department of Education is one step closer to returning to an age where women were seen as property and beholden to their husbands.
reclassification of a whole [:
Largely any and every woman dominated field has been relegated to non-professional status, which will mean that it'll be increasingly more difficult for women who want to get educated and enter the workforce in those professions to get loans to pay for those educations because those programs.
We'll be seen as riskier than more traditional programs. This is by design.
This is the intent of the white Christian nationalist crowd in this regime and around this regime and the billionaire crowd funding this regime. They do not wanna see a society where women are in the workforce. Their view of women is that they should be barefoot pregnant dependent.
ducation is that they get to [:
The third outcome driving the profitability of lending institutions. When in doubt, follow the money.
When you look at all of the loan providers by destroying the Department of Education, what. Is left out there, you have a trillion dollar book of business that can be transferred to the private sector, and that is the student loan component of the Department of Education.
The Department of Education acts as the guardrails of student loan companies and make sure that students aren't taken advantage of through predatory lending when you eliminate the Department of Education. All of those loans and the function of issuing those loans needs to be handled by someone. And what you're going to see is all sorts of companies, start entering into the student loan market to take advantage of the gutting of the Department of Education and the removal of all the guardrails that prevent instances of predatory lending.
And this is related with the [:
You've already seen approved lenders from the Department of Education get in trouble for issuing out predatory loans and. They've had their hand slapped with the Department of Education going away, you're gonna see that get ramped up to the point where a lot of students are gonna be at risk and are gonna be forced into debt slavery, thanks to the loosening of all the regulatory constraints that these financial institutions have to operate by.
good, but probably the most [:
Think about what is being reclassified as a non-professional degree. Track teachers, nurses, anybody in healthcare. What do those professions have in common?
All of those professions have a mandatory reporting requirement within those professions. That means if. Anybody in those professions notices that a child under their watch has signs of abuse, they are obligated to report.
entering those fields, fewer [:
And what do we know and understand about the Republican party and white Christian nationalists when they're not burning crosses and trying to disappear Brown people?
Their second favorite thing to do and arguably most favorite thing to do is abuse kids while they're spending all their time pointing their fingers at drag queens and the lgbtqia plus community who is consistently getting arrested for. Abuse against children .
The vast majority of white Christian males are the perpetrators of abuse of children in many forms.
And when you take away the entities that have a mandatory responsibility to report those instances or suspicion of those instances, what happens? Abuse is gonna go through the roof.
n plan as detailed in Project:
They could abuse their wives, they could abuse their kids. They could abuse anybody and everybody that wasn't a white male. And this is one of the ways that they're gonna bring that to reality if it's allowed to continue.
