Defunding DEI in California Schools

the whole thing is oriented. The philosophical idea that American public education should be focused on one hundred percent of everybody going to college is both idealistic, foolish, foolishly idealistic, unrealistic, and ultimately winds up being harmful. We have some of the worst prepared for the job market eighteen year olds

in the world. We could imitate countries like Germany and have real serious emphasis on vocations and training and all kinds of give kids different kinds of career tracks that they can follow throughout high school, apprenticeships, things like that. But instead we vaguely prepare everybody to get a major in some mickey mouse arts and letters degree from college after accruing a bunch of debt that they can't use to do anything, you know, a bachelor's degree that is

useless for anything other than flipping burgers. That is the focus of American of California public high schools, and by objective measurements, a lot of our largest public high schools are wild abject failures, with huge percentages of kids not being able to be up to grade level in math or reading. And then, of course, the powers that be within California public education look at homeschoolers with really concerning that these homeschoolers are you know, being educated without you know,

oversight from educational experts. And meanwhile, the homeschoolers, by like every objective measure, are doing far better than kids in public schools. Now, given my disdain for California public schools, and on top of all of that, California public schools are suffused top to bottom with left wing ideology that is injected and infected throughout the curricula of our various

public schools and various grades. Whether that's the god awful sex education that I think any Christian should pull their kids out of, given how many things it is teaching that are totally contrary to our beliefs, to stuff that beyond just the sex education that you're getting seventh grade onward, the ways in which all kinds of morality contrary to what we believe, is infected throughout the curriculum. An even

bigger picture, things about history and American culture. These all these sort of sixteen nineteen project ideas of America being built on systemic racism, that the whole American project is grounded in racism and fundamentally infected by this original sin, that the country is fundamentally racist. All these kinds of stuff gets incorporated into what we teach, and various kinds

of DEEI measures are infected throughout California public education. Diversity, equity, and inclusion, which I heard some liberal the other day say.

want me to drill down further. I object to equity. Equity is the thing I object to. I don't mind having diversity. If that's the byproduct of giving equal opportunities to everybody, that's great. I want I would love there to be diversity. I don't want a system that says no, Black people can't participate. That's that's wrong, that's evil, that's immoral. I want it open to everybody. I'm an inclusive guy.

Everyone come in. Equity is what I object to. The modern definition of equity means equality of outcomes, not equality of inputs or equality of opportunity for everybody, but equality

of outcomes. If the makeup and this is happening within California public schools, they got rid of certain kinds of gifted tracks, advanced track math programs because they looked at the racial breakdown of who was participating in it and saw it was predominantly Asians and white, predominantly Asian kids, white kids, not enough Latinos and black kids given their

relative shares of the California school age population. So the DEI based solution is to get rid of the gifted kid program, get rid of these higher track math programs, because too many Asian kids were doing too well, and the Latino and black kids weren't doing as well because the outcomes weren't equal to what you would expect if

it was perfectly proportional to the population. The DEI approach assumes that any difference in outcomes that doesn't reflect the population's racial breakdown is rooted somehow in racism.

weeks or face unspecified cuts in federal funding. I fully anticipate that it will have a chilling effect on school districts, but also colleges and universities, said Royal Johnson, who leads the University of Southern California Race and Equity Center's National Assessment of collegiate campus climates. The Department of Education's letter isn't law, nor is it legal. Johnson, Oh, it's not legal, Johnson said, I'm pretty sure it's not illegal. Pretty sure

the Department of Education can put strings on funding. It's just a question of what the operative statute says. Anyway. Oh oh well, actually, by the way, let me point this out. I'd bet the Department of Education's letter is super legal, given that pretty much all grants of federal funding for education come with certain kinds of non discrimination requirements. And the non discrimination requirements it's based on language that was adopted in American law based on the heritage of

the Civil Rights Acts, okay, and the Civil Rights Acts. Basically, the big breakthrough of the Civil Rights Acts was basically saying that the federal government will not allow discrimination treating people differently on the basis of and then it would provide a list of categories in certain circumstances, sex, national origin,

et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. The big breakthrough of the Civil Rights Acts was applying this in all this sort of standard no differential treatment on the basis of these various categories, applying that in all kinds of contexts. In the operation of private businesses. Okay, your grocery store can no longer say that, well, we're not going to

serve black people. No, you can't do that. You cannot discriminate on the basis of race in operating your grocery store, in hiring our law firm does not hire black people or does not select African Americans to be partners in our law firm. Now, you can't do that. You can't say that you're just not You're only going to have

white partners. Can't do that. And with lots and lots and lots of federal funding that goes, especially to educational institutions, it all has non discrimination requirements, like you can't I'm not going to give this to a school district that's refusing to admit, you know, that that's going to have

segregated public schools. So I would bet actually that in spite of what this article from ed source says, written by presumably left wing hacks, I don't know that for a fact that the authors are Malika Sheshadri and Lasherica Thornton look like to millennial teachers. Actually, I would guess that this letter from the Department of Education is fairly solidly grounded educationally, because the whole idea, the whole idea of DEI, I think, has always been intention with American law,

with American non discrimination law. The whole idea of DEI is to affirmatively discriminate in favor of certain racial groups at the expense of other racial groups, and not just white people. Often Asian kids. Often Asians are one of the loser. Asians a historically a racial minority group that hasn't always been treated very well in American society. Certainly, I mean, let's compare. You know, obviously, no one had

it worse than African slaves in the South. Historically, I think it'd be hard to argue someone had it worse than people of African descented. But certainly I don't think you can say that Asian Americans had an easier time than Latinos. So DEI says, we have to treat Latinos. We have to give affirmative deferential treatment to Latinos and

affirmative worse treatment to Asians. That's one of the things with DEI is that it really does exist in serious tension with American non discrimination law, and including with like recent Supreme Court cases that you know, destroyed the idea of affirmative action within college admissions. That's what affirmative action is. Affirmative action is basically the DEI concept as applied to

college admissions. So I would say probably the Department of Education is on really solid ground to tell the State of California, hey, you got to stop doing these DEI programs. We're going to cut off your funding because probably that federal funding has some kind of non discrimination thing tied into it, and the whole point of DEI is discrimination.

Dei's is this new paradigm that really is divorced from the classic Civil Rights Act, civil rights era paradigm of how we treat people on the basis of race, which is really attempting to be a color blind approach to how you operate businesses, how you educate kids, how you whatever hiring employment, all that the ideal as presented in the Civil Rights Act is genuinely a color blind approach,

and that's firmly embedded in American law. So this contention by this piece, oh the Department of Education's letter, isn't law, nor is it legal. Johnson said. However, many advocates, when a liberal journalist wants to make an argument for something that they just agree with, they say that. Advocates say, because it sounds better than you know, lobbyists for such and such industry or or act active activists for such and such advocates and community members say, what's a community

I'm a community member. Community members say they are concerned that more and more districts will cut their diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives out of fear. Yeah, they should, and deprive students from marginalized backgrounds of the support they need to succeed in the classroom and beyond. We often think about California as being protected from this larger right wing movement, Johnson said, But as we saw with changing patterns and

demographic votes in the presidential election. I think there are many people in California who are wrestling with this conservative movement and who are afraid of it, and who are proactively and preemptively making decisions. What do you This isn't some vague, amorphous like for No, it's a very concrete we will cut off your funding if you keep doing DEI stuff. This isn't like, This isn't someone bowing and scraping to Donald Trump. This is a very rational reaction

to a genuine funding concern. The Department of Education's letter opens with the words dear colleague, but the ensuing message takes on a different tone. Well, yeah, that's just how these things work. Dear Colleague letters are a classic way in which specifically the Department of Education interacts with school districts around the country who are recipients of federal funding. The dear colleague letter, this is like a standard form thing. It's not like, it's not like they're Oh, they pretend

like they're being so nice and then they're being chillen. No, the Obama administration had all kinds of mandates for public schools on the basis of using a Dear Colleague letter like this is not some The fact that the tone is mean, whereas the dear colleague at the beginning is nice,

is not a remarkable feature. Rather than engaging in that work of acknowledging and affirming educators, what the Trump administration has done thus far is to express hostility and disdain, said John Rogers, a professor at UCLA's School of Education and Information Studies and an Associate Dean for Research and Public Scholarship. Instead of acknowledging and affirming educators, the point of the Department of Education is not to affirm you. It's to give federal money. It's to give federal grant

money for school districts. They're not your friend, they're not your therapist. They're not there to affirm you and encourage you. These are sources of federal grants. If you want these

federal grants, this is what you have to do. By the way, this source of federal grants given to you by the federal government that is accountable to whom the American electorate who is paying the bill, and the American electorate who is paying the bill, just voted for a guy who ran on, among other things, the whole idea that DEI is nonsense and should not be. I want to dig into this more after the break. Just the unreality in which California public educators apparently live. That is

next on the John Girardi Show. Reading through this piece written by ED Source GV wire, local Fresno outlet. They love publishing pieces by this entity called Ed's Source, which is this entity that publishes various kinds of op eds and news stories, etc. About matters impacting education, and it's just reliably like, it seems very reliably like this is what public school labor unions think, liberal public school liber

unions think. And they have this whole piece freaking out about the Trump administration saying they're going to cut off federal funding for California public schools if they don't cut out their DEI initiatives. And they live in this alternate reality where they just don't understand. They're not smart enough to understand the legal battles, the legal controversies that are

at play here. So they're talking about this dear colleague letter that came from the Civil Rights Division at the Department of Education, and it says, hey, stop engaging in DEI measures. The whole idea of DEI is that you are basically affirmatively discriminating in favor of certain racial groups against other racial groups in order to achieve some kind

of outcome equity. The idea that, well, if you have Asian kids all doing much better in math and science and Latino and black kids not doing as well, that there must be some racism inherent in the system, so you need to do things affirmatively helping to discriminate in favor of the black and Latino kids. That's the whole premise of DEI is. It is affirmative. It is not a color blind approach to providing educational opportunities or whatever.

It's affirmatively saying we need to discriminate in favor of certain historically oppressed groups, and we do that by discriminating against certain historically oppressed groups like Asians. There's no reason to think that Asian Americans had an easier time in

American history than Latinos have or had. Now here's this piece from ed source DA DA DA this complaint from a professor at UCLA that it stead of acknowledging and affirming educators, the Department of Education is expressing hostility and disdain.

Oh that's terrible. The letter specifically claims the authors incredulously right that white and Asian American students, including those from lower income backgrounds, have been discriminated against, and that education in educational institutions have toxically indoctrinated students with false premises that the United States has built upon systemic and structural racism. Yeah,

that's true. Okay. The California like restructured all kinds of things within its math programs, specifically because the Asian kids were doing too well. Asian white kids were doing too well. It was too big of a percentage of the student body within these sort of higher track math programs where Asian white kids relative to their shares of the school population,

So they got rid of it. They continue to write, increasing school's scores on the national report card has been a justification for some of the administration's changes, according to John Rogers from UCLA, But instead of boosting student performance, Roger maintains that this directive getting rid of DEI programs could quote throw K through twelve schools into further tumult ah, but it'll it'll cause confusion due to the high fiscal

costs of culture wars, Okay, this is hilarious. So if you get rid of DEI stuff, it'll result in costs because of culture wars. Just last year, conflicts surrounding race and LGBTQ plus issues costs schools more than three billion dollars nationwide. I discussed this story on the show This

is the Biggest Hunk of BS. This was another piece from ed Source, written by a woman named Diana Lambert that talked about some study that was done to try to show that basically parents being angry over sex ed smut pornography, basically within sex heded programs inappropriate content, parents being angry about it led to all these costs, with the underlying thought being that parents should just shut up because them being upset about what public schools don't do

costs money, and it's costing money in the forms of public schools had to hire more security for school board meetings and apparently had to hire more security for superintendents and things like that, and they use this three billion dollar number, which is spread across the entire country, which you know is again when you think that Clovid president, so unified by itself, is getting five hundred million dollars just from one ballot measure, like three billion dollars spread

across every school district in America is actually not that much money, relatively speaking, but any anyway, I don't even know how they're calculating such a thing, but this idea that, okay, if we get rid of DEI, it's going to distract from the work of public schools more costs because culture wars cost so much money. This is the laziest freaking thinking I've ever heard in my life. No, it's not.

These DEI programs are total waste of time and money, frittering away public school money on a bunch of administrators who are not doing anything to ensure that these kids are actually learning to read, or write or do math. It's bogus good for the Trump administration cut off this DEI funding. When we return, I'm going to talk about President Trump's order on IVF next on the John Girardi Show.

President Trump issued an executive order the other day about IVF in vitro fertilization, and I kind of need to talk about it as mister Right to Life being director at Right to Life Es Central California. It's within kind of my purview because of some of the ethical issues considerations that are involved with the IVF. So let me get started by acknowledging I hold a very minority position on IVF. I realize that probably a lot of you

listening to it don't think IVF is a problem. Maybe some of you listening to it have a grandchild who is conceived brought into the world via IVF. Maybe some of you have gone through IVF, have a child via IVF. I want to just preface this by saying, I'm not condemning your motives, your desires, and I think a lot of people go into IVF without really understanding some of the ethical issues that are involved. So I am not here to condemn people, just as I am in the

abortion debate. I'm not actually here to condemn people who have abortions. I think abortion is wrong. I love people, I hate sin, I hate things that are wrong. The idea of judge not lest you be judge, is that I'm not judging people's subjective consciences and motivations. I am judging actions. And I think IVF has really serious moral ethical problems. Namely, one of the most significant moral problems with IVF is the fact that as it is practiced

in the United States. Most of the time, it involves the creation of far more embryos than will ever be implanted. There are about ninety seven thousand children born. There are about ninety seven thousand children born per year via IVF, and the number of embryos who are destroyed or left indefinitely frozen is far greater. It's an enormous number. It

could be in the million. You know, there are million, over a million right now in storage, and we could it could be like over a million children created and destroyed via IVF, destroyed or frozen every single year. And often embryos are held frozen until the family decides to stop paying for the storage fees, and eventually those children just die. Those embryos just die. And before you say, well,

is that a human being? Guys, it is an early stage human being every bit as much as an embryo growing inside of the womb of a woman who's considering abortion.

of adoption easier, simpler, better promoted. I think there's a huge problem right now that's not talked about enough that gen z and millennial moms don't who are in difficult situations, would rather have an abortion than place their child with an adoptive family. That basically you have whole adoption agencies in the San lu Quin Valley that went out of

business for lack of babies. Okay, Infant of Prague adoption agency, which was founded by a large group of Catholics, a lot of whom were sort of tied in with us at Right to Life, went out of business a few years ago because they had no babies. So the first move that the Trump administration does for helping promote families and allowing people to have more children is not through adoption, not through managing the costs of childbirth, the newborn care.

You know, I mean we a Right to Life. We helped start, I helped found our Obria Clinic, which I talked about a lot on the show. It's our nonprofit pro life Obgyn clinic that we founded in Fresno. Why, Well, it was because of this basic problem. There are a ton of women in South Fresno who are on medical and there are fewer and fewer doctors who want to

take care of them because medical loses money. So rather than fixing some of those economic incentives and reimbursement rate, maybe we have a program with more reimbursement rates for doctors who take medical Medicaid patients in order for it to be profitable for doctors so that more of them can take more medical patients, to allow women to more readily have access to doctors. No, we're going to IVF,

and let's remember that IVF is an industry. This is a usually cash industry, doctors making a ton of money. And it's also arguably not even really healthcare. Why do I say that? Okay, this isn't necessarily a moral judgment on it, but it's a of a technical thing. Healthcare means fixing something that is wrong with the human body. Something is wrong with the human body, and you do an intervention to restore the body from non health to health, or an intervention to help keep and maintain the body

in a state of health. You have a headache, something's wrong with your body. You take tile and all it makes your headache go away. That's healthcare. Now with that definition, certain things are not really healthcare. Michael Jackson getting a nose job because he's convinced his nose looks funny, that's not a healthcare intervention. There was nothing wrong with Michael Jackson's original nose. He wanted it for cosmetic reasons, some

kind of social reason. IVF is not really healthcare in the sense that it is not fixing something that is wrong with a woman's hormonal health, or a or a man's hormonal health, or a couple's hormonal health or reproductive health. It is sort of bypassing whatever issues are happening, whether it's for women polycystic ovarian syndrome or endometriosis or whatever. It is, bypassing those problems and creating a child through a different means. It's not actually addressing the underlying fertility

health issues that the couple is experiencing. And as a result, I think it has made sense for it not to be mandated to be covered by insurance. Also, the extreme cost of it makes sense that it's not generally something covered by insurance, and this is part of the money side of it has led to this warping and distorting

of the field of fertility care. There are whole ranges of hormonal health approaches for addressing infertility that for the most part, most infertility doctors are not taking advantage of or pursuing because IVF is such a cash cow. I've had plenty of stories of people who had infertility in their marriages went to infertility docs who would do maybe a few things maybe to try to help increase like sperm motility or something, and then immediately go to Okay,

so when are you doing IVF. You know, he's talked about it on the radio a lot. But my very good friend Jonathan Keller, my co host on Right to Life Radio, he and his wife had infertility within their marriage for ten years and bang their heads against the wall of fertility doctors who would immediately jump to IVF, and Jonathan and his wife believed ethically that that was

not something that they could do. And then finally I was able to get them in touch with a doctor who There's a lot of infertility medicine that has come out of certain kinds of Catholic hospitals and medical schools, particularly Creighton Universe promoted this thing called Napro technology, which is sort of this range of surgical and hormonal hormonal treatments for infertility that actually try to address the underlying

hormonal health problems with a couple's infertility. Jonathan's wife had a surgical procedure to help address anometriosis and had a surgery called a bilateral wedge resection, basically surgery that's done on the ovaries to help sort of kickstart activity, and they had two babies within five years of that process, two sons who are their absolute joy. And most of the infertility industry is not interested in that because of the because the cash cow of IVF. So I would

say just a couple of things. I think any kind of insureurance mandate for IVF, which is something that the Trump people have floated, would be insane, completely insane. Mandating that IVF, which is not really healthcare and which is incredibly expensive, be covered under insurances is an insane idea.

Promoting IVF without more restrictions on it in order to lessen or eliminate the number the creation of excess wastage embryos, which is actually how the IVF industry is regulated in most of Europe and also within the state of Louisiana, they have certain specific laws that are better. I think would be a massive mistake. I think mandating IVF coverage in insurance plans would be a massive fiscal mistake. It would lead to massive incre lead, further increases in insurance premiums,

all kinds of problems. And I think also just just this focus on IVF leads to this continuing diminution of real fertility healthcare treatments that again have gotten such short shrift because of what a cashcow IVF is. This will if if a Trump EO results in just insurance coverage for IVF for everybody and whatever sort of subsidization, it's only going to make that problem worse. And by the way, if we're all in on this MAHA thing, which I'm

more and more believing after our f CA. So, oh, President Trump's totally right about IVF with no sort of skepticism, you know, RF case, who's allegedly so skeptical of the pharmaceutical industry and the practice of medicine, no skepticism about the iv industry apparently, which makes me think that his make America Healthy Again agenda is not really some logically coherent and consistent series of principles and policies. It's just

kind of whatever he thinks. Actually promoting real, authentic fertility health care and real fertility health care treatments would be a much more MAHA thing than going to IVF. And again, if the Republican Party becomes the Party of IVF and leads to a massive increase in the number of embryos being created and destroyed via IVF, it honestly leads me to a very displaced place as a pro lifer, because why am I so concerned about abortion numbers when other

children are being legally killed? Maybe more children are being legally killed through this other means. It's honestly an incredibly politically disorienting thing for me and makes me question, well, what kind of a Republican am I if my own party is supporting the legal killing of hundreds of thousands of embryos. When we return, journalists covering Pope Francis's illness are bad at their jobs. Next on the John Girardi Show, those of you outside of the Catholic world may not

be aware. Maybe inside the Catholic world may not be aware that Pope Francis is in very bad health right now. He's got pneumonia, bilateral pneumonia. He's eighty eight years old, he had actually had most of one long removed from

a childhood illness, so he's not in good shape. And all the reports coming from the Vatican, they all start with this headline, Pope Francis, who has been diagnosed with pneumonia and both lungs, passed a peaceful night, the Vatican has said, amid growing concerns over the eight eight year old's condition, stop saying that he passed the night comfortably. Two nights in a row, we've had headlines saying that he passed the night comfortably. Stop saying passed Pause through

all thinking means he passed away. That'll do it. John Gerardi Show, See you next time on Power Talk