Key members of the GOP field want to abolish the Department of Education.

We'll discuss what that would mean for the nation's 55 million students.

Then a showdown in Tennessee over gun control reveals a split within conservative circles.

We'll head down there, at least metaphorically, to see what's going on and see if there's any prospect of legislation

in the wake of that tragedy in the spring. And then finally, we've got a record number of voicemails.

So we'll turn the floor over to you, the listeners, to tell us a little bit about what you felt

about some segments from episodes past. This is The Lost Debate, a show for political eclectics.

Hello, everybody. I'm Robbie Gupta. And I'm Ricky Schlaught. Well, Ricky, in 1642, Massachusetts,

which was really just a colony at that time, passed the old deluder Satan Act.

And they really went after it. Every township across Massachusetts, this is in the words of the

bill, after the worth hath increased them to 50 households, shall forthwith point one of their own

town to teach all such children as shall resort to him

to read and write whose wages shall be paid either by the parents or masters of such children

or by the inhabitants in general. So with that piece of legislation, Ricky, we've entered this

experiment of federal control of education. And that was on display at the

GOP debate where multiple candidates have engaged in this time-honored tradition of debating

whether the federal government and the government at all should be involved in our kids' education.

Governor DeSantis, Vivek Ramoswamy,

Doug Bergam, and Vice President Pence all said if they were elected they would eliminate

the Federal Department of Education. This is a bit of a long-standing policy position of the Republican

Party, goes back to Ronald Reagan, who basically immediately upon the

establishment of the Modern Department of Education promised that he would get rid of it.

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