Higher education is a major U.S. export. And it’s under threat.

Make Me Smart

Marketplace

News, Business

4.6 • 5.4K Ratings

🗓️ 22 May 2025

⏱️ 9 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

It’s Kai’s last day as a regular co-host of “Make Me Smart” and he’s got a solid rant (and two bleeps). We’ll get into the Trump administration’s push to block international students at Harvard, thretening one of American’s biggest exports: higher education. Plus, we’ll unpack the Supreme Court’s 4-4 split over a separation of church and state case. And, could penguin poop be a tool against global warming?

Here’s everything we talked about today:

“Supreme Court deadlocks, blocking creation of first religious public school” from The Washington Post
“Trump Administration Halts Harvard’s Ability to Enroll International Students” from The New York Times
“Harvard University Loses Student and Exchange Visitor Program Certification for Pro-Terrorist Conduct” from the U.S. Department of Homeland Security
“Stop making cents: US Mint moves forward with plans to kill the penny” from AP News
“Penguin Poop Could Limit Global Warming’s Impact on Antarctica” from Bloomberg

“Make Me Smart” is going on a break! Kimberly and Reema will be back with new episodes June 9. We’d love to hear from you while we’re away. Email [email protected] or leave us a voicemail at 508-U-B-SMART.

Transcript

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0:00.0	Hey everybody, I'm Kyle Risdahl. Welcome back to Make Me Smart. Where we make today makes sense.
0:11.2	And I'm Kimberly Adams. Joining you all from the New York Stock Exchange today, it is Thursday, May 22nd.
0:17.6	I'm in the studio in L.A. Nothing fancy here. Just doing my thing. Your studio's fancy.
0:23.7	Well, not as fancy as the New York stocky stance. I mean, come on. We're going to do some news.
0:27.9	Close it out with some smiles. We will begin. And Ms. Adams, you get to go first.
0:32.6	You know, I was surprised a little bit that Congress actually, that the House actually moved that bill last night, but, you know, they were determined to get it done.
0:41.7	So, I mean, that's the big news, but since everybody's been talking about that all day, I wanted to talk about something else, which is news out of the Supreme Court that they had a 4-4 split, a tie, leaving in place this Oklahoma Supreme Court ruling
0:56.3	blocking what would have been the first in the nation public religious charter school.
1:02.9	So this was a case where they wanted to set up a charter school and basically use
1:06.7	taxpayer funds in Oklahoma to have a religious school and teaching, you know, religious stuff,
1:12.9	and use charter school funding for that. And a lot of people were complaining that this
1:17.3	violates a separation of church and state. The religious groups behind it were saying
1:21.9	if these funds are available for any group to start a charter school, they should be available for us
1:27.3	too.
1:28.0	Now, we ended up with the 4-4 split on the Supreme Court because Amy Comey-Barritt actually
1:32.9	recused herself. And so it was an even divide. And so now what happens is the Oklahoma's,
1:40.6	the, excuse me, the Oklahoma Supreme Court's ruling stands, and they, it doesn't kind of make
1:49.1	anybody happy because it means that the case can be brought again. It's not a definitive answer,
1:54.9	but it does at least stop it for the time being, because this would have been a huge deal.
1:59.2	Would have been a very huge deal. I do think we're going to see it again, though.
2:01.9	I do think, or something very similar, right?
2:04.4	Something very similar.
	...

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