This is the Tom Hartman program.

David Pepper's on the line with us.

The lawyer, writer, his latest book is Saving Democracy, a user's manual for every American,

political activist,

former elected official, adjunct professor

at the University of Cincinnati College of Law,

has served as the chair of the Ohio Democratic Party

and regularly rights on sub-stack,

laboratories of Autocracy.com.

You're right, over the past year,

we've seen a case study of this

with the takeover of the Ohio School Board

and independent body with numerous members elected directly by voters.

So number one, how did and why did Ohio get an independent school board and number two,

what are the Republicans trying to do about that and why?

So my bigger theory and I assume you'll agree with this is about that

public education is clearly one of the major fronts in their attack on democracy. They

don't like public education for many reasons and Ohioans to their credit in the 50s had a constitutional amendment

to create some independence in the way our public schools were dealt with because they were concerned about

politicians and their

donors sort of using schools for their benefit and not the benefit of

families and kids. So we've had an independent elected school board for the

...