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Hi, I'm Kristen. Hi, I'm Rachel. Hey, I'm Stephen. I'm Mary Catherine. I'm Griffin. And I'm Amanda.

And we just won bar trivia again. This is Nick. Oh, Nick the host. The only thing we're more

competitive about than winning is learning. This podcast was recorded at 12.37 p.m. Eastern Time on Friday,

September 5th, 2025. It's a lot of people in this group.

Things may have changed by the time you hear this, but we'll continue to study our presidents and state capitals. Enjoy the show.

Trivia's so much fun. Absolutely. I've been thinking about wanting to join a trivia team. What's your trivia thing, Domenico? Is there like a special area? Well, I mean, politics, government, sports, 90s rap. Usually those are the areas I get five out of five in jeopardy. Geography. Oh, very cool. Very cool. Hey there. It's the NPR Politics Podcast. I'm Sarah McCam and I cover politics. And I'm Domenico

Montanaro, senior political editor and correspondent. And NPR education correspondent, Corey Turner is here. Hey, Corey, good to have you.

Good to be here. Today on the show, we're taking a look at how President Trump is changing the shape of K-12 education from the steps the administration has taken to try to shut down the U.S. Department of Education to fights over school funding nationwide.

You know, Corey, what strikes you about the way the Trump administration is approaching the federal role in education?

I think there's a really interesting contradiction or tension in the Trump administration's approach here, because on the one hand, as you said, you know, President Trump campaign on the idea of closing the education department. He has said no shortage of terrible things about the department and what it does. And he has been busy making good on

that promise. We know the staff of the department is now roughly half the level it was in January,

and we know behind the scenes they're working on carving out some of its responsibilities

and trying to move them elsewhere. The tension comes from the fact that at the same time, President Trump wants to close the department, he has shown no hesitation in wielding the power the department has in one really specific arena.

And that is around the department's job in enforcing federal civil rights laws.

Yeah, and how is that working? How are they doing that?

Well, so they're basically using a combination of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and specifically Title VI in that law,

which prohibits discrimination based on race, color, and national origin. And they're using Title IX,

which obviously prohibits sex discrimination and was meant to

level the playing field for women and girls. What the administration is doing, though, is going after,

...