Friday, March 28, 2025

Part I

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The Truth About the Department of Education: Teachers Unions, Bureaucracy, and Massive Ideological Issues at the Department of Education

Well, bureaucrats love bureaucracies and one bureaucracy tends to want to protect the other bureaucracy. It’s a mutual defense pact, and that’s at least part of what we see with all the headlines coming out of Washington and the energy coming from the Trump administration to shut down some federal agencies, bureaucracies, most importantly, the Department of Education. We’ve talked about that at length, including the fact that it didn’t exist until the 1970s, and that it basically has become a very large swamp in itself, a large part, a large bureaucracy there in Washington, DC. And even though it provides only about 10% of the funding for most local school districts on average, it has a bureaucratic reach far into just about everything that’s taught, every school that exists.

And yet it doesn’t exist in a power vacuum. Obviously, at least a part of what makes the Department of Education this massive federal bureaucracy so politicized is the fact that it was created by politics. It is funded by politicians. It is right in the middle of the political swamp. That’s just the way it works. But it’s also true that the Department of Education is highly politicized because the world of education is highly politicized. What do I mean by that? Well, number one, the people who are in office in so many of these agencies, and by that I mean the continuing bureaucrats, not so much those who are identified as politicals, those are political appointments. But the ongoing career administrators, overwhelmingly, it’s pretty evident that their commitments are to the left. And it’s a reinforcing, a mutually reinforcing pact because you have the elites say in colleges and universities, particularly in education schools, which are almost never the strongest schools, by the way, in those institutions.

And so the one watches the back of the other, and they both tend to move ideologically in pretty much the same direction, pretty much at the same speed. Not a coincidence. That’s just the way it works. That’s the way bureaucracies, that’s the way the administrative state works. So President Trump has ordered an immediate shutdown of about half of the operations of US Department of Education and has announced, and this is not a secret, he ran on this, he said this, it was even clear in the hearings for his Secretary of Education. It’s very clear he intends to at least do his best to shut down the Department of Education, immediately about half of it. And already, of course, the lawsuits are flying because that’s the way the administrative state fights back, and in this case, the administrative state plus its co-belligerents, those who are fighting on its side, which means the Democrats in Congress, the larger intellectual elite, an entire alphabet soup of organizations, and most importantly, the teachers unions.

So here’s the headline from USA Today, “Teachers Union Sues Trump Administration.” Subhead, “It Calls Dismantling Education Agency Illegal.” Okay, most people would have no knowledge of this, but I’ve been watching these things long enough, I’ll tell you something interesting, and that is that the teachers unions weren’t really hot on the creation of the Department of Education. What they wanted back in the 1970s wasn’t so much a Department of Education as, and you know the refrain and this chorus already, they wanted more money. And they wanted that money being more specifically designated. The teachers unions, by the way, especially the National Association of Education and the American Federation of Teachers just overwhelmingly liberal. There’s actually no way I think you can exaggerate that. I don’t think I have the ability to exaggerate how liberal they are. And very, very powerful in the Democratic Party.

Going all the way back to the first decade of the century, two out of three persons present at the Democratic National Convention as it was reported, were either teachers, or married to a teacher, or at least had a member of the teachers union in their natural family, their immediate family. And in most cases, it was either teacher or spouse of a teacher in that designation. Two out of three, let’s just say that’s inordinate influence. That’s one of the reasons why if the entire country were run by the NAE and the AFT, you would never see a Republican on the ground. But the USA Today report tells us “ the nation’s second-largest teacher’s union, two other unions representing school employees, and a pair of Massachusetts school districts on Monday filed a lawsuit against the Trump administration over its attempt to dismantle the US Department of Education.”

Of course, their immediate claim is this is going to hurt students. This is going to lead to a fall off in terms of America’s ability to educate its children. The response to that almost immediately is the Department of Education has been a disaster. Under its existence, students have done worse, not better. And yet you understand how bureaucracies are watching the back of other bureaucracies. The bureaucracy of the labor unions is watching the bureaucracy of the Department of Education. But as I say, it was interesting that back in the ’70s, it wasn’t so much a Department of Education the labor unions wanted, the teachers unions wanted at the time, it was more money. Now, they did begin to see the Department of Education as an asset in their effort to get more money. The other thing the teachers unions don’t like by the way, are block grants.

Block grants mean that the federal government says to the states, respective of some kind of formula, “Here is a block of money. You spend it as you see best.” Instead, they want the bureaucratic state, the administrative state, to be able to basically use ideologically driven formulas to say, no, you’re going to have to spend the money on this program. You can see where the moral liberals, the progressives, just see this as a great engine, a great mechanism for reaching the minds of children, forcing programs, DEI initiatives. You just go down the list. It’s all been a part of this. Well, the teachers unions are outraged about the president’s attempted shut down of the Department of Education. The president himself, by the way, has acknowledged he can’t shut it down into non-existence unilaterally. It’s going to take some congressional action, but you know what? The president is doing something so significant that it’s going to be hard for the Department of Education to recover, particularly with Republicans in the House and in the Senate as well as in the White House.

But at least if history is a guide, don’t count out the administrative state. Don’t count out, don’t count as defeated, the bureaucratic blob because it usually wins. It usually finds a way to come back. But here’s something really, really interesting. It’s not just that the teachers unions don’t want the shutdown of the Department of Education, and that’s largely political and ideological. They also, and this is something you’re not going to hear so often, they also really, really hate the block grants. They don’t want the states to have more authority over how they spend their money. They want bureaucratic control, and the biggest thing they want is more employees. So the Department of Education didn’t exist until the 1970s, but it’s really interesting that the Heritage Foundation released research just this week saying “from 1950 to today, there has been a 100% increase in the number of students in public schools. A 243% increase in the number of teachers, a 709% increase in the number of non-teaching staff, which are largely administrative positions. Only 47.5% of people in the public school system are actually teachers.”

Here’s the other thing, wouldn’t you think that the teachers unions would want more teachers and fewer administrators? Well, it would make sense, except the administrators themselves are very much a part of the demand that the teachers unions have made. They want teachers to be freed from all kinds of administrative responsibilities, so you need to hire someone to do that, the labor unions have been arguing. And so you look at this and you say, “Okay, this is a perfect mess. It’s a perfect mess.” But I think it’s very interesting that the Heritage Foundation has released these numbers. They really are telling. There’s been a 709% increase in non-teaching staff. You do the math, 709%.

You say there are more students. Yes, the rise of students has been 100%. So the student body has doubled, but when it comes to non-teaching administrators in the public schools, it’s like a mushroom cloud on an atom bomb. It is absolutely massive. And by the way, if they have their way, it will never stop. So I will just say out loud, as I’ve said before, I think one of the most dangerous influences in our entire system are the teachers unions. Notice I didn’t say teachers, I said teacher unions, but I think you look at this, you also come to understand it is just a giant swamp in which everyone bureaucratically looks out for everyone else.

And when you have a 700 plus percent increase in non-teaching staff, every single one of them is going to fight for the continuation of that job. And by the way, every single one of them would argue he or she needs an administrative assistant who by the way, will need an administrative assistant and a director of administrative assistants, and oh, by the way, a DEI officer to watch over it all. That’s just the way it works. One of the biggest questions in American public life is whether that can be stopped. Honestly, it’s almost as big a question to ask if it can even be slowed down.

Part II

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U.S. Scientists Need a ‘Safe Place’? The UK is Opening Its Doors to U.S. Scientists in the Wake of the Trump Administration’s Program Cuts

But I have to shift to another story to tell you. There is good news. If you are a scientist afraid that you’re going to lose your job due to some kind of cutback, particularly in areas of research or of work that are out of favor with conservatives right now, well just know you’ve got a safe place to go. And that is Europe, the New York Times “as US scientists lose funds, Europe offers a place to land.” And so at least some universities in Europe, including in particular France, why are we surprised? Has thought that it is to the advantage, why would we be surprised, to see an opportunity to hire scientists from the United States, or at least to get some headlines in the American press. “Just hours after opening its new program for American researchers called Safe Place for Science in reaction to Trump administration policies, a major French university received its first application. Since then, the university in the south of France, known for its science programs, has received about a dozen applications per day from what the school considers scientific asylum seekers.”

Yeah, leave it to academics to turn this into a cosmic drama. And as I told you, there’s an ideological edge to this that is right from the get-go. Listen to this: “at stake are not just individual jobs, but the concept of free scientific inquiry. University presidents say they’re also rushing into fill huge holes in collective research caused by the cuts, particularly in areas targeted by the Trump administration, including studies of climate change, public health, environmental science, gender and diversity.” Yeah, you pretty much had that list in mind already. Later in the article we read, “taken together, the actions have sent a chill through academia and research institutes with scientists worried not just about their jobs, but for the long-term viability of their research.” The president of the Pasteur Institute in Paris, “who moved to France last year after 30 years in the United States where she led the National Institute of Health Center for Human Immunology,” said, “what we see today is actually censorship, censorship of fundamental values. We could lose a generation of scientists, something that we cannot recover from,” she said.

Well, I will just say I don’t think we’re in danger of losing a generation of scientists, but this is exactly the kind of hew and cry you’re going to hear if anyone even says we need to cut back or exercise some oversight over these programs. By the way, the article ends with a citation from a German economist teaching in the United States at the University of California Berkeley, big surprise there, who told a media group in Germany, “I know that a lot of people are thinking about leaving” Well, I guess the easiest way to end that is to say we’ll see.

Part III

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Will You Clarify the Abolitionist and Incrementalist Positions Within the Pro-Life Movement? — Dr. Mohler Responds to Letters from Listeners of The Briefing

Now let’s turn to questions. 

You can send your question just by writing me at mail@albertmohler.com. I’m always honored by the questions, interested in them. Sometimes they come in a pattern and that pattern tells me this is something that’s really important, a lot of people are thinking about this, wondering about it. Let’s take a stab at trying to clarify it and think about it appropriately.

One of the questions coming in now as something of a pattern are persons who are asking about the abolition movement in the pro-life movement. So as a subset of those who are seeking to oppose abortion and to defend the unborn, a subset is a movement that isn’t exactly new, but it is newly energetic, especially after the repeal of the Roe V. Wade decision in 2022. The argument of the abolitionist movement, and you can understand that abolition is a good word when it comes to a moral evil like abortion. That’s what we want to do, we want to abolish it, we don’t just want to restrict it, we don’t just want to reduce it, we want to abolish it. Now, in a sinful world, it is really doubtful that you can abolish anything like that, but you can certainly fight it with the goal of abolishing it.

And I would state right up front that I think it should be the commitment of every Christian to oppose abortion and to defend the unborn all the way to what we hope would be the abolition of abortion. Now, you know the abolitionist arguments, they’re the same and different depending on who is making the argument. But I want to identify three parts I see as central to the argument. Number one, the argument that unborn human beings are persons as would be recognized by, and whose lives would be defended by, the 14th Amendment of the US Constitution. So when the 14th Amendment talks about persons, the argument, I think it’s absolutely right, I share in this affirmation entirely, is that the 14th amendment includes unborn human beings. So it’s persons born and unborn who should have full protection, full recognition, full respect, full constitutional standing, and that would be a game changer, to be sure. I gave full support to a legal effort to try to work through the courts on this issue, and I will continue to do so.

Now, the second issue is asking who should be prosecuted if abortion is to be made illegal unless it would be a criminal act for which there would be criminal consequences, who should be charged with that crime? And I’ve talked about this on The Briefing before, but I’ll come back because I think it’s good to put it in this context. I believe it is morally untenable. By the way, the argument of the abolitionist movement is that a woman seeking abortion should be criminally liable. A woman undergoing an abortion has some criminal complicity in the sin, which is the crime of abortion. The historic background to this is that the modern pro-life movement, emerging out of what was known as the physician’s crusade against abortion, began at a time when it decided that it would center in the criminalization of abortion in which you’d have the prosecution of abortionists and those who ran abortion clinics, those who performed abortion, rather than women seeking abortion.

Now, that was somewhat a moral decision, but it was a different moral context in which the only context they had was the so-called fallen woman, and they in every way wanted to treat her as a victim. The other part was political. Honestly, it was very political. They felt like they could make real progress towards criminalizing abortionists. They thought that just given the sentimentalization of the issue, it’d be very difficult to bring criminal prosecutions against women seeking abortions. But that also is a very different time. And so for years now, I’ve argued that it is unreasonable, it is contradictory, to say that you have a crime in the destruction of unborn life, and yet the one who is seeking that criminal act has no criminal responsibility. And in many cases, and this is also something the abortion rights movement doesn’t want to talk about, in many cases, we’re talking about women who have had more than one abortion, and so it becomes very hard to say that’s a matter of coercion.

At the same time, we know it sometimes is a matter of coercion, and I think most of us understand there are situations in which a boyfriend or a husband or a family member or someone else who just met the woman and say it’s the abortion or else, and women are in a very vulnerable position at that point. But here is where we need to understand the law can make discriminations, and it does. In most states, there are multiple charges related to the death of a human being, even to murder, going all the way from capital murder at the top, premeditated homicide, premeditated murder at the top, all the way to something like involuntary manslaughter, which means it was by accident, at the low level. And the facts determine the case. The facts determine the crime. The facts determine the indictment. The facts determine the arguments made in court, and the facts should determine both the verdict and the sentence.

And if human courts are able to do that with murder now, they ought to be able to do the same thing when it comes to understanding the moral imperative of criminalizing the intentional death of the unborn. I say there are three issues as I can best understand it. The third issue would be non-incrementalism. And this is the argument that if indeed, first of all, as would be established in scripture and understood by Christian conviction that life begins at fertilization. And if indeed the 14th Amendment rightly stipulates that persons are those who possess certain rights, including the right not to be murdered, just to put it bluntly. If indeed that status is given to persons and unborn human beings are such persons, then it would be morally wrong to settle for anything other than the total abolition of abortion by law.

Now, I want to be clear. I basically agree, and I do so publicly. I’ve talked about this for a long time. I basically agree with the first principle and the second principle, and I think the first principle is absolutely right as a matter of the constitution. I think the second principle is also morally right, and I think it’s contradictory to just say there’s no circumstance in which a woman seeking an abortion should bear some criminal responsibility for a criminal act. I just don’t believe that’s in any way morally consistent. The third issue, which is non-incrementalism, well, here’s where given my own theological worldview, I believe that in a fallen world, almost all politics is incremental. And I think that in a fallen world, just the Christian theory of rescue means you rescue as many as you can, and then you do everything possible to prevent future endangerment to others who would have to be similarly rescued.

And by the way, I think that argument has changed somewhat after the November 2024 election, I want to tell you why. Because there are an awful lot of people who call themselves abortion abolitionists who voted for Donald Trump. If you voted for Donald Trump, you are not honestly a non-incrementalist because Donald Trump has not declared opposition to all abortions in all situations. But the difference between Kamala Harris and Donald Trump on abortion is absolutely massive. So much so, that I think it is clear that even most of the people who said they are non-incrementalists, they at least were incrementalists on election day in November of 2024. And I don’t think they violated their conscience. I don’t think they’re wrong. Again, I take a theological understanding of history and politics in which we understand that we contend for righteousness in a world of sin and intertwining systems that work for unrighteousness rather than for righteousness.

And in a fallen world, most political proposals are somewhat mixed. And in any case, over time, the political entity, the polis is certainly mixed. We have a big job ahead of us in persuasion, and that’s where we need to go. So again, it’s a complex question, but I think it can be reduced to some easily understood principles. And I am sure if there’s some people who disagree with my definition, I will hear from them.

Part IV

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Is My Toddler’s Imaginary Friend an Evil Spirit? — Dr. Mohler Responds to Letters from Listeners of The Briefing

That took some time. But again, I say I see patterns and I hope to be responsive to those patterns in a way that will be helpful. Love moms sending in questions. Moms and dads from the little ones, a mom in Texas writes me, “my three-year-old has been seeing an imaginary friend in their room that has a name of someone they have never met or come across in real life. The other night we were getting ready for bed and he said, “There he is,” and was chatting with him in a normal conversation as a three-year-old can. She then, as a sweet mom asked this question, this one kind of lands with a thud. Is that an evil spirit around my toddler? I want to say I certainly do not believe that’s an evil spirit. I think you have a very normal three-year-old. This is a normal phase, and quite honestly, your three-year-old is incredibly adept at a certain point in determining what’s real and unreal. But the imagination of a three-year-old, it’s a wonder of this world. And as the grandfather of a three-year-old, I can simply say it is a wonderful thing.

I also want to tell you a story. Sometimes you can read way too much into this. So today I’m going to end by telling you, sometimes people can sound an alarm, and it turns out there’s nothing really there. I think in this case, I think it’s a very sweet question. I’m so thankful you’re the mom of this three-year-old, and I think you have a very normal three-year-old with a normal three-year-old imagination. Imaginary friends are very normal at three. Now at 30, we got a problem. But at three it is quite normal. 

I want to end with a story that may encourage you, and it comes from my own family history. I am one of four, and the oldest of four children, one of my little brothers was actually the subject of some concern on the part of teachers. At least one teacher was concerned because we were a family of mom and dad and four kids, but there were five kids in the picture, and when asked the name, he just provided a name. And the teacher knew there were only four kids. And so there was a fifth kid.

And so immediately the teacher goes, “Wow, we may have an issue here. We got a young elementary school student. He appears to have an imaginary member of his family.” And so called my mom in, my mom had a conversation, but she was probably sharing the concern somewhat. And so my mom decided to ask my little brother what was going on. And with the honesty and straightforwardness of a little elementary school-aged boy, he said that he was told to draw a picture of his family. He drew one too many heads, so he had to go ahead and add the body. Teacher asked for a name, he was embarrassed, so he gave a name. It actually wasn’t an imaginary friend. It was an artistic error. I just hope he doesn’t mind me sharing that story today. Oh, the world is full of things that encourage us and discourage us. I got to tell you this question coming in from this mom, it has encouraged me.