January 17 – Betsy DeVos’ “Christian” Agenda; Trump as an Authoritarian Leader; “A Practical Guide For Resisting the Trump Agenda”

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Part 1

We begin with the testimony today of Donald Trump’s nominee to be the next Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos, a billionaire conservative political activist and major donor to Republicans including most of the majority members of the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee conducting today’s hearing. Diane Ravitch, a Professor in New York University’s Steinhardt School of Education, a former Assistant Secretary of Education under President George H.W. Bush and author of “Reign of Error: The Hoax of the Privatization Movement and the Danger to America’s Public Schools”, joins us to discuss the religious zeal that underpins Betsy DeVos’s determination to promote Charter Schools and Vouchers for Religious Schools and Home Schooling which will further de-fund public schools where 85% of American kids get their education.

 

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Part 2

Then we speak with cultural critic Ruth Ben-Ghiat, a Professor of History and Italian Studies at New York University who has spent decades studying authoritarian and fascist regimes. She joins us to discuss her latest article at CNN, “Trump is Following the Authoritarian Playbook” and the extraordinary defense of Trump that came today from a fellow authoritarian leader Vladimir Putin who argued that the intelligence dossier the president-elect was fake news because Donald Trump would only consort with high class hookers and that Russia’s prostitutes are the best in the world.

Part 3

Then finally we look into a growing movement to resist the Trump agenda and speak with the co-author of a practical guide on how to do so. Ezra Levin, a D.C.-based domestic policy wonk who served as a congressional staffer and the Associate Director of Federal Policy at the Corporation for Enterprise Development joins us to discuss “Indivisible: A Practical Guide for Resisting the Trump Agenda” which he co-authored with another former congressional staffer Angel Padilla.