The federal Education Department is a very small department. It’s basically the college student aid program and (typically) non-controversial and often universal grants to state and local governments for K-12 stuff (like special education).

At major D-I schools, “revenue sports” like football, basketball (men’s and women’s nowadays but much smaller than football), and sometimes baseball or a random other sport turns a profit and funds the athletic department along with donors. Sometimes, there’s an “athletics fee” students pay that (ideally) funds things for a gym and intramural sports.

But generally, it’s donors. And college presidents keep sports around to advertise the school and keep alumni attached so they donate. A rich alumnus might not donate to sports but the college president wines and dines them at a football game.

In normal times, I’d say it’s complicated. There’s a lot of suburban parents who are busy and tune out the news but get very politically activated if you start fucking with schools (and student aid because that’s fucking with their money).

Not sure if MAGA cares — I don’t know if we’ll even have elections — but don’t underestimate parents to be late to the fight but then want to gouge out a politician’s eyes.

I think the practical problems with this are going to be weird. The federal Department of Education is pretty small and doesn’t set as much policy as people assume since that’s 90% done at the state and local level. The college student loan program is a huge component and could theoretically be ruined or just moved to Treasury or HHS or whatever.

The rest is mostly grants to state and local governments and red state politicians are going to be even more pissed than blue if they kill those and put a hole in their budget that has to be filled. (Doesn’t mean they won’t do it but it’s not going to please any governors/legislators.)

The people who will likely suffer most are special ed students since those grants are, obviously, for public schools and private/parochial schools basically never have programs for students with severe, profound, or mild autism. (I don’t know the current terms but when I was in high school, people with, for instance, autism were classified as severe, profound, mild, or moderate based on where they fell on the spectrum. Those terms are probably outdated or were unique to my school system.)

You can use any shape you want. The rest is idiotic but you can get crazy with the shape if you want.

The actual law says:

Whenever there is a declared war between the United States and any foreign nation or government, or any invasion or predatory incursion is perpetrated, attempted, or threatened against the territory of the United States by any foreign nation or government, and the President makes public proclamation of the event, all natives, citizens, denizens, or subjects of the hostile nation or government, being of the age of fourteen years and upward, who shall be within the United States and not actually naturalized, shall be liable to be apprehended, restrained, secured, and removed as alien enemies.

It seems like a plain reading of the text says it requires an invasion by a “foreign nation or government.” I don’t know how lawyer-brained you have to be to read that as “Oh, and also some Venezuelan gang counts as a foreign nation or government if the president says so.”

He’s not the first or last person to throw away a promising career to make a shitty, embarrassing podcast.

Party registration is public data in Arizona. They provide a ton of data, actually. A lot of states just provide name and party affiliation and maybe zip code or whatever. But you can often just buy it.

If they required people to RSVP, it’d probably be pretty easy for a political party to cross reference and check ID. (It seems Arizona sells the list to political parties and mere citizens have the right to inspect the voter rolls. Whatever that means.)

Source: https://www.ncsl.org/elections-and-campaigns/access-to-and-use-of-voter-registration-lists

Because basically everything in the Democratic Party is fundraising and seniority now and he represents NY and has for years. The way you advance within the Democratic Party is fundraising. So, leadership almost inevitably represents NYC, San Francisco, LA, etc. If you can have a fundraiser with guests from Hollywood, Wall Street, or Silicon Valley, it’s pretty easy to be one of the top Democratic fundraisers.

The only other ways to match that are basically: be independently wealthy, have an unusual level of celebrity and a national profile (like AOC), or be the chair of the appropriations or finance committee or something similarly powerful. There’s no official rule about it but traditionally, Democrats assign committee positions by seniority. So, you get a bunch of out-of-touch old people running powerful committees and easy-to-caricature coastal elites as the main faces of the party in Congress. (Republicans have 6-year term limits for committee leadership and fewer norms around seniority.)

Republicans obviously don’t have fundraising issues since the FEC doesn’t enforce election laws and they have billionaires on their side. Super PACs legally aren’t allowed to coordinate with the campaigns but, of course, Elon Musk, who setup and funded the biggest Super PAC, literally made campaign appearances with Trump and crashed at Mar-a-Lago for awhile. Of course they fucking coordinated.

Amy Coney Barrett Is from an inner suburb of New Orleans and went to high school in the city. She might be Catholic to a creepy degree but she’s definitely going to vote differently than Alito or Thomas. New Orleanians are delightfully ungovernable. Sometimes for the worse but we don’t even have common law here. She’ll have a broader perspective than someone who grew up indoctrinated.

She’s from Old Metairie and went to Dominican, for anyone who knows the city. She’s super conservative and I dislike her but she’s going to end up a swing vote when a Bible Belt conservative might not.