Have Faith in Catholic Education

Catholic schools are closing their doors all across America, leaving future generations with nowhere to turn for the high-quality academics and values-based education so many families are seeking. The number of students attending Catholic schools in the US fell from about 5.2 million in 1965 to around two million in 2008.

Pioneer Institute believes these schools are worth preserving. For over a decade, we have raised our voice in support of these excellent academic options, and tools such as tax credit scholarships that would enable more families to attend.

Pioneer has held public forums, published research on the benefits of Catholic education, on successful models such as Cristo Rey, and on policy changes that would stop the Massachusetts education department from depriving religious school students of special needs services and school nurses. The Institute has also convened key stakeholders, appeared in local and national press, filed amicus briefs, produced a feature a documentary film, and much more.

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Navigating Labor Shortages: The Role of Immigrants and the Potential of Schedule A

November 30, 2023/in Featured, JobMakers, News /by Editorial Staff

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Transcript, JobMakers, Guest Lindsay Milliken, November 30, 2023

Denzil Mohammed: [00:00:00] I’m Denzil Mohammed. Welcome to JobMakers. There are about a million international students at U.S. colleges and universities at this very moment, many of whom would love to use the skills and knowledge they gain at our schools in jobs available here in this country. At the same time, there are way more job openings than there are candidates, with unemployment at a record low, but a dire need for more talent, more people. What are we missing here? For Lindsey Milliken, Immigration Fellow at the Institute for Progress, a Washington, D.C.-based nonpartisan think tank that researches industrial and scientific progress, there is a clear way to bridge this gap. It’s called Schedule A, out of the Department of Labor, a list of in-demand occupations where employers can more easily and quickly hire immigrant professionals.

But not only is it not being used to ease today’s scarcity; it also hasn’t been updated in more than 30 years. Lindsay believes that with immigration such a contentious issue, the inaction around Schedule A is all but predictable. But this does not serve America’s interests, as you learn in today’s episode of JobMakers.

Denzil Mohammed: Lindsay Millikan, Immigration Fellow at the Institute for Progress in Washington, D. C. welcome to the JobMakers podcast. How are you?

Lindsay Milliken: Great. Thank you so much for having me.

Denzil Mohammed: So, we often talk to entrepreneurs on this podcast, but the economic integration of immigrants is a huge topic and it affects every corner of this country. And the state of the economy and employment is very interesting in the U.S. right now. What exactly is the state of employment and jobs in the U.S. today? And have we seen anything like this before?

Lindsay Milliken: It’s a really great question. And we’re at a really unique point in history right now, as we’re transitioning away from the COVID-19 pandemic, the height of lockdown. And I think that a lot of people are feeling a lot of whiplash from that. And the economy certainly is. In April 2020, for example, the unemployment rate was actually almost 15%, which is the highest it’s been in 75 years. So that is crazy. And now in three-ish years, we have rebounded, and our employment rate is holding very steady at 3.8%. And the last time that we saw an employment rate low like that was in 2000, and then before that, it was 1969. It’s not common to be in such a strong market for labor in this country. And in addition to the unemployment rate, we’re also seeing record high job openings since the Bureau of Labor Statistics and the Department of Labor started their job openings and labor turnover survey.

In 2002, the greatest number of job openings was in November 2018, which was 7.6 million. If you look at it today, we are at 9.6 million job openings. So, record low unemployment, and record high job openings.

Denzil Mohammed: What are some of the occupations or industries where you, where the forecast is most dire? Where are the job openings projected to just increase and we don’t have the people to fill those jobs?

Lindsay Milliken: The high-level national, even industry-focused data doesn’t really capture what people are feeling, in the trenches, so to speak. But based on the information that we do have from the data and also from employers, the biggest hits have been in hospitality. There’s been a huge demand in hospitality workers recently, and there’s also a significant need in healthcare, particularly related to elder care, and in education, which we’ve heard a lot about recently is being a teacher in this country can be quite challenging. One industry that we think is probably going to see more demand in the future is probably going to be manufacturing. There’s been a lot of effort at the Biden administration level to jumpstart manufacturing in this country, particularly in semiconductor manufacturing. So, this is something we think is going to be a growing area of focus in the next few years.

Denzil Mohammed: I live in Massachusetts, and, during the summer, the Cape doesn’t have enough workers to support the tourism industry. So, it’s a very valid point you’re making there. And of course, healthcare, elder care, as you said, is hugely important. It’s only going to become a larger and larger industry as the Boomers age into retirement and beyond. We’re talking about this as an American issue, but it’s also an immigration issue. How do immigrants fit into this situation, or how do they not fit into this situation?

Lindsay Milliken: Immigrants play a really important role in our economy, and there’s a growing focus on their role as the U.S. is grappling with this very high level of labor demand. Just to take healthcare as an example again, in 2021, there was a survey conducted and they found that 18 percent of healthcare workers were immigrants — 26 percent of physicians and surgeons were actually born in a foreign country. And when you think about home health aides for our aging population, almost 40 percent of those are foreign born. So, this is in even just looking at healthcare, a massive role for immigrants in this country. And. Not only we want to think also about not just the current workers that we have, but the pipeline, we want to think about our international students, because that is a very valuable font of talent that the U.S. has that we’re not taking advantage of as well as we could. It’s very challenging to transition from being an international student to being a worker here in this country. And so, there is a lot of people who are being educated here, but then going home. For example, the Department of Education found that international students earn 40 percent of the STEM masters degrees, and 43 percent of the STEM PhDs, and a significant portion of these people want to stay and work and build their career here, but it’s quite challenging for them to stay here.

Denzil Mohammed: So, you’ve written, co-authored an op-ed, with Josh Smith from the Center of Growth and Opportunity at Utah State University, where you spoke about one tiny thing that most people don’t know about that could be incredibly useful in filling these jobs, and it’s not going to be complicated to do it. It’s called Schedule A. What is it and how is it supposed to be used?

Lindsay Milliken: Schedule A is a regulation that the Department of Labor oversees, and to better understand how it is placed within the immigration system, I want to just back up slightly and talk a little bit about how DOL interacts with the immigration system in general.

So, there are three agencies that deal with the immigration system here in the United States. It’s U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Service Department of State. And those two are the ones that we think about the most. But when it comes to employment-based immigration, the Department of Labor actually plays a very important role on the employer side of the immigration system.

So, there are two elements that D.O.L. oversees: They’re called the PERM process, and the prevailing wage process. So, PERM stands for Permanent Labor Certification. And this is essentially a way that the Department of Labor determines whether hiring a foreign worker is going to negatively impact American workers who are already here.

When an employer wants to hire a foreign worker, they have to prove to the Department of Labor that they can’t hire an American to do this job. They’ve tried to hire, but they can’t find one. And prevailing wage essentially is the employer proving that they can pay the immigrant the wage that is appropriate for the job, and also matches the wage for that particular geographic area.

Schedule A itself deals with the PERM process and this process is only for green cards. It doesn’t increase the number of green cards per year, but it essentially says we, the Department of Labor, have looked at the data and have found that there are some occupations that have such a high demand for labor that you employers don’t have to prove that you can’t hire an American because we are already acknowledging that there aren’t enough workers in these areas.

So, this Schedule A list, is a list of those occupations. It originated in the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965, and it used to consider occupations like engineers, nuclear scientists, physicists, people with advanced degrees. This was like cutting edge talent that we wanted to bring to the U.S. but currently, the list hasn’t been updated in 30 years and only contains nurses and physical therapists right now.

Denzil Mohammed: And as you said, it’s not an increase in the number of green cards. It’s an increase in the expediting of that process, right?

Lindsay Milliken: Yes, that’s correct. So, the PERM process takes about a year and several thousand dollars of work by the business itself. So, imagine you meet a person that you want to hire, but then you actually have to wait a year and a half to actually get them working in your office. This is something that helps streamline that process a little bit and also reduces administrative burden on the department of labor side, because then the people at the agency don’t have to go through a bunch of paperwork for a job where everyone acknowledges there are not enough Americans to do it.

Denzil Mohammed: So how do you suggest we use Schedule A in this kind of economy?

Lindsay Milliken: It’s a great question. What we are working on at IFP is we want the Department of Labor to update this and make sure that they put in a process that’s data driven, and also ensures that the list is updated regularly from now on.

Denzil Mohammed: And you make it clear that this is, these are situations where they just aren’t enough American workers, but does the whole concept of bringing in foreign trained talent, put American workers at any sort of disadvantage?

Lindsay Milliken: It’s a great question, and this is really important, and at IFP we care a lot about this question itself, which is why right now we’re working on a research publication to develop a data-driven approach that the Department of Labor could use to update Schedule A while not negatively impacting Americans who are already here and also immigrants who have come here previously, who are working here now.

Individuals working in occupations eligible for Schedule A still have to meet the requirements for their green card, and the employer still has to prove that they are paying the person a prevailing wage, the appropriate wage for that job, that matches the wage of other people employed in that job.

It’s still a very rigorous process and it still takes quite a long time. They’re still screening at USCIS, the Department of State, and the Department of Labor. So, this is something that we’re really taking very seriously. And the list itself, by its own nature, is only supposed to include occupations that do not negatively impact U.S. workers. And this is something that’s very important to us because as occupations go onto the list, we think that they also should come off when there is a lower demand. This is something that should be a living list of occupations and having, while it is small right now, having only two occupations on the list for 30 years is not accurately representing the demand that we’re experiencing now.

And we don’t want this to be updated and then never updated again. We want to make sure that we’re responsive to the needs of the economy and also make sure that we’re not harming the economic standing of workers who are already here.

Denzil Mohammed: I’m thinking of the responsiveness of certain other countries when it comes to job opportunities and immigration. I think of Canada who with their point system, able to, in a sense, do exactly what Schedule A would do, which is be responsive to the economy and fill in the gaps when those gaps arise. Now, particularly in the op-ed that you wrote, you present an argument for both sides of the immigration divide.

It’s very easy to have to come up with anti-immigrant sentiment and anti-immigrant arguments, when you think of the economy as a very simplistic thing, which of course it is not, it is incredibly complex. How would you explain this to someone who perhaps has anti-immigrant views, maybe a bit ambivalent, and, I’m thinking of more doctors having access to more people. Everyone benefits from that. How does the wider community benefit from more foreign trade workers participating in our economy when needed?

Lindsay Milliken: This is a very important question to ask and it’s something that I think about a lot coming from a rather blue collar area of New York State is that when we’re talking about immigration, we really need to and a lot of other policy areas, but for immigration in particular, we have to really meet people where they are and acknowledge the fact that there is a lot of uncertainty today in the world, and that uncertainty just seems to increase.

And there are a lot of people who are concerned about their future and the future of their children. As we acknowledge that, we need to emphasize the fact that, as you say, the economy is very complicated. It’s not a static system. And it’s not a zero-sum situation. The people who come here also increase demand.

So, they have to buy the same types of things that we buy. They go to the dentist, they get their hair cut, they buy cars, go to the restaurants. So, they’re not only doing a job here and fulfilling demand for a worker, but they’re also creating more demand. So, businesses can be growing with the addition of immigrants to our communities. They create more jobs. So that’s, and immigrants themselves could also be starting their own businesses. Research shows that immigrants are 80 percent more likely to start their own businesses than Americans. And almost 44 percent of the 2022 Fortune 500 companies were founded by immigrants. So, this is a significant number of immigrants who are not only, fulfilling demand for worker, but they’re also generating their own demand.

And as I said before, there are people who are incredibly talented and who have passed numerous screening background checks were done by the agencies. So, this is something that’s expensive and time consuming and they came here because they really identify with our values, and they want to contribute to the economy and build lives for themselves and for their community.

Denzil Mohammed: That’s a wonderful illustration of who an immigrant is. It’s someone who wants to create a better life. It’s someone who is not coming here as a blank slate. They’re coming with talents and skills already. And as you describe Schedule A and the different departments that are involved, we can see that it’s basically a foolproof process. There are checks and balances, there are screenings, and they take the livelihood of the American worker very seriously. This is not something that the government takes flippantly. And we’ve been doing this a long time, we have processes and systems in place. And as you so wonderfully demonstrate, the wider community benefits from this economic, increased economic output.

And, the fact that immigrants are inherently entrepreneurial, so they’re creating jobs, they’re providing goods and services that we need, they are innovating, and creating these incredible Fortune 500 companies. So, in this op-ed that you co-wrote that I’ve been referencing, which is in the Salt Lake Tribune, you cite the example of Utah and the way that the state integrates its foreign trained workers. Do you want to just flesh out this example of what is Utah doing, that is benefiting Utah when it comes to immigrants?

Lindsay Milliken: I think Utah is a great case study for this because, after we spend so much effort and money to get an immigrant here to the country, it’s a big culture shock still for this person.

I mean, they’ve moved to a completely different place. The culture is completely different, and Utah in particular is spending a lot of effort to help them assimilate to help them get jump started into their job quickly. And one example of this is that professional licensing is a big challenge for people who have very important skills who are coming here like doctors, for example, to continue the healthcare example is that these people are trained often extensively in their own home countries, but those licenses don’t transfer to the United States, to get a U.S. license, a lot of times you have to do additional training. It can be very expensive. Taking the licensing exams can be very expensive. For doctors, you have to go to medical school all over again. Utah this year, Governor Cox signed a bill that allows the state agencies to issue professional licenses to foreign professionals who can prove that they have the relevant skills without having to go through all this extensive training.

Another example of things that Utah is doing to help immigrants settle into their new communities is that Utah actually is one of the only, one of the few states in the U.S. that has an office dedicated to immigration and the integration of new Americans into the workforce. So, these types of this office does a myriad of services, such as navigating healthcare, the housing, making sure that you can find a place to live education for your kids, pursuing citizenship, and the whole process that is other challenges that come up when you settle in a new country. This is something they’re very hands on with and it’s kind of shocking to me. But there are actually fewer than 20 of these offices in the whole country. So, there are not, there is no office of new Americans in every single state. But there is some momentum this year, I think, to try to establish offices that can help with integration at the congressional level. In July of this year, actually, Sen. Markey of Massachusetts and Rep. Meng of New York, reintroduced bills to create a national office of new Americans situated at the White House level to harmonize this type of support across the country. And this is something that I think is a very valuable idea because, as I said before, bringing someone here from a new country is a big change. And we want to make sure that they can really feel comfortable, hit the ground running and stay here for the long term.

Denzil Mohammed: And I want to emphasize that, immigration has always been contentious, but before it became this contentious, Utah in 2002 signed in a bill that gave, undocumented immigrants in-state tuition. And we can draw a lot of contradictions with Texas. But Texas did the same thing in 2001. So, states know how to integrate their immigrants in order to get the best out of them and benefit from them.

There are many things that states can do, but also at the federal level regarding Schedule A. Lindsay, if we want to step back and take a broader view of the role of immigrants in American society and economy, it been a net benefit to the U.S. and how can we see it, shaping our future going forward?

Lindsay Milliken: It’s a great question. I think immigrants play such an important role in our society and in our economy, and other countries are recognizing this, that immigrants are playing major roles in their economies as well and are making adjustments actively as we speak to their own immigration systems to attract new workers.

We’ve always been a powerhouse of research, economic, and cultural development. Thanks to these immigrants that we’ve attracted, a recent example is Katalin Karikó from Hungary, who she just won the Nobel Prize for her research on mRNA vaccines. Sergi Brin, the co-founder of Google was Russian.

Andrew Carnegie, the magnate from the early 20th century, was Scottish and, for people who are really interested in fashion, Oscar de la Renta, who is a very popular with the first ladies is from the Dominican Republic. And this is just, these are just economic examples, cultural examples.

There are so many people who’ve played such a huge role. Alex Trebek, big favorite of mine, was Canadian. Jackie Chan is from China and Audrey Hepburn is Belgian. And Arnold Schwarzenegger was from Austria. I mean, there’s so many examples of people playing huge roles in U.S. development and cultural advancement that are coming from other countries. And I think the important part about this is that these people were the successful ones. These ones were the lucky people who actually made it through our immigration system. And I mean, a lot of people talk about how broken the immigration system is today and how impossible it is to fix.

So just imagine. If we actually were able to make changes to our immigration system, what sorts of really interesting, innovative people we could attract here. And I want to hammer this point really home is that the people that we know and. the immigrants that are our neighbors and our friends, we’re the lucky ones. There are so many people who don’t have the means or don’t know how to navigate our immigration system. Many people need to hire a lawyer to navigate our immigration system and that’s so expensive. So, we’re really missing out a lot on this really interesting group of people, this really talented group of people that don’t have the means to apply, or are not sure where to start, or have been scared off by how the system is designed.

And so, we need to really think critically about how we can make changes, even when it seems like the political situation is not conducive to immigration changes, particularly at the legislative level. And I think Schedule A is like one of these concrete improvements that we can work on now that is at the executive level.

It’s something the Department of Labor could do tomorrow, and just hasn’t. Worked on in decades. This is something that is concrete and could improve the lives of a bunch of people trying to come here tomorrow. So, the immigration system is full of different solutions like this. And that’s something at IFP we’re really working on very hard is trying to come up with these concrete solutions so that we can get more innovative people to come here that wouldn’t have otherwise.

Denzil Mohammed: The op-ed is called The U.S. Government Can Help Solve Labor Shortages Today. Why Won’t It? It’s in the Salt Lake Tribune. Lindsay Milliken, Immigration Fellow at the Institute for Progress in Washington, D. C. Thank you for joining us on the JobMakers podcast.

Lindsay Milliken: Thank you so much.

Denzil Mohammed: Jobmakers is a podcast about immigrant entrepreneurship and contribution produced by Pioneer Institute, a think tank in Boston, and the Immigrant Learning Center in Malden, Massachusetts, a not for profit that gives immigrants a voice. Thank you for joining us for today’s deep dive into the many ways high skill immigrants are needed to keep the U.S. on the leading edge of innovation. If you know an outstanding immigrant we should talk to, email Denzil, that’s D E N Z I L @jobmakerspodcast.org. I’m Denzil Mohammed. See you next time for another episode of JobMakers.

This week on JobMakers, host Denzil Mohammed interviews Lindsay Milliken. Milliken underscores the current unprecedented combination of low unemployment and high job openings, particularly in sectors like hospitality, healthcare, and education. She addresses the vital role immigrants play in the workforce, and advocates for leveraging Schedule A, a regulation that expedites the green card process for occupations facing high labor demand. Milliken co-authored an op-ed in the Salt Lake Tribune that proposes updating Schedule A to reflect contemporary demands and streamline the immigration process, pointing to Utah as a positive example of state-level immigrant integration.

Guest:

Lindsay Milliken, an immigration fellow at the Institute for Progress, has a background in high-skilled immigration and science/technology policy. Her experience spans public, private, and nonprofit sectors, including roles at the Delegation of the European Union and the Federation of American Scientists. Her published work can be found in the University of Chicago Law Review Online, Scientific American, the NYU Journal on Legislation and Public Policy and Inside Higher Ed. Lindsay holds a bachelor’s degree in political science from American University.

Hillsdale’s Dr. Kathleen O’Toole on K-12 Classical Education

November 29, 2023/in Education, Featured, Learning Curve, News, Podcast /by Editorial Staff

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The Learning Curve Dr. Kathleen O’Toole 11/29/2023

[00:00:00] Albert: Hello, everyone. Welcome to another episode of the Learning Curve podcast. I am your host, Dr. Albert Cheng from the University of Arkansas, and I’m recording this morning from our nation’s capital in Washington, D.C. And with me is my co-host, Mariam Memarsadeghi. Hey, Mariam. Nice to have you back on the show.

[00:00:45] Mariam: Hey, Albert. Great to be with you again.

[00:00:47] Albert: Yeah, I guess you were last. talking with Professor Leo Damrosch about Jonathan Swift and I think we’re going to touch upon that with our guest today, Katie O’Toole, as we talk about classical education.

[00:00:58] Mariam: Yeah. I’m looking forward to this conversation because it’s going to be refreshing and the antidote to a lot of the things that we usually discuss on the negative side.

[00:01:07] Albert: Yeah. I think so. I think there’s a lot of reason for hope with what’s going on in classical education.

Mariam: Fantastic.

[00:01:14] Albert: So, we’ve got a couple of new stories to start us off here before we get Katie. So, Mariam, I don’t know if you’ve been paying attention to what’s going on across the states with school choice legislation. Here in my state in Arkansas, we passed a major universal education savings accounts bill not too long ago.

[00:01:31] Albert: But our neighbors in Texas seem to be having a lack of success actually passing their own bill. And so, you know, our friends, Cory DeAngelis and Nathan Kunin have an opinion piece at Fox News, kind of giving really the skinny and the update of what’s been going on in the legislature there. And so, it looks like it’s been several tries to get a bill passed in the Texas state legislature, but to no avail, it seems. So how about you Mariam? What have you seen in the news lately?

[00:01:58] Mariam: I spotted a piece in The Wall Street Journal about a high school in Evanston, Illinois that is separating black and Latino students from white students. And the stated goal is that this will help black and Latino students to improve their performance in math and writing and some other skill areas. But, you know, I was alarmed, frankly, because of the idea that students can’t be comfortable learning alongside each other, the idea that they need to be essentialized down to their race above all else when it comes to getting the attention that they need from educators — it’s a dangerous trajectory. It’s a dangerous a trend, I think, and we’re not certain, not only are we not serving the black and Latino students that way, even if test scores might improve for some of them as compared to their prior experience, it’s, bad in the larger sense, I think psychologically for all students.

[00:02:59] Mariam: And it is a narrative about race that is the polar opposite. I think of Martin Luther King’s vision of all children, regardless of color, playing alongside each other and learning alongside each other in equality. When I came to this country, I was seven years old, and I was put into an English as a second language class. I would be pulled out of regular class to go to ESL for a few hours a day and I was with other students who didn’t speak English and I’m extremely grateful for the ESL instruction that I had, but I remember thinking. particularly after a little while that, you know, this is actually keeping me back and that I really want to be with the rest of my classmates. I really want to learn alongside them. Even if I am far behind, I want to hear what they’re hearing. I want to have the same common experience. And when I read the story about these high schoolers in Evanston, Illinois. I thought, hmm, you think you’re doing these young people a favor by cordoning them off, from white people, but it is such a corrosive, harmful narrative that they’re absorbing about themselves, about “white people” and of their own abilities.

[00:04:12] Mariam: The idea that they can’t be comfortable unless they’re with people who look exactly like them, which of course we never look exactly like anybody else anyway I think is a disservice.

[00:04:23] Albert: Yeah, again, check out that article in The Wall Street Journal, you know, I came across it too and definitely a lot of hard questions to ask there. Coming up after the break, we’ve got Dr. Kathleen O’Toole, who’s going to come and talk to us about classical education.

[00:05:01] Albert: Dr. Kathleen O’Toole is the assistant provost for K-12 education at Hillsdale College, where she leads Hillsdale’s work in K-12 education, including the K-12 education office and Hillsdale Academy. Prior to joining Hillsdale, she was the founding headmaster of Founders Classical Academy of Leander, a classical charter school serving 700 students in grades K-12. She has taught at the college and high school levels at Claremont McKenna College, Moorhead State University, and Founders Classical Academy of Leander. Dr. O’Toole was an editor for the Claremont Review of Books, a Publius Fellow at the Claremont Institute, and serves on the board of the Classic Learning Test. She earned a BA from the University of Dallas, an MA from Claremont Graduate University, and a PhD from Claremont Graduate University. Dr. O’Toole, great to have you on the show.

[00:05:56] Kathleen: Hey, thanks for having me.

[00:05:59] Albert: Yeah, so, let’s make sure our audience is all up to speed. I don’t know if everyone listening knows about Hillsdale College. So, can you start us off by telling us about some of the background and the mission of the school? And talk about your own academic experience and path to becoming the assistant provost for K-12 education there.

[00:06:20] Kathleen: Well, Hillsdale College is old. Hillsdale College is independent. Hillsdale College is excellent. The college was founded in 1844. We are a liberal arts college in southern Michigan, serving about 1,500 graduate and undergraduate students.

[00:06:38] Kathleen: But we have a nationwide following of many millions of people follow online courses that we produce, participate in many of the conferences and things that we host nationwide and all of the outreach that we do, which is substantial is guided by the mission of the college and representative of the good work and the essential work that happens here with the teaching of our beloved students.

[00:07:02] Kathleen: The K-12 work is the work that I oversee. I got my start in that back in 2014 when I was the founding headmaster of one of Hillsdale’s affiliated charter schools. Since 2012, Hillsdale has helped local people start private and charter classical schools. And we provide, here at the college, we provide curriculum, we provide teacher training, we provide all of the things that it takes to establish an excellent K-12 school.

[00:07:33] Kathleen: And that work I got to participate in it as a school founder and headmaster for five years and then came up here to the college. Where I now work with Hillsdale Academy, our school here in town, and help it grow and help it thrive.

[00:07:47] Albert: Great, so, let’s talk philosophy a little bit. You mentioned liberal arts education, classical education this certainly connects to the ancient Greeks view of paideia, right rearing and the education of the ideal member of the Greek polis or city state at that time. And those ideas then were kind of adopted in the Roman world with Latin and humanitas. Could you speak briefly about what these terms mean, especially paideia to the Greco Roman world and bring us up to speed of how they apply today with what you do at Hillsdale, and the K-12 schools that you operate?

[00:08:20] Kathleen: Yeah, well, I’ll do my best, these are serious questions for a brief interview, Albert.

[00:08:26] Albert: I know, that’s why we’re asking!

[00:08:30] Kathleen: We do not mess around here on The Learning Curve. Well, okay, so ancient Greeks and ancient Rome and education. I think the origins of what we call liberal education can be found in ancient Greece and Rome. It’s in ancient Greece that we get the idea that the individual human being can be shaped and formed through education for citizenship. And that the education that a human being receives can enable the human being to be a good citizen, enable the human being to be a good person, a good man, or the opposite.

[00:09:03] Kathleen: The ancient Greeks were the first to talk about the virtues of citizenship. Ancient Greece is the birth of democracy. And so, there’s discussion there about what kind of virtues, what kind of capacities do you have to have in your citizenry in order to have the deliberation, the participation that a democracy would require.

[00:09:23] Kathleen: The term liberal education can mean a couple of things. Liberal is a reference to freedom. And so, a liberal education is the education that a free person has or would have to have in order to be free. You know, in ancient times, what that meant is you’re a participant in democracy. You are a citizen. You are a — rather than living a servile or slavish life. And so, what is the content of this ancient Greek liberal education? Well, it’s doing the things that you need to do in order to participate. You have to have some courage, you have to have some justice, or a sense of justice, you have to have some moderation, some self-control, and, you have to love your polis, love your Greek city state, love your regime that you’re participating in.

[00:10:10] Kathleen: And that’s transformative, those ideas. Today, when we talk about liberal education, I think we’re taking our roots, certainly, from this ancient Greek idea, which, as you say, developed in Rome. But there’s a different sense in which we use the term liberal education.

[00:10:27] Kathleen: We also use it to mean the education that makes you free in the sense of opening your mind. A wide-ranging education that doesn’t confine you to a specific place, an education that makes you free to ask big questions and think outside of your polis or your regime. And that’s a very different kind of freedom, than the freedom that the ancient Greeks were contemplating when they thought about the virtue of a citizen. And so, I think inherent in the very term liberal education is a little bit of a tension or a question. What exactly do we mean by freedom? Do we mean the freedom to participate in and defend a specific regime or do we mean the freedom to think beyond the bounds of one’s regime?

[00:11:16] Kathleen: And that question: What does it mean to be free, or what kind of freedom are we trying to promote through education? is implicit in the writings of Plato, who wrote about Socrates. And it’s taken up by Aristotle, too. The story of Socrates is the story of those two senses of freedom coming into tension with each other. Because Socrates was a citizen of Athens and was expected as a citizen of Athens to promote the regime, promote Athenian democracy. But he was asking all of these impertinent questions and raising up these young Athenian men to question the Athenian regime. Ask big questions, not about, what is the right thing for an Athenian to do, but…What is the right thing simply? What is justice truly? And is there some sense of justice, some sense of beauty, some understanding of courage that’s fundamental and would go beyond the bounds of this Athenian regime. And Socrates, as we know, was put on trial and executed for doing that a clear demonstration of the fact that That kind of questioning, that kind of investigation is not good for the regime, necessarily.

[00:12:36] Kathleen: It’s not good for Athens to have Socrates asking those questions, even though he is the first person to have asked these important questions and the source that we follow. In our pursuit of truth today, and so anyway, we see in the story of ancient Greece, this kind of fundamental tension. Aristotle is my guy. I wrote a dissertation on him and studied him. Although anyone who studied Aristotle can know that you can spend your whole life studying him and still learn more. But Aristotle takes up that question of what’s the relationship between the good man and the good citizen?

[00:13:14] Kathleen: And are they in tension with each other and, and what can be done to conceive of virtue and citizenship in a way that is both good for the human being and good for the regime in which the human being lives or exists. And so, if you look at his ethics, and if you look at his politics, there’s a kind of a description of virtue That tries to find common ground or tries to find a way of thinking about those things that brings the virtue of the citizen and the virtue of the human being simply together.

[00:13:45] Kathleen: Fast forward to today, and I think we still see that tension in our sense of liberal education and our sense of freedom playing out as we go to the founding of our country, and then as we fast forward to debates over education that are currently happening right now.

[00:14:02] Albert: Let’s unpack that a little bit, fast forwarding to today, or maybe not as far, you mentioned the Founding and some of the educational ideals of the Enlightenment they’ve been described as the science of freedom. In fact, you know, you could say that the Enlightenment thinkers were in dialogue with ancient Greece and, and Rome. So yeah, could you talk more about the founders and their relation to this? For instance, you know, Jefferson had a vision of education. How did that vision of education harmonize with classical ideals? And how might we think about those as we think about K-12 education today?

[00:14:38] Kathleen: Well, I think it’s a really good lesson in theory and practice. Because although the founders were deeply steeped in all of this philosophy that we were just talking about and many other things, you know, there were learned human beings, the American founders were, they also had a job to do, and they had to do it right now.

[00:14:57] Kathleen: And at points in their lifetime, their very lives were at stake. And so, they were eminently practical human beings as well. There’s a lot to be learned by studying their actions. that you might not be able to learn by merely theorizing about it. So, if you look at the time of the American founding and you look at what Adams said about education, what Thomas Jefferson said about education, you see them working out these tensions between liberal education, meaning freeing of the mind to pursue truth simply, and liberal education, meaning something more like civic education.

[00:15:37] Kathleen: The education that produces a free citizen and what you see is that in there thinking about it and their prescriptions about it, there was not this deep tension there, partly because of the nature of the American constitution and the reasons for America’s, in the first place. So, let me try to explain that. John Adams wrote in a letter to John Quincy Adams, his son, I wish for you to become a good man and a good citizen and everything that I do as your father will be conducive to those two things together. So anyway, he thought his role is his father.

[00:16:10] Kathleen: His role as a father, his role as an educator was to produce a son who embodied the virtues of both. a great human being simply and a great citizen of this country. How is it possible that those two things went together? Well, if you look at what Jefferson wrote about, the University of Virginia and if you look at his own thinking about what it means to be an educated person, you see a kind of harmony between all of these ideas.

[00:16:40] Kathleen: Jefferson thought that there is a place for scientific discovery. He writes a lot about progress that can be made through studying the sciences. And he’s a very kind of personally innovative and curious human being about every type of subject. And he thought that massive improvement in our conditions was possible through the study of science. But the founders in general did not believe that improvement was possible or choice worthy regarding human affairs. They thought by looking back on what we know as human beings, about politics, about justice, about virtue, there’s not a lot of innovation to be had. In other words, the essential truths about politics, the essential truths about virtue, the essential truths about what it means to be a human being are already known to us.

[00:17:31] Kathleen: And we should build a regime, build a government that is built upon those principles, rather than try to innovate on things that we know are true. The innovation comes — and this is the new science of politics that you were referring to — the innovation comes in the structure of the American regime, which is built to be a democracy, in that it rests on the sovereignty of the people.

[00:18:00] Kathleen: And relies on the ability of the people at large to participate through voting, but it’s not a simple democracy, it’s a democracy with some aristocratic elements built into it, like the Senate, like the, eventually the Electoral College, and elements that will temper the will of the majority, which the founders say our study of, Greece and Rome teaches us can be very damaging. They carefully create this political system, which you can still see in the constitution and the original provisions of the constitution and understand through reading Madison’s notes on the Constitution and the Federalist Papers. So, you can still understand all of that and see that It’s carefully constructed so that it’s a representative democracy, which tends to the right decision, the just decision, the truth being pursued.

[00:18:58] Albert: Yeah, great. So, let’s just talk about these ideals that you’ve been explaining, and talk about how these apply in your work today with the K-12 office. So yeah, tell us more about what you do at the K-12 office. I mean, your goal really is to in some sense, make classical education more available. What are some of the obstacles that you run into when you’re exporting this work? And what are some of the successes that you’ve seen?

[00:19:24] Kathleen: So, our work here in the K-12 office is to teach anyone who wishes to learn about the principles of excellent K-12 education, we’re a college Hillsdale’s a college, the K-12 office is part of the college, and so our primary job is to teach, and what we teach about is board governance, what it means to serve on a school board, how to lead a classical school, what are the things that one ought to learn in one’s K-12 years, How should they be taught? What is the art of teaching and how do you practice it? How do you become an excellent teacher? And then the culture of the school. How do you establish a little community of people, teachers, parents, students, altogether, who are pursuing the mission of the school and what should the mission of the school be if it is to be excellent?

[00:20:09] Kathleen: So, we teach about that. We work with a network of excellent schools across the country. There are 30 of them right now. And we provide resources and teaching and free conferences and all kinds of things to anyone across the country through the Hoagland Center for Teacher Excellence and many other programs. We think of our mission as just reminding teachers and parents and students and others in this country about the things that we used to know about excellence in K-12 education in this country. And we believe that if people are reminded and if people are taught, then they can rise to the challenge and bring excellent schools to their communities.

[00:20:51] Mariam: Dr. O’Toole, Hillsdale offers a very different vision of higher and K-12 education alike. Much of American higher education remains the envy of the world, though mostly in the STEM fields. Well, our K-12 system lags far behind our international peers and economic competitors. Would you talk about some of the anti-intellectual or pedagogical fads that have plagued American education for decades and how Hillsdale’s outlook addresses these long-standing academic weaknesses?

[00:21:25] Kathleen: Yes, absolutely. So, we talked earlier about founder’s vision for education in America, for helping people grow up to be not just good citizens of the country, but good human beings simply, and how Jefferson and others thought that that was possible under practical circumstances present at the time, if you fast forward a little bit American history, you’ll see a kind of intentional new way of thinking about education and government and human virtue and all kinds of things with the progressive era. We talked about how the founders look back to ancient Greece and Rome.

[00:22:01] Kathleen: We talked about how John Adams was raising his son, John Quincy Adams. And thought he was responsible for his son’s education. Woodrow Wilson, one of the chief Progressives and one of the chief architects of all of the changes that happened at the time of the Progressive era, said that he wished for American schoolchildren to learn to be as unlike their fathers as possible. In other words, we should institute a way of thinking about school that cultivated innovation and experimentation and being different from the past for the sake of being different. And I think that that spirit was present and is still present in a lot of American education. Think about the way that we teach children to read, or we did teach children to read in the early days of American schooling. The most effective way of teaching children to read is through phonics instruction. And that’s just proven. It’s just set, it just is. And nevertheless, we innovated in this country, and we introduced sight words and the Lucy Calkins approach without ever having truly tested it.

[00:23:13] Kathleen: We experimented on our children with this new approach that ended up not working, and the result has been predictably very damaging for students reading ability and what we’re trying to do in this country and what we especially at the college are trying to do is remind schools and remind teachers that it is actually possible to help students become strong readers. At a very early age, kindergarten, first grade, if you have a sound curriculum, Albert asked, what are the obstacles that we’re dealing with? One of the obstacles is this desire for innovation, for the sake of innovation, without knowing whether it’s a good idea or not.

[00:23:55] Mariam: Previously, you mentioned that your favorite books include Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics and Jonathan Swift’s Gulliver’s Travels. Recently, we hosted Harvard professor Leo Damrosch to discuss Swift and Gulliver’s Travels, in fact. Could you talk about a few lessons you’ve drawn from these two timeless books? Books that you think K-12 teachers and students could benefit from knowing more about?

[00:24:21] Kathleen: Yeah, absolutely. I love those two books. When I was at old school, I used to teach both of those books to 11th graders, and it was — it’s about the most fun teaching I’ve ever had. I guess we’ll do Aristotle first. So, Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics is the first and best book written about virtue. And what does it mean to be a good person? What does it mean to be a happy person? That’s the question that Aristotle asks at the beginning of the book. And if you read that book, what you learn is that what he says in there rings true.

[00:24:56] Kathleen: Even though he was writing many thousands of years ago, at a time and place very different from ours. He goes through and explains the virtues, beginning with the moral virtues, and then the intellectual virtues. And he sort of paints a picture of a well-rounded, happy, thriving human being that is very compelling.

[00:25:17] Kathleen: That book is the source of the famous point that virtue is a mean. Virtue is pursued by choosing the middle path. And that’s something that we say a lot and remember a lot when we are talking about Aristotle, but sometimes we fail to fully understand what it means. What Aristotle’s saying there is that virtue is not a binary. It’s not either you do the virtuous thing, or you do the vicious thing, either the right thing or the wrong thing. He’s saying that there are two wrong things, and that virtue is in the middle. The right thing to do is in the middle. So, think about the virtue of courage, or the virtue of moderation.

[00:25:54] Kathleen: The right thing to do is the courageous thing. The right thing to do is the moderate thing. But there are two ways to go wrong for each of those. With courage, of course, there’s the cowardly thing to do, but equally vicious is the reckless thing to do. With moderation, the moderate thing is the right thing to do. The wrong thing to do would be indulging oneself, being greedy or something. But the other vice is failing to enjoy something which one ought to enjoy. So I think that’s fascinating, and I think that… if you teach virtue using Aristotle’s ethics and explaining that there are two vices, it opens up in students a desire to think through what the virtuous thing to do is because it’s, it’s no longer, don’t do the wrong thing that’s fun, do the virtuous thing, which is hard work, but better for you in the end. It’s something much more complicated and interesting than that. What is the right thing to do here? And what does your reason say is the right thing to do here? And how do you actually choose it? That’s Aristotle.

[00:27:00] Mariam: Yeah. Yeah. Pioneer Institute recently released a book, Restoring the City on a Hill, U.S. History and Civics in America Schools, that includes a report card of current major K-12 U. S. history and civics offerings in which Hillsdale earned high grades. Would you share with us the basic characteristics of your K-12 U.S. history and civics curriculum and why Hillsdale’s is particularly strong in terms of academic quality, primary sources and imparting enduring civic knowledge.

[00:27:35] Kathleen: The history and civics curriculum that we are about to finish releasing started many decades ago out of you know, scholarship related to American history, the American founding, and how to think about American political thought and American history in light of the principles of the American founding. The curriculum has been in scope and sequence form in our K-12 program guide for a long time. It’s our scope and sequence for the schools we work with. And a few years ago, we decided to put it out in the form of lesson plans. and primary source readings and guides for teachers of American history, because we detected that especially regarding history instruction, there was a lack of understanding about how exactly to pursue the truth through the study of history.

[00:28:27] Kathleen: The curriculum is very much geared to the teacher, and it respects the teacher’s role and also responsibility in the classroom. We never provide scripted lessons for teachers because the teacher is not a script reader. The teacher is a knowledgeable person who explains. Curriculum takes that form and it’s for teachers. It’s developed by teachers in our affiliated schools, and it aims to set them up to teach American history. In a way that is captivating to students, in a way that is effective for teachers, and above all, in a way that pursues the truth, we get into a lot of arguments today when we talk about history instruction with one side accusing the other side of indoctrinating students and importing politics into the classroom. And the solution to that is to acknowledge that in everything that we are studying, we are pursuing the truth. And to the extent that we are pursuing the truth, every idea should be on the table, as long as it is subject to the rigors of reason. And we should be conveying in our speech to each other and in our thought individually, we are going to seek the truth above all, discard opinions when they’re wrong, pursue opinions when they seem right. Jefferson himself said something that I think is really helpful here. He said, we’re not afraid to follow truth wherever it may lead, nor tolerate any error. So long as reason is left free to combat it, and that’s the thinking behind the history curriculum that we’ve produced here at the college and really everything that we produce for K-12 schools.

[00:30:17] Mariam: Excellent. Finally, the country, higher education, K-12 alike seem hopelessly divided and very balkanized. Could you close by discussing how a robust traditional liberal arts education can help bridge these partisan political divides and present young people with a more unified vision of humanity in our nation?

[00:30:39] Kathleen: I think that’s a really good question, this idea of pursuing the truth is the unifying idea, right? Truth is one, and error is many. And if we can approach education with a common… Commitment to pursuing what is true. And then if we can cultivate. Within the students that we are educating, and ourselves, the people doing the educating, a commitment to the truth, a responsible approach to the way in which we teach, and a commitment to educating for the benefit of the individual human beings in our classrooms. That will be the beginning of repairing what’s been broken.

[00:31:25] Mariam: Dr. O’Toole, thank you so very much for being with us today. This was an inspiring conversation with you. Thank you for all your service to Hillsdale and the inspiration it serves for education across our country.

[00:31:40] Albert: And I’ll add my thanks for being on the show as well Dr. O’Toole looking forward to when we cross paths again.

[00:31:46] Kathleen: Thank you so much. It was a pleasure to be here.

[00:31:49] Albert: Thanks again for being with us Dr. O’Toole. It’s always great to chat with you. And thank you Miriam for co-hosting with me today.

[00:32:23] Mariam: It was a fascinating discussion.

[00:32:26] Albert: And, before we wrap up this week’s tweet of the week comes from the historian Anne Applebaum. Who tweeted about the Day of Remembrance for Holodomor.

[00:32:35] Albert: Mariam, I’m guessing you’re probably familiar with this. Every fourth Saturday in November is a day of remembrance for that. And that refers to the Ukrainian famine man made. You know, back when Ukraine was under Soviet rule in the early 1930s estimates what, seven to 10 million people died of starvation. And so, incidentally, you know, I mentioned I was recording today from D.C. I, this morning as I was taking a stroll, I actually passed the memorial to that. So, I thought it was appropriate to mention this.

[00:33:07] Mariam: Yes. And it’s important right now because what Stalin did to the Ukrainian people. by a famine is not unlike what Putin is doing to that people, that nation now with war.

[00:33:21] Albert: Yeah, yeah. check it out if you want to learn more about that. Give it a quick search on the internet and read up on that. Really important to know our history and… to help us understand where we might go tomorrow. other than that, don’t forget to join us next week, where we have Francine Klagsbrun, who will be talking about her book, Lioness: Golda Meir and the Nation of Israel. Until then we will see you next week.

This week on The Learning Curve, guest co-hosts Prof. Albert Cheng of the University of Arkansas and Mariam Memarsadeghi interview Hillsdale College’s assistant provost for K-12 Education, Dr. Kathleen O’Toole. She explores Hillsdale’s mission and its impact on K-12 education, delving into classical education, Greco-Roman ideals, Enlightenment principles, and the college’s efforts to enhance education. She discusses the challenges faced in exporting Hillsdale’s model to K-12 public schooling, critiques of American education, and the role of the liberal arts in fostering academic unity amidst societal divisions.

Stories of the Week: Prof. Cheng discussed a story from Fox News about the Texas House rejecting school choice in a recent vote, despite widespread Republican and public support. Mariam addressed a story from The Wall Street Journal critiquing the implementation of optional race-specific math and writing classes that are intended to address academic disparities.

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Guest:

Dr. Kathleen O’Toole is the assistant provost for K-12 Education at Hillsdale College, where she leads Hillsdale’s work in K-12 education, including the K-12 Education Office and Hillsdale Academy. Prior to joining Hillsdale, she was the founding headmaster of Founders Classical Academy of Leander, a classical charter school serving 700 students in grades K-12. She has taught at the college and high school levels at Claremont McKenna College, Morehead State University, and Founders Classical Academy of Leander. Dr. O’Toole was an editor for the Claremont Review of Books, a Publius Fellow at the Claremont Institute, and serves on the board of the Classic Learning Test. ?She earned a B.A. from the University of Dallas; an M.A. from Claremont Graduate University; and a Ph.D. from Claremont Graduate University.

Tweet of the Week:

Today is the annual day of remembrance for the Holodomor, the Ukrainian famine. 90 years ago Stalin sent activists to confiscate food from Ukrainian peasants. Millions died.
To mark this day, Putin sent dozens of drones to attack Kyiv. Like Stalin, Putin wants to erase Ukraine.

— Anne Applebaum (@anneapplebaum) November 25, 2023

Supreme Oral Arguments: Do Gun Rights Rest on Responsible Behavior

November 28, 2023/in Featured, News, Podcast Hubwonk /by Editorial Staff

Click here to read a transcript

Hubwonk Rahimi Oral Transcript

Joe Selvaggi: This is Hubwonk. I’m Joe Selvaggi. Welcome to Hubwonk, a podcast of Pioneer Institute, a think tank in Boston. On November 7th, the United States Supreme Court heard oral arguments in the case of USA v. Rahimi, a case that at its essence seeks to determine which behavior by a citizen could be sufficiently dangerous to be legally prohibited from owning a firearm and what procedures would offer sufficient due process to make that prohibition constitutional.

Zachary Rahimi was indicted for violating a federal statute under which it’s unlawful for someone to possess firearms if they’re under a domestic violence restraining order. The task for the U. S. Solicitor General was to persuade the court that while Mr. Rahimi had not been convicted of a serious crime, his demonstrated dangerous behavior as determined by a civil judge was sufficient grounds to legally prohibit his possession of a firearm.

Mr. Rahimi’s attorneys, by contrast, needed to make the case that though he had committed dangerous acts, Mr. Rahimi was subject to an unconstitutional law when prohibited from owning a firearm. The oral arguments that lasted nearly an hour and a half offered constitutional scholars a vivid display of the nuances and merits of the issues in this case.

What were the arguments from the plaintiff and U.S. defense? How did the questions posed by the nine justices reveal their views on the Second Amendment? And how did the skills of the respective attorneys likely serve to influence and shape the outcome of a case that may define the limits of gun control and prohibition in the future?

My guest today is Attorney Clark Neily, Senior Vice President for Legal Studies at Cato Institute. Mr. Neily, who appeared on Hubwonk in October to discuss his views on the Rahimi case, had the opportunity to attend the USA v. Rahimi oral arguments live. In part, owing to his experience as co-counsel in the pivotal D.C. v. Heller Supreme Court case. Attorney Neily will share his observations on the strength of the litigants’ presentations and arguments, how the questions posed by the nine justices suggest how they’re likely to rule, and how the possible outcome of the case will affect Second Amendment law in the future.

When I return, I’ll be joined by legal expert, Attorney Clark Neily. Okay, we’re back. This is Hubwonk. I’m Joe Selvaggi. I’m now pleased to be joined by Cato Institute’s Senior Vice President for Legal Studies, Clark Neily. Welcome back to Hubwonk, Clark.

Clark Neily: It’s great to be with you, Joe. Thanks.

Well, great to have you back, it wasn’t long ago that you were a guest here on Hubwonk and, you offered, and I accepted your offer to, come back and do a rehash after the oral arguments in a, I think, a somewhat, substantial case in, at the Supreme Court, USA v. Rahimi, you and I in our episode, more than a month ago, maybe six weeks ago, talked about what was likely to be the arguments in the oral arguments.

Then, you got a front row seat, as we said, you and Thomas Barry also from Cato were invited. You were there live to watch the oral arguments. It must’ve been quite an impressive event, but so I want for our listeners to compare what we thought would be the points argued in the case and what was actually argued because I think there’s a substantial difference.

And I want to credit where credit’s due. Let’s acknowledge our arguments. Let’s, and let’s compare them with what actually happened. So, let’s start at the beginning. Before we get to the beginning, how is it that you got lucky enough to be in the courtroom while this case was being argued?

Clark Neily: Yeah, there’s this interesting procedure that a lot of people don’t know about where, when you become a member of the Supreme Court bar, so you actually have to be admitted to a special bar, for people who get to file briefs in front of the Supreme Court, the qualifications are not too difficult.

You have been practicing for a couple of years and, but you need somebody who’s already a member of the bar to sponsor your membership or to move you as the terminology goes. And so, I’m a member of the bar and my colleague, Tommy Berry, wanted to be admitted to the Supreme Court bar. and so there’s two ways to do that.

You can just do it purely through the mail, in which case you get a nice little certificate and that’s the end of it. Or you can ask to have it done, in court. And that’s how Tommy wanted to do it. And what happens is the person who’s going to be sworn into the Supreme Court bar shows up with a person who’s already a member who’s going to move their admission, and that’s the first thing that happens, when the court commences its session. a number of people, usually anywhere between, let’s say half a dozen and maybe two dozen people will be moved in. So their sponsor will go up to the podium and tell the Chief Justice that they move the admission of so and the bonus is that once that’s done, you get to stick around for the argument and you’re right there, really in the first row of the spectator area, right behind where the lawyers were actually arguing the case get to sit.

Joe Selvaggi: Wonderful. So, the 50-yard line of a very important case. No, I didn’t see it of course, I wasn’t there, but I did listen to the roughly hour and a half oral argument of by a C-Span, which I thought, it’s wonderful that we have those resources. For the benefit of those listeners who didn’t hear our earlier episode, let’s just rehash the facts of USA v. Rahimi. It’s a Second Amendment gun-related case. So just give us the 10,000-feet view of the case.

Clark Neily: So, there’s this federal law that is found at 18 U.S.C. section 922, and it has a number of provisions that make it illegal for certain people to own a firearm. This would include people who have been convicted of certain crimes, anyone who is an unlawful user of a controlled substance, or, as in this case, anyone who is the subject of a domestic violence restraining order that has been issued by a state court.

And the defendant in this case, Zachary Rahimi, was the subject of a domestic violence restraining order from a state court in Texas. Upon the entry of that order, it then became a federal crime for him to continue to own firearms, which he did, and when some sheriff’s deputies showed up at his apartment to serve a warrant on him for some other conduct that he allegedly engaged in, they found both a rifle and a pistol in his apartment, along with the domestic violence restraining order that made it unlawful for him to own firearms. And so, they referred that situation to the U.S. marshals who then brought it to the Department of Justice.

This resulted in a federal prosecution under this Section 922 G8 and Rahimi was convicted, received, I think, a 72-month prison sentence, which he then appealed in the wake of this Supreme Court case called Bruen that came down in June of 2022. And his argument was essentially that, the federal law under which he was convicted, the one that makes it illegal for anyone who’s the subject of a domestic violence restraining order, was unconstitutional, because it was not disarming people who’ve been found to be potentially domestic abusers was not part of our history and tradition, in this country and the statute was too broad.

The Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals agreed with that, and declared the statute to be unconstitutional, and then it was that decision that was on review in the Supreme Court, at the argument you’ve been referring to.

Joe Selvaggi: Sure. We’ve got a bad actor, a guy who’s not particularly, responsible, but he wasn’t allowed to own a firearm and decided to own a firearm and got locked up. I think, again, to rehash our argument, our concern, or your concern particularly, was that this was a restraining order. Now, not sufficient process was offered, this is a fundamental right, the right to own a firearm. And it was, in a sense, taken without what we would might regard as due process. If you’re going to take someone’s fundamental rights away, you had better be very careful before you do it. I think again, I don’t want to put words in your mouth, but I’d say our, let’s say, sympathies with Mr. Rahimi’s argument was that he, though he may be a bad guy, he wasn’t given enough process before his gun rights were taken away. Is that fair?

Clark Neily: Yeah, that’s right. And look, let’s be clear. This is a commitment that we as a country have that exists in all different kinds of scenarios. for example, when somebody is convicted of a capital crimes, so a murder for which the death penalty could apply, that person is usually guilty and usually a really bad person, but we have a tremendous amount of death penalty litigation that is centered around the idea that they also receive or that they are entitled to receive a death penalty. A certain amount of due process before the state convicts them and potentially puts them to death. Another scenario, which I think would be more sympathetic would be what about when it comes to terminating or suspending your parental rights? So, you’ve been accused of doing something that could result in the suspension of your parental rights.

So, you can’t see your kids anymore. And the question would be, okay, how much process do you get to make sure that in fact, you did that thing? And that’s really the angle that we took last time was to say, This guy, Zachary Rahimi may, in fact, be a bad guy, but did the, was the legal process that resulted in the issuance of this domestic violence restraining order that then triggered the federal prohibition on him owning a firearm was it a sufficiently robust process so that we can be confident, that, essentially anyone against whom such an order has been issued is, in fact, a dangerous person or potentially dangerous person. That was the issue we focused on, but it really wasn’t the issue that the court focused on during the argument.

Joe Selvaggi: So then let’s do that. Let’s jump to the oral argument. I’d like to say, I feel like we were like sports commentators predicting whether the Giants or the Patriots would win. But ultimately, that’s why you play the game. And ultimately, the oral arguments are where you see the game being played, presenting for the U.S. Department of Justice, is the Solicitor General, Elizabeth Prelogar, yeah, okay. And, for Mr. Rahimi was Attorney Wright. I listened again. As I said, for an hour and a half, listen and both make their case.

It seems like a little bit of a mismatch in talent. I thought, the solicitor general, her arguments were very precise, clear, very narrowly defined. And as she seemed to know her arguments backwards and forwards, whereas Mr. Wright seemed a bit less focused. What were your impressions being in the room?

Clark Neily: Let’s give credit where credit is due. Most lawyers in America would be overmatched. If they were up against Elizabeth Prelogar, she’s really 1 of the great Supreme Court advocates of our generation and, hats off to her, for really doing an excellent job in this case. Now, that being said, I would say, as an experienced litigator myself, it is a lot easier to look good in court, when the judge is already on your side. It was very clear that most of the justices wanted to go in the direction that she wanted them to go. And so, it’s somewhat easier, when you’ve got a court that is sympathetic to your position, and you’re essentially just showing them and you’re assuring them, hey, we can get to where you want to go, judges. Let me show you how to do that. And she did that very effectively. but I will say, as sitting there in person, I would say there was never even the slightest doubt about which way the majority and perhaps even all of the justices wanted to go in this case.

And so, her job, I think, was less in persuading them which way to go and more in persuading them that they can get where they already wanted to go in a way that was principled and consistent with their earlier ruling in the Bruen case, and that I think she did an extremely effective job of doing.

Joe Selvaggi: So, I want to return to Ms. Prelogar later, although she argued first, I want to handle her argument second. Let’s talk about Attorney Wright’s case. Given that he, let’s say, presented a case that both the lower courts agreed with, and perhaps I might argue that you and I agreed with, do you think he made a fair presentation, a fair defense of Mr. Rahimi’s case and his rights?

Clark Neily: I agree with you that his presentation was in some ways less thematically consistent, than the Solicitor General’s, but in part, I think that’s due to the difficult position that he finds himself in, because keep in mind, or recall, he is applying to — he is representing a criminal defendant who has been convicted under a given statute.

And when you bring a civil case, and the Heller case that I was involved with as a civil case, you can bring that case to court, and if you get the sense that the judge is not with you, you can back up your argument a little bit. You can circle the wagons a little more tightly. You can make a concession over here in order to seem more reasonable. But when you represent a criminal defendant, it limits how much you can back off because you can only back up far enough to the point of insisting still that the conviction should be overturned, and you can’t give up more than that. And so, one of the most difficult questions that he got asked, and I think he got asked the question repeatedly, but point blank from Chief Justice Roberts, is your client a dangerous person? That’s a problematic question for a public defender representing this person in particular, because based on not only what appears to have happened in the case below, but also in, there were some other allegations of criminal misconduct that occurred after the domestic violence restraining order was issued.

This guy’s accurate image looks like a bad actor. And someone who does appear to be a dangerous person. What are you supposed to say about that? Yes, my client is a dangerous person, but I think that he should still be able to own a gun. So, it really puts a criminal defense lawyer in a very difficult position and a different position than a lawyer who’s bringing a civil case trying to vindicate a given constitutional right. Those two are not the same and defending a criminal conviction or trying to get a criminal conviction overturned, which is what Rahimi’s lawyer is trying to do is a more difficult position to be in.

Joe Selvaggi: You mentioned in your response there that he’s a public defender. I’m curious how it is that a public defender could be standing in front of the Supreme Court. It seems that your impression of him was that he was in a difficult spot and did the best with what he was given. Could there have been, let’s say someone of the caliber of Ms. Prelogar, to defend him? Or am I just, this is just a lay person, not understanding how tough his job really was?

Clark Neily: A few points about that. First of all, the Federal Public Defender Service, and that was what Rahimi’s lawyer was a federal public defender, is really, they’re an excellent group of lawyers, and do they argue in the Supreme Court as often as some other lawyers do? No, they don’t, but they are still good lawyers very good at what they do. We can only really speculate about whether this case could have been. It’s not unusual for lawyers in Mr. Wright’s position to hand off a case like this to one of a smaller group of lawyers who are sort of members of this informal Supreme Court bar that repeatedly argue cases in front of the court the optics in this case were tough, right? Because this is somebody who is accused of being a domestic violence offender, who’s also accused of engaging in some other violent behavior. This is not a case, I think, that the standard cast of characters that would normally be eager to take over a case at the Supreme Court stage were probably flocking to.

It’s possible that there was an opportunity to hand this off, our future houses the opportunity to hand this off. but I can assure you that this is not a case where very many people would have been knocking on the door to say, hey, let me take over this case at the Supreme Court.

Joe Selvaggi: All right. So, let’s shift to General Prelogar, and her case. She is right in her opening arguments. I think I don’t have the quotation for me. I should have written it down, but I’ll paraphrase it. essentially the difference between a battered domestic abuser abuse victim and a dead domestic abuse victim is the presence of a gun. I’m like, wow, you know, that’s a bold statement. I’m a lay person, but I say what I loved about her argument was that she said, okay, we’re talking about responsible law-abiding citizens. You and I use those terms. And she broke down what each of those meant, and she sort of pushed to the side two of those terms and focused on one of them. Talk to our listeners, speak to that. What is the difference between, let’s say, what I think our argument was is, this guy, though he’s a bad guy, he’s a dangerous guy, but he didn’t break a, you know, he didn’t, he’s not a felon. Why is that a fundamental difference when we talk about dangerousness and law abiding, that sort of thing? Flesh that out for us.

Clark Neily: Yeah, so, there are really two distinct questions I think have to be answered in this case. One, is if we assume that a given person has done X is X sufficient to suspend their Second Amendment right to arm self-defense? So, the conduct itself with that kind of conduct. So some of the examples that were used where Chief Justice Roberts said, if somebody goes 30 miles an hour in a 25 mile an hour zone, technically, they’re not law abiding.

So, would that be enough? Or, if they mingle their trash with their recycling, and they don’t separate those, that’s not a responsible thing to do. Would they still be a responsible person? Point one is we have to figure out, okay. what kind of conduct either that you have already committed or that you’ve been found likely to commit.

Would be sufficient to suspend your Second Amendment rights and then the second — and and this is really what you and I focused on the last time — is how confident do we need to be? Once we’ve identified what X is, in other words, what conduct would be sufficient to trigger the loss of Second Amendment rights? How confident do we need to be in the process by which the government determined that? In fact, you did X, right? And I would say that. Because of the, again, the optics in this case, because it is just in your gut, you can feel that this guy Rahimi is just a bad person. And I would say also, because of the way the Solicitor General very successfully framed the argument, the court devoted the bulk of its attention to that X question.

What is it that would be sufficient to Second Amendment rights and very little time focusing on. Okay. And how clear is it that this particular person egaged in that conduct. And so, what General Prelogar did was to essentially argue, look, there are essentially two prongs here that emerge from this court’s interpretation of the Second Amendment in the Heller case and in the Bruen case.

And in order to exercise your Second Amendment rights or to not have them suspended, you have to be both law abiding and responsible. First question, somebody who drives 5 miles an hour of the speed limit, are they law abiding? And she said, look, let’s be clear. We’re not talking about ticky-tacky laws, like speeding, and she said the dividing line should be essentially misdemeanor versus felony level. Conduct, which is already reflected in federal law and so then that’s. Deals with law abiding answer the question responsible to compress a lot of argument and this is what most of the argument was about into a very short sentence.

What you said was, in essence, responsibility boils down to whether a given person represents a particular danger. When it comes to owning or using firearms, this could be somebody who’s dangerous because of conduct they’ve engaged in intentionally, such as domestic violence. Or even conduct that’s not culpable, but the person is nevertheless represents an unusual or specific, a special hazard like a child or somebody who is mentally unstable.

There’s no culpability there, but that person is still dangerous when it comes to the possession of firearms. And that’s really what the argument focused on was that point.

Joe Selvaggi: I see. as you say, a child or a mentally ill person ought not to have a gun, not because they’ve committed a crime, but it’s a predictive judgment, which is to say we can anticipate from past action or from their behavior that were they to have a gun, it would not be used responsibly.

Okay, so, that seems to make sense we have. You and I talked about there’s not much precedent for that, essentially, rightly there’s very few groups that you can essentially say. Are not responsible enough for fundamental rights. So, let’s focus on the other part, which is okay.

How confident do we want to be in our judgment, meaning you and I had concerns that someone could wave a hand and say, everybody who’s goes five hours of the speed limit is de facto irresponsible. There was an element there in the argument that I thought was really important for me to hear, which is.

We were worried about process, and she really dialed in on the fact that this isn’t just some administrative stroke of a pen, but rather a judge had to contemplate the facts in the case and had to say, you know what, I’m not going to generalize about all domestic abuses, but this guy seems to be irresponsible.

So, I will deem him to be, the judgment, the process for this guy was sufficiently thorough to take his second amendment rights away. Is that fair? Or how do you see it?

Clark Neily: Yeah, I think she was extremely successful in painting an essentially fictitious picture of the way that domestic violence restraining orders are issued. and I say that after having spoken with many, family law practitioners, the vast majority of whom have said, look, when it comes to issuing domestic violence restraining order, judges will tend to issue those, At the drop of a hat without making significant factual findings on in this case, actually, below, we don’t have a lot of information about how this domestic violence restraining order was issued, but we do know that it was an agreed order.

In other words, didn’t even resist. There was no adversarial process. He just went into court and said, yep, that’s fine. I’ll stipulate to all these things. There was no specific factual finding. In other words, the judge didn’t make a finding that on this date, you engage in this particular violent act.

There was just what we lawyers call, boilerplate. There was just these recitations. Oh, there’s been an act of family violence in the past, and there’s likely to be another one in the future. And you don’t have to have been around the block too many times to recognize boilerplate when you see it in a legal document. And that’s really what there was in this case.

Joe Selvaggi: Can I push back a little bit? Because I think the Supremes did address this again. I’m sorry if I can’t remember which did. I think it might have been Alito that said, look, if it is a judge, great. We want judges to be involved in the process, but what if it’s just a rubber stamp as you characterize it, then it is effectively, though it is a judge is involved, he’s not really using his judgment.

That’s a rubber stamp. She retorted with this statistical assertion that. There is X number, I think it was like 550 domestic order requests and only 200 granted or something like that, which suggests. 550 people wanted it and only 200 got it. Somebody’s got discretion and they say you get it and you don’t. It isn’t a rubber stamp. What would you say to that?

Clark Neily: Yeah, that’s right. So, she pushed back and noted that only about 55 percent of applications in Tarrant County, Texas result in the issuance of a domestic violence restraining order. Now, we don’t know why that is, right? We don’t know, for example, if the person who filed the application ends up withdrawing it, maybe they just didn’t pay the relevant fee. Maybe there was something they were supposed to submit along with the application that they failed to do. So, the implication is that in all of those cases, the judge looked at the merits of the case and made a decision, OK, you have not met the standard.

I don’t know that’s true. I’m not know if it’s not true, but I can tell you that there’s a lot of ways that you can dress up a statistic like that. So that if you have 500 applications for domestic violence restraining order, but only 255 or 289, I think was the actual number were issued — that might tell you that 45 percent of those were denied on the merits and that is possibly what happened, but it might also be the case that some significant percentage of the person who initially filed the application withdrew it or didn’t pay the relevant fee or failed to make a necessary showing. So, we just never got a merits determination that is not clear from the record, which way that is.

And certainly, there was a heavy implication that all of those decisions were made on the merits. But I would be very suspicious that was true. and, even in federal criminal prosecutions, for example, the government ends up dismissing voluntarily, dismissing about 8 percent of federal criminal prosecutions after there’s been an indictment.

So, we know that even in very serious proceedings like that, some percentage of cases result in. no conviction for other reasons than that, a decision was made on the merits that the person was innocent. If that makes sense. The other thing that’s important to understand too, is that it’s the argument here, isn’t that.

Every single domestic violence restraining order is handled in a kind of a slap and dash way. The argument instead is that there are a significant number of dynamics that should cause us to be suspicious about how. Meticulous this process really is. So, to take another example in Texas, and in some other states, there’s what we call a one-way fee shifting provision.

And what that means is that the, if let’s say the partner who is accused of having committed domestic violence and against human orders being sought, if they resist, if they go in and try to resist that application and lose. They can be forced to pay attorney’s fees for their partner. But if they win, they don’t get attorney’s fees paid to them.

It only goes in one direction. And you don’t have to be a rocket scientist to see it, a scientist to see that might discourage some people, even if they had meritorious defenses from going into court and asserting those. The other thing too, to keep in mind is to think about the implications of a domestic violence restraining order.

It’s going to order you to not commit an illegal criminal act, or at least an unethical act like stalking against your former partner. what if your attitude is like, look, I’ve never done that. I am never going to do that. I’m not the kind of person that would do that, but I don’t care if you want to issue an order against me saying, don’t do it.

I wasn’t planning on doing it. So fine. I think there’s a reason to be suspicious. essentially how, the level of adversarial in this in these proceedings, it may be highly adversarial. And then the results are highly reliable in some cases. And not adversarial at all, and therefore the results are not reliable at all in other cases.

I’ll leave you one last thing. I mentioned this example earlier, and I think it’s a fair question. If the significance of the issuance of domestic violence restraining order is not just that you would lose your ability to own firearms, but you’d lose your ability to see your children. For whatever, however, long that order was in effect.

With the amount of process that the federal statute at issue here requires be sufficient to sustain the suspension of parental rights. And I think almost certainly the answer is no, because among other things, there’s Supreme Court precedent that indicates that the lower court has to make a finding by clear and convincing evidence that the parent who’s, Parental rights are going to be suspended has, in fact, engaged in some dangerous behavior is likely to engage in some dangerous behavior towards the children.

There is no such requirement before somebody loses their Second Amendment rights. Now, maybe that’s appropriate. Maybe we should make a distinction between gun rights and parental rights, but it’s not obvious that there should be such a distinction. And that really was not a point that was not developed at all during the argument.

Joe Selvaggi: Yeah, I think that would be my immediate response to your sort of rhetorical question, which is if you’re irresponsible with a gun, you should be, the gun rights would be taken away. If you’re irresponsible, you abuse a child, then that would be taken away. You don’t blend it. You don’t have to catch all the dangers for you. Everything’s taken away. Each deserves its own sort of disqualification or, again, but I don’t want to get too far down that, that, line of, reasoning. I want to take a step back. You, we talked about at the top of the show you were in, involved in the Heller case, and that came up and as you mentioned, did the Bruen case.

These are, these both established the right to bear arms as an individual, right and the right to bear arms, as you know, as enshrined in the Constitution. Given how often those were sort of thrown around by both sides and by all justices, did everyone characterize, in your view, did everyone characterize the rulings in those cases fairly? Essentially, have we all moved on and are all the justices on the same song sheet with regard to Heller and Bruen?

Clark Neily: That’s a great question. Clearly, one of them is not and whether it’s more than one is not clear. I would say that Justice Jackson made fairly clear through her questioning that she thinks there are real concerns about the Bruen framework and to perhaps oversimplify, but hopefully not.

Bruen essentially requires judges to look at historical tradition, to see, did they essentially take some somewhat similar approach to gun regulations in the past. In this case, it would be in the late 1700s when the Bill of Rights was ratified, such that we can find some sort of an analogous regulatory scheme from back then.

And Justice Jackson’s pushback was essentially to say, look, they don’t appear to have been particularly concerned about domestic violence at the founding time, and they certainly don’t — there was no tradition of categorically disarming domestic violence offenders back then. So, isn’t that the tradition that we have to import to the present in order to do the historical tradition analysis that Bruen requires?

And so, I think in some way, she was really trying to hang Bruen’s analytical framework around the neck of the justices who signed on, the six justices who signed on to the Bruen majority. And I actually think it was a really fair point both Prelogar and some of the other justices had some, I think, reasonable responses for why you didn’t have to do that, go back in time and say, okay, however much they cared about domestic violence back then is how much we have to care about it now. In effect, in the Second Amendment context. But it was, it was a difficult question, I think a fair one.

Joe Selvaggi: I want to characterize impugn her motives, but it may have been almost cynical. Swipe at history and tradition, right? We’re saying we didn’t protect domestic abuse rights. Victims of domestic abuse in 1791. Why should we do it now? Kind of thing. Like if you’re wedded to this concept of precedence, we haven’t taken guns from domestic abusers in the past,therefore, we shouldn’t do it now. I think they spent a lot of time with that. I don’t want to get too far down that line. But would you characterize this as fair? Was she sincere in her argument?

Clark Neily: I wouldn’t presume to say whether it was fair or cynical or serious, but I think it was — in other words, I don’t know what was going on in her head subjectively, but I think it was an entirely fair effort to determine whether the framework that the majority announced in Bruen, fairly applied in this case should compel a ruling in favor of somebody who stands credibly accused of being a domestic violence, offender, and, I think it was a reasonable point to make.

And I think the majority in Bruen, or let me say this, the justices who made up the majority in Bruen are really going to have to back off a little bit. I think on the test that they announced in that case, in order to basically come up with a holding that enables the conviction of this particular offender defendant Rahimi, to be sustained, notwithstanding the fact that if it was 200 years ago, I think it’s very dubious, whether he would even have been, prosecuted and certainly there was no law in the books at the time that would have categorically disarmed him because he’d been the subject of a domestic violence restraining order. That I think that’s somewhat problematic for the majority, in the Bruen case.

Joe Selvaggi: That would be odd for Justice Brown to be the lone originalist in this ruling and be in the minority. So, looking at denying justice again, we’re pulling back and more abstract. We often hear political claims of politicization of the court and that we have conservatives and liberals.

In listening to the questions, it wasn’t you’re going to mine is a late year. I’m not an attorney. I don’t argue in front of the court, but it did seem to me that the justices all asked fair questions and didn’t seem to have a bias one way or the other. You suggest they all had a bias against Mr. Rahimi, but I couldn’t see any ideological difference in the nature of the questions and the pushback from either side. Did you see a clear political divide on the court?

Clark Neily: I wouldn’t call it a political divide. If there was a divide, I think it was probably centered around the issue of, in effect, I think the message is sort of, okay, look, we all agree that this is a bad guy, a dangerous person and someone who, who’s, putative Second Amendment rights.

Nobody on this court with a possible exception, I would say maybe Justice Thomas are going to go to bat for in this case. But what about the hypothetical next defendant? What about a defendant who comes before us and makes a credible argument? Hey, look, I never did anything wrong. Yes, a domestic violence restraining order was issued against me, but I was actually the victim.

That was my ex who went to court and got that order for the specific purpose of disarming me to make me. easier to abuse and there’s some arguments in the amicus briefs that is a thing that happens and what I think some of the justices were pretty clearly trying to do is to leave the door open for looking at those kinds of situations on a case by case basis and leaving room to go back and reexamine whether the federal law issue in the Rahimi case while generically it’s okay, under the Second Amendment might violate the Second Amendment as applied to a particular defendant, who.

Essentially stands in a better position to argue. Look, I am not a dangerous person. I am a responsible person and yes, a court issued a domestic violence restraining order against me. But that’s basically because I just chose not to fight it. I didn’t want to get involved. They didn’t want to have to pay my ex’s attorney’s fees.

And I just said, okay, fine. I’m not a violent person. I’m never going to be a violent person. I don’t care if you want to get a restraining order against me. That’s fine by me. I think that some of the justices make clear they want to be able to look at that case fresh if it comes up and some of the justices.

Yes. I would, I get the impression would rather just say, look, this federal law is perfectly fine for all cases at all times.

Joe Selvaggi: So you’ve anticipated my next and we’re getting close to the end of our time together, my next question, which is, what does this case mean for other, second amendment cases, has our right to own and bear arms been reinforced or threatened?

As you say, this is a case-by-case basis, which I guess. This case helps to define the contours of our rights and where they may be legally taken from us. So, in your view, again, I’m making the assumption because at the outset, you said, I think the court is leaning and was leaning before all arguments towards, or against Mr. Rahimi and towards, taking away his right to, to own a firearm. Let’s assume they go that way. Is the Second Amendment safer or more unsafe in your view?

Clark Neily: Yeah, it’s a tough question to answer. I think I would say this. The result of this case is likely to be a very narrow ruling, possibly even unanimous, in which the court essentially says that this law as applied to this particular defendant, doesn’t violate the Second Amendment and as a totally generic prospect, we don’t see anything that is categorically problematic with this law, but we leave open the possibility That on a case by case basis, defendants will be able to assert a Second Amendment and or due process challenge to the particular way in which this statute was applied against them.

In other words, if you turn out to be a responsible person, if you turn out to be a law abiding person against whom a meritless domestic violence restraining order was issued, I think that the door will still be open for you to challenge that under the Second Amendment, perhaps also a procedural due process.

Thank you. So, I think it’s going to be a narrow ruling that doesn’t do nearly as much violence to this, the court’s Second Amendment doctrine as might otherwise have been the case because they’re going to write the case. I thought that the opinion will probably be just as, no broader than it needs to be to take down Zachary Rahimi and leave the door open for other potentially meritorious challenges.

Joe Selvaggi: Which is a very nuanced complex answer, which will probably defy the headlines when the case is handed down. Everybody wants something to put on a bumper sticker so they can take to the streets. This isn’t, I think, going to satisfy either side. for our listeners, when will this case be handed down? When we find out the end result?

Clark Neily: The really tough cases they usually hold until the end of the term, which is to say the end of June of next year. I don’t think this is going to be considered a really tough case. They’re making multiple opinions, which tends to stretch things out longer. If I were a betting man, I’d say March or April.

Joe Selvaggi: That’s good. March or April. Watch this space. I’m not sure we need to cover it again. I just thought, for my money, there’s so much cynicism towards our institutions, particularly now recently, the Supreme Court, I think myself. If you feel that negative cynicism flowing through your veins, take some time, listen to those arguments, listen to how thoughtful our, our justices are and think of how well they are, the arguments are made in front of them and how respectful and how orderly and how thoughtful and smart.

I hope this case, this podcast, helps to restore people’s faith in the judgment, the power, the thoughtfulness of at least this institution. We’ll work on the others later. Let’s hope this works. Thank you for joining me today on Hubwonk today, Clark. This has been great. It’s good to have you back. I really appreciate you coming in before and after to discuss a pretty complex issue. Thank you.

Clark Neily: It’s been my pleasure. Thanks a lot for having me back.

Joe Selvaggi: This has been another episode of Hubwonk. If you enjoyed today’s show, there are several ways to support Hubwonk and Pioneer Institute. It would be easier for you and better for us if you subscribed to Hubwonk on your iTunes Podcatcher. It would make it easier for others to find Hubwonk if you offer a five-star rating or a favorable review. We’re always grateful if you share Hubwonk with friends. If you have ideas or comments or suggestions for me about future episode topics, you’re welcome to email me at hubwonk@pioneerinstitute.org. Please join me next week for a new episode of Hubwonk.

Joe Selvaggi engages in a conversation with constitutional scholar Attorney Clark Neily to explore the oral arguments presented in the US Supreme Court case USA v Rahimi. The discussion delves into the intricate examination of behavioral history and the legal processes involved in restricting an individual from owning a firearm.

Guest:

Clark Neily is senior vice president for legal studies at the Cato Institute. His areas of interest include constitutional law, over-criminalization, coercive plea bargaining, police accountability, and gun rights. Before joining Cato in 2017, Neily was a senior attorney and constitutional litigator at the Institute for Justice and director of the Institute’s Center for Judicial Engagement. Neily is an adjunct professor at George Mason’s Antonin Scalia School of Law, where he teaches constitutional litigation and public interest law. He served as co- counsel in District of Columbia v. Heller, in which the Supreme Court held that the Second Amendment protects an individual’s right to own a gun.

Neily is the author of Terms of Engagement: How Our Courts Should Enforce the Constitution’s Promise of Limited Government. He also contributed a chapter to Libertarianism.org’s Visions of Liberty. Neily received a BA in Plan II (with concentrations in philosophy and Russian) from the University of Texas at Austin, and he received his law degree from the University of Texas, where he was chief articles editor of the Texas Law Review.

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Read Our Commentary

Navigating Labor Shortages: The Role of Immigrants and the Potential of Schedule A

November 30, 2023/in Featured, JobMakers, News /by Editorial Staff

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Transcript, JobMakers, Guest Lindsay Milliken, November 30, 2023

Denzil Mohammed: Lindsay Millikan, Immigration Fellow at the Institute for Progress in Washington, D. C. welcome to the JobMakers podcast. How are you?

Lindsay Milliken: Great. Thank you so much for having me.

Denzil Mohammed: And as you said, it’s not an increase in the number of green cards. It’s an increase in the expediting of that process, right?

Denzil Mohammed: So how do you suggest we use Schedule A in this kind of economy?

Lindsay Milliken: Thank you so much.

Guest:

Hillsdale’s Dr. Kathleen O’Toole on K-12 Classical Education

November 29, 2023/in Education, Featured, Learning Curve, News, Podcast /by Editorial Staff

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The Learning Curve Dr. Kathleen O’Toole 11/29/2023

[00:00:45] Mariam: Hey, Albert. Great to be with you again.

[00:00:58] Mariam: Yeah. I’m looking forward to this conversation because it’s going to be refreshing and the antidote to a lot of the things that we usually discuss on the negative side.

[00:01:07] Albert: Yeah. I think so. I think there’s a lot of reason for hope with what’s going on in classical education.

Mariam: Fantastic.

[00:05:56] Kathleen: Hey, thanks for having me.

[00:08:20] Kathleen: Yeah, well, I’ll do my best, these are serious questions for a brief interview, Albert.

[00:08:26] Albert: I know, that’s why we’re asking!

[00:31:40] Albert: And I’ll add my thanks for being on the show as well Dr. O’Toole looking forward to when we cross paths again.

[00:31:46] Kathleen: Thank you so much. It was a pleasure to be here.

[00:31:49] Albert: Thanks again for being with us Dr. O’Toole. It’s always great to chat with you. And thank you Miriam for co-hosting with me today.

[00:32:23] Mariam: It was a fascinating discussion.

[00:32:26] Albert: And, before we wrap up this week’s tweet of the week comes from the historian Anne Applebaum. Who tweeted about the Day of Remembrance for Holodomor.

[00:33:07] Mariam: Yes. And it’s important right now because what Stalin did to the Ukrainian people. by a famine is not unlike what Putin is doing to that people, that nation now with war.

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Guest:

Tweet of the Week:

Today is the annual day of remembrance for the Holodomor, the Ukrainian famine. 90 years ago Stalin sent activists to confiscate food from Ukrainian peasants. Millions died.
To mark this day, Putin sent dozens of drones to attack Kyiv. Like Stalin, Putin wants to erase Ukraine.

— Anne Applebaum (@anneapplebaum) November 25, 2023

Supreme Oral Arguments: Do Gun Rights Rest on Responsible Behavior

November 28, 2023/in Featured, News, Podcast Hubwonk /by Editorial Staff

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Hubwonk Rahimi Oral Transcript

Clark Neily: It’s great to be with you, Joe. Thanks.

There’s no culpability there, but that person is still dangerous when it comes to the possession of firearms. And that’s really what the argument focused on was that point.

So, I will deem him to be, the judgment, the process for this guy was sufficiently thorough to take his second amendment rights away. Is that fair? Or how do you see it?

Yes. I would, I get the impression would rather just say, look, this federal law is perfectly fine for all cases at all times.

Clark Neily: It’s been my pleasure. Thanks a lot for having me back.

Guest:

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Big Sacrifices, Big Dreams:
Ending America’s Bigoted Education Laws

In Massachusetts, the Know-Nothing amendments prevent more than 100,000 urban families with children in chronically underperforming school districts from receiving scholarship vouchers that would allow them access to additional educational alternatives. These legal barriers, also known as Blaine amendments, restrict government funding from flowing to religiously affiliated organizations in nearly 40 states and are a violation of the first and fourteenth amendments.

The U.S. Supreme Court will hear a case this year, Espinoza v. Montana Department of Revenue, that could end these amendments. In 2018, Pioneer produced a 30-minute documentary on the impact of the Blaine amendments on families in Massachusetts, Georgia, and Michigan.

“She’s a good girl. She helps me a lot. She has big, big dreams. I don’t have the money, but she has big dreams. I hope she’s going to get everything, but she works so hard. She works so hard in school.”

Arlete do CarmoFramingham, MA

“Our family is needing to make some really big sacrifices because we believe this is important, and so, we’re basically going to do whatever it takes… Sometimes we look at each other and go ‘I don’t know if I can do it again another month…’”

Nate and Tennille CostonMidland, MI

“A lot of the families have to sacrifice and work multiple jobs… And just scraping together enough money to just make tuition, just the basics.”

Sarah MorinFall River, MA

“It is discriminatory, that parents who want to choose an alternative to public school for their children, would not in any way receive any compensation for that, whether it be tax credit, whether it be a voucher…”

Father Jay MelloPastor, St. Michael and St. Joseph Parishes

Watch the Film

History of Blaine Amendments

Nativist sentiments were, like slavery, a part of the original fabric of the United States.

In the 1840s, nativist movement leaders formed official political parties and local chapters of the national Native American Party (later the American Party), although they continued to be commonly known as the Know-Nothing Party. Politicians sought to insert provisions into state constitutions against Catholics who refused to renounce the pope. The Know-Nothing movement brought bigotry and hatred to a new level of violence and organization.

The party’s legacy endured in the post-Civil War era, with laws and constitutional amendments it supported, still today severely limiting parents’ educational choices. A federal constitutional amendment was proposed by Speaker of the House James Blaine prohibiting money raised by taxation in any State to be under the control of any religious sect; nor shall any money so raised or lands so devoted be divided between religious sects or denominations. These were then named the Blaine Amendments of 1875.

in recent decades, often in response to challenges to school choice programs, the U.S. Supreme Court has demonstrated great interest in examining the issues of educational alternatives and attempts limit parental options. Massachusetts plays a key role in this debate. The Bay State was a key center of the Know-Nothing movement and has the oldest version of Anti-Aid Amendments in the nation, as well as a second such amendment approved in 1917. Two-fifths of Massachusetts residents are Catholic, and its Catholic schools outperform the state’s public schools, which are the best in the nation.

Make Your Voice Heard Now!

Help families like the Costons in Michigan to end the bigoted Blaine amendments in their state that are blocking tuition scholarships and other types of financial support that would make it possible for families to send their children to high-quality schools that are best suited for their children.

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Navigating Labor Shortages: The Role of Immigrants and the Potential of Schedule A

November 30, 2023/in Featured, JobMakers, News /by Editorial Staff

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Transcript, JobMakers, Guest Lindsay Milliken, November 30, 2023

Denzil Mohammed: Lindsay Millikan, Immigration Fellow at the Institute for Progress in Washington, D. C. welcome to the JobMakers podcast. How are you?

Lindsay Milliken: Great. Thank you so much for having me.

Denzil Mohammed: And as you said, it’s not an increase in the number of green cards. It’s an increase in the expediting of that process, right?

Denzil Mohammed: So how do you suggest we use Schedule A in this kind of economy?

Lindsay Milliken: Thank you so much.

Guest:

Hillsdale’s Dr. Kathleen O’Toole on K-12 Classical Education

November 29, 2023/in Education, Featured, Learning Curve, News, Podcast /by Editorial Staff

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The Learning Curve Dr. Kathleen O’Toole 11/29/2023

[00:00:45] Mariam: Hey, Albert. Great to be with you again.

[00:00:58] Mariam: Yeah. I’m looking forward to this conversation because it’s going to be refreshing and the antidote to a lot of the things that we usually discuss on the negative side.

[00:01:07] Albert: Yeah. I think so. I think there’s a lot of reason for hope with what’s going on in classical education.

Mariam: Fantastic.

[00:05:56] Kathleen: Hey, thanks for having me.

[00:08:20] Kathleen: Yeah, well, I’ll do my best, these are serious questions for a brief interview, Albert.

[00:08:26] Albert: I know, that’s why we’re asking!

[00:31:40] Albert: And I’ll add my thanks for being on the show as well Dr. O’Toole looking forward to when we cross paths again.

[00:31:46] Kathleen: Thank you so much. It was a pleasure to be here.

[00:31:49] Albert: Thanks again for being with us Dr. O’Toole. It’s always great to chat with you. And thank you Miriam for co-hosting with me today.

[00:32:23] Mariam: It was a fascinating discussion.

[00:32:26] Albert: And, before we wrap up this week’s tweet of the week comes from the historian Anne Applebaum. Who tweeted about the Day of Remembrance for Holodomor.

[00:33:07] Mariam: Yes. And it’s important right now because what Stalin did to the Ukrainian people. by a famine is not unlike what Putin is doing to that people, that nation now with war.

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Guest:

Tweet of the Week:

Today is the annual day of remembrance for the Holodomor, the Ukrainian famine. 90 years ago Stalin sent activists to confiscate food from Ukrainian peasants. Millions died.
To mark this day, Putin sent dozens of drones to attack Kyiv. Like Stalin, Putin wants to erase Ukraine.

— Anne Applebaum (@anneapplebaum) November 25, 2023

Supreme Oral Arguments: Do Gun Rights Rest on Responsible Behavior

November 28, 2023/in Featured, News, Podcast Hubwonk /by Editorial Staff

Click here to read a transcript

Hubwonk Rahimi Oral Transcript

Clark Neily: It’s great to be with you, Joe. Thanks.

There’s no culpability there, but that person is still dangerous when it comes to the possession of firearms. And that’s really what the argument focused on was that point.

So, I will deem him to be, the judgment, the process for this guy was sufficiently thorough to take his second amendment rights away. Is that fair? Or how do you see it?

Yes. I would, I get the impression would rather just say, look, this federal law is perfectly fine for all cases at all times.

Clark Neily: It’s been my pleasure. Thanks a lot for having me back.

Guest:

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Have Faith in Catholic Education

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Watch: Catholic education forum highlights

Help preserve Catholic education!

Big Sacrifices, Big Dreams:Ending America’s Bigoted Education Laws

History of Blaine Amendments

Nativist sentiments were, like slavery, a part of the original fabric of the United States.

Make Your Voice Heard Now!

Learn more about how you can help end bigoted education laws in your state!

support our work to end bigoted barriers to school choice

Yes! I want to help restore Catholic education

Big Sacrifices, Big Dreams:
Ending America’s Bigoted Education Laws