(upbeat music) (graphic pops) - Hello and welcome to "The Journal."

I'm Steve Kendall.

Politics 2025 style is off to a rousing start, both in DC and Columbus.

Joining the studio is Dr. Nicole Kalaf-Hughes, and we hope to be joined later in the program from Columbus by the host of The State Ohio, Karen Kasler.

She's tied up at an event, but hopes to join us before the show is complete.

Dr. Nicole Hughes, welcome to "The Journal."

I mentioned that we're off to an interesting start, both in Columbus and DC.

Kind of characterize the way this new administration has come in, actually before Inauguration Day, characterize what's going on in DC from how the federal government is operating now versus maybe the way we've seen it in the past.

- So they spent four years preparing to hit the ground running, and that's what they did.

And it's a little bit of a hot mess in a couple different ways.

So there's the, what I would consider the traditional new administration behavior, if that happens, regardless of who is the incoming, who is the incoming president, and that's gonna be a slew of executive orders, undoing the previous administration's executive orders, making change, helping to align kind of the policy making environment with what their goal is and what the American voters voted for.

That's all normal.

That happens every time a new administration comes in.

It can be a little bit confusing right off the bat, but it's nothing that we don't typically see.

The great thing about an executive order is, it carries the force of law.

So it enables presidents to act quickly and to kind of skirt Congress.

The downside to an executive order is that it can be immediately undone by the next administration with an executive order.

- [Steve] Which is exactly what's been happening.

- And that's exactly what's been happening, and it happens every time.

So that's not out of the ordinary.

What is a little bit different this time is, both the speed and the breadth of the executive orders, and some that we know pretty much right off the bat are unconstitutional, including things like directly challenging the provisions in the 14th Amendment around citizenship and that kind of stuff.

So there is definitely kind of an invitation to court challenges that exists.

All of that's still not that abnormal.

What is a little bit abnormal is the speed with which the new administration has attempted to gut the federal bureaucracy, the US federal workforce, to skirt Congress's constitutional powers of the purse that are written in the Constitution, and to do it almost outside of the government or through the executive order created department that kind of has an amorphous responsibility, that involves Elon Musk, and that has given a bunch of non appointed bureaucrats a tremendous amount of power over every single aspect of American life.

Combined with the immediate purging of long-serving civil servants that have civil servant protection.

So you have a slew of illegal actions in terms of civil service, the workforce there, because people have employment protections, and we've kind of ignored all of that.

So you have all of the normal stuff that people will get upset about, but it's kind of normal.

- [Steve] Sure, there's gonna be turnover because, yeah.

- Yeah, it's nothing that we didn't expect.

It's what the voters voted for in terms of you vote for a new administration, and they do what they campaigned on, and they're gonna do it through executive orders.

Totally normal, not strange.

But then this attack on the US government and a skirting of the separation of powers that exists in our constitution is completely unprecedented in US history.

- Yeah, yeah.

And you look at certain areas, and you know that, okay, so we knew that the FBI was gonna be on the agenda, US Aid, that organization, again, being dismantled across the world.

And I heard a phrase the other day that I hadn't heard before, and it was, there's constitutional, unconstitutional, and then extra-constitutional.

And I don't know how they define extra-constitutional.

It must be somewhere between what's constitutional that we know is constitutional and we know is unconstitutional, but we're gonna argue about that piece in the middle, extra-constitutional, because some of these things seem to fall in one of those categories.

They, all of them have a place there.

And I guess what we believe is unconstitutional may now be up for discussion apparently, things that we've taken for granted are, no, you can't do that, the constitution, no.

like birthright citizenship, well, maybe it is on the table now.

Whether it's legally on the table or not is another question, but the discussion's there.

- [Nicole] The discussion is there.

And that's part of a larger strategy.

And so some of this strategy, particularly I think with birthright citizenship and the protections that are outlined very clearly in the 14th Amendment and have been upheld numerous times by Supreme Court precedent, is just to kind of chip away at rights.

And we saw this happen with Roe v Wade before the Dobbs decision.

And if you can just kind of chip away a little bit, maybe you can kind of inch the dial a little bit.

This is gonna be a little bit challenging because we're not unique in nations in author offering birthright citizenship.

And we don't really have the infrastructure to kind of get rid of it.

And you would create a huge diaspora of stateless persons.

And it would, if people think we have problems now, this would be a whole other host, a whole other host of problems.

And so this, my guess is this isn't something that they think will necessarily swing immediately, but more just to kind of chip away at it and create an environment for questions.

- [Steve] Yeah, and I sometimes look at this, and is a situation where we almost like, and, of course, the president comes from a background of negotiating deals.

That's what he always says.

I'm the best deal maker the world has ever seen, in the universe.

Name a constellation, I was the best deal maker there too.

Is this the, I'll put the bar up so high, that anything happens below that, now seems normal in comparison to what I originally put on the table.

Is there a lot?

Is that some of it part of the strategy too, that make it so absurd on the top, that anything below that now almost seems, well, that's not so bad after all.

- [Nicole] It might be.

And the president is known for kind of this outlandish rhetoric and this like bombastic way of speaking.

And doing that is actually a pretty good strategy because then any kind of wiggle room you get, you can claim victory, even if it's a problem of your own making.

So if you levy tariffs on everyone, and the prices go up for the American consumer, and then you get a tiny concession on something, you can claim victory.

If you threaten to invade Panama to get the canal back, and then you get a slightly better discount on shipping.

- [Steve] A better deal.

- [Nicole] In terms of the cost.

- [Steve] And a better price.

Or whatever.

- [Nicole] On moving goods.

You can claim credit for that win.

And so some of it is kind of a rhetorical strategy.

The stuff that's happening in the federal bureaucracy is not a rhetorical strategy.

It's just a complete gutting of American taxpayer dollars.

- [Steve] Hmm, yeah.

And one of the things that, of course, seems to always be brought up in any of these or arguments, so we'll, can talk about this more in the next segment is, everything seems to have at its root, and it's become a catchphrase, acronym, that everything that's bad about federal government is somehow tied to diversity, equity, and inclusion.

That somehow that all, no matter what the topic is, that is seen as a problem.

Now there are multiple sides to that, when people can argue whatever, but that seems to be the go-to phrase, no matter what the topic is, no matter what program's being addressed, gutted, changed, people losing their jobs, taking jobs, whatever.

We come back, let's talk a little about that phrase and why it's suddenly become such a popular go-to for at least one side of the aisle.

Back in just a moment with Dr. Nicole Kalaf-Hughes here on "The Journal."

You are with us on "The Journal."

Our guest is Dr. Nicole Kalaf-Hughes, Associate Professor at Bowling Green State University Department of Political Science.

Last segment, one of the things that is a thread that runs through almost every argument that's going on with the new administration is that behind all of this is DEI, that everything we're trying to do is to make sure that we eliminate that, that that's been the problem.

Any issues we have with any department, any organization, any part of the government, DEI is at the bottom of all of that.

So talk about what the strategy is with that.

Because it, they ran on that.

I mean, they ran and won on that, but what does that actually mean in process?

What does that actually do to a lot of those programs?

- So the kind of the DEI boogeyman, for lack of a better term here, is this idea that goes back decades.

We've had kind of these policies that make sure that hiring is relatively equitable.

And to make sure that everyone has access, assuming they meet certain merit qualifications, that everyone has access to jobs.

Merit-based hiring goes back to the progressive movement of the early 1900s.

It has stayed consistent.

We have always had, like, at least in the last a hundred or so years, we've always had merit-based hiring in the federal government, that hasn't changed.

But it does encourage breadth in who you hire.

Starting in the sixties, essentially, if you look at the data, the biggest benefit of who has benefited from these policies is actually white women and rural Americans.

Because we tend to lump DEI policies in with race, but it is not, and some of the memos from the administration have reflected this.

It's DEIA, including accessibility.

And so we are looking at anyone who is essentially outside of the traditional power structure.

So women, racial and ethnic minorities, but also Americans from rural areas, Americans from different socioeconomic backgrounds, veterans, right, veterans do have preferential hiring in the federal government.

And so that is part of it as well.

People with a variety of disabilities.

There's a huge range of kind of what these policies look like.

And so it's kind of become an easy catchphrase for the current administration.

And it's what they campaigned on as like, we need to get this out.

It goes back to kinda the politics of resentment, which is this idea that some group is taking something that they haven't fairly earned.

And you can have racial resentment, you can have gender resentment, you can have rural resentment.

And there's a huge scholarly literature on this.

This idea that these groups, pick your group, are taking something that they haven't earned.

And thus the system is inherently unfair.

In this case, they campaigned on kind of getting rid of it.

And so that's what they're trying to do.

The problem is, is that the data and the claims that are being currently made aren't really supported by that.

If you look at any study of like business and industry, public administration, diversity actually helps industry broadly.

It helps companies, it helps public agencies, because a diversity of thought makes the deliberation better.

And so when you have people from varied backgrounds, gender, race, socioeconomic status, location, like where you're from in the US, it actually makes the deliberation and the discussion better.

And those agencies are actually more productive.

We even see this in studies of legislatures.

Because if you look at state legislatures, if you look at Congress, if you look at even like city councils and school boards, diverse governments, including having like women serving, they're actually more effective and more entrepreneurial than if you just have all men.

And there's a lot of theories as to why, one of which is that people outside of traditional power structures do have to work harder to get in those jobs.

- [Steve] To get into and join the structure.

- [Nicole] Yep, and so you get just the people who are just better.

And so it's an easy boogeyman.

It's easy to blame, but if you actually look at the data, the claims aren't really, aren't really supported.

And so it becomes a toss up a little bit of, what you can sell to the voters versus what we actually know makes government work better.

- [Steve] Yeah, yeah.

And the impact is still is very unpredictable at this point, although obviously it would appear that it will have, in some cases, negative impact on groups that maybe thought they weren't part of the DEI category, silo, whatever you wanna call that.

Because I guess, you know, if you look at, and my Latin is never really good, but if you look at the phrase, E pluribus unum, it's out of many one, which basically says, we want a lot of range or we want a lot of people to come up with good ideas, that would seem to fly in the face of this to say, well, certain groups have somehow achieved a level that they didn't deserve, so we don't want to hear their voices anymore.

And that's simple.

That's making it too simple probably, but.

- Not necessarily.

Because it also then means that the people who are serving in those roles have to justify their existence.

Because the assumption then is that everyone who did achieve that, whether it's a military rank, whether it is a customer service job with the IRS.

- [Steve] A Supreme Court Justice.

- Yeah, right.

Any of those that you have to justify that you earned it - [Steve] That you earned it.

- [Nicole] So the assumption is, if you are not a white male, that you are not as good.

And so now we have a whole secondary problem that isn't necessarily related to merit-based hiring or any of that.

And I can't stress enough that merit-based hiring has always existed in the federal government, but that it's going to be a new kind of conversation around the assumption that anyone that might be perceived as being a quote-unquote DEIA hire doesn't actually deserve their job.

- [Steve] And somehow less qual, yeah, didn't have the, for some reason got the job other than based on their qualifications for the job.

And that sets a whole new set of rules in place in the way people are seen in the workplace.

Because now if, yeah, it would seem to undermine everything you would say would make for a cohesive structure of moving things forward, whether it's a private business, a public entity, whatever it is, it would seem to undermine all of that.

That phrase has become, I guess, you know, it's funny how we've moved from, there was another phrase, that was CRT a few years ago, that was the hot button.

This now seems to have replaced that to some degree.

What is the response though?

Is there a legal boundary there that can't be crossed, just because an executive order says do away with anything that remotely seems like it might somehow be connected to that in some one thread some way, are there any barriers there to just saying it's gone, we're done?

- [Nicole] Yes and no.

- [Steve] Okay, alright.

- Some of the dismissals from the federal government are part of like the equal Employment Opportunity Commission and that kind of stuff.

So there's gonna be a question of enforcement.

Discrimination is still illegal broadly.

But it becomes one of those things where discriminate now and sue later.

So if you have a bunch of people where you're trying to decide either who retains their job or who you hire, and even if you come right out and say, well, I'm not hiring you because you're female, or I'm not hiring you because you're a veteran.

I'm not hiring you because you're from Wyoming.

Even if you like come right out and say those things, and you hire the person who looks like you with your background, that person can sue.

But we're talking a years long expensive legal process.

And in the meantime, you've reshaped whatever you're trying to do, and the position is gone.

And so we know from like American history that though discriminate now, sue later is not really an effective way to stop it.

It was part of the reason how the Voting Rights Act, how that was designed in the sixties, it was designed that way to prevent discrimination before it starts.

And so discrimination is still illegal.

Merit-based hiring still exists, and it has always existed.

- [Steve] It's still the norm, and it is still the, yeah, okay.

- The problem is, is you have many people who are qualified.

And so if you are only choosing people who share your experience, whether that experience is veteran status or rural or big city or whatever it is, you're gonna miss out on some of the other expertise that exist.

And we tend to, because of human nature, we tend to hire those like ourselves.

And so without the guardrails to encourage us to think broadly.

- [Steve] Yeah, to think outside our own mental box, yeah.

Okay, we come back, we've got a lot more to talk about.

Back in just a moment with Dr. Nicole Kalaf-Hughes here on "The Journal."

Thanks for staying with us on "The Journal."

Our guest is Dr. Nicole Kalaf-Hughes.

Last time I looked, and I just fairly recently, there are three branches of government, each with a role in how the US democracy is to function.

We know what the administration's focus has been, where their direction is.

What about the other branch that, as you mentioned earlier, has the power of the purse, the US Congress, what is their role in how all of this rolls out, either supportive or as a guardrail, or what are the tools they have, should they choose to use them?

- So this is where it gets really, really interesting, because from a strategic standpoint, the new administration has made a very concerted effort to kind of make sure that they have control of the executive branch.

And that is probably a very strategically wise choice, because it's where they can exert the most immediate influence.

However, Congress exists, and according to the constitution, the House gets the power of the purse.

Congressional negotiations in between Congress, when you're passing legislation, deciding on financial allocations, and appropriating money is all very complex.

And it's a complex negotiation between members of Congress who essentially have competing interests for a very kind of tiny slice of a fixed federal pie.

They can't just endlessly spend money that doesn't exist.

And so they compete between themselves.

- [Steve] For what's left in that piece themselves.

- [Nicole] Yeah, for what they can bring back to their districts.

And it's part of the design of our government.

If you go all the way back to the Federalist Papers with the lie, and I think it was Madison who said, "Ambition must be made to counteract ambition."

And it was this idea where you're going to have them competing against each other to prevent any one branch from becoming too powerful.

Because if you don't have that check, you can end up with an executive branch that's like a tyrannical executive branch, right?

Where they were afraid of having a king when they designed the constitution.

And so they really wanted to make sure that that didn't happen.

And the same with the courts, right?

The courts can also check the other branches.

And so while you haven't heard a lot from Congress, and it's gonna fall predominantly on Republicans, because Republicans have a majority in both houses, and they have the presidency, and they have a conservative court, you haven't had a lot of pushback yet.

However, given that they have the power to appropriate money and their constituents and their districts are counting on this money, that right now Elon Musk is saying he is gonna stop paying out from the treasury, which again, not sure on the legality of that one, it's not there, there is gonna be pushback, because even the most conservative Republican who wants to reduce the size of the government and wants to reduce the debt, still wants to bring back.

- [Steve] Something back to their constituents.

- For their districts, they still need funding.

They need to provide public services.

They need to do this work that their constituents count on.

Otherwise, they're not gonna stay in office, because their constituents will find someone else who can.

- [Steve] Who will try, yeah.

Who will at least try to, yeah.

- [Nicole] And while, I mean, Musk has publicly threatened to fund primary challengers for anyone who doesn't go along with his goals, that only goes so far, because you're gonna get primaried if you can't bring anything back.

And for some of these districts across both parties, you're looking at huge amount of money in agriculture, in farming, in technology, in public services like hospitals and like senior citizens assistance, and that kind of stuff can't just go away.

And if it does, you're going to have political consequences, 'cause some of these things are like partially completed projects or roads that are not completed, but that have been torn down to be improved.

- [Steve] To be improved, sure.

- [Nicole] And so you can't just cut off that pipeline.

I mean, apparently you can or they're gonna try to, but you're not gonna be able to do it without political repercussions from your voters and from your fellow members of Congress who have made concessions and collaborated and built consensus with you, given money going back for their districts.

- [Steve] Well, and typically, and you mentioned various areas, a lot of first responder jobs, police, fire, EMTs, those sort of things, they operate to some degree with grants for capital improvements like fire trucks, breathing apparatus, hiring policemen, you know, policemen over time, that kind of thing.

Those impacts are seen immediately.

If you have a grant in process to get breathing apparatus for your fire department, suddenly you don't know if you're gonna have that money or not, which means if you would plan to move to newer equipment, suddenly now, well, how do we keep our existing stuff running?

As you said, you can't, some of the stuff you stop on a dime, it creates a whole ripple of repercussions, which then create to some degree, at least under the older system, the previous system, backlash.

Like, well, wait a minute, what my congressman, what happened to my FEMA grant?

Well, I had to say no to it because whatever.

As you said, that's gonna be an interesting discussion at the jurisdictional level, at the political level.

- It is, and that's where you're going, you will start to see some pushback, because even the most conservative members of Congress still want to bring things back for their districts.

They're still advocates for their states, they're advocates for their district.

And it's a really tough sell to be like, I'm sorry, we aren't going to have any new jobs in our state.

Pause, right?

Like that's just not, that's not a politically palatable position.

And when you're looking at stuff like wild land firefighters or even like federal crime labs that work with local police agencies, right?

Because a lot of the local stuff is state level.

People expect that to be there.

And then if you go further, and you go after things that people have paid into, so Social Security and Medicare and things that people have spent the last 60 years of their lives paying into with taxes.

- [Steve] Yeah, yeah, and believing it will be there.

- [Nicole] Yep.

- [Steve] Right.

- [Nicole] And then that is where it's, you don't put yourself in a great position as a member of Congress for reelection.

- [Steve] Right.

And we know that when it comes right down to it, like any human being, if you have a job you like or you feel like you want to stay there, you don't wanna see that go away.

So that's, yeah, that's, you said, that's where the rubber will meet the road, as I'm gonna go along up to a point, but now you're getting into my neighborhood in a way that I didn't think you were going to, and I can't have that.

But what is the, you mentioned the courts a little bit.

Traditionally those have been the backstop for anything that if Congress went off the rails or was perceived to have or an executive did, a president, that was the place you went to say, okay, here we know we'll get a fair hearing, we'll get a read on what American government is supposed to be, what it's not supposed to do and what it's supposed to do.

Is that any question?

Is that a gray area now?

- It is a little bit, not necessarily in terms of the people who are currently serving on the court.

We know kind of what their positions broadly are.

The lower levels that are going to be responsible for representing the federal government before the court, that's where the problem is.

Because the administration has tried to gut the Department of Justice, both law enforcement and career prosecutors, who would be responsible for representing the US government.

So that's part of the problem.

The other problem is, all of these federal agencies had inspectors general, that were responsible for tracking any malfeasance.

Even as recently as 2022, Congress passed a law that you can't dismiss them without cause, and you needed like 30 days notice.

That wasn't followed.

Some of them refused to leave, because in their government training, if the government issues an unconstitutional directive and you follow it, you're still responsible.

So they didn't leave, and they were escorted out.

And so the watchdogs in these agencies that exist to protect Americans and like are tax dollars, they don't exist anymore either.

And so they, and there already are lawsuits.

So now it's a part where essentially the court is going to be in a position to evaluate whether the dismissing these people immediately was legal.

But again, make your actions now and then sue later is gonna be a slow process.

And so Congress could act, or Congress can punt to the courts and hope that it gets sorted out quickly.

- [Steve] Faster, sooner rather than later.

- Exactly, and that's my guess, is, I think, there's a little bit of a calculation going on.

There's a very limit as to what Democrats can do because they're completely out of power.

So they can send like strongly worded letters, and they can slow some things down, but they don't have a ton of power.

Republicans, I think, are kind of punting with the hope that it doesn't trickle down to constituent impacts.

- [Steve] Yeah.

- [Nicole] And that- - [Steve] Which then they have to answer for.

- Exactly.

And that they can kind of let the courts handle it.

Because that's the best of both worlds.

You can tell your constituents you're working for them and you can avoid a primary challenger funded by Musk.

And so you've got, you've got this tension there, but the guardrails that have historically existed that are designed to prevent malfeasance and to produce the required transparency for citizens that kind of we demand are gone, at least right now.

- [Steve] Okay.

Well, when we get back together the next time, we'll see how far we've progressed, regressed, digressed, whatever it is, and go from there.

So I appreciate it.

Thank you so much, Dr. Nicole Kalaf-Hughes.

- [Nicole] Thank you.

- We will see you again next time on "The Journal."

You can check us out at wbgu.org and, of course, each week at eight o'clock on WBGU-PBS on Thursday night.

We'll see you again next time.

Goodnight and good luck.

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