On Friday’s episode of The Excerpt podcast: Former President Donald Trump vowed to support Christians during a Thursday speech. USA TODAY Education Reporter Alia Wong discusses the divide over whether to include LGBTQ+ discussions in school. Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton is suing a Catholic migrant aid organization for alleged human smuggling. USA TODAY Personal Finance Reporter Daniel de Visé looks at a looming retirement crisis for younger Boomers. What happens during a mass cell service outage? We got a glimpse Thursday.
Hit play on the player below to hear the podcast and follow along with the transcript beneath it. This transcript was automatically generated, and then edited for clarity in its current form. There may be some differences between the audio and the text.
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Taylor Wilson:
Good morning. I’m Taylor Wilson and today is Friday, February 23rd 2024. This is The Excerpt.
Today Trump makes an appeal to Christians on the campaign trail, plus a look at the divisive debate over LGBTQ+ discussions in school, and how some boomers have fallen behind on retirement wealth.
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Former president Donald Trump called on Christians to support his presidential bid and pledged, if elected, to protect God in the public square and to appoint a task force to fight anti-Christian bias, including federal prosecutions. He made the comments last night at a presidential forum at the annual conference of the National Religious Broadcasters in Nashville. Trump made the stop in Tennessee, despite a tight calendar of court appearances and campaigning ahead of tomorrow’s South Carolina primary. Voters in Tennessee will cast ballots on Super Tuesday on March 5th. NRB President, Troy Miller said the organization invited all eligible candidates from both parties to participate in the presidential forum and that Trump was the only candidate who was available to attend. The NRB has not endorsed Trump’s Presidential bid.
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A police investigation is underway after sixteen-year-old Oklahoma high school student Nex Benedict died earlier this month after sustaining injuries on school grounds. Medical examiners are still working on their investigation into what killed the teenager, but police said this week that an autopsy determined Nex did not die as a result of trauma. News of the high schoolers’ death has brought national attention, in part because of the student’s gender expansive identity, and claims of bullying that led up to the altercation. Nex’s death comes amid a sharp divide on how students, teachers, and the general public feel about discussing gender identity and LGBTQ+ topics in the classroom.
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I spoke with USA Today, education reporter, Alia Wong to learn more. Hello Alia.
Alia Wong:
Hello.
Taylor Wilson:
So Alia, this new report from the Pew Research Center shows really a major divide over whether LGBTQ+ related discussions have a place in the classroom. What exactly did this report reveal?
Alia Wong:
It revealed that, by and large. Teachers and teens and members of the general public support instruction about racism and racial inequality. This has been, in the past, a very divisive topic, but you still see pretty good consensus on the importance of teaching those topics and some consensus that even if parents disagree with that instruction, that they should not have the right to opt their kids out of it.
It’s quite different when it comes to instruction about LGBTQ+ issues, and roughly half of teachers say that they shouldn’t happen in the classroom, that school is not a place to discuss those topics, and many support parents right to opt out. Interestingly, you also see that teens, when it comes to LGBTQ+ issues, they’re very mixed in whether they think they’re an appropriate topic for the classroom. A third actually said that they’re uncomfortable discussing gender identity in class. That doesn’t mean that they don’t support those identities, but that they just don’t feel comfortable discussing them in school, so that was noteworthy.
One real takeaway from this is that while the public discourse often lumps together all these culture war issues, whether it’s racism or sexual orientation or gender identity, there’s a lot of nuances within those topics. So when someone might support discussions of systemic racism, for example, that doesn’t mean they’re going to support discussions of trans inclusion, for example.
Taylor Wilson:
Interesting findings, Alia. So what’s the core argument from those who are against LGBTQ-related discussions in the classroom?
Alia Wong:
They told me they feel there’s too much emphasis placed on sexuality in schools, that there’s almost this hyper-focus on sexuality and gender identity in classrooms, when schools, especially now as they recover from learning loss, should really be focusing on subjects like math and reading. They pointed to the nuances too. They say, well, it’s one thing to discuss. Same-sex relationships, which come down to romantic attraction, but it’s quite another to discuss that ones gender identity can be different from the biological sex assigned at birth. So they say this is an extreme direction to go in and they’re not comfortable with it. They say, particularly at the younger grades, and you see this reflected among teachers as well, that elementary-level classrooms really are not an ideal or appropriate setting for these conversations to happen.
Taylor Wilson:
When it comes to LGBTQ+ advocates, what do they say about the harm a lack of inclusive classrooms can have on young people’s mental health? Also Alia, what do they really mean when talking about inclusive classrooms?
Alia Wong:
Inclusive classrooms can look a variety of ways. They can entail curriculum that goes over the history and the contributions of queer people. They can involve training that helps teachers become better allies to students and helps them identify suicide risks, for example. It can mean just having signage or messaging in the classroom that really shows that these are safe spaces, whether that’s a pride flag or some other sign that shows I am here for all students no matter your sexual orientation or gender identity.
This kind of inclusion, a body of research shows, really correlates with decreases in the suicide risk among LGBTQ+ youth. We know that these kids have a heightened risk of suicide and other mental health challenges. They say that when they’re in classrooms that have these inclusive resources and are inclusive spaces, the odds that they’ll have better mental health and a reduced risk of suicide really go up. The people I spoke with who believe that this education is really important, highlighted just how existential this can be for kids and what can happen when those lessons are taken away.
Taylor Wilson:
All right. Alia Wong covers education for USA Today. Thanks as always, Alia.
Alia Wong:
Thank you.
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Taylor Wilson:
Texas Attorney General, Ken Paxton, is suing a Catholic migrant aid organization for alleged human smuggling. Ruben Garcia is the executive director of the non-profit Annunciation House, and Garcia gets daily text messages from US Border Patrol when they tell him how many migrants will be lawfully released and need a meal, shower, or place to sleep. He’s been specializing in meeting those needs for more than 40 years through a network of faith-based shelters in El Paso. But in his lawsuit, Paxton claims that the Annunciation House appears to be engaged in the business of human smuggling, charges that its shelter network amounts to an illegal stash house, and is threatening to terminate the non-profit’s right to operate in Texas. Experts say the litigation is a serious expansion of Texas Governor Greg Abbott’s crackdown on immigration and border communities. If the state prevails, it could have broad implications for churches, hospitals, and other organizations that provide humanitarian assistance. You can read more with a link in today’s show notes.
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The youngest baby boomers have less retirement wealth than older generations. For more on how this happened, I caught up with USA Today, personal finance reporter, Daniel de Visé.
Daniel, thanks for hopping on the excerpt today.
Daniel de Visé:
Always a pleasure, sir.
Taylor Wilson:
So Daniel, researchers are pointing to a looming retirement crisis. Strong words for the youngest American boomers. What exactly did we learn from this latest research?
Daniel de Visé:
These would be the people who were born in the first half of the 1960s. I call them Beatlemania boomers. They’re younger baby boomers, and they have less retirement wealth and a lot less retirement savings than the older generations, the older baby boomers, the war babies, the silent generation folks. That’s what the researchers found.
Taylor Wilson:
Why are we seeing this? What happened to the savings of these late boomers?
Daniel de Visé:
You have to go back to 2008. The Great Recession happened, and here’s why that matters. When the Great Recession hit, these Beatlemania boomers were at the peak of their careers. They were in their forties, so they were at an age when they should have been fully employed, gainfully employed, making as much money as they were ever going to make, and they got slammed in those years. A lot of them lost their jobs. A lot of them lost their earnings. A lot of them took a huge hit to their retirement savings. Probably a lot of them had to take out some of their retirement savings. So they just took this massive hit to what would be their retirement wealth, right when they were at their peak.
Taylor Wilson:
So Daniel, what does this mean for this generation functionally in the decades to come?
Daniel de Visé:
I mean, I think the impact is yet to be felt because this would be people who have that much less in their IRA, if they still have a 401k. A lot of them retired, basically, never went back to work. A lot of these folks, these late boomers, left their jobs maybe in 2010 or thereabouts and never went back to work. So they just have this deficit of retirement money, and that’s going to become more and more of an issue in the years to come, basically.
Taylor Wilson:
I’m curious, is there a solution here for folks in this generation who feel behind on their retirement savings at this point? Also, are there any lessons for the following generations, Daniel, or is the lesson really just that bad luck can derail anyone’s future financial plans?
Daniel de Visé:
I was affected by this recession myself. I was a little younger. But you can’t blame the Beatlemania boomers, it’s not their fault that the economy crashed. That’s how I feel. So the only lesson here is if you’re a late boomer, maybe you’re in your sixties now, if you can, you could keep working. You could try to build up some more retirement wealth while you still can. It’s a very powerful thing to continue working. Basically, if you can’t, then you just have to maybe come up with a new modified retirement plan and figure out how to live your remaining years on what money you have. That can be tricky, but there are experts who can help you with that.
Taylor Wilson:
All right. Daniel de Visé, covers personal finance for USA Today. Thank you, Daniel.
Daniel de Visé:
Thank you, sir.
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Taylor Wilson:
AT&T says it has restored service to all customers after tens of thousands were affected by a nationwide outage yesterday morning. At the disruptions peak, between 8:00 and 9:00 AM Eastern Time, some 70,000 customers were reporting outages according to Down Detector. The outages impacted essential public services, including people’s ability to call emergency responders. That raised a question for many, what happens if I can’t use my cell phone, especially in an emergency? Alyssa Provencio is a professor at the University of Central Oklahoma who oversees the Disaster Management Certificate program. Provencio said that communication issues in a disaster are the norm, not the exception, and that yesterday’s challenges could be a learning experience for the future. Still, solutions are complicated. Yesterday, some local emergency service providers told people that if they needed to reach 911, they should try calling from a landline. Yet, phone companies are pushing to eliminate traditional landlines in parts of the country. You can read more about the debate around that and more with a link in today’s show notes.
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Thanks for listening to The Excerpt. We’re produced by Shannon Ray Green and Bradley Glanzrock, and our executive producer is Laura Beatty. You can get the podcast wherever you get your audio, and if you’re on a smart speaker, just ask for The Excerpt. I’m Taylor Wilson, back tomorrow with more of The Excerpt from USA Today.
Elaine Hadley is a dedicated journalist covering the ever-evolving landscape of U.S. news. With a keen interest in politics and a commitment to uncovering the truth, she provides insightful commentary and in-depth analysis on domestic issues. When not reporting, Elaine enjoys exploring the diverse cultures and landscapes of the United States.
