Chaos in Minnesota: Riots, Arrests, And Insurrection Act? Trump's Healthcare Fix, And Newsom

And we're live. Welcome back to the LOOPcast. Today is an edition of Tom and Erika try to figure out what's going on in the world. There's always a possibility Josh busts in like the Kool-Aid man, so we never quite know when Josh is not going to be here. So, cross your fingers, you might get Josh today, but it's looking like Tom and Erika. The LOOPcast, of course, brought to you by The Loop, every Catholic. No way. He did that on purpose.

He did it. He did that on purpose. You are the worst. Josh is here. There is so much coordination that goes into the show, so much, and we talk all morning. Didn't hear a word from Josh. There he is. Welcome to the show, Josh. There's time zone differences, you know? What do you want me to tell you? Well, where are you today? Is that top secret, or what's going on? No, I'm in Denver. It's okay. I travel, you know, for the cause, and I'm suffering through some nasty hotel coffee, because I'm not like one of you.

Gen Z kids is going to, like, door dash some Starbucks or something. I'm anti-door dash, and I'm actually kind of anti-door dash. Well, Starbucks, actually, I feel like, of all the coffees, most consistent, so I'll give them credit on that one.

But, you know, it took me a little—I should have been on here a few minutes ago, but, you know, I had to get the shine, as Kevin likes to call it. Yeah, you've got to continue with Kevin. What did you think of Kevin? He did phenomenal, of course. I mean, he's the man. I mean, you know.

It was nice just to be able to have him on the show, and there's a lot of people in D.C. or whatever that have big egos, and I can tell you, I've known Kevin for 15-some years, and before he was at Heritage, he started a Catholic political movement, and it was called Catholic Families for America, and he had enough humility to say, hey, you and Brian are doing a better job. Just take it over. I am going to focus on something else, and he went on to, you know, go to the Texas Policy Institute, I think, when he went to Catholic College.

And then he went to Wyoming. So, just like, sometimes that happens in your life. You are like, wait a minute, a door is closing, and the good Lord is looking for people who are humble, and they are going to open up another avenue. And so, obviously, the good Lord blessed Kevin. And we're all better for it. And, you know, it takes a lot for someone to say, you know what, you're doing it better, you do it. For sure. That was amazing.

Total respect. Yeah. Some insider show, I did, like, product test the joke about him being bald before the show. I didn't want to do that completely live and ambush him, and it totally worked, by the way. And he laughed immediately. So, he just had a great sense of humor.

He was ready, yeah. Yeah, and we're going to talk. So, okay, that brings me to what we're talking about today. Obviously, there's some chaos going on in Minnesota, actually like two days now, probably actually more like a week of chaos. But we had a second ICE conflict shooting, non-fatal, shot in the leg. We're getting to that, but then, of course, we have Trump really ratcheting it up, potentially threatening the Insurrection Act.

He has threatened it a few times, actually. He better deliver this time. Okay, hold it. I want to get all of your thoughts, Josh. We missed you on Wednesday. The second story we are going to be talking about is Trump unveiled his new health care plan, which is really interesting to me. I was actually getting really in the weeds on Obamacare and profit-loss ratio and crazy stuff, but I had Erika really dig into it. I am excited for the proposal, Josh.

Obamacare, that health care insurance buyout program. Welcome back, Josh. And then finally, Josh, we have a Good Friday story. There was something that went viral. It's basically the opinion that the birth rate would increase if men started doing household chores and spending more time with their children. Are you familiar with this theory? I've heard of this theory. Okay, so we have some results. I have some thoughts. Yeah, some results on the theory. And then Brad Wilcox actually had a great study I read through, or theory, I'm not sure exactly what to call it.

I'm not a super official person. But on the Nordics, the idea that the Nordics, they do a great job of social welfare to help out families, and yet their birth rate is in the tank, just like everyone else's.

Which, with the person company excluded, are both married to other people and have had a lot of children. We are the exception that proves the rule, Josh. But you also are American, so you don't live in Sweden. Imagine Swedish Josh. That would be kind of funny. I like thinking about that sometimes. I'm Norwegian, but we're going to let that slide. All right.

Okay, so without further ado, and the other thing, too, with all this, Axe is back. All right, I was going to have Selene test. Axe is in and out today, so bear with us. I know, I had to hurry up and grab my bookmarks because I'm going on a show. Yeah, exactly. Okay, so I'll start here with the DHS account, and we can show the picture. But essentially, we had a second run-in with Ice. And so, I'm just going to give a summary from the official DHS and ICE statements on this as our best guide to understand what happened.

So, federal agents conducted a targeted traffic stop on a Venezuelan national identified as Julio Cesar Sosacelis. He entered the United States illegally in 2022 under the prior administration and had prior minor arrests, such as for false identification and driving without a license. He was released by local authorities. Before ICE could detain him, let's just take a pause here.

Local authorities had him, and then they let him go. Multiple times. And so we're in this situation now. Sanctuary City, that's what that is. I said to pause, extra emphasis on this. This is just a crazy world that we live in right now, but this, of course, is the crux of the issue in Minnesota.

The man allegedly fled his vehicle, crashed into a parked car, then ran on foot to a nearby resident's apartment. Agents pursued and attempted to apprehend him. A struggle ensued on the ground. According to DHS. Two individuals, other individuals, also Venezuelan nationals, Alfredo Alejandro Ahorna and Gabriel Alejandro Hernandez Ledenzma, both the final removal orders or non-enforcement priorities emerged from the residence and allegedly attacked the officer with improvised weapons, a snow shovel and a broom handle. The initial suspect reportedly joined in on the assault and fared for his life amid the ambush by three people.

The federal agent fired defensive shots, striking Sosa Salas in the leg. It was a non-life-threatening injury. All three men fled back to the residence, barricaded themselves, but were eventually arrested by ICE. The injured man and the agent were both hospitalized. The agent's condition not detailed in the incident, though separate reports note injuries to agents in related operations.

DHS emphasized this as a part of arresting criminal illegal aliens amid non-cooperation from Minnesota authorities. That is what happened, according to the account. I'll pause before I get into the immediate aftermath and eruption of protests. I mean, to me, this is classic textbook. You're assaulting a police officer or an agent of the law in the execution of his duty.

Again, like, it's a no-brainer to me. You attack him with shovels, you attack him with broomsticks, you have three guys tackling him to the ground, he discharges his weapon, has obviously, like, thank God that the man's life wasn't taken, so that he can now face justice, hopefully. But, again, this is part of the...

And the response that has been encouraged by the leadership in Minnesota, that we have to have this resistance. Well, I have some immediate aftermath footage, and shout out to guys like Nick Sorter and BG on the Scene is one of my favorites. I mean, they're just on the ground videotaping all this. But this is immediate aftermath in the area. You get riots with...

Fireworks being launched, tear gas deployed, and then you have, eventually, these agitators taking over ICE vehicles, and I don't even think I need to play audio on this, but they're hitting the back of the car and the gun locker with a hammer to get in, and then you immediately see this guy with a face stat taking a rifle.

Yeah, a rifle and ammunition. Rifle and ammo right out of the car. They're going in. I've seen reports of taking arrest warrants out of the car, laptops out of these cars. Maybe this is what Trump is talking about when he's talking about Insurrection Act. This does feel like a really untenable situation.

Here you have someone tying a chain to the back of their car and then pulling another gun locker or locker of some kind out of the car. Total chaos. And this is all right in the blocks adjacent to where this arrest happened, because obviously they ran into an apartment building, so a lot of people saw it. And yeah, lots of unrest, lots of looting. I have more footage of cars just completely abandoned. And it's funny, I was talking before the show about this.

It reminds me a little bit of Afghanistan, or a third-world country in which we leave American equipment, and then it just gets taken over by mobs. I mean, here is another blown-out car of people just looting it. Hey, important world kids are world problems. Crazy.

Yeah, I do not even know. Do we need to be nuanced about this? I mean, this is textbook. You know what I mean? Here is fireworks being shot at the cars, tear gas being deployed. It's a tense situation in Minnesota, no question. It's making a lot of people nervous.

Yeah. Josh, can you enlighten us? When was the last time? Where's the nuance here? I'm really trying to see it. This is Josh Trivia. When was the last time a president of the United States invoked the Insurrection Act, and what was it for?

If I had to guess, I would have thought Eisenhower on the National Guard. Maybe it wasn't even that. It might be a little further. Like, TR? It doesn't happen often. Right. It doesn't happen often, but it was more recent. So, actually, H.W. Bush invoked the Insurrection Act following the Rodney King riots in 1992 in L.A. So, we've actually had this within our lifetime. It was invoked. And, I mean, comparing the history of the Rodney King riots with what we're seeing now, I mean, firing fireworks into crowds of ICE officials, like, that's...

It seems like the Minneapolis police do not have this under control. Nor do they want, nor do the, well, not the police department, but the political leadership of Minneapolis doesn't want the police department to have it under control.

If you ask the police, you know, would you be willing to control it? Yeah, I mean, in fact, what's happening is some members of the Minneapolis police department are quitting and joining ICE because they want the job done.

Yeah, for the audio listeners, I mean, I can read off the truth here. If the corrupt politicians in Minnesota don't obey the law and stop the professional agitators and insurrectionists from attacking the patriots of ICE, who are only trying to do their job, I will institute the Insurrection Act, which many presidents have done before me, and quickly put an end to the travesty that is taking place in the once great state. Thank you for your attention to this matter, President DJT.

And for those wondering, the Insurrection Act would basically allow him to deploy the military against U.S. citizens to quell what is being considered an insurrection. Right, and what do we get from Governor Tim Walz? It's basically like, blame the feds being there for all of this unrest. So, he's like, I'm making, what did he say? I'm making a direct appeal to the president. Let's turn the temperature down.

So, he's telling Trump to turn the temperature down, stop your campaign of retribution. This is not who we are. This from the guy who then, two days earlier, had been calling upon Minnesotans to get out on the streets with their phones to, quote, document the atrocities.

Atrocities is a... I mean, that's a high-temp word, if you ask me. When I think of atrocities, I think of Rwandan genocide. I think of the killing pits in Belarus under Stalin. Atrocities is a high-temp word, and now he's like, Trump, you've got to calm down, man. Well, here's Jacob Frey telling police to fight ICE. We're in a position right now where we have residents that are asking the very limited number of police officers that we have to fight ICE agents on the street, to stand by their neighbors.

And that is the police chief behind him. His eyebrows went up. Did you see that? The police chief is like, wait, hang on. What did you say? Yeah, so this is obviously escalating to a confrontation of some kind, and we will see who ends up backing down. My question is, and there is like a clip of Joe Rogan being like, oh, the ICE are just Gestapos with a mask over their face. It is like, is this what we become? You got to ask for your papers.

So, everyone is kind of having the debate now on the strategy, because at least what I am observing here, and I am trying my best to just take in all the information. We have this ramped up targeted enforcement in Minnesota.

I think they have had, at this point, combined with the January arrests, almost about 5,000 arrests. I am seeing something like 4,000 to 5,000 arrests, combined with both. The ones of the recent enforcement action, I believe, are around like 2,000.

And so, after the fraud thing, we get the ramp up, we send them to Minnesota. And it almost feels like, to me, Trump is, so they're doing this and they're publicizing it, by the way. So, there's like hype edits on Twitter of arrests and really trying to project, like, and I think the average person, a lot of people are saying this is making them uncomfortable, this seems unseemly, the mass, the chaos, the forces. Are people backing down from this? Is this the wrong strategy?

Like, what do you think is going on in the politics behind this? I've seen, like, different accounts of Kristi Noem, what she thinks about it, Tom Holman, what he thinks about it. And then, who's the bald guy? Stephen Miller. Stephen Miller, who's a super hard line on it.

I guess, yeah, if you could get just like a political, outside of our own little bubble, like how do you think this is playing, Josh? I think Democrats think it's going to do well. For them, because people in the suburbs are going to be scared, and it gets so mean that we have these military people. I don't think that's true. I think the American people, in general, are like, no, I'm sorry. You don't just get to riot, and therefore, you know, and attack police cars and say everything's fine.

I think most Americans thought Donald Trump didn't do enough in 2020 to handle unrest. You know, he basically said, well, look, you're torturing your own cities. Too bad. You're dumb. Whatever. It's like, no, no. You have an obligation to go in there and take care of business, because there are a lot of people that live in those cities that have nothing to do with protesting ICE or whatever, and they deserve to live in a peaceful situation. This is the United States of America.

Our cities should not look like third-world countries, and we should maintain law and order. I am sorry, but law and order remains a popular thing. And, you know, you get these... Beltway Insider squishy types are like, oh, the American people aren't going to like this. They didn't vote for this. I voted for Trump three times, but I never expected to actually do anything on immigration. Really? You never thought there would be any enforcement? Okay. And the thing is, if you attack police officers, if you drive your car, you hit them with your car, if you start attacking their vehicles, bad stuff is going to happen.

I am sorry. It will not end well for you. In this country, no matter what you are arrested for, you could be a serial killer, you could be an arsonist, you could be a bad hombre, and when the police pull you over, if you are respectful, yes, you will end up in a police car, in handcuffs, sure, but you will get successfully to jail and go through a whole trial without being killed. That is right.

Which is what Maduro found out, to his great surprise. Oh, no, you're shocked. For heaven's sake. By the way, incidentally, the political implications, there are implications beyond what you might even appreciate. Do tell. My friend Ryan, my friend Ryan Gerduski. I did see that this morning. You know, the last time we did the U.S. Census, and we counted all the different people in the states. Okay, so according to current law and case law, we have to count all residents. So, if California has 5 million illegal immigrants, they get more seats in Congress because of it.

That is right. Sorry. That is total baloney. Well, when they're reapportioning all these, you know, seats, they have this formula where they assign all 435 seats in the house, you know, and like I said, if you have illegal immigrants, those count. They're residents.

Last time we did the census, the state of Minnesota held on to its eighth seat by just 89 people. Oh, well, if they hadn't had those extra eight, nine people, that seat would have been apportioned to New York, which is, again, another blue state. I get it. But overall, the trend is that.

Having millions of illegal immigrants in this country gives political power to blue states. Totally. They have unfair advantages. They have more people. They have like a dozen more members of Congress because of illegal immigration. They'll get more money. Donald Trump has already, his administration has already deported so many people out of Minnesota, they're going to lose their congressional seat because of it. And it's one they didn't deserve. So, me, who was born in Minnesota, will not cry. Well, yeah, it's the inverse.

It's like everyone talks about all the time, what was the strategy? It's important people so you can get seats and you can get votes. The inverse is also true, which I feel like people don't think about enough. Like, actually, if you get illegal immigrants out of the country, you lose those votes. You lose that political power. So, because of COVID, California was losing 100,000 Americans every year. They were just like, this is insane. I hate the high taxes. I hate that I can't go anywhere.

100,000 residents. People born in the United States were leaving California, the golden state. This is a state that was every Beach Boy dream. This is every decade from 1850 until... This decade, more people were moving into California than were moving out, but in the last 10 years, it's gone the other way. People are leaving. The population went down, not just not increasing that fast, it went down. If it weren't for illegal immigrants, it would be crashing, and in fact, now that you're seeing deportations, you know, California's going to lose like three, four house seats.

It's going to be crazy. Yeah. Can I do a preach while I zone? Oh, go for it. So, they're stopping people in Minneapolis that have cars that look like cars that ICE would use. Oh, my gosh. And they're asking them to identify themselves. Here you go. Like I said, I don't have to do this. I'm happy to do this. That's all. We've just got to stop this. So, he's got a lot of camera equipment. I think we can say this is an ICE.

Yeah, I know. I know. That is all I can do is tell you. All right, set this. What is going on here? That's just the dude. That's the normal dude. Let me explain in simple terms. The residents of this specific area of Minneapolis are stopping cars and asking them to identify themselves and prove that they are not ICE because they're driving a car that looks like it's used by ICE, this specific type of SUV.

And the normie dad on the video is like, hey. And we kind of get back to that, like. I don't have to do this, but I'll show you what's in my car. I'm like, don't do it. Yeah. Do not think of that. The smart aleck comment is, you mean libs are surrounding random guys and making them show identification to prove you belong there? What, are they protesting again? I think doesn't this get to the heart of it again? Like, I remember during BLM, people putting up signs because they didn't want their window smashed.

You had to put up the fist, and it's like, well, I don't believe in this, but I just don't want to have my window smashed. And we're kind of getting back to this here. And doesn't this all get back to the point? I used to think we lived in a country of law and order.

We, this is, this is vigilante anarchy chaos. Like, this is prosecution by citizens, and it reminds me very much so of BLM. Maybe what you're saying is true, Josh, just like we learned, but yes, you're allowing this to happen. We are allowing neighborhoods to institute mob rule. Exactly. And it's time to crush that. It's like white people, Chaz, like, that just needs to be, you're not allowed to do that. You are not allowed to detain your fellow citizens because the car they're driving.

It reminds me of the, remember the Teslas were all being burned and keyed? Yeah. My beloved New England. People were putting stickers on their Teslas, like, I don't like Elon Musk, so they wouldn't get keyed. No, it reminds me more about what Tom said on the last episode, which I did watch.

We have a two-tier system of justice, where Steve Bannon gets thrown in jail for disobeying a direct order from Congress to testify, but Bill Clinton can do it and get away with it, apparently. I would just love to see a former president in handcuffs. Heck, they've arrested a former president before, right? They did it for Trump. True. Okay, wait, just a quick pause. So, since we did not have you on the show on Wednesday, do you think the Clintons will be held in contempt?

Will there be, because they're not showing up? I did want to ask Josh this. So, they refuse to testify in private. They refuse to testify before the committee. Are they going to be held in contempt? Gosh, 4% chance. Oh, 4? Come on. What's it on Kelshi? Is there Kelshi odds on it? I don't know. Probably. I stay away from Kelshi. But, okay, if I were to, like, put the finest of points on it, and people have made much more profound. It's funny, people were sharing the Fulton Sheen quote about how a misplaced sympathy, of how you're giving sympathy to, you know, the criminals and the rapists, and I believe you actually threw in homosexuals, which, different time, 1950s, I guess you could say stuff and win Emmys like that.

But it does feel like I forget the book that this is from, but basically, we live in a system that is— Punishing law-abiding average people that are not rioting, that are not smashing things, and all of the emphasis, even in law a lot of times, are protecting people that are rioting, and that people are making the lives miserable for law-abiding citizens. And if I live in a civilized country, the opposite should be true. If we were a serious country, we would completely smash.

This is an insurrection. I don't know. It's authority. This is what people on the left feel to appreciate. Imagine, if you will, that Donald Trump is the moderate, and the next guy may not have a hesitation. He may not announce, he might invoke the Insurrection Act. He'll just send in the Marines.

The next guy, maybe J.D. Vance unleashed, right? He'll tell Comer on the phone. Are you ready? We will pick them up. We will pick up Bill Clinton. We will bring him in. Are you ready? We are good. I will send him. In other words, this idea that we have been screaming loud for decades like this two-tiered system of justice is baloney and it is not going to stand, and the left is like, what are you going to do about it? Nothing.

Ha-ha. The time is up, bro. We are going to start actually doing this. People start to realize that they think Donald Trump is too far or too extreme, and the voters won't go for it. Like, bro, he's the moderate. What if he's holding us back?

Josh. Josh coming in with a hammer, baby. Love it. Okay, on to the next one. Trump healthcare outline revealed. We have the video from the Oval Office. We have the announcement. Erika, take me through it a little bit. What are we looking at? Yeah, so President Trump.

It unveils, of course, this is just like so on brand, the great healthcare plan to lower costs and deliver money directly to the people. Great title. The greatest part about it, it is one page. I'm always a fan of government proposals that can be read in eight minutes.

Yeah, just a quick fact sheet. You can read it through it yourself. So, you remember when he spoke to the Republicans at that retreat at the Trump-Kennedy Center weeks ago, and he urged them to own health care. He's like, this is your winning issue. There's no reason why Republicans cannot own this. So, he was kind of teasing this kind of a proposal. So, he's urging them to replace the Affordable Care Act's subsidy structure with this sort of shift, or definite shift, in how federal health care...

Dollars will move through the system. Again, he signaled this at the speech earlier, and so he's saying that instead of subsidies flowing from Washington to insurance companies through this highly regulated safety net, now the proposal flips the model and turns to what he calls a consumer-driven marketplace model. Instead of subsidizing insurers, federal dollars should go directly to individuals, often through health savings accounts, allowing consumers to Consumers to purchase coverage for themselves. His plan emphasizes consumer choice, fewer federal mandates, price transparency, particularly when it comes to prescription drugs and medical services.

So, just a few key elements to pull out here before we dig into what is wrong with the ACA and the expiration and all that. The key elements are we're replacing ACA subsidies with direct payments to individuals. This means giving people more control in buying their own coverage and encouraging competition. Lowering prescription drug prices by codifying drug pricing deals, including that most favored nation pricing.

And making more medicines available over the counter instead of requiring a physician's prescription. He wants to reduce insurance premiums, out-of-pocket costs with federally funded cost-sharing reduction program, trimming insurer kickbacks, and unnecessary fees. So, those are the basic key provisions of the proposal. Already had a lot of criticisms coming at it from all around.

People who are criticizing are saying that the best thing this could do is give, like, gun-shy Republicans who are on the brink of joining with Democrats in resuscitating the UK subsidies, this gives them a concrete one-pager, something else to flip towards. So, I don't see, in my brief read-through of it last night and this morning, I don't see that this was intended, as so few things are, to be like, here's the comprehensive plan, right? This is a one-pager being like… GOP, don't panic.

Do not be panikins. Let's build towards something like this. That being said, A few of the key missing elements here that we would hope future Republicans will latch onto this and start building out. It doesn't mention the deregulation of coverage mandates or third options. So, people are still, according to this sheet, would still be choosing among the various Obamacare plans.

And so, that is one issue. We will talk about the medical loss ratio. There was no mention of the short-term plans, which in his first administration, Trump had utilized short-term plans, but there is no mention of them here on this sheet, not meaning he is against them or anything, again. And also, current regulations on HSA funds, which are limited, but the current regulations actually prevent individuals from applying those funds toward premiums, which... That needs to be reformed, I think, if the HSAs are going to mean anything.

That's kind of an obvious fix there. And then, of course, from the pro-life angle on this sheet, I'm just going to bring it up. I'm not saying that this is a particular concern right now, but the sheet does not mention the Hyde Amendment. And so, we have people from SBA List and other pro-life only organizations being like, wait, it doesn't say pro-life protections. The reason I'm not as concerned about that is, again, because I don't see this. As like, here's my comprehensive plan and everything I'm thinking.

I think there's still room for pressure to be brought in terms of what pro-life coverage would be. Again, it's less of a high thing if you're giving money to people, and then they turn around with their money and do something with it. Exactly, as we've discussed. But what I would like to do, I mean, I would like as much to create a robust individual market, because the individual market is still only like maybe...

I'm going off my old notes, like 15% of Americans get health care through the individual market. Like on a private insurance marketplace? Yeah, exactly. Yeah. Because the bulwark is through your employer or whatever. Or the marketplace. Well, partially because the private insurers, like, they'll kick you off if you get pregnant, that kind of thing. Like, they have all kinds of mechanisms to remove you. That was part of the ACA pitch was, okay, we'll make sure you can't kick anyone off. So, yeah, not ideal.

What I would like to do is I would like... I would like for us, you know, it would be nice to have some sort of Republican vision, you know, from what we see going forward. Like, these are all, these all look like pretty good Band-Aid stuff. I mean, there is nothing in here that, like, oh my gosh, this is horrible, or, and this is so groundbreaking.

Right. I mean, you know, again, they missed a chance to allow people to buy health care through associations. I would have thought that would have been a thing to toss in there. You know, at least add it in and see, you know, who knows, you might get it. But ultimately, what I would like to do is to change the tax code to incentivize employers not to provide health care, but to give money to their employees to purchase the health care of their choice.

Because then what we would end up doing is having enough people that are, you know, like right now, I don't get my car insurance from my employer. No one does. Like, why would you? This doesn't make any sense. Oh, no, I'm moving jobs. What am I going to do with my car insurance? I got to wait until November before I can buy a car. This is stupid.

We need to have a more robust individual market, and the more individuals that are actually in the market. But right now, it is like only 15%, so you kind of feel like you are in a squeeze. Do you know why that is? Do you know why you can buy car insurance independent, and you have to basically get it through your employer for health insurance? I never thought about that. Yeah, so, I mean, back in the late 40s, you know, Harry Truman was trying to nationalize health care, and the Republicans in Congress were like, yeah, that is not going to be a good idea.

In a way to save us from having government-controlled healthcare, we said, let us incentivize employers to provide healthcare. So, that kept us from the axe. So, that was like, okay, that is good. Good. Interesting. But why don't we change those incentives a little bit so that, again, get all these healthcare people off your books.

You focus on being a business. Provide. You know, like, maybe this is the mechanism. Maybe this, you know, what he's talking about, these sort of accounts where you put money into the accounts and the person's then buy. They're like HSOs, yeah. Yeah. Do it that way and get, and so, like, oh, I work for Cisco. I have this insurance plan. It's like, no. What we want is, you know, more individuals in the market that are out there that are. Being good consumers and trying to go for stuff, you know, like, and, you know, more competition is going to be good, I think.

I mean, like, there's a robust competition in the auto. I mean, you see the end of the time where people are trying to get it, and they're trying to save costs and stuff like that, so. Yeah, and I think the only way that that's going to happen, that we'll see the increased competition, is if we deregulate, we get rid of some of these regulations, like, Tom, you brought up this morning, the medical loss ratio. Yeah. All of these massive regulations. Which, that would be a part of this.

It would get rid of the medical loss ratio, which is fantastic. That is one of the easiest, get rid of it, it just adds incentives, bad incentives for employers to raise costs. It is regulations like that, which were intended to lower premiums and did the absolute opposite effect, but it is regulations like that that make it almost impossible to start up new insurers. So, a new insurance company, if someone wants to start something up, to join the marketplace, to join the competition, it is these kinds of regulations that prevent that.

And so, by exploding some of the regulations and then giving the money back to the consumer, hopefully starting to break apart this monopoly on the insurance business. If I could say two positive things real quick, because I know we just said like, okay, this is a band-aid, it's not actually. There are two really good things about this. One being that medical loss ratio that was implemented with Obamacare. Essentially, it guarantees that the provider has to spend a certain percentage on actual medicine costs as opposed to.

Administrative costs. Am I correct on that? That was my understanding. It's about 80% for smaller ones and 85% for larger ones. So, essentially, what ended up happening was, because there's no price transparency for healthcare, they just rose the cost of what, like an actual treatment or medicine or whatever, to reach that ratio. So, they're like, okay, well, now it costs this much, so it'll be 85%, and then we're only spending 15%. It was the only way for them to increase profits.

Yes, and it did phenomenally, and it increased. Price, and a part of the, is this a framework, executive order? I'm not sure the exact technical, like this is our marching orders, I guess. Price transparency is a huge part of this. You walk into a hospital... I think it's what they're intending. It's intended to be legislation. I don't think... Right, right. It would have to go through Congress. This is a proposal to Congress. I don't understand how this has not happened before.

This has to have so much bipartisan support. I know there's big-time lobbyists on behalf of big healthcare or whatever, but price transparency. You walk into a hospital, you do not know what it costs. It's crazy. You don't know what it costs. There's no list it costs for anything. And then if you go in, depending on what happens, depending on your insurance, stuff that should cost 20 bucks costs 500, and there's nothing you can do. And then you call, and you're like...

Like, can I get an itemized list, please? This is insane. And then, like, oh, all of a sudden, the costs come down. And then, you're like, well, I actually can't pay all of it. Can I pay 25%? Like, yeah, that's fine. It's like, in what world would this service, this is the only industry- How does this urgent care all the time? Oh, my gosh. It's insane. And talk about being anti-natal. Are you kidding me? Anytime that my kid has anything that happens to them, I'm, talk about a two-tier system as well.

Dude, I'll go off on the soapbox on this. I'm scared to take my children to go get care because I don't know what it'll cost. If I was on Medicare and didn't have a job, then I could call an ambulance and wouldn't have to pay for it. That is the current two-tier system of health care right now. It is insane, and it's causing people not to have children. I know for a fact it's so expensive. Right, and the reason why is because, you know, when the Democrats come on saying, like, this poor person, they don't have any money, how can you turn them away from the hospital?

You want people to die. Or we just want a more sensible system. A more sensible system. I'm sorry. It's so crazy. Okay, if I could, before we move on, because we're in the healthcare corner, people took some shots at us over Hyde. Okay. Over Hyde, I went through it on the Twilight Zone last show. Hopefully, I did a good job, but people are freaking out about returning funds to Planned Parenthood. HHS just returned some funds. I went through their legal reasoning as to why this is happening.

I went into the Protect Life rule that President Trump himself implemented in his first term. It was overturned by Biden, and we're now back to, hopefully, that revision coming out during the March for Life week. People are now going after the claim that President Trump is the most... Pro-life president in history, it's the most pro-life administration in history, people pointing fingers at J.D. Vance, someone even threw a little dig saying that Brian was... Not the most pro-life, that was the point.

Right. People throwing in little digs saying that we cozied up so that Brian would get a position in the Vatican, specifically thrown at us. Josh, what would you say to people frustrated right now, and then looking at this administration and saying, oh, they're not delivering on pro-life promises?

Well, I'm so glad you asked that. Yeah. Yeah, you know, I thought that one article in particular about this was considerably unfair treatment on this, and so I just, I guess, to try to walk people through everything that's going on. You know, when a Republican president goes off course, so how about this? I just submitted a letter to the editor for Washington Post. Oh, preview. Tom and I, I will read it for you if you are okay with that. That would be great.

You will get the exclusive here on the Loop. That is awesome. When a Republican president goes off course on the pro-life cause, what should a pro-lifer do? Well, if you're Washington examiner columnist Peter Laffin, the answer appears to be lecture and deride any pro-life organization that continues engaging the administration in hopes of improving outcomes, preferably from the safe distance of an opinion column where no vote is counted, no policy negotiated, and no child's life is directly at stake.

We take a different view. When President Trump sends mixed or frustrating signals on life issues, pro-life organizations, including CatholicVote and our allies, do not look the other way. We address concerns directly, sometimes publicly, often privately, while proposing concrete solutions.

Chemical abortions, for example, remain one of the most urgent threats to unborn children, and pro-life organizations are actively pressing the administration to confront the spread of deadly abortion drugs. Recent debates over health care and abortion policy have brought these challenges into sharper focus. One particular step the administration could take is clarifying to the IRS that abortion is not health care, and therefore should not be treated as a tax-deductible medical expense. That is not rhetorical posturing. It is policy work.

President Trump's record gives pro-lifers reasons to believe that such engagement matters. Compared to previous Republican presidents, he has delivered more tangible results for the pro-life cause. He reinstituted the Mexico City policy and expanded it. He implemented the protect life rule in his first term to ensure domestic taxpayer dollars were not used to subsidize abortion, a rule later rescinded by President Biden, and one we are urging Trump to restore.

And most notably, he nominated three justices to the Supreme Court, who overturned Roe v. Wade. These achievements did not materialize through scolding op-eds or moral posturing. They came through pressure, persistence, negotiation, and yes, the unglamorous, frustrating work of engaging imperfect political actors in the real world.

Peter Laffitt suggests that pro-lifers who continue working with the administration are merely trying to cozy up to power or angle for favors, implying indifference to the moral gravity of abortion itself. This kind of snark may play well on social media, but it contributes exactly nothing.

To saving lives. It's easy to question motives from the comfortable perch. It's harder and far more meaningful to deliver actual results. There is legitimate debate within the pro-life movement about strategy, about when to confront publicly, when to negotiate privately, and how to best move the needle in a divided country. That debate is healthy. What isn't healthy is mistaken performative purity for effectiveness. Or confusing cynicism with courage.

Pro-life advocates can disagree about tactics while recognizing a simple truth. Progress has never come from the peanut gallery. It has come from those willing to walk into a room, take heat from all sides, and keep pushing anyway. This is not cozying up.

That's how victories are won. Love it. That was some great writing. Progress doesn't come from the peanut gallery. No further comment. Yep. Hey, and coming from you and Tom McCluskey. Yeah, Mary, that's like some moral gravity there. No further comment. Look at that, men in the arena.

I think that summed it up. Okay, good news now. Erika. Oh, I love this one, because there is medieval legend involved. So, good news. Talk to me. Pope Leo, if we can pull that up, the papal mosaic has been completed and is ready to be installed in St. Paul outside the walls, which is my favorite of the four Roman basilicas. It is beautiful. It is so beautiful. Wait, what are the four Roman basilicas? St. Peter's Basilica is, of course, the best-known one.

You've got St. John's Ladder, which is technically, actually, where the Pope has his cathedral. That's why, you know. Interesting. And then... Why am I blanking on the last one? St. Mary Major. St. Mary Major, yes, which has the cradle from the Nativity of Our Lord, so go check that out. But at St. Paul Outside the Walls, which is built over the place of the martyrdom of St. Paul, who, of course, was beheaded outside the walls of Rome, there are medallions all around the interior, one of each pope.

This was actually a tradition going back to the 5th century with Pope Leo I, which is kind of cool. So, now we have Pope Leo. The... The 14th, he's being installed up there, and I just thought it was, I mean, we've got like Linus, Cletus, Clement, Sixtus, Cornelius, and Bob from Chicago. This is just great. I'm so happy. I've got this little smile, but there's a cool legend involved in the medallions. Do you know what it is? I do not. All right.

So, legend has it, when the final medallion spot is full, that will be the end of all time. Whoa. And so, we are one. Wait, wait, wait. How much more time do we have? Which is the end of time. That is the end of time. Wait, but how much more time do we have? You're picking on me.

Well, so that's also in dispute, of course. There are either six or 20 slots left, because the diehards say there's only the slots around the interior. And, of course, people who want to perhaps prolong our agony here on Earth say, no, no, there's room for 20 more slots if you go into the outer courtyard.

So, I don't know. You tell me. Would you rather be six popes away or 20 from Christ? Well, it is kind of funny you say that because, you know, since 1969, there have only been three head coaches for the Pittsburgh Steelers.

This is where we are going. Okay. I am so glad you are here, Josh. Did Mike Tomlin quit, or did he get fired? Oh my gosh, yes. He did, but he quit before he was going to get fired. Okay, there you go. That is a good answer. He was very classy.

I was trying to be all spiritual, and now it is like back to football. The Giants already got John Harbaugh, Josh. You said he was getting Harbaugh. I called it. I mean, it happened in like two days. I am done. That is crazy.

And then they're going to steal Brian Flores from my Vikings, the Steelers are, I think. You think so? Yeah. I hope the Lions get McDaniel. That would be awesome. Okay. Also, you had this, too, on the architecture note, Erika.

Maybe we could say this is Josh's if you don't have one. Let's just say real quick about St. Paul outside the walls, though. I mean, of course, they had the three fountains, you know. That's where his head dropped, bounced three times or whatever.

And he was beheaded instead of crucified. You know, Peter was crucified in Rome, but Paul was beheaded. Do you know why, Tom? Why was Paul beheaded instead of crucified? I do not. I was going to make a dumb guess, but I don't know. Erika?

Because Paul was a Roman citizen, and crucifixion was preserved for non-citizens. There's a dignity in citizenship that the Romans afforded. We will kill you, yes, but we'll just behead you. We're not going to absolutely crucify you. That is really cool. I feel like, um... I didn't appreciate—actually, it's funny. I went to a church growing up, St. Paul of Tarsus, for a little while. I feel like I didn't appreciate St. Paul enough. It ages like a fine wine, you know what I mean?

Even though he wrote most of the New Testament? No, well, obviously, obviously there's that, but I guess I didn't think enough about— St. Paul being a Roman citizen. St. Paul is kind of underrated, really. I think he is low-key underrated. I do not think people think about it enough, because he killed Christians, and then converted, and then became the greatest advocate. How many examples in life do you see where people are doing horrible things?

But sometimes people do horrible things, and then they just stop doing horrible things, but don't go the other way, where they're like, you know, I'm just done doing horrible things. I'm going to actually literally write most of the New Testament and be a central figure. He went all the way. Yeah, like, that's awesome. Anyway, Tom thoughts of the day. But, Erika, you had this. I just want to show it because I was laughing about it. Oh, yeah. This is pretty cool.

Yeah. This was my other good news in case Josh didn't show up, but he did, and I'll share it anyway because Tom likes it. You can have it. I'm a sucker for a good rendering. Yeah, I do like architectural rendering. So, this is the proposed rendering of the new Commander's Stadium.

In the District of Columbia, and apparently, the first rendering was much more sort of space-agey, and this one is intended to have more of a classical bent. So, if you zoom in on, like, the bottom right-hand one, it's supposed to have, like, pillars and stuff and be classical. Sick.

I know. It could be really cool. Wait, are you out on it? I thought it was sick. I'm just, I don't think it's classical enough. I mean, it's like... I want Colosseum-level classical. If we're going to have bread and circuses, like, at least let the architecture be truly classical. This is like, I want to marry Elon Musk with ancient Rome. But, you know, hey, it's an improvement. It's definitely an improvement. It reminds me of, like, SoFi Stadium. SoFi is, like, tech, and they're just like, we're going to do SoFi, but we're going to add columns.

Yeah. I'm glad they added the columns. I thought it was cool. We'll go with that. So, we'll see. We'll see if it happens. I believe it will. I mean, Trump is like going full hog on the East Wing ballroom there. Why not a stadium, too?

Yeah, and if it's really classical, they'd have to rename it to the Redskins. I'm surprised they didn't make that a part of the... If you get a new stadium, you're going back to Redskins. That's the way to draw the line. Josh, you have good news, or do you want me to go? No, you go ahead and go. I got a twilight zone, but I got a lot. All right, I got a lot. Okay, so, you know, got a lot of doomerism out there, but here's some really encouraging statistics.

U.S. overdose deaths fell through most of last year, suggesting a lasting improvement in an epidemic that had been worsening for decades. That is great news. Fentanyl deaths down. Let's share that. Monthly fentanyl deaths. That is very impressive. I see a couple big dips around 2024. I wonder what could have happened there. Very good news. Negative net migration for the first time in 50 years. That one really was surprising to me. If you want to take a look at it in a graph form, what is crazier?

The increase for Biden or the decrease under Trump, too? Hard to say. I'm here for it. I think that is good news. And then we also... Especially since 80% of the people that are coming in were collecting welfare, I mean, of various forms. It's like, give me a break. Why am I selfish? Why aren't they the ones that are selfish? Come to the country and just mooch up their tax rate? I mean... And we are also living through the largest one-year drop in homicides ever recorded.

That is good news. Maybe these two are related. Maybe these two are related. Just throwing it out there. So, yeah, drug overdoses. Wait a minute, how can this happen? Fewer illegal immigrants in a country, there's fewer murders. It's so weird.

I wonder also how much of this has to do with COVID just not, like people are just back outside. I'm serious. Think about how crazy it was. You don't think there's any correlation with COVID? Not really. The drops would have happened two years ago. I mean, come on, man. Why were they going up in 23 and 24, and then they dropped like a hot rock in 25, the first year of the Trump administration, when he's kicking out all these illegals that are committing crimes?

Oh, I think it's related. Certainly. COVID is less than 1% of it. Okay. Well, I think a lot of the drug overdose stuff is people are back outside and not in crippling depression because they're forced to be inside.

You blow up enough boats in the Caribbean, eh? Oh, gosh, yeah. No fentanyl, bro. We just got another Venezuelan oil tanker, too. Crazy, man. Okay, Josh, time to spend time with your kids. What? Yep. The Economist came out with an article.

Here we go. I will put the graph up. This is what got everyone riled up on X. We have father figures, U.S. parents' difference in time spent per day by mothers compared with fathers. Okay, you guys can read this graph.

Americans are having fewer children than ever before. In 2024, the fertility rate was just 1.6 babies per woman, down from 1.9 a decade ago. This is partly because people are becoming parents later in life. Some may be discouraged by the cost of housing and childcare. Whatever the cause, those who do have children are spending more time with them than all previous generations did, and fathers account for much of the recent increase. I was told that There was a theory that if men do more of the housework and childcare, fertility rates would rise.

Is this just, I wasn't paying attention, I think I was 16 or whatever. Was that really a thing at one point? They were like, okay, this is going to be the fix? Yeah, I mean, I remember this conversation in like the 2000s and maybe early 2010s among like maybe Catholic feminists being like, well, if men would just take on more of the mental load and the work of the household and spend more time, then people would have more children, because right now what's preventing that is women feeling overwhelmed because they're both working full-time and they're doing the majority of household and child care.

So, the theory was... Well, if we just lighten the woman's load, they'll make more babies. That just is not what has actually happened in real life, though, as we can see from the graph, right? Yeah, and even your boy, Tim Carney, chimed in, Mercer, said, here's what's going on. Dads are spending more time with their kids, which is good. Moms are working more outside the home. Moms are, nonetheless, spending more of their day on purely parenting responsibilities. We're over-parenting. It's antinatal.

And then a clip from his fantastic book, which I highly recommend, Family Unfriendly. Hey, I interviewed him. We got on LOOPcast. You can check out the whole thing. I thought it was great. But yeah, then I went into, so Brad Wilcox was talking about the case of the Nordics, which came up, so it was interesting for me to comment. Well, just real quick on what Tim's point was, is that we decided what family means in this 21st century is like over-devotion, helicopter parenting, getting your kids in travel sports, and it becomes all-encompassing.

When husbands and wives have less time together, it is a pendulum swing too far one way from what it was like in the 80s, where parents were just like, what? They had to put commercials on TV. Do you know where your kids are? Because, honestly, the boomers did not know where their kids were. It was a problem. I mean, like, dude, come on, man.

You know, and there were, I mean, I like free-range parenting in a sense, but, you know, you can go too far on that. Yeah, moderation. Wait, I also need to be clear. I actually think that it's kind of a good thing that, like, dads want to be invested in their home life.

I'm not saying this is even negative. I'm just saying the theory that emerged was like, oh, this is going to solve it. We can kind of toss that aside now. I think it's actually good that dads are more involved. You want my two cents on it? I would love that.

I don't have a problem with the idea behind, I mean, I think I'm fairly conservative and traditional-minded or whatever. There's certainly going to be people that are more trad than me. And I don't really, like the whole housework debate, to me, you know, needs adjustments, of course, over time. You know, so like in the 50s, you know, in the 60s, we have all these appliances that are coming in. You know, like washing machines and all this stuff, you know, microwaves, you know, ovens that are more affordable, refrigerators and freezers.

I mean, you think freezers were there forever? No, they weren't. And then you'd have supermarkets, so you wouldn't have to go to the butcher and you make four or five stops to get all the stuff you needed. So, all these efficiencies did make it easier for women living at home. That weren't in the workforce. It used to be a grueling full-time job, and I'm sorry, it's not as much.

You can call me sexist. It's baloney. I mean, women in the 40s had a much harder time before all these modern appliances. Don't give me this crap. And so, a lot of people made the calculus, hey, we can afford a little bit better house if mom works outside the house and got a job. And so, a lot of Americans went to being two-family incomes, whatever. I mean, I prefer a more traditional thing. I happen to work from home, and my wife stays at home, and she runs the Her family is a Catholic bookstore, so we're able to be there all the time, and I would put my record up against any man in the United States.

I do more laundry than any man I know. I do it all the time. Same here. And all that stuff, and we still managed to get six kids, so go figure. Ultimately, when it comes to the kids thing, what Tim is getting at is correct. If you are single in your late 20s and early 30s, and you see all these parents out there who are running ragged because they are trying to do everything for their kids, piano recitals, travel sports, and all this kind of stuff, where the kids are the stars of the family, rather than the whole family, everyone is important.

So, you are basically out there convincing younger people that marriage is kind of miserable. Like, no. Like, that's stupid. Yeah, I think that one of the things that this graph does not go into the parental guidance graph showing, like, mothers and fathers and time spent on child care. It doesn't specify the type of child care and what we mean by that. And if what we mean by child care is mom and dad are more equally splitting, driving to, like, three soccer tournaments a month, driving to dance lessons, driving to, like, do the parish thing and do the, you know, trying to be, is it?

Is this time spent on childcare actually like time spent at home, in the family living room, together, working on chores, playing a game, doing a meal together? And the answer is, if you look at the stats in terms of where American families are spending their time, parent to child, it's actually outside of the home. Oh, interesting. Which I think, really, that drains so much from the family. It drains the joy of the time that you have when you... You are at home and you're exhausted, and I think screens are also a huge part of this, too.

If you're using screens for like, maybe dad is doing childcare, but the kids are on their phones, like playing their games and doing social media, that's not actually parenting, right? So, I would like to see studies like this do a real drill down on how we're spending it. And then to Tim Carney's point about the travel teams and the being out of the home, yeah, like, we've had to make really hard decisions as a family on How we allocate our time to each child, because yeah, we've been blessed with seven kids, but we can't let one child like, oh, they have talent in a sport.

So we're going to let their sports time sink all the other children's time with mom and dad, time together as a family. And so we've had to say no to some good things in order to prioritize our togetherness as a family. And as we made those choices through Childlike 345, we found it more and more interesting to see how we could get their young kids and their families to work in one More easy to make those same choices as God gave us children's children, children's children, five, six, seven, and to be open to that.

And there's a lot of joy there. So, I mean, I think there's so much to dig into here. We are going to do a deep episode on this, the whole travel team sport, because this is like, I'm so passionate about this. It ruins sports, and it ruins families, and it's family unfriendly. Buy the book. I don't get a nickel from it. Tim Carney wrote it. Family unfriendly. Buy it. Own it. Read it. Give it to your priest. So, you're just doing this off of his blackmail?

That's what I did. I literally bought it, read it, and gave it to my priest. Yep. Well, this is just because he has blackmail on you from when you roomed together? I'm not going to say. I mean, hey, maybe we both have blackmail on each other. Really? Funny fact, Tim Carney, Kevin Roberts, and Josh Mercer all have the same hairstyles.

What's going on? What's happening? There's only so many perfect heads. Crazy. There's only so many perfect heads. Yeah, I did just a throw in at the end. Brad Wilcox, fantastic, did a lot of social studies, but he was talking about the case of the Nordics, which was interesting to me. People use the Nordics as kind of the gold standard for places where their birth rate was typically around two, and they had really generous social welfare that encouraged them to have children.

So, they were like the gold standard, what everyone should work towards. In terms of the state actually being friendly towards having children. I love it. Because it's state-run childcare. Right, exactly. It's kind of like a socialist utopia, right? I'm exaggerating.

But of course, what's happened here is that the birth rate has plummeted for indescribable reasons, down to 1.2, despite all of it. Maybe the imports. Hey, you have to understand something. In politics, for decades, for 50-plus years, the left has invoked the Nordics. They're like, look at this. Why can't we do what they do? Why can't we have massive social welfare system? Well, because it is a high-trust society, and they are homogenous. The United States is different. Oh, oh, oh. And so, this one guy was giving the business to Milton Friedman about it.

He is a free market economist. Why is it unemployment in Sweden is so much better? Everything is so much better. Why don't we adopt this system? And Milton Friedman says… Actually, unemployment amongst Swedish Americans is also at 3%. Yep.

And it's just like, dunk. Like, hey, culture matters, actually. And that's what Minnesota looked like before it went crazy. Yeah, here we are. I just saw a video of people are dumping water out of the back of their cars to create ice.

Like, cause cars, like ice cars, they're trying to figure out their paths. I mean, this is crazy. This is so crazy. I don't even know. How do we have a serious country at this point? Send in the boys. Send in the Marines or the Army. Camp Ripley. Let's go. Twilight Zone. What do we got?

All right. Where am I here? I can have Erika go first. This is a very simple thing. Okay, you can go ahead and go first. Okay, this is insidious, and I smell a Supreme Court case coming up in the next couple of years. Governor Gavin Newsom has rejected Louisiana governor's request for the extradition of a doctor In California, who prescribed abortion pill drugs over the phone to a Louisiana woman, she was given the drugs and forced to swallow them by her boyfriend.

The baby obviously subsequently died. The mother also suffered massive bleeding. So now, the state of Louisiana, the governor has indicted Dr. Remy Coiteau for, again, allegedly, because it's an ongoing case. Sending Mifepristone and Misoprostol to Rosalie Markhezich, a woman who says she was coerced into ending her pregnancy.

The Louisiana Attorney General, Liz Murrell, called it drug trafficking that endangers women, and Governor Jeff Landry signed the extradition paperwork to bring the doctor to Louisiana for prosecution. Governor Gavin Newsom, erstwhile Catholic, refused. He cites California's shield laws protecting reproductive care that's legal in his state, and he stated that California won't aid out-of-state punishment of doctors providing these services. In his statement, I'll just read his statement to you.

Louisiana's request is denied. My position on this has been clear since 2022. We will not allow extremist politicians from other states to reach into California To try to punish doctors based on allegations that they provided reproductive health care services. Not today, not ever. We will never be complicit with Trump's war on women.

So, wow, man of principle is Gavin Newsom. He's just going to stand strong here, but it does bring up a really interesting point, and we kind of knew this was coming to a head after Dobbs because we knew we were getting into a situation where states have radically different and disparate laws on abortion and the prosecution of doctors who violate those laws.

So, I did some digging in. Again, this is going to go to the Supreme Court eventually, because when it comes to major enforcement issues and it comes to extradition, the assumption has been that the laws in one state are similar to another. So, if the sanctuary state, in this case California, was asked to extradite someone who had violated the law in another state, Then there isn't a lot of disagreement about whether or not they violated a law, so this hasn't, Dobbs has forced a really interesting issue here, but just, again, just disgusting on the part of Gavin Newsom, because regardless of what you think, obviously, the greatest tragedy here is that a child died, right?

There is a beating heart was silenced by these terrible drugs, but also the recklessness when it comes to the woman's... Safety and health. And the fact that she's being coerced by a man, who ADF did a great video with her. She brought her case to ADF. They did a video, which Twitter was not loading at the time that we released this. We'll try and put it up on our Twitter page later, on our X page later on today for you. But I would encourage you to go and watch that.

But she was saying that she told her boyfriend, I want to keep this baby. I do not want to take these. He actually ordered the drugs to his house. This doctor sent those drugs to his house, or prescribed the drugs to be sent to his house. He drives to her house and forces her to swallow them in his presence. And to me, what are we doing here? Like, this whole war on women? To me, that is a war on women, when boyfriends can do that kind of thing, and are aided and abetted in it by not only the medical healthcare so-called professionals, but also by the state.

It's absolutely disgusting. So, shame on you, Gavin Newsom. Catholic. Oh, yeah. If you want to read more about Gavin Newsom and how awesome he is, you can read the CatholicVote Report. Awesome is sarcasm. Someone posted on Twitter, they were like, Americans be like, I'm going to vote for a Catholic in 2028, and it was like, J.D. Vance, Marco Rubio, Gavin Newsom, AOC. It's like a full Catholic.

Some more Catholic than the other. Yeah, let's not equivocate here, people. JFK was Catholic. Don't get me started on him. Tom, that's going to open up a lot of firms. Sort of. Pro-abortion. Don't do that to me. You're always like, Eric, I'm going to throw you up this bomb and be like, no, we're moving on. Yeah, fun story. There's actually literally a rocket scientist that listens to the show. I've been texting him a little bit, and he texted me, 50-50 on the moon landing, question mark.

He heard me make that comment during the show, and I was like, I'm letting you in on a little secret. I try to learn enough about something in order to make the people that really know stuff about it angry, and it works every time. But once I give the game out, then it's not fun anymore, but for people that know the game, it's unbelievably fun. There are fun games you can do. I prefer the game I would do with my kids, where when they're really little and we're watching a TV show, and I would intentionally get something wrong.

Like, wait, isn't this Laura the Explorer? Like, no, Dad, it's Dora! They just lose their minds. I'm like, are you sure? I thought, and the sidekick toots or whatever? No, Dad! Just, they would get so angry. I do it every time. Is that a part of your recorded housework? You know, child care? Triggering your children? You're clocking in on there? That counts. Increasing them hours, baby. All right, mine is, we're still doing this. This is the impossible question. I like the silver bullet question.

It's impossible to answer, apparently. It works every time. Here we go. Do you think that men can get pregnant? I hesitated there because I wasn't sure where the conversation was going or what the goal was. I mean, I do take care of patients with different identities. I take care of many women. I take care of people with different identities, and so that's where I paused. I think I wasn't sure where you were going with that. Well, the goal is just the truth.

So, can men get pregnant? Again, the reason I paused there is I am not really sure what the goal of the question is. The goal is just to establish a biological reality. You just said a moment ago that science and evidence should control, not politics. So, let us just test that proposition. Can men get pregnant? I take care of people with many identities, but I take care of many women that can get pregnant. I do take care of people that do not identify as women.

Can men get pregnant? Again, as I'm saying... Let me just remind you of what you testified to a moment ago. Science and evidence should control, not politics. So, can men get pregnant? I totally agree. Science and evidence should guide medicine.

Do science and evidence tell us that men can get pregnant, biological men? Can they get pregnant? I also think yes-no questions like this are a political tool. No, yes-no questions are about the truth, doctor. Let's not make a mockery of this proceeding. This is about science and evidence, and I'm asking you. You know, the United States Supreme Court just heard arguments yesterday at great length on this question. This is not a hypothetical question. This is not theoretical. It affects real people.

In their real lives. And you're here as an expert, called by the other side as an expert, and you've been telling us that you follow, right, you're a doctor, and you follow the science and the evidence. So, I just want to know, based on the science, can men get pregnant?

That's a yes or no question. It really is, I think. I think you're trying to reduce the complexity of a lot. I'm not. I'm trying to get, it's not. This is a four minute and 44 second clip. We're only 157 through. I would just give up.

She doesn't want politics. Politics is the only way in which you can, you know, foster untruths on other people. It's only through politics. You know, in normal everyday life, people are like... What? No. Are you dumb? No, of course not.

Yeah, I saw it taken this, and I think that's kind of largely incorrect. Someone said, I'm really having a hard time getting into the SCOTUS case about men and women's sports, because I have to sit back and think that we're, at this point, as a country, as a society, where this needs to reach levels of serious debate at the Supreme Court. Yeah, that was me, man.

You know what I mean? I guess it's fun dunking on people, but this is a doctor. Like, someone was able to become a doctor and not be able to answer that yes or no? Well, you know, on this report thing, you know, I don't want it just to be, you know... I am done with small victories. The Supreme Court should not just say, yes, of course, Idaho, you can keep your law. No one should. Hey, wait a minute. We have been living under this jurisprudence, this legislative authority for 50 plus years on Title IX, right?

It is like, I am sorry, California cannot do this either. Like, California has to make it between men and women. It should be 50 states, not just that Idaho gets to keep their law. No, it should be nationwide. We have a national, we have a federal statute on Title IX, so it should be like, it shouldn't be just, okay, I know, you get to keep your law. No, no, no, no, no, no. Crush every baloney law everywhere in the country. If there are girls in sports in Connecticut, Minnesota, California, they deserve the same protections that the girls in Idaho get.

Josh, that hotel coffee is working today. I know. He is cooking. You are coming to cook today. What can I say? I am in Denver, the home of Mother Angelica's famous rant, so I am ready. Is it the altitude?

I don't know. It is coffee. It is altitude. It is Mother Angelica. Man, he is fired up today. All right, Josh, you get to round us out, man. What do you got for us? Okay, so I got a little map here, and I want you to zoom in before you show it to the whole audience on the upper left-hand corner here. Oh, I don't even know. I don't know. That's… That's a little technical. I don't know if I can do that.

I don't know if I can do this, Tom. You got this. Maybe not. All right. Talk me through it, though. Okay, so there's a gas station. Yeah, well, there you go. The gas station, upper left-hand corner, $5.80 to get a gallon of gas at the Sidewinder Chevron in southeastern California. $5.80. If you travel 10 miles into Arizona, you can buy a gallon of gas. By the way, it's the same kind of gas. For $3 cheaper, $2.80. This is mind-boggling. So, I just want to tell people, again, the reason why we have the Politics is about choices.

You elect the leaders, okay? These are choices. California intentionally makes things scarce. They intentionally make it extremely expensive. It is not like an extra 40 cents for a gas tax or something like that. Three dollars more a gallon just driving 10 miles?

Everyone who is sensible and who has an opportunity, get out of California. Yeah. Gavin Newsom was throwing it down with Benny Johnson, because Benny showed up in California and did some stunt filming, where he goes to a gas station, and he's like, oh my gosh, look, the gas in California is $5.80, and he's pointing there. And Gavin Newsom came back on his social media. He has a little screenshot of the gas prices, and he's like, Benny Johnson just picked out the worst one.

If he'd gone to the one down the road, it was only $4.80 a gallon. Bam, mic drop, and you're like, no, $4.80 is also outrageous. Terrible, brother. I'm also telling you, so a lot of this has to do with, I guess, demonizing fossil fuel and energy and stuff, putting tax to make it more expensive.

That is going to go away very soon, is my prediction. With the AI race? I saw a graph today of the increase in energy cost and production actually started in the 40s and 50s. It was really high because of the machines that were being introduced, washing machine, all that kind of thing, and then it steadily went down as technology got more efficient, so washers and dishwashers got more efficient, they used less energy, down, down, down, down, and we were actually, for the first time in a while, ramping back up, and it is because of these AI data centers, and that is actually going to be It's a bit of unseen right now, but it is the next frontier political fight on the local level.

There's a lot of people that are just like, we do not want these data centers here. You need to share in the energy costs. It's kicking up everyone's energy bill. I'm actually fully on their side on that one, but yeah, that's the next big fight. It would be kind of fun for Trump to do, just find a little tiny corner lot inside of Los Angeles, like a few of them, and declare them a national park.

And then allow someone to open up a gas station and have it under federal law, so they can charge like $2.30 a gallon, and people just keep, you know, it would just go, can you imagine the lines? Bring down the deficit with that, I mean. It would make people go, heads would just explode in California, it would be great.

Josh doing the hard work of privately suggesting. Hey, I have privately suggested a few things, and they have materialized in real life. Very interesting. Keep your secrets. I will let you keep your secrets. I have to. I have a few, but maybe at my deathbed. Here is my book. Yeah, there you go. Yeah, the Josh Mercer book. You have never written a book, have you?

I have edited a few, but… Right. Yours will be the best for last. We will save it. Great show, guys. People are saying they liked Erika's episode of The Deep. I thought it was fantastic. Super fun. Barbie. That is a Barbie clip. Feminism. Barbie clips. Young woman being depressed. Oh, I did not see that one yet. I watched a ton of your… Oh, really, Josh? I have not missed really any of them, but I love them. Oh, thanks. That means a lot to me.

Thomas More's daughter gets involved. It is crazy. It has got everything you could possibly want. Margaret Moore is prominently featured, so Josh, you are going to love this one. Actually, Erika, what is this book? Margaret Moore is prominently featured in it, because then I will watch it for sure. Oh, yeah. Do you recognize that one? I cannot see it. It is all blurry, darling. It is Thomas More giving away his daughter before he dies. Oh, gosh. Yeah, that is a good one.

That is sick, man. One of my favorites. Actually, you know, speaking of England, Father Longnecker was just in England, and he was researching a bunch of stuff on... The gunpowder plot, you know, when Guy Fawkes was trying to... That's a crazy story. The House of Lords, and I'm like, hey, by the way... So, my ancestor was a member of Parliament at that exact moment. Edward Mercer was a member of Parliament from Northampton, and he was literally in Parliament. So, the dynamite did not blow up, is all I'm saying.

I meant to ask you this. There was another Mercer that was kind of in the orbit of George Washington. Do you know who I'm talking about? General Hugh Mercer was a very famous patriot. He's of the Scottish line. I am not related to him. Okay, I was wondering. You're a total buck, though. So, he was at the Battle of Princeton, way outmanned, and outgunned, and he's like, to heck with it. He just starts attacking the British, and he got like, you know.

Cut with a sword like seven times, just bleeding. He leaned up against the oak and just like, just to inspire his troops to keep fighting. And ultimately, he finally perished like nine days later, but he was such an inspiration. And the city of Princeton had the oak, the Mercer oak, as they called it, in the city seal. You know, he's very, and actually, so I went to visit the battlefield.

Like in 2012, you know, and I come up to this historian. It was on July 4th. There's a historian there, and he's talking about all this stuff. I'm like, hi, my name is Josh Mercer, and the guy lights up, you know, like, oh, wow. Actually, I'm not related to this general. Not that Mercer. Your claim to lineage is so vast that I wouldn't have even been surprised. But I said, you know, I'm not related to him, but I love the history, and he's like, so he pulls out the map, and he's showing me all this stuff.

I'm like, okay, I'll see you later. He goes. Don't get shot, Mr. Mercer. But I am related to a Revolutionary War fighter. Lieutenant Amos Mercer was of the Pennsylvania Militia, so I am truly a son of the American Revolution. There you go. Also, fun fact, I found out that George Washington didn't have any biological children. He was the father of the nation. Yeah, you didn't know about this? No, because he had kids. That was like the joke. Right, but he had adopted kids.

Because his first wife was a widow, which I actually didn't know about. I learned a lot of interesting stuff. Well, his adopted kid, you know, he had a daughter, and she married Robert E. Lee, you know? Yeah. What? Yeah. Yeah.

You don't know this? That's crazy. I'm not at that part of the biography yet, okay? Okay, all right. I picked up a massive thousand-page biography. Imagine this. If George Washington decided to go ahead and be a king, he doesn't have any heirs, but he's got a daughter.

And, or, you know, a son that was adopted, and then his son had a daughter, and she would have been the queen, and her concert would have been Robert E. Lee. But part of the speculation as to why he didn't have interest in turning it back into a monarchy was because he didn't have children. He wouldn't have had an actual blood.

Again, so, you know, we revere the founding fathers as we should, but I mean, that was like, I think it was Aaron Burr who kind of joked that, yeah, he couldn't have any kids who made him father of the whole country. You know, like, oh my gosh, dude, that's so mean. People are people. They cut the jokes. Yeah, at least from this, I think it's the Ron Chernow biography, a lot of the other founding fathers kind of bullied George Washington a little bit because he didn't have a classical education.

Like, Thomas Jefferson received true classical education, they thought. I don't know if they thought he was dumb, but, like, George Washington himself was, like, very practical. They teased him a little bit, but, I mean, by the time the war's over, I mean, this is a guy who should have been killed at, like, you know, the battle. He should have been killed at the, um, during the French and Indian War. That's what I'm saying, yeah, the battle. I was getting the... Yeah, he had the bullet hole, like, through his hat.

On the Ohio River? Yeah, a jacket. Several bullet holes, yeah. Four bullet holes in his hat and his dress. I mean, it's actually crazy. The one Indian chief's like, I don't know. How did he die? He got a nickname. I can't remember the nickname they gave him, but there was a lot of people along the path that said that they actually felt that it was divine providence, that he was alive, because he had so many diseases, too. Like, he had smallpox, he had dysentery.

Which probably wasn't fertile, honestly. Yeah, that's what they were saying, too. It was kind of sad, but... Yeah, cool. Very cool biography. No, actually, you want to talk about Washington. So, you know, like the whole Whiskey Rebellion, and all the soldiers, they're going to march on the Capitol and demand their pay, because they didn't get paid. And they're in this tavern, and they're just fomenting. They're ready to go. We're going to take them out. We're going to beat the hell out of these guys.

And Washington hears about this. So, he comes into the tavern, and everyone is just quiet, all the soldiers, and he sits down, and he says, I would like to read something, and he goes, in my old age, in service to my country, I have to have glasses to help me see, and he pulls out the glasses, and he opens up this note, and he reads it, and by the time he gets done, everyone is just walking out.

He had stopped a dead cold. Guys, he's the... America. Beasts. Absolutely. Love that. I feel like he gets that mystique label. I know we've got to end soon, but it's so fun talking about him. Okay, he's obviously... founder of the country, first president. And I actually didn't really know anything about his lineage, his personal lineage, his life before the Revolutionary War. And someone brought up the fact that he was a surveyor, which is also correct. Oh, yeah. And all the men in his family died young.

Yeah. And some of his half-brothers passed away, and actually, partially why he ended up in the position that he was, was because people in his life had passed away. Yeah, exactly. They were wealthy, and then he got the position, and then that eventually led him to be in the House of Burgesses, which he probably would have been the position if he didn't have the land. So, it's just like all these different things happened for him to even be in the position.

And then also, one thing that I didn't know about was, based on a lot of his letters, he actually was a really Like, a passionate man. Like, he was, I think, at least how I thought of him, was very stoic, in command. He's not, like a Benjamin Franklin is kind of a colorful character. He kind of wasn't like that, at least in my estimation, and then you look back through some of his letters, like, oh no, he had a temper on him, for sure.

Especially earlier in life, yeah. And then he just refined that over the years, and a young, ambitious man, too. Like, he wanted to advance in the... The Continental Army, and they wouldn't let him. Like, they actually had a bias against him because he was with the Colonials, and he's just like, screw it. I'm not going to play in this game anymore if I can't advance. The British should have advanced him. Yeah, I think we might not have a country right now if the British would have let him go through.

Crazy. Anyway, great document. Sorry, that was a total tangent, but great read for an interesting. Hey, it's 250. We got to, like, indulge in the founding fathers. Oh, man, it's so awesome. Talk about, like, truly. It's hilarious that people denigrate, like, the most impressive men ever, ever. George Washington is certainly chief among them, but all of them. Hey, check out Hillsdale's new, Hillsdale has a new online course on, like, the colonial period leading up to the revolution. Oh, so cool. Let's go.

Josh, you would love it. I'm watching one of the videos, I'm like, I'm just thinking of Josh, I'm like, oh, he would love this stuff. Sweet, so we end in prayer. And Father, Son, Holy Spirit, Amen. Hail, glorious angel, appointed by God to be my guardian.

Hail, holy angel, my protector in all dangers. Hail, holy angel, my defense in all afflictions. Hail, holy angel, my most faithful friend. Hail, holy angel, my guide. Hail, holy angel, my perceptor. Hail, holy angel, witness of all my actions. Hail, holy angel, my helper in every difficulty. Hail, holy angel, my counselor in doubt. Hail, holy angel, my shield at the hour of death. Amen. Same time this morning, St. Fidelis, I'll let you go to Lupe. Pray for us. Great show, gang, and we'll catch you guys live on Monday. Peace.