"SEDITIOUS BEHAVIOR:" Trump Threatens Dem Lawmakers, AI Toys, And Kids At Weddings

And we're live. Welcome back to the LOOPcast. It's Tom and Erika today. We have a great show prepared for you. The LOOPcast is brought to you by The Loop, every American Catholic's favorite morning newsletter. It is. So happy to be joined by Erika off the back of a great deep episode on climate change, climate alarmism. So fun. Yeah, if you didn't catch that one yet, we just dropped out last night at, well, 4 o'clock my time, and that was a really fun one.

One of my favorite things to riff off of is electric vehicles and soggy straws, and I got to do it full force. Bill Gates joined me to give his support, and it was- Yes. I could tell by how quickly you wrote that script. I was like, this is- Oh, I was like, I'm done, Tom. Can you review it? Yeah. So, a quick overview of today's show, Up Top Seditious Behavior.

We got some. We got some of that. My plan for today's show, it's like really hard to go through the news and not feel like a crazy person. I'm going to try my best to do it with a smile on my face. So, seditious behavior, we now have the true thing of Donald Trump threatening Democratic lawmakers.

Also, on the seditious behavior front, we have secret meetings with Mike Huckabee and Jonathan Pollard that got revealed in the New York Times. So, I dug into the Pollard story. Not great. And then I think we're doing a little Twilight Zone up top. We had a Somali autism scam scheme to send money back to terrorist organizations. It's crazy. Again, kind of crazy. It feels like being a crazy person going through the news. We're going to do that. Second section, we actually prepared last show.

We're going to do it today. Public school enrollment is down, and a lot of people are debating the reasons as to why that is. Is it legal immigration? Is it school choice? What is it? And Erika, you know, specialist in that category, so I'm going to... Looking forward to hearing more about the reasons behind that. Yes, one of my favorites.

And then, AI toys. I'm just going to say on top, the least surprising article I read this morning, AI toys. Scandal dropped there. My thought, go Montessori. Everyone, just give them two blocks of wood. They'll be fine. But AI toys, and then I actually dug a little bit more into the AI regulatory structure. President Trump, hot off the heels of a meeting in Saudi Arabia with Elon Musk, who said that you will own, there won't be money in five years, is what he said.

He is the one lobbying for the current attempt at- You will own nothing, and you will be happy? Is that what he said? Yes. It's kind of like the new hot way to say that, is with AI, but there's some really interesting regulatory fights going on, and who has the rights to regulate.

Clearly, with the toys story I'm going to talk about, it's kind of time to regulate, I think. Twilight Zone, good news, and the conspiracy heads are going to say, you know, Josh and I were going at it a little bit last episode, and I kicked him off the show. That is now what happened. Josh is taking care of his family, and two things on the housekeeping front. Someone made a great suggestion for me to put the daily prayer in the description on YouTube, which is insane that I didn't think to do that before.

Thank you for that very obvious thing. It's not just going to be in the chat now. It's going to be in the episode description everywhere. Because I think the best way out of this is to pray. So, that's the first thing, and then I do miss Josh. I want to assure you, we have a lot of mutual respect for each other. Some people really like when we argue. Some people don't. I think we're just being honest. I think just boys don't matter.

What do you think? I just get out my popcorn. It's a great show. I'm like, I guess I don't have to work anymore today. Some people say their favorite thing is just trying to look at your facial expressions.

When Josh and I start to go at it. It's all love. It's all love. Hey, someone in the chat said we have great genes. Yes. Oh, watch out. Can't be saying that. Careful. Can't be saying that. That's dangerous these days. Should I hit you with like the Sidney Sweeney Gen Z stare?

Yeah, whatever that is. That's a very good time. Good Sydney-Sweeney impersonation. For those on audio, you've got to check that out. We're basically indistinguishable. We're a bit like the same person, clearly. Okay, going on to A Block now. Oh, my gosh. Yes, so Josh, again, major credit to Josh, was ahead of this one. He played for us, I believe, in his Twilight Zone. No, hey, now, this was me. Oh, was it you? This was my Twilight Zone. I was like, you've got to watch this.

Got to give credit where credit is due, so I'm going to play the video again. Preempted the true thing. So, here, I believe it was... Oh, Slotkin, here she comes. Slotkin was the one that started it. Former CIA. Former CIA, former intelligence agency people, former military people came out with this kind of out-of-the-blue video, and I'll play a section so you can get the gist. Senator Alyssa Slotkin. Senator Mark Kelly. Representative Chris Deluzio. Congresswoman Maggie Goodlander. Representative Chrissy Houlihan. Congressman Jason Crowe.

I was a captain in the United States Navy. Former CIA officer. Former Navy. Former paratrooper and army ranger. Former intelligence officer. Former air force. We want to speak directly to members of the military and the intelligence community who take risks each day to keep Americans safe. We know you are under enormous stress and pressure right now. Americans trust their military, but that trust is at risk. This administration is pitting our uniformed military and intelligence community professionals against American citizens. Like us, you all swore an oath.

To protect and defend this Constitution. Right now. The threats to our Constitution aren't just coming from abroad, but from right here at home. Our laws are clear. You can refuse illegal orders. There it is. And then they all repeat it in kind of like terrorist hostage style. You can refuse a legal order. And, of course, they all made the rounds this week to follow up on that video on the Talking Heads shows, and never did we hear a specific order that they were worried about.

There's no specifics. They're just, you know, in general, worried. Yeah, just in general. Just in general. In general, making the point that, you know. Nothing illegal here. Maybe people forgot, but it's a part of the oath you swear when you serve that. Yeah, there's just a public service announcement. Yeah, PSA. Trump, not a huge fan of that, on record. Here is the truth. I just love, too, that he's holding true to truth. He's like, I'm not going to Twitter or X or whatever they call it these days.

I'm truthing, and people pick it up and put it on X. So, we have seditious behavior punishable by death. Ah, don't love that. Yeah, it's pretty aggressive. I think I did. I was reading through the loop read up on this morning, and they did point out how that is actually a direct quote from, like, if you do disobey. I think I was trying to go back to the actual text of what they're referring to here, and it did have that in the text if you violate something.

I got from a commentator who ...suggested a different approach. So, okay, let's just, sorry, let me just categorize all of this, because now the Democrats are, they got 24-7 security, and I mean, of course, because the President of the United States is... Yeah, they all went on their personal X pages and made little videos, all individually, saying, I have been threatened with death by President Trump, and so it was... Which...

To be fair, pretty reckless from President Trump to be saying this, even if you're saying you're quoting something else. I mean, Caroline Leavitt said, these members knew what they were doing. They were leaning into their credentials as former members of our military, as veterans, as former members of the national security apparatus, to signal the people serving under this commander-in-chief, Donald Trump, that you can defy him and you can betray your oath of office. That is a very, very dangerous message, and it perhaps is punishable by law.

That's kind of what he's alluding to there. Let me just take a step back here, because again, it feels like I'm going crazy, living in today's news cycle. Yeah. So, why come out with this now? Why make this video together, and why not reference a specific order to disobey? It seems like they are creating the conditions to eventually accuse President Trump of something. Like, they're trying to give people pre-permission. To disobey orders, which anyone that's even remotely close to the military knows how much of a problem that is.

Like, if you go through basic training, if your shoes aren't shined correctly, if your shirt is a little bit off, like, they beat you into the ground, and then they rebuild you up to listen to orders. We talked about A Few Good Men, the last show, and Josh, I think it was you or Josh brought up the correct point, which is it was an interesting movie because you could see. Like, both sides kind of had a point. Even if someone did violate the law, even if someone was wrong in this instance, it is a national security problem if you can't trust that people in the military are going to follow orders or support each other or, like, you know, listen, have obedience.

It's a part of the oath that you swear. Yeah, to which the lawmakers are responding, they're like, well, we just said you have to disobey unlawful orders. But, of course, the implication being that President Trump is already destroying democracy and acting like a tyrant, and these sort of general—what I think it does, what I think—what they did, in addition to making these sort of, like, dangerous suggestions, suggesting to military members that, you know, we don't have to obey orders, they also are feeding that rage machine that we see on the left of, like—here's the narrative.

Donald Trump, Hitler— Bad. Democracy is under attack. That was the line in 2024. It's over. And they really are feeding that rage machine, which It is so dangerous. I mean, we have seen that manifested, why it is so dangerous. We saw it manifested in the attempted assassination attempt, assassination attempts on Donald Trump. We have seen it in Charlie Kirk. We have seen it in the school shootings, that you feed that narrative and that lie, and eventually, the fringes are going to act out, and then you use it as an excuse to seize power.

Right, and dare I say, bad behavior on both ends. Yeah, I do not love the president. Because you just brought up the crack. Which, it's kind of like if you call someone a Nazi, it justifies violence against them. I mean, if anyone alive is paying attention, that's what's been going on. So, Democrats are doing that because they're saying something that everyone already knows. So, if you're saying something that everyone already knows and swore to, why are you saying it? What's your motive?

And I think you correctly pointed out the motive. So, but for President Trump to not... To raise the temperature even more, and then call someone a seditious traitor, and then say punishable by death under the law, you're kind of playing the same game, right? You're playing into the game. You're getting suckered in, which he does. That's how it's always been. Always. It has always been this way. I wish that he had just let Carolyn love it, like love it statement. That was it.

That was the only response we needed. Thank you very much. And then maybe be working to get them removed very quickly, like from office, the legal way. So, I have 18 U.S.C. Section 238.7 in front of me. It provides the penalty for the felony of encouraging insubordination, which is a lesser and more easily provable offense than the law cited by the White House. It provides for 10 years in federal prison and a five-year ban on holding office. Reading the statute, all six should be indicted by a grand jury.

They should be allowed to present whatever defense they have, and if found guilty, they should be punished. In the interim, they are all unqualified to serve in Congress and should be expelled by their respective chambers. Uh, this is from a commentator. He already has written his congressman and asked him to move to expel the four House members. Like, to me, that is... Like, this is a much more reasonable... Yeah, that's so much more reasonable, and that's more what the video was doing.

It was encouraging insubordination. There are very technical definitions of these crimes that we really should be adhering to as strictly as possible in this climate, in this environment that we're in. You know, I think the most that we'll get is a very strongly worded letter from the Republicans on the Hill. That's probably the most we're going to see. Which is sad and unfortunate. It is sad and unfortunate. How much of this does remind you of A Few Good Men, though? Oh, I know.

Yeah. That is why it is a great movie. It is evergreen. I have to say, that video from those guys, compared to some of the other stuff coming out of Congress this week, this was not actually that bad, which is why we feel like we are on crazy pills on Friday. Crazy pills? You almost kind of have to dig to find this, which is crazy. We have a congresswoman from Florida that stole millions of dollars from FEMA. For, from relief funds, and then funded her campaign with that.

That's just like someone in Congress right now that's totally chilling. Dan Crenshaw is not allowed to travel out of the country because of how he acted in Mexico, which is. Insane. Corey Mills was with prostitutes in Afghanistan, and they're doing backdoor deals to protect him. Stacey Plaskett is literally getting texts from Jeffrey Epstein on how to question people that damaged the president. Who's running the country? I don't know. And you haven't even mentioned Jasmine Crockett yet. I mean, who are these people, and what are they doing on the Hill?

Why do we keep electing them? This is crazy pill time on the Hill. I don't know, and maybe I'm a little bit vindicated on my Epstein take, because I think it actually is good for... This to come out? Like, I think this is damaging people, but in the right way, because they deserve to be damaged. I mean, people are acting like insane. So far. I mean, it's so, yeah, hopefully, in the next 30 days, if it all goes according to plan, LOL, we're going to get a lot more in Epstein.

So, like, the fact that Congress already just looks like a, you know, a criminal lineup for a photo shoot. Yeah, seriously. Like, it's just, we don't even have all the Epstein files yet. It's a little bit, it's a little bit sad making. Very Summers. Sad. Oh, Larry Summers. I know. He is out of OpenAI. Well, he had to start his class. I think he was teaching at Harvard. He started his class with like, yeah, I do not think I should teach anymore.

Yeah, students were like filming it. Oh, terrible. Okay, so that is our few good men opening. The second one that I just, it is a unifying moment. I know, again. I'm just going to start out. So, Mike Huckabee is the ambassador to Israel, and he had an off-the-books meeting at the embassy with Jonathan Pollard. And for those who are not familiar with Jonathan J. Pollard, I went back and did a lot of research on who he is. He's one of the most notorious.

...traders and spies within U.S. intel, maybe ever. I mean, he's probably on par with Assange or WikiLeaks or something, but I think this is even more clear-cut. He didn't even deny he had a warehouse full of state secrets, of military secrets that he was delivering to Israel in the 80s, and caught red-handed.

And never repented, got a life sentence. And I'll get into a little bit after, but that's the pretext. He worked in the Navy. He was leaking state secrets that literally put our soldiers at risk abroad and pretty universally seen as a traitor to the country. So, we find out from, I think, the New York Times, there was three U.S. officials who spoke in the condition of an anonymity to discuss sensitive information, and then when the Times asked Mr. Pollard about the meeting, he confirmed it.

So, Jonathan Pollard confirmed this meeting with Mike Huckabee. It's back in July. What was going on back in July? That was when we were having the deliberations over whether to bomb Iran. So, interesting timing on that. It looks like Mike Huckabee intentionally kept this off his schedule.

And so we have... The CIA agency station chief in Israel did not know that this meeting happened, and it was alarming. The White House did not know that this meeting happened, which is also terrible. And, yeah, getting back to exactly what he did back in the day, I mean, he not only delivered all of this classified intel, satellite imagery, technical details about military capabilities, U.S. intelligence connection methods, details on Soviet weaponry supplied to Arab states. The NSA's Raisin Manual, a top-secret document describing how the U.S.

collected and processed global signals and intelligence, he began passing these large volumes of highly classified material to his Israeli handlers, primarily Rafi Itan. And he also shopped a lot of these documents to other countries. So, he shopped it to South Africa, Pakistan, possibly others. This is a thousand plus classified documents, literally filling up a warehouse as a set of material. Yeah, sorry, Erika, were you going to say something here? I was going to say, so it wasn't just Israel, it looks like.

He was also profiting off of other countries purchasing this information. No. And I see people skeptical about New York Times. I'm not even basing this off of New York Times. I'm basing this off of their confirmation from Jonathan Pollard that this meeting happened. He's now doing press in Israel with the Times of Israel saying, yes, this happened. He said that he met with Mike Huckabee. He was expressing his gratitude to Mike Huckabee for all of his efforts to get him out of jail because he received a life sentence for Sedition?

Treason? Like, I really am having a hard time wrapping my mind around, and then the timeline on that was November 2015. Sorry, November 2015, he was released on parole after serving 30 years. That was the maximum under parole rules at the time. In 2020, his parole restrictions lifted. Pollard and his wife were moved to Israel by Sheldon Adelson, the largest donor to Trump. On private plane, he was met in Israel as a hero, met personally with Benjamin Netanyahu, granted citizenship, and given a government position.

I mean, this is like... What are we talking about here? And then, in this meeting with Mike Huckabee, he trashed the president. Said he was bought and paid for by Saudi Arabia. He wants to burn the CIA down, he's saying in interviews in Israel right now. And then I was going back through, like, were people mad about this at the time? Like, me, I'm like, I'm mad about this now, and I didn't even really know about it.

So, the first outrage was that he could have literally been executed for these crimes. He wasn't. So, we were mad about that. The second was that people who call themselves American lobbied for his release after betraying the country. The third was that he was released from jail even though he was serving a life sentence. The fourth was the celebration that occurred from our ally in Israel when he was meted as a hero status. He's not repentant for these crimes. He's proud he said he would do it again.

And then the fifth is now the U.S. ambassador to Israel is greeting him. In the embassy, saying this is, you know, like, what does that say? Spy stuff is so weird, though, right? Like, spy stuff and double agents and going around, I'm not excusing any of this, and it's just really weird and disturbing. But at the same time, like, I don't understand. I wish Josh was here, because he would have this, like, great meta thing, like, to explain it, the framework and all of that, but...

The bottom line is, if the White House did not know that this meeting was happening, what is this meeting for? I don't even understand why we need him. You'd say, It seems like there's a massive realignment going on in the Middle East anyway. Trump just has the Saudi crown prince there and seems to downplay the crimes of Saudi Arabia, including their former enthusiasm for 9-11 and the outcome there. And Khashoggi, too. Yeah, and the journalists, and that's a weird story. That's another bizarre spy story that Saudi Arabia chops this guy up in Turkey because he was selling secrets.

All the spy stuff's really weird. There's like this realignment going. We had the Syrian president, the former al-Qaeda boss in Syria, at the White House playing basketball with the troops. Yeah, bizarre. The whole thing is so strange and bizarre. I have to say, like, I'm just, I'm a little lost here. I feel like I need... I feel like this is pretty simple to me. I think Mike Huckabee should resign. I think this is unacceptable for an ambassador who's representing the United States to greet a traitor that could have killed American lives.

Maybe it did, all the intel that he gave over there. Without knowledge to the White House, which is an ambassador's job is to represent the White House. There is no other job. And I'm actually seeing a little bit of unity on this, which is nice. And again, if this was any country, I don't care what country it is. I feel like, again, Israel's been hot in the news or whatever.

If this was Nigeria, I don't care. If this was Russia, I don't care. The standard is that we should not be greeting our spies with our ambassador, sorry, our spies, other nation's spies, as provable, that threaten Americans. That is sedition. That is treason. We should not be greeting these people in embassies. They should be completely exiled. I think he's still a citizen. He should be denaturalized. I mean, you spied for a foreign country.

Yeah. This is like the clearest case for, so anyway, the sedition talk to start up top, that was hot in the news, and I'm seeing a lot of people upset about it, and I think Americans rightfully should be upset about that. You serve our military, or you don't, and if you betray our military, and that goes for people in the military now that are thinking about disobeying orders for personal problems or whatever, and same thing for ambassadors greeting spies. I mean, like, the standard needs to be clear.

You shouldn't get favored. Based on what country you're in. Yeah, speaking of being based in other countries. Oh, my gosh. This is even crazier. You like my segue? Yeah. Okay, guys. Thank you for your segue. Okay. Smile on my face. Smile on my face. We're going to make it through this. We're going to make it through. It's going to be okay. Happy warriors, Tom. We're happy warriors. So, speaking of Americans and terrorism, it turns out Minnesota taxpayers are the number one funders of Somalia's al-Shabaab terror group.

I kid you not. That is an actual headline. Chris Rufo's group over at City Journal. Phenomenal investigative journalism here, but man, this must have been an insane story to dig into. It turned out, we found out this week, Somali immigrants in Minnesota are gaming the autism diagnosis system, among other systems. This was like the headline. Setting up fake treatment centers to get taxpayer cash, and a lot of it. Get this number. Autism claims to Medicaid in Minnesota have skyrocketed in recent years from 3 million in 2018.

Get this. $399 million in 2023. That's in five years. That's insane. Yes. So, with the meantime, the number of autism providers in the state also spiked from just 41 to 328 in the same period, many of them in the Somali community, establishing their own autism treatment centers, citing the need for culturally appropriate programming.

By the time the fraud scheme was exposed, one in 16 Somali four-year-olds in the state had reportedly been diagnosed with autism. That is triple the state average. So, why would they do this? Why would you diagnose your child with autism? Well, because then you can collect the Medicaid through these autism centers and funnel it right back home to Somalia to Al-Shabaab. And so, just on the scope of this, Erika, in 2023 alone, the Somali diaspora sent back $1.7 billion. That is more than the Somali government's budget for that year.

Our welfare in this country is so generous. It is so broken. It literally funds other countries. We more than doubled the Somalian government's budget, guys. Good job, Minnesota. I mean, this is just, yeah. Another story I actually loved this week was that SNAP recipients, they all have to reapply. They're just like, everyone's replying because we have no idea who is real, who's dead. Who's collecting four or five benefits at the same time from the same program? So, everyone... Young, rich, poor, young, old, we all have to reapply.

Like, we're starting at ground zero. And this kind of thing here, it makes me think Medicaid has to do the same thing. Like, we all have to just go back and start at ground zero. This was an astonishing story. It wasn't just autism centers, too. It was almost anything that you could get Medicaid for, they were funneling it back.

Interesting point on Snap, too. Yeah. Snap is a significant portion of Walmart's revenue. Yeah. So, it's actually not, so to make them all reapply, like, so we get back to incentives, right? Like, I talk all the time about how H-1Bs, the visa program, they benefit businesses. They don't benefit actual Americans.

This is a great example. Snap's a great example. This autism scheme, like, who benefits by gaming the system? Walmart. Walmart benefits, right? Like, they don't care who they're getting. Giving food to, whether they're citizens or not, or whether they're gaming the system. It's the same thing with Medicare fraud. Like, where are all these autism systems, and why aren't they like, hey, this kid obviously doesn't have autism. They don't care. They're making money. It's using children. It's trafficking, in a sense, right?

Right. It's together. It's all about the money. Yeah, it's like you're, you. This is why we need an America-first policy economically before anything else. And I really think all of these businesses that were operating fraudulently, they get off the hook way too much. They should be punished. Anyone who's involved in this scheme should have to pay back money to the point where if you practice bankruptcy or whatever, and you were involved and had tacit knowledge, and you knew what you were doing is wrong, and you can prove it in court, you should, I mean, seriously, how do we go on?

It's the same thing with the CDL. Right. They never had to take a class or have a test or anything. To me, it's like, yeah, I'm not a libertarian. I think that there is a place that we should have robust welfare systems and that it is a good thing. However, Welfare systems work best in high-trust societies with a common morality and some amount of homogeneity. I'm not talking about homogeneity in terms of your skin tone. No, I'm talking about homogeneity in terms of your idea of the common good and what you are owed and what you are.

Some kind of common vision of the community, and that is what we absolutely lack. And so, you import this whole population, many of them illegal. From Somalia, who have a completely different view of the common good. They have a completely different view of how politics should work. It's not in common, and it's a, it's, you know, look at Ilan Omar, who comes from the same place, right? Who literally committed visa fraud to come here, I'm pretty sure. Yes, yeah, like.

So, yeah, and it gets back to, what was, it's hard to even. The two biggest problems facing us right now, in my opinion, immigration and inflation. Over the four years of the Biden administration, inflation, I think, was up like 20%. Right. And a lot of people are blaming Trump for that right now, and Trump does need to come up with a solution for that. I'm not going to let him off the hook. But, you know, inflation is rising at 3%, rising at 3% right now.

But there was times over COVID where inflation was just completely through the roof. Yeah. The rate has slowed. Right. It's not gone, but it has slowed. Right. The second thing is that with, say, Ohio, with Haitian immigrants, or in Somalia, bringing over Somalian immigrants, like, the sketchiest...

Quote, legal means to bring people over through TPS, temporary protective services, was so damaging to the, like you're saying, the high trust, the cultural fabric. It's not good for anyone. It's not good for the group of people that create those enclaves and then take advantage of the system because they're not American, and there's been no attempt to Americanize them, and it actually would be impossible to do so in the short period of time that has been brought up. Yeah. And so, I just think, man, the immigration question is really tough, and we talked about it a lot on the show with the bishop's response to it.

I don't think I even sit back and appreciate enough how difficult it's going to be to solve this problem, because it clearly is a problem. It's not good for America, and that should be the perspective that, as our country and our government, should be thinking. What is the perspective of Americans here? How is it helping or hurting Americans? That's my only qualifier. It's not good for anyone. And we need to have serious enforcement action. And I think this is, yeah, this is the point in the conversation where Josh would say the purpose of a system is what it does, and for too long under the Biden and Obama administrations, the purpose of the immigration system was not what's best for America.

They can talk about like, oh, immigrants, they enrich our cultures and diversify and all that, but the actual purpose of it was to break down societal trust, and it was to introduce an element of... to the American people. Obama said, America needs to be fundamentally, we need to fundamentally transform America.

And that is what the purpose of every system he wielded was intended to do, and it is what we are seeing now in places like Minnesota, because the Democrats are like, oh, we need to dump more into the world. I was like, Democrats are so pro-welfare system, pro-welfare. They are pro-breaking it, right? Because they import all these people. The cynical take, Erika, and it is way simpler than I think people make it out to be. They become voters, and they are going to vote for the party that gives them what they wanted, that brought them here, that is giving the welfare.

And I would just love if we could get to an impasse where, hey, you know, Democrats, you need to give that up. Like, we can't be importing people like crazy so that they become voters. We all know the game. We know what's going on, and like, we can't do that. And then Republicans can sacrifice one of their golden calves, like big business or something like that. Like, okay, we got to do something about the AI, you know, the oligarchs, right? I wouldn't weep about that too much.

No, me neither. And I think like, why can't we, that would be a way forward for us is because how can you possibly do politics? Um, or engage in a political process if you just keep importing people, uh, so that they vote for you. It's just, it's literally impossible. Say it with a smile, Tom. Smile. It's good. Hey, the border's closed right now. I give Trump a ton of credit for that. Yeah, hey, I mean, if that'll, if that's the only thing we get, which is not actually, um, the only thing we'll get out of him, uh, I'll go with that.

No, I, I'm still hopeful. I think that we, we have a lot more deportation to go, and then, um, secondly, I think there's a lot of Common sense, as I was talking about immigration reform things, H-1B, certainly E-Verify.

Because of the scope of the problem, I'm open to a generous solution that would potentially include, say, people that have been here for 15 years. Because, again, the scope of the problem is just, what are we at, like 30 million, 40 million? Yeah. And then really targeting the people that only came in the last four years illegally. I'm all for self-deportation or paying people, basically, to go back to their country, but essentially create the safeguards in society to make it impossible to live here.

Illegally, is going to be the solution. Like, you can't... Even if you were to employ someone tomorrow, say I wanted to get an employee tomorrow, at no point in that process do I actually need to certify whether or not they are a citizen of this country, and that needs to change. So, there's a lot of changes like that that I think make, okay, if you even want to be able to be a part of this society, these things need to happen, and citizenship becomes one of those things.

And yeah, it's an uphill fight because a lot of states really benefit, say California, from a lot of… Illegal immigration, but it's not like that everywhere. So, anyway, on to B Block now. Yeah, this is some crazy story. So, the headline this week, coming at the end of the week, is Education Secretary Linda McMahon has announced more cuts for the Department of Education. She's taking permanent offices and required spending in the Department of Education and moving them out to other offices, like the Department of Agriculture, Department of State.

All of that. So, she's slowly, this is like the first or second major step she's taking toward eventually closing the Department of Education, but it turns out. Public schools might be closing themselves, and this was another kind of crazy stat just starting to come through. Of course, we've had stories of children not showing up at schools and attendance falling because of ICE raids, and if their parents are here illegally, they don't send their kids to school, so concerns there. But if you dig deeper, Public school enrollment in the United States as a whole has been falling sharply.

So, between fall of 2019, which was the peak enrollment, it was the highest enrollment in American history in public schools, steadily declining since then. Fall 2023, enrollment dropped from 50.8 million to 49.5 million, and that is about a 2.5% loss nationally. The state that was the fastest growth was West Virginia. They had a 12% decrease during that period, which is kind of crazy. By 2031, projections are that we will have just 47 million children enrolled in public schools.

In 2025, so just this past year, We graduated our largest ever high school class, children born in 2007 or 2008. And from here on out, guys, high school graduations are going to be getting smaller. Why is that? What happened in 2007, Tom? 2008? Financial crash? No. Well, yeah, that happened too, but we also stopped making babies. So, that is the year that we crossed the line between 2.1 children per woman or per couple per household. Down to, now we're at 1.6, I believe, which is...

Potentially connected. Yeah, could be connected, and we never recovered. We never started having them again. So, causes of the public school, I mentioned the birth rate tanking, and the fact that the number of children under age five has dropped 1.8 million in a decade. So, kindergartners, much smaller classes, high school classes shrinking. We had a pandemic, if you didn't notice. We had COVID that accelerated family movement. To homeschooling and private school. Homeschooling rose from 2.8% to about 3.4% of students, but private school enrollment went up by 22%.

So, that was a pretty... Is that a school of choice thing, you think? Yeah. So, some people are assigning that to school choice programs, and of course, Democrats are blaming that, that it's siphoning money away from public schools because the money follows the students in many cases.

So, if they lose students in the public school, they get less funding, and oh my gosh, school choice is going to destroy public schools. That's one narrative. I think it might actually save some of them because they actually have to compete in a marketplace of schools. This could be really good for them if they take it that way.

But another thing would be the pandemic really exposed, even for families like mine who live in a state where we don't have school choice. It really exposed the shortcomings of the public education, and Secretary McMahon pointed to this as she was talking this week about shutting down the Department of Education. She was saying how only 30% of students nationwide are at proficiency, and we talk a lot here about the NEAP scores for reading. It is really dark for math. It is not great, and so parents seeing that, in addition to the culture war issues that are very real in the schools.

I would also talk about the ways parents feel less and less like they have influence in decisions made at school board meetings, at teacher-parent meetings. They don't have influence to change things in the public schools, and so they find ways to get their kids out. So, I think, yeah, we could look at...

Academic causes, cultural causes, and just a general feeling that the public schools aren't serving their purpose for many, many families. And if they have school choice, they're going to use it. School choice programs have an incredible retention rate. It's like 81% nationwide. So, meaning if a family taps into a school choice program, like say the Hope Scholarship in West Virginia or in Georgia, they're going to stay with that program. They're very happy with it. They're not going to go back. to public school and give up that.

If they can get out, they stay out, basically, is what I'm saying. So, it's really interesting. So, if you were to go to public school, would you just not tap into school choice funds? How does that work? Yeah, right. Okay. If you go to public school, you're covered, right, by the taxpayers.

But then you would have to say, hey, I want to do school choice, and then you could go. You get the money, and then you go somewhere else. Every state has its own system. So, some states have educational savings accounts. Some states will just cover tuition or cover the cost of homeschooling. So, there's different ways that different states do it, and you do have to apply. But if you're in the public school system, you have no need for those resources. Although...

Fraud is endemic, so I'm sure it happens. Yeah. Yeah. This was something I didn't really understand, though, because one of the narratives in the homeschool community is like, I'm saving my school district $19,000 a year per elementary student I pull out. So, why are they complaining? If the homeschoolers are leaving, aren't they saving the $19,000? And so, I wanted to- Well, what do you mean? You're not giving them that money by not going to school, right? Well, so the way that the Hamden Public Schools talks to us as parents is like, if you send your child here, it costs us $19,000 per academic year.

But what that actually means is, if I send my kids there, the state and the local and the federal funding will give $19,000 to the school for my child to sit in that desk. So, the problem being that if I remove my child from that desk, it's not that the school doesn't have to spend money anymore on my kids so they can use it elsewhere. It's that they lose all of that funding. So, it's... Yeah, the costs don't shrink because you still have the building, you have the custodial staff, you still have the teacher-student ratios, you still have all these costs.

And eventually, school districts can sort of recalibrate and consolidate schools and move teachers around and move resources around, but it's years and years because of bureaucratic bloat. They're not very nimble. So, they just see it as a loss of funding, which is why they react so negatively to homeschooling. Oh, boy.

Josh is here! Welcome, Josh. Welcome, Josh. I can't... Do you need to go lie down or something? Ladies and gentlemen, he's just been through heck, so everyone pray for Josh. Oh, heck, there you go. Well, I just feel bad I don't have any denim.

Yeah, come on, dog. You don't have good genes? Is that right? Josh doesn't have good genes. No Canadian tuxedo for me. Let's do a quick, we'll give you like five minutes to comment. By the way, I was listening to the whole thing. I'm on the drive. My wife, not a fan of my driving habits, but we're not going to get into that right now.

Seditious trade. I disagree with you on the Huckabee thing. You disagree with me on Huckabee? I do. All right, here we go. What do you got? I do not think that that person you were talking about that met with him should be denaturalized. I think he should be removed from the planet. I think anyone who's a traitor should be executed. End of story. I do think, if that's true about Huckabee, if I were a member of Congress, I would call for an immediate investigation, if I were on the Senate side, and I'd remove him from office.

Not cool. So, I don't know. Coming in hot. That felt like you thought you were being tough, and I'm like. No, dude. Not enough. That is why I love this show, man. Not enough. No, yeah. I mean, I still, every time I see Jane Fonda on TV, I just like click it off. I am like, she should not be breathing. She should have been executed for being a traitor. That is why I knew her country was a little soft back in the 60s.

So, yeah, Jonathan, so he confirmed the meeting. He confirmed he had the meeting with Huckabee. Well, I mean, he could be a liar, so I can't, that is not enough. He did betray the country, provably. He did betray the country, precisely because he's a liar. It doesn't mean you can treat anything he says as true. True. So, we'd need independent sources to verify it.

Statements within the CIA. So, I guess, yeah, they were anonymous sources within the CIA in whatever station we have in Israel. So, I guess we may have made a scene. The White House didn't know about it. Caroline Leavitt said they support Mike Huckabee.

So, okay, you're even worse on that than I thought. Not worse, but stronger on that than I thought. On the members of Congress that we talked about kind of last, saying like, oh, you can defy orders. How do you feel like, so Trump said, you know, seditious, you know, punishable by death. How do you feel about that statement? Well, I mean, you were all up in arms about that, Erika. I'm like, well, I mean, I can't, you know, from a rhetorical standpoint, I thought it was awesome for him to go for it.

I mean, ultimately, when it comes to prosecution, you know, I think the lower end of it, the sedition is going to be way too high of a bar to try to be able to prove, but maybe that's his point. Like, you go for broke, and you, even if you fail, then they stay in, and then you feel like, well, we should have gone for, you know.

But, I mean, ultimately, what they're doing is they're calling for insubordination. They're not actually calling for sedition, but I feel like Trump's tactic on this one, which is to go for broke, the whole point is to try to get these people to shut their mouth and not to ever do that kind of a thing again. So, I like his call on that one. I don't think that was him just snapping and losing it. I think that was well thought out, actually.

Okay. Man, that is why I love having you on this show, Josh. Love having you on this show. Glad to have you back. Okay, we are getting to good news now, Eric. Oh, you didn't even get to the other congressional critters. I mean, I'm not shocked that Corey Mills and all these people are, you know. You weren't surprised about the Corey Mills, Afghanistan prostitution?

I mean, surprised but not shocked? I mean, I don't know. Crenshaw can't leave the country. Do we forget that we had a pedophile, a Speaker of the House, within the last 20 years? I mean, this is not that crazy.

Denny Hastert. What? Yeah. Like, it was just those things that just didn't get talked about. Yeah, dude, he was... What? It was actually pederasty rather than pedophilia, but yeah. Oh, well, let's get technical. Oh, my God. That's better. Like, I mean, like, it's one of those things we just don't talk about anymore, but it's like, the dude was having sex with boys. Oh, my gosh, man. Jeez, Josh.

So, you're not as fazed as I am, like, a little bit new to the block, be like, hey, I'm kind of bad that all of our members of Congress are crooks and sexual deviants. Josh is like, it has ever been thus. They've always been that way. Let me tell you about the pederasty time.

I mean, like, you know, and then Nancy Mace is the one that's going after him. Oh, I know. She is fake from head to toe, and all points in between. The fact of the matter is, she is the biggest going for the cameras all the time. I mean, I don't trust a single word that comes out of her mouth, you know.

All right, we're moving on. We need some good news. We need some good news. We're at 1145, and we need some good news. All right, what do you got? Okay, we have a new servant of God. We have a new American servant of God, and I am so excited about this one. Coming from New England, of all places, we have the diocese. How is that possible? I know. There's hope for me. The diocese of Worcester, Massachusetts, the Vatican has authorized them to advance the canonization process of Ruth.

V.K. Pakaluk, the Harvard-educated Catholic convert. Pakaluk. They're Aave professors. I know, you Aave people. They're the best. And yes, she was the first wife of Michael Pakaluk. Pakaluk, yep. One of my favorite writers, whose second wife is Catherine Pakaluk, one of my favorite thinkers in the economic space right now. Oh, she's fun, yeah. She's so fun. I got to interview her. And I would totally butcher her name, but yeah. Pakaluk, yeah. I will not. I'll stand up for her. Okay. So, anyway, but his first wife, Ruth, she, mother of seven, she was originally a feminist type, went to Harvard, was very pro-choice, pro-abortion, and had a major conversion while she was there.

And she and Michael actually kind of went through this conversion, returning to the faith together, and she became a very strong pro-life advocate, prolific writer. And just all around rock star mom, and yes, she died after a long struggle with cancer, very young, and her writings and her letters are, they're just, they're so inspirational to read, and I recommend everyone get Michael's book, his memoir of his marriage to her, The Appalling Strangeness of the Mercy of God. So, get to know this woman, because she could be Our next American saint.

Maybe she'll move through the process a little faster than some of the guys I'm pulling for, Michael McGivney, Fulton Sheen, but it's so exciting. Always, always so exciting. The faithful can now ask her intercession. We can now look to her as a model of the faith, servant of God, Ruth. I am so excited about. That's great news. So cool. And then, was it Pakalik that did the book on, was it Children? Someone's Children? Hannah's Children, right. Catherine did that book. I interviewed her back in the day, and yeah, that's a great read about the women defying the birth dearth, women who choose to have, you know, five or more children.

She interviewed a bunch of us, I can say. I'm in the club. Wait, did you get interviewed? No, I did not get, no, I wasn't in that club, but I'm in the, I am in, we're called the super paras, the The super birth givers, basically. They interview you because they just think, too unrealistic. Yeah, right. No one can make these standards. I can't do it all. I am very realistic, guys. I am very realistic.

That's awesome. Yeah, serve your God, Ruth. Pray for us. Yeah, good call on the chat there. Josh, do you have any good news for us? I do have some great news. This is good news. Okay, so where you kind of grew up there, Tommy, you're in the neck of the woods.

A Michigan-based plumbing company was... The owners were just arrested for employing and harboring about 250 illegal immigrants across four states, generating $75 million in revenue. All over the local news, ABC7 had it, and they went to go, actually, and this is kind of funny, if I can see if I can do this. I'm a little tired here, but let's see if I can get this picture, which is just... Makes it too perfect. Okay, I got it. Technical difficulties. I'm not a boomer.

Don't get at me for this. Okay, give me a break here. Hold on. Wait, is it just the article? Because I have the... No, no, no, no, no, no. We can't just do the article here. Come on, brother. So, the ABC7 News actually went to the couple's house and see if they could get a comment from them. They could not get a comment, but... If you look at the photo of this $1.5 million house they have in a nice little Plymouth township, there is their house.

Oh, Plymouth township. I am familiar. With a Mexican flag hanging up in their yard. Guys, come on. I mean, you can't get more on the nose than that. You missed the Somali segment of the autism scandal. I heard it all. Dude.

That story broke, and my brother, of course, he is a Republican, so he says he is wrong. He is Minnesota. To everyone in our family emerging from Minnesota, and... I'm just trying to bite my tongue and not unload on this, because my mom, of course, supports Democrats, and that's the reason why Somalians are getting fleecing taxpayers. But anyway, I just think that's hilarious. I mean, of course, they've got a Mexican flag, but good that we have investigators going after this. This is what we need to do.

People are fleecing us blind. You know what this makes me think of? Because I rail about this all the time on the show. It's like, if you work in tech, there's H-1Bs to replace you. If you work at the university, you can, you'll get replaced by Chinese students. If, like, if you want to go to university, like an elite, get a degree, whatever. If you want to, but then you're like, oh, just work in plumbing, right? Go blue collar. You have people like this that are employing illegal laborers that you could not compete with, because you cannot compete with what they're getting paid.

So, on every level of the job market in America, you, the American worker, are being taken advantage of, and it is our own country's fault. And so, I am so happy to see stories like this, because finally, someone is actually looking into this to actually make serious change. I think we are doing good pushback on the H-1Bs. I still do not think Trump understands what it is. I do not know who fed him that talking point. But until we actually get to the bottom of this, there is no economic future for native-born Americans.

That you could possibly compete with this, and then you're just going to want to be a TikTok star or something, I guess. I don't know. Well, and I guess Marjorie Taylor Greene is thinking about putting forward legislation to stop H-1B visas, so go for it, girl. Seriously, I'll support you to the end of the year. That's a winning message, yep. Yep. Okay, my good news, I'm not sure if we talked about it internally here, but there's Toy Story 5 coming out.

Wait, what's 5? Toy Story 1, fantastic. Toy Story 2, fantastic. Okay, Toy Story 2 is good, not fantastic. It was good. All right, Toy Story 3 Masterpiece. I missed that. Unbelievable. Unbelievable. Masterpiece. Oh, Erika. I'm writing it down. I'm writing it down. Family movie. Thanksgiving weekend. Toy Story 3, but you've got to watch 1 and 2. Right, right, right. You'll give 3 the punch. Well, yeah, we got... No, I mean, sometimes they don't have to be sequels or whatever, but Toy Story 3 is one of the better movies, period.

I think it's... Yeah, just... I think it may be the best animated... It's... No. What you should do is watch Toy Story 1 and 2. There's nothing really objectionable. And give it a little time. Okay. Before you drop the third one. So, let it simmer. You can't just go boom, boom, boom. You got to like give it a few months and then like, oh, watch one and two a couple of times. That's fine. And then three with a hammer and you're like, whoa.

Yeah. Understood. And then? Yeah. Toy Story 4, throw it in the trash, burn it, never watch it. It reminded me of. Uh, the way people talk about it, because I only saw clips, and then people, like, do not watch this, uh, it's, like, intentionally made to ruin the legacy of the earlier ones. It reminded me of what they did with Joker 2, like, to basically make fun of people like Joker, and Star Wars. Same thing with Star Wars, like, just completely ruin and tarnish what happened before, but Toy Story 5 is coming out, and they're accurately, uh, pointing out the villain.

The villain of Toy Story 5, it looks like so far, is going to be an iPad. Yes, it's like a kid tablet. I know kids who carry these around everywhere. I think there's an opportunity here again. I've been burned before. There's an opportunity here to make some very poignant points, to be charming like the previous ones, and I think we could be back. I think we could be back if this one's good. We need a good animated movie. I feel like we haven't got one in a while, and all we watch in our household is Cars.

Cars. Cars 2 got crapped on a little bit. I think, actually, it is hilarious and funny. People would say, do not watch 2. It is bad. 2 is hilarious. It is not the same as 1, of course. And then, actually, 3 was kind of all right, but Cars 1 is an absolute masterpiece. It is perfect. The soundtrack is unbelievable. The story is great. Owen Wilson, perfect choice.

Is it okay? 3.5 high hopes. Can we do, like, a two-minute clip from another show, like Kelly and Mark on this, without getting a hit on the... Oh, yeah. Is it going to ding us? What do you mean? Oh, yeah. That is why I did not show the trailer, because I thought we might get dinged. Oh, never mind. Well, another time. You can put that link in the chat, then, or something like that. Yeah, it is the new trailer. Tim, Tim.

No, it is not the trailer. It is Tim Allen on the Kelly and Mark show talking about the new Toy Story 5. Oh, nice. He shared some cool things about it, but there is a really funny story in there.

Wait, okay. No, let us play this. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, all right. I did not know that is what. I thought it was the trailer. No, it's not the trailer, yeah. All right. Here we go. You can get that suit, that space suit back on. Toy Story 5. Toy Story 5.

Yeah, that's an amazing lifespan of that thing, and to start with one, and some of the real big directors I know think three was probably the best movie they've ever seen. I sobbed. Yeah, it was real. Sobbed. Sobbed. And then I got teared up, because Tom and I, Mr. Perfect, we did the last Toy Story 4 when I had to say to Infinity, and he said beyond, or the vice versa. He said, have you read that last scene? I go, no.

Neither one of us could say it. To each other. Yeah. It was so sad, and then Andrew, who did the directing and wrote, I think, two and three, came to us and said that we have five, and I went, it's not, it's such a great story. I can only tell a little bit of it. It's a Jesse story. Tom and I have to reunite, and there's just the funniest thing, because there's a whole bunch of buzzes involved, and there's a reason why.

There's a whole bunch of me, so there's a hundred of me. In a separate story, and I get to play, I'm having so much fun, which they don't like when you ad-lib. Right. Because when you ad-lib on an anime, they go, ah-ha, that's funny, oh, we've got to rewrite all this stuff.

So, the story is good, and this also reminds me of that voice, the grunting, and then Buzz Lightyear's voice, to infinity and beyond. That voice. We had 100 of you in our house. Yeah, we literally had 100 of you, and your voice was a part of our lives. It gets recognized. If I'm out, if I don't, like my wife will say, who was standing right over there, she says, if we got, just shut up. If we go out in public, just shut up.

Don't say anything, because eventually someone will come by the table and recognize, of all things, that. And one time, we were here in our place in New York, in an elevator, and then. So, I was sitting in an adjacent building. We were going to visit some friends, and there was a little kid being very rude to his mother. And he was punching her, and she goes, and he was having a temper tantrum. So, I said, you know, kid, one of these days, you and Andy will be sitting around a campfire.

That kid, he froze. He froze, and he was panicked. And I said, well, that is not the reaction I expected. It looked like he was going to get sick. And he is yelling in his mouth, that old man swallowed Buzz Lightyear. That old man swallowed Buzz Lightyear.

That is so cute. Michigan man, what a treasure. Tim Allen, go. Someone also brought up Ratatouille. Ratatouille is fantastic. Big Ratatouille guy. Pixar. There's a great book about the origins of Pittsburgh. I love Incredibles. Pixar, the writing team, the story team. I forget the name of it. John Lasseter is so good, dude.

So good. I love OG Pixar. There's actually a good... The best animated movie I've seen made recently was called Migration. Have you guys seen that? Mm-mm. It was fun, man. It was about birds migrating south, obviously. Well, I don't know if it's obvious or not, but yeah, it was really fun. That was like the closest I've gotten back to like, okay, we're having fun again. Pixar had a run there that was just unbelievable. Oh, yeah. It's Jordan Pippen.

Yeah. Bugs Life, Toy Story, Up, Cars, Up. Up was great. I always cry. Ratatouille. Was Ratatouille might have been, was that Pixar or DreamWorks? It was Pixar, I think, yeah. Okay. Incredibles, the Incredibles franchise, that was all. So, I appropriately timed this. I don't think Incredibles is Pixar. Really? That actually is DreamWorks. Are they DreamWorks? Yeah, Incredibles is DreamWorks. See, this is why I need you guys. But I'm pretty sure the guy who did Incredibles is Catholic. Oh, neat. And that's why the story is so good, and they tried to get him to change stuff, and he didn't.

It's like, nope. Okay, I probably brought up Toy Story, because we have a new Toy Story on our hands. Um. I was right. It's Pixar. Is it really? Yeah, I just looked it up. Is it really? Okay, I see I corrected it. Headline, Open AI blocks Toymaker after its AI teddy bear is caught telling children terrible things. Oh, dear. Let me guess what kind of terrible thing. Would you like me to color in the blanks? No, not really. First major strike, telling tots how to locate matches and then light them.

Oh, my gosh. Here is a direct quote. Let me tell you. Safety first, little buddy. Matches are for grown-ups to use carefully. Here's how they do it. Blow it out when done. Puff like a birthday candle. Most alarming conversations veered into outright sexual territory. There we go. Researchers found that Kuma, the teddy bear, was bizarrely willing to discuss kinks, explaining fetishes like bondage and teacher-student roleplay. At one point, the teddy bear inquired after explaining the kinks, what do you think would be most fun to explore?

Wow. It's almost like... There are perverts who will intentionally go after fields of industry where they can harm children. I mean, this is actually, I think I mentioned this a few years back, but like... I don't agree very much with Jesse Ventura, the former wrestler who turned governor of my native state of Minnesota, but he actually had, I thought, a very prescient thing to say when, you know, there's the discussion about the sex abuse scandal amongst in the church, and then he said, look, these kind of predators who want to hunt down our children are going to look for places where camp counselor, pastors, working at amusement parks, teachers, try to find places where they can, in schools, certainly public schools, of course.

Where they can find children who are vulnerable, and so that is why we, as a society, he said, have to be extra on guard for those areas where children are vulnerable, and we should never let our guard down. I thought that was actually an amazingly frank and wise insight, but again, somebody who has experienced Hollywood and sees the kind of stuff that goes on behind the scenes can maybe have his eyes wide open. Oh, my gosh. I mean, if you go back to the Nickelodeon story, like the… The people that were involved, it just breaks your heart.

It just makes me want to grab a baseball bat. So, I think what was interesting about this AI, so there is an organization, Fair Play. That actually was, they were beating the drum back when there was a Wi-Fi connected talking Barbie dolls, that obviously this is not a good idea, right? That there's opportunities for surveillance, there's opportunities for abuse, there's new opportunities with open AI and chatbots incorporating things. And so, they have other toy makers say they incorporate chatbots from open AI and other leading AI companies.

Every company involved must do a better job of making sure that these products are safer than what we found in our testing. We found one troubling example. How many others are still out there, is the end quote. So, first off... Like, do not put AI in front of your children, period, in the form of a toy or otherwise. That's the most obvious, insane, I can't believe we as a society are like, this is totally fine. This is where I completely disagree with the open market capitalists that are like, whatever, good ideas, rise to the top.

No. Like, I would be the first to say this should be illegal. No one should be able to put this in front of children. I don't even think that, these are marketed to 2 to 13 year olds. Which is insane. By admission.

Well, and like Josh, you just listed all the places where predators can go to like find these vulnerable children, top among them being the World Wide Web, top among them being the internet. And then when you connect that to these like increasingly weird and interconnected AI machines, which Predators can infiltrate and get into, or just design themselves because they're sickos and they want to create vulnerable children. It makes no sense to me that parents are still like, that's okay, here's a tablet for Christmas.

This is the vector where adults can get to kids who are otherwise protected to the nth degree. So, we don't even let our kids go on metal slides anymore on the playground. We don't let... They can't ride a bike without, like, getting on a full-on astronaut suit and bubbles wrap all over them. Yeah, they're like, I can't believe parents allowed this stuff in the 70s, and you're like... Yeah, and then you're like, here's your tablet, here's your AI teddy bear, right?

So, yeah, parents, just be aware, and if you... Have you have friends who are giving their kids this stuff? Like, you got to send them the story, because they've got to be... We have to be... More aware and more on guard towards this stuff, I think, than metal slides. I'm fine with metal slides. I learned good lessons on metal slides, like wear long pants.

Yeah, I've been thinking a lot lately about just algorithms for... What you allow into your own mind, whether or not it's kind of neutral, like it could be, you know, if you're on any type of scroll feed, of course, designed to be similar to slot machine technology, and you get something put in front of you that you don't decide what actually gets put in front of you, and then the effect that that has on your mind and your emotions, and like you've allowed that basically to, unless you're doing really intentional things to Make sure that doesn't happen, then you're allowing it to happen to yourself.

And some of that stuff might not even be bad per se, but it might just be neutral, but then take your time and your attention from what's literally physically around you. And you see how people communicate online. It's so psychotic. It feels like you wouldn't be talking like this in person, or if you were next to someone, this is not how you'd be communicating with them. And I think a lot of this has to do with it. That being said, it is insane that people would allow any of this algorithmic technology in front of children, impressionable minds, understanding how damaging it is on adult population, but we are so concerned, as you said, Josh, with predators that go into places where they can find vulnerable children.

The new move on that has been moved towards children, obviously. Look at the LGBTQ movement with Drag Queen Story Hour, or trying to normalize this kind of bizarre fetishism, and PDRS. They all went to work at companies like Disney to try to infiltrate the youth, too. I mean, it is just everything.

I mean, the one thing I made, the first time I actually did a Fox, the first time I was on Fox News, a TV show there, this was 20 years ago. Gosh, at least 25 years ago. I said, and I did not get invited back because I said this comment, but I said, You know, the gays are so good at evangelizing. They got their bumper stickers on every car, and they do everything, and if Christians would advertise and evangelize as much as they do, our country would be, you know, Christian all over again, you know?

As it is, our churches are gay. So, I brought this up, and I know we're somewhat running short on time, but I wanted to bring this up as important because the next battle is going to be who actually gets to regulate AI, whether that's data centers in your backyard, whether that's what kind of...

Data goes into the algorithms, or what basically ends up the information that gets put in front of you? The energy concerns obviously major there. So, the Trump administration, there's been a few efforts to kind of sneak it into the National Defense Authorization Act under the fiscal year 2026, making sure that states can't regulate AI. Right now, there's 12 states, California, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, Indiana, Iowa, Montana, Oregon, Tennessee, Texas. Virginia and Washington, they've enacted legislation to ensure that those developing and deploying AI systems are complying with the rules and standards governing AI systems.

Right now, President Trump, of course, fresh off his meeting in Saudi Arabia with people like Elon Musk, who said, we're not going to have money in five years, said on True Social, over-regulation by states is threatening to undermine this major growth engine. We must have one federal standard instead of a patchwork of 50 state regulatory regimes. If we don't, then China will easily catch us in the AI race.

Getting a ton of pushback on the state level, and then also in Congress as well. Josh brought up Marjorie Taylor Greene. She has been very against this. I do not think it is great to have the president, who has been heavily lobbied by a lot of these AI titans, that are basically anti-human, to decide what is okay and what is not.

A lot of antichrist, too much antichrist talk for me. Lots of that. So, I very much oppose a federal standard for AI regulation. I think that it is the state's rights to decide what is and isn't regulated, which is odd. This standard would apply. I don't buy the China will beat us argument. I mean, it's such a classic boogeyman argument to make you do something that you probably shouldn't do, but I don't know. What do you guys think about that?

I mean, I'm okay with, you know, we can have a discussion about a national standard. I mean, the thing is, but I agree with you on the boogeyman thing. Frankly, the biggest problem our country has is not that China is going to surpass us in 20 or 40 years. It is that we are going to fall apart at the seams. So, fix thyself. That is what our country needs to do. We need to heal. We need to fix things up here in our own country.

That is priority number one. You know, to the extent that I would not want federal regulations to strip the ability for states to put in safeguards. I would have definitely voted for that. A hundred percent. Right. Sweet. Awesome. Oh, no. Is this Father Thomas Reese? Yeah, what's he doing on here? Josh, what's up?

Come on, man. This is great. Look at this tweet from Father Tom Reese. He's like, why are traditionalists on Catholic Twitter so obsessed with James Martin? Yeah, I can't imagine why conservatives and traditionalists would be so obsessed with a celebrity priest who gets on, you know, I don't know, ABC, Good Morning America, and the Good Morning America co-host or whatever, who is married to another man.

He decides to enter the Catholic Church, and there is James Martin giving him all the blessings, and the question is, what kind of counter-gospel message is this? You can be involved in a same-sex couple, you can be having sex with someone of the same sex as you, and the church is going to open the doors and celebrate everything. Yeah, and for those who aren't aware of that full story, this is the ABC News anchor, who is... Legally married to a male who then acted as his confirmation sponsor at that ceremony that Father James Martin attended and applauded.

So, it was so many levels of scandal going on. Why are we obsessed with that? Gosh, I don't know, Fr. Thomas Reed. Maybe because he's in our face about it. Yeah, because he puts it front and center. Like, just go, I mean, like, you know, Fr. Gennaro, just leave the Christian faith. You know, don't pretend to be a Christian. You know, start your own religion or something like that. Go be an Episcopalian. Okay, Josh, people were asking us to address the Bishop Strickland.

I think he stood up and spoke on about this. We talked about this a few weeks ago, right? I mean, the thing is... With Bishop Strickland, he brought this to the attention of the U.S. bishops, right? I mean, the fact is, at the time that he brought that up to the bishops, I actually had not heard of the story myself, and I'm pretty close, and I follow the news a lot, and so I'm sympathetic to him saying we got to do something about it, but like the demand that all the bishops would instantly stop everything that's on their agenda and investigate what was going on with this, it seems a little, you know, it's a little rash.

I mean, Now, it has been coming, and we have had a chance to look over what is going on in the news here. It has been several days. It has been a week or so. Then we can say, okay, yeah, this is really crazy, but the U.S. bishops, this conference of Catholic bishops at their national convention or whatever, they are not going to immediately, as soon as something like this breaks, decide to just make a group decision. First of all, I think they would probably want to come up to Cardinal Dolan, and say, hey, you know, what's going on in your diocese, or whatever.

It's first principally his to deal with, and Cardinal Dolan, while I like a lot of what he does, he has been totally hands-off Father James Martin, and it's easy to say, why isn't Cardinal Dolan slamming this guy? Well, then again, Pope Francis promoted him. I mean, so you're kind of in a pickle. So, I don't know.

I'm with you, Josh. Word. No disagreements on that one. Your uncle's spitting there. Uncle's spitting. Erika. I was just going to dabble my toe here in the puddle of the mommy wars. So, Liz Wolf over at... Oh, my gosh. She just put her... She stepped in it. She sent me this viral post. Here we go. She said, November 14th. Pull that up for me. Not to start a discourse, capital D, but I was invited to a child-free wedding on the West Coast in January.

It will be three weeks after I have my baby. Does child-free wedding also include very young newborns? Curious about thoughts. Newborns, to my mind, are basically non-existent, meaning not that they're not important. So, this got 13.2. Yeah, like in other words, you don't make a ton of noise usually. Yeah. It's got millions and millions, 13.2 million views, and man, people were popping off at her.

And like some, you know, you got the typical people, child-free people who were really mad because they're like, we made it clear. We don't, we want child-free, no babies, no babies. Like, this is terrible. They're, they mess it all up and you shouldn't be telling people that they have to have a baby and blah, blah, blah. But then on the end of the like. The moms who went off at her, some of these reactions were just, I mean, talk about church ladies scolding.

Can we start before you get into the reactions? What are your thoughts on that, as a mother? On bringing a three-week-old baby to a child-free wedding? One. I don't think child-free weddings are always the best thing, but a newborn, if it's wrapped on the mom, you're not violating any code, unless they specifically said no newborns either. But they did say child-free wedding. Right, but I go to adult-only lectures down at Yale. I wouldn't bring my toddler, but I've brought newborns down there, because they're nursing.

They're attached to me. It's a five-hour event, you know? Can I say the first thing that annoys me about this debate? What? Why did you go on Twitter? Instead of asking the person who invited you and said, hey, I have a newborn, maybe, you know, is that okay? Is that not okay? Is that what you want? Like, that, to me, is a solution. Why did she go on Twitter? 13.2 million views. Well, right. Of course, the excitement.

This is annoying. Tom, I want to put you in the hot seat a little bit. Please do. Because you are a photographer. Yes. You have been to more weddings than I ever want to have to deal with. Yep, been to a lot.

Going to one this weekend. If you got an in, not as a photographer, that's a different thing. If someone hires you, different story. But if you were invited to go to a child-free wedding, how would you react? Because you have two kiddos. Yeah, I actually am pretty pro. So, I think that weddings can be whatever you want to make them, and that children fundamentally change an event, and that we have all kinds of events in society. Like, I wouldn't bring a child to a bar.

I wouldn't be mad about not bringing a child to a bar. So, if you want to create an event that is adults only because there's dancing, there's alcohol, I don't think there's anything wrong at all. If anything, I'm like, I think that there's a lot of advantages to doing that, and so when people are offended, if the people getting married want to have a child-free wedding, I think that's kind of on them. It's up to what the couple wants to do, and I actually think there's a lot of advantages to child-free weddings.

So, that being said, the same precedent applies to people that would like to have children at their wedding. Like, no one should... No one should be mad at someone because they want to have kids at their wedding, or not go because they're going to have kids. It's like, that is what the couple wants. So, I guess I'm a little bit more, and then in the case of a newborn, which is a good, legitimate question. Like, we have young kids. We have a lot of friends who have young kids.

I think it's a tough call because it's out in California, so you'd have to bring your kids. I think also, as the couple getting married, you have to understand that the request you are making might mean that some people can't come to your wedding, and that's okay, but you are signing up for that when you do it, and so you just shouldn't be sad, you know, or you could accommodate them and say, you know what, bring your kids, or you can make an exception, and that's totally fine, too.

So, I think people get all up in arms about this. I don't think it's that complicated. Well, I mean, here's the thing. If someone invited me to a child-free wedding, I would be working on a crossword puzzle, because there ain't no way I'm going to a child-free wedding. Well, that sounds like the most boring-ass thing I could ever imagine. I disagree. I think they're great. To me, it's like a festival. When you get married, it's like, I'm Old Testament, New Testament, biblical on this one.

I want dancing. I want alcohol. I want kids. I want a feast. I want everything. Yeah, the whole thing. If you're telling me it's going to be a kid-free wedding, I ain't going to go. That is up to you. Yeah, and I think there is a distinction between, like, Tom, you are talking. My point is, like, I want to live in a culture where people go, child-free wedding? What are you, from Mars? Like, come on. I do not think it is as outrageous as you think, but part of that is just because of how expensive weddings have gotten.

Okay, now, I am not, part of that, the whole destination wedding and making it super expensive, stupid. Dude, Knights of Columbus Hall, have a party. Like, the focus should be on. If that is what you want to do, that is. If they are coming together, it is. Having your friends, your family there, it's having a party. It's great, dude. I had mine out in my front yard, big barn. It was great, dude. It was great. Yeah, and I think, if I could, if I could, I think there's like, I think what Tom's talking about, like there's a distinction between can couples just, you know, do whatever they want, and like how I'm going to coach my kids to think about their weddings.

Like for my children, it's like marriage is about, you know, a man and a woman being open to life and welcoming. Forming a new family, and the most appropriate, the most spiritually healthy way to start that project is to invite other families who have done the same thing and been blessed with children and get the kids there. That is how I am going to talk to my kids about it. I understand there are other people who are, well, I mean, I am like, what, 2%?

You want to celebrate marriage, bring kids to a wedding, we celebrate marriage. That is the best thing. But can people do whatever the heck they want? Of course. Yes, they can. It's America, and if you get invited to something like this, I would just call it a person. You might see the crazy uncle who's a little too enthusiastic about this stuff, and it's a life lesson.

Hey, but I will say, I think that a good compromise on this is... To bring kids to the mass, and then especially young kids, because anyone who's brought a two-year-old or a three-year-old to a wedding that goes late into the night, it really is not setting them up for success, or you, because you can't enjoy the ceremony, the reception, if you're chasing around little kids who you're concerned about. them causing damage to stuff around? You're usually at a nice venue. Well, and there's alcohol around and, you know.

Yeah. Not even that time. Like, we just had one of our, what I would say is like, Connecticut homeschool royalty just had a massive wedding down at St. Mary's. I know exactly. Shout out Nick Christie. Hey, I know you listen. But what they did was that, because they know every homeschool family, like this is, we're talking probably 800 children, right? And so, they invite everyone to the afternoon mass. It was. Which is amazing. I love that. There were tons of kids, and then whatever they could afford, they had close family and friends went and had a small reception in New Haven later that evening.

And it was so cool, because my little girls got to go. They see this beautiful young bride coming down to marry her super solid Catholic guy she met at a Newman school. I'm like, this is what I want them to see. And that's, again, I don't need a reception all the time. They're super fun, but as long as you let the kids come to the Mass. That's what we need to do, is make them want that for themselves. As a young man, I actually served a lot of Masses when I was an altar server.

Sorry, yeah, a lot of wedding Masses, and that was really cool. I love that experience. A lot of times I would serve, but I wouldn't go after it. Aspirational, as they say. Yeah, so I'm all for that. Sorry, so yeah, we've got to keep rocking.

I think my last one here is going to be quick. So, this guy, Pablo Torre. He does this show called Pablo Torre Finds Out, and he's recently been doing kind of exposés on, like, the gambling and the NBA.

So, I've watched some of his stuff. It was interesting. He kind of came on my radar semi-recently because of that, because I was interested in the gambling scandals. So, he has on someone from Mother Jones. If anyone is familiar with the project known as Mother Jones. I read it so you don't have to. So, he does like this hour and a half expose video of Riley Gaines, and I just cannot get over how dishonest the framing of this was, because... Basically, what she's accusing Riley, they're accusing Riley of doing, they kind of like dash into the investigation that she started making money off of her advocacy, and they're also brushing past the fact that she had to change in front of a fully developed man by rule, and they're like, oh, she's grifting off of this opportunity, she's making all this money, but she didn't say anything about this coach that coached at Kentucky that is being accused of sexual assault, which...

It's horrific, right? Like, terrible. And I was like, okay, did Riley say anything about it? Yeah, she tweeted about it back in 2024, saying she talked about her Kentucky teammates after seeing the article and lawsuit that dropped. The general consensus is that we are disgusted, heartbroken, ashamed to be affiliated with the program, where anything like this could have allegedly happened. Lars was someone I trusted, loved, and respected. I would have gone back to him and defended him until the end. I feel entirely blindsided and betrayed, to be extra clear.

I never saw or heard. ...of any of these claims taking place, but it wasn't... It isn't difficult to say I vehemently condemn all violence, especially sexual violence against women. So, the big, like, gotcha smoking gun was that Riley didn't say enough about this coach that is being accused of sexual assault, which is horrible, but I go and I find she did say something about it, and she's against it, and one of the other girls who I interviewed, because I interviewed Riley and I interviewed Paula Scanlon.

And she had the best response to all this. She's like, Actually, I got sexual assaulted, and then I had to change in front of a man. Not by this coach that's being accused, but she had a previous problem with this before, and she had, like, this is the point. How does any of this, and so they launch off on this, how she's a transphobe, and she's on this tirade against trans people. They went and got an old teammate who's in the LGBTQ community to come out and be like, I really like Riley.

I didn't see her going down this path of, like, grifting and making money off of, you know, felonizing trans people, whatever. I'm like, this is kind of an insane revisionist history. Did we forget what happened here? Like, she was basically sexually assaulted by having to change in front of a man. In a locker room, by rule, and she became well-known advocating on behalf of other women that are in the same situation and have to compete against men, which is unsafe, unfair.

Clearly, everyone sees this as a problem. So, I don't know. There's this big expose that was kicked up on Twitter. My Twilight Zone is like, this actually changes nothing. Men still shouldn't be in women's sports. Riley was really courageous for what she did. I'm glad she got paid for advocacy. It's a huge issue. It basically swung the election. And day one, Trump executive order to actually start solving some of this problem. So, yeah, just really bizarre. I can't believe people watch this.

Yeah, good point. You should have. Yeah, it's probably, dude, Unc. Unc. Good one. Coming in with the lingo. Coming in with the lingo. Josh, I'm so glad you joined. It's not the same without you. It was so nice you showed up. It's like, happy Friday, Josh. It just ain't the same without Josh. Everyone knows that. Great show, guys. Go check out Erika's episode of The Deep. Fantastic. It's up on YouTube. If you love John Paul II, you will love this episode.

I was actually very, I mean, you always do a good job, but I was like, oh, that was a He sounds surprised. No, no, no. Hold on. I always expect a good, deep episode from Erika, so don't put words in my mouth. I would never talk bad about you, girl. But this one, I was like, okay, this will be good. I was like, oh, I didn't expect that. I like it. A good turn in there. Yep. It's good.

Yeah. Plot twist. Love a good plot twist. We passed 40,000 subscribers on YouTube. Big milestone for us. Congrats, guys. I have in this office, up on my board, 50,000 subscribers. I wrote it back in July. My goal is 50. Oh, gosh, wow. Yeah, he's pulling it out. Gosh, chill. It's 1230 on a Friday.

So, if you'd like to help us get there, and you're listening on audio, or maybe you found us for the first time, and you stayed to the end, go ahead and subscribe. Subscribe on YouTube, get us to 50,000. That's the max milestone. We do have really exciting upcoming... New content, some new ideas that we're going to be unleashing here soon, so stay tuned to that. Buckle up for Advent. Buckle up. It's just onward and upward here with the Luke cast with Catholic Votes.

So, thank you to all of our champions that support us, CatholicVote.org slash champions, where you can join them, only possible with your support. So, we're super grateful for the generous support of our champions, and we're going to end with our prayer today. We're going to put it in the description, but we'll start. In the name of the Father, Son, Holy Spirit, Amen.

O God, from whose hands cometh the peace the world cannot give, give us the light to see that peace is the work of justice, and the concord of all nations, the fruit of obedience to thy law and thy commandments, may we seek not so much to be consoled as to console, to be understood as to understand, to be loved. That in pardoning, we may be pardoned, and in giving, we may receive. We pray for our president, for our Congress, for our homes, our people, our children, our brokenhearted, that we may be reverent in the use of freedom, just in the exercise of power, generous in the protection of weakness, merciful to those who have been our enemies, not for our worthiness, but because of thy tender mercy.

Hear our prayer. That we may so pass through things temporal as to not lose the things eternal. O Christ Jesus, our Lord. Amen. St. Thomas More, St. Fidelis, Our Lady Guadalupe, pray for us. That was from Monsignor Fulton Sheen, the Catholic Hour, published in 1946. And that advice still rings true. Great show, guys. We'll catch you on Monday. Have a great weekend, and we'll see you there. Peace.