Trump Extends Ceasefire as Iran Skips Talks, VA Dems Massive Redistricting Win, And Sodom is Back

And we're live. Welcome back to the LOOPcast. It's Tom, Erika, and Josh. I've returned from my... My walk in the wilderness. Welcome back. An amazing trip to California, filming a couple things for Time Across America. It's just a real blessing, but I miss Josh and Erika, okay? I miss Josh and Erika. I miss hanging out with you guys. I miss going through the news. I miss figuring it out. There wasn't like a high-profile beef between the Pope and the President while I was out, right?

Yeah, you missed a few things. Let's just put it that way. We'll leave it at that. You missed a little. Okay, I'm trying my best to catch up. I hear that it was a little bit of a rush. I'm trying my best to catch up. I'm trying my best to catch up. Fun time. We were so bored. Oh, man. Well, I am happy to be back regardless, and we got tons of stuff to talk about today. I also just shout out, I met just the sweetest Loopcaster, actually in the cry room at Mass last Sunday.

I was back in Michigan. Shout out to her. She had a beautiful family, two young boys, and we were teaching some. Some virtues, hopefully, of sharing, of, you know, taking, you know, that was tough. That's what it's all about. Trying to pay attention. So, yeah, it was just cool to get out and meet some different people that, no Catholic voter, no Lucas, and, of course, just beautiful families, and working hard, and raising the next generation, so shout out to her.

But, today, on today's show, we had a lot happen, and domestically, of course, Virginia had a big referendum last night. Their ballot measure passed by a very small margin. And it has completely reshaped the congressional map, something I wish that we would have been able to spend a little bit more time focusing on in the country, but unfortunately, we are caught up in this Iran war situation. We are at day 53. Are we calling it a war now, or is it officially a war?

Yeah, it is a war. Okay, just checking. 53, I mean, I think we are getting there. So, we got, there are supposed to be talks. Talks didn't happen. Iran said no thanks, and now we are kind of at an indefinite ceasefire, so we got the details there. Zeal News has been doing a great job tracking that. And then we also had the SPLC has now been indicted by a jury for funding white nationalist groups, I think. Josh has got a big smile on his face.

Is this like you throw out a meme, like we're all shocked? I mean, I'm even wearing a brown shirt for the Southern Poverty Law Center today. Oh, no. That's so bad. The energy on this show is explosive. We're bad. There wasn't enough racism in the United States. They had to go out and find some and pay people to be racist so they could campaign against them. Love it.

Yeah, and also, hey, shout out to Switcher Mike. Oh, is my mic in the wrong thing? So, shout out to the other Tom. Yes, it is on the wrong mic. Let me see. He's back. He's back. We're back. Shout out to the more handsome Tom filling in for me. He's the man. I know we went through some tech issues, but it's always great to hear from him, and yeah, there we go. Mic should be fixed. Ready to rock. I say we get right into it, but of course, before we do that.

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Switch to Charity Mobile and buy the way you believe. To get started, visit charitymobile.com. And use promo code LOOPcast. That is tradingmobile.com, promo code LOOPcast. Excuse me. Thank you, Trading Mobile, for sponsoring today's episode. So, we get into it, shall we? So, of course, we've got a great roundup here of what happened last night. There's a lot of speculation. J.D. Vance was on the tarmac, ready to go, and did not end up going anywhere. It looks like Iran did skip out on these talks.

I believe it was supposed to happen through Pakistan, and it did not. Vance's planned trip to Islamabad, Pakistan for a second round of U.S. Iran talks had been delayed indefinitely. According to a White House official, Vance had been expected to lead U.S. delegations. A delegation at a negotiation scheduled for April 21st, but remained in Washington, where he met with the President, Special Envoy Steve Witkoff, and Trump Advisor Jared Kushner to discuss next steps. A White House official cited by Axios reportedly said that the reason Vance's departure was postponed was that Iran had not responded to the latest U.S.

proposals or formally confirmed it would send a delegation. Iran has also conditioned further talks on the U.S. easing its naval blockade of Iranian ports, a demand Trump has rejected. Iran's state news agency said April 20th that the nation would not send a delegation and saw no prospect of participating in the talks. Iranian foreign ministry spokesman blamed the collapse of negotiations on what he called the contradictory messages, contradictory behaviors, and unacceptable actions of the American side. Iran said also they would not negotiate under pressure.

We do not accept negotiations under the shadow of threat. Prepare to reveal new cards on the battlefield. No second round of talks had been scheduled. Ceasefire now extended with no new end date. I believe Trump himself said, based on the fact that the government of Iran is seriously fractured, not unexpectedly so, and upon the request of Field Marshal and Prime Minister of Pakistan, we have been asked to hold our attack on the country of Iran until such time as their leaders and representatives can come up with a unified proposal.

I have therefore directed our military to continue the blockade and in all other respects remain ready and able. And will, therefore, extend the ceasefire until such time as their proposal is submitted and discussions are concluded one way or another.

That is where we are at. I leave it to you. How are we feeling? Well, I mean, I would love to have, you know, peace talks continue in Islamabad, which I am surprised they don't have it named Islamagood, but I guess that is...

The way they were rolling Pakistan. Is that a dad joke? That's how we're starting? All right. It's going to be a long show. The question is, like, how long is this indefinite, like, kind of, you know, dance going to work where we don't commit to ground troops and we don't invade the country? I certainly don't want that to happen. But we continue a blockade, and we do this kind of back and forth. What is the endgame? That is, I guess, my biggest thought here.

That is the question I am left with. Yeah, and I think that has been the theme throughout this conflict, war, whatever we are going to call it, that one of the biggest objections to when we went in was that the administration, from the get-go, had a really hard time articulating. What the goals were, and what was the final thing that pushed us over the edge? And I think one thing that's been consistent is, like, Trump really does not, he wants a commitment that there will be no new uranium enrichment, so that's been sort of consistent, but also throwing in things like regime alteration, regime change, maybe yes, maybe no, ground tubes, maybe, we're ready, you know, we're going to bomb you into oblivion, we're not going to bomb you, we're doing a ceasefire, because peace.

And that That's been the consistent issue, is that... In addition to fog of war, we have the fog of the Trump Twitter account, and then we have the reality, and I believe, Trump, on this one, that the Iranian regime is so fractured now that we don't even know who we would make some kind of end with, right? After the first round of peace talks in Islamabad, J.D. Vance comes back, and the Iranian Republican So, the military starts tweeting about questions about the mental capabilities of the two Iranian foreign ministers who had gone to negotiate with him.

They're like, these mentally incompetent men don't speak for the IRGC. So, you clearly have this massive fracturing of the Iranian leadership also. So, the whole thing, I just become What are we in week seven now? Trump has been saying week four or five, this would have been wrapped up. It's becoming even more impossible and stalemate-y to me, which when we're talking 20% of the world's oil supply is under lock and key.

Not good. Well, which is why I think all the people in the beginning, they weren't saying, don't do this because they're pro-Iranian regime or whatever. They were saying it for this exact purpose. You're going to get yourself in a quagmire you can't get out of. You're going to upset the global economy. And I think most importantly, like we're going to talk about in Virginia, you're going to lose focus on the domestic issues that you said you would run on. And now all of the news that is, even like today's loop, right?

The top story is the Iran wrap-up, but Virginia just... Pick up a 10-to-1 map, and this is a state that was read before, and you saw the promises from Virginia. I mean, they're not coming to play softball, so this is where I meet, because I actually have real moral concerns, and so with the Pope message, I'm definitely more sympathetic to that, because, well, there's strategy blunders. There's also moral concerns of war that just happen whenever you go to war. It doesn't matter what you do, but strategically thinking.

Even the idea of assassinating the leaders of a country. That, of course, makes it harder to negotiate. That would be a good strategy if you wanted to send this country into a civil war, a bloody civil war, regime change, which we all, in the beginning, thought, no more regime change wars, but it seemed like that was the approach. And now, we're kind of surprised that we can't negotiate with anyone or that the IRGC has different aims than, say, the prime minister or other people.

Well, yeah, we killed all the leadership, all the people that would come to the table and potentially do something here. So, that was maybe a strategic blunder. Right now, Iran can wait us out. I still think the best possible scenario, and maybe this will happen, Trump comes up and says, We weakened their... We destroyed their Navy. We destroyed their Air Force. They're much less likely to get a nuclear bomb. We've accomplished all these ends that we wanted to come in and do, and we're going to leave.

Now, it's the problem of what's going on. It's unfortunate. Just walk away. Claim victory. Walk away. Get back home. Refocus. I just don't even know at this point. We've ruined so many relationships, I think, with the GCC and European nations now and Asian countries. I mean, moving THAAD missiles. That's just a trap we can't get out of, and I think, unfortunately, this was all very predictable and just a major shot in the foot to Trump after a few shots in the foot.

I think the worst thing that came out of this, too, among many other things, of course, the loss of life being the worst, was his tweet saying, I think I was out for this. I'm going to destroy an entire civilization. Praise Allah. So, you mocked a world religion.

You threatened to nuke a country, essentially, and you're so erratic with your messaging that we can't even get it straight. Any type of moral clarity or precision, I just think now it's like, okay, everyone thinks you're crazy. No one trusts you. Americans actually looking at his true socials, his messages. How can you even discern a pattern of strategic thought when he changes it every, on the hour almost? And so, I think a lot of people have really lost. Any type of trust or faith in our own leadership at this point, in particular Trump, and so we're even deep.

That's like another own goal that you didn't need to have. For people that did have trust in him before, now we're kind of like, you know. Well, I mean, some of this, yes, some of this, no, though. I mean, like, obviously, we had a great objection to him making that comment about bombing a civilization into nothingness or whatever, and we called him out on it. But in general, like. You know, we obviously would love to know that this war is being executed for, you know, moral clarity, like a real purpose, like that we're justified in doing it.

Like, is it taking out the nukes? Whatever. Tell us why. Donald Trump, in general, doesn't like to show his cards, and this has suited him well during most of his political career. It's not like he's infallible, so he makes mistakes, and this might be a whopper of one. Who knows? We'll see, but that's kind of why he, you know, like the kind of thing that we normally typically would want, especially with regards to a war.

Moral clarity, message clarity, let us know why we're doing this and why it's justified, runs counter to so much of what has made Donald Trump very successful over the last, you know, not just political career, but his business career. Like, in his mind, it's better for him to be all over the place and unpredictable, and then hopefully it ushers into something that he claims that was what he wanted all at the beginning, you know.

Well, and I think that it served well in the first term where we had no new foreign wars, right? That was one of the, during the whole 2024 campaign, we would bring that up repeatedly as a reason to vote for him, is that he was the only president in the last 20 years to successfully avoid foreign entanglements in that way. And I think one of the ways that he did that is precisely what you just described, Josh, that that's how he's operated, like art of the deal.

When it comes to everything, and I think that what we're seeing now is that when he does pull the trigger, it is... Contrary to, it's inimical to, I don't know how many, I could be a thesaurus about it, but it does not serve either his interests politically or the country's interests in terms of trusting, like rebuilding trust in our institution, specifically the presidency at all.

So, again, it's... Unless. Well, so one more thought, like you can't, you can keep saying things like, well, Trump has, not you, Josh, but like in general commentators are like, well, Trump's always been in a war. An Iran hawk, and MAG has always been anti-war. You can keep saying these things, but the reality is, pragmatically, this is the situation that we are in. We don't have a definite end goal, and the longer that he kicks it down the road, the worse things seem to go domestically.

I was just looking, okay, one thought, too. I just pulled up this poll this morning. This is the University of Michigan poll from the, let's see, it's all the way at the bottom of this segment, Tom. This is just shocking to me. So, this is the University of Michigan Consumer Sentiment Index. This just came out. It fell to 47.6 this month. That is the lowest reading in the 70-year history. And I was like, it couldn't possibly be lower than COVID. It is.

It's lower. And yeah, the one that you're showing there is the spike in concerns for personal finances, and they have just surged now, higher than under Biden, higher than COVID. So, I think that this is sort of like a pulse on the American. People, and what we're seeing in Iran is that we seem distracted, like the people on top don't seem to be looking at this. I think it's almost worse than distracted, because it's making the problem worse. Unless you believe in the 4D narrative of Professor Zhang, and this is all actually about China, and we're choke points in the different places.

It'll all be fine. This is a resources battle. Who knows? I don't know. He's been right on some things, but in the short term, this is throwing the global economy in absolute chaos, reshuffling all of our alliances, and if oil doesn't affect us now, it's going to affect consumers through trade. Tariffs didn't work. That's all coming back. Well, I mean, higher price for oil makes everything more expensive. Yeah, right. That was the point that I was trying to make. Yeah. So, it seems it's not just a distraction.

It's actually making it worse, and I think the firewall that really protected Trump, well, two things. One, he ran on an American sentiment of anger at the George Bushes of the world, the neocons of the world, for getting us involved in these type of foreign entanglements. It was just obvious all over his running, and he was very simple on message. We're going to get out of that. We're going to make America great again. We're going to get the economy going. We're going to be proud of what we do, and we're going to get globalists out of the country, out of the national strategy, and it worked, and I think the firewall that protected him was the economy, but because this, as you're seeing, is the sentiment underlying all of the distraction right now, that firewall is breaking, and I think you see that in his approval numbers now because of the disruptions with AI, the college graduate.

Employment numbers are shockingly high. Unemployment numbers are shockingly high. Young people are having a really hard time getting... Because everyone's holding their gunpowder for what's going to come with AI or whatever, or market uncertainty with a global war. I mean, it's just a horrible combination of a lot of different things.

It's not just an online phenomenon. I mean, this is something when I talk to people in person, everyone is feeling this stress. It's tangible. I've not had one person I've talked to in person be like, yep, this is going really well in Iran right now, even if they understand certain principles of it. And I had an interesting, so Bishop Barron had a tweet, and I'm actually curious, Josh, on your perspective on it. This is about kind of the Pope Leo and Trump beef.

I followed a little bit. You guys were closer in it. I read the attacks from Trump. They were ridiculous and self-centered. I think Pope Leo just said, please don't hit civilian infrastructure, and peace is preferable, and that was enough to set this off, and I don't know where the narrative got spun all different ways, David Axelrod, whatever, but I think the principle of this is kind of interesting to discuss, so here we go from Richard Barron.

There is a way past the absurd and deeply divisive war between the President and the Pope, which has been enthusiastically ginned up by the press, and it is indicated in the Catechism of the Catholic Church, paragraph 2309 to be precise, after laying out the various criteria for determining a just war, proportionality, last resort, declaration by competent authority, and reasonable hope of success, etc. The Catechism points out that the evaluation of these conditions for moral legitimacy belongs to the prudential judgment of those who have responsibility for the common good.

The assumption is that just war principles function, to use the technical term, as heuristic devices designed to, sorry, is that, yeah, heuristic, designed to guide the practical decision-making of those civil authorities who have to adjudicate matters of war and peace. The role of the church, therefore, is to call for peace and to urge that any conflict be strictly circumscribed by the moral constraints of the just war criteria, but it is not the role of the church to evaluate whether a particular war is just or unjust.

That appraisal belongs to the civil authorities who, one presumes, have requisite knowledge of conditions on the ground. So, is the war in question truly the last resort? Is there really a balance between good to be attained and destruction caused by war? Are combatants and non-combatants being properly distinguished in the waging of the conflict? Et cetera, et cetera.

So, then we have the posing of those questions. Indeed, the insistence upon their moral relevance belongs rightly to the church, but the answering of them belongs to civil authorities. The Pope has said on numerous occasions that he is not a politician, and that his role is not the determination of any nation's foreign policy, but he has just as clearly said that he would continue to speak for peace and for moral constraint. In making both of these claims, he's ...operating perfectly within the framework of 2309 of the Catechism.

If we understand that the Pope and the President have qualitatively different roles to play in the determination of moral action in regard to war, we can, I hope, extricate ourselves from the completely unhelpful narrative of Pope v. President.

Josh, how do you feel about this? I agree with like 99% of that, like basically the running sentiment. Is that the Church outlines the principles, and it's up for civil authorities to be restrained by these principles so that you don't create an unjust war, and that I do think bishops and the Pope should be careful to not declare something to be unjust, but that's where I differ, though, a little bit with Bishop Barron, because That doesn't mean that a bishop or the pope cannot declare it unjust.

It should mean that they should be very careful, because it might appear to be unjust based on certain things, but then there might be, that's I think what Bishop Barron is getting at, there might be additional information. There might be top secret that would actually alter the calculations of whether or not the war would be justified. So, that's, I think, what Bishop Barron is saying. The only thing I would add as a caveat to that would be, it's sort of like how the church looks at private revelations.

So, imagine you have a private revelation, and, oh, Mary's speaking to me and saying all these things. The church, in her wisdom, doesn't immediately jump out and say, that's bogus. The church will normally say, well, I mean, here's the ways we determine whether or not that might be true, but if suddenly, oh, and by the way, Mary said it's not a trinity, she's part of a four thing, then the church will go, okay, yeah, that's obviously not true. So, there can be times where the church can intercede.

So, in other words, if there was a war going on, pick two countries, between North Korea and South Korea, you know, and also North Korea. Nukes, Seoul, South Korea, like the civilian population. The Pope would be like, yeah, that's. Absolutely unjust. What are you talking about? That's totally unjust. So, you can declare something unjust, but I generally agree with Bishop Barron's sentiment that you need to be careful about getting ahead of your skis. Outline the principles. You can make strong suggestions that you think something might be unjust, but unless you're dead certain, it's best to be careful, because there might be information you might not know about.

I'm not trying to... Give cover for Trump on this. Yeah, no, I appreciate your perspective, actually, and Erika, before I get to you, I think the one, and you brought up the good example, because, but the answering of them belongs to civil authorities. So, in your case, civil authorities decide that it is totally just to nuke, seal, you know, their soul or whatever. Then it would be like, okay, well, we are just going to leave that now to, we are just going to leave that now to their devices.

Yes, Father? Ryan Burt's on the line? Let me pick something up for you. Before I get to you, Erika, I think that the... The issue that I may be having, again, I think I generally agree, but I'm concerned at the, it almost feels in somewhat an attempt to exonerate civil authorities from, like, the Pope commenting on anything actually happening now. And I don't think we would accept that when it comes to abortion or euthanasia or gender mutilation.

That's not what Bishop Barron's getting at here. I don't think so at all. No. No, I think Bishop Barron was trying to say, you know, the church outlines the principles for which we examine whether a war is just or not, and that ultimately the decision has to be made by civil authorities who have more access to the information. And like I 99% agree with that. You know, that is what I am saying. The decisions to the moral authorities. But people were saying the Pope should not speak at all.

Some people are saying that, but not Bishop Barron. I don't think he said that in that post, though. Yeah. Also, to say Pope Leo did not say this war is unjust. I believe he said some people say it's unjust. It's kind of the same thing. We don't want to accuse people of what they're not saying. But can you see how that framework... People are wanting to assume that he's saying that, so Bishop Barron's saying he didn't. Hello, this is what he's getting at.

I don't think Bishop Barron's trying to correct the Pope. I think he's trying to correct the misinterpretation. And Pope Leo has spoken out several times about how there are people trying to adopt narratives. For him on stuff like, you know, it's like I gave a speech in Cameroon on peace. It had been written months ago. I mean, it's like, hello, I'm not trying to throw shade on Trump in doing this speech, you know, like, he didn't say anything like that, obviously.

The mainstream media was definitely like following the whole Africa trip with the constant, the wrong heuristic, to use Bishop Barron's, to use Bishop Barron's very academic term, because they would interpret every homily that the Pope has been giving in Africa as like a And, like, the world does not, like, the Pope does not revolve around America and Trump. And that's what he essentially said on that airplane. He's like, uh. That tree's like, he was made Pope because I'm president was insane.

Well, this Pope has much more clarity. Like, if he wanted to take a moment in Cameroon and speak to what President Trump's doing, he would have every ability to do so. And he would make that point clear for everybody. This Pope. Has a lot of clarity, which is welcome. Yes. Appreciate it.

Maybe other world leaders could take it in from the Pope's clarity. Yeah, because I was looking back, so I was trying to look back on other Popes, like their perspective more, because maybe I just want to get past, I think that, of course, the media narrative around this is like a war is kind of ridiculous, but the idea of a Pope commenting on wars or, you know, atrocities or evils of their day, in particular, I got Cardinal Ratzinger on the Iraq War, the concept of a, quote, preventative war does not appear in the Catechism of the Catholic Church.

It was right to resist the war and its threats of destruction. It should never be the responsibility of just one nation to make decisions for the world. Given the new weapons that make possible destructions that go beyond the combatant groups, today we should be asking ourselves if it is still licit to admit the very existence of, quote, just war. So, it's not like, you know, popes have not weighed in on this or serious intellectuals in the church have. Yeah, and just to be really clear on that quote, so that was before he was pope and he was commenting on questions about John Paul II.

Stance on the Iraq War. And that last line that you quoted, though, where he's like, is there even an existence of just war? That's just, some people take that as Benedict said, there's no such thing as a just war anymore. Not actually what was going on. I would disagree with that. He was speculating, yeah. Just to be really clear, though, because people kind of like took that post and went crazy in the online world. It's like, look, there's no such thing as a just war anymore, which.

Again, it is an argument, given... I echo Michael Knowles. I want the Pope to speak out on moral issues of the day, and of course, the decision whether or not to wage war is a moral question. I mean, how could it not be? I want the Pope to talk about abortion, pornography, marriage, religious liberty, war. Usury, you know, unemployment. I don't think unemployment is the number one issue of Pope Francis, you know, the previous Pope thought so.

It's not nothing. It is an important issue. And I want the President of the United States to be able to speak about the impact of religion on people's lives. I mean, like, this idea that we're supposed to have a total separation here, and one can't speak of the other. Like, no, that is totally against Western civilization. Yes. But now, and so I thought Pope John Paul II speaking out against the Iraq war was a good thing, and I was not opposed to the war at the time.

I mean, I'm honest. I mean, I wasn't outspoken about it, but I supported the war at the time, and I now have come to regret it. I'm like, that was a bad decision. I wish we had, as a country, had not done it. And so, I think it's good to have Popes to speak out and to talk about these issues, to make us think twice. It can be very valuable.

Yeah. Speaking of Christians around the world, right before we get into Virginia, this was a massive story in Zeal, a massive story around the world. There's a video confirmed by the IDF of an Israeli soldier desecrating a crucifix in a Lebanese village. I mean, it's really hard to look at this picture. This came out on a Sunday.

You know, before we even get to any of the response or anything, this is completely disgusting, blasphemous, unacceptable from anyone. Ally status, non-ally status, really doesn't matter. Really, I mean, send shockwaves around. You get a very quick response from Benjamin Netanyahu, as the Jewish state Israel cherishes and upholds the Jewish values of all tolerance and mutual respect between Jews and worshipers of all faiths, all religions flourish in our land, and we view members of all faiths as equal, building our society and religion.

Yesterday, like the overwhelming majority of Israelis, I was stunned and saddened to learn that an IDF soldier damaged a Catholic religious icon in southern Lebanon. I condemn the act in the strongest terms. Military authorities are conducting a criminal probe into the matter. And we'll take appropriately harsh disciplinary action against the offender. So, while Christians are being slaughtered in Syria and Lebanon by Muslims, the Christian population in Israel thrives on like anywhere else in the Middle East. Israel is the only country in the region that the Christian population and standard of living is growing.

Florida. Yeah, I was like, okay. I almost couldn't even get through all that with a straight face, but I appreciate it, Josh. But I appreciate that the IDF went ahead and rebuilt it, so. They rebuilt it. They punished the soldiers. I think they put one in like 30 days. Both of them are in 30 days detainment, and they were removed. ...permanently from combat responsibilities, so there was swift action taken. And they replaced it. Again, it's another unforced error here from Israel that this cult...

Well, not unforced, but... Can we get into it? It's not. Sorry, go ahead, Josh. Go, Josh. I mean, you're saying it's an unforced error by Israel. It's a soldier that did something really stupid, yes? Yeah, it's a soldier.

Yeah, and I think someone said it speaks to the lack of formation among the soldiers. So, again, I'm glad that they took swift action. That was good. Unfortunately, it's a pattern in certain segments of Israeli society where they spit on clerics in the country. They block the patriarch from celebrating mass. I mean… I'm not saying this is all of it, but I think it's kind of ridiculous for people to be like, well, don't take this instance and look into other instances.

Well, you can, but I have a lot of members of the military in my family, and they were all saddened and embarrassed by what U.S. troops had done at Abu Dhabi. For sure. A grave or something? Abu Dhabi. Yeah.

Whatever it was. I forget the name of it. They were taking photos and mocking prisoners. I don't care if they're terrorists. That's just not acceptable behavior. I'm glad there was a swift response, and there better be more appropriate tolerance of Christians in Israel.

Yeah, I guess the bigger problem to me is that that stood in Lebanon before it was invaded and now occupied by the Israelis, and that crucifix was not destroyed in this terrible Muslim society or whatever. It is actually an interesting setup in Lebanon where they have members of parliament be Catholic and then Muslim, and then, Selene, you can help me out on the third one, but I forget the name of that style of government, but it is very interesting. Of course, there is a problem with Hezbollah, and there's people.

In Lebanon that don't like Hezbollah and what's going on, but they occupy more of Lebanon right now than Russia occupies of Ukraine, and that has all happened kind of without anyone paying attention. There's also daily West Bank violence, like there was a last night, a dozen Israeli settlers set a Palestinian home on fire surrounding the house to prevent the family from escaping and hurling rocks as it burned. Eight people were injured, including a one-year-old baby. I mean, it's almost like Headlines that are so hard to even...

Read. So, the crucifix thing, like, yes, it was blasphemous, yes, I'm glad it was taken care of, but to me, the bigger tragedy is all of the deaths and injuries in Lebanon from bombing, civilian infrastructure, the death and continued abuse of Christian Palestinians, or Palestinians in general. Where's the apology for that? Exactly. I would love to get, you know, not just an apology, the biggest problem is America funds it. I mean, we are giving Israel weapons to go do this kind of thing, and it's tacitly supported by the Knesset.

So, I've even seen, you know, people that are very pro-Israel in American media or whatever saying, the settler stuff's got to stop. And by stuff, I mean... Is illegal Israeli settlers going, lighting homes on fire, destroying properties, killing people, and they're getting, you know, supported and defended by these Israeli soldiers. So, kind of another consequence of this war, unfortunately, is Lebanon's now been invaded. It's like another reason to probably not light the Middle East on fire to allow. The Greater Israel Project to continue, and this type of aggression.

I mean, these are clearly, unfortunately, the people we're dealing with, I think back to Netanyahu saying, like, there's no difference between Genghis Khan and Jesus, doing the World Iran quote, because Genghis Khan wins. It's like, okay, clearly, there's a difference in thought process, Christianity in America here. But unfortunately, it doesn't seem like it, because America is so lockstep with this. It should stop. This could stop tomorrow. I don't know why. Yeah, and I think there were some signs of hope that there's starting to be a crack, even in the Trump administration, starting, because last week we had, for the first time, we actually had Israeli and Lebanese leadership.

Marco Rubio gets them together, and there have been some motions towards, there's like a ceasefire going on, and in spite of the fact that Israel said, oh, Lebanon's not part of the ceasefire with Iran. The Trump administration seems to be putting on the screws a little bit that you have to tone it back. So, there are some signs of motion there. I think maybe members of the administration are watching the polls in America and seeing the shocking decline in support for Israel over here.

That might be part of it, but yeah, it has to be. We have to have more. It improved our negotiation stature with Iran and improved those. Yeah, more of that. I just, yeah, that needs to stop. I mean, we're not, I saw Mike Huckabee got recalled, whatever that means. He's on his way back to Washington for urgent White House consultations, according to open source intel. So, we'll see what happens there.

I think he was talking trash to another country. I think it was Hungary. Hungary's elections. I think you guys might have covered it. He said he would arrest the next one on the out. We can dream. The labor secretary is the latest one. That was horrible.

And I'd love to take care of this insider trading. I don't know if we talked about this, but basically, every two seconds, Trump's like, we won, oil's back, or the straight's open, and then markets shoot up, and there's insane trade volume like 15 minutes before it goes public.

And now we're at like five or six times of this happening, and it's the same account on, I think it was like Polymarket or something. It's the same account. They're not even changing it. That's how brazen it is. Would love that to get taken care of. It's just hard to watch all this.

Okay, before we get into the next one. Uh, mailbox. If you guys have questions, LOOPcast at CatholicVote.org. We want to answer your questions, okay? We do. You know, whatever it is. Listen, we're in unprecedented times, guys. We're in a brand new era. No, I keep laughing because it's like, I can't believe the stuff that I'm talking about. I would have never imagined. Politics moves so fast. The issues change so fast. I would have never imagined being in this position, but here we are.

So, send us your questions. You got them. We'll answer them. I would love to hear from you. LOOPcast at CatholicVote.org. And... We have Zeal for America 250, June 13th, okay? We got tickets. You guys can buy them. We will all be there. It is a historic rally in, it's La Crosse, Wisconsin, right? Come hang out with us. You betcha. And Michael Knowles. We get to hang out with Short King again, so come be part of the party. It's going to be great.

Short Kings, man. Short Kings rise up. So, yeah. Saturday, June 13th. It's going to be awesome to set up the La Crosse Center. If people have not been there... So, I actually have not been there, but my wife has and loves it. There's the relic of true cross of Christ. There'll be confession. There'll be prayer for the renewal of our nation. So, we're not playing around, okay? We're actually Catholic, and this will be a very Catholic event, so it's going to be great.

Ronald Burke is going to be there. Kelsey is going to be there. Joe Lombardi is going to be there. Michael knows, as you said. I don't know this guy, but I'll start listening to him. Bradley Banning. Awesome. Father Ambrose from the Norma Teen Boys. Look who it is! Josh Mercer is going to be here. No way. Come on, man. It's going to be an event. Oh, wait. We're going to be there. I didn't know I was on that. All right, now.

Who got top billing of the three of us, though? That's so funny. Oh, yeah, Dave Stotts. Oh, and Cecilia, of course. Cecilia Pappas' Flourish is awesome. Go check it out. But so many people have reached out to me about the Steubenville doc. Did you guys see that? Yeah, so good. Dude. Forgotten America. Insane. Insane. It was so good. So many people talked to me about this and how good it was, how much they loved it. Yeah, check it out on Zeal.

It's free, and it's amazing. Talk about a shot in the arm. I love, I haven't seen every episode of Forgotten USA, but the one on North Carolina, the one on, you know, the floods were there, the one on Steubenville. Such a great, great.

Program. We're cooking on Zeal, man. We're cooking. And if you want to see me be a garbage man for a day and a port-a-potty technician, it's Tuesday. It's dropping. Tuesday. I've gone through the footage. Do not eat your lunch while you watch it. Do not eat your lunch. Some of the noises were special, but listen. I think the direct quote from the guys working with, like, if it's disgusting, I'll do it because There's money in poop. That is such a bar.

I can't believe that. There's money in poop. 22-year-old kid, didn't go to college, started a port-a-potty business. Oh, it's so cool. He's got a great story. So, I'm looking forward to sharing that with you guys. It's coming out Tuesday. I've been working hard editing it.

Okay, on to B Block. Yeah, here we go. Back in the U.S.A. Back in the U.S.A. Erika, I had you on this one. What's going on here? Yeah, so last night, sad to say, Virginia voters approved the sweeping... This redistricting referendum paves the way for a new congressional map that will most likely give Democrats a 10-to-1 advantage in congressional representation. Right now, it's 6-5. It's going to go 10-1. Reminder, what you see on your screen right now is that in the 2024 election, most of Virginia swung towards Donald Trump.

I think he lost the state by only six points, so it is truly a purple state. The plan that just got voted through last night turns it blue in terms of congressional representation. So, it was 82% of the vote was counted, and they called it over at the AP. The yes side led with 50.3% of the vote. So narrow. So, so narrow. So, this has been a massive effort from the Democrats. Going back to last year, we had Hakeem Jeffries, the minority leader in the House.

Is he leader? Yes. And he said, in November, we're going to win 10 congressional seats in Virginia and take back control of the House of Representatives. We had Obama campaigning for this. Yeah, I saw that. Interestingly enough, Abigail Spanberger, the governor, she campaigned saying that she had no interest. In redistricting. Completely changed her tune as soon as... What? Politicians who lie. What? I don't know. It's shocking. Shocking. Wait, Erika, can I just start with a clarification of, like, I almost feel, anytime I hear the word redistricting or gerrymandering, my brain kind of shuts off because it sounds boring.

What does this do? And I think the baseline is important. Wasn't it drawn before where it was kind of almost the fairest map in the nation? It was the fairest map in the nation. Yeah, I'm going to let Josh cook on this one because he can explain it better. The fact of the matter is voters in Virginia went to the polls in 2022, I believe it was, and they voted for an amendment to set up a commission to draw fair maps.

Now, a lot of times, these commissions end up being shadowed by just a group of Democrats, like California, so they are not fair at all. But at least, give them credit, in Virginia, they came up with a map that was fairly representative. I mean, like, Kamala Harris got...

You know, 54% of the vote, so it's not crazy that it would be a 6-5 split for the Democrats and some of the House seats for 11 seats. But now, they're like, wait a minute now, let's take Northern Virginia and splice it like five fingers and have them all reach out like tentacles all over the entire Commonwealth.

It's ridiculous, and it's like, you know, okay. And they're like, well, we're just doing this because Texas did it. Really? Republicans in Texas had made a map that had expanded the number of Republican districts in Texas, but of course, Texas didn't go completely to the wall. I mean, Texas could have tried to make it like 35 to 2 or something like that. They didn't go total maximalist.

And that's not just me saying it's independent people, but yes, they did do it to increase seats. But it started this mid-decade redistricting, redrawing the lines to try to gain advantage. The bout of it started with New York. This was Kathy Hochul and her decision to try to smoke out four seats for the Democratic Party and kick Republicans out. So, here we are, you know, and I think we're just going to have this ratchet up further. Like, Indiana, Republicans in Indiana, they said, well, We don't want to up this, you know, keep doing this, ratcheting up this stuff.

We got to do what's right and play the moral high ground. Yeah. And Trump's like, what are you, an idiot? Two questions. Well, and last week, Ron DeSantis said, oh, nice balloons, Tom. Last week, Ron DeSantis was like, no, we're not going to push this in Florida. We're going to do that. Well, I think that's going to change. No, no, he said we would delay it to see what the voters in Virginia do. Delay it, see what Virginia does. Exactly, yeah.

And now the special session is starting next week in Florida. You know, Republicans are like. Oh, that's the game you want to play in Virginia. So, Josh, can I just dumb it down here real quick? Basically, Virginians went to the ballot, and, you know, Berrio came out, and he said, you should do this. This is for, I don't even, did they even go under the veneer of fairness or whatever? Did you call him Berrio? Yeah, yeah, yeah, of course. Okay. Legendary campaigner.

Barack Obama. Barack Hussein Obama. So, they were like, okay, you're going to go, and. The real thing that would happen is we're going to redraw 10-1 in a ridiculous fashion to make sure that we get way more Democratic seats, even in areas that are red. So, here's the reading. If I'm just a guy who wants to do my civic duty, and I'm just reading through, maybe wasn't paying too much attention, this is what I would have read for that to happen, okay?

Question. Should the Constitution of Virginia be amended to allow the General Assembly to temporarily adopt New congressional districts to restore fairness in the upcoming elections, while ensuring Virginia's standard redistricting process resumes for all future redistricting after the 2030 census. Yes or no?

See, this makes me so angry anyway, on its face, the way this was framed. The way it's framed. Are you in favor of fairness? Yeah, again. To restore fairness in the upcoming elections. Okay. Yeah. At least California, because California voted on this just a few months ago. California didn't try to pretend like it was for restoring fairness. So, we just want to temporarily change the Constitution, give the legislature the ability to draw new maps because of what's going on with redistricting around the country.

California, ironically, more honest. Virginia, closer to the Beltway in Washington, D.C., less honest. Go figure, right? So, I actually looked into this, because Tom had asked, oh, well, who gets to decide? Who writes these things? That is crazy. Who writes these things? Because this is like Orwellian language here to try. It is clearly meant to deceive uninformed voters. So, it turns out that it is the Virginia General Assembly that drafts the amendment itself, and lawmakers determine the wording that is going to be presented to the voters, and with a Democrat majority in the Virginia legislature, This is the language that we get.

So, back in January, though, the GOP actually put up a fight about this wording. So, Representative Delron Williams, he's a Republican in Virginia. He was trying to debate it on the floor, but the Dems actually voted him down and prevented them from bringing this up. A little bit of coverage happened in local media at the time. The Democrats were arguing that using the term fairness is, quote, appropriate in the face of President Trump's election. unprecedented effort to encourage Republican states to rig their elections in order for the GOP to hold on to power in Congress, of course, referring to the Texas redistricting.

And then someone asked, one of the Republicans asked, well, how does restoring, quote, fairness in Washington feel to Republicans in Virginia, who will lose all their representation in Congress? The Speaker of the House, Don Scott, he spoke out about the need to prove. ...provide a check on President Trump's seemingly boundless sense of power. He said, quote, this is bigger than Virginia. Virginia is just coming to the rescue. Whereas I'm like, I thought politics in the state were about serving the state first, not like saving some big federal strategy of the Democratic Party.

Now, so here is the thing about this. Talk to me. There is an economist who I met named Donald Boudreau, and he said, when it comes to claims made by politicians, always ask yourself, is it possible for that politician's opponent to make the exact opposite claim?

Okay, now work with me on this. It is like the infield flywheel. It might take a second, okay? We are cooking. We are listening. This is the Don Boudreau. Don Boudreau rule, okay? Okay. If you can't imagine a politician opposing something that another politician said, then it means nothing. Here's the example.

Virginia Democrats say, support this proposal because it's for fairness. Okay. Imagine the opposite of that. No, no, no. Don't support it. ...support this proposal because I believe in fairness. Like, of course, I mean, it's a nonsense word. It doesn't mean anything. Like, if you can't imagine your political opponent saying the exact opposite of you, then you're editorializing complete BS. Oh, you know, like, I'm going to grow the economy. This isn't even editorializing. I want to be against the economy. But this isn't even...

Why should you allow people to editorialize on language that shows up on a ballot to deceive? That's exactly the point, yeah. Yes. I don't even understand. Like, there should be laws against that or something, or there should be a way to actually take it seriously?

This is why we need to have ironclad, pre-existing rules which govern. Our laws, ballot initiatives, so that a court would step in and say, no, no, no, no. You don't get to say your proposal is for restoring fairness. That is for the voters to decide whether or not your plan is restoring fairness or not. What your proposal is trying to do is to override the constitutional amendment that was passed by voters a few years back, and to give the power back to the legislature to draw maps as it sees fit.

That is it. That's exactly what it is, just straight. Adding restoring fairness is a bunch of hooey. Don't include it. That's why we need ironclad rules in place that govern the behavior so that a temporary majority, which is what Democrats have right now, right?

We had a Republican governor in the previous four years. She is just brand new, and the legislature is both very Democrat. You need ironclad rules that prevent a temporary majority from running roughshod over this, and what that ultimately means is, how do we deal with gerrymandering then? How do you prevent gerrymandering? How do you prevent it so that a temporary majority, whether it's Republican or Democrat, can just completely change the map in such a way that it disenfranchises, you know, 45% of the citizens or something like that, or maybe even a majority, just you happen to win one election.

And my good friend, Tim Carney, put together an editorial a few months back, and he came up with some ideas where you could kind of put together and put in place these kind of rules. That would prevent a temporary majority from getting in and just going crazy. He said, ban any redistricting in the middle of the decade. Only do it when you have a census. None of this stuff in 25, 26, where you're changing the maps, end it. He's saying every state should do this.

We could do this on a national level. And then you said, you require the states, as they're drawing the maps, you say that they have to respect existing city and county and town borders, okay? So, you're not taking the city of Baltimore, for example. Yeah, and cutting it up, yep.

Or Fairfax County, the Democrats are just slicing it into four pieces like an apple. Having it run 200 miles to places in Southern Virginia that have nothing to do with Fairfax County. That is interesting. So, that is what you can do. Require the states, so that when someone tries to draw a map, and you take one little piece of, let us say, Baltimore, and extend it 150 miles west, then the other party can sue and say, you are not respecting the rules, and then the courts can overturn it, and then say, nope, yep, you are right, that is wrong, throw it out.

It violated the law, and then you can try to encourage compactness of districts. They're not stretched 150 miles. There are districts that are in North Carolina back in the day that would run on a highway. There was literally no one on that stretch. It would run on a highway for 40 miles, and then it goes over here. Josh, I have a wrench in your plan. Wouldn't that require Congress to actually do something?

Well, first of all, states have the ability to do these kind of gerrymandering rules anyway. They can put these things into place. States. So, Congress. Like, state Congress. They would have to pass something. Each individual state could do something, but... No, no, no. I want to be specific about who would do something. It is not the governor. First of all, what I am saying here is, individual states can enact these reforms anyway, certainly.

But, it would, I think, rise to the point where we should start to have national, you know, like... We're going to have this keep ratcheting up, okay? That's why with this whole thing, there needs to be a standard. The Republicans in Florida have really no incentive to adopt these kind of plans if they only affect Florida and it doesn't affect Virginia. So, that's why I'm very cynical about the way things work in politics, but you could imagine a scenario where Democratic and Republican leaders say, here are these principles, and let's enact them, starting with the next census.

Going forward, this is how we're going to do it, and everyone has to agree on it, and debate it in Congress, and have a vote, and tie all 50 states with the same kind of rules. That would make sense.

Yeah, it would require Congress to do it, and I just think that they benefit from not having to do anything. Isn't that our whole problem? What's happening now is Trump is trying to do everything through executive order, which actually is kind of a bad precedent, because Biden tried to do the same thing, and it didn't work, and everything just goes to return. I understand what you're saying, but first of all, the United States Senate doesn't have, you know, 100 senators have no direct...

they're not they're not affected by redistricting right they have no one because they're elected statewide so this could be a proposal that starts in the senate and if it passes with like you know 80 votes that it gets really hard for you know by members of the house to really say we're not going to go for it i understand that the individual self-interest of republicans in florida and texas is to not have you Rules like this, because then they would have to shed seats, just like Democrats in Virginia wouldn't like these rules because they have to shed seats.

But if everyone realizes that, yes, it's in the current system with no national framework, we have the incentive to maximize the seats for our own party in our own state. But it's better for the country if every state is bound by the same rules so that. California can't go crazy and then affect everybody else.

Dare I say, it actually might be better on an individual level for House members, because there have been House members that have been basically taken out by redistricting. So, if you are a current House member, and you would like to stay in the House and not have the looming threat of redistricting, Basically, ruin whatever your position is now. You could say, yeah, I'd like to lock it in here, or have some type of... What I'm telling you, though, is that there's at least...

There are going to be members of the House right now who got in there only because of gerrymandering rules. That's a good point, yeah. But there are a lot of members of the House that, even if we enacted these rules, they would still be safe. Yeah. And trust me... They're not going to pass laws that's going to nuke every one of them, obviously. They're not that selfless.

But I think you can't come up with a framework here at all, Josh. You're selfless, but not that selfless. Oh, yeah. We've got a bunch of Mother Teresas in Congress right now. One question before we move on, because I know we've got a lot else to get to. I'm seeing a lot of buzz about the RNC getting big time outspent here, which is confusing to me, because I keep seeing so much about them having such a big war chest. Like the Trump team has spent a lot of money on John Cornyn in Texas, right?

Okay, Josh, that is a great question. Why are we spending so much money on John Cornyn in Texas, or we? I mean, the Republican Party. So, okay, sorry, I don't even want to say we, because I don't even consider myself part of what the heck this is going on. If I'm someone that is generally conservative, cares about the family, doesn't want to have rabid leftists around the country, doesn't want to have foreign influence over us, whatever, right? I feel like the vehicle should be, the right should take that mantle.

Maybe the left does, I don't know, but the right should be taking that mantle. They're spending all of their, I think they got outspent three to one in this race, in a race that they just lost four seats, but they're spending so much money to try to keep a rhino in office right now. $1.1 million, I think, was.

What the GOP burned on John Cornyn's primary campaign against Ken Paxton, it's just like self-inflicted. And then, of course, Lindsey Graham, they're trying to get re-elected. So, I think this is Chris Lasavita. He was the... Well, campaign manager for Trump, and maybe Trump 1.1 million. Yeah, it's not 1 million, it's like 100 million.

It's, yeah, nearly 100 million. So, here's the thing. I'll just read it out, dry powder. The Republican National Committee is sitting on roughly $109 million in cash on hand. That's nearly 100 million more than the Democratic National Committee, which has just 15.9 million and is carrying 17.4 million in debt. Trump-aligned super PAC, MAGA, Inc., entered 2026 with more than $304 million in the bank by itself. In fact, combining all the major Republican groups leaves the GOP with over $807 million cash on hand in total, which means they'd only have to spend 0.25% of total funds to salvage Virginia.

As we saw, this race was razor thin. This was like a couple percentage points. So, what's going on here, Josh? It was winnable. You have so much money. You are wasting it on rhinos. Why would you not get involved here? I do not understand it. See, Republicans and Democrats have different incentives, okay? So, Republicans will look at a race like this, like the thought on the gerrymandering case in Virginia is, Virginia is so blue, why would we waste millions of dollars on it because it is going to lose anyway?

And so, Republicans are like, that doesn't sound like a good investment. Forget it, which is stupid. Republicans in the Beltway are reluctant to spend money on a race unless they think there's a really, really good chance of winning, and then they go crazy for it. And the reason why that drives me kind of crazy is because it's like, well, you don't know. Circumstances on the ground can change. It's not a totally hopeless case. It's not like California redistricting. Forget that. Don't even try.

This one is actually winnable, and there has been a lot of Democrats and independents in Virginia saying, this is going too far. So, you could have made an investment and made the difference, and I think if they had, there is a good shot that they could have actually defeated this proposal and saved yourself four or five House seats. Like, come on, guys. So, that was really frustrating. Now, Democrats, when they are in a similar situation, right? Why do they make the call?

Now, if the rules were reversed here, and it was like a Texas ballot initiative, Democrats would have been like, absolutely. They would totally spend the money. Why? Because for them, power is everything. They need to control the power so that they can spend the money to give it to their friends. Yeah. So, to them, they go for broke every time, because they're like, first of all, they can restock their coffers with, you know, state and federal money anyway, because they throw cash to all their friends, and the money comes back to the politicians and everyone.

So, they, to them, when, Republicans, we want our, you know, we want the economy, and we want businesses to thrive. We don't look at our livelihood depending on whether or not we win elective office. Democrats do. It's their money train. That's the ballgame for them. This is their Christmas and Super Bowl and everything, and Easter rolled into one. Elections are what matter. That's the way in which they take money from everyone else. So, to them, they're like, go for it. Spend the money.

And the Republicans are like, I don't know, let me check with my accountants to make sure it's a good investment. Check the polls. Okay, so what I would observe is, and I think this is just objectively, obviously observable with the Trump campaign.

Instead of investing, say, in R&D or whatever, the biggest CEOs and billionaires in the country were behind Trump at inauguration, they spent millions of dollars on his campaign, and have since gotten government contracts. And so, it is a better investment for them to put it into the Trump campaign, Miriam Adelson, whatever, she gets her war, whatnot. And so, they view it that way.

At the end of the day, I guess it depends on your strategy of do you care, do you think that government is more powerful than businesses, or do you think that business is more powerful than government? Democrats clearly believe that the levers of power are within, even the smallest, you know, even this Virginia redistricting effort is worthwhile investing into because if they win, they will be able to muck it up. And Republicans, I guess, just don't think that. They rely more on the richest among us or whatever.

It's better for them to be influential with the titans of industry than it would be, say, at the local level winning redistricting fight. Is that generally what I'm hearing? Well, no. My point here is that Democrats will— Go to the wall to try to win as many races as possible because they know that controls the purse of the federal treasury or the state treasuries, and to them, that is the ballgame.

Republicans get elected, like, let us change the regulations to make them not so onerous for businesses, and let us cut taxes for everyone. They are not trying to, like, get. Democrats don't aid, necessarily, normally, just to themselves. Do you know what I'm saying? They're just like, we should lower everyone's taxes. Republicans get elected to power to lower taxes for themselves, but for Democrats, too.

Whereas Democrats get elected, they're like, they don't want to cut taxes for everyone. Like, hell no, they want the money for themselves. So, they send money to Somali daycare centers in Minneapolis. I was going to say, Nick Shirley is still in business, right? You know, they get the FBI and the Justice Department to collaborate with, I don't know, the Southern Poverty Law Center.

Sure, but I just don't, I don't know if I fully agree with that, because you don't think Trump is enriching his friends here? I do. Okay. I'm not saying that there isn't pay-to-play going on on both sides. I mean, certainly both sides, but I'm saying at a fundamental level here.

Democratic candidates for office are trying to funnel state money, federal money, to their friends. You know, like, oh, we need universal child care. No, you are just wanting to open up the spigot and throw money at all these daycare centers. It is like, gosh, what the heck is going on? Whereas Republican voters, in general, are like, I would just like our government not to be insane. That'd be great. Wouldn't that be nice? Sorry, Erika, you wanted to say something. No, you're good.

I was just going to say that it reminds me of Tyler O'Neill's whole thing in The Woke Tapus, that the whole apparatus of when the Democrats are in power, they're building this apparatus of the unelected bureaucracy that funnels money around. So, I think the power and money are completely tied, and with Republicans, that's true on individual levels, but the conservative... Project, when conservatives are the primary influence on the GOP, the conservative project is to preserve and to undo that. And so, Josh, what you're saying is that's why Democrats are more driven to win elections, right, than we are.

It's just psychology, right? I think someone threw this in the notes. I don't know who did, but this tweet from Kevin Roberts was really great, I thought, to kind of like sum up and tie in about the Virginia election. So, he said, last night's Virginia election results underscore the importance of conservatives relentlessly delivering on the popular policies that propelled them to a trifecta. My good friend on the other side of the aisle, in scare quotes, is trying to destroy the country.

It is not time to play nice. It is time to win. Mass deportations, Save America Act, more doge and spending cuts. Americans gave the right power to break. The Washington establishment, they expect nothing less. For me, talking the last two weeks about the revelations with Arctic Frost and the FACE Act, the DOJ under Biden working hand in glove with Planned Parenthood and the National Abortion Federation, that just drove home again for me what was at stake in the 2024 election, and is still at stake because that wokeism is not dead.

It's just... And they're just waiting to get back in, to continue that project, and to continue what the SPLC was up to, which we'll get into in a few minutes. If Trump had stayed laser-focused on these three things, we would be rushing right now. We would have a completely different conversation right now. 60% approval. Totally different vibes. Yeah, exactly. And so, I like that Kevin got to the heart of this. Yeah. And so, it's just frustrating to me now that we're seeing Trump attack his own coalition in many different ways.

Not having focused spending when you have such a big war chest, and this is the first shot across the bow of, even though the other side is not really offering a great platform or something that's even super popular, like go take the approval rating of congressional Democrats, they're going to win these kind of things. And so, hopefully, this is the wake-up call. I don't know if someone can get through to Trump here to just be like... Well, actually, there is a point here, too, I'd like to make.

Given all the headwinds that Trump has with the war, And his approval rating is sinking so much, it stings that this initiative passed in Virginia. But think about it. It is a state that Democrats usually lead by five points, right? And you almost had a victory in April, when Republicans are less likely to vote.

And you look at the congressional... So, in other words, that's not a... Not a bad result, even though the result is bad, but the showing, and there's nothing else on the ballot, just pure political thing, and Republicans nearly got the win. Makes the sting of defeat that much more that we should have spent more money on it, but it wasn't like Republicans got thumped by 15 points because the war is unpopular or the economy or that kind of stuff. It could have been a harbinger of, oh my gosh, this is going to be a bloodbath in November.

It may mean that the Republicans have the opportunity, if they steer the ship, as Kevin Roberts is saying, as you are both saying, and I agree, if we steer the ship in the right direction again, you actually can do a course correction, and you can make an improvement here. And you look, pardon me, at the polling.

Polling on congressional things, they ask people this, okay, so, you know, if you're voting in November, you vote, do you want to vote for the Democrat? Or do you want to vote for the Republican? And you look at the results, and like a lot of these polls that have come out, it's like, you know, Democrats are leading, sure, as you would suspect that they would. But it's not like leading by 10 points, which you would think they would be by now.

Like, the average right now, they're leading by just under six points, you know, and some of the polls have come out like they're down by two, they're down by five, they're down by four, down by... How is that possible? Like, Republicans should be getting their butts kicked, given the war, the... Gas prices, the economy. So, I think, that's why the New York Times, you know, while you were gone, by the way, my phone was kind of lighting up, as you can imagine.

It was? Wall Street Journal, New York Times, like, what do you think of the Pope and all this stuff? I'm like, oh, I'm loving this. Yeah, I love it. Yes. Yeah. But I did say. It was an unforced error, because the fact of the matter is, I think you, you know, because they're like, oh, well, are Catholics going to abandon Trump in November?

And my point is, look, I think Donald Trump should make a course correction here. I think he should focus on the things, as he says, that would make America great again, you know? And right now, Americans are getting their tax refunds back. They're like a thousand bucks higher than they normally are, because we're paying less taxes. Like, that would have been a time for, I don't know, Republicans in Congress and President Trump to say, we did that. Talk about that. No, but we're at war, dude.

The Democrats actually convinced the media, well, the media were willing accomplices on this, to tell people a few years ago that the Trump tax thing increased people's taxes. I mean, it was like an absolute lie. It went down. It depends. Americans believe that their taxes went up, and it's like, well, now they're seeing it with their own. Hit their bank account, and it did go down. It depends. I wouldn't defend the current tax system.

You don't have to defend the current tax system, but it is undeniable that the average American family paid less in taxes because of what Trump and the Republicans did. Yeah. How about that, maybe, instead of starting wars? I was just looking at the tax policy. He could actually do a lot of good things there. I think the problem is that asset owners don't really pay taxes as they should. So, even if you're a high-value earner, you pay a ton of taxes, but anyone that has a job pays a lot of taxes.

But there's a couple loopholes. I know. I'd love to have less taxes on wages. Yeah. A hundred percent. Maybe more taxes on assets. For sure. Yeah, no, there should be more taxes. I think it would actually allow people to kind of, it gets back to the housing thing. Anyway, that's a whole side tangent, but there's a lot of things you could do. And I don't think a 1.5 trillion Pentagon budget is in my plans there, but yeah, he could course crack.

The thing is, all these Democrats railing against the war, which they're like, why do we spend so much money more and not a dollar to help the poor? And it's like. Have you seen our budget? Have you seen the budget? I have no sympathy for Democrats, because they could come forward and pass the War Powers Resolution, and they can't, because many of them support this. So, I don't even think this is a Democrat or a Republican thing. It's all a show.

They can shut it down on daily basis. They're not going to. They're not going to, because they want it to, because everyone benefits from this, except the people that are anti-institutional, which is becoming more and more the divide, I think, rather than partisan lines, because you're just seeing people. Ideologically chained to foreign nations. Both sides, Republican, Democrat, and you're just like, all right, I'd like to get back to the North. Yeah, for Democrats, it's very simple to judge whether or not a war is just or not.

Is a Republican in the White House? Okay, that's unjust. Well, I saw reports that, I mean, no, well, you could say the same thing about Republicans. I saw that Biden was going to bomb Iran, too. You voted for many Republicans in your life, in your short life, yes. I have actually only voted for Trump. You call yourself conservative.

Yeah, I do call myself conservative, yeah. Okay, you are absolutely not a typical reverse of a Democrat. Really? You do not say, wait a minute, is a Republican office, therefore the war is just. I am saying, you are the counter example I am talking about.

All three of us have voted. All three of us consider ourselves conservative, and we don't say, oh, a Republican is in office, therefore the worst to us. But for Democrats, it's absolute Team Jersey time. That's all that matters. I don't know if I'd say that for everyone. I was speaking more of officials, elected officials, senators, congressmen.

On a personal level, I know plenty of Democrats that opposed what Biden was doing, what Obama was doing, with drone striking in Yemen, all of that. I did. Not enough to do anything about it. Right, but then again, we're talking about senators. We're talking about elected representatives that are bought, is the bigger problem. Well, I do think there is less enthusiasm for the Iran adventure amongst Republicans in this Congress.

Previous wars of either side. I would agree. That's just a hunch. Yeah, hopefully that's enough. Erika, talk to me. Good news. What do we got? Oh, good news. All right. I mentioned the Pope. He's on his way through Africa, the Pope down in Africa. He's awesome, and he had great advice. He spoke at the Catholic University in Cameroon, so maybe the Cameroonian version of my alma mater, the Catholic University of Cameroon. I don't know, but I love the message here because he's talking to them about A topic that is near and dear to our heart, which is, of course, immigration.

In the case of Africa, mostly emigration. And this is a point from the Catechism of the Catholic Church that is often overlooked when we hear from churchmen, perhaps in our own country, on this topic of immigration. It was notably absent from the 60 Minutes interview of the Big Three Cardinals, the McCarrick Three. And what he's talking about here is what the Catechism terms as the right... ...of people to remain in their home country, that we want the human capital, which is our greatest asset of all, which is the genius of the human person, the beauty of a human life, to be able to remain in their native land.

So, we can play it. It is in French, but go ahead, and I can translate. All right, I'll wait. Or should you... Are we just going to play it in French? Maybe I should just play it. You just play him, and I'll say it. So, he said, in the face, and he's speaking to young people in a third world country, in the face of the understandable tendency to migrate, which may lead one to believe that elsewhere, a better future may more easily be found, I invite you, first and foremost, to respond with an ardent desire to serve your country and to apply the knowledge you are acquiring here to the benefit of your fellow.

Citizens. And he went on to challenge them to put their intellectual formation at the service of society, meaning their local society at home. And I just thought this was a beautiful thing. He did something similar when he visited Lebanon last year, which is now sort of tragic to reflect upon, where he urged Lebanese Christians to stay in Lebanon and to make sure that there was a Christian Catholic presence there. And it was also moving here in Africa because, as with Lebanon, Christians are a minority, and it's not always easy to make that commitment, but the beauty of your native homeland that the Pope was bringing this up here, it was so refreshing to see, and I've enjoyed following his remarks in Africa.

This was my highlight. That's beautiful. That is beautiful and true, and I think we should make that easier by not invading countries and kicking out the natural population. Yes. Just an idea. Just a thought. Just a thought. Just a thought.

Okay. Josh, Clarence Thomas talk, huh? Well, there was rumors that Clarence Thomas and Sam Alito, the two greatest Americans in the country, were considering retirement. I did not think that Clarence Thomas was going to do so at all, because I think he wants to stay on the court until summer of 2028.

So that he can become the longest-serving justice ever. That will be his ultimate, you know, in-your-face to Joe Biden and all those who try to oppose him. That he'll, you know, that's, I think he's gunning for that. So, that's fine by me.

I love it. Sam Alito, I thought there was a shot. I talked to some friends, you know, on the inside who know a lot more on this than I do, and I'm like, uh... Like what, one in four chance he retires? And my friend said, yeah, that is probably about it. So, I would, you know, given that inside info, I did not think he was going to do it, although he could change his mind. We will see. There are rumors that Governor Ron DeSantis asked Donald Trump for a position.

Apparently, DeSantis does not want AG. He might want like Secretary of the Department of War. He also might want to be on the Supreme Court, which would be delicious. Ron DeSantis, as a Supreme Court Justice, would be... He has a personality for it. Can I clarify on the... So, is he asking for someone's job that he currently has a job? Was he asking for Pete Hegseth's job, basically, or for... I mean, Pete Hegseth, you know, you gotta... That's what you do, man.

He was on the hot seat for a few times, you know. Yeah. You never know what might happen. I mean, the AG position's open. So, that would be the natural thing, but... Wait, no, I thought Todd Blanch was... Is he just interim, or... No, he's interim. Yeah. Interesting. And so, I kind of feel like, but, you know, DeSantis probably realizes, like, he can't be completely in his own element, because then Trump might just fire him, you know, if he doesn't do the right thing, so...

I would love to see DeSantis on the Supreme Court, though. We have gotten to this habit over the last few decades of, like, we have to only pick judges for the Supreme Court. That is not the tradition of our country. We have oftentimes had people like governors and stuff like that be pointed to, you know, former president.

You know, Taft was put to the Supreme Court, so I don't believe this idea that you can only pick jurists. For a while there, all nine practically were from the Ivy Leagues. I mean, that's not good for the country. But I just wanted to highlight, we don't have really time to play a good chunk of the speech right now, but Clarence Thomas gave a talk at the University of Texas in Austin, and it is magnificent. Yeah, cool thing.

You guys just go to YouTube. It is there, University of Texas, Clarence Thomas talk. He just rips Woodrow Wilson, a new one, which is beautiful. Woodrow Wilson was, you know, you know, someone posted this. Maybe the second worst president ever.

I mean, he really is kind of like the worst. Okay. I mean, and Clarence Thomas has every right to say, you know, hey, you know, Woodrow Wilson, he resegregated the federal workforce. I mean, a million things that you can decide how terrible he was.

Anyway, so he said that Woodrow Wilson and the progressive movement really were the second mainstream threat that was trying to undermine the principles of the Declaration of Independence, with the first being the pre-Civil War South trying to uproot the principles of the Declaration of Independence through slavery and that kind of stuff. So, just a great speech talking about how, you know, the United States of America...

With the principles of the Declaration of Independence, which we're celebrating 250 years this year, was markedly different than the philosophies that were and have been governing Europe for the last few centuries. So, yeah, you should go watch the speech. It's awesome. This is one of my favorite graphics of all time, remarks by new Supreme Court justices, words spoken by each justice in their first eight arguments.

Kentonji Brown-Jackson, 11,003 words, Clarence Thomas, 96. Yes. One of the greatest analyses of all time. She talks the most and says the least. Oh, that's a bar. Okay. We should not actually, you know, like so many of these opinions are coming now, like eight to one, we should just say eight to Jackson, because we know he's going to do it. It's true.

Okay, first I have a question for you, Josh. Is it possible from the Up North Live news account, is this your son? Someone in Petoskey got their first catch of the season on the street. That is a huge fish.

That is a pike caught off the road in Petoskey. Are you familiar with that? And that's pretty much Petoskey right now. Six inches of water everywhere, right, Josh? Yeah, including my basement. Yeah. Did someone catch a fish in your basement?

Yeah, I wish. Oh, man. Very cool. Very cool. Yeah, Josh, I see we have the farmer's one. I'll save that for your Twilight Zone. Okay, this one's mine. This is just a personal beef. We're finally calling people out for it. So, the JetBlue Twitter account has been accused of surveillance pricing, for those that aren't familiar, basically, if you go on an airplane website to go book a flight, and you leave, and then you come back. All of a sudden, prices increase, or there's just shifts in pricing, depending on how bad they think you need to fly.

It's called surveillance pricing, or there's a couple other terms. These algorithms to try to determine if they can get more money out of you. Which I think should be illegal. But anyway, so someone said, I love flying JetBlue, but a $230 increase on a ticket after one day is crazy. I'm just trying to make it to a funeral. And the JetBlue account says, try clearing your cash and cookies. Or booking with an incognito window, we're sorry for your loss. Oh my gosh.

So, they're like, yeah, we do that. Just go incognito. Buddy, you can't. And then they deleted it. You just admitted it. See, to the executives at JetBlue, the crime here was admitting your crime. Yep, exactly. Yes, for sure. It reminds me of the days George Washington had some scathing words for the citizens of the colonies because they were price gouging the army, the continental army in the beginning, and he was not thrilled about that. Some of his letters called them some nasty words, let's put it that way.

And then they were selling to the Tories, too, so they're kind of making a buck off everyone, which I guess is... Maybe the most American- War profiteering. That is what that is. Yeah, classic. What we do. Yeah. Anyway, okay, Josh, we are excited to talk about the SPLC. You wore your brown shirt today. Let us talk about it. The Southern Poverty Law Center has been a scam, and now it is finally being exposed. So, this is an outfit that for the last 40-some years, what they do is they raise money saying, really, combat racism.

The problem for them is that there's just not enough racism to go around. So, what they've decided to do is to actually fund racist groups. I know it sounds like you can't even believe this. Like, wait, wait, what? They have given money to white nationalist groups and the KKK to try to get them to do marches in Charlottesville, the Patriot Front, all this kind of stuff, so that they can say that they're combating them.

It is the oldest trick in the book, Josh. But the media today, so what happened is the FBI, Kash Patel, got a grand jury to indict the Southern Poverty Law Center. Humongous news. This is awesome. I love this.

The way that the media is spinning this right now, though, they are like, oh, well, the FBI is going after... Because they pay to have informants in these groups so they can track them and see what is going on. That is how the left-wing media is trying to attempt to dodge this.

Like USA Today and others, but it's like, no, no, no, no, no. It's wire fraud. You have members of people from the SPLC who are committing bank and wire fraud. They're alleging that they're using this money for X when it's actually for Z. That is against the law, and so the grand jury indicted them. They're going to go to trial. But this is just, you know, 11 counts before the jury. You know, I mean, this is unbelievable stuff. And you'll have to remember, during the Biden administration, like the Charlottesville with the tiki torches, and then these guys marching up and down the street with, like, they had hoods on.

Yeah, and brand new khaki pants, too. Yeah, it was like the most obvious fad, yeah. And the whole time, we're like, oh, these are feds, these are feds. These are not actual conservatives, because first of all, conservatives don't believe in racial hatred, number one. You're trying to make it all look like every white guy in the rural area is a total racist. And this is, we correctly said years and years ago.

This is all a campaign to smear conservative voters who honor their family and God and their country, and we said they were feds. Maybe that was the last part that we didn't get right. It wasn't maybe the actual feds. It was the Southern Poverty Law Center doing it, which we just, I mean, like, what? This is a group, a left-wing group that's like, we're trying to fight racism. So, imagine your aunt who donates money to the Southern Poverty Law Center only for that money to end up in an account of the KKK.

Mm-hmm. What? I pulled a couple examples from the indictment. So, there is an individual, they're calling him like number 37. So, he was involved in the Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville that Josh just mentioned, where, you know, Trump, like the good people on both sides hoax, all of that. So, he was actually paid between 2015 and 2023 over a quarter million dollars, $270,000 to act as like an organizer for this. Particular Unite the Right rally, and then to get other people to go to it.

So, I don't know if they could be photographed there or something like that. I mean, this was crazy. It's a quarter million dollars. And then I also found one where the SPLC paid a member of the National Alliance over $1 million in less than 10 years. So, this informant would enter the headquarters of a presumably different organization. He stole 25 boxes of documents, delivered them to the SPLC, and then later returned them once the SPLC had been through all the docs, and another informant was paid $6,000 to take responsibility for the theft.

So, this was like massive sting operation. I don't know, backwards? This was crazy stuff. But yeah, they were funneling donors' money to avowed neo-Nazi and Klan members, and the SPLC was employing a network of fictitious entities with names like... Northwest Technologies and Tech Writers Group, none of whom were incorporated. So, yeah, this is massive criminal activity, for sure, and props to Todd Blanche, the acting director, the acting AG right now, for getting this done. This is insane stuff. It's actually a quick read if you wanted lunchtime reading.

Highly recommend it. But, yeah, nuts. Well, it is worth remembering, as Congressman Brandon Gill said, that the Biden FBI was actively colluding with the Southern Poverty Law Center to target traditional Catholics. Here is a clip by the Congressman. Absolutely not. The FBI utilized a so-called hate map from the SPLC, the Southern Poverty Law Center, as it was going after traditional Catholics and labeling them domestic extremists. Do you think that that's an appropriate source? Absolutely not. Do you know some of the other groups that the SPLC labels as hate groups or extremist groups?

No, I don't, off the top of my head. I can name a few. They also name the Alliance Defending Freedom, the Family Research Council, and Moms for Liberty as hate groups as well. Do you find it concerning that they were using that, that the SPLC is a source?

Yeah, I find it deeply concerning. Do you think that Catholics who celebrate the traditional Latin mass are a threat to the American people? I don't, because I'm one that does that on occasion. Very good. Very good. Very good.

Well, that's good news. So, thank you, Brandon Gill. I appreciate that. Okay, so two things on the culture block, right? Something that I've thought a lot about, Erika. I know you have personal experience, I guess I do too now, but saw this, a lot of people talking about it. I'll just play the clip, and then we can get into it. It's about raising. ...families away from parents. So, I think there might be some profanity. It's not crazy. So, I kind of get why the birth rate is going down, and I say that as someone who loves this kid more than anything on earth, but raising a human with no village around you is genuinely the hardest thing I've ever done, and I feel like I've been through some shit before.

Nobody tells you that the hardest part isn't having the baby. It's doing it without the support system. We weren't designed to do this in isolation. How are there people out there with five kids, six kids? Are they okay? Parents? Wait, are you okay, guys?

Let me pause there. Link twice if you're not, Josh. Are we soft, or is this actually hard? Yeah, are we soft, or is it actually hard? I think we got some five or sixers in the room here right now, the digital room.

Thoughts? Yeah, it is hard. Actually, we're talking about number of kids. Between Eric and I, we could say, as the kids, six, seven, right? Six, seven. Yeah, that's, oh my God. A couple months late on that. A couple months late on that. I appreciate it, Josh. The problem is that with these fads like the six, seven, the teenagers get over it pretty quickly. Like, they get tired of it, but the nine-year-old never gets tired of it. She never gets tired of anything.

That's such a good point. Oh my gosh. But anyway, yeah, no, so we've always lived Away from family, with the exception of six-week periods where we're between houses or something during moves. It is really, really difficult, and I think that for Todd and I, the most important thing when we were having our first three kids down in Atlanta, Georgia, all of our families up in New England, was to build the village as rapidly as possible. So, getting hooked into, and we're fortunate to be members of church communities because we are practicing Catholics, and so you kind of have this...

It's not the same as having family that you can just call up, but there is that element of, you know, if you're in a solid Catholic parish, you're going to have a mom's group, you're going to have older couples even who are supportive sometime if you're really lucky, and we've always been able to intentionally seek that out, but it has been difficult because it's not just a built-in feature of our parenting that, oh, we can just call up mom and dad and they'll come over.

Ben Dominick actually had this sort of, this op-ed that I'm not sure how I feel about it still. It came out yesterday on Daily Wire. He's the new opinion editor there, and he was complaining about how even when you live near your boomer parents, they're like so busy now with pickleball clubs, or like, they're just like, oh, I did that. They're not as helpful, perhaps. I don't know if that's true. Interesting take, Ben. Yeah, Ben was like, I thought it was kind of uncharitable.

Well, let me just say this. I live next door to a Boomer relative, my father-in-law. God bless his heart. He served our country in Vietnam, and he's always like, well, if you want me to help with the kids, whatever, just let me know. I'm like, okay, and then when I ask, it's like, uh, uh.

Do you feel like you're awkward, like you farted in church? So, it's like, well, I mean, you say, so, I mean, so, you know, I get what Ben's saying. Yeah, but what relative are we talking about here? That's not your parents. It is my father-in-law. It is his wife's dad. I will say this, though. With regards to the problems and the societal ills that we have identified, loneliness amongst men, You know, too much screen time, feeling atomized in society, not having, you know, a place where you can go and dump on something because you don't want to do it with a co-worker who could use it to get back at you.

Like, I feel like telling people, yeah, have you thought of this thing called church? I mean, it's like, hello. Yeah, it's true. So, but like too often. I think the Catholic Church and many parishes over the last 30 or 40 years were just like, well, everyone's fine, so let's just have the sacraments. And you go there, and then you get down to Sunday Mass, and it's like, I mean, my family were like, this is crazy. We went to a different parish, and it's like, it feels like it's home.

People don't immediately run out the exits, because now it is 55 minutes after we started. They stop, and they talk, and then kids go to a room where they play with the billiards. That is why we drive almost half an hour to get to our parish, because that is where the home is and the community is. Like I was saying, for Todd and I, that has always been the source of our support in raising, especially when the kids are small.

You know, you have an emergency one night, and you need to be able to just call someone, can you come stay with this kid while I take the other one to the emergency room for stitches? Not that that ever happens with our very responsible children, but it does. And so, I think that I remember one of my secular relatives, she came to help after a baby was born once, and she was just blown away by our meal train, and then by a friend who came and got an older child for a play date.

She's like, my... My kids, who live way out on the West Coast, they have nothing like this. There's no meal train, and they don't have church. They have work. They have their kids' school, which is There's no community there, and it made me realize how precious that is, and how intentional it is, and how so many young parents just don't have that. Which is why travel sports, people don't understand it. It's becoming too church for people who don't have church, and so that's obviously a bad idea, because we want people to have the sacraments.

But you understand, it is helpful to think about that and understand that, because that is what drives it, because they build these bonds, these parents who are all in misery, having to drive four hours to whatever this travel sport thing is.

Church would have been better, you know. We need to, right, because I think what the dad in that video was getting at there is that, and he's right, we weren't meant to just be these isolated mom-dad units that, like, we're girl-bossing it, we're mom-bossing it, we're dad-bossing, like, we don't need anyone else but our nuclear little family. That's just not, it's just not true, and he's, I don't know if he's religious, but he's putting his finger on that, for sure.

I teased my father-in-law, but he was there when I had a race to the hospital as a kid. If I didn't get that in, my wife was going to give me a cold dinner. All right, I'm trying to decipher this map, Josh. I'm curious because you reside in one of these states. So, this map came out. Percentage of people born in their state of residence. Highest in the Midwest and Louisiana, and lowest in the West with Nevada at the bottom. The top state was Michigan.

No shock at all. 76%. That is percent of people born in their state of residence. There's a lot of Michigan Natives. Why is this? Well, I mean, first of all... If you think about just the pure, you know, I mean, obviously, it's easier to focus on the contrast. Obviously, the state of Nevada is going to have the highest number of transients, like people that were, they have a ton of people in there that moved to Vegas, you know, get away from it all or whatever.

Florida has a ton because a lot of people retire there, they just stay there, or they move there because they're, you know, they want warmer weather. Michigan. Well, part of it is just like geography. I'm there. To get to another state, it takes me four to five hours to get to another state. So, it's not even easy for me to be able to get other people to coming in from other states.

But Michigan is a proud people. They have a proud culture, and I love it. I mean, obviously, I've been here since, what, 2004 or so. Yeah, the whole Midwest is pretty solid, like very impressive showing from the Midwest, I have to say.

In Louisiana. I don't understand Louisiana. Maybe I'll have to do a video. Louisiana is a lovely state. I would love to visit. I love it. In fact, I joke with my wife, like, if we retire, like, why Florida?

Texas, you know, like, you know, Arizona, like, I'd rather be in Louisiana. Great music, great food, great people, like, I love Louisiana. Summers? Yeah, my only experience of Louisiana. In the summer, you come back up. We're August. Okay, I got it. You need summer birds. Oh, Josh left. Yeah, I can speak to the New Hampshire one for sure, like, why it's so low there. It's because for the last five years, everyone's been moving to New Hampshire from the other New England states, because, you know, we're in Massachusetts.

The Socialist Republic of Maine. Yeah, they're all just like trying to get to New Hampshire. Come on, it's crazy. Yeah, impressive Midwest. Mainers. Okay. Even the natives. Well, Midwest, we said this. Midwest has been on a run, bro. I mean. It's facts. That's facts. You have a pope? What region of this country sent us a pope? Hello. Global heater.

Okay, Josh, your twilight zone. I think I actually had this potentially my good news, which is funny. We interpreted it differently, but. Well, yeah, roll the tape. You got this. Yeah, we'll roll the tape. It's a farmer. It's just been harder and harder and harder to find those people to work. Bethany Gotts owns Quays Farm in Mountain Home, but now with fewer workers, a lot of the manual labor is left up to her. She tells me she's tried hiring locally, but it's been difficult to find people willing to do the hard work.

Finding a legal American here that is going to work as hard as an immigrant is nearly impossible. She even posted job openings on Facebook. I had seven people contact me about it, and when I sent them the description, I had no people respond.

She says hiring undocumented workers is not an option, with serious risks for both sides. One, you're going to get fined. You have, unfortunately, an employee living in fear. They could get picked up at any moment, and then you're without an employee. To keep her farm running, Gotts is hiring high schoolers and is now looking into the federal I have endeavored to spend $200,000 to build a small, small worker housing so that I can get H-2 workers next year. Gotts hopes for long-term solutions that support both farmers and workers.

The misnomer that farmers exploit immigrants is just so sad to me because... All right, let's cut her off right here. Oh my gosh. What did you say, Josh? She's deciding to build a little... A little slave tent there. Somebody found out, though, online, what it is, why aren't people applying for this job, you know, or they applied for it, and then she sent the specs for it, and then they're like, oh, yeah, no, no, thank you. Yeah, I got it. So, work.

See if you want to do this, Tom, and maybe you don't know. You can leave the loop cast. What about this? Looking for a competent ranch hand for 4,000 acres, approximately 100,000 permitted government acres ranch located in Arco, Idaho, by the way. No offense to people in Idaho, but this city of Arco in the middle of nowhere, okay?

Small commercial cow-calf operation typically run approximately 600 mother cows. 550 acres of alfalfa hay. All right. You know, working as a ranch hand, everything I have heard, you are talking, you know, it is not like a typical nine to five job. You are not clocking in and clocking out. You are working a good 60 hours a week, right? For this position, she is expecting two to five years of experience. Oh. Full-time, year-round, and your salary is $2,600 to $3,000 a month.

That might have something to do with it. Housing offered, yes. Oh, great. Wow, wow. Yeah, you can live in a bunk and make $36,000 a year, if you're lucky, if you've got five years of experience. I'm surprised that American workers don't want to work on a plantation. Shocking.

Now, Josh, why did I put this in my good news? Well, the good news, of course, is that she's unable to find illegal immigrants to pay under the table near slave widows. Because what is the solution to this?

Pay a just living wage. Paying a higher wage. And now, what's crazy about this is this is so baked into people's psychology. Look, I'm not going to pretend I understand, you know, ranch and culture, because I'm not. I'd love to go do a time across America out there. I've seen Yellowstone. They had bunks in it. You should call her.

Maybe I'll call her. But what's my point with this? My point with this is that. Just because you don't understand the nature of being a ranch hand doesn't mean you don't understand basic economics. Oh, yeah, exactly. No, no, no. Okay, this is how bad the incentive structure is currently. It's, I can't pay a competitive market wage, which is like the promises of capitalism, right? Is that, in order to get these workers, I'm going to go pay it. I'm going to go complain to the media.

And then I'm also going to say, I built this so that I can take advantage of a government program to get cheap labor. That's what an H-2A visa is. Or illegal labor, right? Or illegal labor. So, like, the incentive structure right now is... Instead of paying people what I should pay them, the promises of capitalism and how it should work, there's two cutouts, illegal labor, immigrants. People say we're taking advantage of them. No, they come and work so hard. Well, yeah, you own them because they can get picked up at any time, and then H-2A is the same thing.

Those jobs should go to Americans, but Americans, in order to protect people's quality of life, and this is a left-right issue. There's populist Democrats around this, too. Immigration is bad. Immigration is bad for the working class, and our current tax code favors owners right now, rather than workers, wage workers, and wage work is sacred. Like, we go to Ram Navaram, putting a good day's work for a just wage is a good thing, especially the kind of work you do on the ranch.

We're not anti-owners by saying that. No, not at all. We're respecting the dignity of work. That's what we're trying to get at. Of course, because private property is also enshrined properly in Ram Navaram. By the way, Tom, here's the issue. The interesting part about this, for the most part, Democrat officials don't give a rip about business owners, right? Remember the whole 2012 campaign, and Obama, and oh, and then you built that, oh, give me a break, you know, and- Oh, that was bad, yeah.

Yeah, I mean, it was bad political framing, but the whole point was like, Democrats, you know, Republicans were complaining, this is going to destroy businesses, and Obama's like, oh, boo-hoo, CEOs. Well, now, Democrats are like, look at this poor woman, she's trying to run a business, and Republicans' policies on immigration aren't allowing her to do it.

Oh, we're not allowing her to pay slave wages. Yeah. Boo-hoo. If we cut this out of, like, and this is what frustrates me so much on Trump with, like, the Chinese visas for students and the H-1B visas still going through. It's like, we just need to cut out that entire apparatus, root and branch, because this, to me, wasn't my good news, because these are the first signs. Of course, it's going to be painful at the beginning, but the first signs of actually increasing wages.

For workers. I agree with you that his Chinese worker thing was stupid. Yep. Saying Chinese students. But the H-1B visa, you do need Congress to step in and change it, so what Trump did is he creased it so that they had to pay $100,000. I did see the payment, but I just think it should be outlawed. It's the best you can do without Congress's help. Congress should absolutely get rid of that. By the way, I think...

Everyone just assumes, okay, J.D. Vance, he's the guy to beat in the 2028, and I still think that's the case, but if somebody like Ron DeSantis ran a campaign and was just like, I'm going to abolish H-1B visas, that would be a game changer. That would move the needle. Fishback's doing it in Florida right now, and listen, I don't know anything about his personal character. He shot himself in the foot the other day. Did you see this? What did he do?

He is like, we need to increase teacher pay. You could be more toxic. Like, you want to give more money to public school teachers. Like, no, thank you. Wait, what? You are against that? He wanted to, Fischbach. You are against paying teachers more?

He thinks that is the number one issue, is paying public school teachers more money. He said that is the number one issue. I doubt he said that is the number one issue. So, you are against, in principle, paying teachers more. I don't want any more money to the system until we get- Yeah, no more money to the public school system. I vote down on every single tax proposal ever. Because, well, right now in Florida, there's no property tax, so they can't get the money to pay teachers, but they do pay teachers pretty well in Florida compared to other schools, and that is why- Right, and then why would we be railing on this issue then?

That's my point. You think that's toxic politically, to want teachers to make more money? It was to me, I said. Okay. I think that's pretty weak. That, of course, isn't the centerpiece of his campaign. The centerpiece of his campaign is stop funding Israel. I mean, that is the thing. I know, but he made a big deal. He made a big push on the teacher pay, and I'm like, what? I don't see an issue. Oh, out to lunch.

I don't, that's such a side thing. But to the DeSantis thing, because he's also hitting the H-1Bs, he's also hitting all the foreign stuff, but you would need someone capable of that, because Ron DeSantis signed into law in Israel the Holocaust Remembrance version of anti-Semitism, which is basically a speech law that says, you know, the Jews killed Jesus is anti-Semitic. So, he's tainted to at least the young, DeSantis is, for doing that. And he's done a lot of good things, but Fishback would be like the...

Ron DeSantis is the best governor in the United States. He is the best governor in the United States. I disagree with some of the property tech stuff, but I think he has done a lot of good stuff, too.

Okay, Erika. You're up. Yeah. So, on Monday, it was Patriots Day. If you didn't know, great day in Boston, because it's the Boston Marathon, and as usual, the Kenyans took it away, but in China, there was another marathon, and this was a marathon featuring robotics, specifically humanoid robots. So, the Chinese put- Oh, I'm sorry. It's so late.

So, here we go. Can you play this? Can you play this? This is a robot running a marathon. This is the winning robot. It just shattered the world record. This was actually the half marathon, this particular one, but I just love this footage so much. Finished it in 50 minutes and 26 seconds. It ran alongside 12,000 Chinese citizens, actual humans, and this was the second year that they've done the marathon, half marathon robot race. This guy, can you play the video?

It's not going to work. Oh, sorry. I thought I was playing it. I was watching it. I've watched it now three times. Oh, you're right. This robot keeps... There it goes. Look at that. So, this is the final stage for the sprints.

Robot sprinting to the finish. We can hear a lot of people are shouting that the robot is coming near us. Well, I can't see... There it goes. Oh, it's there. It's okay. It's okay, because it's a robot. In the last one minute, let's see whether... Does it get up? Yeah, yeah. Well, it's human handlers. Robots running in China with a French woman speaking English. Oh, I mean, this is globalist. This is globalist stuff. It does finish. It does finish. It does finish.

The human handlers, they're allowed to pick up their robots when they crash, which happened throughout the race. Wait a second. They also pulled this, too. Look, if you watch. They didn't let him actually tear it. They tore it before it could tear it. They don't want him to fall over again.

But the interesting thing was, this was the second year they've done the race. The robot improved. This was three times faster than the finishing time last year. So, I was doing some digging, and China has been really leaning into robotics, and specifically humanoid robotics, and they've been having these robotic Olympics where they'll do boxing, they'll have weightlifting, they'll have the robots racing, they'll have different... Athletic events for their robots. And so, the New York Times was covering this, and they interviewed this professor.

Professor Alan Fern, a robotics professor at Oregon State University, and they're asking him about the integration with AI in these robots, because one of the concerns about the AI revolution is that once it gets integrated into robots, you have this sort of like alternative intelligence, super intelligence, now with an actual concrete influence in reality. And so, Fern was really downplaying the accomplishments coming out of China with... A robot winning a half marathon might attract attention and impress a few investors, but the harder question is how these capabilities translate into productivity and ultimately profitability.

He said that is much less obvious. To which I'm thinking- That seemed not obvious. No, it's pretty obvious. This is military capabilities of robotics. It's like drones that can run on the ground. So, to me, it's pretty obvious that the reason why any government would be investing in humanoid robotics would be for military capabilities. Interesting. Did Plato race in this, Erika? Plato? Yeah, the humanoid robot that Melania Trump walked- Oh, no, but there were no American robots. I was kind of disappointed.

I want, like, a true robot Olympics. I want Melania's robot. Melania is convinced that Plato the robot is going to teach her kids the classics in your home. Yeah, teach kids the classics and be the foot soldiers in Iran. Maybe that's what she's thinking. Anyway. I'm about to know. I'm about a big fat no to all that. Yeah, I'm not a fan, but it was creepy enough that I thought I'd bring it up. Whoa, I switched the twilight. All good. Okay, listen, I've been pretty hard on Israel in general, but I had to bring this.

I had to do it. I had to do it. I had to do it. Now, that's caught my eye, too. Israel's Twitter account. Oh, my gosh. This is the official state of Israel. This is the official state of Israel. Pride rises at the lowest place on Earth with a rainbow. This June, the Dead Sea becomes the Pride Land, the biggest LGBTQ plus festival ever in the Middle East. Four days of nonstop celebration of community and connection. Israel celebrates its LGBTQ plus community bigger than ever with a heart.

Here's a nice picture of the... The celebration that will be going on. Now, does this location ring any bells? It does, because I read books, like the Bible. You've read a book. I have read a book called Genesis. What location is this Pride Festival, the biggest in the Middle East, taking place? I believe the archaeologists have conclusively determined that this was the site of Sodom and Gomorrah on the Dead Sea.

Sodom and Gomorrah. The C is called dead for a reason. It's dead. Literally, literally B. At Sodom and Gomorrah. Oh, I don't. What are we doing? The house is real. How is this going to shore up evangelical support for Israel when it's at its all-time high? They don't care. Clearly, they do not care. Unbelievable.

It does not. It was like President Trump was like, I could shoot someone on Fifth Avenue and no one would care. It's basically, we're there. However, now I won't be too hard on Israel if I'm going to be hard on ourselves, too. We have our own Sodom and Gomorrah going on. We are going to have a smash, bash, grinder. It's making a political power play. Now, Grindr, sorry for those unfamiliar with Grindr. Okay, tell us what Grindr is. It's a dating app for homosexuals.

It is ramping up its political presence in Washington as it seeks to flex its influence muscles on a range of policy priorities. I do not know what those policy priorities are. I don't think they're going to be great. I bet you can guess.

They have poured $1.6 million into its influence operations since registering to lobby federal lawmakers a year ago. And they're going to throw a huge party. It'll be on full display this Friday. Please don't go if you're in the D.C. area. Tom, do not. I just don't even report on it. I don't want to be anywhere near. Maybe get out of town, Tom, for Friday. Send a few exorcists, maybe. Yep, send a few exorcists. The app hosts its inaugural White House Correspondents Dinner weekend party, for which Democrats and Republicans alike have been clamoring to get an invite.

We're planting a flag, top grinder lobbyist Joe Axtell is doing an interview. I just have to laugh. It's held in a $9 million, 10-bedroom Georgetown mansion. It's one of the buzziest feats of the upcoming weekend. And the guest list has been closed for more than a week. The interest level has been insane, according to Hack, though he declined to provide a preview of expected attendees. Tease that very high-level people from both sides, RSVPs. We'll see if they come. Well, I'm honestly not surprised.

Having lived in Washington, D.C. myself for about five years. The percentage of people who are homosexual is way off the charts. I mean, it's, you know, it's just like, what is the deal? Now, the rumor is that the Dems are just a little bit more open about it than the Republicans. Is this true?

Yeah, I think that's true, but, you know, I mean. High-profile Republicans were seen at Disney World with a child's toy and no children with them. I don't know why he's closeted. Just be like Besant. Dude, I like Besant. That's the thing. He's honest about it. I like his policies. I don't like, obviously... Yeah. We need to send in an exorcist. Although, this isn't any crazier than what happened under the Biden administration when there were aides actually in the halls. So, we need a great...

Yes, I do. It was crazy. I mean, it felt like the whole White House at the time was, though. Like, even the... Oh, Transvisibility Day on Easter? Yeah. They're getting naked on, you know, the lawn there. That was crazy. Like, I wish that we could have some moral high ground here in America. You know, we can't be as on the nose as having a huge pride party in literally Sodom and Gomorrah, but we're kind of doing it now. Yeah, we don't literally have Sodom.

We just try to... I mean, they lit up the White House. The Democrats did, with the... Not the red, white, and blue, but the rainbow flag. Trans Day of Visibility on Easter just happened to be on the same day. Crazy.

Don't blackpill, gang. Don't blackpill. We shouldn't be totally down on Democrats the whole time. I got to give this credit. I want to go back to the SPLC for just a second, because the comments on this are just too perfect. I mean, the Southern Poverty Law Center raising money to fight racism, and then they fund the KKK because they want to... It's genius.

It is. There's a really funny account called Comfort... They're so perfect. He says, The Southern Poverty Law Center should send a fundraising email saying that the FBI has uncovered a group funneling millions to Nazis, and this proves the SPLC needs your support more than ever. They kind of did. I saw their fundraising email that they sent out that morning. It was like, FBI targets anti-racist organizations. Send money, quickly. It's genius. It's the oldest game in the book, dude. It's like the mafia.

Like, the mafia would start off. You know, nobly defending whatever, and then they're like, hey, there's going to be a huge problem unless you pay us off, and then someone's really going to hurt you. You don't know who we're honest. Someone's going to break your knee, and then if you don't pay them, they break your knee, and they're like, this could have been prevented. We could have stopped it, but you didn't pay us.

This is more honest than these shakedown artists, but it just brings to mind that... What Thomas Sowell, you know, the black economist, conservative, he's just amazing. He said, you know, racism, you know, exists. You know, it's nearly been wiped out, he said, but it's kept alive by, you know, politicians, race hucksters, and people who want to feel morally superior to other people.

Yeah, you got to give credit to Trump for, like, it did feel in 2016 after the Obama years, especially the second term, it's like... I don't know what we're on the precipice of, but it was crazy. It was like the race stuff was just off the charts.

Yep. So, refocus, Trump. Please refocus. Refocus. Get out of the Middle East. Refocus. Seriously. It's time. No more Virginias. All right, we're going to end with our daily prayer, Daily Prayer for America 250 by Cardinal Burke, of course, and if you want to join us, go grab a ticket. Celine, throw that link in there again. I would love to be there to talk about all the issues of the day and pray.

It's going to be a great event. Looking forward to being out in Wisconsin. So, we'll end with a prayer. In the name of the Father, Son, Holy Spirit, Amen. O Sacred Heart of Jesus, King of Heaven and Earth, I place today my nation, the United States of America, into your heart, pierced. For love of us, on the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence, I acknowledge that true liberty is your gift, and that our lasting homeland is the eternal kingdom of God, under the mantle of Our Lady of Guadalupe, patroness of the Americas, and through the intercession of her immaculate heart, bless my homeland anew, purify her from sin, and guide her leaders in truth, justice, and peace, so that she may safeguard all human life, respect the integrity of marriage and the family.

In honor of the practice of religion, reign in my home and in my nation, draw every heart into communion with you, that your truth, love, justice, mercy, and peace may triumph in America and throughout the world. Amen. St. Thomas Morris, St. Fidelis, Our Lady of Guadalupe. Pray for us. Glad to be back with you guys, talking about the issues of the day. We will catch you guys on the flip. Erika has got an episode of The Deep coming tomorrow, and we've got Time Across America coming next week. It's going to be great. Catch you guys later. Peace.