Vance Plan to Pay Stay-at-Home Parents, Lindsay Clancy Jurors Speak Out, and Remembering 9/11

And we're live. Welcome back to LOOPcast. We are Tom, Erika, and Josh. Young Tom is off in the wilds of Maryland. I believe he's fishing for crabs. We have handsome Tom instead. We have handsome Tom joining us in his stead, and we're very happy to have you for the top half of the show here. To some people, I am a younger Tom. Well, I mean, it's all relative. Between the two, brother, I mean, you're definitely older than Pogo. Yep.

Well, and as someone who spends most of his time on the Hill, you are young Tom, because we have a geriatric Congress, so you probably often feel you are youthful and spry, and certainly mental acuity that you're going to share with us today. We have a great show. It is super packed. We're going to have a quick midterms update from Josh Mercer, Catholic Votes Advocacy VP, and we are also going to then get into this. It's a hornet's nest on the right.

Are we now socialists? Is J.D. Vance now a socialist because he wants to extend welfare programs for families with a stay-at-home parent? Very interesting, very in the weeds, but I think it uncovers a lot of really more fundamental debates that are going on in conservatism right now. So, that'll be fun. We've also got sports. Those of you who are into sports, happy beginning of the NFL.

This season, this evening, we have the Patriots are going to just cream the Seahawks and get back at them for the Super Bowl, but we also have, can we save college sports? Josh is going to give us the rundown, and we'll talk all things. We will, unfortunately, have to get into that Lindsay Clancy trial. I'm feeling kind of down on my XX chromosomes right now, after some of the jurors decided to go public and speak about that one lone male holdout.

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Switch to Charity Mobile and buy the way you believe. To get started, visit charitymobile.com. Use promo code LOOPcast. That's charitymobile.com, promo code LOOPcast. Thank you, Charity Mobile. All right. Gentlemen, let us get into it. So, very briefly, Josh, we had some results. I think this was the final primary up in New Hampshire last night, and we had a DSA candidate making a challenge on the Democratic side of the ticket. What went down, and what does this mean for your predictions as the Oracle Petoskey?

Well, you know, DSA candidates have done far, far better this cycle than people had suspected. I mean, even though, you know, in Michigan, the DSA-adjacent candidate Actually, wins the primary, Abdul El-Sayed, and he very much, well, could be the next senator from Michigan if Republicans don't get their act together.

And the DSA candidates have won statewide in other races. You had Graham Plantner winning the nomination in Maine. You had, even in Florida, Alex Vitterman was expected to be the nominee, and he gets ousted by a DSA candidate. So, New Hampshire, who knows what could happen? Well, the DSA candidate did not win in New Hampshire. If she had, I think this would have been a definite advantage to the whole Republican Party, but Congressman Chris Pappas is the Democratic nominee for the Senate now.

And on the Republican side, Scott Brown lost. He tried to get back into the Senate there, and I am actually kind of happy. John Sununu is the better candidate. Frankly, part of it is just that he had served in the Senate before, so he is a former Senator, and the name Sununu, as you from being in New Hampshire know, this is a family name with a lot of staying power in New Hampshire, for good or for ill. I mean, I am not a big fan of his dad.

His brother has been okay, but Senator John Sununu. I would like to see him come back to the Senate and defeat Chris Pappas. You know, obviously, given the tough environment, I think the advantage here is with the Democrat, given the way the circumstances are going.

If the political environment shifts, you could, you know, at least this will be a race, and I'll force Democrats to spend a lot of money there, so we'll see, and every vote counts, so. Well, and Pappas would be replacing Jeanne Shaheen, right, because she's retiring, so it would be swapping a Democrat for a Democrat, not a gain of a seat, right, for the. Exactly, so this is, so, you know, I mean, if, but again, you know, you never know. Strange things can happen, and the Sununu name has got to be worth, you know, certain percentages right at the ballot box.

So, we will see. We will be monitoring that, but there is a real big wrinkle out of Missouri in the last 24 hours. So, Republicans have passed a new map redistricting the lines, making it a 7-1 advantage likely for Republicans in the House districts.

And then the Missouri Supreme Court, which, by the way, you're like, oh, there's like, you know, six of them or five of them are Republican-appointed nominees. No, no, no. See, the Constitution in Missouri was one of the first to adopt George Soros' plan for judges that the governor, no matter who the governor is, they have to pick. A candidate from a committee that recommends who the judges should be. So, there is no freedom. The people elect the governor, and that governor has to basically, he has to just give his okay to someone on this committee.

So, you end up with a generation of activist judges, no matter who is the governor, and we have had Republican governors in Missouri for a very long time, and now the bench is still very liberal. And this Missouri Supreme Court said, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. We're throwing out this old map. We're going to go back to the previous map. But here's the problem. Voters actually cast ballots in the primary under the new maps. And so, you know, you might have voted for someone in the primary, and then now you go to the general and you're like, well, wait a minute now.

I didn't even vote in this race before. How can I? And so. There are two different lawsuits that are going on. The first lawsuit was just to say, you know, we don't want the court to overturn these maps, and we also don't want the referendum to allow the voters to. Appoint some sort of commissioner or whatever, and Justice Kavanaugh decided not to do an emergency stay. Just, no, I'm not going to blow the whistle and stop all this, whatever. That doesn't mean that the Supreme Court wasn't going to rule on it.

They just didn't want to get involved necessarily, but then another federal judge actually got involved in a second lawsuit, and that actually supersedes, and here's why. It sounds kind of weirder than it does, but this judge said, no, hold on a second.

The candidates who are running for office, as well as voters in these areas, you know, this is unconstitutional. You're basically forcing people to vote in the general election when they had no influence or say in the primaries, and so that federal judge said, we're putting a stop on what the Missouri Supreme Court has done. And so, then, naturally, the Secretary of State in Missouri is like, sounds great. We're going to go back to the new maps. This is good. The Supreme Court in Missouri is holding a hearing to consider contempt charges against the Secretary of State for actually doing what a federal judge told him to do.

Ordered him to do. He liked what the federal judge wanted him to do. He agreed with it. So, there's no problem with him. So, we're going to face down a possible constitutional crisis in Missouri. You know, like, I mean, if I were a lawmaker in Missouri, I'm not super familiar with the Constitution in Missouri, but I would be like, oh, okay, we can have a Missouri Supreme Court, fine, but I would make a new court called the Missouri High Court, and that's where the highest court of the law, and the Missouri Supreme Court would handle traffic tickets in St.

Louis County. That's what I would do. Oh, my gosh. Any other challenges? So, I know we covered extensively when the Supreme Court allowed states to redistrict and to redraw the lines. We talked a lot about racial gerrymandering. Any other states where we anticipate challenges to that prior to the midterm elections? No, I mean, this really is quite egregious. I mean, normally, there's a rule with regards to this that judges don't want to, even if these judges thought, the way that this should have gone is that the judges could have said, we think this is totally unconstitutional and egregious.

However, we should. You know, repair or fix this after the election, because the fact of the matter is, it's unfair to voters, millions of voters in Missouri who've cast votes in primaries, and a lot of them now are going to have a completely different district, and so they have no say, and that's not fair at all. So, you know, the remedy here would be to allow the new map to move forward, and if you think it's wrong, you know, you fix it later.

But again, why is it that the Missouri, I don't think the judges should be involved in redistricting lines anyway, unless they Unless the legislature violated the Constitution of Missouri, then maybe you can get involved, but it is like this idea that, well, we do not like how you gerrymander this, so therefore, we are going to get rid of it. Sorry, no, that does not work. Yeah. Well, we are certainly, we are post-Labor Day now, and we are in the thick of midterm election.

This is the height of midterm election season. So, Tom, I just want to kind of get your inside thoughts, too, on what it is like to be On Capitol Hill leading up to an election, I mean, there's a lot of people who might be, this might be the end, right? Is there already a lame duck feeling, or is there a feeling of urgency and like, let's get some stuff done, regardless of what happens in November, we can actually do something? Or do people just kind of give up?

Having been here for so long, I don't know if that makes me a cynic or... Or not. However, because there's a lot of people like, oh, we can get this done or this done during a lame duck. Nothing good happens during a lame duck. If you've lost, you don't normally come back. The general feeling is, though, that it's going to be a very different Congress come next year, but there's no sense of urgency among Republicans, well, we should get things done.

I mean, the leadership team right now, they're down in Dallas, and I hear to improve their image, they went to visit an orphanage, and it was said that you'd never seen so many faces so devoid of hope, and that was from one of the orphans.

Oh, man. I mean, the sense of everybody is just holding on to their seat of the pants right now because nobody seems to be able to change the The rocket that seems to be going down, because it is all outside forces, outside at least of even Congress' control, be it prices, be it Iran. The war is certainly weighing heavily, and everything else, I think, it is going to be a bad year for Democrats.

I would assume you mean it's a bad year. Oh, I was like, whoa, hot take. It's the other party, brother. It's going to be a bad year for Democrats because they're going to actually have to govern. I know. They're going to talk about a civil war looming on the side, the Democrat side, once they're actually in power. I agree with you that there's sort of a...

Throw up your hands kind of view amongst Republicans in Congress, precisely because they feel a little, it's a little helplessness on this, because obviously, I think they did get a lot more accomplished than most Congresses did in the fact that the one big, beautiful bill was substantial. It financed immigration enforcement for the next three years. That's awesome. It did the federal.

Education tax credit, and it also made sure that taxes remain, you know, the tax cuts that were done in 2017 stayed in effect. There are several good things about that bill, and then after they got that part done, and I, again, fixed loans for college stuff. There have been a lot of reforms in here, but then after that, it is like they kind of put all their eggs in one basket, and they got the basket. They got it passed, and so then after that, it is like, okay, well, what do we do?

Like, well, I guess we just work on budgets, and Take your time with it. I still think they could do further reforms, obviously, but the reason why they kind of are throwing up their arms in a little bit of despondency is that they can't help but feel, as you say, that they're...

Their plight is really out of their control, because voters, when they come in November, are going to decide their fate based on not necessarily just the good stuff that they've already done, or it's really going to be weighing down on the price of gas, the price of other... Things at the pump. I don't think there's too, I mean, again, this is not a hot war like the Iraq and Afghanistan wars. So, there's not like, you know, I mean, we have lost, I think, what, 17 soldiers?

That's, you know, that's bad, but it's obviously, you know, the war in Iraq and Afghanistan, the numbers were far higher. So, it is a category different. But, yes, the price of gas is high, and affordability is still an issue, obviously, because we shut down the economy in COVID for several years, and it is going to take a while for some of these policies to take effect, which is by the way. Why I appreciate J.D. Vance's approach on this so much better.

So, if you heard his speech, he goes, he's talking about all these reforms he's wanting to do, and he says, it's going to take a while. We didn't get into this thing. This was decades and decades of the wrong policies, where we just allow millions of people to come into this country illegally. H-1B visas and all this kind of, all these things that are hampering the economy. And yeah, it's going to take a while to undo all of this.

You know, that is so much better of an approach than what Donald Trump did during the summer. He was like, I deserve like an A+. Right, right. All the numbers are green. Yes. No, that is good. You don't actually have to say that. It is really stupid for any politician of any party to say, oh, no, no, no, no, you voters. You voters are dumb. You don't get it. It's awesome, actually. If it's better than they think, you've got to come up with a better way of saying it, and I think J.D.

Vance has got it. Yeah, so let's dig into one of those sort of reforms, speaking of reforms, speaking of things that can be done. So, this story broke in the New York Times over the weekend. It was leaked, and so here's the reform that's being proposed, and I can't wait to get your guys' take on this. So, the New York Times broke the story. The Trump administration officials... We are drafting a rule that would allow married couples with a stay-at-home parent to tap into the federal child care fund.

This is a Clinton-era child care and development fund and currently offers about $9,000 per year per child to low-income households to pay for child care or daycare centers, but it only is applied currently to either single mothers. Or households where both parents are working, and so the kids have to. So, all of these funds are going to third-party childcare daycare centers. So, the proposed change would allow families to take that about $9,000 and actually just apply it to the stay-at-home parent and support that parent for taking care of his or her own children.

So, this is a massive health and human services program. Again, this is Already in existence, so they don't have to go to Congress and ask for more money. It's about $12 billion in the fund right now. And it's just opening this old welfare program to, dare I say, a greater diversity of household models. I mean, this sounds almost leftist, right?

So, a few different threads here. The draft draws on child care legislation. They're saying that Vance is the one really pushing this, but it's also drawing on some proposals that Marco Rubio had made when he was a senator.

A proposal in Remember Project 2025, Project 2025, like very scary, the Heritage Foundation's blueprint. So, this idea has been in the works for a very long time. Roger Savarino, friend of the program, Heritage, he helped author that blueprint in the Project 2025. The Times reporter interviewed him, and he said that this would put stay-at-home caregiving, which I'm a big fan of, On equal footing with paid daycare, and would likely survive legal scrutiny, including for married same-sex couples under existing Supreme Court precedent.

The Democrats hate it, of course. Rosa DeLauro, my congresswoman, she denounced the plan. She said it's unconscionable. Saying that supporting stay-at-home parents should never come at the expense of working families, and the whole point of this was obviously to subsidize single motherhood, but she, so the Democrats are saying, Single motherhood or two-income families. Or two-income families, but she's saying that now it's the working families are going to be subsidizing stay-at-home moms for their chosen lifestyle. Where's Rosa DeLauro going wrong, Josh?

Well, I mean, like, it always amuses me when Democrats are against government spending for something. It's like, why would they possibly be against government spending? What possible reason could they be for? But their point is that single mothers... And two-income families are what they support and what they want to subsidize. They do not want to subsidize one-income families where, you know, and usually it's a mom who stays at home. They hate that arrangement. They definitely, I mean, they believe in feminism.

They want to attack the family whatever way they can, so they don't want kids actually raised by their mothers at home. They despise that. Because if this were her true objection, oh, you know, if you add more people to this, those other two groups, the single mothers and the two-income families, will get less because there's a finite pie. It's a zero-sum game, right, yeah. Okay, how about this? For every stay-at-home mother family that there is, one-income family, you could just say, we'll increase the pie.

Would Democrats still object to it? I think it becomes advanced. There's a conservative critique, of course, that we can get into, but the Democratic critique, absolutely. What would be the problem? Why would we discriminate against this one family arrangement? Why not make it available for all family arrangements here? I don't understand. Right, yeah, that makes no sense. But then, let me set up the intramural fight going on on the right here about this, and I want to get Tom's take on this first.

The more interesting split to me, for the purposes of our conversation and our program and all y'all in the chat, your interests, is that we saw this sort of, like I said, hornet's nest of people just have massive reactions to this proposal from the White House, alleged proposal from the White House, from the New York Times. But we have sort of the new right saying, yeah, this is a great idea, lining up maybe behind a potential advance or Rubio presidential campaign 28.

But then you get these More Reaganite conservatives, I'll say, or traditional conservatives, who just think this is socialism, come to the Republican Party. So, we got Dana Loesch, who was a former spokesperson of the National Rifle Association. She called this program an example of the new socialist right.

This conservative pundit, Tomi Lahren, likened it to the money that was sent out during the COVID-19 pandemic that, quote, destroyed our workforce. And she said that it could create a giant fraud boondoggle, and so the criticisms just go on and on. So, Tom, I wanted to get your take on the sort of intramural fight that we're seeing, and where the, I mean, is J.D. Vance a socialist? Is that what's going on here?

I guess we're all socialists now, as Bernie Sanders might say, and I was even describing the other side as Reaganite, and there's like a whole boomer thing, and I don't want to get into the Tom Begay type thing. However, Jim Ryan, when he was a congressman from Kansas, was the first one to introduce this idea, and Jim Ryan was the Reagan.

A Reagan conservative. He would still describe himself in that way today. What I don't understand, ultimately, yes, we'd like to get rid of it. Should the program not exist? Of course not, but it does exist. None of these people are complaining about it or doing anything to get rid of it. So, all we're saying is that we all agree that the nuclear center of society is, I'm sorry, the center of society is the nuclear family.

So, why shouldn't we do something? I'd love to eliminate this program and refashion it so it's just for married couples or widows. But until we get there, what is wrong with opening the door? And everybody who named National Review has also been very critical of it. Mike Pence has also been very critical about it.

And I really think there's, through almost every intramural fight we've been having- That's a good enough reason to support it, those two. Well, exactly. But who else do they not support? They don't want to see J.D. Vance. Yeah. They don't like his approach, his approach of being a good guy. They don't like his approach of being a good guy. Putting family first, that it's not about capitalism, it's about the flourishing family, yet they seem to forget that any other backstop, be it a Marco Rubio or Ron DeSantis, has voiced the exact same position as well.

So, to me, just about everybody is a hypocrite who's saying, don't do this. So, you're seeing this more as a proxy battle over Like, the upcoming presidential campaign. So, this is like positioning to criticize. Yeah, I mean, the war in Iran, that was the big one, because J.D. is seen as not for all these new foreign wars, whereas Marco is a little bit more of a neocon, though I think he's evolved a little bit from that. But I do think there's an underlying fight here.

And I partly love it because it exposes the hypocrisy. So, what's the other half, Josh? Well, the other half is, I mean, you know, again, you get people who are like, well, this doesn't make sense. This is not the best way we should do it.

You know, we should just try to lower taxes for everyone else and get rid of government programs that are inefficient. And it's like, oh, okay, cool. Rachel Bovard, our good friend, she put together this really fun little pie chart, or flow chart, where it's like, okay, should we get rid of this program? Yes or no? Okay. Is there any actual movement to get rid of this program in the Congress? Yes or no? In other words, there is no attempt, there's no realistic attempt politically to get rid of this program.

So, the question is, should we make it so that it doesn't discriminate? Discriminate against family. Yeah, here we go. Should this welfare program exist? Yes or no? No. Okay, well, is there a realistic chance that congressional Republicans will repeal it? Yes or no? Yes. Oh, great. Let's schedule a vote and repeal it then. In the meantime, it should not discriminate against marriage or single income families. You know, again, she's got, this is so perfect. I mean, it's like, but again, it just gets to one of those things where You know, it is true that the free market is a phenomenal way of organizing our society.

You know, our market economy, there's prices, there's supply and demand, there's all these things that, you know, interplay. Now, for the common good, sometimes the government has to step in and intercede and try to take care of things, and sometimes those interventions are...

Create consequences and effects, and so this is, I feel like this is like a few steps down the line, because, of course, in the 1930s, there were a lot of senior citizens who were living in abject poverty. It is the exact opposite of the critiques that 20-year-olds have now of people who are in their 70s who are actually very wealthy in many ways. They have their own house. It is not like they are living high on a hog, but they are far better placed than they were.

When we go back 90 years ago, when they put in Social Security. So, we decided with Social Security, I am not a big fan of the program, but we are not getting rid of it, where we decide we want to make sure we have the government provide a basic standard of income to people who are senior citizens, right? Well, that has some down-level effects. So, what happens is you collect Social Security based on how much you work in the workforce, but if you have lots of children, I have six.

I don't get, like, more money from Social Security, even though I created six new taxpayers, right? Whereas someone who, like a single gay man who never had any children, he's going to, and if we earn the same amount of money, he gets the same amount of benefits, even though I put six more people into the economy who are going to be paying Social Security taxes. Yeah. Why is that fair? So, again, if you asked me for the way to remedy this, it would have been like, well, why don't...

Why don't you reduce Social Security taxes for mothers and fathers who have children? That would be a way you could try to do that, because, again, we want to make sure that no seniors go poor, but then we tax everyone sort of equally, and that doesn't make sense. You should tax the families less. We don't do that on the Social Security side. We do it on the income side. And so, when I have the Dana Lauches, however you say their names, like, well, we need to cut taxes more.

I got words for you guys. There are some families who have five or six or seven kids. You cannot cut their income tax anymore. Their income tax is zero. The husband is working his butt off. They've got used cars. They've got five, six kids they're trying to provide private school tuition to. They get scholarships or whatever. You can't cut their taxes.

They already vote Republican. They already vote Republican. You can't cut their taxes. And maybe you could cut their, again, Social Security taxes. I haven't heard anyone really talk about this as a plan. So, in the meantime, hey, maybe we should allow them access to this program that we give it to everyone else, but we're going to exclude stay-at-home moms. Makes no sense. Yeah, it makes no sense. Give me the chance. If there's like a little, you know, what is it? Staples.

Push the red button, make it easy. If there's a button, I can push it to get rid of all welfare programs and just, you know. Bring up the family and lower their taxes. I'm all for it, but that ain't on the table, guys. Right, right. It's a matter of the art of the possible, and I think that one of the, oh, I just lost my train of thought, but to your point, Josh, that if it's going to exist, it should at least not discriminate, to Rachel's point, it should at least not discriminate against the family, the household model that is proven to be most beneficial for society, the nuclear.

To your point, Tom. And so, just the fact that the Democrats come back and they're like, well, we can't prop up the mother who's taking care of her own children. It's just such a tell, right, on what the priorities are. And one of the priorities is to- And it's a fundamental misunderstanding of, there's certain things in American life that people just get fundamentally wrong. So, like, if you ask American people, like, how many, what percentage of people are gay? And the number, what people say, it's like- I don't know, 30%?

It's like, whoa, you're way off. Because if you watch streaming TV, 30% of the characters are gay. So, everyone's like, oh, yeah. What percentage of couples are interracial? And it's like way off the charts. Well, every commercial has that interracial couple, so you think it's a lot. And so, it gets down to the big political map, and I'm trying to find out how I can send this to you. My computer's not working, but it is the map of all maps of understanding politics today.

And I'm just going to put it in the Slack channel, because I am not Getting it right. But anyway, like, one of the things that people don't understand about politics is how things are, and where American voters actually, where they are. So, in Washington, D.C., you have a, okay, you have, this is the map of where people and their political opinions are in 2016, okay?

The bottom left corner is people who are very liberal on economics as well as very liberal on social issues, okay? So, there's a ton of blue dots there, right? That's like Bernie Sanders, AOC. They're socialists. They're for all the LGBT agenda and that kind of stuff. Okay. The upper, upper right, far right corner would be someone who's conservative in economics and conservative on social issues. There's not a super ton there. No. Okay. Now, the Beltway Republicans, okay, the Harlem Globetrotters, the Washington Generals, like the team that's meant to lose all the time, established Republicans, they don't care about social issues.

Right? They just want economic freedom. That is the bottom right quadrant. There is almost no one there. There is almost no voters there. This is empty. Okay? So, you have a choice between the bottom left corner, you know, the Bernie Sanders, AOC, pro-gay, pro-social, you know, LGBT, trans, and socialist corner, or look where all those red dots are. Look at that big cluster of red dots. Those are people who are socially conservative, and on economics, they're not socialist, but they're not libertarian.

They're kind of in the middle. So, this proposal. It looks like J.D. Vance to me. Perfect for that. Yes. So, the thing is, but see, libertarian economics, as a former recovering libertarian, I can tell you this. It is a religion in many ways, and the idea that apostasy, if you ever say, look, I understand that, for example, minimum wage laws are bad in the abstract because you set a floor on it, and then it does hinder some people. I want the minimum wage to be kind of low.

I mean, to exist on paper. Yeah, not $20. Yeah, not $20. If you raise it too high, then you're going to, teenagers aren't going to be able to work at McDonald's. They'll just put a computer or whatever. But I get, like, when we have these discussions in economics, it's good to be informed on stuff, but it's like. They just get so angry. They look at this, like J.D. Vance, as an apostate. He is a heretic, because he is going against the religion of free markets.

It is like, look, I love free markets. I want a better, more free market area. If I can get rid of this program, I am all for it, but if we are going to have it, I actually want to support our own voters. Yes. And what the Danilowshians say is that this is going to backfire. It is going to get your voters up. On to government, and they're going to love government forever. I'm more worried about the opposite, actually. I'm worried about a political party that is so dedicated to its principles and ideals that they forget the people they're supposed to vote for.

Members of Congress should actually care about the voters that put them in office, and if there's a proposal to get rid of this program, great, but if not, make sure your own voters can receive the benefits from this, because if they don't, they'll be like.

What good are you? Right. And they're going to go to socialism. Right, and I just wanted to clarify, there's been a few questions in the chat about how are they going to fund this. It's already funded, so this fund already exists. Trump has to spend the money, and so what the Trump administration is saying is, okay, if we have to spend this money, if we have to execute, Executive Branch, this program that Congress has handed to us since the 1990s, let's at least make it so that it's benefiting I would say the men and women who are trying to actually do what is best for their children.

And interesting, too, a lot of studies have come out the last year, kind of from the Patrick T. Brown milieu of Substax and Washington Examiner, talking about when you actually ask women, and particularly women, but also fathers, What their preference is for how to raise their children. A plurality of women say, I want to raise them myself. And we're actually, they're talking to the very population that qualifies for this welfare program. They don't want to be taking the $9,000 and having to siphon it right to like the happy daycare, happy rainbow daycare center next door.

They would rather keep that, make some sacrifices, stay home with their children while they're young. And so again, like you said, Josh. If conservatives are going to move beyond being principled losers, they have to start to listen to the actual people who are currently using, if not trapped in these programs, and say, okay, how can we give them more choices? How can we let them pursue what is better for them and for their children? So, totally on board with that. Tom, did you want to add anything?

Well, it is just a matter of, right now, the way the program is set up, we are subsidizing our enemies. The Republicans are subsidizing those who would normally vote against them, and if anything else, Republicans should look at it that this is a recruitment program as well, because a lot of those dots and all that were blue are also just like, they want to stay at home. Just as much. Exactly, yeah. And I don't know why, as Whitney Houston says, and then Hillary Clinton, if children are our future, why don't we want the best environment for them?

And the best environment is having a parent stay at home and raise them. Yeah, unless you're like a Yale law professor who thinks that parents and children are always at odds with each other, and that the state has to save the children from their parents. I was like one of Ross Douthat's last interviews. I couldn't believe what I was hearing, but they really do believe that, too, that somehow kids being with their parents is not ideal for the child. Whatever, that's a whole other topic.

We have to think that the more children that are able to be at home with stay-at-home parents, the better it is for society. Just overall. Yes. Yes, absolutely. All right, so let us roll into some ball. Let us play ball. We have the Protect College Sports Act, which is coming up on Congress. Sounds good. I mean, all the names of these bills, you are like, yeah, that sounds good and empathetic and like we want sports. We love this. CatholicVote is super involved in this movement.

So, Josh, give us the rundown on the Protect College Sports Act. Well, the purpose of the Protect College Sports Act, ostensibly, the purpose of this bill is to create a nationwide framework on laws governing college sports, precisely because we have seen a lot of turmoil. You know, and changes in college sports. First, you know, the most obvious one of that is college athletes are not able to be paid, and there's name, image, and likeness. They get, you know, hundreds of thousands of dollars for playing college sports.

Before, it was all amateur. They never received any money for it, so they're almost like now a minor league for, you know, the pro leagues like the NFL. And we're talking like life-changing money here. It's life-changing money. Yeah. Right, I mean, because what had happened before, you know, athletes in... In the NCAA, would only play for like their freshman year, and they'd be chasing the dollars in the NBA or the NFL. And so now, actually, since they can get paid, like some athletes who grew up in very poor families, they're now able to cash in right now.

And I sort of understand the impetus behind it. I know it didn't make things better, per se, but for those athletes, I understand what they're saying. These colleges were making millions and millions and millions of dollars. ESPN and CBS was making millions of dollars, but, oh, we can't pay the athletes.

So, that got changed with name and image and likeness, and there's also now this transfer protocol where players can zip to another team for the next year, and sometimes they might play three different years in a row for three completely different teams. Or get red shirting, right, like six years there in the college. Yeah, it's bizarre. It's definitely... I do think there is something that we can try. It does make sense for federal lawmakers to try to intervene because it's not like high school sports, which we normally govern by, let's say.

The Michigan legislature for sports teams in Michigan and whatever other states, but because we are talking about college, conferences are playing across the country. Nebraska is playing against Minnesota, Penn. So, it makes sense that federal lawmakers would get involved to try to deal with how do we deal with the transfer of students, how do we deal with the name, image, and likeness, and all this other kind of stuff. And, of course, you know, as it gets more and more expensive for these teams to, you know, to get a championship team, as some people say, like $40 million to have a championship football caliber team in the NCAA.

So, you know, what is going to get cut? Well, they are going to cut a lot of sports that just really are not profitable, that are lost leaders, you know, and a lot of them are women's sports, for sure, and some of them are just men's sports that are also not profitable. So, let's get started. There's a lot to be said here, but our main concern with this is that how it's going to affect women's sports, because one of the things about this bill, we think, again, might have some good aspirations behind it, but we have a major problem with it, is that this bill is going to try to create a national eligibility standard, basically inviting the NCAA to set rules for eligibility for sports.

Okay, well, why is that a problem? Why would that be a problem? Well, in some states, boys and men are allowed to play girls' sports. We saw the controversy with the University of Pennsylvania swim team. You know, where so-called Leah Thomas, a dude, started swimming with the girls. Like, what is this? And so, we have had 27 states step in and defend women's sports by saying, no, no, I am sorry. We are going to have biological reality here, folks. Women play women's sports.

Men do not play women's sports, no matter what they call themselves, no matter what hormone treatment they get. The problem with Ted Cruz's bill here, he's working with Maria Cantwell, super liberal, pro-war Catholic from Washington. The problem with this bill is that it does not...

Affirm these state laws. It just basically creates this opportunity for the NCAA or activist judges or bureaucrats to come up with a standard that's not codified. We cannot have. This kind of vague language in a bill. So, CatholicVote is mobilizing our network and telling people, contact your member of Congress. It's a very quick fix. It's like a paragraph or whatever. Just say, nothing in this legislation supersedes state laws protecting women and women's sports. It's a simple fix, but if they don't get this fix in there, I don't want it.

And one big problem we are running into on the Senate side, because this is where everything is right now on the Senate side, is I do not know what Ted Cruz has been drinking or where he is at. However, Working with his office, working with his office, Josh Hawley and Jim Banks has an amendment to do exactly what Josh said, and the reply back we get is, first, it was just like, no, no, no, our bill doesn't do that, our bill doesn't do that, and they lied to the White House and said the same thing.

So, Ted Cruz's office actually put together a coalition letter themselves, which is very unheard of, for them to write a coalition letter. Got a whole bunch of groups who don't work on this issue, like the 60 Plus, which is a senior citizens organization, and HSA coalitions, which really is one guy working out of his basement, to sign onto this letter saying, we support your bill. Whereas groups like Alliance Defending Freedom, CatholicVote, Family Policy Alliance, Family Research Council, CWA, Concerned Women for America, all oppose the bill.

Right. So, yeah. We know about it. Right. Well, Ted Cruz, his office, when you finally whittle them down with all their arguments, their last argument is, if we introduce this language to fix this, it'll be a poison pill, and the Democrats won't vote for it. And every single time, I was on a coalition call this morning, and I almost had to scream it, I don't care about fixing the bill.

I'm not going to weigh one over the other, and it's not our job as activists for the family to make the decision. The good news is, on the House side, Steve Scalise, the majority leader, is 100% on our side, doesn't like the Senate version. The House version is much stronger with language and does protect those states and protects future states as well.

So, this is one of those things, though, we've got to watch for during a lame duck, because nothing good ever happens during a lame duck. So, we need to make sure we're vigilant and keep on top of those. So, basically, if it passes on the Senate side, and then they kick it over to the House, the House does the amending, and then the House passes it, it's going to have to go back to the Senate again, right, to make it? Or it goes to conference.

This is something that hasn't happened in a very, it's happened rarer and rarer recently, but it could go to conference where the two. um sides try to figure it out in media for lawmakers on both yeah yeah can someone just explain to me though like everyone knows this is an 80 20 issue with the american public right so i mean and ted cruz is in texas where i can't imagine it's like less than 85 15 right that people want these kinds of protection for girls and women's sports so why what's the resistance and by the way it is the one you know in a Obviously, immigration was the number one reason why voters picked Donald Trump in the 2024 election, but this was number two.

This was a very salient, obvious issue on which moved the needle, and I always give credit for Terry Schilling for how much work he did to show Donald Trump, dude, you can win on this issue. You can beat up Democrats on it, because 80% of the American people are with you. I don't know why Teddy Cruz doesn't get it.

The question, Erika, is people also love universities, and they love their universities. There are hundreds of millions of dollars being poured into this from the universities, from the university-adjacent type organizations, whereas groups like us do not have hundreds of millions of dollars to spend. We don't.

We're scrappy. This is one reason why you saw the White House weigh in heavily, because there were a couple of billionaire donors who said, I want to see this done. And it is another reason why Ted Cruz, I think, is also so adamant about this getting done. And it is why something will be done, and why we need to be vigilant that the family has a voice. Yeah, follow the money.

Right. Okay, Josh, send us over one more time. Where can people go to contact their congressman? I think we're going to throw it in the chat as well. Well, Celine put it in the chat already, so we can put it in there again, but yeah, I mean, again, CatholicVote, you know, we're going to have an email update on this soon. If you're not signed up for email alerts from CatholicVote, my gosh, go to CatholicVote.org, change that right away, and we'll have a link up on our homepage soon that will take you to the CatholicVote Action Center, where you can...

Talk to your members of Congress and tell them, fix this bill. Fix it. Protect women's spaces. I like women's spaces. Not that I know, and it'll be good. Okay, we're going to roll into good news now. I think we need a little good news, and there is a lot of good news. I've been following a few threads from the Trump administration, and you know there's a lot to be frustrated with, but this was really good news. So, on September 4th, the Department of Justice announced an agreement with Mount Sinai Health System.

So, Mount Sinai Hospital is a state-run hospital. So, we're going to get to that. So, we're going to get to that. Massive and very prestigious hospital up here in the Northeast that resolves an investigation into potential violations of federal law arising from, yes, you guessed it, transling the kids. So, the hospital had been... Doling out castration, sex-rejecting procedures is what we're calling them now, because that's what they are. So, castration surgeries, using castration drugs like Lupron on kids, and all under the name of gender-affirming care.

So, in this agreement, Mount Sinai. Again, one of the biggest providers in the state of New York and has a lot of tentacles out in the whole Northeast. They're going to cease providing these interventions to minors, including administering puberty blockers and cross-sex hormones and performing surgical procedures. Not only that, they are going to pay a monetary penalty and dedicate $2 million to now providing free medical care. To individuals who went through this treatment as minors and now want to de-transition.

So they are going to now put all, not all, but a good amount of the effort that was going into transing the kids into de-transing their victims. And so this is great news. This would not have happened under President Kamala Harris or Joe Biden had he made it through the election cycle. And again, I think we...

I think we often forget just how bad things were when it came to this, and that there were real child victims, and the number of those child victims would have increased exponentially under a different administration. So, I'm going to give props where props are due. This is also, just to remind everyone, this is actually the fourth massive hospital system for the DOJ to successfully go after and turn when it comes to Wait, do elections matter? Oh my gosh, Josh, it's like elections matter.

It's like we don't have to be losers all the time. It's like we can do things. This is awesome. I mean, on the trans stuff and on the border, like two areas, Trump has won. Yes. I mean, it shouldn't be that hard for the DOJ. All they need to do is go up to these hospitals and go, how would you like to feel liable for some 25-year-old who you convinced to change their gender when they were 15? No, they can't have any children.

Right. Yeah. And, I mean, you're driving to the bank. I almost wish I'd transferred when I was 15, just so I could see somebody right now. Oh, Tom. I'm glad you didn't. Okay. Well, so is my wife. It would have been, yeah. Come on, man. We went there.

All right, Josh, give us more good news. We're just, we need, we love this. I mentioned earlier about the federal tax credit. The federal education tax credit starts on January 1st, 2027, and what it amounts to is you will be allowed, if you're a federal taxpayer, you pay federal taxes, you can donate up to $1,700 to a... Scholarship granting organization, and you will receive $1,700 credit back on your taxes. So, basically, you're directing $1,700 of your own tax money to go to a scholarship.

And Patrick Graff over at, he's a researcher with an organization, School of Choice Now, he basically says, look, there's $120 million. Federal tax filers in 2027, if just 2% of these 120 million people participate in this federal tax credit, we could raise $3.8 billion for scholarships for kids for K-12. Now, what are these scholarships for? I mean, the biggest thing I like is scholarships for private or Catholic.

Education. So, we can get kids into Catholic schools who right now can't afford it. This is outstanding, and the money goes from, the taxpayer gives the money himself to these scholarship-granting organizations that get it to the kids. There's no government middleman. You're not sending the money to the government, and the schools have to get it. No, no, no, no, no. You're, as a taxpayer, donating to these scholarships.

Granting organizations. So, this is a phenomenal opportunity. It's a game-changing moment, but it's not going to happen unless Catholics get involved. We're going to be talking about this a lot in the months and months to come, so we're very focused on this because this is an opportunity, a generational opportunity, to really give millions of Catholic families an opportunity to get that Catholic education. Yeah, 100%. And I would just encourage everyone who's watching right now to stick around until the end of the show.

I did an in-depth interview with Patrick Mason, who directs one of these funds, and he and his organization are all about getting people educated about it so that we can get massive participation in this. And I think about this a lot. I did that deep episode. Maybe we could throw this in the chat, Celine. I did the deep episode on why are Catholic schools so expensive and so unaffordable, right? Why is the Catholic school that's two miles up the road from me, which in today's dollars should cost me 250 bucks to send all my kids there, now $8,000 a student, right?

How did that happen? And at the end of that video, I got to go into several organizations, including the Chesterton Academies, Josh was part of founding one in his town, the Cristo Rey Academies in the inner cities, who are re-examining that model and coming up with ways that We can bring back Catholic education to a wide swath of practicing Catholics, and this bill, or this opportunity with the tax credit could help with all of those programs. So, it is really important for Catholics to become aware of this, opt in, and start getting the, let the coffers flow.

Let the coffers flow. Money isn't everything, but it helps. All right, Tom, good news. I know you have to leave us soon, so. Well, I'm going to take two, though, because one, I've been talking to a friend of the show, Rachel Bovard, about this stay-at-home mom proposal from the Vance administration.

Her tongue-in-cheek solution is that they all start forming LLCs, corporations, declare themselves a learning center, and the Democrats will start sending billions of dollars to them. That's right. That's right. On the actual good news front is, and this is thanks to the Trump administration, Donald Trump, one reason he's successful, and I mean this as a compliment, he can be a bully. If he sees something ridiculous, he will be relentless about it and calling it out. And one thing he did was the Smithsonian just went completely left.

It has gone completely left for decades. You sometimes see it in the exhibits when you come to Washington, D.C., but one of the bigger problems is the Smithsonian also has, they put out learning materials that they send out to schools and everything, and schools are just like, oh, it is from the Smithsonian. It has got to be good, and it is all this like. 16, 17, or 16, 19, whatever, crap, and things like that, that our founding fathers are all bad, and the white culture is bad.

The guy behind it all, Lonnie Bunch, is now out. He's gone, or he's retiring. This should be good news, because now, I believe the two... One is, J.D. Vance is one of the people who's on, is a regent, because the regents get to decide who's the next. There's about five open spots on this, on this board as well, that get to decide who the next president is. I'm trying to remember who the other regent is. I think it might be either Pete Hegseth, or it's Marco Rubio.

It's somebody within the administration. So, I mean, we have an opportunity here to make Josh Mercer the next head of the Smithsonian. Oh, my gosh, Josh. You know, actually, it is kind of funny. If you think about this, Donald Trump had actually called the White House during the Obama administration and said, There's no ballroom here. I can do this. I'm a builder. I can help fix this.

And David Axelrod legitimately said recently, like, that was a blunder, that they should have called him back and tried to get him involved. And so, somebody just said, imagine an alternative timeline where he would have been allowed to do that, help build a ballroom for the Obama White House. Hillary Clinton gets elected president. He becomes head of, like, you know, the... The Kennedy Center or whatever, and he would have never run for president, and instead, they ignore his call, and Donald Trump goes to the prom, right, the nerd prom, the White House Correspondents, and Obama proceeds to attack him from the podium for joke after joke after joke.

One thing Donald Trump does not like is being ridiculed, and so I think that is the moment where Donald Trump is like, I am going to run for president. And this is going to be the ultimate legacy. The rest is history. Yeah, I mean, it's just amazing to me, but I do, I actually want to add one little thing here, just thinking about this. The whole term, stay-at-home moms, it does kind of have a little bit of a negative connotation. I wonder if we just call moms.

And then, there's moms who raise children, and then there's stay-at-work moms. Oh. Oh! But then, what am I? I don't know. I work from home, moms. I mean, I say this tongue-in-cheek. My wife, as well, is a working mother, but she works from home. Some of the times, these labels can be kind of a little bit more negative on it, and so I think I say that in jest, of course.

There are families that both have to work out of the house, and they don't want that. And that's why I think this, you know, giving them the opportunity to get these funds, maybe they could, they would stay at home if they had the chance. But I meant that tongue-in-cheek, of course. Oh, I appreciate it. Yeah, one of the, one of the conservative, intra-conservative criticisms about this was, I forget what her name was, but she's like, I don't want my, my tax dollars as a working mom to subsidize the stay-at-home lifestyle of my neighbor.

And I'm like, wait, so. When did being the primary caretaker of your young child become a lifestyle, right? That's not what's going on here. It's actually, it's all upside down, right? The normative natural state of things would be for the mother to be able to care for her own child, preferably in a whole neighborhood of women who are also caring for their own children, so that you're not like me. I'm the only adult in our whole neighborhood. All week long, because it empties out.

I couldn't have said anything. We're going another round on this. Oh, my gosh. I'm with you, though. Thank you. Thank you. It's not a lifestyle. It's trying to respond to God's call. Like, let's just make it. That's what it is. Okay, we have a few more minutes with Tom McCleskey, so I am going to flip this around. So, obviously, this week, we have two very sad anniversaries. We have the one-year anniversary tomorrow of Charlie Kirk's assassination, and I... Again, like the most disturbing part of the last few days have been seeing the continued celebrations of the Kirkiversary on social media from the left.

Dark times in our country when that's acceptable social discourse. But we also have the 25th anniversary of 9-11 on Friday, which it's hard to believe it's been a quarter century since that day. But I wanted to open it up to both of you.

Either, where were you on 9-11 when you found out? Where did you watch it from? And sort of, what do you think the greater impacts have been on your own lives and our country? So, Tom, I'll just pitch it to you. Well, I was down here. Not too far from where I am now, less than three, four miles from the Pentagon, but just like everybody else. I mean, I could see the smoke when I went outside. I watched most of it unfold on TV, just like everybody else.

I didn't know her at the time. My wife was actually working downtown. She had to walk across the bridge because all the roads were closed off. And I mean, I'm old enough to remember when you as a regular citizen, it was very easy for you to go visit Congress. I have to leave to go up to Congress right now. And one reason I have to leave early is I have to go through all the security. And it's just the, it's because of 9-11 that a lot of it is, and we've just grown accustomed to seeing, like, just policemen walking around with AK-47s, it's just totally, I think, changed our culture here, where we're more conscious of the threat, but, I mean, thank goodness.

Be it vigilance or God's oversight that we haven't seen something as horrible since. Amen. Josh? Yeah, I mean, I was living in Northern Virginia at the time, and, you know, I got the heck out of Dodge. My friends and I drove out of the city as soon as we saw it. It was horrifying, but it is true that things have changed. Obviously, it's not just 9-11, but that was the most obvious one. I mean, there was an attack on the U.S.

Capitol, like, in 1998. And then there was the attack on the World Trade Center before this, back in 1991. So, there were other isolated attacks, and then, of course, terrorism, political homegrown, domestic terrorism, where you had the Bernie bro that was shooting at. Steve Scalise and other members of Congress during a congressional softball practice, and then now, again, with Charlie Kirk, with the assassination of him, and then the attempted assassination on Donald Trump. I mean, like, if he didn't turn his head, I mean, Trump is dead.

So, you know, I don't know if we're, it's hard to just, you know, I just don't think we're going to get that toothpaste back in the tube. We're not going to get to a pre. Heightened security level situation, you know. There is talks now. Like, whether or not, like, okay, should we allow people to go into an airport that isn't going on a plane ticket right now? That's one of the things that TSA is, like, considering that, you know. Can we let a family park the car, all come in through security, and eat a meal together, and then wave dad off to the plane?

You know, you used to be able to do that. Yeah. Who knows if that proposal will happen or not. That's going to have to go through all the different works to see if it happened. I do think that the heightened security thing was a big change in America, but I think in some ways, the attempted assassination of Trump and then the actual murder of Charlie Kirk. Well, it seems so much more darker to me, in a sense. I mean, like, you know, it's one thing for foreigners to come at us, and 3,000 dead, I don't mean to minimize that in any way, and the heroism of the firefighters.

My friend was a speechwriter for Mayor Rudy Giuliani, and he and the other speechwriters just worked nonstop, 21 days straight. They didn't take any breaks. And they wanted to make sure that every single one of these hero cops and hero firefighters had a special remembrance by the mayor. It was not just like, oh, no, we have got a lot that are dead. They took the time to make sure, and afterwards, the firefighters and the police officers were like, How did you do that?

Like, it was so personal. Like, you really did know Tony. I think this was the point. Like, you guys are heroes, and so Giuliani, I think, went a little crazy in recent years or whatever. I will never forget how outstandingly awesome he was during 9-11 and the aftermath. He was a hero for it, and I love him for it, but, you know, that was a foreign threat, and it was horrible, and we responded to it, and like Tom said, we haven't had any...

I think, thankfully, there was an attempt. The guy, the shoe on a flight, a bomber or whatever, didn't really materialize. Thankfully, we've been better at that. But the thing that we haven't gotten better at... It's the whole domestic stuff. Joe Biden said the number one domestic terrorist threat was white supremacy. No, it's not. It's that the left is so enamored with political power, and they feel like Donald Trump is this impediment to us, and why they are so totally okay with violence.

The one actress who held up the effigy of Trump's head, bloody. Yeah. You know, all this kind of stuff. What are you doing? Like, what is with this? Like, you know, I mean, I just do not see anywhere, like, even one percent of the glorification of violence amongst the right that I do with the left. The left, you know, there's, how many have been there? You know, hundreds of attacks on Catholic churches, you know, in recent years because of abortion. You know, there's so much.

The left is. Crazy when it comes to violence. It's a serious problem. Yeah. I think, too, one of the many disturbing aspects of the rise of the Democratic Socialists of America is when their spokesmen, like Hassan Piker, we have Zohran Mamdani in New York, we've got Al-Said in Michigan, and past comments that they've made about 9-11, the, oh, America deserved 9-11, we brought this on ourselves, or like, I'm going to mourn the 3,000 people who died on 9-11. And then the next day, I'm going to mourn the 30,000 people America killed in the genocide that followed in the Middle East.

And so, comments like this, and then, of course, walking back, well, I just, I meant it, you know, metaphorically or whatever. I didn't really mean it. But those spokesmen for that rising political arm are not only tolerated, but it's kind of passed over the, oh, you know, maybe we did deserve that. Maybe we did. But then just the last few days. I've spent a lot of time, as I do every year, I try and go back and watch or listen or read about one of those actual heroes on that day.

So, President Trump yesterday gave the Medal of Freedom posthumously to the man in the red bandana. You probably remember him as the 24-year-old former lacrosse college sports champion who ran back into the towers, went up, saved 18 people, brought them down, went back up, and of course, died in the collapse. But when I think about... When I think about those faces of those individuals, I was like, you know what, Hassan Piker is saying that that man deserved what he got, and that that woman who died deserved it, and that it's not just like this amorphous America deserved it, but you're actually saying you're glad that these people suffered that and died, and I think it's the dehumanization on the left of Of the victims of violence that is most disturbing.

And we see it with the Charlie Kirk, the celebration of his death. It's this dehumanizing of your political opponents to the point of the violence was justified. So, you've got to watch it. And it gets very, the one thing that, walking away from the Charlie Kirk violence and assassination, was that I learned, because, I mean, I was part of an assassination attempt, like, almost 15 years ago or so now. It's very personal, right. So, it was very personal, and I was talking with a cousin on Facebook, because that's where all political discussions happen, right?

And he made it very clear, he kept on saying, Well, nobody deserves what Charlie Kirk got, but maybe if he didn't say what he said, he wouldn't have got it, meaning Charlie Kirk deserved what he got, and then when I explained, he didn't even know about my, this is my cousin, he didn't even know about my situation or past, and he said then the same thing to me, and it opened my eyes that people in my own family, because of the views I uphold.

Um, if something like this were to happen to me, it'd be like, oh, well, you know, we missed Tom, except maybe he shouldn't have spoke out for the things he spoke out for. Um, which, look, I'm stupid. That means I'm going to keep on speaking out louder about it.

Thank God. It's just, it was very eye-opening about... It went from being faceless violence to being very, very, very personal to Charlie Kirk. Kelsey had just taken over CatholicVote. I can remember sending a private prayer to her, like, hey, you know, unfortunately, because you're out there like this. It's just so, it's so unnecessary in a free society. Yeah. Well, and, you know, It is just disturbing because, you know, like you say, your own family, like, yeah, my own family, too, just have views that you look at and would have been considered.

The height of absolute radicalism, not just that they support transgender stuff, which, like, you know, you go back four years, and it's like less than 1% of people would support such policies, you know, and now it's just like, yeah, half the country is like, yeah, dude, totally. I mean, not half the country, but the political party that half the people in the country vote for. It's just, it is really, truly bizarre, the radicalism of the left, and that's why. You know, we have our fights in the primaries, and we try to get the best candidates we can, but when it comes to election in November, it's like, I'm sorry.

I'm going to stand in the gap, and I'm going to prevent as many Democrats from holding elective office. That party deserves to go down in flames and be in the ash heap of history. We need a better... I'd love to have two parties that are not psycho. That would be nice. Right now, we only have one that's not psycho. Thank you for my support.

Yes, it's kind of like, I would love to not have a welfare state, but we have one, and so I would like the money to be distributed more fairly to moms. Tom, I know you have to go, and you're going to go defend the unborn, defend the Hyde Amendment up there on Capitol Hill in the swamp, and we, yeah, thank you for speaking louder.

I'm glad I got to spend this time. And I'll see you all soon. Yeah, you will. All right, Tom. Take care. All right, Mercer. It's you and me. Let's break it down. All right. This is going to be one of your favorite segments. We're going to talk about, we had Labor Day, Happy Working Man Day. Someone called it the Communist Day off or something, like Labor Day. Whatever. Okay. Let's talk about- Well, I mean, in other countries, Labor Day is May 1st, which was May Day, the communist celebration, and we decided to have it.

Further away. Put it the last weekend of November, and it's a nod to the tourism industry, and I prefer that that way. Yeah, we like it that way. Do it the American way. So, we have a lot of numbers on work, and we have a lot of numbers on immigration and deportation coming in. I mean, I'm going to put this in the W's category. You've already alluded to the fact that on immigration, which was the number one issue in 2024, Trump is winning.

And then I want to tie that into the jobs report that we just got, and then talk about where are all the men, and maybe as the sole man remaining on the podcast today, you can explain this to me. But to start with immigration, which is great. So, the total, these numbers came out this week, the total foreign-born population has declined 2.9 million from January 2025, when Trump took office, to July. This follows an $8.3 million increase during the Biden administration.

So, we still aren't back to pre-Biden levels, but a significant chunk have departed the country. DHS is reporting that 2.1 million of these were working-age men who were either here legally or illegally, but they were not born here.

So, if this trend continues at this pace, we're going to see a reduction of 15.3 million foreign-born residents by the time Trump finishes his second term. This would get us back to a 2010 level of a foreign-born. 2010. 2010 only. It only gets us back 16 years. Wow. No, that's good. It is. It is. People are like, oh, we need to do more. And they give me eight years advance. Come on, baby. Okay. So, Josh, reactions? Thoughts on this news, and are we just all racist and hate Mexicans?

What's going on? Well, I mean, again, I would just like to point out there's a lot of podcast bros who've been spreading a lot of, what is it, black pill, where they all just get so despondent, whatever, and it's like, listen, cold starting a deportation machine like this is not easy. It takes a few months for this stuff to ramp up, but it's been going on now and going faster than it had ever gone before. Like, we had faced...

An absolutely mind-blowing, reckless, four-year policy of a wide-open southern border. Joe Biden should still be impeached. Yeah. I mean, it's just, it was malpractice that he and Mayorkas were not impeached for this. Like, it's absolutely the most reprehensible. I mean, he should have been hanged, these guys. I mean, this is a crime. I mean, it's just absolutely insane.

And so, all the podcast bros are like, oh, nothing's happening with immigration. What are you talking about? Like, for the first few months, yeah, it took a while to turn the ship around, but this is amazing. Like, in a year and a half, they've already undone like 35% of what had come in during Biden's four years. That's pretty good. That's really good, and I suspect it'll get even higher. Like, going back to 2010, that is amazing, and don't tell me that these illegal immigrants aren't receiving welfare.

Like, you know, Senator Eric Schmidt had a, he posted a diagram. Can we pull that up, Celine? This is crazy. Yeah, here we go. Yeah, here we go. Yeah, so we've got, and this also speaks, so this chart speaks to two things. One is the percentage of illegal foreign-born residents, thank you, relying on welfare, but it also speaks to the fact that our open border drained these other countries of their workforce, of their working-age males. So, look at this. These numbers are crazy.

25% of all Mexicans live in the United States. I mean, can you imagine if 25% of the American population up and moved to Canada? Like, that would just wreak havoc on our economy, on education, on healthcare. Of those 25%, 70% of them rely on welfare here. The same thing, 10% of Guatemalans actually live in America right now, because they came up through... Mexico. 12% of Nicaraguans live here. 12% of Haitians live here. And again, 77% on welfare, 75% on welfare, 53% on welfare.

What are we doing here, people? Why are we borrowing billions of dollars from China so that we can pay welfare to Haitians who live in this country? Like, what? This is dumb. I'm sorry. No, and call me a racist and a homophobe and a bigot and all that stuff. La, la, la, la, la, la. I don't care. It's dumb to borrow money from China and take money from taxpayers in this country and give it to millions of immigrants that come in our country.

We want to help people in other countries. Foreign aid is what that's for. Like, this is crazy. But not the kind of foreign aid, not the foreign aid we were doing with USAID, not where we had, like, the transgender mice. Putting on operas about a lesbian lover of Julius Caesar or something like that. We don't do that. We're thinking healthy foreign aid would be good. And one of the foreign aid would be just not drain- To be invested to have wide jobs.

Right, investment in them to have jobs in their own countries, and not draining those countries of their military-aged males. That's not good for those countries either. So, again, that's the untold story. And DHS, they put out these numbers, and they point- Okay, this is connected to the fact that we've been having great jobs reports.

Which is true. So, we got the numbers for August, and we had total non-farm payroll employment increased by $162,000 in August, and unemployment rate was unchanged at 4.1%. That number was double what people expected, double or triple even. Yeah, so that was really great, and it was also continuing on a really strong July set of numbers and a strong June set of numbers. So, when it comes to unemployment... We seem to be heading in the right direction, but this was a really interesting stat that came out, and I want to pick your brain on this, Josh.

If you look at the numbers demographically, Of those 162,000 new jobs in August, 98% of them went to women. 98. 98%. How is this possible? Okay, so I'm going to try and offer... You'd think it was like 1982 or something like that, where women are just entering the workforce.

This is crazy. So, women accounted for 158,000 new jobs in August. Men, for 4,000, to put it in raw numbers for you. This has been covered all over the left, the center, and the right media. President Trump's reaction on Truth Social was, no wonder they like me, as in girls like him. I'm like, no. I'm a little bit disturbed by this bra. One explanation- Yeah. Got that wrong. The message got that one wrong, and also, Ken Paxson, who I like, running percent in Texas, like, oh, look at all these women getting jobs.

I have nothing against women who want jobs to get jobs. That's not the problem here. That's not the problem. There is something fundamentally wrong if only 158,000 jobs and only 2% went to men? Yeah. What? This is so weird. Now, is it because men are already vastly super-employed, and there's no available men? Well, no, that's not the case.

There are men available for jobs. So, I think, and it's not just, by the way, Erika, where are the numbers? It's not just August. You look over the course of the last 18 months or so, it's still like 90-10 or whatever.

And so, what is going on with it? Now, some of it is that... The sectors of the economy that have been growing the most over the last 10 years, healthcare, education, are overwhelmingly dominant by women, but 98%, something smells funny, and I think it is time for the Department of Justice to look into this, because the accusations, the explanations for this from a lot of young people is that women dominate. HR, and they simply do not hire men. If that is true, there are a lot of billion-dollar corporations that are exposed, and they better watch out because the civil rights law can come to bite them right in the butt.

They're the ones that said we needed a Civil Rights Act for employment so that we had no discrimination against. People based on race and on sex, it's like, well, wait a minute now. If only 2% of men are getting hired?

Yeah, so I think that's part of it, but it's also a fact, too, and the Wall Street Journal just covered this, that men are also leaving the labor market in droves. And you can do like a chicken and an egg thing, like, well, are they leaving it because they get so discouraged by the HR ladies who don't hire them, or are there other factors as well? But it's also the truth that men have, especially Gen Z men, have largely stopped looking for work.

So, I think it's one in three Gen Z men this year. This is from the Institute for Family Studies. One in three Gen Z men are neither in school, nor are they actively seeking employment. You can't really blame them if only 2% of men get hired. Exactly. You can't blame them. And again, I'm not sure what's the cause for what. This is totally a deep episode that has to come out ASAP. But this was more crazy stats. So, in the 1990s, men held...

Nearly seven million more jobs than women, and now women are dominating not only the workforce, but we've also passed gender parity in medical school students. It's majority female, law school, majority female, four-year colleges, majority female. So, even the pre-professionals, we're seeing this market rise in the number of women. I mean, I'm reminded of the great feminization. Controversy of the winter, that what is the effect of this going to be? You want to make sure your doctors are white dudes, you know.

Yeah, that is right. That is right. And, yeah, so just crazy times. Can we get this Washington Post graphic up there, Celine? I don't know if we can, but there's, yeah, the share of men in the workforce just plummeting, basically, since 2006. Well, I mean, again, if, you know, people like me, I've been in the workforce for 20-plus years now, and so I'm...

I am not eminently employable for the next, you know, how many ever years until I get to retirement. I am not the problem. Gen X and boomers are not the problem, obviously. The problem is those under 40. So, as men are leaving the workforce, you know, you would think that my sons, they should have the opportunity to get jobs, and that is the concern, is that these, you know, crazy HR ladies are just a stone wall preventing men from being considered for these positions.

Yeah. And so, again, I think the controversy you talked about. In the winter was Helen Andrews, who made the point that, you know, once, you know, you get this. Like a critical mass. Critical mass. That was what I was looking for in my brain. Once you get a critical mass of women in a sector, it fundamentally changes the character of that.

Of that sector. It is no longer the same. It becomes a new creation, and also, they have this tendency of only hiring their own. So, the big rap on white men by feminists and the blacks was like, oh, you white men only hire white men. We will be different once we get in power.

No, we are not different. We are all just big men. You are Humphrey. Eat your hat. This is such a joke. Yeah, a couple of other threads that came up. Nicholas Eberstadt, who's a fantastic sociologist, he had a book a few years ago, and he talked about what are the characteristics of these young Gen Z men who are not working, and basically, they're more likely to be non-workers if they have only a high school diploma, no more than that, not married, no children.

Or children who lived elsewhere from outside relationships was not an immigrant. So, if you were an immigrant in that age bracket, you were more likely to be employed, even if you were male, and then was African American. And he talked there about the effects of the incarceration and the crime rates in the Black community having a massive effect on these unemployment rates and that kind of skewing. So, there's a lot of interesting threads. Going on here, but someone in the chat was mentioning, okay, well, this is the man-child, the man-child who leaves the workforce.

Yes, they are also more likely to be regular users of cannabis. They are more likely to use their leisure time to play video games for multiple hours. I think the average is like four to six hours per day, and then, yeah, getting on. I mean, some are losers. They're just not going to earn employable. I get that, but if you give them no opportunity.

Then, yeah, then they might go, well, I got nothing else to do. This guy on Twitter had a funny comment. Sorry, man. You got to have a college degree to send emails for our company. Have you considered operating huge machinery that runs at 2,000 degrees? It's just kind of mind-blowing that, like, why, what? Like, why are all these sort of white, you know, cozy office, white jobs, like, white-collar jobs, why are we not, why do we not want men for them?

And it just, it's kind of amazing. So, I do think that we're seeing resurgence in the skilled trades, but there are some people who are not meant for the skilled trades. And men should not be excluded from white-collar jobs. This is absolutely asinine, so I want the Justice Department to get involved and throw down the hammer on this stuff.

Sounds good. All right, speaking of the great feminization, let us roll into the Twilight Zone and talk about women on juries. I can't believe I'm doing this. I was going to have a fun Twilight Zone, but then all hell broke loose yesterday when three, and actually four, three went on video, one did a radio interview, of the female jurors from the Lindsay Clancy trial decided to go public and just hang that one holdout juror out to dry, and of course, he was a male, which they...

I mentioned multiple times that this man couldn't come around to their way of thinking. So, for those of you who weren't following this, God bless you, but on Friday, we got a ruling from the judge that there was a mistrial because the jury could not come to an agreement. There was one holdout juror, which the defense attorney for Lindsay Clancy, I mean, I'm so naive, Erika. I'm so naive. When I heard there was a holdout juror, I thought, oh, one person doesn't realize that this woman is guilty.

No, Josh. It's like, oh, no, no, no, no, no. So naive. Josh, you're so innocent and naive. That's really touching, but no. It was one guy who, according to these jurors, couldn't get over the fact that Lindsay Clancy had viciously murdered her children, and I... That kind of seems to be why you're there. All right, we're just going to roll the tape. Celine, we're going to roll the tape, and we'll just kind of break this down, why this is so disturbing.

Jury of our peers, here we go. I'm not sure if rogue is the right word, Sue, but every one of us, in the hours of our frustration, would get up and walk the room, because you just couldn't sit anymore, and would all go to the cart with the exhibits.

He, I think, got up to the cart once, very briefly, and went back to his seat. He would not... He would not interact with us and try to understand. We read to him on numerous occasions the definition of reasonable doubt from Judge Sullivan's instruction. He actually said one day, in the end, well, why don't we have the judge come in and read it again? And we were like, no, we have it in front of us.

We don't need that, and we would highlight it, and, you know, so-and-so, this is the definition of reasonable doubt, but you have the hardest time getting off the fact that Lindsay viciously killed her children. Okay. The operative word there being viciously, because that's what they were asked to determine. Right. If she was psychotic, it wasn't vicious. If she was under this influence of the demonic voice or whatever, and her meds, then it wouldn't have been vicious. But the fact that this juror actually characterizes the murders as viciously, that's the tell.

Of course he was holding out. That's what... The job of the jurors was. Another one of the jurors, I'm not going to play you these tapes, but they all fit the profile. If you had asked me, what does the woman look like who's holding out and wants to exonerate Lindsay Clancy and just pat her on the head and send her to rehab for the rest of her life? What does she look like? They all look like that. They're all my age, my cohort, a little bit more weathered, perhaps, liberal white women.

But another one of them actually admitted that there were several nurses on the jury, and when the holdout juror was asking questions about the toxicology report, instead of relying on the expert witnesses in the courtroom, which is what they're legally obligated to do, the nurses on the jury jumped in with their expertise and were like, let me interpret the evidence for you, which absolutely this was a mistrial if that's what was going on in the jury room. And then what was the other one?

Yes. The third woman said that when she was asked about, well, what did you think of the prosecution's arguments for Lindsay Clancy's guilt? What did you think of them? Her response was, well, I found there was a real lack of compassion for Lindsay from the prosecuting attorneys. This was a murder trial, and she killed her three babies, and I found the prosecuting attorneys to be, quote, biased and cold.

To which I'm like, what was the prosecution's job? I'm biased against moms or dads who kill their children. That's definitely a strong bias I have. Yeah, and then the fourth, the juror who declined to be videoed, but she did do a radio interview. She was asked by the interviewer, and this was a local news station in Boston. She was asked, well, when you walked in, what was your initial thought on the trial and how you would vote, and then why did you change your vote?

To, you know, exonerating Lindsay. And she said, well, when I walked in at first, I thought that I would convict her. But over the course of the trial, I realized that in order to get Lindsay the help she needs, I would have to exonerate her.

To which I like. What she needs is a rope. I mean, yes, who knows what that is. Send a signal to moms, hey, kill your kids, we'll hang out. And we've already had at least one copycat mom hang her toddler outside of Chicago, and apparently the celebrity of Lindsay Clancy contributing to that. We also had another juror talking about how the argument that this was altruistic filicide. That Lindsay was actually acting out of compassion and mercy for her three children as she strangled them with an exercise band.

That this was altruistic homicide. One by one. And while tragic. One by one. It was totally understandable. That is it. It is three actions. You kill one, and then you go on to the next one, and kill that one, and go on to the next one. It is not like you are driving a car, and you had a moment like, ah, and you just turn the wheel, and you go up a cliff. Like, a split second, and you do something that kills all of you.

You use three actions. I just cannot get over this. You know, this is horrifying. It is horrifying. You know, there is a quote going around. You see this, Erika, from Fulton Sheen, talking about, you know, this is making its rounds amongst many Catholics, you know, in the wake of this jury, and I think it really says it very well. It speaks to this, actually, and it also speaks to, by the way, the assassination of Charlie Kirk. Archbishop Fulton Sheen said decades ago, As Roe v.

Wade was first put in, he said, just think of how many mentally disturbed women we are going to have in the United States in the next 10 to 15 years when the guilt of abortion begins to attack the mind and soul. And I think that is why it is so important for us, Catholics, to remember, like, there are a lot of people walking around who are very depressed, and I think that is why it is so important for us, Catholics, to remember Very wounded, physically and spiritually, by the evils of our day, whether it is abortion or pornography.

There are a lot of things that we can mention. It is going to require grace, certainly. It is going to require a lot of prayer and fasting by people who know. Through the grace of God, I've been given the light to see the better path, but it also is going to require, guys, it's also going to require men, like that holdout juror, who are surrounded by a sea of women who are yelling and screaming.

I feel like one more time, if they encamp the definition, that maybe I'll completely surrender. No, it's going to require men who can look truth, you know, miss lies, and all that stuff, and say, no, we live not by lies. Amen.

That's so true. Yeah, I think that another one of the, something that, like, really helped me think about this, and, like, what is going on with these women. I was very down on women last week. Women did not, we didn't acquit ourselves well over the last few weeks, I have to say, but Bishop Robert Barron gave a fantastic homily in the Word on Fire sermons, highly recommend, and he actually talked about Gad Saad's book. Suicidal empathy, which just came out. Highly recommend.

But he talked about that our society, and to me, I'm like, oh, this is what these women are doing, right? Is that they're making empathy and so-called compassion the highest supreme value, right? That it's empathy for Lindsay Clancy. Forget her children, but it's empathy for her that should be the highest value. And he says in the homily that when empathy becomes the highest value, Truth is destroyed, as you said, live not by lies, and justice. We lose the ability as a society to execute justice amongst each other and to give to each other what we are due.

You know why empathy becomes number one? It is a selfish reason. They want to be seen as being virtuous for being empathetic. That matters more than what is the proper and just thing to do in this circumstance where we have this woman who killed three children. That really does not even matter to many of these women. What matters to them is that they be seen as being virtuous, like, I care more. I care so much. I am even willing to say to this woman who did something evil, like, I can understand.

I share my pain with you. It is not even about Lindsay Clancy, and it is certainly not about the three children. It is about women who are wanting to show that they are more virtuous than other people. That is what is going on here. Now, of course, there are men in there. That I have this problem, too. It's not just, but it is more a women's problem than a men's problem. Yeah, each sex has its own peculiar vulnerabilities to vice, and I think the Lindsay Clancy trial certainly was exhibit A for what we as women are subject or more vulnerable to.

All right, so, okay. That actually leads to my... Yeah, go for it. It's a great transition. Go for it. Because, you know, again, I wanted to say... The explosion of the internet in American life, one of the first biggest societal woes it brought was widespread.

Easy access to pornography, and then it became much more insane and nasty. So, I've been long saying how horrible that is, and it's getting to kids younger and younger. Terrible, terrible, terrible. So, the first wave of the internet was horrible for devices that are, especially men are prone to, but women too, but much more men, obviously.

But, with the advent now of social media, and being able to share videos and talk, whatever you want to, I got to tell you, ladies, yes, this problem is a bigger problem for women than it is for men, and there's multiple different, I mean, I could give you a thousand exhibits of this, but this one in particular.

Caught my attention, and it was circulating on the interwebs this week. Let's listen to this lady talk about her and her husband. One thing about me, I don't like to be told what to do. Never have. Never will. Sorry, don't care who you are, don't tell me what to do. So, if you want me to do something, you're going to have to say the opposite and trick me into doing that, whatever it is you want me to do. But anyway, my husband didn't like my haircut the other day.

He didn't say he didn't like it, but in a roundabout way, he did. He said, I got my hair colored, okay? I come home. He says, hmm. What do you mean, hmm? What's hmm mean? He said, much shorter, huh? Sure did, obviously. Sounds like a typical guy to me. Does that mean you don't like it, or? He said, no, no. It's fine. It's fine. Shorter. If you say shorter one more time, I will buzz my head. All off. Clean off. Bye.

I would not say shorter again, sir. I didn't cut it for you, and I'm also not going to grow it out for you. I don't do it for you. I do it for me. So, I don't know. Is anybody else like this, or is it just me? I don't know. Sadly, it's not just her.

But for heaven's sake. Okay, so, now. I have a lot to say about this. So do I. You go first. Now, you know, again, part of the fashion industry and makeup and all that stuff was to convince women, like, you know, you do this for you, and this is why you need makeup, and this is why you need all this stuff, and men are almost always like, you look pretty without makeup, you know, whatever, we love you, well, that's fine, you know, it's like, and of course, we start to realize, you look at the change in advertising in the 70s and 80s, when they realized Women do this, all the dolling up and that kind of stuff, because they want to impress other women, like how cute they are or whatever, that kind of stuff.

Okay, now, that aside, I want to just say that, first of all, I think this is a pretty lady. I actually think this is a pretty lady. I think she's pretty. I haven't seen her with long hair, but I think she looks cute with a short haircut.

But notice how she prompts an argument from her husband. First of all, why do you have to share this with anyone, by the way? Why are you dogging on your spouse? I would never. The good Lord bless me with a wonderful wife, and Lori's probably in the chat, so she'll agree. I don't understand. I don't do this in public. Why would I do it online so everyone could see? To me, it's nauseating. It's odious. It smells.

He didn't even say it was terrible. He was like, oh, and he was careful with his words, because he knows apparently that you're a pit bull, and you're going to bite him if he says the wrong things. Apparently, there was no appropriate answer. Now, here's the thing. I have had a beard now for almost 20 years. I could not actually imagine shaving it unilaterally.

Because, literally, I am married. Hello. I am owed to my wife, and she is owed to me, and so if I decided to completely shave, and she would be like, oh, I like you with the beard. Why did you do that?

I would have been like, oh my gosh, I forgot to ask you. I would feel kind of bad about that. Oh, you do? I'm sorry. It was just kind of bothering me. I didn't like the white hair. I felt like I was 80 years old, so I shaved it, but do you want me to grow back? And she would probably be very selfless, like, well, you don't have to, but I really like it. And so, I would grow it back then, because I love my wife.

Yeah. I don't think this woman loves her husband. I don't. I don't understand this. So, like, it would be like if my wife decided she's just going to, she's a beautiful blonde, and she decided she's going to dye it completely, like, red or something, or black, and not tell me, like, oh, wow.

Well, and I might like it, but I might be like, oh, I don't know if I like that, and I'd be gentle about it, but, like, doing something that unilateral, like, it seems, and, like, and the way she was acting, like, how dare you, you better love it. Yeah, like, why did you get married? What did you think that was about? Was it, I'm not really sure what she thinks marriage is, other than, like, I belong to you, and you belong to me.

My beloved is mine, and I am my beloved's. And the poverty of... The poverty of that relationship, it's so painful to watch in that video, and like you think, okay, maybe she's just putting it on. It turns out she has like hundreds of these videos that she just gets on Instagram. She has a massive following, gets all these likes and affirmation on Instagram for posting garbage like this, and what we need to do, some people I saw, they were like, okay, we need to ban women from social media.

The government should pass laws, like no kids should be on social media. No, we need laws. I'm like, we just need a really good public shaming. Like, this should be, I don't care if you're left, right, or center, I don't care, like, what your ideology is, but this kind of betrayal of a person that you vowed your life to should just, it should elicit nothing but shame, and it's so toxic, not just to- But you want men to be better? Is this going to make men better?

No. No. I want men to be better. I want more chastity among men. I want less porn. But this is emotional porn for women, and this should be completely eradicated through those pressures of other women. Like you said, women perform for other women, and we've got to step up, sisters, and be like, this is not how we present ourselves. It's certainly not helping the cause of women's liberation, because, I mean, it's just, if this is what it produces. As someone in the comments said, I agree.

She probably thought she was being... She's passive-aggressive, when in reality, she's just aggressive. It's just aggression. Yeah, that's not passive-aggressive. No, we are now just at the narcissistic-aggression level, and yeah, again, I think about little girls growing up and dreaming of their wedding and dreaming of finding the guy and the life that they want. I don't think this is what any of us were envisioning. We're like, I'm going to have an Instagram account where I can trash my husband with impunity and get likes for it.

That's why we want to make sure we raise children that, you know. That honor and respect. If we want men to honor and respect their wives, we also expect women to honor and respect their husbands. Like, come on. This is a two-way street, people. Yeah. Can I tell you my haircut moment? We have a couple minutes here, and then we got to get going on the Catholic education. So, my haircut moment with Todd, we were married for, I think it was like, probably...

Let's see, it was 2012. So, yeah, we'd been married for, like, nine years, and I love wearing, like, combat boot style boots, and they were really in, and I find them really comfortable, and I just, I really liked buying, like, the Doc Mart combat boot style, and we're, like, seven or eight years into marriage, and I just sort of, like, realized, like, I don't think Todd likes it, and sure enough, like, I got all defensive, and I'm, like, confronting him, and I'm, like, but I, like, I like wearing them.

They're comfortable for me, and I was kind of a jerk about it. I was kind of like this lady. Thank God I wasn't on Instagram about it, and it took me a couple of years to be able to swallow that desire to just show it, stick it to the man, and be like, this is about me, and I can wear what I want, and realize that even though it was just about these stupid shoes that I liked to wear, it was actually a much broader and really toxic attitude that I had towards him.

Yeah, that is a fair point. At all aspects of our marriage, and that this, like, yeah, it's just the combat boots, but giving those up could, like, down the road save the whole marriage, and so I did. I gave up the combat boots. The only other time I wore a pair was when I got to go to Italy with another group. I was invited on a trip, so I wore them in Italy because he wasn't around, and then I confessed it.

I confessed it in Italy that I was like, you know, this was not a beautiful thing in my heart. I had to let the combat boots go, so never buzzed my head, but I feel like, again, I can have empathy, but I can also say, this is objectively bad for your marriage and bad for society when women act like this. Well, and again, I just think that so much of, you know, there's reactions and reactions off of reactions, counteractions, and we just, we got to kind of, you know, discern through what the church and what, you know, literature over the time, like, what is the best arrangement here?

You know, like, like. You know, the 60s were a rebellion against the 50s, where a lot of housewives had a wealth that was higher proportionately, and they were able to stay home, and they had these new washing machines, but the husbands were dealing, millions, with PTSD, and so it was sort of a unique environment. So, the 60s rebelled against that, and we have been dealing with... This sort of weird aberration for 60 years of feminism. I remember, actually, speaking of 9-11, Bob Dornan, the congressman, I love that guy.

He was a solid conservative, and he gave this speech at Notre Dame in 2003, and he goes, isn't this great? Right after 9-11, people were opening doors for each other, and they're helping people, and they're being nice. He goes, that's what things were like until the last 30 years with feminism and pitted men against women.

Like, we just need to return to normalcy. I just loved it. We've forgotten what that even looks like. Yeah, yeah. Speaking of returning to normalcy, we have an episode of The Deep Dropping tomorrow, and it's about, we've been down on women, but it's about optimization culture for men. So, you think of like Clavicular, you think of like Jordan, not Jordan Peterson, you think of the longevity movement, and just guys going on social media and doing the craziest things. To try and live forever and not die.

Well, I am going to break all that down for you. Why are men obsessed with this, and why does it seem to be going away? Maybe we overshot the optimization. What is it for? I cannot answer the question. So, that is going to be a fun episode. It is weird, and it is entertaining, and it is disturbing, and it was an interesting thing to dive into. Definitely not a world I normally inhabit. So, come with me tomorrow at 4 p.m. Eastern on The Deep.

For sure. Please check out that quorum that we talked about on the college sports bill. Very important that we get as many voices out there, and after prayer, stick around, because we have that interview about this amazing education opportunity, and again, this could be the game changer for private schools, Catholic schools, and really educational choice, which is what our country needs so desperately. So, stick around, but let us close in prayer. All right. In the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, this is the prayer of St.

John Henry Newman. O my Lord Jesus, low as I am in your all-holy sight, I am strong in you. I am strong through your Immaculate Mother. I am strong through your saints, and thus I can do much for the church, for the world, and for all I love. Amen.

Our Lady of Guadalupe, St. Thomas More, St. Fidelis, pray for us. In the name of the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Stick around for that interview, and we will see you back here with Tom next week.

What if there was a way for the dollars that you would have paid in federal taxes to go directly to the students and schools that you care most about as a Catholic? Well, there is a way, but not many people know about it yet. So, here to discuss with me is President and CEO of the Catholic Education Fund, Patrick Mason. Patrick, welcome to LOOPcast.

Thanks, Erika. I am really happy to be with you today. I am very excited to talk about this. Education is something near and dear to our heart. This education tax credit is something CatholicVote is very interested in, and so I want to get it straight from you as an expert in this field, and really one of the drivers of getting this into the aegis, the purview of Catholics. So, what exactly is, in the most exciting terms possible, what is the Education Freedom Tax Credit, and why should Catholics...

Do the work to find out about this. You know, whenever you talk about tax credits, it's hard not to be exciting. I know. But I mean, this really, yeah. But this really is an exciting time. You know, I think that Especially where I'm from. I'm from the southwest, middle of Indian country, right in the heart of the Nava Reservation.

Our schools never have enough funding. Our Catholic schools never have enough funding. We charge $3,000 tuition at our school, at our cathedral parish, and even most families can't afford that. Right. And so, we've always are looking for solutions to that problem, and then out of nowhere, it wasn't actually out of nowhere, but it seemed like it to a lot of us that weren't looking at it. About two years ago in the big, beautiful bill, a tax credit was passed at a federal level, and what a tax credit is, is not a tax deduction.

So, a tax credit is like if you have the child tax credit or anything else. A tax credit is you get back dollar for dollar. What you put into the program. So, under this Education Freedom Tax Credit, if someone gives $1,700, which is the cap, That when they file their taxes, they are going to get $1,700 back. So, it doesn't actually cost them anything, right? They actually are going to not have any dent in their pocketbook, as it were. And that money that must be given to a scholarship organization like our organization is then passed on to students at, in this case, Catholic schools that can then use that for tuition, for transportation.

Tutoring, for curriculum, all kinds of different things. So, what you are really looking at here is a way for... A everyday American taxpayer to redirect his taxpaying money back to the schools that he wants to support. We always talk about we're paying taxes for these schools, and we don't even agree with what they're doing with our students, but now's a chance for you instead of doing that. I mean, you're still going to have to do that on other things, but at least in this case, you can say, I want these tax dollars to go to scholarships for this institution, which I do support and is doing amazing things.

So to be really specific, under the EFT, You can determine where those dollars go, so it's not just going to a general education fund that the government distributes, but Catholics can actually direct this money to specific institutions or schools.

Yeah, that's right. So, you can't give to an individual student, but you can give to an individual institution. So, for example, at the Catholic Education Fund, we're actually fundraising in all 50 states. We currently have 12 dioceses partnered with us, and we have another 10 about we think will come on soon. And what we're doing is we're setting up a purses, we call them, so like a diocesan purse, and then individual purses for each school. So, a donor, a taxpayer can go And say, like, I just want to give to the Diocese of Gallup.

Here's my $1,700. Let you guys spend it however you want. Or they could say, I want to give it to Sacred Heart School. That's my alma mater. That's where I went to get winter. That's where my grandchildren go. Here's $1,700. Go to that school. That school, then, will see all the money in its purse and be able to say, okay, we collected $100,000 this year. That's awesome. How are we going to split that up? We could do it $1,000 for 100 students.

We could only give it to the most needy students. Right. I had one really interesting school. They said, instead of giving $1,000 scholarships to 100 students, let's give $20,000 scholarships to five students with special needs, so that now that we were never able to provide services for special needs kids, now we can. And so, there's a lot of really creative ways you can spend that money if you're a school. That's amazing. So, this isn't something that is just automatically available to everyone, though, right?

States have to opt into it. Can you tell us a little bit about the scope of which states have opted in and what that process is if you live in a state that has not yet opted in? Yeah, so the way the law is written, and in addition to doing this work, I'm an attorney by trade, although my law partners wonder if I ever do any legal work anymore, but the way the law was written is, in order, we could collect money, the Catholic Education Fund can and will collect money from taxpayers across the country in all 50 states.

However, we are only allowed to spend it on schools, on students. There are 30 states that have opted in. And opting in is usually the governor. It's a very simple process. The governor basically just has to sign a letter that says, we opt in. Please send us your money. So simple. Yeah, you would think. But, you know, politics, nothing is ever that simple. So, actually, currently, 30 states have opted in. If not officially, at least, announced that they were going to opt in.

Of those, the only one that has a Democrat governor is Colorado, and the incoming, potentially incoming Democrat governor says that will be a one-time thing because he is not going to opt in in the future. Now, there have been other indications. Governor Hochul in New York has said that she is going to opt in. Our governor, Michelle Lujan Grisham in New Mexico, I have had a lot of conversations with her, and she said she is going to opt in. You have to hold them to that, and hopefully we will be able to.

We think that a lot of them are waiting until after the midterm elections. Even if they are not up for anything, they do not want to rock the boat in any way. Teachers unions have a lot of power in a lot of states, and so we think what will happen, though, is pretty much immediately after the midterm elections happen, Governor Hochul is going to opt in, and then a bunch of states are going to follow suit. If you are the governor of Connecticut, or you are the governor of New Jersey, and the governor of New York opts in, all your Connecticut money in Greenwich and Stanford is going to go to New York, and all your money in New York is going to go to New York.

So, we think all the surrounding states will be likely to opt in, and then other states will follow suit. You know, it is kind of from a state perspective. To not opt-in is a little bit foolish because you are leaving money that could be coming into your state on the table. Even more importantly, you are going to be seeing money go out of your state. If I am in New Mexico, if my governor doesn't opt-in, I am going to collect money in our state.

But if I can't spend it in our state, I have to, by law, spend it on schools and states and students in states that have opted-in. So, we have estimated those amounts, even in a small state like New Mexico. We realistically think we could collect $50 million a year in scholarships statewide. That's money that's going to go out of state if our governor doesn't opt in. I mean, it seems like a no-brainer to me.

So, talk to me a little bit about the Catholic Education Fund specifically, and anyone watching, you can go to catholiceducationfund.org to read all about this and to participate. But, Patrick, tell us a little bit about what you're doing specifically for Catholics. and working with Catholic bishops on this project.

Yeah, absolutely. So, when we started this, our nonprofit that this fund is associated with is Equidas Education. We have been around for 10 years, focusing a lot on classical education and helping schools implement models like that. But when we first started this, we were just advocating for governors topped in, and we said, you know what, we are going to set up a regional SGO. But through my work in the Catholic Church, I realized there was not really an entity out there that was going to be.

Well, I think that the Catholic Church is capable to help dioceses really take advantage of this. When we started looking at it for our own diocese, we realized this is a huge amount of work. You are allowed to retain 10% for administration, but there was no way that was going to cover anything, right? I mean, there was audits and compliance and tech. So, we said the only way this is really going to work for Catholic education nationwide is if we bind together.

And in the Catholic Church, we are not… Not always great at that. So, we have two principles in the Catholic Education Fund, unity and subsidiarity. So, under the first principle of unity, you know, the diablo, the great divider, anything that divides comes from the devil. Anything that unites comes from God. So, our principle in everything that we do is we will only do things that unite. We are not going to talk bad about anybody else. We are not going to, you know, whatever it might be, we are there to unite.

So, in that regard, we've just been talking to bishops and saying, like, hey, let's all work together. Let's bring all of our schools together so that we can provide a level of service that you don't usually see in the Catholic Church, right? You might see it in corporate America or other evangelical space or whatever. They have these crazy events and high levels of service. But we like to kind of do it grassroots in the Catholic Church, which is good, but at the same time, we can also have nice things.

So, we partnered with an organization called Ace Scholarships. They've been giving private scholarships for 26 years to Catholic schools. They recently invested $10 million to build a platform on the ground up, from donor to scholarship. Our school uses it. It's an amazing platform. So, we partnered with them, and we said, okay, let's work on this. We will be your Catholic. arm you use your platform you take care of the compliance but we want to we want to bring all these diocese together but it's not just enough to bring them together because as you know every educator is overworked whether you're a homeschool educator or a principal or superintendent whatever it might be There is not enough time in the day for anything, so we thought that this was only going to work if we had subsidiarity, and subsidiarity is the great Catholic principle that says that which can be done at the most local and is most proper to that local level should be done at that local level, and you only elevate the work up higher levels of bureaucracy and organization when it is necessary.

So, we looked at this entire program and said, what is best handled locally, and what is best handled at a higher level? Administratively. So, compliance, connecting with the Treasury website, audits, all the things that nobody wants to deal with that you have to do every day, technical support, customer service, those things are better handled at a higher level. But what is handled best of the locally? Relationships, right? Unity, relationships with your community and your family.

Engaging your community to participate in this program, whether through a donation or a redirection of their tax liability, or for your kids to apply for these scholarships. Yeah. So, we give dioceses and schools a turnkey solution. We basically say, look, you don't have a marketing team. We do. We're going to create you some beautiful marketing materials. We're going to create a branded portal and website for your donors and your students to go to that will have... It'll look like you're going to Sacred Heart School, not like you're going to the Catholic Education Fund.

Right. You'll actually feel like you're at their site and able to give to them, and then in real time, they'll be able to see everything that comes in, set their scholarship amounts, set what the scholarships can go for, and deliver those scholarships to kids. So, we really wanted to make it turnkey, and we gave them a playbook, too. We said, hey, first week of school, send this message out. It's the end of the first semester, send this message out. Put this on your Facebook.

So, all they really have to do is take our materials and post them in the places that we suggest to engage the community. That is great. Exactly. What an incredible service to the church, because like you said, that is the work no one wants to do. Yeah. You are like Gandhi. You are cleaning the latrines for us. This is great.

Sometimes it feels like that. Yeah, right. I mean, you are a lawyer, so. Yeah. But all said and good fun. So, quickly, just. Kind of broader vision question for you, that if this works the way it's supposed to, if the AFTC takes off and Catholics are able to take advantage of it through the Catholic Education Fund, what do you see it doing for Catholic education five or even ten years down the road?

I mean, I think... The biggest thing it will do will allow, well, there's two big things. One is it will allow schools to become sustainable, right? So many schools now are not sustainable. Unless you're one of these schools that charges $30,000 a year, you know, the cost to educate a child is not what it used to be. So, if you're a school charging $3,000 or even $8,000 a year, it's very difficult to educate a child with that amount. But these scholarships We'll allow those schools to focus on that education, right, and really not worry as much as they do every day.

Like, how are we going to get the money to keep the lights on, right? Right. We have a very good source of funding that we're able to provide the funding to our school for. But I think more importantly than that is it's going to get lit schools focused on their Catholic identity. So, I have a friend, a good friend in Virginia. He had five kids. He sent all of them through Virginia Catholic schools. And he said he saw over the decades a shift in the school because what happened was many of the Catholic families could not afford the education.

The families that could afford the education were non-Catholics. And so, to attract those students to the schools, they would stop. They were still Catholic schools. They were still good Catholic teachers and principals, but they stopped. Emphasizing the Catholic aspect of it, because they did not want to scare away the non-Catholics that could actually afford the school. And over time, what happens is if you do not keep that Catholic identity front and center, then you are going to, intentionally or not, dilute your Catholic identity.

We just had our first day of school. Last week, and our principal said, when she came up there, she didn't say like, oh, we're here to get your kids all, you know, straight A's or anything else. She said, we are here to teach your kids in partnership with you as the primary educators to love God, to love Jesus, and to love their neighbor. And that is the purpose of Catholic education. The academics are excellent, but our purpose is in and of itself to love God and love each other.

So, this will allow those schools to not be afraid of their Catholic identity, right? We actually can now attract those low-income Catholic students that would love to go to our school but couldn't normally, but now we have scholarships for them, so we could bring them into our schools, and we could lean into our Catholic identity. We don't need to just go after the upper-middle class and rich kids. We could take every student that wants to come here, and we want students that want to come here because we are Catholic.

Amen. I mean, it's such a transformative opportunity, and thank you for the good work that you are doing, bringing this to everyone's attention, because, yes, I know, like, the tax credit, everyone kind of glazes over, but when you actually think about the import that this could have into the future and generations to come, this is central and very important to everyone's effort. So, Patrick Mason, thank you so much for your time, and I'm going to direct everyone again to... CatholicEducationFund.org. You can find more information in the description of this video, and you can find more information on their website. Thank you so much.