Trump’s YUUUGE First 10 Days - In The Tank #481
Download MP3Alright. We're live. Welcome to the show, everybody. 10 days into the Trump administration. It feels like it's been 10 years with the amount of news there is to cover.
Linnea Lueken:Trump has been signing an absolute blizzard of executive orders that practically started the moment he was inaugurated. I mean, he was to work right away. We're we are going to cover a bunch of them, and break down some of our favorites. So stay tuned for today's episode, 481, of the In the Tank podcast. No.
Linnea Lueken:And and that was a very particular case. It wasn't clear if he was radicalized when he got here or while he was living here.
Linnea Lueken:That's amazing. I love that so much. Alright. Welcome to the In the Tank podcast. I am Linnea Lucan, your new host.
Linnea Lueken:And today as usual, we've got Jim Lakeley, vice president of the Heartland Institute, and Chris Talgo, editorial director at the Heartland Institute and Socialism Research Fellow. Guys, are you tired of winning yet?
Jim Lakely:I am close. Yeah. I I thought, you know, Donald Trump is really testing the the line. You're gonna be there's gonna be so much winning. You'll be tired of winning.
Jim Lakely:And I thought maybe with all of this 350 or so executive orders, all of them rolling back, hard leftism that has been the hallmark of our government for so long. I thought maybe I would get a little smidge of being tired of winning. No. I am not tired of winning. I am I wanna put this to the test.
Jim Lakely:Let's see how much winning we can take day after day after day. How about we do it every day for 4 years? I think that sounds great.
Linnea Lueken:I apologize real quick for my dog barking in the background. But, as always, you guys, I wanna before we start getting into it, if you want to support the show, you you can go to heartland.org/inthetank and donate there. Please also give us the thumbs up to like the video and remember that sharing it also helps break through some of the, YouTube suppression. Even just leaving a comment actually helps with the algorithm too. If you're an audio listener, it would also be super helpful if you can give us a review there, either, on Audible or, Spotify, wherever it is, iTunes.
Linnea Lueken:We're everywhere. And, so taking it down a notch for a second to a little bit more, somber topic. Last night, most people have already heard there was a major plane crash, accident, at Reagan Airport. I wanted to extend our prayers and sympathy for all of the victims there. It's an awful shocking thing when you have a major disaster like that.
Linnea Lueken:Most likely, you know, preventable accidents. Just wanted to, pitch that out there before we get into the good news, which is Trump's work that he's been doing. If you guys wanted to add anything.
Jim Lakely:No. I just I I used to I lived a good a good part of my life in the, Greater DC area. I lived in, Arlington, Virginia. I lived in Fredericksburg, Virginia. I used to work in DC for the Washington Times every day.
Jim Lakely:You know, I am very familiar with that area, and I'm very familiar with flying in and out of Reagan National Airport. It is, actually one of the more harrowing isn't the right word, but it's a, it's a tough airport. Even pilots will admit it's one of the most difficult airports to to land in in the United States because the the airport is relatively small and it's got a short runway and you gotta bank hard to get in there. And, I I find it I find it this is just a tragic, obviously, an accident. There was a screw up somewhere.
Jim Lakely:There's no way that helicopter should have, missed seeing that plane and flown right into it. So there will be a full investigation, obviously. We will, we'll discover what happened. We will take steps to prevent it in the future. But there are, you know, more than 60 people whose, lodged lost.
Jim Lakely:There were no survivors of that crash. Just, absolutely tragic. The only, maybe perhaps saving grace is that there wasn't a ton of time to think about, you know, the end of your life and the suffering. So, our thoughts and prayers go out to, all the families there and, and the people that it's that it has affected. Sorry.
Linnea Lueken:Yep. And I see Bob Johnson asking there, why was there a military helicopter there? It's there all the time. They have military craft going back and forth, but the Potomac is like a major highway for helicopters basically between a couple different military bases. So it wasn't unusual that it was there.
Linnea Lueken:It's just awful conglomeration of bad decisions probably that led to this one. So, this this week, though, on this show, we're going to be focusing primarily on the executive orders that Trump has been just like machine gunning out there since the day that he was inaugurated. And we're gonna start with our our favorite topic, which is the climate and energy topic, or at least I might be biased, working for the Robinson Center. And I wanna highlight 2 in particular. The first being the putting America first in international environmental agreements, one, which involved withdrawal from the Paris agreement.
Linnea Lueken:This is one that we have been advocating for since the last time Trump pulled us out of the Paris agreement. It's not a real treaty, but we've been treating it like it is one because, for all intents and purposes, our government has been acting as though they actually signed on to something with this, even though they never actually pass it through the Senate as a treaty. Chris, I know that you have made comments last week talking about, you know, how we actually need to put a little bit of, like, stronger support behind a lot of these executive orders. And do you think that this is one that maybe we should pitch to the senate to see if they'll actually pass it as a treaty, or do we want to not even take the chance of them, actually agreeing to it?
Chris Talgo:So if I remember correctly, it was called an executive agreement, and it was originally, put into place by Barack Obama. And then, obviously, during Trump's first term, he pulled us out and then, Joe Biden put us back in. Now Trump has pulled us back out. So what, you know, what this is is it's it's kind of just becoming a you know, from presidential administration to presidential administration, they're just undoing each other's executive orders and executive actions, which is not good for the long term. So, I mean, technically, this is a treaty, and treaties have to go and be, passed by the senate.
Chris Talgo:And the senate, I do not think, would approve this treaty. So it should it it should be this should be the end of it. This really should. And, you know, we'll see if that does happen, but this is a great start. And I've got some other, executive orders on energy I'd be love to talk about later on.
Linnea Lueken:Oh, absolutely. And if you wanna bring one up, you can, right here. I've got one more that I definitely wanna cover. And this one I just enjoy because it's a a little bit of a like a kick between the legs at Kevin Newsom. It's called putting people over fish, stopping radical environmentalism to provide water to Southern California.
Linnea Lueken:And I want to read a passage from it. It's pretty terrific. During my first term, the state of California, at the direction of its governor, filed a lawsuit to stop my administration from implementing improvements to California's water infrastructure. My administration's plan would have allowed enormous amounts of water to flow from the snow melt and rainwater and rivers in Northern California to beneficial use in the Central Valley and Southern California. This catastrophic halt was allegedly in protect protection of the Delta smelts and other species of fish.
Linnea Lueken:Today, this enormous water supply flows wastefully into the Pacific Ocean. And Trump goes on to say that the recent wildfires in Southern California could have been tamped down if they had more access to water. So, I'm going to pitch it to both of you guys here. I mean, is it is it. Is it hilarious or is it just funny that Trump has to call out Newsom in this specifically?
Linnea Lueken:But it's also warranted. Right? Because, the the radical environmentalists in California have been running that state into the ground. It's actually causing loss of life at this point. Do you do we think that he actually has the authority, though, to, be shipping water across the state, or is this something that, again, is gonna be seeing litigation?
Chris Talgo:So so, I mean, to me, I I gotta just, you know, stick to my guns here and think federalism. If this is a federalism issue, and I am a strong believer in federalism, and I do not want any administration, even one that I am, you know, very much in favor of, dictating to states what they should and shouldn't do. So, I mean, to me, it's just you wanna be honest here, just based on my my my principles. So, you know, I feel this is a little bit of an overreach, and I'm, you know, gonna stick to that.
Jim Lakely:Yeah. I would agree. I mean, I I seem to have lived everywhere that's important to this podcast today, but I spent 5 years as a journalist in California, And so I covered state policy politics and policy, quite extensively during that time. And, this strikes me as a as a state issue. I mean, what's California the the California aqueduct, which brings, water for farming and for, and then into the desert of Southern California all the way from Northern California, is one of the great engineering marvels of the 20th century that a lot of people don't necessarily know about.
Jim Lakely:And when you I've driven through all the way through the Central Valley. I've driven from, San Diego, to Sacramento. I'm actually covering the recall election that put, Arnold Schwarzenegger as governor back in gosh. What was that? 2000 I can't even remember, but it was a long time ago.
Jim Lakely:And it was a wonderful drive, and it's kind of lonely. You're in the middle. You go past Fresno and Bakersfield, and you go and you just follow the the, the 5 freeway all the way up. You see the aqueduct, and you pull over just to marvel at it as you see it in the distance just winding its way, bringing all this water down, and it's just using gravity, and it's amazing. And they the state did divert what was the regular flow of water from Northern California out into the, the the Delta of Sacramento and then out to the ocean, to protect a so called endangered fish that wasn't actually even endangered.
Jim Lakely:And, when I lived in Southern California, that policy had already been put in place, and we were under constant, drought threat in Southern California. You couldn't use water this day, couldn't use water the other day. And in this respect, Donald Trump is right. I don't think he has the power through an executive order to divert that water. But he is right that there is actually plenty of water in California and in the West to make it so that, California is not under a constant drought restriction, situation.
Jim Lakely:I mean, they had one of the wettest, if not the wettest, winter in the or, yeah, winter last winter in the last 10 years. And I think, what, 80 or 90% of all that would have been beneficial water and certainly would have helped in the in the fires in Los Angeles, was just left to go out, out into the ocean. Completely unnecessary. California, it was built by great men and great projects of the mid 20th century. And the politicians, the left, the environmental nut jobs in California have, neglected or even, in some cases, destroyed the infrastructure that allows modern life to exist, as it does in Southern California.
Jim Lakely:And this was a very high price to pay proving that fact.
Chris Talgo:Now now I just wanna say one thing. You know, one one consideration would be to, halt federal funding for certain projects if they're not abiding by, you know, these these, you know, regulations. So I think that that's one area that's definitely worth pursuing, but I do I I just you know, I'm I'm a little, concerned about these, blanket, executive orders telling states what to do and what not to do. And, you know, I definitely defer to the states on most matters.
Linnea Lueken:Yeah. Yeah. Not to play too much, you know, postulating about like 4 d chess or anything, but do you think that there's a chance that a lot of these orders are kind of knowingly put out, you know, with the awareness that that it's gonna end up being a state issue, but just wanting to, like, light a fire, not to be too funny, but to light a fire underneath the governors of some of these states, especially places like California.
Chris Talgo:I mean, that could be the situation, but I think that what's going on in California, especially in the areas that were affected by the fires, it's gonna be much more of a local thing. So we got the coastal commission, you know, already, you know, putting up major major, you know, roadblocks here. And I watched the entire, portion of that, roundtable where president Trump was talking to, mayor Bass. Gavin Newsom wasn't even invited to this. That just goes to show how much how much of a non player he is in this.
Chris Talgo:But Karen Bass was just saying again and again, well, we're gonna do what we can, but we need to, you know, make sure it's it's done in a safe manner. And Donald Trump was saying, listen. These people don't have anywhere to go. They need to go back to their homes and start rebuilding tomorrow morning, not, you know, next month or next year or 18 months from now. So I think a lot of this, you know, we have a tendency to think, oh, things are almost always happen at the federal level, but almost all politics are local.
Chris Talgo:So, really, if the pay if the people of, you know, California and the people of Los Angeles and those areas that were affected wanna really make some changes, vote for different local office holders, and you will see massive changes.
Linnea Lueken:Yeah. There is a concern about, you know, if we focus too much on the federal level that actually doesn't have the authority to do some of this stuff, then people are gonna be ignoring the more important elections. You know, I've I've championed, like, over and over to my friends. If you're gonna vote for anything, vote for, like, sheriff and stuff. Like, these are these are the positions in your town that really have a lot of immediate effect on your life.
Chris Talgo:Well and and and we don't we don't wanna always look to the federal government for answers. We want the states and we want local municipalities to be as independent, you know, and self sufficient as possible. So, you know, one of the things that, you know, has come with this, I think one of the blessing in the disguise is is the fact that now people are asking, is FEMA really necessary? Do we really need this giant emergency federal force? Why don't we just have the states handle this on their own?
Chris Talgo:Because the states are gonna be much more agile, much more flexible, and much more able to do this what needs to be done in a timely and efficient manner. So I think, you know, one of the things that we're seeing, you know, from the Los Angeles, you know, wildfires is the fact that the federal response to it, and this goes back decades. This goes back to New Orleans. This goes back, you know, to so many of these disasters. The flooding in North Carolina that we saw late last year, they are not good at at at at, you know, cleaning up these things.
Chris Talgo:They're not good at doing it in a timely manner. We need to make sure that the states and local governments take on as much of this burden as possible.
Linnea Lueken:And, Chris, did you have another another executive order on the environmental or energy side that you'd like?
Chris Talgo:So, the the, executive order called Unleashing American Energy, that I think is one of the best ones so far because not only does it, talk about really, you know, revving up, American production of natural gas and oil here in the United States. We've got, you know, just so many of these resources under our feet, but it also, directs the EPA administrator, who was just confirmed, I believe, yesterday, Lee Zeldin, to actually go and look at the endangerment finding. And I think a lot of people don't even know what the endangerment finding is, but the endangerment finding is a big deal. So in 2009, under the Obama administration, the EPA, declared that carbon dioxide is a greenhouse gas and it's a harmful pollutant. Okay.
Chris Talgo:But what's what what what's happened now is that we've, you know, made all these laws and we've made it very difficult, for the, the energy industry to provide enough electricity, you know, in a reliable and dependable and affordable manner based on this flawed, assessment. So I I really hope that Lee Zeldin is gonna do what needs to be done to, reverse that, but really that's not the solution here because then the next EPA administrator for Democrat wins, you know, 4 years, 8 years, 12 years from now can just go and reinsert that. So what we really wanna think, to have happen here is for the supreme court to take up this case and to say once and for all, carbon dioxide is not, a a greenhouse, harmful gas that must be regulated. Because if we took that to its logical conclusion, hey. Guess what?
Chris Talgo:Water vapor water vapor contributes a lot to warming. So every single time you boil an egg or every time you boil your, you know, noodles to make your spaghetti up, you gotta make sure we regulate that. So that's just how how preposterous, how absurd, and ridiculous these things go. So I think just putting a, a nail in the coffin to the endangerment finding would be a boom to the energy industry and the economy as a whole.
Linnea Lueken:Oh, yeah. And we we have this article, from the Manhattan contrarian by Francis Menten who, goes over how you can rescind it in a way that makes it stick. And this is a problem with a lot of executive orders generally is that, you know, is the Veranek's administration can just get rid of it as they come in. He goes over a couple of different lawsuits that have, some precedents in this kind of issue regarding, you know, like the Clean Air Act. You know, Massachusetts versus EPA, for example, he points out that, despite the fact that environmentalists use it a lot to try and say that the EPA does have the right to say that CO2 is a pollutant, it actually didn't determine that it was.
Linnea Lueken:It actually just directed the EPA to determine whether or not it was, which means that they can also determine that it's not a pollutant into the future. And then there's a couple other ones. I'm trying to find the spot that I liked that I read earlier today.
Chris Talgo:And and, Lanae, this is part of such a bigger problem in in recent decades where the United States Congress is not taking, you know, its power that it should be taking and passing laws to do this. And what they're doing is passing these big, vague laws, creating these giant, you know, bureaucracies that then go in and legislate on their own. And what we see is that, you know, these these, regulatory agencies have become like legislative bodies in and of themselves with policing powers as well. We need we need to make sure that we put that genie back in the bottle. We need to make sure that, these regulatory agencies are acting on behalf of the American people and not acting on behalf of lobbyists and environmental, you know, alarmists.
Linnea Lueken:Right. And here's here's a segment that I wanted to highlight real quick. I found it. Francis Menton points out to rescind the endangerment finding, EPA does not need to contend that greenhouse gases will not or cannot cause any global warming. Rather, they can put the burden of proof on the other side to show that greenhouse gases emitted under EPA's regulatory jurisdiction will inevitably cause dangerous warming.
Linnea Lueken:EPA need to only conclude that there is no sufficient proof of that. So he says, frame that way, this is not complicated or difficult. There are, in fact, hundreds of scientific papers in peer reviewed literature showing empirical evidence that the dangers predicted all those years ago when the endangerment finding was put into regulatory. I don't know. I completely lost my train of thought there anyway, has not actually happened.
Linnea Lueken:So, you know, for example, there's been no upward trend in hurricanes. We go over that all the time at Climate Realism. So there's the the evidence that they would need to prove that carbon dioxide, water vapor, a bunch of different greenhouse gases, including methane, are pollutants just doesn't exist. So they do have what they would need. It's just a matter of being intelligent about putting it together before the
Jim Lakely:legislature. Yeah. I saw a clip on, on X this week of representative John Dingell. I'm sure Chris might remember that name. A long time, very powerful member of Congress from Michigan.
Chris Talgo:Abby Dingell's husband. Correct?
Jim Lakely:That's right. And then when he died, his, his his wife you know, that's the way we do things in this country. At least you're you know, you die and then your wife or your son gets your seat, you know, just like just like in, in England in the in the 12th century or something. But, anyway, I saw on the clip, John Dingell said, essentially, hey, I was there when we passed the Clean Air Act. There was never a hint of a congressional intent to allow the Environmental Protection Agency to consider carbon dioxide emissions a pollutant that warranted very strict regulation.
Jim Lakely:And so, I thought, wow, that's interesting. And I'm sure it wasn't getting a whole lot of, whole lot of play. But, Chris, you're right. Congress has, for decades now, given increasingly increasing power to the bureaucracy, to the administrative state, to figure out the details of the laws that they pass. Even when they obviously, as John Dingell was of the opinion, when they obviously go over the intent of Congress, seem to never even take any steps to rein them in.
Jim Lakely:It would have been very easy for Congress, to pass a law saying the Environmental Protection Agency does not have the power to regulate carbon dioxide emissions from any human activity. It would be a a one sentence bill, and Donald Trump would have signed it, but congress can't even bother themselves to do something like that. I do think we're gonna talk about the endangerment finding, I think, in much more detail on tomorrow's, the Climate Realism Show, same time, on Friday, on the same bat channel. But, but, yeah, the that that's that's big. And, in fact, Lee Zeldin, has already one of my favorite things.
Jim Lakely:This isn't an executive order. But the first thing he did as soon as he was sworn in as the new administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency was to cancel increased or more stringent and unscientifically, necessary restrictions on big rigs, you know, diesel, 18 wheelers that was set to take effect, I think, in 2030. He said, nope. We're done with that. We're not doing that.
Jim Lakely:I think he's probably either going to freeze or even loosen the CAFE standards. That's the corporate average fuel economy, What CAFE stands for. It's basically the California standard because they have strict smog and other, you know, other emissions stuff. And so that actually sweeps across the country because Ford and Honda and all these places are not gonna make a California car and then one for everybody else. So, the most stringent, bar you know, the most stringent restrictions are the ones that rule for the entire country.
Jim Lakely:I think you're gonna see EPA release some of those as well. So, EPA is just getting started. And, it's there's so much happening. There's there's so many executive orders, so much stuff that's happening in this Trump administration so so far right now that Lee Zeldin is already taking actions that, 4 years ago, would have been front page story, would have led every single, network news program, and it's it's not even registering. It's barely registering with the climate press and the energy press in this country.
Linnea Lueken:That's good. No. Yeah. This is definitely I mean, the word that comes to mind is blitzkrieg with the way that Trump has been, putting forward his policies, and and it actually is. I I hate to get too into the, like, 40 chess stuff because I tend to think that's exaggerated quite a bit.
Linnea Lueken:But I do think that this is probably intentional that the way that they're passing all of this stuff or the way that he's signing all these executive orders is make is putting the media so on their back foot. They do not know how to focus on any one issue right now. They're they're, like trying desperately to scramble around and figure out what to cover. And it and it seems to be making it very difficult for them to focus. One of the examples of these areas, that they're that they're trying to focus on, but they keep getting distracted off in different directions is on immigration.
Linnea Lueken:And this is one of Trump's cornerstone topics, illegal immigration, and what we're doing about the the just massive influx of illegal immigrants that we've had over the last couple of decades, especially in recent years. So from the New York Post, we have this article, which let's pull up. Okay. So this is crazy to me. Feds roundup 50 Trende, Arawagua.
Linnea Lueken:Yeah. Members at makeshift nightclub in Denver as nationwide ICE raids bust child rapists and suspected ICE's terrorists. Now Trump directed ICE to begin doing these operations, like, right away, and it's crazy how right away they're arresting dozens and dozens of, like, major cartel connected, you know, and, like, drug deal connected illegal immigrants that are in the country. Let me just read you a passage from this because it's very it's just nuts. It says the first migrant roundups, part of an operation dubbed Return to Sender, are focusing on migrants who have been charged with crimes or who have been deported by a judge.
Linnea Lueken:The DEA and Immigration and Customs Enforcement led Sunday's predawn efforts in Colorado, and they were joined by squads from Homeland Security Investigations and ICE Enforcement and removal operations to execute the busts. The Post has been at the forefront of reporting how Trend Aoragua terrorized the Denver subject suburb of Aurora, a pop a city with a population of just under 400,000 for months, even taking over entire neighborhoods and apartment complexes. Okay. So what strikes me about this is that they have known for years that these guys were there, that they were illegally in the country, and that they were doing organized crime in Colorado. And then Trump gives them the mandate to go, yeah, go get rid of those guys, and they immediately go arrest them.
Linnea Lueken:Jim, is it me, or is it, like, kind of mind blowing and very insulting that that they've known this whole time that there were all these criminals, and they knew exactly where they live to the point where they can just show up and just decide we're gonna arrest them today?
Jim Lakely:Tom Homan at ICE arrested more than 500, you know, felon Thelonious criminals, aliens in the United States. And he had to go hunt them down and find them under the you know, in their hidey holes. But the the Trump administration, on its first day, in half a day, because he didn't get to get rolling till about, you know, 3 o'clock in the afternoon, you know, we, apparently, were able, at any time in the last 4 years, to let our, immigration and customs enforcement agents do their jobs, which is to track down, arrest, and deport violent criminals who are here in this country illegally, rapists, murderers, people who have committed armed robberies and carjackings, both in their home countries where they came from. They should have been allowed here in the first place, but also when they're here in the United States. The Biden administration could have done any of this at any time, and it's obvious that they chose not to do this.
Jim Lakely:The the Democrats and and and the Biden administration chose to keep dangerous criminals on our streets all across America. And the the fact that that, you know, the the Trump administration could arrest and deport 500 of them in a few hours on day 1, and I think the number is probably more than 2 or 3000 of these hardened criminals have been rounded up and and, you know, and deported. You know, it just like Andy, there's a there's a thing I wanna add to the stage here. I'm gonna do that if I can. And this is, this is a chart, there it is, that, Donald Trump had shared.
Jim Lakely:And it was it's daily encounters of undocumented migrants without repatriations and and returns to Mexico or, I guess, or elsewhere in January 2025. The day before his inauguration was a high point for the month of January under the Biden administration. 2,516 daily encounters. These are just encounters that, you know, where our border patrol agents just happen to see them and encounter them. This is not including people who sneak by that are not seen, and it's more than 2,000.
Jim Lakely:The the day of his inauguration, it dropped to it dropped in half. And then the first full day after Donald Trump was was was, sworn in what is that number? 43 or a 143? And then on, like, 5 days after his election, it was the number was total was 47. We go from more than 2,000 encounters a day to 47, and that's because policy matters.
Jim Lakely:And and and wanting to enforce the law matters, and sending a message to the world matters. And so now, just in this last, you know, 10 days, we have fewer violent criminals trying to sneak into this country, and that's a good thing. That is not a bad thing. It is not racist. It is none none of those things.
Jim Lakely:This is something that needed to be done in this country a long time ago. Donald Trump, actually, if if you look at the statistics, Barack Obama actually deported more illegals that were in this country than Donald Trump did in his first term. I think Donald Trump's pretty determined to be the world record holder in his next 4 years. But, this idea that it's somehow mean or racist or un American to track down hardened criminals and get them the hell out of our country. The American people voted for this.
Jim Lakely:They voted to get these people out of our country, and it's it's the Trump administration should be applauded at how quickly they're able to accomplish this.
Linnea Lueken:Right. And and we have a little clip here too because, you know, as one of our viewers pointed out, the media is already trying to, you know, kind of spook you spook us out of supporting this policy by showing like, oh, well, you know, there's people who are, you know, coming in or who are being deported that aren't criminals. They didn't commit any crime. And, or do we have the clip, Andy? Yeah.
Linnea Lueken:Yeah. The Maryland immigration. Of the 35100 arrests ICE has made so far since President Trump came back into office, can you just tell us the numbers? How many have a criminal record versus those who are just in the country illegally?
Speaker 4:All of them. Because they illegally broke our nation's laws and therefore they are criminals as far as this administration goes. I know the last administration didn't see it that way, so it's a big culture shift in our nation to view someone who breaks our immigration laws as a criminal, but that's exactly what they are. Are you
Linnea Lueken:hearing me? Worst person.
Speaker 4:They all have a criminal record. And welcome to the If they broke our nation's laws, yes. They are criminal. Yes.
Linnea Lueken:Thank you. Gosh. Oh.
Chris Talgo:Yeah. She was she was really blunt about that, and I'm very glad she was blunt about it because it's time to be blunt about this. Now I I wanna just go off on a little, thing that I saw on on the media a couple days ago. So, apparently, in Chicago, there was a report that ICE officials went into a high school. It was actually not even true, but, of course, the media ran with it.
Chris Talgo:And I saw an interview with Tom Homan, and he was saying, you know what? There are many instances of, 15, 16, 17, 18 year old gang members who are now in schools, and they are harming, you know, children. Okay. He also then said, you know what? There are a bunch of, legal immigrants who are child predators.
Chris Talgo:You know, they've they've ruined children's lives. Okay? We wanna get rid of them. Okay? And if that means going into a school and taking out a a a teenager who should not be there, then that's fine.
Chris Talgo:And I'm gonna give you guys one little just quick story about my teaching days in South Carolina. I know for a fact that we did have several illegal immigrant, students and and families. Okay? Because the students told me that. We had I had one student who, was, let's just say, rather large and rather mature.
Chris Talgo:And he claimed that he was, like, 17 because he was he was a junior. That's correct. Because he was taking American history. And guess what happened? We found out that he, was, engaging with child pornography and that that he was actually, like, 23 years old.
Chris Talgo:Okay? They booted him out of the class. Thank god. Because I just kept thinking myself, wow. I mean, you know, this this this criminal, this degenerate was in these was in these hallways with, you know, these these, you know, preteens and teenagers, and that's scary in and of itself.
Chris Talgo:There were some, instances of sexual, misconduct, on the school premises on behalf of some of those kids who were then later kicked out. But, yeah, this does happen, and I saw it happen firsthand. And, we need to make sure that we are putting American citizens first, and we need to make sure that we are, putting American children first. And if that means that, these sanctuary cities are gonna have to, you know, just do whatever the federal government tells me to do, I'm fine with that because this is a federal issue. So it's interesting.
Chris Talgo:We went back to the, to the California thing, and that's more of a state issue. But guess what, everybody? Immigration is a federal issue. And the federal government has every single right in the book to go into every single sanctuary city and state or even what they are now calling themselves super sanctuary cities and go in there and then say, you know what? We have a, warrant for this person to, you know, to to leave this country.
Chris Talgo:We are going to to make sure that we apprehend this person and get them out of this country. I don't understand why anyone would be opposed to that. And what's also funny is Tom Homan mentioned that on a lot of these raids, you know what people are doing coming up and telling the ICE people after the the raid occurs? Thank you so much for doing that. We were all scared of this person.
Chris Talgo:We didn't know what to do. So I think that, you know, the media doesn't report on those kind of stories, but I can guarantee you that in downtown Chicago where, you know, the the residents are have been struggling for years with overcrowded schools, with overcrowded streets, and with these giant budget shortfalls because we are spending 1,000,000,000 of dollars on these illegal immigrants that they are more than happy that Donald Trump has sent in ICE agents to Chicago and all these other cities, you know, across this country and are getting rid of these child predators and these just total, you know, losers.
Linnea Lueken:Chris Rand. Yay.
Jim Lakely:Yay. Chris Rand. Chris Rand. Yeah. I mean, look.
Jim Lakely:The reason I picked that, the the right thing, it went instantly memeable. The, I really don't care, Margaret, like JD Vance when, Margaret Brennan was telling, well, you know that guy that you that was arrested as a terrorist? You know, we don't really even know if he was radicalized before he got in the country or after he got here. Like, he was like, he was more radicalized by coming to the country. Sure.
Jim Lakely:Sure. And he says, I really don't care, Margaret. People like that should not be in our country, and they should be around our kids. I don't want them around my kids. I don't want them around your kids.
Jim Lakely:I want them the hell out of this country. Finally, common sense. And the and a person in power who is actually reflecting the majority opinion of people in this in in the United States. And let's be honest here and and clear about what was happening over the last 4 years. Yes, there are such things there are such things as, people who are seeking political asylum in this country.
Jim Lakely:The vast majority of the millions and millions of people that the Biden Administration led into this country were not actually legitimate asylum seekers. They were economic migrants, or they were gang members and criminals, or they just wanted you know, by economic migrant, I mean, they just wanted a better a better life for themselves and their family, better than they have it in Honduras or Guatemala or El Salvador. You can understand that desire, but that does not mean you get to walk into this country illegally. You must apply for legal immigration into this country and then, eventually, apply for citizenship. That's the way it's supposed to work.
Jim Lakely:The Biden administration did not care and just flooded our country with no vetting at all, for the most part, of all these people that that that came into this country. And it's time to, as JD Vance said at the end of that, you know, in that interview, it's like, yes. We're a nation of immigrants, but that doesn't mean that, you know and we were built by immigrants 200 years ago and settlers and all of that. But that doesn't mean that 250 years later, we have to have the dumbest immigration law in the world, which is what we have right now. Well, which is what we had under Biden, which was, essentially, no immigration law.
Jim Lakely:So, yeah. I'm very happy to see this. I think immigration is good if it's controlled and if it's orderly, and we have had nothing remotely close to that over the last 4 years.
Linnea Lueken:Yeah. Well, you know, as a sovereign country, you have the right or the citizen the government should be enforcing its own immigration laws and should be choosing its own border control policies and everything to benefit the citizens that live here. We, it's just not freezing.
Chris Talgo:But but but but here's but here's what happened. And I think we all know this, and I think the American people finally understood this. What the Biden administration was trying to do was to change the demographic of this country so that they would, get 10, 15, maybe even 20,000,000 new voters for, you know, for eternity. But it's so ironic that that blew up in their face. And most of the Americans, you know, in those border towns, it's Hispanics in particular, said we don't want this.
Chris Talgo:We're gonna we're gonna vote for the guy who said he's gonna get rid of all these people. So it's just so I I think it's it's it's such a great, you know, example of a of a policy totally backfiring because it was grounded in politics and not common sense.
Linnea Lueken:Exactly. I wanted to, point out to another one of the, orders on when was this day? This was from the Associated Press from the AP. President Donald Trump on Wednesday signed the Lake and Riley Act into law, giving federal authorities broader power to deport immigrants in the US illegally who have been accused of crimes. He also announced at the ceremony that his administration plan to send the worst criminal aliens to a detention center in Guantanamo Bay.
Linnea Lueken:So I don't know about the I don't know about the Gitmo part. I'm not sure if that's actually what they're going to do. But, I mean, if we're not using it as a major prison anymore, then I guess that would be a good middle ground before sending them on somewhere else.
Chris Talgo:Defense secretary Pete Hegseth was on, Jesse Waters prime time last night for his first interview, and he said that there are 30,000 beds at Guantanamo Bay that are going unused and that are gonna start being used because they don't want these people even in the United States, like, awaiting whatever, you know, processes have to be, you know, done. They want them out of this country immediately, and that's gonna start happening.
Linnea Lueken:Yeah. And that was the whole point in the first term, right, with the stay in Mexico policy. It was, you know, a lot for a long time, the policy under Obama and under Biden later was they come into the country, and I think even under Bush to a certain extent as well. They come into the they they break into the country. They've detained them somewhere, and then they give them, like, a phone, and they give them a court date.
Linnea Lueken:And they release them back into the United States. And they say, okay. Show up your court date so we can deport you. Right. And no.
Jim Lakely:Yeah. I
Linnea Lueken:mean, duh. Would do that.
Chris Talgo:80 80 to 90% don't even show up for their court date. Those those court dates are years years in the future. The immigration system is really, really broken, and we need to fix it. And I think Donald Trump is getting us back on solid footing. Obviously, we want, you know, high skilled immigrants.
Chris Talgo:My mom came to this country, but you know what? She did it the right way. She waited years and then had to get her citizenship and had to do it that way. That's what we want. We want people who come here and do it the right way, not people who break the law, skip the line, and then basically just become, you know, you know, they they they they just, you know, suck up, you know, benefits, and that that's that's not good.
Chris Talgo:We don't want that.
Jim Lakely:Chris, let me let me slightly correct you, or or maybe correct Pete Hesketh. We're not going to start using those 3 30,000 beds in Guantanamo. We are going to restart using those 30,000 beds in Guantanamo because Guantanamo Bay, Gitmo, has been used to house, masses of illegal immigrants in this country going back several presidencies. And so, yeah, you will not hear that in the mainstream media. They will make you think that they're we're locking them up where we put the terrorists.
Jim Lakely:It's not the case. This is something we've done for a lot, over the years, and, Donald Trump is just using the tools available to him, as president.
Chris Talgo:Very good point. Yeah.
Linnea Lueken:Well and and, Jim, I think that, there is another thing, that you had wanted to bring up, and I think it's a very important topic, that is related to illegal immigration in particular, but also to a certain extent some of the legal temporary kind of status, immigration that we have here. And that has to do with birthright citizenship, if you wanted to take that one.
Jim Lakely:Yeah. I mean, this is one of the things that's amazing about these these first 10 days. You know, you guys you know, it's it's called moving the Overton window. Right? And, normally, moving the Overton window, which is roughly the window of the possible politically, culturally, you know, socially, It takes years to move that window in the direction that you would like it to go, either left or to the right.
Jim Lakely:In 10 days, Donald Trump is swooping that window in different you know, to the right in in many areas. And one of them is on immigration, and one of them is on birthright citizenship, that is the 14th Amendment to the United States Constitution. And the idea that our courts this is something that nobody ever voted on. Congress never voted on this. The people have never voted on this.
Jim Lakely:It has been interpreted this way over the years by, frankly, left leaning courts and judges that if you are just the fact of your birth on soil of the United States of America automatically makes you a, a a US citizen. No matter how you got here, you could have been beamed down by by Scottie from from the Star Trek Enterprise. And if you're standing, you know, in Kansas City, Missouri, you are a US citizen as well as a member of the American Federation of Planets, I guess. But, the the, but now we have we're we are actually now going to have a national conversation about what the 14th Amendment and birthright citizen citizenship really means. It is clear, we're all just starting to do research on research on this now.
Jim Lakely:Right? And it was clear from some of the reading I have done from the the members of the of congress who had, passed that amendment and got it to the states, that they had never intended for noncitizens of the United States, like foreign dignitaries or somebody who came over the border and did not intend to ever become an American, that all of their children are automatically American citizens. The 14th Amendment was written because, you know, after the Civil War, Democrats in the South were still trying to deny that, freed slaves were full American citizens. And so the 14th Amendment was required to say that these children of slaves who were born here in Alabama or in Georgia are American citizens now because the Civil War is over, and we're all getting back together. We're Americans.
Jim Lakely:That's what the 14th Amendment was for. That's what birthright citizenship meant when the 14th amendment was put into our constitution, but we've never been allowed to have a conversation about that. And there is no other country on Earth in which you could sneak over the border, give birth, and have that child be, be a citizen of that country. You can't do that going to Mexico. You can't do that going to Great Britain.
Jim Lakely:You can't do it maybe you could do it in Greenland. Maybe we'll do that when, we'll we'll have birthright citizenship in Greenland when we buy that. You know? But there is no other country in the world that has that kind of immigration system or that kind of interpretation of birthright citizenship, and it's time that we have a conversation about that. And that's gonna be part of, you know, the Democrats and the left always talk about we need comprehensive immigration reform.
Jim Lakely:Let's include this in that.
Chris Talgo:You know, the birthright citizenship has been abused so much over the past century and a half. You know, it's now led to chain migration. It's led to birthright tourism where, these, you know, pregnant women fly in here, have their baby, and then, the rest of the family becomes citizens as well. Yeah. Jim's right.
Chris Talgo:You know, this has been abused. It was done, in the in the wake of the civil war because the south was denying, citizenship, to, former slaves. So, yeah, we need we we need we need to deal with immigration in a holistic manner, and we need to make sure that these loopholes are no longer being, you know, used and abused.
Linnea Lueken:This is such a, like, a passion filled topic. I mean, it it really has been kind of making things extremely difficult for especially the poor in the United States. Chris as Chris pointed out, you know, inner cities and stuff have really been suffering from a lot of illegal immigration, especially when it comes to, like cartel activity. I saw someone make this, like, completely stupid comments on Twitter, which is or on x, which is shocking and unheard of. I know.
Linnea Lueken:But, they said something along the lines of, oh, well, you know, the cartels are gonna start retaliating if we start arresting and deporting their members. So we really need to, you know, not do this. And they're they said, you know, there's gonna start to be kidnappings and stuff in major border towns. There already are. They we already are have kidnappings and murders.
Linnea Lueken:Yeah. In our own towns. Like, what do you it was just it was so stupid. I I couldn't believe
Chris Talgo:Just just one of the quick things. So I saw Stephen Miller on CNN get into a really good give and take with, Jake Tapper about this. And Jake Tapper, of course, used the old trope of, well, Steven, who's gonna pick the fruits if we don't have these illegal immigrants? Do you know what Steve Miller did? He said, gee, Jake.
Chris Talgo:Do you know that less than 1% of illegal immigrants here in this country actually work in the agricultural sector? So we're not talking about, like, you know, like, 100 of thousands of illegal immigrants who are coming to Florida and California and just wanna, you know, like, work in the fields and then return home, you know, in the off season. No. That is just simply not true. And second of all, you know what?
Chris Talgo:If if we did not have all these illegal, immigrants, fulfilling those jobs, you know what would happen? Americans would fulfill those jobs.
Jim Lakely:Not only that, but we have a guest worker program in this united in attendance here in United States, and so that can be done legally.
Linnea Lueken:That's crazy, Jim. Why would they do that? I think just okay. So I would love to keep on this topic, but it's 149 here in the East Coast. It's time to move on to the next one, which is both a very funny topic and also sad in in just so many ways.
Linnea Lueken:So here I have this headline from The Wall Street Journal, an anxious federal workforce bids goodbye to job stability and remote work. In early executive actions, Trump moved to order government workers back to the office full time and watered down job protections. Now for some reason, I have a really hard time generating any tears whatsoever for these people. Jim, you worked in DC. Are are federal workers at this level just run ragged?
Linnea Lueken:Are they just they they just suffer all the time, and Trump is just making their suffering even worse?
Jim Lakely:Well, I mean, back when I was, living and working in DC, there was no such thing as remote work. Everybody got on the trains, and everybody stuffed themselves into the into the subways and to get to and from the city to their homes in Maryland or Virginia. And by some accounts, I believe there was a survey done. I think a member of congress asked the survey to be done on how full our federal buildings are in, in Washington DC, and some of them were as low as, like, 6% occupancy. And so it so they would just work from home.
Jim Lakely:COVID COVID kind of changed the way America works. The Heartland Institute itself, we have now a hybrid system where, like, for instance, today, I am working, remotely, but I go into the office 3 days a week. And that's been kind of standard across the country, and it's to keep your employees happy, which we like to do here at Heartland. But some of these federal employees have never gone back to work since 2020. And, they just wanna work remotely forever.
Jim Lakely:So so yeah. The Saab stories here, you know, I don't have a lot of sympathy for them.
Linnea Lueken:Yeah. I've got this good, link on x to someone that, told their story to NPR. And so I'm gonna read a little segment from this because it's just it's very funny. Okay. Lane's a federal employee and works in person 2 days a week, a common setup for some federal workers.
Linnea Lueken:NPR is only using her middle name because she fears speaking out about the new telework policies may jeopardize her job. Lane says she works those 2 in person days back to back, finishing up at the office around 3 PM, getting home around 5. She says, you know, I'm so exhausted by the end of the day. By that 3rd morning when I'm, you know, waking up and teleworking, I'm just so brain dead. It's actually hard to focus the next day.
Linnea Lueken:I cannot imagine trying to get in the car and go in a 3rd day. Oh, man. This, I don't know whether to blame, like, millennials or or like my generation, millennials or or Gen Zers who are working in the government now or who or just the the general spoiledness of federal employees in general. I don't I don't really know. It's pretty bad, though.
Linnea Lueken:They're they're also there's the hiring freeze that Trump has put in, which is also very good, although I think that some of that is being contended or a little bit or at least the the freeze on funding is being fought.
Chris Talgo:Right.
Linnea Lueken:This one from the Wall Street Journal. I no. This one from AP News that says, Trump White House rescinds memo freezing federal money after widespread confusion. President Donald Trump's budget office on Wednesday rescinded a memo freezing spending on federal loans and grants. That ties in a little bit with the the general, like, swamp atmosphere that Trump is tackling with a lot of these executive orders.
Linnea Lueken:Right? We've got all this money floating all over the place that they don't quite know where it's going or what it's for or what it's actually being spent on versus what it is billed for. And then we also have all of these federal employees, many of whom are probably realistically doing like 2 hours of work in a whole work week and kind of goofing off for the rest of the week. So he's trying to figure out how to make that a little bit more efficient with Doge. So do we have sympathy for the confusion in the federal bureaucracy right
Chris Talgo:now? Absolutely not. You know, the the federal workforce is just incredibly lazy. That is just a fact. Okay?
Chris Talgo:They have these extremely cushy jobs that they can never get fired from, and they know that they can just, you know, do the bare minimum. And we've all experienced this in one form or another, whether it's the USPS or the, you know, DMV, any sort of pub not any, but most public, you know, sector employees, they have no incentive to do better because their jobs are just based on solely just putting in the time. So, you know, that's that is a, I think, a culture shock that we need, and we need to also, you know, take these federal agencies and get them out of Washington DC. I wanna see them spread all throughout this country. I wanna see them put in places where the the people that they are actually, you know, looking over, whether it's like the ag department, put them in the middle of the country.
Chris Talgo:I don't want them near the swamp. So that's that's my my thing on federal workforce. One other thing about the this federal spending freeze, of course, as usual, the mainstream media just goes, you know, ballistic when, the federal government, you know, just ever tries to reduce spending. And, here's just one one little example. And Caroline Levitt, the the new press secretary, she mentioned this.
Chris Talgo:Did you know that the United States was going to send $50,000,000 worth of condoms to Gaza? Did you know that? For this year. Now how many how many condoms is that per person in Gaza? They did the math, and it would be something like 5,000 per year.
Chris Talgo:Now did you also know that, Hamas uses those condoms to make bombs and and use those, condoms to blow them up and put bombs into Israel? So why is the United States of America funding $50,000,000 worth of condoms to Gaza, which, I mean, we know they're not gonna use them for their intended purpose. And why are we doing that anyways? That is just one example of literally probably 100 of thousands of examples like that. Our government spends more than $6,000,000,000,000 a year.
Chris Talgo:I kid you not. I bet if you lopped off 2,000,000,000,000 of that, you would not notice a difference. You just wouldn't even notice a difference. And, actually, you know what would happen? We'd have more money in our pockets.
Chris Talgo:Our economy would go gangbusters. And all these, federal bureaucrats who just drag our economy down, they would just be out of the job, and that would be great. And I don't say that, oh, I want them to suffer. No. I don't want them to suffer.
Chris Talgo:But I want them to stand on their own two feet, get a job in the private sector, and actually make themselves valuable. I know it's asking a lot, by the way. I know.
Linnea Lueken:Alright. Well, I think we have a clip for this topic too, don't we?
Jim Lakely:Yeah.
Linnea Lueken:Previous one. Okay. So we can play the clip, and, I think Jim has some points to make.
Speaker 5:And I'm restating right now to correct any confusion that the media has purposely and somehow, for whatever reason, created Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid have not been affected by any action we're taking in any way, shape, or form.
Chris Talgo:Yep.
Speaker 5:We are merely looking at parts of the big bureaucracy where there has been tremendous waste and fraud and abuse. In that process, we identified and stopped $50,000,000 being sent to Gaza to buy condoms for Hamas.
Chris Talgo:It's just so ridiculous.
Speaker 5:And you know what's happened to them? They've used them as a method of making bombs. How about that? We stopped an attempt to make an illicit payment for illegal alien resettlement. We canceled $181,000,000 in DEI training contracts.
Speaker 5:This is just for the training of people in DEI, which has been terminated and completely terminated. And we paused $1,700,000,000 in unauthorized payments to foreign organizations, including stopping more than $40,000,000 that was on its way out the door to the very corrupt World Health Organization, which has not done its job and not done it properly. We also thank you. We also blocked $45,000,000 for our diversity scholarships in Burma. 45.
Speaker 5:That's a lot of money for diversity scholarships in Burma.
Jim Lakely:Yeah. That's a lot of money. Just a just a couple quick points here. I mean, I'm I'm Gen x, and I remember, and I've been a conservative all my life. And I remember how excited I was in in 1994 when Republicans took control of the house for the first time, I think, in 45 years.
Jim Lakely:And they promised under Newt Gingrich that we're gonna get spending under control. Ronald Reagan tried to get spending under control, but he didn't have the power to do it because he didn't have the power of the purse. And you couldn't cut things without Walter Cronkite saying that you're starving grandmothers and all this stuff. But don't worry, guys. Now that consider the Republicans are in charge of congress, we're gonna get a handle on spending.
Jim Lakely:Well, that never really happened. And I've thought I would never in my life see a a spending freeze announced by the federal government. I never, in my lifetime, thought I would see a hiring freeze announced by the federal government. And what's happening here, we have to, I think, take stock of the historic nature of this moment. Because, you know, during the campaign, Elon Musk, when he would campaign for Trump, would say, look.
Jim Lakely:We're not gonna just fire all of these federal employees, but we do need to reduce the size of the federal bureaucracy. And so we'll just make them an offer, an offer that they'll probably wanna take. It's like, here's 8 months severance. Go that gives you plenty of time to go and find something else to do with your life that's more productive than pushing paper, I guess, on your home desk, for some bureaucracy that doesn't do any good in the world and nobody even knows about. So here you go, and a lot of people will take it.
Jim Lakely:And that's the deal that we see on the table from Donald Trump right now. And I think just like when you start enforcing immigration law and announce that you're gonna get serious about it, a lot of illegals in this country will self deport. We're gonna see a lot of people in the bureaucracy self retire or self you know, fire themselves and go off. And, plus, they also get to keep where however much time they put in for the federal government, the most generous pension package in the Western world is a is a an employee of the federal government of the United States of America. So they still get that as well.
Jim Lakely:So what we're gonna see is that, we're gonna see a lot of these people, you know, self deport. We're going to again, moving the Overton window. We never have a discussion about, yeah, exactly why are we spending $46,000,000 on a DEI scholarship program in Burma while while while, you know, natural disaster victims in North Carolina get $750, if that if they put if they jump over all the, bureaucratic hurdles first. And another thing that is happening here, and I I wanted to make sure to remember to bring this up, and Donald Trump has already done this. He's frozen the, the donations of our tax dollars to NGOs, nongovernmental organizations, especially those who specialize in facilitating the, migration and and life of illegal immigrants in this country.
Jim Lakely:He's putting an end to it by shutting off the money. The Heartland Institute is a nonprofit. We're a 5013 organization. Like many of these organizations, there's thousands of them in the United States. There's many of them on the left.
Jim Lakely:We have never taken 1 cent of government money. So many of these NGOs, these nonprofits that advanced leftist ideology and and leftist agenda, almost all of them take government money. So we are paying the salaries and for the and for the work of all of these left wing NGOs that are undermining the national security of this country, our economy by by bringing in a bunch of illegal, immigrants and all sorts of other things. And so Donald Trump is putting a stop to that. This is historic.
Jim Lakely:And now he's moved the Overton window where we as a society and a country can start to talk about whether these should really be the priorities of American tax dollars, or maybe it should be something else, like rebuilding Los Angeles and Western North Carolina.
Linnea Lueken:Yep. It's I'd like to recommend a, x account that I like to follow, randoland.us. He tracks or auto posts all of these, like government federal grants and how much they're for and what they're going to. And there are some doozies in there. I mean, we are sending 100 of 1,000, if not 1,000,000 of dollars to foreign countries for like.
Linnea Lueken:I don't know, transgender basket weaving classes. I mean, it really is that ridiculous in some cases. It's it's absolutely nuts. But, and it and it's really insulting when you look at how much money we're dumping into other countries for, like, random social progressive causes, when we have, like, major problems at home that we could be addressing.
Chris Talgo:Yeah. And, Lisanaya, one other thing. And, you know, Jim and I, we've been around for a while. We've we've seen the the annual list of grand grandpa puts together a good list of, you know, government waste. But I was watching, an interview with, someone at the OMB office saying that there are literally hundreds of programs that the funding has lapsed.
Chris Talgo:There is no longer they are no longer authorized, but the funds just keep getting dispersed by treasury. So it's like those are the kind of things where you've got such a gargantuan government that spends such an enormous amount of money. It's not as if someone is checking on every single, transaction that's going in and out of treasury. So we need to get our we need to, you know, look under the hood here. And that's what this was about.
Chris Talgo:This was not about saying we're gonna cut all this. It's yo, guys guys, chill. Take a freeze for a minute. Let's actually look under the hood, see what's going on, and then determine, okay. Yeah.
Chris Talgo:We get rid of this. You know, we can pause this. Okay. We, you know, need this. But, of course, as usual, the left, the democrats, you know, in particular, just, you know, are get are getting really hyperbolic about this saying, oh, you're gonna cancel people's Social Security payments.
Chris Talgo:That's not true. We've seen that argument just again and again and again. Government shutdowns don't even affect, Social Security payments. So why would a temporary, funding freeze on grants and other other spending, priorities, why would that cause the Social Security checks to not be mailed? It just doesn't make any sense.
Chris Talgo:The fear mongering, I think it's I think it's not working anymore. I think the American people see through it, and they know. And they, you know, voted for someone who's gonna go in there and clean up this mess.
Jim Lakely:A 100%. Those top stories don't work. Those those top stories aren't gonna work anymore. I I think that people are completely done with that done with that.
Linnea Lueken:It it won't work on it won't work on most, like, thinking people, but people that are, you know, just kinda going off of what they see in social media, especially young people. I had a relative of mine reached out to me concerned because one of her friends told her that, she heard that the birthright citizenship thing was going to get her deported even though she's an American citizen because, like, her grandmother or whatever was an immigrant like an illegal immigrant or something. No. But people are being grandfathered in. You're not gonna be deported if if you're a citizen now.
Linnea Lueken:If you have a Social Security number, you're not getting deported.
Chris Talgo:There's a very powerful response response to to this, and I've been saying this for years when people bring this stuff up. It's your tax money. You know, I just just filed my 2024 taxes. I paid the federal government a lot of money. Yeah.
Chris Talgo:I got a little bit of it back, but, you know, that money was wasted on so many of these frivolous stupid programs and going to pay, you know, people's salaries for just doing nothing but watching Netflix, you know, in their PJs all day. And I think the American people are just getting really sick and tired of that. You know, this is our money. The government does not just have money. The government can only get money from productive people, and we, you know, are sick and tired of funding these ridiculous programs, these people who do nothing, and the government that almost does nothing.
Linnea Lueken:Yep. Absolutely. Well, before we wrap it up today, I want I wanted to, take a look and give you guys any chance that, you wanna take to bring up any executive orders that we didn't cover. We only covered a very small number of them. I mean, there's a 1,000,000,000 of them at this point.
Linnea Lueken:And I'll I'll start because I think that this is one that is going to, have some good broader impacts on how the United States looks at international activities and international organizations and everything, and that's withdrawing the United States from the World Health Organization. And right off the bat, Trump does not, pull any punches on it whatsoever. He immediately says that the reason why we're doing this is because of the organization's mishandling of COVID 19 that arose out of Wuhan, China, he specifies, and other global health crises, its failure to adopt urgently needed reforms, its inability to demonstrate independence from inappropriate political influence of member states. In addition, the WHO continues to demand unfairly onerous payments from the United States far out of proportion with other countries' assessed payments. China, with a population of 1,400,000,000 has 300% of the population of the United States yet contributes nearly 90% less.
Linnea Lueken:So this is great. This is terrific. I don't think it should stop here. The reason why I picked this one as my favorite is because I hope that it is kind of a bellwether for what is to come with other international organizations. I don't think I it's my personal opinion that I do not think that we should be in the United Nations anymore.
Linnea Lueken:I think that it's a huge waste of time and money. Everywhere the United Nations goes, they bring suffering, and all they do is they suck money out of, the United States in particular and send it to everybody else in the world, whether or not they're holding up their end of whatever bargain it is that they claim to be involved in. This is especially true on the climate issue. So I would just like them to just be done. I'm we're just done with them.
Linnea Lueken:So I like the idea of pulling out the WHO. It's a good kind of test for pulling out of international organizations like that. I'd like to see it go further. Okay. Who's next?
Linnea Lueken:What's your favorite?
Chris Talgo:Alright. I'm gonna go with, the education sector here. As of yesterday, Donald Trump said that the federal government will no longer provide funding to schools that promote CRT. That's called critical race theory. I think that is a huge win because as a, teacher, I saw the, corrosive effect that CRT has upon students making them, you know, feels if they are, you know, some sort of oppressor just because of their skin color, that is sick, that is twisted, that is everything against what Martin Luther King, you know, stood for.
Chris Talgo:So I'm very glad to see that a CRT looks like it's gonna be on its way out just like DEI. And one other, executive order signed yesterday and this doesn't have that much teeth, but I think it's just still important to note it. Donald Trump wants to make school choice universal. He wants to make school choice universal for every single American, which it should be. Our public school system I'm a former public school teacher.
Chris Talgo:I've been in the trenches for years. It is utterly failing. It is utterly failing. Our, national assessment education, report just came out. And guess what?
Chris Talgo:We fell we fell behind again, in terms of our reading, writing, and math skills. Our education system is in dire need of repair. The only way to properly repair it and to save this next generation is through school choice. We have to have school choice. It's happening at the state level, but if it would if it were to happen at the, federal level, that would just be a total game changer.
Chris Talgo:And, Tim Scott, by the way, the senator from South Carolina, did just, introduce propose a bill that would make school choice universal. I doubt the senate obviously is gonna pass it because he needs 60 votes in the senate, and we know that Democrats who claim they care so much about children actually don't give a you know what about children because they care much more about the teacher unions and, you know, the the, lobbying fees and lobbying, money that the teacher unions supply to almost solely Democrats. Interesting.
Linnea Lueken:But but, Chris, don't Chicago schools just need more money, and they'll do better? Isn't that the formula? Of course
Chris Talgo:they need no more money. And you wanna know what's really sick and twisted about this. Let's let's, just circle back real quick to the immigration stuff. The Chicago Teachers Union is actually, you know, congratulating these illegal immigrants because guess why? It boosts their attendance.
Chris Talgo:Yep. It it boosts public school attendance. And as a former high school teacher exactly. I can assure you that all they care about is the attendance, and they only care about the attendance in the 1st 2 weeks because those are when the federal government gives you those these pink sheets of paper and you go and you do your attendance. And if that's if that student is there during that 2 weeks, they count as a seat and they count as more money.
Chris Talgo:And we went on, we were we were encouraged to go on door doorbell knocking, missions to get students to come just for the 1st 2 weeks. But then guess what? After those 1st 2 weeks, they didn't give one you know what if those kids showed up again. So that just goes to show me they didn't care about educating the kids. They cared about getting as much money as they could per seat, which is just that that's evil.
Chris Talgo:That's why I just could not take it any longer.
Linnea Lueken:Awesome. Thank you. And I I've seen reports to that, something like 30 schools in the Chicagoland area have 0 students that are reading at their grade level, which is, like, just stunning. I don't know how you you even achieve that. It's terrible.
Linnea Lueken:And yet we're supposed to we're supposed to give them more money anyway. Jim, what is your favorite executive order or orders of these last 10 days?
Jim Lakely:Well, we actually went over so many of them. I have a big list and we we actually hit a lot of the ones that I had on my list. But, I just wanna one of the ones I I don't even know if this is executive order necessarily. But Donald Trump is ending the practice of sue and settle at the Environmental Protection Agency. This is a practice where a, again, a, probably publicly funded national, you know, NGO on the left that working to save the planet will, sue, the EPA to say that you must regulate in this in this particular fashion.
Jim Lakely:And then the EPA, instead of fighting it, will say, oh, that's a good idea. Fine. Great. We'll set we'll we'll we'll accept that. We'll probably actually award you some money, and this will now be the new policy of the United States, through the EPA.
Jim Lakely:That's a a complete scam, and it's going to end, apparently, under Donald Trump. I'm gonna keep an eye on that for sure because that's a very important way that the left has imposed their will against the will of the people. We never get to vote on these things. They just they just go to court and make everything happen. And another one just based on, on the environment and energy stuff is that Donald Trump fired the entire, science advisory board at at the Environmental Protection Agency.
Jim Lakely:And so these are the radical alarmists who, give the fake scientific justification for all the regulations that the EPA wants to roll out. Trump fired them all. Again, he's moving this Overton window into where we can have actual discussions about, some very important policy ideas. And, and that's only possible because of the way the election turned out. I just wanted to just to I just wanna remind everybody that if the election went in another direction, the opposite direction, Donald Trump would be in jail today, and he would die there.
Jim Lakely:He would be sentenced for probably 30 years in prison, for that. Elon Musk's ex would probably already be under, would be certainly under assault, and he may even be in in big legal trouble. So we dodged a real bullet on November 5th, and now we are seeing the benefits of that in ways that were wholly unimaginable even based on Trump's record in his first term. He is serious. This is a major political and, I think, social inflection point in this country.
Jim Lakely:And I just I said, I I'm not gonna get sick of the winning. I promise you I promise you I will not get sick of the winning as long as it happens every day for 4 years.
Linnea Lueken:Yeah. We are we are loving it.
Chris Talgo:Do you remember shortly after Barack Obama won in 2008 that he, had that that, big meeting with, I think it was, people from both sides of the aisle, including John McCain, who he defeated, was back in the senate. And he said these infamous words, elections matter. Well, you know what? Elections really matter now. So I'm really sorry, Barack, but your fundamental transformation was, you know, a complete disaster, and elections matter.
Chris Talgo:And this election is gonna matter a lot for a long time to come.
Jim Lakely:Yeah. I believe the quote was elections have consequences. Excuse me.
Chris Talgo:Yes. Yes. Yes.
Jim Lakely:Yes. And and he had said famously on the campaign trail that, we are 5 days away from the fundamental transformation of the United States of America. Donald Trump is now bringing about the fundamental restoration of the United States of America. I mean, one of the lines from his and we'll end here. But one of the lines from his campaign that really struck me as very powerful, as he's as he would run through the list of litany of things that were wrong with this country and the policies that were completely backwards, policies that took away our freedom and treated us like children or worse.
Jim Lakely:He said, we don't have to live this way. And we don't have to live this way. And the voters in November decided they were not gonna live that way anymore. And that's why I think this is a real political and social inflection point that we may look back on in in 10 or 20 years as as pivotal as the fall of the Berlin Wall.
Chris Talgo:Can I speak one more one more one more quick point? You know, I I've been thinking a lot about this. So, you know, there was obviously a big side of me that wanted Donald Trump to win in 2020, but I think it was actually a blessing in his and blessing in his skies that he that he I think he won the election, but that he wasn't certified the winner. We'll put it that way. Okay?
Chris Talgo:Because it allowed us to get to rock bottom. I think the American people actually needed to hit rock bottom, and Joe Biden led us to rock bottom. The economy was a joke. The, border was wide open. Our foreign influence and our, you know, foreign standing just plummeted.
Chris Talgo:And I think that sometimes you need to really just kinda hit the bottom to to finally realize, like, woah. It doesn't have to be this way. So I think that, you know, we probably wouldn't even have this flurry of executive orders in this, you know, this this, you know, this, almost like widespread acceptance of Donald Trump at this point. You know, there's polls showing that, you know, he's 52%, you know, approval rate, you know, for his first couple weeks here in office. We would not have seen that in 2020 because he would have been under that, that impeachment.
Chris Talgo:It would have been just way more resistance. So I think looking back on it, and I know that a lot of people have struggled, and I have struggled too in some ways under the Biden administration. But I think looking back on it that we will look at that as, wow. You know what? We had to hit rock bottom in order to realize that we can do so much better than this.
Linnea Lueken:Oh, yeah. Definitely. And it's it's very amazing to watch. I I think today, we can say this real quick. Today, I think Democrats actually pulled, like, the lowest popularity rating that they've ever pulled, and that's after the the opposing party just got into office.
Linnea Lueken:I don't think that normally happens. I think normally, Democrats get a little boost after a Republican is in office because they get to be the resistance, you know. But that is not happening right now. People are sick and tired of these guys. Anyway, everybody, so I wanna pitch real quick before we end the show.
Linnea Lueken:A lot of the research that we did or that I did anyway to try and find good executive orders to highlight because there are just so many of them, came from an account on Twitter called 47 or on the x. Sorry. I always call it Twitter. 47 tracker, and all it does is post, the executive orders as they are published to the White House website. There's no commentary or anything, so it's a really good source for that.
Linnea Lueken:Anyway, that is all the time we have. We went a little bit over, but thank you guys so much for sticking with us. We are live every single week on Thursdays at noon CST on Rumble, Twitter, YouTube, Facebook. When they let us, they might let us more into the future. For audio listeners, again, please rate us well on whatever service you're using.
Linnea Lueken:Leave a review that really helps us climb the ranks there. And thank you guys so much. Our usual panelists are terrific. Guys, where can the audience find you, and do you guys have anything to plug this week?
Jim Lakely:Atjlakeleyonx, at heartlandinst, also on x. Visit heartland.org, and see you tomorrow for for the Climate Realism Show same time, but on Fridays on this year channel.
Chris Talgo:I got nothing to plug. I just I concur with everything that Jim just said.
Linnea Lueken:Okay. That's terrific. Well, thank you again, everybody. We will see you next week.
Creators and Guests
