Dr. Ralph Reed on Election Integrity, the First Amendment and the Trump Administration
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Welcome to Broken Potholes. I'm your host, Sam Stone. In the studio with me today, my co-host, Chuck Warren, the irrepressible Kylie Kipper. And on the line with us, we're going to go right to our interview today because it's a fantastic one. Dr. Ralph Reed, Dr. Reed, an American political consultant and lobbyist, best known as the first executive director of the Christian Coalition during the 90s, which did some amazing work across the country.

And he is the founder of the Faith and Freedom Coalition and one of the really leading lights in Christian political thought. And welcome to the show, Dr. Reid.

Thanks so much, Sam. Good to be with you guys. Great to have you. Great to have you. Well, we want to start this off right away. We are dealing with First Amendment issues now, as we all knew would happen with the Biden administration. And as a person who's been part of and attacked as part of this council culture, what do you see happening? How do we fight back? Well, I think elections have consequences, and we've gone from the most pro-life,

and the most pro-religious freedom administration in our lifetimes to the most pro-abortion and the most anti-religious freedom. And I think we can anticipate, we see it already in the COVID, you know, so-called relief or stimulus bill, of which only 9%, by the way, is healthcare related. It's a $2 trillion stimulus bill. So they took the Obama trillion dollar stimulus and they doubled it.

It's basically the Obama crowd is back in town. And, you know, we see it already in that, Chuck, with the expansion of the Obamacare subsidies. What that has to do with COVID vaccination, I have no idea. And that is the first step towards bringing back the Obama conscience mandate.

which is Little Sisters of the Poor. It's Hobby Lobby. It's forcing every person of faith in America to subsidize and pay for abortion on demand. They've also tucked some expanded funding for Planned Parenthood into this bill. Planned Parenthood, the leading abortion provider in the world. And they're going to try and undo the Trump rulemaking on the Title X Family Planning Program

which didn't really explicitly defund Planned Parenthood, but by requiring that they not use any government-subsidized facilities or staff

to make abortion referrals, Planned Parenthood voluntarily and unilaterally withdrew from the program, giving up $60 million in government funding. So they're going to ask us to pay for abortion on demand. They're going to be bringing back conscience mandates. And that's just the beginning. Dr. Reid, you brought up a kind of an important point. I think a lot of the criticisms of Donald Trump misunderstood that

And a lot of the love you see in the press for Joe Biden misunderstand that the president is only one facet of his administration. And Donald Trump's administration as a whole was incredibly supportive of Christian values, of family values, of all these things where, frankly, Biden, who talks the talk, his administration is incredibly hostile to them.

Yeah, and I think, look, I think there were a lot of people, some at the grassroots, some in the base of the Republican Party, but even more independent and soft or weak or nominal Republicans who got spoiled under Donald Trump. You know, they got used to standing up to bullies. They got used to the appointment of over 225 people

conservative and pro-life federal judges. They got used to every time there was a Supreme Court vacancy, you had an outstanding, stellar conservative jurist being nominated who met just a gold standard of judicial temperament, of originalism, and of a fidelity to the Constitution and the Bill of Rights. And those people who got spoiled

under an administration that protected religious freedom, the first president to address the March for Life. I want you to think about this for a minute. Joe Biden is the first Roman Catholic president since John F. Kennedy. He is a professed faithful Catholic. He regularly attends Mass. He publicly professes fidelity to the teaching of his church.

And he is presiding over the most pro-abortion, radical administration in history, and he is calling for the repeal of the Hyde Amendment, which for the first time since Roe v. Wade would force every single pro-life and Christian American in this country to pay for the taking of innocent human life with their tax dollars, which are taken under penalty of law. Now, that is what is going on in Washington.

And I will tell you something. I think this honeymoon is officially over, and I think people understand that they're spending like drunken sailors. They've used the COVID pandemic as an excuse to spend trillions of dollars that they don't need.

We've still got hundreds of billions of dollars from the last COVID relief bill that hasn't been spent. And as Mitch McConnell pointed out on the Senate floor, I think yesterday, the money that they're appropriating to schools, I think it's like $170 billion, isn't even going to be spent this year. It's going to be spent over the next seven years. So this is a boondoggle. It's a giveaway to public employee unions, and they are bankrupting us. And that is just the beginning.

You know, Dr. Reed, you are incredibly right. I work with the city of Phoenix and we have at this point about one hundred and twenty five million dollars in covid monies left over from the two hundred and fifty three million they gave us last year. And that money has been is being used to line the pockets of public employees to increase, you know, increase salaries, increase payoffs. It's exactly what you said. And we're not done spending what we've already gotten.

Dr. Reid, this is Chuck. So as you go and talk to your activists and the people you work with in the various states from Georgia to Iowa to Nevada,

What is their mood right now? How are they feeling? Are they ready to take on the fight and go fully here the next two years so we can take over the House? And they realize we don't have time for a gradual recapturing of the House and Senate. What is their mood? How are you handling them? Tell us a little bit about that right now. Well, I think, Chuck, they are ready. They're ready to work. They're over whatever...

disappointment that they had after November and then again in January when unfortunately we lost control of the Senate. And, you know, look, it was a tough election cycle. And I think people want to see us focused on election reform and election integrity and ballot security. I'm not saying the election was stolen. I frankly don't know whether it was or not. But what I do know is that there were extensive protests

and concerning voter irregularities and unilateral changes in voting procedures by election officials, by governors, and in some cases by state and federal courts.

that either were inconsistent with state law or specifically violated state law. So I think as long as people feel that we're doing that by fixing things like the abuse of mail-in ballots, requiring voter ID in all cases, including when somebody votes absentee and those kind of things, and we have a robust ballot security program, I think people are ready to get to work. And I think what we've got to do is we've got to do three things. Number one,

We need to we need to stand up and oppose these violations of our rights. We're we're working to oppose H.R. one. We're opposing the covid stimulus of a multi trillion dollar boondoggle. You know, we're we're opposing the rulemaking, the end of fracking and and the killing of the Keystone pipeline and the killing of jobs.

So you oppose what's wrong. Secondly, you unfurl a banner not of pale pastels but of bold colors, to quote Ronald Reagan. You lift a banner of what is right and true and just to which the faithful can repair. And then number three, you start getting ready right now for the 2021 and 2022 elections. And you'll note I said 2021. Right. Because we have state legislative races in Virginia and elsewhere. Right.

We don't need to wait. We have a special election, Chuck, in Louisiana, I think in a matter of weeks. So remember that when we fought Batik against Obama, we won that special election for that U.S. Senate seat in Massachusetts after Ted Kennedy passed away. We're going to have opportunities. We don't need to wait until November of 2022. Let's get off the

the couch. Let's quit feeling sorry for ourselves and let's get to work. And yes, people are ready. Dr. Reid, I think that's an incredible, important point that everyone needs to be geared up now. But touching on what you talked about with election fraud, there was a Pew poll that came out, I think, a few days ago showed that 47 percent of the country

or at least 47 percent of respondents believe there was massive fraud in the 2020 elections. If you go back to 2016, you probably had a fairly similar number, only it was on the left. Yeah, it was on the left. It was a different batch of people. I think actually Republicans standing up for what looks what a clean election looks like and putting forward ideas on that front legislation initiatives. That's part of what it takes to get our voters back to the polls right now.

Yeah, I totally agree. And that's why at Faith and Freedom, we've established the Center for Election Integrity. We're lobbying in states all over the country, as I said, to ensure that there's voter identification, whether you vote by mail, whether you vote early or whether you vote in person, doing things like requiring interoperability of voter rolls so that somebody can't be registered to vote in more than one state.

You know, doing things like requiring that people vote in the precinct in which they reside. You know, doing things like requiring proper chain of custody with any vote left in a dropbox. Look, we at Faith and Freedom are not opposed to voting, making voting convenient. We have no problem with that. We just want to make sure that the votes are legitimate. So, for example, in Florida, when

When you leave a vote, a mail ballot in a drop-off, you have to do so by scanning your ID. It's very similar to what you do, say, for example, to pay your auto tag renewal in a lot of states. You have to scan your driver's license, then they can identify you, and then you can pay your tag fee. If we can do that with an auto tag, we can certainly do it with voting. Look,

You know, Winston Churchill said it best. He said democracy is the worst form of government ever conceived by the mind of man, except for all the rest. Absolutely. Democracy matters, but people have to know that it has integrity.

That's an incredibly good point. We have about 30 seconds before we have to go to the break. We're going to have Dr. Reed back on with us in the next segment as well. Thank you, Dr. Reed, for that. But I think that's an incredibly important point again. And thank you. You're dropping pearls of wisdom with every time you speak here because our election integrity and the belief in our system has to be restored. Broken potholes. We'll be right back. Talk about how to do that.

Welcome back to Broken Potholes. This is Chuck Warren with my co-host Sam Stone, and on today with us is Dr. Ralph Reed, founder of the Faith and Freedom Coalition. You can find more about the Faith and Freedom Coalition at ffcoalition.com. It's truly one of the better...

outside groups that actually does something on election day versus talking about it. Dr. Reed, let's talk something here quickly here. I think the misperception for most people is that if you're Christian right, all you care about is abortion. And I've heard you talk before, and it's true. There's a philosophy called the seamless garment philosophy. There's more to it regarding issues such as abortion, euthanasia, social justice, and so forth. Tell our audience what

What happened really during the Trump administration, how all of that came together and how he worked towards those things such as sex trafficking and social justice and things of that nature?

Sure, I'd be happy to. First of all, I want to thank you for the Eagles Hotel California bumper music there. We'd love to please. You're bringing back a lot of memories of my youth, I'll tell you that. But in any event, Chuck, you're so right, because this is another thing that neither we nor President Trump gets credit for.

But not only was President Trump the most pro-life president we'd ever had, not only was he the most pro-religious freedom, not only was he the most pro-Israel, and these are the issues that are primarily identified. You know, pro-family, pro-life, religious freedom, Israel, are what our community is mostly identified with. But Christian civic engagement, properly understood,

is about applying the eternal and transcendent truths of Scripture to every area of life. And you take, for example, finances and the economy. You know, money and finances are mentioned, and I'm doing this from memory so don't hold me to the number, but I think they're mentioned like 153 times in the New Testament.

And the biblical principles of the way the world works, to borrow a phrase from George Gilder, is something that applies to every area of life. So, for example, in the tax bill, we were in favor of doubling the standard deduction from roughly $12,000 to $24,500 a year.

to ensure that the most successful department of health and human services ever conceived, namely the intact family, was strengthened by not being forced to pay high taxes and send its money to Washington to then filter back down through a bureaucracy. We favored and worked very closely with the president and particularly with Ivanka Trump

who was sort of a point person on doubling the child tax credit from $1,000 to $2,000, increasing its refundability. It was 70% refundable. Chuck, that is the most successful anti-poverty program

in the post-Cold War period. It's lifted 9 million people out of poverty, including an additional 750,000 people under Donald Trump. We worked on immigration reform, not in order to loosen our laws, but in order to strengthen them. We believe in a secure border. We believe in the rule of law, but we also believe in strengthening the family by not forcing minor children to wait in lines to enter the country legally in

in lines that in some countries are decades long. And finally, we achieved historic and path-breaking criminal justice reform. We do not believe the biblical form of punishment for wrongdoing is building prisons that are crime factories and locking people up in them for decades so they can learn how to be better criminals. We'd rather have them pay restitution to their victims. We'd rather have them have humane and tough love alternatives

to traditional incarceration. And again, Obama talked about it, never got it done. Clinton talked about it, never got it done. Donald Trump got it done. And we were right beside him in doing so. You know, Dr. Reid, there was actually a great line I remember from Johnny Depp in the movie Blow, where he started out as a marijuana distributor dealer and then ended up getting caught going to jail. It was based on a true story.

And he said coming out of that, he said, I went in with a bachelor's degree in marijuana and I graduated with a Ph.D. in cocaine. And that was his experience of prison.

That's right, and that's the story of hundreds of thousands of nonviolent offenders. And again, we're not soft on crime, okay? We're talking about a biblical model for dealing with crime and restitution and reconciliation and repentance, both on an individual level and as a society. And

And all we're saying is, you know, look, if you're a violent criminal, you need to be behind bars where you can't hurt anybody. But if you're a nonviolent offender, if you're willing to make the changes in your life, get a high school diploma, get a job, get in a recovery program if you suffer from chemical or other addictions, get plugged into a church or a house of worship where your life is being changed through faith. If you're willing to do those things,

If you're a first-time nonviolent offender, that's going to be our first desire as Christians. And again, we brought that witness to bear. We had a leader in Donald Trump, and I assure you, we lobbied on this going back to 2013. And without Donald Trump, it would have never happened. And by the way, I should also mention his son-in-law, Jared Kushner, whose family had experience with the criminal justice system,

and who felt it not only on a policy level but a personal level, I want to say it would have never happened without him. Well, as our time wraps up with you today, and we appreciate your time, two quick questions. One, is it better being a grandparent or a parent? And two, tell people more about Faith and Freedom Coalition and how they can get involved, Ralph.

Well, the first one is asking you which you enjoy more, Chuck, is kind of like asking who's your favorite child. I've loved them both, and you can't be a grandparent unless you're a parent first. So I know you love your kids. I love mine. Our second grandchild is on his or her way. We don't know yet, but they're due in April next month. No gender reveal. And Faith and Freedom.

You know, look, Faith and Freedom is an organization that now has over 2.25 million members.

members and activists, over a million current donors. We have full-time staff right now in 15 states. We have affiliates in over 30 states. We knocked on 5.8 million doors and reached over 12 million voters at the door in 2020. We're going to do even more in 2022. We make sure that Christians have a voice in government by

by influencing public policy based on the principles of our faith, including the Bible. And secondly, we make sure that Christians are registered to vote, turn out to the polls in record numbers, and elect like-minded people who share their values of faith, of freedom, of the protection of innocent human life, religious freedom, and

and support for Israel. And I'm very pleased with how the organization's going. If people want more information, they can go to ffcoalition.com, get involved with us. We're changing the direction of our country. Well, thank you for your time today, my friend. It's been great talking to you. Give my best to your wife, and we hope you have a great weekend. Thanks, you guys. Thanks for having me. Dr. Reed, thank you so much.

So he's the first one to answer the question, not say a grandparent, because all my friends just say it's you only have kids to have the grandchildren. You don't bother with the kids if you can't get grandkids. What's the point of children if you can't spoil your grandchildren and hand them back? Yeah, you monitor your time. You know, you get an hour of enjoyment, you send them home. I mean, that's the beauty of being a grandparent. Yeah.

Great interview with Dr. Reed. Really, really glad to have him on the show today and want to thank him again. Folks, check that out. I believe it's FF.com? FFcoalition.com. FFcoalition.com. Folks, get involved with something. If you care, get involved. Don't talk about it. Talk is cheap. Broken Potholes. Be right back. The other night, dear, as I lay sleeping.

Welcome back to Broken Potholes. We are now having our sunshine moment with Dr. Kip, we call her Kylie.

She is today going to tell us something that some innovative young woman has put together to help victims of domestic abuse, which sadly happens more than we all want to think it does. Kip, go ahead. Well, when I read the story, I just loved it and I couldn't wait to share. But a Polish high school student, she launched a fake online cosmetic shop that offers a lifeline to domestic violence victims that are trapped in their homes.

She's just 17 years old when she came up with this idea. And she had just heard of rising reports of domestic violence post the lockdown. And she wanted to be able to create a solution for that. And so the idea of the shop was to hide the request, to give victims an opportunity to hide the request that they need help from their abuser by appearing to be online shopping. And so how it works is when a victim's online shopping for their product and if they ask to buy a cream,

Instead of a salesperson responding, it's a psychologist and they ask scripted questions like, how long are your skin problems occurring for? Or how do they react to alcohol?

And she got this idea actually from a French initiative where victims could go to a pharmacy and if they requested a certain color mask that actually indicated to the pharmacist that they needed help. But she wanted to create a solution. She hadn't heard anything that was occurring in Poland yet. So she wanted to create a solution and she thought maybe she'd be helping friends that didn't have the courage to come forward or maybe, you know, friends of friends. But since starting this in April of last year, she had 350 people that have contacted the website for help.

And this has just gotten bigger. She actually needed more help. So she reached out to the Women's Rights Center in Poland and they provided psychologists and lawyers to kind of help out with that and

So it's just she won a prize for this, $12,000. But it was just that she just felt the need to do this because there wasn't a solution for that. Well, it goes back to the purpose why we have the sunshine moment. We sometimes can have on the show interviews and everybody thinks the life is full of gloom. It's dark.

Listen to the news these days. It's all gloom and doom. Yeah, and we go and we have these innovative, inspired women and men who step forward and say, not on my watch. And that's why we have this segment, and it's inspiring women.

I don't know if we want to get the French credit because the French think all good things come from France. Well, they did just ban wokeism. They did ban wokeism. I got to give them credit for that one. They are French, so they are leaders in cultural things.

Let's talk about domestic violence for me here in our short time we have. Sam, how much did domestic violence increase during the COVID lockdown in Phoenix? So we don't have full numbers yet, but you're looking at something like an 89% increase in domestic violence cases during this time. And for our listeners, how would we define domestic violence?

violence? I know it's more, is it purely physical? Explain it. Well, so for when we're looking at policing, it is actually purely physical. While domestic violence can take many forms and can be verbal and psychological and all those things, and we have programs that help women get out of those situations, for a police report, it has to be something that rises to the level of a physical attack. And that's increased 89% over this past year. 89%. I mean, it

It is an insane increase. And, you know, really we are seeing – we're seeing divorces go up. We're seeing – one of the things we're not seeing very worrisomely, and, you know, this kind of hits on it, is children. We've seen a decrease in domestic violence cases related to children. A lot of that has to do with reporting in schools because they're not in school. Right.

And kids don't know how to reach out for help. Sure, sure. Who do they call? Yeah, well, you know what? Call 911, kids. I mean, you know, if you're in that situation, call 911. We will get you help. And we will find we have programs. But at the end of the day, how many kids have the presence of mind to even be able to do something like that, to understand what they're experiencing? Yeah.

Well, they don't, first of all, because they're young. And two, when you're the recipient of that type of abuse, you freeze. What do you do? You know, you don't know where to go. It's a very dark chapter for people. And that's disappointing. But it's gone over all over. I've heard it from all police. I've talked in various cities. It's just astronomical right now. Unbelievable. And, you know, those type of abusers are generally very...

You know, they really convince their victims. It's their fault. They manipulate them. I mean, these are just horrible. I mean, this is as bad as it gets. This is one of the great problems in every society, in our society, and it has been massively exacerbated. It's one of the untold stories of the COVID pandemic. Well, Kylie brought up a positive point on this. If someone taking charge...

And making life better for 300 plus women in Poland. Of course, all credit goes to the French. Kylie, thank you a million for bringing this to us today. Broken potholes. We'll be right back.

Welcome back to Broken Potholes with Chuck Warren and Sam Stone. In studio with us is Kylie and Mackenzie. Mackenzie's just looking for Lorne, thinking about the future here today. But in the meantime, Sam, as we have... And hiding from the microphone. And hiding from the microphone. But as we have this final moment, let's talk about the House passed this week H.R. 1280, which is the George Floyd bill.

I think we all agree what happened to George Floyd was tragic. I still don't understand what was going through people's mind. I mean, someone can't breathe, someone can't breathe. Get up. You know, it's amazing. That was a murder. Yeah, plain and simple. That was a murder. And it should be treated as a murder. Yeah, it should. What I want to do, Sam, because you're the chief of staff for Sal DeCiccio, you've dealt with this issue a lot.

And as all things that happen are tragedies, we seem like we always have a group of people from both sides try to overcompensate. But in this particular one, the left has just seemed to gone crazy.

bit crazy on some of the things they're proposing so what I want to do is go more yeah more so more than I want and I want to go through some of these points as you've dealt with it and tell me because not every idea that's brought up is the same thing of hr1 I don't love hr1 but not everything's bad about it I mean there's always good in something and so I want to go do tell us like yes in the city of Phoenix or elsewhere this would work or this not work so let's start with this first one

It creates a registry of police misconduct that would include complaints that were found not to be true and lawsuits that were thrown out of court. This has the seed of a really important, great idea buried in it. And it goes completely off the rails by trying to essentially create a narrative here. Because if you leave in these reports that are unsubstantiated, that turn out after investigation and not be true...

What they're really trying to do is set that officer, that department up for firing or for a big lawsuit payday down the road by trying to create the perception that there has been a lot of misconduct by this particular officer. One of the things police deal with all the time is complaints that have absolutely no basis in fact that are just being made up because you're dealing with criminals. Which is something people don't get.

Police generally do not talk to people unless there's a reason. No, right? I mean, they just don't willy-nilly go around and say, hey, Kip...

You know, there's a reason they're talking to Kip. Now, I love police, but when I see the flashing lights behind my car, it doesn't make me feel real good. No, no one does. No one's like, oh, what a wonderful day. I have a cop visiting me today. It's a wonderful thing. No, I mean, and they don't get that opportunity generally. The problem with this, and I don't want to go on this, but the problem with something like this as well, for things that were thrown out or found to have no facts, they should not be included in the background. I remember when I applied for the domain.vote and they did a background check.

They went back to 1989 that I had a tax lien for $78 when I was in college, right? And because they mailed the tax notice. You missed Grant. Yeah, because they mailed the tax notice to an address I obviously wasn't at because I was a college student, right? Well, the problem with that is I had to spend time explaining why I had this $78 tax lien, which, you know, I had paid taxes many years since and plenty of money, but no one brought it up. Right.

So I had to go down to the courthouse, get it taken off, get it expunged. It was just weird. Yeah. No, one of the big problems in policing today is that when there is a legitimate complaint against an officer, they can basically bury that in their past by quitting or resigning or even being fired. And then they go to another department. That record doesn't follow them in many, many cases. Which is a problem. That's a problem. So the heart of this idea is a very good one. But the way they're doing it is designed so a lawyer can make –

a bunch of fallacious accusations look like a pattern of behavior? Well, as most laws are, they're great for trial lawyers. Let's talk about the next point. Would ban federal no-knock drug warrants and require complaints against law enforcement officers to be made public, including those that were later found to be not credible? I mean, there's... First of all, the latter part is...

We don't do that in any other aspect of society at all. And it ties to the previous one. It's kind of a repeat of that, which is ridiculous. And no knock warrants should be used a lot less. And the big issue with them is judges who are not being look, they're they're supposed to be there to decide. The police are always going to want to go get the bad guy. That's the job, of

Of course they are. The judge is there to decide whether and how they're asking to go do that, whether they want to go do a no-knock warrant that's appropriate. And a lot of judges have been rubber stamping those things for years. That should never be the case. There should be way fewer. But banning that tactic puts lives at risk and it puts a lot of very important cases at risk. It's very easy to discard evidence.

Another point in this bill, H.R. 1280, bans chokeholds at the federal level and conditions law enforcement funding for state and local governments banning chokeholds. Fine. Yeah. No problem. There are plenty of other control techniques that are just as effective.

and do not require you to put the suspect's life at risk. It's just that simple. Requires that deadly force be used only as a last resort and requires officers to employ de-escalation techniques first. Changes the standards to evaluate whether law enforcement use of force was justified from whether the force was reasonable to whether the force was necessary.

condition grants on state and local law enforcement agencies establishing the same use of force standard. This is a very good sounding and dangerous. Right. So one of the things that, you know, look, we train de-escalation techniques and that training should be expanded and it should be the first resort is to try to de-escalate the situation. You go back to George Floyd, the fact that the other officers on the scene did not, that they stood there and watched that happen.

That is a huge problem. That cannot happen ever. But we have a big problem with this because when someone's pointing a gun at you, saying you have to try to de-escalate the situation first isn't reasonable. I mean, just period. When someone has a knife, there was a great video that we posted on the Councilman's account a few months ago of someone with a knife. The officer didn't shoot the

They tried to deescalate the situation. That person was a few steps away from him before they could fire. That person was on them, had them in a hold and was moving to cut their throat when the other officer ended the situation by firing and killing the suspect. So,

You cannot—people don't understand how fast these situations are. Well, anybody just driving during traffic time or commute hours, people are so unreasonable to drive. Them lecturing everybody else like, well, this is what I would do if I was a police officer is just ludicrous because you don't know until you're there. And like you said, you keep training. You do a lot of things. But at the end of the day—

Your life, your mind, your heart go to a different degree if someone's pointing a gun at you or has a knife. And I laugh at people think that this is just something like, well, my checklist says number two, I should be doing X. I mean, it's ludicrous. It's ludicrous. What we hear a lot is, well, they should have just shot him in the leg.

Are you the best marksman on the planet? Because if you're not, stop that. Stop. Well, and I read something that handguns during incidents like that, that only 18% of the time do they actually hit somebody. Yeah, no, look, I mean, and officers are well-trained, but it doesn't matter. It is very difficult to hit a moving target with a pistol.

That is something that requires a huge amount of training. Let's talk about this quickly and explain a little bit what they're asking for, Sam. It lowers the standard for federal civil rights lawsuits. Explain. What they're trying to do is create the conditions that will allow the federal government to federalize state and local police. That's what that's about. So what they're trying to do is be able to show a pattern of civil rights violations from your department, your local police department.

And once they do that, the federal government comes in and starts overseeing your department and they can dictate everything about how you operate and that sort of thing. And Democrats are looking at what they feel is a national electoral advantage. And they're saying, we'd like to have control of this in Washington, D.C. We don't want you peons out in the sticks, at least flyover states we ignore, to decide how you want your policing done. We're going to tell you how it's going to be done.

Another point they want to do in H.R. 1280, the George Floyd bill, makes it easier to prosecute offending officers by amending the federal criminal statute to prosecute police misconduct. So exactly. We're going to have to actually get into more details on that one because there's an issue here around qualified immunity that is a real issue. You can't get rid of qualified immunity entirely, but it needs to be –

You know, there needs to be a standard where, for instance, if an officer takes deliberative action to harm a suspect, you know, they just unjustified, completely unjustified that there is some penalty for them personally, that they can't just push that off on the taxpayers. That's actually pretty reasonable.

But the way they're going about this, once again, it's way too extensive. Right. Here's a point. Maybe you can explain to us what the city of Phoenix does. It mandates training on racial, religious, and discriminatory profiling for all law enforcement. How does Phoenix train their officers on this? So Phoenix does racial profiling training. We also do implicit bias training.

Which actually can be valuable. I think one of the great, and I've gone through and watched the presentation, and there are some things that are really actually worth thinking about in there. For instance, a good example of implicit bias is that we are naturally more inclined to defend, stick by, and trust our family members than we are people who we don't know, right? That is an implicit bias. Are our family members naturally more truthful and trustworthy than a stranger? Not necessarily. Right.

But we're biased to believe they are. That's kind of valuable. The problem with all these things now is critical race theory.

Because that is a really, really pernicious – that's not racial sensitivity training, folks. Critical race theory is a pernicious theory that's come out of academia that basically says that everything in the world is because – all the conditions of the world are because of white supremacy. All the ills in the world are due to white supremacy. It is a race-baiting ideology that is being taught as some sort of social justice mechanism.

And it is awful. Well, here's something that concerns me greatly. The bill would authorize $750 million over three years for states to set up independent prosecution programs for cases involving an officer's deadly use of force and $300 million over three years for state investigation into abusive police practices. It would also authorize funding for a number of reports and to collect data on the use of force and racial profiling. Again, the latter is good.

I have never known anything good to give attorneys a blank check. No. And actually, so in a certain sense, the first part of that is actually kind of good, too. The big issue you get into with all of these things is the perception that departments are not able to investigate themselves impartially. Right. Right. That's one of the big problems that we have.

So we've been the blue lines real. Right. Yeah. So it's very real. We take care of our own. Right. If any of you guys did something in this room here, we're all going to be defensive of each other. Right. That's a natural human reaction. Absolutely. And so one of the things that Councilman DeCiccio and I have been pushing for in the city of Phoenix and here in Arizona is for the State Department, Department of Public Service and Safety to

to develop a unit within itself that can investigate all of these use-of-force incidents in local law enforcement, have a dedicated investigative arm. That takes it away from the local law enforcement, gets rid of a lot of the questions about bias and that kind of thing. That would be valuable as an element of this. Where you get really, really wrong is when you start, when you create programs that are designed to find bias and designed to find racial bias

inequities, they will find them.

Oh, in any aspect of life, if you ask us to find something bad about anybody we associate with, you know, you're going to do it. People do what you pay them to do. I mean, and especially in bureaucracy. Especially attorneys. Yeah. When they get a nice big check. Yeah, absolutely. And so we only have a couple of minutes left here today. But but these this bill and H.R. one, which is the voting rights bill that Democrats have put forward, they sound really good on the surface and there are elements of them that are are really valuable. Right.

But the way they have been done is really, really dangerous. You know, H.R. 1 is essentially taking away states' rights on elections. This is putting policing under the gun of federal civil rights lawyers. In our final minute here, I want to go back to our previous conversation with Ralph about COVID funding and about all this unused money we have from the last stimulus packages. Would you briefly describe again, where is this money parked that the city of Phoenix has not used yet?

And what are they going to use it for? So what all these cities have done, unless you're in New York City or one of these that's hugely in the hole, what they got permission to do was swap those monies into our public safety budget. So we put about $150 million of that money into our public safety budget. We take $150 million other dollars – I'm doing air quotes here – other dollars out of our public safety budget and use that for more spending.

City of Phoenix taxes tax collection was up 5.7 percent in 2020 over 2019. We are not suffering economically at all. So we have no need for those monies at all. I mean, so. So, dear listeners, besides the fact that Sam needs to be trained on how to use air quotes, but you do it like this, not like this. Besides that fact, where's the money? Where do you do the money then? Where's it going to go? It's going to go to government employees.

And a lot of handouts to favored government employees who no one lost incomes or jobs during the COVID pandemic. Broken potholes back next week. Thank you for coming. And thanks, Kip. Thanks for having me. Turn my head on the sky.