Mark Krikorian on the Looming Crisis of Title 42
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Welcome to Breaking Battlegrounds with your host, Chuck Warren. I'm Sam Stone. As always, fantastic lineup of guests for today, Chuck. First up, Mark Krikorian. Mark is the executive director of the Center for Immigration Studies and a nationally recognized expert on immigration issues. Mark, you've been leading the charge to bring awareness to this problem, this unbelievable problem.

that continues to get worse and worse, and it's about to explode. Can you start by telling folks out there what is Title 42, and then what is it going to mean? Title 42 is the shorthand term for a public health order that when a public health emergency is declared, the Border Patrol is authorized to just bounce people back into Mexico, right?

who they catch, illegal immigrants from anywhere, rather than have hearings and asylum and all of that kind of stuff. And it was put into effect early on when all the COVID stuff was happening two years ago, when we were doing shutdowns and school closings and all that stuff, and it made sense at the time. The thing is,

What's happened since President Biden took over is they have undone almost everything else President Trump did on immigration, but they've been using this Title 42 authority as a crutch

to basically avoid actual enforcement of the immigration laws. And, you know, because it's based on a public health issue, they can't just keep it in place indefinitely. And so what they're facing is

is that when they get rid of it, it's going to be toward the end of May now, they announced. There's hundreds of thousands of people in Mexico just waiting for this Title 42 to end, because every illegal immigrant making his way through Mexico, and again, most of them are not Mexican. They're from Central America, they're from Africa and Haiti and Russia, Ukraine, Russia, everywhere, you name it. They all know about Title 42.

There's a reporter that one of my analysts knows, and he told him that any time this reporter down in Mexico goes and talks, people saying he's interested in the immigration issue, asking people about it, he gets mobbed by immigrants who want to get to the U.S., mobbed by them.

The people are all asking, hey, when's Title 42 going to end? When's it going to end? They know more about this bureaucratic stuff than anybody in the United States, practically. That's what I was going to ask you. It would be interesting to see polling numbers, polling them on what they knew not only about Title 42, but the complete bureaucracy around immigration in the United States versus you and I going out tomorrow and knocking on 10 doors.

Any random 10 hours in a middle class, upper middle class neighborhood. The era of the cell phone has totally changed the dissemination of that information. Absolutely. Absolutely. So Title 42 gets put away end of May. What does this mean for immigration coming, illegal immigration coming to the United States that now has broken all records? What do we expect to see from this?

we're going to see a huge increase. In fact, even the Department of Homeland Security has said there's going to be a big increase. They're actually preparing for

an increase of up to triple what they've been facing up to now in illegal immigration. What's that number? What's that number? It's 18. They're preparing for up to 18,000 illegal alien arrests a day on the border. And Obama's own Homeland Security Secretary, Jay Johnson,

said that anything that gets above 1,000 a day starts to overwhelm the system. Think of the crowd. 1,000 a day overwhelms the system. We're talking about potentially 18,000 a day. We're now getting 6,000, 7,000 a day. It's been going up over the past few months. So our radio show here is in Florida and Arizona. What could governors do? Can they sue? Can they have the AG sue and try to stop this?

Yeah, potentially. Arizona could. I'm not sure if Florida would have standing. Potentially it would. But Arizona has sued on some immigration matters. Texas obviously is sued. And actually other states can because Missouri and Ohio and other states have sued. So, yes, the attorney general.

could potentially sue on this. Uh, and I, I think it's almost certain that somebody is going to sue because it's got, you know, 60 days or so before it goes into effect. And I think the odds are pretty good that, um,

It may at least be delayed by a judge, but who knows? Because remember, this is a temporary authority. It's in the law, but it has to be based on public health concerns. And frankly, what Congress needs to do

is allow Border Patrol to do this even if it's not for public health concerns. And right now they can't do it. If you get across the border and you utter the magic words of asylum that American activists and the smugglers, either working together or separately, coach these people on what to say, they can't just bounce you back anymore. You're put into this pipeline for asylum, and even though law says you're supposed to be detained,

Almost all of them are just let go in the United States. Mark, for folks who are listening to this this weekend, if you're watching the Final Four, you're talking about that entire stadium being – us trying to detain that entire stadium worth of people every single day. Fox News, Hillary Vaughn today reporting DHS expects 500,000 migrants within six weeks. That may be an underestimate. And what you were just talking about, the people claim asylum –

If they ever show up to their court hearings, which they mostly don't, the vast majority do not qualify. Right. I mean, these are not folks who are legitimately coming here under our law.

But, but, but there's a spin there. You're right that as it is now, the large majority of people who go through the asylum process don't qualify. Very few, if any of them, are actually made to leave even after they get rejected, which is a big problem. In other words, even if they come to their hearings, it doesn't really matter if at the end of the process, nobody makes them go home. But it's even worse than that.

because the Biden administration has issued a new rule that will go into effect about the same time as this Title 42 thing ends.

to expand and make it effectively a rubber stamp to give asylum to these illegal immigrants who are trying to game the system. So that I think the administration's plan for dealing with this surge of people is not to stop it.

It's to launder it. It's to relabel all of these illegal immigrants as quickly as possible on the spot. They won't be able to do it the same day, but it'll be quick. Relabel them as having asylum, at which point they're on a path to citizenship. They can get actually they're better than having a green card because you can get welfare. And then their response is going to be.

What's your problem? There's no illegal aliens here. They're all legal. Which is why you're seeing a big push now to allow non-citizens votes in New York and other Northeastern and San Francisco, for example, to vote in local elections. Yeah, I mean, that push has been going around for a while. It's interesting. A few years ago, I don't remember exactly, it may have been 10, 12 years ago, there was a similar push in New York City.

to allow non-citizen voting, and the state legislature, I think, has to approve that. It's only in local elections. You can't vote for congressmen or what have you. And back then, and again, this isn't that long ago, the New York Times said, oh, this is a terrible idea. Only citizens should be able to vote. Who thought this was a good idea? It really shows how

How much things have changed, how quickly in the past few years? Well, and there will be a similar audience saying, OK, well, they're not voting for president or state or Congress, right, or governor. But, you know, as we know, as we have this, as COVID has put a spotlight on schools, right? And as we're all learning and waking up to, school boards really run schools.

you know? So being able to go and dominate those school boards comes with a lot of other type of things that the progressive movement wants to push. And Sam and I aren't big conspiracy people, but

It's pretty easy to see. You don't have to be a conspiracy theorist to see that there is a plan here and it's step by step. And the one thing I've noticed about progressives is they are much more patient on their plans than conservatives. We sort of chase like, you know, we're like a cat with the laser pointer. We just sort of jump around. But they've got people that just say, this is what I'm focusing on and we're going to do this. And it doesn't matter if it takes 10 or 20 years.

Yeah, I mean, I don't doubt that there is. I mean, I'm sure that there are people who think of the issue that way. But I got to say, I think what's going on with the folks in the Biden administration now is not so much part of a plan. It's not that, you know, they cook this thing up with George Soros and his Bond villain lair somewhere. This is this is they're doing this out of principle.

In other words, they don't believe that the American people have the right to keep anybody out of their country. I mean, that's what it amounts to. They see limits on immigration. In other words, where there's only so many people allowed in under various categories, anything like that. They see limits on immigration as fundamentally immoral and illegitimate.

And so when you tell them, well, that's the law, they see it as a kind of like Jim Crow or something. They see themselves as civil rights crusaders in trying to subvert immigration law, which they consider wrong, evil.

Mark, here in Arizona, gubernatorial candidate Kerry Lake has proposed declaring an invasion on day one, activating Article 1, Section 10 of the Constitution, taking the federal government's responsibility, which obviously, based on what you're saying, the Biden administration will intentionally do nothing for the next three years. Do you think that's something that is possible? And how do you make that argument that that's what's going on?

There are people in Texas who are playing with this argument, too. And, you know, the question is, is this flow of people into Arizona, Texas and elsewhere? Excuse me. Does that constitute an invasion under the meaning in the Constitution? I don't know. In other words, that would end up having to be decided by the Supreme Court. Maybe, maybe not. I mean, I wouldn't bet on it. I think we'd probably lose the case.

And, um, so I'm not sure. In other words, I'm not sure it helps us. Maybe it does. Uh, what do I know? But I think there's all kinds of other stuff we need to do before we get to that point, uh, that states have the power to do like mandate E-verify, which Arizona for instance does, but it doesn't really enforce it very much. There's all, there's other things that states can do. Uh, in fact, we've got a, uh,

publication online a backgrounder on this at our website cis.org on some of the things states and localities can do i think that's more likely to be effective

then essentially start a lawsuit which will go to the Supreme Court because only if the Supreme Court decides, yes, this constitutes an invasion under the definition of the Constitution, could then the states do something about it. I'm not sure what. Maybe use the National Guard or something like that. Mark, we have to go to break right now, but we're going to bring you back for our next segment here, Breaking Battlegrounds. We'll be right back with Mark Krikorian, Center for Immigration Studies.

Welcome back to Breaking Battlegrounds with your hosts, Chuck Warren and Sam Stone. On the line with us today, Mark Krikorian from the Center for Immigration Studies. Mark has been one of the leading voices for a very long time dealing with the problem of illegal immigration. Mark, when we went to break, we were talking about things states could do to try to stem this tide that the Biden administration, as you said, has no intention of stopping. In fact,

appears to be encouraging at every turn. What are some of those things and how can citizens work to get those move forward?

Yeah, I mean, there are some things I had said, for instance, the state could mandate use of E-Verify, which is an online system to make sure when people hire employees and they take their Social Security and IRS information that they just verify online. Are you know, are these people authorized to work in the United States? Arizona has a requirement like that. I think enforcement of it is kind of slacked off some.

Texas is doing some things. They're actually arresting illegal aliens for trespassing. They get permission from landowners, or if they're on state land, an illegal immigrant comes across the river, they arrest them. The problem is, even if the local prosecutor, the district attorney, prosecutes them for trespassing, okay, you know, you have them for 30 days in the county jail, then what do you do with them? You've got to let them go because you can't deport them.

Especially if they're from Mexico, maybe you could push them over the bridge. But if they're not from Mexico, what are you going to do? You end up having to let them go anyway. Ultimately, the root cause of the border crisis is in the Oval Office. And until that changes, states can do some things. Congress, even when the Republicans take over next year, can do some things. But there's a limit to it. It's got to be a different administration who's really going to be able to change things.

So, Mark, if Title 42 is thrown away, where do these 500,000 people go once we've had their quick little hearings? Where do they go? Where do we send them and who pays for it?

Well, I mean, they're going, we're getting, we already have a border crisis now. This is just going to make it even worse. So they're going the same places that people go now, all over. Wherever there's immigrants, most of them are going because they're going to places where they have relatives. So literally everywhere. I mean, all the big cities, they're going to Florida, they're going to Arizona, they're going to Texas and Chicago and New York and California, everywhere. As far as how they get there, that's kind of interesting because the so-called unaccompanied minors

People who claim to be under 18, and we don't do, like, x-rays of their hands. We kind of take their word for it. So a lot of them aren't even under 18. But the ones who were supposedly unaccompanied minors, they're also not unaccompanied. They all came up with smugglers. They are transported ultimately to their what's called sponsors, which means they're illegal immigrant relatives in the United States who paid smugglers to smuggle them up to the border in the first place.

The U.S. government, which is to say you and me, pay to transport those people. You know those flights they were talking about? Yes. In the papers a little while ago, there was middle of the night, they were flying people. Those are all, that's all U.S. taxpayer money, because those were the so-called unaccompanied minors. The ones who were adults, who brought kids with them,

They, generally speaking, they're paying their own way or some nonprofit group or their family members are wiring money, buying a bus ticket, that kind of thing. I've been to the bus station, for instance, in McAllen, Texas, way down in South Texas, where the Border Patrol drops people off.

And they kind of facilitate connecting the relatives wherever they are, D.C., California, Florida, whatever, connect them with the bus station or the bus company, Greyhound or whatever it is, and wire the money and buy the ticket that way. So it's kind of a mix of but the fact is some of it taxpayers really do pay for a good share of that transportation. Amazing. Mark, you know.

Well, we're all kids growing up. Some of us want to be baseball players. Some of us want to be firemen. How did you get involved with this? How did you develop a passion to become an expert in immigration policy?

I kind of dumbed into it. I think most people kind of dumb into most things they end up doing for the rest of their lives. I got a master's degree in international relations. I was a student in back then the old Soviet Union, the 80s. I'm Armenian, and it was in Soviet Armenia. It was free, so I studied there for a while. Came back. I wanted to enlist, but I can only see out of one eye. So it's like, well, Isaac, give me a desk job. No, no, you can't do that. CIA turned me down.

which is probably just as well, seeing what the intelligence community has turned into over the past few years. And so basically, this is the way I serve my country. And, you know, I grew up speaking Armenian. I mean, I didn't know, I didn't speak English until I went to kindergarten. And I didn't even know there were old people who spoke without an accent until I was in high school. So I've grown up in kind of an immigrant surroundings, even though I was born here and my parents were born here. So it's been something I've been familiar with my whole life.

my whole life. And I don't know if this is, this is my alternative to doing three years in the Navy. Oh, well, thank you for your work. Yeah, absolutely. You've written a number of books and, and I wanted to, to get one thing because Chuck and I talk at immigration here quite a bit, obviously being a show based in Florida and Arizona. You have made the case against both legal and illegal immigration and,

Tell listeners what the case is against illegal immigration, because I'm curious, too, as to what the basis of that is.

You mean legal immigration? Legal, yes. Yeah. Well, the point of my book is called The New Case Against Immigration, Both Legal and Illegal, from now a number of years ago. It's out of print, and the publisher was kind of, I don't know, they were afraid of it. But you can still find it in the digital remainder bin on Amazon. It's still copied. The punchline of my book is that

The immigrants today really aren't that different from immigrants of 100, 200 years ago. We are different. We have a post-industrial knowledge-based economy. We have a welfare state. We have transportation and communication technology in the world that makes, you know, shrinks the world. All of those things put together mean that

immigration, mass immigration in today's circumstances, whether it's legal or illegal, conflicts with the kinds of goals and characteristics we have in a modern society. Because if you have a knowledge-based, you know, high-tech economy, and you bring in lots of people with a fourth-grade education, there's nothing wrong with them. They're just regular people. Some are good, some are bad. They're just people. And they all get jobs, but

But they're not going to be able to get the kind of jobs that will lead to upward mobility. And it limits the wage growth for U.S. citizens. I think people don't understand one of the things that happened during the Trump era was that the bottom quintile of U.S. earners realized

really started to shoot up, and I thought a lot of that had to do with limiting the competition from illegal immigration. Especially in the minority communities. Yeah. Yeah, and it was like the first time in, I don't know, 40 years that the people at the bottom of the economic ladder actually saw real wage gains. Their wages have been falling for, you know, probably half, maybe most of my lifetime.

And that turned around when Trump, through various means, reduced immigration. I mean, illegal immigration fell, but also legal immigration fell. Congress didn't change the rules, but fewer people did come. And that made a huge difference to people, especially who

who were lower earners. Mark, we have just about 45 seconds left, but before you go, tell folks how they can follow your work and how they can stay up to date with what you're doing and talking about.

The Center for Immigration Studies is online at cis.org. We have a podcast, if people are interested in that. It's called Parsing Immigration Policy. It's all the usual places, weekly podcast. And if you have a taste for snark and sarcasm, I'm on Twitter at Mark S., as in Stephen, Mark S. Krikorian.

Fantastic. Mark, thank you so much for joining us today. Really appreciate having you on. We'd love to have you come join us again sometime. Breaking Battlegrounds. We'll be right back. The 2020 political field was intense, so don't get left behind in 2021. If you're running for political office, the first thing on your to-do list needs to be securing your name on the web with a yourname.vote web domain from godaddy.com. Get yours now.

Welcome back to Breaking Battlegrounds. I'm your host, Chuck Warren, with my co-host, Sam Stone. Today we have a fan favorite back with us, Alex Sawyer. She is an attorney and a legal analyst for The Washington Times. And apropos that she's with us now with the Supreme Court hearings going on. First of all, Alex, how's motherhood treating you? You're a new mother since you were last on with us. I am. Yes, thank you. It's good. She's a really good baby. So I got very lucky. So she's sleeping?

She is, actually. She has been sleeping seven-hour stretches since she was nine weeks old. Wow. I got very lucky. I think that's God's way of telling me I should have another one. Yeah. Boy, I'll tell you, some will say you made a deal with the good Lord or the devil, one or the two, but congratulations on that. That's fantastic. Thank you. Thank you so much. I have friends who have puppies and don't get seven hours with them. So anyway...

All right. So, you know, we had this little thing called Ukraine, which is sort of dominating. Then you have inflation and people can't afford filling up their car. But we've had a Supreme Court hearing.

Yes. I don't think it got as much attention as it could have given everything else you just listed. Tell the folks, first of all, how was the tone in these hearings versus what Democrats did to Kavanaugh and, you know, our Amy Barrett, everybody else? Was the tone different at all?

Yeah, it was very different. Well, one, you mentioned I just had a baby, so I covered remotely, but I was in the hearing room for a Justice Barrett confirmation hearing, Justice Gorsuch and Justice Kavanaugh. So, you know, I can talk a little bit about the difference there. Of course, it was

you know, since the COVID rules applied during the 2020 hearings. So that was very limited. But I would say, you know, previously you had a lot more, you know,

I guess I would say political rhetoric. Of course, that's what surrounds all these confirmation hearings, but it was heightened, I think, during the Gorsuch and Kavanaugh experience because you also, at the time, had the public in the hearing room, and so you had a lot of liberal advocacy groups getting protesters in there, which I don't know if you remember, but there was parts where it was hard to even hear lawmakers or even witness testifying because you had eruptions. Right.

At the time. It must have been Yale Law students, but continue.

And there was also from Democrats, I remember during the Amy Coney Barrett hearings, although it was closed to the public, they had brought in like posters of children in their seats, you know, saying, well, if she's on the Supreme Court, she's going to take away health care from these children. Of course, when it came down to the actual case weighing the ACA, she didn't.

didn't vote to do away with it. So you see this. I feel like it's a kind of a political game. I think Republicans did a little bit less of that at this time. And one of the things that they went after Judge Jackson on is a few cases where it looks like she sentenced child porn offenders less than what sentencing guidelines would have suggested.

Let me ask you a question. Did they provide the pre-sentencing reports at these hearings so people can see what she based it on? My understanding is that she did not provide them. Well, my understanding is that it was not given in the record, okay? So then it looks like after it became an issue when Senator Hawley brought it out, it looks like the White House and Democrats had some of that information, but it didn't...

The way it was read into the hearing, once the Republicans started to see the paper and started to talk about it, it didn't look like you got all of that, all the details. For example, they said something about privacy concerns because of the victims and that thing. Of course, as members of the press, I didn't. I wasn't given anything specific.

you know, by any lawmaker. Sometimes they send us out information, press releases, and I didn't get anything like that. But I think that it was a confidentiality issue too, that they were questioning if they should go that far.

Hey, Alex, we have just about a minute and a half before we go to break. But one of my impressions from this hearing is that there's been more political speak from the nominee really trying to avoid answering questions and avoiding her policy positions far more than there has been in the past. And I wonder if that's your impression also, if that's kind of what people are just getting from the highlights on the news.

Well, I kind of think that a lot of the controversial issues you usually hear nominees say, well, you know, there could be a case. Cases like that are being moving through the courts. I can't weigh in on it, which I was surprised, to be honest with you, that she didn't use that with the question about what is a woman. Right.

right when she said, you know, I can't answer that. I'm not a biologist. I thought that would have been an appropriate answer to say, you know, there's cases right now, whether it's transgender sport and women's sports, that sort of thing about not being able to weigh in on that. The fact that she mentioned the biology aspect makes me wonder if she doesn't think there is an element of biology there. So, yeah, I don't know. I don't know. I think it could be one's own interpretation, but definitely an issue like that. I think

You know, she could have gone there. That is interesting. Alex, I want to come back and explore some of this a little bit further. We're coming right back with Alex Sawyer from the Washington Examiner Breaking Battlegrounds. Back in a moment. Welcome back to Breaking Battlegrounds with your host Chuck Warren and Sam Stone. On the line with us, Alex Sawyer. She's a returning guest to Breaking Battlegrounds, attorney and legal analyst for the Washington Times. Washington Times. I got to start getting this stuff right.

But putting my foot in my mouth is one of my great skills. So, you know, just continuing the tradition here. But Alex, when we went to break, we were talking a little bit about some of the issues that have come up in that hearing, particularly the issue surrounding what is a woman, which I think

That is kind of an interesting take on your part that you mentioned biology. So there may be a little bit of a difference from some of the left activism of today in her response that she doesn't, you know, I think a lot of times Republicans assume, conservatives assume that when you hear a sort of non-answer like that, that it's a way to avoid taking them off. But it might well have been plenty of those answers to avoid taking the far left off as well.

Right, right. And of course, we haven't seen that. There hasn't been any sort of LGBT group questioning that answer. But I do, I mean, covering the court for the past several years, I do believe there's going to be more of this questions over violence.

the limits of transgender individuals entering female sports, possibly some of these laws in states with bathroom issues, schools, that sort of thing. And I don't know. I think it'll be an issue. It'll be telling.

How justice has come out on it, especially given we had the Bostock case, I think it was last year, last term, and Gorsuch, surprisingly, I think he actually, him and Roberts, joined with the liberal wing when they were talking about the Civil Rights Act and the definition of sex. Can sex...

is it just, is it gender or can it be sex discrimination in terms of LGBT rights? And they went and said it could be LGBT rights included in that. So, you know, this is an issue that I think is going to keep bubbling up. So the fact that that question was asked and that answer, I think it's,

it's a little bit you know telling i don't know i'm not sure how she'll make it up dot or so that's always something i think that you uh... but it it's an interesting angle and i do think and we know the harvard affirmative action case will be coming up next term which will be interesting and she kind of senator crews after about this given that she's on the board of overseers and she said that she was planning to recuse from that so that's another case another indication that she won't be

involved in something that's been very, very watched for several years. Let's shift gears. There's a bro-ha-ha about Clarence Thomas' wife, Jeannie Thomas, and about the text she sent to Mark Meadows. Do you think this is going to be dragged out and they're going to make a serious effort to impeach Clarence Thomas?

I'm not sure how far they'll go with this. I would think it's possible that there would need to be more that comes out that gets someone like Senator Schumer to go that far. Right now, it looks like Senator Warren, along with about 23 other Democratic lawmakers, I saw a letter this week that they had written to the Supreme Court to Chief Justice Roberts and Justice Thomas.

asking for an explanation of him sitting on these cases related to the 2020 election or reviewing the appeals. Also, the...

and wanted Chief Justice to come out with some sort of code of ethics for the Supreme Court to follow. I don't know if they'll go as far to teach him, but one of the interesting interviews I did was with a law professor, Josh Blackman, from South Texas College of Law, and he made a good point about, you know, they're asking Justice Thomas to recuse from hypothetical cases, right? Like, there is nothing right now involving his wife

or the election pending before the Supreme Court. So the difference, of course, is when you actually have, when I mentioned the affirmative action case and the conflict of interest with Judge Jackson serving on the Board of Overseers, like that is a pending case. There is an obvious conflict there. But when we're pushing for something hypothetical, it seems too remote.

That's a great point. That's a great point. Alex, one of the things I think I think it's probably a moot point now because Susan Collins has come out and said she would support the nomination. But can the vice president break a tie in this situation? I've actually seen different legal interpretations. If it came to a 50 50 vote, would the vice president be able to cast that vote?

That's a good question. I guess it would probably be posed to the parliamentarian, but I would think that, at least my experience covering the Senate, given that it wasn't just currently Kamala Harris being potentially the tie-breaking vote in

increasingly that way. It was also Vice President Mike Pence had to come in several times. So I'm not sure the exact, but I do think that it's a possibility that she could. Of course, that would be that they would probably have to look towards the record and history to see if there's ground to do that out. But I don't know, because if you remember, it was to the 60 vote threshold, like what he was.

up until Justice Gorsuch's confirmation. The Republicans did away with that because of the political backlash. Democrats weren't going to support him because of their view that the Republicans didn't move forward with Merrick Garland. It was a stolen nomination, that sort of thing. So because it was subject to the same threshold as legislation, I guess you could make the argument that Justice, she would be able to break a tie on something

some sort of legislative matter, she should hear, too. I'm not sure. I think it would be interesting to hear their arguments either way. We're with Alex Sawyer, and she is an attorney, and she is an analyst for The Washington Times. Alex, what is the buzz about supposedly the missing seven and a half hours of Donald Trump on January 6th? There's no recordings. Do you see this blowing up to be more

Do they try to make this a Watergate-type thing? What are your thoughts on it? I don't know. I actually saw – I've seen a little bit of that yesterday, and then I saw one report. I haven't read it in depth, but some people have said it's not unusual for there to be, you know, I guess –

bases and different records in terms of call logs. It's something I haven't really looked into. I need to do more research. But it makes me wonder, you know, it's not that they are going to impeach him again. But I guess we'll see. The one thing I will say is

There's a lot of questions about what went on with January 6th. And I keep thinking of some of these, the impeachment proceedings that covered both of them with Donald Trump. But you mentioned Ukraine in the news, and I've seen so many reports now about Hunter Biden's laptop and connections with Hunter Biden. It looks like the main key is finally joined in and digging into that. And so I'm wondering, you know, the focus that the Democrats have been given Trump, you

And any sort of quid pro quo, if we're going to see the same being given to the Biden family, especially in light of what's going on with Ukraine, you would think that there might be some interest there. But so far, not not the case. Alex, how much I think people, as Chuck mentioned, when we began the interview here,

Ukraine, inflation, all these other things that are going on right now. But in terms of the next 30, 40, 50 years, the nomination of a Supreme Court justice might well end up being a far more significant event for the average American than either of those things, which are, you know, obviously we hope temporary and will resolve in the near future. How much are folks missing out on really paying attention to this? Because it will matter.

Yeah, I think that you just hit on a big element that I think goes unnoticed. And that was one of the things that Mitch McConnell and his working with former President Trump said.

should get a lot of credit for for conservatives. And that was the number of judicial appointments that President Trump had, being able to flip some of the circuits with having more GOP appointees than Democratic appointees, being able to have three Supreme Court justices. It's a big deal because, like you said, when you have these different issues working their way with the economy, but also in terms of regulations, every time a new administration comes in,

there's so much that just gets peeled back right away, right? And so the one thing that doesn't is these lifetime appointments to the federal courts and, of course, the Supreme Court being the highest and the final say. So it's very significant. And these are the people who, of course, they shouldn't be legislating from the bench, but depending on the makeup of the court, they could. And so it's important that society and the average American's

looking at these judges, looking at their record and making sure that they hear that their senators are hearing their voices one way or the other, whether they're for or against someone like Judge Jackson. Alex, with the Biden administration now, we had Trump came and sort of reversed a lot of gains Democrats have made on the federal judiciary. How is that playing out now with the Biden administration? And what does a second term of the Biden administration mean to the judiciary and the majorities in the various appeal courts, things of that nature?

Well, he's had a significant amount of appointments just from taking office. But of course, Trump did a really good job of filling a lot of the vacancies. So when we're talking about sheer numbers, you know, he still has a long way to go before he's catching up with something like

what president trump has done uh... in terms of the future administration i would have to look and see the number of senior that just judges on those appellate courts they're going to take senior status or retire that sort of thing and sometimes we don't really find out until

you know, an announcement is made. It's hard to say how much more Biden could do to, I guess, chip away at Trump's gains, but we'll see. He did, as soon as he got into office, we had a slate of judicial nominees released. I think it was within the first few weeks.

So it was something that they were thinking about, and maybe the Democrats have taken notice of how prepared the conservatives were when Trump took office, but they're trying their hardest to counter that. Of course, you also have the progressive wing members.

And doing things like calling for packing of the Supreme Court, which I think gets a lot more notice than actually getting some of these lower court slots taken, you know, and billed. Right. Tell us more about Clarence Thomas' illness. What do you know about it? How serious was it? What was it? Yeah.

What happened? Yeah, the court has been really quiet about it. Um, we got a notification, the press did, that he had been, he had been hospitalized over the weekend. So it was clear that there was something going on and then they finally updated the press. Um,

It took, I guess, it seems a couple days longer than expected for him to be released from the hospital. At the time when the initial notice came out, it said that he would be released in a day or two. A day or two went by and multiple outlets, including myself, had reached out to the court for an update and nothing. So it took, I think, another extra day or two.

before there was word that he had been released. No word on the subject. Apparently it was some sort of infection and he had flu-like symptoms. It was treated with an IV, but that's pretty much, I believe, all that we were told from the press release, if my memory serves me right, from the Supreme Court. And I think that might actually...

anyone's interested. I think it might be on the court's website. I'd have to go double check, but usually they have their... They do post special releases. Thank you. What has surprised you about covering...

Washington and being a legal analyst for the Washington Times that when you started, this is like, oh my goodness, I didn't know. We've asked questions of this of our other guests. So Jason Chaffetz, when he was chairman of Oversight said he was just surprised how lazy the press was that they just cover things up. Mike Lee was surprised no one reads bills when they vote on them, right? What has been your surprise?

Well, a combo of those two, I guess it would be, I think a lot of times there's a lot of members of the press that report on legislation without reading the legislation. A good example of that, I guess, would be all the news over the Florida governor's don't say gay bill, right? Right.

People are like, oh, well, that's definitely a misnomer because nowhere does it say that in the bill. And anyone that wants to talk about sexuality to a kindergartner, there could be more issues there than just that, right? Right. But I guess I would say I think that there is an element of laziness. Some people say it's biased.

I think it's probably a mixture of the two. And with that said, so that's, you know, a combination of that. The press isn't reading these bills before they're writing their detailed reports. I think a lot too many go off of press releases from law. You know that it could be a Democratic senator's office that they're writing off of or a Republican. Before we end up the interview here in about one minute, how much has that gotten worse since COVID?

Where reporters are really kind of just reporting Twitter. Yeah, I think it's been hard. And one of the things you asked me is what was I surprised about when I could walk around the Capitol and approach lawmakers. It was surprising to me who would seem so willing to take questions on air, but then would shut down when confronted by a member of the press. It went with both parties, really. Alex, I'm sorry to cut you off, but real quick before we end up here, how do folks follow you?

They can follow me on Twitter at A. Swoyer, S-W-O-Y-E-R. Perfect. Breaking Battlegrounds will be back next week. Thank you, Alex. Welcome back to the podcast-only segment of Breaking Battlegrounds. Fantastic show today with our guests Mark Krikorian and Alex Swoyer. Fantastic guests. Thank you, Kylie. Absolutely. The irrepressible Kylie Kipper, our producer, and Alex.

We have a special that we often forget in our rush to talk to these fantastic guests. That is our sunshine moment.

The very best moment of the day. I think I said a long time ago that I was going to try to keep these sunshine moments happy because sometimes they get a little depressing. But really this one. The news covers depressing just fine. Yeah. And then like when something seems happy, it's like, oh, well, behind it was kind of sad. But anyways, this one's all happy. So this is about, it was an article that came out, I think today or yesterday, about Miss 15 funniest misunderstood song lyrics.

And I am horrible at this, the song lyrics. Oh, no. Yeah. Watching the lyrics now scrolling in my car, which is kind of a dangerous feature, by the way, is ruining so many songs. Yeah. No, no kidding. Yeah. And really, you know, the definition, it's called Mondegreen. And it's if you hear something unclearly and then you just make up the words yourself. But sometimes I think I actually hear it very clearly and that that's actually I don't look into it. And I believe that that is it. But a few of the songs that made me laugh. Yeah.

There's 15 of them. I won't go through all of them to save you guys the time. But Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds by the Beatles...

This one actually is making me laugh. The girl with solitis goes by. But the real line is, that's what people think it is. The real line is the girl with kaleidoscope eyes. And solitis is like IBS, like an irritable bowel syndrome. I don't know how people came up with that one. Okay. The song Purple Haze by Jimi Hendrix. Excuse me while I kiss this guy. Right. Everybody says that.

It's Excuse Me While I Kiss the Sky. I got that one correct. Oh. Yeah. There you have it. Summer of 69 by Bryan Adams. Oh. Oh, we're off the radio now. Okay, we're good. I got my first real sex dream.

The correct line is actually I got my first real six string. Very completely opposite. All these perverts out there wandering around society. Wait a minute. I'm turning out to be better at this than most people and I'm half deaf. Yeah. Speaking of perverts, Living on a Prayer by Bon Jovi. Oh, what's that? People think it does not make a difference if we're naked or not. But the real line is it does not make a difference if we make it. Make it or not. Yeah.

Perverts. Society is full of perverts. That's what we're learning here. That is what we are learning here. Oh, my gosh. My goodness. Message in a bottle. People think that the line is, a year has passed since I broke my nose, but it's a year has passed since I wrote my note. Ha ha ha.

Which when you listen to the, like, I don't really look that deeply into songs and, you know, I don't really know the meanings behind many songs. I just sing them. So I see how people would make those mistakes. Well, you're going by the beat, the music, you know, but most people ignore the lyrics a lot of times. Yeah. Yeah. You know, so it's, I'd say that's pretty funny. That's pretty funny. A more recent one is Good For You by Selena Gomez. Yeah.

I don't know how people, I'm not sure I know the song off the top of my head, but people thought it was I'm farting carrots. I'm farting carrots. But it's

I'm on my 14 carat. My 14 carat. Well, it's like the song from Frozen. It's let it go. I kept always thinking it was let it snow. Well, that seems like it should be more appropriate. Well, I agree. I agree. Well, thank you, Kip. That was a needed laughter and humor in today's show. That's what I'm here for. What a levity. Exactly. Well, interesting show today. Yeah.

Yeah, I think Miss Brown, who's going to be a Supreme Court justice, she probably was saved a lot of embarrassment just because of other more pressing issues in the country right now and because it also didn't decide the majority of the court. Well, I've got to say too, Chuck, and I blame Republicans just as much because I watched portions of this hearing, and one thing that drove me nuts is

is the grandstanding by senators during their time to theoretically question the nominee, where they're just making statements. Well, we discussed that with Mike Lee. Were we going to be better? And I think these need to be held with lack of a better word. I'm sure it would be misinterpreted like a song lyric. But they need to be held with a little more reverence, I think. And I think we have made them so political. Now, for example, what she has ruled on these child pornography cases –

needed more explanation. The fact that they did not have pre-sentencing reports or something. Now, she made a comment which I saw which made sense. She said, you know, it's not like the old days you just had pictures. Now you go online and you have a thousand pictures pop up and that's each account, right? So she was making that point which

Look, I think child pornography, we all know my view on capital punishment, so it's pretty hard, right? But, you know, downloading, going to a website or something and then saying each one's that. I mean, I get her logic on that to a degree, but it's still a heinous crime.

She did not – I don't believe – we don't know. We don't have seen it. But it does not sound like she followed any sentencing reports or what prosecutors wanted at all. No, it doesn't. And I think on that and a number of other issues, there were plenty of opportunities to ask her pointed questions that would have given a much better insight into how she's going to rule in the future than were asked. And instead, you have people who are –

mostly interested in hearing their own voice and seeing their own picture on TV. So it wasn't really Ash. She was not allowed to really explain how she came to a ruling. You know, it's just become...

I like to say comical, but there's nothing funny about it. Not at all. And so it's been really interesting to watch this process. I am fascinated to see what happens with Clarence Thomas' wife. Yeah, me too. I got to say this is emblematic of something that – By the way, feminists should be like, well, yeah, she has her own life. I have not seen a feminist group come out yet and stand up for her and say –

They're both professional people. She has a right to do what she wants to do. So apparently now if you're a spouse of a Supreme Court justice, you don't have a right to have your view. If you're a spouse of a conservative Supreme Court justice. Conservative black Supreme Court justice, you don't have a right. Now, one of the things I think – and we've talked about this or touched on this before but really since Harry Reid, the breakdown of the Senate rules and the requiring of some level of bipartisanship in their proceedings –

is really hurting this country. Oh, tremendously. Everything is just simply a fundraising pitch online. I mean, it's all this is about now. And it's disturbing to me. And somebody has to start taking the higher road

I would hope it had been our side. I think they were obviously better than doing the bunch of, you know, no one was personally attacking her like they did Kavanaugh and so forth. The complaints by the left about her treatment in this, she was treated very civilly. She just had to sit there and listen to a bunch of monologues. Well, the left needs to back away and realize they have built a glass house and they just need to shut up about it. Yeah, no kidding. So, well, interesting show this week, Jamie.

Kylie, fantastic job as usual. Absolutely. And we hope you have a great weekend in Florida and Arizona, folks. Enjoy the sun. The political field is all about reputation, so don't let someone squash yours online. Secure your name and political future with a yourname.vote web address from godaddy.com. Your political career depends on it.