Rep. Buddy Carter on the Big Beautiful Bill, SCOTUS Wins with Dan McLaughlin, and Russia-Ukraine Insights from Thomas Grove
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Always. The true star. Yeah. Our first guest today at Breaking Battlegrounds is Congressman Buddy Carter. And this is a person that when I worked for John Shattuck, Buddy Carter had been elected. And so, Buddy, I've known of you for a long time. You don't know me at all, but that's okay. Because I left Congress about the same time you came in. But you are the Health Subcommittee Chairman of

of the Energy and Commerce Committee, which is a subcommittee that Congressman Shattuck served on. And that's kind of a, you're kind of in the

big spot right now. Tell us about what you've been up to. Yeah, it's kind of like, be careful what you ask for. I've been aspiring to hold this for 10 years, and I finally get that position. They come to me and they say, oh, by the way, most of the savings we're looking for in the reconciliation bill are coming from your subcommittee. And sure enough, we got over half of them in our subcommittee. Well,

Which is pretty remarkable. And I think it's really important. This is one of the things that when you look at what the Democrats have talked about as far as the quote unquote cuts to, you know, we're killing Medicaid. We're going to literally kill people because they're going to lose coverage. Tell us about what the truth is as to how you're finding savings and why those savings are important for protecting those who actually need Medicaid.

Well, thank you for that question because it is very important we get this straight. We are saving Medicaid. We are sustaining it. We're actually stabilizing it, and we're making it better. Keep in mind what Medicaid was intended for. It was intended for the most vulnerable in our society. It was intended for the

age, the blind, the disabled, for mothers and for children. And what we're doing is we're doing IIAV. We are getting the ineligibles off. We are getting the illegals off. We are making sure that able bodies are doing work requirements. And we are making sure that the most vulnerable in our society are served.

That's what we're doing with the savings. We are making sure that states are going to be checking their rolls more frequently to make sure that those people who are ineligible are not on those rolls. We're making sure that those states like California, New York, and Illinois that are paying and allowing illegals to be on Medicaid, that they are getting them off of Medicaid. We're making sure that...

able-bodied adults, not those who are caring for children or caring for a parent, but instead those who are able-bodied, that they have work requirements, that they have to work or that they have to volunteer at least 20 hours a week.

Now, I don't think that most Americans oppose that. I think that they think that's a good idea. So what we're doing, again, is that we are making this program better for the most vulnerable in our society that it was intended for. Well, that's great. Go ahead, Chuck. Congressman, I want you, if you could for a minute, to play professor here. So the House passed this big, beautiful bill by one vote in May.

People don't seem to understand, especially on the right, because they're complaining about various cuts or complaining about salt. You hear that a lot right now. And I try to explain to them that, you know, not every member of Congress thinks alike. If you had not done certain things, you may not have gotten a vote from a congressman or woman in New York or California or the case may be. Can you explain to people the delicate balance in negotiating a budget bill like this?

Absolutely. And again, a great question, because it was a very precarious situation that I have to applaud Mike Johnson and leadership. They did a great job of crafting this so that we were able to get the 218 votes that we needed in order to get it passed. And that's what you've got to do. Look, we identified waste, fraud and abuse. We identified a number of different things.

that saved us and I hear all this about, yeah, salt was a big issue, especially for those in the Northeast. And we were able to negotiate and we were able to compromise and we were able to come up with a solution there. Now it's gone over to the Senate. They may tweak it some. I

I certainly hope that they don't make major changes to it, but, you know, they do have that right. But at the same time, I think that they recognize that you've got to keep the main thing the main thing. The main thing in this bill is to make sure that we extend those tax cuts, because if we do not, Americans will be looking at the largest tax increase, the highest tax increase they've ever seen.

And we can ill afford to let that happen to our economy. That's such a great point because, I mean, the price on the salt is a pretty small price to pay when it comes to what we would face without passage of this bill. And it is interesting. One of the things I was talking to a friend about, you know, when you think about the difference between the House and the Senate and how the politics with this works, the one thing that's interesting is that the salt issue is a House issue because

Because there are Republican House members from New York, from Illinois, from California, these blue states that are high tax states. There are no senators from those states. So so so it will it will, you know, I suppose the the blue state Republicans who pushed for salt in the House are going to need to talk to John Thune to protect that language in the Senate bill.

uh... but i i think you're exactly right i think that you know my hope is that the senate doesn't do anything dramatic to to create problems because passage of this is important for the economy it is finally important for the economy and you're right all politics are local all politics are local and i get it if i were from the northeast i'd be fighting just as hard as they're fighting and and yeah there are things important to me that may not be as important to them but at the same time

We've all got to represent our constituency, and that's exactly what they're doing. And thank you for making the point that there are no Republican senators in New York and in California and Illinois. So they're not going to be that concerned about it, and they need to understand that the House members are concerned about it. And I will tell you, for some of them, it's a red line. They mess with it, and I'm afraid you're going to lose some votes over here.

Yes, I believe that. Can you tell us about the recession package that President Trump is sending? It's supposed to be $9.4 billion in savings. Can you explain to our audience what that is because they don't hear that much and what are the things included in that savings?

Well, you know, that's what Doge was. That's what Elon Musk and his team were doing using 21st century technology to identify waste, fraud and abuse in our bloated bureaucracy. And they did a good job of that. Department of Government Efficiency and they did.

And now we have an opportunity to call back, if you will, in a rescissions package, $9.4 billion in savings. So what are we talking about when we talk about the type of things? We're talking about $33,000 for being LGBTQI, whatever, in the Caribbean. Yes.

$167,000 for free education and health care to Ecuador and Venezuelan migrants. You know, this is American taxpayers' money. And here we are spending it on things like this. This is what they have identified, that $9.4 billion that we're going to claw back and we're going to get back for the American taxpayers.

Well, and I feel like this is probably just the first step in what will be a number of rescissions bills, right? I mean, it's the reason that, Chuck, you point out the American people don't know what we're talking about. It has been so long since a president has sent rescission packages to the House. When was the last time? When was the last time?

I don't remember. I'm a Google-ed while you're talking. Yeah, it could be that it might have been – I feel like there was one during the Bush administration. Yeah.

But boy, maybe we just wanted them to do one. I don't know. When I was a budget staffer back then. Congressman, one of the things that just shifting topics slightly as we've got a lot of just a few more minutes, you've introduced a bill that investigates the cover up of Biden's health and cognitive ability. Talk to us about why you think that's important.

As we kind of look back, there are obviously people who are, oh, this is in the past. We shouldn't worry about it. It's done. But I feel like there's more to it than that.

There is more to it than that. And I disagree with those people. We ought to know. The American people deserve to know. This potentially could be the biggest political scandal of our lifetime. It could be the cover up. Let's face it. We all know that that Joe Biden's physical acuity was diminishing and rapidly diminishing.

And I would submit that the last two years at least of his term, I'm not sure he was cognitively capable of performing the services of the President of the United States. And what really set me off and what really upset me were the pardons because they were signed by an auto pen. To me, a pardon is one of the strongest, most forceful things that a president can do.

is to pardon someone. And at least it ought to be signed physically by the president, not by an auto pin. I don't, I don't, I would say that he didn't even know what he was signing. He didn't, he didn't know those pardons were being signed by the auto pin. And,

And that's how strongly I feel about it. And yes, the American people deserve to know. They need to know what was going on at that time and whether he was cognitively able to make those kind of decisions. And if he wasn't, who was making the decisions? You know, that was one question I was asked time and time again whenever he was in office. Who's running the show over there? Who's running the show over there? And I don't know. I don't think it's him, though.

Yeah. One of the things that I find really disturbing about this is the fact that we know that he wasn't completely all there much of the time. Now, it's not to say that he didn't have some moments of, you know,

where he was fine. I mean, I watched my father go through the Battle of Alzheimer's. And, you know, for anyone who's had a family member go through the dementia-ish process, it was so obvious watching Joe Biden over the course of the four years he was president that

at how bad that was becoming. And I feel like, you know, like with the with the pardons, as you mentioned, I don't know that he was completely aware of. For one, he made such a huge deal about how he was not going to pardon his son that.

And then he does. And then he ends up pardoning his brothers and sister-in-law and others. And I really do think that that was probably driven by Jill using someone in the White House staff to push that.

And again, I would submit that that is one of the most important decisions a president makes and one of the strongest decisions and most consequential decisions that a president can make. That's right.

Congressman Carter, thank you so much for your time. We'll be watching both the reconciliation process, the rescission process and the investigation on the the Biden acuity issue. Thanks so much. By the way, the last by the way, the last time someone requested it was President President Clinton. It was Clinton. Well, there you go. Yeah. All right. Thanks so much. Thank you. Thanks, folks. We'll be right back.

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Folks, this is Sam Stone for Breaking Battlegrounds. Discover true freedom today with 4Freedom Mobile. Their SIM automatically switches to the best network, guaranteeing no missed calls. You can enjoy browsing social media and the internet without compromising your privacy. Plus, make secure mobile payments worldwide with no fees or monitoring. Visit 4FreedomMobile.com today for top-notch coverage.

digital security, and total freedom. And if you use the code BATTLEGROUND at checkout, you get your first month of service for just $9 and save $10 a month for every month of service after that. Again, that's code BATTLEGROUND at checkout. Visit 4freedommobile.com to learn more. Welcome back to Breaking Battlegrounds. I'm Sean Noble filling in for Sam Stone. We've got Chuck Warren and Kylie Kipper with us today as well.

Always Chuck. Our guest this segment is Dan McLaughlin, who is a senior writer at National Review Online and a fellow at the National Review Institute and a longtime guest of the show. You can follow him at

baseball crank on x and you must follow dan he's just one of the most brilliant minds out there dan thanks for being here today and you've had some uh a lot of important articles about uh what's going on with the supreme court yeah so the court had um the court had a busy excuse me busy day yesterday um

And, you know, they've had so many of these emergency applications that I think they probably had a bit of a backlog of the written opinions and, you know, cases on a regular schedule. And it's interesting, you know, very often we think of the court as being ideologically divided. And it is. But, you know, they're actually more often than you think. Cases that come out unanimous or close to unanimous are,

even though, you know, one side is really getting a win. And so we had three big ones yesterday. There were five opinions handed down, plus a case they tossed off the docket. There were three of them in particular that were big, you know, pretty big conservative wins, you would think. And yet, you know, they were all unanimous. They were written by one

one each by Jackson, Kagan, and Sotomayor. So, you know, which is... They really only get the right majority opinions when they agree with the conservatives on things these days, unless they're able to get... You know, unless... Except those occasional cases where they get, you know, Roberts and maybe Kavanaugh or Barrett or occasionally Gorsuch to cross over. And often when that happens, you know, somebody like Chief Justice Roberts will...

decide to cross the line and then write the opinion himself so he can control it. Which of the rulings surprised you the most or do you think has the biggest impact down the road? Well, the really big one is a case called Ames.

It's basically a case involving the standard for employment discrimination under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act. And what happened in the court below is that they basically said, look, this is a lawsuit by a heterosexual woman who said that her lesbian boss passed her over for a promotion in favor of another lesbian, and this is discrimination against her for being straight.

And the lower court said, you know, and the crazy thing about all these unanimous opinions is that all of them were reversing things that were done in the lower court. So it's not that nobody got this stuff wrong. But the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals basically said, you know what, this is discrimination against a majority group of people.

you know what the press will sometimes call reverse discrimination and so you have to you have to kill more you have to show additional fax to give us some reason to believe that discrimination is really what's going on here uh... in a way that you wouldn't if it was you know like a gay person or group you know black person alleging it and

uh jackson's opinion was unanimous for the court saying no no the law is about discrimination it's about discrimination against individuals not groups and so the standard is the same no matter who you are um and you know justice thomas noted in his he wrote a separate opinion um and he said you know the problem with trying to figure out majority and minority groups is you know it it

it depends on where you are in, in, you know, what, what locality, what line of business he's like, look, you know, like if you're like a black person in Detroit, are you a majority or a minority? Well, you're a majority in the city. You're a minority in the state. You're a minority in the country. Uh, you know, men may be a majority in, in construction and a minority in, you know, nursing or something. So, um, the bigger stakes that Thomas is playing for, uh,

which the court didn't get to, but he sent a shot across the bow, is to say that, wait a minute, it's actually too easy in general for anybody to sue for employment discrimination. You know, we have this, like, 52-year-old Supreme Court decision that he thinks wasn't really based on the statute at all that makes it really easy to get into court in these cases. But he was very much in agreement with Jackson that, you know, whatever the standard is under this decision, it's the same for everyone.

Were you surprised? Did any of the opinions or the concurrent opinions or any of the justices' votes surprise you on this? A little bit. I mean, I was surprised in that case that they couldn't get a single vote from the progressives for any of this nonsense. What other votes did they have? Sorry. Go ahead. I have a question for you.

Oh, some of the other cases were more easy. I mean, the second big one was a case involving a gun lawsuit. It's basically Congress passed the statute, protection of lawful commerce in Arms Act,

about 20 years ago, to try to prevent lawsuits from becoming a sort of backdoor method of gun regulation, right? Which is kind of what happened with tobacco, right? A lot of what ended up being done with tobacco regulation, you know, the court kept saying Congress has never given the FDA power over this, so what happened was people filed lots and lots of lawsuits and they changed the business.

And Congress saw this coming and didn't want it to happen. The guns, they didn't want...

you know, some local jurisdiction passing a law or just court suits that weren't based on any particular law about guns at all, you know, trying to drive guns off the market. And so they passed this liability shield. And then what happened is that the Mexican government actually filed this lawsuit saying, wait a minute, our country's being flooded with guns and like, you know,

You know, as you may know, there's only like one legal gun store in Mexico. It's almost impossible to get a gun legally in Mexico. And yet, you know, Mexico is not disarmed. There's lots and lots of guns. The drug cartels have tons of guns.

So their argument is, well, the Americans are making these guns that find their way illegally into hands in Mexico and lead to all of this violence and chaos. And, you know, it's a convenient political way for the Mexican government to point the finger away from their own failure to enforce the law and the pervasive, you know, corruption of their government by the cartels. But...

you know the court was more worried about the law and they said look you know this liability shield applies just as well here this is this cockamamie theory kagan wrote the opinion

And she said, look, you know, like they haven't even identified who the gun dealers are that are selling these illegal guns in Mexico. And like if the complaint can't do it, how are the gun manufacturers supposed to know? It's like three levels downstream of them. So it was it was it was really a that one, I think, was fairly obvious when it got to the when the court took the case that it was doomed. But that again, you know, the First Circuit Court of Appeals had had let the suit go forward.

That's Dan. Again, the work you're doing on keeping us informed on this stuff is totally, totally important. We can't thank you enough. What's as far as anything? We've got 30 seconds. What's what should we be looking for from the court for over the next few months?

Well, there's going to continue being a stream of these emergency applications, so it's hard to predict. But there's, I think, 26 cases left the rest of this month. Some big issues on, like, transgenderism and age limits for online social media. So there's still a bunch of big cases coming up. It's not going to be the blockbuster term that we've had in some of the years. But there's going to be more news over the next couple weeks, next decision days on the 12th.

Well, we'll definitely have you back on to educate our listeners about that even more. Thanks again for joining us, Dan. Follow him at Baseball Crank. And thanks, folks, for listening. We'll be right back.

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Welcome back to another segment of Breaking Battlegrounds. I'm Sean Noble filling in for Sam Stone. We have Chuck Warren remote coming in. And our next guest is Thomas Grove. He's a writer at the Wall Street Journal. You need to follow him on X at TG Grove. And Chuck has the first question. Thomas, when we first had you on, I asked the question,

How does the conflict end between Russia and Ukraine? And you said someone has to win. Do you still hold that to be true? And if that is the case, what does Ukraine have to do to win? Yeah, that's a good question. Maybe I've revised my thinking about that. I think...

I do think that somebody is going to win in this war. And, you know, right now, the, you know, the various factors certainly seem to favor Russia. You know, for Ukraine to win, they have to really kind of change some really, you know, some real kind of strategic problems that they're facing right now. That includes

demographics, having enough soldiers to fight on the front lines. But they seem to be doing pretty well with some pretty amazing operations like we saw last weekend. I think they've certainly made headlines. Whether that really changes the... be extremely innovative and do a lot with the little that they have. What...

I mean, what they did with the drones and attacking the air bombing capabilities of Russia was pretty impressive. I think there is concern now. What is what is Russia going to do to retaliate? What do you expect? And, you know, does Ukraine have the ability to withstand that?

I mean, I think there's a number of things that Russia could do right now. I mean, I think, you know, we saw a big attack last night. You know, I think we could see, you know, a broader ramp up. And, you know, some sources will say that they are planning a kind of a stronger offensive in the east. Another thing that Russia could do is kind of use some of their resources

their dual use technology and dual use here. I mean, you know, what can carry both conventional and nuclear warheads, you know, Ukraine did attack after all an arm of the Russian nuclear triad.

although they were attacking it because they were getting hit with conventional cruise missiles launched from those bombers. Nonetheless, in terms of messaging, Russia could do well and could certainly threaten to escalate things by dropping another, say, another Oreshnik, which is one of the big bombs that they dropped, I believe it was late last year.

to pretty big effect. I mean, they can carry nuclear warheads. Last time it was dropped, it was conventional, of course. But they can do that again to signal how unhappy they are and how serious they are about things moving forward anymore. Going back to the question that Chuck asked about your... and how you have kind of retooled your thinking on...

a win. I mean, yes, I think your instinct is right that there's probably a win. It seems to me that at this point, if there were a ceasefire to come into place, it would likely be Russia keeps what they've gained from Ukraine. And there's not going back to, you know, Ukraine's not going to get Crimea back, it would be my guess. Is that kind of where your head is?

I think absolutely. I mean, I think there's a few things here. I mean, one is, you know, does somebody have to win? And number two, you know, what does a negotiation look like? And, you know, I think probably at this point, the best negotiation outcome we could have is one in which everybody loses, right?

Ukraine certainly has to make concessions. Russia would potentially have to make concessions. But I think what we're seeing now is just a Russia which is on the front foot. It's gained tremendously in terms of recruits. It's gained tremendously in terms of its own military industrial production. It's really turning

you know, this hardware out right now in a way that, you know, makes up not only for its battlefield losses, but is also starting to stockpile strategic reserves of various, you know, equipment systems, whether they're tanks or missiles or whatever. And so I think that's a point we need to, I definitely want to dive in because you wrote an article on this. Let's, we, we've got to go into a break, but let's pick that up when we come back and,

We'll ask you about how Putin has retooled Russia's economy to focus only on war. I think that your writing on that has been very important. So stick with us, folks. We've got Thomas Grove from The Wall Street Journal, and we'll be right back.

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Welcome back to Breaking Battlegrounds. I'm Sean Noble filling in for Sam Stone. We've got Chuck Warren remote. And our guest today right at the moment is Thomas Grove from The Wall Street Journal. Thomas, you were just about to go into a discussion about how Putin has retooled Russia's economy, focusing on only war.

Well, I think, you know, to start this, to kind of go into this topic in the right way, let's rewind a few years. And what we can do is we can talk about how, you know, before the war started, you know, Russia's economy was, you know, largely stagnating, obviously dependent on, you know, oil and gas and things like that. There weren't many great innovations in the technology sector. There were some bright spots here and there. But of course, it was all, you know,

pretty weak oil and gas driven growth. Um, once that war started, of course we saw the, the Russian state pouring money of its wealth, you know, from its wealth funds into the, uh, you know, military industrial sector, expanding, uh, you know, factory lines, adding new ones. I mean, basically bringing, you know, uh,

turning an entire, you know, turning Russia's already pretty significant, you know, arms and defense industry into something even bigger. And so what we saw with that was a huge amount of growth. I mean, right.

These plants are just pouring out tanks and missiles, drones and things like that. And because there is a demographics problem in Russia, the labor market is very tight. And so in order to attract people into that sector, away from the civilian economy, they had to boost labor.

And so suddenly what you're left with is an economy that's, you know, it's doing pretty well given the sanctions it's under. You have living standards increasing because wages are rising and, and,

suddenly you kind of have an economy that is, you know, obviously there's problems here and there. It's not all, it's not rosy throughout, but you have what seems to be a kind of a very strong picture of an economy doing well during wartime, right? And this isn't the first time we've seen this before, right? I mean, it was, we've seen, you know, Nazi Germany had something similar in the 30s as it was kind of gearing up for

World War II and you know the United States is you know military arms industry You know likewise after World War two right doing really well and was really the engine of growth And so what we're seeing now is pretty much. That's where Russia is right now And I think that that kind of that that says something really important and that is that it's going to be very difficult Politically not just economically economically and politically to pull back from that

For Putin to make the decisions that he would need to make to scale down production, pull back on what has been the major engine and major driver of growth, pull back on wages. We're already seeing wages kind of leveling out. But these are very difficult decisions that a leader would not want to make.

for a number of reasons. And it would not only create possibly some discontent at home, I don't think we're talking about major riots in the streets, but I think a certain sense that the euphoria of the war is over. And among the people who are fighting at the front, if you were to stop fighting and bring these people home, this is a new demographic. Not a huge one, but still a significant one.

of people who, you know, have been on the front line, have made war their business and their profession for, you know, the last, you know, year, two, three years, and suddenly have to be reintegrated into Russian society.

I mean, if I could just make a quick aside here, you know, after World War II, you know, the veterans that were coming back from the German front, they were people who had seen, you know, what living standards were like in Europe. And they were coming back and they constituted an entirely new kind of political class of people.

And so for Stalin, that was a very dangerous prospect of having to face, you know, veterans who had been abroad, had seen, you know, life was actually better on the other side of the front line. And we're going to come back now to, you know, a society that is obviously, you know, still industrializing, still going through, you know, kind of the turmoil of...

you know, of the 1940s and Soviet life. And so a lot of them were sent to the Gulag. A lot of them were just kind of sent packing into prison camps just so they wouldn't be a problem. And I'm not saying that necessarily would be the case in, you know, Putin's Russia. They've been extremely generous to the veterans. You know, they've kind of put a lot of them into, you know, high places in local, regional, you know, federal governments.

But nonetheless, that is to say that, you know, this is a demographic that you have to contend with one way or another. Well, I just guess... Well, Sean, let me ask you one question here. Thomas, how many... What's a true number of how many Russian soldiers have been killed or injured in this three-year war they started? Injured and killed. I mean, I'll be honest. I mean, it's a running... It's a moving target. You know, I think there was... General Cavoli gave a really good...

speech to the Senate, I think it was earlier this year in March, and I think he gave some figures there. I remember hearing that those figures were generally correct. I can't pull them out. I don't remember offhand exactly what they are. But we're talking about hundreds of thousands, right? You know, well into the hundreds of thousands. So that brings you up to Ukraine. So that's one thing you keep hearing about people who are discouraged about Ukraine continuing because they are running out of

Men. When does it come to the point Ukraine just says, we can't keep doing this or we're just going to wipe out an entire generation of males? Well, they're not at that point quite yet. I mean, I think they have started digging deeper. They've started, you know, mobilizing younger and younger men. And that is certainly, you know, that certainly gets them to the point that you're describing. I wouldn't say that they're quite yet. But yeah, it's a...

In terms of time, I don't know. That's hard to say. I mean, as a rule, the Ukrainians lose fewer men than the Russians do. The Russians are known for their kind of very brash and meat grinder style attacks that kind of just end up with a lot of men, you know, killed and wounded. Ukrainians generally lose fewer. Nonetheless, though, I mean, it is, you know, a really bad situation for them. What can we say?

The Golden Dome. Can you tell us about the Golden Dome? Why does that make our allies nervous? Well, it's definitely a project that's been criticized by our adversaries, you know, first and foremost. I think, you know, if we're looking at it from a Russian point of view, all through the 1950s, 60s, 70s,

In the 80s, the idea of mutually assured destruction was what kept us from launching attacks on each other at various different times. And that was what restrained our hand during the Cold War. A lot of our experts would argue now that by having a missile defense system,

you're going to, number one, get an efficiency rate of about 80 to 85, maybe almost pushing towards 90 in the best cases. So it's not going to be foolproof. And secondly, you're going to basically be driving your adversaries to produce just

tons and tons more weapons. And so you kind of, you get the worst of both worlds in a sense, an illusion of safety while you're actually, you know, causing your adversaries to produce more arms against you.

Um, you know, I think it's, our allies generally wouldn't be affected. You know, they would be, it would be hard to extend it. It would be extremely costly to extend it across the United States as a whole to extend to allies would be, um, I think prohibitive probably. Yeah. What, you know, when, when Reagan was pushing SDI, uh, so-called star Wars, uh,

One of the deals that he was trying to broker with Gorbachev was we would share the technology so that they could do it as well. Yeah. Should Trump make that as a part of what he wants to do? I mean, it's certainly a consideration, right? I mean, I think there's...

you know, there's always a trust deficit, uh, you know, between Russia and the United States. And I think that's, that's grown exponentially since, you know, since the era in which Gorbachev and Reagan were speaking, um, you know, whether or not Russia would accept, you know, any plans as, you know, the Holy Bible of, of our, of our golden dome, you know, defense technology is, is a, I think that's a pretty open question, quite honestly. Um, I think that's, uh,

It's one way perhaps to go about it and trying to build trust, but I don't know if we have the trust to really make that work at the moment. Yeah. Shifting topics. What you know, there was some pretty dramatic election results in Poland recently. Talk to us about what happened and why that's important.

Yeah, it was an amazing weekend last weekend. I mean, we saw the largest turnout for presidential elections since the polls shook off communism back in 1989. I mean, so there was a huge turnout. And I think that's one of the wonderful things about following Polish politics is that you see

whether it's parliamentary or presidential elections, you see people really, you know, putting in the work, standing in line and doing the voting. So it's wonderful to see that. And you got to really commend, you know, the polls for that. And, you know, and we saw some, you know, it was a close race throughout, you know, throughout the last few months. We knew it was going to be a close race, you know, come election day.

And that's exactly what it was. I mean, we saw 400,000 votes, a little less than 400,000, basically deciding who was going to win in that election. And so what we're left with is a...

the government that came into power in 2023. It's been a relatively centrist, left of center at times, right of center at times, government. And we have a much further right, much more conservative president now, who is backed by the former ruling party.

law and justice. And so, you know, what has been a really unhappy marriage for the last few years between the government and the presidency, just as a note that the former president was also from law and justice, it was a very unhappy marriage, lots of vetoing because the president can veto, can submit bills to the constitutional court to slow them down, delay them, kill them.

We're going to see that dynamic continuing. The president doesn't have a lot of power. It's a parliamentary system here, but nonetheless, it's really going to slow things down and probably not help the government in terms of getting its wish list figured out.

Yeah. And I think just for our listeners' sake, what's interesting is that the prime minister's name is Donald Tusk. Yeah. I just find it hilarious. But Carol, the Rocky, is that how you say it?

Oh, yeah. So Carol, Carol Navrotsky is the he was the he's the new president. He's the new president. And so he's and but opposite sides of where the prime minister is. So that's going to, as you as you point out, that's going to make things I mean, it's it's divided government. It's not unlike Russia.

what we've had in the United States in the past when we have a Republican president and a Democrat Senate and House. Very much so. Very much so. It's going to be tough. It's going to be, you know, I think the one thing that they are, they do agree on is strong defense and a strong military strategy.

Poland is now the third largest military in NATO. So there's a lot of priority given to the military and by both the entire political spectrum agrees on this. So that's one thing where we won't see this unhappy marriage affect policy. But when we're looking at domestic issues, things like abortion,

You know, some of the judicial changes that were that were made with the previous government attempts to change them back. It's just going to be a little bit it's going to be messy here for a while. Domestic politics are really going to be occupying people's minds for for kind of the foreseeable future. Yeah. What now? This is a question I probably should know the answer to this. But where does Tusk, the prime minister, come down on NATO membership for for Ukraine? Because we know that the new president opposes that.

Yeah, I mean, I think Tusk pretty much, he's aligned with the European consensus, which is, you know, let's find a way, let's make it happen. You know, Tusk is very much concerned with Poland becoming a European power, right? Like, being one of the leading voices of this kind of

European bloc of countries. With its bigger military, it's kind of louder diplomatic voice and good economy. It has a good economy as well. I should point out. That's helpful as well. Thomas, thank you so much for your time today. We appreciate it. Follow Thomas at TG Grove and watch his stuff in the Wall Street Journal. Thanks everybody for listening to Breaking Battlegrounds and we'll be back next week. I say this every election cycle and I'll say it again.

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Welcome to the podcast. Kyle, I'm just going to let you take it over. It's my corner time. Let's play my music. I'm once committed murder and mayhem in a world of sin and oh, Kylie's on a roll.

and listening

It's your favorite time of the show. It's my favorite song. I love that song. Played in the shower. Okay. So I was going to talk about this case last week, but I wanted to see if we learned anything more and we haven't. But it reminded me of another case. So we have two cases here that we're discussing. So over Memorial Day weekend, there was two Arcadia High School students. And Arcadia High School is a local high school here in Phoenix. And

Pandora and Evan. They went camping in Tonto National Forest just off the 87, which is between Mesa and Payson in Arizona. When they didn't return home, the search party obviously went out and they found them with gunshot wounds dead over by Mount Ward. And there's been no leads, no investigations. The Maricopa County investigators are asking for anyone to give any kind of information that they may have. They are

So far, they have no leads of anything. But this reminded me of a case that happened in 2003. In October, there was a couple. They went to high school here in Scottsdale. And they were celebrating. I think they were 17 and 18 as well. And they were celebrating their one-year dating anniversary. And they went up camping off Bumblebee Road off the I-17. Like you're heading towards Flagstaff. And...

When Brandon, he was the male of the couple, when he did not show up to work the next day, a search party went out and they found them dead inside.

with gunshot wounds to the head, to the head and to the chest. But the weird thing was, is they took, they bought a camcorder and a disposable camera on the way up camping. And there was photos from like their day that they had and like them sitting in the back of the truck. And then there was one photo that was taken after them camping that looks like it was on the inside of someone's home. And it was like a ceiling fan, there was plants or whatever, but

It was taken after the camping trip and the camera was found a hundred feet from the site. So they don't know if maybe like the murderer went home with the camera and then some reason dropped it on the way back or what happened. But those two cases, well, that case remains unsolved. And now there's speculation that this, for some reason, that case, I had heard about it in November of last year. And, um,

Which is why when this happened, it just reminded me. And so people were like, oh, you know, it could be the same person. But I'm kind of thinking maybe if that case was getting recognition again, that it could be like a copycat or...

of that source. So there's no leads? No leads. Nothing. With this Arcadia. Yeah, no leads. And they don't know of anyone that maybe wanted to hurt them. They said they were in a remote area that you wouldn't necessarily know that they were there unless you followed them. So they either had to be followed out there or someone was out there and saw them. But they said it was a very remote area and it did take them about a day to find them. Do they say what type of gun it was? No, so the...

So last week we didn't even know it was a gunshot wound, and then they just released that information this week. But they didn't say what kind of gun. We don't know. They just released that part of it. It's so wild. Very wild. It's just shocking. I mean, because we live in the Arcadia area. We have friends who have kids that go to Arcadia High School. The thing that is just tragic about this is that these are –

two kids who were out camping doing something wholesome. Yeah. They're not out doing drugs. They're not out partying, you know, speeding down Indian school. Yeah. It's like, it's so tragic. I know. It's so sad. So sad. So if you know anything and you're a Phoenix listener. Yes. Let the authorities know. So Maricopa County Sheriff's Department's the lead on that? Yes, they are. They are the lead. Hmm.

That's all I have for today, though. You don't have anything uplifting? That's plenty today. Enough murder. I don't know if you've been listening to the show, Sean, but I had to stop talking about murder lately because I felt like I was attracting it a little bit too much. So I talked about the lottery, and then we talked about...

I don't remember what I talked about last week, but eventually I want to talk about this Bitcoin stuff. The guy that was being held hostage. Right. But I feel like every time I opened my phone, TMZ has a new thing about what happened and it's him doing all this crazy stuff. And I don't know if he was actually held hostage. Yeah, no, it gets, yeah, it gets sketchier. It's really, doesn't it? It would make for a good lifetime movie. Yeah. So, you know, as we wrap up here,

Sean, how do you see this Russian-Ukraine war ending? I mean... I just don't know. I don't know. It really is based on the will of the Ukrainian people, I feel. Yeah, I think it's that. I think it will depend. A lot will depend on how much Europe, the European nations, continue to support Ukraine. I mean, obviously, there's going to be less of that coming from the United States than there has been previously. Yeah.

You know, I think it's going to start to have an issue. I mean, it's already, I think, weighing on Trump because, you know, he said he was going to stop it on day one. He has this unfortunate habit of over promising and under delivering. Yes. So, yes. You know, so he's got to get this one big, beautiful bill done.

That's got to happen. But when it comes to Israel and Gaza, when it comes to Ukraine and Russia, you know, there needs to be some movement or it's going to get it's going to continue to get worse for him. And I don't think and I don't you know, this Elon blow up. I don't know if this is a flash in the pan and they're going to make up or if this is going to be kind of a they're entrenching on either side. It's hard to say.

Well, there's a there's there is a lesson in communications to learn from Trump and Elon. Not everything deserves a rebuttal or reply. Yes. And Trump literally could have been just absolutely had the higher ground on this by just saying, I love Elon. We disagree on some things. He's a great American. I appreciate what he does. That's all. It's all he had to say.

Elon would have just he just would have been carping had been over with yesterday. Yeah. And now it's this, you know, it's like we had the big, beautiful bill. Now we have the big, beautiful argument on Twitter. And I just the the memes about these two yesterday. It's just, you know, it's just incredible. It was so entertaining. Well, I mean, it was remarkable. Every I feel like every day it's like, how is it possible that there's enough popcorn in the world?

to watch all this stuff. Well, the problem is, you know, Sean, you and I are old enough, Kylie is not, that if this had happened when we worked in Congress or got started in politics, this would have been over because you didn't have social media putting a microphone on it and just, you know, spouting it to the world. And it just goes on and on and on and on and on. And you can just tell, you know, if you really had the timeline of who they're talking to during the course of the day, you can tell who they've talked to by sometimes, you know,

the tweets get less aggressive let's work together then you're going to hell you know it's just up and down up and down yeah it's it's not useful um and you're right that that i mean i think the best thing that trump could have done is basically ignore just say you know elon's been great he's got some great ideas sometimes you're not going to agree and then back channel um

people who Elon trusts just to walk him through what a reconciliation bill can and can't do and try to get to some, you know, at least detente on talking about it. Well, it goes back to the question we asked Congressman Buddy Carter is explain the math. People just don't get the math. They just think because you have a majority, they're all going to vote the same. They all...

think differently they all have different priorities and to the american people start understanding that and so you know if i was elon musk and i want to start a party i would just start a party saying i'm running a bunch of people they're running for one term one term only they'll serve one term one term only and their only their only job is to get a 10-year plan to balance the budget reduce our debt i think that would be a very very powerful force out there you really think that they could i mean how many people do you think he could get elected to congress

I bet you could at least get a dozen. Really? Yeah, because I just think it's all they're saying is, look, I'm just running and I'm going to serve one term done. I'm running for re-election. This is all I'm going to do. This is it. It's the only thing that matters. And you may not win much the first time, but after two or three terms, you could probably get 10 to 12. Okay, so over time. Yeah, yeah, two or three cycles. But one thing they're not doing on this budget stuff is they really, if Elon really wanted to help,

He'd go put $100 million just doing cottage meetings and seminars in every legislative district, not congressional districts, every legislative district in the country and say, this is where we're at. These are the options to get out of it. What do you want to do? I just don't think people understand. I mean, people don't understand that almost two-thirds of this budget Congress doesn't even vote on. Yeah, well, it's getting closer to – They didn't have the vote on it. Yeah, it's all driven by the mandatory spending, so –

And the debt. Yeah. But I think what Elon is not recognizing, I mean, you know, the most, like we talked about with Buddy Carter, the most important part of this is the tax extensions because we can't afford to do a huge tax increase because that'll cripple the economy. And if we do pass this, then we can actually grow the economy. And that lessens the debt impact. I mean, we can grow ourselves out of a big chunk of this. Yes, yes, yes. But you have to start tapping what we're spending.

Yeah. You know, it may just be 1% a year. That's it. Well, it doesn't matter if inflation is high or not. It's 1% a year. That's it. Yeah. So anyway, folks, thanks for joining this week on Breaking Battlegrounds. On behalf of Jeremy, myself, our guest host, Sean, and me, have a great weekend. Follow us at BreakingBattlegrounds.vote or wherever you get your podcasts. Have a great weekend.