Speaker Ben Toma and Mark Krikorian on the Reality of the Border
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The 2022 political field was intense, so don't get left behind in 2024. 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.votewebdomain from godaddy.com. Get yours now. Welcome to another episode of Breaking Battlegrounds with your host, Chuck Warren. I'm Sam Stone. As always, jumping right into it today in studio with us, which we always love. Makes for a better conversation.

Arizona Speaker of the House of Representatives Ben Toma, he's also running for Congress in Arizona's 8th Congressional District, where Congresswoman Debbie Lesko is retiring.

And you can follow him on X at Rep Ben Toma. We got a lot to talk about. Been an interesting few days in Arizona politics, hasn't it? Most definitely has. Looking forward to it. Okay. I don't think you've ever had a slow day this year, have you? Yeah, I can't really remember. Nope. So...

When after 2022, when Hobbs won and then Chris Mays became a G, Sam and I talked here on the show and privately saying losing that age seat was more of a danger to Arizona than Hobbs because the legislature could do a lot to.

keep Hobbs somewhat on a course, right? I know she has her ideology and so forth, but you're sort of a check and balance. May seems to run just wandering through a field with nobody just thinking she's above everybody else.

Is that a fair assumption? I mean, I think it's not only fair. It's an observation of what's actually happened up to this point. And so when you run for AG, you're running for a specific job. You're supposed to be the defender of the law and the enforcer of the law, right, in the state of Arizona. But when – what we've actually seen –

Let me know if this sounds familiar, but using the legal system for political means or weaponizing the process when you want to, also selectively enforcing and deciding, you know, I'm conflicted. Well, conflicted usually meant, you know, I have some sort of other benefit or something, financial interest or something of that sort. Not that I'd simply disagree with the law.

And so I don't. So that's what she's sort of redefining it to, which is, by the way, what we've seen the left do throughout, you know, I don't know, the last decades or so that that I've been involved in politics. They continue to change the meaning of things and to move the ball over and over and over their way to sort of progressive thinking and progressive ideology. And she's very much a product of that. So she's decided that that conflicted means I don't like the law. I don't agree with the law. I wouldn't have voted for it. So therefore, I'm not going to do my job that I got elected to do.

There's been a lot of criticism in the past of some of the Republican AGs. But looking back on it, I would say that when people were upset with them, it was pretty bipartisan. People on the left were upset with them. People on the right were upset with them. Different rulings. If you're doing that, that's pretty much a sign that you're doing a good job in that position, right? Because you're actually following the law.

Mays has just gone completely 100 percent Democrat operative with her approach to the office.

Right. I mean, again, yeah, that's a fair point. When you're in that job before, historically, right, there are situations where something happens and you have to go after it. And you know it's a politically sensitive issue. And you know you're going to get flack from both sides. And that comes with the job. Don't run for the job if you don't want that situation because that's what happens. But in this case, what we're seeing, you're not seeing anyone on the Republican side running.

on May's aside, on almost any of these issues. No, no. It's all one-sided. And again, look at the record. I mean, I don't know. I get that people don't pay attention nowadays. And part of the problem has been what people look for five seconds or 15 seconds and then they lose interest and all they read is the headline. But really, when you look at it, the fact that I and the Senate president are now stepping in to defend a record number of laws,

and a record number of court cases that were involved in. Why? Because she won't do her job. So the House Committee of Executive Oversight came out with a report this week, which you joined in. Tell our audience what you found she's not doing and what your recommendation was.

Well, the committee found, and first of all, that she hasn't fully cooperated with the committee, and that's part of the problem. Shocking. Right. That's my shocked face. Sorry. Yeah. So, you know, so I actually sent a pretty strongly worded letter saying, you know, you're going to have to provide these documents. These are documents you're going to have to provide. And to her credit, her office did respond the same day and said they are going to provide them. So we'll see. We'll keep you updated once that happens.

Having said that, the committee found that she did, in fact, exceed her authority. Not only that, but she used her office for political gain. And that's pretty clear. I mean, when you're going and you're doing so-called town halls and you're talking about regulating groundwater and threatening to put businesses out of business because you don't happen to like water,

the fact that they use groundwater. Well, if you want to argue about groundwater, great. Join the fun. We've been having a lot of fun on that at the legislature. Run for that. She can run for the legislature and be all over that discussion with all of you. Sam, did she get Soros money? Yes. Did she get Soros money? Yeah, no. She was an open society-backed candidate.

from the start. Well, that says everything I need to know today. Yeah. Well, and again, I mean, you saw she first threatened and she sued the Cochise County Board of Supervisors. She lost that case. We got involved with that. Then she threatened Mojave County and basically said, if you don't vote the way I'm telling you where I'm going to sue you, I mean...

what more do you need? That is the very definition of weaponizing government. And again, you've seen that at the national level. I don't need to rehash all that because I'm sure you've talked about it. Yeah, that's all they do. So where was Speaker Ben Toma?

I'm Speaker of the Arizona House of Representatives, and he's running for Congress and CD8. He's decided to, I don't know, just wake up one morning and said, let's do something crazy. That is not what happened. By the way, tell us, how did you make the decision, and what did your wife say? And you have all daughters, correct? Correct.

All daughters, yeah. Did they all just set you down and say, Dad, do we need to go and have an intervention here? Okay, so I got to tell you what actually happened. You started by getting a call from American Airlines offering you the platinum premium package, right? Not quite, but I'll get there. So what actually happened is this was happened in October of last year. My wife and I celebrated our 25th wedding anniversary, and we were en route to Croatia.

And we were going to go Croatia and Southern Lili. And we had just spent that whole trip talking about what's next. As I think you know, I'm termed out at the state capitol. And so my wife and I said, look, we're going to go on this big trip. But before we get there, we're going to talk about all these. So we spent 10 plus hours talking about all the different options on what's next. And what we were kind of leaning to was a break for two years at a minimum. Right.

Right after we got there, we checked in. We got there kind of late. It's 11 o'clock at night. Of course, Debbie didn't know that. And the phone rings, and it's Debbie Lesko. And she says, hey, I'm about to announce I'm not going to run again, and I really want you to consider running to replace me.

and my wife heard it of course because we're in the hotel room it was just us and she looks at me and she goes well there's a door that wasn't open so we talked about it and the next morning it was her it was actually my wife I talked to Debbie again and she was part of the conversation very much so remember we were celebrating two weeks and I'm like babe you do understand what this means right this means I'll be gone a lot and she's like look I mean you've been called and once you're called you gotta do it and

It's a big commitment and having that kind of support is essential because you're going to be on a plane twice a week. You basically have to live your life by a calendar that gives you a half day off a week. That's a major commitment. People do not understand the requirements. No, they don't. I always hate it when people go, they're just doing it to go make money. Oh, gosh. It's like, it's a horrible job.

I mean, you can't, the money's not worth it. The travel schedule, all that. It's only the opportunity to have a real impact. Well,

Well, I mean, everybody who knows my record down at the Capitol knows this. My whole – you know, I rarely speak, for example, on the floor. I'm the speaker that rarely speaks, right? Why? Because I know the real work happens behind the scenes. It always happens in my office. It always happens in some conference room, in someone else's office, convincing them of some policy issue. And, again, we're looking at my record. Flat tax, universal school choice, now the biggest border security thing, which has gotten some flack, but I think people are starting to pay attention to it finally now. Sure.

Chuck and I have talked about this on the air before. And in every legislature, because we work all across the country, Chuck far more so even than I, but in every legislature there are a handful of people. Workers. Who really make everything run, who get the job done. They're the ones that all their colleagues, frankly, are counting on to really be vested, involved, and understand the issues and lead. 100%. And you've been one of those since day one. Yeah.

Who else down there would you say is that person? Workers. The workers that just get the job done. They're not getting distracted by all the. Well, I don't want to get myself in trouble, first of all. But, you know, there's a few that just pop off the top of my head. Partially for me, it's been these are people that are that are experts in particular areas. So, for example, water, since we talked about that, you know, Tim Dunn and and Gail Griffin seen occur in the Senate. Right.

on some of these other issues. Uh, Jeff Winneger, who hopefully is coming back. He's, he's been a really good guy. That's been helpful. Travis Grantham, who's my many ways, uh, right hand. And, and he often disagrees with me and he's not shy about it. Uh, but, but you know, he understands that we need to be a team at the end of the day. Uh, and I don't, I don't want to meet this list to be exhaustive. Kwong Nguyen out of, uh, out of, out of Prescott Valley. Um, uh,

You know, Montenegro, Leo Bilsucci. We have some very good ones, yeah. Right. We have some good guys that are willing to work. And then there's some that are really loud, which I'm not going to name, but I think you know, that make a lot of noise and love to be loved, if you will, in LD rooms and other, you know,

Republican meetings. But at the end of the day, they've done nothing, nothing at all of note. And so the reality of it is I remind people, look at the fruit. Don't believe us. Talk is cheap. Look at what we've actually done. There's a lot of people out there who can get retweets who can't get a bill passed.

Yeah. You don't even need to comment on it, but that's absolutely spot on, Sam. So let's switch to Congress for a minute. So George Will had a column out today called The Biden Administration is the Most Progressive in U.S. History. I want to talk about it a little bit and your philosophy in Congress. But how has the Biden administration made your job easier or harder in the state legislature?

Well, I don't know that it's easier in any way. I think it's harder because we have been conditioned over time and it really kind of started with Obama, but Biden took it to a whole new level.

where people are starting, even on the Republican side, starting to accept some of these socialist undertones and socialist ideas where the government is the solution to many of our problems. And you know what? I don't know if you guys are familiar with those motivational posters. I saw one the other day, and I'm getting one. It's a picture of the U.S. Capitol. You know how they used to say, like, achievement, there's an eagle soaring or something? This one's the U.S. Capitol, and it says government, and it says, if you're afraid of our problems, wait till you see our solutions. Ha!

And I'm definitely getting one from my office, and I'm going to make it really big and put it there. Because, look, all kidding aside, it is scary to trust that government will do a good job when we all inherently know that government doesn't do a good job on almost anything. Now, there are some things that only government can do, obviously, you know, public safety and infrastructure. But outside of that, really, government shouldn't be doing all these things. And yet we start to accept little by little as we're being pulled to the left by

Progressive ideology is starting to seep in and you have now diehard MAGA people that think government is the solution. We have to stop. What do you feel – Ben Toma was elected in November. He's sworn in in January. What are the two or three things that you feel will be your focus that you think is things you can have a real say in and accomplish when you're there?

First, really quickly, border security. We've got to figure that out because we can never fix immigration until we figure that. Secondly, the financial stuff. I mean, the fact that Social Security is almost bankrupt or will be in a few years. If you think inflation is bad now, just wait till you see what happens later. Yeah, absolutely. We're going to be coming back with more from Arizona House Speaker Ben Toma here in just a moment. He's also running for Arizona's 8th Congressional District. You can follow him at RepBenToma on X. Breaking Battlegrounds. Be right back.

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the letter Y, then refy.com. Okay, we're continuing on with Ben Toma, Speaker of the Arizona House. Ben, before we went to the break, Chuck asked some of your priorities, but I wanted to ask a little bit different question. What's one thing you're talking about on the campaign trail that your opponents are not?

It's an interesting question. You know, there are a lot of things we agree on, at least in terms of in theory, what we want to tackle. One that I do want to tackle, and I think it's going to take some time, to be perfectly honest with you, will be the health care space. In particular, the fact that we have so little transparency into what's actually causing the problems. And so in my experience, you know, when you're talking to all these different –

uh, people that have, that have a, that have, or groups that have a play in this in some way. For example, you know, you're talking to pharma or you're talking to doctors or the hospitals or the PBMs or, you know, they're all kind of doing this number pointing the opposite direction. It's everybody else's fault that, that,

We're saving America. It's all these guys who are messing it up. Correct. And sure, as everybody's saying the same thing. It's someone else's fault. And the truth is because there's no transparency, you don't really know who's at fault. And you hear when everyone else's fault is other than you, it's kind of like Congress, right? Everybody loves to hate Congress, but they love their congressman. It's like, well, wait a minute. Somewhere there's something broken here. And so transparency is the big thing that I want to work on in health care. Yeah.

Let's talk foreign policy for a minute. There's really three hot spots that are in the news. There's many other hot spots.

Israel, Gaza, what is your position? Should Israel do a ceasefire or should they just keep going until they destroy the enemy? So I was there in early March. I actually got a chance to see the attack sites. I talked to some of the people that survived. It was god-awful, having seen it myself. I don't think people realize how small Gaza is. No, they do not. It is the size of Sun City.

The original Sun City. Not Sun City West, not Sun City Grand, Sun City. It is 17 square miles.

It is very small. While we were there, there were explosions all around. And first, you know, you look at the locals when that happens because you're kind of wondering. If they're diving for cover. Yeah, exactly. You do the same, right? But no, none of that was happening. They said, no, that's just because everything's so close, there's no way. You hear everything that's happening. Okay. To answer your question, I was interviewed unrelated the day after.

So on October 8th. And I said what I still believe wholeheartedly to this day. There is no way Israel can stop until Hamas is eradicated. There is after what happened. There's just no way. And I don't care what Joe Biden says. And I don't think Israel will stop until Hamas. I don't either. I posit this all the time, you know, with obviously a lot of California Democrats, whatever. But.

If the people of Tijuana were launching rockets and firing mortars at the people in San Diego all day, what do you think would be the U.S. response to that? We would annihilate Tijuana. Correct. Absolutely.

And rightly so. I mean, our duty, right, and Israel's duty is to protect its citizens. And by the way, they weren't just Jews. There were Arabs that were attacked that day. There were Bedouins that were attacked that day. Israel is a fully multicultural. National security is of paramount importance for a national government.

Right. It's the most basic they're supposed to do. Right. I mean, so Ukraine, I'm I'm I am pro beat up Russia. Sam's a little bit opposed. Leave it to leave it to Europe. We got other stuff. I'm a neocon. Let's make more missiles. The better for me. What what is your position on that?

You know, so first of all, I think you probably know I was born in Romania. I lived the first nine years there. Romania has the largest border with Ukraine. Not that they've always been great neighbors. So what you're telling me is you're not going to announce a president today. No. All right. I just want to be sure about that. I'll have to find Obama's guys. Sorry, that was a cheap shot. It was a good one, though. The.

So look, here's my thing on Ukraine. I know that there's corruption in that part of the world. I'm well aware of it. I don't think we should be sending them any money. However, sending them weapons is a different thing. And the reason, personally, I believe that is because I've dealt with bullies. I've dealt with them in the context of just like everyone else has, but also in the context of politics and leadership in that sense. And

There's only one way to deal with bullies, and that's to smash them in the face. If you don't do that, you're going to have to do it again later. The only question is, where do you do it? Do you do it in Ukraine? Do you do it in Poland? Do you do it in Romania? Do you do it in Germany? I mean, wherever, because Putin...

given enough time and resources, will not stop. That's just the record. That's what bullies do. You smash them in the face, just like Reagan said, you speak softly, but you carry a big stick. That's my foreign policy in a nutshell. Taiwan. I am a belief. I am a China hawk, but I don't believe China wants military confrontation with us. But I do think they want to be a nuisance in the nest. Right.

That's another reason why we should smash Putin in the face. Because if you don't do that, then China will go, well, the U.S. isn't really going to do anything, so we might get away with this if we take out Taiwan. So that's another thing, too. It's like, look, I'm not saying we should be involving ourselves in everyone else's business. No troops on the ground, nothing like that. 100%. But send them military equipment. Yeah. One thing, and Ben, I'm kind of throwing this out there without –

expecting even much a response from you. But Chuck, we've touched on this a little bit. Our military supply chain is such a disaster right now. We can't build ships. We spend 10 times what we should to build fighters. Everything we're building is not built in a efficient, effective manner. Well,

Well, that's got to change. And we have to change. And that's a good thing. The military supply chain needs to be changed. So tell me about this. You see all these semiconductor plants being built in Arizona. What hiccups building them do you see or people don't realize that's happening? Or is it going pretty smoothly, all these semiconductor plants? I mean, you know, by and large, it

Wherever you see hiccups, it's usually having to do with just bad policy requirements that are part of it. For example, requirement to do union labor and things of that nature. That's really what's caused a lot of the delays up in TSMC. I'm 100% a believer in capitalism and in competition. And when you take that off the table and you put in all kinds of requirements, which is what we're seeing, by the way, by the Biden administration all the way through and through, just ridiculous number of rules. I think it was referenced in that article. Right.

Adding just burden to actually getting things done. Now, I get it that there are certain things you've got to do that are safety concerns or whatnot. Okay, that's fine. But we've gone way beyond that. You know, there was that great quote that got passed around a lot from the Canadian Prime Minister candidate, Pierre Pelleve, yesterday, who was talking about this in their housing market, that 30% of the price of every new house they build is government regulations and costs. Right.

And we have to be close to that same number here. We are. Just transfer quickly to Mexico, talk about national security. Okay. Trump has talked about sending Navy SEALs in to attack the cartels if he's elected. What is your position on the U.S. getting more aggressive with the cartels?

I think we absolutely should get more aggressive with the cartels in particular because they are terrorist organizations because they and even from a purely humanitarian perspective, what they're doing to people. Oh, it's God awful. And we know they're doing it. I was there in Yuma and on on Sunday and Monday. And I could tell you we visited the shelter, Amberley Shelter down there.

The stories, you just don't want to hear it. I mean, you don't want to hear it. And the easiest thing to do is just turn the channel. But when you're face-to-face with someone that's been raped multiple times, that's been abused, and you know what? That's just... Well, I'll forget. We went and did two years ago. We went to a ranch.

We're running out of time. We're going to have you come back and talk a little more immigration with us. We're with Speaker Ben Toma. He's running for Congress in CD8. Our next guest will be Mark Krikorian. He is with the executive director of the Center of Immigration Studies. We'll be right back.

Welcome back to Breaking Battlegrounds. And if you're listening to this and you're not worrying about the government, your tech company, your phone company, and everyone else spying on everything that happens on your phone, then you haven't been paying attention to what's been in the news lately because they most assuredly are. And if you want to stop them, you need to visit 4freedommobile.com today for top-notch coverage, digital security, and total freedom. Use code BATTLEGROUND at checkout to get your first month of service for just $9 and save $10 a month for every month after that.

Again, that's code BATTLEGROUND to check out. Visit them for freedom mobile dot com. Chuck, we're continuing on right now with Mark Corian. He is the director executive director of the Center for Immigration Studies and a contributor at National Review Online. Folks, you can follow him on X at Mark S. Corian. Mark, thank you for joining us again. Welcome back to the program.

Glad to be here. Thanks for having me. So, Mark, you put an article out this week on National Review. Biden applies Soros DA shoplifting rules to the border. Explain to our audience what you mean by that. Well, if, you know, people who've been reading the papers know that shoplifting has exploded in a lot of big cities because the prosecutors in those places have said that

that they won't prosecute thieves who steal less than $1,000 or $950. It's different in different places. But the point is they're saying there's a certain amount, there's a certain level of theft that we are officially announcing is

In other words, it's technically still illegal, but we're not going to do anything about it. And that is exactly what President Biden's announcement this week does. It says that 2,500 illegal aliens crossing a day is something that's technically still illegal, but we're not going to access it.

actually take any extraordinary steps to deal with it. So it's the same kind of concept and you're going to have the same result. You know, what if you say people can steal $1,000 worth of stuff? Well, then that's what they're going to do. You're seeing that all over the country now and you're seeing the same thing with regard to immigration. So explain to our audience what

Biden's executive action exactly did and why 2500 is acceptable for him, though we know that number just made up probably focused versus the 5000 that they weren't going to go below for on the supposed bipartisan deal. So explain to our audience what this executive action does.

The point of this is that it creates a kind of trigger mechanism so that if illegal crossings at the border, with all these exceptions, but without, you know, other than that, if they reach a certain level, whether it's 4,000 or 5,000 in that bill or 2,500 as the president announced this week, that if it reaches that trigger point, then people will

no longer be able to apply for asylum. They're saying we'll close the border, although that's an exaggeration. And so for a lot of people, they're like, wow, okay, well, that's not so bad. But again...

Number one, it is setting a baseline level of illegal immigration, which is, if you figure 2,500 times 365, I'm not exactly – I can't do the math in my head, but it's close to, what, 2 million people a year almost, a million and a half, something like that. That's normal. That's an acceptable level of illegal immigration. Which is more than double our legal immigration level, which is already the highest in the world.

Exactly. Yeah. And Obama's own DHS secretary, a guy named Jay Johnson, who, look, he's a Democrat, but he was a serious person. He's still a serious person. He has said 1,000 illegal crossings a day overwhelms the capacity of the Border Patrol to deal with it. And the president just said, well, up to 2,500 is fine. And only when it gets to that level will we actually take steps to try to reverse it.

And that doesn't include gotaways. It does not include gotaways. And maybe even more importantly, it doesn't include 1,400 plus people a day that they are letting in through the ports of entry. These are illegal immigrants. These are people who have no right to be here that they are waving in.

of fourteen hundred and fifty of them each day and even that numbers made up no reason they won't be couldn't just double that so it's not even clear that it's actually going to reduce the number of people led into the country who have no right to be here

It might, and this is a big if, but if it does anything, all it would do is make it less disorderly. It wouldn't actually reduce the flow. And Mark, this is Ben Toma, but I'm just curious, in your perspective and based on your knowledge, what do you think this is communicating to those that are trying to cross illegally? How is this going to change their behavior, if any at all?

Well, initially, I wouldn't be surprised if for a few weeks numbers go down just because smugglers and prospective illegal immigrants might well say, well, I don't know, you know, we've heard this this.

This is serious, so let's hold off and see whether the gringos have gotten serious about this. But they're going to realize very quickly that it's just an election year stunt. And in fact, it may even be held up by the courts in no time. So while there might actually be an initial dip, once that dip is over, if it even happens, and there's no evidence of it yet, it's just going to go back to business as usual.

We're going to be coming back with more in just a moment from Mark Corian. He is the executive director of the Center for Immigration Studies and a contributor at National Review. Also Ben Thomas, Speaker of the House here in Arizona. We're talking immigration. We've got lots more to cover, folks. Stay tuned. Breaking Battlegrounds back in just a moment.

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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 with your host Sam Stone and Chuck Warren. Folks, if you haven't yet been to the website for our friends at investwirefi.com, you need to go there right now.

I'll see you next time.

Or give them a call at 888-Y-REFI-24 and tell them Chuck and Sam sent you. So, Speaker Toma, you folks in the legislature this week referred something to the ballot regarding the border. Tell us about it.

Sure. Well, we had to do that because Hobbs has vetoed everything we've done on the border up to this point. But there really has three sort of large parts that are all border related. The first of it is that no one is allowed now to produce false documents to get benefits, public benefits of any kind. It seems pretty commonsensical, but the progressives have lost their mind on that.

The second piece. I mean, you're breaking the law the minute you produce the false documents. One would think, right? But, you know, whatever. Democrats just blow my mind. Well, this is the whole selective enforcement thing that we were talking about earlier. But anyway, secondly, it has to do with fentanyl. And that's because we know that all the fentanyl, virtually all the fentanyl that's coming over is what's killing people. And now we're losing, what, six a day now in Maricopa County, I think is the latest stat I saw.

So it has to do with tougher sentences for fentanyl dealing. And then the third, which is the one that's gotten most of the attention, has been the so-called similar to the Texas law, which makes it a state crime to enter from a foreign country at a place other than a legal point of entry.

And, you know, there's a big difference between this and the days of 1070. This has probable cause, and the examples given in the bill of probable cause are an officer physically seeing someone crossing the border or having a recording of someone crossing the border or presumably – this is not an example, but another would be like witnesses. Someone's driving along on the highway. The officer just sees them driving past them. They can't do anything. You know, they can't pull them over. They have to have had –

actual evidence that they have crossed, that someone in that vehicle has crossed the border illegally. 100%, which is the difference between reasonable suspicion, which was the days of 1070, versus probable cause, which is the standard in this particular law. And it only becomes effective, the others become effective right away once they pass, but this piece would become effective once the litigation around the Texas law, 60 days after that

becomes effective. So those are the three parts. They are all border related and voters are going to get a chance in November. Mark, what do you think about this policy? Do you have any questions for the speaker about it? No, I mean, I think this is definitely the way for states to go. Now, honestly, it would be better if states didn't have to get into the immigration area because it is mainly a federal area and the feds need to be doing their job. But if they're not, it seems to me perfectly sensible to make

illegal entry from another country, which is to say crossing the Mexican border, a state offense. And, you know, if you sort of fence it in so that it requires probable cause, et cetera, the cops aren't walking down the street and saying, hey, Paco, where's your green card? This is an actual, it's got to be actually related to illegally crossing the border. You know, the sooner the better is all I can say.

Mark, we had an election in Mexico last Saturday. What does this mean for the United States, and what does the new president mean for our immigration crisis?

The new president is Mexico's first woman president, Claudia Scheinbaum. And she's a protege of the current president. So she's very different. She's more of like a technocrat, and she's more of a regular left-winger, whereas the current president, AMLO is the initials for his name, he's a left-winger, but he doesn't map onto our politics, whereas the new president is more of like a regular faculty lounge left-winger. But...

She fits in well at Columbia.

Yeah, probably. She would fit in well there. But the thing is that Mexico, first of all, is cooperating now with us, partly because we're bribing them to reduce the flow so that Biden can help Biden get reelected. But they're also the agreement, the trade agreement we have with Mexico is up for renegotiation in 2026. And that's way more important than anything related.

related to migration. So we actually did a podcast, my current podcast on our website at cis.org is with Trump's ambassador to Mexico, Christopher Landau. And he's actually cautiously optimistic because of the trade agreement issue. In other words, they're not going to want to piss us off too much, regardless of who's president, because that is getting the trade agreement renewed

is way more important to them than whether, you know, any number of Venezuelans or Tajikistanis can traipse through Mexico and get to the U.S. border. So I'm actually, fingers crossed, I think Mexico's going to be working with us on controlling the border. That's a real optimistic take I've not heard from people who are conservative.

Because you hear all these fears. She's a socialist, yada, yada, yada. She's talked about nationalizing. Yeah, but that's a very interesting observation you've given. Thank you for sharing that. That's fantastic. Yeah, I mean, all that stuff's true. Look, she's a PhD in environmental science. Her parents are both professors. So, yes, she is. If you look at it, she lived here. She got a PhD in California. So, yeah.

All of that stuff's true. But Mexico's politics is different from ours. You know what I mean? And so I think, like I said, I'm cautiously optimistic. How closely tied are the cartels to the Mexican government? Because it seems like without really separating them, that it's almost impossible to get true cooperation in addressing the border issues here.

That's a good question. You know, there's speculation that the current president is tight with certain cartels. I don't know. I mean, I can't tell you yes or no one way or the other. What I can say is that under Trump, when Trump was president, things were that different in Mexico. And Mexico worked with us because, as an old boss of mine used to say, you teach people how to treat you.

And when we approach Mexico and say, look, we are taking these steps to control our own border and we insist that you work with us and cooperate, they're going to go along with us. When we have a weak and

and laughable leadership like we have now, the Mexicans are going to have us over a barrel in some sense. They have Biden over a barrel, and they're going to take advantage of it. Why wouldn't they? They have their own interests. Enforcing our border is our job. When we do it, then we can ask Mexico to cooperate with us, and I think they will.

I mean realistically one of the things I think that a lot of people on our side and across this country and the world don't seem to understand is that the cartels generate a huge amount of revenue for Mexico.

I mean, both in terms of remittances from people that they're traveling to this country, in terms of the travel, the hotels and all these things that are being filled up by people coming through it, and then by the money that's pumped into their economy from drug sales here. So, I mean, they have a serious financial incentive to play ball with the cartels that might well be bigger than their economy.

financial incentive to play ball with us in certain aspects. Yeah, maybe. I mean, I'm still convinced that Mexico would much rather make money the old-fashioned way rather than through selling drugs and stuff. And I think...

Look, Mexico is already a middle-income country by the standards, by world standards. It's much more developed than it used to be. Lots of immigrants are staying in Mexico because they're saying it's just too much hassle to go to the United States.

There's now a Haitian neighborhood in Tijuana. There's Cuban neighborhoods in Juarez. That leads me to the question, who is crossing our border right now? What are the percentages of the demographics? Because it's not from Mexico like it was 10, 20 years ago. Who makes up a majority of the folks crossing our border now illegally?

Mexicans and people from the northern three countries of Central America, Salvador, not even Salvador really much anymore at all, but Honduras and Guatemala, make up around half, sometimes a little more, sometimes a little less. But the other half is people from everywhere.

A lot of them from Venezuela and Cuba, Haiti nearby, but still not where it used to be. But also people from everywhere. We're getting people from Eritrea. We're getting them from Vietnam, from Kyrgyzstan, from you name it. And that actually makes it

somewhat harder for us to deal with because when they're all Mexican, well, then we just bust them to the border and hand them over to Mexican authorities. Lots of, lots of countries Americans can neither spell or find on a map. Yeah. And, and lots of countries that are not cooperative in taking back their own citizens, you know? No. Well, so I was just down there at the border on a Sunday night, early, early Monday morning. And we ran across a group of migrants around, uh, 3 34 AM. Uh,

on the other side of the fence. Interesting, we got a chance to talk to them a little bit through the fence and Border Patrol was processing them. Interesting point, Border Patrol actually opens the gate once they process them and put them on buses and send them wherever they want to go so they don't have to actually cross the fence to get here. But that aside,

subject. Every single one of those people that were there were not Mexican. There were about 40. About half of them were male, single male, maybe a little less than that, were single males. And they've all been coached on what to say in order to apply for asylum. And they all say the same thing. In this particular case, I don't know if it was because it was June, but they all claimed they were LGBTQ. And so, yeah, that's what they all said. Every single one, as we went down the line, said that, having

having not heard the ones before. So they knew exactly what to say in order to claim asylum. And they were from Colombia, Venezuela, El Salvador, in this case, I think Guatemala. So that's just anecdotally, of course, but that's as of this week, anyway, what's happening. Absolutely. And you're seeing, I don't know if you're following the news from over in the San Diego area, east of San Diego, huge numbers of Chinese are coming over.

Tens of thousands, people from Turkey in very large numbers coming over. And, you know, I'm sorry. I mean, like I was in Yuma this spring and no, it was last spring rather. And there were there was a whole bunch of people. We were out there at three thirty in the morning, too. And there were a bunch of people from Georgia, the country of Georgia. Those people weren't being persecuted. I even talked to them briefly. My Russian isn't great, but it's OK. They were just there because they could do it.

At the same place, there was a family from Angola that had been living in Brazil for years. Their kid was born in Brazil in a Brazilian passport. They came because they figured they wanted to trade up. If Biden was letting them in, they were going to take us up on it. And that's what has to end. The expectation that they're going to get away with it.

Mark, how much does the federal government spend on illegal immigration processing, you know, giving them benefits when they get them? How much do we spend annually on that? I don't know. I don't have the number at hand, but I mean, it's billions. It's a huge amount of money. Now, a lot of that's enforcement. We would be spending a lot of that if we were enforcing the law. But if we were enforcing the law by detaining people, which costs money, by sending people back, which costs money, we would be deterring

people. We would be creating the situations to spend less money in the future. What we're doing now by spending money to process people and then drop them off at the bus station is

The money we're spending is now creating more demand. Advertising for additional illegal. Absolutely. So just anecdotally, the center where they're processed in Yuma, we went by there for a moment. There's these large tents and Border Patrol does their processing there on this side of the border, of course. That, they're saying, costs anywhere between $1.5 to $1.8 million a day to run. So if you do the math on that, if you average it out, that's conservatively about $600 million just for that.

A year, just for that center. And just for that center, yeah. And they've got them in Texas and they've got them in California, you name it. Yep. And Tucson, of course, because that's the biggest, that's actually the most populous crossing point at this point into the U.S. Mark, we only have two minutes left, but anecdotally, we're also hearing that there's been a big shift from Texas to California in terms of the volume of illegal immigration. Arizona's stayed fairly steady. How much has Texas's

aggressive actions on the border driven that change? I think it's contributed to it. There's no question. Texas can't, isn't going to be able to solve the nation's illegal immigration problem, but they can make it much less appealing to cross in Texas and more appealing to keep going and cross somewhere else. Now it's not just that though, because it's combined with the Mexican army, uh,

actually being bribed by Biden to turn people back before they get to the border. And they are, in fact, doing some of that. And that's why the numbers like in the past few weeks have been down to only and I put only in air quotes, 4000 a day.

of illegal crossings total on the border instead of the unbelievable numbers of like 9 or 10,000 a day that we were seeing in December. So definitely Abbott and Texas's efforts have contributed to shifting

the flow to the West, but it can't really stop it. That can only happen if Washington changes its policies. And we'll let that be the final word. Mark Krikorian, thank you so much. Folks, you can follow him on X at Mark S. Krikorian, Krikorian with a K. Two Ks actually in there. He is the executive director of the Center for Immigration Studies. Mark, what's the website there?

We're online at cis.org. There you go, folks. Check it out. They're doing fantastic work. Appreciate all our guests today. Mark, Ben, Toma, thank you so much for joining us. Breaking Battlegrounds will be back on the air next week.

The 2022 political field was intense, so don't get left behind in 2024. 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.votewebdomain from godaddy.com. Get yours now. Welcome to the podcast segment of Breaking Battlegrounds with your host Chuck Warren. I'm Sam Stone in studio as always with us

Kylie Kipper, she's going to lead us away with the blood and gore of Kylie's Corner. In studio. Kylie Kip Campbell. I keep screwing that up. I'm so sorry. Me too. I should not be screwing that up because her husband pitches for my baseball team. I know. The Boston Red Sox. Well, the funny thing is if she had gotten married 20 years ago, she would spend about two months figuring out the last name on stuff when she signed checks. Have you changed your signature yet? No. Okay.

I haven't officially changed the name. I've got to go to some office. It's a lot of work. Before we jump into all the rest of this stuff, I know Isaiah had a little bit of an arm hiccup or whatever, had a little bit of an injury. How's his recovery coming? Is he getting close to getting back? Is he feeling better? Yeah, he's just rehabbing right now in AAA, and so hopefully... Well, they need a new setup man because their setup man just went on the DL yesterday. Yeah.

He did. Yeah. Yeah, Chris Martin went on the DL yesterday. Okay, I did know about Martin. Yeah, so, I mean, he's been their elite setup man. So we've got our fingers crossed for your guy here. We do, we do. We need him in that role. We need someone who can punch out somebody in that role. Yeah, we need a healthy Isaiah for that. But hopefully coming back soon. Well, now moving from healthy pitchers into unhealthy murderers, what do you got? Yeah, in the same city. Okay.

That's Boston. Yep. The Karen Reid trial continued this week. It was only two or three days. I can't remember. They haven't been doing full weeks because we're entering now the second month. And for folks who are – It's unbelievable it's lasted this long. Yep. We've added a bunch of new people. So for folks who haven't been with us on this podcast before, we've been following this case. We have.

Where a woman is being accused of murdering her husband, police officer husband, by backing over him about 2 a.m. outside a friend's house. In a drunken rage. In a drunken rage. That's what the Commonwealth believes. And there are serious questions in this case about whether she is being framed by the rest of his police family or not. Yes. Well, every week this goes on, I just still cannot believe how this is –

the death of a Boston police officer and how the police investigated this death. It does not give me much faith that a normal

of Boston. Murder investigation is going all that well. This is how they treat you. I mean, generally in Boston, historically, that depends where you got murdered. And who you know, apparently. Big time. Yeah. I got to meet some new friends. I mean, you need Irish friends. You need Irish friends because they have the cops. If you have the Italian friends, all you can do is call the mafia to help you out. Yeah. So this week, the main focus was on Karen Reid's taillight because, again, they said she backed into him.

And the original investigators who first showed up on the scene, the Canton police officers, they used a leaf blower, if you remember, to look for evidence to move the snow around. And they found no... Very scientific. Yes. They found no taillight. Okay. This was right on the scene. It was snowing all night. A few weeks went by and the Canton police chief was driving by the house and he found the first piece of taillight, which happens to be the largest piece of taillight ever.

And so this week on the stand was Trooper Buchanan. He is the investigator, the state trooper, because they took over the investigation because of the conflict of interest with Canton. This happened on the lawn of a Canton police officer of another Boston police officer. And the state, the state is in Massachusetts are known for being real. They're known for being serious. Yeah. Yeah. So the, so Trooper Buchanan did not find it odd that a,

Chief of police found this even though they had to be removed from the investigation because of the conflict of interest. He was like, yeah, it's not that odd. He was just driving by. Okay. They then showed footage of Karen Reed at her and John O'Keefe's house. John O'Keefe is the victim here. Of her backing into the car the morning she was going to find John O'Keefe. So you can see that she clearly backed into the car, which would explain a broken taillight. She did have a broken taillight.

The Commonwealth said that they had found or the station said that they had found glass on her bumper. And so they were showing. So remember, they don't have the footage of when they actually brought the car in into the sally port of the police station. That footage is missing. Yeah.

Just must not have been working at the time of they brought the car in. That and the Cam and Jeffrey Epstein cell. But they did have footage of the car just sitting there. And there was a point when two investigators are walking around the car looking at it. And at this point, you can see the taillight. There's a taillight there. So it's not like the whole thing is missing. If you saw photos, it looks like the whole taillight at this point is missing. But in the video, it's not missing. It's there. You can see it.

And then the video is just cut and it skips for 30 seconds. Again, the trooper that was on the stand did not think he's like, I don't I can't tell what's going on. So this leads to another point that we've talked about before here, Chuck.

Our local governments need better tech support. Yeah. Because that is really bad video editing you're talking about. It's really bad. Because I did watch it, and just out of nowhere, this person appears and starts walking by the car. So the defense is alluding to there's been tampering. Right. Which, I mean, I don't know how. I don't know how you see that there's not been tampering. Exactly. There's so many missing pieces and phones that are missing, phones that have been thrown away. Yeah.

They didn't need them, you know. Wiped them with a hammer a la Hillary Clinton? Yeah. So apparently Michael Proctor, he's the lead investigator, the state trooper. He's been connected to all the families, the family of the home where John O'Keefe was found murdered. The kids have babysat his kids. So there's that connection. He was supposedly there's rumors he was not going to testify. But yesterday they did confirm he will be testifying.

The judge did say that she was confident that this is going to end the last week of June. The trial is going to run? So will that be two plus months, the trial was? It'll be two months, two full months. Is that an average length of time for a criminal trial like this?

where there's just one person. Not to my knowledge. I mean, that's pretty long. Yeah. So we're still on the prosecutor's witnesses. We haven't even entered the defense. But I think because there has been this whole conspiracy of a cover-up, that the prosecution had to bring in all these witnesses. Otherwise, the defense would. Now, the holdup of this week, which is why there's no trial today and it ended early yesterday, was because the –

brought forward that they want to stop one of the defense team's witnesses to come on the stand. And no one was aware of this. The

Judge didn't know. And so they wanted to argue it that day. And defense and the judge were like, we're both unaware of what's, you know, that this was being brought forward. But the judge is actually a former police officer in Massachusetts and a forensic pathologist. She and she's a current emergency room physician that focuses on wounds. Wait, wait, wait. So the judge.

Yeah. Is a former police officer. No, no, no. Sorry. This is the witness that the defense is trying to bring forward. Yeah. Now, the judge, there's been rumors about her. I was going to say, that's the most impressive career track for a judge I've ever heard of. Yeah, no, no, no. There's been rumors about her connection, but I'm trying to keep the judge out of this all and not get too sucked into the internet sleuths. But...

You know, but Canton did vote to audit their police department. So that was voted amongst the citizens. So that is being done, which, you know, I don't think can hurt them. It doesn't sound like it. No. No. Yeah. So I think that's probably positive for them. Well, so who do you think did it? You changed it. You've been doing it. Who do you think changed it? Who do I think did it? Hmm. I don't know. So after. But do you think she did it?

Do I think she did it? This is just the invest. I don't know if we'll ever know. The investigation is just so botched that like there's literally I don't think there's any way to figure it out. So what you're suggesting is you and Jenna should have been put on this case and we would have found out the truth. Yeah, I think I not knowing how to investigate a murder, I think I could have at least closed off the scene, which was never done.

I could have collected the evidence and put it into the proper space, not just left it for everyone. You know, I probably wouldn't have put it in red solo cups, but I mean, look, Kylie, you are highly organized, right? I mean, no, you are. Absolutely. Uh,

It does appear that this department could use your services fairly dramatically. Organization does not appear to be their strong suit. Every time. But this seems like this happens a lot with law enforcement. And, you know, we're pro-law enforcement here. Yeah, absolutely. But there seems to be they all need to hire a true organizational phenom to be in the department because you hear this story more than you would like. Well, I think in having –

delved into all of the issues surrounding staffing at the city of Phoenix police department and the city of Phoenix generally. And we've talked about the fact that you have such a difficult time hiring it people for government because you don't pay them anywhere near enough to hire good ones. Same thing with lawyers, right? One of the issues here is that there are certain personality and character traits that go into becoming a police officer and

Those are not the same personality and character traits that go into becoming an accountant. And it's the accountant side of things where police departments are soft. Which is something I feel not only law enforcement but the military need to open a window where you can join both of them at a later stage in life. Let's go and say you have a career. And let's say you run a small business. You're 50 and like, well, you know what? I like to do law enforcement. It doesn't mean you need to be carrying a gun and doing patrolling.

But your organizational management skills would probably help the efficiency of it. I feel the same thing with the military. The military should really open that back up and say, yeah, if you're 50, you want to join. Look, we're not going to send you, but we need people running the barracks. We need people doing the mess hall. We need people doing IT. I think we need to go and get – because we're going to have this age explosion. We need to get these people back, even if they're reserves. Well, and for government, for cost containment.

You need to have that within the normal line of duty pay structure so that they're joining the police department. They're just not going through the same academy, physical requirements or whatever it is. Same thing with the military because while this doesn't happen so much with police, with military they're contracting people to do that stuff. But they're paying a ton of money to do it rather than hiring someone in like you're talking about who's older with the experience and can do that.

or who just isn't a warrior at all. Right. I mean you can see a kid coming out of high school or college who's really good at organization and numbers and all that stuff.

but who is not physical in any way, who isn't somebody who wants to carry a gun. The part of the whole strong military, people just often think it's all soldiers, right, carrying a gun. It's not. It's supply chains. It's tech. It's management. I mean, it's getting from point A to Z. I mean, for example, you could use more of those people building the Gaza Pier. Well, so interesting. Yeah, interesting you bring that up because I was just reading a book on the Third Crusade.

And one of them, it has some letters from the grandmaster of the Templar order to the pope that they included in this. And one of the things he's pointing out is you keep sending us knights. I don't need knights. I need bookkeepers. I need people who understand trade. He literally says there's a great line. He says behind every knight should stand 250 people.

to support them on the battlefield. - Yeah. - So literally, that's the ratio you're talking about. And it hasn't changed that much between that time and now. Every fighter jet, every fighter pilot,

There's hundreds of people responsible for getting that jet in the air and that pilot. Well, it was one of the funny things people don't notice with the Maverick, the sequel, the Top Gun, when he was doing, you know, breaking the sound barrier again and all of the supporting staff. Right. And he realized that, you know, I'm not doing this without you guys, but I have to do my job so you can keep your job. Right. It was a real interesting point in the movie I just, you know, found interesting. So you don't know.

I don't know. All right. Any other murder for us today? No, but there is not human on human, but there was a potentially Jamie Accord. She was actually walking on a beach in Maine. We're going to stick up there with our East Coast shenanigans. Northeast. Northeast shenanigans. She's walking on the beach of Poppin Beach State Park in Maine. Which is beautiful. I've been there. It's gorgeous. And then she just randomly sunk to her hips. Quicksand. Quicksand. Quicksand.

Chuck, for people of my generation, this is it. We have been waiting our entire – we were promised everyone would die by quicksand. When you and I were young, like Gilligan's Island, you're always avoiding quicksand. Shows everywhere. Every show had quicksand. It was really a Hollywood thing. Some people do it. But now we have quicksand in Maine. You officially have quicksand. So what happened was it's actually called super saturated sand. It's not as cool as quicksand. We're going to call it quicksand. But normal sand is 25% water. But –

quicksand is 70% water. And so what had happened was a series of winter storms rerouted a river that pours into the ocean, which has been softening the sand in the area. So she sunk to her hips and her husband had to pull her out. She said she couldn't move. So it was basically like she was... It is quicksand. Here's the thing. There needed to be a tree with a strategically placed...

vine hanging down from it that he could pull up. Yes, right. But they do have 100% survival rate.

Because you don't actually sink. It won't swallow you full. You'll actually float in it because it is water. I don't believe it. So if you want to get out, I got some tips. If you want to get out, you just lean back. Lean back. Try to get your toes to the top. And then you can use your toes and your hands to get out that way. So no yoga or Pilates student will die in quicksand is what you're telling me. Yeah. Because they have the moves. Yeah. I mean, I don't know if Jamie did any of that, but she's still, she's part of that 100% survival rate. Yeah.

All right. Well, before we get to the sunshine moment, I found a story this week that I just – well, besides the fact that Breonna Joy Gray got fired by The Hill because she's – And I'm laughing. Because she's an anti-Semite. Folks, if you don't know it, Breonna Joy Gray was Bernie Sanders' former press secretary. She's been on The Hill. She writes all this despicable diatribe. She's telling us that Hamas wants to be a beautiful, multi-faith, multi-ethnic country of freedom just like the United States.

But she got canned this week because she was talking to the sister of a Hamas hostage.

And she implored Breonna to rethink what's the suffering of these female hostages. Breonna literally rolled her eyes at her. And cut her off. Cut her off. Literally rolled her eyes. For The Hill, which I think most people think is a pretty fair publication. It's left center. But it's not. It tries to stay fairly fair. It's not what The New York Times has become. The Hill was not having any of that, right? Which brings me to The Washington Post. So this week, The Washington Post—

got a new publisher and chief executive, Will Lewis. He announced various efforts to save the company. I guess Jeff Bezos is tired of losing $100 million a year. Yeah, I mean, they're amazing. I mean, I don't even know how you lose $100 million on a newspaper, like a brand like the Washington Post. This tells you how bad it's gone down, right? Well, the staff are mad. And basically, Will Lewis brought in tough love. And he said, we are losing large amounts of money. Your audience has halved.

in recent years. Have since 2020. 2020. People are not reading your stuff. I can't sugarcoat it anymore. The staffers pushed back and Lewis responded, I've listened to your platitudes. Honestly, it's just not happening. And if what I caused to happen to you

is what he said. If what I caused to happen is you all get it, great, but the game is up. So basically, an adult has entered the building. And it was funny, I was reading this George Will article this morning, and it always shows on the right, trending articles, Washington Post. So if you want to know why the Washington Post is failing, here's the top five trending stories in the Washington Post. Number one,

A Biden rallies the free world. Trump serves in a higher cause himself. First, no, I make a point about that. And I'm not even defending Trump on this. I'm going to make a point. If Biden really cared about the free world, Joe Biden would not be running for reelection. Right. OK, is that simple? You know, you need to read the article. I just explained to you. But that's what they wrote. OK. Another one was their top five.

The Law and Order Party, meaning Republicans, defunds the IRS again. So somehow law and order now is put in sync with the IRS. Is government revenue. Yes, government revenue. And then here's the other one. The checkup with Dr. Wendt in defense of the six foot social distancing rule. Oh, my goodness. Yes.

Literally the same week. These are their top stories. So you wonder what he just says. Going back to his comment was, we're losing large amounts of money. Your audience has halved in recent years. People are not reading your stuff. I can't sugarcoat it anymore. And I can't think of anything more that sums up

I hate the word corporate media. I hate the word mainstream media. It's just these are just propagandist rags now. They don't provide anything. I actually switched to calling it the left stream media. Oh, I like that.

You should trademark it. That's actually a good idea. TM. Right now. You heard it here. Yeah. Don't jump the gun on me, any of y'all out there. It's going to take me a few days. But the funny thing about this Washington Post thing is these hip journalism professors have come up with this way to turn around. And one of their suggestions is stop being so anti-Trump. That is a fascinating, fascinating take. Well –

I mean, fundamentally, and I've had this conversation with some of the leadership of the Arizona Republic here. But all these papers that have joined the left stream are doing everything they can not to alienate half of their audience anymore, but to alienate all but 35 percent of it. If not less. If not less. So even moderate Democrats.

are being pushed out and ridiculed by these institutional newspapers and their staff. I mean, if you think equality is valuable and equity is not, which is a very normal viewpoint for centrists in any reasonable society, including this one, you don't align with them. You're being attacked. Well, and I'm telling you right now, I'm telling you right now,

I bet you can't count the number of centrists on one hand who think the six-foot rules still apply. No.

This is very much – When you see someone with a mask right now, unless there's someone – look, obviously I get people who have immunodeficiencies and things like that. Or common courtesy, you're getting over cold. Right. Yeah, sure. Be a nice human being, right? But short of that, when you see somebody, I know they are on the extreme left. Yeah. That it is a virtue signaling device, not a health device. Right.

All right, what's our sunshine moment today? So I have a story about an individual who started a ceramic studio. Uh-oh. Got the song going here. Here we go.

All right. What do you got? So he started this studio just with the idea of having a gallery, sort of an educational aspect, teaching people ceramics with a residency program. But he decided to open it to former U.S. service members. And they started the Odyssey's Veterans Clay Program.

And it's been going for 11 years. And military veterans and their families have been coming for a bunch of pottery classes that this man, Mr. Klein, offers free of charge. And so he says, you know, I'm not an art therapist or anything like that. But, you know, some of the people who have gone to it, this one woman, Rosanna, said that it's the best form of therapy, you know, compared to any therapy that she's had.

And so, you know, they say it's a very, it's a very grounding experience. I had a chance to go to just like a weekend pottery class here in Scottsdale at Scottsdale Artists School. And, you know, there's lots of different ways that you can get involved. And if you're looking to pick up a new hobby, like it's a very fun thing to do, but it's

a very grounding experience and you have to be so focused in on what you're doing that it's difficult to focus on anything else. And so it's giving people an opportunity to create and have a peaceful space. Mr. Klein said he thought that it would provide a returning soldier the peace, serenity, and calm that I experienced while doing pottery.

So I think it's just amazing that he's opening up this door. And it's something that a lot of people can get into. If you're, you know, you don't have to be good at it. I did one sculpture of a man. I think one eye is like three inches lower than the other one. But it was a really great experience to do that. That's great. That's wonderful. You know, my grandmother used to talk about this because she was big on knitting, right? And she said, listen, when you're doing it,

Your mind gets rid of everything you're worried about. Yes. Everything that you might have been affected by goes away because you have to be 100% focused on what you're doing to do it right. Pottery, obviously, same thing. It's probably the best therapy in the world. Yeah, probably one of the things that we could push as communities is art classes, music classes. Just find yourself a hobby that...

you don't have to be good at it. Just that you artistic expression. It takes you away. It'd be good for the mind, calm it down, slow it down. And, um, it'd be a great thing to do. Here's the thing. If you live in or near any major city, I can tell you for a fact, they have these type 100% available for you that are, you know, free or nearly free that you can get to. And then there's ones that you can pay to go, you know, that are more intensive or extensive. But, um,

One thing people don't realize, I was actually doing a piece. Everyone knows I work on policy for Cary Lake. I was doing some work on child care stuff. And Head Start, which is funded through the cities, is only about 66% full. They're paid the full amount, all the providers, but only about 66%. Yeah. They're paid. If a student shows up once. They get paid for it. Per month, they get paid for –

That counts as them attending for the month. That counts as attendance. They get paid. So here in Phoenix, for instance, they have 3,640 spots. The providers are paid for the 3,640 spots regardless of how many days and how many spots are used. So they say 66% of those are used. But you count somebody who shows up just one day in a month as using a spot, right? So the real number is probably less. It's probably like 50% or less that are full.

I bring that up in this context not just to bag on Head Start but to point out that almost all of these cities have these programs, whether it's child care supports like Head Start and Early Head Start, whether it's art classes, whether it is athletic programs, all these things. They are 50 percent unutilized everywhere. Yeah.

It's really easy if you go, the website will stink because we talked about the IT problem all these governments have. The website will stink. But you can find a million programs like this in your area that are free. That's wonderful. Well, folks, thanks for joining us this week at Breaking Battlegrounds. You can find us at BreakingBattlegrounds.vote or wherever you find podcasts. Please share with your family, friends. Give us a great review. And we're going to close here.

with a comment from Donald Trump on Adam Schiff describing what Adam Schiff looks like. And I just bring it out because it's funny and this is true. It's spot on. So have a good weekend and enjoy this clip from Donald Trump.

These are not stupid people. I call them watermelon head. He's got the thinnest neck I've ever seen, how it holds up that head. He's got a neck that's about a size six. Very unattractive guy, both inside and outside. And people say, oh, that's such a terrible thing to say. That's okay. Very unattractive guy. Here's the thing. These are bad people.