It's a Numbers Game: The Impact of Illegal Immigration on Representation with RJ Hauman
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Thank you for calling Amica Insurance. Hey, uh, I was just in an accident. Don't worry, we'll get you taken care of. At Amica, we understand that looking out for each other isn't new or groundbreaking. It's human. Amica. Empathy is our best policy. Welcome back to A Numbers Game. Happy Monday, everybody. I am glad for you to be here with me for one more week. So much happened with the New York City election. I didn't get to give my listeners the update on the Kansas speech, so...

I gave, for those who missed the episode, I gave the keynote address to the Bob Dolden in Kansas, which was a very nice thing, usually reserved for a congressman. I wasn't really sure why I was invited, but I was honored to be there. I flew into Kansas, had some barbecue at Joe's Barbecue in Kansas City, Missouri. Delicious, amazing, highly recommend. And then go to the speech, and I'm very nervous. I really didn't know why I was invited. And I meet with the organizers the night before, and I say, why did you have me over

a senator or a congressman, whatever. And they said, oh, because you're so edgy and funny, just be edgy and funny, which is not good guidelines for someone like me because it's like, hey, push every boundary you possibly can. Like I'm a child, like you need to give me parameters. Like I work very well within the lines, but like if I don't see the lines, I, you know, it's driving, like I drive like someone, like a woman from New Jersey, I'm all over the place. So anyway, I, uh,

I'm very nervous. I write my speech and then it dawns on me like that right before the speech, nobody is going to know who I am. Like, I guess if you were like, listen to me on my podcast, but I mean, that's not the whole audience. It's all donors and, and establishment people and elected officials. They're definitely have no, they're not listening to my podcast or not watching me or reading my sub stack. Those are like the people, like those are not like the electives. So I walk into like the room. First of all, the mic's not working, which is, or it's like working like kind of like very shoddy.

I go into the room, this very well-dressed, very elegant Asian, older Asian woman walks up to me and goes, can we get a picture? And I go, oh my God, you know who I am? And she goes, no, I don't know, but I get pictures with everybody. And I was like, oh my God, this is going to be bad.

So I meet some of the elected officials, the Senate president, people running for governor. It was really nice, whatever. But once again, no one knew who I am. I'm having to be introduced to everybody for the first time and then make the small talk and then talk about my pack and nonprofit with education. And I text my one friend who's a political.

political consultant from Kansas. And I'm like, this is going to go horrible. He goes, no, no, it's a Kansas audience. They give standing ovations to everybody. It's just how they operate. So the state treasurer gets up, he gets a standing ovation. The first speaker gets up, he gets a standing ovation. The German ambassador's assistant got a standing ovation. I'm like, okay, I'm cool. I'm, you know, it's going to be fine. Everything's going to work out fine for me.

I go give the speech. And once again, I'm looking at the audience. They have no idea who I am. So I say, I'm the guy who made the beeper joke on CNN. And you hear this like collective, oh, yeah, in the audience. I'm like, oh, OK, well, this is going great. So I give the speech and I go on about how Republicans support immigration reduction. And it's time that all the Kansas legislators, congressmen and senators, including those who live in Florida, because one

Um, Kansas Senator may have a residence, may spend most of his time in Florida instead of Kansas, but, um, all the Kansas congressmen and senators should back, uh,

immigration reduction. We can't let farmers have low skilled workers flood our country in the name of like picking crops. I just go off. And then I talk about AI policy and how Kansas needs to regulate AI because they're taking jobs. And I said, if you want to make sure you turn Trump supporters into AOC supporters, make sure that our unemployment numbers reach 20 percent in the country, especially white collar workers. And

And then I go into education, how Kansas ranks 33rd in the country. I lay it off with like a nice thing about Bob Dole and the legacy of Bob Dole. I could not overemphasize how few people clapped at the end of my speech. It was so tepid. Absolutely.

Did not care. Oh, this was the best part. Wait, one last thing. The only other famous Republican from Kansas. I looked at my notes. This came back to me. Only other famous Republican from Kansas that I know of is Dwight Eisenhower.

And I said in my speech, Dwight Eisenhower had a much easier legacy to wrap up than Bob Dole's. He won D-Day, he built the highways, and he deported the illegal immigrants with Operation Wetback, which was a real thing. You could look it up, Operation Wetback. I said, Trump should have named Tom Holman the czar of Operation Wetback 2.0. They did not like that. Apparently...

That was not cool with them, to which one evangelical lady walked up and said, I can't believe you said the word wetback. It's like saying retard. I said, retards back. OK, you could say retard now. OK, it's Trump's America.

So they also did not think that that was funny. I was this was not my audience. This was not a New York audience. This is people who deal with politically incorrect conversations. I heard that the speaker of the House was biting the inside of his cheeks when I was talking about immigration reduction and slamming farmers for bringing in cheap labor, taxpayer expenses.

Um, so that was that, that was Kansas one woman. And I'm going to apologize for my swearing. One state legislator walked up to me at the end of my speech and said, so were you born without Fox to give, or did that come recently? And I was just like, Nope, born this way, just ready for a barn burner.

Anyway, okay. I was going to tell you way more about Kansas, but it's not worth it. But it was very funny. It was very my life in a nutshell where you end up in a very cool setting, but no one really knows why you're there. You don't know why you're there. And kind of everything goes wrong because you can't shut your mouth and just give like a normal nice thing. You can't just play by the rules, which is very how my life has always been. Okay. So two things. One, this episode, the main point of it, which I will get to in the second part, was recording.

requested by more than one email person receiving email listener over email. I get all these Ask Me Anything segment emails now, which I love. You can email me, Ryan at NumbersGamePodcast.com, and I try to answer every email or get to it on the show.

Well, more than one person asked the same question. So this episode, the interview part and the second part will be completely about the listener questions, which is about illegal immigration when it comes to congressional redistricting and it comes to reapportionment and getting and the census taking illegal immigration information. I will get to that. But first, this happened recently.

just as I'm about to tape, uh, which is a few days before it airs Pew research, which is one of the premier, uh,

nonprofits that analyzes elections, especially presidential elections, came out with their post-2024 analysis. Now, I know we've gotten this from before, and I know that we are, you know, half a year, more than half a year since the 2024 election, and people generally don't care. They've moved on. I care, and I am fascinated by this, and I want to talk about some highlights in the Pew Research data about the 2024 election. So first,

From 2016 to 2024, the Trump Coalition

In 2016, 88% of all people that voted for Donald Trump were white. By 2024, that number had dropped to 78%. His support among the number of voters in his coalition that were Hispanic has essentially doubled. And those who are black have essentially tripled, which is fascinating. Well, the Democrat coalition from Clinton to Kamala has actually gotten whiter.

And they've lost a significant portion of both their black and Hispanic voter base, which isn't shocking. Of the people who voted in the 2020 election, right, that voted for Trump, 11% did not vote for Trump in 2024. They didn't vote at all. 3% voted for Kamala. So it was a 14 point drop off among people who voted for Biden.

Five percent voted for Trump. Number three for Kamala from Trump's Trump had a net gain of two from Biden people. And 15 percent of people who voted for Biden in 2020 did not go and vote for Kamala. Of the people who didn't vote at all in 2020, 14 percent of both didn't vote in 2020, but voted in 2024.

14% voted for Trump, 12 voted for Kamala. So Trump got an advantage, a boost in the raw vote total of not only people who had voted for Biden and then voted for Trump, but also people who didn't vote at all and voted for Trump, which is part of the reason why he won the popular vote. Among those voters,

Building on that, voters who didn't vote in 2016 but voted in 2020 favored Biden by five points over Trump. People who didn't vote in 2020 but voted in 2024 favored Trump over Kamala by 12 points. It's an immense group of people who are inactive voters, infrequent voters.

People who are all of a sudden becoming very new and fresh to the political scene. Very interesting. OK, Trump's support among his percentage of the vote that he received among certain demographics from 2016 and 2020 to 2024. This is fascinating. Among men.

Trump's growth of the male vote has increased three points from 2016. It went from 52% of the overall male vote to 55%. Among the female vote, it has increased by seven points, from 39 to 46. This is what I'm about to say about the male-female thing. I know there's a lot of numbers coming at you, but take it in for a second.

Among white men, his numbers actually declined by three points. Among white women, his numbers increased by four points. Among black men, now that was from 2016 to 2024. The numbers for minorities are from 2020 to 2024, just asterisks. It's not that important, but it's worth analyzing. From 2020 to 2024, among black men, his numbers increased by nine points. Among black women, by five.

Among Hispanic men, 11 points. Among Hispanic women, 13 points.

Trump's gain in the popular vote and Trump's win in the popular vote was because women, especially non-white women, voted for him. That is the headline, right? Of course, the male vote counted. But Trump's growth among females with white women and Latino women was larger than his gains among Latino men and white men.

And only black men surpassed black women, which is not that surprising at all. Anything else? Oh, the white vote overall. Trump's numbers improved by one point from 2016, 54 to 55. Among blacks, it went from six to 15. That's a nine point gain. Among Latinos, it went from 28 to 48. That's a plus 20 point swing. Huge. And among Asians, it went from 30 to 40. So that's plus 10. Pretty significant.

It was the Latino voters is very significant. He won Latino men by two points. He went from losing them 57 to 39, losing them by 18 points in 2020 to winning them by two points, 50 to 48 in 2024. Okay.

Trump's base also became younger, which we all knew, but it's fascinating to see the numbers. Among all 18 to 29-year-olds, Trump went from getting 28% of their support in 2016 to 39% in 2024. He went from losing that by 30 points to gaining that, so losing that by 19 points. So he wasn't losing them by huge numbers.

The same is true among 30 to 49 year olds. My demographic millennials. This is the group that built Obama's coalition. These are Obama voters. People forget he went from losing them by 11 points, 51 to 40 in 2016 to losing them by two points. Millennials basically broke even Trump Harris, the Obama coalition coalition.

is a solidly mixed bag now. The biggest group to sit there and support Trump were Gen Xers, 50 to 64-year-olds. He went from winning them by six points to winning them by 14 points. And among people 65 and older, he went from winning them by nine to winning them by three. There was a movement towards Democrats with them. But remember, I've said this to people before, I'm kind of blue in the face from it.

People kind of have a frozen time of when, what a senior citizen is. Like they think, oh, I'm thinking of my grandma from when I was a childhood or my neighbor from when I was a kid who was 80, 20 years ago. Well, there's likely that person doesn't exist anymore. The person's probably gone to their eternal rest. They're not a longer with us. Remember, Henry Fonda, who was very conservative, is not a senior citizen. Jane Fonda is, right?

People who were anti-war activists in the 60s and 70s are now in their 70s and 80s. Those are the people who are sitting. Archie Bunker is dead, but Meathead is a senior citizen. Think of it like that. People are wondering how did the seniors become so left wing? They didn't just become so left wing. Left wing people have aged into being senior citizens. And that's what's important.

Trump won men under Trump, won all men, but Trump won men under 50, which he had lost in 2020. And his growth among women between the ages of 18 to 49, a group that he lost by 36 points in 2016. He only lost by 14 points in 2024. This is the women who were supposed to win for Kamala because of abortion. All they cared about is abortion, cared about abortion.

Trump made 18 point swing among that demographic, people who are supposed to care about abortion more than anything else in the world. All right. Which groups when it comes to education? Trump made gains with college educated whites. He went from 38 to 43. The only demographic, though, to give Trump a majority of support were non-college educated white people. Trump won 64 percent of non-college educated white people.

Oh, sorry. He also won non-college educated Hispanic people as well. He won them by a single point. So non-college educated Hispanics and non-college educated whites. Without those two groups, Kamala Harris would have won.

And I think it's important to say those things out loud because I have to hear, and this will be in the email from the listener later in the last segment of the show, and no shame to them, but this is what I hear all the time is, how do we win back white college-educated women, or not just white, just college-educated women in the suburbs? We hear this ad nauseum.

What we should be talking about is how do we deliver for the only people that make sure Republicans win the White House? How do we deliver policy gains for people who are delivering the White House and Congress and Senate for Republicans? That is non-college educated whites and non-college educated Hispanics. If the policies we are advocating do not fight for our voters, why are we doing them?

And there's a lot of policies we do which hurt them, hurt them a lot. High school voters without a high school degree, which have backed Trump in 2016 by seven points, backed Trump by 20 points this time. 20 points this time. Huge swings. By religion, fraud.

Trump gained with basically every religious group. Protestants, he gained by six points since 2016. Evangelical, white evangelicals by six points. Catholics by three points. Unaffiliated by four points. Black Protestants by six points. Latino Catholics by 10 points. Non-white Protestants by 15 points. They're all reflective in the other stuff. Okay, last part of this entire autistic rambling that I've just had on the 2024 election. I promise this is the

Probably the last time I reflect on it and have a whole segment on it. Immigrants. Among people who were born in the USA, Trump lost the American native born American vote.

in the 2020 election by three points, which is lower than the overall average because the immigrant vote voted for Joe Biden by 21 points. The immigrant vote voted for Hillary Clinton by huge margins in the CNN exit poll, which is different than Pew. But immigrants delivered Democrats the popular vote and delivered Democrats a lot of swing states. That is why you will never hear the Democrats back away from it. They need...

these voters. In the 2024 election, Trump won Americans, people who were born in America, American born, natural born Americans. He won them by two points, 50 to 48, which is about what he got in the overall popular vote. Among naturalized citizens, immigrants, Trump lost them only by four.

There was a 17 point swing among immigrants in this country, which is crazy. I never thought we would see this. I mean, still, they voted for Joe Biden. They voted for Kamala Harris. So it's not like they were, you know, MAGA hard right Trump people. But the fact that they voted that close and it wasn't a 20 point loss. So where did this come from? Which immigrants made this swing? This is going to surprise you.

In 2020, 56% of white immigrants, i.e. Australians, Canadians, New Zealanders, Kiwis, and Europeans, voted for Joe Biden by a 15-point margin.

White immigrants voted for Donald Trump by a 16 point margin in 2024. There was a 31 point swing. It is the largest single swing of any immigrant group and actually of any group that it's even larger swing than Hispanics. 31 point swing among white immigrants from Canada, Europe. I guess there's some whites from South Africa, Canada, Europe.

Kiwis and Australians. Wild. Among Hispanic immigrants, Trump won, according to Pew Research, Trump won Hispanic immigrants by three points. He lost them by 19. So it was a 22 point swing among Hispanic immigrants and among Asian immigrants. He lost them only by five.

After losing by 30 last time, 25 point swing for Asian immigrants. There's no information on black immigrants. I guess they don't have enough sample size to make an accurate telling. Okay. Why? Why did immigrants all of a sudden become Republican?

Obviously, the economy plays a big part of that, right? There's no rhyme or reason or say that otherwise. The economy was sour and they paid back from it. But Trump campaigned on mass deportations. There was no hidden agenda that, oh, Trump didn't really campaign on immigration. He campaigned hard on immigration. I think, and this is my belief, and there's a little bit of data to back this up, but it's more my belief than it is the data.

And if there is, I can go into this at a different time. I believe that the Black Lives Matter riots in 2021 and the end of 2020 really changed people's opinion on a lot of things when it came to how the Democratic Party governs and then the COVID lockdowns.

That absolutely affected people into sitting there and reanalyzing how Democrats act. The education policies, not only of the transgender stuff in schools, but closing specialized schools, which so many Asian immigrants and European immigrants benefit from.

And then also the insane stuff when it comes to the transgender thing. This is not just for, not just for Latino immigrants and Asian immigrants, but also European immigrants. Remember, it's Europe, which is at the forefront at stopping transgender surgery for minors. It's Sweden. It's Norway. It's England. These are not, you know, right wing hardcore countries. These are countries that Bernie Sanders wants to model America after. They are at the forefront of all these fights.

So I think that that is fascinating and I think it's worth telling. And I don't know if it means something bigger going forward, if this was a blip in the map, but a 31 point swing vote change among European immigrant, white immigrants and a 12 point change among Hispanic immigrants and an 11 point change among Asian immigrants and

from 2020, 2024 is why that number among immigrants overall has changed significantly. Okay. I'm not going to talk about that anymore. That's the 2024 election. That's the best data that there is out there. We put a pin in this. We put a bow in it. I'm landing in the plane. That is fascinating. It's the kind of the gold star as post-election analysis goes. What the Democrats and Republicans campaign on in the future will be based off of what that information says.

All right, so now go to the question. The question that I received from listeners

was about the census in 2030. And the question was looking forward into how the census is coming out and how congressional districts are being up reapportioned based on population. How is the legal immigrants affecting the number of seats different states are receiving, different congressional districts are receiving? This matters not only for the House, but for the Electoral College.

Right. You get the number of electoral college votes that you get is based off of how many house seats you have in any given state. Right after COVID in 2022, a left wing organization called the Brennan Center established

And they have this image that's floated on social media. They show that based on current trends, states like Tennessee, Arizona, Georgia were all expected to gain one seat. Florida and Texas were supposed to gain four seats each, while California, New York, and Illinois lost a combined 10 seats, right? This massive reshuffling.

This came out of Michael Lee, by the way, the Brennan Center. And it was basically sitting there and saying COVID had so affected the amount of blue state voters leaving that in dark blue states, Illinois, California, Rhode Island, Minnesota, and New York and Oregon were slated to lose a total of 12 seats. The sole swing state, Pennsylvania, was supposed to lose one, while red states like Idaho, Utah, Tennessee, Texas, and Florida were supposed to gain 10. And swing states, North Carolina, Georgia, and Arizona were supposed to gain one apiece. Okay.

So you might have seen that kind of floating around. There was another one, but another graph, another map given by Michael Lee last year, an updated map since COVID showing the population changes because obviously we do every decade. So he's just updating it year by year. The Brennan Center found that instead of losing two seats, Illinois was slated to lose one. Instead of losing three, New York was going to lose two. And instead of losing five, California was going to lose three.

Tennessee and Georgia, which was supposed to gain seats, are not going to gain seats anymore. Red states are going to be losing more and more leverage during the reshuffling. Why is that? Why are these states not gaining as many seats? The answer is immigration.

Immigration and the obviously the number of people leaving states has slowed since COVID, though it has continued. But immigration is padding the numbers for failed blue state governance. Let's take New York City, for example, between 2023 and 2024.

58,158 Americans left the borough of Brooklyn for greener pastures. There was a natural increase, which is births minus deaths of 15,000. So that means that Brooklyn should have had a population shrunk of 12,700. But 37,000 immigrants moved to the borough in the meantime.

So that means they actually grew by 25,000, despite the fact that nearly 30,000 New Yorkers said, New York can't be governed. We got to get out of here. We got to leave. We got to go to Florida, North Carolina, Georgia, Connecticut, you know, wherever.

If you look at New York City as a whole, in one year time, 91,000 people left New York City. There was a natural growth of 34,600. That means there should have been a loss of 56,000. Over the course of a decade, that means New York City should have lost one congressional seat. But the number of people who immigrated to New York from

mostly the third world, but across the globe was 144,000. So despite lockdowns and rising crime and sky high taxes, New York grew by 87,000 people because of immigration. That means New York is on track not to not only not to lose three seats, but may not name they may not even lose two seats.

The same is true for Illinois and California. Now, some red states experience this kind of boom to Florida and Texas have loads of immigrants, lots of illegals. And but there's also a lot of Americans moving there, which is why they're going to gain four seats each.

Immigration rewards failing blue states and robs red states of seats that they should have gained. You know, Tennessee and Georgia should gain a house seat each, but they're not probably not going to. This is why big blue states fight so hard against deporting illegal immigrants. Their numbers are dependent on who's being counted by mass immigration.

There was researchers that went back to 1980 to see how congressional districts have been affected by illegal immigration. They said this, under the hypothetical scenario of not counting people who were not in the country illegally, two seats would have switched in 1980. California and New York would have lost a seat. Indiana and Georgia would have each gained one. 1990, California would have lost two seats. Texas would have lost one while Kentucky and Kentucky

And Montana would have gained one. In 2000, California would have lost three seats. Texas would have lost one. Indiana, Michigan, Mississippi, and Montana would have all gained one. In 2010, Louisiana, Missouri, Montana, Ohio, North Carolina would have all gained a seat. California would have lost three. Texas and Florida would have lost one. And in 2020, California and Texas would have each lost a seat. And Ohio and New York would have each gained one. So put that, know those numbers together.

Since 1980, California has 10 extra congressional seats that they would have not had had it not been for illegal immigration. Ten. Think of what the California delegation has voted on since the last, I don't know, 45 years. Amicare, amnesties, cash for clunkers, green new deals, all of them. Not that all of them were benefited from illegal immigration.

Illegal immigrants absolutely padded it while, you know, states like Ohio, Montana, Georgia, Kentucky, Massachusetts, Louisiana, they all lost representation. And you could see it in how it how how many votes it takes to win some House seats. Some states and some seats, it's there's 350, 375,000 people who vote.

In Ohio's 9th congressional district, which is I think Warren Davidson's seat, there are 375,000 people who vote in that last presidential election. Go to Nydia Vasquez's seat in New York's 7th district, only 221,000 people vote because a lot of the people are illegal. 150,000 extra people vote in this one district in a district with more Americans than a district with not more Americans.

So, yeah, it's unfair representation. People are being robbed. Your vote counts a lot more if you live in Nita Vasquez's Brooklyn-based district than if you live in the middle of Ohio because you're around American citizens versus illegal immigration. What's the solution to that? You know, how do we get forward on this? Well, my guest this week has been writing about this and talking about this for a very long time. He's an expert on the issue. We're going to have him up next.

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With me today is RJ Holman. He is the president of the National Immigration Center for Enforcement. RJ, thanks for being here. You wrote a great article on Fox News saying that illegal immigrants should no longer be counted in the census data that counts congressional districts, right? First, discuss with me how desperate some Democrats are to make sure illegals are counted. You brought up Anita Vasquez saying that she needs immigrants in her district to keep her district.

Yeah, well, first, thanks for having me on, Ryan. And you pronounced my last name as Homan, which I love every time. He's my idol. Great guy. But, you know, let's get something straight here. I mean, you know, congressional seats and electoral college votes are supposed to represent the American people, citizens, you know, voters, not everybody who's physically present on our soil. But, you know, right now, that's not what's happening. Under current law, the census counts all persons. So you're talking non-citizens and

Even illegal aliens, I mean, for the purpose of, you know, apportioning congressional districts. And what's very important, too, is determining presidential electors. So with this massive illegal alien population that Biden brought in the country purposely, that party's effectively rewarded with more political power, while states who actually enforce the law, they're being punished. I mean, and that is upside down, and it's happening in plain sight. Back in 2020, President Trump, you know, tried to fix this.

He issued an order that would have excluded illegal aliens from the apportionment count. But on day one, guess what happened? Biden reversed it, ensuring all non-citizens, regardless of their immigration status, so illegal aliens and the mass migration he does through legal pathways are counted the same as citizens when it comes to distributing power.

And I mean, in practice, like states like California, where you have sanctuary policies under Newsom, OK, you have millions of non-citizens. You get more seats in Congress and more sway in electoral college than they otherwise would. And so you follow the law. You're Ohio. You're Alabama. What do you do? You lose out. This is a corrosive matter, dilutes the votes of American citizens and warps our entire representative system.

And it creates a massive incentive, I think, for open border states to keep flouting federal immigration law. California can't always be offset by people fleeing when illegal aliens come in mass. Right. So are there any bills in Congress to take to take this on?

Well, I'm going to sound dumb here, so consumed with reconciliation. But last Congress, I think it is still introduced. There is a great solution. It's called the Equal Representation Act. That was I think it was Warren Davidson and Bill Hagerty. What they would do is two basic things. They'd add a citizenship question to the census and require that only citizens be counted for purposes of congressional apportionment and electoral vote allocation. I mean, that's it. There's no games. There's no guesswork for an approach like that.

It's a straightforward fix to restore fairness to our entire political system because, you know, let's be honest.

Representation, Ryan, that's power. And right now we're handing that power to people who ain't even supposed to be here, that they're making communities unsafe. They're corrupting our system. And at the same time, we're telling the American voter their vote means less. That's not democracy, man. That's a distortion. Well, what has have you ever pulled this issue? Because I started looking at for polls on this and there were not many. There was like a few in 2019 and the American and the public were favorably.

favoring favoring the idea of citizenship being asked on the census. Was that a was that if you ever pulled this question, just curious. Well, first, you got to make sure you pull the right people, because we have a very big poll, the presidential election and stuff. You know, illegal aliens are impacting it. But no, I think the American people, I mean, on both parties, I mean, I can't I don't have data in front of me. That would be a great thing to kind of capture. I mean, if you ask an American citizen, do you want your vote to be diluted?

both for Congress, your congressional representation, and your electoral college votes, everybody's going to say, hell no, that's not what the founding fathers intended.

Well, that's a good leading question, though. It had to be written a little differently. But yeah, so you mentioned resolution, sorry, reconciliation in Congress. Tell my listeners what is going on with Congress right now over the right. First of all, reconciliation bill is part of the big, beautiful bill. It's the vote that they need for 51 votes in order to pass. It's not the 60 vote threshold.

Explain what is going on with immigration specifically in reconciliation right now on the Republican side.

Well, aside from being in Texas, that's part of why I'm sweating right now being engaged on Capitol Hill from down here as well. Listen, you know, Republicans did send a decently strong bill to the Senate. But one thing that pisses us off, and rightfully so, President Trump was elected on a key electoral mandate. It was loud and clear. It's mass deportation. Not the worst of the worst. Not just the worst. Everybody should be eligible for deportation, and ICE should get the resources to do so.

Congress passed a resolution which gave the amounts of money for each functionary. Homeland Security was a $90 billion. Judiciary, which is ICE, was $110. You know what ICE got? $74 billion in that House version. So they treated a number that was a floor like a ceiling. And now what's over in the Senate, you're starting to see a scrub. It's called the birdbath. A

A lot of the pay for mechanisms of Medicare, Medicaid eligibility, getting rid of both immigrants and illegal aliens from any eligibility that would help pay for enforcement. That stuff's getting scrubbed. Wait, wait, I want to, but before you, before you go any further, okay. What he says the birdbath is, is that there's something called a Senate parliamentarian who is supposed to be a nonpartisan figure. Yeah. Goes to the reconciliation bill and sits there and says, if anything is not to do with,

budgetary items that cannot be in the bill. So for instance, and I'm just making something up, an abortion ban could not be in a reconciliation bill because it has nothing to do with the budget. And the Senate parliamentarian's role is to go through and take things out that have nothing to do with the budget.

A number of key Republican items have have been iced out by the Senate parliamentarian because of the Byrd rule named after Senator Byrd, who's been dead for quite a while now. The but so you're saying is that a lot of immigration enforcement has not made it through the Senate parliamentarian. Well.

Well, we don't know in terms of the immigration enforcement stuff. Listen, ICE had a lot of pay-fors. There was a lot of fee increases. Okay, you know, you put asylum at about two grand or something. You use it to deter forms of, you know, I call it a legal entry under the guise of legality. But the biggest thing here that's very irritating, the parliamentarian is an unelected, smoke-filled backroom figure. Senator Thune, the majority leader, kept her on as a show of good faith.

She serves, Elizabeth McDonald serves at the pleasure of Senate Republicans. If she scrubs this whole damn thing, it's on their plate. But what we're seeing, though, in terms of Medicare, Medicaid, tax credit eligibility, where they're allowing illegal aliens, tell me why.

I mean, it is still budgetary in nature when you're when you're getting rid of eligibility of someone who shouldn't even freaking be here. OK, that's going to save the American taxpayer money. That's going to give the program more integrity. How is that not compliant with the Byrd rule? And the Byrd rule, keep in mind, the reason they're doing reconciliation, you only need 51 votes, a simple majority. If it is not compliant with Byrd, just like everything else in the Senate, you need 60 votes, which is, as always, a lost cause.

Yeah, and that's why I think – partly why I think the AI policy, which I talked about in a different podcast, that didn't make it through the Byrd rule either on AI technology. So is there anything making it through this immigration? I mean you mentioned ICE. So is border wall funding getting through any of this other stuff?

Yeah, I mean, well, first, you know, President Trump wasn't elected on build the border wall to port sub not all. OK, the border wall funding is fully there. It's 45 billion. The border is secure. A lot of that money needs to go to ICE. But let me tell you something, the most egregious thing that's happening kind of in the shadows of reconciliation is the DHS appropriations bill. OK, the traditional funding mechanism for fiscal year 26 was marked up and left the House Appropriations Committee the day before yesterday. There

There were two amendments that were included in it by Republicans allowed in. They were the most egregious things I've ever seen. First, one of them essentially re-puts Biorcus's enforcement priorities back as like a sense in the text where it's only criminals, terrorists, threats to public safety. Hell, it's even weaker than Biorcus because Biorcus said recent illegal entries also are priorities for removal.

Mayorkas was President Biden's DHS secretary who let immigration flood the country. Just in case anyone who didn't know what we're talking about, that's what we're talking about. Go ahead. He's the invasion architect. And his memos were guided at all. Civil guidelines for enforcement, they called it. It essentially handcuffed ICE. So they kind of mimic that.

As we're seeing, you know, as ICE is just getting directed essentially by like TV clips about, hey, worst of the worst criminals. No, we got to go after freaking everybody, especially when that money comes in. And second, what they did, too, is told ICE they gave a directive. President Trump in that EO2 said ICE can enforce the law anywhere, whether it's a school, a church, anywhere. ICE has to go arrest the person that they're going to go after.

What they did in this language that they put in there is they said ICE has to do a sensitivity assessment of wherever they're going to go raid. So ICE now has to sit back and check their feelings about is this a good place that we should go to? Enforce the damn rule of law and act in accordance to the EO. Republicans are going to pay for that, and that stuff better be stripped in rules. What Republican proposed that amendment?

Mark Amadei is the House of Props subcommittee chair who did it in Nevada. He's the sole... The guy who influenced it was Juan Siskamani from Arizona. Both of them... Juan Siskamani from Arizona and Mark Amadei from Nevada and Juan Siskamani from Arizona. Yep. That sounds about right. Juan Siskamani is terrible on immigration and Amodee's always been squished. So that is not surprising. But Amodee... Siskamani has a border district. You'd think that he would care more. Um...

Is there? Okay, I have one question I want to ask you. This wasn't even my topic, so I want to ask you. I keep hearing that deportations are not that high. Is that true? I hear arrests are high. I hear people are more, there are more people in detention centers.

But the actual deportations are not happening. Is that true? Yeah, they're 100 percent true. I mean, they were trying to count to some extent the beginning Coast Guard at sea repatriation, stuff like that. Listen, the American people. Why? Why? Why a deportation? Is it because it's a budget issue?

Well, yeah, it is a budget issue. Listen, ICE is in the red. ICE is struggling. But here's my point. The American people, your listeners, I mean, we all understand that ICE is operating on a very low budget that the Biden administration, you know, they kept them constrained for a reason. They're abolishing it from within. You don't need to protect

that you're arresting, detaining and deporting en masse. You need to go to Congress and say, guys, listen, the American people spoke loud and clear. We're freaking struggling. Give us the full 110 billion you authorize and then we can do it. Stop playing games. The American people will see if mass deportation is either watered down or he doesn't need that. So the big, beautiful bill needs to pass so we can get the deportation. OK. Yeah, that's it. They need the money.

RJ, where can people go to follow your work?

Yep, it's Nice Enforcement with 1E.org. I'm also a fellow at the Heritage Foundation's Border Security and Immigration Center. We lead the charge up there. Also operate the Mass Deportation and Border Security Coalition up on Capitol Hill in the drove passage of HR2. But Nice Enforcement, the National Immigration Center for Enforcement. ICE is nice. They shouldn't be maligned. President Trump is empowered. That is great. Great branding, RJ. Thank you for coming on this podcast. I appreciate it.

Of course. Thanks, Ryan. Hey, we'll be right back after this.

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Build a show around your interests and what you guys are talking about. So please email me, Ryan at numbersgamepodcast.com, Ryan at numbers, plural, gamepodcast.com. I'll take a question on basically anything and we can go through it and I can try to find the best, most accurate information about political questions you always want us to know about.

This question comes from Patrick.

that were scared away from being seen as trashies for supporting Trump. In short, does J.D. scare the hoes? Thank you, Patrick. I have the best listeners. Thank you, Patrick, for that question. OK, so I don't think it's all about scaring the hoes. Right. And I'm I worked for J.D. I know him. I'm a fan of him politically. So this is not a criticism of him, first and foremost.

I think part of why the suburbs have shifted is changing demographics. Look at the suburbs of Atlanta. When George Bush won them in 2004, they were 66 percent white. They are now 33 percent white. As we said earlier in the podcast, the only group of people voting for a majority nationwide. But this is true in Georgia. It's also true that white college people.

Voters vote Republican in Georgia as well. But white voters are the ones who actually give Trump his majority as Republican, their majorities. Right. Those being going from 66 to 33 is why the Georgia suburbs have moved so far to the left. But that's so that's that's a big part of it.

Secondly, when we're talking about the female vote, specifically the college educated female vote, let's look at the examination, the numbers from Catalyst, right? Catalyst is the Democratic firm that also looked at the 2024 elections. There was a six point difference amongst college educated women from Mitt Romney in 2012 to Trump in 2024.

That's it. It was the six points. And six points means a lot. Six points among 50% of the population will swing suburbs for sure, right? Especially in certain regions of the country. But that six points is reflective of other college educated women around the world. We saw similar shifts in Canada, in Britain, in Europe. I think that...

I don't know if I mean, maybe there's a one or two points that would sit there and swing back because J.D. is different. I think J.D. has a lot of advantages that Trump doesn't have. I think that being young, having a young family, I think his wife, Usha Vance, is a major asset to him that has not been talked enough about. I think him being more intellectual absolutely would not scare as many people. But I think that the media apparatus and the social media apparatus will make him scary.

They're going to make him too divisive about a million different issues. And he speaks. He's spoken a lot. He's spoken very thoughtfully. And unfortunately, we don't live in a society that rewards thoughtfulness. So when those things are boiled down to talking points for 30 second TikTok videos or 30 second Instagram videos, they will probably be viewed as negative.

can he win some of them back yeah maybe um can he get back to mitt romney numbers i don't think so but you don't have to get back to mitt romney numbers in order to win them um that's my take on that i think the trump the jd trump coalition whoever the nominee is in 2028 um is built on the backs of the working class especially working class minorities that have moved to the right um but also more

Working class white voters as well. There's a lot of ground to still gain considering a lot of them. I think 25 or 25 to 30 percent of all Kamala Harris voters were whites without a college degree. There is a lot more of that fruit to squeeze juice out of.

Anyway, that's my opinion. Hope you guys like it. Hope you guys like this podcast. Please like and subscribe on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, wherever you get your podcasts. I promise that every episode is going to be this autistic. But if you like the numbers and you like the data, please give me a five-star review. I really appreciate it. It helps boost this podcast. Take five seconds of your time. It's the Christmas gift you guys didn't give me. I'm just joking. Thank you guys so much. I will see you guys on Thursday.

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