Erick Erickson 4-23-26 HR 2

Ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls, welcome. It is Eric Erikson here, the phone number 877937425, should you wish to be on the program. I would be delighted to have you if you text Eric, E-R-I-C-K, to 33777. You get the live stream, the show notes, the podcast. You can follow me on Instagram because I'll be putting up golf course pictures for the next couple of days. We'll see. I'm debating whether or not to take my fancy camera. I may take my fancy camera. I don't know. We'll see. This course I'm supposed to play. It is in the middle of nowhere. In fact, I was told that I have to have a car service take me there and back because Uber doesn't go out that far into the desert. So I'm intrigued. It's right by Area 51, too. So who knows what we'll see. Aliens. Aliens on the golf course. All right, we got to move on. So there's an interesting thing happening, and you should keep your eye on it. Every president becomes a lame duck. It typically happens after the midterms, but it's a slow and creeping thing up to the midterms. And it becomes a obvious thing as people start to move on. Lame Duck originated in the stock exchange of London to describe brokers who defaulted on debts, functioned like an injured bird, unable to keep it with the flock. In the 1830s, it began to transition into American politics as terminology. In 1761, Horace Walpole wrote in a letter to Horace Mann, quote, do you know what a bull, a bear and a lame duck are? The first known use of the term to refer to politicians was January 14, 1863, in an issue of the Congressional Globe, which at the time was the official record of the U.S. Congress, quote, in no event could the Court of Claims be justly obnoxious to the charge of being a receptacle of lame ducks or broken down politics. Now, what essentially it has come to mean is someone who is term limited out of office and their power begins to go away. People begin to treat them like a lame duck and they begin to move on from that person. Donald Trump is a lame duck. He is more so a lame duck after the midterm elections. Right now in the run-up to the mid-term elections, Republicans kind of want him, kind of need him, kind of like him, he's useful to them. He can endorse and help them raise money. He can clear primaries for them. He can find competitors for them if they aren't nice to him. He has a little bit of power. But behind the scenes, there are growing conversations.

What comes next? Who's it going to be? The thinking is that it's JD Vance's if he wants it, but JD Vance has now said twice that he may not do it. His wife is pregnant with her fourth kid, and he's just not sure. Likewise, the problem for JD Vance is a practical problem that he owns the Trump presidency because he's the vice president. Now, if you're an ardent van supporter, you can say otherwise, but do you really think JD Vance can campaign on the campaign trail and take public issue with President Trump's policies? He can't. Trump would eviscerate him. Marco Rubio will have that problem, although less so, since he's just Secretary of State. He can't be blamed for the whole. He can be blamed for the foreign policy. A governor, a Glenn Youngkin, former governor of Virginia, Brian Kemp, the current governor of Georgia, were they to run? They can take fundamental issue and say the party needs to go in a direction. And maybe they can get support, maybe not. The donors, a lot of them will align with JD Vance at first at least. But Trump will be less and less part of the conversation because his days are numbered. The Constitution and God Almighty both have term limits, and we pray that Donald Trump will run up against the Constitution's term limits before he runs up against God's term limits, but either way, he's lame duck. And more so after the election, when Republicans really no longer need him, he no longer will really be able to clear fields for them, he no longer will be able to have the clout with voters, because voters will be looking for the next shiny object.

Republicans are now starting to show signs in Congress of standing up to the president. It's not just Ted Cruz and Tom Cotton speaking out against the Spirit Airlines merger. In fact, I'm told very reliably that Sean Duffy, the Secretary of Transportation, who got his rise in politics with the Tea Party movement and opposition to TARP and the GM bailout, he apparently told the president he thinks bailing out Spirit is a bad idea that there could be political blowback and that if... No other airline of the private sector wanted them. Why should the government want them? Howard Lutnick, not a surprise to anyone. Howard Lutnick thinks the president should bail him out. Howard Lutnick thinks the government should do everything. Howard Lutnick is an idiot. Hope the president listens to Duffy on this. Congressmen are starting to speak out. Behind the scenes, leaders in Congress have told the president a spirit bailouts a bad idea. Let the private sector handle it. Don't create the moral hazard. We'll get the spirit here in a little while. The big one, though, is reconciliation. So Republicans have a chance to do another reconciliation package this year, and that is they can structure things the way they want without having to rely on Democratic votes and get past a filibuster. What they do cannot be new policy and cannot add to the deficit. What the Republicans are planning on doing is funding ICE Border Patrol or the rest of Homeland Security using a reconciliation package. And that was going to be it. That was all they were going to do. But in the House of Representatives increasingly, members of the House Republican leadership have decided that they need to do a broader, bigger reconciliation package.

And the problem is that the president doesn't want it to happen. House Republicans are having problems on FISA. House Republicans can't get the votes they need to get Section 702 extended. They're going to have to come up with something. They're going to have to do something. and the House Republicans are now settling on the idea that they want an expansive reconciliation package in defiance of what the President wants in opposition to what the Senate has said they want, but the House Republicans think they can solidify and lock in all the votes of the House Republicans by doing a bigger reconciliation package, and it could be a boon for the Republicans headed into the midterms to do more tax cuts and more economic stimulus. And it's not a bad idea, quite frankly. It's not a bad idea. Now, meanwhile... The Senate is concerned about confirmation problems, tying them up outside of reconciliation. And they're urging the president to stop pushing people out or stop having others push people out. But there are concerns. Tulsi Gabbard is going to be out. In fact, I know Tulsi Gabbard has been told it's time for her to go. She needs to find a time for the midterms to get out. You've got Lori Chavez-DeRemer is gone. Kristi Noem is gone. She's now been replaced by Markwayne Mullin. Pam Bondi's out the door. Todd Blanche is acting attorney general. There are rumors that Ron DeSantis wants it. I've been told there are those within the administration who have blocked Ron DeSantis from being AG. That Susie Wiles, the president's chief of staff, is no fan of Ron DeSantis. She used to work for him and he pushed her out the door, and she's no fan of his now and doesn't want him as AG. There will be no openings in the Supreme Court, so there was a rumor about Ron DeSantis. Maybe going to the Supreme Court. He and Clarence Thomas very close, but that's not going to happen this year. There are some people who believe the president wants to push out Tulsi Gabbard. Well, they've already pushed her out. She just hasn't gotten the hint yet. Howard Lutnick may be next. He's standing by Pete Hegseth. Now you've got Feelein out. There's going to have to be a cabinet confirmed or a Senate confirmed position for Feelein. And the Republicans in the House of the Center are like, guys, we've got to do stuff. Trump is not leading us in ways we need to focus on for the midterms. And now all eyes are on Ron DeSantis as well, not for the appointments before redistricting. This is from Politico's. The Sunshine State is the GOP's likely best remaining chance to claw back an edge to keep the House majority after voters approved a gerrymander in Virginia that allow Democrats to pick up as many as four new seats. Now all eyes are on Florida to deliver a new map that could net the party anywhere from three to five seats with legislators scheduled to hold. special session next week. National and state Republicans are counting on Ron DeSantis to deliver on the White House priority and ensure their nine-month redistricting war doesn't end in a wash. This is honestly an all-hands-on-deck moment because if you lose the house, you're going to bring essentially the agenda to a grinding halt, says Fort O'Connell, a Florida strategist. Ron DeSantis does this right. It could give rebirth to his political career. Now, there is a problem with the Florida redistricting.

Given the map that could be drawn, there are concerns if they can pull it off. The state has a strict ban on redrawing congressional districts for partisan gain or to help or hurt incumbents. Democrats say that would run afoul of the Constitution. Ron DeSantis, however, thinks that he can find a way to redraw the map that satisfies the Florida Constitution. The concern is, do you dilute Republican strength so much in districts that if there's a wave year for the Democrats, You could cost the Republican seats that would otherwise be safe. There are actual concerns in Florida that you could go too far and you could actually cost the Republican seats. Republicans, however, are leaning on Ron DeSantis. And ironically, they're leaning on Ron DeSantis, not Trump. Because again, lame duck. And this is all about saving the Congress, which is going to require an effort from Ron DeSantis in Florida. Also, you should know that a Virginia circuit court has enjoined the referendum. Let me explain this with you. I don't expect them to win, but this matter went to the Virginia Supreme Court, and the Virginia Supreme Court said essentially that they would reconsider the issue of the referendum after the vote. In Virginia, there is a process by which you can amend the Virginia Constitution, and it requires a series of votes. And the argument is that they did not hold the series of votes properly. Let me read you from Ken Cuccinelli. There are three challenges to the amendment process. The first is that the passage was invalid. The amendment was taken up during a special session convened in 2024 for budget purposes. The General Assembly's own call to the governor and its governing resolution limited the session's scope. expanding it to include a constitutional amendment on redistricting required a two-thirds vote, and that never occurred. A county judge already found that it was void because it was not in the called special session, and there was no two-thirds vote. Article 12, Section 1 of the Virginia Constitution requires that after first passage, a proposed amendment be referred to the General Assembly at its first regular session held after the next general election of members of the House of Delegates. An election must intervene between first and second passage. Here, first passage occurred during an election cycle, not before an intervening one. Article 12, Section 1 requires the amendment be submitted to voters not sooner than 90 days after final passage by the General Assembly. The timeline from final passage to the April 21st vote did not satisfy the requirement. Plus, one challenge to the proposed map argues Article 2, Section 2 of the Virginia Constitution, requires that every electoral district shall be composed of contiguous and compact territories. The proposed constitutional maps violate the continuity requirement very badly. So this goes back to court, and it's going to move fast. We'll see. The Taswell Circuit Court that said that this is unconstitutional entered an injunction blocking certification of the election and denied a motion to stay pending appeal. A final order is going to be drafted. It's going to be immediately appealed to the Virginia Supreme Court. I'm not hanging my hat on the Virginia Supreme Court tossing out this. However...

The process is in place, and they have very good legal arguments. The Virginia Supreme Court, from what I'm told by Democrats and Republicans in Virginia, is very process-oriented. And the process very clearly was not followed. And so there is a chance they throw out the referendum. I'm just not sure they're going to be brave enough to do it, even if they think otherwise. We'll see. But between the redistricting effort and the reconciliation effort and the Spirit Airlines merger issue, you've got Republicans in Congress starting to get to every man for himself, and that precludes the president because he's not on the ballot again. It's going to be interesting to see how many of them want to campaign with him as well. In some safe districts, they will, but in swing districts, probably not. In swing districts, the Democrats are trying to nationalize the election. Republicans understand this. That's one reason they want to do another major expansive reconciliation package so that they can have another economic win that they can take to the voters before November. And they're also very much hoping, and we'll get, again, at the top of the third hour, I want to delve into the Hasan Piker interview in the New York Times. They're really, really hoping that the Democrats overplay their hands by going insane, and that appears to be happening. Those who love him? Listen to find out what he's going to say next. Those who disagree with him also listen to see what he's going to say next. It's the Eric Erickson Show.

On the go, take Eric's podcasts with you. Available wherever you stream your favorite podcast. Search Eric Erickson. The Federalist Society at the University of California, Los Angeles, UCLA, they hosted a Department of Homeland Security lawyer. to talk to Federalist Society students. Leftist students showed up at the event. They disrupted it. They yelled profanities. They shouted, made their phones make noise, and then stormed out to rally. After trying to shut the guy down, they held up signs. F.U. Loser. Stop caging kids. Called him a Nazi. How does Trump's... male reproductive organ taste, these sorts of signs. Then they're getting their pictures taken. And I've got to say that these people want to be lawyers. Their protests fall outside the acceptable standards for lawyers to conduct themselves under the bar ethics of every state. I hope that law firms are paying attention to this. Maybe they're going into public interest law or are going to be public defenders and nobody will care. But if they're getting hired by law firms, law firms need to pay attention to these disruptors and what they're doing and their standards. And some of these people probably going to have to be deprived of jobs. It is wild that they do not want free speech. At the Federalist Society, they do not want someone to come talk. They want to shut them down and silence them instead of engaging with their ideas, which is very much the opposite of what it means to be a lawyer. The idea that you can shout down someone instead of letting them speak and that somehow that's your right to do is nonsense when this is a private setting with Federalist Society allowing this lawyer in. Let me tell you about incogni. They want to protect your privacy online. You can go to incogni.com slash Eric, I-N-C-O-G-N-I, Incogni.com slash Eric. You sign up with Incogni, and they will work online day and night to get your information taken down from data broker websites. Data brokers will sell your information. They'll sell your prescriptions, sell your medical records. They'll sell your consumer habits. to people, even to scammers, this is why you get those phone calls for the car warranties and the loans and the IRS stuff. This is why you get the credit card solicitations in the mail, all the junk mail is why you get the email scams, because the data brokers sell your information. If they can't sell your information because they don't have your information, well, you see less scams. I am now not getting scam calls. I was getting them after I bought my kid a car. I was getting them every day, multiple times a day. I'm down to zero a day, and it's all thanks to Incogni.com slash Eric. You can save up to 60%. Protect your privacy online. Incogni has gotten my information off over 340 websites. They've done over 600 actions, including going back to people. Again, incogny.com slash Eric, sign up today.

Ladies and gentlemen, we must return again at this moment to Spirit Airlines. The president wants some sort of bailout for Spirit. I mentioned yesterday, the as-designed bailout would in fact be something in order of the government taking partial ownership in the company and giving it a massive loan. And, well, I am encouraged, by the way, to... see Tom Cotton and also Ted Cruz come out and say, nope, bad idea. Because it is actually a bad idea to bail off spirit. By the way, I got to tell you guys. So I mentioned yesterday I was on a Delta flight and I was joking about them parking next to Spirit Airlines and the flight attendant said that they would have somebody stand outside to make sure Spirit didn't steal their hubcaps. A Delta pilot sent me a note yesterday. and said he got in a little bit of trouble one time because they were parked next to a Spirit plane, and he told the pastors they hadn't been pushed back yet because the guys who push them back were trying to help get Spirit Airlines push back before the repo guy showed up. Wow. Wow, that's bold. Here's the problem. And by the way, I'm encouraged to see Republicans stand up and say this is a bad idea. American airline CEO has come out and said merging with United would be bad for customers. They're actually cutting their earnings projections because of fuel increases. United is threatening to cancel flights and also increase. ticket prices because of fuel. Southwest Airlines is forecasting quarterly earnings below estimates because of higher fuel. And now you got this potential bailout by the government. I explained moral hazard to you yesterday. For those of you who weren't here, this bears repeating, if you know the government is going to take action to save you, you have no limits on the risks you will take. Every single company takes risks. On a daily basis, you take a risk. You take a risk getting out of bed in the morning. People are crazy and have forgotten how to drive. You take a reasonable risk. And companies are expected to take reasonable risks. But when you know the government is going to be your ultimate guarantor and they're going to use federal taxpayer dollars to bail you out, you no longer have an incentive to take reasonable risk. You have the incentive to take unreasonable risk knowing there will be no penalty to you because the government will bail you out. That is moral hazard. When the government is going to protect you instead of allowing the free market forces to work, you lose your assessment of what is a healthy risk and what is an unhealthy risk, and you begin to presume that unhealthy risks are actually healthy. It's a bad thing.

I tried to fly JetBlue one time. I got stuck in a snowstorm in Washington, D.C. JetBlue was on the way out. I wound up taking Amtrak. Worst thing ever. It didn't meet a great guy and his son on the trip. But the JetBlue flight would have taken me from D.C. to Boston to Atlanta. It was kind of ironic. I was on this train, and the train took forever. And as I was an hour outside of Atlanta at like 7 o'clock in the morning, having not slept a wink. on the train, I got noticed that the jet blue flight had just landed in Atlanta. But they're limited in gate access in Atlanta because of Delta. And the federal government has allowed airlines, given the limited resources of gate access, to be protectionist. We should actually have more of a free market, not less of a free market, when it comes to aviation in this country. And we haven't done that. Spirit has been shut out of certain markets because of it, but Spirit has also been able to bypass certain hubs for other airports in the area. Take, what is it, Breeze is a new airline. I see it. I was up in Rhode Island. Saw it there. I've seen it in other places that they don't fly into major market areas. They fly into other airports. They have good, reasonable prices. They've got a growing reputation. I mean, part of spirits problem, frankly, is, as I mentioned yesterday, it's reputation is not a great reputation. Breeze, to my knowledge, this new airline has a great reputation. It flies into non-traditional routes. Let me see here. I'm pulling them up right now for us to talk about. And I realize for some of you this is a little bit of an esoteric topic, but I'm just to give you a sense that there are ways that you could deal with with. Spirit without a government bailout. So let's see. So Breeze flies Akron, Kenton, Cleveland. It flies Albany, flies into John Wayne Airport in Orange County. Flies into Eureka, California, Atlantic City, Banger, Maine, Fadeville, Arkansas, Birmingham, Alabama, Kingsport, Tennessee, Brownsville, Texas, Hollywood, California. So it skips L-A-X in favor of Burbank Hollywood Airport. Flies into Burlington, Vermont, goes to Cancun, Charleston, West Virginia, Charleston, South Carolina, Cincinnati, Ohio. It goes into Dallas, Fort Worth. It does have gate access there. It does not fly into Atlanta. It flies into Huntsville, Alabama. Jacksonville. It does actually have one routed LAX. So the point, though, is that it flies into a lot of airports that don't have major traffic from other carriers.

Spirit decided to fly into the big airports to compete with the big guys as a discount airfare, and it has struggled in large part because we don't have the free market conditions. We should have an aviation for competition. And then, of course, very famously, the Biden administration blocked the merger between JetBlue and Spirit. Now, it didn't quite make sense for those two to merge, given the differing dynamics of those commercial carriers. But they wanted to do a merger for themselves. And guess what? Both of them were now on hard financial times. Had the Biden administration allowed them to merge, you would have had a discounted airfare company in this country that was competitive with gate access in a lot of places. And the Biden administration said no. Sometimes consolidation is necessary. We've had a lot of consolidation. But having two discounted carriers merge, the Biden administration said it would be a bad idea. What's worse? The 14,000 people who work for Spirit losing their jobs or Spirit and JetBlue merging? What's worse? The Biden administration said it better to have them lose their jobs than to have two airlines become one. There's a difference at scale between a JetBlue and Spirit merger and a United American merger. United American merging would control upwards of 60% of air traffic in this country. Bad idea, bad for competition, bad for prices, bad for all that. Spirit and JetBlue, not so much, but the Biden administration refused to discern between them and didn't allow them to go forward. Spirit should be put up for sale and merge with someone. They certainly have problems. They're going to have to navigate a bankruptcy issue, but we should not have the government bailing them out. The government bailing out spirit would be a terrible precedent. And the Trump administration keeps doing this. They've helped intel. They're helping a spirit. And all of this compounds the moral hazard over time. When companies decide the government's policy will be to bail them out, those companies no longer have to take intelligent risk. They can take dumb risk. And the dumb risk compounds the moral hazard with the expectation that the government's going to bail them out. Again, it's nice to see Republicans in Congress stand up against this. It is nice to see. Now, the question is, will the Trump administration pay attention to Congress? What's notable is Congress is more and more beginning to ignore the legislative priorities of this White House. So, for example, as I mentioned earlier on reconciliation, the president wanted a simple reconciliation to just deal with... with ICE and Border Patrol and the House to say, nope, we're going to have a more expansive reconciliation package. They want more tax cuts and the like. And it sounds like the Senate may be wavering and going towards the House. It sounds like we are headed into lame duck status with this White House, where the House and Senate Republicans are more and more willing to speak up against the White House and some of his policies. And they're more and more willing to embrace that they must do other things beyond what the White House wants. It's very significant that they're speaking up already about spirit. It's very significant. They're second guessing the White House reconciliation strategy. They are a little bit aggravated with the way Virginia happened, and there is a feeling, despite the RNC pushing back, that the Republican National Committee didn't spend enough money. Things change, friends. Events change things. The dynamics of the midterms are starting to change the relationship between Congress and the White House. At some point, Congress will assert itself.

It will probably happen in large part because of the president becoming more of a lame duck. But as this White House continues to chart territory that the Democrats are more comfortable with than the Republicans, like state bailouts of industry, the Republicans are going to speak up more. They understand that if we keep going down this road, it's going to cause further problems that they don't want to see. Now, How aggressively they stand up. That's another matter. They still want the president's support out on the campaign trail. Have something to say? Hello. Hello. Call the show. 1-877-97-9-7 airing. That's 1-877-97-9-3-7-4-25. Welcome back. It is Eric Erikson here. 877-9-37-9-3-7-4-25. Don't forget I'm going to be out tomorrow back on Monday taking my producer on our annual golf trip tomorrow and going to go see some folks out in Las Vegas with Charlie. Philip sent me this. Great example of Moral Hazard here. This is from the Wall Street Journal. Wall Street's watchdogs are ramping up their inquiries into how much risk has built up in the $3 trillion private credit industry, just as investor angst to spark some backers to head to the exits. The SEC in recent months has opened several enforcement investigations of large private credit managers, according to people familiar with the matter. The Treasury Department has requested information from private fund managers and insurance firms about their business models. Bank regulators, too, have stepped up their focus on the risks posed by the industry with the Federal Reserve querying banks about their lending and exposure to private credit. Regulators have been watching for risks stemming from the growing private credit market for years, but the recent outreach adds to scrutiny amid a wave of withdrawals, slowing inflows, and dropping stocks, people familiar with the latest action said. The agencies have been acting separately but discussed the turbulence during a recent meeting of the Federal Financial Stability Oversight Council. None of the regulators are sounding dire alarms yet, and Trump administrations have said officials have publicly said they don't think losses in private credit funds would ripple painfully through the financial system, echoing what executives and bankers have said, too. There are real worries here. Why are we seeing this? One, because the government overcorrected in regulation after TARP. making it much more difficult to acquire capital. But then in the bailing out of so many industries within the banking sector, they incentivize private companies to do what had otherwise been done through banks and oversight through banks, knowing that the government was going to bail them out. And this is very key because it comes up in a lot of the conversations with these entities that... If they get too big to fail, they cannot fail because the government will bail them out because look at TARP. This is exactly the moral hazard I've been telling you about. These private financial companies understand that they are so big.

that they can get away with this because the government's going to bail them out. And the only way to ensure that they back down and take only measured reasonable risk is to make it very clear the government is not going to bail them out. But you and I both know if there is massive market turmoil, the government would bail out. This is unacceptable. This should be unacceptable to you guys. Private credits composed mostly of loans to middle market businesses extended by asset managers who don't face close supervision like banks do. The first quarter investors sought to pull more than $20 billion from certain types of private credit funds, though they were only able to get $11 billion, according to data from Investment Bank, Robert A. Stanger. Investors have been spooked by high-profile losses and the industry's exposure to software companies challenged by AI. There are real problems out there in this sector. People are sounding the alarms and they keep plowing ahead knowing the bigger they get, the more money they have, the more likely it is that the government is going to bail them out should something happen. Again, it's the moral risk that we get from TARP and the General Motors bailout. The chickens coming home to roost with all of this stuff. It's just I would advise you to keep an eye on this situation because if things turn south, it's going to get very bad very quickly in the response of the government thus far to Spirit Airlines, to Intel, to all the others is to bail them out, take partial ownership, socialism, and it's going to get way worse for you and me as our money is going to be on the hook to bail out the hedge funds and the private equity guys. unless something changes. Now, I got to tell you about my Eden Pier thunderstorm because I'm not taking it with me on my trip in large part because I packed my bag and I forgot it on the back porch and it's okay. The back porch kind of needed it last week because I opened the... Use my wood-burning pizza oven and the smoke got onto the back porch and the Eden Pure Thunderstorm eliminated the odors. And it did it in like an hour. And then I forgot to unplug it and put it in my suitcase. Travel bag. I'm in a different bag. Nonetheless, it works. It eliminates odors. Edenpuredeals.com. Discount code is Eric 3. Edenpuredeals.com. Discount code Eric 3. You can get three of them and you save $200 and you have a money-back guarantee. If they do not eliminate the odors, get a money-back guarantee. Edenpuredeals.com, discount code Eric 3. They get rid of dust, pollen, they're filterless air purifiers. They wipe out 99.9% of bacteria and viruses that are pulled through the machine. And then they eliminate all odors. You can get three of them. Save 200 bucks. Edenpuredeals.com. Discount code Eric 3, E-R-I-C-K-3. See site for details on the moneyback guarantee. Edenpuredeals.com.