Refugee Facilitators Are Still Gaming The System

Thanks for listening to Chicago's Morning Answer podcast sponsored by Signature Bank. Signature Bank takes pride in helping customers grow their business and provide unmatched banking expertise, custom financial solutions, and the industry's best technology. So whether you're a business looking for a deposit relationship or needs a ready source of financing, Signature Bank is the right bank for you. Call today at 773-467. 5600 to hear how signature bank can help your business grow and thrive. Member FDIC, Equal Housing Lunder. Join Dan Proft, Sean Thompson, and Alex Marlowe, editor of Breitbart News. For Cigar Night on Tuesday, May 19th, tickets are on sell now at 560.com slash cigar. This is Chicago's morning answer with Dan Proft on AM 560, The Answer. Top of the morning, Dan Proft here. Interesting that as much as time as we've spent talking about the L.A. mayor's race because of the relatively unique and insurgent campaign of Spencer Pratt from a reality TV star, sort of lost track of the governor's race a bit, although we did talk about the debate last week that was national in broadcast because it was on CNN. So it has national implications, of course. Governor of California. And despite the fact that you had the Eric Swalwell exit to winnow the field of neo-Marxas, You sort of had this sort of rotating frontrunner for them. It went from Tom Steyer and then it was Xavier Becerra and Katie Porter seeming to make a bit of a bit of a move. But in point of fact, at least according to the recent polling, you still have the real possibility. of both Steve Hilton and Chad Bianco making the runoff. And it seems like the more that California is in the news, the more it buoys the prospects of the two Republicans. You know, Chad Bianco is the sheriff and, of course, Steve Hilton, former Fox News host. And it's just story after story, the salient issues of the day, where national attention is focused on California. being the bad example, and if that's only being compounded by what's going on in L.A., I mean, could you imagine? Could you imagine California going from seemingly this inexorably leftist state that was going to essentially crater under its own weight to having a Steve Hilton or a Chad Bianco for governor and a Spencer Pratt for L.A.? Politics can be very volatile, particularly in these times. 312-642-5600 is the AlphaWealthgroup.com, call in and text line. And Steve Hilton's having a moment this week, too, because of this populist gambit by one Patrick Bateman or Sparkle Beach Ken meets Patrick Bateman as Scott Bessent termed him.

I'm talking about Gavin Newsom and this $20 million diaper deal. So while Californians are paying six and seven bucks at the pump, Gavin Newsom is trying to make play for those young families, all those offals and raffles that actually did have a child, whether that's with a male human or not. is beside the point. $20 million to provide free diapers to all new babies born in the state. That's the Golden State Start initiative. I think I like Trump's $1,000 in a investment account better. But, okay. And it's being done in partnership with a nonprofit baby to baby. Well, Guy Benson reporting for Fox News on baby to baby. Of course, that's a populist grift. And then there's the secondary layer of the grift. Some critics wonder if the money might be. The $20 million will go to a nonprofit group called Baby to Baby to distribute the diapers. And the CEO of that group reportedly sits on the board of a nonprofit run by Gavin Newsom's wife. And there you have, of course. It's an insider deal. Get a load of that, won't you, if I may. And Steve Hilton's moment on this issue was to do a little bit of diaper shopping, compare, contrast. The cost per diaper that this $20 million buys when it's a NGO gambit. for a favored Gavin Newsom NGO and ally, as opposed to, you know, what if you just actually went to, I don't know, Costco and paid retail? All right, so Gavin Newsom is taking $20 million of your money to send 100,000 babies, 400 diapers. That works out at 50 cents per diaper. We just came into Target to check out what you could buy it for in the store. Here you go. Just check this one out here. $162.26 that works out at $0.16 for diaper. Right. So he's paying 50 cents a diaper to funnel $20 million of state money to this partner. nonprofit, as opposed to you could pay a third of that cost if you just went to Costco. The grifts. Every angle. Even free diapers is a grift. 312, 642, 5600. Some other related news, though, in the governor's race. Tom Steyer. I mean, this is rather remarkable. Tom Steyer, the billionaire, who made his money investing in fossil fuels, for-profit prisons. He got the endorsement of the Democrat Socialists. He's the DSA candidate. And they said in their statement, you know, we'll just have to see if.

He's saying all the right things. We'll just have to see if he gets in if he ends up being a class traitor or the real McCoy. But that's great because it just continues to create tumult and confusion within the ranks of the neo-Marxists carving up that vote such that you could have a Hilton or a Chad Bianco. I mean, excuse me, Hilton and a Chad Bianco. escape into the runoff, a Republican governor of California, and effectively, he doesn't call himself this, but effectively a Republican governor, excuse me, a Republican mayor of L.A. Wow. It's hard to get your mind around that, actually. Things could change so dramatically, so quickly. And frankly, almost entirely due. to the self-inflicted wounds of the left. Now, to be fair, you have to have people that are capable enough to take advantage of the moment, and Spencer Pratt is proving capable, and to a lesser extent, Hilton and Chad Bianco are as well. We have the possibility of such a moment in Illinois. Those who are capable to take advantage of said moment seem to be the ingredient we're missing. And, you know, again, going back to the quality of life and where California finds itself right with Illinois in the bottom and every quality of life indecency. But maybe there is some real weariness, not just with the diapers, but as I mentioned before, at the pomp. And Doug Burgum, Secretary of the Interior. had this distillation, the California energy problem recently. You know, the Strait of Hormuz is not a big deal to America, as Trump has pointed out repeatedly in terms of fulfilling our energy needs. Right. It has an impact on global prices, of course. But there is one state. Actually, it does have an impact on in terms of fulfilling energy needs. California is leading in a couple things. They're going to lead in highest energy prices. They're going to lead in highest taxes. And then they're going to lead in outmigration. Those are three things. And I'm not being sarcastic. That's just all true. And, of course, the last thing I'll say is at the time of this recent conflict with Iran, California was the only state that was dependent on oil coming through the Strait of Hormuz. 60%, 2 out of 3 barrels of oil comes into California by ship. They've blocked every pipeline. They've blocked transmission lines. They've turned themselves proudly into an energy island. And then they're complaining to this administration about their high energy prices. And even last year, they want to blame the current conflict. Last year, their lowest price in the year, was higher than the highest prices in virtually every other state in America. I mean, this was a condition that they created for themselves long before the current conflict, but it's going to get worse for them going forward. And we're doing everything we can to try to help. We've tried to reestablish offshore. They're sitting on massive piles of oil. They were the...

Kuwait of the Jazz Age back in the 20. They were one of the largest producers of oil in the world, and they've shut down that whole thing. We authorized offshore drilling on federal land. We got back going. They're trying to block the pipelines that are coming in, which would then help them. They used to have 40 refineries. They went down to eight. Now they've got six. And so Texas, by comparison, has got 36 refineries going to 37. Remarkable. Yeah, the self-inflicted disintegration of a great state, a great city, L.A., the same thing that's happening in Illinois, the same thing that's happening in New York. But the... political dynamics are turning out to be very different in California this election cycle than they are in those other two failed states, aren't they? This is the morning show. More Chicago radio listeners are choosing. This is Chicago's morning answer on AM 560. The answer. Hey, business owners, is your business and money in good hands? Does your bank invest in your success? Hi, Mike Gallagher here, letting you know that when you need a relationship bank, signature bank makes commercial banking personal. I love these guys. Not only do they have expansive industry experience, a strong financial track record, but they're also highly capitalized for strategic growth. That's so important. That's why signature bank is my bank. They know what it means to grow a business by designing solutions that are right for you and only. you. These are real people. They're ready to help. So reach out to my friends at Signature Bank. Make the call today. 773-467-5630. Or visit them online at SignatureBank.Bank. Bank. That's SignatureBank. Bank. Your business could be Signature Bank's next success story. Go online. SignatureBank. Bank. Equal Housing Lender, Signature Bank. If you're looking for the latest news, insight into what it means, and the sharpest opinion, there's only one station in Chicago where you can turn, and it's this one. We're AM 560. The answer.

Top of the morning, Dan Proff here. Our friend Gad Saad, the marketing professor from Strange Brewerland up in Canada. He has a new book out called Suicidal Empathy, Dying to Be Kind. A little play on words there. Suicidal empathy. Something we've talked, pathological empathy is another. way it's been described. Empathy, writes, Saad, is an admirable virtue. As a social species, we've evolved the capacity for empathy. We seek prospective spouses and close friends who exhibit this trait. We look for empathetic health care providers, be they physicians, therapists, or vets. But suicidal empathy that modifiers important. He describes as the misfiring of an adaptive virtue in ways that result in the willful suicide of one's civilization. As historian Arnold Toynbee observed, civilizations die from suicide, not from murder. And that's what we have been documenting on this show for the last decade is what has been, what the West has been doing to itself. to varying degrees in varying countries. Suicidal empathy. Let me give you an example of what I think Saad is talking about. Identitarianism is the source of so many societal ills, so much suicidal empathy. And it's the case in the example I'm going to provide. New York City woman declined to press charges against the subway shover, as he's being described, because she didn't want to put another black man in jail, unquote. A weeks later, you've probably seen the video, heard the story. He's the guy who randomly, for no reason, pushed a 76-year-old man down the stairs, down the steps at a subway station in New York and killed him. 76-year-old retired teacher who works with special needs kids. Came up from, you know, a guy was walking down towards the stairs to go down into the subway. This guy walked by him and essentially threw him down the stairs, killed him. A 23-year-old woman anonymously detail how she and a friend nearly escaped this same individual, the killer, after he allegedly attacked them while riding the subway on April 2nd. She told the New York Post she completely regrets her decision not to work with prosecutors after he was charged with murder on Friday for shoving 76-year-old Ross Falzone down a flight of stairs to his death at a subway station Thursday night. She told the New York Post, quote, we started running a little bit, but then thank God the cops were right there because, I mean, we kept thinking about, imagine that there were no cops. We would have had to literally run for our lives. The cops, they immediately arrested him. It was shut down really fast by the cops, and we respected that.

The woman claimed the situation left her in shock, but she did not pursue any further action against her attacker. Quote, maybe a part of me was just like, I don't want to put another black man in jail. But you know, at some point, if you're a criminal, you're a criminal. And he was scary. He was a scary guy. 312-642-5600 AlphaWealthgroup.com. answer line, well, call in line and text line, if you want to opine on manifestations of suicidal empathy when we see them on a daily basis in Chicago, of course, from civilians and electeds alike, don't we? A society totally given over to suicidal empathy or, you know, the word I always uses sentimentality. We talked about this a bit on Friday with Glenn Reynolds, per his new book, Seductive AI, that it's this very misapplication of empathy, sentimentality, tenderness, as Flanier O'Connor would say, tenderness in the absence of faith, which leads to forced labor camps and the fumes of a gas chamber, as she wrote. And she's right. This is what we're talking about. Real world cases. And by the way, that applies to the judge in the case as well. The judge in the case, because this guy was a habitual offender. On February 2nd, he assaulted officers. He was released two days later. No cash bail. They got a version of the Safety Act in New York City. They've eliminated cash bail, too. Don't you. Don't forget. Two weeks later, February 14th, burglary on the subway, released 11 days later. No, you know, no cash bail. Zero bail. February 25th brings a knife on a train. Release five days later, no bail. Assault woman on a train on March 2nd supervised release, no bail. Taken to a mental hospital on May 7th, released an hour later. Five hours later, he pushed that 76-year-old man to his death down those subway stairs. So, conversation about the justice system, I think, is in order, as we have so many of these. in Chicago. So the judge in the case. Marva Brown is her name. This gives you a little bit of an insight into who Marva Brown is and how she approaches her job as a New York City judge. I'm Marva Brown. I'm a judge currently in Manhattan Criminal Court. Being elected to the civil court has given me a 10-year term where some people believe I now have the autonomy to be my authentic self on the bench and make decisions without fear of reprisals. That might be contrary to what mainstream media, people that don't see value.

in my people, in our community, agree with. The personal effect of having an incarcerated family member. It's very strong with me and the work that I do each and every day because I know that there are so many reasons why people end up involved in the criminal legal system. And so for me, getting to know my clients, getting to know their stories and why they ended up in court, why they ended up with cases, what their family and home life and community life became a priority to me. And so... When I think of my career as a public defender and saying, I need to be in that decision-making role, that decision-making... process as a judge, we have to have people on the bench who see value in the people's lives that come from our communities. And for me, the transition from attorney and advocate to judge is one that I see not only to affect the people who appear in front of me, but also to be counsel and advisor to other judges that sit in my courthouse and provide my life experience, my professional experience, because frankly, most judges don't come from a public defender background. Most don't come even from criminal. backgrounds that actually sit in the criminal courts. And so when you think of who's deciding these cases, who's reviewing these cases, we need not necessarily diversity of skin color, right, but diversity of professional experience, life experience. And so that has been part of my mission to say we need to expand what the judiciary looks like in the state of New York and beyond. No, but not by skin color. No, no, of course not, which is why you use the phrase, my people. You use the phrase our community. Contrary to what mainstream media people who don't see value in my people. Who are you talking about? Excuse me, former public defenders? I don't think so. And I know you don't think so either. The personal effect of having incarcerated family members is very strong with me and the work I do each and every day. Well, that's fine right up until the point of suicidal empathy. Judge Marva Brown released the man who pushed that 76-year-old man to his death. Under a supervision... after, under supervision, after he was accused of third-degree assault for attacking a couple despite having two prior violent arrests just days earlier. One of those arrests came after he assaulted a cop and resisted arrest while officers were trying to detain him for bringing a knife onto the subway. Yeah, boy, you couldn't put the pieces together to conclude that he may pose a public safety threat. This is Judge Like all over again.

Isn't it? So, you know, having this conversation about L.A., L.A. in particular, now I'm going to get to fold in the California governor's race, too, because of the mess that the neo-Marxists have made of it. Goody. But just as we talk about at some point, somebody is going to win a race in one of these cities that are... Dying under the weight of the suicidal empathy, authentic or performative, doesn't matter. The result is the same. Of the electeds. And maybe Spencer Pratt is that surprise candidate who wins a race. He wouldn't otherwise win if the disintegration wasn't so pronounced. Well, that goes for the judiciary, too. Somebody somewhere, just like a prosecutor's office, DAs and chief judges, somebody somewhere in one of these big cities that is just releasing predators time and again to prey on the lawful residence of the city, county state. Somebody is going to announce a vibe shift, if you will, a paradigm shift. and say, we're not doing this anymore. And as Chief Judge, I am going to instruct judges accordingly. That, yeah, I understand what the law says about no cash bail or in Illinois context, the Safety Act. But we still maintain some judicial discretion. And there is still this determination that needs to be made. about somebody being a public safety threat. And we are going to give, maybe you don't announce this exactly this way, but we are going to essentially give prosecutors the benefit of the doubt when they present a solid evidentiary case that this person is a public safety threat and he should be remanded pending trial. That's going to happen somewhere. And like I said, with... a surprise victor in a big city mayor's race i don't know exactly where or when or who but it's going to happen because most people across the political spectrum see a case like this 76 year old man pushed to his death down the subway stairs in new york mining in our own business and playing by the rules in his life by all accounts at the hands of repeat violent founder and say, no. Uh-uh. And there's this interesting study out of Sweden, too. I mean, this is very consistent with what we know from our conversations with, say, Raphael Mangual over at the Manhattan Institute. The study looked at recidivism. What proportion... attempting to answer the question, what proportion of violent crime would be prevented if recidivism stopped after the nth conviction, first conviction, second conviction, third conviction, fourth conviction, fifth conviction. They looked at data from all Swedes born between 1958 and 1980. Looking retrospectively to inform policy prospectively.

And to think about policies like three strikes in your out, for example. And depending on the crime, perhaps one strike and you're out. What proportion of violent crime would be prevented if recidivism stopped after the nth conviction? After the first conviction? So if you remove people from society after the first violent crime conviction, Almost 80% of recidivism. I mean, almost 80% of violent crime would be stopped. If you were one and done, 80% of violent crime they found. Two and done, a little over 60%. Three and done, a little over, now about 50%. Four undone, still over 40%. Five and dunce, just under 40%. Six and so on and so forth all the way out to 24. In places like Chicago, Cook County, you would have to take that out to 55, 65, 60, 65 arrests. But the point is to say those people with 24 arrests for violent crimes or in Cook County, 50, 55, 60, 70 arrests, all of that violent crime would have been eliminated or most of it if you had some sort of sensible, like three strikes and you're out, as it pertains to violent crime. So as all of these questions... turn out to be. It's not a question of we don't know what to do. We're throwing up our hands. And I understand you have to balance freedom versus order. And of course you respect people's constitutional rights, but there is no constitutional right to commit X number of violent crimes to remove somebody from society permanently when everyone is on notice that if you commit three violent crimes, you're not, you're going in and you're not coming out. I don't think that's violative of cruel and unusual punishment. In fact, I know it's not. And I don't think the Supreme Court would find it to be. So, we know what to do to make these particularly big cities and urban centers safer. It's just a political will question. And as I said, somewhere, someday in the not too distant future, some electorate is going to find the political will to install people who will do just that. Dan Proff, Chicago's Morning Answer. This is Chicago's Morning Answer. Your show keeps me alive during the week. There's nobody I'd rather listen to between 5 and 9 in the morning than you guys. On AM 560, The Answer. Hey, business owners, is your business and money in good hands? Does your bank invest in your success? Hi, Mike Gallagher here, letting you know that when you need a relationship bank, signature bank makes commercial banking personal. I love these guys. Not only do they have expansive industry experience, a strong financial track record, but they're also highly capitalized for strategic growth. That's so important. That's why signature bank is my bank. They know what it means to grow a business by designing solutions that are right for you and only.

you. These are real people. They're ready to help. So reach out to my friends at Signature Bank. Make the call today. 773-467-5630. Or visit them online at SignatureBank.Bank. Bank. That's SignatureBank. Bank. Your business could be Signature Bank's next success story. Go online. SignatureBank. Bank. Equal Housing Lender, Signature Bank. This is Chicago's Morning Answer with Dan Proft, an AM 560, The Answer. Top of the morning, Dan Proft here, doing a little business here. Tickets still on sale for Cigar Night. That's going to be up at Gobert's Farm in Pingree Grove. Or no, that's, wait, yeah, isn't that? Yeah. I'm going by memory here. Yeah, that's right. My memory's good. Of course, Dennis Prager is not doing cigar nights anymore per his medical condition. But tickets are on sales, as I said, and we've got Alex Marlow, the editor-in-chief of Breitbart. We'll be joining Sean and I. That is a week from today, next week, May 19th. Again, Gobert's Farm in Pingree Grove, fine cigars, great conversation. VIP tickets, I think there's still a few VIP tickets and general mission tickets are also available. 560Theanswer.com slash cigar. That's 56thanswer.com slash cigar. You don't have to be a cigar smoker to attend. at Stephen Colbert's Farm has this awesome event space. We did it there last year. It's great. It's sponsored by Liberty Cigar Company, Viro, and by Donnelly Auctions as well. Again, that's 560.com slash cigar. Another housekeeping, but I didn't get to a call last hour, but I saw the question was, do you have to be a lawyer to be a judge? And the answer is generally yes, with one exception. The one court. where you can be a presiding judge or justice, and you don't have to be a lawyer? It's unusual, to say the least, but the Supreme Court. Our founders and their infinite wisdom did not make being an officer of the court a prerequisite to being a Supreme Court justice. I wonder what insight they were playing out there. All right, I want to get to benefits fraud. I was unaware of this to independent journalists. Of course, it requires the independent journalist. Although, I do have to say, again, that in some cities, like Minneapolis, you have had the local network affiliates actually investigating and doing reporting on benefits fraud, actually dating back pre-Nick Shirley.

and some of these independent journalists. So, I mean, we do have to give credit where credits do. I know that doesn't happen in Chicago, but it does happen in other places, even in otherwise blue states. So we've got two more independent journalists here, because this is not just all on Nick Shirley. I mean, I get texting up on the other day. When can Nick Shirley come to Chicago, come to Illinois? We have 13 million, 12. Well, probably 12 million people here now. Nobody can do a little gumshoe work like Nick Shirley. They're independent journalists. People do this all over there. People doing it at Lewiston, Maine. All over the country. But I guess we don't have anybody with that sort of initiative. David Kate and a guy who goes by Fabian, political Fabian, is his handle on X. They posed the question, what does $5 billion for refugee resettlement programs the United States actually look like? Well, they went to what is dubbed refugee city of America to find out. It's rather remarkable. This is in an area, this is in Clarkston, Georgia.

You know, in Atlanta, just outside of Atlanta, I guess. I'm not familiar with Clarkston. And, well. This is what David Kate and Fabian found. Congress is trying to give $5 billion of your money for refugee resettlement programs, and then it ends up in places like... This. This is the International Rescue Committee, the largest refugee NGO in the country. They get the government funds and subcontract the work out to places like... This. This is the Somali American Community Center. It receives grants from the IRC in order to help refugees resettle in America. But when we went in... we found this. An almost completely abandoned retail space, which hasn't filed taxes in almost 10 years. Where almost every business is focused on getting refugees on taxpayer-funded welfare programs. And that is how the largest refugee city in the country is funded. And how over 87% of Somali immigrants end up on taxpayer-funded public assistance. We spent three days in Little Somalia in Atlanta, Georgia. The largest refugee center in the entire country. This is what we felt. I know there's people poo-pooing the idea that Biden flew migrants into the U.S. didn't happen. What these programs that people are pointing to are not what they say they are. For example, This guy with an immigrant rights group. The closest thing was the parole programs, which allowed some Ukrainians, Cubans, Haitians, Nicaraguans, and Venezuelans to come here legally for two years. That's the claim. Well, the evidence suggests otherwise. Kate and Fabian found some of it. Bill Malusian reporting and responding to these assertions. President Biden created the CHNV migrant flights mass parole program, which allowed 30,000 migrants to fly into the U.S. every month for two-year humanitarian parole grants, totaling more than half a million migrants. But they never left. And the DHS Inspector General found the Biden administration wasn't even tracking their parole expiration and certainly wasn't enforcing it. There was also no vetting of their sponsors and widespread fraud was found in the program, leading the Biden administration, you'll recall, to temporarily pause it. One Haitian man who flew into JFK as part of the program was supposed to be with his listed sponsor, New Jersey, but he ended up in a migrant hotel outside of Boston where he was convicted of raping a young girl in the hotel. This program did not exist before Biden. So yes, Biden quite literally allowed more than half a million migrants to circumvent the border and flying to the U.S. outside of the normal visa or legal immigration process. And the large majority of them are still here well past the expiration of their two-year parole grants. And a large – and some percentage of that large number of half a million people that are still here were found in –

Clarkston, Georgia, refugee city accessing state benefits because there's all these, as you heard them reference, businesses that have been set up with refugee facilitators. These are paid employees. Refugee facilitators, what do they facilitate? Getting refugees on benefits programs, like Obamacare. We walked around this one plaza that has about six or seven stores, and in three of the stores, a grocery store, a pharmacy store, and an iPhone repair store, we found three different Obamacare enrollment centers. Can I ask yourself, why in a refugee city are they trying to get people onto public benefit? Every single place you go, whether it's the children's daycare or the grocery store, the pharmacy, or the iPhone repair store, everyone has a sign for Obamacare. Clearly, you get paid when you sign people up. So this is a little weird. You walked around another plaza, and there's like five stores here, and two more Obama Enrollment Care Center. So Fabian, what is that now? Five or six Obama and Care? The only place that you can't get Obama Care apparently is the hair salon right behind this. 312-642-5600. AlphaWealthgroup.com call and text line. Those refugee navigators?

Places like the Somali American Community Center act as navigators. Is that right, Fabian? Exactly. Explain to us, what is navigators? They call them navigators. Navigators are supposed to help refugees navigate America. But all these navigators do is they simply sign them up for every single publicly available taxpayer-funded welfare program imaginable. Whether it's federal or state level. So even when President Trump says no more such programs in 2025, These agencies still continue to get money. These navigators still continue to get money through state funded programs. Exactly. They get paid to go register refugees on public benefits. Then they get a commission when they sign up. the refugees for things like Obamacare. The big problem is what the GAO found and that's why we're very highly skeptical of things exactly like this. The GAO flight these kind of places is high risk places for fraud for various reasons. It's very easy to gain the system and to start to collect public benefits for everyone in your household. Yeah, in fact they ran a study and In one year, 20 out of 20 fake applications that the GAO submitted for Obamacare were approved. 20 out of 20. Another year, it was something like 18 out of 20. So they know that these ghost Social Security numbers is what they call them, are being used to sign up multiple people on the same Social Security number account. And the crazy part is they will not cancel any of the policies because what they say is they don't want the original person who is benefiting from this the right way. to be hurt by canceling all of the other policies associated with that same social security number. No, of course. And rather than doing the due diligence to root out the fraudsters, we'll just keep everybody on the payroll. Even those here, remember, this was a two-year refugee carve-out program. And I'll also describe it. And it stood up a whole cottage industry of refugee navigator facilitators. And, you know, these bureaucracies that exist to underwrite dependency. So they can grow. 312, 642, 50, 600 to give us a call or text. You know, Cloward and Piven just weren't ambitious enough. Thinking about creating a Marxist state here in America through domestic welfare dependency. They had no idea it could be scaled internationally as we have done. In Ohio... That investigative series that Luke Roziak for the Daily Wire has been doing. When we last left this discussion, multi-billion dollar Medicaid industry in Columbus, Ohio, abusing the home health care program, which people are paid to visit homes of the elderly and provide non-medical services, cooking, cleaning, even companionship qualifies.

In response to the reporting that Rosiak is done for the Daily Caller, the Ohio Department of Medicaid said it is, quote, aware of concerns involving home health care activity in Columbus, has been actively investigating these matters since prior to the publication of DailyWy. So, yeah, we were on it way before you. That's the Gavin Newsom or the Field Marshal Tim Walz's line. Oh, we were doing this way before you. Really? Well, how are you doing if I found all of this? The key component of anything resembling oversight here. Mandatory electronic visit verification capturing date, time, and service location for these home health care programs. That's required by federal law. But Ohio Republican governor, Mike DeWine. inserted, his administration inserted loopholes making that verification optional. Ohio is paying providers even if they didn't submit any electronic evidence according to a 2024 audit by the Ohio state auditor, Keith Faber. His audit that examined the payments back in 2022. Found 44% of personal services claims had no electronic verification. The situation was similar for home nursing. According to the audit, that resulted in approximately $1.1 billion in claims not supported by the federally required electronic verification visit. And not only do these programs... subsist regardless of known instances of fraud, not only do they apply to citizens or are accessible by citizens and non-citizens alike, the poverty ink bureaucracies that are set up get bonused out. ABC affiliate in Minneapolis talking about human service bonuses. I'm tracking your tax dollars, $3.2 million to be exact. This is the Minnesota Department of Human Services. It is the largest state agency in Minnesota, has a massive billion dollar budget. But that $3.2 million went directly to DHS employees since 2020 in the form of achievement awards. Achievement awards are essentially a bonus. We found millions of dollars went to employees at the same time that Medicaid payments in 14 high-risk programs, identified as having issues with waste, fraud, and abuse soared. And when you have a high-profile target that may be complicit in multi-million dollar frauds schemes.

Like possibly Congress human Ilhan Omar and the Feeding Our Future NGO and that scandal that's sent about 70 convictions so far. You have state legislators intervene to try to protect those who need to be protected. Our friend Mike Tobin reporting on... the effort to subpoena communications between Omar and feeding our future fraudsters. So you can still see that the FBI are behind me. We've been seeing that throughout the morning bringing. Hi Harris. Democratic Minnesota Congresswoman Ilhan Omar did not meet the deadline to produce documents and communications with defendants from that massive feeding our future scandal, and she doesn't have to. The Minnesota House Committee on Fraud Prevention and State Agency Oversight made the unprecedented move of trying to subpoena Omar to produce the records. That subpoena required a two-thirds vote of the committee, and the vote failed five to three with a vote falling strictly on party lines. Every Republican voted in favor of the subpoena. Every Democrat voted against. There's an investigation to be had, and this is a subpoena for the information. If there is nothing to be found here, then there's no problem issuing this subpoena. So let's... Let's bring light to the darkness. Part of the reason that I was resisting in the subpoena is the lack of confidence that it would be used, that any information we get would be used to gain actual insights. And in fact, just the opposite, that the activities in the committee have tended to prioritize, in my view, political theater and not going after fraud. Omar championed the 2020 Meals Act, which removed guardrails on COVID relief money. And Republicans say it opened the Bill Gates for the program to be exploited of the tune of $250 million. Meals were billed to taxpayers and never delivered. Now, evidence in the trial for Amy Bach, convicted as the ringleader in feeding our future scandal, showed multiple communications with Omar and her office. However, back in January, Bach told our Alexis McAdams there were no substantive communications with Representative Omar. Oh, that's good enough for me. And that's good enough for Dave Pinto. The first rep you heard calling for the subpoena to be issued was Isaac Schultz, a Republican. Dave Pinto, then you heard say, oh, no, this is just political. And so, gosh, I, you know, I want to see here speak no evil. Dave Pinto. I'd like to keep tabs on these people. Dave Pinto, Minnesota legislator, was the genius behind this call for a particular study.

It is an intriguing line of questions. Several of us are on the Public Safety Committee, and yesterday there was a presentation of a group seeking to change how we address organized retail theft. And it actually had not occurred to me to ask. It probably would have been good to make sure that they would study sort of the benefit of shoplifting and of retail theft because perhaps people are relying on that and sort of using that. Maybe it's assisting them in some way. I mean, these folks were describing people violating the law, but I suppose it could be useful to look into that. But ultimately, it's a policy question, right? We do want to make sure when we have a law in place we're enforcing it. So, yeah, we look into the benefits of shoplifting. You can see what somebody that thinks about shoplifting as having benefits is somebody who is not going to be interested in interdicting fraud and benefits programs. You see. Mike and Deerfield, John Chicago's Morning Answer. Hey, Dan, thanks for taking my call. I just saw this yesterday, and this is from the Labor Department data, confirms that 25% growth in California health care and social assistant jobs between 22 and 26 is driving nearly all the state's employment growth. And actually, if you strip that out, I saw that it's actually negative by about a half a percent. So maybe one of the reasons Pratt is, you know, gaining some momentum other than people just being set up by the incompetence of their leaders is there's no growth in the private sector. And how much of that growth in the health care is that home health care where a family member takes care and gets paid $50,000 or $60,000? I mean, they're just getting robbed blind. 100% is a good point you raised. Thanks for the call, Mike. And the flight, too.

I saw that what you're referring to in California. It's no growth in the private sector. This is per IRS data. Between 2020 and 2024, 892 companies escaped from New York with Snake Pliskin. $47 billion they took in income with them. 341 of those companies went to Florida, 187. went to Texas, 129 went to North Carolina. And again, this is not just billionaires fleeing, just as the same thing in Illinois. Billionaires are insulated from terrible public policy. They can endure whatever Gavin Newsom or Kathy Hochul or J.B. Pritzker throws at them. It's the hollowing out of big cities and the hollowing out of failed states. 892 companies 4-year period, $47 billion in income, and there's residual, as we talked about with the impact that Citadel had. Citadel alone, something on the order of $3.5 billion impact, negative impact, on Illinois since they left. Talking about purchasing power of their employees and all that stuff, all the millionaires that are minted at a company like multimillionaires at Citadel. Yeah, that's what's happening. That is what's happening. But again, it's been my thesis that the great sort of counterintuitive result is that the worst they make it, the better it gets for them because productive, commonsensical people are the ones driving the exodus. But maybe. There are enough that have, at least having a present fit with common sense, such that as we began the show, you could see something unthinkable just a few months ago occur in L.A. and maybe even the state of California. George in Naperville. Dan, in Obama land, benefits have no borders. That's right. Thanks for the call, George. Dan Proff, Chicago's morning answer. Before you see it on TV, share it on Facebook or read about it in the paper. Hear it here first. This is Chicago's morning answer on AM 560. The answer. Only the biggest stories. Only the biggest guests. And only the biggest opinions. This is AM 560, the answer. Sports and politics and sports and politics and sports and politics and sports and politics and sports and politics and intersection. Arogance and ignorance. High school sports in the NIL era. A really interesting piece in the Wall Street Journal. I didn't really have an appreciation for the dynamics of... high school sports in the NIL era until I read this piece. Now, it focuses on Florida, which is a bit of an unusual case because there are no penalties for transferring schools. Sort of in the, with the open enrollment and the statewide school choice of which is a good thing.

The high school athletic association sort of went the same direction and said, you can transfer without penalty. Penalty in sport being sitting out a year, for example. So they profile a couple of standout young football players like this kid, Amari Stevens, 16-year-old football player from South Florida, boarded a helicopter with a videographer one day last spring. As the chopper circle Miami, the cameraman explained the purpose of the shoot. Everybody in their mama wants to know where he's going to play ball next year. He's a whip-fast sophomore wide receiver with two state championships under his belt. He would think if he's part of a successful program, he'd stay, but you'd be wrong. As he's looking at high school campuses on the chopper. He's listing the attributes, NFL, alums, college stars, state titles. Teens in Florida, especially in the lucrative sports of football, basketball, and baseball, jump from school to school chasing playing time, winning teams, talented teammates, connected coaches, and anything else that might put them on the radar of colleges, boosters, and corporate sponsors with millions to spend.

That's not necessarily anything new, but there are some new dynamics here. There's the ability to make money legally in the system. There are NIL deals at the high school level now, if you didn't know. But of course, the... rules are that you're not allowed to pressure or induce a kid to come to your school. Now, as coaches who spoke to the Westry Journal say, I mean, that's just, that's nice on paper, but it's difficult to prove and rule breaking is rampant. You see it. I mean, this, look, this happened in the Chicago Public League. It happens with Catholic schools and football, too. I mean, the recruitment that goes on. I mean, you know, Sunny Cox at King was legendary for it on the basketball side. The Florida legislature has passed to build a limit switching teams mid-season or playing different sports at different schools in the same year. That's pending Ron DeSantis's signature. But, of course, you have... Parents, some coaches, some administrators, some state high school association sports folks saying, you know, going from jumping from school to school provides no continuity and it's not exactly conducive to a kid's intellectual development. You know, the learning part of high school. You know, we know in many respects that's all but over now as college, as the revenue sports at the collegiate level are just professional leagues now. So Florida enacted open enrollment policy in 2016 to allow families to take leave of underperforming schools. Parents can send their child to any public school as long as it has room and they provide transportation. And so the Florida High School Athletic Association, as I said, followed suit and dissolved its transfer regulations. And five years later, NIL arrived. As the executive director of the Florida High School Athletic Association, it's an economic thing. It's not so much about winning a state championship but getting to that next level where I can earn those NIL dollars. It boils down another... County Athletic Director boils down to getting exposure. You're the best athlete at a small school and no one's coming to your games to look at you. I'm not so sure that's true. I mean, in this era of this digital era and turning over every rock to find talent, I'm not sure people get passed over because they're at a small school. You know, travel is not. even necessary in some respects, at least to identify talent. You can see it online. And with the recruiting that goes on overseas now, I don't know. That sounds to me like a little bit of an anachronistic take on it. Under the rules, school representatives must not, quote, pressure, urge, or entice, unquote, students to transfer for athletic reasons. But again, as I said,

Come on. Florida does allow high school owners to earn NIO money for off-field endorsements or other legitimate work. And the payouts at the high school level, according to this report, range from a few hundred dollars to five-figure trading card deals for big-name players like this kid that's one, this wide receiver has won two-state championships and is about attending his fourth school in four years. He's got some endorsement deals. They're required to the high school athletes who have NIA deals are required to disclose them, but not the amount or the company. And according to the Florida High School Athletic Association, few actually even bother disclosing deals they have, even though you don't have to disclose the amount of the company. 36 disclosures last year is what the high school Athletic Association in Florida received. The executive director estimated there were many hundreds of deals statewide. And what's going on at well-funded schools is people are, quote, just essentially cutting the kids a blank check. They don't have to do anything. Well, that's also going on at the collegiate level. So going back to this kid, Amari, the standout wide receiver. A move through four schools in 10 months, spent the first two years at St. Thomas Aquinas, which is a story football program in Fort Lauderdale, then transferred to a prep school and plantation called American Heritage, where he ran track and prepared to catch passes from a marquee quarterback. A semester later, he was at Edison and a month after that at Shamanad Madonna in Hollywood, Florida. His parents said they never violated recruiting rules or received money for transfers for his transfers. However, It's also noted in the story without comment that his parents, a UPS driver and a former hair salon owner, and there's nothing wrong with that, but they estimate that they have spent $500,000 in support of Amari's athletic development. And now their full-time job is managing his athletic development. So a UPS driver and a hair salon owner spent half a million dollars on their 16-year-old kid and they can quit their jobs and manage his career at this stage. I guess he's 18 now. At this stage without a source of income? Hmm. Hmm. Hmm.

By the way, his coach at Edison, his third school, that he left after a month and a half to go to his fourth school. Oh, I guess actually he probably is still. He's probably 16 or 17 or 17 because he did two schools in a year. I'm thinking he goes year to year. This guy's moving around on a monthly basis as needed. His coach at Edison is Luther Campbell. from two live crew. And I guess Luther Campbell, I didn't know this, is co-founded Youth Football League, and he is a well-known commodity in high school football in the state of Florida. And he's pushing the transfer portal the way that, I don't know, the way Dion Bernie Sanders is at the collegiate level. Or Kurt Signetti, frankly. Yeah, there was a Florida high school product at the White House yesterday with Signetti. Fernando Mendoza, a great kid, high character kid. I'm no reason to believe that the Samari isn't. We're just using him as an example to talk about the system and say, does this make sense to you? 312-642-5600 is the AlphaWealthgroup.com answer line and text line. Of course, Florida is a hotbed of... football talent, so that's not new. There's another approach. And maybe this is the answer to all of the questions about the NIL era and regulation and trying to empower athletic associations and require these disclosures and so forth. Maybe it all really comes down to this. Caden Henderson is a bona fide star. He's a linebacker from Tampa. The 17-year-old five-star junior has offers from 50 colleges, including Notre Dame, Ohio State, and LSU. Please go to Northwestern. I'm kidding. He plans to spend all four years at the same high school, Jesuit high school and all boys Catholic school, which has a strong college prep program along with the history of sending players to D1 programs and even the NFL. His father, Randy, who's a health care executive, there have been other schools that reached out. But he said he and his wife, who's an attorney, wanted to keep the focus on education, not football. Of potential NIL deals, Mr. Henderson, Caden's dad. Our lights are on, our bills are paid. No interest. Hmm. Hmm. Something else that's changing the game, too. At the top tier, the quality of competition has never been higher, but often there are fewer people in the bleachers to watch. Gate receipts have fallen in some places because locals won't turn out for a team of strangers. They're putting together our all-star teams is what the point is. The executive director for the athletic association, there are no community teams anymore. I live three miles away from the school that I coached for 20 years, and the last time I went to a game, there was not one kid on the sideline that I knew.

Ken and Gray's Lake here in Chicago's morning answer. Good morning. I was a football coach for a long time. All three of my kids were recruited for college athletics, so I do have some insight in this. I know personally of people that have moved from one town to another because they thought their player would get better exposure at a bigger high school. I can tell you that Jelly Bellies, COVID lockdowns, killed the potential for a lot of kids to get recruited. My son lost this junior year of football because of J.B. Pritzker and the COVID ending of sports and junior year for football players is prime time to get recruited. So a lot of kids in Illinois got overlooked because of COVID. But the bottom line is for all this school jumping around, I'm wondering if you... put in a rule that says before you can transfer schools, you have to test academically at grade level and how much of it would suddenly stop. That's interesting. That's an interesting idea. Thanks for the call, Ken. Yeah, I mean, you need the parental oversight that the Henderson's are providing, but maybe that too. Amari, the standout wide receiver, getting Bs and Cs, according to the story. But also just in terms of what high school sports is, Apopka North, excuse me, Apopka High North of Orlando, lost 18 returning football players last year. Head coach Jeff Ralson, who had led the team to a state title, to state title games three times in six years, opted to retire rather than try to rebuild. He sort of sounds like he's the Nick Saban of Florida high school football. We were down to a JV team basically said the coach, Ralson. These guys don't want what we're selling anymore. Commitment, character, integrity. He said those who left told him we're not getting offers here. And of course, you have to keep in mind, but I think most adults know. that about 2% of high school athletes nationally will play in a D1 program, much less get NAL deals, much less play professional sports. Bob in Buffalo Grove. Good morning, Dan. I was good talking to you. Let me flash back many years ago. My daughter was playing softball and we met with the coaches. And he said to us, the parents, your kids cannot take drugs. If I find out, they're off. No questions asked. And I will find out. Four players were found positive or were found taking drugs. They lost four-star players. One of the parents, wanted their girl to go on to play, you know, college ball. They switched schools, and she got placed into an adjoining high school to continue on with her softball. Often wondered what happened to her and the other players that were drug tested positive.

Thanks for the call, Bob. Dan Proff, Chicago's Morning Answer. Hear about the big stories of the day. Then talk about them right here on Chicago's Morning Answer. On AM 560, The Answer. That's on means it's time for our weekly installment of in-depth history with Frank, the history teacher from Arlington Heights, because there's nothing new in this world, just the history you don't know and Frank does. Frank, take it away. Good morning. The strangest-looking electoral college map, no doubt, is that of 1872. President Grant won quite easily, but his opponent, Horace Greeley, died three weeks after the election before the electoral college met, so four additional men got votes, making the map quite colorful. But the congressional map was clearly read across the whole country as the freedmen now had the franchise and voted heavily Republican. And that 1872 map also had more uniformly shaped districts. Here in Illinois, our current map well, it would be easier to draw a smiley face while playing twister and operation at the same time than to draw at many of the 17 districts. Now, Britain faced similar problems with their parliamentary boroughs in the early 1800s. Rotten boroughs were those that had their population thin out due to urban migration. Pocket boroughs were similar, but the right to elect the MP was due to special privilege given to a local aristocrat who controlled the votes. We have our own rotten boroughs in a way. Wyoming, Vermont, and Alaska all have less than the required population for a district. But we also have our own version of the pocket boroughs, the unconstitutional, racially gerrymandered districts across the country that are now being dismantled by state legislatures in light of the recent Supreme Court ruling. Yet despite all the hyperventilating, once these are resolved, a more small D. Democratic polity should emerge. In 1874, in the midst of an economic depression with a normal map, the House went Dem, was a complete reversal of 1872. In 1912, the Dems gained 61 seats, but then lost the same amount back two years later. 1894 and 1932 had triple-digit swings. But since the Voting Rights Act, with only a few exceptions, the swings have been more mild, as our political class chooses its own voters. Change is then hard to come by, so was it any wonder Congress has such dismal approval ratings? Thankfully, Skodas took a sledgehammer to this long-standing insult to the ideals of our Declaration of Independence. Excellent, as always, Frank. Thank you so much. There's only one radio show in Chicago talking about today's biggest stories and telling you what they really mean. That show is this one. Chicago's Morning Answer, an AM-560, The Answer.

This is Chicago's morning answer with Dan Proft on AM 560. The answer. The top of the morning, Dan Proft here. Yesterday before President Trump departed for Beijing, he provided some color on some of the comments he was making on social media over the weekend about the unsatisfactory, to put it lightly, response he got from the Iranians to any sort of peace deal, saying the ceasefire is on life support at this juncture. What? For the crime being, the ceasefire remains in place? It's unbelievably weak, I would say. I would call it the weakest right now. After reading that piece of garbage, they said, I didn't even finish reading it. I said, I'm not going to waste my time reading it. I would say it's one of the weakest right now. It's on life support. They understand. These are all medical people. Dr. Oz, life support is not a good thing. Do you agree? Diagnostic. I would say the ceasefire is on massive life support where the doctor walks in and says, sir, your loved one has approximately a 1% chance. of living. And despite what some have suggested, the skeptics, that Iran can outlast the United States, Trump will lose interest. He's under pressure. That's not what the president said. You can believe it. How stupid? Are they stupid people? They didn't want to believe it. They think that, well, I'll get tired of this, or I'll get bored, or I'll have some pressure. But there's no pressure. There's no pressure at all. We're going to have a complete victory. We've already, in theory, had a complete victory from the military standpoint. The military, look. He also said that the initial agreement or the initial response. that they walked back, apparently I'm talking about the Iranians, which I suppose was the basis for his optimism that they were close to a deal, was that there was initial agreement to turn over or allow the United States to come in and obtain that enriched uranium that's part of Trump's. Must have. You agreed to allow the removal of all their enrichment? Yeah, yeah. Well, they did two days ago. They didn't, okay? They did two days ago. They said, you're going to have to take it. We were going to go with them. But they changed your mind because they didn't put it in the paper. So when they sent us this document that we waited four days for, that should have taken 10 minutes to do, it's looking very simple. We get that. They guarantee no. nuclear weapons for a very long period of time, and a couple of other minor things, but they just can't get there. So they agree with us, and then they take it back. Yeah, well, finally, it sounds like the President's patience is running out, and we found out yesterday that the United Arab Emirates's patient has run out at least a few days ago because they have launched strikes inside Iran.

How does that factor into the dynamics? For more on those issues and others, please be joined by Kenneth Pollock, who's the Vice President for Policy at the Middle East Institute. He previously was a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute. Kenneth Pollack, thanks for joining us. Appreciate it. Great to be here, Dan. Thanks for having me on. So how do you interpret those comments from President Trump as he's getting a little bit? exasperated with the Iranians, clearly. Yeah, frustrated was the word that I was going to use. And look, I'll be honestly, Dan, this was always where I figured we were going to end up. You know, we got to recognize that the leadership in Tehran we have right now first is divided. And I think that's part of the reason why the administration is saying they're hearing these very different things. We need to recognize we decapitated Iran's leadership starting this war. So what's left is kind of fighting it out amongst themselves about what course Iran is going to take. But what we've consistently seen is that the guys who always end up with the upper hand, at least the last couple of months, and I would also say over the last 47 years, the guys who always end up with the upper hand are the hardest of the hardliners. And these guys have no interest in cutting a deal with us. They want nuclear weapons. They oppose. the 2015 nuclear deal with Obama because they thought it was too generous to the United States. And, you know, whatever we may believe, they seem to think they're winning. They seem to think that they can outlast us, that the pain that they're inflicting on us by closing the straight is worse than the pain we're inflicting on them through the blockade. Well, there's this sort of like the Monty Python's Black Knight, it seems to me. Yeah, merely flesh wounds, really. I mean, and there's a lot more that could come. And I suppose if you were advising the president describing those hardliners that appear to be preeminent. as they are, then what do you do if both you and B.B. say no nukes and a commitment to not pursue them for some period of time. It's been rumored 20 years, you know, however you could enforce that. Combined with we have to have the enriched uranium, both Trump and B.B. have said that over the last 24 hours again. So how do you get there? Yeah, so look, I mean, at this point in time, Dan, there are three pathways open to the United States. One is we make concessions to them. We give them what they want. And I'm very glad to hear the president so consistently rejecting that pathway. That would be absolutely disastrous. So the two that are left are the path of significant escalation. And again, the president keeps threatening this. And obviously, as you're kind of hinting at, United States is the most powerful country on Earth. We do have options for escalation. The issue that we have, again, is that you've got a group of people in Tehran, the leadership there, who truthfully doesn't care very much, if at all, about the Iranian economy, doesn't care about their people.

They're perfectly willing to kill themselves in power, remain in power, to killing as many Iranians as they have to. We saw that back in January where they killed, you know, anywhere from 5,000 to 35,000 people to suppress the latest round of popular revolts against them. So we can try to escalate, but not clear how that would work, when it would work, what it would take. And then the other, the last option, is... Strategic patience, right? Wear them out. Stay the course. Let the blockade have its impact in the expectation that at some point in time, you will get Iranian leaders saying, you know what, this really is too much. But, you know, those are really the two courses open to us. Neither is great. I can understand why the president kind of, you know, seems to go back and forth between the two of them, you know, on the one hand, threatening escalation, on the other hand, saying, you know, I can wait as long as I have to. But, you know, he's really outlined what our options are. Well, can't you do strategic patients with strikes? I mean, for example, you had the president talking the other day, and I sit down with Cheryl Atkinson. about uh you know there are many and he's not the only one who said this there are many targets that we've already identified you know military targets or uh industrial production targets that have not been hit yet so we could resume taking out those targets that we have already identified we could um provide, we could restart Project Freedom to escort ships through the Strait of Hormuz and dare the Iranians to strike. They haven't been very successful trying to do that. I mean, so you can be patient and let the blockade take its effect and let the population simmer while also continuing to debilitate them and moving commerce through the strait with our people. Sure. So first on resuming the bombing, I would actually say, to me, that is actually the escalation piece, right, because it would really be about going after new targets, that's right, the ones of the president just mentioned, power plants, just an old industrial facilities, civilian infrastructure. trying to inflict more pain on the Iranians. And I suspect that's where we're going to end up at some point not too far away, because that's kind of the next step in the escalatory ladder. There's a sense of logic to that. I'm glad you brought up the escort mission, though. I actually think that that was a very important move on the part of the United States. It was something I was waiting for us to do for a number of weeks. And I'll be honest with you. I think that that had a huge impact on the Iranians. It's worth of people understanding that what happened was the U.S. Navy enabled two American commercial shifts to move through the Strait of Hormuz. The Iranians threw everything out of it could.

and they couldn't hit them. That's really important. Instead, what they did go was they hit a South Korean ship elsewhere, and they started lobbing missiles again at the United Arab Emirates. And for whatever reason, we decided to shut that operation down. I suspect it's because of the attacks on the United Arab Emirates that we were afraid those would expand to the other Gulf states. And that's what makes that option hard. Again, I think we'll wind up going that route because showing the Iranians that they can't control the Strait of Hormuz is hugely important. for the future of commerce and the international economy. And I also do think that escalating to try to cause them more pain is going to be important. But we've got to recognize they're going to shoot back. They're going to shoot our allies in the Gulf. That's not something we really want to have happened. I think that's why President Trump has been trying to give this ceasefire a chance. I suspect we're going to end up there. Well, I mean, we initially reportedly had some holdups with the Kuwaitis and the Saudis, and then those holdups were removed after they hit that refinery in UAE. And now, as I mentioned at the outside, UAE has launched their own strikes. So how does that factor into the Gulf states participating in this preemptive de-escalatory escalation? Sure. So first, I'm not entirely convinced by those news stories about the Saudis and Kuwaitis putting holds on it. The truth is we have so much force there. We don't really need their support. Right. I'm going to wait to see what we fully get out of this. And as far as the UAE is concerned, I mean, I think that's great. I think that more of our allies ought to be participating actively given the fact that they are being attacked actively by the Iranians. But while it's symbolically important. We should recognize there's really nothing that the Emirates or any of our Gulf allies can add in a meaningful military sense. on top of what we and the Israelis already bring to the fight. I mean, we and the Israelis... Well, right. Of course. Of course. And our NATO allies, for that matter, you know, it's nice that Keir Starmer are sending a destroyer over one of their two or three. Good grief. The whole reporting over the weekend about Emmanuel Macron and Keir Starmer getting together to figure out some sort of way to facilitate commerce through the straight. You know, those are, those are, they're a couple of Unix, aren't they? Well, yeah. Maybe not, you maybe don't want to be that strong, but yeah, but you know what I'm saying.

Yeah, symbolically, again, symbolically, it would be great to have our European allies joining us in the fight. And by the way, they actually do have some real capabilities that we could use that our Gulf allies don't because, you know, we made a decision back in the late 1970s, early 1980s for a division of labor in NATO. We would build carrier battle groups and attack submarines, and we would let the Europeans build all the mine clearing assets. So they actually have a much better mind clearing capability than we do. And so getting more than one destroyer, but getting a bunch of European destroyers and frigates would actually be helpful. President Trump also expressed some disappointment with the Kurds saying something to the effect of we sent weapons to the Kurds to get to whoever they wanted them to get to with respect to sort of the Iranian dissidents that they want to see, you know, take up arms and aid in the fight to throw out this regime. And so how does that play in in terms of trying to... provide aid and comfort to those who would like to take on the IRGC indigenously. Yeah, so this is a bit of a thorny question, and I guess I've got a fair amount of sympathy for the Kurds on this one. Understand, first of all, nobody's paying any attention to this. The Iraqi Kurds are getting hit as badly as anyone except maybe the United Arab Emirates by the Iranians in this. And in fact, in some ways it's worse for the Iraqi Kurds because they don't have any air defenses. So the Iranians are throwing a lot of stuff at the Emirates, but the Emirates are shooting it all down. The Kurds are defenseless. And so far more stuff is actually hitting Kurdistan than anywhere else. And if you actually look at a map of where the stuff is actually hitting, there are all kinds of explosions all over Kurdistan. So they are far more vulnerable than anyone else is. In addition, you know, they live right next to the Iranians. And what they're trying to calculate is what happens over the long term. If the Americans are going to be here to protect us against the Iranians over the long term. Trust me, they will be with us. The Kurds hate the Iranians. They would love to be our allies. They've been trying to be our allies since 1975. We just keep throwing them in the gutter. But they're afraid that we won't be. And until they're convinced that we're going to stick around long after this war to help defend them against the Iranians, they are hedging and trying very hard not to piss off the Iranians.

for fear that when this war ends, we're going to walk away and then the Iranians are going to come looking for revenge. So President Trump sit down with Xi Jinping. What should he be asking of Xi Jinping vis-a-vis the Middle East and vis-a-vis America more generally with, you know, in addition to saying, you know, please stop sending your honeypots to our wink links like Eric Swalwell. So, look, I mean, let's start with the fact that, as you're kind of pointing out there, Dan, we have huge equities with the Chinese, right? And the Middle East is clearly one set of issues we've got with them, and we need them to deal with that. We can't lose sight of everything else going on there, right? And the administration has laid out, you know, a whole bunch of different things that they want from the Chinese on trade, on other geo-economic and geostrategic issues. They're absolutely right to do so. But, you know, that's just it is. we shouldn't trade off the Middle East on those other things. You know, we shouldn't give up on those other things just to get their help on the Middle East. We've got to strike a balance here. On the Middle East, you know, we want a few things. One, we want their pressure on the Iranians. And in many ways, that's the most important thing. China is Iran's most important trade partner. And therefore, the Chinese have a lot of leverage with them. And the Chinese, frankly, were critically important. in getting the Iranians to agree to the ceasefire in the first place. So we need to get the Chinese to lean on the Iranians, agree to reasonable terms. Second, we need to get the Chinese to be willing to cut off their trade with the Iranians if the Iranians won't do that. And, you know, here there's a good argument for the president to make, which is, you know, the Chinese want stability and peace in the region. And Iran, A, is the hold up right now, and B is a force. for instability, aggression, and violence in the Middle East, and frankly, the Chinese understand it. And it always made the Chinese somewhat ambivalent about the Iranians. This is a moment when they need to get a lot more ambivalent about the Iranians. In fact, they need to read the Riot Act to the Iranians and say, enough of this stuff. You guys need to become responsible members of this community so we can all enjoy peace and prosperity. Well, maybe you don't say this explicitly to she, you know, because you don't want to embarrass him. But, hey, she, I mean, the reality, the subtext is that you're dependent on Western economies. You're an export country. And your economy is weakening. You've got all kinds of problems. And those problems are only going to multiply if you are antagonistic towards the West and particularly America. Right. I mean, this is ultimately about, you know, where's your bread really bothered, right? How much are you getting from the Iranians? How important is that to you compared to your relationship with the United States and through us with the rest of the Western and developed world? What do you want at the end of the day? And, you know, we need to recognize, again, the Chinese are antagonistic to us. I think at some level they do see us as the end. So they like the fact. that the Iranians are frustrating us. But we've got to get them over that. And we've got to get them to focus on where their real interests lie, which are with us, not with the Iranians.

Kenneth Pollock is the vice president for policy at the Middle East Institute, former senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute as well. Kenneth Pollack, thanks so much for joining us. Appreciate it. My pleasure, Dan. Thanks so much for having me on. Yeah, and he joined us on the AlphaWealthgroup.com answer line. It's news, opinion, insight. This is Chicago's morning answer. An AM 560, The Answer. Insert Democrat Socialist here. Runs the Democratic House law for 30 plus years running. He's promising this and he's stealing that. Where can you get that kind of money? He's using your house like his own piggyback. Gang, gang, gang, gang, gang, gang. You ought to know by now. You can pay off your house here in Illinois. You can never keep up with the taxes. Oh, how it's always been the plan To have a taxpayer pay, no doubt, not a matter of if anymore but when You're moving out. I said when you're moving out. Top of the morning, Dan Proft here, that theme music means it's time for a weekly conversation with the wirepoints.org folks. All things Illinois policy related. Mark Lennon is the founder of wirepoints.org. And he joins us from Poland. We're going to do something different than we normally do because Mark, as he mentioned, he would be doing a couple weeks back, has went to Ukraine, has been in Ukraine, and he's going to report back with some first person accounting of what it looks like, what it looks like ground level there. Mark, thanks so much for joining us. Appreciate it. Thanks for taking this up, Dan. So tell us what you saw. Yeah, well, I was in a safe area of Ukraine, the western part, and mostly in the Lviviv, which looks like life is normal. They're trying to live their lives as normal, keep the economy going. Lviv, of course, is a beautiful city, and it has retained that. Some parts of the countryside look a little tired, as you'd expect. But for the most part, it's fine in the West. The front, of course, remains brutal despite the... tremendous success that the Ukrainians have been having. And on the war front, this is where the American press has just been way, way behind things. They fought the Russians to a standstill at least a year ago, despite, I have to say, Trump's claims that the Ukrainians were losing. And now they really have some spring in their step. You know, there are these deep strikes going into Russia, crippling the Russian economy. They are stopped on the front. They've lost 1.3 million casualties, the Russians have, including 500,000 dead. You know, the joke in Ukraine, you know, I've heard several times is at the start of the war, we were told we could never win because we're trying to fight the second best army in the world.

Well, today we're fighting the second best army in Ukraine. And that turns out to be pretty true. And don't take my word for it. Let me just say, don't take my word for these things. It's the most notable commentary that I watch closely that gets reported, not by the American press, but by others, is from Russians. You're including very prominent voices there that are ultra-nationalist, ra-rah war, expansionary Vladimir Putin fans. They say the war has lost, the Russian economy. is in deep trouble. The head of the Communist Party, who was in the doom of the parliament, said last week that they're facing a 1917-style revolution again if somehow things aren't turned around. And he was referring to the war they're losing and the economy. I'm not so sure that anybody really thought that this was the Russian bear of the Soviet era, but it's just the overwhelming resource advantage that the Russians had. What is the where is the casualty, not that this is how you measure success, but where's the casualty number at for the Ukrainians? The highest credible estimate I've seen is 200,000 dead. That number is less certain because the Ukrainians don't release the number. We know for sure that it's 15,000 civilians. because kills families in their beds pretty much every night. But estimates range from 100,000 to 200,000. And so how is this statement that Vladimir Putin made over the weekend that the war may be coming to an end very soon? Is that you think that's the result, I'm assuming, of what you're describing in terms of the state of the war? It's a head scratcher. You know, that was very significant because the... Russia experts were stunned that he would say even that, but he did not elaborate. So whether he's going to declare a victory and pull out or escalate or whatever, we don't know. And so I can't speculate on that either. What are the Ukrainians that you talk to think of Volodymyr Zelensky? I mean, there was another high-profile incident of alleged corruption. His second in command is at the center of it. Is that something they treat like we treat corruption in Chicago as just part of the price of living there?

Now, even the fight against corruption is like a second war for the Ukrainians. That's part of why they had their initial revolution that sparked all this in 2014. The pro-Russian president that they had elected to turn pro-Russian and was dismantling democracy, was extremely corrupt. And so that's part of why they revolted against them. They do not like Volodymyr Zelensky's tolerance for corruption. And I think it's absolutely fair to say that that Volodymyr Zelensky tolerates that he stepped on some of the anti-corruption measures. But the prosecutor, you know, that scandal you're talking about, they've indicted nine people already more coming. The people are dead set against corruption and cleaning that up. And the likely replacements are being as a whistle as far as I can tell. It's a guy named the Zuluski and another one named Budenov. uh... there will come out of the military we continue the war effort as it is uh... and and really fight corruption, I believe. So that's a point I really want to emphasize. Don't equate Ukraine with Volodymyr Zelensky. They are not the same thing. And it's got complaints about Volodymyr Zelensky, make them. But don't dump on the whole country. Again, I'm afraid the president is done and the vice president. Well, I mean, Volodymyr Zelensky also handled himself poorly in the last administration and into this one, particularly when he was at the White House. That was not the best strategic approach I've ever seen. So you can understand why there is some skepticism about him. I mean, yeah, it's not just like talking about Xi Jinping is not talking about the Chinese people necessarily. But, I mean, you have to deal with the heads of state at that level, obviously. Yeah, and fundamentally, Ukraine does have to make concessions to get a peace deal. I mean, I'm fully in Trump's camp in terms of pushing both sides hard to get a peace deal, and that's going to require giving up some territory by Ukraine. And Volodymyr Zelensky is accused of not being cooperative enough on that and prolonging the war. That's a valid criticism, I think, although... Again, the Ukrainians, I mean, my fear is that the Ukrainians are getting so optimistic that they're going to expand their ambitions, you know, conceivably to include the Crimea, which is the, you know, heavily desired piece of territory on the South on the Black Sea that the Russian seas in 2014, but Ukrainians want back. And the, you know, the populace, just the regular people that you interacted with, they are not so weary with this battle. I mean, 200,000 dead. I mean, good grief. That they will fight on and, as you say, try to, you know, I don't know, try to push the Russians back out of Donbass, try to get Crimea back. That's the attitude of the average Ukrainian.

That was probably the primary thing that I wanted to get a feel for is that charge. You know, some critics of the war say they don't have the will to fight. You know, this is all Volodymyr Zelensky fight and American corporations foreboding this, blah, blah, blah. The Ukrainians are tired of the war. Yeah, they're tired. They want a peace deal, too, just as I described. But, yeah, it's as best I can tell from talking to people and from all the polls that clearly showed as two-thirds. of Ukrainians are willing to fight to the end, unless they can get a fair peace deal, something that gives them security, preserves their democracy. They've lived under Russian rule before, obviously, in the Soviet days, and they do not want to go back. And they will look in the eye and say, we will fight to the end. And I've had people do that. Well, I mean, yeah, and I mean, obviously they know their own country's history and the famine that was imposed on them by the Soviets and so forth too. So, I mean, they know what they're dealing with, right? That's right. And, you know, at the start of the war, there were, you know, 2 million, 4 million, probably Russians inside Ukraine. I mean, they were ethnically Russian, spoke Russian. So they sided with the Russians, a million and a half or so of them moved to Russia. They're mostly in those areas occupied by Russia now. So that one third, you know, of Ukrainians that's out there that might not be so crazy about the war. If not those Russians, they have friends and family that are. And probably from Soviet days, they have friends and family in Russia. So the two-thirds number is a pretty strong number. And by the way, that's a whole lot higher than the American support for the revolution was at the time of our revolution. It was at the most 50%. What's their attitude towards America, specifically NATO, generally, NATO countries? So. Certainly more positive than it is towards Trump. I mean, I have to tell you, they and the whole region don't like Trump. You can look at his approval, Trump's approval ratings through, you know, Hungary, Poland, Slovakia, the Czech Republic. You know, it's in the 20s. But, you know, they're kind of ambivalent to the European Union. They do want to join the European Union. They were not happy with the Europeans for being so slow to come to their aid. But, you know, we have shifted. America has not fund the war anymore, you know, for over a year, or provide any philanthropic aid. 110 billion was just allocated by the Europeans. So the Ukrainians are very grateful for that. And again, I'm sorry to say that, you know, Trump advanced.

campaign for the one guy that was trying to block that European aid. I mean, we wanted to shift the burden over to the Europeans, but then we tried to block the European aid by, this was by supporting the, you know, main obstacle. I just don't get that. That's just a head scratcher to me. And have you haven't seen Hunter Biden out there while you were there. Did you, you know, I don't know, maybe the Burisma corporate office or anything? Yeah, they're well aware of that whole story. And, you know, they're just disgusted by the whole thing. And, you know, that's another example. Are you going to blame all of Ukraine for Volodymyr Zelensky's corruption? Well, you know, the Biden family was a crime wave. And, you know, I would hope that if America had a catastrophe, people would still come to worry despite that. Yes. Well, when you get back, we have another scene that we need you to be sort of reporter on the ground for. I mean, it's rocking your former stomping grounds in North Shore. I don't know if you've heard. You've had a bit bigger matters to tend to. But there was an incident at Tony Indian Hill Country Club. where a 22-year-old worker there apparently pointed a gun at his co-worker's head and then left. Now, he was subsequently arrested, but you can imagine the trauma that Indian Hill members are suffering today and probably will suffer for years to come. So we're going to need you to make sure that your former North Shore neighbors are okay. Yeah, yeah, well, you might want to get, you know, see if you get Bill Murray on the phone and chime. Exactly. No, I know. Yeah, I know. Thankfully, the Havercamps were not injured. So that's the good news. Mark Glennon, founder of Wirepoints, Wirepoints. Wirepoints.org, all things Illinois policy related. Coming to us from Poland, are you on your way back now? Yeah, you got to take a train in to get into Ukraine. So I took a train back. I'm in the beautiful... Carpathian Mountains. Looks like Switzerland around here in the south of Poland. Very nice. Well, enjoy the rest of your European vacation of sorts. Mark, thanks so much. Appreciate it. Okay, Dan, thank you. And Mark joined us on the AlphaWealthgroup.com, Anseline. The stories you need to know to start your day. This is Chicago's morning answer. On AM 560, The Answer. Dan Prop here, just a little bit more on that incident at Indian Hill Country Club. Yes, as Mark Lennon mentioned, where the Murray's caddied and was the inspiration for Caddyshack. Thank goodness Caddymaster Lou Loomis was there. What's that sign say? No bare feet. What's that sign say? No loaded gun. No loaded gun. No loaded gun. You only one gumball machine. What's a candy wrapper doing there? Yeah, and you, Angie, pick up that blood. Hopefully, the individual charged with, arrested and charged with pointing a gun at a co-worker's head, rather than getting, like, Judge Like in Cook County, he should have to face Judge Smales, who, as you know, has sent boys younger than him to the gas chamber, not because he wanted to, but because he felt he owed it to them.

How about our fresco? The stories you need to know to start your day. This is Chicago's morning answer on AM 560, the answer. This is Chicago's morning answer with Dan Proft on AM 560, the answer. Time of the morning, Dan Proft, Dan Proft, Mara Gay is an opinion writer for The Grey Lady, the New York Times. And she is none too happy with the Supreme Court's callous decision and the resulting remapping that's going on. Also none too happy with the Virginia State Supreme Court. And she's parroting the party line on that score. We actually don't know what this means for the national Republican or Democratic Party overall. That's going to play out. What we do know so far is that black political power in the South and therefore in the country has been severely diluted and kneecapped. And that's both in terms of representation. So the ability of these voters. under Section 2 to choose someone who often happen to be black, but not always is the case with Representative Stephen Cohen in Memphis. But also in terms of the voting block. So I think it's really important that even though what Jonathan says has a lot of truth to it, it's also true that because of the gutting of the Voting Rights Act, these voting blocks have been split, not in two necessarily, but fractured. which actually makes it very difficult to have a moderating effect likely on these other districts. So it's going to be hard in Tennessee, for example, looking at the map, you know, black voters might be 20% of a district that is overwhelmingly MAGA. That's not really going to help them get fair representation. So I just, I think that that's still to play out. But. It's clear just the swiftness with which these southern legislatures moved, these Republicans moved, to eliminate black political power. It's clear that the Republicans see black political power as a democratizing force, which it is. They understand that. And this is a way to consolidate power. And it's also a way to express white supremacy. So it's bold. There it is. And I don't think we should miss that. And yes, it's going to animate. Black people and many other Democrats who are angry about this. But, I mean, you know, Joe, because you are from the South, that what the South experiences is not unique. It's just in some ways more Americans. So I think a lot of Americans who are outside the South should take this as a wake-up call that their own rights are under threat. This is an attempt, I believe, to steal an election. And it may not work, you know. I believe in democracy. I believe in the ability of people to organize. But make no mistake, this is devastating. And the gravity of this is only beginning to make itself felt. Yeah, capital D democratizing. I got some great news for Mara Gay because black political power. That's all she's interested in. Not of any particular persuasion, of course, right, Mara? Great news. Charlotte Bergman, a black female.

is likely to replace Stephen Cohn in that seat in Memphis in Tennessee. I mean, she happens to be a Republican, but you don't care about that because you're just interested in black political power, right? I got some more good news. Byron Donalds's, who's a black member of Congress, is likely to be the next governor of Florida following Ron DeSantis. Because you're just interested in black political power, not any particular ideological bent, right? But, you know, as much as it's been a wonderful development, the well-reasoned Samuel Alito majority opinion in Calus, the well-reasoned opinion from the Virginia State Supreme Court about a neo-Marxist party in that state that didn't follow the state constitution in terms of what it demands for any sort of. gambit as they pursued. I wouldn't go spiking the football. The balance of power and the likelihood that Republicans can hold the house has certainly increased, but there are still some prickly matters to deal with. One of them is the Save America Act, and you still have Mike Lee out there beating the drum for an enforcement of the talking filibuster or nuking the filibuster. And President Trump, in his sit down with Cheryl Ackison for her full measure program, had this to say. I believe coming up on the 2020 election, the 2020 election was rigged. You know, when I used to say that, they'd say, oh, the cameras would turn off. How can you say nowadays? The information, a lot of it's already out there. The election was rigged. It was rigged. You look at Georgia. You look at Pennsylvania. You look at these states. They were rigged. It was a rigged election. And they used COVID to do it. And they used crooked dirty cops to do it. You know, they had dirty cops. Like you read about James Comey is a dirty cop. Bad guy. Bad for the country, bad guy. But no, the 2020 election was rigged. Anytime you have mail-in voting, you're going to have a rigged election. Anytime you're not using voter ID. The Democrats don't want. They're fighting us on the Save America Act. Anytime you don't have, when somebody says, we don't want voter identification, that means they want to cheat. Yeah, and just one more point of order. I mentioned it the other day. Jeannie Ives mentioned in her commentary this morning. Lauren Underwood, she's a black female Democrat, and she represents a district in suburban and exurban Illinois that's 9% black, majority white. It's funny because Lauren Underwood, as I mentioned again yesterday, she said essentially that. We can still compete even if it's not a majority black district. Yeah, right. So why don't you knock off the Jim Crow 2.0 nonsense? Well, they can't do that. Alex Marlowe is the editor-in-chief of Breitbart News. He's also the host of the Alex Marlowe show, which airs three to four on these airwaves. And he'll be in town next Tuesday night at Gobert's Farm. for our cigar night, joining me and Sean. I'll get those details to you after we talk to Alex. Alex, thanks for joining us. Appreciate it. Dan, my pleasure. Thanks for having me. So, you know, the response from the identitarians.

is hardly surprising. But as I was saying, it doesn't mean it's a positive development. There's no question about it beyond just these midterms. It's just the end of racist gerrymandering, which is great for the country. But as it pertains to these midterms, Republicans still have some water to bail. Yeah, they do. And it's an uphill climb in the midterms given the state of the map. But I actually welcome these clips and quotes and highlighting people like Margei. It just shows you the Democrats stand for nothing aside from that they hate Trump. These are ideas that are so retro-rayed. They look backwards and they're not actually solving any problems. It's particularly if you're a semi-smart person, you can follow the decisions. They're actually eliminating seats of white liberals, black conservatives going to take the seats. Black conservatives support this. And so it's one of these things where if you actually think for more than five seconds about it, it's really the left that's pandering to blacks in the same way. Think about that Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez quote last week where she said that black Americans invented democracy. Not the Greeks. Wasn't advanced in Rome and France. And then in America, by white Americans, no is black Americans who invented it. No one actually believes that. And I think a lot of black people are really rolling their eyes out of the Democrats. Yeah. Well, and the other thing that's happening, too, as we saw in 2024, is, I mean, it's still a distinct minority, to be sure. But you have more black voters, particularly black men moving in the direction, younger black men, moving in the direction of the Republican Party. Yeah, Trump's black support doubled, I think, from 2020 into 2024. And it's only going to go up from there. But all it is is white socialists understand the best way to win elections in this country is to move blocks of voters. And so when they treat blacks, like you're supposed to vote a certain way or your pariet to your race, that makes it easier to move more voters at the same time. And once you understand that it's all just a cynical shell game, then there's a chance for us to pick up a lot of voters who have open minds and do think for themselves. What's your perspective on the Save America Act and the prospect that John Thune will at minimum... find the intestinal fortitude to force a talking filibuster? Yeah, I don't think it's going to happen, but I think you're correct to highlight it often because it's not acceptable, and it's tone deaf of where the energy is among base voters, the type of people who are going to win or lose this election for Republicans, they not only want this, they see it as completely insane and it hasn't been passed to this point, or at least make the Democrats work harder to stop it. And he's indulging a couple of moderates in his Republican conference at the expense of the vast majority of people who could win this election for the Republicans in the midterm. And it's a huge mistake.

If John Thune won't do it, clearly he won't, do you think Mike Lee and other aggressive conservative senators should be calling out their colleagues and saying the problem is Lisa Murkowski, the problem is Mitch McConnell, the problem is Thom Tillis, and we need to focus on getting the wrong people to do the right thing here. The problem is the names you listed are all people who are real iconic class. And Thom Tillis might be a total idiot. And Susan Collins and Lisa Murkowski are the sort of thing where, you know, a devastating opinion piece that I make the lead at Breitbart News is not going to convince Susan Collins or Lisa Murkowski to come to her senses. And that's kind of what we're up against is that the base is not persuasive to those people. And I think Mike Lee is a hero, one of my favorite people in all of American public life. But I just don't necessarily see him persuading anyone. But he'll make great points. I just don't know if he's going to persuade anyone that's necessary to get this across. Well, then do you share his concern that even if... Trump extricates America from Iran with a decided victory, even if the economy is roaring and the markets are up, that you're going to see base Republican voters, MAGA voters, with Trump not on the ballot, sit on their hands. So I'll give you in my brain. I feel like that's a great analysis. But in my heart, to be honest with you, I'm too optimistic about this because I think the Democrats, the fact they don't stand for anything, the fact that they're such demagogues, that they're completely confused. They don't have a single platform position that they're actually campaigning on. Their leadership is so toxic that they can't put their people out there. Gavin Newsom runs for president, and he goes down the polls. in L.A. where I'm at, the Democrat candidates can't go out in public because they always go down in the polls whenever they do. It makes me think that if Trump can get us out of Iran with a victory in short order, and we can start talking about the MAGA agenda and how he's pushed it forward. I don't know how the Democrats are going to defend that, and it's going to be close one way the other. It's not going to be a blowout. One side is going to win by a little bit, and I still feel like we have a good shot. Since you're out there in L.A., What is your optimism about Spencer Pratt actually being able to pull off the upset there? Well, frankly, fairly low. in terms of winning, I think what he's doing is incredibly productive in terms of starting essential conversations to a city that's completely broken. But I do mean it's completely broken. I was born out here. I've spent 32 of my 40 years out here. And basically the city's controlled by the unions. And the unions are locked up behind bass. They know how to win. And until I see otherwise...

I'm not going to actually buy. He's going to win, but that said, every day, right part were going to treat it like he's got a shot because his campaign is pure Trumpian, and I love to see it. Yeah. And do you think that, I mean, we're talking about this a bit yesterday, too, and, you know, Bass trotting out the Magic Johnson endorsement in, you know, in the most ham-handed way possible. Yeah. You know, sort of like an old Soviet would. And that, I mean, that model is not going to, it may get Karen Bass one more term just with because of the inertia that you're describing. But that model is not going to last in very many places for very much longer. I sure hope not, and especially in our hypermedia age, that it does feel like how often can you see these celebrities who just all seem very stupid. Magic Johnson is not a stupid person, but he just seems it's not an ad that's persuasive to anyone unless you're just an old... person who might be a voter though, but there might be someone who's got nostalgia over Magic Johnson, and that's all it takes to get them to vote. I'm not underestimating it's a few people. But again, it's the unions move blocks of voters in L.A., and they are 100% behind Karen Bass, and that is a massive, massive problem if we want to see victory. but identifying it and then also talking about all of the problems that Pratt is talking about with the widespread incompetence in our city government. It's still a productive exercise to go through. No question. And we're very familiar with the paradigm you're describing in L.A. here in Chicago, so we get it. All right, Alex Marlowe, he's the editor-in-chief of Breitbart News. He is joining us for Cigar Night, a week from today. That's May 19th, Tuesday evening at Gobert's Farm in Pingree Grove. We still have a few tickets available, and a few of VIP, too. 560The Answer.com slash cigar. 56 the answer.com slash cigar to pick up those tickets. And you can also hear Alex three to four on these airwaves. Alex, thanks so much for joining us and we'll see you next Tuesday night. Yeah, it's great to meet you. Everyone come out and see us. It's great to be together with friends, particularly if you're like us and we all live in blue areas. It's a great opportunity. Yes, exactly. It's sort of a therapy session, as it were, with cigars. Yeah, and we have some fun. Alex Marlow, joins us on the alphawealthgroup.com. Answerline. Thanks. The more you listen, the more you'll know. This is Chicago's morning answer. Morning answer. On AM 560, the answer. Only the biggest stories. Only the biggest guests. And only the biggest opinions. This is AM 560, the answer.

Top of the morning, Dan Proft here. We're going to talk a little bit more about remapping with our next guest because he wrote a good piece on the topic, but I want to broaden the cultural discussion. Among the wild things that Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez had to say while sitting down with David Axelrod at the University of Chicago's Institute for Political Skullduggery that he runs, you know, where she was, she. Has ambitions bigger than president. She's going to change America. The American Revolution was a revolution against billionaires. She also had this to say about guns vis-a-vis a discussion of violence, you know, particularly centered in... Big cities. That, you know, it may be different in every community. Yeah, it is true that in rural Vermont, the way guns show up in that landscape is very different than in Brownsville, Brooklyn. You should vote differently in that community around it. Do you think she understands the implication of what she's saying? For more on the topic and others, please be joined by David Seifer, freelance writer, black conservative culture critic, and contributing to the American Spectator. David, thanks for joining us. Appreciate it. Yeah, thank you, man. I'm blessed. I'm happy to be here, man. Great to have you. So guns work differently in the hands of people in, say, Brownsville neighborhood in Brooklyn as compared to Bernie Sanders land. Are you picking up the same thing that I'm picking up in terms of what she's implicating, even if she doesn't understand what she's implicating? Well, I think that, you know, she does a good job of speaking to her base, and she wants to highlight to the people in the inner city how you need extreme gun control because, you know, this is what's going to happen to you and this doesn't happen in Maine. It's a classic us versus them paradigm, basically. Yeah, right. We need to keep guns out of the hands of law-abiding persons of color in big cities, but not honkies in rural Vermont. I mean, so what is she said? I mean, that there's a clear, right? She's making a commentary on groups of people who are not the same in terms of their behavior, maybe in terms of their skin color, but not in terms of their behavior. And this is the thing the left can't. bring itself to admit. Yeah, I mean, correct. I mean, unfortunately, you know, the left a lot of times speaks with a lot of racial undertones, and they know, you know, that's what their base responds to. So somebody hearing her may say, yeah, we have to keep guns out of inner city.

Because, you know, it's not like Maine because of race. And that's the main focus that they want you to focus on, not, you know, people enjoying their Second Amendment rights. But. You know, just that us versus them mentality and who's going to get killed and, you know, just focus on the racial undertone. Yeah, I would say that law-abiding residents in big cities need the means to protect themselves much more than do syrup makers in Vermont, you know? I agree. I wanted to get your take you. I know you wrote about the Virginia contra top over the remap and the nullification of that referendum. I think what Maxwell Frost had to say, he's a Democrat from Florida, the Orlando area, member Congress. What he had to say is sort of illustrative of what we're getting from that caucus. My heart is heavy for the country because we see that this is going on all across the south. And it's important for people to realize that this isn't happening in a vacuum. This isn't a plan that just came up because Donald Trump said to go redistrict. This is the product. of a 60 plus year plan to bring this country into Jim Crow 2.0. An era where they've traded in the hoods for suits and ties, an era where they are trying to use our democracy against us to take away, not just our right to vote, but our right to protest, our right to privacy, our right to health care, a right to be able to actually have life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness in this country. And they see the South as a threat. And that is the reason why some of the worst voter suppression tactics we see are in the South. I don't think that conservatives see the South as a threat. They see it as an opportunity. David, what say you? I mean, I think that the voters deserve clarity, and that's why, in my piece, I try to give the voters clarity. Basically, what's going on is... It's a tit for tat, and it's part of a national redistricting, basically arms race. And, you know, he wants to frame it around race. But in my article, I really critique what is the problem here, which is gerrymandering, because the real losers that nobody's talking about is the voters, the people. Because let's be clear, gerrymandering, you know. It's just a political tool used by either political party to create safe seats or safe districts.

And so you end up in a situation where in a working democracy, the voter is supposed to elect the politician, but now the politician is electing the voter. And they keep the focus on race so they can kind of keep this arms race going. And I basically try to address that in my piece. Yeah, I mean, you know, we're looking right now of the 435 seats. 18 are considered toss-ups. And so one of the hopes, at least from my perspective, with drawing maps that don't require much expertise in cartography if you just keep it to, you know, contiguousness, compactness, and respect for municipal borders, as the Supreme Court promulgated, the norm should be, then you're going to have more competitive races. And there's more opportunities for people across the spectrum, you know, across the identity spectrum. Isn't that what we should want? Yeah, I mean, yeah, we, as a voter and I, and I details to my piece. You want the politician to work. You want, you know, you want them to earn your vote, which means that they have to convince skeptics. They have to build a coalition. They have to work outside their comfort zone. You don't want a situation where basically the general election becomes political theater. And the most important thing is the primary. And that benefits the parties because now they don't have to speak to the voter. They could speak to their most extreme base. You know, just think of a real quick, just think of a Democratic state like Virginia that wanted to become 10 to 1. I'm talking about their advantage as far as seats. They wanted to take it from 6 to 5 advantage, which is a slight advantage to 10 to 1. Now they can say the same thing that Frost says all the time, and they don't have to speak to the voter. They can speak to that extreme fraction and just, you know, get an easy win. Yeah. Yeah, and do you think sort of the crying Jim Crow 2.0 is getting stale for black voters? I mean, this, you know, the Georgia election reform law was Jim Crow 2.0, you know, the MLB under pressure pulled the All-Star game out of Atlanta and the whole embryo there. And then the next election, you saw record black turnout. So obviously that election reform law did not inhibit turnout. It didn't deprive anybody who wanted to vote of their rights, to vote or any other rights. It's just like everything that they don't like is Jim Crow 2.0 or white supremacy. And it's always talking about, you know, black political power pretending that there's not an ideological, the main thing is not race, but ideology, which is what you're seeing from these leftists, obviously. Yeah, I mean, I think as far as to your question about the Jim Crow 2.0, I believe that politics has a way of pulling people in, and they know right now with the redistricting wars, a lot of people are upset, and they can utilize their anger. You know, hopefully they're hoping they can utilize their anger to maybe get some rulings overturned and basically kind of push.

the redistricting arms race in their favor, so to speak. Yeah, well, it would also be nice if people picked up on the fork-tonged responses you're getting from these decrying the Virginia Supreme Court decision as well as the remapping that's going on. Like Jim Clybourne in South Carolina said, you know, just because they're drawn a map that they think is going to provide only one Democrat seat in South Carolina. Don't be so sure. I think we could win three seats. Well, wait a second. If you think you could win more seats under the new map, then how can you then turn around and say this is Jim Crowe 2.0? Right. Well, you know, I believe that a lot of times, you know, if you see things within the prism of race, You know, it's easy to call every maneuver Jim Crow 2.0. But, you know, the fact remains is that, like you said, either we need to go back to municipal borders or take independent redistricting commissions and actually give them teeth so they can't be bypassed. the redistricting is not in the hands of a party or a person. And my main goal in I detail that is just keeping the power with the people. Yeah, I mean, there's a concept. I want to get your reaction to something else on another topic. And this is still in sort of the conversation about black political power that's being. so widely discussed again. Wes Moore, of course, is the governor of Maryland, and he's a possible presidential candidate in 28. He was recently on Patrick Bet David's podcast, and Patrick Bat David put this question to him, listen to the question and response from Governor Moore. Your son comes in saying he wants to transition. What do you do?

Well, first, if it's my son, so I love him regardless, right? And he's always going to have mine dying love. That's me, right? I want to make sure that I'm involved in understanding where he is, how he's feeling, the way he's feeling, why he thinks is important. If this is a journey that he wants to go down, I want him to always be comfortable in his own skin. And I want him to always know that he has a partner in me to help him along that journey. Would you advise him to wait till he's 18? If this is how he is feeling and I feel like I'm closely tied to him. I'm not going to advise him on something that he feels is at 14 years old, Wes? No, I understand it. But what I'm saying is, The most important thing for me is I want him to feel safe in his own skin, safe in his own decision making, but also know that at 14 years old, I want to be involved inside of that process as well. I'm not going to condemn him nor castigate him. I'm not going to kick him out of the house. I'm not going to do anything that's going to hurt him. But I just want to make sure that I'm involved. Not going to do anything to hurt him. I'm going to let him hurt himself, I would argue. What's your reaction to that answer, David? Believe it or not, I think he tried his best to be measured. As you know, the issue around transgender, I believe, has been losing steam for a while. So you can see in these comments, he's very measured. Like he has to. you know, stick to how Democrats feel about that issue. But at the same time, keeping in mind that the general public has shifted away from those transgender culture war issues. And people want to know what's going on with the economy, what's going on with gas. And they've really moved away about personal issues and, you know, which the Democrats continue to lose on. Yeah, but what does it say about who Wes Moore is tethered to? I mean, the audience for that response is. frankly, is radical, left suburban women. It's mainly single. It's not, I mean, it's not, it's not the, the regular person that you're talking about that has these very, uh, focused concerns on their quality of life. And so when, when Wes Moore says something like that or policy, any politician says something like that, I mean, do you get, do you get the sense that people are like, okay, this guy is? not operating on the level. He's he's weak because he won't say what he really thinks. He feels like he's got to tailor an answer to cover his bases. Yeah, I mean, well, I mean, anybody who's looking at it with any bit of clarity can see in his speech that, you know, he was very muted. You know, he was saying things that maybe he thinks will satisfy the people, maybe his donors, people that want to vote for him. Like you said, people that maybe on the extreme ideological lane. And he doesn't want to offend those people because, like you said, he could be a potential candidate in the future.

So I think he knows what he's saying. Since there's so much discussion about the state of black political power in the wake of the callous decision by the Supreme Court, what's your perspective? What's your outlook in terms of a black political power, whether if you even look at it in those terms, if it's on the rise or the wayne? Right. I will say this. I mean, the outrage is expected, and even though I am a black conservative, I understand the outrage. But I also look at it, like, how can... Can we grow black political power? Because if black political power is connected to a court ruling, it's not very strong. It depends on the wave of a hand of a court. So maybe getting rid of gerrymandering, getting rid of all of these things that put the power in the hands of politicians will actually raise and help black political power because now people have to earn their vote. They maybe become... a swing vote or anything like that. But if you pack everybody into a district and guarantee them, you know, a black senator, you know, you kind of lose that incentive. You kind of lose that, you know, it has a double edge short where you kind of lose your power a little bit. Yeah, it sort of creates a ceiling, right? Yeah, because if you think about it, in some of these states, there's one majority of black district. And if your focus is tethered to holding on to that one majority minority district, I just feel like there's no room for growth. And then you have to, you know, then you have to assess, you know, how much power are you really gaining? Or like you said, are you going down or up? David Seifers, a freelance writer, black conservative culture critic, and contributed to the American Spectator, his piece over at the Hill. Virginia Democrats won the vote on the map, but the voters lost the fight. David, thanks so much for joining us. Appreciate it. Thank you, Matt. Thank you for having me. I appreciate it. Pleasure. And he joined us on the AlphaWealthgroup.com, Anseline. It's like a hot, steaming cup of information to start your day. It's Chicago's Morning Answer on AM 560, The Answer. Thanks for listening to Chicago's Morning Answer podcast sponsored by Signature Bank. Signature Bank takes pride in helping customers grow their business and provide unmatched banking expertise. custom financial solutions, and the industry's best technology. So whether you're a business looking for a deposit relationship or needs a ready source of financing, signature bank is the right bank for you. Call today at 773-467-500 to hear how signature bank can help your business grow and thrive. Member FDIC, Equal Housing Lender.