Vicki McKenna Show - No One Reads the Story

Good morning and welcome to the program. It's the Vicki McKenna show. Polls are open. Polls are open. Polls are open. I have reposted all the voting lists that were sent to me on my Facebook page. So if you're someone who's saying, what do you mean? Polls are open. Is like this election day or something? Yes. Today is election day for those of you who don't know. Don't feel bad about not knowing. There hasn't been, you know, a blanketing of information about the candidates in these races. For instance, how much do you know about the Dane County Board? Probably not a lot. That's why the Republican Party of Dane County has helpfully... created a voting list for you. So you don't have to think this through too much. Now, does this sort of bother me that we have to just hand out lists? Sure, it does. But practically speaking, it's the right thing to do. These are low turnout elections. They're buried on an early April, Tuesday, every single spring. People don't pay attention to them. They're doing other things. They're thinking about other things. They're paying attention to other things. The news media is terrible about sharing information about what's important because the less information that is out there about spring elections, the less likely it is that anybody will turn out in vote. And by less likely, I mean Republicans. Because the Democrats will get their people out. They always do. Why? Because Democrats vote in blocks. They vote in groups. The Democrats hand out the lists of the candidates. You are not required to put any thought into it. You simply show up or you file your absentee ballot. Whatever that might be. So I put the list up for Dane County and some others, Sok County as well, Jefferson County, some people listening in Sok and Jefferson. So your lists are up on my Facebook page as well. Find the list. It's not that hard. And make sure you take that with you if you're not sure. who you're supposed to vote for. Now, no more going to the clerk's office and voting in-person early absentee. This is in-person election. If you are not registered to vote, no problem. We have same-day voter registration in Wisconsin. No problem. Please go vote. Please go vote. If there's only one thing you vote for today, because you're just too busy, make it Judge Maria Lazar. Judge Maria Lizar, because we have to begin clawing back the Wisconsin Supreme Court from the crazy Estro-Nazi Karen's that the Democrats have put on that court. Maria Lizar is our first opportunity to do this. You need to vote for her. She needs to win this race. The only way she wins this race is if our people remember it's election day and turn out.

Spring election days are typically very low turnout, which means the Democrats can dominate because they have blocks of people who go and vote. We need to make sure that we take people to the polls today, call your friend, say, hey, did you know it was election day? Oh, I didn't know. I don't even know what's on the ballot. You say, well, Maria Lazar is on the ballot, and we need you to go vote for her. It will take you no time because the lines will be short because it's spring because it's April 7th. So this is going to be something you can do easily today. So please do it. Polls are open now. They close at eight. So make sure you get this in. We are lucky to have a beautiful day. No snow, no rain, nothing like that, no excuses. If you're saying to yourself, well, you know what, I got a root canal scheduled for today. Here's what you do. You go before your root canal. or you go after your root canal because I've had a root canal and it's not like you're out you're down for the count after a root canal whatever it is you can find time to do this today Maria Lizar absolutely needs your vote and I have helpfully because of the good work of the Dane County GOP put up a voting list for you a voting list for you on my Facebook page just go find it it should be you know top one of the top two on the page. You can have to go directly to my Facebook page. But we've got all the county board races that are contested. We've got Sun Prairie School Board as a registered write-in candidate for that. We've got Village of Cottage Grove candidates for trustee. We've got the Fitchburg mayor's race. We've got, let's see, of course, the Wisconsin Supreme Court. So this is what I'm encouraging people to do. Please go find this on my Facebook page, Facebook.com slash Vicki McKenna Show. You'll find it if you see the little profile picture, avatar profile picture of an eagle. That's my profile picture of an eagle flying over a lake, all right? Get on it. No excuses today. So here's what's coming up in the program. Besides elections, education, we'll give you more reasons to turn out and vote today. We've got Derrick Van Orden coming up. President Trump put out what I can only describe as a... rhetorically alarming truth social post. And we'll check in with Derrick Van Orden on that. Tom Tiffany is going to join me on the program today. More on the crazy scam that has become the rigged game for billionaires on utilities in Wisconsin. All of that is ahead on the program. But I have to first make sure you remember it is election day. You must vote. You must vote. It is your duty as an American. There are people in the United States military. who are putting themselves at risk of death and great bodily harm, of course, but at risk of death, 13 have already died for your right to vote, for your right. So when they do that for you, it becomes your duty to vote, your duty. All right. So.

Get it done. We'll take a break on the Vicki McKenna show. As I said, we'll come back. We'll talk a bit more about education. We have got, again, information that should inspire you if there are contested school board races in your district to make sure you vote for the candidate that is not insane. We'll be right back. Welcome back to the program. It's the Vicki McKenna show. So here's the thing you need to do is text your friends, make sure that everybody knows it's Election Day and that they do need to vote. Now, we had another. We'll get a little bit more into this when Tom Tiffany joins me on the program. We had more double ballots sent out this time in Green Bay. Then there were mistakes made on ballots. And so additional ballots were sent out essentially double ballots in Racine. We keep having this problem, don't we? where we had double ballot sent out in Madison. We still don't have an adequate explanation of that. Weck has done nothing. everybody shrugs their shoulders and just says, hey, I guess it's just just reality. We're just going to make these kinds of mistakes and, you know, hope for the best. In these kinds of elections, local elections, spring elections, a handful of votes matters. And so when you have these problems, it does really make people take pause. All right. I wanted to get to this. This actually goes to some of the reason we want you to go out on spring elections. That's when you can elect school board members. Will Flanders is standing by on the program to talk about, you know, the necessity of understanding what's really going on in schools. And maybe election day is probably a little late to talk about this, Will. But it's pretty shocking. How few people actually understand how much money we spend in education, how little of that money actually gets into the classroom, and how almost none of that money encourages better performance among students. And I say this with the backdrop of Tony Evers telling everyone to get over it, deal with it on his massive property tax increase because, quote, we need to have schools fully funded. Great to have you will. Hey, good morning. Yeah, it's just, it's an absurd approach to whether you're someone who thinks we need more funding for schools or not, sort of this callous approach that you see your property taxes going up year after year to say, get over it. But, of course, we've seen the governor use flippant statements like that a lot of times in the past. It's not that surprising, fortunately. Right. So let's talk about what the reality is of school funding. We're going to stick it to the taxpayers or the property taxpayers. We're going to run those senior citizens out of their homes because the increases are going to be astronomical. As the years go by, next year it will be huge. It'll be even larger the year after that and after that because it's a ratcheting tax increase. It's $325 per student every single year. So every year there's another $3.25 that gets piled on per student, which means eventually people will not be able to afford to live in their homes. Okay. Our schools...

Not fully funded? Are schools underfunded in Wisconsin? Yeah, so I think the evidence, the short answer to that is no. We just put out a FAQ on this new lawsuit that's been filed for public school funding by a number of districts around the state the other day. And in there, we traced school funding going back to the year 2000. And, you know, the reality is that we fund schools more than we did in 2000. And we fund schools almost on par with the highest level ever reported. in 2011, we're within $14 of that funding level adjusted for inflation at $18,592 per student. So, and recall, in 2011, that's when Act 10 was implemented. So since that point, districts that saved billions of dollars with Act 10. So there's really no evidence and no way to support the claim that schools are underfunded despite whatever they want to say with this lawsuit. People think they're underfunded, though, because the media says they're underfunded, because the media are just stenographers for the Democrats who put out press releases who say they're underfunded. It was pretty shocking to see how many people actually thought schools needed more money until you told them how much they already spent. That's right. So we just did a, we had a partner with 50 can who did some national surveying on schools around the country in terms of, you know, one of the questions they asked of parents was, how much do you think we are funding our schools in the state? And the majority of folks either said we're, you know, spending less than we actually are. About 10% of folks said we're spending under $1,000 per kid, which is pretty crazy. But when then we tell folks what we're actually spending on schools. then the percentages change, and over half of respondents that they think we're spending enough or too much. So people really don't have a conception of what these numbers are, which, you know, for the average person, you know, makes sense. They're not diving into these numbers every day. But it does have implications for people just accepting as fact, including the news media, as you mentioned, when folks say schools are underfunded and they have no idea we're spending nearly $20,000 per kid and over $20,000 per kid in many districts around the state. So no information about actual school funding. I don't think a single reporter in the state of Wisconsin understands how schools are funded. I swear. I don't think, I bet you I could prove that if we could get everybody in a room. So no actual information being shared with voters on a spring election day about how schools are funded. No true information about per pupil spending. You almost never see that. Maybe Alan Borsick at the, at the Journal Sentinel will occasionally do a column on that. If he's still employed, I haven't read him in a while. Occasionally you might. get an editorial on it, maybe. But generally speaking, nobody knows that students are getting approximately $20,000 per student. And maybe some people understand that there is a problem with proficiency. But again, very little information shared at the same time, almost new information shared about the candidates in school board elections. And so is it any wonder that we have, you know, 8% turnout on spring election day? I think not.

Yeah, you think about what's going to be decided by this court in the coming years. You know, Act 10, you know, we just alluded to the savings that resulted from Act 10. If you think, you know, Ivers for your veto is a problem for taxpayers, wait until Act 10 is overturned. We'll not be able to fund any other aspect of government in many instances. True. We'll leave the entire surplus with the cost of Act 10. This school funding lawsuit, again, that could even add more funding. to schools on top of what would happen with sort of the requirements of an Act 10 repeal. So all of these things have huge implications. And as we've seen with some of the work, for instance, from IRG in recent months on, you know, voters not turning out because they don't see the impact that these local elections have on their lives. It probably has a much bigger impact on your life than what happens in D.C. 100% it has more of an impact on your life than what happens in D.C. School funding lawsuit, which says that the amount of school funding should be unlimited. The amount of school funding should be infinite. That's what the school funding lawsuit that's currently progressing. The Act 10 lawsuit that is also currently in the works is asking for appeal of Act 10, which has already saved Wisconsin taxpayers, 33 billion. So repeal of Act 10 so that most of the money that we set aside for schools goes into the pockets of the union bosses. Okay, so school funding lawsuit plus the Act 10 lawsuit plus the 400 year property tax veto. And so we are looking at astronomical amounts of money here that nobody has. Now, we don't have the money to do this. But again, it makes the case for spring election day, Maria Lazar, who is on the ballot for Wisconsin Supreme Court so that you don't get these crazy decisions from the Wisconsin Supreme Court. And it also makes the case to pay attention to local school districts. Because they can make a determination whether or not to smack you with that 400-year tax increase. You don't have to let them do that. By the way, at the same time, we got referenda all over the state of Wisconsin asking for even more money on top of this, Will? Yeah, it is a never-ending cycle. And, you know, you look at our state budget. You know, Medicaid takes a huge portion of the budget. Education spending takes another huge chunk. Yes, you know, we've had a surplus in recent years, you know, thanks to the legislature actually holding the line on spending. But, you know, this could, this would eat the entire surplus and more if we sort of took this liberal Christmas tree of ideas that's out there right now. And I don't think even those on the left that are supporting this in many instances, maybe the ones at the top, but. the average liberal, the average teacher out there, I don't think they realize that this is a untenable amount of spending that's being thrown out there in all these different contexts. All the teachers out there, and I'm not sure what they're making, but again, we learn from your investigation, from Will's investigation, Wisconsin Institute for Law and Liberty, that the money that is set aside for per student isn't making it into the pocket of the teacher.

It's going to pay from new administrators. It's going to pay for staff. It is going to pay for programs. It's not going for, you know, ongoing teacher education. It is not going for assistance in the classroom. It's not doing anything teachers want like improving discipline. And it's not going into their paychecks, is it? No, that's all right. We had the DPI report yesterday. They looked at sort of the teacher workforce and the problems with it. Interesting to note, you know, we could have a whole other conversation about what wasn't mentioned in there. But, you know, one thing they do show is the teacher pay has declined a little bit relative to other folks with a bachelor's or a master's degree in recent years. And rather than, you know, asking the state for more money, what teachers ought to be doing is asking their own school districts, where is that money actually going, if not into our pockets? As you mentioned, we're spending more money on all of these things that don't directly impact the classroom, layer upon layer of bureaucracy. But again, the easy solution is say, hey, state, give us more money rather than looking internally. It's your own school boards and the decisions they're making and deciding where that money is actually going rather than rewarding effective teachers. We're doing it for all these other things like DEI programs and things of that nature as well. Yep. So all of the cheerleading that's going on from the teachers union, and they're going to turn out in droves today. They will be out on mass, voting for massive increases, not realizing they're not going to be able to afford their property taxes either. They're not, you're not exempt because you're a teacher. You're not getting anything for this because you're a teacher. Your classrooms suck. You have no control over discipline. You have no authority. Because your teachers union is not interested in giving you authority. They're interested in checking woke boxes. And at the same time as we're talking about teacher pay, which is not improving, we're also talking about lowered proficiency. So maybe teachers don't deserve more money. But certainly those administrative and programmatic expenses are not doing anything to improve outcomes either. But this blew my mind in a recent survey. that most about half of parents think their kids are doing really, really well, that they're above grade level. And that's so far from reality. The reality is that maybe 12.5% are above grade level in any given, you know, at any given spot. Yeah, that's absolutely right. That was another question. It was in that 50 can poll. And again, yeah, the percentages suggesting their kids are above grade level, it's sort of like the Lake Wobagon thing, you know, where everyone's above average, pretty old reference at this point. But essentially that seems to be what our DPI system, where we're lied to on a daily basis about proficiency, where they change the standards to make it look like everyone's doing well. It shows the impact that has. You know, no one wants to believe their kids aren't doing well. But the reality is in many instances, there is a need for improvement. And, you know, it's better to focus on those things and work on it rather than just whistle past the graveyard and say everything's good. But again, the propaganda from DPI has been pretty effective in making folks think that everything's great in this state. Right. How does the kids report card look? That's all the parent is looking at. You know, how is the spin on the standardized test score? How does that look on a piece of paper when it's written out as a narrative? Oh, your child is, you know, is efforting.

Whatever. It looks much better than saying your kid is functionally illiterate. Your kid can't read at grade level. Your kid is never going to succeed in anything important because your kid is practically a moron. You don't say that to people, right? Because then they don't want to vote for those school spending questions. Yeah, and by the way, you know, they're talking out of both sides of their mouth. You have this funding lawsuit that says things are horrible. We need more funding because, look, they actually do cite proficiency levels. Again, the only time I've ever seen a school district actually mentioned their proficiency numbers. At the same time, you have DPI projecting this message that no schools of this state are failing to be expectations, and very few districts are even meeting few expectations. You can't really have it both ways, and I think we've got to call them out more on it. Which one is it? Our school's not performing well, and we need more money, or is everything great, and our funding levels must be okay then? Okay, we do call them out on it. You routinely call them out on it. I call them out on it. We are minor media, however, minor voices by comparison to the Gannett Monopoly that basically reprints press releases from DPI and does almost no investigative work. Doesn't even bother to go to GROC to see what it actually means, what the school funding formula actually means. So, I mean, we're doing our job calling people out on it. The problem is... Everyone doesn't talk to, you know, or listen to Vicki McKenna or talk to Will Flanders or read Wisconsin Institute for Law and Liberty Dispatches. And Lord knows, the media refuses to do anything with the amazing information that you have put out there over these many, many years. We'll keep grinding away. We'll keep trying. That's all we can do, right? But you're absolutely right that the mainstream media should not be allowed to ignore this thing. It's actual factual information about spending. It's not some will right-wing spin. You can look at the data yourself. You can do an inflation adjustment yourself, and you'll get the same numbers that we're getting. And they ought to be asking what's actually happening and they're not. By the way, here's how you do the inflation adjustment yourself. You're like, I don't know how to do an inflation adjustment. That's fine. You know what? There's not much that I say good about AI. But you can do this using a chatbot. What is the inflation adjusted cost of per pupil in Wisconsin public schools, the year 2000 to the year 2023? or 2024. I'm not sure what data you had available. I think it was up to 2024. So you can pop that into a chat bot and you can get the information. I mean, you have basically the most powerful library on the planet in your pocket and people act like, you know, they don't know what to do. Like, who should I vote for in the election? I don't know. You can look it up. You could do that. But anyway, it's very first. Never been easier.

Never been easier, and it's easier than never, and fewer and fewer people do it. And by the way, 70% of people only look at headlines. They read the headline, they don't read the story, they think they have everything from that headline, and unfortunately, for many of us, they vote accordingly. Thank you, Will Flanders, for joining me from Wisconsin Institute for Law and Liberty. Thanks so much. Have a good day. You as well. Again, we're talking about lawsuits. We're blowing up property taxes. We've got property taxes blowing up. We've got lawsuits trying to make it even worse on us. You've got a chance to begin the correction today. Her name is Maria Lizar. If you do not know who your candidates are, you can go to myvote.wI.gov and you can look up your ballot before you go to the poll. And if you're of a mind to, you can put the names into a chatbot. I would highly recommend GROC and ask what these candidates are all about. And if you can't figure it out from that, fine. Just vote from Maria Lazar. Go to the voting lists that we have put up there, that I have put up there, from Dane County, GOP, from Salk County, GOP, go check out my Facebook page and print off those voting lists and start taking back control. And by the way, if you think your kids above average or your grandkids above average, I'm sorry to tell you, that's probably not true. And that should make you mad that you got snookered like that. That you got conned like that, that you got conned to sell out the future of your children or grandchildren because your teachers union, your school administrators, the Department of Public Instruction, and the press in Wisconsin lied to you. It should make you mad. And it should make you want to do something about it. We'll take a quick break. I'm going to just say this. You people should go find the NASA photos of the dark side of the moon. A Pink Floyd song, Come to Life, thanks to the Artemis II mission. Wow. I'm just, I'm kind of geeking out on this whole space thing. I could just. spend all day looking at this stuff. Anyway, the photographs are remarkable. Be careful not to get snookered by old photos, rendered photos. There's a whole bunch of really cool stuff out there, but it's not from Artemis II. So anyway, keep that in mind. Look for NASA photos or whatever that have come directly from the spacecraft. Okay, let's stay on education, shall we? Big whining going on that teachers are just, you know, are leaving the profession. and they're not getting paid. We just mentioned that with Will Flanders. They're not getting paid like they want to get paid. And yet we're spending more and more and more and more money on education.

We have fewer and fewer students spending more and more money. Teachers are leaving the profession. Teachers, you know, are not getting, you know, massive increases in their salary. Their union is doing absolutely nothing for them. And everyone blames Act 10. It's all Act 10's fault. Quentin Claibon from Institute for Reforming Government is joining me on the program to talk about this. It's all Act 10's fault, right? It's the phonics law that isn't even being implemented. And it's all the fault of Act 10 because don't you know, Quentin, that that 18-year-old freshman in college wants to be a teacher so she can be a union member and get union benefits under the collective bargaining agreement. So she's not going into the profession because she's not getting the same kind of bennies under the CBA. Good to have you, by the way. Yeah. If the Packers lose to the Bears again this year, I'm just going to blame Act 10. I mean, apparently it's the problem for everything. Yeah, so thanks for having me. There is a report that comes out every year that basically gives the state of the teaching profession. And it always says the same thing every year. We're not doing a good job in Wisconsin of training teachers. We're not doing a good job of paying teachers. And we're not doing a good job of keeping teachers in the classroom once they start. And I think a lot of people agree on those things. I think the question is just... what do we do about it? And so if you ask me, and if you ask a gentleman like Will Flanders, if we ask you, they'll probably say something like, make sure that UWs are actually doing a good job of training teachers. Make sure that the money in schools is actually going to pay teachers and not all the stuff that schools are doing that they're not required to do and making sure that we make classrooms a good place to be in. But if you ask superintendent underly, and if you ask the reporters who wrote puff pieces on her meeting in Green Bay yesterday, They'll tell you the solution is they need to raise your taxes a whole bunch so that they can put more money into schools. And that's not a sustainable solution, especially if people are considering the referenda today. Yes. If there's a school referendum on your ballot, the answer is no. That's the answer. The schools don't need more money. The schools have fewer students. They don't need new buildings. You don't need a swimming pool. You don't need ground source heat pumps. You don't need lead certified climate change friendly stuff. There are fewer and fewer students in Wisconsin schools. And there's more and more and more money being poured into education. As you just heard Wolflanders talk about, a record amount of dollars. has been poured into Wisconsin education. Let's get back to the teachers. They have no control of their classrooms because the control of their classrooms has been taken away from them. Their teachers union doesn't do jack. They don't say we need discipline in the classrooms. The teachers union says discipline in the classrooms is racist. We need more DEI stuff. That does not translate to a good environment for somebody to want to make $48,000 a year, right? Even if they do get three months off in the summertime. if you are worried about someone throwing something and hitting you in the head choking you out attacking you or just generally not listening to you maybe that's a grind huh and maybe that's part of the problem maybe we should start there i think that would be the first place i would start

Yeah, I don't know if Act 10, I live in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. I don't know if Act 10 is going to stop parents from walking into schools, past security guards and punching teachers. I know there are a bunch of teachers who are really frustrated. There are kids who will hang out in the hallways just during class. And if they school them and send them back to class, they may get a call from their principals saying, hey, you know, this is going to cause problems for us, you know, take a step back. That makes schools a really miserable environment to teach in. You know, everybody wants to be a teacher. It goes in because they love teaching kids. They want to, you know, interact with kids, help them learn and help them reach their goals. And when you don't protect teachers and when you don't make the classroom a great place to be, that just creates problems. And, you know, taxing people more revoking Act 10, that's not going to solve any of those problems. Correct. Okay. We're also the more you churn out kids coming from these chaotic environments into college when they're practically illiterate. We'll get to that in a second. When they're practically illiterate. And then you want the practically illiterate underperforming student who is not actually performing above grade level to be a teacher, but you've put them in a chaotic environment. How many of them do get into college and say, you know what I like to do? I'd like to put myself through the hell that I saw my teachers put through. No thanks. I'll choose something else, even if it's stringing. together gig jobs and a barista, you know, part-time, part-time job. So there's that. Then there's the fact that we're not even equipping teachers to teach kids how to read properly. And let's be honest here. The teachers who are not teaching kids how to read properly probably are teachers who are not taught how to read properly, Quentin. Oh, it is, this will shock people. I hope nobody's driving. If so, if so, pull over. So there is a test that a lot of Wisconsin teachers have to take in order to pass in order to become teachers, kind of like if you're a nurse or an accountant. You have to pass this test. It's called the Foundations of Reading Test Fort. 25% of college students in Wisconsin fail this test. Wow. Their paying tuition to go to school for four years, specifically to be able to do this main part of their job and a quarter. fail it. In Massachusetts, the state that we copied this test from, only 10% fail, which is pretty high, but only 10%. You know, in Wisconsin, it's a quarter. You have universities like UW Green Bay, over a third are failing it. Superior, over a third, Whitewater, which is one of our big education schools in Wisconsin. Three out of 10, fail the test. You know, again, spending more money and taxing more is not going to solve the problem of UW not doing an adequate job of preparing these teachers, or, like you said, make sure that the kids entered college able to read so that they could learn well to be able to teach.

the next generation to read. It's not going to solve any of those problems. That's another thing Jill Underley blamed was the phonics law. We have a phonics law that has not been implemented. We're not teaching phonics. We had $50 million set aside to implement the science of reading law. We'll call it phonics. The science of reading law. And Tony Evers first tried to steal the $50 million. And then the court said you couldn't steal the $50 million. And then the $50 million went into DPI where Joe Underley promptly tried to spend it on everything except phonics. It didn't matter. All the school districts were supposed to comply with this, but nearly none of them have actually complied. And I don't think a single one has actually begun the process of teaching phonics, teaching the phonics-based method of teaching kids to read. And this is only up until fourth grade for Pete's sake. A lot of people think families have moved from public schools to private schools over the last few years. That's really not true. It's basically about the same. Where they're really moving is to homeschooling because parents feel confident that they're going to be able to teach their children to read because they're not receiving them in their public schools. And that's really unfortunate. It should not be that way. They should be great places for kids to learn. And until that changes, we're going to end up in these same enrollment declines. But I think you raised a really important point, which is everything where we ask schools. to equip students to do better is somehow a problem. And yet, when we try to make things simpler to become a teacher, those just aren't taken up. So, for example, there's something called a teacher apprenticeship. This is in all 50 states at this point. It's a bipartisan thing. President Trump loved it. President Biden loved it. It's just a great idea. How about when you're in college, instead of just reading about how kids learn, you actually go and teach and help teach in classrooms? that you're not, you know, you know how to manage kids once you actually graduate. You know how to teach reading because you haven't just read a book about it. You've actually done it. So other states have this. States like Tennessee and North Dakota are churning out hundreds of teachers this way. Not only do you get more experience, you actually get paid for your student teaching, which we don't do in Wisconsin. Wisconsin tried to do this. Actually, the group that I work for, Institute for Reforming Government, reforminggovernment.org for the website, we actually, provided some ideas. A bill was taken up in the legislature. Governor Evers vetoed this bill to get teachers paid and more experience during college and then did a program at the zone. While other states are turning out hundreds of these teachers, Wisconsin has about 10. So there are all these complaints about how the state is forcing schools to do things. That's one thing. But when we try to give them the tools to be able to do things better, unfortunately our education leadership is not taking that up. Right. And by the way, we elect our DPI superintendent in spring elections where there's low voter turnout and special interests like teachers union and other government employees unions who reliably vote left wing always make sure to keep the status quo in place. And then they cheer on more tax increases and then blame the Republicans because they can't afford to stay in their houses. They can't afford. There's a lack of affordability. Then someone else gets blamed for the decisions that every single one. one of these leftists have made for the rest of the state of Wisconsin and themselves. So I don't really play the world's smallest violin for teachers who aren't getting paid that much because, quite frankly, they don't earn it. They don't earn it. They don't complain. They don't demand more. They don't demand the discipline in the classrooms. They don't fight their teachers union. They don't demand to have access to better tools so that they can actually teach children. They don't earn it. But I'd like them to.

I'd like things to be the way they were when I was a kid, in which case I'd be cheering on above inflation increases in salary for teachers every single year. Oh, yeah, absolutely. When you have, there's going to be a report that comes out in a couple of weeks. It's probably going to say that we have the most. staff in Wisconsin schools ever, not like per student ever, more than when you were in school, more than when I was in school, even though we're going to have the fewest kids since the 1950s. But all of that growth has been people who aren't teachers. And so it is incumbent upon the state of Wisconsin, whether it's at your local school board level, at your state level, to say, hey, If we want teachers paid more, we need to make sure that they're the ones that we're focused on in classrooms and not all of this other stuff. Schools are not going to solve all the children's problems. They're there to teach children to learn. And until we focus on teachers, until we focus on learning, things are never going to change. They're going to keep getting more and more expensive. And you're going to keep seeing referend to show up every three years in your district. Yeah, the answer is no on the referendum. Today, whatever referendum is on your ballot. The answer on that one is no. You know, as you were talking and I'm thinking back, the staff, I'm going to think back in my high school, we had three secretaries, and they were called secretaries. We had a nurse, we had a nurse assistant, and we had three guidance counselors. And the guidance counselors didn't have assistance. That's, at least to the perception of the student, that's what we had in a high school. That's a pretty low amount of staff and somehow it ran okay. Yeah, I feel like we turned out well. And now the staff have staff who also have staff and things should keep on adding up. You have states, and again, this will not surprise you. People know that some red states are really doing an excellent job on education, which is not the common perception in a lot of legacy media, Mississippi doing great on reading. Also on staff, they're also doing a great job. States like Iowa and South Dakota haven't added all these new things. They're basically doing things. the way they did, you know, 10, 15 years ago. And guess what? They had the money to give teachers thousands of dollars in raises. This is something that other states are doing. Wisconsin is just choosing not to do it. And if we choose this path, again, things are going to keep getting more expensive. We're going to keep seeing these reports about how teachers are unsatisfied. And we're going to be the ones to blame. The Teachers Union Hack, who's the governor, is the reason why we're not doing it in Wisconsin. We have a Republican legislature. They've put forth many good pieces of education related legislation. and even the ones that do pass and get signed into law end up getting stripped mined or corrupted by the same teacher's union hack the union get rid of the union that need someone needs to start that movement not just act 10 but get rid of the union

You get rid of the union and you're going to unleash the power of education, the enthusiasm, the innovation and education that we have not seen in this country in my lifetime. I appreciate the time. Quentin Claibon, reforminggovernment.org is the website. Thanks. Thank you so much. And we will take a break on the Vicki McKenna Show. And welcome back to the program. It's the Vicki McKenna Show. Don't forget today is Election Day. For those of you just joining the program, polls are open until 8 o'clock. What? It's election date. Yep. Maria Lizar needs your vote. The teachers' union will turn out the vote for Chris Taylor. They don't know why. They've just been told to vote for her. And so we need you to turn out the vote from Maria Lizar. And Chris Taylor wants to not be a judge. She wants to be a legislator, an advocate, and an activist on the court. She does not want to be a judge. But Maria Lazzar does. And that's what we need on the Wisconsin Supreme Court. We need to start fighting back for sanity on our court, which has obliterated any sense of certainty in Wisconsin, any sense of objectivity in our court. It's just been obliterated. So again, that's the, I'll tell you whose fault that is. That's the fault of. Since 2011, the Republican legislative majority, it's their fault. What do I mean by that? They're not the reason why we lost the court, but they're part of the reason why because they had an opportunity to change the fall election. This is a major, major. race in Wisconsin. And they were given an opportunity to move this race to a different date. And they whiffed. They whiffed because they didn't want the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel or the Wisconsin State Journal, two newspapers who have been seeing their circulation drop faster than a rock. We're going to say mean things about Republicans. But I remember when Scott Walker had put pressure on the legislation to change the date of the election, we need to get rid of spring elections. Spring elections are terrible. Why are they terrible? Nobody's paying attention to spring elections. I mean, if it's snowing, you're giving yourself an excuse not to go out and vote because you haven't been paying attention anyway. If it's raining, you're doing the same thing. If it's sunny like it is now, you're doing the same thing. That's what people do because no one's paying attention. And why is no one paying attention? Nobody's paying attention because no one's telling you anything about it. I get it. You don't have the television stations reporting on this. You don't have the radio stations nonstop reporting on this. You don't have the newspapers reporting on this. You don't have candidates doing anything except setting up a Facebook page and then lying about what they stand for. For the most part, in these not, quote, nonpartisan elections, which are never nonpartisan. These elections are never nonpartisan. Ever. There is no such thing as a nonpartisan election in 2026. And there hasn't been any such thing as a nonpartisan election for the last 20 years. These are partisan choices. But everybody hides behind the nonpartisan label. So you're not, well, Chris Taylor didn't. She's taking money from Reid Hoffman. She's taken money from Planned Parenthood. She is Planned Parenthood for crying out loud.

She's not treating it. Wisdoms aren't treating her race like it's a nonpartisan race. They're not treating any of these races like they're nonpartisan races. But because they have a built in get out the vote, turnout operation in the form of government groups, political constituencies in low turnout elections, they tend to dominate. High election turnout benefits Republicans. In spring elections, high election turnout benefits Republicans. We have had all sorts of opportunities to move these elections and give them the important attention they deserve. You hate political ads, right? Everybody hates political ads. I get it. I don't like them either. They annoy me. You want to know what they do? They educate. Yeah. They lie sometimes, but they also educate. The more political spending, the more advertising. This is a memo, by the way, to the Republicans who think they can just get away with a nice piece, a nice opinion piece at Wisconsin right now, or come on the radio with Vicky and Dan, all right? If you think you can get away with that without running ads, you're stupid. The ads are the way to supplant. the lack of media attention that Republicans always get. Or to counter the negative media attention. Believe it or not, there's a reason why advertising-based media works because people actually listen to ads. Now, we make an effort to be very honest in our ads. I'm not saying that the political candidates all make an effort to be honest in their ads. But you know what? It doesn't even matter if they don't. Because simply by having those ads on the radio, people pay attention. They are aware. A Republican in the fall is listening to the radio or watching television and sees an ad. And if it's the Republican-affiliated candidate that's being attacked, that person gets motivated. If it's the Republican-affiliated candidate that is explaining him or herself, that person gets motivated who's watching the ad. It's information. Advertising is information. And you get more of it in the fall because people are on alert for elections. So here we are on April 7th. I'm on bend-ed-kneed-need-ne begging people to vote. I'm on bend-to-need-ne begging people to make turnout in this election modest to good. I should say modest to moderately good because moderately good is what we need. We just can't tolerate low turnout. We can win with moderate turnout. In fact, with moderate turnout, Marie Lazar is going to win. But you're going to have to go to the polls today if you didn't vote early and most people didn't vote early because most people didn't vote. And vote for her. And print off those voting sheets that I have already mentioned on my Facebook page and try to win back a couple of seats on the Dane County Board or on the Salk County Board. It's the most impact you are going to have are in these state and local races. It's the most impact you're going to have. You know, naval gazing on national politics is fun.

But typically speaks up, we could sit here all day and we can talk about President Trump's true social post, which was unnecessarily inflammatory, unnecessarily rhetorically aggressive for a purpose. We could talk about this all day because people are freaking out about it. But you know what? You have zero impact. I have zero impact. I can't change things. Today's election day, you can change things. It's the only chance you have. So. Just unbended knee. We're going to take a break, though. Come back and talk about some free speech stuff. Again, though, please get the very least, if you're listening to me, it's Dane County, that's where we're broadcasting. I've put a voting list up for you at my Facebook page. Oh, but I don't have Facebook. You know what? Then email me and I'll cut and paste it and send it to you. You know, I hate that everyone, I have to tell people this. You're going to have to, you just have to be on social media because so much information that is not being shared with you by the Monopoly Gannette Press in Wisconsin. That company, you know, basically just has a boilerplate product for the entire state. And there's virtually no inventive or investigative journalism going on in the entire state of Wisconsin. TV stations rip and read from the AP. They're not generating new content. The only new content they generate is, well, there's this, and I will just say it'll be a fake hate crime. There's this accusation that somebody was racist in, you know, BFE Wisconsin High School. Then it'll be original content. Otherwise, you're not getting anything. So if you, if you got to be on social media, if you want to actually get information, some of it's garbage. I grant that. But it's where you're going to find at least something. So, but if you're not, if you're not, you can email me. I'll send you the voting list. By the way, win red, win red, W-I-N-red.org is where you, if you're like, well, geez, but I live in Green County. I don't have Green County's list, but you can go to Win Red. And you can find Green County's list. We'll take a quick break on the Vicki McKenna show. Welcome back to the program. It's the Vicki McKenna show. Earlier on the program, I've already said this. I've made this statement. 70% of people never read anything except the headline. 70%. Actually, that's probably a five-year-old data point. It's probably higher than that. Nobody reads the actual story. I mean, I prove that every single day on social media, I'll put up a headline or a comment. And everyone's like arguing with my comment or arguing with a headline. I mean, read the damn story that I link for you, but see, nobody does. And that just happened again. We have all of these folks who are posting memes and, you know, American flag pictures and the eagle with the machine guns and all this with the announcement that the government has settled on the big, big free speech case that the United States Supreme Court refused to hear a couple of years ago.

This is the big censorship case. Joe Biden's got every damn agency censoring, forcing Facebook and Twitter and everyone to censor everything. I mean, you could not talk about the economy. You could not talk about COVID. You couldn't talk about, you know, you couldn't make statements that were true about vaccines. You couldn't do any of that because Facebook is either deplatforming you, canceling you, or just turning you into a nobody on social media. Same with X. Didn't matter where you were. doing this, misinformation, malinformation, disinformation. And everyone was like, woohoo, we won. Kenan did we win? It doesn't look like when you actually dig into the article beyond the headline that we really won a whole lot here. Well, we didn't win anything at all here. And I can't tell you how many people I respect have written articles or gone on TV or radio and talked about this huge victory. Senator Eric Schmidt, who was the Attorney General of Missouri at the time they filed this case, put out a tweet, we won, we won. We, you and I won nothing. And even the plaintiffs in the case won, you know, ice to Eskimos. It's just awful. Okay, and I should mention Kenan Spivek has got an outstanding piece, must read piece, at real clear politics.com, real clear politics.com, which is also linked up to my various social media, which thankfully has been let out of censorship jail. But that had nothing to do with this settlement. Okay, so why not? Why didn't we win anything? As I'm reading it, it just looks, it looks tough, but it looks like basically, yeah, you know what? We just promise we're not going to do anything, you know, quite as aggressive, maybe for a little while. It doesn't even say that. So let's start with what it does say. It says as to the five or six plaintiffs and no one else that four or five social media platforms, Facebook, Instagram, X, LinkedIn, and YouTube. I guess that's five. that those five, the government won't directly coerce them to suppress content for 10 years from those six or seven plaintiffs, with the exception of national security. And that's all it says. It doesn't say anything about what the government can't do for anyone else, like you, me, or any of your listeners. It doesn't say what the government can't do for any other social media platform. It doesn't go beyond 10 years and has this exception for national security. And just to make a point, in all their litigation, what the Biden administration kept contending is that they were censoring and suppressing speech in the interests of national security. Yes.

They were suppressing speech on the economy or on COVID in the interests of national security. You couldn't tell that I could not, because I got on two platforms. I could not say that when I had COVID, my doctor prescribed hydroxychloroquine and ivermectin and a handful of other things for me. I couldn't say it because when I did, I got officially, I got that tweet banned and Facebook reduced my reach to the point where nobody was seeing my posts any longer. For that shared comment, and I'm not covered by this, is what you're saying. Well, yeah, let me go on because I should have said this. Not only are you not covered by this and I'm not covered by this. Not only does it only cover a few plaintiffs for 10 years with only those five social websites, but it only covers the Surgeon General, the Center for Disease Control, and this cyber technology agency inside of... the Homeland Security Division. The lawsuit claimed that 11 separate agencies of government were involved in this suppression, ranging from the White House to the FBI, to believe it or not, the Census Bureau, the Justice Department. None of them are covered by this consent decree. So even as to these plaintiffs, the government can go suppress all the posts they want as long as they don't do it through these three agencies. What? Vicki, this settlement... It was literally a press release. There's a preamble to, it's called the consent decree. There's a lovely preamble. It says all the things you and I would want it to say, all the things I've been writing about since this lawsuit was filed. Then there's some other really beautiful sentences in between about how censorship is bad and how the Biden administration trampled on free speech. And it goes on and on and on. And then it gets to the actual consent decree. And it says these three agencies for 10 years. won't do anything bad for these plaintiffs. And then it goes on and says, just in case anyone missed it, no other person is covered by this, no other social media platform is covered by this, no other government agency is covered by this. And, P.S., there's an exception for national security. Which, of course, was already the excuse. The national security exception was already the excuse to say, Vicky can't talk about her COVID treatment because of national security. They were saying that. So this is something else to understand. It did nothing to reject the CSA. That's the other agency I think you're talking about. The CISA argument is this security inside the internet security inside DHS that said all these platforms are infrastructure. It didn't say no, they're not.

It said they are infrastructures and they're critical infrastructure. So CISA argued that Facebook, LinkedIn, all of these things are critical infrastructure. And so in the name of national security, this critical infrastructure has to be controlled. And because it's speech-based, the control has to be speech. And this consent decree did absolutely nothing to reject that philosophy of censorship by the Biden administration. And so it just remains. Right. So Jen Easterly, who was the director of Cesar, who made those comments, at least the Trump administration removed her from her position as an instructor at one of the military academies because of her position. But she actually told the Hill a sort of left of center, but pretty good news source. She told the Hill that people shouldn't be allowed to decide what's true or false. That's the government's job. I mean, this is, what the Biden administration did is remarkable. I wrote an article in real care politics during the campaign, and I said that this was a fight, the campaign itself, the election, was a fight between the left view that censorship is good and the Republican platform and the Republican view that it's bad. And so the Republicans won. And on the first day in office, Donald Trump issued a marvelous executive order about how the federal government. should not unconstitutionally restrict free speech. This was his first opportunity to do something that would actually survive his administration, because his executive order sure as heck won't. And they whiffed. They did nothing. And so first I blame this on the Supreme Court. When the district court judge heard this case, he wrote the most beautiful opinion and issued a very strong injunction. When it was appealed and the Fifth Circuit heard this case, they've sustained almost all of his findings, modified his injunction a bit, but issued a very strong injunction. It went to the Supreme Court, and Amy Coney Barrett, and a majority, including many of the conservative justices, decided, well, you know, maybe these... social media platforms would have censored the free speech anyway. These people can't really prove that government was a but-for cause, which isn't the standard. And so they don't have standing to get an injunction, and they threw out all the work of the Fifth Circuit and the district court judge. And that left us with the people who are actually censored. That's what they said. The people who were actually censored. So they said they couldn't show but for, and they couldn't say that explicitly. They couldn't show harm. They were actually censored. And the real human beings, not like a government body, not like Congress. You know, it wasn't some group. It was five human beings. And they're real people. And that wasn't enough for the Supreme Court. Vicki, they actually did say expressly they couldn't show a but-for cause. If you look at their technical, their legal analysis, their legal analysis was that these specific plaintiffs didn't introduce evidence to show that government action was the specific cause of the censorship, these specific plaintiffs experienced.

at those social media platforms. So that actually is what they said. They created an evidentiary hurdle that you couldn't get over. An analysis, they used the word censorship once in the entire opinion. You know what they called it content moderation? Suddenly, our conservative justices became Sotomayor and the left. This wasn't censorship or suppression or deplatforming. It was content moderation. I don't know what went wrong with them. Just like I don't really know what's just gone wrong with the Trump administration, but it's very troubling. that when you really get to the point of words versus action, our government doesn't give us action. And the plaintiffs, which include government, the attorneys general of Louisiana and Missouri, they go along for the ride, they go along with the game, this isn't good. No, what we've had so far, what we've seen is that the DOJ seems to be just continuing on with what the Biden administration was doing. That's what the DOJ seems to be doing. I just talked to a man who has been trying to get a mining operation opened up in Alaska forever, but is now under a veto from the Biden administration and the Trump administration's defending the Biden administration's agency veto of that project. Like, why? Your words say you wanted. He specifically mentioned it, but there's the Trump administration just, you know, with the bean counters, maybe they're just bureaucrats that never got blown out. I don't know how to explain this either. No, that's said. But let me tell you, because I've been disappointed in some things the Trump administration has done on free speech beyond this. And what I'm going to say now may disappoint some of my fellow conservatives. But as much as I think that Khalil Abrago and all these people on university campuses shouldn't be doing what they're doing. I don't like when the Trump administration goes to Columbia University or Harvard and says, it's going to cost you $500 million because we don't like your professor's speech because you didn't suppress the speech of people here in the U.S. That's not free speech. Free speech is when people get to say things I hate to hear them say. And so... We really do need a culture and a government that understands that free speech means it's free speech. Now, it doesn't for defamation. It doesn't for true national security, like whoever published the information on the pilot rescue.

You have an absolute right to say, I don't like America. You've an absolute right to say, I don't like Israel. I don't like Kenan Spivak. I don't like Vicki McKenna. That's what free speech means. Rather, they not say all those things. But we're not getting real free speech protection from this government. No, I don't think we have a culture of free speech anymore. I don't. You need to actually defend the principle on the principle on principle grounds. Or you can't defend, you know, us, you and I offending liberals. I mean, because my defense is I have free speech rights. I mean, my defense is I can say, you don't have to like me, but you can't censor me. And that my defense is based on a principle of free speech, not the fact that I was censored before and now it's my turn to censor you. That makes no sense. That's not logical. It ends up just becoming tyranny. This is really just, go ahead, please. Yeah, no, I was going to say. If you only say you favor free speech as a means to argue for your ideological positions, then you don't favor free speech. You favor your ideological positions. Now, what the Biden administration did was orders of magnitude worse than what the Trump administration is now doing. But the Trump administration is doing is combining some suppression of free speech. That's the university level among foreigners who are in the U.S. in particular. but they're combining it with avoiding any restrictions that would prohibit them from going back to the practices of the Biden administration should they choose to do so. Government power never ratchets in the opposite direction of increasing. It always increases. I appreciate the time. Great piece. Realclearpolitics.com. That's where you can find it easier to find it on my social media, though. Kenan Spivak, thank you for coming on the program. Thanks, thank you. Have a great good. You as well, and we'll be right back. And welcome back to the program. It's the Vicki McKenna Show. So today is Election Day. If you go to my Facebook page and print off the Dane County or Sok County voter list, there are people who are running for county board. There are people who are running for town council. There are people who are running for village board, city council, et cetera. Okay. This is your voting list. These are the people.

who are going to be making decisions that will have drastic impacts on your costs. not the ones who are in Washington, D.C., trying to figure out what to say about Trump's latest truth social post, but the ones that you could vote for today. And of course, we also remind you that Maria Lazzar needs your vote. When we, if we get a new Republican governor in the fall, we're going to want that Supreme Court to be short up. So, because a lot of challenges are going to be coming before that Supreme Court. And Tom Tiffany is going to be doing aggressive things. For instance. like stopping the PSC from delivering rate increases to us so that billionaire investors, global investors, can make gobs of money off our utility rates. Okay. Craig Rucker is sitting by from C-Fact, C-Fact, with you got a big climate. Is a climate conference going on now, Craig? The Heartland Climate Conference, which is the common sense climate conference. But is that concluded or is that going on now? No, it's just about to start, Becky. And thanks for having you on the program. Yeah, we're going to be holding a conference here in D.C. It's the, I forget what number it is exactly. It's called the International Conference on Climate Change. It's been going on for, oh, I don't know, 15, 18 years. And really, it's designed to try to bring together those scientists and academics and others who. have a contrary position to what the UN has and even what some of the people in our EPA have on the state of climate science. It's kind of the assessment of most people, and they're very decorated. We have a formal Nobel Prize winner. John Klauser will be there. We have people that are former science advisors to presidents that are also in this. We have scientists like... You know, in the past, like Fred Singer and Patrick Moore and it's since past, but they're giants in the field. And William Happer is there, and he was former Trump and Science Advisor. And leading off the whole discussion will be our keynote speaker, which is EPA administrator, Lee Zeldit. I'll be introducing him tomorrow morning. So the whole point of the climate agenda. is increasing energy prices. This is what I wanted to get to. Affordability is the buzzword of the 2026 midterms. Affordability, affordable. Now that anybody really cares about affordability, because if they did, they would look at Wisconsin utilities and they would say, how come, no matter what you do, no matter what green mechanisms you invest in yourself, your utility rates never go down. Affordability, though, is supposed to be the buzzword, but when it comes to climate, Keeping energy prices high is very, very important, which is why you see the same people who seem to be rhetorically losing right now, hoping and hoping that the Straits of Hormuz stay shut down, that energy prices stay high, because in their mind, that's another reason to go forward on the climate agenda.

Oh, you hit the down ahead, Vicki. I mean, as a matter of fact, you find a number of the green organizations like 350.org, Greenpeace and others weighing heavily against the president's actions in the Gulf in the sense that they don't want. In fact, I think there's concerns by Greenpeace talking about how it'll hurt if we attack any of the refineries, the fauna and the coral reefs and that that are in the Persian Gulf and that would be devastating the marine environment. But on the other hand, They are privately hoping for, and we saw Reuters newscast on this, talking about how this is the best thing yet for the climate transition because they want the refineries to be shut down, the streets not to be transporting oil. 20% of the world's oil goes out from there. And this will jack up prices and make more reasonable their expensive alternatives, electric vehicles. you know, things of renewable energy. Yes. They want us on the... More affordable as oil prices skyrocket. Right. They want us over the barrel on this. And by the way, there is no way oil could double. And it would still be more affordable than their insane ideas of wind and solar and EVs. Oil could double. But that's not how people perceive it. People perceive when their gasoline costs 10 cents more, 20 cents more, 30 cents more a gallon, people perceive that things are going sideways and we need alternatives. So cheap oil is not what they want, which is why they want the straight shut down. They like that. But they're also saying, don't shut down the refineries. Don't shut down the refineries because we might dump things onto the coral reefs and things like that. So they, I mean, it's like they understand the necessity for hydrocarbons. They just want to create a crisis so that their technology or their ideology or their policies seem more agreeable by comparison. And there's no question that that's exactly what they have in mind. I mean, it's. A matter-of-fact thing, if you look around the world, any place that goes down the green energy path, you look at Europe and how much they pay for electricity, you know, where they're upwards 40, 50 cents a kilowatt hour compared to the average of the United States between 12 and 15 cents. Part of the reason there's is so high is because they've gone way down the primroad path that green energy is cheap and affordable. But it is not. As a matter of fact, they are finding themselves in a real precarious position in this Gulf War that while they're not helping out, their gas prices are going through the roof. And people misunderstand that in the total amount of energy that America uses, electricity, which is principally what solar and wind would replace, is only about 20% of our energy use. It's an important 20%. But even if we went net zero and that entire 20% was provided for by sun and wind, we'd still have 80% need. And that's primarily for running big businesses, industry, transportation, and the like is needed for, you know, by oil to power us. So there's no way around it. Still over 80% of the energy consumed in the world comes from fossil fuels.

Sure, but if you're looking just at Europe, because Europe's got, the problem with the Straits of Hermuz is, in terms of just immediate problem, is Europe's access to its hydrocarbon base, right? It's oil. It's going to, so by comparison, the insanity of 40 cents or more kilowatt per kilowatt hour electricity, that starts to look better. It does. It starts to look so much better. when the oil that they have made themselves dependent on becomes ever increasingly more expensive. But Craig, they still have to have it. They still have to have it. They still have to have it. They still have to have it. They still have to have it. They still have a boogeyman that they can keep yelling at after Trump is after the last Republican has died in the United States. And that's what I think their game plan is. As I say, they're kind of speaking out of both sides of their mouth. On the one hand, they're very adamantly opposed to the war, and pretty much all of them. You have the Climate Action Network, which represents pretty much all of them, actually issuing full statements by the entire people that they're condemning the preeminent military strikes or preemptive military strikes by the U.S. and Israel. And on the other hand, you have them. kind of cheering on the whole shutting down and putting out articles talking about how this is good for humanity. So they're playing both sides of the fence, and you're kind of, you know, damned if you do and damned if you don't in this particular case. Making people energy poor is good for the globalist. It is. It's just good for the climate agenda. If you make people energy poor, because if you make people energy poor, you make people poor. People are just poor. It's difficult to produce food. It's difficult to produce product. It's difficult to sustain yourself. It's difficult to maintain your health care system. It's difficult to run your transportation operations. Next to impossible to run your military, et cetera. And so again, back to the issue of affordability, because this is the big joke. But this is our buzzword for 2026 is affordability. In Wisconsin, there's three stools of the affordability chair, and one of them is energy. And there is not a single Democratic politician who is also endorsing the climate agenda, which is all of them, who are saying, we actually can. reduce utility rates in Wisconsin. We actually can reduce gas prices in Wisconsin, get rid of minimum markup, which we have had in place forever. We can do all of these things for the people. They could, but they're not going to, because again, expensive energy is a call to invest in more wind and solar. Yes. And as a matter of fact, when I found interesting, you go back last year, the... election for the governor when Mikie Sherrill, I guess, won down there or was defeated down there. And he actually was going against trying to.

Mickey Shiro, I'm sorry, beat Jack Citrielli. And basically she campaigned on cheap and affordable energy, yet was backing the offshore wind projects that were going on off New Jersey, which promised to deliver far more expensive energy, less reliably. And it was kind of annoying. You know, the former governor, Phil Murphy, of course, jacked up prices. Everybody was concerned about it, but they latched on to this. But it was exactly his policies of supporting renewable energy, offshore wind, and that was driving it up. And yet the voters reelected somebody who carried on that policy, and now they're moving forward. It's one of the five projects, pretty much exempted by Trump, to allow to continue. So we're going to see that go up and up and up. They're causing the problem. by moving us toward a Green New Deal type economy, many on the left, and then they're saying they're going to come to the rescue. And the way that they're trying to rescue people, by the way, is through more government subsidies. They're going to, perhaps for those who can afford energy prices at least, they've done this in Canada and other places, they'll give them somewhat of a subsidy to be able to afford their electricity rates. But if you're the hardworking middle class. Don't expect to see them. No, you never get the subsidies. They'll say, we'll increase, for instance, the Wisconsin heat assistance. in our state. That's a budget item. We'll increase that. But it won't be for people who actually are now struggling under inflation, under ridiculous housing policy, under bad energy. And here in Wisconsin, we have stranded assets, which allows the utilities to shut down a perfectly functional, say, natural gas facility. Keep charging people the per kilowatt hour rate that was already established with zero electricity being generated while they turn on a solar array. while they connect the grid to a solar array. That, of course, requires an increase in cost as well. And the Green New Deal people in our government say that our public service commission has to rubber stamp all of those rate increases. Someone's getting rich, but it ain't us, Craig. So the affordability agenda by the Democrats on energy is bunk. Just a lie. It's just a big lie. But it's effective politics because you see getting elected cases based on exactly that lie. Climate change rhetoric, the climate change narrative has been amazingly effective. It really has. It's a lie, but it is a very effective one. Craig Rucker, thank you very much. C-Fact. I appreciate the time on the program. Enjoy your conference. Thank you, Vicki. Have a great day. You as well, and we'll be right now. Okay, about a minute left. So if you don't know where to vote, you don't know where your polling location is, we've made it easy. Wisconsin doesn't do much well, but it has made this easy. Go to myvote.w.w.gov. And there you click on where do I vote? They actually have, it's shockingly useful this website.

Where do I vote? You type in your address. It tells you where to vote. It's so simple. So you're like, gosh, I haven't done this in a while. And, you know, Vicki McKenna is talking about it. And I really should vote for Maria Lizar. I really should download my Dane County Voting Guide, my Salk County Voting Guide. I really should do that. But I don't know where to vote. Myvote.wI.gov. So if you're on your phone, And my mother was like this. So forgive me. I'm not being condescending. She didn't know how to look up website addresses on her phone. Click on your, if you're on an iPhone, click on Safari, on your Safari app, on an Android, click on your Chrome app and just type that website in in the box at the top of your phone. Myvote.w.w.I.gov. Again, I'm not being condescending. I just remember my mom. could not for the life of her figure it out unless I explained it to her and she was smart. Anyway, we'll come back here at 2 o'clock. Derrick Van Orden and Tom Tiffany will join me. This is the Vicki McKenna Show. Good afternoon and welcome to the program. It's the Vicki McKenna Show in case you forgot or didn't know in the first place. Today is election day. So you're going to have to vote. It's your duty to vote. You have people dying in the military in very, to harrowing operations to protect our freedoms, the least you can do is exercise your duty to vote. Maria Lizar needs your vote today. Chris Taylor, who Maria Lazzar is running against for Wisconsin Supreme Court. is out electioneering today, which is, by the way, a crime in Wisconsin. So you have the liberal candidate for Supreme Court electioneering, which means she's campaigning in front of a voting location. She's campaigning in front of a voting location. On election day, it's called electioneering. That is a misdemeanor criminal offense in Wisconsin, not that this candidate for Wisconsin Supreme Court gives a darn. If she doesn't care about a law like this and everybody who's ever run and she's run, how many races? She was in the legislature. She would know this. She knows this. She doesn't care about the law. She's trying to influence people's votes by electioneering, campaigning in front of a voting location. When she filmed herself doing it, she's so proud. She doesn't care about the law. So this is why this particular election matters. She wants to be on the Supreme Court and she doesn't care about the law. Shorty said she doesn't care about the law. She cares about activism and advocacy, and apparently she can violate the law when it suits her. Now, imagine if an election case comes before Chris Taylor. She's already told you what she thinks of election law. This is a law for a reason. We don't want undue influence from candidates at voting locations. There she is.

So today is Election Day and Maria Lazar, who is not standing out in front of voting locations trying to artificially or unduly influence people's votes because it's against the law needs your vote today. If you didn't plan to vote, it's a perfect day. You have no excuse. You really don't. If you don't know where to vote, you go to myvote.w.w.w.w.w.gov. That's where you find your polling location. Because a lot of people just never vote in the spring elections. I actually understand why. No one tells you they're coming up unless you're listening to this program or other talk radio or you're really dialed in. Chances are this was not top of mind today. In fact, more top of mind was President Trump's true social post on Iran, which we will get to on the program. But top of mind, the top of mind thing today in Wisconsin is the spring election. Now, if you don't know the other races, you still have to vote for Maria Lassar. You can go to Win Red and you can look up your candidates. If your Republican Party has put out a list of endorsed candidates, they will put it up at Win Red. Or is it winred.org? Let me just double check that. Winrod. It would be winred. Come on. Oh, now, of course, my computer wants to take a dump on me. Com. Winred.com. You just click on Wisconsin and then you can start looking for information there. If for some reason you decided just to make your decision today, okay. I've put some voting guides on my Facebook page. So you can go check out my Facebook page, Facebook.com slash Vicki McKenna Show. But you need to go to the polls. Because low turnout elections benefit Democrats. Why? Their political constituencies, their built-in political constituencies are always there to be. flipped on whenever needed. So that's teachers unions. That's public employees unions. That's the various different activists who are out there organizing for Planned Parenthood or No Kings or whatever. They're always ready to go. And in low turnout election, that can be enough. And this will be a low turnout election. We need the Republicans to be more. energized for at least a moderate turnout election. In a moderate turnout election, Maria Lazar is probably going to win. So there you go. I've long griped about spring elections in the first place because nobody knows anything about them. Lack of information means lack of voter participation. Lack of voter participation means Democrats tend to win. So. praying to the good lord above that in the fall when we have our fall elections when people pay attention that we can put a governor a republican governor in the east wing that we will maintain control the republican control of the wisconsin legislature that the wisconsin legislature with this governor a new governor might actually change this inane idea that somehow there is such a thing as nonpartisan elections because that's supposedly why we have them

in spring when no one pays attention because they're nonpartisan, which is a, which is a joke. It's a joke. Anyway, you need to vote. Polls are open until 8 p.m. tonight, 8 p.m. tonight. So go to myvote.w.I.gov if you don't know where your polling location is. And if you've never voted before, you can register at your polling location. You don't even need to worry about that. All right. Tom Tiffany's coming up. Derrick Van Orden's coming up and I'll be right back. Welcome back to the program. It's the Vicki McKenna Show. Let's not forget today is Election Day. It's April 7th. It's Election Day. Please find your voting guides. Please go and vote for Marie Lazar. Today is Election Day. We never remember anything about April elections. So I'm reminding people. We also have another election coming up. A huge election as well. And that, of course, is for governor. Things get positively sane. in Wisconsin if we elect a Republican governor. Tom Tiffany is the candidate, Republican candidate for governor. He joins me on the program. That is if we can figure out how to print ballots, Tom, how we can figure out how not to put double ballots in people's hands, hey, we might actually have a chance of getting common sense, rational governance back in our state. People wonder sometimes why we bring up this election integrity issues on a regular basis. And it's being highlighted once again as a result of the events in Racine and Green Bay. And I would remind people about Green Bay that the clerk in 2020 was run out of office by the Green Bay mayor and his political operative he hired from New York City. to help run the election in 2020, and I put help in air quotes. And they ended up making her life so miserable in 2020 that the clerk took a leave of absence two weeks before the election. And the political operative ended up with three of the four keys to the central count for Green Bay. So we have that as backdrop. They had a perfectly competent clerk that they ran out of office. And now they have someone who's putting out duplicate ballots. appears that doesn't know how to run the election process. Well, that's true. And that was in the 20, I believe it was the 2022 election. The Green Bay clerk had problems because she wasn't even up to date on what election law was, which was totally fine, apparently. You don't have to know election. You're just the clerk. Then we have Racine. Racine forgets to put a candidate on the ballot. Oops. Got to send out more ballots. We just forgot. How do you forget? You got one job. You've got one job.

And you can't do that job. And of course, let's not forget 2,000 duplicate ballots in Madison that were just what? That was just a mistake because people were more focused on making cookies or other things that were more important than processing election integrity. And remember, the city of Madison, of course, that was the 2024 election in Madison, which, by the way, my office broke that story when we found out about the 2000 duplicate ballots, and then they misled the as far as what it was all about. Ultimately, had to fess up that it wasn't just two wards that it affected in 2000 ballots. It was more than 2,000 ballots, and it was more than two wards. And ultimately, Madison did not count, what was it, 197 ballots, and even the Madison City Council said. Our clerk has to go. That clerk is no longer there as a result of not handling elections properly. And by the way, let me just show one. Most clerks around the state do a really good job. They do their job as best they can, and they fulfill the function that they're supposed to do. But there's been some of these things that have happened where politics gets in the way and you end up with clerks. that simply can't do their job like happened in Madison in 2024. Madison, they fired the clerk. Suddenly election integrity matters to the liberals, huh? Because it's the 89% left wing, 92% left wing in Madison. That meant that the 197 votes were talking about that weren't counted were liberal votes, probably. So it's always Racine, Milwaukee, it's Madison, it's Kenosha, it's Green Bay. It's always these areas. Isn't that curious? But you're right. This is why we hammer on election integrity, election integrity, election integrity, election integrity. I want to get to some other things. I want to get to energy prices. We talk about affordability. That's the buzzword, right? The Democrats created the affordability crisis, and now they're claiming they can solve the affordability crisis. But they're not going to solve it because they created it, and their answer is more of the same. Let's talk about energy for a second. It is now come to everybody's attention. I hope everybody's attention, though the press has not shared this, that data centers are getting big tax breaks. not tax breaks on the actual electricity used, but on the infrastructure to create the center in the first place. And we've discovered that the PSC, which is just three people, political appointees, that the PSC...

Just rubber stamps, anything that the investor-based monopoly utilities want, including stranded assets, which means we pay for power that we're not even generating. And it goes on like this. We Energy's customers are now facing, I think it's a 14% increase. And overall in Wisconsin, we are going to have a 40% increase in our utilities in an inflationary time when everyone's talking about affordability. Remember, over $2 billion increases in increases during the Evers administration, just a little over seven years, over $2 billion in increases that we are all paying for in higher utility costs. And the... You are correct that the left is going to try to tell us that, hey, let's let government come to the rescue and that'll solve the problem. That's what they're going to say for everything that they're talking about. The problem is government. And in this case, it's the Public Service Commission, which is just a rubber stamp for these increased rates. That and going to intermittent sources of power, you need base load power in your state if you're going to be able to have low energy prices. When you have intermittent sources that are only on 20 or 25% of the time, you've got to build a whole lot more. And that's really expensive. That's what Wisconsin's been doing the last seven years. And the ratepayers are holding the bag as a result of government action that is not working for the consumer. 100%. There is a law that says the utilities get to make 10%, right around 10%. There's a law that says the return on equity has to be right around 10%. They don't pour that back into our pockets. They don't lower our rates with that. And the PSC doesn't force them to do that, and neither does state government. The PSC is three people. We can't elect them. We can't kick them off the PSC. We have no control over them. And at the same time, we just learned that WEDC has crafted, there's a whole package of Data Center tax breaks. Nobody wants these things in Wisconsin. And we sure as heck don't want to give people tax breaks to build them in Wisconsin. And so, I mean, you're talking about a squeeze plan energy that could be scary, could be Illinois scary very soon. Yeah, there's no reason to give additional tax breaks. I mean, to companies that are, you know, multi-billion-dollar companies, there's really no reason to do that. You know, whether you're for or against data centers, I think we can all be for the fact that we don't need subsidize multi-billion dollar companies. Now, we have the manufacturing egg tax credit in Wisconsin, and that's served a good purpose. But this goes far beyond that to give additional tax breaks to companies that really don't need it.

No, they're billionaires. They're billionaires. And the private equity firms that are invested that own, each one of them owns about 15%, so BlackRock Vanguard State Street, Blackstone. So the majority of ownership and our utilities, investor ownership in our utilities are multi-global companies or multinational companies. Again, their shareholders are doing well. But we're not. We're not. We're not. Now we are, I think, the second highest utility rates in the Midwest. We expect to get even to smack, get smacked even more. We use more energy than other people because we use air conditioning. We use heat. We have all kinds of things that are weather dependent. It's insane. It's absolutely insane. So Tom, I want to, before I miss an opportunity, we've got to talk about the big one. We've got to talk about get over it and deal with it. Okay, there's the other part of the affordability chair. So the second stool on the affordability chair is housing. Property taxes in Wisconsin are now at a 30-year high. And Tony Evers, who delivered this nightmare to us, said, deal with it. Get over it. You're just going to have to suck it up, seniors, and you kids who are out there wanting to buy your first home in Wisconsin, deal with it. So let's talk about that, because that is something that can be addressed by the next governor. That is correct. We are, in those December property tax bills were the highest in 30 years. You want to do something about it, then you should elect a governor that on the first day, I'm going to call a special session to end the 400-year property tax increase. 400-year. Deal with it is what Governor Evers says, that 400-year property tax increase. Well, guess what? If you want a governor, that's going to deal with it, I will. and we are going to end it on day one. And then after we reduce property taxes, we're going to freeze them. And we did that 10 years ago when Walker was governor. We can freeze property taxes and local governments can still be funded appropriately. And it is time, and it's a key element to affordability, right? I mean, if seniors are going to be able to stay in their homes, they've got to be able to afford the property taxes. If somebody wants to buy a home that's just starting out. They've got to be able to afford to pay the property taxes. So we're going to deal with it immediately, just as Governor Ebers said we should deal with it, but we're going to deal with it in a way that's going to make it affordable. Most people are already paying what amounts to a car payment. And if you're in a house that has consistently seen, its assessment go up and up and up, much, much more than that. just in monthly property taxes. That's already the case. And apparently Tony Evers wants everyone to pay more in property taxes than their mortgage payments. And God forbid, you've actually paid off your house and think that, oh, I'm just going to have to deal with property taxes. All of a sudden to look at your property tax bill and say, this sure looks a lot like my old mortgage payment. You know, and it just, it ratchets up. You know, we need to make it cheap to live in Wisconsin, Tom. It needs to be cheap to live here. We have cold winters. We have hot summers and we have competition. We have competition in the Midwest now from states like Iowa and Indiana, but we have aggressive competition for business development, for deregulation, for taxes, for energy in places that stay pretty warm most of the time. We need to make it cheap and attractive to live here. And the first way to make it attractive is to deregulate and make it inexpensive tax-wise.

So the solutions are easy if we're going to make it affordable. One, get control of property taxes, reduce them, freeze them. And then let's go back to being one of the low-cost states to produce energy, just like we had 20 years ago. And then let's do a red tape reset. Let's get rid of so many of those regulations that are duplicative, that are so burdensome that cost people thousands of dollars. We do those things. Just take care of the basics and get government out of the way. And people are going to prosper in Wisconsin. We're going to make Wisconsin the shining star in the Midwest. So we just learned, my last question for you, we just learned from Dan Lenington at Wisconsin Institute for Law and Liberty that people that illegal aliens in Wisconsin have access, depending on whether they're, you know, in application for asylum or flat out illegal aliens to 28 different somehow state-funded social service programs, not the least of which is Medicaid, but also other assistance, WIC, those types of benefits. Can we finally get? the information that allows us to cut off the benefits to people who are not able to legally get them or scam us out of them. I'm so glad you hit number four that I forgot just a minute ago, and that's audit every single state agency. We're going to do that. We saw what happened over in Minnesota, and we're not going to allow that to happen in Wisconsin. Look at Newcap up in Green Bay. We just went bust. An organization that is a governmental organization at the county level, just went bust. They're going to cost taxpayers millions of dollars as a result of it. Look at the food stamp fraud down in Milwaukee gas station over three years, $1.6 million that went out fraudulently that they stole from the taxpayers. We are going to do a full audit of all state agencies. Your money is not going to be stolen by the fraudsters. Tom Tiffany, I do appreciate the time on the program. As I always do, thank you very much for joining me today. Have a great week, Vicki. Thank you very much. Congressman Tom Tiffany, don't forget today is spring election day, so we need you to vote for Maria Lazar. And you can just go to my vote.w.I.gov to find out where your polling location is. Make sure you make every day a day about saving Wisconsin from the hell that could rain down on us. We'll be right back. Welcome back to the program. It's the Vicki McKenna Show. And I have Congressman Derrick Van Orden on the program. Good to have you back on the show. Thanks for joining me. Sure. Great to be here. Before we get to anything, let's address the language of President Trump's post, which, you know, is it Trump being Trump or is it something to be extra alarmed about? Quote,

A whole civilization will die tonight, never to be brought back again. I don't want that to happen, but it probably will. However, now that we have complete and total regime change, where different, smarter, and less radicalized minds prevail, maybe something revolutionarily wonderful can happen. Who knows? So that's, even for Trump, that's kind of aggressive language. Well, there's a few things you've got to remember here. If people aren't used to the way Donald Trump speaks after a decade, they're never going to get used to the way Donald Trump speaks. Donald Trump is not speaking about destroying the Persians. He's talking about getting rid of these radical Islamic molos that have been... holding the world hostage for 47 years, including literally Americans hostage in 1979. And people who have not dealt with folks like these mullahs, these terrorists, like I have, don't understand that you need to speak to these people in a very, very serious and direct way, because otherwise they just don't believe you. And so having sat down across a table from... some very unsavory people around the planet, unless you speak to them directly and very forcefully and tell them, you know, you're going to have a real, real problem if you don't start modifying your behavior, they just won't listen. They just don't. That's the way it is. These people are savages. And, you know, they're raping, murdering, beheading, hanging, stabbing, running their own people over. There's horrific videos out there of what they're doing to these people that just want their freedom. Yeah, they're standing on rooftops shooting people. If they stand out in the streets, they're standing on rooftops and they're shooting people in the head and the chest. We have, we know. Can we cover one more thing here? There's a whole bunch of ludicrously irresponsible politicians and morons on the internet saying that destroying dual-use infrastructure is a war crime. That's absolutely false. And it is dangerous. And members of the Democrat Party are actively telling. service members not to obey lawful orders. They're saying unlawful orders, but that's not really what they're saying. So the IRGC does not have their own power plants. They don't have their own bridges. They don't have their own roads. They don't have their own factories. Those are all dual-use pieces of infrastructure that are completely legitimate military targets. And if they don't think they are, then they better drag Volodymyr Zelensky to the Hague and trying for war crimes because he's been blown up Russian factories and bridges for years now. And power plans and oil pipelines. Correct. Right. Right. Exactly. Enough the hypocrisy, it's time to stand with our military during this incredible time. It's fine if it's Volodymyr Zelensky. It's not fine if it's us? Wait a second, right? So the bridges. I mean, just think of Wisconsin. If we go to war and somehow Wisconsin becomes a hot spot in the war. 94 East and West are going to be blown up, right? I mean, the University of Wisconsin, et cetera, et cetera. So I'm glad you made that point because it's a war crime. Oh, no, it's not. And we need to deal with this. So what is, maybe you don't know. I mean, you know, I'm not sure that the Trump administration is sharing, but they do seem to be awfully candid about this. It seems to me like this regime is daring.

the United States not to do it. And they're putting people around the power plants or they're staging teenagers on bridges. These are not happy suicide, you know, suicide sacrifices. These are people who are being forced by the regime to do this. I guess thinking that that is a hard check on the game board for the Trump administration. Yes, that's what's taking place right now. And they did have something called the prestigious. during the Iran-Iraq War where they had these little teenagers and 11-year-olds, they'd slap. headbands on them and make them charge into the Iraqi guns and they just had their own children slaughtered. And that's all historical fact. And you just got to remember, Vicky, if they build a missile in a factory, if they're not launching a missile from the factory, it had to go into a truck and on a road or it had to go into a rail car and go by train. That's what makes these things legitimate targets. And we are going to start. This is very unfortunate. So the United States military now is going to start hitting these. pieces of infrastructure that do not need to be destroyed if the radical Muslim mullahs would just comply. Open up the Straits of Burmuz, stop murdering your own people, stop terrorizing the region, and keep all your stuff. Or keep doing these horrible, horrible behaviors, and then you're going to lose all your stuff. You're going to have to rebuild it later. I mean, it's really that simple. That's what Trump is telling these people. It's that simple. It's their choice. Yeah, I don't know what revolutionary wonderful would mean. I am hoping against hope that there is some kind of revolutionary wonderful thing. Whatever that is, it's amorphous in my mind. I want to get to something else if you don't mind, and that is the alarming news that many of us just learned yesterday, you probably already knew this, that there are so many regime, Iranian regime connected people. in the United States, partying high on the hog. Here's the grand niece of General Soleimani, who's been partying in rubbing elbows with the rich and famous, you know, partying like a penthouse pet and, you know, dressed in the most provocative ways in ways that any woman in Iran would have been murdered for. She's here? How in the heck did we get? It's California, it's Miami. They're all over the place, apparently. Yeah, they are. And Marco Rubio, to his tremendous credit, has revoked her and her mother's screencards. So they are, they're part of this regime. The reason they did this, do you know why? Because they came here and they sought asylum and they've returned multiple times back to Iran.

These same people, this is not some like, we don't like you thing. They came here under the false pretenses of asylum and they've gone back to their home country, as have thousands, if not hundreds of thousands of other people that are here that claimed asylum unlawfully during the Biden administration. So that is just, it's absurd. We are, we had Iranian regime, Iranian regime connected people claiming asylum, getting legit documentation to stay in the United States, parting like it was 1999. And in the case of Soleimani's niece and her mother. posting aggressive pro-Iranian propaganda using, you know, networks in the United States, using systems in the United States, and we're supposed to play the little violin for these people getting sent back to the country. They've been defending that right now they couldn't survive in. Correct. Being in the United States of America is a privilege, it is not a right. So when you come here under false pretenses, which they clearly did, you will be thrown out of this country. And I don't know anybody that can argue against that. There's something else that's very disturbing. We had one of the most miraculous C-Star that's combat search and rescue missions take place in the history of warfare. I'm just unbelievably exquisite with all the platforms that are involved and all the different covert and overt actions that took place to get those pilots out. Absolutely amazing. There are. tens of thousands, if not hundreds of thousands or millions of Americans who were rooting for that pilot to be captured and paraded on television and beaten it tortured by this regime so that they could thumb their nose at Donald Trump. Yep. So if you're one of those people that are listening to me right now and you're thinking that, you need to get your mind right. That is an American citizen that is serving our country in uniform. By the way, let's talk about that. The Trump derangement syndrome has just gotten bananas. Someone leaked the information that that pilot was alive before the IRCG had any idea whatsoever, and it was global media fodder. before anyone in Iran knew it would have been. And I'm looking at the timeline on the rescue operation. Holy smokes. Okay. If I ever had any doubt about the capability of the United States military or our special forces, it was laid to rest. If Venezuela didn't do it for me, this did. Holy cats, to get that guy what he did, hardcore, but it shouldn't have had to happen because someone leaked the information. It made it exponentially more difficult. And here's what's interesting. If these people really like Iran, which it sounds like they do, more Iranians got killed because of that. Because they said a three-kilometer perimeter around that pilot, or excuse me, he was a Rio, a weapons officer, a whizzo they call, a three-kilometer around that guy, and anybody who got anywhere near there with a gun got killed. So good job.

Yeah, so this sort of thing has got to stop. There is a time and a place for, you know, for real rigorous journalism. And there's a time and a place for not doing that. So compromising. thousands of American service members that if you think about the entire chain that it took to get that got out there's thousands of people involved soldiers sailors airmen Marines by the way it wasn't special forces they picked them up they were special operations forces and they were my brother navy seals which is awesome But compromising that type of stuff made the mission exponentially more difficult and endangered thousands of more American service members. Why? Because somebody hates Donald Trump or they wanted to go on television or they wanted to seem cool to a reporter. All that stuff is unacceptable. So I hope they find a person that leaked this and put him in prison, not jail, prison. Yeah. Is it a prisonable offense? Oh, hell yeah. Absolutely. We thought it was. I mean, I'm not familiar with the ins and outs. Is it likely to have been a military source? In which case, does that explain some of what we've already seen going on with the second wave of purges? It very well may have been. There's plenty of people in the military that have Trump Durangement Syndrome. There's a lot. And listen, I don't ever recall ever. Remember, I retired under Joe Biden. and, or excuse me, under Barack Obama. So I served eight years under Barack Obama and Bill Clinton. And never once did it occur to me to try to attempt to sabotage a mission because I really, really did not like the commander-in-chief. Never came up once. So when people are compromising their oath because they don't like Donald Trump because they've been listening to this crap media for over a decade, they need to get out of the military. They have to. At some point, there's going to be a Democrat president again, and every single Republican, every MAGA Republican in uniform, better damn well listen to what the commander chief says, regardless of their own political beliefs. That's how the military is supposed to function, and that's how I function as a member of the military, and everybody else should be doing that, or they don't belong in the uniform. No, or, you know, critical missions go sideways. Things go bad. People die. Our country is put at existential risks sometimes. If you've got a disloyal military, which is, again, going back to something you said just a couple of minutes ago, is which the Democrats are encouraging. Be disloyal, refuse orders. By the way, to your point, an explanation of dual-use infrastructure. If those people do that, They're in trouble. If those members of the military listen to those Democrats, those Democrats aren't going to be the ones that have to face the Uniform Code of Military Justice, right? It's going to be the other people who listen to the idiots.

Correct. Every single mission, every single target is approved and vetted through multiple levels of not just a military chain of command, but the legal chain of command. And sometimes, you know, we get it wrong. If you have bad intelligence, we may wind up bombing something that we don't intend to. But all of the processes before you release ordinance or before you go on a mission as a seal or another guy, If you're going to go pick somebody up, you have to have the ability to exercise lethal force. And we take that very, very seriously in the military. There's no willy-nilly thinking when you're potentially going to go out and start killing people. So every one of the targets that is going to be hit and has been hit has been vetted. lawfully. So if a member of the military refuses to execute the order that they've been given, they're actually committing a crime against the uniform court of military justice, period. And for these politicians that are telling these people, showing doubt in the minds of our military that we are not doing things lawfully is reprehensible and it is bordering on sedition at this point. I agree with you on that. And it's time to stop freelancing this crap. This has got to stop. I appreciate the time on the program, Derek, as I always do, Congressman Derrick Van Orden. Thank you very much and follow Derek on X. Yes, ma'am. Please. That's right. That's right. That's Derrick Van Orden. At Derrick Van Orden. Two R's, I-C-K, Derrick Van Orden. You should be able to, it's fanatic. Thanks, Derek. Appreciate it. Yep. Cheers. Take care. And we'll be right back. That is it for me. Again, folks, polls are open until 8 p.m. tonight. If you do not know where you're going to vote because you're not used to voting in spring elections or whatever that might be, just go to myvote.w.wI.gov. Maria Lazar, Marie Lazzar. Make sure you vote for Maria Lazzar. On tomorrow's program, we'll do a post-election analysis, however that turns out this evening. And also, we'll do a deep dive into Salazar, the Muslim terrorist that was recently arrested in Milwaukee. Have a great afternoon.