Vicki McKenna Show: Cuts Based Off of Fraudulent Payments

And welcome to the program. Good morning. It's the Vicki McKenna show. It's Friday and I'm dismobulated. Yeah. But again, I like to blame it on age and menopause. That's what I do. It's how I'm going to roll. It's like I can get away with it. Okay. Kidding. Kind of. Here's what's coming up on the program. We are going to talk about the not even trying to hide it in your face attempt by the Democrats to protect illegal voting. They are working so aggressively to protect illegal voting that it's just sort of... gobsmacking. And we'll also get into the big data center controversy that has popped up in Wisconsin. There's resistance to the one that is cited in for De Forest, Port Washington, Janesville. What we have, and I mentioned this yesterday with Andre Jacques, for those of you who heard my two o'clock hour, what we have are these companies coming in. going to the town board, go into the potential land sellers, enforcing everybody to sign NDAs so that by the time you realize what is going on, it's too late to stop the project. So more on that, because there are now legal actions being taken and not too soon. So that's all coming up on the program. I got one for the books. I got one for the books. I don't have a term. I don't have a term to share with you. So we don't have a word of the day. I get another category I like to frequently tap into, and that's the one for the books category. Raise your hand if you had Democrats defending dog slaughter to dunk on Trump and MAGA. Yes, I knew you didn't have that one on your bingo card. That's okay. Me either. This is after Zohran Mamdani's advisor, who is on the record supporting multiple Islamo-Fascist terror organizations, not the least of which is Hamas, is speaking for the mayoral administration, said, number one, Islam is dominant in New York City. And number two, dogs have to go. Dogs have to go. Pet dogs are anti-Islam. They are haram. They have to go. Ban dogs. Randy Fine, who is a congressman, responded by, we're going to ban Muslims before we ban dogs. And predictably, the Democrats lost their mind. He's a bigot. You know, call me what you want, but I'm banning people who loathe and despise my country, who loathe and despise and has as a tenant of their faith, the slaughter of Jews and Christians. I'm going to put myself down on team Congressman Randy Fine, on this one.

Dogs versus people who want to destroy my civilization, loathe and despise Christians and Jews. Yeah. Sorry. But yeah, so they freak out. What is fine responding to? He's responding to the declaration that Islam is now the dominant political force and religious force in New York. And everyone has seen the pictures now, Times Square. You can't even walk through it, although I might walk through it with my dog. is now filled with the daily call to prayer and people clogging the streets while the clanging sound of Islamic prayer is in the loudspeakers. So this is happening in New York as we speak. In the city where Al-Qaeda took down the Twin Towers, Times Square has now been declared a Sharia zone for all intents and purposes. And the dog thing was the emboldened mayoral administration making a declaration that pet dogs are not Sharia compliant and they got to go. They got to go. What does that mean? Get them adopted? No, it means kill them all. And the Democrats now, suddenly in attacking Congressman, Fine, are on the side of Sharia compliant dog slaughter. So what did Fine do? Well, he introduced a piece of legislation. He writes on X, I am proud to introduce the Protecting Puppies from Sharia Act. Democrats are losing their minds because I made a simple statement that given a choice between our dogs and those who had banned them, the choice is easy. They can pound sand. This bill bans federal funds from any jurisdiction. And any local government that considers dogs haram proceed accordingly, Miram Zohran Mamdani. He then put out a graphic. The protecting puppies from Sharia Act, no federal funds will be given to any state, local government or entity that bans dogs as pets. It is a right of all Americans to own a dog. In America, we will not allow anyone to tell us that we cannot have dogs. My bill protects Americans' right to own a dog and would not allow federal funding to be given to any state or local government that bans them as haram. There are 57 countries that are Sharia compliant. The United States will not be 58. But because everything... Trump says, or MAGA does, the Democrats have to declare the opposite. They're now on the side of eliminating dogs to appease Sharia law. Didn't have that on my bingo card either. Declarations of appeasement of Sharia law and dog slaughter in order to be compliant with it. See, I said this. Many times. Please don't come out in favor of shelter dogs, President Trump. Because if you do, the Democrats will take up the opposite. So here's Congressman Fine saying, I'm for dogs. And now the Democrats are saying, we're for Sharia law because you're for dogs. They will do the opposite. You can count on it. The opposite.

Everyone liberal, conservative, Marxist, communist, libertarian, anarchist, anarchist, anarchist in New York City who has a dog is like, get bent. But when it comes to the established Democratic Party, you cannot agree with conservatives. If there's people in your group here in this city that are conservative and they also love their dogs, we're going to have to go after those dogs. I'm sorry, we're going to have to go after those dogs. So that's how you will eventually get a significant enough minority, never a majority, but minority of Democrats with the right propaganda and the right anti-mega inducement and the right tweaking of TDS, Trump derangement syndrome. You will get them to agree to kill dogs. Dogs are bad. Sharia, good, dogs bad. Unreal. Now, I didn't have that on my bingo card, but I'm not that shocked. I'm a little shocked, but I'm not that shocked. All right. We're going to take a break on the Vicki McKenna Show, and I will be right back. Welcome back to the program. It's the Vicki McKenna Show. We do have another chance for you guys to win ACDC tickets today. It's going to be the last chance to win the tickets. for the Camp Randall performance coming up in July, July 19th. So be listening for ACDC bump music. If you hear an ACDC song, that's your cue to be caller number 20 at 877, 235, 1310. That song coming into this segment was not ACDC, FYI. But you ACDC fans would know that. Okay. Republicans just yesterday decided that they did not want. to sign off on President Trump's cuts that are based on fraudulent payments and decided to excise that from any deal that might be moving forward to end this partial shutdown. Okay, the Republicans. Now, this is after Open the books, this is Doge before it was Doge, right? Open the book's been around for a long time. This is after the watchdog organization opened the books, identified even more fraudulent payments from the federal government under the Trump administration than under the Biden administration, which is almost unbelievable. But true, alas. Jeremy Portnoy from Open the Books joins me on the program. So the Republicans being Republicans, apparently are kind of comfortable with the data that you presented not long ago showing these massive numbers of overpayments, improper payments, almost, I won't say exclusively, but largely driven by centers for Medicaid and Medicare services. Good to have you, by the way. Thanks for having me, Vicki. Yeah, this is $186 billion of improper payments. Data released by the Office of Management and Budget itself. Just to be clear, most of that is not fraud. Most of it is simply mistakes. It's just money sent to the wrong person, the wrong amount for the wrong reason, sent to dead people, tax credits given to people who are eligible for it, tons of money being sold out that should have not been paid in the first place.

Sure, but we do have billions of dollars in Medicaid fraud. I mean, here we know of Minnesota. And by the time that investigation is done, and I don't know when that's going to be done, I mean, my goodness, how long does it take? It's expected to be around $9 billion. Then there's Maine. We just had Dr. Oz identified Maine based on a whistleblower report. And now you've got Nick Shirley, the same guy who exposed Medicaid fraud and his partner there. uh in in in minnesota they're in california and they're saying you think minnesota was bad wait till you see california which is expected to be in the double digit billions of dollars so you're right it's mostly just stupid mistakes but there's a lot of fraud Right. And the issue this year is that the government is not telling us exactly how much of it is confirmed fraud. This report has been coming out years and years. Every year, it's released by the office of Mandevin and budget. There's always a tally at the end that says this much was a mistake, this much was confirmed fraud, confirmed by a criminal court. This year, for the first time ever, the Trump administration removed that number. They're not telling anyone how much was actually fraud and how much was just mistakes on the part of government officials. So let's go through this. Centers for Medicare and Medicaid services. And I'm going to go with a lot of this one is fraud, okay? Because we know a lot of this one is fraud. If you add $9 billion, let's say maybe it's $15 billion in California. And then maybe, you know, I don't know how much is Maine's smaller state, but who knows how much in Maine. We also know it's happening in Ohio. We just don't have any data. No one's doing the investigative journalism in Ohio. And we know it's happening in other states as well. I'm going to go with lots of this one's fraud. $96 billion. Now, 100% of that $96 billion is an improper payment. Not 100% of that is fraud, admittedly. But $96 billion that's just thrown into a fire pit and lit on fire. It's money we should not be spending. And we are looking at ongoing $3 trillion budget deficits over the next five to 10 years. Right. It's a huge amount of money, and it doesn't even include those states you had mentioned, like Maine and Minnesota, where they're still investigative work ongoing. This is past payments that have already been confirmed by the office of management and budget to be overpaid to people who are not actually eligible for Medicaid, people who are already said, people that were eligible to receive too much. It's so much mistakes being made every day. That's important for people to understand what you just said, Jeremy, is that these are passed confirmed. improper payments. What we've got going on right now with the investigations and all the states with a Somali fraud, et cetera, is new stuff that's not included here. It's not included here. So 96 billion. IRS, $28 billion, $28 billion in improper payments to the IRS. What's the IRS doing? What are they sending out bad payments to? And can I get some? So in a typical year that tax credits given to people who aren't actually eligible for them, like maybe, you know, a child tax credit given to someone who doesn't actually have kids. But this year, again, unfortunately, that information is redacted for the first time ever. The Trump administration is not saying why these payments were made or how the mistake happened. So between Medicare and IRS, we're talking, you know, the...

massive lion's share of the improper payments here. We got Department of Agriculture. What is that? People who don't actually qualify for food subsidies or for crop subsidies are taking the Department of Agriculture for rather than we got small business administration, Social Security HUD, Ho HUD with $6 billion. I mean, what did it say prior to the Trump administration releasing these numbers? What were the percentages under the Biden administration? So during the peak of COVID, starting with the end of Trump, the first three years of the Biden administration, these improper payments were even higher than they were now. Vending is just so high, there was routinely close to $300 billion spent on it every year. This year, it's gone down from that peak. It's still a bit worse than last year under Biden. But $180 billion is, I don't want to say good because it's still definitely an issue, but compared to the past few years, it is a decent increase. Or sorry, you know, it's getting better. So this is a year, right? This isn't like, you know, some kind of spread out over several years. This is one year. So about $200 billion in what, no, I'm going to round up. You know why? Because there's ongoing fraud in these states that we have identified. So let's say $200 billion a year. Right, one single year. So if you actually do the math, it's about $5,000 every second. Every time you look at your watch and you see a secondhand tick, it's another $5,000 of taxpayer money, the federal government lost improper payments. So what's the interest rate we pay on our debt every single year? What is the amount of interest that we pay in our debt? I think it's around $280 billion, something like that. Right. We're at the point now where it's actually the debt is increasing faster than our GDP. It's becoming a much and much bigger issue. Okay. So let me see if I can get a quick number on the actual amount we're paying on our debt. Because I remember the last time I heard it, it was around $286 billion. So let's just say the last number I heard was a couple years ago, $280 some odd billion. We're close to actually fraudulently, you know, the burning up. two-thirds of the amount of interest we pay in our debt. I mean, maybe we shouldn't do this, right? Because we're paying an enormous amount of interest on debt that is now increasing, as you say, faster than GDP is increasing. But the Republicans said they didn't want to do anything about it this last time around. This number's been out there. You're not the first people to look at it. You made a nice little graph so that it'd be really easy to pass around the halls of Congress. It doesn't seem like anyone wants to do anything about it. Right. This is new. This number has been reported since the early 2000. It goes constantly between Democrat and Republican administrations. If you had it all up since the early 2000, it's been about $3 trillion that have been reported so far in improper payments. And you're right, there hasn't been a lot of fixes. One of the big issues, the Treasury maintains a giant do not pay list, literally a list of people that should not get money from the government. They don't share it with every other federal agency. Every year we have agencies sending money to people that are already on that do not pay list. It's such an easy, simple fix. It's been an issue for years and years. What? I didn't know that. We have a do not pay list and they're not sharing it? I know. It's absurd when you say it out loud, right?

Yes, it's absurd when you say it out loud. It is. It's like when I learned that the Social Security Administration knew everybody in the country who was illegally using fake social security numbers. They just knew, but just didn't want to share it with anybody so that we could not give people loans and not give people benefits, et cetera. This is a matter. Can't the executive do this? Can't the executive say you're going to share this list? with all of these. I mean, these are executive agencies. Well, isn't that a matter of maybe like an executive order? The last week, they finally signed a law that said the Social Security Administration has permanent access to the do not pay list. But there's still plenty of other federal agencies that don't. Housing and urban development, their access expired for five years. They finally just renewed it this year, but it was expired during the first Trump administration, and then they never renewed it. They never renewed it during the Biden administration. So a lot of times, it's not just the keyed criminal fraud. A lot of times it's just... simple obvious mistakes that need to be corrected and just are not back when we still had information how much of the Biden since Biden's the most recent so just kind of because we can ballpark what's going on in the Trump administration since obviously no one's really doing anything to rein in improper payments just it's just you know last on the list I guess because who cares about 186 billion dollars I mean it's just walking around money I guess especially when you consider how much we're in debt But what was in terms of just dead people or, you know, just, you know, bad paperwork, never canceling things versus actually identified fraud? Since we don't have it now, what was it in the years past? So they report the number of fraud that's actually been convicted in a criminal court. The last year under Biden, that was only $7 billion. But the government accountability office released its own report where they estimate the what you include undetected fraud, roughly $250 to $500 billion. Yeah. These people aren't serious. Jeremy, this just, we're governed by people who just aren't serious. It's just we're governed by people who just aren't serious. It's just we're. Our debt is growing faster than our GDP. The interest rates are not coming down on our debt. They're starting to reset to that historical level that Ron Johnson says, if that happens, we are in a proper debt crisis, which will mean, you know, potential inversion of huge sectors of our economy. And I just saw a CBO report that suggests Social Security is going to be in dire straits in 2032 instead of 2034. where mandatory cuts of 7 to 10% are going to be required for existing beneficiaries. And here we've got hundreds of billions of dollars in fraud that we could take care of tomorrow, but no one's interested in doing it.

or, you know, tense, things like that, 1.7%. But in other key sectors, pharmaceuticals, for instance, went down. Finished product pharmaceutical prices went down by a half a percent. Raw material pharmaceutical prices went down by 8%. Computer tech. This is peripherals. This is the components to make computers. This is the information technology that's in your smartphone, et cetera. Down. by 0.3%. The prices went down by 0.3%. So we were told, by the way, steel, our cost of raw steel went down by 3%. That's huge. That's huge. So it was an absolute SOP to U.S. Steel. So what? They were geopolitical tools, and now they're gone. I don't know what Trump is going to do about this, but, and I didn't expect this to happen today. I didn't expect them to reject this, but they did. All right. Anyway, Nick Fondacaro from Media Research Center is on the program. You guys will have fun this weekend because the media will spike the football on the Supreme Court decision to obliterate the tariffs, right? That you guys can calculate, you know, and maybe do a left-wing media bingo game on the buzzwords they're going to use. But NewsBusters and Media Research Center, thanks for joining me. Hey, thank you. Thanks for having me on. Yeah, like, they'll likely spike the football and they'll likely look to the comments made in, well, for the majority decision, those made by the liberal justices rather than, excuse me, rather than John Roberts or any of the other Republican, conservative justices who sided with them. And likely, again, like you said, they'll spike the football. We'll see definitely what they say today. And whether or not. that they'll what specific is they'll say like we can definitely play some sort of bingo game oh yeah i mean but a key a key political pressure um that the trump administration have had to bring our geopolitical allies and foes to heal has just been detonated by the u.s supreme court um and that's what they're really excited about it stick it to trump Stick it to, I mean, I know we're going to talk about some other things, but I don't know if you noticed how enthusiastic the media was when Mitch McConnell announced that he was not going to vote for the Save Act. It was sticking to Trump. Yeah. Yeah. You know, there's that, here's that austere, you know, Senator Mitch McConnell with so much gravitas. Now they love him, right? Stick it to Trump. That's the headline. If there's a way to make a headline, stick it to Trump, then our press is going to do that. Oh, that's exactly what they're going to say. It's because you'll always hear the jokes about Mitch McConnell looking like a turtle, droopy dog, and all this other stuff, and how he's like the vain, like the evil incarnate for the filibuster and all this stuff. But now when he's able to do something on the way out the door that can sort of upset who the liberal media really have it out for, who they really have it against, that's when you're going to see their attitude change.

Absolutely. Remember when John McCain ran for president? He was the world's worst human being. He was a fascist. He was a racist. And then when Trump was president and John McCain decided to take out all of his personal anger on the country, then John McCain was a maverick. He was just the greatest guy on the planet. And so they're going to John McCain, Mitch McConnell, as well. And I mean, we're talking about media here, folks. Again, I don't have. I haven't read the whole decision on this tariffs case. We'll have to wait. That will have to wait. I want to pick out, pick something up that NewsBusters and Media Research Center reported, which I thought was kind of interesting. And that was. 47% of people now say that they are informed without chasing the news, okay, without sitting down in front of a newscast, without actively going to a news website and checking on the headlines of the day, without, you know, frankly, without flipping on the radio, without 47% say they don't need the news in the traditional way that it is presented. What I also thought was interesting is that you guys also found a survey that 82% of adults say that they do their own research on fact checking and don't trust the fact checkers. This can't be bad news. Please don't tell me that there's like some kind of, you know, cold dust covered lining of these two data points. Well, yeah, like elsewhere in that same set of statistics there. And let me just start off. It's good to see that the American people see how important is to be skeptical in the news that they consume. And also those numbers, 94% collectively of Democrats and Republicans alike think it's important for people to do their own research and accountability and to try to get the information that they have. A 66% is extremely very important for the fact check whatever news that they get. And these numbers should be the impetus for the liberal elite media and their outlets to reform their ways, but they likely won't because they do themselves as the ones they need to guide us plebs towards what is right, true, and virtuous because they have their own savior complex. Two-thirds of them say, like, questioning about 70% of them say questioning these organizations is an important thing to do and it's fundamental to do their own research. When it does come down to, like, what do they mean by their own research? Because that can also have pitfalls regarding that. It's 84%, say, it's comparing information of multiple sources, which... That's a good way to go about doing it. And then 72% say they just go and Google it, which that can also, like, depending on what Google's AI is deciding to show people that day, that can be the problem. Because the MRC, we've shown that search engines like Google are biased. Like Google, 30% of their search, like the, are left-leaning sources that they cite when it's in December. We found 70% of Google's sources are left-leaning.

in December. Those were the stories that they were putting forward. So just Googling it, like people, 72% say they do, that also has a pitfall. Yeah, I agree. It is better than just simply trusting. the mouthpieces. You know, I was actually asking GROC recently about what are considered, you know, right-wing sources, what are considered center sources, neutral sources. And they're kind of, you know, I mean, you're right about AI because I would, you would think, well, Elon Musk's grok would be better. But it isn't. It considers epic times, a hard right source, you know, Brightbart.com. I mean, Epic Times is a China critical source, but hard right. Breitbart is a mainstream conservative, you know, slash Republican source, but it's considered hard right. BBC, PBS, NPR, all considered neutral by Grock. So it's not even just, it's not even just, you know, Apple News. We talked like last week about Apple News or Google. These AI bots are drawing from assumptions that are programmed into them that, you know, hard right means this, neutral means this. And the hard left is, you know, the nation, Atlantic. At least, you know, they're not considering those neutral sources. But, you know, so there's your, there's your coal dust covered lining. of numbers that should be really optimistic because people are doing their own fact checking. Exactly. Like, AIs are basically just sort of what children, right? Because we have to feed the information into them so that they know what to look at, what to consider. So basically, it's the bias of the person teaching the AI is also going to be baked into what the AI knows and what they can do and what limitations that they, that are out there, basically just based on what is getting put into them. And even like the non-alorithm or AI-based stuff, like you would talk about Apple News. Like we have a thing, our look at Apple News in a 100-day period. They gave a single right-leaning source in their top 20 morning edition that they had. The hundreds of left-leaning outlets and stories, one right-leaning. And basically, and all this is editorial control, and that's what matters. basically telling these AI companies to be like, hey, you guys got to do better, put these in here. And it doesn't necessarily, like, there's a video going around recently of Oliver Darcy who used to work for the Blaze and his little outlet called Status, which is basically after he got upset at CNN and left, he decided to do his own little substack. doesn't seem to be doing very well. And he's sort of, when we, when the FCC was talking about like equal time and all this stuff and trying to, and our studies about what Apple News is putting out, he was all upset saying that like, oh, like making up complete lies that conservative outlets don't do original reporting. Meanwhile, you have outlets like Free Beacon, Examiner, the Washington Examiner doing tremendous work.

Agreed. And Washington Examiner is considered a conservative site in my GROC analysis. By the way, free press, this is Bari Weiss's operation before she took over at CBS. Bari Weiss has free press. She still has it. And I personally consider Free Press to be about as centrist as you can get. There is center left in free press. There is center right in free press. It satisfies nobody in either extreme. Free Press is considered an aggressively conservative outlet. by AI. And I'm free press. Axios Reuters, Reuters, AP, all neutral. Did you know that? PBS, NPR, all neutral. So this is the problem where you've got the potential for hyper democratization of media, right? And the way people will be able to access it is through wire services and or AI. And it's face planting. Exactly, because Grock is going to pull, like, to get an opinion about free press, that it's going to look at stories about free press. And especially right now, when all the left-leaning places are just railing against Bari Weiss and just calling her a conservative with this far-right person, when she absolutely isn't. One of the things that we've noticed over here at newsbusters is... For all these claims that basically CBS is state TV in Trump's corner, that's not true at all. Like, they've come over slightly, but they're still just as liberally biased as ever. And for the most part, like, because you have the brine stultures of the world, CNN, MSNBC, just sort of claiming whole cloth that CBS is, CBS and Bari Weiss and Free Press are just these hard whitewangers. Brock is going to say that because it's looking at these stories about it to get its information. Yeah, I'm still going to recommend Grock if you have to use an AI tool. It's better than chat GPT. It's better than Claude. I actually get interested in terms of accuracy, if you're looking up data, for instance, from the congressional budget office. But if you're looking up things that are subjective in any way, it's no better than Google. It's no better than going and Googling something. It's just faster. You're going to get the same, you know, warped results, but you're going to get them instantly instead of having to poke around three or four websites to do it. So, you know, you're not going to be out of a job anytime soon, Nick. It's not like I want you guys to be unemployed over there, but they're, you know, but I kind of do, right? I don't mean to be mean. I do appreciate the time. Media, media research center. You guys have been doing this since what, the 80s? Good, great. 87. The year after I graduated from high school. Okay. And also newsbusters.org, which is must read stuff. In fact, you can sign up for a newsletter that allows you to get the dispatches daily in your inbox. Thanks so much, Nick. Thanks for having me on. And we'll take a break on the Vicki McKenna Show. I'll be right back.

Welcome back to the program. It's the Vicki McKenna Show. Congratulations to Paula of Madison, who is going to see ACDC in July at Camp Randall Stadium. Yay! Paula said she's been calling all week and finally won. So I hope you enjoyed the show. It is July 19th at Camp Randall Stadium. You can get tickets if you didn't win them. I'm sorry if you didn't win them. But you can get the tickets at WIBA.com. Go to our website. Scroll down to the bottom and you will see a link to purchase tickets to ACDC, their power up tour. I'm going. darn right i'm going it's really it's the real acdc it's not some fake cobbled together bunch of people buying the rights to the name it's actually the band so um good job on you paula i hope you have fun all right we got more stuff coming up um on the tariffs decision as cavana points out The I-E-E-E-E-A, which is the International Emergency Economic Powers Act, does not say the president can't enact tariffs. Just doesn't say that. Doesn't matter. Justice John Roberts found it. He's good at that, isn't he? Let's roll back to Obamacare. When the individual mandate... The argument against the individual mandate is that you can't tax something you don't do. But Robert said, well, you know, you can. And besides, is it a tax or is it a penalty? Is it a tax or a penalty? Well, you know, depending on how you read it, it could be either. And so because of the ambiguity of the way you read that, we're going to say it doesn't violate the Commerce Clause. Obamacare, we're stuck with it. You're seeing your premium skyrocket. I saw the, I did a quick research, a little bit of research on this. Obamacare premiums are up 114%. 114%. John Roberts, John Roberts, Chief John Roberts. said, you know, the ambiguity means we're just going to let it slide. I'm oversimplifying, but that's all right. That's basically what happened. So now John Roberts is saying, well, I can't figure out if the individual mandate is like a penalty or if it's a tax. It doesn't really matter. The ambiguity means I'm not going to touch it. But in the case of the IEEPA, Robert says, yeah, tariffs are taxes. And only Congress can enact taxes. But what else do we have? Well, we have Section 232, which is look this up, of the Trade Expansion Act of 1962, explicitly allows the President to impose tariffs or other import restrictions that the Secretary of Commerce determines that imports threaten national security. No cap, no rates. Section 301 of the Trade Act of 1974.

allows the president to investigate and impose tariffs in response to unjustifiable or unreasonable or discriminatory foreign trade practices. The IEEPA authorized by Congress also permits the president in times of national security to utterly close off importation of goods. Certainly it allows that. John Roberts is saying it does not allow the president to impose tariffs because tariffs are taxes. But if tariffs are taxes, then why are presidents unilaterally using other elements of federal law to impose tariffs? Barack Obama, Joe Biden, both of them impose tariffs on steel, on copper, on rare earth minerals? Joe Biden kept Trump steel tariffs in place, didn't cancel Trump steel tariffs, and nobody challenged it and said, hey, you don't have the authority to do this. So there are other, the point being, there are other ways Trump can impose the tariffs. Section 232, Section 301, there's also Section 338, Section 122, and Section 201. So that's, yeah, that's good. That's good. Because what are tariffs? Tariffs are meant to protect U.S. manufacturing, protect U.S. jobs, protect national security, all of those things. Maybe over time, the idea being, write the trade deficit. But what's the main reason that President Trump used the IEEPA to impose tariffs? Political pressure, geopolitical pressure, the International Emergency Economic Powers Act, he chose because the main reason to do it was geopolitical pressure. We want China to do things we want China to do. We want Vietnam to do things we want Vietnam to do. We are using, notice how we negotiated them. I'm going to put a 147% tariff on China. China threatens to, you know, throw down 150% tariff on our stuff and what end up happening. A conversation with China and the 147% was reduced radically to around 50%. Same with Vietnam. But, but sir, but sir. Conversations happened between the Trump administration in Vietnam. Conversations happened between the Trump administration and India. That's what happened. The threat of the tariffs itself brought nations together to agree on tariff frameworks because what were they doing to us? Tariffing the snot out of us. It brought the nations together to agree on frameworks for trade using tariffs as the mechanism.

I think Trump is going to find a way to utilize the many other tools that are there to keep them in place. The enthusiasm, though, to spike the football on this comes with the immediate demand. by, quote, a contingent of small businesses who claimed they suffered the burden of the tariffs to be refunded 100% of any costs that they incurred, any costs that they incurred. It's been certified as a class action. But I'll tell you. If Trump is able to utilize these other mechanisms, I think the remittances to anybody who did have to shoulder the burden of excess cost of imported goods because you've all gotten your businesses hooked on China smack are going to be a long time coming. All right. We're going to take a break. Come back and talk a bit more about the crazy stuff that's going on with the SAVE Act. Mitch McConnell has announced he's a no. Lisa Murkowski, she's a no. They're not voting to protect our vote from abuse by illegal aliens. We'll also talk about California moving with emergency legislation to prevent ICE from being at polling locations on Election Day. Virginia doing the same exact thing. We'll also talk about birthright citizenship because that case is before the Supreme Court. We're expecting decisions on that. Gosh, I don't know when. We'll be right back. Welcome back to the program. It's the Vicki McKenna show. So I'm going to do a little bit more analysis, deeper analysis on the Supreme Court decision on tariffs. We've got landmark legal's Mike O'Neill joining me in the 2 o'clock hour today. So again, this is fresh stuff. So, you know, and this is Mike's wheelhouse. All right. Let's go to the Save Act. Let's go to the partial shutdown, how it's affecting, particularly DHS. Department of Homeland Security. By the way, the Democrats are now announcing that their new strategy is to defund DHS, essentially cancel DHS entirely. I've got Ira Melman from Federation for American Immigration Reform standing by. If we've got some time, we can talk about how, you know, the birthright citizenship stuff could be shaking out, especially now with the... you know, a lot of attention being paid to the American who decided to ski for China. But it's good to have you, Ira. Thanks for coming back on the show. Good to be back. Thank you. All right. So let's first start with...

the DHS situation. So we've got DHS, ICE, TSA, et cetera. They're the ones kind of shouldering the burden of the partial shutdown. And now you've got Democrats using that to try to strategize an elimination of the Department of Homeland Security entirely. So where are we on that and what does it mean if they're ever successful in doing that? I'm not a huge fan of DHS from every perspective, but functionally it's all we've got right now for immigration. Yeah, look, I mean, we are at a very, very dangerous point here. If ever there was a moment for DHS to be up and running, it is right now. You know, we are potentially heading to a conflict with Iran, you know, maybe weeks, even days off. Iran probably cannot strike back with intercontinental ballistic missiles and those sorts of things, but they can certainly strike us here in the interior of the country. We have millions and millions of people who came into the country and to the Biden administration. Two million came in were gotaways. These were people who had good reason not to be stopped and apprehended by the Border Patrol. You know, we ought to assume that there are cells here that have their allegiance in Tehran who are prepared to strike any time the folks over there in Iran tell them it's time to make a hit on the United States. We should have a fully funded DHS. We should have ICE agents out there trying to find people before something happens. You know, hardly a day or a week goes by where we don't hear that the FBI or some other law enforcement agency has broken up a potential plot. As I said, this is precisely the reason why DHS was created in 2003. You know, at this very moment, the funding for that department is being held hostage to the Democrats' desire not to have any immigration enforcement at all in this country. Yeah, you get rid of DHS and then, you know, which is absorbed now, the former INS, which is now ICE, Customs and Border Patrol, and intelligence work and investigation. I mean, you mentioned Iran and there's probably cells here. In fact, there is a really, there's really good intel that there are cells here and that they are waiting to strike soft targets and they're waiting to strike soft targets simultaneously. which would overwhelm emergency response locally and potentially at the state level as well. But there's also the adjunct to those cells, which is Trendaragua, which is Venezuelan adjacent, you know, gang adjacent, cartel adjacent forces we know are in the United States who have an operational relationship with our enemies, not the least of which is Iran. So, and Hamas. I mean, wow.

At the same time, you have got Republicans coming out, either overtly or obliquely coming out against the SAVE Act. So that's something that undermines the sovereignty of the nation, never mind the national security of the nation. I mean, we are at a country on full tilt right now, Ira. It doesn't seem, the Democrats don't seem to be getting more rational as the polling starts showing more and more support for aggressive immigration enforcement either. No, you know, they are precisely asking to go back to the days of Alejandro Mayorkas. You know, if you look at the list of demands that they are making in order to fund the Department of Homeland Security, it is basically to cease all meaningful interior enforcement. It's, they want. ICE to go out and get individual judicial warrants before they arrest any of the millions and millions of people who are in the country illegally. Even if you can get a federal judge to sign off on that, by the time that judicial warrant is issued, these guys have disappeared and you've got to go find them again, that they want to expose ICE agents to even greater danger by forcing them to expose themselves in public. their faces in public. I want to be clear about that. At a time when assaults are up, they want to go back to the Mayorkas days where you can only operate in certain areas. So essentially what you're telling illegal aliens and potential terrorists. These are the safe stones where you ought to be, where you can't be touched. I mean, it's insane that they are holding this hostage to these demands that essentially would take us back to precisely what the voters voted against in 2024. So the administrative warrants, we should talk about these things. We need a judicial warrant. You can't use an administrative warrant. That's what is empowered in law enforcement regarding ICE is administrative warrants. That's what Barack Obama used. That's what Joe Biden used. Number one, let's just assume the federal judges aren't a complete bunch of lawfare insurgents. And they are. And you couldn't, there's not enough time. There's not enough judges. There just isn't. So administrative warrants are the practical workaround solution to a court system that cannot handle mass deportation orders. Barack Obama, I forget how many million were deported under Barack Obama using administrative warrant, but there were millions. Same is true with Joe Biden. As he was pouring people in, he was deporting people on the backside. I mean, it's just bizarre. that all of a sudden we've got a bug up our butt about administrative warrants when that was what was empowered by DHS in the beginning when we were debating DHS.

Yeah, look, I mean, I think it's obvious the mask is the mask is off now on the Democrats, but they simply do not want any interior enforcement of her immigration laws. They essentially want to handcuff ICE, render it impotent. And as I said, at a time when the dangers and the need for ICE out there. actively looking for people who pose a danger to the United States and the American public is greater than it probably has ever been since 9-11. I think that's 100% true. And while you're right that, you know, Iran can't, you know, they're not going to fly planes into our buildings because we actually have competent, well, do we in the FAA? But we have competent, at least we have competent military leadership. We've got competent administrative leadership. The FAA is its own little conundrum for, you know, for the administration. But. But they, yes, but they have cells. So the old global war on terror guys who are still in contact with their intelligence sources have been reporting this for the last 18 months that the cells that have been here in the United States for a long time are being essentially teed up for immediate action, simultaneous action, when given the order. And we also learned. that the various different, you know, Islamic sects, whatever you want to call them, have found a way to work together. They're not at each other's throats like they used to be when Osama bin Laden teed up attacks on the United States. So yeah, it's, I mean, they're sort of functioning as a phalanx right now instead of being sort of at each other's throats over differences over Islam. Yeah, the danger is very real. I mean, all you have to do is look around the world, what's going on. And look, you know, if we end up in a conflict with Iran, you know, they're, they've been biting their time. They've been waiting for the opportune moment. They have nothing to lose at that point. They can send the signal. It's time. Hit the United States, hit them hard, hit them in the interior of the country. And that is precisely why DHS was created. It's precisely ICE's job description to avoid precisely those sorts of things. And yet here we are. You know, we're sitting here with the Department of Homeland Security partially shut down. ICE and Border Patrol still have funding because of the reconciliation bill. But we need a functioning agency to protect the interior of this country and to protect the American public. Yeah, a lot of the intelligence work is essentially being, is on, funding is on pause. I hope it's still ongoing. A lot of times, you know, folks are just good patriotic Americans and they're continuing to slog along, even as, you know, Chuck Schumer tries to figure out ways to completely handcuff any kind of immigration enforcement. But back to DHS when it was created.

It was the recognition that our immigration system was gamed against us for national security risk. That was the recognition. It was visa overstays. Everybody forgets this, right? It was visa overstays by al-Qaeda-affiliated terrorists that al-Qaeda used. to tee up the attacks on us in the first place. So we recognize that immigration wasn't just, oh, somebody's lying to get a green card or people are faking marriage or they're sneaking across the southern border of the United States because, you know, they want to get paid in cash under the table. It wasn't sort of, you know, that was sort of mundane. It was serious. And it was a threat to the stability of the United States because we never expected to be attacked from inside our own borders. That was the whole reason to make an intelligence agency. Yeah. Look, if you go back to September 10, 2001, people overstaying their student visas, people who are in the country illegally getting driver's license, there was no evidence that that was a threat to the country. 24 hours later, we found out very, very differently, that it was a serious threat. So, you know, just because something hasn't happened yet doesn't mean that we are not in danger. We should actually prepare. for the worst case scenario, you know, hope it doesn't come about. But the worst case scenario is what we ought to be prepared for because the worst case scenario could do it. It's an awful lot of damage. Well, yeah, in the worst case scenario, if it is what, you know, the global war on terror intel guys are saying would be a simultaneous attack on multiple soft targets across the United States. And that would, how would, I mean, we're on full tilt. That's this culture. That's the Democrats versus the Republicans right now. The Democrats have us on tilt. They are, you know, they've got their, their most rabid insurgents, insurrectionists, minions, believing, Ira, that you and I just talking about basic stuff that, you know, like. I don't know, 18 months ago was okay to talk about is full on fascist, Hitler, you know, genocide, et cetera. And people are acting on those outrages in violent ways, in unpredictable in violent ways.

And that's the backdrop, a totally divided country with a significant minority of people willing to do violence on behalf of their politics to destabilize the United States. So if, in fact, let's just say a simultaneous soft target terror attack happened in the United States, how would we respond as a nation? How would we respond? I'll tell you how we would respond. You'd have Elon Musk Omar and Chuck Schumer and, you know, Stacey Plaskett and Jasmine Crockett and all the minions screaming, you know, to string Trump up by his ankles for reasons. They'd blame him. They would blame him. Yeah, you know, you mentioned Chuck Schumer. You know, he's the Senate Minority Leader. You have Hakeem Jeffries, the House Minority Leader, their city, they both are from New York City. They both are from Brooklyn. That would be ground zero. You know, it would be their communities that would probably be hit the hardest. So, you know, they're not even representing the best interests of their constituents. Yeah. There was just a call to prayer that damn near filled Times Square. You can see video of this. It almost filled Times Square. in New York City, since they decided to elect, you know, basically Hamas as their mayor. And, you know, people kind of shrug their shoulders. The call to prayer is blasting five times a day from the speakers in New York City. And when we see call to prayer, we don't mean, you know, fast for lent. It's the Islamic call to prayer. And yeah, Hakeem Jeffries Chuck Schumer. Chuck Schumer is, he's Jewish. And nothing. They're not saying anything. They're instead trying to, you know, basically, you know, gag and handcuff ice. Amazing. Yeah. Yeah, he is a shameless politician. The only thing he cares about is power. You know, you've seen over the course of his very long career in Congress, he will go whichever way the wind blows. His only interest is maintaining his power there in the Democratic Party. And, you know, I understand politicians want power. But sometimes you just got to say, you know, we just have to do the right thing. But it's New York City. It's New York City. You know, remember, the landscape looked a lot different in New York City on September 10th than it did after September 11th. And Chuck Schumer was there. He was in Congress. Ira Melman, thank you so much for joining me on the program from Federation for American Immigration Reform. Good to have you. Thanks. And we'll be right back. Hey, welcome back to the program. It's the Vicki McKenna Show.

I brought this up earlier in the week. And that was in Pawtucket, where you just had the guy who claimed he was a woman murder his whole family. Well, not his whole family. One kid got to watch it from the ice. In the Pawtucket Middle School, the teacher, a teacher, and the principal had children paint a mural. And the mural was of Moloch. The kids in a public school led by a teacher and signed off on by the principal at a public school in the same city where this happened, painted a literal mural of Moloch on the school wall. Parents got mad, you know, and it got outraged. And so they whitewashed it. They painted it over white. But they did that. And, you know, literal mural of Moloch. And I'm just going to throw that out there because what we're about to talk about, what Canada is poised to do, and what you sort of see shades of emerging in the United States is allow the euthanizing of babies. And so I bring that up because, I mean, literal murals of Moloch are pretty explicit. So Wesley Smith, who writes about bioethics, who writes about these things, joins me. You are not Moloch. But it's so, I mean. You can draw the direct correlation if you like, but this is where an ideology bereft of truth itself ends up. So when you start with materialism, you move into postmodern shadings of materialism, you end up with zero ethic that treats humanity itself as an innate good, as an innate thing. And because truth. which is where we derive morality, truth, capital T, truth is where we derive morality, is flexible. And so here we are with Canada talking about euthanizing babies. And they're already allowing people to sign up for, you know, assisted suicide if they just are kind of depressed. So I'm worried. I'm more worried than I've ever been. Well, in Canada, it's not even assisted suicide. It's homicide because doctors give lethal jabs. It's not murder because it's legal, but it is one human being killing another human being. And in terms of this infanticide issue, you know, people seem surprised that it would be done. It's been done for decades in the Netherlands. They're in the Netherlands. Babies born with terminal illnesses or very serious disabilities are euthanized in their bassinets. And there's even a bureaucratic protocol, people, your listeners can look it up, called the Groningen Protocol, G-R-O-N-I-N-G-E-N that describes how doctors can decide which babies can be killed. And babies are being killed in the Netherlands. There's no age limit for euthanasia in Belgium either. Children are euthanized as in the Netherlands. And in Canada, it's not yet legal.

But why wouldn't it become legal? Because Canada has jumped into the euthanasia chasm abyss with a smile on its face. And there have already been articles written wanting what they call mature minors to be able to decide on being euthanized without their parents' knowledge or consent. And what constitutes a mature minor is up to the doctor. And, you know, once you decide that killing isn't... A medical treatment becomes very difficult to prevent medical treatments from any member of the population. Here's your genocide. This is really happening. So the politicians in Ontario are now talking openly about giving doctors the authority to upon parents' wishes. And of course it will expand beyond that, it will, to euthanize children who are disabled, children who are profoundly disabled. So kill, murder, children who are profoundly disabled. If a parent wants it right now, it would be, well, the parent would have to say the parent can kill their kid. Right? The parent can authorize the killing of their kid. But disability. So we have, eventually eventually, eventually going to get to the place where it won't require consent. I mean, you're already seeing in the UK, this is not euthanasia, but enforced removal of life support that is wanted by parents on children and on adults and even the idea, this is the Charlie Guard case and others, where if the parents say, well, we'll move our child to a different hospital that is willing to offer the care you don't want to give, they say no. because you end up in a situation in a culture of death where liberty itself and the freedom to make medical decisions is kind of the choice becomes like driving a cattle down the shoot at the slaughterhouse certain categories of people You will either choose this or we will choose it for you. That's where this thing moves. And some goes faster, some goes slower. But in Germany and Estonia, the Supreme Courts of those two countries have declared that suicide is a fundamental human right, being assisted for any reason, not having to do with health or disability, that... being assisted in that as an ancillary fundamental human right, and assisting someone who wants to be dead is a human right. You were talking about Moloch. This is a death cult. This is a nihilism that is really beginning to subsume so much of what's decent in the West.

And so there are practical implications. If somebody who is mentally ill should be able to, you know, suppressed or has OCD or something should be able to force someone else to kill them. That's what we're doing. You would force someone else to kill you. Or if parents who just, you know, don't want to deal with the headaches and the hassles and the cost of a disabled child, have that is a legitimate materialistic, legitimate claim to kill their child. I mean, the practical implications are disabled people. Disabled people will be... third-class citizens. They won't even, I mean, they won't even be considered human. Anyone who is sad. We won't, we won't provide any care. We won't try to get them better. We won't try to help them. How about palliative care at the end of life when, when someone has cancer, when someone is, is, is, is, is, is, is, is, is, you know, in pain. What will happen to the, you know, to the enthusiasm that we have, at least still right now in hospice for palliative care? When will hospice become nothing more than a death factory? That's where this is leading. This is all leading to only the fittest have value. Humans themselves intrinsically do not. Well, with regard to the mentally ill, again, Netherlands and Belgium permit euthanasia of the mentally ill. And guess what? And Canada starting that next year. And guess what? Organ harvesting is conjoined with these euthanasia deaths often. So somebody with a serious mental illness decides, well, I want to kill myself and at least let the society get some good because my life is bad, goes into a hospital, is killed, is wheeled into a surgical suite and harvested. That happens regularly in Netherlands, and it also happens in Belgium, and it has happened in New Zealand with assisted suicide, and it happens in... Canada. In fact, in Canada, Ontario, Canada, which doesn't yet let mentally ill, although it's happening, be euthanized, if a doctor agrees to kill a patient, the doctor contacts the organ procurement organization, which contacts the patient saying, can I have your liver? And doctors, by the way, in Ontario, who don't want to kill patients have been told by the highest court in that province that if they don't want to kill patients, they either have to find another doctor who will or get out of medicine.

So, you know, when people listen to what you said and say, well, that's a little extreme, that's paranoia, it's facts on the ground. This is not slippery slope argumentation. This is facts on the ground, provable, demonstrable, and happening on an ongoing basis. And yet, even despite all that, England is on the verge of legalizing assisted suicide and you brought up hospice. The hospice sector in England is in a state of collapse and they're thinking of legalizing it anyway. It's already passed the House of Commons. It's only being held up right now in the House of Lords. Canada's access to palliative care is deficient. You have people in Canada asking to be euthanized because they can't get oncologists for nine or months or 12 months when they've been diagnosed with cancer. So it becomes a substitute for proper care. It does. And there's sort of a well-known case, although most people are out, but probably don't know about it. But if you're paying attention, it's a somewhat well-known case of a disabled veteran in Canada who couldn't get a lift to get her to her bathroom, which was on the second floor. And they did offer her assisted suicide instead. I don't know if she ultimately chose that or not. But she was not offered a lift to get her up to a bathroom. Instead, they said, you know, death is something we will offer you. Incidentally, as we are talking here, I want people to understand that as of February 2026, there is an outstanding piece of legislation, SB 739 and AB781 in Wisconsin, that would legalize assisted suicide in Wisconsin. Once you do it, once you do it, I just saw a editorial from the Beloit Daily News. advocating for assisted suicide in Wisconsin. So it's on the way. If we don't maintain control of the legislature, we're getting it here. And inevitably. The creep takes place, right? Wesley, you start up by saying, oh, it's only the most, you know, the saddest cases, the most, you know, intractable cases that we're even going to consider this, that never stays the case. As it didn't in Oregon, it didn't in Canada. It's not in Europe. It inevitably simply becomes a death industry. Right. What happens is, you know, when it's being sold, it's being sold as, oh, it's the only for people whose pain can't be controlled, which is a false premise. But secondly, then they say, we'll have strict guidelines to protect against abuse. And people say, oh, well, you know, we'll have these controls, these strict guidelines. Very quickly after legalization, the guidelines are redefined as obstacles and barriers. The media starts reading stories about how a good death was interfered with by how hard it was to go over the hurdles. And you begin to see the slip sliding away of the so-called guidelines. And the guidelines aren't enforced even when they are in effect. I mean, in...

I forgot which province, I think it was BC, more than 400 cases were shown to have violated the law, and none of them were referred to for criminal complaint. These guidelines are not there to be enforced. They are there to give people false assurance. And we've become a society that has become so focused on eliminating suffering, we are now willing to... turn that into eliminating the sufferer. And once you've decided that, the suffering that constitutes a killable offense, if you will, continually expands. It's going more slowly in the U.S. than it did in Canada, but almost all jurisdictions in the U.S. that legalized assisted suicide have already expanded it. You have a couple of states that allow it to be done by telehealth, you know, Zoom. You have some Oregon and I think Vermont that have done away with... residency requirements because they're trying to nationalize this. So the idea that you can have a little bit of assisted suicide or euthanasia is false. A little euthanasia is euthanasia and eventually you're going to get the whole thing. It is the culture of death. It is the culture of death. Oh, Wesley. Always great to have you. Wesleyj.J.Smith.com. You can also go to Humanize. This is where your awesome podcast is. Humanize. Help me. Today. Today. Humanized. Today. Humanized. Today or WesleyJ.Smith.com and buy Wesley's books because they're mind-blowing. We've got to come back and have you back on and talk about transhumanism because that's getting insane. Thanks, Wesley. You wrote the book on it. You literally wrote the book on it. We'll take a break on the Vicki McKenna Show. Good afternoon and welcome to the program. It's the Vicki McKenna Show. What's coming up? We're going to talk about the Supreme Court decision on the tariffs. We'll walk everybody through that. President Trump has got options on this. So, you know, expect the press to spike the football, but. It is likely he has other options. Michael O'Neill from Landmark Legal is going to join me to talk about that. Derrick Van Orden is going to join me on the program as well to talk about what? Well, the lies that the left are telling that somehow the one big beautiful bill hammered senior citizens. Yeah, the hammered senior citizens with a $6,000 tax credit. I know that I'd hammer me that way. All right. I'm happy to be hammered with a $6,000 tax credit. So that plus. updates on what's going on at Lawrence University. As I detailed yesterday with Zach Courier, Lawrence University has locked down the ability of Turning Point USA from forming a chapter there, even though the school pledges that it... refuses to engage in political discrimination and offers protections against political discrimination and harassment based on political discrimination. It's also come to my attention that Lawrence University.

has a minimum of $2.7 million in federal money, direct federal money, so grand federal money, not student loans or anything like that. Anyway, we'll get into that as well. This just popped into my timeline on X. I didn't know this. Pete Hegseth has announced he is firing the trans wolf Lilith death row, I'm sorry, death howl from Fort Bragg. Did you know that? Fort Bragg? was employing a trans wolf named Lilith Death Howl as a teacher. Anyway, I thought I'd share that with you. So all of this is coming up on the program. Real quickly, there's a Vodorama going on in the legislature right now. And among the things that are being taken up, very, very important things that are being taken up, is the wake surfing and sandhill crane hunting. Important things, of course, that's what always is the priority in the legislature, is making sure we have new regulations on wake surfing, on Wisconsin lakes, and on the wake surfing legislation, an amendment has been tacked on to permit the hunting of sandhill cranes. Among the not important things that are going to be voted on today is the reform bill that would stop the vertically integrated scam of insurance companies' pharmacy benefit managers from denying people access to their prescription drugs and stealing their manufacturers drug coupons. That one didn't make the cut.

Wake surfing made the cut. But it appears that the PBM reform was just too complicated. It's too complicated. Even though you've had a year to understand it, as it's been introduced. It was introduced a year ago. It's too complicated to understand. So I'm sorry to report that wake surfing has taken precedent. over making sure insurance companies can't stick it to people on their prescription drugs in a variety of different ways. By the way, the legislation was actually not complicated. It was really simple. It said you could not change the formulary mid-plan, and you had to give people a heads up if you were going to drop a drug off the formulary. And it said you couldn't steal drug manufacturers coupons. that are meant for patients to help pay down expensive prescription drugs they need to live. So, but that's too complicated. Too complicated. So, yeah, so wake surfing, I don't know what wake surfing is. I've never done it. I had to look it up. Wake surfing is a sport that relies on boats to create artificial waves, big enough to surf. I don't know how many people are big wake surfing. Folks out there, sounds like fun to me. Not sure it would have made my priority list. And then on that bill, again, there's attached amendment to hunt Sandhill cranes. I don't know what Sandhill crane hunting has to do with wake surfing. But okay, maybe you could have done the PBM reform and then attached the Sand Hill Crane hunting thing to the PBM reform bill. Or maybe you could have done the PBM reform and then attached an amendment on wake surfing and Sand Hill Crane hunting to the PBM reform bill. Hmm. No? I mean, if we're just attaching amendments to things that have nothing to do with each other, then why not use a good piece of legislation that had bipartisan support and would have passed to then also get some kind of, I don't know, something for the wake surfers and something for the crane hunters out there. But that's just me. I have my priorities out of whack. All right. So here's what we're going to do. We'll take a break. We'll come back and talk about this tariff's decision. Everyone immediately lit their hair on fire in the announcement this morning. And now that some time has passed, yeah, Trump's got some options on the table he can use. So we'll talk about that, Derrick Van Orden again. We'll address that controversy at Lawrence. I'm very glad he's on it. He's already begun making efforts to help out the students at Lawrence University in Wisconsin. We'll take a quick break. This is the Vicki McKenna Show. Welcome back to the program. It's the Vicki McKenna Show. And because I'm no expert in tariff law, tariff policy, although I do know what Trump intended with his tariffs. I did decide to tap into someone who does. And that is Michael O'Neill from Landmark Legal, who joins me on the program to talk about the six to three decisions striking down President's tariffs, President Trump's tariffs under the IEEPA. So this is a specific.

you know, mechanism that Trump was using for the tariffs. So, you know, Michael, thank you for joining me. I do want to start by reading from Brett Kavanaugh's dissent. Three dissents. Yeah, great. Samuel Alito Brett Kavanaugh, Clarence Thomas. He writes this, context and common sense, buttress, that interpretation of the IEP. IEEPA. The plaintiffs and the court acknowledge that it authorizes the president to impose quotas or embargoes and foreign imports, meaning that a president could completely block all imports. But they say that the IEEPA does not authorize the president to employ the lesser power of tariffs, which simply condition imports on a payment. As they interpret the statute, the president could, for example, block all imports from China, but could not order a $1 tariff on goods. That approach does not make sense. Properly read, the IEEPA does not draw such an odd distinction between quotas and embargoes on the one hand and tariffs on the other. Yeah, I think it behooves everybody to read Brett Kavanaugh's dissent there because he does explain it in fairly straightforward manner of the problems with the majority opinion. But nonetheless, we're still stuck with, if you want to, whatever you want to use. With the majority of six justice opinions, you have, of course, Chief John Roberts wrote the opinion joined by three liberal justices, if you want to describe them as such, and Gorsuch and Amy James Comey-Amy Coney Barrett. And the rationale there, the profit, let's dig into the rationale of John Roberts's, Chief John Roberts rationale, how you arrived at this conclusion. Let me can talk about the practical effects of what this means, what the decision means, the takeaway here, how this is going to affect our economy, how this is going to be implemented, et cetera. But I think starting forward where John Roberts, first, he's kind of got this interesting thing regarding the revenue raising measures, taxation measures. And he's always subscribed that this is a... core congressional power. And if you really, if you look back, even back to the subilius upholding of Obamacare decision, remember he said that this was, he justified that, that law under the Congress's power to raise revenue and the tax people, interpreted it as a tax. So he's always kind of had this affidation, affiliation, this love of the congressional taxing power. So he takes that, he says, This is raising revenue. When we're talking about imposing tariffs, we're raising revenue. So it's akin to a taxic power. That's a core congressional power. It can only be delegated to the executive if there's clear, explicit congressional authorization, statutory authorization. And he uses the major questions, Dr. Nees. He pulls that in and says, I'm going to apply what is known as a major question, doctor. And if Congress wants to delegate a core power, it needs to do so explicitly. You need to have, particularly in these cases where there's major economic or political implications, then you're going to have to have a clear congressional delegation.

particularly in this core power, i.e. raising revenue. And in his mind, the IEEPA, the statute you just cited, Vicki, doesn't have that clear delegation, doesn't have that clear authorization. And so he says it's not there. Now, Brett Kavanaugh, as you just said, pointed out a lot of the practical effects here. He arrived at a different conclusion. He concludes that the statute is fairly clear here. So you have a split in the interpretation of the statutory authority here, and that's really kind of where it comes down to. Six justices agree with Justice, or five justices agree with Chief John Roberts. Two justices, Samuel Alito and Thomas, agree with Brett Kavanaugh. So Congress passed this. I-E-E-P-A in 1977. That's how old this is. So going back to 1977, I'm not sure if it's ever been used or how it's ever been used in the past. But Congress has passed a number of tariff-enabling pieces of legislation. There's the Trade Expansion Act, and I looked it up. Section 232 of the Trade Expansion Act of 1962, Section 301 of the Trade Act of 1974, and it goes on. Section 122 of the Trade Act of 174, 338 of the Tariff Act of 1930, et cetera, et cetera. So Congress is comfortable in giving tariff authority to the executive. Congress is comfortable. And this idea that, you know, the tariffs are tax. And in the Obamacare decision, John Roberts didn't seem to really understand whether he wanted to call it a tax or he wanted to call it a mandate. He wanted it to be ambiguous so that he didn't have to strike the law down. It could be a tax. Even though you're not, you're taxing inactivity. Yeah, we can do that. So I'm kind of confused here. If Congress enables this in IEEPA in 1977. then why then how come joe biden and baroque obama can use these other tariff acts and president trump can use these other tariff acts and my other question is might there be challenges to the previous tariffs under these other acts Yeah, I don't, I think you're really getting into some specific implications here about how this is practical implications. Let's unpack it a little bit. First of all, regarding, I do think he's got this spot with revenue raising. In his mind, again, in his mind, the Chief Justice, John Roberts, if it's raising revenue, somehow, you know, or if it involves revenue, you know, imposing a penalty. And that was the penalty we're talking about under Obamacare, right? If you elect not to buy health care, you're going to have to pay a penalty. So that means money is flowing into the treasury. If you're imposing a tariff, even under a statute, if you're imposing a tariff, money is flowing into the treasury. In other words, revenue raising, that involves the core congressional power of tax. That's kind of where he is with this. And then if it's a core power of Congress...

You have to have explicit delegation of that power to an executive agency in order to justify it by, you know, in order to justify it. In other words, you have to have, Congress has to clearly say you have this power to do what you're doing. Otherwise, he can't justify it from a constitutional or legal perspective with Chief Justice. So, but I think you raised a couple of other good points, Vicki, and that Brett Kavanaugh gets into this, too. This isn't the end of the story. I mean, everybody's saying this is the end of the story, President Moss. I do think he has other tools in his toolbox, and you just cited some of those statutes for imposing some of these tariffs and justifying these tariffs. So what does that mean going forward, practically speaking? Well, as I read this opinion, I think that you have six justices who vet, who, who, who, who, who. presented the narrow decision that the president doesn't have this power under the IEPA. They don't weigh in on whether the president has the power, these power to impose some of these tariffs under other statutorily, under other laws, under other provisions of the law. And you cited a couple of this just a moment ago. So now the question becomes what? This case was... the court upheld the circuit court's opinion, but vacated the lower court's opinion for lack of jurisdiction. So as I read this, Vicki, is that say you're going to have a claim to some of this money that's come in, right? You say that the president doesn't have authority. You're going to have to file a lawsuit in the court of federal claims, which is the specific court that's been designated by law to hear these sorts of cases regarding a claim that the government owes me money, so I have to seek redress in the court of federal claims. So you're going to have to go there, and then the court... The government, the federal government, in litigating these cases going forward, isn't going to be able to rely on the IEPA as a defense thing. Well, we have authority to do that. Now what they're going to do is they're going to assert authority under these other statutes. So those, I don't think the door is closed. I think the president has other tools in his toolbox going forward. I do too. I think he has other tools in his toolbox. But I think it is very curious if John Roberts has all, you know, has a be up his butt about revenue and anything that's revenue is a core authority of Congress. Then, you know, my question is, does somebody get a case before this guy and these other acts that delegate core congressional authority? That, I mean, the non-delegation doctrine. They delegate core congressional authority to the president of the United States. Yeah. So, I mean, is, well, it's revenue. It is raising revenue. Therefore, it is the core authority of Congress. I mean, I think, I think if, if, I think this could be really, really funky going forward. And I, and I do find it fascinating that nobody thought to challenge any of this stuff when other presidents did it. Yeah, yeah, I think so. But I think just sticking with this one, it is, it just is odd to me that this tax thing with him. And it was funny because he was kind of telegraphing this during oral arguments. And oral arguments came out, and I said it's a 70-30 loss. It doesn't look like there's a majority here. The initial inclination was that, that again, the Chief Justice was concerned with this, this taxing revenue-raising authority and lack of explicit authorization.

But I do think that practically speaking, this isn't the end of the road. Now, everybody's saying here, and it's interesting when you get the collective wisdom of the world, whatever you want to say, that somehow this is a major loss for Trump. Yes, it's a loss as to its authority under this provision of the statute. It's not a loss in his ability to impose tariffs, generally speaking. He has other tools in this toolbox. He can use those. It's going to be a while. And interestingly, Brett Kavanaugh raises this again, the practicalities. We have hundreds of billions of dollars out there. How is this going to be, how is this going to affect going forward these bilateral trade negotiations? I think it would have been, obviously, from a foreign policy perspective, from a negotiation international diplomacy perspective, if the court had simply signed off and said, yeah, he does have this power. And I think there's a roadmap for that, as illustrated by Brett Kavanaugh, it's disappointing that the court didn't do it in that context. But, again, I don't think the door is closed here. I don't think this is the end of the line here. As with everything in Lodge, you know, it's complicated. We'll see how this plays out going forward. I don't think that the administration is going to take this loss lying down. I think they're going to say we have authority under these other statutes. Sure. If you want to come at us, we're going to justify this. And you're going to have to look at it. I think so. And easily with national security, when geopolitics was really the main purpose of this. And remember, the steel tariffs began back when Trump was elected in 2016. And Joe Biden continued the steel tariffs. So that was about security. That was national security. That was under the argument of national security. National security trademark infringement. There's all kinds of different reasons. that these other pieces of tariff enacting legislation allow the president to assert to, you know, to maintain this. Because it is those tariffs that brought China. Remember the little mini trade war that took place. That brought China and the United States together in a conversation because China was manipulating its currency. China was undercutting all of our products because they were subsidizing all of their products. They were terrifying the crap out of us. We had the same thing going on with other countries. When Trump did this, the first thing they did was pick up the phone and say, sir, can we have a conversation? So it was political in nature, less revenue in nature. And so apparently that was not amenable to the years of one Justice John Roberts. But, man, thank you very much for unpacking this for us today, Michael. I appreciate it. My pleasure. Yeah. Takeaway is it's a loss in the short term here, but we'll see the president continues to have significant powers conducting international diplomacy. It is disappointing in that because it was a powerful weapon, as you just illustrated. My pleasure, Vicki. You have a great day. And, you know, we'll get some more decisions maybe next week. Maybe some other big ones coming down to like next week. They might have to talk about those as well. Yeah, you were telling me there's a big redistricting, a big district map decision coming down. So that one terrifies me. Okay. Great to have you. Michael O'Neill, landmark legal, a pleasure. Take care, Vicki. Have a great day. You as well, and we'll take a quick break. Welcome back to the program. It's the Vicki McKenna Show, and I'm always pleased to have Congressman Derrick Van Orden standing by on the program, fresh from a round of kicking puppies and shoving little old ladies off cliffs. Good to have you, Derek. Thanks for joining me on the program. Well, thank you. Yes, if you read the left-wing press, that's exactly what I'm doing. If you want to know the truth, here's what I'm actually doing. We just got done with an event with a large group of seniors in Portage County.

And we're talking about the $6,000 tax break per person that we're getting on Social Security stuff. So 88% of seniors, those are 65 and older, are not going to pay any tax on Social Security benefits. And we have to understand. This isn't the one big, beautiful bill, which, by the way, every single Democrat voted against. So Tammy Baldwin, Mark Polkhan, Gwen Moore, all these other highfalutin Democrats around the country voted against giving the people that built this nation a $6,000 tax break, which I think is absurd. Well, I voted for it proudly. I also voted for no tax on tips and no tax on overtime. So no tax on tips, which the state of Wisconsin refuses to do because Democrats hate Republicans and we want to bubble wrap Wisconsin so that none of the great benefits of the one big beautiful bill ever accrue to our state. And I'm not kidding. That's what they're trying to do. But here's when they can't stop. And they can't stop federal no tax on tips. They can't stop federal no tax on overtime. And they can't stop the $6,000 tax break on Social Security. It isn't like you're living the life. of luxury on Social Security, but you're still paying taxes on it. Well, you get a $6,000 tax break now. Yeah. And listen, this is life-changing for some of our seniors. It lowers their tax bracket. It's fantastic. We just did a little short interview. We're going to set over in the White House and blast it out about how, you know, what a profound, positive effect this is having on our seniors. Again, the people that literally built this country. And the other thing with no tax on overtime, our union workers, they live on overtime. And so you think, you know, the Democrat parties is this big, you know, union labor guys. Guess what? We're chopping them a tremendous amount of money because they're working very hard to build this country. And that's union and non-union. But, you know, traditionally the headquarters for the unions vote for Democrats and give them hundreds of millions of dollars over the year. And I think that's just dumb because we're the ones fighting for the American working man and woman. I think when you see the five-year out on the no-text on overtime, I think you're going to see hours worked explode. Because at some point, overtime kicks you into the next bracket. You're going to see hours work to explode because you can make great money on overtime. They have a disincentive to add extra hours. It's just dumb. Not if you want your economy to be productive. And I also think that the no tax on tips, that one is going to be, it'll be harder to measure that. But you're going to now start seeing people in the tipped industries. you're going to start seeing more sustainable incomes. And you're going to, honestly, people will work more. They will take on additional hours. And I think you're just going to see incomes creep up in those categories. And you're going to see those become a lot more sustainable than they typically are viewed. But, you know, I mean, you've got ads running against you and every other Republican out there, you know, essentially saying, Derek hates old people. Derek hates puppies. You like puppies, don't you? We want to just get that on the record. I love them. As a matter of fact, I do. And again, I have tremendous respect for our seniors because, I mean, they gave us a nation worth living it.

And right now, unfortunately, a lot of people on the left are trying to destroy that. We're trying to destroy our way of life. And I'm just not going to stand for that. And we're going to respect our seniors. And a real tangible way that we can prove that is by the fact that we voted, the Republican Party. to give every senior, 65 and older, a $6,000 tax breaking. I can't stress this enough. Every single Democrat voted against that. So I don't know why a single senior would be voting for a Democrat when they want them to have financial insecurity. And we simply don't. So I want to switch gears if you don't mind, and I want to talk about Gen Z a little bit. Gen Z, you know, you're Gen X. I'm Gen X. We love, right? We love to kick the millennials in the tush. It's fun. They love to kick Gen Z in the tush. I mean, this is what we do. Boomers. Boomers make fun of us. Yeah. Yeah. No, we're not boomers. Get a calendar, buddy. I know. Exactly. It's an insult. Stop it. All right. So, you know, but anyway, we have fun, right? The generations always are picking on each other, and it's fun. But Gen Z is literally in multiple ways in crisis. And we're not looking to them for solutions. We're looking to each other. We're the ones who rig the debt. to $39 trillion and an unfunded liability on entitlements to $150 trillion. Well, I'll be dead. They're going to be the ones dealing with it. So how do we get so that that perspective can be absorbed by our party, by our policy, and kind of get us to take the horse blinders off? Well, we start getting young conservatives involved in politics. at a much younger age. And I don't know if you saw it or not, but I just endorsed Michael Alfonso for the 7th Congressional District to take Tom Tiffany's seat. He's 25 years old. And I want to be crystal clear. Kevin Herman is an American hero, period. And he's a very good friend of mine. And I've done Jesse now for six years, and I've spoken to the other guy that's in the race. But, you know, right now what we need to do as Republicans in the state of Wisconsin and nationally is we need to start uniting together. We need to stop spending our limited resources. They're going to spend probably six or seven million dollars on a primary for the seventh congressional district. And that thing is as red as an apple. It's an R plus 20. So we need to think strategically over the long term. And getting Michael in there in office, he's going to be a great congressperson. Getting him in younger so he understands the state of play and how things are working in these bigger circles in Washington, D.C. is going to go across the board for that generation. And these young college folks, young Republicans and the YRs and everybody,

and college Republicans, they are of the future. And if we, you know, look down at them, we're literally looking down to the future of the United States and American. I'm unwilling to do that. So I want my first to get elected. And get in there. Yeah, go ahead. Yeah, I just read a piece in the Wall Street Journal and the entire thing was just dunking on Gen Z. Just mocking Gen Z. Oh, they can't afford their houses. Well, maybe they shouldn't wait in line and buy, you know, avocado toast or whatever. And I'm thinking that's, that is, that's our reaction to a young generation of people who say, how am I going to be able to start a family? How am I going to be able to not afford a house? Please, how do I afford rent and my student loans plus my car payment and my utility bills, which in Wisconsin went up 37%. Thank you. Governor Ivers? Yeah, thank you very much with a $2 billion rate increase, Governor Evers. And our response is mocking them because we taught them. to, you know, wait in line for processed food. Are you kidding me? So we're the ones who created this mess. And you've got, I like Michael a lot. I like Michael Alfonso a lot. I mean, he's a TPSA guy. He's a young conservative guy. He's, he's got his head on the right side of the Constitution, which you don't see often. Let's train up more young people like that through these organizations, YRs, College Republicans. Turning Point USA, and let's unleash them to replace old farts like us. Yeah, that's what we're doing. And, you know, getting Michael there into Washington, D.C., as I said, so he can understand the machinations that take place in our, you know, deliberative body of Congress. And then he can speak directly. to his peers and they, you know, we all speak differently. And if you went to China and you're in a movie theater and it caught on fire and yelled fire in English, no one would know what you're talking about, right? And same thing here. If you yell firing Chinese in a theater in the United States, no one's going to understand what you're saying. So each generation speaks differently. And so having the ability of someone who speaks directly the language of younger people is critically important. I mean, these folks were raised on social media. Social media didn't exist when you are. You and me, social media was a newspaper, Vicki. And so that stuff has changed. And so when they take this as part of, you know, everyday life and they just get it, that helps us communicate across a wide range of voters that are going to be the future of the country. And here's what's interesting. We flipped the University of Wisconsin lacrosse to Republican for the first time in history, and we're like 50-some votes shy of flipping the University of Wisconsin River Falls. You know why? Because these young people, like Michael, they understand what government tyranny looks like through the COVID thing. They were ordered to stay at home. They were forced to get a vaccination. They were told they couldn't speak to their friends. They said if you said certain stuff on social media, they're going to ban you and they're going to ruin your life. If you simply asked questions of the government, that's why this generation.

wants to be Republicans because they understand that we are the party of freedom. And if we don't embrace that and engender a great sense of patriotism and actually working for things, then we're doing a disservice to the country. And I refuse to do that. I served for almost 30 years defending American citizens' lives. And this is a way to continue that service by emboldening the next generation to take charge of the country by handing the mantle over to them. You know, I'm not endorsing in that race, but how old were, I don't think 25 is some kind of, you know, prohibition. How old were you when you signed up for the SEALs? I was 18 when I joined the military. So you were 18 years old. Okay. Yeah. Just saying. Yeah. That's a hefty load of responsibility on the shoulders of an 18 and young and into your young 20s when you were going through all that training. Just saying we used to not be bothered at all to put that responsibility on the shoulder of young men. By the way, speaking of men, Gen Z men are not afraid to stand up for themselves as men. And I enjoy that as well. We are, Gen X. We're all afraid of offending people on Facebook. But not them. They're the ones who have lived with the brunt of the attacks. Vicki, you clearly have that looked at my Facebook. I am not a person. Why, as I do. Present company excluded. You're the exception that proves the rule. All right, before I run out of time, though, I do want to get something else out here because I know I gave you a heads up on this. You said you're looking into it. Speaking of Turning Point USA, what organization is training more young conservatives than Turning Point USA? I can't name one. God bless CRs and YRs. Everybody's helping. But TPUSA is. where it's at. And we have a condition in Appleton, Wisconsin, at Lawrence University, where a young man is being prohibited from forming a chapter, and the campus is now poised to vote to ban turning point permanently. Yeah. Well, guess what? The Milwaukee School of Engineers try to do that. Beloit College tried to do that. According to University, try to do that. And here's what happened. They got a hold of me, and I called Harmeet, who is the assistant, she is the assistant attorney general for civil rights. And I asked her, what is going on here? What can we do? What is the recourse? Those are private institutions. But guess what? She laid out to me in detail what these schools are up against. So because they receive money through Pell Grants for their students and other grants for research and all this stuff, they are subject to the federal government's jurisdiction. And this is what this means. And if they're listening, they need to because right now the president of that school is refusing to get a hold of us. We've been trying to reach out to them and they won't contact us, which means that they know they're wrong.

So here's what happens. If they choose to do this, the Department of Education will go into every single one of their admissions, policies, practices, and look at it student by student by student. They can revoke all of the Pell Grants that are given to any one of their students. They can revoke any type of research money that they've been given by the federal government. And guess what? The Trump administration will do this. You cannot discriminate against an individual group. You cannot do that against federal law. And so I need to get the details from this. So, you know, Madam President, please get a hold of us. We've been trying to reach out to you. And we're going to bring the full force of the law against these people through discriminating against Trane Point USA or any other organization. So that's federal law. So you can't say I'm a private institution. I don't have to comply with federal civil rights law. Well, you actually do because you couldn't start a group on campus and say we're going to ban all black people from that group. You're not going to be able to do that. Private or not, right? So, Vicki, let me be really clear. They can do whatever they want. They just won't get any money from the federal government. And that includes the money that's going to their students. If they want to sit out in the wilderness by themselves. Knock yourself up, but you are not going to discriminate against people. You're not going to discriminate against people in the United States of America under the Trump administration. 70 grand a year. If those kids on those spell grants are getting the financial aid, I don't know if they're going to be able to cough up 70K a year to go to the school. One last thing. This school on its own website as a declaration of its inclusivity policy prohibits discrimination based on political affiliation. University policy also prohibits harassment based on political affiliation and discrimination based on political affiliation. So, hey. You know, Lori Carter, who is the president of Lawrence, you know, check your voicemails and call Derrick Van Orden back. I really, I'm grateful for you to jump on the program today. And thanks for helping out the kids, I shouldn't call them kids, the young adults at Lawrence University trying to do right by the Constitution. Well, you are welcome. And just ask the God bless you and your listeners, Becky. It's wonderful to talk to you. And we're going to take a quick break. That was Congressman Derrick Van Orden, and I will be right back. All right, that is it for me. Everyone have an awesome weekend. I'm going to have an awesome weekend. I will be back here on Monday and we will talk about, you know, some really frivolous things like utility companies making us pay for electricity they don't generate or the property rights infringements that the data center companies are imposing on Wisconsin citizens. You know, stuff like that. No big thing. Anyway, have a wonderful weekend. We'll see you back here on Monday.