Vicki McKenna Show - Keeping the Academy Queer

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So get on it. Win some money. So I can read your name on the air. So here's what's coming up on the program. There's a reason why education's terrible. It's not one. It's not a hundred reasons. It's one reason. Education is terrible. We're going to talk about that. Education is terrible because it's designed to be. We'll get to that. Yet another analysis proves me right on that. We're going to talk about the Pacific Palisades fire as well. We had an arsonist who was arrested, a 29-year-old arsonist. It looks like the investigation is shaping up to be a terrorism investigation, an eco-terrorism investigation. He burned the Pacific Palisades on purpose. for climate change. That's coming up on the program. We'll talk about that media roundtable. It was fascinating, actually, and terrific for a bunch of reasons, not the least of which a whole bunch of credentialed, press past reporters with Columbia School of Journalism degrees, had to sit there and listen to a bunch of indie reporters. Mike dropped them all afternoon. on everything from attacks on ice to the Portland Antifa riots. We'll get a little bit more into Portland as well. Portland cops are Antifa. New story emerging. The mainstream press won't tell you that story, but those indie reporters, the people who are literally risking their lives to tell these stories, are reporting that Portland PD is compromised. They're not just standing down because they've been given in order to stand down. They're actively assisting the Antifa terrorists who are attacking citizens, federal agents, and reporters. We'll also talk about that California law that the used car salesman in the cheesy suit, Gavin Newsom, just signed into law that would prevent law enforcement from protecting their own identities. Anyway, all of that's coming up on the program. Real quick reminder before we take a quick break and come back with the education topic. We're signing people up to come to Ireland, Ireland, in June of 2026. June. Now go on your Google. Go on the Google and look up Ireland weather in June. It's beautiful, just like Wisconsin. Very little rain. nice comfortable temperatures, good temperatures at night. So we're going to do Ireland in June of 2026. It won't be too cool. It won't be too hot. It'll be easy to pack for. The price points outstanding. You just simply go to cruise dash tour.com, cruise dash tour.com. And this will be the third trip I have taken with Cruise and tour. I can say, having used many travel agents in the past, cruis and tour is the best of them all.

All of the accommodations are exceptional, and it's seamless. You didn't even have to think about anything except what you are going to bring in your suitcase. Leave enough room for stuff to take home. We're going to do Dublin, Killarney, Waterford, Kilkenny, Cliffs of Moor. We'll kiss the Blarney Stone. We'll drink whiskey. We'll stay in an Irish castle, we'll drink beer, unless you don't want to, and we'll eat outstanding cuisine. So please check it out. Cruise-Tor.com, June 2026, the Vicki McKenna trip of a lifetime to Ireland. We'll take a break. I want to come back and talk about how education went from something that was in the United States. It was since 1975, it hasn't been great. Some districts have been great, but since 1975 overall, it hasn't been great, but it's been... And right around 2015, something changed drastically. One thing changed. We'll be right back. And we are back. Welcome back to the program. It's the Vicki McKenna Show. There's a reason why education is awful. Well, there's a lot of reasons. I mean, you can pile on it. But there's one main reason why things just went sideways fast. And that was Barack Obama. It was the Obama administration. We've got Kalyn D standing by with a terrific Washington Examiner article taking a look at how education has gone so sideways over the – and it hasn't even been that long. Like I said, you know, prior to about 2015 schools, public schools are – eh. They haven't been terrific since about 75. Some districts, though, were really good. And in right around 2015, things just went absolutely down the tubes. Caitlin, let's start with what Obama did. And what Obama's Education Department did was essentially threatened schools with civil rights investigations if their discipline policies produced disparate results. What ended up happening in the cascade after that decision? Well, thanks for having me on. You know, like a lot of schools after that, you know, were succumbed to all these Title VI threats, you know, threatened with discrimination if they engage in disciplinary acts against students who might be well indeed misbehaving. As we know, you know, it's a problem in schools. And it happens in varying degrees depending on the location. But when you don't have a way to actually introduce, you know, disciplinary tactics without threat of, you know, locksie, you just wind up to, you know. causing, you know, more chaos for classrooms and it leads to degradation of other students learning. And that's what we have, that's what we have seen in a lot of urban areas when it comes to school zones like, you know, in Chicago and some places of some parts of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia. Milwaukee. And yeah, Milwaukee is a big one too, yeah. Yeah, but, you know, there's a lot of different things. And I do think that's the primary. fascinating issue that this all sort of comes back to is, you know, if school districts aren't going to be able to, you know, have a well sort of regulated, you know, or actually be able to enforce.

disciplinary action. It's going to lead to people taking their kids out of schools. And that's exactly what we've seen in Chicago. There has been a decline, a slight decline, I will say, in enrollment there. And that's, you know, in part because some people are even taking their kids to homeschool. And it's really an interesting phenomenon that you're seeing because that's not something that you would typically expect from urban areas. But it is happening in small incremental degrees. And I think that it could happen. perhaps even more as we see, you know, some of these classrooms just not really getting the right amount of, you know, test scores. I mean, the officials in Chicago are elevating, you know, and celebrating test scores that are just honestly not phenomenal in any regard. Well, I mean, whenever you have that, whenever you have that, whenever you have that, whenever you have that, that kind of reward, you know, like, you know, you're just saying, oh, that's great, but you're also spending, you know, around $30,000 per student. You know, it's not a great system. And I think that parents are starting to wake up and realize there's other alternatives. Chicago is a great example, but we have one that's even closer to home, and that's Milwaukee, which is spending well over $20,000 a student, sub-30% proficiency in reading and math and in declining enrollment. And yet each year, more money, fully staffed up administrative buildings. You mentioned this in Chicago. Dozens of kids in some buildings, just dozens, but a full administrative staff. for a second because it's 100% true that the discipline decision by the Department of Education created a cascade. But it wasn't really the discipline and the chaos. per se. That was the result of the threat. It was the disparate impact theory. So you're off to the races once you come up with this idea that anything that affects black or marginalized kids negatively is de facto racism and possibly going to earn you a civil rights investigation and possibly some sort of citation from the Department of Justice. You saw all kinds of changes. All of a sudden, everything's about structural racism. It's not just, you know, social studies lectures from time to time on white privilege. It's everything has now shifted to this idea of anti-racism or this idea of structural racism. That leads to, let's eliminate grades. Let's do it Wisconsin did. Let's lower the cut scores so that more kids can look like they're passing. Let's increase social promotion and graduation rates artificially. And what you end up having is ideology, the education system becoming a vessel for ideology entirely and nothing about actually teaching kids to read and do math. Yeah, I agree completely. And, you know, for the longest time, you know, we were told sort of the, the, the guys all around was that, you know, America is, you know, a racist society, and we're always looking for ways to find racism. And I think that it's that type of mindset that's led to these degradation. And honestly, actually, more racist policies to sort of say, like, oh, we're going to be accepting, you know, just, you know, the bare minimum.

Everything's fine as long as, you know, scores are just... just a little bit above the passing range or something like that. And I think that in turn, it actually harms kids of varying and backgrounds. And I think that that's the real travesty of it all of the Obama era policies. But the good news is that, you know, that I think that we're on a passport, you know, with the current education department, with Linda McMahon in charge, I do think that we are seeing. And also I will say with, you know, great minds like Gail Harriet, who are sort of a. being sort of advisors to this, to this, you know, change in education. I think that we are starting to see somewhat of a, you know, trend in the opposite direction and a better, in a better direction. But it will take a lot of legwork down at the local district levels. And I think that that's going to be something that will either parents will be willing to wait it out and see if things get better or they're going to take matters into their own hands. I think that that's where. You know, school choice, again, becomes the supreme talking point. I think teachers' unions, getting the teachers' unions out would be a huge lynch pin to pull. Okay, that's one thing. We can talk about that if you'd like. One last thing before we move on, and I want to talk about the success stories here and how simple it was. In red states, that were actually interested in improving the ability of children to read right and make those graduation rates actually real. rather than just social promotion graduation rates. Common Core reduced standards. And it also implemented new styles of teaching that were confounding to both teachers and parents. And so when you combine all of this, when you take kids who might be fairly talented, you put them in a chaotic environment, you've made it more difficult for them to learn, and then you've confounded the actual way you teach. Now you are taking the kids who might have been okay, and you're reducing them closer to... mediocrity or failure, now that disparate impact looks a lot different. Put aside all the trans and the woke and all that stuff. That's something in the last day since Trump. This already was beginning before we started talking about, you know, woke everything under the sun. So you reduce standards, you reduce discipline, you confound learning. What did Mississippi and Alabama do? Mississippi. It's like they said, you know what, I think we'll just teach kids how to read the old-fashioned way. And look what has happened. That's remarkable. Yeah, I mean, the reintroduction of phonics in some of these school zones has been really instrumental, I think, in part because, you know, you have, you know, that is something of itself that was almost sort of reduced or sort of, you know. waned, weaned off of society for a long time. I remember, you know, whenever I was growing up, you know, the hooked on phonics games, those were something that my older sister played, 10 years older, but it was less of a, less of a instructive part of our education growing up with phonics. And I think that whenever you just go back to the roots and you, like, reintroduce those types of...

ways of learning and actually getting kids to be speaking with more proper, you know, speaking more proper English and, you know, just being a little bit more attentive to trying to get kids to... be on the same level as their peers, I think that you find a lot more success in those types of strategies. So I think that's definitely something that's been contributing with Red States. The other thing, too, is that, you know, it's a bit of an obvious one at this point, but a lot of schools that were in urban areas closed off during COVID, a lot of them didn't reopen for a very long time. And so there's still the residual effects happening from that. Those are permanent effects that. honestly have to be addressed by an individual case-by-case scenario. But I think that, you know, there's always going to be that little skew in the data because we're going to be seeing these kids who had different, you know, different ways of dealing with COVID. Some of them didn't really have that much of an impact in their education because they kept going through their studies. But, you know, some other ones had to be remote online and maybe they just weren't very good learners in that environment. And there were a lot of teachers who mailed it in as well. So that was also a problem is that, you know, you suddenly put everybody in front of a blue screen and their brain starts to melt away. And they'd rather see flashy things on a blue screen, not some boring teacher who's mailing it in and aggravated talking through a mask at them. So that's something that is going to shake out. And I agree with you on that. But I want to go back to Mississippi specifically phonics. So they prioritized reading. When you prioritize reading, you're actually going to improve math because reading starts to create different pathways of understanding. the world to create sort of logic patterns in your brain. It actually makes it easier to understand math, even if you use the lousy algorithms that they're using to teach math. And I believe Mississippi has changed sort of back to the classic algorithms that I was learning when I was growing up, whether it was just simple addition, subtraction, multiplication, or algebra. So... But when you improve reading, this is what Chicago refuses to do. It's what Milwaukee refuses to do. It's what Wisconsin refuses to do, even though there's $50 million sitting in a fund to do it. And that is to go back to basics on reading. And I mean, it's everything, Kalyn. It's every. Could you do your job if you couldn't read? No, neither could I. Multiple times. And I'm going to talk to him again today. I have a college professor, English professor friend who says his gen ed kids don't read books. I just read an article in Harvard. Harvard students, the best kids in the country. Don't read books. Most of them have never read a book cover to cover. And that includes Harry Potter coming into Harvard. And that's because they're not being taught the easy way to understand language. And once you figure out those, you unlock the first couple of boxes on language when you're young with phonics. Everything else is simple by that time.

Yeah, and honestly, we just need to prioritize, you know, actually passing laws that prioritize how children are learning and, you know, to read above sort of the profit incentives that, you know, some publishers and education, you know, you know, leaders have, you know, because I think that in a lot of ways, this is something that, you know, they overcomplicate the situation. You know, it doesn't have to be, you know, like we have to. take into account every single person, you know, personal life and how it impacts their learning abilities when it comes to reading. Just get the kids back on phonics and get them into a situation where they can sort of begin to mesh together instead of having this sort of, you know, oh, we're going to kind of, you know, make sure that we're adjusting our curriculums to some sensitivities or cultural sensitivities that some people might have. No, I think it's important that we get kids back in this same regimen because if they aren't learning in a more, in a more, you know, similar, you know, reading, reading style, I think, I think that it's going to cause. a lot of problems going forward. And I think that this is just something that people need to give a chance because it will start to show benefits along the road. You're being really logical and there's a reason why Chicago hasn't adopted it. And there's a reason why Milwaukee hasn't adopted it. And there's a reason why our Department of Public Instruction Superintendent refuses to take the money for phonics-based reading education and use it on phonics-based reading education. It's all about SCL or it's about disparate impact or it's about structural racism or something woke. There's a reason why that they won't do it. And that is because they don't have a desire at this point, the people who control education, to make it about education. It is an ideological vessel now for left-wing politics or left-wing ideology. And that's why this doesn't – that's why it's happening in Mississippi or Alabama, but it isn't happening in Minnesota. It isn't happening in Illinois. It isn't happening in Wisconsin. Purple states are controlled by left-wing ideologues in education. Blue states certainly are, and sometimes red states have to have a fight too. But I think that's the reason why it's only happening in states like Mississippi, where you see a strong, conservative bend in government and policy, which actually says, well, geez, it's education. Maybe we should teach these kids to read. It's not the goal of the teachers' union or the education bureaucrats. Lastly, on unions. I mean, pay attention right now to what's happening in Oklahoma. It is one of the worst states of the country for education. But there's also a movement right now that's happening with the former state superintendent. He's going into the private sector. He's starting his own sort of collective of, you know, basically the idea of what Ryan Walters is positing is that he wants to create a teachers union that is there to support kids. You know, the, that's the simple solution because all the teachers unions right now, they're there to support the teachers. They're just only there for teachers. They have no interest at all in the children's education. And imagine what you could do, the change that you can enact, if you get teachers who want to assemble, not for themselves, not for their own personal gain, but to actually bring about a better education system for...

the children that are in those school districts. I think it's a novel idea and I think it's something that more people need to adopt because all the unions at this stage are not in it for the actual kids who are learning. No, I wouldn't even say they're in it for the teachers because, you know, no discipline in the classroom doesn't help teachers. Confounded education, you know, plans that teach reading in ways that make sure kids never read. I don't think teachers are helped by that. I don't think the teachers themselves think they're helped by that. I think they pay the dues because they think they have to. And many of them are just fellow ideological travelers and are totally fine with it. So, you know, get rid of the teachers union. help get rid of this disparate impact nonsense from the department of education mandate phonics education and catch these kids up as fast as possible in reading the ones who can't catch up you can target those kids if education is actually your goal in indoctrination is not. It's a really interesting piece. It's a comparison between you use Chicago as the worst example. I think you could pick any school from a blue state. I think you could pick Minneapolis or Milwaukee or, you know, New York or anywhere. But, and then you compare it to the states that are actually making some simple changes and doing well. I hope people check it out at Washington Examiner.com. Kalin, thank you for coming on the show. Thank you so much. I appreciate it. And we'll take a break on the Vicki McKenna show. Thanks very much to Middleton Ford for sponsoring our hotline. Here's one thing I was thinking as Kaylin was talking, how not hard it is to teach reading. Because my mom taught me to read. I bet yours did too, Brandon. Bet your mom taught you. I had a lot of help. Yeah. You know, I mean, the thing is moms, I get to kindergarten. I'm reading books because my mom taught me to do it. My mother had a high school education. A high school education in the 1950s. We'll take a quick break on the Vicki McKenna Show. We are back. Welcome back to the program. It's the Vicki McKenna Show. I've got standing by in the Middleton Ford hotline, our friend Bonner Cohen from CFAC, Citizens for Constructive Tomorrow. Bonner, before we get to what we could potentially do to unleash. American mineral supremacy. Okay. I do want to talk about the Pacific Palisades arsonist. who was just arrested. And remember they blamed climate change. They're still, by the way, blaming climate change. He apparently now, it appears, is an eco-terrorist who did this to try to run people out of California and make people more serious about climate change. So maybe we should just start with how all of this is now turned into a nihilistic ideology that wants to burn.

structures and people in cities to the ground. One wonders how many predominantly young people who have spent the vast majority of the last five or ten years looking at their smartphones, which have many dumb things on them, being thoroughly indoctrinated into the false narrative of man-made climate change, and have drawn the conclusion that they must take radical steps, such as this guy from... actually from Melbourne, Florida, from what I understand, has an interesting last name, Rinda Kinecht, which translated from German, means cattle servant. This is a very, very sick individual. How many more of them are there out there who have been fed a steady diet of this? And look at the harm the man did. Twelve people were killed, an entire... kind of middle class to upper middle class to hoity-toity, because that's what Pacific Palisades was, completely destroyed. The narrative at the time that we heard over and over again, this is being caused by climate change. Well, in a weird way it was. It was actually caused by the phony narrative of... climate change which drove this very disturbed young man to do to become an eco-terrorist in this case an arsonist who set a fire and we know he said it they've done a very good job of reconstructing his moves in the days leading up to the beginning of the fire so absolutely incredible and as I said I believe the point but they're more people like that out there. So here's the thing. We don't know if this guy's attached to an eco-terrorism group. If he was, you know, just, you know, it fed a steady diet of, you know, eco-fascism, environmentalism. We know that people who are in this realm do all kinds of crazy things. We've had mass shooters who were motivated by eco-fascism and ecoterrorism. His goal was to get rid of all of those single structures. Apparently, he was quite upset up. the fact that people had homes in Pacific Palisades when they're not going to now by the way it's going to be all low-income housing isn't that curious the property the grand grab has begun the poor people who lost their homes there as a result of what this disturbed young man did are still waiting on the state of California and the city of Los Angeles to give them the permits to rebuild their homes. So they're going to be waiting a long time. No, they're going to get single family homes are not going to be rebuilt. That's right. Gavin Newsom has already said this. Karen Bass has already said this. They're not, they don't want single family homes rebuilt. They want high density, low income housing. High density, low income housing.

So they are simply saying you're not going to get your permit. Your land value is now zero for you. They're not paying for the lost land value and structure value. So. Eventually, that all that land is going to be for high-density, low-income housing in Pacific Palisades, which is going to do what, Bonner, which before we get to the mineral stuff, which is important, we should explain. When you pour in subsidized housing, the market rate of all other housing goes up. It goes up for Pete's sake. So setting aside all this money and saying, we need more low-income housing because it's too expensive in California, therefore we need low-income housing. No, you need to bring market rate housing back in line with inflation and start to let people build structures again. But that's not what they want to do there. No, it's not. This is happening in one of the most expensive housing markets on the planet. Whether you're talking about, apartments, detached homes. condos, townhouses, what have you. They cost an arm and a leg in California. And as you pointed out, they're now going to cost even more as a result of the subsidized housing that mayor, who chose, by the way, not to stay in Los Angeles when the fire broke out. Instead, she went off to a trip to Kenya and came back to a smoldering mess. So, yes, this is, you already have a catastrophic housing situation in Los Angeles. And what are they doing in the aftermath of a horrific fire? They're making a bad situation worse. Oh, they did it in Lahaina, too. Affirmatively furthering fair housing isn't actually a rule anymore, but it is operational in California right now, which is the idea that you should never allow these single-family enclaves to form with middle-class or upper-middle-class incomes, that everything needs to be subverted to subsidize low-income housing. And one last thing on subsidized low-income housing. I know housing developer, a private, you know, rate housing developer. And he says the people who are subsidized, they don't bear all the risk. That's the government that's bearing all the risk. And they bid up prices for land, which the moment the next market rate developer comes in, that's the set price for whatever it is they're going to have to purchase as well. So it's a constant ratcheting effect. And it doesn't actually put poor people in homes, Bonner. That's the other thing. It doesn't actually help poor people. It is, these are just programs that just seem to, you know, continue to be funded. And in the case of California, funded by both federal and state dollars and local dollars in the city of Los Angeles. Yes, and it gives politicians the opportunity to virtual signal to their hearts content about they're really taking action on housing. Well, in a sense, they are taking action on housing. But the action they are taking, as I said, is going to make a bad situation.

worse and is not in the least a bit going to help the targeted audience to poor people. They benefit not in any way from this. But the ecoterrorist who set the fires is good with this. This is an outcome. He will be sitting in prison. This is an outcome that he would have desired because this is the outcome of this is the demand of the green environmentalist, the climate change lunatics. Before we're not at a time, I want to get to minerals here because one of the things we keep saying, We always have to bend anita China. because they have the minerals. We don't have the minerals. They've got the minerals. Therefore, we are sort of locked in an allegiance or an alliance with them, regardless of how nefarious their intent to us is. And President Trump says, oh, contrary, let's go get the minerals we actually do have. And we do have an abundance of some of these minerals that we are relying on, relying on China for. Oh, yes indeed. In fact, If you look at the geology of the two countries, compared China with the United States. The United States is far better endowed with critical minerals, not to mention oil and natural gas, than is China. And the Trump administration recently reversed a Biden administration decision and will go allow a 211-mile mining road up in north. western alaska's called the ambler a m b l the ambler project road to go forward uh what is there well it's the largest untapped source of critical minerals in the world it has among other things it has copper gold silver zinc and other critical minerals which we use every day. Either we manufacture with them, manufacture with them, or we have them in products that we use all the time. Now, we're going to use those minerals regardless. The question is, where are they going to come from? Are they going to come from the People's Republic of China or simply those? Or are they going to come from one of the 50 states of the United States. And it turns out that they are there in abundance in Alaska. But the Biden administration was absolutely determined to put an end to that. And so it did not approve the permits to build.

the mining road. The mining road isn't going to appear overnight because there are going to be lawsuits filed by environmental groups and some native Alaska tribes. But I think the ship is a long last moving in the right direction. You have something close to you in Wisconsin up in northeastern Minnesota. You have what is known up there as the Iron Range. This is another huge deposit of copper. and other critical minerals, again, blocked by the Biden administration, and now the Trump administration is moving forward with this. There is no need for us to be dependent on the People's Republic of China, which, if it means the Communist Party of China, which runs the country, for our critical minerals and for our energy when we have the resources here. Of course. So it begs the question, why? Would you cut off access to it in the United States? We could actually put the state of California on that list as well. California is mineral rich. Wisconsin, you mentioned Wisconsin. We tried to get an iron mine up in northern Wisconsin because northern Wisconsin is largely dependent on tourism for its economic growth and economic stability. And it was sued into oblivion. sued into oblivion. So that's another change that's going to have to take place because you're right. This 211 mile road is going to be sued and sued and soon. But imagine had there not been an overt halt to it, the process would already be in play and we would be on the way to getting a determination. Eventually, you know, the people who are looking to do the iron or the iron mine in Wisconsin just gave up. You can't blend them. Yes, they gave up. We'll take our business elsewhere. So the other thing that has to stop as well are these, you know, proxy lawsuits that are nuisances designed solely to impose a policy that was not agreed upon by anyone in government. If it's not, if you're not actually suffering a harm. Alaskan tribes, Wisconsin tribes. If you can't prove a harm, you shouldn't be bringing lawsuits, but they're, they become the proxies for radical environmentalist groups who simply want to alter policy they could never get passed through a legislature or Congress. A recent positive development on that front from the U.S. Supreme Court, which shot down an effort brought forward to stop a copper mine in Arizona. They used Native American tribes as their proxy here. The tribes claimed that these were sacred lands and blah, blah, blah, and putting the copper mine on those lands. would, shall we say, ruffled their feathers. Of course, they were operating at the behest of environmental groups. Well, anyway, long story short, the Supreme Court said, you really have no case to make here. We're going to go ahead and allow the copper mine to go forward. So we hope that sets a precedent.

that will at least cut into the number of these phony proxy lawsuits that are filed. Good to have you on the program, Bonner. I ran out of time in this hour, but thanks so much for joining me today. Okay, thank you. Bonner, Coen, Seafat, Citizens for Our Constructive Tomorrow. We've got to take a break. Middleton Ford, thank you very much for sponsoring our hotline. This is The Vicki McKenna Show. All right, welcome back to the program. It's the Vicki McKenna Show. You've got another chance to win $1,000. Here is your keyword. Credit. Credit. It's our nationwide fall fortune cash contest. I am, by the way, buying time with long dramatic pauses while I double check that this is, in fact, the correct word. which, as I learned, was a technique that King George the 6th used to control his stammer. I watched the King's speech again for only the second time last night. So I'm borrowing from Colin Firth's performance in the King's speech. Anyway, all right, but I've just confirmed. It is, in fact, credit. C-R-E-D-I-T. You go to W-I-B-A.com. The B is in ball. Boy. booze, beer, brewers, all right? WIBA.com. You could win $1,000 you have until 55 minutes past the hour. And we'll call you. Just remember we will call you. What is mystifying to me is that the media that we complain about a lot. And it's important to complain about the media because it is locked down a huge amount of information from people isn't having the impact it thought it would have with Trump 2.0. And I want to bring this up because Tim Graham's going to come on for Media Research Center. We're going to talk about totally ignoring stories. Here's a story that's totally ignored. The Portland riots. The media is either ignoring them entirely. or pretending they don't exist, saying you're lying to all of the reporters on the ground. You're lying. All of the video coming out, you're lying, you're lying, you're lying. So another great example of this is Jay Jones, who is the candidate for Attorney General in Virginia. There's been zero coverage from the so-called MSM on this, zero, including local affiliates in Virginia, zero coverage on this, at least as of yesterday. in the analysis that I saw yesterday. And so they think if they black out a huge amount of information from people that it will have zero impact, but Trump. But because President Trump holds live events, but because Karoline Leavitt is constantly doing a gaggle, because of this, because Pete Hegseth goes directly.

to the press doesn't filter it through some spokesperson because live events live press conferences live statements are constantly coming out of the white house it is almost impossible for the press to do the job of the dnc and stop people from liking what is going on and i'll give you an example If you listen to the media tell the story, the Trump administration's targeting of TDA coming out of Venezuela with military action is appalling. Everybody hates it. You're killing civilians. You're not. When you've designated TDA is a terrorist organization and they are moving illicit contraband, usually drugs into the U.S. That's not civilians we're talking about here. Polling on, nuking the TDA guys from, you know, night vision guided drones is 71%. That's the approval of that. That's the approval. 71%. That includes Democrats. 56% of Democrats think it think it's awesome. Here's another one. Israel, Israel, Israel. You would think that the Democrats just have dominated and that half the country no longer supports our alliance with Israel. You'd be wrong. 75%. Including. 68% of Democrats favor our allegiance with Israel and our support of Israel. Isn't that stunning? This is after the media has essentially said anybody who supports Israel is supporting genocide in Gaza, genocide, genocide, genocide. How about deportations, ladies and gentlemen? How's that been working? All this anti-ice rhetoric, J.B. Pritzker, Hakeem Jeffries, and all of the attacks that President Trump has taken for the goofy memes with the sombreros. How has that been impacting support of immigration policy? Well, 71% of Americans surveyed. This is Pew. say they support President Trump's deportation strategy, including 56% who say explicitly all illegal aliens should be rounded up and deported out of the United States. All of them, like no nuance. 71% support the current Trump strategy, which is to target illegal aliens in the United States who are also besides the crime of coming into the United States illegally, otherwise criminal. That's 71%. 56%. And incidentally, this was 50% about three months ago. 56% now say, get rid of everybody. Everyone. And then there are some polls that are a lot more soft on Republican representation, like the Harris poll. The Harris poll asked, who's responsible for the shutdown?

Democrats. 55% Democrats. Okay. So if 55% of Democrats, of 55% of people believe Democrats are responsible for the shutdown, how many people want it to end? 55%. How many of the Democrats wanted to end? 50%. So we're going to talk about the media coming up. They still have an impact, certainly. But on some issues where President Trump can penetrate with live address, or Karoline Leavitt can penetrate with live address, or anyone else, name them, Marco Rubio, Scott Bessent, Kristi Noem, Pete Hegseth, where the Trump administration can go directly. Be the media itself. You can't evade that. I don't care what kind of socials you're on, even blue sky. The issues trend pro-Trump, 100%. 100% of the issues that Trump can penetrate on by circumventing the press penetrate in the positive direction in polling 100% of the time. We'll be right back.

All right, welcome back to the program. It's the Vicki McKenna Show. Standing by in the Middleton Ford Hotline, Middleton Ford Family Owned and your good neighbor of Ford dealership for nearly 75 years is Tim Graham, who is the senior editor at NewsBusters, also with Media Research Center. And he joins me to talk about the press, as we always do. Tim, welcome back to the program. It's good to have you. You know, I traveled through your old hometown last weekend. Oh, really? That would be Varroquah, Wisconsin. Didn't stop, but I did think of you. I told my husband, hey, you know that guy Tim Grammys on my program? He says, yeah, he's from Varroquah. When's last time you've been back home, huh? Yeah. I did. I failed somehow to show up at the right time to the gelato store. They have gelato now. I'm like, wow, we're getting hip over here. So fancy. That is fancy. Fancy, fancy. If I had known that, I would have made an effort to go to the gelato store. Not that there's anything wrong with custard. Every now and then you just want a different fat to ice to air mix, just saying. Well, we do have a culvers. Of course you do. You have to, or you're not a town. All right, I'm kidding. There are towns without Culvers in Wisconsin. Don't hate on me. Don't hate on me. You just all wish you had one. All right. So, Tim, I don't need, we could, we could. We could start with the non-existent attack on ice agents in Illinois, right? Didn't happen. Or we could talk about the non-existent riots in Portland because Antifa is not even an organization and there are no riots in Portland. Or we could talk about the stroke of genius that Trump had by pulling all those indie reporters into a live event yesterday, shaming the mainstream press saying, if you're going to call us a liar, I've never seen you there. So, I mean, on those two issues alone, Trump is starting to have an impact simply because he is circumventing the press, circumventing the gatekeepers and getting the information out and it's starting to show up in polling. Yeah, and I think the dominant media spin on these issues on what you might call chaos in the streets is that. Trump is the author of chaos. This was John Dickerson on TBS Evening News Plus. He has this really pompous editorial with a terrible title, Reporter's Notebook. And so obviously the people who are authoring chaos in the streets are Antifa, are the people who are trying to interfere with ICE law enforcement actions, who are hitting the cars of ICE agents. The idea that those people are not being treated as the insurrectionist is mind-boggling or should be. Well, it is, but it doesn't matter because that's just this is.

Smart people are now saying everything the media says, I'm going to think the opposite. There's something else going on. That's where we are in the American kind of general populace. When Trump circumvents them and goes directly to the people, and I mentioned a few issues, whether it was the shutdown, which doesn't even exist as a story now. You know that, right? That doesn't even exist for all intents and purposes as a story, even though the government shut down and air traffic control is slowing and a bunch of IRS agents got. furloughed and you know what I mean? Not even a story. But if Trump can go around them and directly to the people either through Levitt or one of the spokespeople for the administration, one of the secretaries, you know, now we're talking. So now you see it show up in polling. But as long as he doesn't do that with an issue, they are still able to have an effect. I think the Portland lie is the one that is, I mean, this is the Baghdad Bob lie of the day. This is the one that. is so ridiculous, you've got to wonder if they are embarrassed to actually repeat it. Yeah, I mean, once again, you know, the only real dominant storyline I've seen in the shutdown was Trump said maybe some bureaucrats won't get back pay. They're always looking. Every news event is really only categorized as Trump did something outrageous today. That's the way everything is. So, yeah, Trump has an event at the White House. Well, all these conservative journalists or, or at least anti-Antifa journalists who are out in the streets filming these people and sometimes being violently attacked for filming these people, that to them is not a story. I find it fascinating. You have groups with titles like the Committee to Protect Journalists and the Reporters Committee on Freedom of the Press. They don't care if these people are attacked by Antifa. They're trying to report. And this is what, you know, obviously what we see a lot from Julio Rosas or what Andy Noe has done is that they're putting, you know, videos on X and other platforms. And these are videos that, yeah, they don't, the networks aren't interested in what Antifa is doing. And as you suggest, they do. Try this horrific, stupid line that, well, they're not an organization. Well, no, they're obviously. They organize, they meet, they coordinate. You can join them. You can go on a website and join. It's like, yeah, it's like I'm trying to say CBS News isn't an organization. It's merely an idea. It just, it sounds ludicrous from the get-go, but that's what they do, you know. And so. I think the main point here, Vicky, is that we're at a point right now where there's a real dispute over which side, the left or the right is more violent. And the news media was basically like, well, we're not going to acknowledge any left-wing violence exists. And when obvious left-wing violence exists, we say silly things like... just because the bullet casing said anti-ice doesn't mean the shooter was anti-ice. I want stories that don't even get told, like the Supreme Court, the attempted bombing of the Supreme Court, 200 different explosive devices with a person arrested who intended to bomb the Supreme Court while they were attending a Catholic mass. Zero coverage on the anti-Catholic specifically violence that has been going on in this country. How about the Palisades arsonist, who is a left-wing, eco-terrorist.

idiotog, you know, they're still trying to claim it was climate change, not an arsonist to do this. I can go on and on. Katie Porter, who up until, you know, maybe recently was the lead candidate for governor in California, they don't want to talk about Katie Porter. This is a woman who is absolutely unhinged, just went off on a mainstream reporter. You're not hearing anything about Katie Porter. How about Jay Jones? Near where you actually work. You've got this guy who's out there cheering on the murder of children of his political opponents and police officers. It's not a story. I saw an analysis. I think you guys did it. Zero coverage as of a couple of days ago on that story locally and on the network on the network news. Yeah, I mean, we try to be generous. We got 63 seconds on Meet the Press, but that's because former Mike Pence aide, Mark Short, brought it up. And then the comedy of that was NBC host Kristen Welker said, well, that'll be a big story this week. No, it hasn't been a big story this week. And that's, this is the whole problem, is that when a candidate suggests. that he would like to put two bullets in a Republican and kill his children because the Republicans breed little fascists. Quote. I mean, again, we can flip this upside down in the other way and say, let's imagine a statewide candidate in Virginia says exactly this about. about a Democrat. They would kill them and their children. That would be a lead the news, probably for a week. Or more. Yes, and every single candidate, every single candidate would be asked anywhere in the country. That's what they do is they take something like that and they ask every Democrat. The joke is Manu Raju of CNN runs up and down the aisles on Capitol Hill demanding everybody, denounce it and separate themselves from it. You know, in 2006, George Allen made a joke and he called one of these Democrat trackers that was filming him, Makaka. And they turned that into somehow him suggesting that this guy was a monkey. Because isn't there a monkey that sounds like Macaca? I mean, and they made that a big story. I believe that Washington Post did like a hundred stories mentioning McCaca. Not so much on Jay Jones. I mean, they are just that partisan. Well, here's another. This is a big story. And again, it's a very clarifying game. What if it were reversed? The Portland Police Department is 100% compromised by Antifa. They are compromised, not just by bad rules of engagement, but by Antifa. There is video from Nick Sorter, who, by the way, was arrested by the Portland PD for getting beat up. He got beat up.

Oh, that was, yes, and that was national news. Of course, everybody, you know, maybe didn't know that if you were living in Wisconsin. That was national news. We had Ed Schultz here doing live broadcasts, you know, Al Franken. You had major, that was when Air America was a thing. Yes. And so for the offense of wanting to have a budget repair bill that erased a structural deficit and made unionism voluntary and made collective bargaining, not everything under. the son, Scott Walker was Hosni Mubarak, right? And Coke Brothers, Coke, Coke, Coke, Coke, Coke. I mean, I'm sitting there going, I think I can tell you everything about the Coke brothers because of that. But when George Soros saw this Neville Singham, who is underwriting the legal fund for Antifa, or any of these other people are out there, or the Portland Police Department. It's not even a story. It's fake. Fake news. Fake news. Tim Graham from newsbusters.org and also Media Research Center. Thank you for coming on the show. You bet. We'll take a break on the Vicki McKenna Show. Thank you as well to Middleton Ford for sponsoring our hotline. And I will be right back. And we are back on the Vicki McKenna Show. Don't forget you've got a chance to win $1,000 in our nationwide... Fall fortune cash contest. I gave you the word. Hopefully you remember. I'm going to make sure I remember. You got to play, though, to win. I don't think I can say it twice. But if you win, of course, and you pick up your phone and answer the phone, we will give you credit for winning. See what I just did there? Credit for winning. I don't have my bell to dinging a bell when I said the word credit. Okay. Mark Mix from the National Right to Work Foundation joins me on the program. I've got to just ask you just a question. Is Josh Hawley on? Is Josh Hawley on? Is he just on the take from big labor and other, you know, sort of soft left-wing groups? I'm not quite sure what to make of this guy, except that, boy, when it comes to kind of common sense labor bureaucracy, this guy seems to be, you know, just one step to the right of Sean Fane. Yeah, Vicki, it's really frustrating for a guy who was a supporter of right to work when he was back in Missouri, allegedly. And, you know, the first time he ran for office said he supported right to work, and now he's made a 180-degree turn. And not only is he against right to work, he says this, Vicki, and you'll, of all people I know, you'll appreciate this. He says, I would never impose right to work on anyone. That was his initial quote, getting into the business of being in favor of forced unionism. And he doesn't understand labor policy that imposes forced unionism on the states. He doesn't understand federal policy that imposes forced union association on workers who didn't ask for, didn't want, and didn't vote for a union. He doesn't understand that it's forced dues that are imposed by the federal government on the 24 states that don't have right to work laws. And now he's inviting...

Sean O'Brien, the Teamster president, as a Republican witness to a hearing about expanding federal power and giving federal government power to impose contracts on small businesses across the country for up to two years. So let's talk about this. This is pretty disturbing. Honestly, so if an attempt to unionize at a small business in America fails, you know, fails to come to an agreement. After 90 days, Josh Hawley, Republican, wants the federal government to force a contract on that company for two years. Yeah, that's the extent of this bill. It's Senate Bill 844. If someone wants to go read it, they can see this. And it says, you know, you've got to start negotiations in 10 days. You've got to be done in 90 days. And if you're not, then the bureaucracy will come in. And if you don't get an agreement in the next 30 days, the federal government will say, okay, here are the terms and conditions upon which your employers are going to operate under. The employer is going to impose on them, and the union is going to be in charge of that. And it'll happen for two years. It'll be in place for two years. That is not labor law reform. That's going down the road to more federal government power and union power over the American workplace. Well, yeah. Is this after a, you know, fully vetted secret ballot election to unionize the workplace? Vicki, you know too much about labor law. No, it isn't. It could be a card check. It could be a voluntary recognition. It could actually be an imposed union contract under a Supreme Court case called Gissel, if you will, from 1969. The NLRB now has the power to say, oh, because you, Mr. employer, or Mrs. employee, employer, were so bad in your labor relations. We're not even going to ask for a majority support or for any proof of majority support. We're going to impose a union on you without any of those safeguards, particularly a secret ballot election. So this is insane. This is actually, this is Josh Hawley. That's further to the left than even some Democratic members of the Senate, although they probably vote for this just because they have to because they're all trying to outflank Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. But this is bananas. This is like way past, you know, John Fetterman, Joe Manchin. I mean, we're getting to Chuck Schumer territory here. So. I don't understand. Where's Trump on this? Well, he's focused on the public sector, the government sector unionization at the federal level right now, and he's battling pretty well there. I don't know where President Trump is, although he did say that he supports the National Right to Work Act. He supports right to work laws. He's been relatively silent on this private sector kind of new, quote, labor law reform, unquote. We haven't heard from him.

The problem is we think that probably JD Vance has got maybe an oar in the water on this as well, because when he was asked about right to work, he said he was not a big fan of right to work. That doesn't mean that he opposes it, but he just, he has other ideas about labor policy, perhaps. And you know, Vicki, one of the things that happens here, a guy like Josh Hawley... They think that if they're just in charge of labor policy or quote unquote, we are in charge of labor policy, we'll run it right. And that's kind of this whole notion about the federal government. It's like, okay, we've got an agenda and we're smart enough to run it. And every time that happens, we have that philosophy, government gets bigger and the imposition on citizens like us get worse. And I think the idea is to get out of empowering private organizations to impose their will on the American worker, let workers to choose. So the thing about right to work, it does not, and again, we got to always say this because even though we are a right to work state in Wisconsin, the thing about right to work is it doesn't prevent unionization. It just allows people to opt out of paying the dues. Here's the thing. They're still stuck with the union contract because of a Supreme Court precedent. So that's not enough. That's not enough. So you give the, you know, maybe it's the majority, maybe it's the minority of workers, the ability to opt out. Right? Because 90% of their dues goes to left-wing politics. So they say, no, I don't want to support transing kids. I don't want to support abortion on demand. I don't want to support, you know, giving money to Hamas, whatever. I'm going to opt out. They're still stuck with the collective bargaining agreement. They're still counted for purposes of union membership. And they still get to get to be stuck with what the union. has in store for them, right? That's not enough for Sean O'Brien. That's not enough for Sean Fane. That's not enough for Josh Hawley. It's not enough. You can't give people the escape hatch of writing checks to support causes that do not help them and are bad for America. For instance, unrestrained migration. Yeah, Vicki, and ultimately that's about accountability for union officials as well. The best way to hold union officials accountable and get them to focus on the shop floor as opposed to what's happening in Madison or Lansing or Washington, D.C., is to be able to withhold your money when they're doing things that are crazy like that and against the economic or religious or philosophical principles that you have. Giving a private organization the type of power that unions have been granted going all the way back to the 1930s is really just an amazing, amazing. kind of fact in our labor policy that doesn't make any sense at all. I mean, giving workers the ability to choose is what makes sense. And I think, like Samuel Gompers, that that will make the unions even stronger if they're actually focused on the shop floor, as opposed to what's going on in the legislature and various states or in Congress. In principle.

Collective bargaining is not a bad idea. Workers organizing is, in fact, it's a good idea, okay? But it's not executed as on behalf of the workers in principle. It's executed on behalf of union leadership and politicians in principle. And that's the problem. Only 6%, I think it might even be less than that at this point, of the U.S. private sector workforce is unionized. Multiple attempts have been made by unions, either using card check. I mean, they've got card check for heaven's sake. They've got the ability to demand automatic imposition of union collective bargaining agreements, and they can't get above 6%. And they've taken a run at company after company after company. And the workers themselves say no. We know. And so. This would essentially take the – this would take the shop floor out of it entirely almost. Yeah, indeed. I mean, again, you can have, as you mentioned, you can have an imposition of a union contract, and it doesn't have to be voted on by the employees. It doesn't have to be agreed to by the employer. And what it is is a union contract that's imposed by federal will under this bill. Federal bureaucrats. It goes a step farther. Yeah, it goes a step farther than what's currently in the law. Exactly. Because they're trying to drive up the 6%. The 6% of the unionized workforce is driven by the choice of workers to either certify a union or not. That 6% reflects American workers' choice. I think American workers are getting screwed all kinds of ways to Sunday. But American workers' choices mean 6% of the workforce is unionized. And frankly... A lot of those American workers might choose to have it less than 6% because they feel like they're stuck in a collective bargaining situation, in a non-right-to-work state. So that 6% is probably artificially high. And this is crazy because this particular piece of legislation. So understand this is what happens if a Democrat is back in control, if we lose the House, this is going to happen. Federal bureaucrats get to pick federal arbitrators. to decide whether or not to impose a contract for two years on a business, whether that business can afford it or not, whether that's going to break the back of that business or not. Federal bureaucrats, and we can trust them, are going to pick federal arbitrators who are, you know, let's face it, coming out of training that is left-wing in nature. And somehow that's going to be fair for the small business. Yeah, and that's really the, that's really the juxtap. On no planet. On no planet will it ever be fair for the small business. Yeah. And so we've got to continue to stay vigilant. And I appreciate the opportunity to talk about it, Dickey, because it does matter for the American worker. It matters for the American economy. And to your point, I think it's only about 6% of all union members today right now have ever had a chance to vote on whether or not they wanted to be in the union or out of the union because those elections and those union contracts are legacy contracts, like in the automotive industry, go back to 1937 with the United Auto Workers. What would it take to decertify something like that? What would it take? It would take an act of God. Well, you know, it's interesting. It happens all the time, Vicki. In fact, in Michigan, when they repealed the right to work law, we had a slew of employees coming to us and saying, oh, my gosh, there's money coming on my paycheck for unionization that wasn't there, you know, a week ago or a month ago. And so a lot of these certifications have taken place. Of course, no one talks about it when the union gets thrown out by the very workers, to your point, Vicki, that say, you know what? We don't like this anymore. We want out. Yeah. In fact, we won three elections. We won three elections. We helped employees in three teams for elections.

just last week, throw the Teamsters Union out. That's, thank you. Thank goodness. Yeah. That, you know, we could get court decisions to grease the skids on that would be probably helpful. To get rid of the exclusive representation rights that unions have, unions have, whether it's member workers or not is something else. It could be huge as well. This is just, you know, at a time where everyone is now, you know, Republicans rightfully are concentrating on workers. Lobbyists are taking advantage of that and saying, you know what you need? You need to force unionism. Because most Republicans don't spend five seconds thinking about what that means because most of them have never experienced it firsthand. Mark Mix. National Right to Work Foundation, National Right to Work Committee. Thank you so much for joining me on the program. Always a privilege, Vicki. Thank you. Thank you. And we'll take a break on the Vicki McKenna Show. Thanks to Middleton Ford as well for sponsoring our hotline. We'll be right back. All right, just a few seconds. So we're going to check in. We're going to check in with Gen Z. See what Gen Z? How's Gen Z's temperature? Do a head check on them, a gut check on Gen Z. Jenna Pivarczak has a really...

insightful column at wisconsin right now.com. Wisconsin right now.com. You can read it. Jenna's going to join me on the program in the two o'clock hour. She's my Gen Z head check. She is talking about why maybe everybody else wants to move on from the Charlie Kirk assassination, the threat of political violence, but her generation can't. So that's coming up. Jenna. Duke Pesta will join me as well. Everybody have a great lunch. We'll see you back here at 2 o'clock on the Vicki McKenna show. Good afternoon. Welcome to the Vicki McKenna show. You want to win money, don't you? I know. Here it is. Check. That's your word to win. Just get right to it. Just get to the winning. nationwide fall fortune cash contest the keyword is check c h c k in case you came through public school in the last 15 years um go to our website news talk 1130.com or w i b a dot com enter the keyword check your personal details you have until 55 minutes past the hour and we'll call you if you win don't screen your calls We're not going to leave messages. So we will call you if you win. You must pick up the phone to win the money. All right. We've got tons to get to on the program today. Jenna Pivarcheck has a really good article at Wisconsin right now.com. She's Gen Z. And I've been curious as to how the Charlie Kirk assassination has affected young people. I am not young. So I'm affected differently by this. I am angry in a different way. And my appreciation of Charlie Kirk, candidly, until his death, was just different. I appreciated him as the hyper, super talented political organizer that he was, mostly. And I was grateful for what he did on campus. But I didn't, you know, he wasn't talking to me. He wasn't trying to get at me. He wasn't trying to get to my level and try to convince me of something. He wasn't on, we weren't on the wavelength of Gen Z, you know. So, you know, old folks like me, Gen X. We were just grateful that a young guy wanted to organize campus. So Jenna's got a different take on this, and that is because Charlie Kirk was a lifeline for Gen C. And I didn't really know that until I read her column. So she's going to join me on the program. Also, Duke Pesta is going to join me on the program to talk about University, University of Ashkosh. It's where he teaches. University of Ashkosh is hosting an event called Queering the Academy. Keep the Academy queer. Okay. Also teaching how horrible immigration enforcement is. This is a Wisconsin school. This is Ashkosh, not Madison. So we'll be diving into that as well. Plus.

some nuggets from the Kay Ivey League as well, some of the wizards from the Kay Ivey League. We want to talk a little bit about them, too, on the program. I don't have a ton of time in this first segment, but this is, I'm just going to throw this one out there. Is this big news? No, but it's cool. The NFL has decided to pick this guy, Bad Bunny. I'm calling him Bad Bunny. I don't care if he calls himself Bad Booney. I mean, don't give a blank. So let's call him Bad Bunny. This guy is taken to performing in fancy pretty dresses. He has performed with demons dancing around him. He despises immigration enforcement. He's taken shots at cops. Just recently sat for God bless America. Just sings in Spanish. You know, he's big with the Spanish-speaking Latin pop music set. He's a Super Bowl halftime act. And it'd be one thing if it was just some guy, none of us over the age of, you know, 35 have ever heard of because that happens. But it's that they picked this guy at a time when Latin kings are putting bounties on ice agents' heads. When people are trying to murder ICE agents in the form of sniper fire, cars, random gun fire, yeah. So this was the NFL's decision, smart choice, right? This is absolutely unqualified good news. No, the NFL is not going to pull this guy. Turning point. Charlie Kirk's organization, and this is the first time I can think of this ever happening, is hosting an alternative Super Bowl halftime show, fully produced halftime show with musical acts. They have not named the musical acts so that all you have to do if I cannot convince you to boycott the NFL, I did, by the way, years ago after Colin Kaepernick. Don't watch the NFL. Just don't care. Got my Sundays back. Sundays are for God anyway. So I just don't. bother myself with that. But if I can't convince you to do that, maybe I can convince you to switch over from the halftime show to the live stream of the turning point halftime show. As we get closer to the day to the game, there will be more details on this. You'll have a direct live stream link. But good for them. They're going all in on this from what this. And I'm looking at the Fox News article from what the Fox News article is describing. They're not chinsing out. They're not, you know, it's not going to be Lee Greenwood singing his most famous song 10 times in a row, although I bet he shows up. I hope he does. So stay tuned for details on that. Good for them for responding to the gigantic middle finger that the NFL just flipped to American football fans again. with this. All right, we're going to take a break. I want to come back and talk about a school that ordinarily wouldn't even hit the radar, University of Wisconsin-Ashkosh, queering the academy. How important is queering the academy? Very important. And we will talk about that next. All right, while we're trying to connect with Duke, let me begin.

by describing a couple of things going on at a university that ordinarily doesn't make the radar. That is University of Wisconsin-Oshkosh. And how did I find out about this, libs of TikTok? It actually hit the radar screen of libs of TikTok. One is a professor at UW Ashkosh who is providing education on, quote, keeping the academy queer. in women and gender studies. So this is a discipline, women and gender studies. I don't know how it ever, really, it's not a discipline, but that's what they call it. It's an academic discipline. So the associate professor of public administration, interim director of the Whitburn Center for Governance and Policy Research, is teaching in the women's and gender studies discipline. Keeping the Academy Queer Lessons from Queer Community for the Future of Public Affairs Education. Join us for Dr. Sam. Sam is a woman. Sam, well, I think. Sam Larson share her insights from her co-authored article in how universities can better support LGBTQIA plus communities in today's cultural and political climate. We'll also have an open conversation about practical steps we can take together to create more welcoming and inclusive spaces for queer faculty students and their families. We look forward to this wonderful conversation. So what isn't welcoming about the university to queerness? Anything? Not welcoming at the university to queerness. First off, there's a women and gender study, a department. Women and gender study, get rid of women because all it is is gender studies. It's all queer. The whole point of it is queer, queer, queer. That's it. It's not even the L and the G and the B. That's gone. By the way, doesn't the B telegraph that gender is binary? Just asking for a friend. So the L, the G and the B, they're gone. It's the T. QIA plus, whatever the heck that means. It's the queer. What isn't welcoming on campuses? You have got campuses that host sex toy parties. They've all had sex out loud as a group. That's called Sex Out Loud is the name of a campus group. Every campus has one. They promote pornography. They promote kink. They promote BDSM. What isn't welcoming about being the... TQIA plus. Are you flipping kidding me? So that's Ashkosh needs to keep the academy queer. At least say we're honest about that. The academy's queer. How do we keep the academy queer? What are they worried about? I have no idea because right now you can be as queer as you want to be on campus. Second story from University of Wisconsin-Oshkosh. Introduction to cultural geography. What does this one fall under? Well, this would be sociology. And what are we learning in the introduction to cultural geology at University of Wisconsin-Oshkosh? Well, we're learning how horrible ICE is. How ICE is making poor illegal immigrants live in uncertainty and fear.

How ICE is unfairly burdening poor illegal immigrants with legal responsibilities. How ICE is disrupting the home life of poor illegal immigrants. This is University of Wisconsin-Oshkosh in the introduction to cultural geography. It's Ashkosh, not Madison. To school, you go to, maybe you can't get into Whitewater, Platteville or UW. You don't go. Otherwise, right? You go to community college, maybe. It's not considered one of the best schools, just not. So even at this level of college, you think, well, my kid's not going to Madison. My kid's going to be okay. No. What's the chief complaint coming out of college right now from the students? Can't pay my loans. What's the answer from government to students can't pay my loans? Well, if you're Joe Biden, you just simply forgive loans, right? But they're taking out loans for this kind of stuff. Let's get to the Harvard audio. It's not Harvard. I'm sorry. I know I can't remember. I think this is Yale audio. Let's get to the audio of recent graduates from an Kay Ivey League University. Do you have that ready to go, Brandon? Okay. You got to pay your loans back for this, right? If you're Joe Biden or if you're the Democrats, you say, no, you don't. You shouldn't have to pay your loans. I don't think you should ever take out a loan for something like this. But if this is Ashkosh, right? It's better. It's better. at the higher end universities. Let's play the audio of recent graduates. And I think this is from Yale. Play it, please. Hi, and it's Kayla. I graduated from my U.S. and my concentration is economic inequality in the U.S. and Caribbean. Period. Today, my name is L.E.E. I'm L.A. L.A. And my concentration is spiritually. Hi. My name is L.L. and I concentrated in back story telling. Hey, my name is Gabby. My concentration is called exploring colonialism and sustainable economic development. Period. I'm Alexia, and my concentration is creativity as communication, how the arts act as a language outside of verbal communication. Period. Period. All right, I don't know how easy that was to hear. The first girl said that she was majoring in economic inequality in the Caribbean. The second girl said that she was majoring in spiritual healing. The third girl said that she was majoring in black storytelling. The fourth girl said that she was majoring in something about colonizing something or other. And then the last girl said that she was majoring in, now I completely forgot, right? Student loans for black storytelling. Student loans for economic inequality in the Caribbean. This is what we are paying for when we underwrite student lending. Forget about the student loan forgiveness for a second. We pay for this when we underwrite the lending. Now, where do you go if you are from the University of Wisconsin-Oshkosh, you got your degree from women and gender studies, and your concentration is keeping the academy queer? And where do you go if you're a sociology major?

And you decided to have your concentration in cultural geography where you're going to talk about how horrible everything is for poor illegal migrants. Where do you go with that? There's two places to go. There's place number one, which is a corporate HR department where you just harass people. But you know what? Corporate HR departments are getting tired of that. And the second one is, would you like whipped cream on your coffee? Would you like fries with that? And we're the ones underwriting this. Why? Now, I do want to do a Harvard story here real quickly because Harvard is sort of the cream of the cream, right? It's the creme de la creme. 61% of young people in Harvard, the best of the best, the ones who don't go to University of Wisconsin, Ashkosh, 61% of them haven't read a book cover to cover. They didn't read a book cover to cover going into school. They didn't read a book cover to cover coming out of school. Almost all students double schedule classes and don't bother to attend. They have done away with grading. You get pass, fail. This is Harvard. They've canceled tests because students are stressed. This is Harvard. This is the best. This is what our country relies on for its lawyers. It's policymakers. It's advisors. It's UN ambassadors. So you can't even just say, well, that's Oshkosh, or that's Harvard. It's everything. And nothing's changing. There's absolutely nothing that has changed. That's the most aggravating part of this. There has been no defunding. There has been no threats of withholding research dollars. There has been no threats of withholding student lending. Nothing. There has been no move by Congress to stop underwriting student lending. It was under the Obama administration that private lenders got out of student lending and government became the student lender. And it was after that happened that things like majoring in black storytelling became a thing. And majoring in queering the academy or women and gender studies became a thing. Spiritual healing. Studying economic inequality in the Caribbean. By the way, no one cares. No one cares. You can do that with a library card. If you are black and you want to tell stories, you can do that for free. If you are black and you want to read stories, you can do that with a library card or an Amazon Prime membership. So this is, if you don't address high education, all of this work that everyone's doing is going to be for nothing.

It's not like someday we're going to wake up or we're going to see a president and say, you know what I want. I want a really tough roll up your sleeves high school grad. Especially because you couldn't even ask for that now because across America, the average proficiency for reading in math is about 40%. So you couldn't even do that. That won't happen. And nothing has changed. I don't know what Linda McMahon is doing. She rattled her saber at Harvard about anti-Semitism. That was all she did. There has been no investigation. There has been no threats of defunding. There have been audits on some campuses. They're looking at UW Madison on DEI. They haven't opened an investigation though. There is no threat of withholding research dollars. There's no risk. to university whatsoever. None. Congress is not moving to rein in student lending. No one's wanting to turn it back over to the private sector. And if it went back to the private sector, by the way, you would not get someone to give you money at any amount of interest if you declare that your major was going to be studying economic inequality in the Caribbean, spiritual healing, black storytelling, queering the academy or cultural geography. Because a private lender would say you'll never pay that back on your barista salary. Anyway, we're going to take a break on the Vicki McKenna's show. Jennifer Pivarczak is going to be with me in just a moment.

Welcome back to the program. It's the Vicki McKenna Show. And I have Jenna Pivavarcheck standing by who has got a column, an essay at WisconsinWriteNow.com. People, you should all go read this and share it. It has been shared widely. It's kind of gone viral about Gen Z and what happened to Gen Z when Charlie Kirk was assassinated. And Jenna, it's great to have you back. I love it when you can come on and I can pick your Gen Z brain. But let me just kind of set the stage here. You know, in my generation, Charlie Kirk, to us, was an incredibly talented, you know, decent man, but an incredibly talented political organizer. And we were grateful for what he did. And we were enthusiastic about what he did because he turned the light switch on for the younger generations. And then that's it, pretty much, for Gen X and the old conservative boomers, right? We were like, yay, he's organizing campus. He meant so much more to your generation than I'm only starting to understand now that he was assassinated. And I'm sorry to say that, but you do a good job of trying to lay that out. So welcome. Yeah. Thank you very much for having me. I kind of lay out in my article that... For so many young conservatives, we really grew up on Charlie Kirk. And one thing that I've kind of tried to compare him to a little bit is Rush Limbaugh for the older generations. I remember sitting in my room, being locked in my room over the pandemic when I was like 14, 15 years old, and watching his videos and watching Ben Shapiro videos, Charlie Kirk videos. And while I knew the rest of my generation was watching videos on transgenderism and crazy woke stuff, I was actually learning about conservatism, American history, and honestly, most importantly, truth and how to address truth in a civilized manner while treating, you know, your possibly aggressors or disagreeers like a human being. And so my generation learned a lot from Charlie, not only talking points and statistics, but also he really was a North Star kind of guiding light for truth for our generation. And so that loss... has not only created this gaping hole in our souls, but also... In, you know, the whole entire conservative movement for my generation, we don't really know where to look. We don't really know who's going to fill his spot. No one ever will be able to. But it's kind of up in the air right now where things go for us. Yeah. He was unique. And I'm learning that. And, you know, just in the in the week since he was killed, very, very unique because he was more, he was a Pied Piper. He was an evangelist for freedom. for what but also for god right but he was an evangelist for truth and freedom and that is something i i yes you're right about rush but that's not i that's not an abundance okay that isn't an abundance tell me about your generation though you're you're you're you're 14 years old you're locked down during covid they're trying to tell you you're a potential plague

They've already, you know, berated you for having wrong thing in school. You're already living in this sort of eggshell culture of Gen Z where if you say the wrong thing, you could get accused of any number of things, not the least of which would be being a Nazi, right? You're in a safety culture where everything's got to be about safety, safety, emotional safety, you know, physical safety, safety, safety, safety. And along comes Charlie Kirk. I mean, how much of a bomb did that set off in your generation? Right. My favorite thing that you just said is the emotional safety. We're taught that if you might offend someone, if someone might give you a side eye or kind of stick their nose up or possibly be offended at what you say, that is literally the worst thing that could happen to you. You're canceled, right? But Charlie. prove to us that people can actually be offended and they're still okay. You know, you can say something that offends someone and they're going to get up and walk away and be okay. And that was really an eye-opener for me. It's like, actually, it's okay if I'm offended. It's okay if someone says something I disagree with just like it's okay that other people get offended. You know, no one, the liberals, especially my generation, have no problem offending conservative students or, you know, students, Christian students. anything of the like. They were dancing in the streets when Charlie was murdered and it was evil. And they didn't stop to think, oh, maybe we could be offending people who really liked him. And so my message isn't to go out and look to offend people, but don't be afraid to speak the truth at the cost that it might offend someone. That's what he did. That's it. He said it's okay to take risks. He said it's okay to be, it's okay to get hurt. It is okay to take risks. You're going to get hurt sometimes. Your generation, I'm not dumping on your generation. Your generation has been a generation that has been taught that risk is bad. All risk is bad. Anything that might upset you is bad. That's why your generation, instead of saying, I think that, always says I feel that. That's deliberate. That's on purpose. They did that to you to make you be afraid of taking a risk of offending someone, of being offended, of having to have your beliefs challenged. In watching Charlie's videos, and he did it so gently with students, with people your age, is he. He taught them that without being overt, right, without saying, you got to take a risk, son. And I think it translated because the people who left after answering the, asking the questions, even if he got the best of them, I don't think they felt horrible. Right. One of my favorite things that Charlie would always do is he would pray for and with students that were clearly perhaps deranged or had some, you know, TDS, Trump derangement syndrome. He would pray for them. He would treat them like a person. And he would always find something they could agree on to begin to humanize the situation and to humanize them for him and him for them.

And I think that's something I'm trying to incorporate in my life, and all I'm going conservative should try to incorporate is treating each other like people, because it's so easy, like we've talked about this before, my generation grew up on social media behind a screen where people don't really exist unless they're looking at you right in the eyes. To reach a new level of humanity and treat each other like what we are is all children of God, whether or not a student believes that or not, is really something that we should all aspire for and learn from Charlie Kirk. Yeah, instead of, you know, the sick burn, right? That's not what you're going for. Not going for the sick burn. You're going for conversion, right? That's what I mean. Right. He's an evangelist. He was an evangelist for truth and an evangelist for freedom and an evangelist for God. And that is about convincing someone. To join, to join, you know, to think differently, to choose for themselves rather than wait around for some algorithm to choose something for you. Humanize, though. The dehumanization, I'm wondering how complete it is in Gen Z with the digital world. Because Gen Z is the first digital generation. And you're right. And you can see this on all social media. People pound out the cruelest things. You know, you're feeling terrible, but somebody decided that you were a bad person because of X, Y, or Z. People in social media say, kill yourself. The dehumanization is so overwhelming among the younger generation that it scares me. And I'm wondering if there is a way for you to shake that off, even without someone like Charlie Kirk. helping you do that. So I think that I completely agree with you. People have gone way too far. And honestly, even people that I would agree with on social media on 90% of things, they find one disagreeing point. And suddenly I'm Satan reincarnated. You know what I mean? I'm no longer the 20-year-old college student. I'm no longer Jenna. I'm evil. But that's besides the point. But. I think that what you're going to see, you're seeing a pendulum shift, right? In my generation, we're actually headed towards conservatism. I'm talking about that in my YAF chapter meeting tonight on campus is there's this huge culture shift to the right. And I think as soon as Generation Z starts having children, we're not going to do the social media thing. We're not going to allow kids to have phones before they can do math problems. We're not going to allow kids to have phones in middle school. We're going to keep them off of social media because on a personal level, I know how it damages me as a person and also how it damaged me as a young girl. going on social media and seeing all these things that kids should not be seeing. But that was just the generation. We grew up with the internet. We grew up with social media. But now as I think that my generation grows up, we're really going to take a hard turn to the right and not allow that for our kids. You think so. I hope you're right about that. I really do. At Lisa Genzi, who choose children, a scary number of Genzi women.

do not want to choose children. So that there's going to, it will have to be besides, it will have to be, something else will have to take place as well. But it's the rehumanizing of people you disagree with that, I think, is maybe because of Charlie Kirk and because of the shock. the shock wave that is continuing to ripple through your generation, maybe that is something that's possible. Because the cheering, the jeering, the dancing on graves, it's so... unbelievably vulgar and off-putting and despicable and people are now starting to pay some consequences for that that sort of that that that societal correction that is taking place maybe not as fast or as aggressively as I would like I think that helps I do you know you should not be cheering people's death it's disgusting and and I think that sense of internalized shame is possible now maybe for the first time in 10 years Right. And here's what I'll say. I did see something on Twitter that said, we need to, I think Matt Walsh said it, we need to reinstate societal standards. People need to know how to behave in society. And I understand that there is this huge controversial reaction to the push of maybe companies should be allowed to fire someone that, you know, they, it was revealed that they were cheering on the death of Charlie Kirk. People have free speech. People have free will. You're not free of consequence. Okay. And conservatives for salt, well, not conservatives, people on the right for so long got just obliterated for speaking their mind, fired over vaccinations, fired over free speech, fired over political speech. And now suddenly you're seeing it kind of being pushed back on the left a little bit and they're not happy about it. But maybe we do need to reinstate some societal standards. Well, I think the companies, first off, they do have a right to do that. They absolutely have a right to do that because they're companies. They're not government entities. They are companies. So, yeah, I think it sucks, doesn't it? I mean, that's what you should say. Yeah, this is not fun. But then again, you probably shouldn't have been cheering on the death of someone. You know, I feel bad for you that you're unemployed now. But, geez, you might want to rethink. Saying that, your company isn't going to be punished for doing that to you. It's not a government entity, so yeah, it sucks, but there isn't free speech at your company. Maybe we should get a culture where there's free speech everywhere so that things like this don't happen in the future. Maybe it's a conversation starter. I don't know. It's an opportunity. All of this is an opportunity. I don't know. Let other people figure out the best way to deal with some of these crises. And I certainly don't think I'm going to impose my will on you and it's going to work. So it's going to have to come from your generation, Jenna.

Right. And I think that we are imposing that. I talked about in my article a little bit how some students feel like they have this new fire in their belly. And there's so many, my personal friends who are apolitical, not interested in politics, they were texting me that day and the following days saying, there's no way this is real. How do I get involved? How do I speak up? Help me figure out what to post. Help me figure out how to, you know. managed possibly getting fired for my job for being outed as a conservative. And it was, it brought tears to my eyes because these are people that never would have typically cared, but they were so appalled by what was happening and the societal reaction, the glee that people were displaying, that they decided to stick up for it or stand up for it. Good. And that's courage. That was shocking to me, but it was so, so relieving. And freeing the seat. And I think Charlie, I know he's watching and I know he saw that. And I know he's proud. Courage, courage is also something he inspired. Courage is a virtue. Jenna, Pivarcheck, it's a terrific article. I hope people read it, Wisconsin right now.com. You already should be signing up for the emails from Wisconsin right now. But Jenna, thank you very, very much. Thanks, Vicki. And we are going to take a break on the Vicki McKenna Show. We'll be right back.

That's going to do it for me on the program, the Vicki McKenna show. On tomorrow's program, we'll talk about an analysis that shows that agencies in Wisconsin, so the DNR, Department of Revenue, Wisconsin Elections Commission are taking their marching orders, not from even the governor, but from left-wing interest groups. Yeah. Institute for Reforming Government is on this. We are going to talk about this on the program, talk about that report. And has AI jumped the shark? You know that reference, right? That's the Happy Days reference when Fonzie tried to jump the shark. Has AI jumped a shark, particularly with its demands for excess power access? We'll get into that as well on tomorrow's program. Everybody have a great night. Hey everybody, Lady Luck here, and we're celebrating America's 250th birthday. Now, all summer long, I'm going to be celebrating by playing on SpinQuest.com, which is an American-owned social casino. It obviously features over a thousand slot games and live blackjack, live craps, live bubble craps. Head on over to SpinQuest.com. Get yourself a $30 coin pack for just 10 bucks. SpenQuest is a free-to-play social casino. Avoid where prohibited. Visit SpenQuest.com for more details. This is the race fans wait for all year. EMSA returns to Virginia International Raceway, August 21 through 23rd, as the world's top GT teams and drivers battle for championship points on VIR's iconic road course. See Porsche, BMW, Corvette, Mercedes-AmG, Ford, and more competing wheel-to-wheel. Three days of racing, paddock access, and nonstop action. Secure your tickets now at racebIR.com. That's r-A-C-E-V-I-R.com. Tyler Reddick here from 2311 racing. Game nights fun until someone spends five minutes lining up one shot. Chalk, breathe, rechalk, still aiming. While they figure it out, I fire up Chumpa Casino. I can spin anywhere, anytime, and there's always a new social casino game every week. Spins happen way faster than that shot. Play now at Chumbacino.com. Let's Chumba. Sponsored by Chumba Casino. No purchase necessary. VGW Group, voidware prohibited by law, 21 plus, terms and conditions apply. Saturday, July 25th. I know I will be the best wealth away in the world. An undefeated phenom. Bad man is a rising star. And a frightening force. What a win for Shabil Messiah! Ascend on the nation's capital to fight for gold. Fad, the Silverback Gene. Silverback Nation, makes some noise. Versus Shameel Musayev. All it's over! For the PFL welterweight world title. On Real. Saturday, July 25th and 10 p.m. Eastern on ESPN.