The Joyce Kaufman Show 3/20/26 -Foreign communities in the US, debate over the Save America Act, the role of Gulf states in the Middle East during the war with Iran

You're listening to this podcast, so I know you've got a curious mind. Here's a helpful fact you might not know yet. Drivers who switch and save with Progressive save over $900 on average. Pop over to Progressive.com, answer some questions, and you'll get a quick quote with discounts that are easy to come by. In fact, 99% of their auto customers earn at least one discount. Visit Progressive.com and see if you can enjoy a little cash back. Progressive Casualty Insurance Company and Affiliates. National average 12-month savings of $946 by new customers surveyed who saved with Progressive between June 2024 and May 2025. Potential savings will vary. This is the Joyce Kaufman podcast, honest, straight, and unapologelic, with your host, Joyce Kaufman. Yes, and of course, as I have said in the last couple of weeks, unfortunately, names are being added. for the service members who have died. We had the six U.S. service members killed in the crash of a refueling aircraft that were returned to their families on Wednesday, day before yesterday. Well, the president was there at the dignified transfer, which is what he has once described as the toughest thing. that he has to do as Commander-in-Chief, accompanying him were Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, House Speaker Mike Johnson, General Dan Kane, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and the lawmakers from Alabama. Senators Tommy Tuberville and Katie Britt, both of them Alabama Republicans. All six crew members of the KC-135 Air Force refueling aircraft were killed last week in a plane crash over friendly territory in Western Iraq while supporting operations against Iran. They were all from... one base, but they were from Alabama, Indiana, Kentucky, Ohio, and Washington State. Every person on that aircraft carried a weight most Americans will never see, and they carried it with professionalism, with courage, and just a level of quiet excellence that deserves to be recognized. You know, the Pentagon did identify the six Air Force airmen killed. They are Major John A. Kinner. Let's see if I have all these names. in front of me. Yes, I do. Sergeant Tyler Simmons, Tech Sergeant Ashley Pruitt, Captain Seth Caval, Captain Curtis Aungst, and Captain Arianna Savino.

all serving out of the MacDill Air Force Base in the Ohio National Guard. And this crash brought the U.S. death toll in Operation Epic Fury to 13 service members, with another 200 U.S. service members have been injured, including 10 severely, according to the Pentagon. Wednesday's dignified transfer was closed to news media coverage at the request of the families in accordance with military policy. President Trump spent two hours on the ground and did not speak to reporters when he was leaving Air Force One or when he returned to it. He was there at Dover Air Force Base on March 7th for the dignified transfer of six U.S. service members who were killed by a drone strike at a command center in Kuwait. He saluted as flag-draped transfer cases containing the remains of the fallen service members were carried from military aircraft to vehicles waiting to take them to the base's mortuary facility to prepare them for their final resting place. It's the bad part of war, he said to the reporters afterwards, asked then if he was worried about having to make multiple trips to the base for additional dignified transfers. As the war continued, he said, I hate to do this, but it's part of war, isn't it? U.S. Central Command, which oversees military operations in the Middle East, said that the crash followed an unspecified. Incident involving two aircraft in friendly airspace over Iraq, but that the loss of the aircraft during a combat mission was not due to hostile or friendly fire. The circumstances are now under investigation. The other plane landed safely. And so you had three people who were assigned to the sixth air refueling wing at McDill Air Force Base in Florida. Those were Major John A. Alex Kilner, age 33, who served in Birmingham, Alabama, Captain Ariana Lynch Savino, age 31 of Covington, Washington, and Tech Sergeant Ashley Pruitt, age 34, of Bardstown, Kentucky. Clinner, who left behind a wife, a two-year-old son, and seven-month-old twins, was known for his steady command and goofy nature as well as a willingness to help others. Pruitt's husband described her as a radiant woman who lit up the room. Savino was a friend, mentee, and source of positive energy who was proud of her Puerto Rican heritage and inspired young Latinas. She had... a tremendous personality. You know, we we pay tribute to these men and women on this sad occasion, but we don't do it in, what's the right word? It's not because we think that they're not going to be given.

the dignity they deserve, we're quite certain they will be. But we do it because I don't want my listeners to forget the cost. There's human cost that is far greater than the financial cost. I get really tired of listening to people saying, whoa, it costs hundreds of billions of dollars to have. this kind of military operation going on. Why are we doing it? You know, whose idea is this? I'm not here to deal with any of that. I'm here because we owe it to these men and women and their families to make sure that you understand that this is not a faceless sacrifice. These are people who had families, just like you and I have families, and who gave the ultimate, the utmost, in defense of this nation. And if it's the only thing that I'm able to do is to say their names out loud on Fridays when the occasion presents itself, well, then I'm going to do that. because it's the least, the very least, that we can do. You know, one thing I understand is that of all the administrations that I've been on the air for multiple administrations, and they all are very serious about this transfer, these dignified transfers when they take place, but some of them, I don't believe, were as... Well, I don't think they were as involved with the families, both during the transfer and after the transfer, as President Trump is. And I also remember that George Bush, George W. Bush, he was very involved, and he literally wore this. with a tremendous amount of pain and yet dignity. And for that, you know, I'm graceful. I know that there have been presidents who really don't care that much about the military, don't really relate to the military. Certainly Bill Clinton comes to mind, a man who thought that, you know, the military were the least of our population. and hated, really hated the military. I don't think Obama was that bad, but I don't think he had any great love for it either. And so, you know, I'm just grateful if you're going to send men and women. into battlefields and they could end up losing their lives, their families end up losing mothers and sisters and brothers and fathers and just, you know, children, then the least that we can do as Americans is give them some honor, pay them some honor and respect. So that is my pledge. I will do that as long as I have a radio program on which I can do it.

And it's been a lot of years. And I've been through Iraq. I've been through the Gulf War. And there have been times when it would take an entire half hour to go through the name. So I'm grateful that we're not there. But I will still spend some time each and every Friday reminding us the cost of war. The cost is great. It's a human tragedy. Don't forget to download that 850 WFTL app. That way you can get breaking news. You would have found out that Chuck Norris passed and talk about a person who really loved this country and made no bones about it. Chuck Norris was that kind of person, very conservative guy and, of course, mighty martial arts figure. But he has passed, and I thought I would get to talk to Derek about that today, but he wants me to tell you all to watch the last days. That's his podcast, and he will be doing an entire segment or entire show about Chuck Norris. All right. Let me take a quick break. You stay right where you are. I'll be right back. So much happening. So much to talk about and yet sometimes you just want to close your eyes and curl into a fetal position and try to, you know, enter the weekend early. That's how I'm feeling. We did see a news story not an hour ago. I saw a story that one of the U.S. stealth fighter jets was hit by Iranian fire as attacks on these energy fields are escalating. So, you know, I will try to bring you the news of that story as soon as it's up there and I can depend on it because I tell you, half of the things that I see flashing across my screen within an hour. You know, there's... There's a different take on the same story. Now, the Save America Act is a debate going on right now, and it's dragging on. It looks like the lawmakers are nowhere near a deal, which means there won't be funding for the Department of Homeland Security. And that means that if you have plans to travel on an airplane somewhere, In the next, well, certainly this weekend and perhaps all of next week, I would suggest you make some other arrangements because these guys don't seem any closer, which I find them, you know, just awful. They're paid to do this work and they can't get it done. We'd probably be okay to just scrap them all. I'm looking at photographs right now at George Bush Intercontinental Airport, which is in Houston, Texas. These people are, there's just hundreds of people crammed into the airport going nowhere. They can't get through TSA. The lines are hours, hours long.

And for some reason, the men and women sitting in Washington don't seem motivated to get this taken care of. I don't know about you, but I'm glad that I have no plans this upcoming week. My husband who was down out of town last week really just made it back in time. Because I would be very nervous if he was trying to get on an airplane and make it home right about now because I just don't get it. I really don't. What is going on, though, with, you know, the Gulf states, the Arab states in the Middle East? I think my friend Howard Galganov had written an article, which I read earlier. I'm going to try to remember it as best as I can in case I cannot find it. But, you know, these, you had... 5,000 Marines on their way to Iran. That's not a training exercise. Marines are not dispatched to be peacekeepers or to make idle threats. If the Marines are truly on the way, you can be certain they're not there for photo ops. Every military expert has been on multiple stations, whether it's CNN or MSN now or the Fox networks, saying that Iran will not fall without troops on the ground. As much as Israel and America are pounding them, the people of Iran, what are they supposed to do? They don't have weapons. They're not trained. to take on the military that the Ayatollahs had in place. If there's no regime change, then all the bombing and all the destruction that's being caused won't accomplish what we had hoped would be accomplished. If the regime is left standing, they don't care how long it takes to reconstitute themselves. They think in terms of thousands of years, not like we do in terms of a year. And they'll be right back at it. And they'll have the help of the Chinese, of the Russians, the North Koreans, and the Islamists that are spread out across the Middle East and across the world in Europe, in America. Israel doesn't have the manpower. to maintain its own security against the Palestinians in Gaza, in Judea, in the West Bank, in Samaria, and then they're fighting Hezbollah and Lebanon, let alone the potential threats from these terror groups. You still have the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt, Jim Jordan, Syria. So who's going to be able to do this? I mean, America is the only powerful enough.

Thousands and thousands of travelers just trying to get through a TSA checkpoint. I mean, I saw some local television anchor at that Houston airport. Oh, no, it was at the Atlanta International Airport. And all he could say, this was a reporter. All he could say is the TSA line is wrapped like a snake through baggage claims. It's unbelievable. Thousands and thousands of travelers. just trying to get onto airplanes. You know, CNN said the hours-long TSA lines at Atlanta were linked to Senate Democrats. So now you got liberal news outlets blaming the Democrats. And travelers are just, they're tired. They're sick of this. They don't understand. Imagine if you didn't do your job for one week. We're not talking about one week. This is a month now. And that's why when Sean Duffy, the Transportation Secretary, says that what Americans are dealing with today is child's play compared to what's coming if they continue to play politics with their travel. You could have airports shut down. Certainly some of the smaller regional airports, they'll have to shut. Shut them down. People are going to be stuck in places during spring break, one of the big travel seasons. And stuck in places during spring break, one of the big travel seasons? And let me just ask you a question. Will the attempt by Democrats to cause all this strife, because it's economic, it's social, during the president's administration, because they hate Donald Trump so much, is this going to work in their favor? I don't know. I'm trying to figure this out. Because you can only gaslight the public so long. It's very hard to shift the blame for shutting down the TSA onto Republicans. I don't think it's going to work. So all these disruptions, I'm looking at now, Philadelphia International Airport, TSA checkpoints are temporarily closed due to staffing issues from this shutdown. Imagine. The Democrats are now holding Americans hostage for whatever they want to push down America's throats. If you didn't learn this in 2020 when the Democrats locked you down for COVID, remember when I used to get on the air every week and said, If they get away with this, if they're able to shut us down and keep us from going to work, keep us from going to church, keep us from, you know, sending our children to school, then they will stop at nothing. They'll shut down society and they'll do it again. And guess what? I was right. Because they are intentionally inflicting pain on us.

They are inflicting pain on Americans that need to use airports for travel so that they can bring Trump's 5% GDP down to 1% or throw us into a recession. This is a national emergency. They better pass the bill through reconciliation or end the filibuster. They have no choice. Republicans have no choice at this point. This is a great example of the Let Them Eat Cake moment for our Congress. They're using people as political pawns to play politics while they get paid, but no one else does. Every single American should be very angry at all of Congress who are getting paid while they're wreaking havoc for us. You know, Democrats will be Democrats. Three hours of security wait times at Houston's Bush Airport brought to you by Chuck Schumer and the Democrats. All right, let me take a quick break. Stay right where you are. This is a particularly nasty role of destruction you're seeing, and this is the week that Democrats have voted not. to deport illegals who harm animals, not to deport illegals who are caught committing fraud, and to continue to rail against the Voter Integrity Save America Act. Don't forget these things. In other words, they voted against Americans and even our pets every time. I'll be right back. You know, the other day I was watching one of these hearings. It was the Senate Committee on the Budget. And an old friend of mine who, for years, we would, well, actually two old friends of mine, Dr. Steve Camerada and Jessica Vaughn were testifying before the committee about the cost to the American people, the cost to you and me. for illegal immigrant families. And it was really strange for me to be watching this on television when 15 years ago I was sitting in Washington, D.C., with Jessica Vaughn and Stephen Camerata and Mark Corcorian and Art Arthur having the very same discussion that I was listening to the other day on Wednesday. There are 13 states and about 100 localities that have adopted sanctuary policies. That's more than half of the illegal immigrant population lives in sanctuary jurisdictions. And more than a fifth are in California. And these policies, they are a significant hindrance to immigration enforcement, and they're a real challenge to the supremacy clause of the Constitution. They bring a lot of costs to the community. We would have these discussions, and people would write articles about me, like in the New Times and in Fort Lauderdale newspapers about how I was trying to put a price tag on human beings.

Which is not what I was doing. It's not what Jessica Vaughn was doing at this committee hearing the other day. It was never with the Center for Immigration Studies or the Federation of American Immigration Reform. That's not what we were doing. We were just pointing out that the costs to the community. and the needless human cost of new victimizations at the hands of criminal aliens who are released instead of being turned over to immigration and customs enforcement for removal and the considerable monetary, a fiscal cost that's associated with providing services to illegal migrants who are actually attracted to these sanctuary cities by these policies. Congress really should have acted back then and certainly should be looking at it now to preserve the prerogative of law enforcement agencies to cooperate with immigration enforcement. And they should punish. They should have liability for jurisdictions that call themselves sanctuaries, that actually enact laws or practices that obstruct enforcement. of immigration law. Immigration law is a federal matter. So when you start looking at the cost, it's not because you put a price on human beings. It's because this has to be factored in. You know, what is a sanctuary policy? It doesn't even appear in immigration law. But it's generally understood to mean that a state or a local policy shields illegal immigrants from the reach of what apparently they want you to believe are unfair or overzealous immigration enforcement. The first sanctuary policies started back in the 1980s when these humanitarian groups in the southwest were trying to protect Central Americans who had come into the United States. fleeing conflict in their countries. And over time, you had a few cities like San Francisco, Berkeley, Santa Fe, led by politicians who opposed any kind of immigration enforcement and were advocating for amnesty for illegal immigrants. They said, you know what, we're going to create sanctuaries. Don't ask, don't tell. They had ordinances, really, that forbid local officials from even denying public benefits and services to illegal aliens. And it prohibited officials, including the police, from contacting immigration authorities if they had an encounter with an illegal alien. And it was a criminal act that they were interacting over. And in response in 1996, Congress amended the Immigration and Nationality Act to prohibit state and local governments from in any way restricting the ability of officials to communicate or share information with federal immigration authorities regarding the citizenship or the immigration status. And that would seem to...

Should have been an end to this nonsense, right? No. Not even close. People have argued, and I have been one of the people arguing, that those provisions are unconstitutional. They violate the 10th Amendment protections against the commandeering of state resources by the federal government. But that's just not true. I can make a great argument to the contrary. You know, you... Federal mandates, particularly when it comes to immigration, which is a federal issue, should never be pro-sanguary. In 2008, the federal government began this fingerprint sharing program known as secure communities, which actually allowed ICE to match the biometrics of anybody who was arrested by local police with an immigration database. And if they got a match, They could follow up with detainers or at least requests, hold the alien for ICE, and we'll take custody for removal. The program helped criminal deportations under the first two years of the Obama administration. Because ICE was no longer dependent on local police to identify and refer criminal aliens. And most local authorities were very happy to help ICE remove some of the lawbreakers that were causing all these problems in the community. And then anti-enforcement groups soon started moving in. They wanted to make sure there was no collaboration. And they convinced hundreds of state and local governments to adopt these sanctuary policies, which prohibited local law enforcement agencies from even honoring an ICE detainer. even notifying ICE of a pending release of a criminal alien or taking any action to aid immigration enforcement, even against criminal aliens. And so when I saw Jessica Vaughn on Wednesday in front of this committee talking about the human cost of sanctuary policies, I said, we've been talking about this for two decades. Why is this news? You know, how is this news? You know, the sanctuary policies that block state and local law enforcement agencies from cooperating with ICE. You know, according to the, you know, ICE records, which, of course, Center for Immigration Studies, fair, they all have access to this through FOIAs. And you cannot, 26,000 criminal aliens. have been, I don't know, should I say, saved by sanctuary policies? Because we're not safe because of them. More than half were released in California. California is no longer a safe place for families to live.

You have people there who are pending charges for assault on a police officer, rape of minors, sexual assaults galore, 46 of them with convictions right now in Virginia, and an inability for ICE to come in and detain them or deport them. How is that in the best interest of the American people? Of course it's not. Besides the public safety problems, sanctuary policies bring a lot of costs to taxpayers. Because guess what? And they showed me these figures 15, almost 20 years ago, okay, the Center for Immigration Studies. Illegal immigrants, illegal migrants, whatever you want to call them, they go to communities that put out the welcome mat. So you have emergency health care. You have schools that are just overwhelmed with children who come from households where English is not a first language and maybe English is not a language at all. They have to have access to all these other public benefits. Medicaid, health insurance, all that subsidized health insurance, food assistance, shelters. Remember, we were putting illegal immigrants up in New York City hotels. We can't put our veterans, our homeless veterans up in hotels, but we were putting illegal immigrants in hotels. A number of states give Medicaid to illegal alien adults and children. A number of states give them SNAP benefits. There is a higher use rate of illegal aliens who also commit fraud. The highest rates of welfare fraud are directly within the illegal immigrant population. Look at what's going on in Minnesota. Look at how children who have been diagnosed with autism, and by the way, apparently in Minnesota, the only thing you needed to get that diagnosis was to walk into one of these virtually non-existent clinics and say, I think my child is autistic, and then they slapped a piece of paper in your hand, and off you went to collect benefits.

fraud. I don't care how else you, you know, I love when I'm watching now families that actually do have children who could use these benefits, can't get any benefits because now they've shut everything down. It is, there, first and foremost, we know that you're generally going to have lower education levels and lower incomes in the illegal immigrant population than in native-born citizens. In addition, You've got U.S. born children who are eligible for all those welfare programs the minute they're born. This isn't new. And so when I watched her testimony, Jessica Vaughn's testimony on Wednesday, all I kept thinking was I brought this to you, my audience, 15, 17, even 20 years ago. The very same things that she was testifying about, I was telling you 20 years ago. How could we have let it go this far? This is obscene. And now they're up there and they won't even fund the Department of Homeland Security? We have all these dangerous people that came across the border, many of them from terrorist nations. And we have a heightened threat, according to Tulsi Gabbard and all of the people, CIA Director John Ratcliffe and FBI Director Kash Patel. I had to sit and watch them talk about the heightened threat, but the DHS isn't being funded. TSA agents are walking out because they can't afford to work without a paycheck. And so who knows what's getting through in airline traffic right now? This is... This is as bad as it's ever been right now. And it's certainly not because this administration set this in motion. Prior administrations set this in motion. And now, in an attempt to clean it up, we've got a political party that will do anything to preserve their power, including risk your life and mine. Don't forget, coming up after me is Guy Benson, followed by Will Kane, and it'll be Joe Pags and Lars Larson, and then we will officially begin the weekend. Of course, on Monday, we'll all be back. Jennifer Ross and Stephen Deiner will be back Monday morning at 6 a.m. And then Brian Kilmeade at 9, Eric Erickson at noon, and I'll get to come back at 3 o'clock. I still have a segment left today. And I'm really upset. So you want to keep that. And Derek's not joining me because he has to do a special podcast about Chuck Norris. So you stay right where you are. I'm not done yet. So listen, I wish that I hadn't been right. I really do. When I was predicting some of the disasters that I see now unfolding in our schools, in our hospitals, I wish that I had been wrong and that all of those pro-sanctuary policy people had been right. But that's not what happened. What happened was we have sacrificed America's children, America's families, for some quasi-humane effort.

to allow people into the country, some of whom have absolutely no desire to become like us. You know, when I look at these communities that get built up, like the Somali community in Minnesota, the Palestinian community in Dearborn, Michigan, you know, people who don't even really want to integrate. into this but would rather carve out pockets of this country where they can maintain the very lifestyle it's not even lifestyle the very principles that they were living in places that they had to run from flee from okay you know and this is what we've been asked to embrace you know when I look at this examination now of they're looking at The Somali-born Congresswoman, Ilhan Omar, who has been, I think she's in her third term in Congress, third or fourth term in Congress, how did she become a multimillionaire? Somebody helped me out here. Because I've been in the private sector for my entire working career, decades of working. And I have never, you know, I've never had to work for minimum wage. I've always had what I would consider well-paid jobs, profession. You know, I've been a professional, my adult life. I could not have turned into a multimillionaire in a period of two, three, four years. No way. No how. Meanwhile, I've been paying taxes all this time. And yet, I'm watching other people benefit from the largesse of the American public. And God forbid, I say, well, could we actually look and see why these people have become millionaires? Why is Nancy Pelosi and Paul Nancy Pelosi multi, multi, multi millionaires, billionaire really now? having worked in public service all these years. That's not the guarantee. As a matter of fact, civil service is supposed to be an avocation, not a pathway to becoming rich. But okay, if I ask those questions, it immediately becomes political or it immediately becomes racial. And that's where we are. And it's a very sad state of affairs. And all I can say is if you had plans to go somewhere, I've got some close friends who are out of the country right now. Two of them are on a cruise. I have another person who is out there on the European continent. And I'm wondering if they're going to be able to get home. I would say they got a 50-50 chance of not making it back home easily.

I live in this beautiful rich nation and we cannot fund a TSA agent who makes $35,000 a year, but Elon Musk Omar is worth $5 million. You got to have to do better than tell me to be quiet, that, you know, that I don't have the right to ask any questions. I certainly do. You know, then I got Jeff Bezos out there now, raising money to replace blue collar workers with robots. Not machine operators, blue collar workers with robots. Tell you, this is... This is not a good time. We better get our acts together and apply pressure. I called Jared Moskowitz's office three times today. Start funding DHS. The Coast Guard must be funded. TSA must be funded. Secret Service must be funded. This is no joking matter. I thank you for your time this time until next time. My plan is to be back here Monday at 3 p.m. If it be his will and he delays his coming. What lies behind us and what lies ahead of us are are, are tiny matters compared to what lies within us. So wherever you are, just be yourself. Everybody else is taken. Then God bless you. God bless Israel. God bless our mighty military, and God bless the USA. See you Monday. This has been the Joyce Kaufman podcast. Available everywhere you get your podcasts.