The Jay Weber Podcast #0006 4-24-26 (EDIT)

The Jay Weber podcast is presented by creative planning, helping clients simplify their journey to financial wellness, one personalized plan at a time. The Jay Weber podcast is a production of iHeart Radio podcasts. Good day. Come on in, take a seat. Welcome to the Jay Weber podcast. We have a lot to talk about today, including for the first time in either term, President Trump deciding to attend the annual White House correspondence dinner this weekend. And I can only think of one reason why. that he'd be at all interested in doing this. Gregory John, my producer, is here. Greg, are you thinking this is going to be appointment television this weekend? Would you make it a point to tune in to watch any sort of fireworks that might occur? Well, you know, to be honest with you, Fox News is actually going to be doing like an Academy Awards kind of introduction to the correspondence today. They're going to have a red carpet and everything, and Jesse Waters is going to be the host. So I guess they're going to make it a must-see TV event for all of us. I guess so, but everyone's in D.C. and New York are wondering why Donald Trump would even just now choose to waste time with this. He is never going to get this group of people to like him or treat him fairly, these correspondents. So why go? Greg, give me a prediction on what path Trump will take in his speech. Is he going to poke fun at himself and try to win the crowd over by being self-deprecating? Or do you think it's just going to go full blast at him and show up just to call them all scumbags and liars? Now, the second one I would love. I would love to see that. Either way, it should be an interesting night. And I might tune in just to see if that room of so-called journalists sitting in front of him can manage to act like adults. In addition to Trump going into the lion's den, we'll talk about Sean Duffy doing the work when it comes to finally improving an air traffic control system that every administration since Reagan promised to fix. Trump and Duffy are getting it done. We'll talk about the various ways that Virginia's new congressional map is an insult to the Republic and how if the Virginia Supreme Court allows this to stand, it's going to be remarkable. And folks, finally holding three or four congressmen accountable for their criminal actions, it's a positive thing. But it's not a purge of a Congress that's full of rats and grifters. To call this a purge is interesting to me. All that and more coming up after I tell you about my superior sponsor, Creative Planning. They're one of the nation's largest independent wealth management firms offering fully integrated financial and retirement planning, investment management, estate planning, tax strategies, business services, and international wealth management, all in-house and coordinated through your wealth manager. Their fiduciary wealth managers are here to help you navigate every piece of your financial life. Visit Creative Planning. to schedule your introductory meeting. That's creative planning.com. Your team awaits. Paid for by Creative Planning, an SEC registered investment advisor. The speaker's statements are not an endorsement of the firm. So the White House correspondence dinner is this weekend, and for the first time as president, Donald Trump is attending. Oh boy, this should be a proper shiz show, shouldn't it? For the life of me, I don't know why Donald Trump's going. I could take a few guesses. One is that even after everything that has transpired over the last 10 years, Donald Trump, the man, I think, still wants to be adored and loved by this country's rich and famous and elite class. He's always been one of those people after all.

This is something that Donald Trump, the man, has always been into. Being adored in elite circles on both coasts has always been something that Donald Trump has craved and something that has motivated him. You know, the number of famous people from entertainment, from pro sports, etc., who filed through Trump Tower when Donald Trump was simply a billionaire businessman is legendary. Trump wanted to meet everyone famous and personally shake their hand and sit down and get to know more about them. He's inherently a people person. But it's why before he was politically controversial, you had everyone from, you know, Mike Tyson to Jay-Z and Beyonce to Magic Johnson to Justin Bieber, all saying, you know, Trump's a friend, Trump's cool. So my guess in terms of what motivates Donald Trump to even agree to go to this dinner tomorrow is that even after everything that's transpired and all the hatred that D.C. in New York and the L.A. crowds have tossed at him. He still wants to be seen as cool to them. Trump still wants to be... in that in crowd when it comes to U.S. and global elites. That's my guess. My guess is he certainly wants to rejoin those circles post-presidency, too. And so that's why he's making what's likely a terrible decision to go to this nerd prom banquet tomorrow night. The chance that Trump is going to be simply savaged and lectured to by a bunch of activist America haters who simply poses journalists is a high one. And any chance of Trump emerging from this more liked or more likable in this crowd is nearly zero. The president should continue to skip this and anyone still associated with the White House Press Corps should be pushing to end this annual dinner altogether because it has always been a biased, ridiculous affair. It has always been so-called journalists making themselves the story and injecting themselves into politics and the current events of the day when they're supposed to be impartial observers. They're not supposed to do that. But in this era, this dinner is really a joke, and it's simply a night for left-wing activists to get together and celebrate the power that they derive from routinely lying to the American people. And by the way, the average member of the D.C. or New York media elite really, really doesn't like to be challenged. This is a group of people that has genuinely convinced themselves. They are the truth seekers and the truth tellers. They are the social conscience of this nation. They're the intellectual elite of the nation. And so they hate nothing more. I mean, they react very negatively when someone challenges them or they're standing. And so this crowd in particular has a burning hatred for Donald Trump and for anyone who would dare to work for him. Just consider how many of Trump's appointees and cabinet secretaries are under constant fire from the mainstream news media simply because they dared to take the job. This is both in their personal lives and in their professional lives. Pam Bondi, Kash Patel, Sean Duffy, Janine Piro, Brett Kavanaugh, name a Trump appointee, and I'll show you someone who's under relentless assault from these so-called fair news outlets, whose members are trying to destroy both their personal and their professional lives because they dared to work for Trump. Knowing Trump, working for Trump, liking Trump, it's enough to sick these rabid D.C. in New York media dogs on you. And why would Trump himself even want to go to attend this dinner or in any way legitimize that? Why legitimize anything that these jackals do or say? I just don't understand it. Hopefully Trump can get off a few good zingers and get a bunch of press attention on Sunday and Monday of the sort that they think is working to trash Trump, but it's really the sort that backfires on the mainstream media and is boosting Trump with the average American.

Trump knows that the real effect of these waves of negative coverage is often a boost to him and his standing amongst the average American people and away from the coasts. So maybe that's what Trump is angling for here. Also, now that he no longer has worries about being reelected, I think there's a very good chance that Trump's speech is one in which he simply calls them all liars to their faces and just levels them. You've got to think that he's going to include at least some of that in any speech he gives. Then there's this wild card. I mean, we aren't sure how the members of the White House Press Association are actually going to react to this call for them to, quote, forcefully demonstrate opposition to President Trump during this event. This call came from a group of journalists. You might have seen this. A group of over 250 so-called journalists put out a public letter urging the attendees to trash and smear Trump in every way they can. Put up a public stink and a public opposition to Trump accepting the invite or something. Well, first of all, it would really reflect poorly on the so-called unbiased White House Press Association if they invited a guest to their party and then just trashed and belittled and embarrassed that person for two hours. That's not what the organizers of a reputable association would do to their guests, any sort of group or association, much less, quote, professional journalists. This is what you really have to consider. This is allegedly a news organization. They're allegedly journalists. You can't call yourself a journalist and then engage in this sort of angry activism. This letter in its suggestions should be absurd to anyone who actually consider themselves a journalist. The sad thing is, in this era and in this moment, virtually no one who shows up to this dinner is going to be a genuine journalist. After all, this is the crowd of people who on a daily basis are refusing, simply refusing, to report on any news or run any sort of story on the very real and consequential wins that Trump and his team are racking up for this country. I keep giving you new examples of these things because so many very positive developments are being ignored by the news media. These are all stories that news outlets would have routinely covered and reported on in any other era because they were simply good news. They were things that would bring readership, would inform the public. Not in this era. Just a couple of examples this week. Do you know that homicides are down 75 to 80% in Washington, D.C., since Trump cracked down on crime in that district? There are a couple of different measures of this, so that's why it's somewhere between 75 and 80%, if you believe, the stats. There have only been 20 murders total in Washington, D.C. since the first of the year. I'll say that again, because some of you realize how remarkable this is. There have only been 20 murders total in Washington, D.C. since the first of the year, when that city was a famous killing field until Trump took over, including during the Biden era. Washington, D.C. is on pace to have about 45 murders this year, and that would be down from 274 in 2024, the final year of the Biden era. Carjackings in D.C. are also down by nearly 50%. Folks, historians say this is the lowest murder rate in Washington, D.C. since 1900, since the turn of the last century. That's roughly when Jack the Ripper was terrorizing the streets of London, and street lamps were running on fossil fuels and whale oils. I think that might be newsworthy. Is Trump getting any credit for it? No. Did any of you know about this until I told you about it? No, probably not many. One pundit pointed out on social media that the Washington Post, this is the newspaper of record in Washington, D.C. hasn't written a single story about D.C.'s murder rate since February 1st. The liberal activists at the Post didn't want their Washington, D.C. readers to know that overall crime and murder is down significantly since Trump took action. Why?

I think you can answer that one for yourselves. Here's another great example of some positive changes being made by the Trump team that are quite significant and yet not being reported on because it might make Trump and Republicans look good. Most people don't realize that for probably three decades, we've been told by our FAA, our pilots, our air traffic controllers, et cetera, we desperately need to upgrade our air traffic control system. It's been at least 30 years now that the insiders in Washington, D.C. and the insiders of the Federal Aviation Administration have been calling this a dangerous situation. It went from dangerous situation in the 80s to crisis now. Something needs to be done. And every administration since Reagan has insisted they'll do something about it. Oh, yes, very important. We'll improve our ancient and embarrassing air traffic control equipment, et cetera. It's got to be done. It's got to be done. It's never been done. Why? Because it would take hard, thankless work. That's why. It would take a lot of taxpayer money and someone to actually do the hard work. At the same time, that hard work isn't going to bring any particular political glory or attention to the administration that does it. Leading today is way too intertwined with just political considerations and whether or not you get credit for it. And as we've seen over and over and over again, if something isn't politically popular or doesn't come with some big political payoff at the end these days, why do it? No one does it. This is perceived as having no upside to your average elected official or politician. It's simply true that it has been almost exclusively Republican presidents and governors who have done the hard work of actually making the tough calls in this country, improving infrastructures, tackling difficult tasks, etc. In this modern era, it's simply true that has mostly been to the Republicans to do because Democrats aren't serious people and largely want to play games. This has simply been the case for at least three or four decades. If it's not cheap and easy with a political payoff, the Democrats aren't going to do it. Dealing with that toxic train derailment sounded hard and fraught with political risks, so Joe Biden and Pete Buttigieg simply decided they weren't going to do anything. Dealing with the Gulf oil spill in the Obama era sounded hard and thankless. It was difficult. So Barack Obama in his White House simply didn't do anything about it. We'll just leave that up to the Republican governors and then take some credit after it's done. Today's Democrats simply refuse to do the hard work, the actual work of running and maintaining this country and its infrastructures. But they'll be sure that if Republicans decide to do it, there will be a bike lane or expensive public art somewhere in that project. It's just pathetic. And there's no better example of this than Pete Buttigieg's categorical malfeasance and disinterest in running the transportation department. You know, this little dipwad is out there again making speeches because it's clear he wants to run in 2028. He accepted a cabinet-level position from Joe Biden in order to drop out of that race and clear the way for Biden's nomination. And then he decided this was just going to be a four-year vacation.

Put a judge plotted another run for president in 2028 and didn't do anything between 2020 and 2024. This guy was as absent as Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez on acid when it came to doing anything related to that job. And it's one reason that Sean Duffy's tenure as Transportation Secretary has been so impressive, but only one reason. It is not inaccurate to say that Sean Duffy is better than the last 15 transportation secretaries because he actually took the job to do the job. It wasn't just some title handed to him for political patronage. But I'm wondering, what's the story that the leftist media won't tell you today, that less than a year into Duffy's overhaul of our air traffic control system were already nearly half done the way it sounds? And again, you'd think this would be newsworthy. Only the Washington Times. I've only seen this in D.C.'s conservative newspaper. They say thousands of outdated telecommunications equipment like radio and phones are being swapped out for brand new models. Hundreds of radars are being upgraded. The paper flight strips that were used by air traffic controllers to guide flights are getting ditched for new electronic ones, all accessible on one computer screen now. They say as of this month, nearly 50% of the old copper wires that powered the communications between air traffic controllers and pilots has also been replaced with new high-speed fiber optic cables. This is great proof that all it takes is some actual effort and focus to get many of these longstanding issues fixed. It takes a priority from the important people and those controlling the purse strings. Donald Trump is proving that all it takes to combat high crime is an honest attempt to stop it. Sean Duffy is proving that Pete Buttigieg in the last 10 transportation secretaries were clowns who just didn't want to deal with his air traffic control issue. Duffy might have it fixed by Christmas the way this is going. I exaggerate, but, quote, the Transportation Secretary has pledged that the changes will be completed by 2028, thanks to the $12.5 billion approved for the modernization in President Trump's one big, beautiful bill. They say the system has basically been held together with shoestring and duct tape. This is according to Chris Sununu, who is now serving as the CEO of the Trade Association for Airlines for America. But Sean Duffy says it was the D.C. air crash that had President Trump saying, look, enough of this fix this problem. And for all the faults you want to ascribe to Donald Trump, he is a fixer. He is a doer. He is a builder. Duffy says what we realized was that we used an incredibly old antiquated system of technology from the 60s, 70s, 80s, and 90s. This is a huge task now because it's been ignored for 30 years. The scale of the work that's facing Duffy and his people, the scale of the work that needs to be done, just to switch out equipment and make the modern day upgrades, is massive. And it's largely thankless work, of course.

This is going to be a wonderful gift that has been given to the American people, finally, after 25 or 30 years of delays. But the 28 Republican nominee isn't going to get national credit for finally making the system safe after three decades. And I mean, not even if it's JD Vance or Marco Rubio that's on the ticket. They'll lay claim to it as a victory, but voters will largely shrug their shoulders. Yeah, we expect safe air travel. We didn't see any of the hard work being done, so it's not going to move voters. We should be heaping special praise onto people, departments, presidents, lawmakers who are going out of their way to actually do something, do the work, fix our problems, instead of just bloviating about them. But first, the average voter and the American people need to know about those fixes, know who is working hard and doing the work. The American people need to hear about the hard work that's being done and the genuine win that results from it. And there's no blasted way that today's leftist news media is going to tell the American people about any of Trump teams wins, right? Not if they can help it. That's the sort of so-called fair and balanced news media that we're dealing with today. News Talk 1130 WISN. He's proud to present the Jay Weber podcast. Jay Weber draws from his 35-year career in radio news and commentary to craft an insightful look at the major stories and impactful issues from around Wisconsin, the nation, and the world. And after you've enjoyed the Jay Weber podcast, we invite you to go to your radio or go online and listen to News Talk 1130 WISN, Wisconsin's most listened to. Radio Station. My friends, I'm not convinced that this big redistricting cheat by the Democrats in Virginia is a done deal. A lower court already halted it temporarily, of course, and the state's Supreme Court in Virginia is going to have to ultimately determine if this very unfair and extremely gerrymandered map ever gets put into play. We'll get into the unique setup of Virginia's Supreme Court and why it's hard to predict how it's going to rule on this. But even realizing that in this era, even court politics is a rumble. My take is if the Virginia Supreme Court doesn't reject this map, it's going to be a major embarrassment for the justices on that court and a blatant affront to the Republic and any sort of rule of order when it comes to parliamentary procedures. And I know, I know, you know, everything is hardball politics right now, and nowhere have the leftist been playing harder ball than in states like Virginia. I get it. But if most of the justices on the Virginia Supreme Court have even a modicum of dignity or integrity. If they even have a sense of fairness and justice, well, they can't approve this map.

Everyone in the country and on both sides of the aisle knows that this is a blatant attempt to cheat. And no, liberals listening, no, this is not like what was gone on in Texas or Florida. Those adjustments to the political maps in those states that were pushed by Republicans still left congressional representation that was largely proportional for that state. The Democrat voters in Texas and Florida are still represented in Congress in some way. This map in Virginia wipes out virtually all voter representation for anyone who didn't vote Democrat in that state now. This is the situation, by the way, when it comes to all of the New England states, those all seem to have no Republican representation at all, even though those New England states vote about 40% Republican. This map in Virginia, though, wipes out virtually all voter representation for anyone who didn't vote Democrat in that state, and it's crazy. This change takes a district map that had six Democrat districts and five Republican districts and pretty accurately represented the voting percentages in the state of Virginia. and turns it into a map in which there will be nine districts controlled by Democrats and only one by Republicans. And I don't care which side of the aisle you're on or which parties' Kool-Aid you're drinking. No one can claim this is a map that is anything close to fair or representational. That's one reason that I believe the majority of Virginia's Supreme Court just might reject it, because if they don't, they just look like scumbags and idiots. That's a pretty good incentive for the average judge to do the right thing and reject the extremes. Moreover, how can the left-wing lawyers who are trying to defend this possibly argue this is fair or constitutional? And when I say constitutional, I mean representative of the voters of Virginia. I know the next step is the state Supreme Court there in Virginia, but I'd also be surprised if conservative and good government groups don't find arguments to challenge this map in federal court and put it on the fast track to the U.S. Supreme Court. Some showdown over this is long overdue. We have states like Oregon that have conservatives in their states so frustrated they want to break away and secede and join Utah. I think every effort should be made by conservative activist groups to get some sort of challenge based on this Virginia map to the Supreme Court in the federal court system. I know the U.S. Supreme Court's been very, very reluctant to get involved in these state maps, but we now have something like seven to nine states that are Democrat controlled. They either have zero Republican congressman or only one being sent to Washington, despite the fact that the voting patterns of their states are far, far more balanced. Such as Massachusetts. Massachusetts votes about 40 percent Republican. They don't have one Republican representative in Congress. The federal Supreme Court has already heard at least one argument related to fair maps recently, and we're awaiting that decision. The case in front of them would weaken some of the rigged rules and the so-called Voting Rights Act if they rule as expected, and it could lead to another round of national redistricting. So we certainly haven't seen the final round of this fight over maps in the states and nationally. But I say bring on more litigation and get it in front of this conservative U.S. Supreme Court. I think conservative legal activists should use this Virginia outrage as a springboard to challenge the very notion that one party, either party, can just freeze out the other one and pretend their state is sending a, quote, representative government to Washington, D.C. from that state.

I mean, the Democrats in Virginia went into this knowing how much they're cheating and how blatant it looks. We know this because as part of the language that they used in the legislation and on the referendum, they added a clause that says this map would only be in effect until the next census, which is in 2030. Well, of course, that would be the case. That's when every state needs to redo and rejigger their federal congressional maps. It's by law. But the Democrats in Virginia... Couldn't have made it more clear. We're cheating now, but we'll turn this process back over to our, quote, nonpartisan maps commission in 2030. Yep, Virginia's a state in which the Democrats have convinced their voters to agree to a sham of a maps commission, only to then violate and ignore that system when it doesn't suit them. We're seeing Democrats do this all over the country in various blue states, including New York and California. And it's one reason why anyone in Wisconsin is stupid if they support Governor Evers' push for, quote, fair maps and a maps commission. Evers and Wisconsin Democrats have already ignored a different version of a nonpartisan map committee, and they cheated to redraw their own maps when they felt they could. They exposed again what a sham these maps commissions are. First of all, they aren't really nonpartisan, but second, if the Democrats are just going to ignore them any time they see an opening to cheat, why have them? Why pretend? Seriously, why do New York, California, or Virginia even have, quote, nonpartisan maps commissions if the Democrats are just going to ignore them and cheat every time they feel the need or see an opening? This has been the case now in both California and Virginia just over the last few months. Virginia is a split state that leans blue. It has been for quite some time. So the current map shows split representation in Congress. Quite fair, actually. Six Democrats and five Republicans are sent to the House of Representatives from that state currently. But magically, through force, Virginia Democrats get to rig this falls elections to give them a 911 congressional delegation? Come on. There isn't a single Supreme Court in the country that, if they had honest justice sitting on it, would find that fair, reasonable, or representative. In fact, John Fund at the National Review has at least four legitimate legal avenues on which Republicans can challenge this move in Virginia. The first is, he says the legislature violated the state's constitution by keeping a special session open for nearly two years, and that's a move that a local judge who heard the case already has labeled a blatant abuse of power. Second avenue of challenge, Virginia law requires that constitutional amendments be passed at least 90 days before any election in which the people ratify it. Lower courts had initially blocked this redistricting process on those grounds. So that's a procedural argument. The third argument would be the gerrymander improperly tossed out the work of the 2020 voter-approved bipartisan redistricting commission. They tossed it out right in the middle of the decade. So challenge based on that. And then the fourth potential challenge, the language on the ballot was blatantly biased in claiming that the referendum's goal was to, quote, restore fairness in upcoming elections that presuppose that the bipartisan commission map was unfair. All of those are legitimate avenues of challenge. And I think you notice that they don't really have anything to do with gerrymandering or challenging what a gerrymander is, et cetera. There are ways to stop this without getting into big constitutional arguments.

But I think a path that challenges this on federal and state constitutional grounds based on the definition of a representative government is also a pretty interesting way to approach this. And I'm not a legal mind, but we have great legal minds that might be able to find some way to argue this larger question and in a federal court. I think any federal lawsuit like that... Could be a game changer, given that we finally have a conservative-leaning Supreme Court with justices on it that seem determined to correct the terrible constitutional drift that this country has been on for decades. I think a court that has shot down Roe v. Wade and killed off the Chevron doctrine is a court that might just step in and say, look, a state map has to at least be somewhat fair when it comes to representing the voting patterns of that state. If we on the right got a ruling like that nationally, Democrats might lose two or three dozen House seats in the more honest redo of these maps. So how does this play out at Virginia's Supreme Court? Well, experts in D.C. and Virginia seem to agree. It's hard to predict. And it is because Virginia's a state in which the legislature actually appoints the Supreme Court justices, not the voters. And currently... This Virginia Supreme Court is said to be small C conservative, as in the judicial conservatives might have a slight advantage on this court. Quote, Virginia is one of only two states where the legislature elects the Supreme Court justices. Because the state has had divided control for much of the past quarter century, the balance of the court's justices were appointed by bipartisan compromise. The court's current seven members include one justice who was elected when Democrats had sole control of the General Assembly. three when Republicans controlled both chambers, and three when control of the legislature was split. And so if that's the case, this isn't a court full of members who are going to want to rush to get this new map into effect before the fall election, which is what Democrats want it to do. It also doesn't sound like a court full of justices who are just going to ignore the fact that Virginia's legislature and governor broke all sorts of procedural rules in order to ram this map into place. I don't see how any split court or any group of justices that's even trying to be fair or trying to get a ruling right agrees to let this map be put into play. And despite the result of the referendum this week, there's no way to honestly say that this is what the people of Virginia want either. The National Democrats and activists spent a massive amount of money tricking the voters of Virginia. They spent $81 million in what amounted to a sprint to trick Virginia's voters into thinking that this was about fair maps. Those on the ground in Virginia say the misinformation campaign that the leftist pulled off here was shameful. Impressive, but shameful. This was a very slanted, shameless, shameless, ugly affair. And still, the left only managed to win this referendum question by three points. They spent two years trying to trick and steamroll Virginia voters, and they still only narrowly pulled it off with a sprint of $81 million worth of spending. And yeah, I understand that this is a constitutional amendment that the voters of Virginia have now passed, and only the win matters, and the Supreme Court can't and won't overturn the will of the people, et cetera. But this process and the left's dishonesty and duplicity in engineering this result can be challenged in court and will be. It's the reason to believe that whatever happens, this outrageous map of the Virginia voters just approved will not be in play this fall and may not ever come into play.

and the president can put the most conservative, most liberal nominee in place, correct? If the Senate is in the other party's control, well, then any president needs to nominate a more moderate judge because they need someone who was going to survive the confirmation process when the members of the other party control the Senate and need to approve of the person. Most of you get this, but with the potential for the Democrats to retake control of the Senate this fall, you see that the window on a super Supreme Court pick from Trump could be closing. This is what the activists are worried about. He still has three more years of his presidency, sure. And Samuel Alito and Clarence Thomas still have a three-year window in which a Republican president would appoint their successor if they do want to retire soon. But the Senate that needs to approve the Trump pick might only be under Republican control for another nine months. Hence this flurry of attention to Samuel Alito now. You might have also seen that Molly Hemingway of the Federalist told Megyn Kelly this week she's hearing rumors John Roberts might retire. He might be the unexpected wild card here, she's saying. John Roberts was appointed by George Bush. He's had a good long run as Chief Justice, but he's only 71. And as of last year, John Roberts was claiming he was never retiring from the court. Just about 10 months ago, John Roberts joked that they'd have to carry him out feet first, as in, you know, they'll carry my corpse out of here. So I doubt that John Roberts retires. There's always a chance that some secret illness or changes in their personal lives might have a federal judge with a lifetime appointment deciding to retire early. But short of something like that, I'd be shocked if John Roberts retires. That said, it'd be great if he did. Listeners to my longtime radio show know that I never liked John Roberts or his approach to his job as Chief John Roberts has spent two decades trying not to have this court decide the biggest constitutional issues of our day and not make precedent-setting rulings that would actually clear up the question in front of them. Drives me crazy. I've found that irksome beyond belief. John Roberts is a judicial dud, and if Trump had a chance to replace him, that'd be huge. That would be huge. Now, the caveat over all of this is that the Republicans should, should keep control of the Senate after this fall elections. They should. They have a 53-seat majority, and the Democrats would have to win at least a few Senate races that they aren't expected to win in order to see control of the Senate flip. But you never know. If it's a Democrat wave election because Trump started a war in Iran and it has Americans upset that gas and grocery prices are higher again, et cetera, well, there's at least a chance Republicans could lose control of this nomination process. That's where this nervousness over any Supreme Court opening comes in. I hope you understand it more fully now. My prediction would be Thomas Samuel Alito and John Roberts all stick with it for now, but either Thomas Samuel Alito or both bail before Trump leaves office. There will be heavy outside pressure from right-wing political forces for them to do so. Whether that moves them, we'll see. I'm certain that both men want to see their legacy and their seat on the court continue to be in conservative hands, though. And so I think one, maybe even both, will leave before Trump leaves office.

News Talk 1130 WISN. He's proud to present the Jay Weber podcast. Jay Weber draws from his 35-year career in radio news and commentary to craft an insightful look at the major stories and impactful issues from around Wisconsin, the nation, and the world. And after you've enjoyed the Jay Weber podcast, we invite you to go to your radio or go online and listen to News Talk 1130 WISN, Wisconsin's most listened to. Radio Station. So when President Trump and Pete Hegseth were droning all of those drugboats off of the South American coast, some of you were worried about all the fish and marine life that was going to be coming into contact with all that cocaine that our drone strikes were dumping into the ocean. Oh, but what's going to happen to the fishes, people were asking? Well, we have our answer. Well, we at least have an answer. Research conducted by two universities in some joint venture found that salmon on cocaine swim twice as far as normal salmon. I'm not sure how they got these fish to do a line of blow, but we have our answer. The story says salmon exposed to cocaine in the water swim longer distances than those that go without, according to a study release this week. Joint research by Australia's Griffith University and the Swedish University of Ag Sciences studied how the drug affected the movements of wild fish in their natural habitat. Researchers took 105 wild Atlantic salmon and exposed them to Coke and then tracked their movements. They found the salmon exposed to the drugs traveled 1.9 times further per week. than their clean living cousins, as they put it. The researcher said, we're finding higher and higher concentrations of not just illicit drugs, but all types of pharmaceuticals in our waterways, and they've warned the pollution of waters by common drugs is now posing a major and escalating risk to our biodiversity. Quote, our study shows that drugs are not only a societal issue, but also a concrete environmental challenge. So there you go. This comes after a study on sharks in the Bahamas that found that they're being exposed to everything from cocaine to caffeine to painkillers. It opens up a whole new avenue of research, I think. Are we seeing more shark attacks because that we've created cocaine sharks? I'm kidding, of course, but I'm guessing we're just about a year or two away from some eco-zellate group insisting that that's what's happening. Oh, and as long as we're talking about cocaine, let's talk about Congress. That's a great transition. I'm getting a kick out of the cleanup that we are told is going on in Congress because three scummy House members have been forced to quit over the last three weeks or so. This, of course, started with the Democrats engaging in a campaign to explode Eric Swalwell's run for California governor. And unfortunately, for them, it meant that he had to be shoved out of Congress, too. They would have liked to have kept his vote, but they really couldn't. He had to go. If they were going to pretend to be upset about the decades-long womanizing that he was famous for in D.C., he had to resign from Congress, too. So he resigned. Then it was a Republican, Tony Gonzalez of Texas, who had his own sexual misconduct scandal going on. He resigned. And then this week, it was another Democrat, a black woman from Florida named Sheila McCormick. And I admit, she's hyphenated, but I stumble over her maiden name. Sherfilis. Surefulis.

We'll just call her Bosephus. So then there's the third resignation, Sheila Bosephus McCormick. So in a chamber of 435 members, three people actually are being called out for their scumbaggery, and apparently this is a house cleaning. It only is to longtime elitists who have set up a system over 250 years that ensures that they will never really be held accountable for their own actions or their own criminality. Only by that measure is this any sort of ethical house cleaning going on in Congress. Good grief. But Bocefus here didn't resign due to a sex scandal. Hers was a good old-fashioned theft and ethical misconduct scandal. She was charged with stealing nearly $5 million in FEMA funds and pled not guilty to that in criminal court, but she was going to be expelled from the house if she hadn't resigned first. McCormick said in a statement, rather than play these political games, I choose to step away so that I can devote my time to fighting for my neighbors in Florida's 20th district. I hereby resign from the 119th Congress effective immediately. By the way, love the resignation statement. Makes no sense whatsoever. Proves she's a moron. Sheila said she's going to resign from Congress so that she can focus on better representing her constituents in Congress. What? It's like saying you're going to go on an all-cake diet in order to lose weight. But McCormick resigned literally minutes before the head of the Ethics Committee convened a hearing in order to release the final results of their investigation into her activity, and that investigation found McCormick was in fact guilty of at least 25 different ethical and criminal counts against her. Quote, investigators found substantial evidence of conduct consistent with the allegations and the indictment as well as more extensive misconduct. Yeah, Sheila McCormick is a real peach. She's only been in Congress for about three years, but the rap sheet of offenses and crimes that she racked up here is incredible. She's actually been criminally charged for dozens of real crimes in addition to the House ethical investigation and the findings that pushed her out of Congress. This woman's going to prison, regardless of what Congress has done. She stole from FEMA. She clearly stole from her own campaign and filed false and inaccurate campaign statements. That's a crime. And this is across numerous election cycles, the investigators say. She's charged with falsifying paperwork on loans, accepting bribes, lying about her campaign finances, spending all sorts of taxpayer money on, quote, luxury goods, like jewelry and designer clothing. Sheila McCormick is the sort of person who never intended to do this job honestly or properly. You have to put yourself in her mindset when she ran for Congress and won. When you look at the timeline and the charges against her, McCormick was a slippery grifter right from the start from the moment she ran from Congress. And in the three short years she's been in Congress, she's pulled off every dishonest and illegal stunt she could think up apparently during that time. Here's a fun twist. Sheila McCormick won office in a special election in Florida to replace longtime scumbagg Elsie Hastings. Hastings was a decades-long congressman from Florida, who was also among the most famous sexual predators in scumbags in Washington, D.C. Hastings was Eric Swalwell before Eric Swalwell was ever born. So the people in that district in Florida traded one scumbag criminal for another when they went from Hastings to McCormick.

I'll say one other thing about Sheila McCormick resigning, and it comes from her criminal lawyer. I do think he's right. I'm not cutting Sheila any slack here because she did the crimes and she put herself in this situation. But I acknowledge the correctness of her lawyer's statement. McCormick's criminal lawyer says she had to resign from Congress because there was no way she was going to get a fair criminal trial after the United States House of Representatives officially declared her a criminal scumbag. He said, how can she possibly go into court and have a fair trial if her jurors have already heard that she was found guilty by the House of Representatives? It's an impossibility. So she was left with no choice but to resign. That's true. But it only means that she made a spark decision to resign, because when she ran for Congress, she had to know that she would be living as a public figure and beholden to her constituents and held to an ethical standard. I mean, she had to know on day one. There were actually little seminars that they go through with new House members. So she had to know on day one, the House had a process for investigating ethical and criminal violations. And so it isn't some great constitutional question as to whether her rights are going to be violated here. She set herself up for any such consequences when she ran for office and won. I don't feel sorry for her in any way. But if you still do, here's the capper. Please understand that Sheila Bosephus McCormick doesn't appear to be a decent person in any way. She committed all of these crimes and all this misconduct, and she shows no remorse and only wants to portray herself as some sort of victim. And at that point, once you realize that, I think any normal person is going to say, well, F her then. Meanwhile, this little flurry of scandals and resignations has Speaker Mike Johnson vowing to finally, finally add some tougher rules of conduct on U.S. House members, and it's long overdue. Folks, this is 250 years overdue, because as great as this country is, the people who both formed this republic and those who have come to D.C. and the 250 years since to represent Americans in Congress have spent all of this time protecting themselves from consequences and exempting themselves from accountability. The idea that we've had an ethical House and Senate policing themselves over the last 250 years is ridiculous. Heck, the idea that we've had an ethical House and Senate policing themselves over the last two decades is ridiculous. There is clearly so much corruption and grifting and scumbaggery and skullduggery going on in Washington, D.C., that you cannot possibly pretend our leaders in D.C. really care about it or want to stop it. There's a reason it's called the swamp. Consider that around this time last year, Doge was uncovering decades-long schemes in which lawmakers on both sides of the aisle, but mostly the Democrats, were kicking taxpayer money to all sorts of ridiculous and even fake outside groups and NGOs just so they could set up their friends and relatives with dishonest, cushy incomes, and funnel a bunch of that money back into their own campaigns. It's gone on for decades.

These are the people who are supposed to view as honest or ethical. Come on. And whether it's sex scandals or taking bribes or whatever, it's clear that Washington, D.C. really is the swamp. It is clear that over 250 years now, the people whom we as Americans have sent to Congress to represent us and rule us, govern us, mostly abandon their ethics and sense of integrity once they get there. And not all of them. Not everyone. But way, way too many of our longtime D.C. dwelling lawmakers have more interest in being exempted from the social mores, the ethics, the laws of our society than they have any interest in following them and or holding the members of their own chamber accountable. And it's why I'm getting such a kick out of this, this fake purge that's going on. This is being called a purge, three congressmen who are obviously guilty of ethical and criminal violations. And yeah, it really is on both sides. I've seen a lot of claims on social media lately as Eric Swalwell got shoved out. Well, Republicans never punish their predators and pedophiles. You know, right now it's vogue on both sides of the aisle, but really on the left to smear everyone as a pedophile. This seems to be the 2026 smear. Yeah, why aren't you policing your own pedophiles? That's what passes for a snappy retort. But the truth is neither side has been good at policing their own because if you think about it, if you hold members of your own party accountable, you're losing their vote in the chamber, right? The truth is neither side is very good or interested in really holding their own members accountable. And this list that Congress released earlier this week proves it. They released a list of House members investigated for sexual harassment over the last 40 years. And they claim it was 28 people, 28 members, 14 Democrats and 12 Republicans. First of all, that number seems low. But you can see that being a sexually harassing creep is not exclusive to either party and that both sides have had their scandals. In general, though? From what I've seen in the 40 years that I've been watching this, in general, Republicans have been significantly better at acknowledging the scumbags within their midst and actually doing something to punish them or push them out. Republicans did shove out George Santos and Matt Gets on their watch, by the way. Those are just recent examples. Meanwhile, Nancy Pelosi and the Democrats protected Eric Swalwell and Elsie Hastings for decades. They ignored Barney Frank Scandal altogether, et cetera. The truth is that sexual harassment claims on Capitol Hill are being filed quite routinely and by the dozens, and the American people never hear about them. We don't hear about the vast majority of them. And by the way, the same goes for scandals related to bribes and campaign finance abuse, etc. The vast majority of congressmen who are called out for unethical behavior suffer no consequences, and the average voter never hears about it. So, color me skeptical, as how Speaker Mike Johnson now promises to tighten the sexual and misconduct rules in that lower chamber. And, you know, if I'd trust anyone on this, it would be Mike Johnson. Not only is he a religious man and committed to clean government, but he has two young daughters who are working as staffers on Capitol Hill. So I don't doubt that Mike Johnson will be serious about finally, maybe making some decent changes.

However, I highly doubt that the majority of the over 400 members in his chamber are really going to vote in favor of placing tougher sexual harassment rules onto themselves and onto future Congresses. These are bodies, the House and Senate, that have protected their own members vigorously over the last 250 years. Mike Johnson said this week that he's taking suggestions from other lawmakers and ways to tighten these rules. Quote, I will lead that myself, he said. All right, we'll see where it goes, but I won't be holding my breath. The Jay Weber podcast is a production of IHeart Radio Podcasts, produced and engineered by Gregory John. The Jay Weber podcast is presented by creative planning, helping clients simplify their journey to financial wellness, one personalized plan at a time. Listen to all of Jay Weber's podcasts, available on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite podcasts.