Lars Larson Northwest Podcast 2026-06-09

17 forming to the upper 70s. Yes, quiet, ladies and gentlemen. You're ready for the bit so? In exactly 15 seconds, we'll be on the air. Lars. This is the Lars Licensure. President Trump is one badass president. He secured the border at the level we've never seen before. Honestly provided for our country and for our children, the best is yet. to come. Broadcasting across the Pacific Northwest and covering Oregon, Washington, and Idaho on the Radio Northwest Network. Lars and Niles. He is an existential threat to democracy. Here's your host. Quiet, please. Lars Larson. Welcome back to the Lars Larson show. Well, it turns out the transit agencies in the Pacific Northwest, both Seattle's major transit agency and, of course, Trimette, the major transit agency for the Portland metro area. are all desperate for money. It's easy to understand. Why? They are so desperate for money. Because both agencies have seen falling usage, meaning there are fewer people per capita riding public transit than there were 10 or 20 years ago. So, despite that fact, they have poured additional billions and billions of dollars into both light rail and other kinds of transit in both Seattle and Portland. And still, their per capita usage of transit has been going down. Now, about 5% of all the people who commute on a daily basis commute by transit. The number is actually a little less than five, but just to be generous, let's give them 5%. So what have they done? They've said we're desperate to get cash. And of course, we've talked a lot about the desperation of TriMed to where they're trying to soak Southwest Washington for many of their costs. tens of millions of dollars but in seattle in seattle it's even more interesting than that in some ways and why is that because quite some time ago seattle and sound transit decided that fair enforcement is racist now i there's a weird logic behind it it doesn't actually add up But now that they've decided that they're short of cash, apparently the fact that fair enforcement was racist, that it was imposed too often on people of color, well, Seattle doesn't have to care about that anymore. They need the cash more than that. Let me dig into the details of all of that in just a moment. First, I want to welcome your phone calls. Welcome to the Radio Northwest Network and the Lars Larsson Show. If you want to join the best conversation in talk journalism, it's right here every day. At 866, hey, Lars. That's 866 439-5277. If you happen to be a naysayer, we love naysayers. You go right to the head of the line if you disagree with me or something else that you heard on the show at 866-439-277. Send your emails to talk at Larslarsen.com. You can vote in our ex-pole in today's question.

We decided to do this because I saw that Sweden, yeah, I've got a dog in the fight there. About half my family is Swedish. At least my grandparents were Swedish and great-grandparents were Swedish. Sweden, you know, they've just been overrun with Muslims lately, and they've had Muslim rape gangs, they've had all kinds of problems with so-called immigrants because in Western Europe they want to be polite when they describe people who've come into their country and are doing awful things. They just decided to overhaul their citizenship laws. Now, I think the list they came up with of what you have to do to become a citizen of that country, it'd be a great list for America to adopt. Because we already do some of this, but I think this is much, much clearer. Number one, you have to speak the language, in that case, Swedish. Number two, you have to be able to support yourself. Number three, you have to live there for eight years without committing any major crimes. Is that the model that America ought to be following? I would vote yes for that. You can vote any way you like. You'll find the Exbowl at Lars Larson Show and at Lars Larson.com and brought to you by Ultimate Truck Services. If you rely on trucks for business, Ultimate Keeps Your Biggest assets on the Road and running right. Find them at Ultimate Truck Service.com. Yesterday, I'd asked you about Donald Trump walking out on NBC's Meet the Press and Kirsten Welker, who decided to ask a bunch of rude questions. And I said I thought Trump should have stayed. 88% of you said yes. He was right to walk out on NBC's Meet the Press. Only 12% of you said no, so I was on the losing end of that one. But glad to have you with me on the Radio Northwest Network. Let me get back to this issue of transit. Because the greedy transit officials in both Oregon and Washington have decided to try to soak the taxpayers for many tens of billions of dollars, not tens of millions, tens of billions of dollars. You've got sound transit that is well into the $50 billion range, and they're telling the voters and the taxpayers and citizens they are tens of billions of dollars short of being able to build what they promised they would build for $50-some billion. Oregon, you've got an interstate bridge that is all tied with light rail. And Trump is saying you either build the bridge with light rail or you're not going to get a new bridge over the Columbia River on Interstate 5 at all. But in Seattle, here's what I find funny. About six years ago, Seattle decided as a policy matter that enforcing fair collection.

meaning fair enforcement programs were in fact racist. Now, how did they know they were racist? Well, when they began to get on a train at one end or a bus at one end and check every single person on the bus and then they wrote tickets, the percentage of tickets written to black riders was much higher than the percentage of black citizens who are riding transit. You say, well, then it must be racist. This is a bit like and stupid as declaring that America's justice system is ageist, or sorry, sexist, because 90% of the people sitting in prison are men, and only 10% or less are women. And you say, well, it must be a sexist organization because clearly they're discriminating against men and in favor of women. To which most sensible people would say, no, what are you crazy? Men commit more serious crimes than women do. That's why men make up 90 plus percent of the prison population, and women are 10 percent or less. And yet, that same simplistic logic, they did not apply. What they found was that between 2009 and 2019, about a 10-year span. Black passengers got 46% of the citations compared to white passengers only got about 34% of the citations. They immediately concluded it must be biased against black transit riders. No, it could be, just like with the male-female comparison, you have black customers of sound transit who are violating the rules more often than white customers. But you see, that kind of conclusion. oh it makes all the politically correct people at city hall and other organizations of government in seattle they get all queasy when you talk about that but now that sound transit has run short of cash and they are seriously short of cash they don't have the billions of dollars to build what they promised the voters they would build when they got all those ballot measures approved and then went out and borrowed all that money so now They are proposing to install fare Bill Gates at 14 of their length light rail stations. They say it's going to improve fair compliance. It'll increase revenue. It'll enhance the passenger experience. It'll keep a lot of the hoodlums off the trains. But they don't want to say that out loud. And they have to be very careful. If Seattle says, well, you know, When we're flush with cash because we just got a lot of money from the taxpayers, then we're not okay with enforcing fares. That would be racist. But if we run short of money, then yeah, go right ahead and enforce the fares and racism be damned. I don't think their racism conclusion was accurate, but let's hold them to what they say. If they really insist that enforcing the fares is a racist thing to do, then don't let them have the money. And don't let them say, but when we're short of cash, we've got to do it anyway. It's Tuesday. It's the Radio Northwest Network, and you're listening to the Lars Larson Show. America.

your piece 866 hey Lars that's 866 hey Lars now back to the Lars Larson show that makes a lot of sense a lot of nonsense right you know he got a right to sit this is the northwest nonsense how much longer do we have to sit for this nonsense Great moment every day, where Lars brings you the cold, hard facts without any liberal wokeness from the daily dead fish wrapper or mainstream media bias. Well, the city of Portland's taxpayer-subsidized housing agency, Home Forward, is sliding rapidly toward a financial cliff. Mayor Keith Wilson warns that the agency faces financial insolvency, what the rest of us call can't pay your bills. $200 million of Home Forward's 300. million dollar budget comes from the federal government. So they got that money in hand. Home Forward operates 7,000 so-called affordable apartments. More than a thousand of them are sitting vacant for no good reason whatsoever. So despite its rich Uncle Sam money, Home Forward is looking at a $35 million budget shortfall. It doesn't help that his former CEO, Ivory Matthews, took home a fat $300,000 plus salary and did $100,000 of junkets around America while the agency she allegedly was managing fell apart. Matthews bailed out with a fat $170,000 golden parachute because that's how things run in liberal progressive Portland. In the meantime, tenants still renting from home forward have to contend with prostitutes and... drug dealers and a landlord looking at bankruptcy by the end of the year. Today's best question, but you can always send more to talk at laus larsson.com, is brought to you by Multlima Medical Clinic. No pills, no shots, no surgery, and get better fast. Multlima medical clinic. C. Bert, Charles Bert, says, Lars, has gotten too expensive to farm. Martinelli's a leading producer of apple juice and cider as cancels the contracts with local growers in California. Apples from out of state cost about half as much. Now with no market, apple growers are bulldozing their orchards. This is similar to Del Monte going bankrupt, leading farmers who lost their contracts to destroy hundreds of thousands of peach trees. The high cost of labor, fuel, and energy is killing agriculture in California, signed Charles Burt. And now today's Daily Grill. Insane.

when they're dealing with you and when they're accusing you of things when they're finding you taking you to court even well and Dylan there was a real question whether the Supreme Court of Washington would take this case up and let me make it clear is not SCOTUS it's not the Supreme Court of the US Supreme Court of Washington but now they've decided to do it that that seems like a tremendous break all by itself Absolutely. And we know the makeup of that court, and there's a lot of concerns. People already saying, can you get a fair shake there? And well, I don't have a comment on that, other than I'm keeping my fingers crossed, but for that court to be able to take this case seriously not to hear it, a case against a state agency that those of us who've seen what's happening on the ground have said is out of control for a long, long time, for them to finally have a reckoning. at the state's highest court. This is a huge deal. And a lot of folks are going to be watching this. Certainly in farming, are farmers going to be treated fairly by the state of Washington or not? That's really the way we see the question. But a lot of folks, even outside of farming, they have to deal with any state agency. Will we get a fair shake? Is the state itself going to force its bureaucrats to follow the law? or are they going to get a pass at the state's highest court as well? We're hoping for the best, but the attorneys on this case with the Pacific Legal Foundation are feeling pretty good. They feel like they have a really strong case here, but the state made an egregious mistake and failure of following the law. Dylan Hancoop is with Save Family Farming. Dylan, thanks so much, and thanks for getting the word to us about the Foti family. The Foti family gets its day in front of the Supreme Court of Washington. Let's hope that at least once the Supreme Court of Washington is willing to stand up and tell state agencies you're not allowed to run roughshod over America's farmers and farmers in Washington State. You're listening to The Lars Larson Show and the Radio Northwestern Show.

Have something to say but don't want to talk. Email Lars and talk at Larslarson.com. Now, back to the Lars Larson Show. Welcome back to the Lars Larson Show. It's a pleasure to be with you. I'm glad to get to your phone calls and emails at 866. Hey, Lars. That's 866 439-277. Send your emails to talk at lauslarsan.com. I kind of suspected over the years that we'd get to this point where we're told that we have to go green so hard. They will shut down every source of power. They'll shut down the coal plants. They'll shut down the nuclear plants. And then we'll run short of power. And they'll say, no, we've got to forge ahead. It's got to be wind and solar. And at this point, we're now looking at perhaps bulldozing thousands of acres of forest in order to make room for a big solar farm. Now, if you say, Lars, that sounds too crazy. Even for the Pacific Northwest, it's not. Joyce Furlong joins me now. Chair of Tino Islands Alliance. Joyce, welcome to the program. Hey, thanks so much, Lars. If I've overstated any of this, please tell my audience. Tell on me, I don't care. It's okay. But what is it that they're doing to 8,600 acres of forest to make room for a solar farm? Oh, no, you have not overstated it at all. 8,600 acres, that is 13 square miles. It's an immense... piece of beautiful forest right adjacent to the Klamath River. And it would, they're putting it a 400 megawatt solar field. And that is 80, excuse me, 850,000 solar panels. I mean, it's just beyond comprehension. And in order to do this, they literally would have to clear cut and pull out stumps to do that. It's just huge. So there's no other way that they say to build this big a solar farm without mowing down the forest. I mean, I would think that in the state of Oregon, you could find lots and lots of places that are already vacant of anything except maybe sage. There are lots of places. And just recently, the LCBC, the Lamb Conservative and Development Commission, loosened up some of their rules so that eastern Oregon, where there's... you know, so much sagebrush, open sagebrush. They could put all these large solar farms there. Well, they included Klamath County in this group of eastern rural counties. Now, Klamath County is ag and forest. We don't have a lot of sagebrush out here. And so... What happened with this land? This is green diamond land. It's a privately owned land, but it's considered low production timber. There's a lot of meadows and wetlands on this land, big open area. But because of slow production, of course, they're not making money on it, but they would make money if they leased it to... a solar company, a very large solar company. So Joyce, when they say it's low, low production, meaning that because it's very dry, and I mean, you get a lot of sun, but it's very dry, is that why trees don't grow as fast on that kind of land? Well, I don't believe so. I...

It's wetland. It's wetland. It's full of juniper. And it's just that type of wild land. It's just not productive timber. So juniper, trees that are smaller than 21 inches and that sort of thing. But it's valuable land because this is corridor for one of the largest elkers. The Roosevelt Elkirk is about 500 to 700. elk and there are four to seven thousand mule tail deer in that area as well. This is their migration corridor and it is their winter grazing area. Is the deal? Is the deal already done at this point? The deal is not done. Good question. Good. I want people to know. Yeah. Yeah. It's in process. So they have filed a notice of intent, and they've been given the parameters that they have to survey and prove mitigation, which means, so what they are doing is they're asking for an exception to the very tight, very strict land use rules that say you cannot do this to the forest. Now, why have those rules in place? I mean, really, if you're just going to make an exception to them. But that's what they're doing. They're jumping through the hoops to get an exception. So they're in the application process. It will take them till next spring or maybe next December to complete their application. And then it goes to the siting committee for approval. So we're a couple of years before this is all said and done. But we've got to start fighting now. This is a dangerous precedent to be setting because up till now, The fight has been to not put solar on productive agricultural land. So that's all the regulations. Yeah. No, I mean, that should be the goal. If you're going to build solar at all, I don't actually think without the subsidies that it actually pencils out. But this includes not just 850,000 solar panels, but a gigantic lithium battery storage area. Where's this energy going to? Oh, that is a great question. Yeah. We don't know because they're putting out so much energy. So 400 megawatts. A megawatt is a million watts. The battery storage is 1,600 gigawatts. A gig is a billion watts. Where is all that? So the grid here is maxed out. So in order to do that, Pacific Corps is going to have to completely rebuild the grid. Are they going to do that? I don't know. Well, I've got another idea for you. If it's relatively inexpensive land, and that's what it sounds like it is, could you imagine them putting a data center there saying we don't have to ship that power very far because we just built a giant data center right next to where the power is? Right. What do you think? Well, we have asked them that question and they deny it. But it's not called the Klamath Falls Solar Farm. It's called the Klamath Falls Energy Center. So we don't know. You know, we're skeptical.

So maybe they are. I mean, the other thing is, I used to live in climate falls as a little kid. It's five and a half hours drive from Portland. It's many, many hours drive from the population centers of even northern California, like San Francisco or Sacramento. Right. So where the heck is all this energy going? Because it's a gigantic amount of energy. It's like building a resource a long, long ways from all the people who would ordinarily use the resource, unless, of course, it's going to some other kind of industry. Right. And that is the question. Where is this going? And they say, well, it's going into the grid. It's not for Klamath County. That's for sure. We have our power. So we don't know. And we're not getting the right answer. Are they required to tell you what they're planning to do with the power? You know, I believe in the end they are. But at this point, in the application process, a lot of questions are vague. And a lot of answers are not being, a lot of questions are not being answered. So we don't know. But I'm telling you, we're like mama bear, uh, protecting her cubs with this because we do not want to see this beautiful forest destroyed. We've got a lot of the entire professionals who live in climate fall. Retired forest professionals. You got to stop that. That is Joyce Furlong with the Kina Wildlands Alliance talking about 13 square miles.

Keep it. Can't listen to Lars Live? No problem. Get the podcast 24-7 at Larslarsen.com. Now, more with Lars Larson. Hi, welcome back to the Lars Larson show. Got to update you on a story. I imagine you're going to hear more about in the top of the hour news, Carmelo Anthony, who was underage at the time, but he has been swiftly convicted of murder. That happened in Frisco, Texas. But a jury in Colin County deliberated for about three hours, they found Anthony now 19 years old, guilty of first-degree murder in the death, April 2 of last year. There was a confrontation. Remember, we talked about it on the show. The fatal stabbing of a fellow high school athlete, Austin Metcalf, at a track meet. And it made no sense at all. And then Carmelo Anthony's attorneys tried to argue, well, it was self-defense. No, you don't get to stab somebody to death for no reason whatsoever. And get this. They say the verdict came after four days of sometimes excruciating testimony that was so graphic, it visibly shocked the jurors and drove Metcalf's family away from the courtroom. Metcalf, of course, was the victim in that case. Carmelo Anthony is now looking. at probably life in prison. They said he could end up with a life in prison sentence. He was spared the death penalty because he was just barely under age at the time. To your calls now at 866. Hey, Lars, that's 866-439-5277. Send your emails to talk at Larslarson.com. And this segment of the show is brought to you by 540 Training.com, concealed carry, home invasion defense, and a personal defense. Find them online at 540 training.com. Let me go to your calls first. Let's go to because it's about our previous subject. Jim in St. Helens. What's on your mind? And thanks for listening. Well, thanks, yeah. I've enjoyed your program on the Uniper, which is the solar. And whether solar is a good idea or not. Juniper is a invasive species that's destroying our ecosystem on the organ, and it's a weed, basically. And it's got no commercial value for timber, and it's not a forest. It's a weed, and they're not very densely, and they destroy all the grass. They suck all the water out of the soil, and the grass dies. Yeah, you're right about the juniper, but it's not only juniper there, it's other forest as well that's in that climate falls areas, I understand. There's a mixture of different kinds of things. It's just very low production when it comes to timber.

She didn't mention any other species, but I very seldom see, I spent a lot of time in that part of the state. I very seldom see juniper and pine in the same area. Okay. Fair enough. But you think then it's okay to take 8,600 acres of forest and flatten it to put in 13 square miles of solar panels? I don't call up a juniper forest a forest. It's a weed. Okay, fair enough. You made that point. And so you're in favor of wiping out whatever it is that's growing there and putting in 13 square miles of solar panels. Let's go to Ron in Tacoma. Hey, Ron, thanks for listening on KVI and the Radio Northwest Network. What's on your mind? Well, it's on my mind, Lars, as you know, I called you a while back about the B&D platform by all the media. They come out and they make all these allegations, and then they just say, well, now they're kicking you off. Well, here, you might find this very interesting. I just got back on in the last 30 days, and I've already been de-platform on XN Facebook. And do you like to know why? Sure. I'd love to know why. Yeah, this is very interesting. Basically what's, I figured out what's going on here. Social media, they're in collusion to the platform Republicans. Basically, Facebook slandered. Facebook has a slander scheme to censor Republicans' accounts. And what they're doing is, this just happened to me today. All if I did is I posted Pramila Jayapal. She's allegedly come to the United States illegally with her parents. This was on a news thing. All I did is post the news that this came from and where they're talking about this. And I immediately got a slander from Facebook basically saying that I was posting something to do with child sexual. exploitation. Now, I don't know where they got that from. There was no child on any of that fee. Okay, can I tell you, Ron, when you read stuff online, do you automatically assume that it's accurate and valid? Oh, it was valid. I checked it out. No, hold on. How did you check it out? Because I just did a quick search. I don't know. I mean, I've met Primalogia-Paul on one occasion at an airport. I wanted her to come on the show, and we happen to run into each other. She doesn't want to talk to me for anything. She says her husband listens to the show, but she doesn't. But she came to the United States legally as a student on a student visa when she was 16 years old. and then over the next 17 years, she went through H-1B, work visa, et cetera, et cetera. Now, when you said, well, she came to the U.S. illegally because I read it online, what did you do to check that out and make sure it was true? All I did is I basically just came from Tim Poole, and he was doing a show on it, and this was her own words. So he brought it up to everybody. What were her own words that she came illegally?

Jim Poole says he's got the video of her saying that she came to the United States with her parents. But, you know, I don't know why this is the issue. She came on a student visa at the age of 16. And so I guess what I'd wonder is. You know, the more outrageous a claim is, the more I'm likely, and my producers know this. Joel knows this, McKenzie knows this. If somebody comes to me and says, hey, you know, Ron in Tacoma had shrimp for lunch. If I say that on the air and it turns out to be wrong, it's not going to harm you in some great way. On the other hand, if somebody says, Ron from Tacoma is actually, you know, something, you know, really evil like a pedophile. then I'm going to check that out six ways from Sunday. If you're going to accuse somebody who's a member of Congress, even a Democrat, and I don't like the Democrats' positions either, but if you want to accuse them of, say, breaking the immigration laws of the United States, coming to the country illegally, and now they're in Congress, that's a pretty serious accusation. Do you at least owe it to everybody else to check out your background, check out your information first, and not just say, well, Tim Poole said it, so it must be true? Don't do that kind of thing. Well, here's the issue, Lars. What's the issue? What's the issue? What he was in fact? He brought out. What does that have to do with me being a... You know what it has to do with, Ron? If you say something about somebody that's not true, if you say something about me, like Facebook? Like Facebook? If it's defamatory, yes. If you go in and you defame somebody, Facebook will get away with it because Facebook has Section 302. But the rest of us, the rest of us have to be very concerned that what we do is accurate and you should care about accuracy even if you don't worry about getting sued. But I appreciate the call. You've got the Lars Larson Show and the Radio Northwest Network. The Lars Larson Show.

You ready for the bit so? In exactly 15 seconds, we'll be on the air. Live! Founders! is the Lars Larson Show. President Trump is one badass president. He secured the border at the level we've never seen before. Honestly, provocative talk with Lars Larson. For our country and for our children, the best is yet to come. Broadcasting across the Pacific Northwest and covering Oregon, Washington, and Idaho on the Radio Northwest Network. Mars and now. He is an existential threat to democracy. Here's your host. Quiet, please. Lars Larson. Welcome back to the Lawrence Larson show. You would swear that America's political left have decided to treat the Pacific Northwest States, Oregon and Washington, as some kind of petri dish for all their crazy ideas. I mean, even before the pandemic, both Portland and Seattle had very low levels of staffing compared to other cities of similar size. I mean, I remember complaining that Portland, I think, was at... 19, 1.9 officers per thousand. And we said we should be at 2.4. And now we're at 1.2, so we're even lower than we ever were before. And there is a, well, there's a clock running right now and a July 2nd deadline where voters could actually do something about it. But will they get the chance to actually fix the problem and refund the police? Sergeant Aaron Schmots joins us now president of the Portland Police Association. Aaron, welcome back to the program. Aaron. Is Aaron there in there? Oh, let's see if, yeah? Hey, Aaron, are you there? We may, I don't know, let's see if we can connect with Aaron otherwise because, Joel, I... We're just going to have to see if we can get him on a different line because it sounds like that line is not working. But Aaron is the president of the Portland Police Association. And what he's suggesting is that Portland has about half the national average for a city its size of the number of police officers. It needs 1.2 officers per 1,000. I mean, it was bad before the pandemic at about 1.9. But now it's at 1.2 Seattle is not much better. And the end result of all of that is that we end up with a city that doesn't have nearly enough cops on patrol. So. They've got to gather enough signatures. They need 41,000 signatures of Portland voters, and they need to have them collected by July the 2nd. And if they don't make the July 2 deadline, then it doesn't go on the ballot, which means voters won't even get the chance to say yes or no to the possibility of putting that in front of the voters and giving you a chance to vote for the kind of funding that has to be there.

to be able to take care of a city the way it should be. Well, I'll tell you what, Joel, if you can punch that phone number up, I'd be glad to talk to Aaron about this because I want to make sure that people get a chance to hear about this. They know how they can get the signatures that they need to get. What's that, Joel? Ah, I see. Okay, well, I'll give that a try. Let me see if I can do that. While I'm talking on the air, hey, watch this, folks. I'm going to actually type and talk at the same time. I guess what I wonder is, is there any point to having a city that doesn't have the capability to police itself? If you can't police the city... then what's the point of having the city? The city is going to have a report that, gee, it's not really a problem because we don't have any crime, at least any reported crime. If you don't have any cops, then how in the world would you know that you had crime? There we go. Okay. Hey, imagine that. Typing and talking at the same time. Almost someone in secret codes. How about that? And we'll see if that works. Oh, boy, I love IT. I love IT so much. It's my love for IT knows no bounds. In any case, we're going to see if we can get Aaron on the phone here. Joel. Ah, Aaron, are you there? I am. Thank you, Lars. Sorry about the technical problems. Tell my audience how they can help get this in front of voters by getting signatures in. So, Lars, saferportland.com is our website. Again, that's saferportland.com. The number one thing we need right now is for folks to go there. We have listings of where they can go sign. They can print out signature sheets. You can volunteer. You can donate. We need 41,000 signatures in the next three weeks. Okay. And if you get those, then it goes on the ballot. What is it that you'd be voting in favor of? It's more taxes, isn't it? We're not. It is not more taxes. So no, so that's a big feature here. 25 years ago, we had over 1,000 police officers, and today we have less than 800. What this ballot measure would do would use existing funds. to fund 400 more police officers to get us closer to the national average, to provide for faster response times, to provide for better community policing and better connection with community. Okay, and all it really does is say to the city council, you've got an $8.5 billion budget. I understand that most of that is tied up for one thing or another, but you've got $800 million that's in the general fund, spend the money to protect the city. make that a first priority and put everything else second and you can get it from existing revenues without raising taxes right so the so i mean we've seen this year i mean right now as we speak that portland police bureau is facing its largest cut that has ever been proposed

It's $21 million, six and a half percent. This ballot in 2018, the Portland Clean Energy Fund was created with the plan to raise $30 to $50 million a year for climate initiatives and other things. And it's raising $200 million a year. And this would pull money from that surplus, give voters a say and how that money is used to ensure that we have a safe and thriving city. I mean, isn't this the same fund that they're talking about taking some of the money out to pay for Motor Center renovations? I mean, as much as I don't like slush funds, if you're going to have a slush fund and it's going to benefit, say, rebuilding a billionaire sports arena, the very least you could do is fund some cops. Yeah, I mean, we're not here to criticize the Portland Clean Energy Fund. It's been very popular. People like it, and it has provided a lot of good opportunity. But it is raising significantly more money than it was intended, and we think that voters should have an opportunity to have a say in how those funds are used. I mean, why is it that police have dropped out as a priority for the Portland City Council? Do you have an idea of why that's happening? Well, I mean, the reality is that we have a city council that doesn't prioritize public safety. I mean, it's a simple statement of fact. And we, you know, as I said, you know, they haven't had an opportunity to fund public safety in many different ways, and it just hasn't been a priority. And public safety isn't just policing. We saw cuts to fire, cuts to PSR, public safety support specialist. 80% of that group is being cut. And it just is not what the general public wants. We've seen in polling, we've seen an anecdote. Our city, like just today, the Portland Fire Bureau endorsed this initiative because we're a big part of what they do too. But we were in the parking lot of a grocery store in East Portland that's shutting down due to crime. And we've seen many grocery stores, the Gateway Fred Meyer, the Safeway in 162nd Division, we're losing these critical community resources due to crime. And it has to be our city's first priority. Yeah, and if it stops being the first priority, then the city stops being a city. That's Sergeant Aaron Schmutz. He's president of the Portland Police Association. Aaron, thanks so much. I appreciate the time. Back in a moment, I'll get to your phone calls and emails. And by the way, all of you who are out there advocating for defunding the cops years ago, are you seeing what happens when you defund the cops? When you pick up the phone and call 911 and you don't get a response? Do you want it to stay that way or do you want to fix the situation, whether you're in Seattle or Portland or Spokane or Eugene? Do you want the police to come when you call them? You've got the Lawrence Larson show.

Lars has you covered. Call him from anywhere. 866 Hey Lars. Now, back to the Lars Larson Show. Thousands of people sleeping unsheltered on our streets. Yes, we are failing. We are failing. Collectively, we are failing. Collectively, we are failing. That is the mayor of Seattle, Washington, Katie Wilson, and she is a failure herself. In fact, she's only in the job, and she's already admitting that she is not able to get the job done. And now she faces a real test because... She wants to hide the city of Seattle's homeless population in numbers 10,000 or so. Could be a little bit bigger, could be a little bit smaller. But she wants to hide them away during the World Cup competition that is coming within about a week. And, of course, Seattle is going to be on the radar worldwide. because a lot of the world's going to be watching what goes on with World Cup. And she's got all these homeless people, and she needs to hide them away. And so far, she's been very, very unsuccessful in getting that done. Welcome back to the Lawrence Larson Show. It's a pleasure to be with you. And if you want to join the conversation, I've got a few other things to say about Katie Wilson. and her attempt to hide this problem with some of the first homeless shelters erected under Mayor Katie Wilson. She had promised a thousand of these beds by the end of this year. I don't think there's any way in the world that she can get anywhere near that. Now, of course, you always expect that when politicians, especially Democrat politicians, make promises, you're always skeptical. You're smarter if you're skeptical about whether or not they can actually get it done. But in Katie Wilson's case, She is failing big time. Let me get into that in a moment. First, welcome to the program. If you want to join the best conversation in talk journalism, it's here every day. At 866-6-6-6-439-277, send your emails to talk at larislarsen.com, and you can vote in our ex-pull. The ex-pull is simple. Today's question, Sweden. Just overhauled its citizenship laws. You have to speak the language, be able to support yourself, and live in the country for eight years without committing crimes. Is that the model that America ought to be following? I'm going to answer that one, yes. Let me tell you the model we've got right now. It's close, but not the same. as what Sweden is doing. Number one, if you want to apply to get a green card and come to the United States, you have to jump through a number of hoops. It's not easy. It can be difficult, and it usually takes a lawyer. You have a lot of forms to fill out, and you have to assure the United States that you are unlikely to end up on welfare, what the law calls becoming a public charge. So in some ways, it's similar. It's also true.

that if you get a green card and you come to the United States and you keep your nose clean for about five years, that you then have the opportunity to take the test and become a citizen. Does it actually say that you have to be able to speak the language? It doesn't, and I think it should. Does it say, in the case of Sweden, they want you to stay there eight years without committing any major crimes? In America, it's only five. Is there a requirement that you have to be able to support yourself? Well, in Sweden, they're going to say you have to show that you can support yourself. If you can't, then you cannot become a citizen. Now, I think that makes all kinds of sense. You can find today's ExpoLars at Lars Larson Show and at Lars Larson.com. But let me get back to Katie Wilson in Seattle. Here's the problem she's got. She's got World Cup arriving first of the kickoffs on June 15th. So we're only talking about six days from now. And they are now going to be at Lumen Field, now renamed Seattle Stadium. They are predicting 750,000 fans are going to descend on a city. And guess what? The city has still shown itself to be incapable of keeping the open-air drug markets off the main streets in downtown Portland, places like Belltown and other parts of downtown near 3rd Avenue. So you have a major problem with drugs. You've got a major problem with homeless people. And what Katie Wilson wants is she wants to be able to hide the homeless people away. Just opening today is a 50-unit homeless shelter. It's in the so-called Interbay neighborhood. It is the first new shelter under Mayor Katie Wilson, even though at the beginning of the year, Katie Wilson had announced that she would open 1,000 beds for the homeless by the end of this year. Now, I guess it's still theoretically possible. About half of the year has gone by. She's now got 50 units out of 1,000. That's only 950 left to go. So she has not met her goal for the half by mid-June. She wanted to have half of the new homeless shelters, 500 of them, opened by mid-June. That's not going to happen. So what does she do? She does what any good communist leader, I guess Katie Wilson is actually a socialist in Seattle, but what any good communist or socialist master does. You try to hide the problems away. In the old Soviet Union or in Russia before the Soviet Union, they had a thing called Potemkin Villages. And what it was designed to do was put on a happy face and make it appear that the people living in the countryside in Russia were actually happy and healthy and well-fed and well-dressed and everything else. It wasn't the case, but they created the impression that it was the case with these so-called Potemkin villages.

The inner bay site is going to provide 24-7 staff support. Let me tell you what the biggest problem with the city of Seattle's approach to homeless is. And it's the same problem that they've got in Los Angeles and in Portland, Oregon. Same problem they've got in almost every city. They're all following the Barack Obama model. And what that is is housing first. And what that means is if you're addicted to drugs and you want to check in to one of these homeless shelters, you can take the drugs with you. You don't have to give the drugs up. So if you're a heroin addict, let's say, you're allowed to continue using heroin. Not a problem at all. If you're a boozer, you can keep on drinking. All of those things are possible, and you just keep on using the very things that put you on the street to begin with because they don't want to have any kind of barrier at all. They call them low barrier, high support, meaning a drug addict will get all kinds of case management, 24-7 staff support. They'll offer you connections to people who will provide you with drug treatment. The problem is they don't say that you have to take the drug treatment. You can simply say, thank you very much. I'd rather continue to be an addict. And in this case, if you let the addicts and the addiction continue, the homeless people are never going to go away. That's the part that I think Katie Wilson and the people of Seattle and the people of Portland and the people of Los Angeles are going to have to learn the hard way. Find to get your calls at 866. Hey, Lars. Send emails to talk at Larslarsen.com and you're listening to the Radio Northwest Network. The Lars Larson Show. Take a good. Take a peek.

inside Lars's studio. Follow him on Instagram at the Lars Larson Show. Now, more with Lars Larson. Welcome back to the Lars Larson Show and the Radio Northwest Network. It's a pleasure to be with you, and I'm glad to get to your phone calls and emails. If you want to join the best conversation and talk journalism, it's right here every day at 866. Hey, Lars. That's 866 439-277. Send your emails to talk at Lars Larson. Let's go to Jeff, listening in Bend on KBND and the Radio Northwest Network. Jeff, what's on your mind? I was just thinking about what you're saying about the addicts and the shelters and stuff. And really, you know what? It's the drug addicts in Oregon and Washington do exactly what they're supposed to do. And that's drugs. And there is no path out of the addiction, right? Like the addiction was enhanced by measure 110 and it was intentional, right? And you can look and you can see it with all the money that they read from. from all this addiction and how little they actually do to cure it. They facilitate it. They don't cure it. No, I think you're right. And, Jeff, to add to your point, imagine this, in Seattle, in the Puget Sound area, and in Portland, the Multnomah County, that basic metropolitan area, you've got a grand total of over a billion dollars a year being spent. Now, most of that never gets anywhere near the addict or the homeless person. It goes to non-governmental organizations that end up as the foot soldiers of one party and one party alone, and that is the Democrat Party. And I know that there are people, and Jeff, I'm going to anticipate that somebody's going to want to call and say, well, you know, both parties do it. Jeff, do you think I can name a couple of dozen NGOs that are affiliated with a Democrat Party? Can you name just one of them? that's affiliated with conservative or republican causes no i mean look this is the new grip the NGO the non-profit that's all the griff that's the fraud that's the way these people make their money and that's why they that's why they want power the power is to make money not to save people or help people or serve people it's simply this is addiction for profit in its purest form i mean Look, you legalize heroin and meth? Are you kidding me? That's such a good idea. No place in the entire world has ever done it, right? And then they just collect money forever. Well, and imagine this, Jeff. You get 10,000 people who are living on the street. Sometimes they'll enhance that number because their definition of what it is to be homeless. We've talked about it before. They'll define somebody who's sleeping on a friend's couch. or sleeping in a friend's spare bedroom, or sleeping in a friend's motor home or fifth wheel, they'll define that person as homeless. Well, by that definition, you may push the number up to 15 or 20,000. But if the real number is about 10,000, how else would you be able to say, we're going to take 10,000 drug addicts, we're not going to do a damn thing to fix their problem, but we're going to get the powers that be to agree to spend a billion dollars a year, fund all that money to the NGOs.

The NGOs will run around and look busy, but they'll have all this money flowing in for a problem they never plan to solve. Because as you point out, if they ever solve the problem, then the need for the NGOs goes away. So they can pretend that they're doing something about the problem, but they don't actually do anything about it. And the end result is a lot of money changes hands, and the Democrats have a whole crowd of foot soldiers doing their work for them. Yeah, it's pretty amazing, really. It's actually, you know, they call it empathy and compassion, and it's actually just, it's simple. It's abuse. This is abusive people. And like, like, to think that I worked across the street from Dirt World here in Bend, Oregon. Yeah. And every time I drive by there, I'm just miffed at the fact that, you know, the Democrats call, you know, allowing, I mean, there's hundreds of people living over there and they're shooting heroin and smoking fentanyl and setting fires. And as a matter of fact, a couple of dogs mauled a lady last year and killed her out there, right? And so they call that compassion, right? And oh, we're being empathetic. And it's just abuse for profit. I could not agree with you more, and I appreciate the phone call. Let me go to a different, Jeff, this one in Tacoma. Hey, Jeff, thanks for listening. What's on your mind? And thanks for listening on KVI and the Radio Northwest Network. What's up? Yeah. Yeah, thanks for having me on. Kind of along the lines of the last, Jeff, I guess we think alike. You know, it's just come to my mind here over recently that, you know, the Democrat Party used to, you know, they were the party of enslavement and a lot of different bad things, just really to make money off of the people that they considered a minority and considered less than them. And really, nothing's changed, you know. They still do the, they still do. And they've figured out a much smarter way to do it, but they're still doing the exact same thing. And it's disgusting. I agree with you because, Jeff, I like to remind people, they say, well, that was the old Democrat Party. But think what the old Democrat Party was in the 1800s. They were the party of slavery. And who were the Republicans? The ones who ended slavery. And so not every clan member, not every Democrat was a clan member, but every single clan member was a Democrat, not a Republican. So, and then you say, well, what happened when? they you know lincoln took their slaves away well they were very mad for a while but then they said we need to get a new group of people that will be our our slaves and so they they they went after black americans and brown americans and that worked for a while and now they're going after illegal alien america or illegal aliens in america and the democrat party sees all of them is just there to do their bidding right yeah

Easy argument when, you know, we started clapping down on immigration, it's like, well, who's going to pick our fruit? Like, wow, really? That's how you see people? And they still say that. Do you know, I mean, there have been major, there have been big, big time members of political groups that have said, well, who's going to nanny our kids? Who's going to mow my lawn? Who's going to wash my car? Who's going to pick our crops? And that literally is the way they look at it. That they are the party of slavery. They have been since 1829. And the Democrat Party, the modern Democrat Party just has the same inclinations. We need to find a group of people. We need to find a way to control them. If they're under our thumbs and we can promise them government goodies as long as they do our bidding, then we'll get them to do anything we want them to do. And the minute they step out of line, Well, we may dump them and find a brand new group. They used unions for a while. That seems to be wearing out now. They used black Americans for a while. That seems to be wearing out now. And now they're going after what else, illegal aliens. Doesn't make any sense, but hey, it's the way the Democrat Party rolls. Back in a moment, I'll be glad to get to your calls. At 866, hey, Lars, send emails to talk at Larslarson.com, and you're listening to the Radio Northwest Network.

The Lars Larson Show. The information you need when you want it. FM News 101, KXL, is Portland's number one source for news and information. KXLFN, Portland, Vancouver, Salem. From ABC News. I'm Lindsay Davis, anchor of Prime streaming weeknights on ABC News Live. President Trump is blaming Iran for this morning's downing of an Apache Army helicopter near the Strait of Hormuz. More from ABC's Karen Travers at the White House. The president posted on social media that the two pilots involved were safe and uninjured, but he now says that the United States, quote, must of necessity respond to this attack. He does not get specific in his social media post, and the White House hasn't responded to our question. about this, about what he might do now against Iran because of this takedown of the helicopter. A Texas jury deliberated three hours before finding teenager Carmelo Anthony guilty of murder. Jurors didn't buy his claim of self-defense in the stabbing of Austin Medcaf at a high school track meet last year. ABC News legal contributor Brian Buckmeyer. It's clear that the prosecution's closing argument getting the last word saying that swift justice needed to be met and that this was not self-defense. The idea of bringing a knife to a fist fight. The proportionality of the self-defense is too high. If someone attacks you with their fists, you're supposed to respond with your fist. If someone attacks you with deadly force, like a knife or a gun, you can do that, but you can't escalate it. And so what this verdict tells me is that the jury did not buy the self-defense claim. They thought that Carmeline escalated that's too high and that he's guilty of murder. They're voting today in primaries in four states. Control of the Senate could fall on Maine voters as they decide if they could overlook recent allegations about frontrunner Graham Platner. The first four people on the next moon mission just got their orders. We are returning to the moon, a grand adventure back to the lunar surface to build a moon base and to do so for all of its scientific, its economic potential, and to master the skills for where we will inevitably go next. The announcement from NASA administrator Jared Isaacman, the Artemis 3 crew includes three Americans and one Italian astronaut. They will dock with a moon module for an eventual boots down on the lunar surface. You're listening to ABC News. With Upside, over 5 million people have earned more than $1 billion in cash back. The free app is helping everyday people earn on everyday buys, like gas, groceries, and meals out. Here are a few real reviews from real users. I use Upside every time I fuel up, and often when I go out for lunch. Smart. Because those routine purchases add up fast. Just ask this person, I've received almost $300 for doing what we all have to do anyway. $300? That's extra cash back straight to your bank account. and spend it how you want. I just transferred money to my bank account just in time to buy a nice lunch for my family. Download the free upside app to start earning on your routine gas, grocery, and restaurant purchases. Use promo code mine to get a $5 bonus on your first purchase. That's promo code mine to get an extra $5. Remember, promo code mine. Real testimonials, AI-generated voices, offers vary by user and location at participating merchants. Go to upside.com for terms and conditions. Exactly 15 seconds, we'll be on the air.

is the Lars Larson show. President Trump is one badass president. He secured the border at the level we've never seen before. Honestly, provocative talk with Lars Larson. For our country and for our children, the best is yet to come. Broadcasting across the Pacific Northwest and covering Oregon, Washington, and Idaho on the Radio Northwest Network. Mars and Niles. He is an existential threat to democracy. Here's your host. Quietly. Welcome back to the Lars Larson Show. It's a pleasure to be with you, and I'm glad to get to your phone calls and emails. I know this is going to sound nonsensical, but imagine this. The United States federal government is now spending about $15 billion a year on so-called affordable housing that nobody can afford, and it's not much cheaper than the stuff the private sector does without subsidy. Now, as I said... I warned you that it was going to sound kind of crazy, but who's actually getting rich on this and what changes should we make? I thought we'd bring on Kirk McClure, who's an emeritus professor of urban planning at the University of Kansas and a leading critic of the tax credit that is used to put $15 billion in tax credits into development of housing in America. and supposedly to bring about affordable housing, which ends up being not much more affordable than what the private sector does. Welcome to the program. Thank you, Lars. It's good to be here. If I've overstated any of that, please correct this so that my audience doesn't get the wrong impression. 15 billion in tax credits, and it really doesn't seem to make much difference at all. I'm afraid that's exactly it. We spend an awful lot of our shares resources that should be used for affordable housing, and it produces housing that the market is pretty good at producing by itself without subsidy. So where does the money go? It has to go somewhere, doesn't it? Oh, it does go. What happens is... Usually, the investors are banks. They have federal tax liability. So they purchase these credits that makes them part owners of these properties. They receive tax credits each year for a period of 10 years, and that, of course, reduces their taxes. By granting the tax credits to the developer, that gives them the tax credits they can sell them into the bank. That means they have less equity they have to raise from investors and less debt they have to take on from a bank. So the developers do pretty well on the deal. Their job is made easier, and they get to generally around 10% of the development cost goes to them in straight profit. So why is it that what they end up with, what they end up either renting in many cases, perhaps selling in others, but renting most of the time, is not that much less expensive than what the private sector is already producing on its own? Well, the reason is it's called a shallow subsidy, which is to say the as generous as the program is,

Ultimately, the developers have to charge a rent that covers their operating expenses and the remaining debt that they have on the property. The program says, well, we have to set a ceiling. And that ceiling is generally, not always, but generally, a rent that is affordable to a household that's at 60% of the area median family income. And unfortunately, the way that all pencils out, we're talking rents that are only marginally below what goes on in the marketplace. So, Professor, what would happen if they simply erase the tax credit altogether, but then said to developers, go ahead. You want to develop housing? Go ahead and develop it at market rates. Would rents go up much at all? I seriously doubt it. What we've got is a process of displacement. The... Some of the original thinking of the tax credit program was that this would cause units to be built that would not otherwise be built. And that has not proven to be the case. The estimates are anywhere from 85 to 100% displacement, which is to say for every 100 tax credit units built, it displaces anywhere from 85 to 100 market rate units. So if in fact the tax credit program went away, I'm very confident that the same amount of units would be built in the marketplace because simply the demand is there. We are helping renters with these units, but in fact not causing them to be low enough to serve the truly poor households, the ones who are suffering from the greatest housing affordability problems. I'm talking to Professor Kirk McClure, who's an emeritus professor of urban planning at the University of Kansas, a leading critic of the tax credit that does this. 15 billion in tax credits every year nationally across the United States to help developers build so-called affordable apartments. But when the people who advocate for these things actually see what they're actually producing, Do they not say, well, if it's not producing the result we want, then let's stop and do something else? Well, I have been an advocate for reform of the program for quite some time. The housing advocates make the argument with some... validity that it is the only game in town. As practical matter, it's the only production program the federal government pursues. My preference would be that we make the program more effective. We have it instead of making

developments that are 100% occupied by moderate income households, we ought to have truly mixed income, some for low, some for moderate, some market rate. And I feel we could do that at probably the same cost to the taxpayer and do a much better job in helping our communities provide affordable housing. Well, and is there any way to go to people individually and say, okay, you're below, you know, your income is not an effort to afford an apartment that your family would need. So we'll give you some help with that. But then as your income comes up, that help would begin to go away. Is there any way effectively to make that happen? Well, we already do that. It's originally was referred to as the Section 8 certificate program. It's now called the Housing Choice Boucher Program. And it works exactly that way. It takes a household and says, you make a contribution toward your housing costs of 30% of your income. You release an apartment that rents for below a ceiling. When that unit is inspected and found to be meeting code, the program will pay the difference between the household's 30% contribution and the rent on that unit. It's a very effective program. It is a good deal more efficient than the low-income housing tax greater program. But sadly, we only funded at a level to provide the assistance to about one and four of the eligible poor. See, I would wish that people would be given some help, but then at some point you find a way to get them to work their way. to freedom to be able to get out from under government subsidy altogether. Professor, thanks very much. That is Professor Kirk McClure, who's an emeritus professor of urban planning at the University of Kansas. He's been a leading critic of the tax credit on which American taxpayers fund $15 billion in tax credits every year to produce what's called affordable housing. And then you find out the housing they're producing costs just about as much as the housing that's already available in the private market. marketplace. Back in just a moment, I'll get to your calls at 866. Hey Lars. And in a moment, Sweden just overhauled its citizenship laws. You have to speak the language, support yourself, and live there for eight years. We'll get to that coming up next.

This is your home for honestly provocative talk radio. The truth every day. Now. Back to the Lars Larson Show. Welcome back to the program. It's a pleasure to be with you. I saw this, and you might say, well, Lars, you have a dog in the fight. With a name like Lars Larson, you've got to have some Swedish background, and I do. Great grandparents on my dad's side. Well, Sweden, modern-day Sweden, not the ones where my grandparents came from, but modern-day Sweden just overhauled its citizenship laws. And to become a citizen in Sweden, you have to, number one, speak the language. English, but Swedish. Support yourself. And number three, you have to live there relatively crime-free for at least eight years. Now, there may be other lesser included kinds of requirements, but those are the three majors. And I thought we'd talk about it with Jessica Vaughn because I like the idea. that Sweden's reform may be exactly the kind of thing that America ought to move to as well. Jessica is the Director of Policy Studies at the Center for Immigration Studies, who we consult with from time to time on issues just like this. Jessica, welcome back to the program. Thank you much, Mark. Should the U.S. adopt citizenship rules like Sweden's? Because we have something similar, but we seem to allow an awful lot of exceptions to the main part of the rule. Well, that's right. I think the United States should look very carefully at these new requirements and think about which ones would be appropriate for us. And what I like the most about this initiative in Sweden is that the government is... saying up front that the rationale for this is that citizenship should be a reward, not an entitlement. And I think in the United States it's considered more of an entitlement once you check a few boxes. They're looking to find people who are not just don't have a criminal record, but have been financially self-sufficient and have a meaningful employment. and are participating in society. They speak the language. You know, they're not just looking to rubber stamp people. They, you know, clearly... Citizenship is very important to them. And they've also prioritized certain kinds of applicants for a fast track to citizenship. For example, people applying from other Nordic countries who presumably will be able to assimilate much more readily than some of the refugee groups that they have allowed to live in Sweden in recent years. In fact, one thing that came to mind to me, Jessica, was last week. There was a story.

about a guy with a CDL, a commercial driver's license, who'd caused an accident, and he was pulled out of the truck, and they said he was a Chinese man who had obtained American citizenship, not just green card or work permit, but citizenship, but he couldn't speak English. And I remember thinking at the time, hold on a second. How do you become a citizen if you can't speak the... I always thought that was a requirement in America. Is it not? It is with exceptions, and it's funny. I had that same thought when I saw that story. There are a couple of ways that he could have slipped through. The number one way people get exempt from the English language proficiency requirement is to claim that they have a disability that prevents them from being able to learn English. You also, if you are a certain age, I think it's 60. six maybe a little bit older i don't think he he did it on the basis of age if you're driving a truck at least i hope not um or you know he might have committed fraud um or he might have had you know a an obama era or biden era adjudicator who just you know kind of didn't really test him so um but the number one right is Yeah, this idea in Sweden, they say, number one, they used to require five years of living in the country, now they want to require eight, and it has to be continuous. So it means you can't just bounce in and out of the United States. I think that's also a requirement for American green card holders, isn't it? Five years, and it's five years continuous or not? Yet, if you're married to a U.S. citizen, it's three years of continuous presence. And when you have a green card, you can't leave for more than six months. If you do, you're considered to have abandoned your green card. But we require that anyone other than a spouse of a U.S. citizen has to wait five years before they are eligible to apply for nationalization. So, but we have the problem, you know, and that's been illustrated with a number of people that the Department of Justice is looking at denaturalizing, you know, after they do things like terror attacks. There were a couple of U.S. citizens who were arrested just the other day for trying to give money to ISIS. It should never have gotten to this. Well, I agree. And are we going to see that move forward to where they say, hey, we're going to grant you citizenship. But if you've been naturalized that way and then you go out and commit certain crimes, we might take away your status altogether. And boom, you're gone from the country, right? That's right. We've always done it in kind of very serious cases, like if someone's discovered to have been a Nazi, you know, working at a concentration camp or something like that, or have involved in genocide in another country, and sometimes someone who is a very serious criminal, like a drug trafficker, but there are more of these cases than we've ever bothered to pursue.

And I'm glad to see that the Department of Justice is now doing many more of these cases. They released a list just the other day of people who committed all sorts of fraud from immigration fraud in getting their naturalization to beginning, like marrying a guy who had taken the identity of someone who is dead, a U.S. citizen, to people who have, you know, committed really heinous crimes. while they were trying to get citizenship. And so we're going back now and yanking it from them, which I think is a really good policy. Jessica Vaughn is Director of Policy Studies. The last thing, in Sweden they now say, we want you to show that you can actually support yourself, earn $2,200 a month or more. In America, all they do is say, we want you to show that you're unlikely to become a public charge. Should we make that part of the requirements tougher here as well? I think we definitely should make our financial self-sufficiency test more rigorous than it is now. We look at just a few, whether people have used just a few welfare programs and have all kinds of exceptions to it. We should make sure that people are engaged in meaningful employment, contributing members of society, supporting their families, and not, you know, really taking steps to become Americans in every sense of the work. And wouldn't that be nice to see them fully assimilate? That is Jessica Vaughn. Jessica, thanks very much. Director of Policy Studies at the Center for Immigration Studies. Back at a moment, we'll get to your phone calls and emails. You're listening to The Lars Larson Show and the Radio Northwest Network, now live on Portland CW. The Lars Larson Show.

Mr. Portland. Miss the Lars Larson show today? Find Lars's thoughts and get the podcast right now at Larslarson. Now. Here's Lars Larson. Welcome back to the Lars Larson show. It's a pleasure to be with you, and you know what they say about people who live in glass houses, you shouldn't be throwing rocks. And I guess I thought about that with John Bolton. I've met John Bolton on a couple of occasions, but only just in passing because of what I do for a living. But John worked as National Security Advisor during President Donald Trump's first term, and then he became one of Donald Trump's biggest critics. And then he began to criticize the president for sloppy handling of intelligence documents. And now we've got John Bolton, who is pleading guilty to his own bad handling of intelligence documents. So I thought we get John O'Connor on, author of Postgate, who served as assistant U.S. attorney in Northern California. John, welcome back to the program. Good to be with you, Lars. I guess I can't say hoist by his own petard, but is there a little bit of irony and John Bolton, critic of Donald Trump on national security documents, having to plead guilty to national security document crimes? Oh, there's a ton of it. And just in general, John Bolton is the guy that is always the smartest and most virtuous guy around. And he's very willing to criticize not only political enemies. But his own friends, so to speak, there's only one guy that's the smart guy, and that's John Bolton, and he, of course, is highly ethical, and he will tell you that. Now, the problem here is that he did stuff that was far worse than Trump ever did. I mean, when Trump gets... indicted for Mar-a-Lago, put aside whether or not he knew he was hiding documents. I don't think he had, Trump had a strong defense there, but he was also charged with mishandling, class confidential information. The mishandling was pictures of documents that, you know, like you do in any kind of document dump, like in my law firm, you're going to have boxes with some documents overflowing, and they're going to be in a closet someplace or in one case a stage. In a place where there is security all over the place where you can't break in and get those documents and so forth. And that was what he was doing to mishandle it. It was just, oh, loose documents. Now, meanwhile, what as documents. that are the most crucial ones that he's going to write about. And he's the guy that brags about being in the room. Remember, Trump did an awful lot of things besides national security stuff, and that's, you know, and so forth. And he cared about documents, not that he prepared, but that dealt with Russian collusion. That's what he cared about. Now, John Bolton, he has every secret we've got from presidential briefings to being right there. And what does he do with them? In order to write a book.

It's one thing to, you know, harvest some documents and bring them home and, you know, and you shouldn't do it. And that's mishandling. And you're doing it for a book. But you can't get too upset about that. However, because presumably, you know, the Iranians are not going to break into his home and so forth. Now, what he did was he methodically and continually took these important documents, paraphrased him, and then sent him. home to his wife's account. Now, he knows, he knows what, the Wall Street Journal doesn't talk about that. A lot of people who defend John Bolton don't talk about that. That is the Cardinal sin. You might as well be saying, hey, Iran, hey China, I want you to get this because I'm putting these on an easily hacked site that anybody with a junior, a junior hacker, a sophomore hacker could get those documents. And these are our, crown jewels and he exposed him and not only that he exposed him in real time sometimes this information is stale six months down the line but no he didn't do that didn't wait for six months or a year he was doing it in real time in an unsecure way so in a way He was as bad as having a spy in there that was calling up every day to the enemy and saying, here's what we're doing now. Here's what we think. When we talked about China this or Taiwan, that, here's what we're thinking. He's giving that to them. And then the other thing about it is, even when he wrote his book, there was some controversy over it about some of the things he had in the book that were confidential. And the judge declined to issue an injection on the grounds that the beans had already been spilled. So the judge thought that some of the stuff in that book was appropriately kept confidential, and he didn't keep it confidential. So he compounded his crimes by writing the book and getting it out there real fast because the publishers, he was going to make money on it. And so this is a terrible guy. This is a terrible guy. He may be smart. But, you know, when you're dealing with national security, there has to be some element not only of... integrity but also team play you you've got to stick together and execute the protection of the country in a way that in the best way possible and he left us all the out to dry I mean John but how is how is it that all these people seem to be very I mean not Trump but all the rest of these people seem to be very sloppy about how they handle classified documents I mean Hillary Clinton would have them faxed to her home and have her housekeeper take them off the fax machine you've got the example of John Bolton sending it to his wife you've got to joe biden putting in a cardboard box next to the corvette the garage with his drug dealing and drug using son coming home and having access to the house how is it that all these people seem to be really terribly careless about america's secrets well first of all they're not careless joe biden

brought documents which nobody talks about to the Penn Biden Center and had a closet full of them. While they're courting, while the center is courting Chinese money. Chinese money that they got from UPenn, right? Right, exactly. And so these include presidential briefings. Some of the stuff in the garage may not be that big a deal. But, and of course, the special prosecutor who was, you know, somewhat partisan. a nice guy, but partisan. And he said, okay, I'm not going to prosecute because the guy's such an idiot. He can't remember his last name. But that was Robert Hur. But the fact is, and I wrote an article about this, the amount of documents that were put out there was stunning. And, of course, Hurd didn't even get all of them because he allowed other people to... take away some Biden's assistance took away key documents before. Yeah, no FBI SWAT raid at the Chinatown office of Joe Biden, right? That's, oh, that's right. That's right. Meanwhile, the stuff Trump's got, he's not giving it to anybody. He's not bringing in people to look at it for money like Biden is. He's not writing a book with it, like what's his name? And also... Trump has ownership of those, ownership or control of them under the Presidential Records Act, which says, okay, the government owns these things. Whereas an awful lot of the people that were taking stuff home, John, are you still there? Do we lose your connection? I think we lost our connection with John O'Connor. But the bottom line is... Joe Biden made money. He made about $8 million on that book. He manages to write a book that has classified documents and really just for the sex appeal part of that. Because as I understand it, there was nothing that substantial that he had to have the classified documents. But gosh, it's awfully sexy to say this book includes classified documents that only President Biden would have. John, thanks very much. I appreciate your time. You're listening to The Lawrence Larson Show and the Radio North Lars Weston. Lars Lawson wants to hear from you. Maysayers get to cut the line at 866 Hey Lars. Now, here's Lars Larson. Welcome back to the Lars Larson show. Well, stuff is starting to pop this afternoon. Let me give you just a short sampling. Number one, you've got Carmelo Anthony found guilty of murder. That case out of Texas, out of Frisco, Texas. And the fact is, that was a case we were talking about last year, where for no apparent reason, he decided to knife another teenager. them underage, but because he's underage, he will not face the death penalty in Texas, but he is likely to end up with life in prison. Then we've got the downing of an American Apache helicopter in the Gulf of Hormuz, and Donald Trump said there will be a proportional response. Well, guess what? The proportional response is happening right now.

and Donald Trump has said it's going to happen. U.S. military launch strikes against Iran after the American Apache helicopter was shot down. Sentcom claims it's a proportional response. You know what? In some ways, I don't want it to be a proportional response. I mean, I want it to be one where the Iranians are sorry they ever even thought about the idea of taking down one of our aircraft. But... That's just me. Then you've got this. The House of Representatives just passed a $70 billion immigration bill. And you know what that does? It funds ICE all the way to the end of Donald Trump's term. So if any of the Democrats are inclined to say, I know, let's hold up the government again. Let's shut down the funding of the government again to shut down ICE. No, ICE is funded all the way through the end of 20. 28, which means Donald Trump doesn't have to worry about the funding of ICE at this point. And then we've got this. This just came down. A bomb threat reported at the University of Oregon's Hayward Field. The threat spurred an evacuation ahead of the NCAA Outdoor Track and Field Championships. Don't have any more details, but as they become available, we'll let you know what we know at this point. In any case, glad to get your calls at 866. Hey, Lars. That's 866-439-277. Send your emails to talk at Larslarson.com. And we're live on the Radio Northwest Network, providing honestly provocative talk to the Pacific Northwest. Also live these days on Portland CW, that's KRCW, and glad to be there as well. And glad to take your calls. If you want to jump into what we call the best conversation in talk journalism, It's here every day at 866. Hey, Lars. That's 866-439-277. Send your emails to talk at Larslarson.com. Oh, and by the way, John writes in about John Bolton, who we were just talking about, the man who is endlessly critical of Donald Trump. for bad handling what John Bolton thought of as bad handling of classified documents he is now pleaded guilty is going to end up being sentenced for his bad handling of classified documents john footman writes in says nothing will happen to this guy no jail may be a fine You know, until we change that equation, until the elites start to understand that they're going to get some tough sentences and some tough penalties for these kinds of transgressions, until that happens, I don't think we're going to get much of anything done about what is happening in this country. We've got too many people who consider themselves elites who simply say, The rules don't apply to me. Well, I think the rules do apply to you. We just have to make sure that you are held accountable to the rules. And by the way, the U.S. now says it is responding in proportion to the attack on the U.S. helicopter. The two aviators on board that helicopter.

managed to get out okay. They were recovered by drones, actually a boat in the water, a drone boat. But the U.S. military announces it has begun strikes against Iran following the crash, they say, of the U.S. Army Apache helicopter. Actually, I would call it the downing of that Apache helicopter because both the... Both Iran claims that it was down by Iran and the United States confirms that the helicopter was down by Iran. And the U.S. military says the new attacks on Iran in retaliation for the downing of U.S. Army Apache helicopter. The mission is a proportional response to unjustified Iranian aggression. President Trump says Iran shot the helicopter down while it was patrolling over the Strait of Hormuz, and he said the United States will respond. I think that Iran is going to end up sad or unhappy with having done this at all. Now, You want to join the conversation? It's 866. Hey, Lars. That's 866-439-277. Send your emails to talk at Larslarsson.com. Oh, and consider voting in our ex-poll. We put up a brand new poll question every day. So Sweden has just overhauled its laws for becoming a Swedish citizen. And what are the requirements in simple terms? Number one. Sweden says you have to be able to speak the language. America does not insist on that here. Number two, you have to be able to support yourself, that is, make a living, and be able to pay your own bills. And number three, in Sweden, you have to live there for eight years without committing crimes. If you did all three of those things, imagine if America adopted that same kind of model and said, you can become an American citizen. rather than five years of green card status, you're going to need to do eight years. Instead of having very, very soft requirements that you be able to support yourself, America might say, you need to be able to show us that you can earn a living, that you're not going to end up on welfare and food stamps and the like. Instead, what we've had lately... Well, at least under Joe Biden, we ended up with a president who let anybody and his brother into the United States. And he gave them refugee status, temporary protected status of one kind or another, and all of them immediately became eligible for all kinds of welfare, food stamps, Section 8, Medicaid, the whole nine yards, and they would get it indefinitely, which means they would be indefinitely a burden on the American taxpayer. Let's go to Paul, listening on KIDO in Boise. Hey, Paul, welcome to the Radio Northwest Network. What's on your mind? Well, you must have heard about the Apache helicopter that ditched into a straight-up remote. We've been talking about it. They didn't ditch. They were taken down by an Iranian drone. I know, but what I'm saying is they had to ditch it and just happened to be above water, so. Yep, they did.

And the pilots, the aviators were, they were rescued by a drone boat. And now the response from the U.S. government from CENTCOM has begun. Yeah, I wish if they would use a heavy hammer this time for whatever reason, it hasn't been heavy enough, especially when they get to their table and they're doing some. From back and forth. I agree with you. Put the heavy hammer down on Iran and tell them under no circumstances are you to take down our helicopters. Paul, thanks for the call. Thanks for listening on KIDO. You've got the Lars Larson Show. The Lars Larson Show.