Lars Larson Northwest Podcast 2026-08-13

Quiet, please. Ladies and gentlemen. Are you ready for the big soap? In exactly 15 seconds, we'll be on the air. Live. is the Lars Larson Show. President Trump is one badass president. He's 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. Quiet place. Lars Larson. You're listening to The best of The Lars Larson Show. 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. You know, a lot of people will say, Lars, you do a political show. And I said, well, no, I talk about what's going on in real life in the world. The problem is almost everything in the world these days, especially in the United States, is based on politics. Food is political. Energy is political. It's hard to find almost anything out there that's not political. And then the comparison. that have come up recently. And when we get done with all this, I'm going to be glad to take your phone calls. If you want to jump into what we always call the best conversation in talk journalism, it's here every day at 866. Hey, Lars. That's 866-439-5. As always, naysayers go to the head of the line on this program. You can send emails to talk at larslarsen.com and find our daily poll question at Lars Larson Show on X and also on my website at larslarsson.com. It's a pleasure to welcome to the program, Michelle Berenfeld, who's author most recently of the book, Lessons from a Lost Republic, what ancient Rome can teach us about this American moment. Ms. Berenfeld, welcome to the program. Hi, thank you for having me. I'm really excited to be here. Is it appropriate, as so many people have been doing, I think, in the last couple of years especially, to compare what is going on in America right now, favorably or unfavorably, to what happened in Rome so many centuries ago? Well, obviously, I think it is reasonable, but I think what most people have been comparing ancient Rome and America, too, is that they've been comparing America to ancient Rome in terms of the empire. I hear all the time, are we, the Roman Empire, is our empire collapsing. And what my book is about is the Roman Republic. which was, like their own republics, founded on the rejection of a king and established with certain rights for its citizens, the idea of checks and balances and institutions rather than men deciding the laws of the land. And that is what our founding fathers were looking at when they designed our Constitution.

But they also knew that the Roman Republic collapsed into autocracy, and they tried to prevent that from happening to us. The Roman Empire is that autocracy. And so I don't want us to become that, and I don't think most Americans would either. Are we at risk of that? In my opinion, it feels like we are. I think that this has been going on for a long time, the incredibly... strong power of the presidential office being increased over time. And I think the most important thing is that our Congress, which is supposed to be an equal party to the government, an equal branch, has been giving up his power to the executive in both parties for many, many years. And that concerns me, because that is exactly what happened in the ancient Roman Republic. The Senate kept dealing with emergencies by handing the executive more power and feeding their own. and not actually grappling with the underlying problems that cause those emergencies. And that's the danger that I see for us. I'm talking to Michelle Berenfeld. She's the author most recently of Lessons from a Lost Republic, what ancient Rome can teach us about this American moment, is the reason that the United States Congress is doing this out of necessity, or are they doing it out of laziness? Because I honestly think that the reason they've taken what was designed as a fairly weak executive, at least the way it was described in the Constitution. that they've taken that and they've decided yeah we don't want to do all that if we have to make those decisions the voters will hold it against us we'd rather just run for reelection and and let others either the bureaucracy or the executive do the job for them so is this about laziness on the part of those people who who said i want to be in congress i want to make decisions and then got there and said it's easier if i let somebody else do it My concern is that they're doing it as part of a block rather than as the representatives of the American people. This discourse that we have now about flipping Congress one way or the other is built on the premise that everybody just gets elected to be part of a headcount and they're just going to be there to help or hinder a president. And to me, that is not what Congress is meant to be doing. And whether they're lazy or not, they're giving up their own power to hold on to their office in those strange dichotomy that I think is very dangerous because that's not their job. Their job is not to help or hinder a president. Their job is to represent us and negotiate and legislate. And that's what I'd like to see them do. So what's it going to take to get them to get back to work? From the lessons of the Lost Republic, what could we do to make the Congress actually choose to do its job and have members who say, I'm going to make the right decision, whether it makes my party happy or not, whether it makes my constituents happy or not, and if they choose to throw me out and replace me to somebody else, go ahead. So many of these folks seem to want to stay there for decades without actually accomplishing much of anything. I agree, actually. And I think that the important thing, and it's going to take some time, because it's been a generation now that our Congress has functioned this way. I teach college, and my students don't remember a time before the discussions weren't just flipping the Senate back and forth to help or hinder a president. And so what we, the people, need to do is demand from our representatives that they do their jobs and also reward them for doing so.

That is, when they negotiate, when they compromise, when things don't turn out 100% exactly what we wanted individually, and we recognize that they're doing the work of the people and actually representing us. And I think if we reward them and we vote in the primary, we have choices that we like, I think over time we can fix it. But we have to do it too. I'm talking to Michelle Barrenfeld, whose author most recently of Lessons from a Lost Republic, what ancient Rome can teach us about this American moment. The only thing I wonder about in terms of reward, you've given the person the office and the stature and the title and all those goodies that come with it. How do you go about rewarding them when the only reward you can really give them is to keep them there for another term, which may not be the most desirable thing in the world? That's an excellent question, but I think one of the things that I mean by that is that we tend to punish those who do things that we don't like and rather than reward them for things that we might not have thought of as perfect, but actually forward the goal of Congress. And so in ancient Rome, people... of rome and the senate tended to back their guy they kept looking to an executive to do to solve their problems and anytime you choose a guy over an institution you run the risk of having powers accumulate in an office because of a certain man that's in that office But when that man goes away, as we all do, those powers tend to stick to that office. And so I think it's really important that we recognize that we can't look to one individual to save us on either side of the aisle. That it has to be something that the Senate and the Congress do in combination with the people. Well, that's the desire. I guess I just wonder how we go about rewarding them. We give them a pension. We give them those things. But the thing they seem to want the most, and maybe we can talk about this in a second segment. But the thing that those people in the House and the Senate seem to value the most is just staying for another two years or another six years, and some of them stay way beyond their expiration date. We're going to be back with Michelle Berenfeld in just a moment. She's the author of Lessons from a Lost Republic, what ancient Rome can teach us about this American moment. And you're listening to The Lars Larson Show and the Radio Northwest Network. You're listening to The Best of the Lars Larson Show.

An enjoyable... An enjoyable... want to talk but want to be heard email lars at talk at larslarson.com he actually will read it no Here's Lars Larson. Welcome back to the Lars Larson Show. I'll get to your calls in a moment at 866. Hey, Lars. And of course, naysayers go first. Send emails to talk at Larslarsan.com. Vote in our poll on X at Lars Larson Show on X on my website at Lars Larson.com. My guest is Michelle Berenfeld, who teaches school. And I hope she's teaching her students something valuable because so many kids are coming out of college these days. And then wondering... What do I do with this degree? She is the author most recently of lessons from a lost republic, what ancient Rome can teach us about this American moment. We're just talking in the previous segment about the strength of the executive. The founders of the United States, you know, they did draw a lot of their inspiration from Rome, but they tried to design an executive that was, by design, very, I guess, very unpowerful. I mean, we teach kids that there are three co-equal branches of government. You've got the judiciary. the legislative and the executive, except the executive was supposed to be fairly weak. The executive can't spend money without the Congress saying yes. In fact, we're finding out from the courts he can't refuse to spend money either. He can start a war. He can act as commander-in-chief, but now you've got the War Powers Act, whether that's constitutional or not, that proposes to constrain the president, but it was supposed to be a weak executive. Why is it becoming a stronger office today? Well, in my opinion, it's because Congress is letting it happen. And the Roman senators did this too. And to your point from the earlier segment, that senators, nowadays, seem to want to hold on to their office more than anything else, senators and representatives. In ancient Rome, that happened too. People decided that it was worth the trade somehow to hold on to their status and their bodyguards and their wealth in order to... just keep their togos, so to speak, rather than actually defending the republic. But it was a losing game because ultimately, yes, senators may have been more powerful and more filled with status than regular Romans. They always had been. But ultimately, they just become courtiers to a king. And that's what I do not want to happen in this country. Because no matter who is in office now, the next guy, if he has undue powers. What if you don't like him? Even if he is from your party, he may not be the same, you know, someone you want to support as wholeheartedly. And it's important to have those institutions to check him. I'm talking to Michelle Barronfeld. She's the author of Lessons from a Lost Republic. So do you need to make changes to the actual design of the system?

Do you need to put some limits in place? People constantly talk about term limits and things like that, which I'm not sure would actually work and do what they wanted to do, although I've kind of come around on term limits a bit, although my concern is if you put term limits and you may just strengthen the bureaucracy while you weaken the Congress, which I don't think is the goal. So do we need to make structural changes to the way the government works or just have a change in our philosophy as citizens about what we're willing to tolerate on Capitol Hill? I think that we, like the ancient Romans, need to take a moment and recognize the crises that have faced us and the emergency measures that we have taken to deal with them. And instead of just saying, few, that crisis is over and, quote unquote, get back to normal, recognize that normal has been shifting over generations. And that's one of the good things about looking to the distant past because you get a perspective that you don't get in your own lifetime. And consider what has changed. and what has not, what we like and what we don't, and actually give our representatives and ourselves the chance to discuss what we really want, rather than just yelling at each other. That's what we need to do, in my opinion. And how do we manage to hang on to a republic and not let it turn into an empire? I know that, you know, on the political left, and I don't know where you are, Professor Barron Feld, but I'm on the right. But on the left, they're constantly accusing America being a colonial power. I don't really think it meets the definition, but are we in danger of going from being a republic to being an empire? And if so, what's the evidence that we're an empire? Well, it's funny you should put it that way because, of course, the Roman Republic was also an empire. And that was part of its struggle, is that most of its imperial expansion happened during the Republic. But part of what happened to the republic and turned it into what we call the empire, but really is the transition into monarchy, is that they couldn't handle that tension between being an empire abroad and a republic at home. So men who went out, went out from Rome to fight wars, while on the battlefield, they had enormous power. They could do whatever they want. They became... which they were beholden to no one. But then when they came home, they had to put down their swords and put on their toga and raise their hand in the Senate. And that was very difficult. And so nowadays, we have a situation where there are some people in our country, CEOs of giant corporations that control communities that are larger than many countries who have fortunes beyond the imagination of almost anyone. they too struggle at the constraints of citizenship, you know? And so what I'm hoping is that we can recognize that we need to think about the power of our government and our institutions rather than individual men to protect our republic. Whether we are an empire abroad or not.

Oh, okay. You kind of stopped there abruptly. I'm surprised whether we're an empire or not. Okay, and then what? I'm talking to Michelle Berenfeld who's a professor. She's a Rome Prize winner and a professor of classics at Pittsburgh at Pitzer College. And lessons from a lost republic is her most recent book. Any immediate suggestions if you had a list of things you could change or do to make sure that we don't slide down the hill, you know, into dissolution the way that Rome did, what would you prescribe for the United States of America? The first thing is to exercise your rights as a citizen and vote. And then not to just be satisfied when your party or the other party gets, wins Congress and say, okay, we're back to normal, but to actually continue to be an engaged citizen and think about what you want from your representatives. It's important to remember that the slide of the Roman Republic into autocracy was not inevitable and neither is ours. But it also is not impossible. There is no political system in the history of the world that lasted forever. And so just assuming that ours is going to continue along without our stewardship is misguided, and we all owe it to ourselves to protect it for everyone. Are we at this point at 250 years, are we the longest lasting republic? Well, the Romans lasted almost twice as long as before they fell into autocracy. So we've got a long way to go, don't we? Yeah, we're not breaking any records yet. But in the modern era, yes. Her latest book is called Lessons from a Lost Republic, what ancient Rome can teach us about this American moment. She is Professor Michelle Berenfeld at Pitzer College. Professor, it's a pleasure to have you on the program. Thanks very much. Thank you so much. It's my pleasure. You bet. We'll be back in just a moment. I'll get to your phone calls and emails at 866. Hey, Lars. And you're listening to The Lars Larson Show. The Rars Larson Show.

Portland's news. Interviews, podcasts, local and national news. Get it all at larsson.com. Now. Back to the Lars Larson Show. You're listening to the best of the Lars Larson Show. Welcome back to the program. It's a pleasure to be with you, and I'm glad to take your phone calls and emails in a moment. Before we do that, I want to talk to our friend Aaron Mesh, who's managing at her at Well, I'm at Week. You can find the stories at wweek.com, also the stories of the Oregon Journalism Project, and I tend to think well of that. Aaron, welcome back to the program. Good to be here. Hey, I wanted to give you a piece of inside baseball. You know, about a quarter century ago, they decided I had a face for radio and I've basically booted out of television. Not really. I didn't get fired or anything like that. But now they put me back on TV. Now, how do you think that's going to work out? I think it'll be great. I mean, as somebody who myself has a face for radio and a voice for newsprint, I think you'll do better than I would. I don't know, you know, but KRCW said, hey, we'd like to put you on for two hours a day. I said, okay, does that mean I have to comb my hair and brush my teeth and all? And it turns out I do. So I've been doing that. And we've been doing it for the last couple of weeks. It's kind of fun because people say, wow. I was surfing and I found you on TV. Whoa. And it's kind of scary. But in any case, I want to ask you about this. The city of Portland, one of the major aspects of the city, is that you've got a river that runs north, the Willamon, which is kind of rare. People may not know that, but most rivers in America run south. And then it joins in with one of the biggest rivers in America, the Columbia River. And Portland sits right at the intersection of those, and yet it is kind of a neglected asset, as you point out in the most recent story in W Week. It is. You know, when I was growing up in Florida, they said that the only two rivers that ran north were the Nile and the St. John's River in Florida. But I don't think that's quite true, because the Willam, while it runs northwest, certainly runs north. And at any rate, that's not germane to this story, which talks about how... Yeah, it's a little fun fact. You're like my friends in high school used to say I was a veritable fountain of useless trivia, and I think that probably applies to you as well. Oh, very much so, very much so. At any rate, so we have this river. It's a gorgeous natural resource. It runs through the Portland Harbor, which, as you know, is a superfund site because of the amount of industrial pollution that happened, mostly north of the Fremont Bridge. So we're talking about in the areas between...

between the Overlooked Neighborhood, University of Portland, and where it converges with the Columbia. And then in the downtown area, you have a lot of freeway overpasses that run next to it, and Tom McCall Waterfront Park, which is a lovely park, but kind of separates you from the water by this large seawall. And people in recent years have begun to ask the question of, like, is there a way that we could take this natural resource and turn it into more of a destination? If you look at places, like the obvious example of a riverfront that everyone flocks to is in San Antonio, where the Blazers were last night. The riverwalk down in San Antonio. I've been down the riverwalk. It's a beautiful place. Lots of business. It's lovely. You know, Austin, Texas has a decent little one, too. Like, there are a lot of cities in the U.S. that have river walks that are much nicer than ours. And so there are people who are asking, if we are really Portland, then why aren't we more closely connected to this resource? What's the answer? I mean, is it lack of money? That's usually what government blames it on, but there should be. I never blame things on lack of money, as you know, Lars. I tend to think that things are lack of vision or lack of... Will is the wrong word, but lack of the people with the, with the curriculum to make things happen, right? Like, um, And I do think it's been a long time. I honestly think the last mayor who had like any sense of building things was Vera Katz. And whether you like Vera or not, and there's plenty of reasons to be a skeptic of Vera Katz. She certainly had ideas about making things. And I think it's been a long time since we've had that. But we examined this week eight different pitches that are currently in the works and tried to evaluate how many of them were serious and how many of them were separated from reality by large gaps in either funding or leadership. And they scale differently. I mean, the Frog Ferry seems like my favorite example. I want to get the people on. They propose to bring people by boat, a high-speed boat. But even still, it seems like a terrible... I mean, they're trying to front it as mass transit, and it's neither mass nor very quick transit. But, you know, I guess I think you talk... If they talk a private entity into funding it, that'd be fine. But they always seem to want to have the taxpayers funded. No, they want public funding for that. And I will tell you that...

While Andrew Schwartz, who wrote about Frog Ferry this week, sees some potential in it, I remain a deep skeptic of the Frog Ferry Proposition. I say that as someone who's actually a big fan of fairies. I think the ferry in Seattle is wonderful. I think that you can look at New York's Ferry and see real use in it. I don't think that fairies are a bad mode of transit. I don't know that our river is a particularly good match. for that form of transit. No, it's not because, Aaron, you might remember Tina and I lived on a floating home on the Columbia River. And our route, when we would take a boat, occasionally, and we did it very occasionally. Because you say, it's only 13 miles. And say, yeah, and it takes a better part of an hour to do that, even at fairly good speed. And it burns up a lot of gasoline and everything else. So we didn't do it. We'd do it for fun, you know, for friends, but not very often. And so when they say, well, we're going to have a ferry, and it's going to hold 100 people. And it's going to run all the way to downtown Portland, all the way back to Vancouver. And the round trip, minimum. is going to take about an hour and a half. And we're going to carry massive amounts of people. I say somehow the math on that just never added up for me. Well, right. It's a long commute. I think that, like, you would have to persuade me that there are a lot of people in St. John's who are looking to get... to the Central East Side or the Orr or Tom McCall Waterfront Park for work every day. I don't know that I see a market for that, really? No. It does feel to me more like it would be a tourist boat. No, it'd be entertainment. Now, Aaron, can I ask you? But like. Well, I haven't had a chance to read the whole story yet, but I pitched this last week, the idea of Ross Island being fixed up. I said, make it a commercial location, have restaurants and bars and all the other things that you have there. It seems like a perfect use of it. I'm afraid that what downtown Portland, especially the woke folks, are going to say, is, oh, no, it has to stay all natural. I'm like, well, okay, it's not going to draw that many people. I'm very confident that the environmental lab, because we'll want that. But you know what I would like for it? And this is not that far from you. We haven't had a really good amusement park in the city in an awful long time. Yeah, move Oaks Park over to Ross Island. You know, like so many cities in the U.S. have really fun amusement parks. Have you ever been to Kenny Wood up in Pittsburgh? That is just the most, like, oh, what a wonderful place that is. Like a little amusement park near the confluence of the Three Rivers, just like. Such a fun place to take the family on a Saturday. For a much shorter trip, Aaron, go to Silverwood in northern Idaho. It's like Disneyland with all the woke DEI crap to go with it. That's Aaron Mesh, the managing editor. And Will I'm going to find the stories at www.com.

It is a small business owner. If you're surrounded by Northwest Liberals, I can't stand these morons any longer. If you don't come with me as instant, I shall run amok. Come to the place where common sense prevails, the Lars Larson Show. You're listening to The Best of the Lars Licin Show. Welcome back to the program on Conspiracy Theory Thursday. Here's one for you, and I want Representative Helfrich to talk about this. Jeff represents Oregon's 52nd district. Should Oregon get more tax dollars, especially federal tax dollars, when it can't account for the ones it already has? And I also want to ask Representative Helfrich about the port of entry cameras that are being run by ODOD because I thought that you and Shelley Bossar Davis raised a good question the other day. What is ODOT doing with all that data? Since we've got all this concern about cameras and how they affect illegal aliens, are we concerned about how we have cameras that are keeping an eye on actual citizens in the United States. Representative Helfridge, welcome back to the program. Lars, great to be down. I really appreciate the opportunity to speak to you and your viewers. You're absolutely right. ODOT is collecting information, and they sidesteped a couple of questions in an email that I asked them about. And it was, where's the data store? How do they get a hold of the data? But one of the biggest things that stood out to me when their email came back to me was they admitted in writing that Oregon trucks, they keep that data for 39 months. Out of state trucks is five days, bypass cameras or 30 days. But let's think about them keeping data on Oregon businesses, their trucks, and mapping the system, mapping where they're at, mapping what they're doing. To me, that's a big question. It got a double standard when they celebrated. the automated license plate reader to 30 days for law enforcement, but yet we've got ODOT who can't manage their own budget right now, and they're going sideways, and yet we're trusting them with that kind of data. Well, are they only gathering data on commercials, or does it inadvertently or incidentally gather data on average people in their passenger cars? It says that it's their email to me says that they're only capturing data on commercial vehicles and that is they're coming in and the license plates, it doesn't see their faces and they have a side view camera. They talked about where it's looking for the US ODOT numbers on there too. I'm suspect of that. Those cameras are good. I've seen them working in person. So they say they're not until it is, but they sized up another question. And now I talked about the retention. They said, well, it's up to the. department of administrative services staff they kept referring to them and they they did a pretty good job of bureaucracy sidestepping there which is unfortunate i mean so so odat says we have the cameras but we let another agency basically the paperclip and and real estate agency decide how long we keep the data does that add up to you at all Yes and no. They want to they can have their internal policy, but they have to go by what Department of Administrative Services says. And I'm not buying that as much, but they are the gatekeepers for all the information, and that's how the centralized government really works in Oregon. Okay, and about ODOT not being able to manage its own budget. I mean, is there any sign that now that I guess they're due to get some money unless the voters, which I expect the voters to kill it in May, what's ODOT's plan?

after voters killed the new tax in May and they're not going to get the money because they originally thought they were going to get the money from the legislature passing it starting in January. Now I guess they think they're going to get it after mid-May when the voters somehow miraculously are going to support the tax and not voted out of existence. Does ODOT even have a plan for that? The governor had a plan, and it was in one of the budget bills that they can keep funding them until the next biennium without a bunch of losses for layoffs, but they did the reductions in full-time FTE people and those type of things. So they were able to find the cuts that they needed to do. And, you know, we had a pretty mild winner, too, so a lot of that money is sitting there available to help pay those paychecks, those workers that need to get paid. And so they... They, for some reason, they were able not to have to lay anybody off, but yet they were still able to keep functioning. Okay, and they're still going to go ahead and build a bridge over the Columbia River that has gone up, depending on whose numbers you believe, anywhere up to $10 billion in increase, and they have absolutely no idea where they're going to get the money, but they're still going to go ahead with construction? Right. That's the other part of this. It's crazy is you've got a billion dollars already bonded for this bridge on the Oregon side, and then waiting for Washington. Let's be really clear about this, Lars. This is not a bridge. We're building a bridge. We're building an infrastructure up and down I-5, and it's being guised as the bridge. If you were to build the bridge, that number would be a lot smaller, but they want to have on-ramp, on-ramps, off-ramps. Hayden Island wants to have their own special little ramp. All these community members got together and said, well, if the government's paying for this, this is what we want to have this big, beautiful bridge. Well, do we just, what do we need for a bridge? Because you're not creating any more lanes. You're making actually smaller, and you put the light rail on it, which... the other side of the river doesn't want. So they're adding all these giving on there, these little niceties. But if we just need to build a bridge, we can do that with a lot less price tag. Well, in fact, Representative Halfridge, let me challenge you on one thing. Not just the other side of the river, I live on the other side of the river, but the last time voters were allowed to vote on light rail in Oregon. Wasn't the vote? No. Correct. Okay, and they haven't been allowed to vote on it since. And you get colossal, I mean, Representative Halfridge, I mean, I know that there are people who just think I'm crazy. But when I look at TriMET saying, we're going to build a light rail line to Wallet and they're tired, wherever they decide to end it because they haven't figured that out yet. And it's $3 billion. And we're going to build a high-speed bus system that does the same damn thing over a different piece of real estate, not far away. And that one is 5% of the $3 billion. And you say, well, why don't you build more of the high-speed buses? You can move those around and stop with the light rail. And it doesn't make sense to anybody with common sense, and yet Trimit goes ahead with it, ODOT goes ahead with it, and now the bridge is going to go ahead with it.

You're absolutely right, Lars. It is light rail is going to be the answer, the east-west, north-south, down to Clackamas Town Center. ODOT's even in the stages of going from Coley Boulevard all the way down to the Clackamas Town Center on 82nd Avenue, the highway, and they're going to make it restricted down to one lane each side for vehicle traffic, and they're going to add high-speed bus lanes in there. That, to me, does not make sense because you're going to affect a lot of those businesses. And I thought the light rail system to Clackamas Town Center was the answer to help alleviate that for people to get down there. Yes, not because everybody wants to be on a bus. And if you look at buses, nobody's paying the tax on those buses to tear those roads up. The amount of vehicle, the amount of weight those buses have is incredible on the strain on the asphalt. But on top of that, these new buses they ordered are longer than what they can have in the actual stations themselves in their repair stations. So they have to go shorter buses that aren't as efficient. So it just... It really is confusing to me why we continue to pay into a system Metro does for these buses that people, not a lot of people are riding. No, and in fact, if you look at the numbers, I know John Charles at Cascade Policy has looked at them. Trimette and ridership on all forms of transit has been declining for more than 10 years. I would even argue the numbers look like it's been declining for 20 years. So you have a declining ridership. even at a time where gas prices and licensing and everything else are higher, but you have a declining ridership. And Trimet seems like the kind of dinosaur that needs to be put out of its misery, at least economically put out of its misery. That is, Representative Helfridge, Representative Helfridge, thanks so much. I appreciate the time, and I appreciate him coming on on short notice. You're listening to the best of the Lars Larson Show. The Lars Larson Show. FM News 101 Shop the Sherwin-Williams sale and get 30% off, Duration, Superdeck, and Woodscapes products August 14th through the 24th. Whether you're refreshing your interior or exterior, we've got the colors to bring your vision to life. And with delivery, getting everything to your door is easier than ever. Shop online to have it delivered or visit your neighborhood Sherwin-Williams store. Click the banner to learn more. Retail sales only, some exclusions apply. See Store for Details. Delivery available on qualifying orders. We want it. FM News 101. KXL is Portland's number one source for news and information. KXL FM, Portland, Vancouver, Salem. ABC News, I'm Michelle Franzen. News signs the war with Iran is taking a toll on U.S. service members at sea. Families and loved ones of sailors aboard the USS Abraham Lincoln raising concerns over reports of poor conditions and dwindling supplies. Family members telling military times some sailors have tried to jump overboard. The Navy in a statement to ABC News. denying the reports of suicide attempts, but says they're working to address the issue of supplies. ABC's Louis Martinez has more. I spoke with another official who did confirm that, yes, there was one sailor who was reported overboard last month and was quickly recovered at sea. But that incident is under investigation right now to determine intent. We also have learned from that official that re-enlistment, which would be an indicator of morale aboard the ship, is up in recent months.

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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. And now, he is an existential threat to democracy. Here's your host. Quiet, please. Lars Larson. You're listening to the best of the Lars Larson Show. Welcome back to the Lars Larson show. I've been looking forward to talking to our friend Brian Haywood. I have to say, I've not met Brian in person, but he's the guy who has produced most valuable initiative petitions. put in front of Washington state voters over the last several years. And he's been a driving force against some of the bad things that are happening in Washington. And he calls in early as a guest. So Mr. Haywood, welcome back. Thank you, sir. It's good to meet you. I'm always glad because sometimes guests call into the last 10 seconds and it scares the daylights out of everybody, including my producers. I want to know, are Washington lawmakers finally admitting that high taxes are driving all the successful wealth creators out of the state of Washington? Well, it certainly seems like it's coming out of one side of their mouth, while at the other side they're about the same. I mean, because you've got both the so-called millionaire tax. It was a billionaire tax. Now it's a millionaire tax. I expect it's going to be 100,000 air tax in not too long. Am I wrong in assuming that that's the direction they're going? Well, it's clear. They've already admitted it. I mean, Jamie Peterson is the poster child on this one with his... Let's go back to that. They voted for one of the initiatives that you just mentioned. We had an initiative to make it illegal to do any kind of income tax here in the state at a state, county, or city level. And a huge majority of the legislature voted for it in 2024. And then Jamie Peterson came out and said, well, don't put too much stock in that. It's a pie cress promise, like Mary Poppin said, easily made, easily broken. So one, he's already said, we're going to do that. We're going to break it. And then you heard Larry Springer maybe my representative up in Redmond area said, well, yeah, you shouldn't trust them. Of course they're going to bring it down to everybody else. Because they're going to drive all the... I mean, I've made the point to my audience. For most people, pulling up stakes and moving your entire family out of the state to somewhere else is almost economically impossible for people. Or very, very difficult. But for people with money, they can easily relocate. And an awful lot of the name brand folks, people like Jeff Bezos and Bill Gates and others, have said, no, we're out of here. And in fact, I just noticed that Mark Zuckerberg just... or is leaving California for Florida probably driven by some of the same incentives.

Yeah, he wants to be close to Jeff Bezos' mom, I think. He's going. Oh, you guys operate in a whole different sphere than I do. And then you've got the death tax, the death tax that they want to have, right? Literally the killer, right? Literally the killer. I think that one, that one's actually kind of funny on two ways, because one, you had Mr. Nick Hennauer, who... Oh, hold on, Brian, Brian. You asserted something about Hanauer. I want to know, is it true that Hanauer who keeps pushing high taxes in the state of Washington isn't really a Washington resident? So I don't know if he's moved yet. He's been out there and his people have denied it. But I have seen, with my own eyes, visual evidence, that he changed his status at the Seattle Tennis Club to non-resident member. And the reason that's really important, the reason that that is something to pay attention to is that those who saw what happened in California realized that the state of California would go after anybody. If they had a club membership in the state, if they used to barber in the state, whatever, California would go after them. So one of the first things you have to do is begin to establish that you're not a residence here. And there's several clubs in Washington State in Seattle that cater to this sort of Uber wealthy. who have created this non-resident status that their members can still be a member, but pay a different fee and not be actually a local. So I know that's true. I don't know if he's moved yet, but he's certainly in the process of it. And you've got two years to make it happen if this income tax bill gets passed. Because if you don't do it in those two years and the tax passes, then the state of Washington is going to try and claw your money back, even if you've already physically escaped the state. Right? That's right. That's right. And you put it all together. I mean, the capital gains tax, the income tax, and then the death tax that you were talking about, 35%. Oh, and which they're now sneakily going, oh, hey, hey, hey, we're going to push that back down to 20%. Because, as you were saying earlier, they realize so many people are moving out that income is, the revenue is actually going down because they made the tax rate so high. So they're lowering that. And I think there's a whole number of the topic that I think that's really Microsoft cut a deal, Brad Smith cut a deal, that sort of screws the rest of us here, which is not cool. What kind of deal did he cut, the cut to avoid that for his own personal purposes? I think there was a combination of things that were happening. I actually think was dumb. I think the Democrats were going to do it anyway because they were in trouble. But I think they did. First, they said, we're going to do a statewide payroll tax, and that hits Microsoft hard. And then they said, so they sort of make this threat. And there was a movement among the business communities to try to fight the thing. And I think that what happened is they got the...

The statewide payroll tax got eliminated. It's no longer a threat to them, suddenly, miraculously. They also got a big, in this income tax, there's a big B&O tax that they're paying right now, which will get expired early in 2008 rather than 2029. And it'll probably be, the estimates are, within the own words of the legislature, about $800 million in savings to the big, big, super huge corporations. So while they're taxing rich people, they're giving big rich corporations a huge tax cut. And then the third thing was moving the death tax from 35% back down to 20%. All this happened. It's very sneaky, you know, very short amount of time without any discretion. The bill's just got introduced. It just suddenly happened. And then suddenly you don't hear anything from the big guys. And that's the un... unspoken secret or maybe it's spoken secret in olympia from what i've heard is that this deal is cut so they're doing all this do they realize they're destroying the business community and that that's going to destroy the jobs and at that point game over i think they've got escape plans and and when you say they're talking about olympia olympia and specifically democrats in olympia I'm not sure if they care. I don't, I mean, I get, I get messages all the time to say, you know, go back where you came from, leave. We don't need you here anymore. They're, they, I think they want to push people out that might be able to fight them is what it feels like. But so they push out support and then they've. I don't like care. I think, I don't think, it seems like it's not about the money. It's about the power. It's about the control. It's what it really looks like to me. Wow, that's a real kind of sickness. Brian, thank you very much. That's Brian Haywood. He's the founder of Let's Go Washington. And when you talk about putting your money where your mouth is, yeah, he's put millions of dollars of his own money into things that fight for the rights of parents, fight for the rights of children, fight for the rights of ordinary taxpayers. And I think you should take his warning seriously. They're going to push the wealthiest people out of the state. They're going to impose taxes. And when Olympia decides, we can't get enough from those who make over a million dollars a year. You know the next group they come after? Everybody else. And they'll want it to impose an income tax, whether you like it or not. Back in a moment. You're listening to the best of the large license show.

Automotive shopped. Oh, taxes. What's your Robin Hood? So you think you're overtax? Overtax, overworked and paid off of a knife, a club or a rope. Are you speaking treason? Fluently. This is the Lars Larson Show. You're listening to The Best of The Lars Larson Show. Welcome back to the Lars Larson Show. It's a pleasure to be with you on the Radio Northwest Network. And one of the biggest boondoggles that we've been tracking literally for decades on this program is the new bridge over the Columbia River on Interstate 5. And then we saw yesterday the governors of Oregon and Washington come together, I guess it was today, and they recommitted themselves to a project that they know they don't have them. money to do. So I thought we got our favorite state representative on. I'm probably going to make Jim Walsh mad, but I'll say it's John Lee, who is Washington State Representative, District 18, position two. Representative Lee, welcome back. Hey, Lars. Thanks to be here. And as you said, they don't have enough money, even with all the nice sales pitch they talked about today. No, and in fact, they have some federal money committed, which is going to evaporate here pretty soon, isn't it? Yeah, and it'll be interesting to see how they pull this out. But a little addition, I watched the press conference and conspicuously absent was Governor Tina Kotek. So it was Bob Ferguson, it was people from ODOT and WashDOT. It was the transit agencies, the mayor of Vancouver. And bottom line, they are now going to quote unquote phase this project. And the first phase, they said, was $7.65 billion. And then when they find the money, they'll talk about phase two. And of course, phase one is building a new bridge and putting light rail on it. And of course, as you and I have talked about many, many times, the whole purpose of this project is to build a light rail platform to bring light rail into Clark County that very few people in Clark County want. And by the way, explain to my audience why they've decided to phase it, because when it was one big project just a couple of months ago, they were saying it's going to cost between $13 and $17 or $18 billion. Is that the reason they've said, oh, this is just phase one. We'll get to two and three and four later on. Yeah, and so phase one, 7.65 billion, allegedly, and then what they didn't even address during the governor's press conference, but as we speak, the executive steering group is meeting, and as part of that presentation, they reveal that the total cost, allegedly, is $14.4 billion.

And that is delivered at the 70th percentile of theoretically being accurate and able to deliver it. which, of course, if they ran it to the 100% or 90%, you're back to the $17,18 billion number. Okay, and they're saying that they will be hiring a contractor next year to start a project that's going to cost the better part of $8 billion, and they have $5 billion in hand right now, right? Yes, and so construction is now delayed for two years. Construction will start in 2028. They'll hire the contractor next year. The alleged plan is about $5.9 billion to build the bridge and to put the light rail components on that bridge. But they are $450 million short of being able to pay for that $5.9 billion. And, of course, then they add the fluff of cost overruns and stuff to go from the $5.9 to the $7.65 billion. But bottom line is construction two years delayed. That's good for the people that are going to have to deal with that. The other good part of that is that the pre-construction tolling will not start until 2028. So there's another rabbit hole for us to run down there. But that means they'll start tolling for a bridge that isn't going to be finished for how long, roughly? And so they're saying six to seven years in construction once they start, so theoretically 2036. And the total timeline remains 20 years. If they can find the money, which most likely will mean they will increase the amount they borrow paid back by tolling. And Oregon and Washington are both broke when it comes to being able to borrow more money from Wall Street, paid back by bonds and additional gas tax and car tab fees, etc. And so they don't know where they're going to find that, but if they get this thing started, they hope they can build a deep enough hole that then you just have to keep pouring money into it. this project okay and and john what happens when because uh so far uh lately the voters have had a very good track record of putting things on the ballot and tolling is almost universally hated they hate it in seattle they hate the idea in portland what are they going to do when they've based all this bonded debt on paying it back from the tolling money and the voters say throw it on the ballot and vote the whole thing down And then you've got bonds that still have to be paid back, except the source of the payback has just ceased to exist. Yeah, and the short answer to that is if everything goes wrong for them, then the statewide taxpayers in both Oregon and Washington are going to have to cover those bonds.

which puts the financial problems on all of the people of both Oregon and Washington, and that's horrible. It shouldn't happen, let alone a different aspect of this reality is that Oregon had an impossible time trying to pass their $4.3 billion for a statewide transportation package here, and that's now on the ballot for Maine. And it's going to get shot down big time, isn't it? Yes. Exactly right. Exactly right. So that means Oregon's not going to have spare money for the inevitable cost overruns, let alone the shortage that is already admitted to on the IBR. And then Washington State, we've got an $8 billion obligation for funding our maintenance and preservation statewide. Unbelievable. I mean, all of this stuff is insane. I mean, they're going to base ODOT on a tax that's going to be voted down in May. Then they're going to have another tax vote in November that has due with $300 million from the Trump tax cuts. And then they've got tolling that they're hanging this project on that they almost know to a fair certainty is going to be voted down by the voters. They'll put it on the ballot and they'll kill the thing. But you'll still be hung with the bill at the end of the day, won't you? Yep, and we'll be stuck with a light rail project that carries almost nobody and an unbelievable IOU that people will be paying off for decades. They're literally the single most expensive light rail line on planet Earth at over $1 billion per mile to build this stupid thing, and probably almost no help coming from the federal government, and they shouldn't get any help. That is John Lee. He's state representative District 18. John, thanks very much. You're listening to the best of the Lars Larson Show. The Lars Larson Show. Portland's news, traffic. Portland's news traffic.

Dropping a Portland truth bomb. My favorite thing about living in Portland is no matter how many fentany all overdoses happen, no matter how many tents get set up, you can't blame black people for that. Back to Mars. Welcome back to the Lawrence Lawson show. I want you to imagine this. You know you have First Amendment rights. We talk about First Amendment rights on this program all the time. But can the government come to you and say if you've decided to tell a young lady who's decided to take an abortion bill, you know, there's a way to reverse that. And do you know there's a way to say for that? The government come in and silence your free speech when it comes to something like that. Well, we're going to talk about the New York Attorney General, and that's Letitia James. I mean, there are a lot of reasons not to like Letitia James. Jessica Proll Smith joins me now from Heartbeat International. Jessica, welcome back to the program. What is Letitia James trying to do to use, I guess, the government's power to silence people so they can't speak out and maybe save an unborn life? Well, thanks so much for having me, Lars. Yes, I'm afraid it's true. The Attorney General poses as a voice for the weak and powerless, but she's chosen to use her position as Attorney General to try to silence pregnancy centers and heartbeat because we share the good news about abortion pill reversal. She has launched a legal assault on us, and she's claiming that our centers supposedly engage in false advertising. deceiving women by sharing the scientific findings supporting the safety and efficacy of APR. So she appears interested in shutting down conversations and opportunities for women to have a second chance at choice, simply because she doesn't like that choice. And by the way, the reference you made to APR is abortion pill reversal because Whether people know it or not, abortions used to be primarily done in clinics as a physical operation these days. Almost two-thirds of them nationwide are done using pills, oftentimes in a young lady's house, sometimes without or even physically seeing a doctor. But she should have the right to know or you should have the right to tell her if you choose to. You could reverse that bill. You could change what's happened or what you think. already done, you can unring the bell and save the life of that child. And Letitia James says telling her that, that Letitia James of the state of New York has the authority to tell you you can't do that? It appears that's what she's trying to do. And for those who don't know, abortion pill reversal is a safe and effective way for a woman to improve the odds of continuing her pregnancy to term after she's ingested Miphyprisone. So the first pill in that abortion drug regimen. That drug, Mephypriston, is designed to block progesterone from the growing baby, so it's cutting off the food source.

But within the first 24, possibly to 72 hours, there's still a window of opportunity where progesterone, a medical professional can prescribe progesterone and can improve the odds that that baby survives and that pregnancy comes to term. And moms are looking for us. They are desperate for this information. So they are looking for us. rather than us selling a product or doing anything of that sort. I'm talking to Jessica Prol Smith, who's with Heartbeat International, because isn't there already a U.S. Supreme Court decision that says things like counseling decisions, no matter which direction you're counseling a young lady, but counseling decisions are protected free speech? Well, Child v. Salazar, I think it's the case that you're mentioning. And we got some great news from the Supreme Court just at the end of last month. That particular court case talked about a counselor in Colorado. The issues were slightly different. But the Supreme Court came down in a resounding eight to one decision indicating, saying many good things. I won't bore you with all of them. But they're just gems there. Medical consensus they write. is not static, it evolves, and always has. And they also noted they kind of closed their argument. Colorado may regard its policy as essential to public health and safety. Certainly, censorious governments throughout history have believed the same, but the First Amendment stands as a shield against any effort to enforce orthodoxy in thought or speech in this country. So we're optimistic that that principle applies to our situation as well. Okay, and in that case, we did talk about that case in the way it dealt with counseling and that sort of thing. But in the case of James, she's got a lawsuit going that is basically a slap suit, a what is that, strategic litigation against public participation, a way to target speech she doesn't like, and say if you talk in a way I don't like, the state of New York will bring a lawsuit against you? That appears to be the case. Our attorneys have made that argument in court. So we were in court earlier this week, Wednesday, the 15th. And the judge indicated that his decision on our question there is whether or not that statute actually applies to the attorney general or not. And our attorneys argue that it is. The tool applies because certainly you have a powerful interest targeting a smaller organization based on disfavored speech or speech she doesn't approve of. Why are they so anxious to prove that they have a right to silence anybody who would talk a young lady out of getting an abortion, out of taking the pill, or maybe even to reverse the pill? Why do you suppose?

It's an excellent and telling question. We like to say we offer women a second chance at choice. And I think women find us in part because they have, many of them have instant regret after taking the first abortion pill. Some of them are coerced or forced by a boyfriend or partner. And so I think our provision of abortion pill reversal indicates that there might be a flaw in. the abortion, in the pro-abortion mindset, that this is a happy and painless choice. Many women do regret an abortion. It obviously ends an unborn child's precious life, but many women are also harmed as well. And so we're here to offer an opportunity for hope. and a possibility to continue to pregnancy and meet that precious child. Well, and Jessica, it's one of the reasons I've mentioned so many times on the show. The mechanism by which that drug works, the one you mentioned, Miffra Presto, is by starving the baby. And I just ask people, if you think about that for a moment, I mean, it's horrific either way or any way you've decided to bring about an abortion, you know, whether it's surgical, whether it's a vacuum, you know, it's DNC, whatever it is. But the idea of saying we're going to take this baby, which is a baby, and starve it, and we're going to starve it so that it dies of starvation, and then we'll take another pill and cause the body to expel it, I would think that most people would be horrified by that. Even people who consider themselves very, very pro-abortion or so-called pro-choice would say, no, no, that's too horrific. I don't want to be involved in that. And I want those young ladies to have the opportunity to go out and reverse that through an abortion pill reversal. Jessica, thank you very much. That is Jessica Pearl Smith, who is with Heartbeat International. And I'll tell you what, I'd be glad to take a naysayer on that as well. Do you think that if a young lady is told you can reverse this, that the state of New York or any state in America is free to say no? We're going to silence you. You have no right to say those words and try to talk her out of it. Does your First Amendment freedom go that far? You're listening to the Lars Larsson Show and the Radio Northwest Network. Owners, did you know you could...

something to say give Lars a call at 866 hey Lars that's 866 hey Lars now back to the Lars Larson show You're listening to the best of the Lars Larsson show. Welcome back to the Lars Larsson show. It's a pleasure to be with you. Welcome to First Amendment Friday. On First Amendment Friday, everything is fair game. We open up the phone lines and you can comment on anything. Now, I want to put this in front of you. Washington State has just passed a law and it's been signed by Governor Bob Ferguson that allows changes to official records involving sex. and whether or not somebody is identified as male or female, or I guess if they call it non-binary, neither. And I thought we'd ask our friend, Representative Jim Walsh, about this. State Representative for Washington's 19th Legislative District, Representative Walsh, this sounds like they're going to destroy public records by not letting you find out whether somebody is even a man or a woman. Yeah, it's a really dumb bill, now law, Lars. It's bad. It continues a pattern we've seen with the left in Washington State weaponizing the state's Department of Health. That's the agency that would do this. And yeah, what the bill says and now law is they can change. medical records, health care records of individuals, state government-run health care records with regard to their sex, to their gender identity. And it's not just a going forward thing. It's not that getting a new driver's license or a new document they can change their gender, they can go back. and change old records, you know, true health records, and reverse them, and change the sex identity, gender of an individual on a record of birth certificate or other older records. And that's very dangerous, in my opinion. I mean, it may not seem as bad as the state income tax and a pension rate and other issues that get more attention. But this is bad. I mean, it allows... a state bureaucratic agency to be weaponized and basically lie, go back and say things that aren't true and weren't true in the past. Well, let me ask you this, Representative Walsh, I mean, this may seem like a dumb question. But if somebody, because we know there are plenty of people who now call themselves women, but they are still biologically men. And, of course, nothing's going to change their DNA. That's going to stay. But even if they've had the surgery and the hormones and everything else. But does this allow you to go in and make changes and say, I want this official state record to reflect that I'm now female, even if you haven't had the changes made? That's correct. So it is, I mean, it's kind of like George Orwell stuff, Lars. I mean, it's the Ministry of Truth, not the Ministry of Health. Where war is peace and all that? Exactly. They're going back and saying things that are scientifically, factually false.

and putting it into a public record. And it's not like it's a mistake. They are intentionally going back and falsifying public records. And that is a bad precedent. It's a bad thing to do. Forget the details. People say, well, it's kind to these individuals, and it helps them with their self-image and their self-identity. Well, okay, maybe that's true. It's also false. And I take a great amount of umbrage of people who claim to be science-based and fact-based perpetuating this lie. I mean, this is codifying and bureaucratizing lies in public documents. Well, and let me ask you on a practical basis, you've got somebody who is a convicted sex offender. Now, I think most people would look at a male convicted sex offender and see far more hazard or threat in a male than a female. So the sex offender goes down and gets his gender change to female, then holds himself out as female, and he manages to effectively conceal himself from a lot of what's going on in the neighborhood. when it says, hey, this convicted sex vendor has moved into within a mile of your house, and I get those notifications. If they change it from male to female or vice versa, that may help to allow that person to camouflage what they're doing. And I can imagine illicit uses of that, but that's going to be allowed. And there's no limitation on how much people want to change from one to the other, is there? Correct. It really will make a mockery of the idea that the public documents are reliable. It just makes them clownish. People aren't going to be able to rely on public documents in the state of Washington. And that's very bad. And remember, a lot of these sex predators and sexual devious, they're sort of cunning. They're what law enforcement calls low cunning. They're manipulators. They see a system and they look for ways to take advantage of the system, whatever the system is. And this is one such system now that a predatory personality, a sociopath, can look for ways to manipulate. This is going to be an easy tool for manipulation of public documents. And allowing them to hide because your official driver's license and other documents are going to identify you as one way, even though that one way does not at all comport with the actual physical facts on the ground. Any reason did Ferguson even talk about whether or not he had questioned signing this thing? No, and when we debated it, it was pretty much by party. It was pretty much by party. It was very partisan as it went through the legislature. There were a couple, I think, of members on each side who voted against their group. But it was pretty much a party-line vote. And we did discuss it, both in committee and on the floor, that this was something that could be easily weaponized, it could be exploited, and it just debases the truth. And we opened up some of these issues you and I are discussing now, but the majority just...

ignored it and the governor's office hasn't acknowledged any of it. They're just trying to virtue signal this, but it's more dangerous than that. I think it has long-term repercussions with the reliability and trustworthiness of any state government document in Washington. And by the way, the legislation also says the state archives are not allowed to have any other documentation as to the fact that the changes have been made, which means there won't be any historical trace where you can say, well, somebody had this change from male to female or female to male way back then because the law actually says you have to keep all of that secret. It doesn't make any sense. Representative Walsh, thanks very much. I appreciate your time. the 19th Legislative District. I'd love to talk to the Democrats who actually signed this thing. I mean, Governor Bob Ferguson saying, anytime Washingtonians want to be able to change their sex designation on official state IDs and birth certificates, they can do it, and there's no question, and there will be no historical trace that the change has even been made. You're listening to the best of the Lars Larson Show.

The Lars Larson Show. FM News 101. We'll be on the air. is the Lars Larson Show. President Trump has one badass president. He's 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, Lars. He is an existential threat to democracy. Here's your host. Quiet, please. Lars Larson. You're listening to the best of 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. You know, I've got a concern, and that is that the... Anti-enforcement folks, the folks who oppose the idea of enforcing federal immigration laws, have taken this to such an extent that they're literally putting lives at risk. And we heard that directly from Charles Lloyd, who is the first assistant U.S. attorney in Seattle. He says this is the last straw. Ms. Floyd, welcome to the program. How are you, sir? Thank you for having me, Lars. I'm doing well. Thanks. I'm glad to have you on. And in any case, I use all three of your names because I don't want anybody to confuse with Charles Arthur Floyd, because I'm sure you've heard that from time to time as well. So we won't go there. But it did come to mind when I saw your name, and I thought, oh, there's three names. Tell me what you meant by the last straw when you were talking about the limitations that states like Washington State and Seattle had put on federal agent. The state of Washington for some time has been essentially trying to eliminate any effective immigration enforcement, and they've been cutting back on databases that we could access. And limiting our ability to actually be able to look at a license play, look at a driver's license. And for the most part, you know, it's all computer-based. So we've been able to find other workarounds. Really, you know, this goes back to about two months ago when I met with the governor, the mayor, and the attorney general here in Washington. And I asked him if there's any way that, you know, we could find some accord, some way we could work together, any compromise. to be able to do some immigration enforcement and not turn into the debacle that we saw in Minneapolis or something. And they basically told me no. They're not willing to cooperate in any measure. And certainly, and then they complained about the fact that the federal government wasn't honoring our agreements to not use the Washington state databases the way they want them to. And I didn't know what that meant at the time.

But then last week... Did they have something in writing that was an agreement you had made, Ms. Floyd? No, not that I'm aware of. I think it was one of these, you know, the contracts with these private entities that actually helped the computer searches and stuff like that. I'm not aware of any agreement that we made. But the bottom line is last week, they cut off access to a system that's called inlets. It's the national law enforcement. transcommunication system or something like that. So it basically, when we get a license plate and we want to run it to figure out who the registered owner of the vehicle was, which is something they use at the border to check people coming in. And that's what drew all the attention because now at the northern border, it's impaired our ability to actually see whether or not the person in the vehicle is the registered owner of the vehicle so we can clear them to come in. But even perhaps more disturbing and in the danger realm is that if, you know, a CBP officer is up at the northern border and they see a suspicious vehicle or a reported subject, you know, that's up there doing illegal activity, they want to stop the vehicle. They run the plate to figure out whether the guy's got any warrants, whether he's a danger, whether he's got, you know, anything that a national security threat. We don't know. And now our officers are in the position of oftentimes having to go up to a vehicle blind. or delay the stop for so long they can try and get other avenues to figure out whether or not the person is a danger. Did the governor and did the law enforcement in Washington State explain to you how you were supposed to sort this out and say, it's okay to use it and find out if there are warrants or wants or warrants on this person, but it's not okay to use it if the same database indicates the person is illegally in the United States so that somehow you're supposed to only use it selectively for the right kind of criminal offenses and not for the other criminal offenses, which include coming into the country illegally? So I met with the Governor's Office, the Attorney General's Office, yesterday, and they said that they admitted that they probably overshot when they shut down this pathway. So basically, a lot of the Department of Homeland Security search computers were routed through one source, one user account. And they got reports, and this is the way it happened. You know, under our tax dollars, the Center for Human Rights. under the University of Washington has been monitoring how these systems are used and who queries it. So when they see CBP or HSI or ERO ICE actually show up on the computer query, then they're notifying the governor and saying, hey, you need to shut down this account because they're using it for improper purposes. But they don't know how we're using it. They don't know why we stopped the vehicle. And, you know, Homeland Security Investigations is probably the leading entity in the country.

for child exploitation cases, drug trafficking. Um, so they're basically throwing the baby out with a bathwater because they don't really, the priority is to shut down immigration enforcement. And if it impacts other law enforcement, then that's just collateral damage. I'm talking to Charles Neil Floyd, who's the first assistant U.S. attorney. I mean, after all, we've had people try to come across on a ferry with a trunk full of explosive. That's happened. And you've got this summer some big events coming up in the Seattle area where you might expect that they would draw some nefarious attention from bad guys. And Seattle's so concerned about protecting illegal aliens specifically that they're willing to, as a collateral piece of this, to protect other kinds of criminals at the same time. Because is there any other way to see it? Then Seattle says it's so important to predict the illegal aliens who are illegally in our country that we have to protect other kinds of criminals, including, I guess, potentially terrorists. Well, I mean, I want to be fair. Yesterday, they said that they were willing to try and find alternative paths for us to be able to operate the border and the people, you know, looking at driver's license coming across the ferry. But what it, what has come down to, Lars, is that in order for me as the chief law enforcement officer for the Western District of Washington to enforce federal law, I have to go and ask and beg the state. Please, will you give me access to this so that we can use it for this limited purpose? And that's just not the way to conduct law enforcement. I mean, if we're all going to work together to try and commute the community safe, then why are we having to create alternative paths and beg for crumbs from their table so that we can satisfy the community organization groups or whoever's screaming about this immigration enforcement? And by the way, Ms. Floyd. You mentioned this outfit at UW. So this is a civilian non-law enforcement agency that's allowed to monitor computers that are only supposed to be law enforcement data. If they're all concerned about my information or your information, and they're allowing a non-law enforcement agency that has a political point of view to look at the use of this stuff? Does that sound legit? The state is giving far more access to these systems to community organizations, to actually the Canadians across the border still have access to the system, but federal law enforcement, not just in the state of Washington, but this is affecting Washington plates and driver's license nationwide. Federal law enforcement can't run a plate in Texas if it's a Washington plate. So they're allowing other people to have access to this, but federal law enforcement, they're greatly diminishing it when they're doing it for a stated purpose. Unbelievable. That is first assistant U.S. Attorney Charles Neal Floyd out of Seattle back in a moment. Sir, thank you very much. I so appreciate the time. You're listening to the best of the Lars Larson show.

Disagree with Lars? Great. Naysayers go first at 866. Hey, Lars. Now, back to the Lars Larson Show. You're listening to The Best of the Lars Larson Show. Welcome back to the Lars Larson Show. It's a pleasure to be with you on a Monday. Always glad to get your phone calls and emails. You know, one of the things that I've noticed that is a commonality between the state of Oregon and the state of Washington is that both states have representatives in their state capitals who are not necessarily representative of the people they claim to represent. They vote for things the public does not want. And then when the public says, we want to have a vote on this, if they can, the folks in high office, both the governor, secretary of state, other offices like that, and even members of the state legislature say, no. You're a citizen. You don't have a right to vote on that. Only we have a right to vote on that. So on that note, I thought we talked to Representative Dwayne Yunker, who joins me now. He represents District 3. That is the Grants Pass area. Representative Yonker, do you think voters should get a chance to have a say in whether or not their taxes go up? Well, of course, thank you on Lars. I think every time that there is a tax increase or decrease that, you know, taxpayers, you know, citizens should be able to vote towards this stuff. And government doesn't function without the taxpayers. No, because the taxpayers have to pay the bill, right? Yes, they're the bill pairs. You know, in Oregon, we don't have a revenue problem. We have a spending problem at $140 billion by annually that is approximately $138 something. But we are about $17 billion above inflation in the last 10 years. That means we have a spending problem, not a revenue problem. So, and yet every time there is some kind of question about whether or not taxes should go up, the special session passed that additional tax, all the tax and fee increases for ODOT. And then immediately the governor did everything she could to delay gathering of signatures. And then I think they thought they could beat it that way. And then when it went on the ballot for November, they said, no, we're going to move it to May because it'll be a lower turnout election and arguably will be easier to defeat. I have a feeling that Oregon voters, I'm not one of them, I'm a Washington state voter, but Oregon voters are going to slam dunk this thing so much so that it seems your Democrat colleagues have decided not to even come out and defend their massive tax increase, have they?

No, I think they've already known that they're going to get defeated, and this Senate Bill 1507 was their way around it. We'll let you have that, but we'll just go after the businesses, and that's why we filed the referendum on Thursday night. So how are you doing on gathering signatures, and are they going to be able to get this one on the ballot, and are your Democrat friends going to try any monkey business with this, the way Kotech and company did with the vote on the special session increase? Yeah, so we haven't got our sheets yet. We're supposed to have our signature sheets by the 15th, which is Wednesday. They have to be approved. The language, everything has to be, you know, approved by the Secretary of State. So we're hoping to be up and ready here this week. Hopefully by the end of the week. We already got, we're using the same tactic we used last time, the no tax. We have the same captains. We have the same people out there going to gather signatures. This is going to go after small businesses. We can look around in Josephine County where I'm at, unemployment rate is 7.1%. I want people to stay here. I love Oregon. I love my district. I grew up here. 43 years I've lived here. And taxpayers should be able to weigh in what they want, not want. And that's not what's happening in Oregon. So what do we need to do to get this message across? Because I thought years ago, the first time I saw the voters really slam dunk the legislature and go 100% the other direction. I thought, okay, they've gotten a knock-up side the head. Is there anything that will get the Democrats straightened around to where they actually pay attention to what the citizens want? Or they're just going to keep poking people in the eye saying we can get away with it. Nothing ever happens to us. And so we're not going to stop. Which one's it going to be? Yeah, I'm afraid I hope it doesn't. do what you said, but I think we're going to have to, you know, us citizens, you know, I'm a citizen here too, a voter. And we're going to have to, you know, govern by, if it's referendum, then that's what we'll do. We're going to over, over, you know, Trump the, um, the, um, the, um, Democratic party. Because this, this bill was passed by Democrats and the governor. It wasn't passed by Republicans. Republicans hated it. We're business friendly. We're supported by businesses. And I honestly, I get irritated when I see businesses support Democrats. because they're the ones that are constantly trying to hurt them with their taxes and stuff. We need people, people need to wake up and say, hey, we're done. I will be out there just with my collectors and collecting signatures. We're going to get this done. We're looking for 100,000 signatures in 30 days. That's what our goal is. I'm talking to Representative Dwayne Yunker. You represent District 3. That's the Grants Pass area of Oregon. So tell me this. What do you expect is going to happen? Are people who run small businesses now going to look at these conditions and just say, I can't afford to run in this environment? They're going to pull out no matter what the voters do in the next year or two. Is there any time at all to be able to make this decision and get the voters to say no to the taxes soon enough to keep those businesses from leaving?

Well, with the referendum filed, obviously it stopped. It stopped in moving forward, just like the no tax did last year. Last year, this will be on the ballot in November. That's what we're asking for, unless the governor asks us, brings us there for a special session and does a vote in August or whatever. That's the only way they're going to be able to do it. But I think people are waking up. They're seeing it. I've had Democrats. voters tell me thank you for the no tax. And then the same thing here. Our chamber here, and I'm not the biggest, you know, chambers has its ups and downs, but our chamber here locally is so opposed to the Senate Bill 507. They know they're hurting businesses. We got empty buildings downtown. That's small businesses. That's mom and pop. We need to fight back. You can't run because I'm not going to surrender. And I hope the businesses are not going to surrender. Well, and imagine this. You talk about the empty businesses downtown, and then take a look at downtown Portland. I mean, the 20 biggest buildings down there have lost 70% of their value. And I know Portland is singing the blues, and I think, oh, well, you didn't really care when small towns and the rest of the state started to fall apart because of tax and spending policy and government policy. So why should anybody give a damn that Portland is now falling apart, except that is going to be a lot harder to fix, I would think. Oh, it's definitely, Portland is hurting. You know, I feel bad for every small business. I don't care if they're a Republican, Democrat, whatever, they're independent. You know, those people go to work every day. They're the ones that take risk. Businesses take risk. And we should be treating them with what. Treat them with all respect that we respect them. We want them. We want them to hire people. You know, my first job was a small business. I worked for a little grocery store here in Grand Pass. Yep. You know, my mom came and picked me up at 10 o'clock. I threw my bike in the trunk, and I went back. Exactly. Representative Dwayne Yunker, who represents District 3 to Grants Pass area. The Lois and Yonkers, thank you very much.

Portland's News News. Lars reads every email. No, really? at larslarson.com. That's talk at larslarson.com. Now, back to the Lars Larson show. You're listening to the best of the Lars Larson show. Welcome back to the Lars Larson Show. It's a Wednesday. It's a pleasure to be with you. It's also tax day 2026. So maybe the perfect day to talk about this. Imagine you run a family business and you do it for decades. And the whole time you're doing it, you're following the rules, you're paying the taxes, and then all of a sudden the government comes in and demands a lot of money and threatens to shut you down. Could that happen to you? And should the government be allowed to impose massive fines over decisions? disputed regulations. Bridget Conland joins me now, who's an attorney with Pacific Legal Foundation in their property rights practice. Bridget, welcome back to the program. How are you? I'm doing well. How are you? I'm doing very well. I hope you have your taxes filed because it's tax day, 2026, and we've spent some time talking about that. And maybe that's why this fits into it so well. Would you mind, and I want to ask you about the pronunciation of the last name, is it Lindsay Hoops? Is that the name? Yes, like, yep, like a hula hoop. Okay, so tell my audience the story of Lindsay Hoops and what happened to her in the Napa Valley. Yeah, so Lindsay Hoops is a second generation winemaker in Napa. When her family first moved there, it wasn't even obvious that you would grow grapes in Napa. You know, back when they used to grow other things, it wasn't so obvious that their cab grapes were clearly the thing you should be growing like it is today. And they were at that for a while. The wine business has really changed such that you really need direct. to consumer sales as a small winery. Over the years, Napa's land has really been consolidated into about four companies for the most part. Really? Lindsay's, yeah. I mean, it's been years since my wife and I have been down there, but it's just four companies own almost all the land there? Well, they have different labels. But if you were to look to the parent companies, it's almost entire, it's like 90% is four companies. Wow. So there's a few family vineyards still holding on, right? And the hoops are one of those families. And they have eight acres. So that's tiny by comparison. And they are limited in how much they can make, of course, how much wine you can produce. And get direct to consumer sales is to have wine tastings. And that's actually been going on on the property they're on now for almost 40 years.

It's part of this historic entitlement. Back in the 80s, Napa won't be grandfathered in past almost any rule that anybody comes up with, shouldn't they? Well, yeah, they certainly are. I mean, if you ask anyone other than Napa, they certainly are. In the 80s, they wanted, Napa wanted to make it easy for small wineries to open up. It was obvious they weren't going to be causing major environmental issues, and so why put them through all of that? They had this streamlined process called the small winery exemption. That's what the property has. So it goes with the property. It doesn't go with the person. This property has had that since 1984. It was then amended in 1987. So they've been able to do tasting since then. Suddenly, Napa decided to reinterpret that 1987 handwritten permit means something entirely different. And what does, I mean, at the end of the day, what are they saying it means that makes the hoops pay millions of dollars in fines by simply doing tastings so people will come and buy bottles of wine? So according to... to Napa, hoops can sell wine. They can sell it to people on the property. Those people just have to take it away and drink it elsewhere. It's almost like if you were a liquor store, I guess, although Napa also says she's not a liquor store. So it's really unclear what they would like her to do other than maybe closed down. I think that's what you could infer from their behavior. But the state says she can have pastings. The state liquor... regulation which is in most states that's who would be telling you you could have essentially a liquor license serving wine or beer on your property right and it's down to the square foot like you can serve it on this balcony but not that one you can't take it into the garden you know that's what the state came out and did that and told her here's what you could do and it's all within Napa's regulations, according to Napa themselves, they filled out this form. They circled yes, all the way down. Yes, it's allowed. Yes, it's been allowed since 1987. Good to go. Then she hadn't even opened yet, and they start sending her violations, saying, You're having tourism tastings. This is not allowed. They didn't like her chicken coop. They just didn't like string lights. They were coming up with something after another. We're not talking about a gigantic eight acres. Just so people can envision this, I guess most people would say eight football fields, but it's not a lot of land. I mean, even in terms of growing grapes, as I know the numbers, I don't do it myself, but I think you can grow maybe eight or ten tons of grapes on an acre. So if you had eight acres, you might be able to grow somewhere between, you know, 64, I think, and 100 tons of grapes, which would turn into a certain amount of wine. But it's not like she's going to get rich doing this. She's going to run a small business and have a business for her family.

What is it they actually want her to do that would make Napa happy with this whole situation? Honestly, that's not really clear because they won't let her. She's asked, you know, what can I do? She's been asking this for years from the time they started sending these notices of violation. And they said, oh, well, there's not a citation. Oh, you know, you can't apply for another permit. We'll let you know. And then they sued her. They sued her for how much money? The total fines they wanted was about $8 million, and they actually said that if they had done the maximum calculation, it would have been $60 million. But, of course, they're kind of hearted, so they only asked for $8.60 million for $40, so a million and a half bucks a year, what did they think she was doing there that would justify that? They thought she was having tours and tastings, which of course isn't even really defined in Napa. It's just been one thing after another moving the goalpost, but from the beginning it's been about tours and tasting, which everyone is doing in Napa. I mean, that's kind of their whole economy at this point. Bridget, is somebody else trying to put her out of business so they can gobble up her land or what? I will refrain from commenting on that, but I think, you know, reasonable minds can come to their own conclusions about, you know, the incentives that might be at play there. I certainly personally would say that's not a ridiculous claim or a conclusion that you could draw from just a casual reading of the fact. She needs to go sell this as a script to somebody in Hollywood. who wants to get it over the other people who own all that other land because, what, they've decided they've just got to have her eight acres. They've got to get that to complete their acreage because they've got hundreds or thousands of acres of land, but they must have that last eight acres, and they're going to grind her into the ground if necessary to get it, right? Right. I mean, there are wineries that are 2,000 acres in Napa. One you've never even heard of that are 2,000 acres. I mean, it's really small potatoes. It's kind of amazing that Napa is spending. so much time and so much of their resources going after her. That's Bridget Conlon. Bridget, thank you very much. She's an attorney with the Pacific Legal Foundation and their property rights practice fighting for the rights of a winery in Napa that's been there since the 1980s and is now under attack. You're listening to the best of the large, large...

Best new innovation. Missed the Lars Larson Show? Get the podcast right now at Larslarson.com. Now, more with Lars Larson. You're listening to The Best of the Lars Larson Show. Welcome back to the Lars Larson Show. Here's a question that is not entirely a rhetorical question, and that is should a retired Navy seal have fewer gun rights than, say, a retired cop? I thought we'd put that one to Bob Barr, who's written about it recently. A retired police officer can carry a concealed weapon anywhere in America, but a Navy SEAL can't. Is America treating its most elite warriors like some kind of second-class citizen? Bob, welcome back to the program. Thank you, Laura. It's great to be with you. And a very interesting topic because... On the one hand, if this, in fact, the Second Amendment to our Constitution, the Second Amendment Bill of Rights, actually means something and applies to all citizens, then all of these barriers from one state to another ought to be struck down, period. Yet the Supreme Court, even though we've had a pro-second amendment majority from time to time, has never had enough to actually say that. So we're left with this strange patchwork from one state to another, and concealed carry is the perfect example of it. I'd like to see constitutional carry in every single state. And we now have a tremendous number of states that already honor concealed carry under the Constitution rather than having to have a permit. I happen to live in one of the blue states in Washington state. So I have a carry permit, but it's good in only, I think, a couple of other states. And that's, I think, it should be offensive to Americans that you have to get that carry permission from each one of the 50 states right now. I've always reminded people that back when Trump was term in office, he said, look, I'll pass or I'll sign nationwide conceal carry. And yet even when Republicans have been in the majority, they've been unwilling to actually put it to a vote and say, let's vote on this, let's change the law nationwide so that my carry permit is good in every state, the way my driver's license is good in every single state. The Republicans just have never had the concerted background to do that. They just have not done it. It took years for H.R. 218, as you recall, to get passed, and for President Bush to sign H.W. Bush to sign that. I mean, I'm sorry, George W. Bush, get these guys confused. Bush number two to sign it. The Republicans just don't have the backbone to push these things across the finish line.

And why is that, Bob? Because, you know, I tell people that, you know, well, the Republicans are the majority. And of course, the left is shouting that from the rooftop saying, you guys are in charge, except they understand that when it gets down to that final vote in the Senate with the filibuster in place, it doesn't matter if you have a majority. It doesn't matter if a majority of Americans are represented by Republicans in the U.S. Senate. You still can't get a 51 to 49 vote on anything. The majority doesn't mean anything. What means everything is backbone. And the Republicans just over the years on firearms issues have very, very rarely ever exhibited it. We did years ago, but it took years for President Bush to finally sign the H.R. 218 that allowed retired law enforcement officers who are properly certified in their home state, post-certified. to carry across state lines and there's been there's been unfortunately no movement since then is the republicans not the democrats that are to blame here they just don't have the backbone for it So now you got Representative Pat Harrigan who wants a piece of legislation very simple that says federal concealed carry authority should be accorded all past and current members of the military special forces. I mean, if they're qualified to carry much more powerful weapons in uniform, why would we not trust them to carry a pistol across state lines in the rest of the United States in all 50 states? And we should, but again, this is not the best way to handle it, to do piecemeal like this. But unfortunately, it seems to be the only way that we can get done, just piece by piece by piece. So what do we do to do this? Because, Bob, one of the big mysteries from me... has been the Republicans, the Democrats don't always get everything they want, even when they've had, say, Obama in office for two terms, and they have, they had for a time Democrat majorities in the House and the Senate, they didn't always get what they want, but it always seemed to me the Democrats got a whole lot more done when they held a majority than the Republicans do, and it always seems to be lack of backbone to me. And frankly, Bob, I'd make the argument. I mean, over the years, I've worried about, well, what happens when the other side's in the majority? if we get rid of the filibuster. But here's the argument I'd like to go to, and you tell me if I'm wrong. The Democrats are constantly talking about disenfranchising Americans. Now, usually it's because of their ridiculous arguments that black and brown Americans don't know how to get a driver's license or don't know how to do this or do that. It's ridiculous. It's disproven by the facts on the ground. But if you say, are you disenfranchising Americans, if Americans elect a Republican president, a Republican majority in the House, and a Republican majority in the Senate, but then we're told, oh, a majority isn't.

good enough, you have to have 60 votes in the Senate to get anything passed, I think it gives the Senate the freedom to say, yeah, we're Republicans, we have a majority, but we don't have to vote on anything difficult because we have to get to 60 votes, which effectively we're never going to get to. So why should we keep the filibuster? And the argument is always given back to me, well, you'll be sorry if you give up the filibuster when the Democrats are in charge, except the Democrats do get a lot more done. And if that's going be the case. Try explaining to an American, you've elected 51 or 52 or 53 U.S. senators, but you can't have a vote on anything important unless you have 60, which both sides know neither party is likely to get that anytime soon. So if that's the case, aren't you disenfranchising every single American if we say we're going to elect a majority in the Senate, but we know that even with a majority, we can't get anything done because of a Senate rule. It was not a rule. adopted by the American public. It was a rule adopted by one body of what is supposed to be our government. Now, is that not disenfranchising? It is, and it's also showing the party, showing the American people, the American electorate, that the Republican Party, writ large, does not have the backbone to stand for what it actually says it believes in, and that is the Bill of Rights, including the Second Amendment. And you need a president who is willing to go out there and put his reputation on the line to do that, and unfortunately, we have not ever had that... magical combination of backbone in the White House and backbone in the House and the Senate Republican Party to get it done. And apparently we don't have it today, even with Donald Trump of the Oval Office. That's Bob, our former member of Congress, former CIA analyst. Bob, it's always a pleasure to have you on the program. You're listening to the best of the Lars Larson Show.

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