Trump's "last chance" for Iran and updates on the budget and reconciliation

In 2025, Americans lost more than $21 billion to fraud and identity theft. That's why so many people are turning to Aura. Aura helps protect your identity with fraud alerts, dark web monitoring, and up to $5 million in identity theft protection. And if you become a victim, Aura's 24-7 U.S.-based support team is there to help. Don't wait until your identity is stolen. Start your free trial today at Aura.com slash safe. That's Aura.com slash safe. Welcome to today's podcast, sponsored by Hillsdale College, all things Hillsdale at Hillsdale.edu. I encourage you to take advantage of the many free online courses there. And, of course, I'll listen to the Hillsdale dialogues, all of them at Hugh for Hillsdale. Or just Google, Apple, iTunes, and Hillsdale. To the Wednesday edition of the Hewitt Show, I want to open up with Senator James Langford from Oklahoma. Senator Langford, I was talking yesterday with a couple of defense-minded people. And they say the budget is going to be big. It's going to go through reconciliation. They're not sure how much, but the president asked for a trillion and a half dollars. You're on the budget committee. What do you think? Yeah, it's serving in that way. We need to be able to put whatever we need on national defense. National events is one of those areas that we have to look at. Okay, I understand what we can afford. We also understand what we need to be able to make sure that we can secure the nation. So we're waiting to be able to get some of the details behind that large of a request to figure out what is it. For instance, drone warfare was not a thing we were talking about four years ago. It is all we're talking about right now. So we've got to look at what defense systems we're doing. We've got to keep doing. What are we not doing? We need to do. figure out to be able to make sure we continue to secure the nation. Now, Senator, what I listened to yesterday was Aaron McLean School of War. He was talking to a former staff director of Armed Services, John McCain's longtime director, Chris Bissart, I believe his name is, and the barracuda missile is being produced by Androo privately and then sold to the Pentagon trenches of 1,000. That's not the way it's been done forever. Do you think contracting is changing in real time to make budgeting more realistic? Contracting better change on it. All of us know the $5,000 toilet stories and everything else from past days dealing with DOD authorizations, appropriations. We've got to be a lot faster at this, especially in drone warfare. What we're seeing in Ukraine right now is the nature of warfare and how they're fighting and defending changes every three weeks. That is not an arbitrary number. That's the real number about how things are changing. We're not set up to do any kind of appropriations like that at all. And so the other thing is defense has typically gone to a big company, McDonnell Douglas, Boeing or somebody, and said, hey, can you build this for me? And they'll say, yes, give us seven years and we'll work on and develop it. It's got to flip and go to smaller companies and to say, we have developed this and tested this. This looks like it meets your need. And so it can move much faster. in our appropriations rather than waiting for somebody to invent it, actually getting someone to invent it and then try to sell it. That's how the process works in the rest of the business world. Senator, I want to switch over to last time I talked to you, you were getting dirty licks from TSA agents as you went through Oklahoma City Airport. Not dirty looks. They weren't being paid. You get him paid again. Is there any way to avoid this circus? You've been doing this a long time, and it's just always a circus.

Yeah, it's a circus every time and it's dumb every time. There's this charge of the Light Brigade when you're in the minority to always think we'll go cause a shutdown and we'll go win the fight. Every single time it's a lose for the American people, and it ends up being a foolish conversation at the end. Maggie Hassan and I, she's a sender from New Hampshire. You know Maggie. She and I have formed a piece of legislation that ends government shutdowns forever. That says if you get to a moment where we would have a shutdown, government workers are still paid, program still goes at current level funding, but members of Congress and our staff can't travel. We're in session seven days a week. We can't change to a topic other than appropriations. We're basically stuck in the box until we actually solve the problem. So the pressure's on us, not on federal workers. Why should some TSA worker in Oklahoma City be punished because we didn't get our work done? We should be punished. In the most effective way to punish any kind of leader is take away their time. If you tell them all the things you had scheduled are not going to happen until you finish this, it puts the pressure where it should be to say finish your work on time and then you can move on to the other things. All right. I want to finish, Senator, in our four more minutes. Oil prices over $100 a barrel. There could be an operation underway as we speak. We won't know about it until combat operations are resumed. Oklahoma is at the center of, not a lot of people know this, but it's Texas, Alaska, and Oklahoma when it comes to oil and natural gas. Are you blowing off? Are the permits there? Are the pipelines opening up? Are you maxing out of production down there? Yeah, we're actually maxing out an existing production, but not at new drilling because the folks that want to go drill a new well are thinking, okay, I don't know when this is going to get resolved. And when it gets resolved, oil may drop to $50, $60 a barrel the next day. They can't be halfway through a $10 million project and suddenly the bottom falls out on them. So the producers that are already producing, they're doing well and they're putting out as much as they can. But new production's not happening. You've got to have predictability to do that. So all the folks saying oil and gas company country loves this, Oil and gas country loves as much predictability as they possibly can, so they can actually plan for big capital investments. Senator, nobody admires Susan Collins more than I do as a constituent, and we just disagree on the constitutionality of the War Powers Act. She and Senators Bill Cassidy and Lisa Murkowski voted along with Democrats to pass the War Powers resolution. I just think it's flat unconstitutional. Is that discussion ever held within the conference? It is, actually. Obviously, the courts would be the one to actually have to be able to come and make that fight, but many of us, myself included, think this is just not going to stand a constitutional muster on it. The real power that Congress has is the power of the purse. If we just don't fund something, it can't happen. That's the real control that's sitting out there any time we get into this type of situation. And quite frankly, there's already some conversation right now that the Pentagon doesn't have enough money to be able to keep this fight going forever. There are limits to the money that they have, actually. And we've got to be able to make sure our stockpiles are consistent that if we actually get into another shooting war from another direction, we have enough to be able to defend the United States. So that's what I think is coming. And so what is that? And the very last question, we seized the third large tanker that was part of the Iranian ghost fleet yesterday, somewhere in the Indian Ocean. Do you know what happens at that oil and those tankers?

They bring it all to Oklahoma and put it in our pipeline. Actually, I don't give that's what they should do with it. I don't actually know other than probably that is held for an indefinite period of time. Obviously, these ships got to get back to its owner, but the cargo, I've not seen yet what they're actually doing with it. I think they're sanctioned ships. I don't think they go back to their owners, but I don't know what we do with a million barrel oil ship. But kudos to our men and women in uniform. Senator, I know you're running on a schedule. Thank you for joining me this afternoon. I appreciate it very much. You bet. You bet. Glad to do. Good to see you again. Thank you, Senator. Welcome back, America. I like it when my radio friends do very well in the book department, as Noah Rothman has with his brand new book, Blood and Progress. I can't turn on the TV. I can't listen to a podcast, except I hear Noah, and that's good, because I want everyone to read Blood and Progress, and I'm going to say Blood and Progress seven times because I'm still teaching Noah how to promote books. You just got to say Blood and Progress, Blood and Progress. I've been doing that, Hugh. I'm trying to incorporate the lens rule. I just did it in a couple of interviews just now. And it is gratuitous. But I understand best practice. It's gratuitous and it works. Now, I want to give you an ultimate compliment. I read the book for blurb purposes when it was in PDF. And when you read a book for blurb purpose, you take no notes. You just read it, read it, read it, read it, and you find out what you can say about it. Now I'm going through it chapter at a time, because we're going to spend a couple of weeks on this. I got to tell you, I'm learning stuff I never knew. I never knew. I know about the palmerades. You learn about the palmerades in law school in 1980 when I went to law school. But I never knew about the preparedness day marches. I never knew about Luigi Galliani. Tell people about these crazy people. Me neither. And there's a reason why some very recent scholarship in the effort to excavate from the historical record there enduring relevance, they all describe these people as forgotten, deservedly so. Luigi Gianni was an Italian anarchist. Born into means in Italy, migrated to the United States where he engaged in socialistic and anarchistic agitation. At the time, there was a real distinction between these two philosophies. They were all beholden to the proletarian revolution, of course. But there were little distinctions between them. You can kind of envision them arguing over, should the state wither away at the outset of the revolution? Or would a dictatorship of the proletariat be necessary in the interim? You know, kind of obscure and esoteric intellectual debates of the historical record. has preserved and allows the Democratic left to say, well, what do anarchists have to do with us? You know, we want a bigger role for the state, et cetera. But he was an anarchistic, violent anarchistic agitator and insteped a movement of mostly Italian, native Italians, who migrated to the United States and faced real persecution, including lynchings and persecution by the state. One expression of the hostility that that engendered was the Italian mafia.

Another was the anarchist movement. And it executed a campaign of bombings, terroristic attacks, assassinations, targeting American political figures, targeting the Catholic Church, targeting police stations and police in particular, which is one of the through lines that this book has. Can I interrupt you? I never knew that. I never knew St. Patrick's Cathedral got bombed. And I, you know, I didn't know about the ferry bombing or that, not the ferry bombing, but the ferry exchange saloon bombing. You've got the details. You dug in here, buddy. Well, thanks. I'm actually kind of heartened by that because a lot of these stories were new to me, but I wasn't sure the extent to which, you know, people have maybe been familiar with this history. But one of the things I argue when I'm promoting this book is that this is not necessarily an obscure history, but it is a suppressed history. There's a degree to which those, there's a degree to which those who don't want you to draw the through line, don't want you to see the predictive and indeed prescriptive elements associated with waves of left-wing violence, as we're experiencing now, as we experienced in the 80s and 70s, as we experienced in the 20s and tens. They don't want you to see the leading indicators that are indicative of those kind of movements that are violent. and potentially mass violent as the anarchistic wave was. And we're fortunate. Again, I mean, we talked about this yesterday. We'd be seeing a lot more bombings if 9-11 had never happened because the bomb was the instrument of the left-wing terrorist movement and just got harder to access explosives after 9-11. I was trying to remember my education, and I knew the wobblies were out there and that they were the most radical of the working groups and the AFLCIO came along and kind of clean up their act. I had no idea that they are actually responsible for the Ludlow mask. I had no idea that they have blood on their hands, that they're a blood and progress group. They're not just some quaint aspect of American history. They're killers. There's, I mean, my education, which I thought was very good. I was educated in public schools, but I learned, I studied Latin in high school in public school. Me too. So I didn't have a, you know, substandard education. And yet. even up to an including graduate school, all the way through my career in education. The only thing that happened in between the Haymarket Riot of 1886, in which, by the way, police were attacked with bombs. That's also memory hold. But the only thing that happened between 1886 Haymarket riots and the Palma Raids of 1919 and 1920 was that the United States descended into a reactionary fervor against immigrants and nothing else. And it's a potted history that is absolute nonsense. The American people had absolutely every reason to fear labor activism. It was violent. It attacked non-union shots. It blew up the L.A. Times. It tried to assassinate Palmer. It almost blew up Franklin Delano Roosevelt.

Who's right next door to Palmer when his house was bombed, which, by the way, also people don't even know. Yeah, that 1920s period is very forgotten, almost as forgotten as the Marxian guerrilla movements of the 60s and 70s. The Bronx Borough Hall, the University of Chicago University Club. You know, this is all SDS stuff we know from the 60s and the 70s. Oh, the poisoning. Yeah, the great poisoning campaign. Sure. It's all repeating. It was almost the mass decapitation of the entire, the entire social structure, government and political and commercial officials and religious officials. In Chicago, it would have been the worst mass murder in American history even today had it succeeded. First time I've ever read about it in blood in progress. Here's the ending paragraph from Chapter 2. The fetidization of violence as a remedy to the abuses of the state, inequities in commercial and industrial life, and even a general sense of enwee is common among radicals and radical organizations. These rationalizations for violence are commonplace among the violent left, both then and now. I think that's the through line that you're trying to get. Fetitization of violence, the Antifa riots, the Chez, everything. It's a perversion. Well, it is the revivification of the Marxian narrative, right? It's the myth for those who are attracted to violent revolutionary Marxist theories, and they have to be violent, is that one episode of galvanizing bloodshed. will create a mass movement in which those who are cowed and subservient and submissive, precisely as those ladies outside the Zohran Mamdani trial the other day we're saying, we're such a submissive population, why don't we rise up in revolution? And what would make us rise up in revolution an act of murderous violence? That is the delusion to which they're beholden. It's the same delusion that the Guyana is subscribed to. Same delusion that Bernardine Doran and Bill Ayers subscribed to. And it's the same delusion that we see today. That's what's fueling this movement of violent radicals. And what broke it in the 20s? What stopped the fever? I'm now curious about what stopped the fever in 1960s and 70s with the end of the Vietnam War? Nixon stopped it. The kids went home because they weren't going to get drafted. What happened in the 20s? Yeah, I don't actually posit a theory on that. The scholarship leads me to believe that the movement, the underground activists who were engaged in this violent campaign of terrorism, and they were few. Again, these are not mass movements. It's part of their delusion. They perceive themselves to be representative of a great mass of people, and they are representative of a very small fringe of deluded people. But they were subsequently broken up by law enforcement. Those that were broken up by law enforcement were under such pressure by law enforcement that they self-deported, including Mario Buddha, who is probably the executor of the 1920 bombing of Wall Street, which is, again, still one of the FBI's oldest cold cases. They've never actually established. who did that. It was closed down during World War II, but it's still unsolved.

But a lot of them just deported themselves, including Luigi Gaiani, who died of a heart attack in 1931 after being arrested by the Italian, the Mussolini government, and then pardoned briefly. But law enforcement breaks this stuff up. The enforcement of existing statute breaks this stuff up, which is one of my recommendations in the close of this book. We have the tools that are disposal. We just need to do it. Noah, I asked you this yesterday. If you can stay another segment, please do. Don't feel any obligation. You're on a book tour. And so if you've got something else lined up, don't. But if you want to come back and talk about blood in progress, I want to. to talk about the french revolution with you because of course why not stay tuned america Welcome back, America. I'm Hugh Hewitt. Noah Rothman has stuck around with me. His brand new book is This, Blood and Progress. I encourage you go to Amazon right now and get it. Get it for yourself to get smart. Get it for any friend of yours who says something dumb about anarchists or feels some sympathy for people who are maybe violence adjacent or say crazy stuff. They got to know what they're talking about. Noah, I'm going to set you up and then let you run with this. First day of law school substance, I always go through the brief history of nearly everything, and I always tell them there are two kinds of revolution. They're a revolution against power and revolution for power. The American Revolution was a revolution against power in order to establish... negative rights so that the governments couldn't screw with individual liberties, and there are revolutions for power, the Bolshe's, of course, but the French Revolution is the mother-of-all revolution, and you end up with Robespierre, and after it fails he end up with Napoleon. Do you agree with my grand sweep of history assessment? Revolutions go one and two ways against power or for power. Yeah, I like that. I think it was Irving Crystal who said that the American Revolution was distinct from the revolutionary tradition after the French Revolution because it sought to codify that which was already established. And it took into account human nature. And it didn't seek to perfect that nature. Right.

its foibles needed to be channeled and directed and harnessed rather than, you know, re-engineered from the top down, which was not the French tradition. And subsequently, not the Russian tradition or any other revolution that followed it because so many of them followed the Russian. Or the Maoists. So, yeah, I like that framing. Or the malists, yeah. Well, give them the brief history of what happened in the 19th century to the 20th century because the Bolshe's really did set us up for where we are now. They did. Yes. I mean, it's crankish on my part, but I do see the roots of so many problems in the Bolshevik putch of 1917. But there is a digression in this book. After introducing you to Luigi Guiani, we go all the way back to the French Revolution, and it seems like a digression, but it sets up the mental habits to which the violent revolutionary left in the United States are increasingly, or always have been, rather. susceptible to. So the French Revolutionary Terror was a project designed to beget the Republic of Virtue. That was Robespierre's belief and idea. And as the terror progressed, and it didn't offend revolutionary French sensibilities so much, even though it was very violent, very bloody. But it was nevertheless thought to be in an effort to bring low a cast. that had benefited unduly from dispensations from society at the expense of the people. This was the bourgeoisie. This is, you know, typically we get this from communist intellectuals, but it had that word has its roots in the French Revolution. And it increasingly became a class-based terror. It was designed to find people who fitted avatars of their tribe, people who fitted within a framework that reduced their individuality, indeed ignored their individuality, and saw them merely as representatives of a particular tribe or caste. And the Bolsheviks were very infatuated with the French Revolution, but initially they were pretty self-conscious about the terror. When they were confronted with reporters or people who were sympathetic to them but were very apprehensive about the prospect of a terror. No, no, no, no, no. We're never going to have to resort to that sort of situation. Even though quite privately they were contemplating it, right? And then as I quote Paul Johnson in his epic and indispensable modern times. It, the, the Bolshevik terror became very short, very quickly, a class-based terror. And the classes were much more numerous than the French, the prostitutes, the work shirkers, the bagmen, the speculators, the hoarders, all of whom might vaguely be described as criminal. Following quickly, however, became entire occupational groups. Then the colloquy. Again, individuals just reduced. Yes, right, precisely. Just in, when you reduce individuals, this is a big theme throughout the book, when you reduce individuals. to flatten them out so that they become avatars, caricatures even, of an imagined class or tribe, it really greases the skids for inhuman barbaric displays of violence.

That is what then culminates in the last century in Mao. And any revisionism we can get about Mao is a good thing. Xi Jinping is just Mao, if lacking charisma. He's a colder, relentless, killer and cruel guy. Do you agree with me? I mean, the Uyghur genocide was a real thing. Jimmy Lai is dying in jail right now. These people are not reformers. They're killers. Yeah, it's not just that. I mean, that's the worst of it, for sure. But there's also the re-sovietization of its economy, the reversal, deliberate reversal of the market-oriented reforms that were engaged in by Deng and by Huzentau. and the design being to reestablish control over society, restore the totalitarian aspect of China that had it slept off. It had kept its authoritarianism, but it had softened the totalitarian element of it. A little too much freedom. Very much in the Malmol. To have blood in progress. This is the book, Blood and Progress. It's at Amazon right now. It's at every bookstore in America. Barnes & Noble.com, if that's your thing. But Amazon, go and get it, get it for your friends who are lost and your kids were going to college. I'll talk to the NOAA again later in this weekend. Next, don't go anywhere, America. I'm Q2. On Iran, it's a limited deal just for a longer ceasefire. We'd have to open the straight. That would open immediately. So we're going to give this one shot. I'm in no hurry. You never think, oh, the midterms, I'm in no hurry. I'm in no hurry. I just... Ideally, I'd like to see few people killed as opposed to a lot. We could do it either way, but I'd like to see few people killed. I just wonder whether or not they have the good of the people, because some of the things they're doing to me means they don't have the good of the people, and they have to have the good of the people. There's a lot of anger now in Iran because people are living so badly. There's a lot of foment that we haven't seen before so much. Now that is Donald Trump on his way to the Coast Guard Academy to give a commencement address today. I'm joined now by Sarah C. Bedford of the Washington Examiner. Sarah, what do you think the president's going to do with Iran? Gosh, I think that he may be weighing more additional military strikes. I mean, the reporting is that he was potentially within hours of striking Iran again before the three Arab states, including Saudi Arabia and Qatar, reached out and implored him not to do so. But this is kind of the type of language that you see Trump use. Like, oh, you know. I'm in no hurry. I'm in no rush before he does a strike. I mean, we've talked about before the strategic ambiguity that Donald Trump likes to maintain. He often sounds noncommittal and disinterested right before he does something, but there's no way to really tell because he really tries to play his card so close to the best when it comes to whether he will or won't do a strike, and especially when he's trying to use that uncertainty as leverage in negotiations like he is right now.

Yeah, I would not be in the least bit surprised if later tonight we hear. As he gave his speech at the Ghost Guard Academy, troops or bombers were falling on the state of Hormuz coastline along Iran. Now let's go to the budget and what's going on in Congress. I began with James Langford. I'll have Selimor Capito on later. I'll also be joined by Senator Marsha Blackburn. Where are we on the budget and reconciliation? Sarah C. Bedford. Republicans are lined up now over the part of the reconciliation package that has to do with ICE and funding for immigration enforcement, and that has advanced out of the Senate Budget Committee. So that's on track. But where they've really hit a snag is with funding for Secret Service, a big portion of which would be used on security enhancements for the White House ballroom. The Senate parliamentarian has said as written, that can't pass in the package. And so at the very least, the drafters of the legislation would have to go back and structure that in a way that could pass through the parliamentarian scrutiny here. But the bigger problem is that there's cold feet among some Republicans about backing the ballroom, just the idea of ballroom funding at all. regardless of how it's written to survive the procedural hurdles. And so the White House is working with senators to try to keep that on track. That's going to be the controversial part of this reconciliation bill, though. And if they just had kept it to a truly skinny, quote unquote, skinny reconciliation package, like what was first envisioned, it would probably already be over the finish line by now and on track to make Donald Trump's June 1st deadline. The ballroom funding. puts that in some doubt, though. No, I'm something of a stickler for detail. And it's my understanding that the so-called ballroom funding is for below ballroom funding. That's the stuff in the basement. And back when I was in the White House, 85, 86, there were a lot of basements under the Bari Weiss Hall. They were elevators down, many, many levels. And I assume they're doing the same thing again, right? I assume they're digging down deep. Were they trying to pay for that with federal money and then have the private funding pay for that, which was above ground? Yes, that's exactly right. I mean, right now there's a court injunction. I believe they're only allowed to do construction underground, any of the cosmetic stuff above the ground. That's on pause while the case is litigated. So the distinction is like the Secret Service money wouldn't fund stuff like a beautiful marble for the ballroom floor, the stuff that would be controversial. But it would involve paying for security enhancements to protect the ballroom. And I guess the critic's argument against that would be, well, you wouldn't need. to pay for security enhancements to the ballroom if the ballroom project didn't exist in the first place. But it's also not just for the ballroom. I mean, it's a billion dollars. And one estimate that I saw was maybe around a quarter of that would be spent on ballroom enhancements. But it's really for security provisions that would affect the entire White House complex. And, you know, I interviewed White House Legislative Affairs Director James Brade a few days ago. And he was saying, you know, look, you have people trying to ram White House.

barricades with their car. I mean, you have death threats against the president. And so it would involve securing the entire White House complex, not just the ballroom. And so, you know, the fact that the ballroom's in there, though, and it's polling so poorly with the public. That's why it's controversial with Republicans. Yeah, they're also going to put an infirmary down there. And an infirmary can encompass a lot. That can be infirmary with a lot of guns in it and a lot of high-tech. weaponry. Let me switch over to the appropriations process that follows Senator Susan Collins will be my guest tomorrow. Where do we see that right now? I think there's some fears among the Republicans in the White House that the days of just regular order appropriations are kind of over. The Democrats very clearly have no incentive to help Republicans go through the regular appropriations process, and there's no incentive for them to reach any sort of bipartisan compromise on funding, really anything. And almost... All, whether you're talking about the Department of Agriculture or the Department of Education, all sorts of things have been politicized under the second Trump presidency that were just never really considered partisan before. So there are fears at the White House that potentially, even the benign aspects of the regular appropriations process could be difficult as we get closer to the end of the fiscal year. In terms of hearing structure and when we get to reconciliation 2.0, if the parliamentarian is made happy and the Senate passes, that goes back to the House, that'll pass. What about reconciliation 3.0, which is for defense? What are the prospects for that? The leadership in both the House and the Senate and the White House are confident right now, or at least they're sounding a confident note, that something will get done. Now, whether from the perspective of leadership, that's just a negotiation tactic to get reluctant hardliners on board with the current piece of reconciliation legislation that didn't have all of the conservative goodies that the hardliners wanted. That's unclear. There's also some talk about potentially including what's been framed as a down payment on the SAVE Act. There's a lot of skepticism that any part of the SAVE Act could survive the parliamentarian process, but potentially something to do with advancing towards some kind of voter ID policies could be in that. And then the White House has talked about some sort of anti-fraud provisions, funding for anti-fraud enforcement and things like that could make it into that reconciliation. Well, that could get past a bird path. If you're raising money by fraud enforcement, that gets past the bird bath. Sarah C. Bedford at the Washington Examiner, follower on X at Sarah C. Bedford. And thank you, Sarah. Follow me to the next segment of today's shoot Hewitt Show. I never get tired. But what I like to do, if I can save war by waiting a couple of days, if I can save people being killed by waiting a couple of days, I think it's a great thing to do.

Morning, glory, and in grace, America, President Trump, minutes ago, arriving back from the Coast Guard Academy. If he can save lives by waiting a couple of days he wants to, but, you know, you can lose lives by waiting a couple of days. Iran hasn't exactly been doing nothing during the ceasefire. To discuss that and other issues, I'm joined by Dr. Michael Orne, former Israeli ambassador to the United States, founded the Israel Advocacy Project. Dr. Warren, am I right about that? If you wait too long, you end up losing lives as opposed to saving them? Well, yeah, as you said, Iran is not sitting around and twiddling his thumbs during this period. It is rebuilding its missile capacity. A lot of those ballistic missiles were buried by American and Israeli bombing. They're digging these missiles out, the launchers out. Lord knows what they're doing with their nuclear program. Maybe somebody knows, but I'll imagine they're just not, again, they're not sitting passively. And they're... plotting their next move. And now they just came out and said that should the United States and Israel renew hostilities against Iran, they will cut the internet cables running beneath the strait of her moves and cause perhaps an international crisis that way. So again, they're getting stronger, not getting weaker. They're pirates. And by the way, that kind of threat tells you that they'll never be trustworthy. They'll never be, because once you make a threat like that, You'll always make a threat like that. Before we go on further, I got to play for you something from last night. Congressman Thomas Massie, upon being defeated, said this. Lost the sound. I would have come out sooner, but I had to call my opponent and concede, and it took a while to find Ed Gowryne in Tel Aviv. All right now. Ambassador Oren, I think that's just nakedly anti-Semitic. Do you agree with me? I was telling people in Israel about it today. I was actually in the Israeli news today and actually quoting him. And people couldn't believe it. They couldn't believe it. The response was, was he really in Tel Aviv? And so outrageously anti-Semitic, they couldn't even understand it. Of course it is. Of course it is. And what's the subtext there is that the Iran, a candidate supported by President Trump, is being controlled by the Israelis. And it's blatantly anti-Semitic, of course. All right. I just wanted people to hear it. I wanted to hear it from you, not me. I've been saying it all day. Let's go back to the war. It seems to me that the Iranians are doing the Iranian thing, which is to always play for time, and that at some point we just have to say, no mas, no more time. Is that your agreement? Do you agree with that? Or should we let it play out a while? Well, it depends on how much oxygen you have on the American western side. We are in a game of chicken. It's not a military against military anymore. It's economy against versus economy. And ideally, the United States could maintain its naval blockade through the Strait of Hermuz. It's costing the Iranians hundreds of millions of dollars a day. Ultimately, it will cause cracks within the IRGC, within the military. Ultimately. But that ultimately may take three, four, five months. During that time, gas prices will continue to rise. The general price of living will continue to rise. Shortage of fuel, shortage of fertilizer even that will cause food prices to rise. So it's that kind of game of chicken. Does the president think that he is administration and the American economy generally?

have that type of wind that it can wait out the Iranian regime. Okay, now the headline in the Times of Israel is Trump says Benjamin Netanyahu will, quote, do whatever I want in Iran after pair said to hold tense call. That tells me after, you know, a year of this since Operation Midnight Hammer, that we got the jets warming up on the runway. Whenever Trump said he's out at a tense call with Benjamin Netanyahu, those two are thick as thieves and getting ready to go, how do you read it? I hope so. I hope that's the case. Or, you know, maybe Ms. Tiav feels that the president is going to this deal, as reported in some sources in the Western press, a deal that would basically end the war and open 30 days of negotiation on outstanding issues like the nuclear issue. And in which case, of course, the nuclear issue will not be resolved. Straight of the rules will not be resolved because that's what the Iranians do. They get into a negotiation and they will drag their feet. They've been doing it for hundreds and hundreds of years, not for the last, you know, six months. So that's... still do it. I think that's what the prime minister is worried about. I think we could get to a situation similar to that which Israel found itself in 2015 after the signing of the JCPOA in which we said, okay, you know, you signed this deal, but we won't be. We won't be bound by this deal. We have to retain our maneuverability, our ability to defend ourselves, which is pretty much what's happening in the North because the President and the State Department have declared a 45-day ceasefire in the North, but there's no ceasefire in the North. And it's limited Israel's maneuverability somewhat. We're not really bombing in Beirut anymore. But there's full-fredge combat going up on North, and we're having soldiers wounded every single day. A woman soldier was seriously wounded. did today. So, you know, there's always going to be a certain divergence of interests between our two countries, as much as we are vastly and closely aligned, because the United States is far away, a big country. It was a small country. We're threatened with immediately on our neighbors. And at a certain point, we have to say, the president, please understand these are our fundamental and even existential interests. Now, I want to go back to Michael Oran historian, Princeton historian, author of the most important book. on Middle Eastern history wars in the modern times. From 1991 to 2003, the United States and its allies operated two no-fly zones in Iraq, one in northern Iraq to protect the Kurds, one in southern Iraq to protect the Shia Muslims. We started them too late, but we got them going. Could we operate? Do you think it's as a military matter possible to operate a no-shoot zone? No missiles, no firing zone for 150 miles in length along the Strait and 100 miles back. And if they violate that, turn it into a no-move zone. In other words, what you've done with southern Lebanon, the allies of the United States and the United States ought to do to the coastal zone along the strait. What do you think of that?

The United States can do whatever the heck it wants. It has that ability. It has the fire power. You're talking about a country with not two or three aircraft carriers, but 11 aircraft carriers. And it has a massive amount of power. It's the strongest military force in the world. It can do that. But if you're going to declare a no fire zone like that, you have to back it up. You have to back it up with true power. And so it's just a matter. as so much in this war. It's a matter of staying ability, endurance, and the certainly willpower to bring American force to bear in the fullest possible way against Iran. All right, but do we have a choice? Because they want to establish the Hormuz Tool Authority. They want to control an International Waterway, which since time of memorial has been open to everyone except pirates. In other words, they want to change the fundamental rules of the geopolitical order. We can't allow that to happen. Neither can the Gulf states, neither can the world, can we? No, of course you can't, but you're going to have to step up and enforce that. Listen, we don't want them to have a nuclear weapon either. We don't want them to have 8,000 ballistic missiles that can threaten all of the countries in the Middle East and threaten us with close to an existential danger. We don't want them to be supporting terror around the Middle East. Keep in mind, one of the ways they close international waterways is not through missiles and not through mines, but through pirates, through true pirates, the hoodies. So all of these issues have to be resolved in this war if we are to get to a vastly better place in the Middle East. And I've talked often on this program about the hinge of history where if the initial five goals of this war, no nuclear program, no nuclear stockpile, no ballistic missile program, no support for terror, and reopening the Straits of Hermuz, these are now emblazoned on my soul, Hugh. You achieve that, then everything, everything changes in the Middle East. You not only get rid of the Iranian threat, you get peace. You get peace across the region, Pax Americana, extending from the Mediterranean to the shores of the Ganges. All right, 90 seconds. When is the election in Israel and who's going to win it? Well, right now it's either set for late September or late October. It's not quite sure. Oh, I thought they said it today. The ultra-authorx parties want it to be in September. It gets closer to the Jewish major holidays, and they can mobilize support much better. It's really immaterial. It's a difference of maybe two or three weeks. Who's going to win it, according to the polls today, right? Today, it's the anti-BBB block. But in politics, as you know, between now and up September is an infinity amount of time. Who knows? Much of it will depend. I want you to know. on the outcome of this war. If Benjamin Netanyahu can go to the voters and say, look, I achieved all the strategic objectives that we set out for ourselves, he'll be in a much, much reinforced position politically. Michael Warren, you've been in the Knesset. You've run before. Are you running this time with anyone?

No, I'm not running. But I, you know something? I've done the legislator thing. You know, postal reform was not the thing that most interesting. In diplomacy. And that's what legislation is. It's postal reform. And that's the most exciting legislation. It goes downhill from there. I am about, we have to set about to rebuild Israel's foreign relations. And that is going to be a huge, huge task. It's going to be historic tax. And I'm going to put all of my weight behind it. Well, I'm glad the Israel advocacy group, the Israel advocacy group. That's what Dr. Oren has begun. That's what we support. I hope you will as well. Thank you, Dr. Oren. I'll be right back, America. Stay tuned. Welcome back, America. I'm Hugh Hewitt. Pleased to welcome back to the show, a friend of mine. The president of the Utah State Senate, Jay Stewart Adams. He has been on before because the American Legislative Exchange Council is a sponsor of our program. I go on the road with them. And usually Stuart Adams shows up to talk to me about why Utah has been number one. Now for 19 consecutive years in the rich states, poor states rating. Senate President Adams, welcome back. Congratulations. Your number one again. Does it get boring? Not at all. It's fun to be with you. 19 years in a row, think about it for a minute. The high school graduates in Utah had never known a time in their entire life when Utah hasn't had the best economic outlook. Pretty amazing. I want to run down the stats, if I may. Number one, best economic outlook for 19 years running. Number one state overall, third year in a row, in the U.S. News and World Report. Number one, upward mobility in the Archbridge Institute. Number one in protecting children's mental well-being and the Childhood Index. Number one in GDP growth, according to Chem C. Gardner Policy Institute. Number one, increase in household income growth. That's from the Urban Institute. Number two, best state for teachers. Number four, best state for education, and the lowest electricity rates in the United States. How do you get this all done, Stuart Adams? Well, again, Art Laffer, Steve Moore, Jonathan Williams, they predict the future. And a good economist, I think the rating of economists is how well they project the future and predict the future. And we have seen that the policies, the regulatory policies and the tax policies that we put in place actually produce what the prediction and wants to predict, the best economic outlook. In addition to those numbers, we have cut taxes, income tax, again, again. Again, again, again, ran out of fingers and again, six years in a row in Utah, both our tax policy and our regulatory policy are what have been able to allow us to accomplish this.

Now, for a long time, people said Utah does so well because it's the LDS headquarters of the LDAS state. That's no longer true. I got a lot of friends who are moving to Utah because they like the quality of life. They like the seasons. They like the education system. They like the public safety. Have you noticed that, that the state's got a lot of inbound migration of people who are not LDS? Well, people vote with their feet. And in addition to all the things you just talked about, we are the fastest growing per capita state and the nation. So, yes, we've had a great influx of people, our demographic change, but we've maintained the same policies that have actually allowed us, not only to kept taxes, but we've been able to increase. We've doubled the spending on teachers. We now have, I think we're the fifth highest in the nation, starting teacher salaries. in the entire nation, plus we built infrastructure like no other state. We're rebuilding our roads, our water system. When you can cut taxes and build infrastructure, pay for services, that only happened by having a strong economy. And a lot of that is because of our regulatory policy. Now, I'll talk you about public safety in the next segment because I'm very interested in that, as are most Americans. But I want to know about electricity. The grid is under stress everywhere. But it's not in Utah. The grid is, I'm in Maine right now. The grid's a big issue up in Maine every single year when it gets cold. How have you kept ahead of electricity demand in Utah? Well, again, energy, energy, energy. And we, for whatever reason in America, we've stopped building new energy production. And we have taken, we could see it coming because energy does drive our economy. We have the lowest electric, some of the lowest electric grates in the entire nation. But we could see a need for the future. And the future appeared to be.

The future is what? The oil and gas industry, the natural gas industry? Well, we have a lot of oil, we have a lot of natural gas, but we have nuclear energy. And we just permitted the first nuclear energy plant, the manufacturing plant in Boxeller County. And we're looking at geothermal. We have ferval energy in St. George or the Cedar City area that's doing geothermal energy. But we think nuclear is a future. So we're actually moving ahead with nuclear manufacturing, and it kind of take a workforce. So we're working on all forms of energy. We want to be the energy capital of the world because energy is going to be needed. We know AI needs energy, and energy productions are so important. Is the new nuclear plant a small modular reactor, or is it one of the traditional bigs? It's all kinds of new technology, but one of the small nuclear reactors is the cutting edge, but we're also seeing a new nuclear reactor that's called a micro. And that microreactor can actually be manufactured in a plant, like you do a car, put on the back of a semi-truck. and dropped into place. You can daisy chain them together, tie them together. They may produce only 30 megawatts of power, but you put 10 of them together and you get 300 megawatts. That's almost the same as a small nuclear reactor. And these new nuclear reactors? They're burning the old spent fuel rods, which we didn't know what to do with. So the new technology is solving, again, a waste problem along with producing more energy. Now, I've been on the campus of BYU. I gave a lecture at the Ruben Gallego Clark School a few years ago. Been on the campus of Utah State to do a Utah PBS special with the late Neil Maxwell. I know you got great higher ed. Does that continue to expand in Utah? We have one of the fastest growing populations because we have a lot of natural increase. Our birth rate is one of the highest in the nation. Because of that, we have a lot of kids. And we have some of the best educational systems in the United States. A University of Utah has rivals MIT as far as startups. Utah State University has a lot of aeronomics and research. We actually funded last session. $50 million, not a lot of money, but it's saved money, to be able to go to the universities to do more research. And BYU is a great university also. And between those universities and the others, we have a very educated and talented workforce. And workforce is going to drive the economy in addition to energy.

Someday you'll get in the college playoffs so Ohio State can beat you, State Senate President. Let me ask you, though, when, how long have you been to the state? That'll never happen. If we get the playoffs, we're going to beat Ohio. I want you to know that. How long have you been the state Senate president? Eight years. And is there a term limit on that? Can you keep going? We don't have terminal limits in Utah. We'll see. But again, Utah is great. And I'd like to take credit for all the great things in Utah. We know Utah is great because of great people. And we have a great state. We have great legislators. We have a really fabulous business community. They get back. They help Utah maintain their number one status. And it's a great spot to live. Well, Stuart Adams, though, being the president, you've got to heard cats. Doesn't it get old? Are you still enjoying the game? Oh, it's a great process. I love the process. It's pretty miraculous as you see it happen. I think my ideas are the best. Hopefully everybody agrees with that. But even my ideas, I hope you're laughing. But even my ideas get better when they go through that legislative process. It is a difficult process, but it's pretty miraculous. They see ideas come out. They get vetted by the public. They get better by other legislators. It's one of the big options to be involved. Stuart Adams is going to stay with me for another segment. I want to talk about public safety because Utah is very safe, and I want to know why that is. Don't go anywhere, America. I'm Hugo. Welcome back, America. I'm Hugh Hewitt. Stuart Adams, President of Utah State Senator, stuck around with me. And I like Stewart so much because he likes the things I like, in order of importance, schools, cops, and desalinization. First of all, school choice. How's Utah doing, Stuart? We passed a school choice bill. We did it with a two-thirds majority in both the House and the Senate. The only state of the nation to pass school choice with a two-thirds majority. We call it Utah Fitzall in Utah, gives an $8,000 scholarship, and it's wildly successful. And again, Parents should be able to decide what's best for their kids. It's causing competition. We're doing very well. I believe that's what, again, another reason why Utah is the number one state in the nation. Number two, public safety. You folks invest in police. Now, sometimes that's a local issue, but the state's got to back it up. How do you help the locals keep their cops on the street?

Well, we're actually not only helped fund it, but it's really a policy issue. I mean, we all know that treatment's a lot better than incarceration, but the problem is anybody with a severe substance abuse problem, they're not going to go get treatment unless they have a motivation. So you need, again, you need criminal justice policies that allow for those issues to be dealt with. And you need to give those encouragement. So sometimes you can be too kind and you don't motivate people to get the treatment they need. And we think the combination of getting proper treatment and housing without treatment doesn't work. So treatment with strong criminal justice revisions, reforms is what's helped Utah. We've actually seen a homelessness drop in Utah. Now, I want to finish with the Great Salt Lake. I used to live in Southern California. I got frustrated. We had two DeSalle plants in Southern California. Israel's got six. Saudi Arabia's got a lot. UAE's got a lot. DeSalle works in some places. We got the Pacific Ocean in California. There should be no water problem. What do you think about DeSalle in the Great Salt Lake? Well, you know, I actually went to Israel, and I saw their technology they had, very economical. They solved their water problems with desalination. I came back to Utah, started talking about desalination, and the media gave me a little bad time. But they didn't know that we had another plan in place. We actually went down to talk to San Diego, talked to San Diego Water Board, and said, we will build asalination plans. Utah will build them. for San Diego, for California, but we want to trade you your Colorado River water. Colorado River exists in your... Oh! We don't need to be very far. And you know what? They said they liked that idea. And that was a year or two ago, during the legislative session this February, Gavin Newsom sent our Governor Cox a letter saying, we'd like the idea too. It's pretty great idea. You'd have this specific ocean. And if we can create more water, that's a win for everyone. That is a win for everyone. Let's close with critical minerals because this is a national security issue. You got them. Will Utah let the rest of the country develop them for national security purposes? Well, again, haloycite is one of the great critical mineral deposits in the world. China's been the only spot where haloy sites existed. We just found the largest halosite deposit. It's a silicone clay. It's not granite. You can just melt the silicone, get the critical minerals out of it, done very cheaply. We have the largest deposit we found in Utah. We're going to compete on a national scale and international. Even the Indian Times says it will change the entire financial balance in the world. We're going to solve the critical mental problems for the free world. And we will share. We'll share, but we'll make some money before we do it. Well, you know, I'm from Ohio, and we have the Great Lakes Compact, and no one's allowed to have the Great Lakes water. I've always thought that was silly. If you could sell it for enough, you could actually open it up a little bit. But I'm sure Utah wants to make its money back before it lets it go. But the Pentagon needs that stuff, right? That's our critical.

infrastructure, our critical weapons system. You've got that enormous Air Force base there, don't you? Aren't all the Minutemen or some of the Minutemen up there? Hill Air Force Base, the entire land-based missile system is housed out of Hill Air Force Base. But you need them for F-35s, you need them for our F-22s our stealth. We also need them for the auto industry. You didn't have critical minerals. You shut down the auto industry in Japan and Europe, the United States. You shut down our pharmaceutical industry. You need it for the economy. We're going to help solve that problem, and Utah is untracted to do that. Be careful, Stuart Adams. Part of that DeSell deal with Gavin Newsom, he might ask you to come over and be the president of the California State Senate, too, and then you'll be really going out of your mind. So good to talk to you. I'll see you at the Allen Convention in Orlando, I hope. Stuart Adams is a treasure to the United States and the state of Utah. Always good to talk to them. Don't go anywhere, America. I'm Guilis.

Welcome back, America. I'm Hugh Hewitt. Former United States Senator Jim Talent is on the board of the Reagan Institute. A study for Center of Peace Studies or whatever they call it, but it's a national security thing. Jim Talent, I followed everything the president said, I don't know what he's going to do. What do you think he's going to do about Iran? No. Well, I, you, I kind of, remember that old song, clowns to the left of me, jokers to the right, here I am with you. Well, exactly. I kind of feel that way because on the one hand, we have the Democrats who oppose what the president's done so far because they oppose everything he's done. And then we have the Israelis like Dr. Oren, who is, who I just love. I mean, he's one of the premier statesmen of our time. And they're concerned the president's not going to do enough. And I'm kind of stuck in the middle of the president. I think he's handled this very well. I think we are going to impose more costs and consequences on the Iranians because of the pot shots they've been taking over the last few weeks in the Gulf and around the Gulf. But the Q is going to be opening up the strait. Duane and I talked about this last night. We started to do that 10 days ago. We stopped, I think, because the Gulf states are afraid. I mean, look, they know the Iranians can't force the blockade. The Iranians can't successfully attack American naval vessels. They're afraid that they'll be able to attack successfully their infrastructure. That scares them, and I don't blame them, because particularly the desalinization plants are important. But at some point, they're just going to have to get us fine and let us open up the straight. Because when we open up the straight, while we're continuing to blockade, that's checkmate. And I'm morally certain the president is planning that. Jim Talent, I have a column coming out on Fox News tomorrow, in which I remind people, we ran no-fly zones in northern Iraq and southern Iraq from April and August, respectively, of 1991 to 2003. Can we run a no-shoot zone? In other words, you fly a drone out of the 100 miles from the Strait of Hormuz inland, and we will follow it up with the Moab. Can we and then take the next step? No-Lib zone. Everybody out, like Israel did with southern Lebanon. Everybody out. Should we do that? Could we do that? Well, as I understand it, and the next time you get Mark Montgomery on, you know, ask him, but that's basically at least part of what opening up the straight entails. In other words, there's constant fighter cover, constant surveillance, air and naval.

in order to take out basically anything that moves that looks like it might be able to shoot successfully at one of the ships that's transiting the straits. I mean, that's how you do it. Now, I remember the press conference with Secretary Pete Hegseth and General Kane, and they were talking about opening a corridor. They said they had opened a corridor on the south part of the strait. The idea is to get as much space distance as you can from the Iranian coast. And then you use missile defense to take out anything they do shoot. And you have constant surveillance and aircraft manned and unmanned in the air to attack the shooter. I mean, that's how you open up the strait. You know, Jim, this weekend, a movie comes out. I'll be talking to one of the historians who consulted on it, called Pressure. It's about Ike's decision to do D-Day. And it was a very, very difficult decision. But after he got the troops ashore, they ran into, I hope I don't butcher the pronunciation, San Lu. And after three weeks of grinding and not moving anything, he just called in whatever the equivalent of the B-52s were. And there wasn't anything left of San Lu. We can do that. We should move the people out first, but should we do that? We can do that. Should we do that to the 100-mile stretch where they're shooting from? I think if it's necessary, now we now have... Oops, we got it for you. I imagine when we strike, the kinetic attack that is coming, I think, I'm going to be surprised if the big part of it... Yeah. Some of the stuff they have is mobile. The drones in particular can be hard to spot. This is a technically difficult operation. We can't reduce the risk to zero, but we don't need to. I mean, my guess is that CENTCOM has already engaged in discussions with the different companies involved, has already knows which freighters are likely to be the first to move. In fact, even in the like the 24 hours in which we were doing operation of freedom, some freighters had moved. We don't need to get all of them out. We need to get the oil flowing to settle the futures market, bring down the price of oil. But, Jim, Talent, you have a little bit of a... You've got a bandwidth problem there, Jim. I want to give you one more question, though. We took a super tanker yesterday, million barrels. That's their third tanker from the Ghost Fleet. Those are permanent losses to Iran's productivity. How much more can this state take before it just collapses like Cuba collapsed? Yeah, I was going to use Cuba as to parallel you. I mean, they're out of power now, like 20 hours of the day. It may take a couple of months, but if oil prices are settling... Yeah, you've got the worst Internet in America. You may have the Iranians after you, Jim Talent. ... capabilities, and then collapse the economy.

Well, thank you, sir. I hope it was better on Dwayne's World, on the universe last night. But I think the Iranians are doing a DOS on Jim Talent, wherever a secret location is, undisclosed location, as we like to say. Follow him on X at Jim Talent. Let me remind everyone, we are in the middle of our campaign to send kids to camp. We're in our middle of our prison fellowship Angel Tree campaign. And it costs $200 to send a child to camp for the summer for a week. Give a listen to Steve Susan Collins, who is Angel Tree's director of camping. That was one of the things kids would say. We had infantry kids that would come to camp. Sometimes they would ask me, why do we eat so much here? You know, because they were used to getting one meal a day. And another thing we don't think about is a lot of times the best meal that these kids get is the free lunch they get at school. And during the summer, schools out. And so, yeah, camp is special. They're going to be well-fed, that's for sure. And lots of fun, fun activity. It's amazing to think of food being the attraction for camp, but of course, if you're coming from an economically underprivileged situation where dad's in prison, it's going to be a joy to get three squares. AAA 206-2764. Go horseback riding, zip lining, hit the big blob in the middle of the lake, get the counselors going in a shaving cream fight, water balloon fight. It's all the same everywhere, and these kids deserve... to go rafting. $2.08, 20, $20 for a tenth of a scholarship. $200 sends a kid to camp. $400, send a couple of brothers who would need to go. AAA 206, 2764, AAA 206, 2764. I'll be right back. Morning, glory, and in Grace America. I'm Hugh Hewitt, joined by United States Senator Marsha Blackburn. She's a senator from Tennessee. She's going to be the next governor of Tennessee as well. But before she gets to go down and run the state of volunteers, she gets to finish up some business up here. Senator, what is going on with the parliamentarian and the reconciliation bill to get HHS fully funded? And what we are trying to do is work out some of these. issues, this is a public safety reconciliation. And of course, you've always got people trying to put things into a reconciliation bill because you can pass it with 51 votes. So our goal is to keep it as narrow as we possibly can to keep it germane and to move it quickly through the Senate and over to the House so the president can have it on his desk. And we can have DHS. fully funded for the rest of President Trump's term. Now, it is, in fact, a public safety bill and the Secret Service is in there and the Secret Service is concerned with White House safety. So is it a ballroom issue or is it an issue about what's below the ballroom?

It is an issue of what is needed by the Secret Service. It's all things that would be below the ballroom or even off the White House premises. But any time you have deferred maintenance of buildings, you have deferred training queue at some point, you've got to bring that up to parity. And the Secret Service is saying this is what we need in order to provide adequate protection. for the protectees that we are sworn to protect. So you have new equipment, new technologies, new training, cyber protection, cyber training, things that need to be addressed. So this is all about the Secret Service. And I will say this, we wouldn't be here having this debate if it were not for the Democrats who have made it a goal to abolish ICE to defund federal law enforcement. And as unseemly. As that is to so many of us, the Democrats are very given to abolishing ICE and defunding federal law enforcement and opening that southern border back up wide open. Now, Senator, can I skip ahead a little bit? I assume you'll get this done because everyone wants to go home from Memorial Day, including the parliamentarian. You'll get this done and you'll get maybe a reconciliation 3.0 done. Do you think that's possible? I do think that what you will see is a third reconciliation. It will pick up some of those remaining tax issues that we wanted to get done last year, also some of the health care issues that we wanted to get done, and bring that forward into a reconciliation bill that we can do either in September or after the elections in November. Now, I would also like to see. Some of the defense reforms like new primes, additional funding to secure rapid replenishment of our munitions. Do you expect defense spending to be in reconciliation 3.0? I'm going to talk with Senator Capito after you, and that's her bailiwick. But what do you think? And there is an opportunity for some of that funding to be there. What we do have to realize is 21st century warfare. As we are looking at Space Force, as we are looking at hypersonics, as we're looking at the need to have a Space Force National Guard, all of this changes how you choose to spend your money. Now, some over at the Department of War would like to keep the focus on legacy systems.

But what we have learned from the warfighter is that changes in how they're able to communicate, having that instantaneous communication between the warfighter on the ground and the forward operating base and their command center and the Pentagon many times that is something that will save lives. Also, utilization of drones. This is something that with these unmanned aircraft, you can do a lot of your ISR activity. You can do it very quickly and much less expensively, more cost effective, and how you conduct those surveillance situations. You can also provide protection. for the troops on the ground by using the drones who are going to help you in that surveillance capacity to be certain the warfighter is in a safer environment and being able to immediately pinpoint where the enemy is. Now, Senator, can I switch to Tennessee for a moment? I assume you're going to be governor. I'm not talking politics with you. I'm talking, assuming you're going to be governor. School choice got started in Tennessee. Do you want to expand it when you get there? I think it's important to recognize the good work that Tennesseans have done. And I have voted in favor of increasing school choice and education scholarships at the federal level. We did that in the big beautiful bill. And I will tell you this, Hugh. Parents ought not to have to win the lottery in order to have a say in their child's education. And we know one-size education does not fit all. And you have to be able to put that child in an environment where they are going to best learn. You want a child to grow up and be a lifelong learner, and you want them to leave. that K-12 education process, knowing how they best learn, how they best attain knowledge, how they best retain knowledge, how they best apply. knowledge. And that will help them throughout their life, throughout their career, if they have learned that lesson by the time they finish high school. Now, the volunteer state just had a knock-down, drag-out redistricting. That went for the Republicans. Republicans pick up a seat that way. Memphis gets chopped up into three different districts, which is fine by me. You followed the Massachusetts model. A blue state has all blue congressmen. and a red state's going to have all red congressmen. Is that pretty much the way it's going to be going forward for all states where there's one party control of the three branches, House Senate, and governorship? I think so. What do you think?

I'm not so sure I agree with that. I think that as you look at districts that make sense, as you look at complying with the Supreme Court's directive, that you cannot use race. You can't use it in hiring and education. You can't use it in how you draw districts. And they basically said you can draw a district based on political affiliations. And so as you look at how this is going to play out, I think you will see districts that may be more competitive. You're going to see districts that are going to be more solidly red or more solidly blue. But what I have learned is all politics is local. And people are going to vote for the individual that they think is going to do the best job of representing them. Sometimes they'll vote Democrat, sometimes they'll vote for an independent, sometimes they'll vote for a Republican. But Canada quality does matter in this. All right. Last question, Senator, you get to appoint, if you win the governorship, I think you will, by a lot. You get to appoint your replacement. And you know the Senate. You've been there a while. I'm not going to ask you for a name, but what kind of qualities does Tennessee need in its next senator that you'll be looking for as people line up to knock on your door and say, pick me. You know what, Hugh, you know very well that that is a topic that I cannot touch. Well, you can talk about, I don't even handiness, open-mindedness, willing to know Tennessee. You don't need to name any name, Senator. Not going there. Sir, safe travel home for the Memorial Day weekend. I hope you get all the budget stuff past. Will you talk to me as often when your governor as you do when you're senator? I'm always delighted to have a conversation with you. Thank you, Marsha Blackburn, the senator from Tennessee. He's going to be the next governor. Back America, I'm Hughitt, joined now by Senator Shelley More Capito. Senator Capito is on three committees that matters so much. Environment and Public Works, that matters, commerce, science, and technology that matters. But what I want to talk to her about is appropriation. Senator, how are you this afternoon? I am good. I'm good, Hugh. Thank you. Well, here's the question. I was listening to School of War yesterday. Aaron McLean hosts it and CBS National Security Consultant and Christian Brose was on. He used to be Staff Director of Armed Services for John McCain. He's now the Chief Strategy Officer for Anderrol. He said if appropriations and the Budget Committee can get Reconciliation 3.0 through. They can get a lot of our munition stockpile funded through the end of the year, and Ander Will can start turn out cruise missiles by the thousands, as can other new primes. What do you think can we get Reconciliation 3.0 through?

Well, it's interesting because we're going to talk about appropriations. We've got to get reconciliation package number two through the gate first. As you know, we're working on that right now. And that, of course, is the border security, homeland security portion. I think we probably can because I feel as though... All of us realize that our military is under, you know, weapons are running short. They're training. They're having to re-look at costs for training and other things. So they're underfunded. And so we're going to need to put more money in, but we just don't think we're going to get the support from the Democrats because obviously they held out Homeland Security for a very long time besides border issues with TSA and Coast Gardens and things of that nature. I think reconciliation could be an option. The administration has also said they're going to ask for a supplemental. We haven't seen that yet. And so that, again, is another method to get additional dollars besides regular appropriations process. Now, Mr. Brough said to Aaron that right now, Reconciliation 3.0 is probably for the post-election session, and that might not leave enough time. I think that's a terrible idea, too, because a lot of people will be mad, a lot of people will be happy. A lot of people just want to stay home and not do this stuff. We've got to get these munitions done, and your committee, Senator Susan Collins is the chair and you're like a prime mover on it. Do you have it in the... in the gut that we really have to get the munition stockpile up. Is it like your priority? Yes, it is definitely a priority for me, and I know it is for Chair Susan Collins and also for Mitch McConnell, who chairs that subcommittee. You know, our problem is, of course, in the Senate, the 60-vote threshold, the need for Democrats. However, if it's framed properly, which I think it will be, munitions and stockpiles and also the possibilities of... You mentioned Anderall and others who are going to be able to move forward with the production of weapons that actually are going to be in much greater numbers at much smaller cost. And I think that's where the greatest emphasis, in my view, the technologies move so much that we have the possibility of replenishing our weapons with just as effective weapons and the money can go a lot farther. So I think that's another reason that we need to put a priority on this. Now, you've been following this for so long. You're an expert in the appropriations process. We've always done it the other way. Pentagon says we want X, Y, and Z, and they change the wrecks all the way through the process. It gets expensive. It gets canceled. What do you make of this new approach that not just Andrel, but others are doing. There are lots of them, actually. They said, hey, we'll take the risk. We'll bring in the venture capital. We'll build weapons and we'll try and sell you the weapons. What do you make of that system? You know, I think it's a great idea. I mean, I think, you know, private sector innovation and, of course, AI and other things that have come up have really made the possibility of change and speed and accuracy. And we know they're testing a lot of these things in the Ukrainian war and to great success. And why wouldn't we want that rather than making the old weapons that are, you know, $4 million a shot?

that are expensive to make, take time to make. You know, I'm not saying we need to exclusively do the sharper, smaller, less expensive weapons, because we're going to need the old weapons as well, but maybe not in the same number. So why wouldn't we get the private sector if they're willing to take the risk to go ahead and move forward on that? I'm so glad to hear you say that. Let me switch subjects on you briefly. You're not in judiciary, but there is a rumor buzzing that Samuel Alito is in fact going to retire. He had faked us. If that happens, I'm not asking you how you'd vote on a replacement or anything like that, but what's it due to the schedule this summer for the Senate if that happened? Well, yeah, that was certainly upend our schedule. But, you know, depending on who the president would pick, I think we saw Gorsuch move. quickly, his nomination moved more quickly than, say, Brett Kavanaugh. And I think that, you know, a good solid pick with easy paperwork and, you know, no conflicts. I think we could move it fairly rapidly. So I'm not too worried about the time right now. I do think the window probably is closing once you get to September, depending on what happens in the election, obviously that will weigh into it. Do you prefer nominees who've decided a number of cases so you can look and see how they reason? Or do you like blank sheets? Because there are arguments both ways. Yeah, I mean, I think obviously the ones that I've worked on have been past jurists. They've got opinions written. You can see their leanings, whether they're, you know, constitutionalists or... or they're ready to go far afield and stretching the Constitution. I think that's always useful. I think demeanor and conduct in the courtroom, I think, is important as well. I mean, that sounds like a given, but, you know, as well as I do, that's not something to give in some of, you know, just a judicial temperament, I think, is extremely important. And so I think a record is always helpful. So finally, Senator Capito, you are always so careful in commenting on war and peace issues. And nevertheless, I am confused by where we are right now. Are you comfortable with the ambiguity in this war, this non-seasfire, ceasefire, this kinetic ceasefire, or do you think we have to either end it or mend it? I think we have to end it, quite frankly, simply because, you know, to a satisfactory, to the satisfaction of the president and also the satisfaction of those of us who have supported the president in this. And we know a lot of what's already been done, destruction of the Navy, the missiles, et cetera, you know, and the ability to develop a nuclear weapon. But we've got to get that straight open. I think it's time. I am confused when the president is like on the verge of restarting, you know, kinetic action. And then even in his own description, pulls back an hour before.

I'm not sure that I don't know who we're negotiating with here. That's my big question. Who in Iran is really going to be the decision maker here? And I'm not sure I have the confidence that even the Iranians know who are making those decisions. There are two camps. There are the finish the job people. There are two camps of senators, the finish the job people and the let's see how it plays out. Are you a finished the job, Senator? I'm a finish the job person. I mean, why go this far without finishing the job? And, you know, this is a generational thing. I've said about this conflict. This is not if we were ever going to do this. This was going to be a when. And this is the time that was chosen. The president had the guts to do it, and we need to see it through to the end. Senator Shelleymore Capito, thank you for the update on budgeting on what we can expect this summer, and I appreciate your candor as always. Have a great Memorial Day weekend. Thank you for joining me on short notice today. I'll be talking with Chair Susan Collins tomorrow about the same stuff, and I really love talking to a prayer for years because if you really know how the Senate works, they're the ones you've got to talk to. Thank you, Senator. I'll be right back, America. Stay tuned. Now, I want to take a moment to tell you about our great sponsor consumer cellular. They have a brand new offer, so I want you to listen carefully to this. You've probably seen the headlines are worth your latest sell bill. Big wireless is raising rates again. Well, you can switch to consumer cellular right now and get $200 off your bill by going to consumercellular.com slash hue and use a promo code, Hugh 200. That's right, Hugh Hewitt, UGH, 200. And when you switch, you'll get the same coverage as big wireless carriers, just not the coverage that's anything other than high quality. Are you tired of your wireless company telling you you have to talk to an AI chat box or even pay 10 bucks to talk to someone when paying your bill? That's happening now, really. With consumer cellular, you'll talk to an actual human being based right here in the United States who will help you every step of the way when you switch. For a limited time, if you're over 50 as well, you can get $200 off your bill when you switch two unlimited lines. That's two lines of unlimited talk, texting data for $60 a month, plus $200 off. Hurry, the extra $200 off your bill will not last long. This offer ends June 14th. Visit consumercellular.com. Use the promo code. Hugh, 200, or call 1-800-4-1-41-44, 1-800-4-1-4-4-44, 1-800-4-1-4-4-4-4-54.

Welcome back, America. I'm Hugh Hewitt, joined by Seth Mandel. He is senior writer for a commentary magazine. I listen to Commentary Podcast every day, so I hear Seth at least three or four or five times a week. Seth, earlier today, Raul Castro was charged with murder by a U.S. court. What do you think that's a setup for? It's hard to know. I mean, I guess the question is, is this is set up for like a Venezuela type thing? I don't really know. But I think that they want to open negotiations with the Cubans and they want some leverage. They very clearly want to be talking to the Cubans about something about, you know, a kind of securing our hemisphere. the way that Trump likes to do, Venezuela was part of it, a kind of Monroe Doctrine approach to things in the Americas, what they're seeking exactly that I don't know. What is the best case solution from a general pro-Western, pro-capitalism point of view for Cuba, Seth Mandel? I have a vision. What's yours? Freedom. I mean, why not incorporate them into the modern world or give them the opportunity to, right? I mean, the best possible outcome for the Cuban people is to determine their own future. And right now they can't and they don't. And they're experiencing a fair amount of misery because of it. And I think that when you empower people, everybody's life gets better. Given the Cuban ex-pack community in the United States that has been here since 1960, we're going on almost 70 years of people fleeing Cuba, and maybe some people fled Batista. Do you think they would take their money back? I don't think they're going to repatriate and become Cubans, but I think they'll invest in the island, do you? Probably, but I think also it's about they will reunite with family members and they will have connection with friends and family that they can't really have right now. I think it will integrate Cuba into the world, but specifically for the expats. It will be a wonderful thing to see people as if a wall came down and... and family members or friends are on opposite sides of the Berlin Wall or something peering through. The connection is a really beautiful thing. The connection is something that they deserve as humans, and so I hope that happens. Well, I also think it's probably, we do have Guantanamo Bay. If it was an ally of the United States, it's a big island, it's strategically located. I would not be surprised to see quite an investment of the American government. in facilities around and on Cuba, would you? No, I wouldn't be surprised at all.

There's always a strategic element, as I said, to the Monroe Doctrine way that Trump tends to see the world. If you remember in his first term, he was actually quite interested in Venezuela as well. The administration didn't go as far as they went this time, but they recognized the opposition leader as the legitimate head of the government, and they backed the organization of American states in their attempt to isolate the Maduro. regime and the Chavistas and to get its Venezuela's constitutional government back on track. So, you know, they've been, they've been eyeing Venezuela for a decade and then went in and did and took. you know that the action that they took uh but i think that yeah they always have their eyes especially within the trump administration on the americas and on our surroundings on you know what russia would call it's near abroad right uh that seems to have been a focus of uh trump and the administration from the very beginning Okay, so yesterday Axios carried a story that had been leaked obviously by some apparatchek for Cuba or one of the people that they've got on their payroll, that they had acquired 900 drones that could reach Key West and Guantanamo and maybe other places in the United States. What would be the reaction if they hit any of us, any of us, with a drone, do you think? the reaction would be not dissimilar from the reaction of anybody else shooting missiles at the American mainland and hitting and potentially killing Americans, right? I mean, you only have to look at what Venezuela serves as in terms of an example, and those were drug boats. mainly, but they were seen as harming the American people and undermining American society and American security and all that. Certainly, I don't think Cuba would get any special dispensation for, you know, a free shot or two at the U.S. The answer is always the same. Somebody tries bombing us. We. Yeah, the 101st Airborne. That's what I think they'd get. They would end up with a bunch of parachutes and landing craft, and it wouldn't be the Bay of Pigs 2.0. It would be Operation Enduring Freedom 2.0. Don't go anywhere, America, the March Baghdaddam referencing. I'll be right back with Seth Mandel. We'll talk about the big war right after this.

Welcome back, America. I'm Hugh Hewitt with Seth Mandel. You can follow Seth on Twitter at Seth Mandel, Seth A. Mandel, I believe. Am I right about that, Seth A. Mandel? That's right. All right. I'm reading from the Times of Israel right now. Israel said preparing for renewal of Iran war. Trump says Tehran has days to make a deal. TV report points to signs of heightened readiness, including a five-hour cabinet meeting, cancellation of PM's trial hearing, and Trump says he is not sure attack. will when it will happen. What do you guess or think? That we're going back to war, that we're going back to an offensive posture in the conflict with Iran, yes. And when you say that, do you mean for a day, a month, as long as it takes because we quit last time and we quit too soon? We did quit too soon. And... I wish I knew what was in the president's head. I don't. But it ought to be for more than a day. And, of course, you know, my opinion is that it should be for as long as it takes. But one thing I've noticed about the president here is that he has not really gotten scared off of the Iran conflict by gas prices. That attack has been used on him. That criticism has been used. repeatedly, and he hasn't backed off of that. He just doesn't think that's enough to stop his quest of preventing Iran from attaining nuclear weapons. So I think he's often biding time for one thing or another. Sometimes it's to reposition forces. Sometimes it is to feel Iran out and see what their red lines might be under new leadership and then proceed from there. But he hasn't let up. on the strait of Hormuz and the conflict over that, over the shipping, and the embargoes. And so whatever happens, that is still going to have the effect on gas prices and the economy that is behind the criticism that he's receiving. So offensive or not, whatever we do with our fighter jets. That part of the Iran war is not going to change, and that cost is baked in. So I would think that the smart move would just be to finish the job and do what it takes, especially if we're not going to move off of the embargo of the strait or the blockade. And this is going to continue. It gives Trump's political opposition grist for... attack ads and things they're going to use against Republicans in the midterms. If they're already making that, spending that political capital the Republicans are, then I think he's just got to do what it takes to win the war. Now, there are about a hundred miles of coastland that, at the narrowest margin, the channel gets down to about 22 miles. You remember, I assume you remember, maybe you're too young, the no-fly zones in Iraq. We had two of them, one in the north from 1991, April of 1991, one in the south from August of 1991. Both of them went for 12 years. We enforced no-fly zones over Kurdistan and southern Iraq for 12 years until Saddam was eventually toppled.

What do you make of a no-fire zone? In other words, if we see any drone or anything, we'll bring the moabs out for that stretch of the straight-or moves because we really cannot allow them to carry on with these hijinks. Right. And also, we've already crippled their ability to build and develop ballistic missiles, which was a huge part of their, of both wars in both major theaters, right? The war between Russia and Ukraine in Europe and the war and the air war throughout the Middle East. Iran was a real hinge point in that with its development of ballistic missiles. So they have less to respond with, less to retaliate with. We should not be shy about that because the truth is that now is at this moment is the time when you would want to get into that kind of a shooting war because they simply don't have the missile capability to keep up with us. If they want that kind of arms race, they're looking at in a way what the Soviet Union looked at, which was an arms race that they couldn't afford and that would. bankrupt to them. Something similar is the case in Iran. Iran has less in the way of financial reserves for the blockade, for what the blockade is costing them versus what it's costing us. And they have less in the way of missile development capability. So, you know, we can wait them out, but if they want a fight, they should absolutely get it with the full force because at this moment, they simply can't compete. All right. Now I want to finish with two political questions. Let's clink virtual glasses over Thomas Massie getting crushed. How happy were you? Yeah, you know, look, he's just, I feel like this has happened a couple times. And Jamal Bowman, a Democrat, was the last one, which was you just, at some point, you just look ridiculous if you are a, if you are representing. your district, or supposed to represent your district in the U.S. House, and instead you spend all your time thinking about a conflict 6,000 miles away. I mean, I just think it's an easy case to make that you've got to get somebody else in there. Government can't work that way, and it certainly wasn't working for the people of Kentucky in that situation. So I'm not, you know, hugely surprised, but I think I'm happy for Kentuckians, because honestly, I think they're the beneficiaries out of this to at least Well, we'll see, I suppose, but at least have the chance of having somebody in office who represents their interests and isn't spending half his time with Ro Khanna in Silicon Valley and half his time yelling about the Middle East. All right. Last question. The buzz is back that Samuel Alito is going to retire. And it's going to be a difficult confirmation because Bill Cassidy's mad at Donald Trump and John Cornyn might not be too happy. And there's always a couple of others who are a little bit. But I have a name. His name is Judge David Strauss. Have you ever heard of him? Yes.

All right. He is a Eighth Circuit judge nominated by President Trump in 2017. Been very, very good. My question is he's an observant Jew, goes to Temple, and the grandchild of Holocaust survivors. All other things being equal. Isn't that a good thing for a nominee? Sure. I mean, in terms of, you mean in terms of the moral worldview that it creates, I think, sure, yeah, and the range of experiences. Realignment of the Jewish vote in America, it would be good for Trump to nominate, provided, and he is an originalist, I know that, but he's got to prove it to other people, but provided he's a good judge, doesn't it help with moving the Jewish-American vote along from the left-wing nutters into the right-wing column? It might, but that would depend on the issues that come before his court. Oh, I just think about it. I look forward to hearing about that on commentary. Seth Mandel, have a great Memorial Day weekend. Follow him on exit, Seth A. Mandel. Follow me at the end of today's program on the Hugh Hewitt show. In 2025, the FBI reported that Americans lost more than $21 billion to fraud and identity theft. Identity thieves can steal your social security number. Open credit accounts in your name. take over online accounts, and create financial headaches that can take months to fix. Most people don't realize they've been targeted until the damage is already done. That's why more families are turning to Aura. Aura helps protect your identity with fraud alerts, credit monitoring, dark web monitoring, and up to $5 million in identity theft protection. If something does happen, Aura's 24-7 U.S.-based support team can help guide you through the recovery process. You also get a VPN. Antivirus Protection, password manager, and scam protection, all in one app. Don't wait until you're a victim. Protect yourself and your family today. Start your free trial at Aura.com slash safe. That's Aura.com slash safe.