08-26-25 - *FULL SHOW* Trey Gowdy; CO Health Insurance; Truckers and Tariffs

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Was texting with my kid like right then, fifteen seconds ago,
because he's he's getting a little nervous now about how
to apply for colleges and where to apply and all
this stuff. We did this road trip with him and
and I think what we really learned from the road
trip was colleges are insanely expensive, and my kid probably

(00:20):
doesn't have good enough grades or SATs to get in
where he wants to go because he had a very
bad first let's call it, three semesters of high school
that are really dragging down his GPA, even though he
did it was all A's and b's last year and
he's and he seems to be off to a decent
start so far this year, but still pretty concerned. So

(00:43):
we're sorting through all that, and I don't know, I
almost feel like I should find some kind of college
application experts to help us. So a part of me
doesn't want to spend that money, but it might be
it might be worth it to try to find someone
to talk to my kid about not just how to apply,
but where to apply and how to think about maybe

(01:03):
transferring later. And I don't know, there's a lot to it.
I want to mention a quick thing. I've talked for
all my years on radio about the Leadership Program of
the Rockies. I describe it as the best thing I've
ever done since moving to Colorado, other than becoming a parent.
And I won't bore you with all the details, but

(01:24):
I wouldn't be doing what I'm doing today. I wouldn't
be on the radio today if not for the Leadership
Program of the Rockies. And the application deadline for the
for next year's LPR class is the last day of
this month, August thirty first, which is coming Sunday. And
so you know, if this seems like something you might

(01:45):
be interested in, please go to Leadership Program dot org
and have a look. It's it's one class a month,
it's a full Friday once a month for about nine months.
I think it's nine months. And it's for people who
believe in free markets and individual liberty. You do not

(02:07):
have to be a Republican. Gosh, they would love to
have a Democrat who believes in those things, but it is.
It is for people who want to be actively involved
within their communities, when within the broader community, to expand
liberty of all sorts, liberty and good government. And you

(02:28):
don't have to run for office. Yes, there are a
lot of LPR grads who are in office, but you
could be involved in so many other ways with civic
organizations or in media like me, or helping in politics
some other way than being in office or whatever whatever
it might be. And it really is an incredible thing.

(02:48):
And I would like you if this sounds like something
that is of interest to you, again, check out Leadership
Program dot org. So we do have this special session
going on in the Colorado State Legislature now working through
the various financial stuff, and it's just it's gonna be bad,
Like we said it would be bad. The state needs
to cut a whole bunch of spending, but instead that

(03:09):
are going to cut just a little bit of spending
and raise and raise taxes on people and on businesses
in particular. There's a lot of little tricky ways they're
doing it. They're mostly raising taxes on businesses, again, not
by raising the tax rates, but by messing with other things,
taking away certain deductions. You know, ten million here, fifty

(03:31):
million there, and it adds up to some real number.
I'll give you one example. There is a thing in
Colorado law and there are restrictions on it, and I
remember all the details, but I'll give you the basic concept.
The basic concept is, under Colorado law, retailer who collects
sales tax gets to keep a small percentage of the

(03:53):
sales tax they collect as an offset for the burden
of having to do all the paperwork to track the
sales tax, to file the reports with the government, to
send the money to the state, and all that. So
it's designed to be a bit of an off a
cost offset to businesses for their compliance costs with sales

(04:15):
tax laws and regulations. And that is going to go away,
so businesses will not be able to keep those whatever
couple hundred, couple thousand dollars a year anymore, and it's
gonna be other stuff like that. It's sort of nickel
and diming businesses. Primarily now because Republicans are very much

(04:36):
in the minority in the state legislature and because there's
a democratic governor. For a lot of things like this
where they're raising taxes, there's not that much debate going on,
and especially in a special session where these people are
in a hurry, so there's a little bit of debate
going on. But what you have to keep in mind,

(04:58):
is that Republicans are essentially uninvolved in any of these
kinds of debates. Democrats don't care what Republicans think because
Democrats don't need Republican votes to pass any of this,
and they're not much interested in working together. And you know,
you can criticize that all you want, but it is

(05:19):
what it is. So this for the fiscal stuff, it's
going through pretty fast. Actually it's not good, but it's fast.
The interesting thing going on is that, as I mentioned yesterday,
there was a bill passed in the twenty twenty four
legislative session that is a bill that regulates artificial intelligence.

(05:43):
And it was apparently written primarily by Robert Rodriguez, who
is the number two guy in the state Senate. He's
a Democrat from Denver who clearly doesn't understand what he's
talking about and has written a terrible bill that will
be extremely harmful to business in state of Colorado. The
bill does have support from some labor unions and from

(06:05):
some so called consumer advocates, but it does stuff like,
so let's say you're a business and you use artificial
intelligence to help you make some kind of decision for
maybe a hiring decision, maybe some other decision. What this
bill would do is it would require the company to

(06:25):
tell the person who the decision was about, and I'm
going to go to coloradopolitics dot com to provide that
person with a list of the types, categories, and sources
of quote personal characteristics associated with the individual. Personal characteristics
include twenty factors including personal or sensitive data, genetic information,
biometric identifiers in the individual's economic situation, health, personal preferences, affiliations, interests, reliability, behavior, location,

(06:54):
or movements, as well as inferences associated with a group, band, class,
or tier of individuals to which the individual belongs. So
what this is saying is that if a company uses
artificial intelligence to make a decision about somebody, then they
have to provide that somebody with all of that information.
And also the software the AI developer is also involved

(07:18):
with this, and if they find that there is something
that was done wrong, it's not only that the business
might be the subject of a lawsuit, but the software developer,
the company that made the AI might be the subject
of a lawsuit. Even if the AI developed an absolutely
neutral platform that knew nothing to start and then somebody

(07:38):
else trained it on some data and based on how
they trained it on the data it made whatever decision
it made. But the bottom line is this is one
of the worst regulatory bills I've ever seen, and it
will destroy businesses in Colorado, and it will destroy AI
in Colorado, and it will send AI company and he's

(08:00):
out of Colorado, and it will generally add to Colorado's
distressing trend of moving far and fast away from being
a business friendly state. They were looking to put together
some kind of compromise to deal with this, but they
couldn't agree on it because even a lot of Democrats
know that this bill sucks. So instead, all they're going

(08:20):
to do is delay implementation of the bill to June
of next year, which is better than nothing because it
will give them the next legislative session to try to
work out something better than this absolute idiocy. Let's talk
about this Lisa Cook thing. Pat Woodard was talking about
that in the news about twenty minutes ago. So Donald
Trump has posted a letter online in which he removes

(08:44):
quote unquote four cause immediately Federal Reserve Governor Lisa Cook,
who happens to be an African American lady. She was
recently appointed to the FED and FED terms. This is
kind of odd. But FED terms typically last fourteen years,
so her term is not up until twenty thirty eight.

(09:05):
So here's here's the issue. Well, there's two issues. First,
it's not clear that the president has the authority to
fire somebody at the Federal Reserve, right, It hasn't really
been tested in court. Just how independent the FED is.
We like to think of the FED as independent, and
it's not really a government organization. Does it fall under

(09:30):
executive branch authority? Where as the Supreme Court has ruled
a few times in recent cases, the president does have
the authority, almost unlimited authority to manage personnel within the
executive branch. But does the FED fall under that? I
don't have an answer to that question. I think it's
a difficult question, and I'm sure it will be brought

(09:53):
up in court and we'll see what happens with that.
The other thing, though, that really troubles me is that
he says, Trump says this is for cause. So what
does four cause mean here when he's trying to fire
this lady? And I'll get to the politics of it

(10:13):
in a second, because I also think that's kind of
a dumb move politically, But what does four cause mean,
So I want to share with you a little bit
of Trump's letter, as set forth in the criminal referral
dated August fifteenth, twenty twenty five, from mister William J. Pulti,
Director of the Federal Housing Finance Authority, to Miss Pamela Bondi,

(10:34):
Attorney General of the United States. There is sufficient reason
to believe you may have made false statements on one
or more mortgage agreements. And they go on to say, well,
at some point you wrote that a property in Michigan
would be your primary residence for the next year, and
then a couple of years later, you signed a document
for another property saying that would be your primary residence

(10:56):
for the next year. It's inconceivable that you were not
aware of your first commitment when making the second. It's
impossible that you intended to honor both. So look, that
could be right, that could be right. But what we
need to understand here. First of all, Bill Polti, who's
running FHFA, said that he got onto this because he
got a tip about her. So it starts with a

(11:17):
tip about a federal reserve cover right, and then at
this point all they have is a criminal referral. All
they have is an allegation of this stuff. So President
Trump is sending a letter saying that this woman is
removed for a cause, saying that there is reason to

(11:38):
believe you may have made false statements. That word may
there is doing a lot of work. If I were writing,
if I were writing this note trying to do what
Trump is trying to do, I would say there is
sufficient reason to believe you made false statements. I wouldn't
have said you may have made false statements. So now
it looks like and it's not just it looks like

(12:01):
it is absolutely, positively for sure that Trump is trying
to fire this lady from a job that he might
not have the authority to fire her from because of
an unproven accusation. And that is just simply not how
this world should work, not how the government should work.
I don't think it's how the government can work. I

(12:22):
don't think you can claim you're firing for her for
cause without being able to show something at least close
to proof that she did something wrong. And maybe even
close isn't enough. Maybe you need to show proof. This
is an extremely aggressive move by Trump, and I think
it's a big mistake. For a lot of reasons. First,

(12:42):
it's important that the FED remain independent. Even though I
don't like the FED, by the way, and I don't
think they do a very good job, it is still
important that our financial, our monetary authorities are separate from
our governmental authorities. That is really important. Second, and this
is I think is kind of strange. Seems very likely
based on J. Powell's speech in Jackson Hole last week,

(13:05):
that the FED is gonna cut rates at their next meeting.
Trump wants the FED to cut rates. It looks like
they're going to cut rates. And of course, if you're
the FED and you value your independence, the harder you
get pushed on by a politician to do a particular thing,
the more you might feel like you need to push
back so that the world doesn't think you're taking orders

(13:27):
from politicians, because you don't want the world to think that.
And so by trying to do this now, Trump gives
the FED an incentive to not cut rates, which is
pretty dumb. I still think they're gonna cut rates, but
I gotta say, I just somebody's got a burr under
their saddle about this lady. I don't know whether you

(13:49):
know she's donated to Democrats I don't know whether it's
because she's black, I don't know, you know, whatever it
or or if she's been against what Trump has wanted
to do for you know, a year or two now.
But it's a really bad look. It's a really bad move,
and it'll certainly end up in court for quite some

(14:09):
time before we have a final resolution. Yeah, nobody's played
King Crimson for me in a while. Thank you for that.
I haven't talked about this cracker barrel thing. I need
to talk about this for a minute. I wrote a
piece for my substack, and I sure hope you will
do me the favor or the honor of going to
Rosskominsky dot substack dot com and subscribe there again, Ross Kominski,

(14:34):
Ka m I n Sky dot substack dot com, please subscribe.
It's absolutely free and worth slightly more than that. And
I try to write once or twice a week about
just whatever is on my mind. It tends to be
fairly political, that kind of writing that I'm doing their
political cultural, little economics, little foreign policy, kind of like
the show, I guess, and it tends to be medium

(14:56):
to long form, you know, whatever I'm whatever I'm thinking of.
So anyway, if you would subscribe, I would very much
appreciate it. Rosskominski dot substack dot com. My most recent piece, actually, no,
I wrote one since then, but my previous piece is
called the New Snowflakes and the subtitle is Snowflakes to
the left of Me, Snowflakes to the right of Me.

(15:17):
So it's pretty clever if you think back to those
bad old years that I'm old enough to remember, because
they were just a few years ago when the left
went absolutely crazy with cancel culture and all these word changes.
And we may in fact get to that because there's
been a thing in the news in the past few

(15:38):
days about a Democratic leaning organization trying to tell Democrats
to stop being such morons with language like talking about
instead of pregnant women, talking about inseminated people. Instead of breastfeeding,
they say chest feeding, and instead of Latino they say LATINX,
which even the Latinos hate, right. And so there's a
group out there on the left called Third Way, which

(16:00):
is warning Democrats to stop talking like that. But if
you think about that kind of language, it's been going
on for several years now, and it's not just language.
Do you remember do you remember when mister potato Head
was renamed to just potato Head because you weren't allowed

(16:20):
to have mister. Do you remember when a bunch of
Doctor Seus's books it was announced a bunch of Doctor
Seuss books wouldn't be published anymore because they had you know,
here's the CNN headline, Doctor SEUs six books won't be
published anymore because they portray people in hurtful and wrong ways.

(16:44):
Oh my gosh, do you remember. Actually, this goes way back.
This is one of the very, very first examples of
cancel culture based on online stuff. There was this lady
who posted a kind of dumb thing on Twitter. She
got on an airplane to go to Africa. There's a
very famous story Shannon smiling out of just recollecting, recollecting

(17:09):
it and trying to remember her name, Jessica or Justine.
Justine is her name. And Justine got an airplane, got
on an airplane going to Africa, and she tweeted quote
going to Africa, hope I don't get AIDS. Just kidding,
I'm white, dumb tweet. But we're talking about a person who,

(17:34):
as far as the world is concerned, not a very
important person, very few followers. She was in the world
of corporate communications at a big online not just online,
a big media company called IAC, and probably a little
dumb of her, more than a little dumb of her
to post that. But she is somebody with no followers

(17:56):
on Twitter, right, she thought a few of her friends
would see it. Bottom line, She's on an airplane for
twelve or fourteen or seventeen hours or whatever it is,
and by the time she lands, the whole world has
exploded and she's been fired. Visit piece from BBC, she says,
And this story is from when December of twenty thirteen.

(18:17):
She says. Words cannot express how sorry I am. She
added that she was ashamed for being insensitive about AIDS.
The company fired her. By the way, I think she
ended up back at that company, but quite a few
years later, quite a few years later. So what a mess,

(18:38):
What a mess, she said, I'm very sorry for the
pain I caused. The company that fired her said, the
offensive comment doesn't reflect the views and values of IAC.
So look this look it was a dumb thing to say,
was it a firing offense? Dumb thing to say as borderline,
But in the world of social media, where it blows
up and then everyone's going to start tagging the company

(18:58):
and not just the person who's said It's almost like
you don't have a choice. One of my favorite kind
of cancel culture things was when Alexandria or Cassio Cortes
went after Goya Foods. Do you remember this. I don't

(19:18):
even remember what her what her complaint was, but there
was there was something that that Oh I think, I
think the CEO of Goya Foods went to the White
House and was meeting with Trump, and AOC didn't like that,
and so then she shared a video. Okay, and here's

(19:40):
what she put in her tweet. Oh look, it's the
sound of me googling how to make your own adobo.
So basically like how to not buy Goya Foods a
dobo sauce, how to make it yourself. And one of
my very very favorite things about that episode was how
badly it backfired. This is from CNN. This is from

(20:02):
December of twenty twenty. Goya food CEO Robert Unan nue
Una and Ui referred to Representative Alexandria Ocasio Cortez as
the company's employee of the month, claiming that the congresswoman's
July tweets about her making her own adobo boosted sales.
When she boycotted US, our sales increased one thousand percent.

(20:27):
He said during a radio interview. She got employee of
the month for bringing attention to Goya and our Adobo,
referring to the company's popular seasoning mix. Goya's sales figures
are not public, so anyway, I don't know that she
actually quite called for a boycott, but it doesn't matter.
It was a massive and wonderful backfire. So anyway, those

(20:49):
are just a few examples, and you can probably think
of seven hundred and thirty three more examples without my
needing a mansion. Any of left wing snowf likeness. They
were always looking for a reason to be offended by
something and to be critical of somebody, and to ruin
somebody's life. And I will also tell you that I

(21:13):
felt very grateful at that time to be working at
a company, which is to say, this company where I
felt very strongly that they'd stand up for me. Now,
not if I said something like wildly intentionally racist and offensive,
no company's going to do that, but just something moderately offensive.

(21:34):
And I say that stuff all the time in the sense.
I don't not looking to say offensive stuff, but I
say what's on my mind, and a lot of things
that I say will offend one person or another, like
the cut the thing that came up yes yesterday, Yeah, yesterday,
about food stamps, where I said, I do think there
should be a little bit of social stigma on using

(21:55):
food stamps to nudge people who use them to find
ways to get off of them so they're not living
off of other people's money. I do want there to
be a tiny bit of stigma, you might even call
it shame that would offend somebody. Maybe, Yeah, I'm sure
Wood sure would. I'm sure I just did. Again, I
don't care. I'm not seeking to offend people. I'm just

(22:17):
seeking to tell you what I think. And I'm glad
to be working at a company where it's my job
to tell you what I think, and where I know
that unless I were to do something really really agregious,
they would stand behind me. But lots of places aren't
like that. Lots of places had a hair trigger where
if somebody said something that even if some person on

(22:38):
Twitter with one hundred and seventeen followers reacted negatively to
it and targeted the parent company, the big company would
react and cancel this or that. That's what happens. That's
what happened with Nike and the Vetsy Ross shoes. Right,
Nobody associates, at least no ration person, no sentient being,

(23:02):
associates the Betsy Ross flag with slavery. But some crackpot
on Twitter with literally one hundred and something followers didn't
like these shoes because it had the you know, the
circle of stars on the back of the shoe, and
Nike pulled them. That was actually, that was when I
started boycotting Nike, and I have not bought a pair

(23:25):
of Nike shoes since then. I don't boycott very much.
It's kind of a waste of time. And I don't
even talk about it very much on the air when
I do, because I'm not really trying to organize some
kind of big social movement like cancel culture. Is just
for my own for my own emotional well being. I
didn't want to support a company that was that weak

(23:47):
need and that unprincipled that they would cancel shoes with
this beautiful American symbol on it because some nobody who
was looking for a reason to be offended decided to
about it, So I spent a lot of time on that.
So let me get back to my more central point. Historically,

(24:10):
the left has been more sensitive about this stuff, and
the left has been looking for reasons to be offended,
and the left has been looking to boycott this business
or that business. But in the last couple of years,
a lot of people on the right have taken up
that mantle. And I think some of it is in
the if it's good for the goose, it's good for

(24:31):
the gander kind of mindset. If the left is going
to do all this cancel stuff, then we're going to
do it too, and just sort of mindsets like that.
And I wish they wouldn't. I wish they wouldn't. I
wish that conservatives would hold their fire before deciding to

(24:52):
be offended at everything under the sun. And that's just
happening too much these days. And I think part of
it is because there's an industry around it now. On Twitter,
on Fox News, unfortunately, Fox News has gone not everybody
on Fox, but a lot of Fox News is going
way down this rabbit hole of telling stories in a

(25:13):
way that are designed to generate a lot of sound
and fury and not really illuminate anything but a lot
of heat and to get people mad. And I think
it's terrible. I think it's bad for the country. It
might be good business, And in that sense, I guess
I don't blame them. Maybe I guess the real problem

(25:34):
is that we have a population that's stupid enough that
they buy into that stuff and are willing to get
offended about everything. And I really don't like it. And
there are a couple stories that fall into these lines
of within this category of conservative snowflakes in recent days,
and I want to just talk about these two a
little bit, and I want to try to talk you
out of being part of this stuff. One is the

(25:59):
Minnesota Vikings adding male cheerleaders. This turned into a whole
big thing online and a lot of conservatives are going
absolutely crazy about it. And then the former team a
former team captain of the Minnesota Vikings whose name escapes
me right now, Brewer, maybe Jack Brewer, Jack Brewer. And

(26:20):
I think this guy goes back to the seventies or eighties,
right It came out with something talking about how this
is kind of an e evil was his word, an
evil effort to manipulate the minds of children, having two
male cheerleaders in with the female cheerleaders. Not everybody went

(26:40):
that far, but it became kind of a big thing online.
The Minnesota Vikings are not backing down. And by the way,
there are already something like ten other NFL teams that
already have male cheerleaders. Now, let me just be clear
on this. Okay, when I'm watching a football game, and
especially if I happen to be in the stadium, whether

(27:02):
in the stands or on the sidelines, and I see
the cheerleaders, I find them slightly distracting in the best
possible way. And frankly, I won't be shy about saying this,
I've got no interest in seeing male cheerleaders. I don't care.
I don't need to see them. I don't need to
see a couple guys dancing around with, you know, with

(27:24):
pom poms, even if they're infinitely more athletic than I
will ever be, and they are they are. These guys
are great athletes. Uh, great athletes. They've got there, they
they're they're stronger, they've got well I've never seen them
with their shirts off, but I'm sure they've got infinitely
better bodies than all ever have. Like Olympic Like male
Olympic gymnasts, I can only aspire to that body, but

(27:47):
I don't need to see them in a football game.
But it's not up to me. I don't care. The
team can do what they want to do. The Minnesota
Vikings can do what they want to do. And isn't
it possible that an NFL team might do something adding
two people only to their cheerleading squad. Might it be
possible that that does not rise to the level of

(28:08):
something you need to get upset about. The bigger one, though,
was Cracker Barrel. This thing is taken on a life
of its time. And I'll tell you. I'll summarize what
my problem is with the conservative attack on what Cracker
Barrel is doing, and that is that they are calling

(28:29):
the changes woke. Now, the CEO may indeed be woke,
and in fact, Cracker Barrel may have done some woke things,
like somebody was saying that they had some some of
their famous rocking chairs that were painted in Pride colors
a couple of years ago. But you don't get to
use that as evidence now if you didn't know about it.

(28:52):
When you are complaining about Cracker Barrel taking that old
cracker off of the out of the logo and the
barrel that he's leaning on. Taking that old dude out
of the logo, there is no reason, no reason at
all to say that that is woke behavior. How do

(29:14):
I know? Take a look at the chart of Cracker
Barrel stock. A few years ago, Cracker barrel stock was
one hundred and here. Let me go, let me get
a five year chart going here. So this is twenty
twenty one. So four years ago the stock traded one
hundred and seventy five dollars a share. Okay, today it's

(29:39):
fifty seven dollars a share, so it's lost more than
two thirds of its value. Now, if you were a
CEO running a company that had lost two thirds of
its value, and some other restaurants have done very badly
like that too, but others have done quite well. Like
the company, I think it's all dine. Maybe that they

(30:02):
own They own a huge range of things, right, they
own they own fancy stuff like the Capitol Grill and Eddyv's,
but they also own the Olive Garden and things like that,
and that stock is up huge. So what if you
owned a brand that was on a very very steady
consistent multi year downturn, wouldn't you be trying something as

(30:28):
management to fix it. Also, keep in mind, Cracker Barrel
is a brand with an old timey vibe, and that
is very much its charm. I've only been two or
three times, and I like it. I don't love it,
but I like it, and I would definitely go again.
It's just not very convenient for me, and it's not
something I really think about very often. But it's okay,
it's all right. I like the old timey vibe. That

(30:50):
is its charm. But here's the problem. That old timey
vibe mostly appeals to older people, and a lot of
older people cut back on going to restaurants during COVID
and have not returned to their previous restaurant going rate.
So attendance at Cracker Barrel, visits to Cracker Barrel have

(31:11):
been down, you know, well after COVID, down from the
pre COVID level, right, So you take out the fact
that nobody could go out during COVID for a while,
you take that out, and the levels are down measurably importantly,
and they're trying to do some kind of refresh That
makes it seem that makes it something that could appeal

(31:32):
more to a wider age range of people, And suddenly
you're gonna have conservatives saying this is woke. Why is
it woke? And even if it were woke, unless you're
a kind a very frequent Cracker Barrel customer, you should
probably shut up about it anyway, because who cares. But

(31:55):
it's not woke. It's just a struggling brand that is
trying to do better. Reason Magazine says there are a
few reasons why the critique of Cracker Barrel as being
part of this go woke, go broke thing. This is
the mark. For one, it isn't obvious how Cracker Barrel bland.
Defying in other words, making its logo more bland is

(32:18):
an apt example of wokeness, which is typically understood to
mean an obsessive fixation with social justice and grievance mining.
And remember, Reason is a libertarian magazine, so they're not
down with all this social justice and grievance mining. They
don't like it either. There's an irony here, they say.
Central to the opposition to woke ideology is the notion
that progressives tend to brand every societal ill is the

(32:40):
product of an ism or a phobia, racism, classism, sexism, homophobia, transphobia,
and so on. But just as not everything progressives dislike
is racist, not everything that irks conservatives is woke. Words
have meaning. Then they go through and talk about the
stock price and the fact that you know, the brand
is doing very well. By the way, the stock is

(33:03):
fifty seven dollars a share. A year ago it was
thirty seven dollars a share, so it's actually doing a
little bit better now. And it's also I think worth
noting that their whole bunch of brands that have blandified
their logos, right McDonald's right, it's just very simple. Now,
what else? Pepsi is a very simple logo Now, Lots

(33:25):
and lots of companies are making their logos much simpler,
in part because simple logos translate better online and for
other reasons. I'm not in marketing, but this company is
just trying to do what so many other companies are
trying to do as their brand is struggling. And I
have no understanding of why conservatives are coming out calling

(33:49):
this woke. I understand that a lot of Cracker Barrel
customers are old conservatives, and they might just not like
the change, and that's absolutely fair. If you've been going
to a place that you love and you love the decor,
and you love the logo and you love all that,
and now they're changing it because there's not enough of
you to keep their business successful, you are more than

(34:12):
welcome to say, gosh, I don't like these changes, but
you're not more than welcome to say that there is
a political awoke motivation behind it. There is just no
evidence of that producer dragon behind the glass wearing a
Robin's egg blue colored Ralph Lauren shirt that I always
notice because it's so out of character. We'll come back

(34:32):
to that. What you want to make sure you put
out your trash this morning? Oh god? All right. I'm
joined in studio by Shane Thomas, who is one of
my morning show partners who is on seasonally. Typically. He
is the founder the proprietor of Integrity Health Advisors, where
I recommend that folks go if you've got questions about

(34:53):
individual and family health insurance plans, also Medicare. We will
talk about Medicare another day as we get close to
the Medicare sign up season. But there was some news
here in Colorado about individual and family plans some potentially
very big news, some big changes that Shane brought to
my attention, so I asked them to come in to

(35:14):
explain what's going on. So, welcome back to the studio.
It's good to see you. Always a pleasure to be here.
Thanks for having me. So what's this news?

Speaker 2 (35:21):
So when we're talking about individual family plans, we're talking
about self insurance, right, individuals that just need healthcare, they
don't have a through employer, things like that. And so
whether you're new to that market or people that are
existing in that market, the news we've heard is from
two very large carriers. So when we say Rocky Mountain
Health Plans, they are part of United Healthcare. So either

(35:44):
one and the other one is Anthem. So they go
buy Elevant's Health now. So just for namesake, so people
know who they are, go by what now elevhants health. Okay,
so elevating your health all different carriers, et cetera about marketing.
But anyway, as far as we know locally, Docu Mountain
health Plan, which is United or Anthem. And so the

(36:04):
big announcement last week was first from United Healthcare Rocky
Mountain is that they were not going to renew their
current plan for January one of twenty twenty six in
seven counties in Denver Metro. So we're sitting here in Arapaho,
so all these neighboring counties of you know, Denver, Douglas,
things like that, right, Yeah, And I'm just a quick

(36:26):
thing here.

Speaker 1 (36:26):
I'm looking at a Colorado Sun article about this. It
says the decision would mean that roughly ninety six thousand
people would have to shop for new health coverage from
a different insure next year. That's nearly a third of
the estimated three hundred thousand people who buy health coverage
on their own in Colorado. That's a big number, that
is correct.

Speaker 2 (36:46):
So when you combine the exit of United and Anthem,
that's how you get to that number. So the majority
of those are sitting with Anthem about seventy thousand, because
they're in more counties, so they're exiting a lot more counties.
So when we're talking about United, which is just Denver
Metro proper, and then you got Anthem in Denver Metro proper,
but then you got them in South North things like that,

(37:07):
so it is affecting more Anthem members. The biggest thing
to know for these members currently that are getting announcements
or that are worried, is that they have continuation of
their coverage to the end of the year. So please
don't freak out lose that you're going to lose coverage tomorrow,
things that are scheduled, things like that. Right, So, what
we're really trying to get ahead of is that this

(37:28):
is happening today, but there's always things in the works. Right,
is now there's so many people that are going to
be maybe uninsured and.

Speaker 1 (37:36):
Have to reevaluate.

Speaker 2 (37:37):
Like you're saying, is that United is going back to
the DOI and saying, hey, we wanted to offer plans,
you didn't approve them because of all these things that
are affecting the bottom line of expenses. Right, we have
to be offering these rates that are higher than you
want us to put it in. But now now you
have all these members, what are you going to do

(37:57):
to help the insurance of Colorado?

Speaker 1 (38:00):
So is this as simple as insurance company says to
the regulator who approves or disapproves, we can keep offering
this plan, but we need to raise the rate by
twenty nine percent otherwise we're going to be losing money
and we're simply not going to operate while we're losing money.
And then the regulator says, we'll let you do twenty
four percent, and then the plan says, no, we gave

(38:22):
you our bottom line already. We're leaving now.

Speaker 2 (38:25):
Correct, And I know you made those numbers up, but
that's exactly it. Right, Is United Anthem anybody that does
the answer all their numbers right with their actuaries and
say okay, we need to be here in order to
make this work. And the DOI says, well, that's higher
than the market, or it's higher than we want you
guys to inflate your rates. And because of all the
tax subsidies that we know are going away, they're having

(38:48):
to reformulate that, and especially because the morbidity rates were
much higher than they were anticipated, so meaning their expenses. Right,
they're reevaluating these numbers and that's why that's happened. But
the gray area right now is if they go back
and they're saying, okay, we do allow higher rates or whatever,
there may be some changes, but if there's no changes

(39:10):
as of right now, it goes back to what you said.
All these current members are going to be uninsured and
they really do need to call us at Integrity Health
Advisors and say, Okay, how do we find a new
plan for us?

Speaker 1 (39:22):
For January one? We're talking with Shane Thomas from Integrity
Health Advisors Integrity Health Advisors dot com. We have just
a couple of minutes left. So Colorado, like every state,
has very populous parts of the state and much less
populous parts of the state, and the insurance situations are
rather different. Right, Like the insurance market around Denver might

(39:43):
be quite different from Grand Junction, which might be quite
different from Alamosa. Right, So these counties that we're talking
about now, are they mostly around Denver? Are the Western Slope?
Is it across the state? So I'll give you a
two part question. You can tackle that, and it'll probably
be the last thing we have time for today. In
these areas where the where the health insurance plans are

(40:05):
going away, is there still competitive market? Is there's still
going to be some decent products available that you'll be
able to offer it? Because I do think that some
of this is going to affect some rural counties in
the Western Slope and not just Denver.

Speaker 2 (40:21):
Correct, You're absolutely right, majority of those are going to
be in the Denver Metro, right, but Anthem is the
one that's going to be in more of your rural counties,
and so we do have a list of those counties.
If you guys want, we can obviously provide that. But
I would say that as options go, right, are there
other carriers in the market that if United and Anthem

(40:43):
do actually exit, are there options? Yes, So as a
brokerage house, we contract with Select Health and signa Kaiser,
et cetera.

Speaker 1 (40:52):
So there'll be other options.

Speaker 2 (40:54):
And so one of the big things that the consumer
needs to be aware of is if I'm losing my plan,
I have to go to another carrier. It's a great
time to say, Okay, I really need these physicians in
these medications, So which carrier is going to be able
to cover me? So there's not a simple switch as
like hey, just go take something else. Because as you

(41:17):
and I know, we were just talking about medical before
we got on the call, it's really important to have
a hospital system or the physician that you want at
the time of need. And that's insurance, right, you need
it when you plan for the future.

Speaker 1 (41:31):
That's a great point. It's not just an immediately generic,
substitutable product. If you're already in medical carrier, already in treatment.
You've got a doctor who knows you and has been
working with you for years and is really specialized, and
it would be really bad if that doctor weren't in
network with you anymore. If you're in one of these plans,
what you want to do is sit down with Shane
or a member of his team and see which of

(41:53):
the other options not just exist as a potential option,
but actually include that doctor. That's going to take some work.
You get started at Integrity Health Advisors dot com. Sit
down with Shane and his team. By the way, they're
not going to charge you anything, right, They'll just sit
down with you and try to help you sort it out.
You want to add anything in the last few seconds.

Speaker 2 (42:11):
Yeah, The thing that we want to talk about is
we're just trying to get some education out there, right,
and so we're happy to talk to you the enrollment period, right,
and the biggest key is you have your plan till
the end of the year, but November one is our
magic date, right when all the plans actually do get
stamped and released, and we'll be able to find options
for you based on what we know as fact out

(42:32):
there in the marketplace, and we do make a change
for January one would be the transition date, but November
one to December fifteenth, So.

Speaker 1 (42:40):
Right now what you might tell them would be your
sort of best educated guests. But it's possible that these
plans can change either prices or I don't know about prices.
But who's in network right?

Speaker 2 (42:51):
Any of its release the prices so we even know?

Speaker 1 (42:55):
So we don't even know all right, Integrity Health Advisors
dot Com and folks, especially if you're one of the
one hundred thousand ish Colorado's in the Anthem or Rocky
Mountain Health plans in the individual and family plan market,
get on this right away, get in touch with Shane
and his team. Integrity Health Advisors dot com. Thanks for
being here, Shane, I appreciate it. Thank you. We'll be
right back. Quick questions or the things I want to

(43:17):
respond to from listener text Ross What about Anthem and
Welds County. Anthem is leaving weld County? Is it just
Rocky Mountain United or all of United's Rocky Mountain Health
Plans which is a division of United Healthcare. I've got
a link up on the blog a Colorado sunpiece that
talks about what counties these are leaving. Rocky Mountain Health
Plans is gonna leave Adams or Rappaho, Broomfield, Denver, Douglas, Albert,

(43:40):
and Jefferson. Anthem is gonna leave the all of those
counties plus Boulder, Clear Creek, al Paso, Gilpen Park, Larimer, Mesa,
Teller and Weld Counties. Keep in mind, though I wanna
be very very clear, we are talking about the individual
and family plan market. We are not talking here about

(44:00):
any kind of group insurance, corporate insurance, insurance you get
through your job, anything like that. Those are not affected
by this story. So I just wanted to make sure
we're very very clear about that. Going back to the
Cracker Barrel thing, listener text, I heard you defending Cracker
Barrel for not being woke. It's not what I said.

(44:21):
It's not what I said. I got one of these
things yesterday too, like people like sort of criticizing me
by saying that I said something that I very very
explicitly didn't say. I didn't say the Cracker Barrel isn't woke.
I said that the rebranding that people are complaining about
taking the old guy in the barrel off of the logo.

(44:42):
That's not woke. And this person says Sean Hannity's show yesterday,
his producer, Linda, who I know, by the way, I've
met Linda and I've met Sean Hannity, did a deep
dive into the CEO of Cracker Barrel, and the CEO
has been a supporter and contributor to DEI initiatives. I
believe that. I believe that. But who cares? Why does
that matter? Why do you care? This was kind of

(45:03):
the point I was trying to make, and I actually
said this when we're talking about this. Yeah, it's it's
It's not just possible, it's probable that at some point
in recent years, Cracker Barrel did some stuff that you
might call woke. I think, as I said, someone sent
me an email or a text saying they saw a
Pride flag colored painted rocking chairs at a Cracker Barrel
at some point. Yeah, kind of woke, kind of DEI ish. So,

(45:26):
first of all, so what But second of all, my
point is that people are complaining about the logo change,
taking the old guy off the logo and making the
decor a little bit more modern, like, not not fully modern,
but just a little bit less old timing people are
complaining about that as being woke, people who have no

(45:50):
idea what Cracker Barrel has ever done in the past before.
And you know, as far as you know, Pride flags
or whatever, they have no idea. So now they're looking
after the fact to come back and say, oh, look
she's she's a DEI person and therefore everything she does
must be woke. It's nonsense. But here's the other point.
Here's the other point. Don't don't let these people like

(46:14):
Sean Handity make you stupid. Okay, it doesn't matter. It
doesn't matter if the CEO of Cracker Barrel has been
a supporter of DEI initiatives. All that matters is Cracker
Barrel is a brand that has been struggling mightily for years,
and the stock has lost two thirds of its value
from it's high, and it needs a rebrand because its

(46:39):
customer base are older folks who are not going out
to restaurants anymore. And as they go to restaurants less
and as they pass away, they are not being replaced
by younger customers. At Cracker Barrel. The company needs to
do something, so they are trying to do something. Now

(46:59):
I'm I'm not saying there what they're doing is good
or right. I don't have an opinion about that. I'm
not a marketer. I don't know. I don't know what's
gonna work. I don't know what's not gonna work. All
I know is if I were running that business, I'd
be trying almost anything. And so, who why do you care?
Whoever texted me this? Why does it matter to you

(47:20):
at all? What Sean Hannity and Linda have dug up
about whether the CEO of Cracker Barrel is a supporter
of DEI Initiatives. Seriously, don't you have anything better to do?
The only reason that Hannity and Linda and I like
Linda a lot, by the way. She's nice, and she's
and she's smart. I really like her. The reason that

(47:44):
they get their ratings they get is because there's so
many people out there who are willing to just get
mad about something that they shouldn't care about at all.
If you are really upset about changing the logo, to
take take off some old dude and make a much
simpler logo, like so so many other companies have done

(48:06):
in recent years, simplifying logos because they think it's smarter
to do these days, especially with all the online stuff.
They think simpler logos work better. If you're upset about it,
I want you to ask yourself, why why is spending
a moment thinking about it a good use of your time?
Why is spending five minutes of it hearing Linda and

(48:29):
Sean talk about what the CEO of Cracker Barrel is into,
Why is that a good use of your time? And
the answer is it isn't so happy to have Trey back.
He's a former prosecutor, he's a former member of the
House of Representatives. He was chairman of the House Oversight
and Government Reform Committee. He's got his own show on

(48:50):
Fox Now Sunday night in America. It's a wonderful show
on Fox News. And he's got a new book out. Actually,
let me reach over here and grab the book. And
it's called The Color of Death. And I've read the
whole thing already, and and today is publication day, and
you can see, Trey, I've got the one where you
like you sat down and signed one hundred and fifty
books so that people can think you care about them,

(49:12):
even though you signed one hundred and fifty of them
all at once I got one of those, which is cool.
And so thanks for being back. You're I really enjoyed
our previous conversation, so I'm really glad to have you now.

Speaker 3 (49:25):
I'm delighted to be with you always, Ross, and welcome back,
and congratulations on surviving survey.

Speaker 1 (49:33):
Of It's right, that's right. I want to talk with
you maybe about two things before we talk about the book. Actually, no,
three things, sir, three things. This is probably kind of
old at this point, but a few months back, when
I was just texting with you privately, your part of
South Carolina had gone through some really bad stuff following

(49:55):
a hurricane. And I'm and I think a lot of
people didn't know just how a lot of focus had
been more on Asheville and North Carolina and stuff like that.
And I don't know how many people understood how bad
it was near you, and I haven't asked you about
it since. So how are things.

Speaker 3 (50:12):
Well better? I mean we you know, I was actually
out of town Ross the night that Helene hit and
I could not get back home. I had to take
the most circuitous route to simply get back home, and
roads that used to be passable were impassable. It kind
of reminded me of Hugo, Hurricane Hugo, which struck like

(50:34):
a month after my wife and I got married. We
were in Columbia, and it was reminiscent of that. You
still to this day see trees down on the periphery
of my neighborhood that were knocked down by Helene. So,
by no stretch did we have it as bad as
people in western North Carolina. But it was much worse

(50:56):
than anyone anticipated.

Speaker 1 (50:58):
Right, and you're somewhat west at least in South Carolina.
You're not by the coast, right.

Speaker 3 (51:04):
Oh no, I'm in the upstate. I am in Spartanur,
which is right beside Greenville, kind of in between Atlanta
and Charlotte. On ID five.

Speaker 1 (51:12):
Okay, let's do a couple other things, a couple of
current events things sort of and then and then I
want to get to the book. I was fascinated and
somewhat disappointed, although you can't these days. Twitter is so
disappointing all the time that you'd be more on to
be disappointed by anything there because it is what it is.
But you you made a comment on TV about some

(51:34):
of these folks like Clapper and Brennan, who I think
did some things wrong when it comes to how Trump
was traded regarding Russiagate, and you said, and I'm quoting,
there's shame, there's history, it's not just prison. And there's
a lot of folks out there who are clamoring throw
them all in prison. And boy, you the abuse you

(51:55):
took on Twitter for saying that was was really some thing.
I'm guessing you probably don't even read that stuff anymore,
and if you do, you don't care. But I'd just
like you to respond to any of it, including if
you want the underlying issue.

Speaker 3 (52:13):
Yeah, I don't read it. I mean people, look, just
the fact that people criticize you does not necessarily mean
they're wrong. But I have just gotten to the point
in life when when people don't know me, and then
I don't tend to care that much what they think.
We do not put people in prison in this country

(52:35):
based on social media. We do it based on an indictment,
an arrest, warrant, a jury, trial, and a senten scene.
What I find most interesting is is lots of the
critics did not spend a single day trying to uncover
what was done. I spent two years of my life
working beside Cash Cotel and John Ley Ratcliffe trying to

(52:56):
figure out what happened. So if it fits within the
statutine imitations and it meets the elements of the offense,
then by all means prosecute them. My point was pretty simple.
The fact that something doesn't rise to the level of
a crime doesn't mean it's okay. We have to find
other ways to punish or meet out punishment. Aside from

(53:18):
simply prison. There's shame, there's history, there's the loss of reputation.
I mean, the fact that something is one day outside
of statute limitations doesn't mean that it was okay to
do it, just means that it doesn't fit within what
we call criminality. So I just find it interesting that

(53:38):
people who literally never spend a day of their lives
in a courtroom because they have some sense of what
a law should be. I mean, being a bad parent
is not a crime, being a bad spouse is not
a crime. Being allows the FBI director is in and
of itself not a crime. However, they may have committed crimes.

(54:02):
So let's let the grand jury do this job less
like Cash Mattel and Pam Bondy, But we don't indict
people based on social media, and I hope we never
get to the point where we do.

Speaker 1 (54:13):
If I were somebody who was as angry about all
this stuff. I try not to be angry about much
because it seems unproductive. But if I were someone who
were as angry about all this as some of the
folks on Twitter are, and I will say I think
John Brennan in particular is a bad actor, I would
probably take the opposite of the position they're taking, in

(54:35):
the sense that it is so so unlikely did any
of those people go to prison, that I would be
spending my time focusing on how do we make them
pay some other price. I don't mean like vigilante something.
I mean as you're talking about with history, with public shame,
with whatever, because the chance of any of these people
going to jail is so vanishingly low.

Speaker 3 (54:57):
Well, the other point I would add to that Roles
is who they think asked Brennan the questions that got
him in trouble. I mean, was it any of the
critics on social media or was it the person they're criticized.
I'm the one that asking the questions. I'm the one
that ask him the question that he lied to so.
I mean, look, there are a bunch of armchair quarterbacks.

(55:18):
Tell him to run for Congress, Tell them to set
up on the dais and ask the questions. Tell him
to go to law school and become a prosecutor. It
is easy to indict someone verbally, but unless you have
stood in front of twelve people and convinced them beyond
a reasonable doubt, which I did for almost two decades,
then you don't know what all is involved in doing so.

(55:41):
Just like people were channing to lock him up at
Donald Trump, just like people were outside the courthouse saying
Trump should go to prison. He hadn't even had a
jury trial yet. I mean, we don't put people in
prison unless you've been adjudicated guilty. I don't know why
that is so hard for some conservatives to get their
heads around.

Speaker 1 (56:01):
Let me switch gears briefly. And I hesitate to bring
it up because I think this story is such a
massive waste of time. But it's one of these things
that everybody's talking about it, so I feel like I
need to a little bit. And that's the Epstein thing.
And I have a very fundamental question that I've never
heard anybody answer, and I think you're the right guy
to answer the question. We hear all these people clamoring

(56:22):
for the release of the Epstein files. What the heck
are the Epstein files? What is that mean?

Speaker 3 (56:29):
Absolutely no idea what they're referring to, because that's not
I mean. Prosecutors don't think in terms of files. We
think in terms of witness statements, examination of forensic evident
search warrants. So I mean, if the file is a
victim impact statement that a victim filled out, this is

(56:52):
what that crime impacted, how it impacted me, that will
never be released. If you're talking about grand jury material,
it requires a judge to release that. But let's talk
about Epstein for a second. So Epstein was indicted, so
there would be grand jury testimony, but we don't know
whether any victims went before the grand jury because you're

(57:15):
not required to put victims for the grand jury. It
could be a single police officer summarizing what every other
witness told him or her that is sufficient to get
an indictment. We know that just Lain Maxwell was not
only indicted but convicted. You have the trial transcript, you
have all the exhibits that were used in her trial.

(57:37):
If there's any way to prosecute anyone that was connected
with the trafficking or underage sex or sex with underage girls.
There's no one in the world that would like to
see them punish more than me. No one in the world.
But when you talk about files, prosecutors don't know what

(57:59):
you're talking about. You, I mean, you got to be
more specific. Are you talking about a witness statement. Are
you talking about surveillance video? Are you talking about DNA evidence?
Are you talking about semen? In a lot of cases,
you don't have any of this stuff for ross. It
is just testimony. So if the victim is unavailable, if

(58:22):
the victim is unwilling to come forward, how are you
going to win that case.

Speaker 1 (58:26):
The other thing I think that some of these people
mean when they talk about the Epstein files is evidence
gathered by the FBI from Epstein's various locations, from his
homes or whatever. As a matter of law, what would
the government be allowed to put out into the public
domain from documents that they got from searching Epstein's premises,

(58:52):
assuming that they would go through and redact let's say,
potential victims names and a couple things like that. But
a would he be allowed to just show the stuff
to the world if they felt like it.

Speaker 4 (59:05):
No.

Speaker 3 (59:05):
I mean, look, anyone connected with him, anyone who aided
a betted, provided a demand for what he was providing.
I want to punish them as severely as the law
can possibly punish them. I actually would be more than

(59:26):
fine even if the statute had lapsed or the victims
were no longer willing to cooperate. I'm fine with naming
and shaming them. But the reality is the government seeks
to indictments. Remember Jim Comey's press conference where he laid
out all the reasons that Hillary Clinton was guilty, but
just said he wasn't going to charge him any he
going to charge her anyway. Prosecutors usually don't do that.

(59:49):
You remember the Molor report. I mean, I was one
of the few people that was wondering, why is the
Moullor report being made public? Donald Trump is not being charged.
We don't like open up investigative files and say, look,
we didn't charge this person, but let me tell you
all the best so if we found on them, that's
usually not what law enforcement does. They speak to indictments

(01:00:10):
and arrest warrants.

Speaker 1 (01:00:12):
I'll tell you what really concerns me just last comment
and then we're gonna talk about the book. What really concerns
me is it seems like Jim Comer, who I guess
is chairing the committee that used to chair is wants
to get this birthday book that Gileen Maxwell put together
at some point. Can you imagine, like, so they get
this book, a bunch of you know, rich people sent
Epstein a birthday card, you know, and probably many or

(01:00:33):
book Most of those people probably had no idea of
any of these terrible things he was doing. They sent
him a birthday card. I can easily imagine some Democrat
member of the Senator of the House finding a prominent
Republican in that or vice versa, and then like ruining
somebody's life because he had the misfortune to happen to
know Jeffrey Epstein just enough to give him a birthday card.

Speaker 3 (01:00:56):
Well, I will give you the other side of the argument,
because that's what lawyers do. So if someone is charged
and convicted, there is an appellent or review process, so
we know whether or not there was sufficient evidence to
endice or convict someone. We never know when someone is
not charged. So it is possible the Oversight Committee or

(01:01:18):
the Judiciary Committee wants to know why you did not
charge someone. So let's assume in that birthday book they
wrote I had a fantastic time two months ago on
your island. I am. I would want to know did
you have sufficient evidence to charge someone and decide not
to do so? And if you decided not to do so,

(01:01:39):
why so an arrest conviction. All of that can be reviewed.
What our system is not set up to review is
the failure to charge someone when you should have. And
I'll go back to the Hillary Clinton example. We spent
a lot of time with Jim Comey saying why did
you not charge? The only way to do that is

(01:02:02):
through congressional scrutiny because no one in the public has
access to.

Speaker 1 (01:02:06):
That fantastic answer. We're talking with Trey Goudi, former member
of Congress, former prosecutor, currently has a show on Fox
News Sunday Night in America. It's a really great show.
His new novel is called The Color of Death, and
it's a thriller novel. First of all, Trey, let me
just did you ever think that when I would be

(01:02:28):
talking to you on the radio. First of all, we
probably never thought we'd be talking to each other, but
you would have one point four million Twitter followers or
ex followers, and you would be noted on the cover
of your new book as a number one New York
Times bestselling author. When did you think that was going
to happen? To Trey Goudy?

Speaker 3 (01:02:49):
Right after every school teacher I ever had thought it
would happen, which is never. I cannot imagine the reaction
of every teacher I ever had. I'm sure right now
they're thinking that that's a misprint, that that Trey read
a book, not that he wrote one, that he actually
read a book that would be newsworthy. I love to

(01:03:10):
write Ross It may be my favorite thing of all
to do. I wrote every closing argument, every opening statement,
every speech I made in Congress, every word that comes
out of my mouth on air. I write. I love
to write. But writing nonfiction and writing fiction are in
two entirely different things. So thank you to Susanne Scott,

(01:03:32):
my boss, thank you to the people at Fox who
kind of allowed and also encouraged me to do this.
I mean, it is one thing to write a book
about how to ask questions that you know that came naturally.
Writing fiction is different, different points of view you know

(01:03:53):
hidden clues taking people through this sleight of hand. Did
this person do it? Did that? It's my first foray
into it, and I'm really grateful that Fox let me
do it, and because it was a labor of love.
It's been in my head ross for ten years. This book.
I just never really had the courage to. You know,

(01:04:16):
when you write something, when you say something, when you
do something publicly, you do open yourself up for critique,
and so it you know, nobody, I guess likes to
be criticized, but it meant enough to me to run
that risk because I'm passionate about people knowing what prosecutors

(01:04:36):
and cops and the victims of crime go through in
a homicide investigation.

Speaker 1 (01:04:41):
Trey's book is called The Color of Death, and today
is publication day. One of the joys of my job
is sometimes I get books in advance so I can
talk with authors on the day the book is published.
And it's a murder mystery where the primary character is
some subset of Trey, mixed in probably with other people
and mixed in with his imagination as well. But the

(01:05:02):
primary character is a prosecutor in South Carolina, and I
want to Trey let me just quote a little bit here.
I just ask you to talk about this a little bit.
This is page forty. I had a love hate relationship
with this building. Courthouses are similar to hospitals, clinics, and
counseling sessions in one respect. Broken people come here to
be healed, but there is no healing. Everyone leaves with

(01:05:25):
some type of scar, one left either by a perpetrator
or by the system. But they all leave with a
mark reminding them that nothing is ever restored to its
original state. Closure may be the greatest lie ever told.
There is no closure. There's more, but in the interest time,
I'll stop there. I love that paragraph, and again I

(01:05:45):
sense that that's Trey Goudy talking. Well.

Speaker 3 (01:05:52):
When I describe the prosecutor as handsome, you should know
it was not me. So the prosecutor is not me
all I'm a handsome but yes, no, I you know,
we hear the word a lot. Closure. I see the grief,
the pain etched on the faces of the moms and

(01:06:13):
dads of children who were murdered when I bump into
him and Sparkman to this day, when I see him
at the grocery store or I see him at church,
if you want to see what grief etched on the
face of a living human being looks like I have
seen it. And it doesn't matter that you put the
person on death row. It doesn't matter that you've got

(01:06:35):
him life without parole. The only exception is possibly in
sex assault cases. He assault is a life sentence for
the victim, but her last image of the perpetrator is
him walking out of the courtroom with no power whatsoever.
He is gone forever. That provides sometimes a mod a

(01:07:00):
modicum of peace, but no closure. You cannot undo what
was done, so it is a myth. It leaves a mark.
Sometimes the mark is visible ross and sometimes it is not.
But I mean people who have not been victimized don't
come to the courthouse right. It is literally a place

(01:07:21):
for broken people who have been hurt or injured, or
too scared or some cases too dead to speak of
for themselves.

Speaker 1 (01:07:29):
We've got a little over a minute left. Most crime
thrillers are the lead character is a cop of some sort.
Yours is a prosecutor. And obviously you are channeling things
that you have lived, and it comes through very clearly

(01:07:49):
like who you know, you would know even if you
didn't know who Trey Goudy was. You would know after
reading the book that Trey Goudy has real important to
experience in this world as a prosecutor. It really comes through.
I would like you to just take a moment. We're
just about out of time, but take a moment telling
me why you think the experience of reading a crime

(01:08:13):
thriller is so different when the story is being told
by a prosecutor. And I don't mean you, I mean
the character in the book where the story is being
told by a prosecutor rather than buy a cop.

Speaker 3 (01:08:27):
Because it's the real world. Television gets it wrong, the
mini series get it wrong, and movies get it wrong.
Prosecutors do not show up the day of jury selection
and say hey, let me see a file and let's
go get ready to try this case. We literally are
at the crime scene that night. We work with the
cops and say, okay, it's not only what we can

(01:08:48):
prove is what the defense is going to say. And
we have to run these tests even though we know
they're not going to come back with prints. We know
we're not going to get DNA because the jury's going
to want to know why we didn't. So whoever has
to stand in front of the jury and explain it
should be there as early on as they possibly can.

(01:09:08):
Real prosecutors know that we are there the night the
crime happens. We're all the phone with the cops. The
rest of media gets it wrong. It's the cops do
all the work and then the lawyers come in at
the last minute.

Speaker 1 (01:09:21):
Good times. Yeah, he's pretty good, isn't he a good guest?
It's funny or something. He's humbles, he's funny looking. He
knows he's funny looking. Right, He's got funny hair, and
he's got big ears. It's the hair. Yeah, yeah, it's
the whole It's the whole combination.

Speaker 4 (01:09:36):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (01:09:37):
Uh a listener, tech, it's a crime that Hillary didn't
get indicted. I don't really care if anyone goes to jail.
If we could just get the truth out of these message.
I agree Hillary Clinton should have been indicted. I don't
think she probably should have gone to jail, but it
was very clear that she broke the law, and she
knew she broke the law, and she should have been indicted.
And Jim Comey made a big mistake there. But in
any case, ross I just bought Trey Gouty's book as

(01:09:59):
a retired pro. I'm very excited as well. You should
be as well. You should be. It's a fun, fun book,
all right. Gosh, I have so many things I want. Okay,
it's National Dog Day and we we had a dog
trainer on the show yesterday, Christy Joy is her name.
I saw a couple of stories though that I wanted
to just mention to you, just for for dog fans.

(01:10:19):
So let's see. How does this? Now, this thing is
gonna make me log in again? I hate that? Why
is Axios doing this? Actually supposed to be free? So
now I gotta go to my laptop. I gotta go
over to this thing. I gotta scroll do here semi
professional radio. Click on that and then do that thing
and then we'll see if it opens. Okay, So this

(01:10:39):
is a list of the most popular dog breeds in America.
So okay, I'm gonna ask you a question. I want
you to guess what do you think are What do
you think are? The is on the list of the
top ten most popular dog breeds in America. Pick one,
but you may not say Labrador Retriever because it's almost

(01:11:03):
always number one. And it is again this year. Okay,
labs are almost always number one, and of all colors. Basically,
they're all included in this category of Labrador retriever, all
colors of lab, black lab, and so on. So text
me at five six six nine zero do this quickly

(01:11:23):
because I'm not going to delay for long here, and
you don't win anything, and just tell me what what
dogs you think are on the list of the of
the top dog breeds in America. I'll give you, I'll
give you a few seconds to respond, and then i'll
i'll kind of tell you some of the answers. What'd
you say, dragon? I said it just you, and I
was just okay, don't say it again, all right?

Speaker 3 (01:11:43):
Was that right?

Speaker 1 (01:11:43):
What? I didn't hear you say it again? Just in
my year? Yeah? On the list around the middle of
the list. No, not on the list. Oh, the second
one is not on the list. The second one is
not on the list at all. Okay, Yeah, kind of interesting, huh.
So yeah, textas at five six sixth nine zero. Look,
the very first person to guess said the same thing
that you just said to me, And that's a that's

(01:12:05):
a pretty good that's a pretty good guess. So I'm
gonna give you the answers now, and then I'm gonna
share with you another thing that I think is I'll
get you in a second, all right. So the top
dog breeds in America on this National Dog Day. Number
one is Labrador Retriever number two, which I'm actually a
little bit surprised by Chihuahua. I know, that's how I

(01:12:28):
feel about them, too dangerous. Number three is a Golden Retriever,
which I guess is different from a Labrador Retriever, although
I think of them is about the same. One's just
long hair, one short hair, okay. Number four is an
interesting one. Pit bull really yeah, and the official the
official name American pit Bull Terrier. But pit bull is

(01:12:49):
number four. Number five German Shepherd. That one surprises me
in the sense that I feel like I don't see
that many of that. Yeah, right, I love German Shepherds.
The first dog that I ever remember having as a
kid in our family when I was probably six or something.
The first dog I remember us having was a German Shepherd.
Number six French bulldog. These have been popular for a

(01:13:11):
for a while, and I had one in their fabulous
golden doodle. I see a lot of golden doodles around
the popular really really popular these days, even more than
the original sort of darker color whatever doodle that thing is,
what was it? What's the dark color one labradoodle? Yeah,
some of those can be dark colors, but anyway, golden.

(01:13:32):
A lot of people love these doodles because you get
some of the lovely personality like the golden doodle. You
get some of the lovely personality traits of a golden retriever,
and you get some of the intelligence of a poodle,
because golden retrievers or labs are like famously morons, right,
but the one of the lovable morons. One of the

(01:13:53):
things that people love about these various doodles, though, is
that they don't shed. That is a big, big thing.
I know a lot of people would allergies that choose
to go with those golden doodles. So that's for that
have the problems. Number eighth to number nine Yorky Yorkies
are cute. I wouldn't say I don't feel like I
see lots of Yorkis. I'm a little surprised. And number
ten docs and I've actually seen a lot of docsins lately,

(01:14:15):
and I realized the plural of anecdote is not data,
So just because I've seen it doesn't mean much of anything.
So that's that's the top ten. But what I wanted
to share with you, and I just have about a
minute to do this here. I saw another list today
and this is the name of this list. This is
actually put out by a law firm for some reason.
The most common breeds of dogs that you find in

(01:14:41):
dog shelters, right, so dogs that people are giving up. Now,
of course, if you've got lots and lots of you know,
dog breeds A, B, and C in the country, then
you will tend to see a lot of dog breeds A, B,
and C in the list of dogs that people are
giving just because there's so many of them. But they

(01:15:05):
actually did this by city, but generally across America's largest cities. Dragon,
what do you think is the breed of dog most
found in dog shelters? I would have thought that pit bull,
but apparently not. No, that's right, it's people. Oh, the
first list was just popular dogs for people to own, gotcha? Okay,

(01:15:28):
this is which dogs are most in shelters, and you
are right, it's pit bull. Next most common German Shepherd,
after that Labrador retrievers, and I don't think it's because
people don't love them, but it's just because there's so
many of them, right, but twenty two percent of and
they did this based looking at adoptions, so in a

(01:15:49):
way you kind of have to assume that every breed
of dog would get adopted in equal frequency, which might
not be true. But just to think about this is
pit bulls next most common is German shepherds are only
eleven percent, since half is common, and then labs are
just under eight percent, Siberian Huskies six and a half percent,

(01:16:10):
Chihuahua's five point six percent. That number should be much higher.
That number should be much much higher. Nobody should. I
don't want to. I don't want to be too mean.
Let me see them. Yeah, somebody loves them. Chicago and
Denver both have Australian Shepherds and Australian cattle dogs near

(01:16:30):
the top of their lists of the most in sheltered dogs.

Speaker 4 (01:16:35):
Here.

Speaker 1 (01:16:36):
Let me see what I've got here, Denver number one,
lab number two, Australian cattle dog number three, German shepherd
in terms of the dogs that people are giving up
in Denver. So there you go. It's National Dog Day.
Give your dog a hug. I gave my dog a
hug this morning, took her for a walk as well.
We'll be right back. Golden Retrievers are smart. People are
people are really mad at me for saying some of

(01:16:57):
those dogs you're lovable. You know they're mad at me
for saying some of those dogs. Sorry smart? All right,
I apologize. Didn't mean to offend your dog. I mean,
I don't mind offending you, but I wouldn't want to
offend your dog. That wouldn't That wouldn't be a very
nice thing to do. I do want to let you
know what we've got coming up in the next segment
of the show. So I'm gonna keep this segment a

(01:17:18):
little bit short because I got to be on time
for this next guest. His name is Andrew Gradison, and
he is Assistant Secretary of the Department of Health and
Human Services, and they'll be joining us from DC, I believe,
talking about sex education. They just the federal government just
going after California saying that some of the sex d

(01:17:38):
stuff in California is inappropriate based on age and also
in the administration's viewpoint, has some issues with the underlying
information or science or so on, And it seems clear
to me that Colorado is also in the crosshairs here.
So we're going to have Andrew Gradison on to talk

(01:17:59):
about what the Trump administration's aim is raining in some
of these sex education programs and how they are looking
at Colorado in particular. Let me do a nerdy energy thing.
You know that I have Duomberg on the show from
time to time, and I love Duomberg's analysis of what
goes on in the world of energy and energy policy

(01:18:22):
and so on. And you may recall that a couple
months back, I guess it was late April, there was
a massive power outage in Spain that also impacted Portugal.
And what I said at the time, because it seemed
fairly obvious, not entirely obvious, but it seemed like I
shouldn't say obvious. It seemed rather likely that the massive

(01:18:45):
power outage was caused by Spain's ridiculous rush to add
wind and solar power to their electrical grid. And now
we have a and just after the blackouts, some people
were saying that it was pretty likely that this is
what happened, that some voltage variations coming out of their

(01:19:07):
solar systems probably caused this cascading failure after failure after
failure throughout Spain and Portugal. The and the Prime Minister
of Spain immediately came out and called all of that lies,
and he said, those linking the blackout to the lack
of nuclear power are either lying or demonstrating their ignorance,

(01:19:29):
and YadA, YadA, YadA. So anyway, there was a study
done and it turned out that it wasn't lies. And
then actually what caused that blackout was kind of a
burp in the system at one of their big solar
things that it caused an irregular voltage that propagated through
the system and basically caused the system shut down. Now,
what's interesting about this, and what Doomberg points out, is

(01:19:54):
that folks talk about solar power in a in a
way that is very very wrong. Economically. What they think
of is only the fact that sunlight is free and
therefore solar must be cheap. But not only is it
not cheap to build the solar panels and all that

(01:20:17):
infrastructure and all that all that kind of stuff, But
what they never talk about is the investment required to
connect new solar power generation to the grid and the
head of the UN actually just came out recently and
said that there hasn't been nearly enough spending on this.
There has been something like thirty cents of spending on

(01:20:40):
the connectivity and the grid for every dollar of spending
on solar and wind, and that that is not enough.
That's not enough. And the head of the UN said
in a speech in July the ratio should be one
to one. For every dollar you spend on solar panels
and whatever you put the solar panels on and the

(01:21:03):
control systems for the solar panels, you should also be
spending a dollar on the underlying system to connect the
solar to the grid. And also all of this additional
stuff that you need that you don't really need for
a lot of other kinds of energy, to make sure
that you don't have these voltage variations that throw the
whole system off kilter. So you need all of these

(01:21:24):
other devices as well. Doomberg talks about stuff, gosh, where
are these things, where are these things stabilizing stable? Yeah, So,
leaving the grid bereft of stabilizing inertia and voltage control
typically provided by the large spinning turbines of conventional power plants.

(01:21:45):
Right as you do more and more of the renewable stuff,
you don't have that stuff, and you need devices like
synchronous condensers whatever those are, and grid forming inverters, whatever
those are. So the bottom line is it's not just
that building the solar panels and the control systems are expensive.
It's that you need to spend another dollar on a

(01:22:09):
whole bunch of other stuff for every dollar you spend
on solar. Solar is not cheap. It's very expensive, and
it's unreliable, and frankly, it's dangerous when it's not done
the right way. And the idea with exposure therapy is
you get exposed to it, you know, in bits and
pieces over time, and then it bothers you less. And

(01:22:31):
I think that's what Dragon is trying to do to
me with playing Neil Young from time to time. Exactly.
It's not gonna work. Neil Young is terrible and he's
always gonna be terrible. And that's why you and I
are gonna go see him in concert next Monday, which
is going to be the ultimate and exposure therapy. And
I don't know why we're putting ourselves through it, all right,
joining me from his home base in Washington, d C.

(01:22:52):
Longtime Washington Redskins fan, as I have been as well.
Andrew Gradison is the Assistant Secretary for the Administration of
Children and Families at the Department of Health and Human
Services HHS as we know it, and well, first of all,
welcome to the show. It's good to have you here.

Speaker 5 (01:23:13):
Ross, it's great to join you. It's great to connect
with folks in the great stead of Colorado.

Speaker 4 (01:23:21):
Thank you for having me.

Speaker 1 (01:23:22):
Yeah, glad to do it.

Speaker 3 (01:23:23):
So you.

Speaker 1 (01:23:26):
Personally, well, I shouldn't say in your professional role, but
with your name attached to it. There's a lot of
stuff going on right now with the Trump administration trying
to get many states to modify what they are what
they are offering students in the world of sex education.
I see a press release that was just put out

(01:23:48):
earlier today. Trump administration puts forty eight states, I'm sorry,
forty six states and territories on notice to remove gender
ideology content from sex ed materials. And I had seen
a news story from a few days earlier about specific
efforts you're already making regarding California. So let's just talk
about what the issue is. And then I want to

(01:24:08):
bring it to Colorado, because I do think Colorado, along
with plenty of other states, is probably in your cross
heres a little bit if they keep going with what
the Trump administration thinks is inappropriate. So what's the issue.

Speaker 5 (01:24:24):
The issue is that the federal government, to the Department
of Health and Human Services, funds the Personal Responsibility Education Program.

Speaker 4 (01:24:33):
This is sex ad.

Speaker 5 (01:24:36):
These are sex ed materials that get put in front
of children as young as kindergarten, but some of the
materials are geared towards middle school or high school age children,
and it's meant to teach kids the benefits of it
absence education.

Speaker 4 (01:24:48):
It's meant to teach.

Speaker 5 (01:24:49):
Them the benefits of using contraception so they don't get
sexually transmit diseases, and how to avoid risky behaviors. What
we found when we started looking into this is that
these materials weren't teaching about contraception or the benefits of
delaying sex and till marriage.

Speaker 4 (01:25:08):
They were teaching kids gender ideology.

Speaker 5 (01:25:11):
They were teaching them that boys can be girls and
girls can be boys, and that gender is on a spectrum.

Speaker 4 (01:25:18):
And they were actually telling the students and telling.

Speaker 5 (01:25:24):
Teachers not to separate students into single sex groups for
sex ed where boys could learn about what's relevant to
them biologically and girls could learn about what's relevant to
them biologically in their peer groups.

Speaker 4 (01:25:37):
They said that that could cause trauma to the students.

Speaker 5 (01:25:40):
So as we reviewed these materials, we found that these
sex ed materials weren't medically accurate, they weren't age appropriate,
but the states, forty six states and territories were putting
them in front of those students. So what we did
today was we put those states on notice, and we
are giving every state that has ideological materials and their

(01:26:05):
sex and curriculum sixty days the correct and remove non
medically accurate, age inappropriate materials and make sure that we're
teaching young people the benefits of abstinence and contraception without
an ideological lens.

Speaker 1 (01:26:21):
So there are a lot of aspects to this conversation, right.
There's the science question and when we'll get to that
in a second, and get and who gets to decide
what is the science. There's the culture question, and then
there's there's political question. They're all very interesting and they're
all I think, rather different. But let's let's start with
the science for a minute and you're talking about sort

(01:26:43):
of non scientifically accurate, non biologically accurate. Who gets to
decide that? For example, you you said, or at least
you implied, that gender is not on a spectrum, right,
And a lot of people say you're a boy or
you're a girl, and that's it. A lot of people
believe that, but a lot of people also there are

(01:27:03):
a lot of other people who don't believe that. So
who gets to decide where that line is?

Speaker 5 (01:27:12):
Well, ultimately we're talking about fundamentals of biology, and who
decides that.

Speaker 4 (01:27:19):
It's our creator if nothing else.

Speaker 5 (01:27:22):
Now, as far as reviewing the materials that get put
in front of students, the Department of Health in our
human services by law, in the Personal Responsibility Education program.
In the prep program, we get to determine what's medically
accurate and age appropriate. We're allowed to review all of
the materials that get put in front of students and

(01:27:42):
we send them to a medical review board to determine
appropriateness and to determine if they're medically accurate. Unfortunately, many
of these materials went through previous review boards and they said,
no problem, nothing.

Speaker 4 (01:27:57):
To see here.

Speaker 5 (01:27:58):
But as under Terry Kennedy's leadership and on a leadership
with President Trump, we're actually taking a close look at
these materials, and what we're finding is materials that do
not reflect biological reality.

Speaker 1 (01:28:12):
Is this a situation that I talk about a lot
in many different contexts where if a state or anybody
is going to take federal money, then they're going to
have to play by the federal rules. So is that
basically what's going on here? These are state is it
are these state and local programs, but they're taking federal money,

(01:28:33):
and therefore, if they want the federal money, they have
to abide by the rules imposed by the administration and
power at that time.

Speaker 5 (01:28:42):
Yes, these are federal dollars, and if you're going to
accept federal dollars for a specific purpose, you have to follow.

Speaker 4 (01:28:48):
The rules that accompany them.

Speaker 5 (01:28:49):
So if Colorado is going to receive one point one
million dollars to fund its sex at curriculum, then they
have to follow the law. This is it's important. I
want to make this very clear. This isn't a new law,
these aren't new regulations, This isn't a change in policy.

(01:29:09):
This is the administration actually looking at and administering the
law as it was written and reviewing curriculum to make
sure that it conforms with that.

Speaker 4 (01:29:19):
So if a.

Speaker 5 (01:29:21):
School district in Colorado wants to continue to use gender
ideology and their sex at curriculum by all means, if
parents are comfortable with that, if they want to put
their students through that, they're allowed to. But the federal
government is not going to pay for it, not under
this program.

Speaker 1 (01:29:39):
We're talking with Andrew Gradison, HHS, Assistant Secretary for the
Administration of Children and Families at the Department of Health
and Human Services. As a parent myself, one of the
things I care about the most most in this world
that we're talking about here is the age appropriateness stuff
separate from you know, what you're called gender ideology, all

(01:30:00):
that there's there can be a lot of stuff out there,
even if the gender stuff were removed that might still
be age inappropriate. How much of that are you finding?

Speaker 4 (01:30:10):
Well, you're a.

Speaker 6 (01:30:12):
Parent, and if I'm fortunate enough, I will be a
parent one day, and I'm not sure that I want
my sixth grader to know that, to be to be
forced into a role play with someone where they're supposed
to play out as if they are transgender, I'm not

(01:30:35):
sure that that at sixth grade, it's ever going to
be age appropriate to tell students that it may be
traumatic to divide your classroom into boys and girls so
that you can receive proper education that will be relevant
to the changes that your body will go through during puberty.
So I have a lot of concerns, and we're finding

(01:30:58):
those are just examples from Colorado.

Speaker 5 (01:31:00):
What we've seen. We've reviewed the curriculum and promot of
these states. Some states, Washington State, for example, was teaching
children as young as kindergarten that boys can be girls
and girls can be boys. That's never going to be
appropriate because we're talking about five year olds who are
incredibly impressionable and don't know the world around them, and

(01:31:21):
you're teaching them something that doesn't comport with reality.

Speaker 4 (01:31:25):
So I have huge concerns.

Speaker 5 (01:31:26):
About the way federal funds have been used under this program,
and we're doing something about it.

Speaker 1 (01:31:31):
One of your colleagues sent me a snippet of a
what is described as a facilitator manual, so something that
a teacher would would read in order to be able
to do one of these classes, in order to properly
put on one of these classes. From page one, twenty
eight of a Colorado Facilitator Manual. Educator note, over the

(01:31:54):
course of the role play activities, students will be in
a position where they must role place actual pressure situations
with classmates of both a different and the same gender
they may be. This may be awkward for teams who
are sensitive to the suggestion of same sex romance, for
teams who identify as gay or lesbian, or for teens

(01:32:15):
who are transgender or gender non conforming. It's important to
address this situation directly and proactively. So I got I
got a few things on that. I don't know what
age this thing was aimed at, so you know, if
I would think if this were fifth or sixth graders,
that would be particularly inappropriate. But it also you know,
there's some issues there even for older kids. And I'm

(01:32:38):
curious of this one particular part where they talk about
for teens who are transgender or gender non conforming, is
it your position? Is it HHS's position that there is
no such thing?

Speaker 5 (01:32:54):
So you're talking about the All for You to second
edition Facilitator man annual that is used to educate teachers
on how they should perform sex.

Speaker 4 (01:33:06):
Ed in the classroom.

Speaker 5 (01:33:09):
These materials are clearly out of bounds when it comes
to the statute. I'll say that and then it is
a false. First off, this has nothing to do with
teaching the importance of contraception, which is what the prep
program was designed to do. So doing a role play
where someone's pretending to be transgender or gender nonconforming, whatever

(01:33:30):
that might mean, has nothing to do with the importance
of using contraception in the first place.

Speaker 4 (01:33:35):
On the second piece, there are boys and there are girls.

Speaker 5 (01:33:39):
And while some people all into a very small category
of intersex, No, under the Trump administration, we recognize men
and women as distinct.

Speaker 4 (01:33:52):
Biological categories, and we're not going.

Speaker 5 (01:33:55):
To entertain the social construct of gender or not going
to force students in public schools to learn it and
be graded on it.

Speaker 1 (01:34:06):
One of the things that concerns me, Andrew, is that,
let's say we've got a very conservative administration right now,
and you and your team have what I would call
a conservative approach to this, and what's going to happen
if the next president is somebody like Kamala Harris who

(01:34:26):
believes exactly the opposite of what you believe just as
strongly as you believe it. And I get very concerned
about this sort of roller coaster of policy where we're
gonna have one administration that says you can't talk about
AB and C, and then the next administration is going

(01:34:47):
to say you must talk about AB and C. And
if you don't talk about all the stuff that Andrew
didn't want you to talk about, if you don't aggressively
go talk about it, we're going to cut off your funding.
So how are we supposed to deal with that problem
as a society.

Speaker 5 (01:35:04):
Well, the back and forth between multiple administrations just reminds
me the importance of parents having a seat at the
table and being able to have their voices heard. The
Supreme Court reminded us last year the teacher that parents
have an absolute right to pull their students out of

(01:35:25):
the classroom in situations where they're being taught materials that
they don't like. So I think it's important for parents
to ask the right questions as far as what's getting
put in front of their children, and we're reminding the
world of the primacy of the parntal relationship.

Speaker 4 (01:35:41):
I like to say that the best social.

Speaker 5 (01:35:43):
Program is a family, and in this context it means
the best social program is a mother or a father.
Who's engaged in their parents' life, who asks questions of
their school, their school board about what's getting put in
front of their children, and isn't afraid to opt.

Speaker 4 (01:36:00):
Their children out of those materials.

Speaker 5 (01:36:02):
The second piece I would mention is, after reviewing this
program and the curriculum that red states and blue states
are putting in front of students, I wonder whether the
federal government should be involved.

Speaker 4 (01:36:15):
In this game at all.

Speaker 5 (01:36:17):
There you go answer for the federal government to have
any role in providing money to states to teach sex education,
I'm not sure that that's appropriate at all, based on
the materials.

Speaker 1 (01:36:30):
That we found. I couldn't agree with you more. That's
the right answer right there. And really, if there are
states like Colorado, which, as you know, i'm sure is
a deep blue state these days, Colorado is not going
to want to go along with any of these changes
that you are saying they must go along with if
they want to keep getting the federal money. And it
wouldn't surprise me one bit if Colorado and a bunch

(01:36:50):
of other states say, all right, then we just won't
take the federal money, which by the way, is fine
with me right as a libertarian, as a guy who
believes in the Constitution, most of what are federal government
these days is unconstitutional. So I think you hit the
nail on the head right there. I'll give you the
last twenty seven, no, twenty nine seconds because I like
prime numbers.

Speaker 4 (01:37:10):
Well, I agree with you.

Speaker 5 (01:37:11):
Whether the federal government should be involved in this one
way or another, that's a future conversation. I look forward
to engaging with our congressional delegation on I will say
that if a state is going to maintain this sort
of content in front of their students, the federal government's
not going to pay for it anymore. And I'll look
to just last week after we were reviewed the Governor

(01:37:33):
Gavin Newsom's curriculum in California, and we gave them the
same opportunity to correct their materials when they refuse, we
pulled the plug on federal funding. And that'll be that's
twelve point three million dollars that are going to go
somewhere else.

Speaker 1 (01:37:47):
I have a feeling, and I don't know whether you're
in a position to confirm or deny, but this is
basically the same train that's heading at Colorado.

Speaker 5 (01:37:54):
It's the same playbook, and if Colorado refuses to correct
their materials, they will say for these same consequences.

Speaker 1 (01:38:02):
I appreciate that very direct statement. And and you know
you're you're talking on the biggest, the biggest talk station
in Colorado right now, so I think a lot of
people are finding this very interesting and important conversation. Andrew
Gradison is the Assistant Secretary for the Administration of Children
and Families at the Department of Health and Human Services HHS.
Thanks for the conversation, really interesting, Andrew, appreciate it. You bet,

(01:38:26):
all right, go Broncos. All right, so I'll tell you
what I need to I need to do this ticket thing.
I'll try to get Mandy in if I got time,
but I got to do this in today's show, so
we we get I'm sorry, Mandy. We gave away four
pack of tickets yesterday. Were gonna do another four pack today.
I'm just gonna do this real quick. We'll take texter
number seven at eleven fifty five. All right, Texter number seven.

(01:38:48):
I know eleven fifty five isn't a prime number. I
don't don't at me a seconds texter? All right? You
want to add some seconds or thirty seven? Okay? Texter
number seven at eleven, fifty five and thirty seven seconds.
You've got to includes your name, your email address, and
anything relating to tickets, and what you will win is
a four pack of tickets to the Good Guys America's
Favorite Car Show September fifth through seventh that the Ranch

(01:39:11):
Events Complex and lovelands about two thousand, lots and lots
of vehicles, and all the vehicles are nineteen ninety nine
and earlier. We're talking classic cars, muscle cars, all kinds
of amazing stuff. If you don't win tickets, they're available
at good dash guys dot com. But texture number seven
eleven to fifty five and thirty seven seconds will win
four tickets for that car show. All right, Hi, Mandy

(01:39:34):
and easy. Did you hear any of that?

Speaker 3 (01:39:38):
No?

Speaker 1 (01:39:38):
I did not, All right, yeah, So I'll give you
just a quick summary. And then, because it seems like
the kind of thing you'd have interest in, the Department
of Health and Human Services is telling forty states and
six territories that they have to change their sex ad programs,
so they're going to lose their federal dollars, and they're
going after in particular, mentions of any kind of mention
of transgender. If there's any mention of that in there,

(01:40:00):
it's out. There is also this thing that I mentioned.
I don't know if you if you heard this, but
it's in this handbook that they're going to have to
role play. Kids are going to have to roll play.
It could be te you know, high school kids, sexual
pressure situations with classmates of the same gender or a
different gender. No, uh huh. And I actually think he
hit on the on the right answer right at the end,

(01:40:21):
is the federal government shouldn't be doing any of this.
That that almost seemed to be like a little brain
cram from him. I'm not sure he wanted to say that,
but I suspect a lot of these states are just
going to say, I keep your federal money and we'll
do it our we I.

Speaker 7 (01:40:32):
Mean, uh, Colorado, I just looked it up chat. GPT
says we get about seventeen hundred bucks per k through
twelve student.

Speaker 1 (01:40:38):
That is not a deal amount of money. Well, he
said it was one point one million dollars in this program, Oh,
which does sound kind of small.

Speaker 7 (01:40:46):
That is small in that program, but if they take
away start going after other dollars, that's a huge problem. Yeah,
of course, Governor Jerry Polis will.

Speaker 1 (01:40:54):
Just say nuh uh. That's his response to everything.

Speaker 3 (01:40:58):
What are you coming up?

Speaker 7 (01:41:00):
I don't know, I have no idea. I got a
lot of stories about climate change, renewable energy. There's a
few cascading stories that have been like, if you're one
of those climate you know, change zealots, you just got
to be.

Speaker 1 (01:41:15):
Like, oh, dang it, crap, these whole whole bunch of stories.
Did you see the thing about Spain where now I
have that?

Speaker 3 (01:41:22):
About the grid?

Speaker 1 (01:41:23):
Yeah, about the grid. We got the whole thing.

Speaker 7 (01:41:25):
I mean, and you guys, we are in a position
in Colorado right now we can still course correct. We
don't have to follow these people over a.

Speaker 1 (01:41:33):
Cliff like Lemmings. Right.

Speaker 7 (01:41:34):
We can course correct because we're gonna end up in
a bad way. We're gonna talk about that.

Speaker 1 (01:41:38):
And so much more. All right, And uh, I didn't
get to this on my show, but I'll just share
this with you. This is from I don't know Denver post.
I guess, oh, I lost it, But it's a Excel
wants to fast track the renewable energy stuff so they
can try to grab the tax credits before they go away.
So they're gonna saddle us with all kinds of billions
of dollars in expenses because they want to grab the tax.

Speaker 7 (01:42:00):
Wait until they start saying we got to upgrade the grid.

Speaker 1 (01:42:03):
Wait till that comes. And that's part of the Spain
stret that's big money. Keep up with Mandy, her fabulous
show coming up right after this. I'll talk to you tomorrow.