Congress Has Returned - Now What?

Fox News Radio's Ryan Schmelz joins us to discuss Congressional priorities now that they have returned - crime, Trump nominees, a possible government shutdown, and the Epstein drama. 

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Speaking of busy. Guess who's back. Well, Ryan Schmelz hasn't
been anywhere Fox News radios. I'm not being critical of
your traveling in Washington, d see. Ryan, Congress has had
a little summer break and they're back. Welcome Ryan, thanks
for doing this today.

Speaker 2 (00:17):
Of course, how are you doing great?

Speaker 1 (00:18):
Thank you so old boy. The news cycle winds up again.
I'm just going to go in order now of how
this was given to me on Fox. As we look
at the docket and what's ahead. Let's start with crime,
and Washington d C, for better or worse, has had
some attention. Now it looks like Chicago.

Speaker 2 (00:38):
Yeah, that's exactly what I've been led to believe, is
that President Trump is going to try to get Chicago
to be the next state or next city that receives
national Guard, a National Guard surge to deal with violent crime.
Now it's gonna be a little bit different because you know,
Chicago is not Washington d C. Chicago was not run

(00:58):
by the federal government, or at least controlled by the
federal government. So the legally the trum administration is not
the same powers to take over Chicago's police force the
way they do with Washington d C. And keep in
mind too, there was just a court ruling that you know,
maybe limits a little bit of President Trump's ability to
do this when in California, so it might carry over

(01:21):
to Chicago as well.

Speaker 1 (01:22):
Okay, it'll be something to watch. But when before Congress
left for the summer break, we talked about nominees being
behind schedule for your average president, where do we stand
with with who's up next?

Speaker 2 (01:35):
With that?

Speaker 1 (01:35):
We haven't confirmed all of those nominees yet.

Speaker 2 (01:39):
No, and they still have not. Yesterday they got back
to work, you know, moving some of these nominees along.
It's still it's still going to take some time as
long as Democrats do not work with Republicans on an
agreement to uh, you know, quicken this process up. And
and you know, there's been some talks I think, and
we saw this happen over recess about lawmakers who we're

(02:00):
pushing for this idea of maybe changing some of the
Senate rules in order to get some of these the
nominees confirmed quicker. Now, of course, I think there's always
a concern when you do that, that you set up
precedent right that you know, a Democrat president could be
an office next time and they could use this to
push through some of their more controversial nominees or more

(02:20):
part of the nominees. You know, but there are some
Republicans who are willing to take that risk because they
feel that, you know, this is taking way too long
for President Trump to get his nominees confirmed. Overall. They
just feels the confirmation process for presidents is broken in
some ways.

Speaker 1 (02:35):
What about the idea of a government shutdown, partial government
shut down? Here we go again, Ryan.

Speaker 2 (02:41):
Yeah, I mean, here we go again, And it certainly
is very possible. They've gotten to the end of September.
We're hearing some rumbling potentially a stopgap measure or a
short term extension of government funding. We don't know how
long that date's going to be, but it seems like
that's becoming more and more of a possibility and more
and more realistic.

Speaker 1 (02:57):
Lastly, at least on my list of big things that
could be on that on the docket, the Epstein drama
is still not done yet. Who gets to see what
and when?

Speaker 2 (03:07):
Yeah, Well, we had some victims from of Jeffrey Epstein
on Capitol yesterday and meeting with lawmakers. We were told
that it was an infuriating meeting and one that was
very frustrating. Obviously, they brought some pretty disturbing information with them,
and there were some serious allegations from what we understand,
made against some very powerful and rich people. They do

(03:27):
not reveal who those people were afterwards, but lawmakers said that,
you know, there are some people who need to go
to jail. That's kind of how one one GPE lawmaker
just put it. And you'll probably hear that report soon.
And you know, they were also told not to go
out and bort these names out because they don't want
these folks to start covering their tracks or as someone
put it, burning documents. So there are some serious allegations

(03:49):
that have been made yesterday and we'll probably hear more
from these victims later today too.

Speaker 1 (03:54):
And that is Ryan Schmells with Fox News Radio, Ian Washington,
d C. Thanks for your time today.

Speaker 2 (03:59):
Thank you brother, have a gue