Relatable with Allie Beth Stuckey - January 16, 2026


Ep 1289 | “Civil Rights” Were Weaponized to Crush Christians. Now the Trump Admin Is Fighting Back | Harmeet Dhillon


Episode Stats

Length

1 hour and 1 minute

Words per Minute

167.79263

Word Count

10,241

Sentence Count

624

Misogynist Sentences

11

Hate Speech Sentences

16


Summary


Transcript

00:00:00.680 Are white Christian Americans and pro-lifers being unfairly discriminated against in blue states?
00:00:07.360 My guest today says in many cases, the answer is yes.
00:00:12.020 Hermit Dillon is the Assistant Attorney General for the Civil Rights Division in the Trump
00:00:16.180 Administration, and she is doing so much work to ensure that our elections have integrity,
00:00:21.300 to make sure that no one is being unfairly treated under the law for their faith,
00:00:26.480 for their skin color, for their sex. There is so much going on in the DOJ. She is going to give us
00:00:33.780 some answers today for how everything works and how justice is actually served. You're going to end
00:00:40.600 this conversation feeling very educated about what's going on, but also very encouraged by the
00:00:46.660 happenings in our highest level of government. Without further ado, here is our friend, Hermit Dillon.
00:00:56.480 Well, thanks so much for taking the time to join us. I've followed you forever,
00:01:05.040 but if there's anyone out there who doesn't know, can you tell us who you are and what you do?
00:01:09.200 Sure. Well, I'm Hermit Dillon, and I'm the Assistant Attorney General for Civil Rights at the United
00:01:14.740 States Department of Justice, and I've been practicing law for 33 years. And before I came
00:01:20.200 to the DOJ, I have been doing civil rights law for most of my life. And tell us exactly what civil
00:01:27.760 rights law is. Like, what cases are you typically taking? So in the DOJ context, the Civil Rights
00:01:35.240 Division was started in the 1950s, and it has expanded to cover just about every existing civil rights law
00:01:44.620 that we have on the federal level, and also new laws. So when the Americans with Disabilities Act
00:01:50.100 was passed, you know, we got that. When the FACE Act was passed, we got that. We investigate incidents
00:01:55.720 of police brutality and excessive force. We protect the rights of prisoners, of employees, of public
00:02:04.800 institutions throughout the country. A big part of our work, and this dates back to the Civil War,
00:02:11.780 is going after state officials who violate federal civil rights. And so throughout the United States,
00:02:19.780 we're looking at voting issues. I administer several federal voting rights statutes. The diversity,
00:02:27.620 equity, and inclusion dismantling of the federal government's agenda is under our purview, and we
00:02:33.540 go after that all over the country, and I'm happy to get into detail. When there's, you know, somebody
00:02:39.840 being discriminated against just about anywhere. If someone brings it to my attention, then we decide,
00:02:44.260 does it fit under one of the federal statutes? And if so, do we have the bandwidth, and do we then
00:02:48.560 look at it? So that's, it's a very broad purview. I have 12 sections, and we added to these sections
00:02:55.520 a Second Amendment section for the first time. So it's an expanding portfolio.
00:03:00.160 Yeah. Aside from that last one, the Second Amendment section, I imagine that, say, Biden's head of the
00:03:07.560 Civil Rights Division might have said all of the same things that you said, that we're making sure
00:03:13.140 that justice is carried out, that we're looking at police brutality, that we're looking at voting
00:03:17.320 issues, but you mean something very different than what your predecessors, many of them, have meant.
00:03:23.440 So how would you say the difference is between, say, how Biden's Civil Rights Division functioned and
00:03:28.960 what you're doing?
00:03:29.920 Well, that's a great question, and you can see exactly what the left thinks about that from the
00:03:33.660 commentary about what I'm doing. And their commentary is a lot of pearl clutching about how
00:03:38.680 I've radically changed the mission of the department. And that is because I think a lot of the lawyers
00:03:44.520 who were attracted to doing this job over the years were left-wing activists, and they viewed their job
00:03:51.020 as protecting a very small slice of Americans at the expense of other Americans. So there were
00:03:58.720 favored groups and disfavored groups. And this is the classic concept of DEI. And so the idea, for
00:04:04.920 example, where I've gone out and said that under Students for Fair Admissions and Ames v. Ohio
00:04:09.760 and other recent Supreme Court precedents, all Americans are protected by our civil rights laws,
00:04:15.680 not just some. That is a radical departure from what the Civil Rights Division's jurisprudence
00:04:22.260 has typically been. Now, every time a new administration comes in, corrections and course
00:04:27.740 corrections are made. But historically, in a Republican administration, that has meant
00:04:32.700 taking the extremely radical left-wing bent of the division and sort of toning that down slightly.
00:04:41.520 It's usually still the same personnel, mutinous and resentful during those four years or eight years,
00:04:46.800 and they just wait like a dormant virus for their opportunity to resurface and propagate what they
00:04:52.600 were doing. And I just made it very clear in my second week in office in April of last year
00:04:58.960 that we were going to be enforcing our federal civil rights laws, check, check, check. But the focus was
00:05:05.840 going to be on the president's agenda that he was elected to carry out. And that caused more than half
00:05:11.620 the lawyers in the division to put in their resignations. And then quite a few more have
00:05:17.100 resigned since then, including this last week. And so it has really been a radical personnel change
00:05:23.780 at the division, but a radical reframing of civil rights for all Americans, which seems natural to me
00:05:30.700 and consistent with my career and what I've been doing my life, particularly those last 25 years in
00:05:35.820 radical left California. But it is different.
00:05:38.860 You know, just like so many things, sometimes we're saying the same words, the left and the right,
00:05:44.520 but we mean totally different things. So how do you define a civil right?
00:05:49.400 Well, I look at the statutes first and before that, the constitution, and even before that,
00:05:54.400 a concept of natural law. And you date back to the founding of this country, and it was founded on
00:06:00.680 religious liberty and religious freedom. And then you look at the constitution and what the framers
00:06:06.000 enshrined as our fundamental rights, including in particular, the Bill of Rights, which I think has
00:06:10.920 been, you know, really important. Some concepts imported from traditional English jurisprudence that
00:06:17.280 the English and the British have now completely abandoned. So really America is the cornerstone of
00:06:24.480 these fundamental liberties that date from the Enlightenment. And we still follow them and believe
00:06:30.380 them. And until the law changes, that's our guide. But then you have statutes that are passed.
00:06:34.840 We had a number of statutes passed. One of the most important of which that I look at in the
00:06:39.000 criminal context is portions of the Klan Act, where after we had slavery abolished in this country,
00:06:46.840 a lot of state officials, sheriffs, governors, they refused to follow the law and treat blacks
00:06:56.400 as equal human beings. So we had to pass statutes that penalized them for doing that. Those same
00:07:03.600 statutes are still used today. And we still have, ironically, a number of state officials, including
00:07:12.000 governors, attorneys general, they refused to follow the law. They refused to go along with Supreme Court
00:07:18.320 precedent relating to voting laws, relating to gun rights, relating to the dismantling of so-called DEI,
00:07:25.260 which is discrimination and drag and other problems. And so we have modern day Dixiecrats
00:07:31.580 who are refusing to follow the law. And the federal government's job is to police that and enforce
00:07:36.900 all of our federal civil rights laws.
00:07:39.580 Okay. I can't let you just say that DEI is discrimination and drag without breaking that down.
00:07:45.900 Tell us what you mean.
00:07:46.640 Well, it is a principle that we're going to fix discrimination in the past by discriminating
00:07:55.840 today. That's what it is. And so to me, discrimination is wrong. And our civil rights
00:08:03.860 laws have a principle and concept of non-discrimination. And literally, when you look at Martin Luther King
00:08:10.640 Jr. and one of, you know, many of his speeches, he talks exactly about that, where taking color,
00:08:17.840 we should have a colorblind society, not a society where you get extra points if you're certain
00:08:23.240 colors. And that's wrong either way. It's wrong to, you know, prefer white people in employment and
00:08:30.140 protected areas. And it's wrong to prefer black people and other people of color, say immigrants
00:08:37.020 are more entitled to jobs than citizens are. And so, I mean, that's one of the radical changes as
00:08:42.640 we have laws on the books that say it's illegal to discriminate on the basis of national origin.
00:08:47.440 Well, American is a national origin. And so when I see ads out there saying that certain jobs are
00:08:53.640 reserved for H-1B visa holders and, you know, people from foreign countries, that's illegal. And
00:08:59.500 we've already reached many settlements in the civil rights division against companies that are doing
00:09:04.000 exactly that. Yeah. Can you give me some more examples of how there are state officials who
00:09:09.480 are defying the law when it comes to non-discrimination against whites or Americans?
00:09:15.640 Well, I have a lawsuit I just signed off on today, so it hasn't been filed yet. So I can't talk about
00:09:22.360 that one. But let's say a state or a city has a policy where they're going to prefer
00:09:28.860 non-whites for city or state jobs. That's illegal. And every time I see a policy like that, I open an
00:09:38.320 investigation. And once the facts are in, we will pursue that, either with a settlement or, if
00:09:45.420 necessary, a lawsuit in the race context. And there are many other contexts. There's gender
00:09:53.080 discrimination. We filed a lawsuit recently in Loudoun County, Virginia, and that's actually
00:10:00.480 religious discrimination, where Christian boys were penalized because they protested against a
00:10:06.840 girl identifying as transgender coming into the locker room and filming them. Boys have rights too,
00:10:14.460 and boys have a right to modesty and to say, whoa, I don't want a girl when I'm undressing
00:10:20.560 filming me in the locker room. And there were two Christian boys and one Muslim boy.
00:10:29.100 There was a complaint against all of them. The Muslim boy's parents stood up for the Muslim boy
00:10:33.980 and said, wait a minute, we're not going to tolerate this. And I think for politically correct reasons,
00:10:39.380 the school didn't go after the Muslim boy, went after the two Christian boys. And that's discrimination,
00:10:45.060 both in that particular choice, as well as in punishing them for having a modesty objection to
00:10:51.900 their rights being invaded and refusing to comply with these transgender dictates. And so
00:10:57.800 people don't understand that students don't lose all of their rights when they go to school. And so
00:11:02.700 we're standing up for these issues all over the country.
00:11:04.720 First sponsor for the day is Legacy Box. So if you're anything like me or you're like my mom,
00:11:15.220 you have all of these pictures and all of these different files, maybe CDs and tapes that you want
00:11:22.340 to save. They're all in these boxes somewhere because you don't want to throw them away, but you
00:11:26.380 don't really know how to preserve them. Most people don't have a cassette player to play a tape or a VHS
00:11:30.960 player to play a video or even a DVD player to play a DVD. Even if you have pictures on a CD,
00:11:38.140 you can't put it in the computer. Technology has changed so much, but how we have stored these
00:11:42.700 pictures in these memories really hasn't until Legacy Box. Legacy Box allows you to digitize
00:11:48.020 all of these things and they do it really efficiently. All you do is you send all of your stuff,
00:11:53.280 your pictures, your videos into one box and you send it to them and then they digitize it and they
00:12:00.140 put it on a file so you can actually have all of these memories to save and they don't get lost.
00:12:06.220 You can pass it down to the next generation, to your kids and your grandkids so they can watch those
00:12:11.280 home videos from 1985 that you would have no other way to show them. LegacyBox.com slash Allie gets you
00:12:19.880 55% off. That's incredible. Such a great discount. LegacyBox.com slash Allie.
00:12:30.140 You said something that made me think. The Civil Rights Division has attracted these kind of far
00:12:37.960 left activist lawyers for a long time. And really, when you hear civil right, it's almost become a
00:12:44.760 progressive buzzword. But you're saying that civil rights law has been, I guess, flouted, but some would
00:12:52.320 argue has been used to justify those DEI initiatives or used to justify anti-white or anti-male or anti-American
00:12:59.680 discrimination. Why do you think that is? Like, why do civil rights attract that kind of perversion of
00:13:06.720 what true equality should look like? Yeah, that's a great question. And I'll answer it with a question
00:13:11.880 of my own or pointing out a defect on one side, if you will, which is when I went to law school quite a
00:13:20.020 long time ago, there really was no career available to a conservative lawyer. And I'm a lifelong
00:13:25.540 conservative to make their career, earn a salary, pay your mortgage, doing conservative civil rights
00:13:33.120 work. And what I mean by civil rights is where a corporation isn't paying you to do it. You're doing
00:13:38.200 it for a greater public good. You may be relying on what's called a fee-shifting statute. So a statute
00:13:44.400 where if you win, you get paid. So you're taking an economic risk. But when I graduated from law school,
00:13:50.300 there are immediately job opportunities and available pro bono work at my big corporate law
00:13:56.520 firms I worked at with the American Civil Liberties Union, with National Abortion Federation, with,
00:14:03.320 you know, National Organization of Women. So there is a very well-established liberal edifice using
00:14:09.700 facially neutral laws, but only in one direction and no countervailing pressure from the other side.
00:14:17.000 Now, it is different today. I started a civil rights organization in addition to my law firm
00:14:22.440 that did a lot of civil rights work. And quite a few others have sprung up in the last decade or so,
00:14:27.880 initially only in the Christian or religious liberty context, but now going well beyond that.
00:14:33.680 You have a lot of organizations now. And so now a young lawyer can make their career, but we're
00:14:38.320 decades behind. And so only one side has invested in advancing a ideological or political agenda using
00:14:46.860 our federal civil rights laws. Yeah. And so, you know, and what's interesting also is like you look
00:14:54.480 at the American Civil Liberties Union. When I was in college, ACLU lawyers stood up for my rights to be
00:15:00.340 able to have conservative speech on campus. Not so today. They stopped doing that about 20 years ago.
00:15:07.100 And so they, you know, again, they've also retreated from the concept of, well, occasionally we can agree
00:15:14.780 with somebody we disagree with. That's not the case anymore. So there's been a vacuum. Now, what I've
00:15:21.120 found in building up the civil rights division is we've attracted quite a few young lawyers who are
00:15:25.880 interested in feeling good about what they do. I mean, it's great to make a lot of money representing
00:15:31.900 one corporation, suing another corporation and fighting over people's money. I mean, I did that
00:15:37.540 for a decade. I found it to be quite soulless at some point because I, you know, have my beliefs and
00:15:44.160 I feel like doing good during the day, not just with writing checks at tax time. And so, you know,
00:15:50.460 I built what I wanted as a civil rights career and I attracted a lot of lawyers to do it with me in
00:15:55.880 private practice, but we're behind. And so we're building it. And so it's just a process and more
00:16:05.160 lawyers just taking the law context need to know that that's available to them and you can feel good
00:16:12.640 about what you do and help your country and help your fellow Americans. What do you think about the
00:16:18.900 suggestion that I've seen some conservatives make over the years that we need to repeal the Civil Rights
00:16:24.000 Act altogether? Well, I mean, I think that's crazy. I've been using it to benefit Americans and that's
00:16:32.580 just, that's not a serious suggestion in my opinion. What needs to be done is to develop the law
00:16:38.820 in a positive way. And for that, you bring cases. I mean, some of the civil concepts in the civil rights
00:16:45.060 law laws, many laws are being used today by the Civil Rights Division to equalize discrimination of the
00:16:51.780 past. When I go into court and I say, when I, when I, when I look at Zoran Mamdani's, you know,
00:16:58.740 tenant activist person, say white people are going to have a different relationship to property in the
00:17:06.060 future. That is directly at odds with the Fair Housing Act. You can't do that in America. And so
00:17:14.540 I'd like there to be a federal vehicle because if I had to rely solely on New York law,
00:17:19.280 I couldn't do anything about that then as a federal government. So I do think we have a role
00:17:24.800 for federal civil rights laws. I mean, you look at the discrimination that American universities have
00:17:31.200 been perpetuating on college applicants. And I've reached with the, you know, with my partner,
00:17:37.240 if you will, Linda McMahon, and with the attorney general's blessing, half a billion dollars of
00:17:43.380 settlements so far in the first few months of this administration, that's because we have federal
00:17:48.600 civil rights laws and title six and, and, and title nine and others that protect our federal civil
00:17:56.620 rights. Title nine protects the rights of girls. And we view that as girls having an equal shot in
00:18:04.660 sports and title nine is being violated when boys are allowed to take girls trophies.
00:18:10.220 That's going to the Supreme Court this week. That's going to the Supreme Court this week. I'll
00:18:13.980 be at the oral arguments tomorrow, um, watching that argument. And we authored briefs in that case.
00:18:20.200 And if I had to rely on state law, first of all, the federal government couldn't do anything about
00:18:24.980 it. California, New York, Illinois, these states are not going to stand up for these rights.
00:18:30.560 That's the role of the federal government. When state officials defy federal law, we have to have a
00:18:35.300 vehicle to challenge it. And you have to then put personnel in place who are willing to do that and
00:18:40.180 perhaps be extremely unpopular with a certain portion of the media and the vocal left.
00:18:45.780 Yeah, that's a good point. Um, a lot of people in 2020, very discouraged by what they saw as widespread
00:18:55.020 voting fraud, or at least irregularities that made them wonder how fair the process is.
00:19:01.260 And the prevailing notion was, you know, it doesn't, all these other issues, it's not that they don't
00:19:06.420 matter, but they almost matter less if we don't get election integrity right. If we want to make our
00:19:12.660 voices heard, it's obviously very important that that process is impartial and transparent and fair.
00:19:19.360 And that's one of the things that you said that you're working on when it comes to what's going on,
00:19:24.500 um, as far as voting regulations and actual practices go in states. So what's happening there?
00:19:31.300 So let me break that down. So in 2020, I was one of the lawyers for, I was active, both member of the
00:19:36.960 Republican National Committee, and also, um, a lawyer for the campaign, uh, at various levels.
00:19:43.880 The vast majority of our election laws and how the constitution is set up is that state legislatures
00:19:51.800 pass most of the election laws. And there's some certain federal laws that I'll get to in a minute.
00:19:56.880 And so the hard work that has to be done is hand to hand combat at the state level. Now, again,
00:20:02.260 there's a disproportionate disarmament here because the left has actively invested in lawyers like
00:20:11.280 Mark Elias and others. They can count on a revenue stream of tens of millions of dollars to fund their
00:20:17.340 law firms to bring frivolous, maybe facially valid, uh, challenges, but in any event, who's fighting
00:20:23.920 that on the other side. And one of the reasons I ended up talking about politics for a minute,
00:20:28.360 which I don't do now, but like telling you how we got to this point, you know, I was frustrated
00:20:32.360 with the Republican National Committee for not being active enough in funding and fighting these
00:20:38.460 frivolous challenges. And so that's one of the reasons I, you know, picked up the, picked up the
00:20:43.300 torch and ran to challenge the leadership there, um, which did not work out eventually, but I think
00:20:48.100 it raised a lot of awareness at what could and should have been done. What happened in 2020 is
00:20:52.640 lawyers in the battleground States, including my own law firm went to Pennsylvania and some other
00:20:58.400 States. And we did challenge these cases and we filed briefs and we went all the way up to the
00:21:02.700 Supreme courts of those States and occasionally to the United States Supreme court, the United States
00:21:07.180 Supreme court whiffed and refused to take up the challenge of Pennsylvania, for example, simply
00:21:12.140 ignoring its own election laws. Um, many, the, the left very wisely used COVID as an excuse to
00:21:19.460 abrogate election law. So Wisconsin has a law that says you can't have an absentee ballot unless you're
00:21:25.380 effectively in a nursing home or in your deathbed. They just ignored that. And so, you know, COVID,
00:21:30.480 um, people were not allowed to observe the counting of the ballots in Pennsylvania. My law partners were
00:21:36.340 there on the ground or in Detroit or other areas because of COVID, of course, you know, that's a really
00:21:42.360 great excuse to just ignore laws and nobody held these people accountable. So there was a real
00:21:47.300 failure by the judiciary and sort of a little bit too little, too late approach in 2020. And I think
00:21:52.540 that some people, many people learned lessons from that. And there was certainly a better job done
00:21:57.260 on these issues in, uh, 2024. I mean, the president faced the unprecedented challenge of state officials,
00:22:04.780 starting with Colorado and Colorado versus Anderson saying he wasn't entitled to be on the ballot
00:22:12.140 because of this fake insurrection narrative. And, um, again, my old law firm led the way for the
00:22:18.740 campaign and filed or responded to over 100 challenges in the country. And that one effort
00:22:26.640 winning at the United States Supreme Court made the difference in the fact that I'm sitting here
00:22:30.680 talking to you today instead of a different fact pattern. Um, but what people don't understand is
00:22:37.680 there is no substitute for doing that work in the States. First of all, electing good leaders in
00:22:43.040 your States who aren't going to do crazy things. Second, pressing for legislation that creates good
00:22:49.360 law, voter ID laws, um, that don't allow ballots to be counted for weeks before or after the election.
00:22:56.800 Why, why are we doing that? That doesn't make a lot of sense. Um, early voting in person is one thing
00:23:02.360 or a short period perhaps, but election day is election day, not election month or year. Um,
00:23:08.700 and so these are some of the things that I think need to be done in the States. Now at the federal
00:23:12.380 government level, I administer several federal statutes that are narrow and tailored in scope,
00:23:19.180 but they cover some real estate. The, one of the most activist areas of the civil rights division
00:23:25.300 in history has been the use of the voting rights act to effectively change outcomes. And, um,
00:23:31.640 Georgia passed a very good passage, uh, package of laws after the really shambolic performance in
00:23:38.620 the 2020 election and administering their own voting laws. And what's the first thing that the
00:23:43.100 Merrick Garland DOJ did and my predecessor is challenged Georgia for trying to clean up and
00:23:47.820 improve its voting laws. And so that's one of the lawsuits that we ended when we came into office.
00:23:54.560 Uh, so voting rights act is an important part of our work. The help America vote act,
00:23:59.940 which requires states to maintain clean and up-to-date voter rolls and some verifiable
00:24:05.400 computerized mechanism for maintaining their voter rolls. That's a very active area. There's the, uh,
00:24:11.580 National Voter Registration Act, so-called motor voter law. And then there's the, uh,
00:24:18.140 UO CAVA, which is Uniform Overseas and Military Voters, which is another kind of widely abused
00:24:24.420 law. If you ask me on both sides, not enough military get their right to vote and way too
00:24:30.000 many people who don't live in the United States claim residency in a jurisdiction, which they
00:24:34.760 really don't have any ties to, to affect the outcome of an election. These are problems on
00:24:38.720 both sides that Congress frankly needs to get in there and fix. But under the help America vote
00:24:43.880 act, this department of justice has now sued or threatened to sue most of the states in the
00:24:50.520 United States. First, I asked for the voter rolls of every state and jurisdiction. I'm now suing 23
00:24:56.760 states and the district of Columbia for refusing to comply. I have current compliance from seven
00:25:03.740 jurisdictions. I have negotiations that are close to finalized with a number more and they'll be
00:25:08.960 announced recently. And I'm about to sue a few more states in the next literally few days. And, uh,
00:25:16.380 that only leaves a handful of states. So within nine months, we have put our money where our mouth
00:25:22.060 is and insisted that states turn over their data so that the federal government can help them do
00:25:27.060 what they're not doing. And that's red states and blue states. I mean, I sued Georgia. I'm going to be
00:25:32.280 suing another couple of red states shortly that are refusing to comply. And what they're claiming is,
00:25:36.780 oh, Ms. Dillon, AAG Dillon, we have, um, we have state privacy laws. Well, this is a fundamental
00:25:44.340 concept of law that every attorney general who's saying that to me or secretary of state, they know
00:25:48.820 very well that's not true. The federal government has supremacy over certain areas and our federal
00:25:55.200 civil rights laws preempt their privacy statutes. And when you say to me, I can't give you the social
00:26:02.180 security number of a voter because of privacy laws or their date of birth with a straight face,
00:26:09.200 who do you think hands out the social security numbers? Like we hand them out in the federal
00:26:14.820 government. There's no privacy there, folks. You're literally handing it out on the phone,
00:26:19.240 you know, when you're doing banking relationships or, or, you know, many other relationships,
00:26:25.960 you're handing over your driver's license at the airport or, you know, to check into a hotel.
00:26:31.140 I had to do that three times in the last two days. And so what are we talking about here? That's a
00:26:36.480 excuse. And I think the fact that so many election officials, red and blue states are fighting so hard
00:26:44.080 against the federal government, simply comparing the voter rolls against our federal databases of
00:26:50.640 who's a citizen. Are they dead? Are they registered in multiple states? That is very telling because you
00:26:58.860 would think they'd be like, yeah, okay, we are kind of our housekeeping is behind, but you're offering
00:27:03.180 me a free cleaning and I'm not taking it. What's up with that? So we're going to go, go and finish
00:27:08.240 this job pretty soon. But we're also, you know, looking at states that are continuing to engage
00:27:14.840 in racial gerrymandering, which is in our view, illegal. And we're waiting for the Supreme Court's
00:27:19.960 ruling in Louisiana versus Calais, important voting rights act case, which again, my team authored the,
00:27:26.780 coauthored the amicus brief on should come out any minute now, frankly. And the Supreme Court will
00:27:32.660 settle this question forever. But I think it's very clear under the Voting Rights Act,
00:27:36.120 the use of race as a proxy for how people are going to vote is impermissible and outdated.
00:27:46.780 Next sponsor is Fellowship Home Loans. If you are looking to refinance, or maybe you are looking to
00:27:52.760 get into the home that you need or your family wants right now, then you need to call my friends
00:27:59.320 at Fellowship Home Loans. Mike and Brian are the real deal. They are going to bring you excellent
00:28:04.320 service and help you get in the financial position that you need to maybe get some extra margin in your
00:28:12.080 finances if you need to refinance or to make sure that you get the mortgage that you need for the
00:28:18.480 home that you are looking to purchase. They do their business by the book, not just by the book,
00:28:23.700 but by the book, by biblical principles. Those are the kind of people that you want to trust with
00:28:28.620 such a big decision like this. If you go to fellowshiphomeloans.com, you'll get $500 of credit
00:28:36.200 at closing. That's fellowshiphomeloans.com slash Allie. Terms apply. See site for details.
00:28:42.440 Fellowship Home Loans. Mortgage Lending by the book. Nationwide Mortgage Bankers. DBA Fellowship
00:28:47.060 Home Loans. Equal Housing Lender. NMLS number 819382.
00:28:53.700 I saw a story, and you can tell me it's veracity, but that in Minnesota that there has been like
00:29:03.680 this process of basically someone saying that they can vouch for someone else or a group of people
00:29:10.840 when it comes to voting. So I guess not having to show their ID is just saying, yeah, I know these
00:29:16.220 people. They're with me. What's going on there? Yeah, that's crazy. So I'm already suing Minnesota
00:29:21.520 for its refusal to turn over its voter rolls to us. And that's before it became fashionable to
00:29:27.340 dunk on Minnesota in the last couple of weeks. But that story is accurate. So Scott Pressler,
00:29:36.160 who's a friend of mine, brought this to my attention. And I immediately opened up a federal
00:29:40.260 civil rights investigation into this because under Minnesota law, and this law dates back over 50 years,
00:29:46.900 an individual can vouch for up to eight people. So if you're a registered voter, you can say,
00:29:54.340 Bob and Susie and Dave and Doug, they're with me. They're my neighbors. And trust me,
00:30:00.460 they live in my neighborhood. So they're entitled to vote in this county. That's it. No ID shown. I mean,
00:30:07.600 even in California, I think when I registered to vote, I had to show my utility bills or my rent bill
00:30:14.540 or whatever mortgage statement. Not in Minnesota, but even worse, if you're an employee of a residential
00:30:21.800 facility like a nursing home or an adult disability center, you can vouch for the entire population of
00:30:27.680 that facility with no evidence of where these people live. Okay, so that is one of the reasons why
00:30:33.840 Democrats don't want to disrupt what's going on there with these fake daycares. Of course. That really
00:30:39.180 just kind of represent these Somalian communities that I guess go there, they take the taxpayer money,
00:30:44.020 million dollars every year or more. I don't know what they do there all day, sit, eat, whatever.
00:30:50.280 But the Democrats are getting voters from that. Look, we're investigating it. That would be a fair
00:30:57.920 inference to the shady practices that we're seeing in Minnesota. And Minnesota, there's one other state
00:31:05.760 that has that practice, but it's a state that doesn't have voter rolls. So they have a kind of,
00:31:13.000 that's North Dakota. Interesting. So they don't have maintained sort of voter registration and voter
00:31:18.120 rolls as such by, by jurisdiction, by either by political or otherwise. So there is a vouching
00:31:24.080 process there and it's very different. There's not a huge influx of, you know, immigrant voters there and
00:31:31.380 it's a much smaller population. So I think it, it's a quaint practice. We'll see. We'll, you know,
00:31:36.960 maybe that needs to be stopped as well. But for now, my focus is on Minnesota where this entire
00:31:42.560 state's management seems to be rampant and ripe with fraud.
00:31:48.540 Yeah. And what is the involvement of the DOJ and your division in what is going on there with the
00:31:55.720 daycares? We can talk about a lot that's going on there with ICE and everything, but let's start
00:32:00.640 with the daycares and the fraud. Do y'all have involvement in that? Not the civil rights division
00:32:06.200 as such, but certainly the United States Department of Justice is investigating that. And so the United
00:32:10.980 States attorney in Minnesota has already brought numerous charges. Even the Biden administration
00:32:17.080 opened up investigations into fraud there so far, if I recall correctly, and I hope I'm not inaccurate,
00:32:22.620 but I think there've been, um, 62 convictions already of people with fraud. Many new investigations
00:32:30.600 opened up. Uh, I think 90, there are 90 plus investigations ongoing that were opened up by
00:32:36.780 the Department of Justice. And I'm sure in the last couple of weeks that's accelerated. And so, um,
00:32:42.140 I spoke to the U S attorney there just yesterday by message and, you know, he's got his hands full
00:32:48.460 with so many issues going on there in Minnesota. And what, one of the positive things that's come
00:32:56.120 out of Minnesota is citizen journalists have begun to investigate this in other States. So DOJ is
00:33:02.560 getting reports in Ohio and other jurisdictions of similar rings of fraud that are happening
00:33:08.740 systematically. And I can only imagine that California is also a target rich environment based
00:33:13.920 based on their bogus, uh, homeless industrial complex and other government grant programs that
00:33:20.900 are ripe for abuse. Are sanctuary city or state policies where a state or a local jurisdiction
00:33:29.580 refuses to comply with ICE, like a detainment order, or they refuse to release an illegal alien to
00:33:37.500 ICE. Is that legal? And does that fall under your purview?
00:33:41.500 Not in the civil rights division, but the sanctuary city policies are being used by other parts of the
00:33:49.380 government. And there are some DOJ investigations involving active obstruction of our law enforcement
00:33:54.580 efforts that is illegal under federal law. But, uh, I think, you know, ICE, uh, Homeland Security
00:34:01.400 have been active in that area as well. And, um, you know, challenging jurisdictions that are refusing
00:34:07.820 to comply with federal law when it comes to that. But, um, yeah, there are many different parts of the
00:34:13.600 government focused on that particular issue. It seems to me that if you're an open defiance of
00:34:18.920 federal law, now we do have supremacy in the United States over immigration, you can't, under certain
00:34:25.560 federal opinions, force states to do your work for you, to do the compliance work. And there've been
00:34:30.720 some rulings in California and other jurisdictions where you can't sort of deputize or expect them to
00:34:35.680 comply. But at the same time, every state in the United States is a welfare queen. They get a ton
00:34:41.620 of federal money from the federal government. And if they're openly defying federal law,
00:34:48.820 why is that? And so I think there's definitely the power of the purse and spending power that can be
00:34:55.140 deployed to put pressure on states to do that. That's a policy matter for the White House.
00:34:58.780 Mm-hmm. You mentioned earlier the rights of prisoners and a story, a persistent story,
00:35:05.840 uh, that we have, you know, covered, talked about on this show for many years is in places like
00:35:12.580 California, Washington, other blue states, you have men who believe they're women many times with a
00:35:18.580 violent past, sometimes sexually violent past transferring into women's prisons. And sometimes
00:35:25.000 women are assaulted. I just saw a story, I think, I think it was maybe Massachusetts where a woman
00:35:29.960 said, Hey, I've been raped multiple times by this guy who says he's trans. And very often the woman is
00:35:36.200 actually chastised. Yes. So I assume that does fall under your purview. What's going on there?
00:35:41.840 Yes. Um, I saw the news story about Massachusetts and we've opened up a federal civil rights investigation
00:35:46.360 into that fact pattern. We have, um, uh, active civil rights investigation under our, um, prison reform laws
00:35:55.520 into Colorado for prisoner conditions ranging from transgender violence to, uh, abuse of the elderly
00:36:04.460 prisoners and heating and cooling conditions and others. And, you know, um, and there's some horrific
00:36:11.620 stories out there and like, look, it's my perhaps bleeding heart view that you, you should, no one
00:36:17.600 should be raped in an American prison, male or female. Like you are serving your time for a crime
00:36:24.680 you committed that should not include unreasonable violations of cruel and unusual punishment, which
00:36:31.760 certainly would include being violently assaulted or raped, which is such a traumatic thing. Um,
00:36:38.780 they're being forced to share an intimate space with a man. Same. That is cruel and unusual.
00:36:43.860 You don't lose your religious rights in a prison. I mean, you know, there's certain restrictions on
00:36:47.600 your liberty, but I've opened up investigations into houses of, um, of incarceration that are refusing
00:36:54.160 to allow prisoners to pray according to their faith. Uh, and there are some great religious
00:36:59.220 organizations that Christian Jewish and others seek and others that stand up for the rights of these
00:37:05.560 prisoners and they should, they should come out of prison able to integrate into society. And faith
00:37:11.600 is such an important part of coming to grips with our shortcomings as human beings. And so depriving
00:37:16.720 that is illegal. And we are certainly going after that. Yeah. Yeah. I'm very concerned about the
00:37:23.100 transgender issue and, and prisons. And, you know, you've got a lot of people, people who identify as
00:37:29.060 Christian, obviously a lot of progressives who, you know, they feel like they're taking up the cause of
00:37:34.020 the most vulnerable and they're the first to speak up about, you know, the dangers of ice and this is
00:37:40.500 Nazi Germany. But when it comes to very vulnerable populations, whether it's unborn children inside
00:37:46.180 the womb or who are literally the least, you know, the, the least powerful and have the least political
00:37:51.900 capital, or when it comes to these vulnerable women who can't offer anything, they certainly don't
00:37:57.160 have any political capital. It's not in vogue to defend them. Like, I just don't see them sticking up
00:38:02.540 for them and saying, yeah, they have a right not to be raped or they have a right not to change in
00:38:07.180 front of a man in prison. And it really disturbs me. And so I'm glad to hear that you care so much
00:38:14.400 about that and that y'all are doing something about that as much as you can anyway, because it is,
00:38:19.360 it's a justice issue. It is.
00:38:21.020 It is. I mean, the progressives are total hypocrites and you've seen some voices on the left break from
00:38:27.080 that progressive movement. J.K. Rowling is a great example of that in the UK where she's, I think,
00:38:32.500 said in the last 24 hours that I saw online that, you know, you shouldn't be raped in a prison or
00:38:38.480 forced to, you know, subordinate your human dignity. Of course, that would seem obvious. And yet
00:38:46.060 there's this total hypocrisy on the left on this issue. And it's as if the feminist movement has
00:38:53.020 completely abandoned its original premise. I mean, Title IX is about equalizing girls' opportunity
00:38:58.900 in sports, really, and education. Where's the hue and cry when boys take the girls' trophies?
00:39:07.840 What does that do to the self-esteem of girls? We've all been girls and that was a tough time and,
00:39:13.860 you know, you really needed that extra boost and opportunity to be able to
00:39:17.100 win trophies and compete and have scholarship opportunities.
00:39:20.800 Just compete fairly.
00:39:21.780 They're being taken away and we're being victimized as a sex yet again by this woke movement.
00:39:29.820 Yeah.
00:39:30.100 All right. You guys know Good Ranchers. This is the American family Christian owned meat company
00:39:41.680 that supports American farms and ranchers by giving you all American meat right to your front door on
00:39:47.220 dry ice. We've been using Good Ranchers for five years now. So thankful for them. Right now they're
00:39:52.700 doing something awesome. They're donating a portion of their sales to paralyzed veterans of America. So
00:39:58.960 we are headed into a year right now. We are in a year. We are celebrating 250 years of American
00:40:05.800 liberty and we want to honor those who have fought and sacrificed for those liberties. And Good Ranchers
00:40:13.740 is doing that. Every time you buy a box of Good Ranchers, especially when you subscribe,
00:40:19.540 you are helping support the veterans of America who have been paralyzed and fighting for our freedom.
00:40:25.920 When you subscribe and get that box of meat to your front door on dry ice every month, you save $500
00:40:31.760 rather than just ordering a box whenever you feel like it. Plus, when you use my code Allie, you save
00:40:36.920 $25 on your first order. Goodranchers.com, code Allie.
00:40:45.820 We were talking off air just about kind of the demands that you and then other people in the
00:40:51.260 administration and the DOJ get. Hey, we want this person arrested. When are the arrests going to
00:40:56.500 happen? And of course, all of us, we have an instinct. We want the bad guy to get what's coming,
00:41:02.320 you know, and we want goodness to win. But what does that process actually look like? And why are some
00:41:09.920 of those demands maybe misguided?
00:41:11.500 So just starting with myself, the vast majority of the work that I do in the civil rights division
00:41:17.640 is civil in nature, meaning I can go after people, punish them. I can get fines. I can get injunctions.
00:41:22.720 I can stop bad practices. I can get consent decrees. But that doesn't typically involve arresting
00:41:27.940 people. Where I will arrest people is hate crimes, attacks on houses of worship, synagogues, murders.
00:41:34.580 We're investigating numerous hate crimes involving race, religion, sex, and otherwise. And those
00:41:42.740 are some headlines in the news. So I can't really talk about those cases. And when people are talking
00:41:48.060 about, I want to see members of Congress perp walked, or I want to see election officials perp walked.
00:41:55.060 What you have to first understand is that's mostly the purview of other people in the government,
00:41:59.140 and they face the following challenge. Much of the evidence involving what I believe is a
00:42:04.120 systematic violation of federal civil rights and due process and Fourth Amendment and search and
00:42:09.800 seizure laws by the prior administration was also actively hidden by the prior administration. I
00:42:15.620 think we've all seen the stories of documents being uncovered from burn bags that are stuffed in
00:42:20.460 safes and in rooms in the FBI building across the street from me at the United States Department
00:42:25.560 of Justice. So some of that is still coming to light. Some of that will never come to light.
00:42:29.440 And some of that has come to light, and we're processing it in the DOJ.
00:42:36.980 There is a deep state in the FBI and the DOJ. So while there's a leadership that the president
00:42:41.940 called to service, and we have a layer of leadership under us, the rank and file in FBI, DOJ, some of them,
00:42:52.960 that's why they quit in my department. They didn't quit in some other department. They're just like
00:42:56.460 slow rolling things that they ought to be looking at. So we're getting our hands around that and
00:43:00.960 forcing the issue. But I think you are going to see these things eventually come to grand juries and
00:43:07.540 result in indictments. We haven't even been in office for a year as yet. The head of the criminal
00:43:13.540 division of the United States Department of Justice was just sworn in last month.
00:43:16.940 There are senators on our side who don't particularly find the needs of the Department of Justice and the
00:43:26.880 president's administration to get people confirmed so they can do their jobs. That may be less important
00:43:31.560 than having fundraisers back in their districts. Okay. Some of us are working around the clock. I mean,
00:43:36.200 I was on a panel last week with Tyson Duva, the head of the criminal division. He's got a huge force of
00:43:42.800 people under him. And with the Epstein files, he was working on Christmas Day and New Year's Eve,
00:43:48.880 redacting, reviewing, and heading up a team to do that. So we are understaffed and working extremely
00:43:56.700 hard at the DOJ. And I'm hiring. And frankly, there are not enough lawyers out there who want to step up
00:44:06.440 and serve their country with us. So if anyone's watching this and wants to make a difference,
00:44:10.440 you could do it in any of the 94 United States attorney's offices. They all have needs all
00:44:15.660 over the country or in main justice in a number of different areas. And so it's really rewarding work
00:44:21.520 and we need more people to do it. But this attorney general could not be more conservative and loyal
00:44:31.040 to the president, both and principled. And so we are not the other side where we come up with an
00:44:37.340 endpoint. And then we work backwards to find some crime and get the person who you don't like. That's
00:44:44.040 not how justice works. It's the Department of Justice, not the Department of Perp Walks and
00:44:49.120 Convictions. And so what you do is you build the case, you find the violation, then you have a law
00:44:58.120 enforcement process. Law enforcement includes getting people's communications. You have to go to a
00:45:03.760 federal judge and get a warrant for that. You do your investigation. You then build the case and
00:45:10.820 you then figure out, if I bring this case in this district, am I going to get a setback from the
00:45:15.680 Court of Appeals that bars this road for me or where do I bring this case? And so there's just like
00:45:19.920 a number of different things that we look at when we decide which case to bring first, where to bring
00:45:25.440 it, when to bring it, and how to bring it in such a way that we get the conviction or the outcome that
00:45:32.060 we are seeking in the course of justice. Yeah. What about something like the FACE Act? There have
00:45:38.560 been pro-lifers that have been put in prison. I mean, we're talking elderly Christian women who were
00:45:44.280 trying to, you know, protest, maybe stand in front of an abortion clinic, and they were convicted and
00:45:51.080 thrown in prison, in federal prison under the FACE Act. Can you break down what that is and what y'all
00:45:56.680 think about it as a division? Absolutely. It's something I'm very passionate about. So the FACE Act
00:46:01.260 was passed in 1994. Bill Clinton signed it into law, and it was designed to effectively protect abortion
00:46:11.420 clinics. But it wasn't going to pass with any Republican support without a corollary aspect to it,
00:46:19.060 which was to protect houses of worship from blockages and obstruction. So in all these years, up until
00:46:27.300 I was the Assistant Attorney General for Civil Rights, nobody ever used that houses of worship part to
00:46:33.020 prosecute protesters or criminals blocking access to a house of worship. So we started to do that. Let's set
00:46:40.140 that aside for a minute. The Biden administration was extremely active in persecuting people of faith
00:46:45.820 protesting outside abortion clinics. I've represented many pro-life organizations and protesters in court
00:46:54.560 and journalists like David Daleiden and others. And so I've seen how the government and the judges
00:47:01.720 weaponize this. I mean, judges refuse to recuse themselves when their wives are actively involved in
00:47:06.820 abortion clinics. So there's a real problem there. The president pardoned the protesters of the nature
00:47:18.740 that you described. So there were some who had quite lengthy sentences, and he pardoned all of those at
00:47:24.600 the beginning of his term. I went to court to defend a conviction. I think they brought one set of
00:47:32.440 convictions really in the Biden administration for a pro-life pregnancy center that was attacked by a
00:47:39.500 group called Jane's Revenge. Jane's Revenge is this violent code pinkish Antifa type organization that
00:47:47.400 had a string of attacks on pro-life clinics, crisis pregnancy centers in Florida, all over Florida.
00:47:56.900 And they prosecuted four of these folks. Three of them pled guilty. One of them decided to roll the dice and go to
00:48:04.180 trial. We used a law I mentioned earlier in our discussion here, the Klan Act conspiracy statute to accuse that
00:48:15.560 protester of conspiring to attack multiple houses of worship. And they spray painted the houses of not worship, but of
00:48:23.940 these healthcare facilities. They spray painted them. They terrorized the staff. The staff had to close down
00:48:32.660 these crisis pregnancy, religiously based counseling centers, and higher extra security, and, you know,
00:48:41.260 effectively shut down for a period of time because of this terror attempt. And so the Biden DOJ got a
00:48:50.540 conviction, 120-day sentence for what pro-life protesters got years in prison for, and not even,
00:48:58.660 some of them were just praying, not spray painting or blocking entrances. They weren't being violent.
00:49:04.000 They weren't even blocking. They were praying. They were invoking God. Very different fact pattern than
00:49:08.960 these, you know, crazed people. Biden administration really put pro-lifers in prison who were simply
00:49:15.040 praying. Simply praying. In front of pregnancy centers using the FACE Act. Correct. And these
00:49:20.720 Jane's Revenge groups who, after Roe was overturned, went to these pregnancy centers. You're saying only
00:49:27.080 one time did they get convicted and got 120 days in prison, some of these people? But there were a lot
00:49:32.420 of instances of this happening. It wasn't just like... There are a lot of instances that haven't been
00:49:35.780 prosecuted yet. I mean, I've asked people who've mentioned this to me in conversation. I said,
00:49:41.520 well, bring me the facts. I will open up a case and look at it. Because if it's within the statute
00:49:45.560 of limitations, I'm very interested in that. Because everyone should be allowed to go under
00:49:50.620 this law to a health care facility or a religiously based health care facility and get counseling or
00:49:58.120 get information. And so I went to court in the 11th Circuit to defend that conviction. And, you know,
00:50:03.740 these types of folks never have a shortage of lawyers to stand up for their rights. And so we did
00:50:08.780 win. And that case is called Oropesa versus United States. And Oropesa had her 120-day sentence.
00:50:15.740 And it was upheld under the 11th Circuit. And so we will continue to use that law. And now
00:50:24.080 we are opening up FACE Act investigations involving blockages of houses of worship.
00:50:29.880 I opened up an investigation, the first of its kind, a civil case, which, you know, may be expanded
00:50:37.160 in West Orange, New Jersey, where a pro-Palestinian group attacked a congregation
00:50:45.140 holding a religious service at a synagogue. And they not only blocked access to it,
00:50:52.480 they also use these soccer fan toys, Vuvuzelas, which make a very loud noise to drown out the
00:51:01.480 religious service. We're seeing this use of these noisemakers all over the country. I have
00:51:07.560 been actively investigating attacks on the Parkey Synagogue in Midtown Manhattan, Lenox Hill,
00:51:18.120 Manhattan, the Wilshire Boulevard Historic Synagogue in Los Angeles, one other synagogue in Los Angeles.
00:51:27.680 There was an arson over the weekend in Jackson, Mississippi. We were investigating that and others.
00:51:36.480 We have other statutes in our playbook, which we've used to convict numerous attackers of churches
00:51:43.760 in the last several months. There was a bad guy planting bombs in his backpack in houses of worship
00:51:54.160 in Colorado, California, and Arizona. He's been convicted. There was a bad person who beheaded a statue
00:52:02.820 of Mary and Jesus recently. We've reached a conviction in that case. And so any attack on a house of
00:52:13.600 worship or a religious service in this country is under our jurisdiction, and we have a zero-tolerance
00:52:20.760 policy towards that. Beyond just attacks, we have hostility to faith in so many zoning commissions and
00:52:29.640 city planning departments, including in blue states and red states. There is a situation that we are
00:52:36.840 investigating in Alabama where a particular jurisdiction decided that they didn't want a
00:52:43.180 Christian drug recovery center to be able to operate there. That's a violation of the Religious Land
00:52:49.600 Use and Institutionalized Persons Act, which I administer. And so we've opened up an investigation
00:52:54.980 there, where zoning commissions say they don't want a church or a synagogue in their neighborhood.
00:53:00.000 Um, that's a violation of federal law. So I would say proudly that this is the most pro-faith
00:53:06.240 department of justice in American history. Wow. This is just all evidence. This entire conversation,
00:53:11.840 everything that y'all are, that you're talking about, I'm like, y'all are so busy. Y'all do need
00:53:15.720 more lawyers, I'm sure. It matters who you vote for. People like to say, oh, you know, politics is too
00:53:22.660 divisive. I want to live above the fray. I always say politics matter because policy matters because
00:53:27.940 people matter. Politics affects policy. Policy affects people. People matter. People don't
00:53:32.760 think that they're not just voting for Trump. They're voting for him to put in people like you
00:53:37.840 that care about faith, that care about the sanctity of life, that care about the definition of men and
00:53:42.880 women. All of that has a real effect on vulnerable people who would otherwise be powerless without the
00:53:48.620 defense of people like you and good lawyers. So who you vote for matters. Elections absolutely matter.
00:53:55.080 In addition to all the election integrity stuff that you're doing.
00:54:02.620 Last sponsor for the day is Preborn. And so we're talking about the importance of protecting those
00:54:09.300 who are trying to protect the sanctity of life. And one of those groups is Preborn. They equip
00:54:13.740 pregnancy centers across the country with the equipment that they need to help save lives. For
00:54:18.460 example, sonogram equipment. Sonograms show women what's really going on in their bodies,
00:54:23.960 that this is a human being made in God's image. It's not just a clump of cells. It's not just
00:54:28.220 pregnancy tissue. This is a little baby. And that baby is worth saving. And when a woman hears the
00:54:34.280 heartbeat, sees that baby, she is so much more likely to choose life. So partner with Preborn in
00:54:39.380 making sure that these women can get a free sonogram at these pregnancy centers that they can see and
00:54:44.740 choose the life of their child. If you donate just $28 to Preborn, that covers the cost of a
00:54:50.000 life-saving ultrasound. Maybe you can donate more than that. Maybe you can only donate less.
00:54:54.940 That's okay. Every bit counts. Just go to preborn.com slash Allie. Make your donation today to help save a
00:55:01.060 life. That's preborn.com slash Allie. Okay. As we end, a couple of things. What is it like living in DC
00:55:12.880 and being a part of an administration that I know you're really proud of, but it's, it might be
00:55:18.200 really different than kind of your life before you're living in California. Now you're living in
00:55:23.780 DC. Um, how do you feel just like on a personal level? Well, it's so different. Um, so California is
00:55:31.840 a crazy place. Everyone loves to hate on it, but it is really beautiful. Of course. And it's redeeming,
00:55:36.860 redeeming quality. And it's got some great people. Great people. People are chill. No one,
00:55:43.220 you know, you walk into a restaurant in San Francisco and no one really cares if you're a
00:55:47.620 barista or a federal judge, you're treated the same. I really love that about California. And I
00:55:52.060 could see the ocean every day from my homes in California. And in DC, it's very, you know,
00:55:58.200 what do you do? Who do you work for? What agency are you with? No chill. And it's always transactional.
00:56:04.080 Even you go to a conservative cocktail party and everyone's immediately trying to figure out how
00:56:08.520 they can use you to obtain their end. So I find that very disturbing, but, um, but, um,
00:56:15.420 this administration has a very strong vibe and president Trump, who I've supported three times
00:56:23.040 has really changed, you know, I think the culture in many ways and people are willing to fight
00:56:29.320 where they were more just willing to sort of further their careers in the past. And so he's
00:56:33.720 really picked those fighters in this administration. I'm surrounded by people in my
00:56:39.140 building, including people who work for me and people who are my peers, Senate confirmed who are
00:56:44.340 fighters. And that's, that feels good. Um, I haven't had enough time to knit. I knit this sweater a
00:56:52.020 couple of years ago. That was going to be my next question. Please tell us about, okay, we got to
00:56:56.320 get a shot of the sweater, please. It's so beautiful.
00:57:00.100 Thank you. And this is, this yarn is made by an American yarn manufacturer. And this yarn is dyed
00:57:04.800 by an American dye maker. I'm kind of very pro American, my yarn, but, um, but yeah, I don't
00:57:10.000 have enough time. It's like seven days a week job, but people are saying, how can you have time for all
00:57:14.660 these hats that you pump out? Well, first of all, I travel a lot for this job. And so hats are great
00:57:20.080 for knitting on planes. And so I crank out hats and now, um, now they've become a high demand item
00:57:26.800 and I can't knit enough for the people who I work with, but, but, but overall, I would say that
00:57:32.060 concept that I came of age in the Ronald Reagan era. I was a 1980s graduate of college. And that
00:57:39.880 concept of being happy warriors is there. And I go to the white house frequently because I deal with a
00:57:45.360 lot of high level policy matters. And so I'm constantly conferring with people in the white
00:57:50.360 house. And when I'm in the white house, I run into my friends and other agencies who I've been in
00:57:56.040 green rooms with and in, in, on news shows. And now they're running the government in homeland
00:58:03.160 security or ice or treasury or energy or a department of war or, um, OMB or, you know, all of these folks,
00:58:13.100 I feel like it's kind of a giant reunion in a way of all the people who made, who made this happen.
00:58:19.880 And so that part is great. Now people ask me the question, a little different question.
00:58:23.620 How are you settling down in DC? I'm not settling down in DC. I went there to do a job. I intend to
00:58:30.280 do it to my fullest seven days a week, year round, very hard. And then I intend to go back to America
00:58:36.640 when I'm done. So that's kind of my mentality. Yeah. Well, I was going to ask you about your
00:58:41.280 knitting, but you've already told us about that. Okay. Tell us on the final thing, if someone wants
00:58:46.820 to learn how to knit, how would you recommend they start? Because I bought a little kit actually for
00:58:52.620 my six-year-old and it was too hard for me, not even for her. Like the directions were just, I was
00:58:58.940 like, you lost me. Um, so what would you say? How should someone start? So there are what we call in
00:59:05.800 the knitting world, LYSs, local yarn stores, and everything is online, but there are ladies,
00:59:12.120 usually ladies who have local yarn stores in most communities. And so find a local yarn store.
00:59:17.640 The local yarn store will often have knitting classes or drop-ins on a particular evening.
00:59:23.500 That's what I need to do. And you can go there and there's nothing that a grandma or a auntie
00:59:28.460 loves more than to show somebody who doesn't know how to knit, but wants to, how to knit. And there's
00:59:33.680 some good kits out there. There's a company called Pearl Soho that sells really easy scarf kits.
00:59:38.300 I've taught many people in my family how to knit and they don't stick with it, but it's just like
00:59:42.320 any other skill. This is a 10,000 hour skill to be able to crank the sweater out in 40 hours,
00:59:48.360 you know, but you can still do a scarf with just a couple of hours of trial and error if you're not
00:59:52.960 too fussy about it. And so I do encourage it. It is, it really takes, particularly if you're in a high
00:59:58.140 stress job, like I have always been in my whole life, it really takes your blood pressure down.
01:00:02.940 It helps you focus. You're not constantly doom scrolling and scanning your phone.
01:00:07.900 Yeah. I listen to hours of podcasts, murder mysteries, and travelogues on my headphones
01:00:16.020 while I'm knitting or watching TV or what have you. And so I highly recommend it.
01:00:20.700 Yeah. That's awesome. Well, Harmi, thank you so much for taking the time to join us and thanks
01:00:24.700 for what y'all are doing. I'm very grateful for it.
01:00:26.660 Thank you for having me. I really appreciate it.
01:00:28.440 Okay, guys, thanks so much for listening. If you have not subscribed to Blaze TV,
01:00:37.400 you should go ahead and do so. BlazeTV.com slash Allie gets you a discount on that subscription.
01:00:42.140 You get access to not only behind the paywall content that I make, but all the hosts make,
01:00:48.080 and it's like really good investigations, interesting documentaries. You also get access to
01:00:52.080 Share the Arrows, both years of Share the Arrows with awesome teaching and worship. You can watch those.
01:00:57.000 If you subscribe to Blaze TV, BlazeTV.com slash Allie. All right, we'll be back on Monday.