00:00:00.000So, one of the most powerful liberal charities in the world has been donating money to the Ku Klux Klan.
00:00:07.000Yep, the Southern Poverty Law Center, a left wing agitprop organization that raises something like $100 million every year, has been handing money to white supremacists.
00:00:19.000Plus, Virginia Democrats ram through an insane congressional map that basically makes Republican voters irrelevant, and President Trump makes a mysterious move on Iran.
00:00:43.000I mean that people on the left think, broadly speaking, that Americans are a set of horrible racists.
00:00:49.000And then they look around in the world and it turns out that Americans are some of the least racist people in world history.
00:00:55.000Like on the planet right now, Americans rank basically dead last in racism.
00:01:01.000If you go to any other country on planet Earth, what you will notice is that there is significantly more racism than there is in the United States.
00:01:07.000If you go to Japan, fair bit of racism in Japan.
00:01:10.000Go to South Korea, fair bit of racism in South Korea.
00:01:12.000Go to India, they've got some racism problems.
00:01:14.000You come to the United States, and the poll statistics suggest that, for example, the vast majority of Americans are fine with living next to people of different races.
00:01:22.000They are fine with intermarrying with people of other races.
00:01:25.000We have very high rates in the United States of ethnic intermarriage.
00:01:29.000All of that with America, like we are an extraordinarily tolerant and diverse people.
00:01:34.000But in order for the left to make its play, For a sort of communitarian centralized government, they have to constantly suggest that the government must be there in order to ram down the throats of those evil racists, or the vast majority of Americans, according to the left.
00:01:49.000They have to ram down their throat decency and goodness.
00:01:53.000And the only way that you can sell that proposition is to create an airstat, a false supply of racism.
00:02:01.000So this brings us to the Southern Poverty Law Center.
00:02:04.000So you've probably heard of it, maybe you haven't.
00:02:06.000The Southern Poverty Law Center is one of the most powerful left wing groups in America.
00:02:09.000It's a supposedly civil rights nonprofit that was originally founded in 1971 in Montgomery, Alabama.
00:02:16.000And originally, they built their reputation on using litigation and research.
00:02:21.000And I say research here because the research is pretty shoddy to combat what they called white supremacists and other domestic extremist groups and advocate for marginalized communities.
00:02:43.000To mainline their intel into everything from media to education to law enforcement.
00:02:50.000The FBI, up until October 2025, was using inputs from the SPLC to determine the kinds of people to monitor.
00:02:56.000And even in the private sector, SPLC data was being used.
00:03:00.000So, Amazon under Jeff Bezos said that it used SPLC data to decide who to exclude from its Amazon Smile charity program.
00:03:08.000So, there's a program on Amazon where if you want to give a little bit of charity, when you buy a book, for example, If you're a charity and you want to get that money, you have to be made eligible via the Amazon Smile program.
00:03:18.000But Amazon would not accept you if you were on the SPLC list.
00:03:21.000PayPal was working with the SPLC to identify accounts to borrow from its payment services.
00:03:28.000How prominent was the SPLC and is the SPLC?
00:03:32.000Well, since 2010, a search of the New York Times pulls up 711 instances where the SPLC is cited as an authority on hate or discrimination statistics.
00:03:58.000And this will become relevant in just one moment, by the way.
00:04:01.000Repeatedly quoted the SPLC's data in its coverage of the 2017 Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville, Virginia.
00:04:08.000That is the one where the media routinely claimed that President Trump said there were fine people on both sides, which was not what he actually said.
00:04:15.000But that Unite the Right rally has been the calling card for entire swaths of the left for a very, very long time.
00:04:21.000And the New York Times repeatedly quoted the SPLC in its coverage of that Unite the Right rally.
00:04:27.000And of course, they quoted the SPLC leadership to provide.
00:04:30.000Historical context for the rise of the alt right.
00:04:34.000In fact, a Google Gemini search of the New York Times, Washington Post, and USA Today shows that 20 to 25 percent of all analytical pieces on the Unite the Right rally referenced data or quoted directly from the SPLC.
00:05:03.000Today, a few minutes ago, in the Middle District of Alabama, a grand jury returned an 11 count indictment charging the Southern Poverty Law Center with six counts of wire fraud, four counts of bank fraud, and one count of conspiracy to commit money laundering.
00:05:23.000According to the charges in the indictment, the SPLC is a nonprofit entity that purports to fight white supremacy and racial hatred by reporting on extremist.
00:05:34.000Groups and conducting research to inform law enforcement groups with the goal of dismantling these groups.
00:05:41.000As the indictment describes, the SPLC was not dismantling these groups.
00:05:46.000It was instead manufacturing the extremism it purports to oppose by paying sources to stoke racial hatred.
00:05:57.000So the basic charge here is pretty simple.
00:06:00.000So what they are saying, the, the DOJ is that the Southern Poverty Law Center was basically paying all sorts of white supremacists and extremists in order to generate more white supremacy.
00:07:09.000So, if your donors are addicted to the fentanyl of the problem and the fentanyl is in short supply, what you do is you create Trank, a more viral version of the fentanyl that's more damaging, and then you go back to your donors in order to fund the methadone clinic to solve the problem.
00:07:24.000So, the SPLC was, in this case, allegedly literally generating the white supremacy so they could fight the white supremacy.
00:07:34.000And then the media were playing along with this.
00:07:37.000The media were treating the Southern Poverty Law Center as the tip of the spear in fighting racism while the Southern Poverty Law Center was taking its donor money and paying actual white supremacists allegedly.
00:07:50.000So, according to the press release from the Justice Department, quote, between 2014 and 2023, the SPLC secretly funneled more than $3 million in donated funds to individuals who were associated with various violent extremist groups, including the Ku Klux Klan, Aryan Nations, National Socialist Party of America, that's the American Nazi Party, and Unite the Right.
00:08:10.000And again, Unite the Right happens to be one that kind of leaps off the page at you because the SPLC and the left made bank off the Unite the Right rally for years and years and years.
00:08:19.000It was, again, the key example they used over and over and over again about how the right happened to be racist, even though, again, the right did not associate with the Unite the Right rally.
00:08:30.000The full indictment says The SPLC's paid informant, quote, field sources engaged in the active promotion of racist groups at the same time.
00:08:37.000The SPLC was denouncing the same groups on his website.
00:08:40.000The SPLC also had a field source who was a member of the online leadership chat group that planned the 2017 Unite the Right event in Charlottesville, Virginia.
00:08:47.000That field source made racist postings under the supervision of the SPLC and helped coordinate transportation to the event for several attendees.
00:08:54.000So again, the SPLC supposedly against Unite the Right, they were literally paying a guy who was in the online leadership chat group and was making racist postings and was coordinating transportation to the event for other attendees.
00:09:08.000According to the indictment, starting in the 1980s, the SPLC began operating a covert network of informants who were either associated with violent extremist groups such as the KKK or who had infiltrated violent extremist groups at the SPLC's direction.
00:09:22.000These informants were referred to by some individuals within the SPLC as field sources or the Fs.
00:09:27.000Between at least 2014 and 2023, the SPLC paid their Fs in a clandestine manner.
00:09:32.000Doing so hid the fact that while the SPLC received donation money under the auspices that the funds would be used to dismantle violent extremist groups, This donation money was instead being used in part by the SPLC to pay leaders and others within these same violent extremist groups.
00:09:46.000That money was then used for the benefit of the individuals as well as the violent extremist groups.
00:09:50.000Okay, so presumably the defense from the SPLC would be listen, we're like James O'Keefe.
00:09:54.000We were just paying people to infiltrate these organizations and get us information, and then we would make that.
00:09:59.000But the information that they had apparently was never really made public, or at least there's no evidence that it was.
00:10:05.000Instead, it looks like they were helping to gin up the racism so they could fight the racism.
00:10:12.000Again, we have a list of the people they funded.
00:10:15.000One membership, one member of the leadership team, according to the indictment, who planned that 2017 Unite the Right event, was paid $270,000 by the SPLC.
00:10:25.000There's a member of a neo Nazi group called National Alliance who worked for the SPLC for more than 20 years and was paid more than a million dollars.
00:10:32.000What did they get for that money, by the way?
00:10:41.000Was this all part of a larger sort of attempt to build out white supremacist organizations so you could then fight the white supremacist organizations?
00:10:51.000So you set the fire in order to put out the fire.
00:10:53.000They also paid an imperial wizard of the United Clans of America.
00:10:58.000There's an officer of the American Nazi Party who secretly paid more than 300 grand by the SPLC between 2014 and 2020, allegedly.
00:11:05.000And a former chairman of National Alliance was secretly paid 140 grand between 2016 and 2023.
00:11:11.000That is the same period of time during which that same person Was featured on the SPLC's extremist file webpage from which it solicited donations, which is insane.
00:11:20.000Okay, so they have listed on their website this person as an extremist and they were paying him at the same exact time.
00:11:32.000So the acting attorney general, Todd Blanch, was on Laura Ingram's show last night on Fox News and he explains that the Biden administration opened this investigation and then they closed this investigation.
00:11:48.000I said today during the press conference that we know that this investigation was opened during the Biden administration and then mysteriously closed.
00:11:54.000I really don't have any information about why it was closed.
00:12:35.000Other things that were in the SPLC extremist files Turning Point USA, Prager University, Chaya Reichick at Libs of TikTok, Moms for Liberty, the Center for Immigration Studies, Alliance Defending Freedom, and David Horowitz, none of whom are extremists.
00:12:53.000And I will say that it does lend itself to the idea that much of what we consume in the media and in sort of the social media world and in politics generally is just not true.
00:13:06.000That the hatred that a lot of Americans feel for other Americans and their recent poll statistics showing that a majority of Americans have negative feelings about other Americans, so much of that is ginned up by groups like the SPLC labeling huge swaths of Americans white supremacists.
00:13:24.000I mean, the fakery here is quite real.
00:13:26.000And people make money off of it because the algorithm favors it.
00:13:31.000In the modern era, this can be done algorithmically.
00:14:02.000And so, if you're the SPLC, what you say is white supremacy is a threat to you and your family.
00:14:07.000It's virulent, it's violent, and it's racist.
00:14:10.000Pretty much that whole pitch goes directly to the amygdala because at no point does the prefrontal cortex kick in and go, wait, hold on.
00:14:16.000I know that I know from all my neighbors, none of my neighbors are racist.
00:14:19.000They don't like racism, they think it's bad, they think white supremacy is bad.
00:14:24.000And because the amygdala has kicked in, you now think worse of your neighbors, even though you have never really thought about the issue using the reasoning part of your brain.
00:14:32.000Well, the same thing is true in the algorithmic space online.
00:14:36.000In a moment, we're going to get to a crazy story about how people are being scammed online by influencers who may not exist.
00:14:43.000Plus, the Virginia Democrats just drew the craziest gerrymandering map that you've ever seen.
00:14:48.000And Republicans talking about killing the filibuster, even while Democrats seem to be gaining an advantage in the polls.
00:15:14.000And the reason is because, again, enthusiasm matters, which is why you should use our sponsor, Zip Recruiter.
00:15:20.000If you are hiring, you want a candidate who's passionate about the role, but you can't get that insight from a resume unless you post your job on Zip Recruiter.
00:15:26.000And now you can try it for free at ziprecruiter.comslash dailywire.
00:15:29.000Zip Recruiter's matching technology is seriously impressive.
00:16:17.000If I speak directly to you, the minute I say you, it's probably firing up the centers in your brain that are more emotionally resonant.
00:16:24.000If I use words like evil or wicked or soulless, those are words that are much more likely to fire up the emotional centers of your brain than appeal to your prefrontal cortex.
00:16:35.000And it's a shortcut for politicians, for influencers, and for groups like the SPLC.
00:16:39.000The more that you can use, Emotionally charged language that is second person directed, the better you will do.
00:16:48.000And that's why we all seem to be living in a world that is totally different from reality these days.
00:16:52.000The more time you spend online, the more you are, you are given this sort of stuff.
00:16:55.000The stuff you see on X, the stuff that is, that is routinely retweeted and reposted is always the same kind of stuff.
00:17:13.000It's why I've said a thousand times on the show, and I will say it a thousand times more, that you ought to go talk to your neighbors in person.
00:17:20.000Because when you talk with your neighbors, your prefrontal cortex will kick in, as opposed to your fear centers, your amygdala.
00:17:26.000And you might learn that the neighbor who you disagree with about tax rates actually is not a racist.
00:17:31.000I gave a speech last week at the University of Pennsylvania, and there's a guy who got up, and he, in the middle of the speech, in the question and answer session, he started asking about Obamacare.
00:17:44.000And listen, healthcare in America is a very complex topic.
00:17:47.000Trying to unwind the American healthcare system and rebuild it is a very, very difficult thing to do, obviously.
00:17:53.000But what he said was, why do Republicans just want tens of thousands of people to die by restructuring Obamacare?
00:17:59.000Well, Democrats want those same people to live.
00:18:01.000And I stopped him and I said, Do you really believe that I want people to die because I want a different healthcare system?
00:18:06.000I don't believe that Barack Obama wants people to die because he wanted a different healthcare system.
00:18:12.000But the thing that appeals to the emotional center is the thing that is politically resonant.
00:18:16.000And that's true on the right, just as it's true on the left.
00:18:19.000And that's how you can have scam artists making bank online, true bank.
00:18:30.000Apparently, there was a top MAGA influencer who's now been revealed to be AI.
00:18:36.000This top MAGA influencer was called Emily Hart, a registered nurse and a Jennifer Lawrence lookalike.
00:18:43.000And according to this story on Wired, on an Instagram account for Emily, Emily Hart Nurse, there were photos of her ice fishing, drinking Coors Light, shooting off a few rounds at the rifle range with emoji laden captions like, if you want a reason to unfollow, Christ is king, abortion is murder, and all illegals must be deported.
00:19:40.000It's why it is our job constantly to try to look through the headlines and the self interest of people who are trying to appeal to emotions and get to the facts.
00:19:51.000Because as I've frequently said, facts don't care about your feelings.
00:19:54.000But as it turns out, feelings Do not care about your facts or any facts, as it turns out.
00:20:00.000And so, trying to get past that is going to be the only way to save the country.
00:20:05.000And that's why it's quite good that scam groups like the SPLC are being brought to heel for apparently allegedly generating white supremacy just to fight it and to appeal to those emotional centers.
00:20:18.000And it's why when you go online, you should really consider whether the thing you're reading that is setting you off emotionally is actually true or not.
00:20:26.000Or reflective of reality or not, reflective of what your fellow Americans actually think.
00:20:30.000Alrighty, meanwhile, Virginia Democrats last night won a major victory in Virginia.
00:20:37.000According to the New York Times, Virginia voters approved a plan on Tuesday to gerrymander the state's congressional map to significantly favor Democrats, according to the AP.
00:20:45.000That new map could eliminate four of the state's five Republican held seats for the 2026 midterm elections, giving Democrats a significant boost in their quest to regain control of the House.
00:20:54.000So you remember that Republicans had made a mid census redistricting.
00:21:00.000In Texas and in California, there's an ongoing attempt to redistrict as well by Gavin Newsom.
00:21:11.000So, Virginia, which was a 6 5 Democratic advantage in congressional districts, in a state that's like 55 45 Democrat, so that's a pretty fair map.
00:21:20.000They decided to go all the way the other way.
00:21:22.000They drew a 10 1 Democratic map, which is totally unfair and ridiculous.
00:21:39.000As the Daily Wire reports, a legal challenge is currently pending before the Virginia State Supreme Court.
00:21:46.000But Democrats pulled out all the stops in favor of this thing.
00:21:51.000Barack Obama, who has been very active lately, he's trying to retake control of his party by steering it further into Momdani land.
00:21:58.000He filmed television advertisements for the Yes campaign, and he said it was a way to repudiate the White House and congressional Republicans.
00:22:06.000He said by voting yes, you can push back against the Republicans trying to give themselves an unfair advantage in the midterm.
00:22:31.000Barack Obama put out a tweet saying, Congratulations, Virginia.
00:22:35.000Republicans are trying to tilt the midterm elections in their favor, but they haven't done it yet.
00:22:39.000Thanks for showing us what it looks like to stand up for our democracy and fight back.
00:22:43.000And again, if you take a look at the actual voting map in Virginia, what you see is that basically the entire state voted against this, except for a couple of extremely Democrat counties.
00:23:40.000Basically, if you look at the amount of money spent per vote, Democrats spent something like 40 bucks per vote in the state to push this thing, Republicans spent 13 bucks per vote.
00:23:49.000And so, if they'd spent even a little bit of money, real money, then Republicans probably would have been able to prevent this from happening.
00:23:59.000Apparently, according to Politico, Democrats outspent Republicans by a roughly three to one margin.
00:24:04.000Virginians for fair elections, which led the yes effort, raised $64 million, boosted by nearly $38 million in support from the House majority forward, that is the House Democratic caucus leadership.
00:24:16.000So there was not a lot of investment by Republicans.
00:24:18.000Obviously, they should have done more.
00:24:39.000Harry Reid blew up the judicial filibuster because he was upset that Republicans were holding up federal judicial appointees under Barack Obama.
00:24:46.000And Mitch McConnell warned him at the time if you blow up the judicial filibuster, that will be used against you.
00:25:04.000Without the judicial filibuster in play, they put into place a bunch of Republicans or Republican appointees, rather, onto the Supreme Court.
00:25:12.000So, any tool that you unsheathe from your arsenal will be used by the other side.
00:25:16.000That is the nature of American politics.
00:25:18.000It's one of the good things about American politics because if only one side were allowed to do it, you really would have a Democratic problem.
00:25:25.000What is likely to happen is redistricting in nearly every state, in which states that are slightly blue turn almost entirely blue congressionally, states that are slightly red turn almost entirely red.
00:25:38.000Congressionally, where population movements mirror that, because let's say you're a frustrated Virginia Republican living in an outlying area, and now you're disenfranchised.
00:25:48.000It doesn't matter how you vote in a congressional election.
00:25:50.000So you don't bother to vote, and Democrats keep winning additional majorities in state races and in gubernatorial races and in all the rest.
00:25:57.000And the only time you vote is for president.
00:25:58.000And even then, you're like, you know what?
00:26:00.000There are more and more Democrats here.
00:26:01.000The big sort that has been happening in the United States is likely to exacerbate.
00:26:06.000Now, in the long run, that may harm Democrats, because the reality is that people are leaving blue states at a faster rate than they are leaving red states.
00:26:12.000People like living in In red states that are freer and increasingly more prosperous, and where business likes to be.
00:26:19.000However, what we are watching is the bifurcation of the country.
00:26:23.000And that's one of the big problems here.
00:26:25.000All righty, coming up, we'll get to anger in the Republican camp at John Thune, the Senate majority leader.
00:26:30.000Plus, we'll get to the latest on Iran and what is happening there, the president making mysterious moves.
00:26:36.000First, let's talk about when you start something new.
00:26:38.000When you start something new, like you start the Daily Wire, it's difficult, it's hard.
00:26:42.000Starting a business is rough, but there are things that can make it easier and more profitable.
00:26:46.000Shopify is the commerce platform powering millions of businesses around the world and 10% of all e commerce in the United States, including.
00:26:55.000Getting started is really, really easy.
00:26:56.000With hundreds of ready to use templates, you can build a beautiful online store that matches your brand's style.
00:27:01.000Shopify is packed with helpful AI tools that write product descriptions, page headlines, even enhance your product photography so you can accelerate your efficiency whether you're uploading new products or improving existing ones.
00:27:11.000Maybe you already know you have a good product, but you need help getting the word out.
00:27:14.000Well, Shopify will help you because they help you make easy to run email and social media campaigns.
00:27:19.000And that makes it feel like you actually have a marketing team.
00:27:21.000You can tackle all those important tasks in one place from inventory to payments to analytics.
00:27:25.000without juggling multiple websites or platforms.
00:27:27.000And if you ever get stuck, Shopify's award winning 24 7 customer support is always around to help.
00:27:32.000Plus, that iconic purple Shop Pay button isn't just recognizable.
00:27:35.000It's the best converting checkout on planet Earth.
00:28:18.000It says that if your name is not legally on the voter rolls, you should be purged, and also that you should have to show a citizenship document at the first time that you register to vote.
00:28:36.000And because it's not a reconciliation bill, that means that the Senate parliamentarian would be likely to strip it out of any reconciliation bill.
00:28:43.000And not only that, you're going to then need a filibuster proof majority in order to pass it.
00:28:49.000And so a lot of Republicans have been saying, okay, we're not going to pass anything until we pass the Save Act, which is cutting off your nose to spite your face.
00:28:55.000So John Thune said, okay, you know what we're going to do?
00:28:57.000We're going to table the Save Act because we don't have the votes for it.
00:29:00.000And we also don't have the votes to kill the filibuster.
00:29:02.000And instead, we're going to move forward.
00:29:03.000With funding, for example, ICE and Border Patrol.
00:29:10.000Here was Jonathan announcing that yesterday.
00:29:13.000What we have been forced to do, and frankly, this is not my preference, but it is a reality, we are going to use the reconciliation process to fund those two important agencies.
00:29:25.000And so we will be getting on a bill later today, a budget resolution that will be the unlock the next step, which is budget reconciliation that will enable us to ensure that those who carry out law enforcement. responsibilities in this country are actually funded.
00:29:43.000Okay, so a lot of Republicans are very, very upset about all this.
00:29:47.000They think that he should kill the filibuster on behalf of the SAVE Act.
00:29:50.000So, for example, Representative Ana Paulina Luna, she's out there claiming that this is a thing he must do, that we should kill the filibuster in order to promote the SAVE Act.
00:29:59.000Here's what she had to say to Catherine Herridge.
00:31:09.000But just on an evidentiary basis, the notion that tens of thousands of Americans every election cycle are voting fraudulently, that evidence does not exist.
00:31:18.000Again, that doesn't mean that it's not out, that maybe it's there and we haven't found it yet, or maybe.
00:31:22.000You think that you've seen a sign of it, but it hasn't been fully evidenced yet.
00:31:26.000We do have statistics on the number of convictions for voter fraud in the United States since 1982.
00:31:33.000It's kept up by the Heritage Foundation.
00:31:35.000And this is a map of where voter fraud has taken place, documented voter fraud in the United States since 1982.
00:31:41.000And what you will notice here is that the scale goes from zero cases of documented voter fraud in states like Oklahoma and Louisiana and South Carolina to the upper end of this.
00:31:51.000Again, this is over the course of the last 34 years.
00:32:02.000And obviously, some elections are really, really, really tight.
00:32:04.000And I'm quite suspicious of some election results, say, like Al Franken over Norm Coleman, where someone discovers a box of ballots five seconds after the necessity for Al Franken to become a senator.
00:32:15.000Man, I think a lot of suspicious things happen.
00:32:17.000Would the current voter bill actually stop that?
00:32:53.000themselves, which is why I have recommended to Senator Thune that what Republicans should propose is a constitutional amendment to enshrine the filibuster permanently.
00:33:02.000And if Democrats won't do it, then you nuke the filibuster.
00:33:09.000However, when we talk about voter fraud, one of the reasons why we distrust the stuff that goes directly to, again, your amygdala is the idea your vote is threatened.
00:33:20.000Your vote is threatened by millions of people who wish to falsely vote in the election.
00:33:23.000And to thwart your capacity to elect your officials, the government doesn't belong to you, it belongs to the fraudulent.
00:33:29.000Okay, that pitch is an amygdala pitch.
00:33:32.000And then on the left, there's a parallel amygdala pitch.
00:33:35.000Any attempt, any attempt to require further documentation for voting is an attempt to stop you and your friends from voting and your family from voting.
00:33:43.000Your wife won't be able to vote if the voter suppression bill is passed.
00:33:46.000Here's Cory Booker, for example, making that case in March.
00:33:51.000Massive voter suppression bill that would make it very difficult for millions of Americans, especially women.
00:33:58.000Who have changed their name, their name on their birth certificate, no longer matches the name on their real ID or driver's license.
00:34:05.000It would cause chaos to voting and really shrink the voting rolls 5 or 10 percent, given the effect it would have.
00:34:14.000Okay, so again, the idea is it's voter suppression.
00:34:16.000So Democrats are constantly claiming voter suppression, and Republicans are constantly claiming voter fraud.
00:34:20.000And the answer is there is no voter suppression.
00:34:22.000And the evidence of voter fraud on a mass scale again, yes, there are absolutely individual cases of voter fraud.
00:34:29.000And yes, of course, we should pass the SAVE Act.
00:34:31.000But if the idea, the reason I'm objecting to this is not because I think there might not be individual cases of voter fraud or even the possibility of LART.
00:34:38.000The problem is if the case that is currently being made, that's being made on large slots of the left, is that every election that is lost is the result of voter suppression.
00:34:47.000And if on the case on the right is every election that is lost is based on voter fraud, you cannot have a well respected election ever again.
00:34:59.000If Democrats are trying to blow up the filibuster for the so called Equality Act, so as to cram down ballot harvesting, That's terrible on two levels.
00:35:07.000The Equality Act is trash, and also blowing up the filibuster is a terrible idea.
00:35:12.000And there's this notion out there that is put forward by people on all sides that Congress is there to do things.
00:35:28.000Because in order to manufacture popular legislation, they wanted you to have to jump through a bunch of hoops in order to get to a true majoritarian position.
00:35:37.000If the United States starts to look like parliamentary democracies in other parts of the world where a coalition just rams through whatever it wants, and then the next four years, a new coalition comes in and rams through whatever it wants, there is no sense of stability.
00:36:04.000Okay, meanwhile, a lot of focus obviously on the midterms.
00:36:07.000I should remind you that whatever we say right now will largely be irrelevant by the time we hit the midterms because it is currently April and the midterms are in November.
00:36:17.000Nate Silver has a chart showing sort of where things were in terms of the generic ballot and the presidential approval rating in mid April in past election cycles.
00:36:28.000So the president's approval rating right now is 39.3%, according to Nate Silver's sort of average.
00:36:35.000And Democrats in the generic congressional ballot have about a 5.7%.
00:37:45.000Just take the L. Tariffs were the biggest unforced political error that I can recall in a long period of time.
00:37:51.000Because if you're looking for just one turning point in terms of when Donald Trump went underwater, it was right around Liberation Day, man.
00:38:02.000Every poll since March 29, 2025, right?
00:38:06.000Liberation Day was just a few days later.
00:38:08.000That means that Donald Trump, there hasn't been a single poll that meets CNN's standards for reporting in which he has had Anything but a negative net approval rating for 389 days.
00:38:19.000As I said, dude, just take the altarists, they are a terrible political thing for you, my man.
00:38:27.000Okay, so the reason I point this out is because there is now an attempt to suggest that the Iran war uniquely is what is driving down congressional approval ratings for Republicans.
00:38:36.000The generic congressional ballot for Republicans has been fairly stable and steady for the last multiple months, and it mirrors the president's approval rating, of course, of course.
00:38:46.000And if the outcome of the war in Iran is good, then presumably there'll be a bit of a rebound.
00:38:50.000And if the outcome of the war happens sometime in the next few weeks, nobody is going to be thinking about that come November.
00:38:56.000Okay, however, when it comes to the outcome of the midterms, this is why I say don't unsheath weapons the other side is going to use once you've unsheathed them.
00:39:19.000There was a two week ceasefire deadline.
00:39:21.000And the president put out a statement on Truth Social.
00:39:26.000Quote Based on the fact that the government of Iran is seriously fractured, not unexpectedly so, and upon the request of Field Marshal Asim Munir and Prime Minister Shabazz Sharif of Pakistan, we've been asked to hold our attack on the country of Iran until such time as their leaders and representatives can come up with a unified proposal.
00:39:41.000I have therefore directed our military to continue the blockade and, in all other respects, remain steady and able, and will therefore extend the ceasefire until such time as their proposal is submitted and discussions are concluded one way or the other.
00:39:52.000Now, there are a couple of ways to read this sort of mysterious move because a lot of people are saying, they didn't even send a team to Pakistan to negotiate.
00:40:01.000They didn't even send a team to Pakistan at all.
00:40:05.000So, Trump is saying, listen, they're not sending a team because part of their team wants to make a deal and part of their team is the IRGC and they don't want to make a deal.
00:40:13.000And, of course, Iran is treating this as a sign of weakness.
00:40:16.000They're trying to suggest that the president is extending the so called ceasefire.
00:40:19.000It's not really a ceasefire, as we'll talk about in a moment, in order to avoid having to restart.
00:40:59.000Donald Trump's presidency or the Iranian economy, which is bleeding at the rate of $440 million every day, and they don't have an economy to start with.
00:41:10.000The actual thing that's happening here is President Trump is perfectly happy to sit there and strangle the Iranian economy with the blockade on Iranian product.
00:41:17.000It is the rest of the world that has a clock.
00:41:19.000It's China that has a clock because they need the oil moving through the Strait of Hormuz.
00:41:57.000The U.S. Treasury will continue to apply maximum pressure through economic theory to systematically degrade Tehran's ability to generate, move, and repatriate funds.
00:42:05.000Any person or vessel facilitating these flows through covert trade and finance risks exposure to U.S. sanctions.
00:42:11.000We continue to freeze the funds stolen by the corrupt leadership on behalf.
00:43:53.000Quote, three ships have been targeted this morning by Iran's Revolutionary Guard, the semi official news agency Fars has reported.
00:43:59.000A Greek owned ship named Euphoria is now stranded on Iran's shores, Fars reported in a telegram post.
00:44:04.000Fars reported that the IRGC had also targeted two other violating ships, the MSC Francesca and Apimanandes, which it said belonged to the shipping giant MSC and had been attempting to pass through the Strait of Hormuz.
00:44:15.000So they are the ones who continue to blockade and fire on the ships.
00:44:18.000And again, this entire time during the so called ceasefire where the Strait of Hormuz was supposed to be open, it has not in fact been open.
00:44:24.000They have been continuing to close it.
00:44:27.000It's just the president realized that, hey, it hurts them significantly worse than it hurts us.
00:44:31.000See, as I say, Tehran is losing $500 million a day.
00:44:35.000The United States, we could lose $500 million a day.
00:44:39.000And our federal budget alone, at the tune of $500 million a day, it would take like 1,500 days for the federal budget to be paid for by that amount of money.
00:44:49.000That's how big we are compared to the Tehran government.
00:44:55.000So, again, they're basically thrashing against the box.
00:44:57.000They're trying to generate angst inside the United States, anger inside the United States.
00:45:03.000The United States is also taking measures to sanction individuals, entities, and aircraft based in Iran, Turkey, and the UAE for involvement in procuring or transporting weapons or weapons components on behalf of the Iranian regime.
00:45:13.000So, we're strangling them economically.
00:45:14.000We are also strangling them in terms of what can be shipped in and out.
00:45:20.000And the reality is that this is also hurting China, right?
00:45:24.000As the Wall Street Journal points out, An opinion piece?
00:45:29.000China, according to multiple reports, has provided Iran with satellite imagery, components, and intelligence needed to attack infrastructure and shipping, as well as U.S. targets in Gulf countries.
00:45:40.000But all this means is that Gulf countries are now realigning with the United States.
00:45:44.000In 2024, Saudi supplied 14% of China's crude, Iraq 10%, Oman 7%, UAE 6%.
00:45:50.000Those four Gulf states accounted for about 37% of China's oil imports.
00:45:55.000China's enabling of Iranian aggression endangers suppliers that collectively matter more than three times as much to the Chinese economy.
00:46:23.000Their economy is totally bleeding out.
00:46:26.000They're fracturing because their economy is bleeding out.
00:46:30.000Meanwhile, there's a lot of talk about the possibility that Samuel Alito.
00:46:35.000Justice on the Supreme Court, one of the best justices on the Supreme Court, might step down before the midterm elections in an attempt to ensure that a good, solid textualist fills his slot at the Supreme Court.
00:46:45.000Joining me on the line is Molly Hemingway.
00:46:46.000She's editor in chief of The Federalist, a senior journalism fellow at Hillsdale College, and a Fox News contributor.
00:46:51.000And her latest book is titled Alito, the Justice Who Reshaped the Supreme Court and Restored the Constitution.
00:46:56.000Molly, thanks so much for taking the time.
00:47:14.000Well, a lot of people are pushing him to retire because they think that Trump would be able to appoint someone much younger.
00:47:21.000They don't push Justice Thomas, who's our longest serving and oldest justice on the court, because Justice Thomas has said he's going out feet first.
00:47:30.000So people just know not to pressure him.
00:47:32.000But both Thomas and Alito, they kind of let it be known they're not retiring at the end of this term.
00:47:38.000That matches my understanding, particularly with the Alito chambers.
00:47:43.000But I do think there's a possibility that there will be a retirement still.
00:47:47.000We have three Republican appointed justices in their seventies.
00:47:51.000Uh, and one of them, it's the Chief Justice, who's the second longest serving member currently on the court.
00:47:58.000But we'll have to wait and see, I guess.
00:48:02.000So, your book about Samuel Alito, for a lot of people who aren't court watchers and who are constantly kind of watching the more colorful justices in terms of their opinions, and right now, Chief Justice Roberts gets a lot of attention.
00:48:13.000Clarence Thomas has gotten an extraordinary amount of attention since Justice Scalia's passing.
00:48:17.000But Justice Alito has been perfectly consistently textualist and originalist in his interpretations for a long time.
00:48:23.000You say that he's the one who reshaped the Supreme Court.
00:48:27.000Well, people have rightly given Justice Thomas and Justice Scalia a lot of due for what they have done on the court.
00:48:36.000When Kerry Severino and I were writing our bestselling book on Justice Kavanaugh's confirmation, so many of the people on the court or near the court kept saying, you know, Alito is kind of this giant on the court and nobody ever talks about him.
00:48:50.000And nobody ever talks about him because he's extremely reserved.
00:48:54.000He does not seek celebrity in any way.
00:48:56.000And yet he's kind of the workhorse on the court, the guy who agrees maybe with Thomas.
00:49:02.000Although just now we got a rare issue from the Supreme Court where Thomas wrote, The opinion with the liberal justices, and Alito wrote the dissent with many of the conservative justices.
00:49:15.000But Thomas will have this really big philosophical position, and he'll say, I think we should be over here.
00:49:21.000And Alito might disagree, or I'm sorry, Alito might agree with that, but he thinks, okay, how are we going to get there?
00:49:28.000And he puts that work in, that incrementalist work to get the court to where it should be on religious liberty or on protecting the speech rights of laborers who are not in unions.
00:49:38.000And it can be a slow, laborious process, which is also less.
00:49:41.000Dramatic, and yet it's so significant.
00:49:44.000I think by the time he authored the Dobbs decision and kept the five justices together, at that point, people realized oh, the guy who did the landmark decision, the thing that the conservative legal movement had been hoping for for 50 years, maybe we should be paying some more attention to him.
00:50:01.000And so I knew I wanted to write the book and tell the inside story of who he is and what's happening on the court and what his peers think of him.
00:50:11.000So, Molly, one of the things that you talk about at length in the book is obviously the Dobbs decision, as you say, the seminal Supreme Court decision of our lifetimes.
00:50:18.000And there was so much that went into that, the negotiations behind the scenes, but also that extraordinary, insane leak of the Dobbs opinion early and the supposition that we still have no idea who did it.
00:50:29.000One of the great mysteries in modern American legal history who leaked the Dobbs decision.
00:50:33.000You have a fair bit of coverage of that in the book.
00:50:35.000So, why don't you talk about that a little bit?
00:50:37.000Well, one of the things I found most interesting in my research for Alito was that.
00:50:42.000After the leak happened, if you remember, the lives of the justices who signed on to the Dobbs decision were immediately under threat.
00:50:50.000They had to be moved to secure locations.
00:51:05.000And yet, when they go to meet in conference to kind of find out, like, when is the decision going to come out?
00:51:11.000And it needed to come out because until a decision is issued by the court, publicly, it's not official.
00:51:17.000So if one of those justices had been killed, then Roe v. Wade would not have been overturned.
00:51:22.000And so they find out from their liberal colleagues that they, the liberal colleagues claimed, oh, we're nowhere near being done with our dissent.
00:51:30.000Even though they'd had like 50 years to work on it and the oral arguments had been in December of the previous year and they'd had the majority opinion since early February, they then proceeded to slow walk it.
00:51:41.000They said, we can't possibly get it done till June.
00:51:44.000And then even when they got that done, They put a little note in there, a reference to a decision that really wasn't near being written up, so that it delayed it another three plus weeks.
00:51:59.000So even though they knew their colleagues were fighting for their lives and were in complete distress and their kids and their spouses, they slow walked the dissent from coming out in order to keep that decision delayed as long as possible.
00:52:12.000It is actually amazing that there's as much collegiality on the court as there is, given that these types of antics are being used.
00:52:21.000So let's talk about the collegiality on the court for just a second, Molly.
00:52:23.000So, obviously, there's this sort of famous relationship between Justice Scalia and Ruth Bader Ginsburg, who are on completely polar ends of the spectrum when it came to Supreme Court jurisprudence.
00:52:32.000What is the situation at the Supreme Court right now in terms of collegiality?
00:52:36.000Again, that's been sort of a famous aspect of the court for a long time.
00:52:40.000People have focused on it for a long time.
00:52:42.000Chief Justices, they used to all live together when they were in session in a house near Capitol Hill.
00:52:48.000They, Rehnquist famously said it was difficult because they're all as independent as.
00:52:56.000They all have their strongly held opinions.
00:52:58.000But previously, they used to keep their problems with each other confined to what they wrote.
00:53:04.000So they might write a decision or dissent where they complain about each other.
00:53:09.000Justice Scalia once said that Clarence Thomas had crafted a freedom destroying cocktail with a certain opinion he had.
00:53:18.000So the next time they went out for drinks, Clarence Thomas ordered a freedom destroying cocktail.
00:53:24.000The idea being they didn't take it personally.
00:53:26.000What we've seen more recently is that the liberal justices are publicly going after some of their colleagues and publicly undermining the integrity of the court itself.
00:53:37.000This is a longstanding norm that has been broken in recent years.
00:53:42.000And I think it also is adding to the trouble, even as they genuinely do try to get along and keep things civil.
00:53:50.000They only have their eight colleagues, they have to, and they've got lifetime appointments, so they try to keep things civil.
00:53:58.000Well, the book is a must read about Samuel Leto, again, one of the great justices in American history.
00:54:01.000It's called The Leto, the Justice Who Reshaped the Supreme Court and Restored the Constitution.
00:54:31.000Let's say you're driving on the highway and the worst possible thing happens nuclear explosion.
00:54:38.000E M P. Your car doesn't work, you're alone, you're in the woods, you have no water, no food, you need to survive long enough to get back to civilization.
00:55:47.000Go check it out right now over at Daily Wire Plus.
00:55:49.000And by the way, I'm going to watch that because I feel like I need some survival tips.
00:55:53.000I mean, I'm like a fast talking Jew who lives in urban areas.
00:55:56.000So if there were an EMP, I'd be the first to go.
00:55:59.000All righty, coming up, we'll get to the latest on the economy calls to basically seize property from older Americans from a columnist over at the New York Times.
00:56:09.000Remember, in order to watch, you have to be a member.
00:56:10.000If you're not a member, become one, use code Shapiro.
00:56:13.000Check out for two months free on all annual plans.
00:56:14.000Click that link in the description and join us.