Bill Meyer Show Podcast - Sponsored by Clouser Drilling www.ClouserDrilling.com - 06-05-26_FRIDAY_6AM

Episode Date: June 5, 2026

06-05-26_FRIDAY_6AM

This hour of the Bill Meyer Show podcast is proudly sponsored by Klauser Drilling. They've been leading the way in Southern Oregon well drilling for more than 50 years. Find out more about them at Klauserdrilling.com. Now more with Bill Meyer. 10 minutes after 6, it is Friday the 5th of June, 55 degrees, and going to be a bit of a cooler weekend. Maybe a chance of showers are rolling into next week. We are live from the Army Navy Marine Studio, Marine Store Studio, and I really appreciate. you're actually giving away some prizes from the Army Navy Marine store, a new sponsor

a little bit later this morning. I'll tell you what the prize is in just a little bit. It's actually pretty darn cool. We also have tickets to Weird Al, the Weird Al show coming up in town a little bit later this year. And we're just going to have a little bit of fun and play that game of just, do you know your Weird Al, if you're a Weird Al, Yankovic fan. And, well, you know, you had to have somebody that carried on the, the use of an accordion out there in the bands. Interesting, interesting,

vintage 1980s and 1990s artistry that's coming to the, to the Jackson County Expo. Okay, we'll have more on that show coming up here in the next few minutes. Twelve minutes after six, and also happy to take your calls, too, on Find Your Phone Friday, 770-5633-770 KMED.

Oh, by the way, by the way, We're also going to be giving away trips on the Hellgate, trips per two on the Hellgate, plus you get the $50 gift certificate from Cartwright's Northwest Haprock Grill, right? A $50 certificate on top of that. So there's a lot of reasons to be checking in. Now, we're not giving away the stuff right now. We will be. But just hang on here in the next few minutes.

And some of what we're going to be talking about this morning, there's been a real push to get FISA, the FISA Court. You know, the FISA secret surveillance court getting that fixed and getting some kind of real teeth in a warrant requirement. This has been something which has been bothering me and bothering a lot of civil libertarians. Frankly, it even bothered Senator Ron Wyden, Senator Ron Wyden, for all of his, all the stuff that he does that I disagree with. He's really tried to be pretty good on civil liberties, and I appreciate that aspect of him. At least I can support them on that. The rest of it, you know, not so much. But everybody runs, when they're running for president and even President Trump ran on that, you know, at this point.

Hey, you know, we're going to get your civil liberties back. We're going to, you know, require good solid warrants for Americans to be surveilled and this and the other. And then they become president. And then, well, President Trump's become president. And then all of a sudden, now just pass the FISA, pass the FISA, renew it. just renew it, just renew the government surveillance. And it's like, why is that? And I know that what a lot of times we people will do is saying,

well, you know, the president knows stuff that we don't. Well, that's a bit of nonsense because the challenge that we face here is that no matter who, when they get in power, they want that super surveillance power too. And as a free people, if we're going to try to remain, you know, keep some modicum of freedom, We'll be talking to some people that are really fighting for this because it's kind of locked up over in the Senate and in Congress right now. We'll get the latest on it at least. I'm going to talk with a gentleman who is with a group called Restore the Fourth, as in the Fourth Amendment. You know, I do get tired of talking about how so much of the Constitution and especially the Bill of Rights has been turned into a dead letter.

Well, as long as we allow FISA courts and various other things to, to continue to be, you know, happening. What can we say? You know, what can we say? How can we complain if we allow this kind of stuff to continue going on? But anyway, we'll talk with that gentleman coming up here in the next few minutes. All right. Some of the other stories we have going on this morning.

Medford woman faces multiple animal neglect charges. We had one of those cases here yesterday. MPD investigating several cats were removed from a home. This was on Roxy Ann Place Highland Drive. 65-year-old Wendy Diamond is facing first-degree animal neglect charges and some other charges may be happening to NBC5 reporting that case. And we had a huge child sex exploitation case that got settled this week. A Roseburg man ended up stockpiling more than almost three quarters of a million child sex abuse files, pictures, photos, videos, videos. you know, all that kind of stuff.

Three quarters of a million. Yeah. And this 56-year-old guy is going to go. His name is David Arthur Kelly of Roseburg. And the Southern Oregon Child Exploitation Task Force has been involved with this, along with the DOJ. They announced this yesterday. There's a plea deal there.

And he's going to go to prison for more than 14 years. It's one of the largest cases, one of the biggest cases that has ever happened. So that's an interesting case, which has been adjudicated this week. And Cakegate finally got settled. Remember Cakegate? Yeah. The feds ended up telling Asante that they have to recognize the Oregon Nurses Association Union as representing about there's like 250 health care technical workers, licensed professional nurses.

It was about three years ago that they were doing a vote. And the way I understand it, it's kind of weird how it did. I kind of vaguely remembered the case when it first came up. But what was going on is that these workers wanted to unionize under the ONA. And so they were, I guess they served free cake in the hospital cafeteria. And they were also giving speeches that were supporting the union. And it was directed at workers who were on the clock. And Asante, and I kind of see Asante's case in which they're going,

hey, this is sort of election rigging and election airing. They're doing it inside the hospital. I don't think you're allowed to do that kind of stuff. But it doesn't matter. The National Labor Relations Board said, nope, you have to recognize the union representation. So that's that. And something else I'm sure that is helping Asante pay or keep its costs down? Hell no, I think would be the answer.

but yeah, the workers get their rights. The workers get their rights. All right. What else do we have going on right now? Joel Scalzin over at World Affairs Brief. I subscribe to his newsletter. I think it's a good newsletter. His top story this week that he says,

President Trump under pressure to compromise with Iran. After numerous failed attempts, this is his report, by the way, this morning. I want to credit him. The House of Representatives finally passed a resolution under the War Powers Act to end U.S. involvement in the war against Iran. Three other Republican reps finally joined Representative Thomas Massing and opposing the war in which Israel started and which Trump was talked into joining based on, and this is once again, Joel's words, deceptive remarks by Israel Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

And Trump raged at Republicans after the vote that would strip Trump of the power to continue waging war on Iran. The resolution has no such powers yet to take effect. it would still have to pass the Senate and overcome a veto by President Trump, which is very unlikely. But it's one more obvious signal to President Trump that the political tide is turning against the war. He has noted for at least a month. He's still trying to hammer out on agreement with Iran that will allow him to save face because Iran can hold out longer than Trump can withstand the growing public hostility to this war. Iran is still refusing to yield on Trump's nuclear dismemberment demands.

Okay, I'll just pose the question to you this morning. Do you think that Joel Scalison is correct in his analysis that the tide is turning against President Trump when it comes to public support for this war? What do you think about that? That's one of the questions that I'll keep open for you. A lot of people have been claiming this. I know that the mega faithful have been pretty much unwavering on this one. but the longer it goes on, the longer you're looking at five. I know your fuel prices have dropped a little bit right now,

but it certainly feels like things are starting to waver a bit. What do you have a, do you have an opinion on this? I'll bet you do. I'll bet you do have an opinion on this. Does President Trump need to wrap this up like yesterday? Or are you willing to just let it go on as long as it takes? Maybe that's the question how we'll pose it this morning. What do you think? Give me a call. Let me know. 770-5-633-770 KMED. By the way, my email is Bill at Bill Myers-Show.com. This is the Bill Meyer Show.

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lots of people to participate. Frankly, I'm not that crazy about having just anybody. participate. If you say, I'm not even interested enough to sign up to vote, I don't think America wants you voting anyway. Lars, weekdays noon to three on KMED. Hi, I'm Jeff with Lithu Body and Paint, and I'm on KMED. 22 minutes after, 6-7705, 633-770 KMED. Rising tide of people calling for the Iran War to be yanked. Get out of there and get out of there. sooner rather than later. And how are you feeling about this? We really haven't pulled on this for a while.

It's been one of those things where we hear, hey, there's going to be a deal, the price of oil goes down, and then, oh, we've got some more problems, and the price of oil goes back up, et cetera, et cetera. How are you reading the room on this one? Joel Scousin of World Affairs Brief is saying that the pressure is up on President Trump, and it's becoming pretty obvious right now.

How are you seeing it? Let me go to Tom. Tom, good to have you on the Bill Maher's show. What are you thinking this morning? Welcome. Yeah, I'm thinking that we have to win this. And I've been to Iran. It was 50 years ago or more.

The Shaw was in power. And I just passed through there. I was going to stay a week. And I got right back on the airplane after being on the ground only an hour or so around the world's flight that I was on. And I went on to Lebanon, where. the welcome was a little greater than Iran, but it was very distrusting. You say we have to win this. What does winning this look?

What do we get, you know, in your view that we didn't get before? Stradu Hormuz was open before. Things were relatively calm. And so, and this is the challenge. I don't think President Trump was expecting it to have gone on this long. Oh, he wasn't expecting that. If he was, he certainly didn't indicate that with his press releases. Yeah, with his press releases, he put a time limit on himself.

Yeah. It would be just a few days or a week. We'll bundle this up, just like Venezuela. He made the comparison many times. And he really shouldn't have done that. He gave an expectation. My gosh, this country put up with other presidents being in a country. for 20 years, Afghanistan was 20 years.

Vietnam was, what, 10 or 12 years or more? Yeah, so this was relatively short, very short, in fact. I think the difference, though, is that when you're upsetting the apple cart of the 20% of the world oil supply, I think that's the difference in some of the other wars that we conducted. It didn't have that impact on worldwide energy, not just, you know, United States and not just, you know, in Iran and such, that kind of thing. That's the real difference, I think. It's like, you know, you could be in Afghanistan forever, and it didn't really matter. It didn't affect the rest of the world that way, I guess.

But I'm going to pay whatever it is at the gas pump. If it goes to $10 a gallon, I'm going to pay it. Okay. Hey, I appreciate the call. That's why we just posted the question this morning. Let me go to Dave. Dave, hopefully you got a good signal. Give me your take on it. We're just wondering, you know, just kind of taking the citizens' jury here, Southern Oregon jury take on the war activity.

Wrap it up quick. What are you going to do? What are you thinking? Let me know. The people I know, they haven't lost support for Trump, except for Congress. I don't know about the Senate. So the pressure is coming from Congress, not the people. And then, you know, we got Bolton that's pled guilty to, you know, having secret documents.

And that's interesting. Yeah, he's going to pay a fine, too. Going to pay a fine, too, about a million and a half bucks from what I recall. Yeah. Yeah, if he's getting any jail time because I didn't hear. They're working to, I guess part of the deal is that he doesn't go to jail. and paying the fines. That's up to the judge.

It's sent and things. We'll see. Yeah. All right. Dave, I appreciate the call. Thanks for that. 770 KMED.

We're talking about the Iran war. It's gone on several weeks longer than President Trump, certainly thought here. And pressure does appear to be rising. Where are you on at all? Hi, good morning. KMED. Who's this?

Hey, Good morning, Bill. This Wayne. Hey, Wayne. What are you thinking today, huh? Well, I endorse everything that Tom said. I think he expressed himself very well on that issue. But I do want.

I do want to caution you on your commercial for your giveaway for cart rights. What's that? Have you ever been on a jet boat ride? Yes, I have. And you're aware of the wonderful meal they serve you for all you can eat? Yes. Yeah, when you get a certain, if you buy the certain case. Dinner trip.

Yeah, the dinner trip. Yeah. So my point is only pertains to the dinner trip is why would anybody want to eat before the dinner trip, let alone eat after the dinner trip. Well, that's if you're taking the dinner trip. But we're not giving away a dinner trip. We're giving away the jet boat excursion. And we're giving you then a certificate that you can go to the restaurant there, which is where, you know, they have the restaurant right there. That's good to know because I anticipated you giving away the top.

Jetboat. No, no. We're just giving way the jet boat excursion trips. So it's the trip for two, but it's just the jetboat trip. And then you can eat at Cartwright's Northwest Taprock Grill right there. Okay. That makes a lot of sense now. Thank you for terrifying. All right. There you go. Let me grab another one. Hi. Good morning. KM.D. This is Bill. Who's this? Welcome to the show. Hi, Bill. Chris. Hi, Chris. If you're following the strategic petroleum reserves, we're dipping way below all the COs of Exxon and Chevron are saying we're in trouble. So they have to have so much oil for the alkylation unit in El Segundo because I help build that refinery. So, yeah, we're in trouble. If you follow MonkeyWorks on YouTube, you get more information on that. Yeah, no, I've been reading it, and of course, reading coverage on the former Exxon executives, everybody's saying that the tanks are dipping and looking really low.

And supposedly July is the drop dead time. Is that what you're saying or what you're hearing? Yeah, that's right around there. and they stopped, and this got resolved now. Kuwait saying it would take a good 20 weeks, like four months for things to start leveling out again. And, hey, by the way, John Bolton's having to pay back at restitution, $2.5 million, and that's for holding intelligence documents, and that's not transmitting. He's got more, there's more charges, I think, the DOJ for transmitting documents.

document. Yeah. Well, at this point, I doubt that we're going to see jail time for him for any of those kind of people. That's what the fine, I'm sure, is all about. You pay a fine, stay out of jail, that kind of thing. Yeah, the least never do time. Yeah. Only Martha Stewart does. Yeah, only the little people, right? The little people. Not that Martin, or that Martha, of course, that whole thing about Martha, what a scam that was. What a scam that was with Martha Stewart. And I'm not a fan of Martha Stewart because it's just a rage. raging, raging limb. And it's just, you know, but that being, but that being said, she was essentially sent to prison for lying about a crime she didn't commit because they didn't get her on, I think

it was insider, insider trading. What they got her for was the process crime because, you know, she lied to the FBI agent. And of course, the FBI agents that are allowed to lie to the American people in the process of a, of an investigation. So she lied about a crime she didn't commit. It's an astounding case when you think about it, Chris. Yep. I think it's all about sending messages to the little people that, yes, we can get you in the land of the three. It is 630. Speaking of which, the next conversation we're going to be going into talking with a representative from restore the fourth,

as in restoring the fourth amendment against your search and seizure, that kind of thing. And we're going to dig into that because there's a real push. And this has to do with the FISA warrants, okay? All of that coming up. This is the Bill Meyers show. Are you paying too much for term life insurance? A man-age-50 non-tobacco user can obtain $500,000 of coverage for as little as $110 per month level rate for 20 years. That's right, guaranteed level rate for 20 years.

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56-year-old David Arthur Kelly entered his no contest plea earlier this week. It's one of the biggest cases ever investigated around here. Almost three quarters of a million child sex abuse photos have been downloaded by Kelly over several years. Metford Police investigating a case of suspected animal neglect after several cats were removed from a home. K-O-B-I-5 reporting that Thursday, police went to do a welfare check at a home on Roxanne Place in Highland Drive, located multiple live and deceased cats on the property. Medford Police say 65-year-old Wendy Diamond facing seven counts of first-degree animal abuse. Several new laws go into effect today, one of them cracking down on the interest rates of unsecured consumer finance loans.

House Bill 4616 is now closing a loophole that allowed some internet lenders to use an out-of-state bank that would charge higher interest rates than Oregon's limit of 36% for consumer finance loans. And nearly three years ago, there was a vote by 250 health care tech workers over at Rogue Regional Medical Center. The group wanted to unionize under the Oregon Nurses Association. Asante didn't recognize the vote because free cake was served in the hospital cafeteria, pro-union speeches were given to workers on the clock too. So Asante was thinking this was sort of vote rigging. Well, Rogue Valley Times reports that federal labor officials have ordered Asante to recognize the union from now on. Bill Meyer, KMED News. I'm Elizabeth MacDonald, and this is the Fox Business

Report. Job growth was stronger than expected last month. Economists were predicting around 80,000 new jobs created in the month. Instead, there were 172,000, and the unemployment rate remained at 4.3%. Also, April's job growth was revised higher to 179,000. Hiring appears to have rebounded after cooling in winter months, though it could also make it more difficult for the new Fed chair, Kevin Warsh, to lower interest rates. Walmart is testing subway sandwich delivery with your order from the retailer. It'll offer customers the option of 30-minute delivery from 1400 subway locations inside stores this summer. When shoppers choose the one-hour express delivery for a fee,

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News Talk 1063, KMED. This is the Bill Myers Show. Alex Matthews joins me. He's the National Chair of Restore the Fourth, Restore the Fourth, as in the Fourth Amendment. And honestly, my gosh, well, first off, Alex, let me just welcome to the show. I was just thinking about the Fourth Amendment and how it's. seems to have been turned into a dead letter over the last 20, 25 years of the United States. But welcome to the show, and what are you thinking about that far?

Good morning. Well, thank you, Bill. I appreciate the opportunity. And thank you to all the people in Ashland who are listening in. Look, it's been a tough road for the Fourth Amendment lately. And I think the thing is that you have had massive technological change. You've had digital data coming forward and oceans of digital data becoming available, not just to each other, but to law enforcement and to the intelligence services,

essentially for free. So you can go back 250 years to when the founders were coming up with the Constitution and the Fourth Amendment. And for them, a search was an expensive and burdensome thing for a colonial agent to do, nowadays, it's cheap as hell. And analysts can conduct searches of your communications or of where you are going in public, and they can do it all from a desk for a trivial amount of money. And so it means that there is a real challenge to maintain constitutional protections

against unreasonable searches and seizures in this new technological context. Does that make sense? Yeah, it does. In other words, it's very easy to get just about anything they want from anybody anytime, you know, apparently. So, you know, in other words, it used to be really expensive to do the investigation and not now. Did I get that right? Is that pretty much it? Yeah, that's right.

All right. What is the actual status of FISA court? The FISA court is one I wanted to face on, to focus on right now. This is the secret court, which essentially gets rubber stamped by, a federal judge, a special federal judge, and they say, hey, we would like to do this. And Americans get caught up in electronic surveillance all the time from the federal government. And there's been a push to get this reformed. Did any of this get affected by the $70 billion vote overnight in the Homeland Security funding vote in the Senate?

Any of that get affected by this, or is this a separate fight? What's the story there? This is a separate fight. The Homeland Security funding stuff, that's real interesting. But after the Homeland Security funding fight, after they had spent until, what, 4 a.m., figuring out what they were going to do about that, then Senate Majority Leader Thune brought in another vote on what's called a motion to proceed for the bill that he wants to bring forward to reauthorize FISA. Now, let me set the context just a little bit here. Foreign intelligence surveillance court, as you say, it is a secret court. And what they do is really two separate things.

One, if there is an individual American that the FBI wants to conduct surveillance on because they suspect that that individual is an agent of a foreign power, then they can bring that individual application to the FISC. And they're supposed to work up an affidavit and make sure that it's all solid and then bring it to the court. And the court hears only from the FBI. They don't hear from the person that's going to be surveilled because you're going to be surveilling them.

And then the FISC says, okay, this individual, yes or no, we're going to surveil that person. That is what happened to Carter Page, who was the campaign worker for the Trump campaign in 2016. And they brought forward what turned out to be pretty much a junk affidavit. And then the court said yes because they didn't have anyone saying no in the room. And they trusted the FBI that they were going to individually review the validity of that and the FBI had done a trash job on it. Now, the second part of it is the part that affects most Americans.

And that's the programmatic stuff. That used to not be legal at all. That was only legalized in 2008. and that is under what they call FISA Section 702, and this is what happens there. There is a program that is run by NSA to collect the communications of people that they are interested in. The targets of that program are around 350,000 foreign nationals. Those foreign nationals don't have to have done anything wrong. They just have to have, in NSA's judgment, information of foreign intelligence interest to the United States.

In other words, they've come up on the radar, so to speak. It's not up on the radar. But it could be like a foreign leader. It could be someone attending a conference. It could be Nobel Peace Prize winner, Malala Yusufzai. It could be a lot of people. Then NSA gathers their communications, and that includes a ton of communications with a ton of communications with Americans. Our internal estimates are that the communications of between two and five million

Americans are swept up in that collection. And so this is not like an American who is actively colluding with a foreign terrorist to attack within the United States. It's infinitely broader than that. It could be anybody. Now then, that all goes into a database and then FBI and CIA and NSA and also the National Counterterrorism Center, they have the ability to dip into that database and see those communications without a warrant. They don't have to go and show anybody outside the FBI that this is okay. And so, of course, they're going to use it for anything that is convenient to them, right? So under Biden, it was being used millions of times a year to conduct surveillance on parents at school board meetings and radical traditionalists Catholics

and any category that they wanted to designate, right? And under Trump, it's been used to surveil the communications of protesters against police violence. And anyone that the Trump administration defines as being Antifa, which is honestly a pretty broad category of people. So it's a hugely powerful tool, and in our opinion, it is a tool that no government should be trusted with to use without a warrant. Because the Fourth Amendment is pretty clear. Before you get into somebody's personal home or their person or their papers, their effects, before you get into their communications or start opening their mail, you need to have evidence that that person is involved in an actual crime. it should be about crime.

It should not be about whether you find this person vaguely worrying. And it's also not about whether or not, well, like you had just said, Alex, whether you are one of those individuals that was standing up and screaming about, you know, politicized educational system, where if you were sitting there and concerned about police violence. Now, you know, it's funny that you did bring up Antifa because we have had some issues. with Antifa violence, especially in the Portland area, not quite so much in southern Oregon. So I have a feeling that what happens is that people just say, hey, we want something done about this, right? And so government will naturally use whatever tools that it is given.

And why has it been so darn difficult to try to get any kind of FISA court reform back here to get some semblance of second, of Fourth Amendment protections, rather, in this? Is it just because it's simple or it's easy or have you just gotten used to it? Or is it that people don't know about it? How do you see it, Ben? Well, I mean, it's a mixture of things, honestly, Bill. The part of it is that national security law is a pretty abstruse area of law. part of it is that the intelligence community has gotten used to having a bonanza of the ability to look into people's communications.

They don't want that to stop. And it doesn't really matter who comes into the Oval Office, because they'll be gone in a few years anyway. And they want to keep tabs on people in general no matter what. But what you have made clear, though, is that the Oval Office. does have some influence because Biden used it for a particular purpose. President Trump using it for a different purpose. I'm sure President Obama used it for a different purpose still, right? They're still using it. Right. I don't think the intelligence community really fundamentally cares what the external justification is so long as they keep being able to spy on people.

Okay. Because that's what they really want. And you can call it being about Antifa. You can call it being about radical traditionist Catholics. But really, the core power is they want to be able to keep tabs on us. They want to be able to keep tabs on anyone who's coming up who may look like they have an interest in, God forbid, regulating the intelligence community. They keep tabs on candidates for political office, and they make sure that people do not get out of life. The Congress is terrified of the intelligence community because they know that the intelligence community knows what an average congressman is doing during their spare time. You know, Alex, that reminds me a bit about what, what was it, Senator Chuck Schumer,

talking about President Trump going after the intelligence agency and kind of like saying the quiet part out loud. Remember that a few years ago? I do. I do. And Schumer was saying, yeah, they basically own the place. So what can you do? And that's Chuck Schumer saying it. That shows a sickness at the heart of our government. That shows that the Fourth Amendment is being active. disregarded, and that shows also how hard it is for Congress to bring forward real reform. So this is what happened at 5 a.m. Okay. Okay, this is the 5 a.m. vote this morning, right, that we're talking about.

All right. In the Senate. Senator Thune had brought forward a renewal of FISA's powers of warrantless surveillance on Americans, and he was, you know, that was what the president wanted him to do. And he had brought it forward with a couple of additional things that were intended to try and pretend like there were real reforms in it. He had added in some sort of internal review and supervision at FBI so that if you were an agent that was trying to run a search on an American, then, you know, you'll have to ask an attorney at the FBI. whether that attorney at the FBI, who could be fired for saying no, thinks it's a good idea or not. So this is all like trash superficial stuff.

But he was hoping that it would convince enough senators and that senators would be worried enough about not having this program in place that they would vote to renew these powers for another few years. And this has been going on for 20 years. Okay. So this time it didn't work. Really? And yeah. And there were, I'm looking at the roll call vote in front of me, but there were maybe eight Republicans who joined Democrats to say, no, look, this is not it.

Whatever this is, this is not it. And asking him to go back and to come up with something that has reforms that people could actually vote for. There is a bill that is on the table that has been introduced, that has bipartisan. and support. It was introduced by Senator Lee with the support of Senator Durbin of Illinois, and it's called the Safe Act, and it includes warrant protections for Americans, and it's right there. Okay, now this is the Safe Act, S-A-F-E, not the Save Act, which was the Voting one, right? You just want to make sure we don't confuse the two, right?

You know, it's good to make sure that, because you know how it is in Congress. They love to name many bill, the motherhood and apple pie bill. Exactly. Exactly. And by the way, that we love dogs and puppies to act, you know, that kind of. Absolutely. You can't vote against this because do you hate puppies? So, the Safe Act, not to be confused with the Save Act, is actually, to be fair, a good bill.

And the point is that the majority leader soon knows that if he brings that to the floor, it will pass. but that's not what the president wants. Speaker Johnson in the House has the same situation. There is a similar bill to the Safe Act that is available to him there. He could bring it to the floor tomorrow, and it would pass. But he doesn't want to bring it to the floor because it's not what the president wants and it's not what the intelligence community wants.

And the intelligence community is looking over his shoulder, and frankly looking over the president's shoulder too and saying, now you better not do this thing. You better not meaningfully constrain this power, because then you know what will happen. We have a lot of information on you guys. And we're not afraid to use it and send it out to the press one way or another. Boy, talk about the chickens coming home to roost.

I mean, it wasn't it even, no, was it Harry Truman that wanted to tear apart the intelligence agencies back then and just throw them to the Windsor was it JFK, maybe all of them, you know, really. It is a reported quote of JFK. He wanted to dismantle the CIA and scatter it to the four winds. And for some reason, that ended up not coming to pass. And Lyndon Johnson, his successor, was considerably more friendly to the intelligence agencies. Just a coincidence, of course. Absolutely a coincidence for anyone who's listening.

Yeah, yeah, just a little bit of history here. Alex Matthews, once again, he's the national chair of Restore the Fourth. Okay, the Safe Act. What is the status of that right now is just kind of bottled up right now? Yeah, it is. Okay. But here is the key two things that the Safe Act does, okay? It says, number one, that if you've got an FBI agent or a government agent that wants to dip into this massive database of Americans' communications, then they need to get a warrant to do it.

They need to go to a court and say, you know, this is why I think this person is involved in a crime. And then the court will either say yes or they will say no. This happens every day. So that's provision number one. If they need to access the content of the communications, then that's what they got to do. And otherwise, tough titty, they can't access it. Second, if you have information that is out there that is commercially available, it's held on Americans by a data broker, it's held by an AI system,

And you know, and I know, Bill, that there is data out there on you and I and hundreds of millions of Americans, right? Now, the second warrant requirement in it says this. If the government would need a warrant to acquire this information directly, then they need a warrant if they're going to buy it from a data broker or acquire it from any commercial. Oh, boy, no wonder they don't like this. Oh, they hate it. Oh, I guess. So much. Yeah, it is so, because the idea that one of the ways they get around the Fourth Amendment is that, you know, you end up, they end up having, let's say, credit car companies and stores and everybody, they get all this information on you.

And so they'll sell it for a price, right? And so the federal government says, well, we don't have to worry about that pesky Fourth Amendment thing. We'll just buy the info from anybody who's selling it, right? That's what they're. Or like they can go to flock safety, if you're. driving in your truck, if you're going somewhere that maybe the government doesn't need to know about, the government can just buy that. They're sitting pretty right now.

They can do whatever they want with your data, and they've been able to do that ever since this massive digitization of our data. They can do that with your conversations and your text, because all that is mediated through digital providers. And so do they want that to be disrupted? do they want to have to get a warrant to do that as the Constitution requires? Hell no. Of course they don't want that.

And honestly, no president that comes in, as you're saying earlier, no matter what they say on the campaign trail, no president is going to sit on top of that mountain of information and then say, no, actually, I want to have less of that. Oh, yeah. Well, they all run on this. Hey, we're going to reform this and protect your rights, et cetera, et cetera. Then they come in and then, well, everybody just does the same thing. So the safe act really is one of the key.

Because two years ago, President Biden was leaning heavy on Congress to renew exactly the same powers. And 70% of Democrats went along with it. And it's now a kind of awkward transition for democratic lawmakers because they're trying to say, okay, yeah, you know, we were okay with this under Biden. And he's a responsible user of these powers. But you see, it just shows, though, whatever party is in control of either the Senate or the House or the presidency, whatever it is, we'll use these powers fairly. It's the other guys who won't. What it really needs to happen is.

And I should say, as you pointed out earlier, there is, there are honorable exceptions and standard Ron Wyden of Oregon is one of those. He's been very consistent all the way along that these powers are excessive and that no president should have them. And you know, Senator Wyden and I, because I'm a man of the right, we don't agree on much, but I appreciate Senator Wyden's principled stand on this issue. He's absolutely correct on this Fourth Amendment issue with FISA. Yeah, he's been in leader on it for decades. Yeah. And so we appreciate that.

All right. Well, what can we do about this restoring the fourth? By the way, Alex Matthews is with me. We're talking about this Section 702 renewal, and we're trying to get something actually better than just everybody gets your stuff just because they, well, they say they want it. What do we do at this point in time? Where is it right now, this Safe Act and work? Well, you know, conservatives need to make their voices heard.

The Gun Owners Alliance has come out in public and has said, look, the bonanza that the government is doing with our data, it's functionally equivalent right now to a nationwide gun registry. Because all you have to do is type into government GPT about, you know, John Williams in Idaho, and you can find out how many gun purchases he's made. All of that stuff can be surfaced. So there are a few conservative voices that are speaking up. There are Republicans who are resisting this. The Freedom Caucus is doing a great job in the House.

and but they need help. They need conservative voices on their side, letting their lawmakers know, you don't go about renewing Pfizer unless you've got warrant protections in it for America. Warrant protections, that's what you end up telling. Warrant protections for American. That's what you tell Congressman Ben,

that's what you tell the other senators, everybody else. Okay, you do that. That's right. Okay. It's a simple message. And like I say, the Safe Act is out there in the Senate, and in the House, there's something called the Protect Liberty Act. These are good bills, but they just need the message heard loud and clear. Don't you go voting to renew this again?

We have had enough of this. We don't have to put up with the constant violation of our Fourth Amendment rights and our privacy rights, because we're Americans. It is the 250th year of this republic, and the intelligence community are torching our constitutional civil liberties. Alex, where can we find out more about the national, well, Restore the Fourth, the Restore the Fourth movement? Where's your website? You go to Restoretheforth.com with four as a number, and we are bipartisan. We have chapters and allies across the country. I want to give a brief shout out to the Bend Privacy Alliance,

who, you know, they're north of you, but they're doing great work. And citizens are coming together, and they are mad about this. It does not have to be this way. We can have a reasonable circle of privacy around our communications and our ordinary lives, and the government doesn't get to see it. So if you feel that way, go to Restoretheforth.com and sign up on our main list and we will be in touch and we'll connect you with other people who feel like you and who have been working hard to make sure that our privacy gets protected.

Okay. The one thing we want to make sure and be clear, though, is that nothing about renewing Section 702 authorization was in the Homeland Security and ICE funding, which did pass, the Senate, right? They stayed away from that. That was a separate thing. And if you want, then I'd be happy to come back on your show and we can talk about Homeland Security and ICE stuff, because there's some disturbing stuff going on at the Department of Homeland Security. All right. Well, we might just have to make that invitation, Alex. I appreciate you coming on and sharing this because I'm just hoping that this doesn't get swept under because it's like, once again, you know, if you have a Republican president, Republicans tend to go to sleep on civil law. liberty issues. And when there's a Democratic president, the Democrats go to sleep on the civil

liberty issues because they're thinking, hey, we've got it and we're fine. We're, you know, we're fine with it. It just needs to be like Senator White and says, taken away from both sides of this political aisle so that the Fourth Amendment is once again respected as it should be in our Bill of Rights. Thank you so much for the talk this morning. Okay. Be well. Thank you, Bill. I appreciate it. Alex Matthews, he's the national chair of Restore the Fourth. 4.com. This is KMED and KMED HD1 Eagle Point Metford. KBXG grants pass. Hi, everyone.