Bill Meyer Show Podcast - Sponsored by Clouser Drilling www.ClouserDrilling.com - 09-08-25_MONDAY_7AM

Episode Date: September 8, 2025

09-08-25_MONDAY_7AM

The Bill Meyer Show podcast is sponsored by Klauser Drilling. They've been leading the way in Southern Oregon well drilling for over 50 years. Find out more about them at Klausor drilling.com. Here's Bill Meyer. I'm not an attorney, but I sure like talking to legal types. John O'Connor is the author of Postgate, how the Washington Post betrayed Deep Throat, Covered Up Watergate, began today's partisan advocacy journalism.

Great, great book. And I bought that a while back and well worth your time here. And, you know, actually, now that I read the title of your book again, John, by the way, welcome to the show. I feel badly because I actually took a $20 offer to subscribe to the Washington Post for a little bit, and I feel guilty now. I shouldn't. Maybe I should just go cancel it. Well, I'm not so sure. I mean, I subscribe to the New York Times, and they're worst in the post, I think.

You know, I think it's important to read all sides, to see all sides of these. things. If the only source was the Washington Post, that'd be one thing. But in your case, it's not. So I think it's very healthy to see what people are saying. I think you find a tremendously, tremendously distorted view of life. And I see when I read these folks how people do get these ideas. If this is your only source of news, I mean, they really distort things. And that's why, you know, that's what we have to do. We have to figure our way out of this thing. Yeah, and I appreciate that take on it.

In fact, that's one of the reasons why I ended up abiding on it because they were teasing out a story that I wanted to see how they were going to spin it. And it was one of their lead stories over the weekend in the Washington Post was riots and abuse troubled these former prisons, ice plans to reopen them. And they're talking about all of these different prisons. that had troubled pasts, for sure. And then all of a sudden, because the Trump administration is going to spend billions to reopen these and then house, you know, illegal aliens in the process of deportation,

that somehow these hellholes that were hellholes with regular prison populations are going to take all of the peaceful, law-abiding illegal immigrants, John. I'm kind of paraphrasing here. And it's just going to be a miserable, bloodthirsty death wish, you know, put upon all of them, and I thought, boy, that was an interesting jump, a really interesting leap in logic,

because a prison population would technically be different than a, shall we say, deportation kind of population? Would you agree or not with me overall? Oh, absolutely. It would normally be different. I mean, sometimes, of course,

you're going to be, have nothing, but if you get trend of Deragua, that can be like a regular prison population, but nonetheless, the next question is, for what purpose are you holding them? Yes. In these places, I think in many cases, we're going to hold them and then deport them.

Now, if that's the case, it's not like a normal prison population where people are in there for 20 years to life. And, you know, then they decide to riot. I do think the past examples of rioting have some bearing on things because it may indicate a bad. physical design. Sure. I've gotten involved in some prison litigation, some class actions where, you know, the testimony is, look, as long as you keep this prison as it is, you're going to have all these problems with people getting beat up and no one knows, and no one, the guards can't

see it because you don't have good lines of vision. But put that aside, I think the criticism there is just they're looking for a way to get at Trump, really. I mean, the fact is you need someplace simply to hold bodies for a while in this immigration thing. And so I think the post, they look for any way they can to criticize Trump. Now, there's some, look, a blind squirrel gets an acorn, and a lot of the stuff they say actually has some merit. Yeah. I mean, you know, I mean, I think conservative people are sort of scratching their heads. They're wondering about, you know, how about these tests? You know, how about, or how about some of the stuff that RFK Jr. says, well, you know, I think wise people, I mean, that's why I like, that's why I like the conservative side of things. You don't find people really locking in, marching in lockstep.

I would agree. There's a little more open-mindedness, not open-mindedness to the point where your brain falls out, but not feeling like you have to, like there's a, you know, like there's one Bible that we all have to, one political Bible that we have to follow on absolutely everything. We do have some agreements, just some disagreements. This also, though, makes it challenging when you end up having a lot of Republicans and or mixed with conservatives, and Republicans and conservatives aren't necessarily one in the same. But that sometimes makes it difficult in governing. When you agree on something like, it seems to be that way. Oh, absolutely.

Absolutely. no no the democrats whatever you say about and they're like sheep you know that did anybody raise their voice against any of the absurdities that Biden came up with you know they see he starts spending money like a drunken service anybody saying no not that you could discern or I could discern you know so you think gee oh the open borders where was anybody on the uh on the democratic side yelling and screaming about open borders that you really didn't see it no they weren't. It's because they weren't, John. That's why they weren't upset about it. Hey, I wanted to shift the gears here a little bit, though, and get into the, I don't know if it's a,

if it's a rogue, a rogue judge disease or if there just really are some disagreements when it comes to jurisprudence with dealings with President Trump. And one that kind of has me scratching my head, and you had brought this up too with me in which we had a judge, you know, telling President Trump that he has to, that he must continue to then resend the foreign aid out, that he ended up getting clawed back at some point. Can you tell us what happened with that and where this comes from as a point of law? Well, I mean, Congress allocates aid, and I think they have these aid packages. Now,

I think really, since the president is the person conducting foreign policy, you know, he really should have some say in how that money is spent. And if he decides that money, even though it's allocated by Congress,

you should not be sent because it does not serve our foreign aid interests, our foreign national security interest, I'm not so sure that if there's any place where a president should be free not to spend money allocated by Congress, it should be in that area. And that's what I would have thought, too, just because Congress appropriates the foreign aid, all right, you can say, all right, they appropriated the SNAT benefit money, let's say, for food stamps, et cetera.

Okay, fine. You did that, and you've got to, you know, move that through there. But you're right, since the president really is the one in charge of foreign policy, for the most part, that if there's an issue, that there is a perfect constitutional executive authority to be able to say, you know, we're not going to send it to this country. And it's like what, there's a constitutional requirement that it has to go to a foreign country. It feels like, it feels nonsensical, I think, to most of us, John. Yeah, let's think of the example.

Well, let's say we allocate as we do in many countries. We allocate money for lethal foreign aid as we did with Ukraine recently. Let's say we do that with another country. And it turns out they changed the regime and we're at war with them or they're at war with our ally. Do we then have to keep sending them that money? I don't think anybody would say that the president would have to do this. So where did this federal judge come down on with this USA? Was it USAID funding, which had to go back in?

Well, it's just very much right down the line. All this guy is very much a Biden appointee. He's a very liberal guy. And then when the thing went up on appeal, a real quick appeal, the two out of three judges who decided in upholding the order were, again, both Biden appointees. So you get people that just take glee in puncturing Trump. and they really I think they really

believe what they're saying I mean I think they have such blinders on that they're going to keep ruling against Trump that's all do you think that ultimately

or ultimately rather gets overturned at SCOTUS you hope you know and I think that's Trump's hope on on so many in so many areas but think of that we've had

12 years at least, with Obama and Biden appointing judges. There are an awful lot of them out there. And then, of course, you go back to Clinton, too. So you probably have far more Democrat judges out there than you do Republican judges. And they're, you know, they're just – and again, like we talked about before. I mean, I think conservative judges are not going to reflexively rule one way or the other. I mean, they'll rule against Trump.

They'll rule in his favor, but they're not going to do it just because he's Trump. They're not going to rule for him. But that's not the case with the Democratic judges. They're almost all in lockstep ruling against him. Okay. And so it's just too bad. It's one of these things that I don't know what we can do about it, frankly, Bill. These folks, this has been sort of like an intellectual disease that probably started around the time of Watergate,

where everybody believed that the only right side was the liberal was the leftist side of things. That's the only way you can think. If you don't think that way, you're a terrible person. And there are an awful lot of people out there in the country now that think that way. And they've been attuned to thinking that way. They're reinforced every day by the Post and the Times. And the judges feel the same way. They like the idea of being a big hero.

Yeah, and what are you going to do? trying to get me out? Probably not, right? So you can't. You can't. Appointed for life. That's the whole idea. John O'Connor is with me. Of course, former Fed prosecutor, great author, Postgate, How the Washington Post betrayed Deep Throat, covered up Watergate

began today's partisan advocacy. And you blow up a lot of Watergate myths in that book, by the way, John. And I wanted to touch on something else that over the weekend they were talking about there was a lot of talk coming out of Capitol Hill that if Trump's

tariffs end up being a found and not authorized that could destroy the country because you know hundreds of billions of dollars in tariffs would have to be paid back to the people who paid them of course and yet there's another side of me that says that you know I'm looking at the at the constitution and the tariff and tariff is a tax if I understand correctly that's Congress isn't it you aren't we kind of set up for a big problem with this because of the tariff power, the power to enact the tax? Well, tariffs are a tax. There's no doubt about it. And there's no doubt that Congress has power to do that. Now, Trump may be overstepping a bit, to be sure, there are laws that

allow him to adjust tariffs, you know, for different reasons. But some of them also sound like they're temporary, you know. So, yeah, I mean, I think this tariff thing is a wide-open question, and I think it's too bad that, I mean, I think the right way to do this is to go to Congress and get some more definite power. Yeah, and actually get that definite power that cannot this be overturned. What I, well, I'm thinking, though, that maybe Trump is smart as a Fox, though, in this particular case, because you notice how the story right now is that, you know, if this goes against us, this is going to be. destroy the country and they're going to have to pay all this back and then we're talking hundreds of billions of dollars like I just mentioned to you. The Supreme Court reads the paper. You know, they read the news stories, right? And could you see the Supreme Court contorting itself

to okay that emergency tariffing power? What do you think? Well, I think the Supreme Court could do this. one of the things it could do is it could come up with a doctrine that just because the tariff is illegal does not mean we have to pay it back. Okay. In other words, it may be wrong within our own country to do this, that is to say, wrongness between the legislature and the president, but it was issued. The other party paid it. so it may well be that the other country doesn't have a right to get the money back.

Okay. You know, that's the way I would come down if I were a judge and said, well, wait a second, okay. Yeah, because, you know, nobody wants to be the part of the Supreme Court that ends up ruling against the president in a way that puts us, you know, a trillion dollars in debt right now that you've got to pay back right away, right? That kind of thing? Exactly. Nobody wants that. Yeah, yeah. So that's one of the things that could happen.

In other words, it is not necessarily the case that you'd have to pay back these countries. All right. Final question I would have for you this morning on more of a philosophical thing as a point of law. Are we in danger, even though I love seeing Washington, D.C., getting cleaned up, and it would be great to see a lot of these other urban hive minds, mostly of the progressive world, getting cleaned up with crime. you as an attorney, you as even a former federal prosecutor and all the rest of it, you start feeling a little weird with this push to have National Guard troops on lots of city streets.

There's something feels wrong or something feels off about that. I'm concerned that we would be normalizing this kind of thing here. John, how do you see it? Well, I think Americans have always had a healthy distrust of a standing military period. And as we don't want, in normal days, the standing military would come and then they'd come into your house and take the third bedroom, you know. That's one of the things that people always worried about. But also the whole idea that we're sort of a police state, it doesn't feel good to have the army out there ruling us. It just doesn't feel good.

Now, I think what Trump's doing, once again, I think I like your idea that he's as crazy as a fox. He's really showing what these cities can do if they put their minds to it. Exactly. Exactly. And if you can clean up, if you can take certain action and clean up your city, and you do that with, say, 500 or 1,000 National Guard troops, why can't you figure out how to do that with 500,000 policemen and really get out there and get active? I think if you're going to examine most of these police departments, you'd find an awful lot of people sitting inside, eating donuts and drinking coffee. And are people out there really, it's almost like our public schools.

There are far too many administrators and not enough people delivering the payload teaching. I think that's true with the cops. And so if you have active policing, as Rudy Giuliani showed back in New York in the day, you can make your street safe. And I think that's really what he's trying to say. You guys can do this. And it's, once again, you have a disease. You have this mayor in Chicago.

I don't know why people elected him. But it was very clear he's not a guy that was out there. trying to clean up crime. Doesn't look like it, no. His opponent was a big anti-crime guy, and he got defeated. What's that about? So Trump, in a way, is sort of saying, hey, look, you guys, your political leaders are failing you.

You can clean up, you can live safe lives if your political leaders put their mind to it. That's really his point. And that's his point of the National Guard. So if it's used this way as kind of messaging, you do this on a temporary basis, and then you're showing the people, hey, listen, you can have a safe city, too. It is possible, okay? You don't have to put up with this. Yeah, it's not a necessary part of life is what Trump's saying.

Look, I did it. I'm showing you how to do it. Let's try to keep this thing safe. So, you know, it's, I mean, Chicago's a beautiful city, but one of the things people have to understand is the wealthy white people do fine and should be. Chicago. This is, we are allowing black people to just live in a hellhole. Oh, yeah. It's not right. And it's not right. And all these people that act like they're so pro-racial equality and everything are really, really hurting black people by allowing these families to live in these unsafe places. It's just not fair. It's not right. You know, it's ironic. I think back to my childhood and on the radio, the AM radio back in the day, was the old.

Jim Crocey's song, Bad Bad Leroy Brown. You remember that was during the Watergate era. Right, about that time, right? And on the south side of Chicago, on the baddest part of town, and it was that way then, it's still that way now. Nothing much has changed. And it doesn't have to be that way.

And I think it's what Trump is trying to do. Yeah, it's even gotten worse on the south side. I mean, it's south side used to be notorious. My sister and brother-in-law live in an enclave in the south side near the Obama's the sort of the high park enclave for University of Chicago. And in the old days, I would venture out of that enclave with my brother-in-law, we'd go to a blues club or something.

We wouldn't do that today. It's things have gotten a lot worse. So it's, but it's always been a rough part of town, but it's getting worse and worse. I mean, the deaths there now, and a lot of this is just drugs. Yeah. Drugs have done something terrible. John, I appreciate your take on it. Thanks for the legal analysis or what is it.

The analysis, that's the word I was trying to say. You see, I would have messed that up in front of the judge here. But it's an excellent book, Postgate, How the Washington Post, Betrayed, Deep Throat, Covered Up Watergate, and began today's partisan advocacy journalism, of which we're still enduring today, for sure, here. And it's great having you on, John. Thank you very much. It's postgatethebook.com. That's your main website.

Isn't that right? Yeah, postgatebook.com. Oh, postgatebook.com. All right. Very much. Thank you very much, John. Take care. Okay, Bill.

Good. All right. So then we'll see where this all ends up going and with the rogue judges and spinning around into SCOTUS and all the rest of it. Plenty of legal, legal stuff to look at. We built this city by Jefferson. That's pound 250. Key words.

Save now from our friends of Pure Talk. The Bill Meyer Show, 736. Lynn, I'm always, I guess I'm always cheered when you call, Lynn, one way or the other. Thank you. I appreciate you coming in. Thoughtful people, always good to have thoughtful people, one. What is on your mind today? And I guess it has a hearing, which is going on in Washington, D.C.

And you wanted us to know a little bit more about, I guess? Yeah. I just want to do a heads up. Ron Johnson is going to be doing a hearing tomorrow concerning vaccine injury, and there's been hints made that the vaccinated, unvaccinated study was done. It was done by a scientist that expected the results to vindicate vaccines and the results were so bad. He buried it, but apparently they've got access to the data now and it's going to be discussed tomorrow. That should be a very interesting conversation there, that hearing. Boy, so is that going to be a live hearing,

something we can watch on C-SPAN? You know the timing of it? Just curious. is? I don't remember. I don't remember, but I think it would be easy to find, you know, Ron Johnson hearing on vaccines or something like that. And also a heads up that, you know, even though the momentum is looking good in the direction for medical freedom, Washington State, which is joined in a contact with Oregon and California. Oh, don't forget Hawaii. Don't forget Hawaii. You know, Hawaii is going to want their papaya's vaccinated. I'm sure for something. Well, anyway, they have said they are giving permission to anyone, I guess, physicians

or pharmacists to give the COVID vaccine to any child six months and older without parental permission or consent or knowledge. So this is what they're up to. And it's, now, did I hear you right that you said without parental permission or knowledge? Yeah, yeah. Oh. So the battle lines are being drawn. Yeah, it's a vaccine that is so good.

can't even, we don't even have to tell the parents about it. Okay. All right. Right. So I just wanted to give a heads up that there's more fireworks coming. And another thing, I wish I would have asked you to ask Benz about this. I didn't know you're having Benz come on, but in the appropriations bill, there's something called Section 453, which would give a liability shield to chemical companies, just like the vaccines. So that means there would be no more, you couldn't sue for injuries due to Roundup or any other chemical ever. Well, I could even think about the conversation we've been having about PIFAs, you know, the forever chemicals, those sort of things.

Right. So, 57,000 chemicals, I think, would be impacted. So basically, they would be able to poison us, and we wouldn't be able to do anything about it. And I've been calling Benson's office daily and saying, don't vote for that bill unless Section 453 is removed. Could you send me a note on that, and I'll get in touch and see what I'll. can find out about that. And by the way, I would say that just allowing chemical, allowing chemical companies to run roughshod over, you know, our, our individual lives here is not a conservative value, in my opinion. Okay? And that doesn't mean you're turning liberal. This just means like, hey, you know, come on. This is just, this is common sense thing. I would, you know, if, if the Biden administration were trying to do that, I'd be just as a tweet over it, really. Yeah, there's no free market. I mean, you wouldn't buy a car.

if you couldn't sue for, you know, a poorly designed car that caused someone's death. You wouldn't buy anything. So it's actually a corruption of the free market, not protecting it. Agreed. Hey, thanks for the tip. All right. Appreciate that greatly. Thank you.

Thank you, Lynn. And give me that note here. And I'll get in touch with Ben's office and try to get to the bottom of that, too. Rest of the news is coming up. Ira Melman joins me from the Federation for American Immigration Reform. They have a new immigration report out here. And it should be interesting to see what the numbers say. Oregon Truck and Auto Authority is celebrated.

7.44. Ira Melman joins me from the Federation of American Immigration Reform, FairU.S.org. And really like staying in touch, there has been a lot of immigration enforcement news in the news, I guess, really coming out the last few weeks here. and a lot of litigation, whether it's, you know, pro what the president was looking for or against what the president and the administration was looking for or not. Ira, it's great to have you back on. Welcome to the show. Thanks very much. Good to be back. Ira, wanted to ask you about the changes that have been going on at fair us.org, you know, your organization here. In fact, you have added an investigative arm, and was it a legal arm or a judiciary kind of arm? Could you explain some of the changes that have been going on there?

Yeah, you know, we've really consolidated an auxiliary organization at Fair, you know, sort of spun off many, many years ago that looked at the legal cases that were before the courts, did investigation. And now, you know, we brought them all together under one roof at Fair. So, you know, in addition to the stuff that Fair was doing in the past, We have now incorporated the duties of the immigration reform laws to, which, as you pointed out, filed suits in courts, defended people who were undermined by the lack of enforcement of immigration laws, and also the investigative team that looks into how things are kind of playing out behind the scenes. So now it's all under one roof. This has all been happening before. It's just now it's been consolidated into one organization.

Okay, well, that's good to have the law people within the same building. By the way, are you still on the same building? Out near Capitol Hill, you're still out there in the same offices? Yes, we're still there, a stone's throw from the Capitol. You know, it's important to be close. You know, things happen fast in Washington, and sometimes you've got to be over there in just a matter of minutes to have your voice heard. All right, yeah, that's the lobbying aspect for sure.

So, Ira, I want to talk about what the investigative side has to say about this, because we ended up having judges not too long ago saying that the Los Angeles ice riots or the anti-ice riots, that this was something that the president was not really allowed legally to do. There was beyond his power. Am I characterizing this correctly? And then what does your investigative arm have to say about what may have been overlooked by the courts? Yeah, I mean, the first thing to note here is you pointed out that these were riots. These were not just peaceful protests. These were people who were actually engaging in violence and property destruction. And there were also attacks on federal officers, ICE officers or federal law enforcement officers. The local officials in Los Angeles and California were not stepping in sufficiently to protect these people. And so as the president, you know, he is the, you know, the ultimate boss of these federal law enforcement officers. He has an obligation to protect their safety and security, and if the local governments aren't doing it, then the federal government has to step in. So, you know, we've seen this in the past where you've had federal troops or federal officers sent and dispatched around the country. This was no different.

But, you know, obviously everything these days gets blown up. And, you know, what we saw is that the feds came in. they put down these riots and you know it's not perfect but uh you know life is functioning is normal now what did they uh discover what did your investigators uh discover though about what was actually backing up though or what was behind the the anti rice riots or the anti ice riots because this was not something which was just uh organic it really was being pushed by some uh influence groups wasn't it absolutely you know these were not spontaneous and And, you know, we've seen a pattern of this in the country over the past, at least the past five years, beginning with the Black Lives Matter, what started as protests turned into riots, the pro-Hamas rallies on college campuses around the country, the anti-ice violence that has sprung up since President Trump returned to office.

Look, American citizens have a right to protest any policy that they disagree with. You know, nobody is disputing that. But we're also seeing now that it often spills over into violence and that these are not spontaneous, as you pointed out. These are agitators, sometimes from people in the country, sometimes people outside the country who come in, stir things up. You know, we saw, you know, go back to 2020 with the mostly peaceful riots that took place or the most peaceful protests.

But at the same time, while you had legitimate people who were protesting, you had people who were being paid by outside organizations. After the sun went down, violence broke out. We've seen that pattern on college campuses over the past few years. And, you know, it is clear that some of this money is coming from abroad, from places like China. You have Code Pink, which has been active in a lot of these things lately. It is funded by two American expats who live in China, you know, very likely just laundering money from the CCP, paying people to protest. There was somebody who was exposed recently after getting on which news network getting paid $75,000 a year just to be a professional protester. So this is what is happening, and it should be brought to the attention of the American public.

So you had the Chinese-affiliated networks. There were Mexican cartels, according to this report, too. And along with the other people that were involved, including what Churla, I think was another group here, the Coalition for Human Immigrant Rights, that's named in this report, Hispanic Federation, Immigrant Youth Coalition, Union del Barrio. And so this was a very well-organized and well-funded operation. So this idea that this was just so very organic is just a total lie right from the start. But it didn't affect the judges involved in ruling on this. They still said President Trump was not legal to do what was done. Well, yeah, look, I mean, you can find a judge who will declare anything illegal.

We've been playing this game for a long time, where, you know, it's just basically to throw sand in the gears. They understand that ultimately these decisions will be overturned. But in the meantime, they're buying some time. and that has been the strategy. They're trying to run out the clock. They did that in the first Trump administration. They're trying to do the same thing in the second Trump administration. But as you point out, you know, it's not, as I said, as you said, not just China.

It's a lot of other outside influence groups. And, you know, in addition to whatever specific issue they're trying to address here, basically what they're trying to do is so dissent in this country to undermine the basic fabric of life in this country. So, you know, the American public needs to be aware that what we're seeing here is, yes, you know, you have American citizens who legitimately disagree with certain policies, but at the same time you have hostile outside interest groups that are trying to ferment unrest in this country.

And, you know, we've seen that over the time that they've been fairly successful in certain circumstances. Ira Melman with me once again, the Federation for American Immigration Reform, FairU.S.org. What do you think about the president wanting to redo or do a census mid-decade, which normally has not been done before? Do you think that would gain some traction here? What's your overall impression of that? Well, it is unprecedented. Uh, you know, we have a census that's coming up in 2030. Uh, it may sound like a long time,

but they're already starting to gear up. Uh, this is a major operation that is conducted once every decade here in this country. Uh, look, I, what precipitated it is what's going on in places like California and other states where they're trying to redraw congressional boundaries to pay for one party over another. Uh, so look, I mean, what we need is, is for there to be some real guidelines for the censuses that take place every 10 years in this country to ensure that when they count people, number one, that they identify people who are in the country illegally so that they are not included in the census for the purpose of enforcement. We need to count them, but we don't need to make sure that they get...

Yeah, in other words, illegal aliens should not be used then to provide more political representation for that area, is what you're saying. Exactly. California has probably four additional house seats and four additional electoral votes by virtue of the fact that they have a large illegal alien population. Got it. So it really has a profound effect on everything in this country. So, you know, I doubt very much that they're going to be able to pull off this mid-decade census,

but it certainly is, you know, an indication that they want this to be on the table when the 2030 census comes up. What can you tell me about that? I know I'm dancing around a lot of topics right now here, but it's been a while since I talked with you, Ira. What can you tell me about the 500 illegal aliens arrested at the Hyundai plant, the Hyundai plant in Georgia? And was this something that was an abuse of the H-1B,

or is there something else going on? Do we know yet at this point? We don't know, but there was a history there with the Hyundai plants. This goes back. This was actually revealed by the New York Times a few years ago where they actually had child labor taking place. This was at the height of the border crisis and the Biden administration. They were bringing in all kinds of people. All these people owed money to the cartels that brought them in. And there were reports in the New York Times of all places that Hyundai, at plant, I think that was in Alabama, that they were employing children. who were in the country illegally and had to help their families pay off their debt. So it is not only our American workers being displaced very often by the presence of large numbers of illegal aliens,

but also just the basic humanity of this country is undermined when we have child labor in this country. These are such the things that should not be happening in the 21st century. Now, I'm going to ask this question somewhat inelegantly, and I may not get the exact, legalities or the right visa right when I mentioned this. But I've read a lot about some people bringing up that H-1B, maybe it's H-1B or maybe a different type of visa, that has been very corrupted the last decade or more, especially in the high-tech world, and that there is no requirement to advertise for Americans first or if there is a requirement, they do such a poor job that it's obvious that there's never

training intent. What is the truth and or fallacies of these reports that we're starting to see these days? Right. You're talking about the H-1B, which was established by Congress to allow American employers to be able to take advantage of people with unique talents around the world, the kind of skills that are not easily replicated anywhere else. And, you know, the idea was then corrupted, and these companies started to realize, hey, you know, we can bring in foreign workers who will work for less money than American workers, you know, and also they are beholden to the company that sponsors them, that gets them this visa. So, you know, while an American tech worker at Google could just go to meta the next day, if meta offers a better deal,

it's much, much more difficult to have that kind of mobility if you were here on an H-1B visa. So it works to the advantage of the employers. They get to set the wage and working conditions. they have greater control over their employees. But is there anything that really requires them, Ira, to really advertise that job opening? Or can they to say, hey, we're going to, you know, take this lottery and do it first? Technically, they're supposed to, you know, they've got to attest to, you know, the fact that they can't find an American worker available. But it is so loosely policed that they've been getting away for years.

with not actually making a sincere offer to an American worker to build those jobs. Yeah, I had a feeling that was what was going on, but is there any push to maybe change that and actually police it? Because I know that, you know, President Trump has to please the tech bros too. You know, it's not just a one direction. You just can't do everything. A lot of money goes both ways in exchanging. Yeah.

Yeah, I mean, the tech industry, like a lot of industries, has a lot of cloud in Washington. Yep. And that's what makes it so difficult, but it really does need to be police. We go back to the 1990s when Robert Reich was the Secretary of Labor under Bill Clinton. He pointed out the fact that these guest worker programs were widely abused and they needed to be police better. You know, here we are 30 years later and we're still dealing with the same situation. All right.

Ira, we appreciate you coming on and keep us in the loop on this and always appreciate your analysis. By the way, how is it, have you been back to D.C. recently? I know a lot of times you live out on the West Coast, too, up in the Seattle area, but is D.C. easier to walk around these days with some of the changes, do you know? I have not been back there since all this has been going on, but I will be there in a couple weeks. I can report back to you. Okay, I look forward to getting your take,

because I remember what it was like when we would be there for a hold-your-feet-to-the-fire sort of thing. and if you were planning on going out and walking the streets near the capital at 2 a.m., you're usually better off not to, just saying. Yeah, I don't know what you're doing out there at 2 a.m., but you probably shouldn't have been out there in the first place. Oh, no, no, I wasn't. No, we were pretty much told in the motel at the Phoenix Park Hotel. They were saying, no, don't go out there at night. Don't. You just don't. You really don't want to. And they were right. They were right. Just curious. Hey, we'll have you back, though, Ira. Thank you for the call. Okay. Be well.

yeah thank you fair us dot org and a lot going on there including the folding in of the the legal aspects going to take legal eagles right for sure kmedy km ed hd one eagle point metford kbxg grants passes where you are nine days