Relatable with Allie Beth Stuckey - Spencer Pratt’s Loss Is Statistically Impossible | Ron Simmons

Episode Date: June 13, 2026

Allie’s dad, Ron Simmons, breaks down the controversial L.A. mayoral race where late mail-in ballots propelled socialist councilmember Nithya Raman past Spencer Pratt, sparking fresh election integrity questions from President Trump, Elon Musk, and concerned Americans. Ron also examines the multiple scandals surrounding Maine Democratic Senate candidate Graham Platner, including his Nazi Totenkopf tattoo, sexting allegations, and troubling comments about women and veterans. Plus, why four Senate Republicans joined Democrats to block the SAVE America Act and what that reveals about the fight for voter ID and election security. Ron tackles the growing backlash against AI data centers as communities grapple with skyrocketing electricity and water demands. Finally, Ron tackles viewer questions on financial books, parenting, and politics. Share the Arrows 2026 is on October 10 in Dallas, Texas! Tickets are on sale now at: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://sharethearrows.com⁠⁠⁠ Share the Arrows is sponsored by: A'del Natural Cosmetics: AdelNaturalCosmetics.com Range Leather: RangeLeather.com/ALLIE We Heart Nutrition: WeHeartNutrition.com Buy Allie's book "Toxic Empathy: How Progressives Exploit Christian Compassion": ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://www.toxicempathy.com⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ – Time Codes 0:00 Introduction 3:27 Mail in Ballots Determine LA’s Mayoral Runoff 16:30 Maine Senate Candidate’s Scandals 26:50 SAVE America Act Stalls in Congress 31:59 Data Centers 43:03 Viewer Q & A – Today's Sponsor: Geviti | Go to gogeviti.com/allie and use code ALLIE for 20% off. Episodes You May Like: Ep 1348 | No Pay for Politicians During Shutdowns, Republicans to Gain Seats After Redistricting, and Advice to Go Debt-Free | Ron Simmons https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/ep-1348-no-pay-for-politicians-during-shutdowns-republicans/id1359249098?i=1000768110421 Ep 631 | Allie's Dad On the Economy, Fatherhood & Raising Christian Kids | Guest: Ron Simmons https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/ep-631-allies-dad-on-the-economy-fatherhood-raising/id1359249098?i=1000566681855 --- ► Buy Allie's book, "You're Not Enough (& That's Okay): Escaping the Toxic Culture of Self-Love": https://alliebethstuckey.com/book ► Subscribe to the podcast: iTunes: https://apple.co/2UVssnP Spotify: https://spoti.fi/2FwkXxj ► Connect with Allie on Social Media: https://twitter.com/conservmillen https://www.instagram.com/alliebstuckey/ https://facebook.com/allieBlazeTV/ ► Relatable merchandise – use promo code 'ALLIE10' for a discount: https://shop.blazemedia.com/collections/allie-stuckey

Hello, everybody. I hope everybody has had a great week this week. I know that we are now kind of into summer, even though it's not officially summer until June. I can tell you in Texas, it's already summer. It's been a hot one, and I think it's going to be a hot summer. That's the way it is. Now, maybe El Nino will bring us some rain that we always seem to need. And I hope wherever you are, that you're beginning to enjoy your summer. Your kids are hopefully out of school by now. and graduations are over. Congratulations to all of you that graduated or had kids that graduated or grandkids. Those are always kind of interesting and fun times.

I can remember all of those for our kids and they all have a special memory in our heart. In fact, I'll tell you, this is a little story. When I guess Lisa and I always knew that Allie was going to be someone that used her voice and whatever career she decided upon. but I think that we knew for sure that she was going to be speaking to groups of people when she graduated from college. Her college, uh, Furman University did not, the valedictorian didn't automatically speak. They actually had a speaking contest that, uh, the students participated in and helped judge

and in the faculty, some faculty group made the final decision. And Allie was chosen as the graduation speaker. which we were certainly proud of. And I remember her speaking that night in the football stadium at Furman. And just, I could just tell there was a point in her speech. In fact, actually, I should have brought the picture with me, I have a really good picture of it, that it's almost like it's going off in her head,

like, yep, this is what I'm meant to do. And so that's a special time for our family. I know you've had a bunch of special times as well. Now, a lot to talk about today, and we'll try to get through it. and as clear and concise as we can, but it's a lot of really interesting information that I, I hope when I'm doing these,

my sessions obviously are different than Alley's. My sessions are really to try to take things and to put them in as layman terms as possible. Some of them are very easy to understand. Some of them are more complex, and some of them I may not do that great of a job at. And if I don't, please let me know that. But I do think that they're important.

What we're trying to do here, what I'm trying to do is to help you and all of us, you know, become better engaged citizens. And I know that you have a lot going on within your family and your job and the other stuff that you do. But it's also important that we participate in our citizenry. And that has to do with paying attention to those that govern us. It has to do with paying attention to culture.

And having influence on as many of those areas as we can through the means that are appropriate that we do as Christians. So that's kind of my goal here. And also to answer your questions, you always have great questions. We'll have some great questions on this episode, and I'll try to do my best to answer those. But you can always also email me,

Ron at Ron Simmons.com, and I'm happy to answer your questions. If you've emailed me and I haven't gotten back to you, please rescind it so it gets back to the top of my inbox. Sometimes they get down at the bottom of the inbox, and I forget about them. So please do that. One of the things that's been going on in the last,

several days is the mayorial race in Los Angeles. And the current mayor there, Karen Bass, and she had two main contenders, Stephen Pratt and Nita Raymond. And the actual election day was a week or two ago, but it takes California seven, eight days to count vote, which is really crazy. The latest and what they are calling the final says that Nithia Ramon has overtaken Spencer Pratt in the race for second place in the mayor race so that she'll be in the runoff along with Karen Bass. Now it's really interesting

that this happened because on election night, because Pratt was so far ahead of her and about eight or nine points ahead of her, which is a lot in an election. Thea Roman broke down in tears addressing her supporters because she was in third place and wouldn't be in the runoff. Here's what she said on election night.

I hope you know that everything, every person in this room is fighting for in this campaign has been about building a city that's worthy of you and every child in this city. So, she

She realized that overcoming a deficit like that would be almost impossible. As a matter of fact, I'll tell you a personal story. The last political race that I ran, my district had kind of turned purple. And it was a race when Beto O'Rourke, if you remember Beto, he ran for Senate against Ted Cruz. Ted Cruz was the sitting senator who still is. and Beto generated a lot of excitement among young voters and Democrat voters and what we call general election voters, voters that didn't vote in the primary but voting in general election.

And on election night, we thought we were in good shape. In fact, the polling that we had done just before when the election process started, we were up seven or eight points. On election night, the polls close at 7 o'clock. And if you get those of you that have read my book know this story already, and I go into much more detail in the book. But on election night at 7 o'clock, the Republican Party chair of our county

will call all of the candidates that are Republican and see where you are in the early vote count. And those were the ones that voted before actual election day and early voting. And I was down 200 votes after early voting. Well, the way math works and the way math works and just statistics work, I knew right then that I was likely to lose that race, even though election day voting hadn't been counted and a lot of the mail ballots had not been counted.

But I knew pretty well for sure that I would lose right then. And sure enough, I did not overcome that deficit during that, once they counted election day voting and mail ballots, because it's just very hard. Usually the percentages don't change very much at all between what happened in early voting and what happens on election day and in mail ballot. So it's very uncommon, and that's why Ms. Ramon basically conceded that she wasn't going to be in the runoff. However, when all these mail-in ballots came in and the way California does it, they allow you to send in your mail ballot, and as long as it's postmarked on election day, they will count it. and it takes up to seven, eight days to get all the votes counted.

Now, why most other states can count them the same day, I have no idea. It just doesn't make any sense. In fact, you know, people are pushing back on this as to what really happened. Because Spencer Pratt was the only Republican or was the leading Republican in the race. In fact, Stephen Crockauer, and I think we have a screen of this, wrote on X. It's not just Pratt fading in these drops. It's Ramon beating Karen Bass by eight points. that really makes it feel very election integrity-ish,

meaning not much integrity at all. And President Trump responded on his true social, said there's big cheating by the Democrats and the California votes are all tied up, may not be for weeks under investigation by the U.S. Attorney's Office in Los Angeles. Why the vote counting delay? Which is a very good question. And then finally, which is the one I want to spend a little time on, Elon Musk retweeted a post from not the B, meaning not Babylon B, noting the statistical impossibilities. When statistical impossible things happen, we should not be expected as a society to accept them.

Evidence of fraud isn't limited to video surveillance. Statistical impossibilities are hard evidence of fraud. Now, let me explain this to you. And it may just may take a couple of minutes to get it. You may have to re-listen to this part of it a couple of times. So at the end, on election night, when the polls closed, when they closed, which essentially they counted all the early votes and maybe some election day votes as well. Karen Bass had 35 percent.

Spencer Pratt had 30 percent. Ramone had 23 percent. And all of the other candidates, there were seven or eight other candidates, totaled 12%. So 35, 30, 23, and 12. Now, once they finish the counting, okay, now remember, the people that are counting the votes and the people that are watching the vote count, they know these numbers, 35, 30, 30, 23, 12. That's why Ramon conceded that first night. The final vote count, and this is really interesting, 34 for Karen Bass, 26 for Spencer Pratt, 29% for Ramon and 11% for all the others.

So Karen Bass's vote count went down by 1%. Spencer Pratt's went down by four percentage points, and Ramones went up by six percentage points. Now, what would have to happen in order for that to be true, all right? that means that Karen Bass, even though her percentage came down, she did get some of the mail-in ballot votes, but not at the same percentage she got them before, which is unlikely, honestly.

Spencer Pratt, not only did he not go up, he went down. And again, he got some votes from mail-in. However, he got very, very few votes from mail-in ballots, which again, based on the performance in early voting, would say that even if he didn't get that continued 30% that he got in early voting, he probably would have gotten 20% or maybe 25%. So it doesn't make sense.

Here's the kicker. In order for Ms. Ramon to go from 23% to 29%, she would have had to have gotten 47% of all the votes that came in after early voting. That is statistically impossible. Someone, in my opinion, and someone that gets 23% of the votes in early voting is not going to get 47% of the rest of the votes.

I am telling you, from what my grandmother would say, there is a fly in the buttermilk. Something is not right there. I hope they can get to the bottom of it. It seems like that they saw what votes they needed to get, and that's where they got. And I hope that's not the case. If she got 47% of the votes in mail-in ballot,

then we all need to go figure out how she did it, assuming she did it in the correct way and use that in the future in any campaigns that we're interested in. One of the challenges in California is something called ballot harvesting. What ballot harvesting means, and in most states it is illegal, but what ballot harvesting means is that I can go as an individual, I can go pick up a vote. I can go pick up people's ballots.

I can go around the neighborhood and pick them up and then turn them in myself. Most places say you can't go around and harvest, get ballots and pick them up and then turn them in. Now, in theory, the person's already filled out the ballot, sealed the envelope and everything, and you're just the transporter. But that just opens things up for potential fraud, all right? It just makes the opportunity so great. And that's why most states don't allow that. We do not allow that in Texas.

So it's not just family members, but anyone can pick up a ballot. And there's no limit on how many they can pick up. So who knows? And in California, everybody's mailed a mail-in ballot. Even if you're going to go vote in person, you get a mail-in ballot by the mail. So what if somebody gets that ballot and fills it out, for just somebody else's name on it or however they do that. I mean, it's just a problem.

And then when you're voting in person, no photo ID is required for most voters. In fact, Gavin Newsom in 2024 signed a law that prohibit checking ID when voting. Now, is that the craziest thing you've heard? You've got to check ID. I guarantee you to get into some of his events, they have to check your ID. To get to the airport, to go through the airport security line,

you have to have ID. but not in voting our most basic fundamental responsibility, the thing that really keeps our democracy and our republic going. You don't have to show voter ID. Oh, just absolutely, absolutely crazy. And so we hope that the U.S. Attorney's Office in L.A. will be looking into this. It just seems like something is not right in that scenario.

It just doesn't seem right. But that is what happens. I mean, I'm telling you, there is election fraud in this country, all right? It is happening. And in my opinion, it's done mostly on the Democrat side. And I'm sure there's some on both sides, but in my opinion, that's where you see most of the problem. Most of the problem that we've had in Texas is in the Valley, Rio Grande Valley,

and that has been a strong Democrat stronghold for many years, although President Trump did do very well down there. And we did flip some seats down there, House seats and congressional seats. But that's something that you have to be very, very careful of. There's no question about it. A couple of questions on this. Does the GOJ have legal rights to investigate the most recent elections? Yes, that's true. They absolutely have the right to do that.

Even though these were state or city elections, when you are violating the Constitution or you're violating federal election laws, even if you do it within a state election or a local election, then absolutely. No question about that. Just the other day, I got a message from someone. She and her husband are trying to have a baby, and I'm not a health expert, but one of the things I recommended to her was to get her blood work done.

Just make sure that her hormones and all of her, all of her different markers are in a good place. Same thing with her husband. And I've done that through Jevity. They make it really easy. This is a concierge service. They send a lobotomist right to you. They came to my podcast.

studio. She was so kind. It took five seconds. It was completely painless, totally convenient. They ship off your blood and they test the, they test for their results. And then the results show up in an app. I don't know the science of all of this and how this works. I just know that I got the results in days in an app on my phone. And I was able to get a detailed report of what's going on in my body. And then they offered a doctor to give me a 30 minute video breakdown of all of the different findings, what it means, what it means for my diet, the changes that I should make to optimize my health. I mean, this could be a total game changer. It could be a game changer for your fertility or just your overall health. Go to gojavity.com slash alley. Use code alley. You get

20% off. Gojavity.com slash alley code alley. Next thing is the Graham Platner scandals. I don't know if most of you have heard of Graham Platner or not, but he is a U.S. Senate candidate. in Maine. That Senate seat is currently held by Susan Collins, who she's a Republican, but relatively moderate Republican, and maybe in Maine, that's what you have to be to be elected. She's been around a long time, but this Graham Platner scandals that he is having are incredible. He is a Marine Corps veteran, and we believe he'll be the nominee. I think the voting's going on this week. He's running against Susan Collins, as we said, but the allegation, about his past conduct

have ranged from his Nazi tattoo, which we'll show you in a minute, to his affairs with women and abusive behavior. Platner showed as a tattoo of the Nazi Totenkov emblem on his chest,

which is a skull and crossbone design used by Nazi SS units. See that right there? I mean, that's those of you that are watching on video. Really incredible. In fact, he initially claimed he got the tattoo and didn't know what it was. But recent text messages have shown that his ex-girlfriend knew the meaning of the tattoo and that he called it, Graham called it by Totenkov.

Now, he's denying that he ever knew it, that maybe his, maybe his girlfriend knew it. In fact, when he was asked by Chris Hayes, Plattner claimed that maybe his girlfriend knew what it meant, but she didn't tell him, Sought 2. The Times basically reported that they saw him. They saw a text of hers, including a text in August, I believe August 3rd of last year. This would be before October of last year, in which she basically said that you had a quote Nazi tattoo and she joked about how she's going to go volunteer for Collins. Now, again, this is a text that got sent so like we can place the time, right? This is in August.

How does she know it's a Nazi tattoo in August of last year and you don't know it's a Nazi tastoo in August of last year? Well, she certainly didn't send that text to me. So whoever she sent it to and was talking to, that's, I can't say why, but I will say that I certainly didn't know. And the text messages she's sending to friends who may have recognized that they didn't tell me that. This guy is just not a truth teller. I mean, that's all there is to it. He's not a truth teller.

Now, the Democrats have rallied behind him. A lot of the ones in Senate have rallied behind him and just, you know, don't care about this type of stuff, although any mistake that a Republican makes, they want to shout to high heaven, and they have the media helping them do it. I appreciate Chris A's asking that question. He's part of MSNBC,

which I'm definitely not a fan of, but I appreciate him asking that question. And it's not only the Nazi tattoo, he also has some sexting scandals. In fact, his wife, Amy Gertner, discovered sexually explicit messages, text messages that he sent to as many as a dozen women on his phone.

In fact, she flagged the issue for his Senate campaign last year as a potential liability. So his, okay, now, stay with me on this. His wife found him on his phone and told the Senate campaign, hey, you need to be aware of this. This is probably going to come out. But his wife also issued a statement saying they had a great marriage. Now, I believe in reconciliation, and I believe people can be reconciled, people make mistakes.

But how can you say you had a great marriage if, you found these on his phone, he obviously wasn't going to say anything about it. And then you had to flag them. His ex-girlfriends, though, actually talk a little bit more about his attitude and how he has treated women. In fact, a New York Times piece, again, usually not our friend, but glad they printed this, documented the testimony of several ex-girlfriends who described him as demeaning, emotionally volatile, heavy drinking, unfaithful, and at least one,

case, physically rough or intimidating during arguments in his 20s and 30s. Lindsay Fifeld, who Plater dated from 2013 to 215, said Plattner was cavalierly contemptuous of women's emotions. He regularly grabbed her by the shoulders while drinking, and in one incident, twisted her arm and shoved her into a bedroom and so her to stay in there until she calmed down. After the piece was published, however, Fafeld posted on Exit at the New York. York Times actually was trying to do damage control for Platner. And I don't know if that's true or not.

Maybe they were, but here's what she said on, and this is, I think we have a screen of this, but on X, she wrote, after the story went up, I began to ask them, wait, where, wait, where are the stories from the other women? Where are the accusation of sexual assault? Why am I the focus? Why does it say nobody could corroborate when I offered them sources that could corroborate? This really was a setup all along. The journalists I trusted who convinced me to share the story I never wanted to tell,

methodically delayed and twisted this into a gift to the Platner campaign. Wow. That's a pretty strong accusation. But it wouldn't put it past the New York Times to do that. We know they're a far left organization. We know that they don't like anything, any Republican or conservative does. But that's not all. That's not all.

This guy, and again, if you know anybody in, Maine, make sure that as it comes around, we'll see what happened to the Democrat primary. Hopefully they won't vote for him, but they probably will. When it comes around to the general election that you vote for Ms. Collins, even though Ms. Collins doesn't do everything we want her to do, and again, she's kind of a moderate Republican. She's much better than what this guy would be. In fact, he had a Reddit account that he has since submitted was his. It looked to be anonymous, but he's admitted it was his.

And this is one of the things that he said. This is to me, all of them are very disturbing. This is very disturbing as well. This is, he responded to a video of a U.S. soldier being shot four times by the Taliban saying, this video never gets old. That dumb MF didn't deserve to live. At least his stupidity and fat A wheezing are available for all future infantry men to witness and hold in contempt. Poor marksmanship on the Taliban.

part is the only reason this MF made it home. He managed to make every possible bad decision when it comes to a small unit combat. Wow. Man. So he's basically saying this never gets old

to see one of our soldiers being shot four times. That's very disappointing. That in itself would disqualify him for any vote that I would ever take where he was on the ballot. Also, Platner, evidently, asked why black people don't tip. And he said, there are times in this world when for the good

tolerance of humanity, you need to kill an MF and smeared rural white Americans as dumb and racist. So this guy is basically a offended everybody. And we'll see what happens in Maine. But man, what a mess this is in Maine. And hopefully this will mean that when it comes out, a lot of Maine voters are independent voters. They're not really aligned with one party. Hopefully they would see Susan Collins is a better pick than Graham Platner. And again, if you know anybody in Maine, I've got a few friends up there, we need to be in touch with them and make sure that they vote correctly in November. One of the questions that comes up about all this is what about the midterms?

What happens, what do you think is going to happen to the midterms? Well, it's an interesting that you say, I don't, it's kind of an unusual scenario. The redistricting so far has helped the Republicans, no question about it. So the hill to climb for Democrats is a little harder in the House. It's going to be hard in the Senate for the Democrats no matter what. I do think that we'll keep the Senate. But the House is a little bit easier for the Democrats to flip. I am hoping that here in the next month or so, that gas prices will have gone back down.

Maybe interest rates will go down a little bit between now and then and that people will feel much better about the economy. People tend to vote their pocketbooks, although there are some issues that I know for me, you know, and for our family, pro-life is a big, big issue, and biblical values are a big, big issue. So we want to vote for the party or the candidate that shares that in most with us. None of them are perfect, and that's what I tell people. You know, general elections are about policy as opposed to people. Primaries are more about people. which candidate do you prefer, right?

But general elections, because for the most part, now we're going to talk in just a second about when it doesn't happen, but for the most part, Republicans are going to vote, all Republicans are going to vote the same way, all Democrats are going to vote the same way. So no matter how towards the middle a Democrat might campaign, they're going to vote pretty far left, okay? And so the policies of the Republican Party fit my values and my family's values more than the Democrat Party does at this time in our history.

Probably hasn't always been that way, but that's the way it is today. So you want to think about party or not party. You want to think about policy in the general election. And you want to think about person in the primary, all right? It's very, very important. And those of us that have a general election coming up where maybe the candidate of our, party has some personal flaws. I want to think more about what the policies are that his party supports, and therefore I know he'll support as opposed to the person. And I hope that you'll

remember that. Now, since we're on the election thing, let's talk just for a minute about the Save America Act. The Save America Act has again stalled in Congress. And there were four Senate Republicans, and we're going to put their pictures up that join with Democrats to block a voter ID integrity bill. We were trying to get in with the $70 billion immigration enforcement funding package that went through reconciliation, therefore only took 50 votes if we got it in the bill. It was Susan Collins, so we just talked about. She voted against it. I don't know why she voted against it, but she did.

Lisa from Maine, Lisa Murkowski from Alaska, she seems to vote. a lot against Republican ideas, effectively conservative Republican ideas. And then Mitch McConnell, he voted against it probably because of his feud with President Trump. I don't know any other reason. I can't imagine that Kentucky voters would be against this, but he voted against it.

You know, he's going out. He's not running again, so he hadn't had anything to lose, I guess. And then finally, Tom Tillis of North Carolina, which, again, he's going out. and I can't imagine North Carolina voters. I know they have voter ID in North Carolina, so I can't imagine why he would be against it, but he was.

So four Republicans joined that. Lindsay Graham's amendment needed 60 votes in the Senate to be approved, and he basically was putting the Save Act inside this reconciliation bill. But it failed to get the required number only receiving 50 votes. Now, even if those four senators would have joined, not likely that we would have gotten anybody else on our. our side, but it was very disappointing, very disappointing. I think one Democrat senator did vote with us, and I believe that was Federman, but I'm not sure about that. You can double check that yourself.

But again, it just shows the challenges that we have. I mean, but, you know, the funny thing is what it simply does is it requires people registering to vote in federal elections to provide that they have proof of citizenship, that are eligible to vote. And that only legally allowed citizens are eligible to vote in federal elections. That's all that we are asking for and that there be a voter ID. Voter ID laws are popular. In fact, 83% of Americans, according to the Gallup poll, requiring proof of citizen to register to vote. And 84% require people to show voter ID when they vote. So I just don't know how we cannot get that passed. And I don't even know how. some Democrats can vote against that. I really don't know how they can do that, but they certainly can.

Josh Halley, who's Republican Senator from Missouri, like a lot of senators, I think he says it pretty well on SOT 3. Listen, we've been doing this in Missouri for years. I mean, voters in my state put it in our Constitution. Voter ID is the most popular thing out there. There's a reason for that. People want their elections to be safe. They want them to be fair. And to me, you can't explain it to me why you wouldn't vote for voter ID. I just don't understand it. I agree, Josh. I mean, I just can't imagine that.

I was on the election committee one of the sessions when I was in the House, and we had voter ID laws. They had gone through the court. The court upheld them. And we put in strict ballot harvesting laws, things like that. So I have no idea. In fact, Texas, U.S. Congressman Chip Roy posted on X, and I think we have a screenshot of this,

is that Senate Republicans prefer to hire. behind a fake 60 vote threshold rather than maintain a true filibuster rule and yet still consider the bill. So here we are. So what he's saying, if you're going to have a filibuster, make them stand up there and talk. Don't just say, I plan to filibuster this. Make them stand up there. Make them go through the pain of doing that. And I think that would be a smart thing to do. Now, I will tell you, I've changed my mind on the filibuster. And I know this could hurt us if the Senate changes to Democrat hands in the future. But I think that I'll say, I'll tell you, I've changed. I think we ought to get rid of the filibuster.

You know, it's a majority gets you elected. You ought to be able to get things passed with a majority as well. I just don't understand that. So we'll see how it works. But a minimum, they ought to do the talking filibuster. It's just senseless that we're, you know, that we're not doing that. But I would encourage you to continue to get in touch with your senators. Get in touch with your U.S. senators, especially if you live in a blue state.

get in touch with them about voting in favor of voter ID and make them explain to you why they're against voter ID. Most every state allows you to, even if you don't have a driver's license, you can get an ID that the state will provide and generally will pay for it for free of cost. You can get an ID that proves who you are and proves that you're a citizen eligible to vote. If you are, if you're not, then you don't deserve to vote. So I just can't imagine why that we can't get that. done. Now, one of the things that we've gotten a lot of questions about and a lot of concern about,

and this legitimate concern, are data centers. And data centers are these huge, I'm sure you've heard of these huge warehouses. I mean, they are multiple football fields long. And inside of them are all these computer servers that are collecting and storing and computing all the data that you and I, like put up, like for example, you know, you, you, you, when you, if you order anything off of Amazon, for example, which most people do in the country now, and you can go in there and you look at your order history. Well, that order history that's in there is stored somewhere in a data center, all right? And that data center, which is kind of sort of like the cloud, when you hear about the cloud, okay, that data center stores the data and then it retrieves it for you so that you can

know what you've ordered. And or in the. past and maybe what you want to reorder something like that. So it's something that we all use every day, but it is just something that has created a lot of concern. In fact, one of the questions we got from Julie is, what are data centers and why are some people up in arms? Well, we just explained to you about what they are, but the reason they're up in arms is because that they, in order for data centers to run, just like your own computer, you have to plug it in, it requires a lot of electrical power. And it also requires these huge computers, as you know, can run.

They have a motor inside of them so they can get hot. And that's why your computer, your laptop, like I'm using right now, has a little fan inside the computer that keeps it cooled down. Well, they have to have that type of scenario in these big warehouses. And they'll use water as chillers. Okay, they use chillers, which are these huge air-conditioning units to keep. keep it cool inside those data centers, and that requires a use of water. And that's why people are concerned is the amount of electricity that they're using,

that it's going to have a negative effect on the electrical grid, and the water. In fact, there have been some claims of water contamination. But that's controversial a bit, but we'll see. Then the reason that, another question about Maggie is, what's up with data centers being built and why the rush? Well, they're being built because we're using computers more and more every day. And a lot of that is what happening with artificial intelligence or as you and I know at AI. What happens is, this is a generalize, some of you that are computer people will probably laugh at me and feel free to email me and correct me or post it on YouTube or some other place where you can comment on it and help me understand better.

But the way I understand it is that what AI, does and how it learns to think, all right? In fact, today, when I gave you the percentage numbers that Rahman had to have in order to get to the percentage she got to of the mail ballot voting, I actually just put that question in AI and it calculated for me, and it gave me the formula. So what happens is that there's all this data. Every time we're on the computer, this data is being collected, all right? And about our own preferences, things like that. And they use that data to then analyze to come up with answers or to answer your Google

inquiry or your AI inquiry or, again, your shopping, whatever it is you want to buy and what have you. So that is all this data and it's more and more and more. And then they're using it. Computing power is also required to help them to quickly in a few seconds go through the, essentially the entire internet to come up with the answer to the question. And that is just a huge amount of computing that has to happen. You know, it's a, you know, it's, was it dots and zeros or dashes and zeros is really what's behind all the code? And they convert all those into what is logical

things that you and I would understand. And we're going to continue to need these data centers unless there is a breakthrough in computing that allows them not to be needed anymore. Most communities are raising concerns, again, as I said, about energy, water, environmental, and they are really huge facilities, but they were also used before AI, but AI has just expanded the need for them. It's a much, much heavier demand. And you and I use it every week. We use AI, you use AI whether you know it or not. When you ask a question of your computer or when you're looking for something, it's using AI to help find that answer as quickly as possible. possible for you. Right now there are 3,000 data centers and there's 1,500 that are already in

development across the country. That's a lot. If you think about that, that's, you know, 50 states, that's, what is that? 60 per state, something like that. And now another 45 is up to like 70 per state, even more than probably 80 per state. So that's a lot. You know, that's a lot. And some big states like Texas probably has more than those. In fact, I think Texas and Virginia have the most of the data centers. However, they do have a huge electrical need. And, you know, there's been strains on our electrical grid. In fact, there's even protests going on about these. I think we have a screenshot of one of the protests. And these are just everyday people. I mean, these could be paid protesters, but probably not. They, you know, they want to know what's going on here. What is happening? And it's

It's a legitimate concern. By 2007, one single rack, this is according to the Global Insta, Goldman Sachs, the one single rack of the most advanced AI computers or servers could require enough electricity to run about 500 typical American homes. So you think about that. There's a lot of small towns in the United States that don't have 500 homes in them. And one big AI service. server could require the same amount of electricity for computing power in order for it to be

able to operate properly. Now, interestingly enough, even though you and I use AI every day and we actually depend on it and need it and we, you know, we depend on our computers, is that seven out of 10 Americans, so 70% of Americans are against the construction of AI data centers in their local area. This is something when I was in the legislature that came up all the time. It's called the NIMBY concept. And what NIMBY means is not in my backyard. In other words, I know we need prisons, but I don't want you to build one in my backyard.

Or I know we need dog parks, but don't build it where all the dogs are barking in my window. In this case, hey, I know we probably need data centers, but just don't build it in my backyard. And ladies and gentlemen, I get what you're saying. And I, again, I wouldn't want one right next to me. either, but we do have to understand that in order to have the benefits of what these data centers bring to us, then we have to be able to maybe sacrifice some things. We don't need to sacrifice our environment or not being able to have enough electricity, but we need to be able to understand they're going to have to be somewhere. Now, ideally, they can be in

places that aren't as densely populated. And in the most part, that's the case. Some parts, it's probably not the case. Now, what's happening here is states and local municipalities, they are encouraging these data centers to be built in their area. And why do they do that? Well, they do it because it brings extra tax revenue generally and maybe more jobs, although it doesn't take a lot of people to run a data center that is more jobs. Certainly, it takes them to build the data centers. There's a lot of construction jobs that go on. And those are you know, those are all good. However, what is happening in some of these states, and my state's been a part of it too, is that they give them incentives, huge incentives to come and build the

data center here, because if my state doesn't give them an incentive, the next state over will. And when incentives, they're meaning that's like tax abatements, mean they don't have to pay tax for a certain period of time, or they may even give them some type of grant, or maybe they give them a lower electricity cost, something like that. So it's a real problem and it's a controversy. This is where you can contact your local city council and let them know your concerns about it. Make sure that you do that. Hey, I want to know, ideally I wouldn't like a data center next to me, but I also want to know what's going on with how are they getting their electricity, what type of incentives are they being done? What are they doing to our water?

I'd want to know all those types of things. And I'd also do that to the state. Hey, we know that these are important, but we also know they have to build them anyway, right? They have to build them anyway. So we don't need to overdo the incentives for them to come to our particular state. And I think you have to hold their feet to the fire. One of the things that is happening in some states, and I think this is legitimate question and a legitimate requirement is we need to have data centers pay for their own. power, right? States and other companies usually build the infrastructure and they just plug into that.

There are some tests going on out there to maybe have these small power plants at these data centers, so they generate their own power. Maybe some of them can use the solar power. Maybe that's the best place to use solar power rather than pulling power off of our grid. Or maybe even there's these, some people are trying to develop these small nuclear power plants, very small ones. and maybe that would work. But I think we have to be looking at all sorts of different opportunities to be able to coexist in a reasonable way with the data centers, but not to let them overwhelm us or to put our infrastructure, I guess,

and that's electricity, water, environment. Let's put those at risk. So stay in touch with that. Please get in touch with your local authorities on this. Voice your opinion on it. And if you have, you're in favor of them, voice that opinion. them, voice that opinion. But just make sure you're educated on it, okay? Take some of the stuff I've told you today on how they work and do some more research and make sure that you voice your

opinion on that. Because if we don't voice our opinion on it, then we don't have much of an opportunity to complain about it. Now, let's finish up by getting into some listener questions. Here's the first one. Housing market for the, this is from Grace, 30-year-old married with one child, do we keep renting or buy? We are in Dallas. I think, right now if I'm renting, I'll just hold off a little bit more. I think the market, the real estate market, could get a little softer. I notice even in our own neighborhood, there's more houses for sale this summer than there were last summer. So that tells me that they're staying on the market a little bit longer is what it tells me. So I think you can just watch it. And also,

I'm hopeful that interest rates will go down just a little bit below 6% and the next several months. I'm hoping that. So I would watch it for right now. Now, this is another related question by Sarah, who says, should we sell home and rent to pay off all debt? Three percent interest on current mortgage. I would say no, that I wouldn't do that. Now, obviously, I don't know your specific financial situation. If you're in a situation where you can't pay your debt, your other debt, and it's just piling up and piling up, then that might be another, you know, another opportunity, or another option to sell the home. But if you can avoid that at 3% interest and you don't plan on moving anyway,

you're going to stay in that home, then I don't think I would do that. I look for other ways to do that if at all you possibly could. If you needed to take a second mortgage out on the home at a little bit higher rate, then that might be an option as well and pay off all that debt. And then you could take a second mortgage and might still even be able to deduct that interest as well. So I just don't know that I would do that right now.

But I need to know a little bit more about your situation. If you want to email me on that, feel free to do that. Next to the Bible, what's the best finance book? Well, I like Dave Ramsey's Money Makeover, I think, as a basic finance book, especially for a lot of young couples, even older couples, no matter how old you are, some people, no matter how old they are, haven't figured out how to manage their money yet, or don't really haven't been taught the principles. I would do that.

Another way that I help people think about finance, another book is called Rich Dad, Poor Dad, done by Robert Kiyosaki. Now, I don't necessarily agree with everything he says out there in all of his books, but this is a good fundamental book on the way you think about creating assets and how you think about finances and what have you. How do I encourage this generation of parents to help their kids? You know, I got some good advice, and this is, I'm thinking more about. about adult children right now financially. I got some good advice one time.

And one of my mentors, I was talking about my kids were entering the phase where they were getting ready to be married and buying homes and things like that. Their kids starting to school. And, you know, our oldest son, we were only 21 years old when Justin was born. So we were very young. So he, you know, he's only 21 years younger than I am. So I'm 65. and so he's 44, okay?

And so he's, you know, if we wait until Lisa and I pass away, and, you know, who knows when that will be, then he's going to be pretty far up there before he would get any inheritance at all. And his kids may already be out of college, who knows. And so what this gentleman told me, he says, look, you need to help your kids when they need it the most if you can afford to do it.

and that they're good stewards. And so that's what we've done. We've tried to help our kids along the way as they've needed, helped them buy their first house. I don't see anything wrong with that. We've helped, you know, help where we can with the private school tuition to go to a Christian school. We help with that where they need it. And that's what we try to do to help them during the time that they need it. Now, they need to be good stewards of their money before that you would be willing to do that. because if they're going to take the money and just use it to go on a vacation or do something frivolous with it, then I wouldn't do that. If you want to help the grandkids, but you don't really trust the kids,

then, you know, you could give directly to the school if they're in a private school or put a 529 plan in place for their college tuition and what have you. So that's what I would do. Let's see. What's your advice on newlyweds to do in their first year of marriage? Well, I think in your first year of marriage is that you just need to. And again, it's been a long time for us, right? 45, we've been married 46 years.

But I think if I had to go do it over again, I'm sure that I wasn't trying to spend all my time trying to change my spouse. And I would spend more time trying to get to learn my spouse and learn more about me than I would be trying to change them. All right. Handling parents living in sin. Dad living with a man, mom rotating with new men, not honest. Man, that's a tough one. I'm sorry, Alison, that that's the case. I really am. I know that that's heartbreaking for you. But I do think that while you shouldn't cut them off, I do think, especially if you have children, you need to limit your exposure. I certainly don't want to

expose your children to your parents when they are. physically with people that you don't agree with, okay? And so I would just, you know, say, hey, I love you, but disagree with, you know, your lifestyle. And I want my grandkids to know you and know who you are, but I'm not going to expose them to things I disagree with. And, you know, they may or may not like that, but that's not your responsibility.

Your main responsibility is to your own family. And that, that would, that's probably the way I would handle that. raising kids who still want to be around you when they're grown up yeah you know you always worry about that when your kids are little i know i worried about that as well well with my kids still want to be around me when they're grown now fortunately they have they are i mean that we're blessed with that and a lot of that is due to the lisa my wife and how her parenting skills and how she was just you know just incredible mom and i probably messed up more than i needed to have i know I did, but they still want to be around us. And I think the way to do that is to make sure that,

again, I've talked about this before, but to make sure that they see you as not hypocritical. That doesn't mean you don't make mistakes, and you're certainly not perfect. But make sure that you're the same person at home that you are when you leave the home. That's what they will look at the most. And make sure, again, just had an email on related to this the other day from one of the listeners is that you understand the difference between values, rules, and preferences. If you understand that, okay, there are some things that are preferences, there are some things that are rules, like, okay, when you're going to come home from your date, preferences are, you know, are you wearing blue pants or green pants? Okay. And values are, are you honest, right? And I think

if they see that right balance with you, they're going to want to have that in the future. The other thing is if you'll focus on experiences as opposed to things, they're going to want to continue those experiences when they're adults as well. How did your mom get her start in songwriting? Congrats to you. God's blessings on your phone. Well, thank you very much, Joni. I appreciate that. Lisa's always been creative. She's always been a writer. She wrote things when she was young and in high school, wrote a really cool point that was published about her grandmother. And then when our kids were little, she would take regular songs and write mom parody songs about them. And some of those are just hilarious. And we had to figure out maybe how to get a link to some of those because they

are super, super funny. And then as Ali left high school and went to college, and so we were somewhat empty nesters because Daniel was off at a program at that time, she began to get more serious about songwriting. And so she began to write more serious songs, primarily in the Christian world. Also, though, some in the country. She's got some really good, funny, and good country songs. In fact, her favorite, my favorite song that she has, and you can probably look this up somewhere called Homecoming Dance. It's my favorite song of all time that she did. And it's, so if you like the song that Stephen Curtis Chapman did called Butterfly Kisses, it's kind of along that line. Did he sing that one? whoever did that. I like that one very much.

So anyway, thank you very much for that. Okay, just a few more here. What's my perspective on Maha, make America healthy again, and is it good for conservatism? Well, you know, there are some guy, I think Maha as a guidance is absolutely good, no question about it. I think any government thing that overly imposes restrictions or regulations

are some that I'd be concerned about. And I don't see them doing that yet. I think they're doing a lot of good things or having to undo a lot of bad things that have been done in the past, but I think they're doing a lot of good things. So I'm okay with that right now. Israel being having control of our military.

I don't think that's the case. Israel does not control our military. I know that for sure. But sometimes when you're in a particular conflict, like this happened in World War II. In World War II, Dwight, Dwight Eisenhower was the Supreme Commander. That meant that the British troops, our allies,

the British troops were under his ultimate command. Now, they had British generals involved in that. And of course, the leaders, Churchill and Roosevelt were even over Eisenhower. But sometimes for tactical reasons in the battlefield, there needs to be one leader. And so if you've got, you know, if you've got British troops and American troops in a particular battlefield, there's somebody that needs to have the ultimate responsibility. I don't know if that's going on with some of our people and the Israelis on coordinating strikes and things like that. And maybe because Israel has some more knowledge of particular locations, that they're the ones that makes the final call on that. But I guarantee you they don't make any final call that President Trump and his joint

Chiefs of Staff hasn't already been made aware of. And if they've given them that responsibility, then that's because we've allowed that to happen, not because they've taken it. So anyway, I hope that helps very much. Don't forget, if you haven't gotten your share of the air rose tickets, you still have time to do that. There's a few seats left,

but it's going to be another awesome time. I was just texting with Shane and Shane the other day. They're great people. They're looking forward to it. You know, if you don't, they have a daily devotional that comes out every morning. And if you're interested, and they sing the devotional, which is really, really good. And if you're interested in something like that, kind of get you going the more, and I would recommend that. And all the great speakers that Allie's going to have, you know by

now that Allie's expecting her fourth child, our seventh grandchild. We're so excited about it. It's going to be awesome. We just can't wait for the next little Bambino or Bambina's to come along, but it's going to be a great time. So thank you for supporting Allie's podcast. Again, if you are interested in getting in touch with me, Ron at Ron Simmons.com. Also a great gift for Father's Day still. You've got plenty of time for that is my book. Life Lessons from the Little Red Wagon.

You can get that off of Ali's merch site. If you want to sign copy, just email me, Ron at Ron Simmons.com, and we'll make arrangements to make that happen. Thank you very much. Have a good day.