The Daily Signal - Why So Many Californians Are Moving to Texas

Episode Date: June 7, 2021

Chuck DeVore moved his family from California to Texas a decade ago. The move was prompted by several factors, including “seeing [California] drifting further and further to the left,” he said. �� Today, many people are making the same decision DeVore, vice president of the Texas Public Policy Foundation, made and are leaving California for the Lone Star State. That raises the question: Will Texas be pulled to the left by all the people moving there? Initial data suggests that it won't be.  “People come here for their own, very deeply personal reasons,” DeVore said. “And you can't assume that because someone came here from a blue state that they're going to have liberal views.” Polling reveals that many people who move to Texas from California support conservative candidates in elections. That could change at any time, though, he warns. DeVore joins “The Daily Signal Podcast” to discuss the ways in which his organization is working to keep Texas, Texas. He also explains what might be next for the recent election reform bill that failed in the [Texas Legislature] when Democrats walked out of the session, preventing a vote on the legislation.   Also on today’s show, we read your letters to the editor and share a few highlights from The Heritage Foundation’s recent Resource Bank conference in Austin, Texas.  Enjoy the show! Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

This is the Daily Signal podcast for Monday, June 7th. I'm Robert Blewe. And I'm Virginia Allen. On today's show, I talk with Vice President of the Texas Public Policy Foundation, Chuck DeVore. We discuss why so many Californians are moving to Texas and what it could mean for the lone star state. We also read your letters to the editor and share a good news story about the ways in which American leaders are coming together to uphold the principles and values we all hold dear. Before we get to today's show, Rob and I want to do that. to tell you about our favorite way to get the news every morning. It's called the morning bell. Each weekday, the Daily Signal delivers the top news and commentary directly to your inbox for free. You'll be able to read about the policy debates shaping the agenda, analysis from Heritage Foundation experts, and commentary from leading conservatives like Ben Shapiro, Dennis Prager, and Cal Thomas. It's easy to sign up. Just visitdailysignal.com and click on the connect

button in the top right corner of the page. We'll start sending you the morning bell tomorrow. Now stay tuned for today's show coming up next. I am joined by Chuck DeVore, the vice president at the Texas Public Policy Foundation. Sir, thank you so much for being here. Great to be here, Virginia. So I want to begin by asking you a little bit about your story. Sure. You moved to Texas from California not too long ago.

Why did you decide to come to Texas? Well, it's a good story. That was about 10 years ago. There's a few reasons. And, of course, when you move, it's usually a very deeply personal. thing when someone moves. For me, I had a pretty decent political career in California. I was in the State Assembly there. I represented almost half a million people for six years. I was termed out in 2010. Ran for the U.S. Senate in 2010. A woman by the name of Carly Fiorena got in the primary,

and she had a pretty decent-sized bank account, and so tough to compete against that. But prior to my being in the State Assembly, I was in the aerospace industry for 13 years. And all the places that I used to work, there were all the major headquarters. In the time that I was in the legislature and was then trying to figure out, you know, what am I going to do next? All the major headquarters left the state. And so all the places I used to work were now someplace else. And so if I was going to- came to Texas. Yes, they did, in fact. And so if I was going to do the same work that I did prior to my elected career, I would be living out of a suitcase. And so that was, that was reason number one. Reason number two was, I'm a conservative, having to be a conservative Republican, and I was

seeing the state drifting further and further to the left. And I thought, you know, this isn't really looking good for someone with my philosophy. I'm beginning to be considered by, you know, the majority of the state to be somewhat on the extreme, right? So, gee, maybe this isn't going to work out. So maybe the political path is also closing down. And then the last thing was a really unexpected curveball. My two in-laws both began to suffer from dementia at the same time. They were off in New York.

We had kind of an emergency hospitalization crisis. My wife went back. She's the oldest of three. She went back and assessed the situation. And I told her when she was back there and we figured out what was going on, I said, look, your parents cannot take care of themselves right now. taking their medicines on time. And if you come back, you're just going to go back there every couple of weeks. Why don't you just pack as many suitcases as you can, bring them out to California,

and we'll figure out what's going on with them medically. And so we did. And, you know, one week turned into a month, turned into six months, turned into a year. And, you know, my father-in-law took over my office in my house. My mother-in-law took over my youngest daughter's room. And so you have six people in a house not really made for six people. Plus, you had stairs that these people in their 80s had to navigate. So you're just asking for a terrible accident going up and down the stairs. And the cost of housing is so expensive in Southern California that it just wasn't an option to find a big enough place to be able to properly take care of my in-laws and still have, you know, room for my daughters and my wife. And so at that point, my campaign, my parents, and my wife. And so at that point,

communications manager, a native Texan, he spoke today during lunch, Josh Trevino. He went to work for the Texas Public Policy Foundation, and he calls me up one day, and he says, you need to apply for this job that we have. And it's like, you know, Josh, this isn't really, the job isn't up my alley. He says, trust me, apply for it. And so I did. I didn't get the job. However, they hired me as a consultant to work on some research.

Happy to do that. And the research really involved me doing a due diligence of Texas. And so I was looking at all the bad things people said about Texas and whether they were true or not. And they were not true, right? Looking at U.S. Census Bureau data and all kinds of primary source data from the federal government about well-being and poverty and educational achievement and things like that. And so eventually I told my family, look, we're just going to move to Texas. The economy is far better than California's. This was in the middle of the Great Recession, 2011.

And I said, I think that maybe the foundation will hire me. but if they don't, I'm sure I'll find another job. And so we moved. We moved. And that was 10 years ago. And my father-in-law still lives with us. My mother-in-law passed away about six years ago. He's 96.

Wow. And in fact, he landed at Normandy about a week after the invasion. Wow. He was a Navy CB. That's wonderful. And so we're happy to take care of him. And we're able to do so in a far bigger house for far less money because it's Texas. And that freedom then allows people to really meet demand more readily.

than they do in California. So sorry for the long story, but it's kind of an origin story, right? That's why I'm in Texas. No, it's great to hear that background. And I think you're not alone in that. You're not alone in the individual looking at your family circumstances

and saying, I got to move somewhere where there are more opportunities where housing is more affordable. A lot of Californians are doing that right now. Even, you know, we've seen Joe Rogan has moved to Texas. I've written a few stories about that. Elon Musk, right. Although I don't think either.

one of them were concerned about housing affordability. Sure. Sure. There are other reasons for the move? But are you concerned as more and more, you know, individuals do come from states like California that we're going to see a shift towards left. Yeah, so what's really interesting about that, and I hear that all the time. And the first thing you have to wonder is like, okay, so since generally speaking, conservatives have more children than do liberals, let's do the math, right? So you can't just like do that forever because then the blue states would become red.

Right? It's not like the left is regenerating itself, right? So then, okay, then you look at the U.S. Census Bureau data where every year around in September, they publish their estimate of interstate migration from state to state. And generally speaking, Texas is always the number one destination, sometimes Florida is, but as far as net positive. So you have people leaving the state, people coming into the state. And California is usually the number one destination. one loser, often up there with New York. Well, the number one destination for former Californians is Texas. But the number one destination for former Texans is California, right? It's just that on the net, we generally get 30,000 to 40,000 more people coming here from California than we lose. So is it a problem? Well, polling has suggested that it's not. So we have historic polling as well. as polling we've done ourselves at the Texas Public Policy Foundation. There's a poll done 13 years ago by U.T. Austin and the Texas Tribune showing that California expats are 57% to 27% conservative versus liberal. There was a very fascinating CNN exit poll between Beto O'Rourke and Senator Ted Cruz for the 2018

election. And what that poll found was that Native Texans, about 60% of voters, preferred O'Rourke by plus three. Now, Cruz run that race by a little more than two points. But the 40% of Texans who moved here, like, by the way, did Ted Cruz, because he wasn't born here, right? They preferred Cruz by plus 15. So if it wasn't for the transplants who moved to Texas, that poll suggested that O'Rourke would be a senator. We did our own polling. We did polling for Trump v. Clinton. and we found that people who moved to Texas were 5% more likely to have voted for Trump than natives.

So as I recall, it was like plus five points for Trump among the natives and plus, I think, 12 among the transplants. And then we just did a new poll that I wrote about a couple of days ago in the Federalist, where we actually drilled down and looked at individual states. We polled something close to 3,000 voters so that we could get enough grandkids. to see some patterns at the state level. And what we found was the most conservative region that was sending people to Texas, was the Rocky Mountain West, followed by the four-state region of Kentucky, Tennessee, Alabama, Mississippi.

Number three was California. Wow. Yeah, exactly. Now, liberals were also coming in on balance, right? This is, you know, not individuals, but the populations of people. So the South Atlantic region from D.C. down to Florida was sending people that were more liberal than the natives. And, of course, foreign arrivals who are naturalized citizens, were the same as the people from the East Coast, the Southeast. So that was a fascinating exercise, and I'm really glad that we had the chance to do it.

It took, as I recall, four months worth of polling for us to come up with that. And so it's not quite what people might think it is, right? People come here for their own very deeply personal reasons, and you can't assume that because someone came here from a blue state, that they're going to, you know, have liberal views. Yeah, I think that's really interesting and good news that, okay. So far, right? Yeah, so far.

Things change, right? Things always change. And in the city of Austin, you do probably have a more left-wing person move here on balance because, again, it's the tech industry and it has its own kind of culture. But frankly, Austin's always been Texas's most left-wing major city because it's a government town, right? You have a lot of government workers. You have U.T. Austin, so you have several tens of thousands of professors and other administrative personnel at U.T. well, that's not exactly a conservative bunch of people, right?

And, of course, the tech industry. So those three things together have pretty much, you know, ensured that Austin, is going to be probably left-leaning for the foreseeable future. Yeah. Now, I know that the Texas Public Policy Foundation, you all are really on the forefront of making sure that Texas does stay Texas, that American values are promoted. Share with us just a little bit about how you're doing that

and really what your mission is as an organization. Right. So we've been around, gosh, I think since the late 80s, we have a little over 100 people at the foundation, mostly in Texas, but we have people who work on issues around the, the country. And we have an operation in D.C. called States Trust that's kind of like our embassy of common sense, of Texas common sense to the swamp in Washington, D.C. And that's a fun operation as well. So most of our work focuses on the Texas legislature. I testified numerous times this last session, mostly on election integrity matters, but other bills as well. Typically connected

with research that I've done. I did a few research papers on threats to election, you know, free and fair elections. And so as part of that then, we're certainly helping the legislature better understand the issues and ways that they can kind of adapt Texas's laws to changing circumstances to try to optimize freedom and opportunity here in Texas. And as well, increasingly on some of the cultural fronts. So, for example, we were engaging on the issue of critical race theory and promoting a bill that would explicitly prevent the teaching of critical race theory in our government classrooms. The funny thing was you saw some of the arguments from the left saying, you know, oh, keep the state out of the classroom. And it's like, excuse me, this is government education, you know, kind of, kind of, it is the state.

The classroom is the state. So it was kind of funny to see people trying to push back with that as a slogan. But I would say that we have a pretty integral role in how the Texas legislature kind of views some of these issues. We testify at hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of bills in a given session. And then starting next week, we go off around the state. And so I'll be traveling to places like Amarillo and Lubbock and Houston and Dallas and San Antonio. And we'll be speaking to individuals who show up and want to hear our take on the session. You know, what is it that we accomplished?

What is it that was left undone? Why we should be concerned about those things that were left undone and how we can try to improve things in Texas. And so we'll be doing that for several weeks with, gosh, probably 10 cities, I think, on the stock. I can't even pay, you know, I just go where my outlook calendar tells me to go and pack enough underwear to make sure that I can, I can last for however long I'm going to be on the road. So no time to rest. Absolutely not. Well, and one of the issues that everyone right now is talking about across the country, but especially right now in Texas, is election integrity. So not long ago, we saw, I know, there was a push to pass election integrity legislation in the state of Texas.

Democrats got up, they walked out of the session. Yes, they did. Yeah, constitutionally, Texas requires a two-thirds of the members be present to constituted quorum. So with about an hour and a half left before the end of a deadline to get everything out of the house, they walked out and not only temporarily killed the major election integrity omnibus, Senate Bill 7, but also killed a few other things that were going to be considered after that. And I think the main, you know, first of all, we did see seven individual pieces of legislation pass that are on their way to Governor Abbott's desk that incrementally improve the ability to have free and fair elections in Texas.

And so those are already done. What we're missing with the omnibus, chief among the things, were missing is a provision for voter ID for mail-in ballots. So unlike in other states where mail-in ballots are a more significant portion of the vote, in Texas they have been gradually growing. They were about 1.8% of all the votes in 2010. In 2020, they were about 9% of the vote, so it's gone up about five-fold over the last 20 years. And the problem with that is that in Texas, for about about...

the last eight years or so, we require voter ID when you go vote in person. Government issued ID has to be displayed, and if it's not, you can file a reasonable impediment declaration and I think vote provisionally. But with mail-in ballots, as it is in most states around the country, it's simply a signature verification, which is a very subjective exercise. And in Texas, it's typically done at the local level where you have a two-to-one board. constituted by the majority of whoever controls that county. So it'll be two Democrats, one Republican, or two Republicans, one Democrat. And it's simply partisans deciding whether the signature matches or not.

And so under current law, you could have a whole series of mail-in ballots that look suspicious and maybe it's signed by the same person with the same ink. And the partisans might say, no, this is fine. You know, there's nothing wrong with these signatures. Well, with a mail-in ballot ID, what we're asking for is inside of a privacy flap, when you request the ballot, you have to put in your driver's license number or your state ID number or the last four of your Social Security. And you also have to do that when you turn in the ballot, again, inside of a privacy flap. And what we're also doing is suggesting that that information, if it's correct, really takes precedence over the signature, which is a more subjective. issue. So it should strengthen the likelihood that voters will actually have their votes counted

even if the local political machine that may or may not be corrupt doesn't want to count that vote, right? And so we think it's a common sense improvement to our election code. It's certainly similar to what was passed in Georgia and what, as I recall, was also passed in Florida, and frankly, ought to be pretty common sense around the country. Yeah. Well, and we've seen, though, with states like Georgia, with these pieces of election, the far left is just slapping a racist label on them. How is that happening?

Why are these bills being pegged as racist when election integrity is something we should all want, we should all be for? Well, I think some of it goes, of course, to using incendiary rhetoric that the corporate media will parrot without thinking about it. And, you know, I was on an MSNBC show talking about this where, you know, they were bringing up the specter of Jim Crow and all this. Of course, never mentioned it. It was the Democrats that did that. And they brought up this terrible incident of vote suppression that happened in Texas 61 years ago. So, three years before I was born and acting as if this was still like, you know, something that was pervasive and happened all the time.

And I'm thinking, you realize that you just, like, cited as your most pressing example of why, you know, these sorts of things can't be trusted in Texas, something that happened in 1960, right? It's like, really? Wow. Okay. That's a little stale. I mean, I don't know. Maybe it's just me. but something that happened before I was born, you know, and was done by the other party, right, by the Democrats in this case, the very people who are complaining about.

So it's like, okay, whatever. Yeah, that was a little on the crazy side. So then the other thing they did in Texas was there's language that you find very common in the English, you know, the Anglosphere, in the talking about things like the equal Apple, of law or of juries that are able to come to a decision independently and objectively or of the ballot box. And the phrase used the word purity, right? Purity of the ballot box. It's actually part of election code in Texas, I think even part of the Constitution.

And the preamble to the omnibus did have that language. And the Democrats during the floor debate, when it was first considered in the House, claimed that this was a racist term that really was referring to wanting racial purity in the ballots. And they were claiming that this was the case and it was all part of Jim Crow. And, you know, I thought about it. It's like, well, okay, maybe there was a couple instances where that was used during that era. Just like in the Antebellum South, the Bible was often used to justify slavery because there are references to slavery in the Bible, right?

Now, I'd argue that the abolitionist case for abolishing slavery, also using the Bible, probably had a stronger theological claim. But the interesting thing, though, is that the Democrats' arguments about this phrase completely missed the fact that this phrase, purity of the ballot, occurs frequently in U.S. history going back to the 1830s and definitely did not refer in any way, shape, or form to anything even remotely having to do with voter suppression, but rather had to do with concerns over vote fraud. In fact, the phrase was used in connection with constant abuses of free and fair elections by Tammany Hall in New York City, so much so that they actually invented at the time, this is something I didn't know, a glass ballot box, right?

And they invented the glass ballot box so you could see ahead of time if it was stuffed, right? You just had to look at it. And it's like, oh, look, there's no ballots pre-stuffed. I guess we're good to go, right? And so I even found contemporaneous with that with the landmark amendments that really launched the equal rights for all in America, the 13th, 14th and 15th amendment after the Civil War. And so I found a Harper's Weekly magazine cover from that era probably around 1867 where you saw a recently, presumably, because it was like an illustration, right? You saw like a recently freed slave,

and then behind him was a black member of the Union Army, right? And they were going to vote with one of these glass ballot boxes that were made specifically to ensure the purity of the ballot. So it was the exact opposite, right? Not only was it just not so, it was 180 degrees opposite of what the Democrats were claiming on the floor, right? So here you have, the purity of the ballot thought of is a good thing, right? And the illustration is showing black men voting for the first time. Right.

So anyway, it's just so amazing. And the problem, of course, is that when this is, you know, when you're ambushed with this and this wasn't on your mind to begin with, and others, putting myself in the Republican shoes, why would they even think that this would have come up? If that wasn't on their mind to begin with, right? That they somehow put in the language because they were racist, right? Because, oh, yes, we're going to put this in because really we only want certain people to vote, right? And wink, wink, nod, nod. And they were caught flat-footed, of course, because that wasn't on their mind. And by the way, it was just part of Texas Code, right? It was part of the Texas Constitution. And again, the phrase having predated its use,

the Texas Constitution by at least 40 years. So anyway, it's just a crazy example of how, you know, these things are used in it, of course, are picked up by the press and repeated ad nauseum. So where does this bill stand right now? I know Texas Governor Greg Abbott says he's going to call a special session. Do you anticipate that that's going to happen? I do. I think that probably we'll see it sometime after the 4th of July weekend by Independence Day.

And the interesting thing politically, you know, speaking as a former lawmaker, I think the Democrats in Texas are on really thin ice here and for a couple of reasons. Number one, the issue of voter ID with mail-in ballots is approved by 81% of Texas voters. And that's with the same polling firm that we hired that Governor Abbott uses, right? I mean, these guys are, you know, very well regarded in the state of Texas, WPI or WPA intelligence. That's number one. So you have majorities of even Democrats who support having mail-in ballots, having some of the same safeguards that voting in person does. That's number one.

Number two, when they walked out, they also killed a very crucial bail reform bill. Now, because of court rulings, the existing bail system in the state of Texas has some very significant weaknesses that if you are a, let's say, a violent felon who gets arrested on a new violent charge, you're accused of shooting somebody or staff. somebody, but you have money, you can make bail. And what happened about a year or two ago is that exact thing happened out in Houston. And then the person who made bail went out and killed a police officer. Well, we haven't fixed that. And specifically, it hasn't been fixed because Democrats walked out on their job. And so what I think is very dangerous for them politically is that between now and the special

session, until they actually come back and don't walk out, if there are, any incidents that happen where you have a convicted felon or somebody with a known violent record that has the money to make bail, make bail because we didn't introduce risk assessments into the process and kill somebody, heaven forbid. That's on the Democrats. They had a chance to fix it and they walked off their jobs. And so I'm not sure that their leadership is going to want to keep this charade up much longer because every month that goes by where they don't fix that, is a lot of the government that is

another month where they could see some very powerful hit pieces hit them in the in the mail come campaign time. Yeah, yeah. Well, Chuck, we thank you for the work that you're doing at the Texas Public Policy Foundation. Thank you so much for your time today. We really appreciate it. Thank you, Virginia. Virginia Allen here, I want to tell you all about a great way you can stay in the know on all the news the Daily Signal covers. Social media. The Daily Signal has an active presence on Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter. We are constantly posting news stories, clips from interviews, videos, and more across all our social platforms.

Follow the Daily Signal on social media so you can get all the latest content from Reels on Instagram to video clips on Facebook and political commentary on Twitter. Thanks for sending us your letters to the editor. Each Monday, we feature our favorites on this show. Virginia, who's up first? In response to Tony Perkins' piece, this teacher is taking a stand to stop the left. Retired Arizona School Administrator Dennis M. Evans writes, hooray for this young man exposing this woke information, as it really is,

a deplorable movement designed to brainwash impressionable children into a lifestyle that is personally detrimental to their potential as human beings. And in response to Jarrett Stetman's piece, John Cena's groveling to China previews world where, We must live by lies. Philip Medonia of Mobile, Alabama, writes to us, At some point there needs to be a distinction between the Chinese Communist Party and the Chinese people.

The kowtowing by John Sina and others only emboldens the repressive regime. The notion that a rising China would be good for all was good and intent, but terrible in implementation. It was based on the false idea that America was great because she was prosperous. American greatness is a byproduct of the idea of America, private property, the rule of law, and freedom of contract. It was the courage of the people in this former colony that enabled them to pledge their lives, their fortune, and their sacred honor to battle, will support from other countries,

a tyrannical government, and form a new nation. The Chinese people should be encouraged and supported. Your letter could be featured on next week's show, so send us an email at letters at dailysignal.com. Virginia Allen here, I want to tell you all about one of my favorite podcast. Heritage Explains is a weekly podcast that breaks down all the policy issues we hear about in the news at a 101 level. Hosts Michelle Cordero and Tim Desher mix in news clips and music to tell a story, but also bring in heritage experts to help break down complex issues. Heritage Explains offers quick 10 to 50 minute explainers that bring you up to speed in an

entertaining way. You can find them on Apple Podcasts, Google Play, Spotify, or wherever you listen to your podcast. We even put the full episode on YouTube. We are doing our good news story a little bit differently today because Rob, I have a few questions that I want to ask you about a very important event that took place in Texas last week. Last week, hundreds of conservative leaders, policymakers, they gathered together in Austin, Texas for the Heritage Foundation's Resource Bank Conference. You and I were both there. And we came together with all of these leaders to talk about the challenges that are in front of us right now, that face America, and how do we maintain American values? Rob, could you explain a little bit more

about the significance of this gathering? Sure. Well, Resource Bank is a longtime Heritage Foundation event that brings together, as you said, conservative leaders to talk about policy solutions. It's an opportunity, as the name implies, to serve as a resource for the conservative movement. And that's exactly what this latest conference did. Of course, it was special in the sense, Virginia, that there was no resource bank gathering in person in 2020 because of COVID-19. But we have a situation now where even with some limited capacity, we were able to come together. And for many people, it was their first flight. It was their first time attending an event of this sort. And so for that, it was special. But it was also special because we find ourselves in a different

moment than we did the last time resource bank convened. Of course, when a Republican president was in charge of the executive branch in Washington, and it's quite different now to have a Democrat who's pursuing quite socialist policies from the White House. And so developing different strategies and tactics and talking through that with our allies really was a central focus of the meeting. Yeah, absolutely. Were there any speakers or individuals that you spoke with that you were particularly encouraged by encouraged by their message, their drive, and their determination to really uphold those American values. Sure.

Well, a couple of things that I'll say. The Texans were fantastic. Virginia, you led a discussion with a group of Texas leaders from our friends at the Texas Public Policy Foundation, a congressman Chip Roy, who lives nearby, Austin. It represents a district nearby. They just gave such an uplifting, optimistic view. It makes you almost want to move to Texas. Sure does.

I don't know if my family wants to be uprooted from Virginia, but just fantastic from that standpoint. We heard from a couple of newly elected school board members who talked about their experience at the local level and the impact that they can have. And then I think the other thing that really stood out to me were not necessarily anything from the main stage, but just the conversations that you could have with individuals. some of the challenge the theme of this year's resource bank was challenged 2021. And I think everybody really took that seriously, not only to challenge themselves to do better, but to challenge themselves to solve some of the big issues that we find ourselves confronted with. Yeah, I found that so many people had taken and are taking a really practical approach.

Like you mentioned, Rob, there's a number of individuals that have run for school board because they've seen issues in their states. We talked with Hannah Smith. She spoke on the main stage here during a break. out session. And then we also spoke with her on the Daily Signal podcast. That interview will be coming out soon. But, you know, she decided that she was going to run for school board because she didn't like what was happening in her community. And it's that practical approach to, okay, as a conservative, I'm going to take responsibility for what's happening in my community. And I'm going to do what I can to solve those problems. And that's really what we need for this moment in history.

You're absolutely right. And the other one was Ian Rowe of Pelham, New York. So, I mean, it's happening. Hannah was from Texas, is from Texas. Ian's from New York. York. So it's happening across this country. And I think that you're absolutely right. Seeing those examples and having them talk about their experience, hopefully will motivate others to take that step. And, you know, look, as somebody who's a public school father, I have concerns myself about the direction things are headed. So I think that it's really, again, a challenge, not only for us to focus on things that are happening at the national level, but also what's happening right here in our own backyard in our communities. Absolutely. Well, and in the cover,

days and weeks, we're going to be releasing a number of interviews that we did at Resource Bank. We were able to talk with so many of those leaders that were speaking on the main stage, so we're really excited to share their insights with you right here on the show. That's great. And did you have a favorite interview, Virginia? You know, it's hard to pick just one. I did really enjoy speaking with Representative Kat Kamik. She is so down to earth and gave just a really great perspective on where we are in America right now and how she's taking practical approaches within Congress. And if you miss that interview, make sure you go back and listen.

It was published last week. And you can get the full story of hers. Just an incredible person. And she is so passionate about telling stories. I think that that really resonated with me. Well, Virginia, we're going to leave it there for today. You can find the Daily Signal podcast on the Rurkishay Audio Network. All of our shows are available at daily signal.com slash podcasts.

You can also subscribe on Apple Podcast, Google Play, or your favorite podcast. And be sure to listen every weekday by adding the Daily Signal podcast as part of your Alexa Flash briefing. If you like what you hear, please leave us a review and a five-star rating. It means a lot to us and helps us spread the word to other listeners. Be sure to follow us on Twitter at Daily Signal and Facebook.com slash the Daily Signal News. Have a great week. The Daily Signal podcast is brought to you by more than half a million members of the Heritage

Foundation. It is executive produced by Rob Blewey and Virginia Allen. Sound designed by Lauren Evans, Mark Geiney, and John Pop. For more information, visit DailySignal.com.