WRFH/Radio Free Hillsdale 101.7 FM - Under the Radar - Episode 20

Episode Date: October 26, 2025

This week on “Under the Radar,” hear about the failed effort in the Senate to pay essential federal workers during the government shutdown, a Supreme Court case that challenges same-sex marriage, a bill that requires the FCC to disclose which media companies are registered to enemy nations, and more.

This is Under the Radar on Radio Free Hillsdale 101.7 FM. Now, here's your host, Luke Miller. This week on Under the Radar, hear about the failed effort in the Senate to pay essential federal workers during the government shut down, a Supreme Court case that challenges same-sex marriage, a bill that requires the FCC to disclose which media companies are registered to enemy nations and more. I'm your host, Luke Miller, and on this show, we'll cover the news you didn't catch this week from the mainstream media. While they're covering the president's latest tweets, here you can hear about the new legislation, executive orders, and Supreme Court decisions that affect you. Welcome to Under the Radar.

The first piece of news I have for you this week is a bill that was just introduced in the Senate called the Shutdown Fairness Act. It was introduced by Senator Ron Johnson of Wisconsin, and the purpose of the bill is to provide appropriations to pay federal employees who are required to work during a government shutdown. So as in the moment of this recording, the government has been shut down for almost 25 days now, but this bill would not just be applicable to this government shutdown. it would apply to all future government shutdowns.

And the purpose seems pretty simple. There are people called accepted employees, federal employees who are deemed essential, who are required to work during a government shutdown. The current definition includes active duty armed forces, National Guard and National Guard reserves, federal law enforcement officers, ICE and Border Patrol agents, air traffic controllers in the TSA, presidential cabinet members, and many others. But there are a lot of federal workers who have required by law to keep working during government shutdown, because otherwise the government and the United States as a whole couldn't really function.

A government shutdown would then mean that the United States would be shut down and that just can't happen. So during the last 25 days while the government has been shut down, these people have had to continue to work. But the way that government shutdowns work in the United States means that their funding is cut. They don't get paid during this time. What the bill does is it sets aside some funds each year to be used to pay federal employees who are required to work if the government were to be shut down. Now, this bill was introduced in the Senate this week. It was brought to a very quick vote where it received a 54 to 45 vote majority, but that bill still failed because in the Senate you're required to get at least 60 votes to surpass

the filibuster, which, if anyone doesn't know, that's the way that the Senate worked. You have to get 60 votes or else the opposing party can use the filibuster to indefinitely extend discussion about a bill. On its simplest level, it means that you have to get 60 votes to pass anything through the Senate. There are a couple of exceptions, but this does not apply. So it got 54 votes. It needed 60 votes.

There were only three Democrats who voted with the Republicans for the bill. Those Democrats were John Federman of Pennsylvania and both Georgia senators Rafael Warnock and John Ossoff. The vote on this bill comes on the heels of another attempt to pass a continuing resolution, which Democrats also block by the same vote. This is now the seventh time that the Senate has voted on this continuing resolution to open back up the government. And every time it has had a majority, but not the 60 votes in the Senate. needed to pass with the filibuster. And so the Senate has voted to keep the government shut down and to not pay the federal workers that are required by law to keep working during a shutdown like

this. Here's what Republican Senate Majority Leader John Thune had to say about both of these things. And unfortunately, the consequences of this are becoming very real, very fast for a lot of federal workers. We want our troops to get paid. We want our TSA agents to get paid, our border patrol agents to get paid, air traffic controllers to get paid. We've made it very, very easy. It's a non-partisan, short-term, clean, continuing resolution to keep the government open. Democrats now voted against it seven times, something that they voted for 13 times under Joe Biden when he was president, and Chuck Schumer was the majority leader in the Senate. That last point that Senator Thune made there is very important and really shows the partisan nature of this whole thing, because the continuing

resolution is an extension of the 2025 fiscal year budget, and that budget was passed by President Biden. President Biden and Chuck Schumer and the Senate Democrats were perfectly okay with passing that budget bill while it was under President Biden, and now they're voting to not even keep the government open for negotiations for the next budget bill because they're refusing to extend the one that they passed under President Biden. And I think that's something that's worth noting when we bring up the Shutdown Fairness Act as well that was brought up this week, because part of the appeal of the Senate Democrats and of the Democrats as a whole for why the Republicans should come to the table with them to talk about adding what they would like to add in to the continuing resolution, add what they would like to add in to the fiscal year 2020. budget is they're saying, Republicans control the government and you're not paying workers while

the government is shut down, so come to the table so we can start paying our federal workers again. Well, this bill was an opportunity to do that. It was an opportunity to pay federal workers during the government shutdown so they could keep negotiating. And the reasons that they're giving for not supporting this bill is that it doesn't do enough. For example, Senate Democrat Richard Blumenthal said that he, in principle, he supports a bill like this, that we need to pay our military, that we need to pay all these federal employees. But he says that he has a concern about picking and choosing among the federal workers that the bill was too selective by only identifying essential workers as those who need to be paid while the government is shut down, which speaks volumes

because the essential workers are the only ones that are still working. The non-essential government employees are not still working during the government shutdown. There's only those that fit under the category I mentioned earlier called accepted employees, those armed forces, those federal law enforcement officers, ICE, Border Patrol, TSA, all of those people are the only ones that are still required to work during a government shutdown. This bill would have paid them while the government shut down this time and for any future government shutdowns. And it wasn't just that one senator who gave that reason for it.

House Minority Leader Democrat Hakeem Jeffries also said the same thing. He says he does not support the legislation because it gives Donald Trump discretion over which employees should be compensated and which employees should not be compensated, which is just blatantly false. The bill explicitly lays out which employees get compensated and it's the ones that are required to work during a government shutdown. defined by Congress in the bill, Donald Trump has nothing to do with it. Now, on the other side of things, to analyze the bill itself, one critique that you may pose against

the bill is that it almost defeats the purpose of a government shutdown. The whole reason that we have this built into our system is, if Congress doesn't agree to a budget bill for the next year, the government shuts down, and so that gives them an incentive to negotiate and come to the table and make a deal. That's the whole point of a government shutdown. If you're still paying all those federal workers to the point where the government can function pretty well, even during a government shutdown, then it takes away some of the incentive for Congress to actually come to the table and make a deal,

meaning that future government shutdowns might last longer if you were to pass this legislation. And this current government shutdown could last longer if you pass this legislation. And that serves no one. The longer that the government shut down, the worse it is for federal officials, the worse it is for normal Americans who are going about their daily business, and the worse it is for people's faith in the institution of Congress generally. One more note that I'll add about this bill is that you could very easily argue that it's unnecessary. In the aftermath of both of the last two government shutdowns, Congress has given back pay to all of the federal employees who were not paid during the government shutdown. So it really made no impact on the long-term income of all these federal employees, which means that likely Congress will do that again.

We'll vote for back pay for all these federal employees who were not paid during this government shutdown. But the most important thing is both sides say that they really want to pay these federal employees while they're working on a deal for fiscal year 2026 as budget bill. and yet they can't pass a simple piece of legislation to do what they claim to want to do there. The next piece of news I have for you this week is a Supreme Court case called Davis v. Ermel. And what makes this case particularly interesting is one, the length of time that it's been going on. It's been in the courts for 10 years. And it offers a challenge to the famous Obergefell v. Hodges case. Now, the Obergefell case is the one from 2015, which essentially legalized same-sex marriage nationwide.

Obergefell was a huge decision, which ruled that marriage licenses have to be issued two same-sex couples in the same way they would be to heterosexual couples. Now, after this Supreme Court decision passed, Kim Davis, who was a local county clerk from Kentucky, refused on religious grounds to issue a marriage license to a gay couple who had just gotten married immediately after the Obergefell case. Now, this was her job. She worked for the local government, and her job was to give marriage licenses to county residents. When she refused to issue a marriage license for this gay couple, the governor of Kentucky sent a letter to her and all of the other clerks in the state, directing them to license and recognize the marriages of same-sex couples all over the state of Kentucky. And when this happened, Davis and her office decided to stop issuing marriage licenses

altogether to any couples that wanted them. She claimed that she was operating under God's authority and that anyone who was a same-sex couple that wanted a marriage license could get one in a different county. Now, the original couple that was trying to get a marriage license sued Kim Davis, alleging that she had violated their right to marry. To give a little timeline on how the case has evolved, the original offense took place in 2015. The couple decided to sue at the beginning of 2016. The clerk's office began issuing licenses again in 2016 when the Kentucky legislature passed a law that allowed clerks to not have to sign their names on marriage licensing forms to try to help these clerks who had religious objections to same-sex members. marriage not put their official stamp of approval with their name on it. Now, this case dragged on for

seven years and in 2023, a jury awarded damages of $50,000 apiece paid by Kim Davis personally to each of these men. Now, Davis immediately appealed this to the U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, and she argued that issuing them a marriage license would have violated her free exercise of religion. But earlier this year, that court rejected her appeal and said that though she is protected by the First Amendment when she is acting as a private citizen. When issuing a marriage license, she's acting on behalf of the government, and that action is not protected by the First Amendment. She is acting in a governmental capacity, and as such, her personal religious views don't necessarily apply there. Now, that's very important. The reason that that's important is because when the jury cited against her in

2003, that required her personally to pay the two men damages of $50,000 a piece. But the circuit court ruled that she was acting on behalf of the government. So now when she's making this appeal to the Supreme Court, she's saying, well, this is wrong. If I'm acting on behalf of the state and I can't exercise my freedom of religion there, then I shouldn't have to personally pay damages of $50,000 piece then, because I was acting as the state, not as an individual person. Now, in this appeal to the Supreme Court, she's contending that when she originally came to the court as an individual, which is how the jury treated her, she came not as a state actor and not as a government official with some sort of sovereign or qualified immunity. And so she shouldn't be on the hook for tort liability as a person,

yet have no personal defenses like the First Amendment available to her. Now, in the case, she's also asking the judges to overturn the 2015 Obergefell decision, saying that it left her and all of the other clerks who were required to issue marriage licenses to same-sex couples with a choice between religious beliefs and their job. And she said that was wrong, that that was a violation of the First Amendment. And as such, she was claiming that the court should overturn the Obergefell decision, which is requiring individuals to act on behalf of government in ways that they don't agree with on a religious basis. Now, there's two very different things going on here.

First of all, it seems very unlikely that the court is going to use this case to overturn Obergefell. While there have been plenty of rumors that there are Supreme Court justices who are open to overturning Obergefell, this case doesn't really seem to show that the Obergefell decision itself is what did harm to Kim Davis. It seems like what did harm to her was the jury that treated her like an individual in that she personally had to pay liability to these two men, yet they claim that she doesn't have First Amendment protection in her actions because she was acting as a governmental official. Those two things aren't compatible. And so I think she has a very legitimate case to bring to the Supreme Court about who is to be held liable in a situation like that. Because on the one hand, if she's personally liable for having to pay these two individuals for the harm that she inflicted upon them,

then she was acting as an individual, as her person. And as a person, she has First Amendment rights, which allow her to act in a way that doesn't violate her freedom of religion. But on the other hand, if she's acting on behalf of the state, which is what the jury claims that she was doing in issuing marriage licenses, that would mean that she doesn't have the First Amendment right to act according to her own religious beliefs there, because she's acting according to the state, and the state cannot operate based off of an individual's religious perspective. But if that's the case, then she's acting on behalf of the state, but she's personally liable for the damages done by the state. So I think the court is really going to hear her out on that part. However, there are individuals who act on behalf of the state all the time who have to do things that, they wouldn't necessarily agree with. For example, under the Biden administration, I'm sure there were a lot

of conservatives in government who had to operate under the Biden-EEOC's requirements to hire people based off of race or gender or gender identity or all those things that they might not agree with. And on the other hand, there are plenty of Democrats in all of the executive administrative agencies who have to operate under the Trump agenda right now, and I'm sure they don't agree with that in a lot of ways, especially when it comes to immigration enforcement. So people have to do things on behalf of government that violate their personal opinions a lot. And so I think the Supreme Court is not going to overturn O'Bergifel with this decision, but they might give legitimate consideration to the other case to try to come up with a solution for people with religious convictions who don't want to be forced by their role

in government to violate those convictions. You're listening to Under the Radar with Luke Miller on Radio Free Hillsdale 101.7 FM. The next piece of news I have for you this week is a bill that just passed through the Senate called the Foreign Adversary Communications Transparency Act. Now, the purpose of this bill is for the FCC, the Federal Communications Commission, to have to annually publish a list of media entities that operate in the United States that hold a license granted by the FCC and have ties to certain foreign countries. So now the FCC has record of media companies in the United States that have to register with them. And this bill directs them to look into these media companies to see if they have a monetary interest or a voting interest that's held by

nations that we have adversarial relationships with. Specifically, the bill applies to China, around North Korea and Russia. So if any of those four countries hold a significant share in a new media company in the United States, or if they hold positions on the board of any of those companies in the United States, the FCC has to publish a list of those media companies for transparency purposes and for national security purposes, so we can know when these nations that we have an adversarial relationship with are trying to influence our media or are in a position to influence our media. Now, there's a very recent example of this. In September of 2024, a right-wing media company in the United States that includes influencers,

like Tim Poole, Dave Rubin, and Benny Johnson, was secretly being funded by Russian state media employees. And just for perspective, those three influencers I just mentioned have a combined following of over 8 million on X. So it's not small influences we're talking about here. There's a Russian state media company called RT that had funneled $10 million to this new media company in the United States. These influencers didn't really know this. They claim to not know this. And the U.S. Justice Department doesn't claim any wrongdoing by the influencers themselves. but they were being funded by a Russian state media agency

to influence U.S. public opinion about the war in Ukraine. All of those influencers, all of the people who worked for that media company, were constantly putting out videos opposing U.S. intervention in Ukraine or further U.S. intervention and aid to Ukraine, and that was something that the Russian state media agency had an interest in. That also is interfering in our elections because one candidate had a different stance on the war in Ukraine than the other did. President Biden was much more openly willing to give aid to Ukraine,

to resist Russian invasion forces than President Trump promised to be during the same election. And that just shows the dangers of these adversarial nations holding stock or influence over our media companies in the United States. Now, the thing I would push back on this bill about is why is this only applicable to those four nations? I would like to know whether any nation, in any place in the world that we have any kind of relationship with, has undue monetary or voting influence over our media, over the media that we consume every day that helps shape our opinions, that helps.

shape our politics, that help shape our elections, I see no reason why this shouldn't extend to every foreign nation in any level of relationship with the United States. Even if a foreign nation is allied with the United States, they could be using media influence in the United States to spur on policies that benefit them. And why wouldn't they? They certainly wouldn't be using their media influence in the United States to spur on policies that primarily benefit the United States. They're looking out for their own interests, and we need to be aware of that. So while this bill is a good step in the right direction for transparency, when it comes to foreign influence in the United States,

and it did pass through the Senate relatively easily, so that's a good thing. It seems to be a bit of a half measure or a lighthearted measure when dealing with this issue. For the last piece of news, I'm going to roll together a presidential proclamation and an executive order both done this week. Earlier this week, President Trump issued a proclamation

declaring National Energy Dominance Month, 2025. Here's what the proclamation had to say. From the Appalachian Mountains to the Mississippi River to the Great Plains and beyond for nearly 250 years, America has been endlessly sustained and enriched by our abundance of precious natural resources like oil, clean coal, materials, and natural gas. This natural energy dominance month, my administration proudly recommits to harnessing the liquid gold and minerals under our feet and bountiful resources in our waters, forests and fields, achieving American energy dominance and forging a future defined by three simple words,

drill baby drill. The proclamation also claims that President Biden's energy agenda reversed a lot of the accomplishments of President Trump's first administration and led to increased gas prices in all 50 states, and the shipping away of energy jobs for, from the United States to other nations. And on a purely economic level, that is what environmental regulations do. While they may help conserve the environment, they do create a lot of extra costs for these companies that they otherwise wouldn't have to pay. And if in the United States they have to pay those extra costs and they don't in other countries, they will go to those other countries. Where it's cheaper and therefore more profitable than in the United States,

and that creates a real problem for the United States when it comes to national security, which is what the executive order addresses. So to go along with this proclamation, President Trump signed an executive order on October 24th entitled Regulatory Relief for Certain Stationary Sources to Promote American Mineral Security. So this executive order is particularly referring to copper and how it's essential for America's energy, for defense, for manufacturing, for all sorts of things. And there are only three copper smelters left in the United States.

If you look back 100 years ago-ish, from the beginning of the 1900s, the United States was by far the world's largest copper producer. We had over 40 major copper producers in operation at any given time across the United States. States, and it was essential for securing and expanding our military and defense and technology going into the world wars. It was a huge part of our industrial capacity, particularly in regards to copper, was massively important for us back then. The number of copper smelters in the United States, as corporate income taxes went up and as other factors changed the need for defense technology and all that kind of stuff, the number of copper smelters in the United States slowly

declined until in the 1970s there were about a dozen. And then after the Clean Air Act amendments of 1990, almost all of those either closed down or move their operations out of the United States to the point where now there's only three. But that doesn't change the fact that copper is still a major, major factor in defense technology. But as the executive order states on May 13th, 2024, the Environmental Protection Agency, or the EPA, imposed what's called the copper rule. It was new emissions control requirements on these copper smelters. And according to the EPA, the compliance with all these new environmental regulations was going to cost each of these smelters over $7 million a year. They also recognize that all of these copper smelters didn't have

the necessary technology yet to be able to comply with those, and so they were going to have to build and purchase that technology, which was going to cost millions to tens of millions more dollars for these companies to do. The executive order is claiming that that technology doesn't exist, and so it's putting a hold on the EPA's copper rule for these smelters so that they can operate without having to comply with these restrictions. That's going to save them tens of millions of dollars a year in research and development of this technology that could help them to comply with the environmental regulations and with the day-to-day costs of complying with those regulations. Now, in theory, these environmental regulations are good things. But through this executive order, President Trump is saying

that the national security need for copper is more important than that right now, especially since if you impose environmental restrictions on these kinds of companies that are extremely difficult to comply with, which this one is, the copper rule is, then that's a great way to drive the last few remaining copper smelters in the United States out of the United States. The executive order emphasizes the need to retain those smelters for our national defense production, and so it's putting the copper rule on pause for two years to try to keep and strengthen that industry that's essential for our national security and defense. So to recap this week, we had two executive orders,

one a proclamation of National Energy Dominance Month, and another lessening environmental restrictions for copper producers. We had a Supreme Court case that challenges the infamous same-sex marriage ruling, and we had two bills, one which would have paid essential federal workers during government shutdowns, and another which requires transparency in foreign influence over our media. Tune in next week for more. Well, that's all I have for you today on Under the Radar. I'm your host, Luke Miller, and I want to thank you for listening

and encourage you to tune back in next time for more coverage of the news that fell under the radar. You're listening to Radio Free Hillsdale 101.7 FM. Thanks for listening to Under the Radar with Luke Miller, here on Radio Free Hillsdale, 101.7 FM. Thank you.