WRFH/Radio Free Hillsdale 101.7 FM - Under the Radar - Episode 37

Episode Date: April 16, 2026

This week on “Under the Radar,” hear about an executive order that aims to reform government spending, a Supreme Court case about a democrat trying to run in a Republican primary race, an update on President Trump's executive order about college sports eligibility and NIL, 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 an executive order that aims to reform government spending, a Supreme Court case about a Democrat trying to run in a Republican primary race, an update on President Trump's executive order about college sports eligibility in NIL, 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 an executive order signed by President Trump, April 8, 2026, entitled the sequestration order for fiscal year 27. Now, a sequestration order is something that the president is legally required to issue every single year. He does it through presidential memorandum or an executive order. And this was started by the balanced budget and emergency deficit control act of 1985. So on its most basic level, what a sequestration order is, is President Trump, through his office of management and budget, is recommending spending cuts to Congress. Now, why would Congress want this, you might ask?

Congress implemented this in 1985, has extended this several times, most notably in 2011 with the Budget Control Act. And as of right now, it's extended through the 2030s. So it's something that Congress has extended over the last 50 years because they want input from the executive branch of government on the spending that they pass every year. So as you all know, Congress is in control of the federal budget. Every year's budget starts in the House of Representatives, where they come up with the budget for the next fiscal year, and Congress really fights over it. So if you're the Republican Party in Congress, you would kind of like President Trump's Office of Management and Budget, which is basically the accountant for the executive branch of government. I've used their stats

before many a times to show, one, what the executive branch has spent on things with their discretionary funds that they get for certain agencies within the executive, but also they show projections. So for example, if President Trump's Department of Homeland Security is trying to carry out a deportation effort, the Office of Management Budget is going to project the cost of that and report that to Congress so Congress can kind of start the ball rolling on funding on behalf of their president. So because of that, Congress has passed this policy where the president is required every year to issue the sequestration order. The actual substance, behind the order is it requires the Office of Management and Budget to give that report to Congress

based off of their projected spending for the next year so that Republicans and Democrats in the House of Representatives can know what the Executive Branch wants and needs and then they can put that into the budget, vote on it, vote against it for the coming year. Now, there are three main categories of spending that the Office of Management and Budget weighs in on, the first of which is mandatory defense spending. And we don't have the exact percentages from their report to Congress just yet. That report was last week. And we don't have the official numbers yet. They're still working on releasing that to the public.

They usually release it a few weeks after the report has been issued to Congress. But the last report that we got from the Office of Management and Budget in 2025 for fiscal year 2026 had a cut to mandatory defense spending by about 8.3%. Now, that's a decent size cut to defense spending. But based on recent comments from the president from January of 2026, he proposed a $1.5 trillion defense budget for 2027, which would be, a pretty significant increase. So it's likely that the Office of Management and Budget is actually going to request an increase to mandatory defense spending for 2027. Now, is that actually going to happen to the full extent that President Trump would like it to happen? Probably not. In 26, the defense budget was about $900 billion, which is still a ton of money. But to raise it to

$1.5 trillion would be a huge increase in spending. Now, not all of that is mandatory, but there would certainly be an increase in mandatory defense spending under this report. And again, that's based on speculation. We don't have the official numbers from the report, but we can make the assumption based off of the official stance of the Trump administration and the official reports that they've made this year in 26 that they would like to drastically increase the defense budget. But to counter that, President Trump has suggested a 10% decrease to another one of the categories, non-defense mandatory spending, which would constitute basically all of the mandatory spending, from executive programs within the federal government other than Medicare.

Medicare is its own category, which I'll get to in a minute. But if you want to make cuts, this is probably the best place to do it. This non-defense mandatory spending is usually in things like the different food nutrition programs, so SNAP or food stamps, which does eat up a good percentage of the non-defense mandatory spending. That's also the category that includes all of the Department of Education program. So you could see that falling under the category of things that get a spending cut for fiscal year 2027. You also see a lot of energy programs. So there's a lot of things under the non-defense

mandatory spending that you could reasonably and realistically see President Trump and his Office of Management Budget suggesting that Congress cut, especially if they want to make up for increases in mandatory defense spending, which is likely. So they're suggesting pretty radical cuts to that side of things. But the third category, which is Medicare spending, is mandatory spending, just like the other two categories are. But President Trump has kind of been a mixed bag on Medicare. Over his first administration and his 2024 campaign, he has both floated the idea of potentially cutting Medicare spending, which he could recommend through this report. And he's also promised several times to never cut Medicare spending, which was something that he did several

times in his 2024 campaign, which I think was probably a plea to older voters, because that is one of the top issues for older voters. It's not really an issue at all for younger voters, because older voters are thinking more about things like Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security, and when they hear cuts to any of those programs, they think it might come to the other ones as well. So among older voters, those health care programs and any cuts to them are a huge deal. So you can see why in a presidential campaign he might have promised that he wouldn't touch those programs to get those votes. But he really hasn't taken any steps as president to meaningfully change any of those programs. And I really didn't expect him to.

But that has been a pretty major part of the GOP platform. Again, President Trump is not a mainstream GOP conservative kind of guy, and he never has been, especially when it comes to fiscal issues. However, in the fiscal year 2026 sequestration report, which was issued last year, they only suggested a 2% cut to Medicare. It was significantly less than the cuts suggested in the other two categories. So to recap, I think that we'll see that the sequestration report for this year for fiscal year 2027's budget, we'll see a request for increase.

in mandatory defense spending, a request for a rather significant decrease in mandatory non-defense spending, and probably very little request for change in the Medicare category. Now, the last thing that I want to say about this issue is that President Trump has historically not been particularly good on fiscal issues. In his first term, he spent more than President Obama did over either of his terms. Despite the promises he made in 2024, Doge was a massive failure and did not cut very much government spending at all. In 2025, the one big beautiful bill, President Trump endorsed, but endorsed as an understatement. I mean, it was his bill. The one big beautiful bill was Trump's bill. And that was over a trillion dollars of spending. Now, the caveat there

is that it fixed the southern border. The one big beautiful bill gave over $100 billion to customs and border protection to close up the southern border to continue building the wall to hire way more agents for CBP and ICE. And it fixed the southern border. We're at the lowest level of illegal border crossings in 55 years. It fixed that problem. So for conservatives who have complained about and Trump's spending a lot of money, especially in his second term. And I have been one of those conservatives to some extent. The one big beautiful bill spent the money on the border that he promised to spend and fix the problem that he promised to fix, more importantly, in the 2024 election.

Now, since that problem is fixed, and since the deportation effort that he promised in 2024 is basically out the window, since that's not really a major concern, it seems like, for the Trump administration anymore, I think you're going to see some efforts to start cutting some spending, at least in areas that are not particularly aligned with President Trump's personal agenda. And by that, I mean American greatness. He's going to spend money on the things like the triumphal arch. If you haven't seen that, you should look it up. It's a proposed piece of architecture that President Trump wants to build in DC. It's really beautiful. It's an arch with a golden depiction of the Statue of Liberty on top, with in God we trust, insignia on it.

It would be more classical style architecture, which would really be beautiful. The renderings make it look incredible. He's also trying to build a magnificent ballroom on the White House, which would be huge. It would be the same size as the White House. So, I mean, those are part of his project to project to project American greatness from within. And then he's proposing this massive increase to military spending to project to project, that's part of his project. That's his personal agenda, at least in my view. And he's willing to spend money on those kinds of things. But now that the campaign promised to close the southern border has been fulfilled, the deportation effort is kind of been canned, at least for the moment. We're probably not going to see that start up again because the

Democrats are probably going to win the House in 2027, which means that most of the things that President Trump wants to get through Congress are probably not going to get through Congress after these midterm elections. Given all of those things, you will probably start to see the Trump administration, start to try to spend less money on the things that don't fall immediately within President Trump's agenda and start to spend a little bit less than the administration has so far and a little bit less than he did in his first administration. You're listening to Under the Radar with Luke Miller on Radio for Hillsdale, one of 1.7 FM.

The next piece of news I have for you this week is a Supreme Court case entitled Ronan v. LaRose, and this is a really interesting case that centers around the idea of open primaries. So I'll dive into it a little bit deeper, but for those of you who don't know, an open primary is one in which voters are not required to affiliate with a particular political party to vote and can thus vote in either a Republican or Democratic primary, whichever one they choose. There's a lot of complications that come with that that I'll get into. But this Supreme Court case is dealing with a man named Sam Ronan, who's running for a congressional seat in the state of Ohio, which is an open primary state, as a Republican.

Now, here's the issue. Sam Ronan ran for the chair of the Democratic National Committee in 2017, which is really the lead Democrat in the entire country. That controls the Democratic Party for the chair of the DNC. So obviously, this man is a Democrat. He's running for Congress as a Republican in the state of Ohio. Now, this isn't just a case of somebody switching parties. Like, President Trump is a good example of that. He used to be a Democrat. He used to vote Democrat.

He was very public about that. He was also very public about his shift, especially in the early 2010s and going forward, where he obviously ran as a Republican in 2015. But he supported Mitt Romney in 2012 as well, so he wasn't just deciding to be a Republican in 2015. This is a little bit different story where this man, Sam Ronan, ran for chair of the DNC. He ran for Democratic office. And now he's running in a Republican primary.

What also makes this really interesting is that when he ran for the chair of the DNC, in 2017, one of the key strategies that he was running on was to advocate for Democrats to run as Republicans in deeply red districts in red states, which is exactly what he's been doing. So he's been running for a congressional seat in the 15th district in the state of Ohio, which is an open primary. And to dive a little deeper into what that means, there are three different kinds of primaries, and they are not exclusive to a particular party, but those three kinds of primaries are closed primaries, open primaries, with partisan registration and open primaries with nonpartisan registration. So a closed primary is one in which only voters registered with a particular party or affiliated with a particular party

may vote in that party's primary election. So if you're registered as a Democrat in the state of Alaska, that's an example of a closed primary state. If you're registered as a Democrat in the state of Alaska, you can only vote for Democratic candidates. And if you're registered as a Republican, you can only vote for Republican candidates. In primary elections, that is exclusive to primaries, It does not apply to the general. So if you're, you can vote out of party in a general election, obviously. But closed primaries are instituted to prevent members of one party from intentionally messing up the primary of the other party.

So an example of this happened as recently as 2020. In 2020, the Democrats had a primary. The Republicans did not. They had an incumbent president in President Trump. And so they didn't need to have a primary. But the Democrats had a primary in 2020. And it was a little bit of a mess, but it was really, really entertaining. For the longest time, you're likely to be.

to see a progressive win the Democratic primary, whether it be Bernie Sanders, who was leading for a long time, or Elizabeth Warren, who was leading for a long time. They were leading the charge for a good while Joe Biden ended up pulling it out in large part due to having a stronghold in the South, especially in South Carolina, which is a huge deal in the Democratic primaries. But in Tennessee, there was a big issue in 2020. Tennessee is not a closed primary state. It's an open primary state. And Republicans who did not have a primary in which to vote were voting for Bernie Sanders in the Tennessee primary. elections in the Democratic Party because they thought Bernie Sanders would be an easier candidate for President Trump to defeat than would Joe Biden or another one of the non-progressive candidates, which is likely true. So in that case, Republicans, and Tennessee is a heavily Republican state, Republicans could go into the Democratic primary, vote in the Democratic primary for a candidate that

they feel like would be easiest for the Republican to defeat and actually mess up the whole democratic process for the other party. That's why you would have closed primaries. Now, there are advantages to having open primaries to it. And as you recall, there are two different types of open primaries. So the first type is an open primary with partisan registration, which means that unaffiliated or independent voters can choose which primary to vote in. So they can vote either in the Republican primary or the Democrat primary. If you are already affiliated with a political party, you can only vote in that party's primary. There are only nine states that have this kind of open primary, there are more states who have an open primary with nonpartisan registration.

Michigan falls in that category. In open primaries with nonpartisan registration, voters are not required to affiliate with any party. Every voter can choose one primary in which to vote. You can't vote in both, obviously, but any voter can vote in any primary. You don't have to be affiliated with the particular party to vote in that primary. So obviously, the downside to that being in a year like 2020, when Republicans don't even have a primary, they could vote in the Democratic primary. and mess it up. Vice versa, that could also happen if you have an incumbent Democrat and you don't need to have a primary. Democrats could vote in the Republican primary and mess it up.

However, the upside to that is that it allows independence to actually participate in the elections. Now, Democrats in some states have amended their closed primaries to allow independents to participate, but the Republican Party has not, and it's not all states for the Democratic Party. So an advantage to having an open primary with nonpartisan registration like Michigan has is that it allows independents to participate. and that's important because only about 15% of voters participate in primary elections. Those 15% are going to be the most die-hard and most active members of the party who really, really care about politics, just because primaries don't actually put anybody into office.

Now, the effects of that are the people who tend to be the most fired up to vote in primaries tend to be the most radical members of a party. Hence why Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren were leading the 2020 primary for so long in the Democratic Party. Now, they have all sorts of other ways to allow the Democratic Party establishment to play a major factor in who ends up being the nominee, and they tend to moderate it. But that role can also be played by independents. Independents typically are not going to be radicals. Like, by the, that's obviously the case. Independence are not going to be radicals on either side.

And so if they like a moderate Democrat or a moderate Republican, they might vote for that person in the primaries and help moderate the radicals who are going to be most likely to be the ones voting in a primary on either side. Another not quite so obvious benefit to open primaries is that it allows third party voters to actually get a say in who gets elected on their side of the aisle. For example, the Libertarian Party members or the Democratic Socialists of America are going to vote right or left. The Libertarian Party are going to vote for the Republican candidate most often. The Democratic Socialists of America are going to vote for the Democratic candidate most often. And if they can't vote in the primaries because they're not registered to the Democratic or Republican Party, it doesn't really give anybody who's not affiliated with the two major parties to say. And so that's another benefit of open primaries with nonpartisan registration is it doesn't really force people into the two major parties. And it allows people with third party registration who aren't going to get an actual candidate for president or for any major political office, really, to get a say in who is elected on their particular side of the aisle.

So there are pros and cons to either kind of primary. But in this case, we have an open primary in Ohio and a man who is obviously a Democrat, Sam Ronan, was running for an Ohio congressional seat. Now, he was not likely to win. He was running against an incumbent named Mike Kerry, who's pretty popular a Republican in the state of Ohio. Ohio is a very red state. You've got a lot more Republicans voting than Democrats voting in the state. But the goal of this was obviously to get Democrats to vote in the Republican primary for a Democrat, Sam Ronan, who was running as a Republican, to see if you could actually have a quote-unquote Republican, who's actually a Democrat, take over that seat in the state of Ohio. It's an attempt to rig the Republican primary election, which is funny because that's exactly what he called the Supreme Court decision. The Supreme Court said that that was not legal, that he would be removed from the ballot

for the primary election that he could not run by explicitly lying about which party he was affiliated with. And it's obvious that he's affiliated with the Democratic Party because he literally ran for the chair of the DNC. Like, that is the highest position in the Democratic Party. But this decision kind of closes a loophole in the open primary system by not allowing candidates to explicitly lie about which party they're affiliated with to try to rig the primary for the opposite party. Now, in response to the Supreme Court decision, Sam Rohnen was quoted as saying, this means that in the state of Ohio,

the standard is that you must chill your political speech to conform with the status quo, lest you be accused of being a liar and a cheat, which is hilarious given the fact that he's obviously lying about his political affiliation here, and trying to cheat the Republicans out of their congressional seat.

It's just a ridiculous, ridiculous situation that's going on in the state of Ohio, that is a loophole in open primaries that hopefully is closed by this Supreme Court decision this week. The last piece of news I have for you this week is a quick update on President Trump's executive order about NCAA sports eligibility and NIL requirements. So if you recall, last week on the show, we discussed President Trump's executive order,

which was primarily targeted at NIL collectives and stopping the whole pay-for-play situation that's going on in college sports. But the other major part of the executive order was suggestions to the NCAA for eligibility requirements. He suggested a five-for-five deal in which athletes would have to have. five years to play five seasons of their sport. Now since that executive order, the NCAA has put a proposal on the table for a new eligibility rule. The suggestion is five years of eligibility starting from your 19th birthday or from high school graduation, whichever comes first. For me,

that would have been high school graduation would have been well before I turned 19. This would mean no more red shirts or waivers for most players, which is a huge difference from the status quo. Now there are a couple of rare exceptions to that, of course, but for most players, there'd be no red shirts or waivers. And that's been a huge deal for the NCAA in recent years. The NCAA is having to deal with dozens of eligibility legal battles every single year. There's been 74 this year. There's 14 still pending in lower courts, and that's costing the NCAA money all the time. So if they can get rid of some of those legal issues and make the system a little bit more clear, that would help out a lot of people. So the NCAA is bringing that to the table. There's going to be a vote on that

pretty soon. But the last thing I wanted to bring up about this was a video that was put out by the White House featuring former head coach and college football legend Nick Saban. Take a listen. Hello, I'm Nick Saban, and I would just like to thank President Trump for having the foresight to know that there's things that we need to do to change the future of college athletics. And to bring this group together is really something special, and I'm especially proud to be a part of it. You know, just being an old football coach, it's unlikely for me to be in a situation where I'll be speaking to such a distinguished group. But I do think there's a question we all need to ask is, you know, what are the future guidance that we want to create for college athletics?

You know, when I was a coach, I always wanted to create an atmosphere and environment for the players that would help them be more successful in life, whether it was personal development, academic support, develop a career as a football player. And in the former years, with the new circumstances of college athletics, it got more difficult, you know, to do that. So I think we all need to look at the ramifications of where we are right now and what we need to do to sort of create an atmosphere and environment where we actually can enhance the chances of people being more successful in life after athletics, but also respect them the quality of life that they deserve while they're playing in college.

So to recap this week, we covered the sequestration order and the president's budget request for fiscal year 2027. We covered the Supreme Court case about a high-level Democrat trying to cheat a Republican open primary in Ohio, and we covered the update on the College Sports Executive Order. 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.