Breaking Down the Political, Ethical, and Legal Landscapes Shaping Our World Today
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Welcome to another episode of Breaking Battlegrounds with your host, Chuck Warren. I'm Sam Stone.

As always, diving right in with our first guest of the day, Victor Jakes is a review journal columnist who explores and explains policy issues in Nevada. You can follow him on X at Victor, and I'm going to spell this out, J-O-E-C-K-S. Victor Jakes, thank you for joining us. Welcome to the program. Thanks so much for having me on. So, Victor, Donald Trump won Nevada, and when President Obama was first elected, he won it by 12 points.

And then Donald Trump won it. What happened? What made this turn to the right? Well, there's a lot of things. And obviously, a lot of the credit has to go with go right to Donald Trump. You know, he kind of has remade the Republican coalition with a lot more, a lot of younger voters, especially young men with an increased turnout.

support from minority voters. And if you look at Nevada, specifically Las Vegas, where 70% of the population is, you've got a lot of young and minority voters. And obviously Trump has done very well with folks with just a high school degree and not a college degree. And Nevada's got a lot of those folks. So, you know, Nevada was kind of the theory of the case that if Trump was going to do well

with this strategy he would do well in Nevada and you laid it out you know just just exactly what happened is that he did end up doing very well he ended up winning Nevada by over three points which

which is a just a huge shift from where from you know 2008 but it's also a pretty significant shift from four years ago when when joe biden won the state by 2.4 points so we actually had about a five point shift uh for donald trump now if you want to go into the weeds uh there's actually something else that that happened that's really interesting um in 2018 and that

that voters approved a automatic voter registration at the DMV initiative. And this was pushed by the left as, you know, a lot of young voters, a lot of minorities aren't registered. You know, we can't get them registered to vote. So we're going to do it at the DMV. We're going to automatically register them. And then that's going to

turn Nevada into California. That's going to cement Democrats' advantage in the state. It's had actually just the opposite effect for a couple of reasons. The first is that the Harry Reid machine was very real, and what they did is they turned money

an organization into a substantial voter registration that if you look even four years ago democrat had about a ninety thousand voter uh... registration edge over republican but one this motor voter once the automatic voter registration when the place democrats stop the registration efforts because everyone would be registered the d_n_b_ while the federal public and run an even playing field

with Democrats when it came to registering voters. And then the second thing that happened is, you know, when people are at the DMV, they aren't thinking about being registered to vote. And so these people who, if Democrats had gone to them and registered them, Democrats would have registered them as a Democrat. Well,

Well, at the DMV, you just default to nonpartisan. And so these Democrat voters or people who would have been Democrat voters are now nonpartisan voters. And that's a huge disadvantage for Democrats because they don't know quite who to turn out. And if you just look statistically, if you are a nonpartisan, you're much less likely to vote than if you are registered as a Democrat or Republican. So one of the great ironies of politics is

You know, one of the things you can credit Donald Trump's victory to is this push by the left for automatic voter registration, which eroded Democrats' voter advantage. And once the election happened, you know, they went from a 90,000 voter advantage to their Democrats' edge in Nevada was less than 10,000 voters. So that's a huge shift, and that contributed, you know, in a big way to Trump winning the state.

I want to throw a quick question to both Victor and Chuck here because, Chuck, you're involved with a lot of registration efforts organized across the country, including in Nevada. Do you think because of the power of the unions there, the SEIU, the other hospitality unions –

that they had already sort of ground out a lot of their potential voters. There wasn't a lot left for them with this motor voter scheme, whereas if Republicans can identify these, there's there's room to be gained still. Victor, I'll let you answer that first and I'll follow up with it. What are your thoughts on that?

Yeah, I mean, I don't know if it was quite as much the culinary union or the SEIU. I mean, I think it was the Democrat Party and their groups that they were having doing voter registration. But, you know, for a couple of decades, basically, Republicans were spinning their wheels when it came to voter registration. They just couldn't keep up. They didn't have as much money. They didn't have as much organization. And you need those things to register voters when you don't have something like automatic voter registration. And so...

It gave Democrats just a huge advantage that they basically threw away. And now Republicans are on a level playing field. And you look at people being loyal to Trump, being more interested in the Republican Party. And what we've seen, at least in Nevada, is Republicans have made some pretty substantial registration gains because of it.

Well, I know – and this is Chuck. When we were doing voter registration out here this past year, like what we generally found is when we called and did survey to target, about 49 to 52 percent of the new residents in Nevada wanted to register as GOP. That's what we were getting, OK? It was mid-20s, high-20s for Democrats.

The second thing we really notice is the amount of Hispanic voter registration that was either going nonpartisan or GOP versus just pure Democrat. And I know Democrats are trying to tamper down how much the Hispanic vote went to Trump. But even in Nevada, where exit polling, which I've seen, manages between 43, 45 percent, that's a big movement. And that keeps all the time. Nevada is in play for Republicans a lot if they go and have an agenda for these Hispanic voters.

families and voters to pursue. Would you agree with that, Victor?

Oh, absolutely. I think the way that Trump has reshaped the coalition with more Hispanic support, with more African-American support, that's huge for Nevada in terms of going for the GOP because Clark County, which is 70% of the state that lives in Clark County, is less than 40% white. A third of it is Hispanic, and then the rest is either African-American, Asian,

Yeah. And so, you know, if the GOP can appeal to Hispanic voters, they can appeal to these voters who previously kind of reflexively voted Democrat. I mean, Nevada could be a very red state in the very near future. What do you think happened? Why did I the last number I saw? And it's probably incorrect. Now, there was about 70,000 people, 80,000 people who voted for Trump and did not vote for Sam Brown. Why do you think that was?

I think a couple of reasons is, you know, if you are a new GOP voter, you know, if you are a Hispanic voter who's never voted for the GOP, if you're 25 and you just never voted before, you're going to vote for Trump. He's the famous person. He's the top of the ticket. He's the one who can say, look at how things were five years ago. I was better than this. I'll bring your prices down. And so I think it makes sense that obviously the top of the ticket would do the best.

And, you know, if someone is a first-time GOP voter, they may not go down the ticket. And then you just look at the Brown campaign. It just wasn't very good. It wasn't very...

there wasn't a lot of energy there and he was running a bad campaign for most of the election cycle and one of the things, one of the mistakes he made is he didn't tie himself to Trump. You know, it was obvious six to eight months ago that Trump was running ahead of Brown. Well, the first thing Brown should have done is, you know, I'm Trump's man in the Senate. You know, I love Donald Trump. I am hugging Donald Trump at the waist and I am not letting go. And

Yeah, you got a little more of that towards the end, but you just you didn't really get a lot of, you know, I'm Sam Brown, loyal foot soldier to Donald Trump. And I think that was a mistake. And then, you know, Brown just wasn't very aggressive in terms of going after after Rosen. It was about a month ago before the election. There was this this controversy where, you know,

The University of Nevada, Reno's volleyball team refused to play against San Jose State's volleyball team because they had a man on their team. And it was an incredible issue. You know, just the perfect highlighting of the West's extremism trying to force women to play against men. And Brown, to his credit, you know, attached himself to this issue and tried to make it an issue. But it's like, man, you should have been doing this for the last six months.

and really driving to voters that, look, Rosen focused on these social issues, not lowering your costs. I'm here to defend women, defend common sense, and be Trump's ally in the Senate. And I think one of the reasons it got as close as it did, actually, is because of that issue, because Brown was able to kind of latch onto it. But

He should have been driving things like that throughout the whole campaign, and he just didn't. And then the last factor is Nevada has some conservative third parties on the ballot. Always. If you look at the...

The number of votes that they got, you know, Brown lost by 23,000 votes and the conservative third parties got, you know, 41, 42,000 votes. So, you know, the margin of victory is right there. And it's I just think conservative third parties are so destructive that.

And we've seen that a lot in Nevada where, you know, there's not a liberal third party to kind of drain one or two percent of the Democrat vote. Well, not when the Supreme Court keeps throwing the Green Party and stuff off for no rhyme or reason, apparently. I mean, you know, it's sort of, you know, sort of rigged. We've got a couple of minutes here. A quick question. We have a governor's race reelection coming up in 2026.

What does Governor Lombardo need to do to have some of the same success again? Well, it's going to be interesting because, you know, Lombardo is...

has a lot of personal popularity, but he, and he recruited some really good candidates for the state legislature, but didn't really have any coattails and didn't really campaign very hard for them. You know, he raised a lot of money, which was certainly to his credit, but didn't really get out there. I think he's going to be fine. I think he can point to things like, you know, supporting the voter ID initiative that passed and,

basically not being a Democrat to kind of motivate Republicans. But, you know, I would really like to see him come out with a much more proactive agenda in terms of protecting women's sports, in terms of fighting for school choice, in terms of fighting for public safety, even for something like a tax cut, which Nevada hasn't had a substantial tax cut in decades. There's a lot of, you know, I think,

easy pickings for a Republican governor and we'll see how aggressive Lombardo wants to be. But I think he enters in a pretty strong position just because whoever he's going to be challenged by is probably not going to have as much money, certainly not going to have as much name ID. And he's just got a pretty significant popularity advantage. Victor Jakes, we've

Appreciate you joining us, folks. Victor is a review journal columnist, explores and explains policy issues. You can follow him on X at Victor Jakes, J-O-E-C-K-S. Victor, 30 seconds before we go, I'm going to ask you one last important question. Do the Oakland A's end up in a new stadium in Las Vegas?

Well, I would be shocked if they didn't. They blew up a hotel to make room for him. So I know there's been concerns about the financing and where the money is going to come from. But I just, you know,

These businesses don't literally blow up a hotel on the Las Vegas Strip to not have the income. Very true. They might pick cheaper real estate for that. Yeah. Victor Jakes, thank you so much for joining us. We look forward to having you back on in the future. Folks, stay tuned. Breaking Battlegrounds will be back in just a moment.

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Welcome back to Breaking Battlegrounds with your host Sam Stone and Chuck Warren. Our next guest up today is going to be friend of the program Alexander Rakin, visiting fellow in bioethics and American democracy program at the Ethics and Public Policy Center. His research focuses on the dignity of human life and end of life issues, especially its impact on the field of medicine and broader ethical questions. We'll be right back.

We've had him on the program numerous times to talk about Canada's euthanasia program. And before we dive into that, let's talk about something more hopeful. Let's talk about securing your family's financial future by investing with Y Refi. If you go to the website invest, the letter Y, then refi.com, you can earn up to 10.25%.

Fixed rate of return on a secure collateralized portfolio. If you're talking about making sure that you have your family's financial future secured, this is one of the best ways you can possibly do it. Join Chuck Warren in this phenomenal investment. Again, that's invest, the letter Y, then refy.com or give them a call at 888-Y-REFY24 and tell them Chuck and Sam sent you. So, Alexander, our friend.

Canada is giving the Galactic Empire and Star Wars a run for their money, aren't they, with this euthanasia stuff? They're just horrible. It seems like it. It definitely seems like it. I mean, I'll be honest. I've been doing this work and this research for the last couple of years, and it just keeps getting worse. And at a certain point, I don't know how much worse it can even get.

Well, I mean, I think when they just start taking kids from families, it seems like that's the next logical step. Any special need or somebody with a mental disorder, it sounds like they're just going to start come taking them. Or someone who's just getting too expensive for them to want to pay for. Right, right. So, Alexander, you –

There was a whole situation. So this wasn't in my report, so forgive me for this. But there's a whole story in Alberta of a 27-year-old whose only diagnosed conditions were autism and ADHD. She lived at her parents' house, and yet she managed to qualify herself for euthanasia.

The parents sued, and they won the first stage of the lawsuit, but they ultimately lost.

So yeah, I mean this was already happening where parents who believe that their children cannot qualify for euthanasia, right? In Canada still, you can't have only a mental illness or disability. And yet, physicians ruled and the judicial system ruled that she's capable of having a physician inject her with lethal medication. So she was living with her parents. How old was she?

Was she, did she have a job or was she at home under the care of her parents?

So she doesn't have a job. She has profound autism, but she's unable to work. And despite living in her parents' house, she managed to find herself eligible for euthanasia.

So, yeah, I mean, that is already what's happening in Canada. My oldest son is autistic, and we got guardianship over him. Did these parents have guardianship over this woman? I mean, if they did, can Canada still say— Is that a different law? Is there a different law in Canada?

Yes. If they had guardianship, they might have been able to stop it, but they didn't have guardianship. So she was essentially just staying at home. They were trying to get her to find a job, to land on her feet. And instead, she convinced herself that euthanasia was still an option.

And in fact, what makes that story even crazier is that she was first deemed ineligible. Then she got herself documentation that she was terminally ill, got herself qualified

qualified for euthanasia the second round. That's when her parents sued. The judge said, she's clearly not terminally ill. What are you doing? But the judge ruled that she could proceed with her euthanasia request. And then on the third time around, when she applied for euthanasia, her first-mate assessor deemed her ineligible again. Her second-mate assessor deemed her eligible, and then they got a tiebreaker who ruled that she was eligible. So, yeah, like, this is...

And in terms of like the balker situation that type. So one of the things that we're seeing in the U.S., for instance, with the gender transition surgeries and all that sort of thing, is that there is a network of people that they know will refer every case for the surgery or for the drugs. Is that's what's happening in this because it sounds like this was a very clear cut case where it would not qualify for.

And then suddenly at the end, they found two experts who would agree. Is that sort of network in play there as well? So that's exactly the problem, right? We have no idea what discussions are actually happening, right? The only people who know what is happening would be the physicians responsible for

and whatever review process. So the report that I wrote for the New Atlantis looks at the warnings from the chief coroner of Ontario, so this is a separate province, where he found there have been 428 instances of noncompliance with Canada's criminal laws on euthanasia.

But we don't have a similar documentation in Alberta. We just have the, you know, the fact that the chief coroner of Ontario already in 2018, right,

right so just two years after canada legalized euthanasia where he he essentially harangued a group of nurse practitioners that quote we see a pattern of not following legislation a pattern of not following regulation and frankly we can't just continue to do education to those folks if they're directly repeating stuff that we've brought to their attention right so this is a pretty strong statement from the chief corner of ontario and yet it seems that after 2018 he just

kept on doing the exact same thing. And the situation is so bad that in 2020, so last year, the chief coroner of Ontario reported that a maid provider failed to comply with maid legislation once every other day. So this is a crisis of dramatic proportions.

And there have been no prosecutions or cases filed recently.

In any of these situations? In any of them. So the coroner's office found that a quarter of all MAID providers, so MAID is medical citizens dying, the euthanasia providers, failed to comply at least once with MAID legislation. And the Chief Coroner of Ontario recommended zero cases to the police.

We have just about a minute and a half left here. We're going to be coming back with more from Alexander Rakin after the break. Folks, you can follow him on X Alexander Rakin, R-A-I-K-I-N. But also, you definitely want to check out this piece, and we will be posting this on our social media page.

that we're talking about right now, about these 428 cases that he wrote for the New Atlantis. That's definitely something you want to stay up on because this program, these programs spread. They're going to be spreading to the U.S. There's all sorts of issues in Europe also. Alexander, before we go to break here, we have just one minute left.

I just want to ask really quickly, there are supposed to be very serious penalties in place in these cases, correct? Yes. Yes. This is part of Canada's criminal law. If you fail to abide by any safeguard or eligibility criteria, you can face up to 14 years in prison. And that should be a pretty big barrier. But if they're not prosecuting anyone, it makes no difference. I mean, no. Right.

Every time we have Alexander Rakin on, folks, and you really need to be following him on X, you need to follow this work. Every time he's on Chuck, I sit here with my stomach churning the whole time. And the problem is Alexander's a nice guy. He's really quite a happy person. Yeah, we like, it's not, Alexander, that is not about you. We love you, man. Dang. He's not a doom and gloom guy, right? No. But this is a horrible subject here. Oh, my goodness. Folks, Breaking Battlegrounds is coming right back.

Welcome back to Breaking Battlegrounds. We have new theme music just for Alexander Raken's appearances. He has his new walk-up-to-the-plate music. And folks, if you want to stop the evil empire from spying on your phone, you have to check out our friends at 4freedommobile.com. That's the number 4, freedommobile.com, for secure private...

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I'm almost – I'm stunned for where it's sitting. Yeah, so let me ask you this. So Canada's own mini Fidel Castro, Justin Trudeau, is – he's going to lead – He could be the mini Fidel Castro or tall one, but whatever. Fidel Castro is probably rolling over his grave at this euthanasia stuff. So my point is he says he's going to lead the Liberal Party again in their next elections.

Is this something if conservatives win that they're going to start putting a real eye in changing this law? Are they campaigning on it? What's going on? Is Pierre Pelliev going to take a bite of this apple? Like I'm a huge fan of Pierre Pellievre. And, you know, to his credit, he did say that he was not going to expand euthanasia for cases of mental illness alone.

OK, that's at least something. But unfortunately, even though the conservative, the grassroots of the Conservative Party voted that they were against euthanasia, he has made no statement on whether they're going to curtail euthanasia in cases of when

patients do not have a terminal illness or disability. So, yeah, I mean, it seems like the conservatives are trying to avoid being labeled as socially conservative and they might be just letting Canadians commit suicide by the thousands. I know, you know, specifically political analysis isn't specifically your area, but are they making a mistake by that, by not

drawing a line in the sand on this issue and at least saying, look, we understand the original intent. We're not trying to take it away from people who are terminally ill right at the end of their lives, but the rest of this just has to go. We're drawing this line.

Are they making a mistake by not differentiating themselves in those ways? I mean, I think it's a mistake. I think the polling that we have shows that Canadians, like Americans, are supportive of euthanasia and assisted suicide for cases when people are terminally ill. I think that that's still a mistake.

But in Canada, it was a Supreme Court decision. It was a 9-0 Supreme Court decision that those who are terminally ill have a constitutional right for a physician to inject them with medication that went into their life. That said, I think that it is very commonsensical, and I think it's

morally imperative for the Conservative Party to join the disability groups that have just launched a constitutional challenge of Canada's euthanasia laws that allege that those who are not terminally ill are being coerced into suicide. And I think that if the Conservative Party is going to be a party of freedom, then it makes only sense to join Canada's largest and oldest disability organizations as they quite literally fight for their lives.

Absolutely. In terms of the political opposition, is there any – we talk about national politics, but are there provinces that are starting to – I mean there are differences between the provinces. Are there provinces that are pushing back on this more in the way that some U.S. states have managed to push back some of the most egregious things the left has done here? Is that a break that can be applied in Canada as well?

Yes. Well, I mean, in Alberta, you know, Alberta is really pushing against this. They haven't formally announced their opposition. But one of the things that they're doing is that they're redirecting funding that goes to, you know, private hospitals or to, you know, hospitals that are, you

you know, non-sectarian, and they're redirecting some of the funding to Catholic hospitals. And I think that's an excellent thing. Patients are looking for spaces where they are not going to be coerced into suicide or euthanasia. So, you know, I think that is a complete win. And I think that in Canada's

Especially, you know, if there are no governments who are willing to take a stance on this, at the very least, they can make sure that there are alternatives where you can get health care without being coerced into death care. Well, Alexander, where can people follow your work and find your recent article on this?

Yes. So if you just Google the new Atlantis, you know, my story is going, you know, is at the very top. You know, you can also follow me on Twitter or sorry, I should say X, forgive me. And yeah, or you can just look up my bio at EPPC.org.

For our Breaking Battleground listeners, we will post his article today as well, so you can find it on all our social media. Alexander, keep up the great work. You're keeping a spotlight on this, and it desperately is needed. Thank you. This is Breaking Battlegrounds. You can find us at BreakingBattlegrounds.vote. We'll be right back. Breaking Battlegrounds

Folks, this is Sam Stone for Breaking Battlegrounds. Discover true freedom today with 4Freedom Mobile. Their SIM automatically switches to the best network, guaranteeing no missed calls. You can enjoy browsing social media and the internet without compromising your privacy. Plus, make secure mobile payments worldwide with no fees or monitoring. Visit 4FreedomMobile.com today for top-notch coverage.

digital security, and total freedom. And if you use the code BATTLEGROUND at checkout, you get your first month of service for just $9 and save $10 a month for every month of service after that. Again, that's code BATTLEGROUND at checkout. Visit 4freedommobile.com to learn more.

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All right. Continuing on with our final guest for today, Alex Sawyer, friend of the show and a legal affairs reporter for The Washington Times. You can follow her on X at A-S-W-O-Y-E-R. Alex Sawyer, welcome back to the program.

Hey, thanks for having me. So Trump won last week or this last week. Trump won last week. It's been a long week, Chuck. I was in Turkey, too. So anyway, Trump won last week. There seems to be some liberals trying to really push out Sonia Sotomayor before President Biden leaves office. Do you think there's any chance of that happening at all?

I do not. There was buzz after the election that there was this push that she should leave because, of course, liberals don't want to see a Ruth Bader Ginsburg type situation, right? Right.

exactly where I guess you could say a quote-unquote liberal seat goes to a Republican president to appoint a replacement. So there's been this talk or push from the left. However, I think it was just earlier this week you saw a few reports. I think it was like CNN and Wall Street Journal both had some sources close to Sotomayor saying that that's just not going to happen. Who knows? Hypothetically, could

a vacancy be filled that quickly. I think it was Barrett's confirmation that I covered right before the 2020 election. And that was just about a month from nomination to actual confirmation. So a speedy confirmation process is possible. But, you know, it would be it would be a big surprise if Sotomayor were to leave.

Especially because I think she's also become such a – after Breyer's retirement, she's become the most senior and leading voice on that wing of the court. Alex, I had seen – I don't know how recent it was, but a fairly recent clip of Sonia Sotomayor, and she seemed to be some academic figure.

But she seemed to be in reasonable health. On the other hand, there are some reports as part of this, you know, Democrats push to potentially replace her, that she now has to have a physician in attendance with her 100 percent of the time, like traveling with her, you know, that kind of thing.

Do you know anything about it? Is that accurate? Is her health really? Because otherwise she, you know, she's of an age you'd expect most of these members to serve another five to 10 years.

Yeah, I think there's been talk about her health on and off, like over the years. You also saw, I think some of maybe that was like speculation because after COVID, she has stayed masked for a long time in the courtroom. I think it was just recently when I've gone back to cover arguments, she doesn't have a mask on. Some people have, I think it's some reports have noted her diabetes, I believe.

So I'm not sure if that has anything to do with it, but it doesn't seem at least like if I was, you know, going to tell you in the past when I've gone to the court and she's been wearing a mask, the last time I was there, she was not. So if she's not wearing one, it seems like maybe she's not concerned about her health at the moment. And that's one of the things I think, and it was either the CNN report or the Wall Street Journal, one of them mentioned that she's feel like that she's, you know, in the best position or she feels healthy or something to that effect.

So I don't you know, that's not one that I would really think is going to open up anytime soon. Now, if we're talking about SCOTUS vacancies in the like, you know, in the coming year, once Trump is actually sworn into office, then I you know, we're looking at two of the justices are in their 70s.

of the Republican appointees, that is. And it could be that one of them or both of them decide maybe they want to retire. So, I mean, that's a potential. I think that might be more likely. What are you hearing about those two? That's Thomas and Alito. What are you hearing? Is that a reality that they say, you know, before midterms, yeah, I'll resign so we can appoint and replace us with two younger people? Do you think that's a reality?

Do I think it's a reality or am I hearing that like, you know, there's no there's no buzz. There's nothing confirmed. I don't really know of any talks or anything about like replacements. I'll be surprised once that announcement comes. But would I be surprised if Justice Thomas wanted to retire? No, just because he's the long he's been on the court for 32 years. Right. And that's a really long time. I think that's even longer than just this.

Breyer had served. Justice Breyer was nominated after Thomas. He was nominated by H.W. Bush. So, you know, it would make sense to want to, you know, some time to retire and spend with family. But especially given that, you know, your time is four years to do so during the upcoming administration. So I guess we could see maybe it would happen next year. I guess you would have

time to do that later on. And a Trump presidency, like I said, I mean, Barrett was, I think, a 30-day, like September 26th to October 26th was basically the nomination confirmation swearing in. So, you know, it doesn't necessarily have to happen right away, but I would, if you're 76 years old, like Justice Thomas is, I would think that, you know, a retirement might be something that you're really considering.

All right. So Donald Trump announced this week a pick for attorney general. I have not received more text messages on appointment by Trump so far than I have. Donald Trump set off a national earthquake with that one. Even among Republicans. What are you hearing out there? What do you think his chances are of being confirmed? I mean, I think he immediately is down three votes with just the Republican side. Yeah. And that's assuming that Democrats don't steal Pennsylvania, which they are desperately trying to do for McCormick. So what do you think?

The reality is of him being confirmed. What do you hear? Let's do let's do the math, I guess. Right. So if they have 54, they would need, I guess, they could have Vance come in and do a tie breaking vote. Right. Right. But we already pretty much I'm guessing in your account, you're thinking no Collins, no Murkowski. I guess I would question like Thune, Cornyn, Cass.

McConnell. Yeah, exactly. So definitely an uphill climb. The question, I guess, would be like, could they do a recess appointment? Is that possible? I don't really know how that would work because typically with the Senate, they do these pro forma sessions that they keep in

Basically, you know, they look to not have recess appointments happen. And Democrats, you know, retain control basically until January. So it's going to be an uphill climb for Gates. There's a lot of talk about him resigning from Congress ahead of Friday, where I guess there was this ethics report. He already did, I understand.

Did he not? Right. He already resigned, right? That's the report as of yesterday. And so now, today, you have calls from Senate Democrats to retain that report. It reminds me of when the Kavanaugh letter, remember we had all this, when I was covering the Kavanaugh confirmation, the Senate Democrats leaked some of that. So I'm wondering if we're going to end up seeing some of this ethics report ahead of any sort of

confirmation hearing for Gates if there is one ever scheduled. Well, I don't think it even has to be Democrats to do it. I was about to say. I literally think there's a dozen plus members of the Republican side of the U.S. Senate who just do not think he's morally qualified to have that position. In two dozen Republican members in the House who loathe him.

More than that. I bet there's 100. Yeah, probably. I mean, do you think there's a chance? I mean, so they have this report. They did not release it. Is there a chance Senate Republicans can get that report? Is someone going to give them that report from the congressional side?

Well, it looks like, like I said, the reason I brought up Democrats is Durbin is the chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee currently, and he's the one demanding to have access to the report. So if he has access, and that would mean technically the ranking member, like Chuck Grassley, Lindsey Graham, the two top Republicans on that committee would have access to it. You know, you talk about the House members not liking Matt Gaetz. Well, that might be true. They don't really vote on confirmation. It has to do with the Senate. So, like,

the most important thing we were just talking about is the numbers. And I, you know, we just listed a few that we don't think will be there for Gates. It seems like the question is, and what I'm talking to a lot of people about is like, how big will senators feel this mandate is from the election for Trump to have, you know, who he wants in place?

It might be – this might be one of the nominees that fails and Republicans feel like they have to stand up to. There was kind of head scratching about Pete Hegseth, the Fox personality for secretary of defense. So maybe this one kind of took the cake though, right? Right, right. You don't hear very many people talking about Hegseth anymore. Yeah.

And I think that was a great point because that was kind of in the vein of the question I was about to ask you, which is you're dealing with people who have very large egos who got elected in their own right. Are they going to go along with 100 percent of Trump's nominees without resistance? I don't think so. And maybe this is a good red herring to throw out there and have them –

Yeah, but to shoo this one up. Does he agree to be a red herring? Does he know that that's what he is? That's a good question. I don't think, you know, I mean, would you go into a position thinking you're the red herring? I don't know. But yeah.

With that said, it could be that the Senate Republicans, once they take the majority, do feel like they have to stand up for one of these. Now, if you think about it, we just had the majority leader elections for the senators. And if you looked at the three picks, they kind of went along with who I would guess made cast in the middle.

If you're talking about from, you know, conservative to the more Trump type, which would have, I thought, been a Rick Scott. And they didn't choose Rick Scott, even though there was a lot of pressure. If you went on to X, you saw a lot of like people kind of pushing for their senator to support Scott. And I'm not really I was kind of surprised that didn't happen, just given how overwhelming the election was for Trump. But they they went the middle.

Well, yeah, they know it's not real life on X. I mean, X serves a very useful purpose, but they realize it's also not real life with their constituencies as well. Well, also, I got to be honest. I didn't I didn't understand the big push for Rick Scott over Thune or I mean, because in terms of actual conservative accomplishment and forwarding an agenda, I

Scott has as many question marks to me as Thune would. Yeah, I agree. Let's change subjects real quick. So the U.S. Senate Democrats, they're rushing to confirm judges before Biden leaves office, right? And so my understanding is there's currently 30 judicial nominees awaiting confirmation plus others. What is going on there? Will Republicans play ball or are they just going to put their feet in the ground and say no way?

So what happens usually at the end of the year, like right before Christmas, before the senators leave for the holidays, is you have some of the majority leader usually comes in with looking to pass or nominate or confirm judges based on unanimous consent. Some of these are like we talk about district court judges that like.

have support from both of their home state senators, that could be a potential. So we'd have to look and kind of crunch the numbers, see if there's some that have that type of support. The one interesting tidbit I saw, I think it was the Associated Press was looking at the Senate calendar, the work calendar. And they said that there's just not really the time to get all of these confirmed that are currently pending unless Senate Democrats

change the calendar and stay and work longer. I guess that means, you know, not taking long weekends or holidays with Thanksgiving coming up, the Christmas holidays. So I guess we will see. Now, it's important to remember, I did a little crunching numbers. Trump still has had appointed quite a bit more than Biden. Even if Biden were to get these, I think it's like five more circuit courts appointed,

appointments that are pending, even if he were to get those, Trump still outpaces him. I think right now the current count is like 54 to 44 for circuit court judges. And these definitely matter, obviously, when we're talking about the appeals process. And like, it's

It's basically, if you think about it, like a raffle, like which judges, which three judge panel do you get? And on a lot of these cases that are so highly political, you know, trying to change the makeup of some of these courses. And Trump really did during his first year. If you look at the Ninth Circuit, he's added quite a bit out.

there, and that was always known to be the most liberal circuit. You now have the Fifth Circuit, which is quite conservative. The Eleventh Circuit is quite conservative, too. So it looks like, you know, if they aren't able to get these circuit court nominees through, he could have the potential to, you know, make even more roads meet there. Alex, we have just about 30 seconds left. Really quickly, we talked about Trump's most controversial pick so far. What is Washington saying is the best pick he's made for any cabinet official so far?

Oh, you know, one of the things I don't think was that big of a surprise was seeing some names from the past, like John Ratcliffe. He served for DNI and now he's like CIA, right? So some of the names that you're seeing circle back, I don't think are too big of a surprise here.

Fantastic, Alex Sawyer. Thank you so much, folks. You can follow her on X at A-S-W-O-Y-E-R. She's the legal affairs reporter for The Washington Times. Does fantastic work. Also subscribe to The Washington Times. Exactly. And subscribe to Breaking Battlegrounds on our sub stack, BreakingBattlegrounds.vote. You can find all this stuff there. We'll be back on the air next week, but make sure you tune in. See you download that podcast. Go to the website, BreakingBattlegrounds.vote. We'll see you next week.

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The 2022 political field was intense, so don't get left behind in 2024. If you're running for political office, the first thing on your to-do list needs to be securing your name on the web with a yourname.votewebdomain from godaddy.com. Get yours now. All right, welcome to the podcast segment of Breaking Battlegrounds. With your host, Chuck Warren, I'm Sam Stone. We're going to be leading off this one with Kylie's Corner, so murder...

We had Alexander Raken on talking about murder and mayhem, government-sponsored murder and mayhem. Kylie, where's the private murder and mayhem? What do you got for us? Lots of mayhem this week going on. So this story is a little crazy. It might be all over the place. It's developing in the last...

Maybe 24 hours, 48 hours max. But there's actress Chanel Banks. She was in Gossip Girl and Blue Blood. She was reported missing by her family and said that they have not seen her since October 27th, which was via FaceTime.

They said they received a text from her on October 30th, and then that was the last communication from her. Yeah, where did she live? Like, where was she at? She lived in L.A. She was an actress in L.A., just living in L.A. with her husband. So she was married a year ago. And authorities had come out basically saying the husband's not cooperating, which is where I first saw the story. The husband wasn't cooperating. He was supposedly taking down missing persons posters and...

was, you know, being suspicious. So I guess after interrogation, there's a lead that takes them to San Antonio, Texas. So police go to Texas, they find this woman who's claiming to be Chanel. And after investigation, authorities say the woman on the body cam footage is not her. So her family says authorities aren't doing enough, they're taking it public, and they want people's help. So now they're going on and doing interviews, they're creating GoFundMe pages, and whatnot. And

So I see this, I'm looking into it. I'm like, all right, let's, you know, this is, this is weird. So then about three or four hours later, authorities come out and say, actually, that was Chanel on the body cam footage. And she's fine. She's in Texas. And the claims from the family are just false.

So my nosy self goes to Chanel's Instagram because I was like, I'm going to go stalk the husband. I don't know if I believe this. So I go to and she's posting on Instagram, but not posting herself. She's posting all of these writings basically saying, I'm Chanel Banks. I'm 36 years old. I'm alive. I've met with the police and verified that I'm OK, but I'm finally free of my mother and her family. They say once you're free, you're

In Christ Jesus, you're free indeed. So I told my husband six days ago I was going to get baptized by one of my favorite pastors, Pastor Robert Clancy. He drove me to the airport and then I was off for a week. But I also saw it as an opportunity to escape my cage. God said, I'm going to give you some money. And I was shocked when it appeared just like he said. Then he said, I want you to move on. So I went and I moved.

And now I'm in the promised land. So then she, this is about like three pages long. She goes on to say how there needs to be a massive restructuring to prevent gross manipulation and abuse of the current systems operating within the American government in order to silence victims from trafficking, domestic violence, and sexual violence. So she goes on to say all this and about how her stepdad was abusing her as a child and her mom didn't protect her. Um,

So that but everyone is saying if this is actually you, why are you not just coming on your Instagram and like showing your face? Exactly. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. So she just keeps posting all these things. She's posting comments on her Instagram of people coming and being like, she's she's fine. Like, leave her alone. She just wants to escape.

Yeah. Maybe I'm missing the law, especially in Texas. But wouldn't police have been able to like ask for I.D. and or some sort of physical identification? I mean, like so they did ask for I.D. and the I.D. was an expired I.D. That was hers. But from 10 years ago. So that was the other suspicious thing being like, how did she get on a plane to go to Texas? Yeah. Maybe she's just going to go.

So also reading on her Instagram, she wrote this about her mom, which seems really nice. She said it was on her wedding photo, which was September of 23. She said, most of all, thank you to my mama for going to great lengths to ensure the perfection in every detail of this divine day, basically going on about how much she loves her. So I can't, I don't understand how she just went from,

writing these very, which I know it's Instagram, so it could be fake, but you also don't have to write those things on Instagram if you actually hate your mother. But it doesn't stop there. So naturally I went and I went to, because in her post, she said she was going to pastor Robert Clancy's to get baptized. So I was like, who is this pastor? So I go and he has this YouTube page, which is, has a bunch of followers. What is it? His videos get between

I'd say 5,000. He has some that have 2 million views, 2.7 million, 6.1 million views. So he is more popular than us by far, Chuck. Yes. He's an extremist religious leader who practices exorcisms and starving for weeks to months at a time to find spiritual clarity. Okay. I'm a little nonplussed that there are 2 million people who are interested in that, but okay, keep going. But so basically he has a video up right now that says he's in Texas with a group and they're fasting and they're going on two weeks now.

So Chanel, we haven't seen her, but she could be in Texas with the pastor. She's not home with her husband, her husband. It's unclear who reported her missing, if it was the husband or if it was the family members, because the husband did say in an interview that she was mad at him for calling the police after she didn't return home from the trip. But I don't know what she expected when you're, you know, right. When you're married. Yeah. Anybody married friend, anybody. Yeah. And he, this is his wife and he has not seen her.

He said he spoke to her but has not seen her physically. I think you're going to see more and more of this type of stuff. I think people have just gone insane.

And then today she posted, cause I think people, it was 13 minutes ago. She said, I don't know who needs to hear this, but if you care so much, get off Instagram and stop harassing me and call the cops and ask if I'm missing, let them know your concerns, ask them if not, but two different state police departments came and accepted my expired form of ID for proper verification. Um, she basically was just like, call them and ask. And then if you're still confused and think I'm missing, congrats, you're just a jackass. She wrote that.

That actually sounds kind of real, right? Yeah. I mean, boy, this thing's weird. Very weird. This stuff's always weird. Yeah. I mean, if it wasn't weird, we wouldn't be talking about it. Well, that's why...

All right. All right. Well, Kylie, I am sure you'll stay on it. And I'm sure she may send a restraining order on you for your cyberstalking. But you'll keep on this. I'm not commenting. I'm not liking it. I'm just on the cyberstalker. I'm saying as these things go, by the way, Kylie, you can have an excellent career with the Phoenix Police Department as a detective.

They're hiring. Honestly, there should be more females in the detective department. Oh, 100%. Oh, no doubt. My goodness. 100%. Honestly, females who have best friends who are always dating bad guys, they would be the best detectives because they're always undercover and stuff. Anything else you got for us today, Kylie?

Well, I was going to discuss another missing person's case, but he, Ryan Bogart, I don't know if you guys heard of him. He was the missing kayaker in Wisconsin. Oh, yeah. But now he's in Europe. Yeah, now he's just in Europe. He just ran away. Do you know this story? He left his family. I caught part of it. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean, he left his family behind. And the funny thing is he went through all of the effort to disappear and uses an IED to cross the border.

Right. It was. That's actually what I kind of enjoyed about that story was it was the dichotomy between you had to use a fair lot of brain cells to do the first part of it and not one of them to do the second part. Well, he probably just he probably just didn't know anybody sketchy enough to go get a fake ID. Well, like I. Right. I agree. Look, not to give the criminal class any ideas here, but there's these things called boats. It takes a while.

I don't know. It's amazing. Yeah. So have they actually located him in Europe? Do you know? No, but I think based on their authorities are upset with it. Search and rescue teams have just come out and said it's a waste of time. It's a waste of resources. We've already wasted this much. Did he have kids? He had three kids.

Yeah, I don't know. Again, I just think we're going to see this craziness continue. There's a batch of it. You and I have talked about this for a while, Chuck, that there were people that were just broken by Trump and by COVID when you combine those two things. And now with Trump coming back –

I don't know if those people ever recover, and some of them have just been smashed to a billion pieces. No, no, no. They've been doing it. Well, Jeremy, would you play that clip we gave you? We're going to go on to hear about blue cities. This is from Ezra Klein. He has a podcast on Pod America. He's a progressive journalist, but he's one of the progressive journalists worth listening to. I think he asked some honest, introspective questions sometime. And I'll let Jeremy start. Roll this.

I come from outside Los Angeles. I lived in San Francisco until 18 months ago and I live in New York City. The thing that surprised me least about the election was the sharp red shift in these big cities. Because if you just talk to anybody who lives in them, they are furious. And this idea that like, oh, no, the economy is actually good or crime is actually down. This is all just Fox News. Like, shut the fuck up with that.

Like, talk to some people who live near you. The rage I just hear from people in New York, this is partially Greg Abbott busing huge amounts of migrants here. But that does mean, by the way, there are enough migrants that Greg Abbott could bus actual human bodies to New York City. And it was a big enough problem that New York City was not able to effectively deal with it, right? It does show that what was going on on the border was much worse. I think the Democrats were letting themselves accept for all the cruelty of what Abbott did there.

That was not like an ad campaign. Those were like actual people who would come into the country who were overwhelming border states. The sense of disorder rising, right? Not just crime, but homeless encampments, trash on the streets, people jumping turnstiles in subways, crazy people on the streets.

You just talk to people and they're mad about it. They feel it's different than it used to be. I mean, in San Francisco, like the fury is overwhelming and you see that it's not just the presidential level. London Breed, the SF mayor, just lost reelection. In Oakland, they recalled the mayor.

A bunch of the progressive DAs across the country were recalled or beaten in re-election campaigns. If Eric Adams has a lot of problems, but if he were obviously on the ballot, he would almost certainly, it seems to me, lose. You have to be able to govern well. People don't follow politics, but they live in the place they live.

They see if prices have gone way up and a bunch of economists telling them, no, no, no, no. Don't worry about the price of everything. At least for some people and maybe net net, a slight majority of people, real wages have modestly outpaced inflation is like not going to do it because people feel when they get a raise, that's them. And when prices are going up, that's you, the government. You know, he makes a good point. So let's first talk about the pricing of things. So I was talking to a friend yesterday.

They have three boys in comp sports. And I said, how much have your comp dues and expenses gone up the last two years? She said, 20, 30 percent. And I said, has your household income gone up? Increased 20, 30 percent. No. And we just use comp sports as an example. This is why it matters to suburban voters. But it's food. It's rent. It's, you know, the

The price now for home insurance, Sam, you have some properties. I mean, how much has your insurance increased in two years? It's gone up about 40% in the last two and a half, three years. My medical insurance, I have a good medical insurance. 30%. But $400 a year, I'm at $2,900 a month for nobody claiming anything, right? And so there's that. But can you name one blue city...

That is actually run well. I used to say Boston, but they're falling off the cliff under this mayor who who's now taken over. She just seems to have a woke D.I. agenda. She does. And that's the death knell for these cities. Right. Like you're standing on the edge of total incompetence and then you get that type of leadership and it just pushes them completely over the edge. Right.

No, look, none of these cities are doing well in actual governance anymore. And some of the most surprising things, there's been a few shifts like Dallas-Fort Worth used to be fairly conservatively run. It's gone heavy blue in terms of the leadership. And they're totally out of control. And this is something –

Republicans are not paying attention to. They're not fighting back. And we have this golden opportunity, you know, as we're talking about talking about with our first guest, Victor Jakes, and about the shift in Nevada and about the shift with Hispanics.

But Republicans have to get back in there and show a way to actually govern. Well, you and I have talked about this. There is an opportunity – and Donald Trump just proved this. You and I have said if the Republican Party can start focusing on cities again and start picking up – I'm not going to say you have to win the entire city. But if you go pick up a couple of council people, a couple of saldecisios on there who are budget hawks, law and order people, yada, yada, yada.

And then you force the Democrats to do the same thing. You're going to have better cities. And what Republicans need to understand and Democrats do as well is like he said there, they don't pay attention to politics. They don't need to read it. They're living it. So you don't want to stop off over a bunch of homeless people. You don't want to see needles on the street. You don't want to be scared of walking out at night. You want your garbage picked up. Managing a city is the fundamentals. It's not a social policy experience. Yes.

No, absolutely not. And look, when you get down to it,

If you go back, you hit on the loss, you know, Sal DeCiccio, who's now no longer in office. I ran to replace him after his termed-out loss. That district has gone heavily blue. There's been a dramatic shift in the city of Phoenix since he left the council, even with one conservative member still on a nine-member board. The press would cover him. The press would cover him. It forced people to talk to him. It forced other people to talk to him. The city has gone far more left since he left.

walked away than it was before. Just that one vote, that one voice. Well, Mayor Gallego now is saying she's not going to comply with any – ICE detainers. ICE detainers. People who are here illegally, but she'll spend money on it. Well, but worse than that, it's not – an ICE detainer is not for somebody who's just here illegally. Right. An ICE detainer is for somebody who is here illegally and has committed a violent felony. Violent felony.

So what she's saying she will protect are rapists. She's saying that a rapist from outside the country needs to be protected from justice being done to them by U.S. citizens. Well, I'm telling you something right now. That is something Republican legislative leadership.

That is something the Arizona GOP chairwoman need to highlight weekly. They need to start targeting what she's doing, how she's how she is protecting those who are a threat to the most vulnerable. Well, one thing I think that, you know, if you remember, like the FBI, when the FBI first started really publicizing their top 10 most wanted list and it became a big thing, I really believe and under Trump, I think you could do it. You can get away with it.

I should be publicizing in each communities their top 10 detainers outstanding and put that out to the press. I agree. And for why. So then let the Mayor Gallegos of the world explain why they're protecting this particular murder or that particular multiple rapist case.

or that person who's involved in child sex trafficking. Let them explain with those names sitting right there on the table. I think that is a brilliant suggestion. We need to get that to the powers to be. I think that suggestion a lot. I just think the time to continue to coddle criminality in this country, you have to just end it right now. We're staring down a massive shift in society around the globe.

AI, robotization, all these things are going to massively change. If society is out of control, it's going to be the excuse for people to use those things to implement very totalitarian systems of control. 100%. If society is under control and people feel comfortable and safe, the impetus to do that is far less. I agree.

Well, great segment this week, Sam. On behalf of Sam, myself, Jeremy, and Kylie, thank you for joining us this week. You can find all of our podcast episodes on Substack, BreakingBadGround.vote, or wherever you get your podcasts. Again, have a great weekend, folks. We'll be back next week.