Unveiling Political Hypocrisies and the Biden Administration's $40M Fine Against GCU
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Welcome to another episode of breaking battlegrounds with your hosts. I'm Sam stone joining me in the, she's in the studio. I'm not today. Michelle Ugenti Rita. Uh, thank you so much, Michelle, for joining us. Always a pleasure. Uh, Chuck, Chuck is out of town today. So Michelle is filling in as always. We love having her on the program. Our first guest up today, uh,

Someone I'm looking forward to talking to quite a bit. Sheriff Curry Myers has combined 35 years of professional experience as a law enforcement officer at the state, local and federal level as a criminologist, professor and executive. Ended his law enforcement career as sheriff of Johnson County, Kansas.

the population of more than 600,000. It's one of the largest sheriff's offices in the Midwest, so he has seen it all. And we brought him on today to talk a little bit about some of what's been going on with the funding and background of the Defund the Police movement, Black Lives Matter, all these organizations, and then some of their leadership, which conveniently doesn't have to worry about having fewer cops on the streets.

Because they always seem to find plenty of armed guards to surround themselves with. Dr. Myers, thank you so much for joining us. Welcome to the program. Oh, it's a great pleasure to be on. And it's easy to pay for armed guards when it's not coming out of your paycheck and you're getting to deal with the taxpayers' money, that's for sure. I appreciate being on.

That is maybe the most ridiculous part about this. One of the reasons we brought the sheriff on is to talk about Cori Bush, a representative from Missouri. Sheriff, can you fill our listeners in? What is that background? Because I think that story flew under the national radar and it shouldn't have.

Well, Representative Cori Bush is out of the St. Louis Congressional District in Missouri, funded by George Soros, by the way. In 2022, her now husband, he wasn't the husband at the time, was hired as her chief of security for her campaign, in which she made a little over $62,000 for that year.

And this is according to campaign finance records. But it's interesting enough, when he was interviewed during the election, he mentioned nothing about being involved in her security campaign. And that video came up and that caused some scrutiny in which the Department of Justice ended up getting involved and actually served some subpoenas for Representative Bush on her financial documents. She spent...

Over a half million dollars alone on private security in 2022, despite her ardent support for defunding the police. She's part of the squad, the very leftist group out of Congress that everybody knows about.

And she has been one of these that has constantly been involved in defunding the police. She's constantly involved in trying to let the public know that officers are systematically racist. And she foments violence against police in her words and comments. So she is a pretty bad actor. There is somebody running against her now.

On the Democrat side, a Republican hasn't been elected in that district forever. And she may very well lose that seat because she has gone too far to the left. But we'll see. Soros funding can go a lot away with people to get reelected. There's no question about it.

Yeah, it's not just the funding, but the ground troops that they'll bring in behind her also. Right. I mean, they they spend a lot of money on these elections. We've seen it in Arizona. We've seen it a lot of other states. They have been very effective at promoting this anti-police movement and really driving it. You know, I have to ask everyone because I don't have a good answer to this, Sheriff.

How does this make sense to anybody? Yeah. How does defunding the police make sense to anybody out there?

Well, it doesn't. I think this is where agendas can get out of the hand. So the defund movement kind of began to occur in 2014 right after the Ferguson events. Do you all remember and recall the Ferguson events where the hands up, don't shoot theory occurred and started being purported? Yeah, it became a huge national narrative, but it was entirely false.

It was an entirely false and negative. And as a matter of fact, that officer was investigated fully, had a grand jury investigation. He was found that there was no cause. It was a homicide. He did kill Michael Brown, but he

It was justifiable because Michael Brown was attacking him. But he was investigated by the local prosecutor, the local police. He was investigated by the Missouri State Highway Patrol, which is an extremely professional organization. Prior to me being sheriff, I was a Kansas Bureau of Investigation special agent, and I worked cases on police corruption and police shootings and things like that, as well as homicides. So they have a very good reputation.

The Department of Justice, the U.S. Department of Justice investigated it as well and found no determination that the officer was involved in an illegal shooting. But that officer, basically, it's ruined his life. It ruined his career.

he's really nowhere to be found. He had to leave the department. He had to move away because of the threats that were against him. And so my greater question is what, you know, due process,

has been a major issue in this country. We are losing due process rights for all of us as citizens, but especially police officers when they get accused of crime. They have the right, just like any private citizen, to have due process followed and their constitutional rights followed. And if they're found guilty, then they will get what they deserve.

in those court cases. But in many ways, police shootings officers are actually convicted in the court of public opinion, especially with the advent of social media that we're seeing today.

Did the congresswoman, did she ever have a justification for spending so much money on private security, but then also having this hypocritical position of defund the police? I mean, have these politicians or politicians like her, have they had to be held accountable for being so two-faced?

Well, that's a great question. She has claimed that she has been constantly under threat from individuals, and Congress does have. There has been an increase in threats to public officials. There's no question about that. In the last 10 years, there's been

especially again, social media has become a way for people to be secretive and be able to make threats against people. But the interesting part is the FBI investigates these matters and they didn't have a lot of information coming to them about these threats, because if they did, they would investigate them further. So she's kind of using it as fodder to say, you know, hey, I claim to be

always somebody who's getting threats against it. But in reality, when it came time to pass the muster on whether or not it really occurred, that information wasn't often given to the FBI to follow up. So a non-answer. Yeah. Yeah.

And that is so typical. I think what bothers me the most about this, Sheriff, is that at the end of the day, these folks are deliberately putting the public at risk. We have a crisis in the number of police officers we have on forces across this country.

We have a crisis in how those officers are allowed to interact with the public. They're under such enormous scrutiny that it really makes them, in many cases in many cities, hesitant to intervene in situations unless it's a clear-cut felony taking place. All of this is damaging to public safety, and yet these folks continue to pile on the security for themselves.

Well, the problem with just about every urban community, especially in America, and a lot of people want to focus on gun control, but in reality, I call it the advent of feral man. I'm actually writing a book called The Advent of Feral Man right now that I'm going to release through my Substack page. But it's the wilding that's going on in America due to the lack of faith, family, and formation.

that occurs in our lives today, especially in our children's lives. We've become a country of enablers where everyone is a victim and no one is held accountable for their actions. We have no focus deterrence anymore. And when I say we've become enablers, we've become enablers in our criminal justice system by not holding people accountable. We've let people out on bail

who should not be qualified to be let out on bail. We have eliminated some sentencing guidelines. And the fact that recidivism is important. I'm a big believer in evidence-based policing as a professor and a criminologist. And we don't use data and we don't use real data and information anymore in making our decisions. We make all of our policies based on feelings.

and not based on facts. And if in particular violent crime, the recidivism rate is about 63% in the first three years that an offender, a violent offender will get out of prison, it goes to about 68% after five years. And if you're under the age of 25, it's an 80% recidivism rate. So this coupled with the police defund movement,

And the lack of officers that we have in the street has really become a perfect storm of criminality. And quite frankly, there's areas, and I'm sure you would agree, even in areas that you live, in urban sectors especially, there are no-go zones in every American city that you should not go or there's a good chance that you're going to end up being a victim of a crime.

Yeah, it is one of the most dangerous things because those neighborhoods, I don't think most people understand. Sheriff, you know this as well as anybody. We have only about two minutes left, a little less than the segment here. But police deployments before all this Ferguson effect and all the movement were entirely data driven. When people point out disparities in the number of people being arrested, that was because

Those areas they're patrolling more heavily are the areas we have more reports of crime.

Well, that's exactly the case. And no one wants to talk about black on black crime, but black on black crime is extremely high. And again, a lot of the urban areas, about 70% of the homicides that occurred are black suspects and comparatively about 70% of the victims are black victims. So, and then we have to understand that right now crime is being underreported and

in many areas and a lot of agencies are not actually providing data back to the FBI on current crime issues. So I believe that the crime rate is actually much higher than what is being reported because it's not being reported by victims and it's being underreported by law enforcement agencies.

Yeah, it's an unbelievable problem. We're going to be continuing on with Sheriff Curry when we come back here, folks, in just a moment. But make sure if you're not already, you go to our BreakingBattlegrounds.vote. Make sure you're signed up for our podcast, Breaking Battlegrounds, back in just a moment.

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all right welcome back to breaking battlegrounds folks you've been hearing us talk about why refi for a while now if you haven't gone to their website and learned how you can earn up to a 10.25 percent fixed rate of return that's right up to 10.25 percent six you need to go there right now the the website is invest in the letter y then refy.com that's invest why refi.com or you can give them a call at 888-YREFI24 and tell them chuck and sam sent you

If you're looking to secure your family's future and you haven't made that call or you haven't gone on the website, you need to do that right now. Folks, thank you so much. We're continuing on now with Sheriff Curry. Curry Myers, he is retired law enforcement, 35 years professional experience as a criminologist.

Professor, unbelievable background, ended his career as the sheriff of Johnson County, Kansas, one of the largest Midwestern police departments in the country. Sheriff, right before we went to break, you had alluded to some of the issues with social media and also to

the sort of breakdown in civility and in respect for the law, the breakdown in law and order that's occurring in this country, how much of that, Sheriff, do you think is being driven by social media? Well, I think it's being driven at large measures, and we have to understand that social technology really has been in the last 10 years where it's really taken off. I know we've had social media longer than that, but

But in reality, the last 10 years is when it's pretty much overtaken our lives. In the United Kingdom...

There was a study that showed that about 10 hours a day of teenagers participate in social media, and that includes not only scanning through social media accounts, but video chats, texting, and gaming. And the unintended consequences...

of using these are that when you get addicted to these kinds of social media, you're more likely to be depressed, lonely, and dissatisfied.

uh with your life and and heavy digital media users become kind of a step parent uh to people and it has a definite impact on the family and then you you couple that with the incredibly high divorce rate that we're having in in in the world today in particular in the united states so we have a lot of single-parent families and other non-intact families

And so it not only affects them mentally, it affects obesity rates, alcohol and drug consumption, loneliness and depression that I talked about, and then cooperative behavior. And then if you dive deep into it further, it actually –

And it becomes more of a social contagion. The more you watch, the more you feel like you have to be a part of a movement. And my greatest concern is that we are beginning to see the increase in the dark psychological traits.

in particular the dark triads, which really involves narcissism, Machiavellianism, and certain psychopathy that lead to dysfunctional emotional lifestyle and antisocial tendencies.

And then we see sadism. Sadism, a lot of people, you know, which is the abuse of other people, either physically or mentally. And a lot of people think that has to be done in person. But with the advent of social technology, you can be very sadistic online and use, and it can foster your sadist beliefs and kind of foment that. So

In particular, the dark psychological traits affect male and relatively younger males. It makes them motivated by power. They often use sex as a tool. It develops selfishness and impotence.

and immature defense styles or it couples that with a lack of compassion and empathy and then you have high suicidal ideation and that was done in a study of high school students back in 2015 that found students with the dark tetrad traits that displayed the most anti-social behavior so we are

we are leading through these dark psychological traits a whole different

group of new criminals that will not only commit crime but cause social distress and create problems not only in the home but in the workplace. And there's two places, again, that this can easily be done, and that's through the Internet, and that we're seeing also more mob violence or more criminality that's occurring as well. Michelle, I know you have kids in that age range. How much of a concern is this for you, and have you seen –

an effect on them from social media. What I think is a concern is the anonymity that people have, and we have too many keyboard warriors. So with my kids, what I see a lot is they repeat something and they take it for fact and then come to find out, you know, when I question or prod further, they don't even know

who the source is, or they just take the account at face value. And there is a lack of awareness that, you know, you can put up any social media name and put any picture in the little graphic area on Twitter or Instagram, and you could say that you're an expert. You can say whatever your resume is, and there's no mechanism to prove it or to verify it. And I noticed that my kids...

Sorry, kids, but they repeat a lot. My daughter the other day was like, Mom, do we hate Russia? I'm like, what? I mean, yes, but no, but hold on. Because they're getting inundated with things from accounts that...

purport to be an expert in a particular area. They take it at face value. They think it... They don't know to push back. They don't know that it's all fake. And it is permeating...

the kids' lives, and you find yourself having to argue against TikTok all the time as a parent. When it comes to that in particular, Sheriff Myers, one of the things that I've seen that I'm concerned with is the prevalence of bad police interactions. It seems like every time there's a bad police interaction, it comes up on social media. We only have about two minutes left, so I'll give you a little time to answer here. But

But we don't see the millions of positive interactions or non-confrontational ones. And it's creating a very misplaced perception of police. Well, and that's true. And if you, again, if you look at the data, the data doesn't support it. And just recently there was a Harvard professor who,

And not that his race matters, but he happens to be black, but he's a Harvard professor that did a study on police interactions with the public. And his findings were incredible. I'm not surprised by them as a former police officer myself, but I think it was incredible to the public. He found that actually there was no...

towards systematic racism in policing, which I think you hear that a lot in the media where there supposedly is a link. And he said his data did not support it. We have we've had probably more than 300 on the average, 300,000 interactions with the public every year. That could be potentially use of force interactions.

Less than 1% of those interactions are actually use of force incidents that are actually hands-on use of force incidents. And even a smaller number are a result of someone being killed. So it's not common to have this occur, but again, through social media and media itself,

It seems to foment that there is systematic racism. Sheriff Myers, I apologize. I have to cut you off. How do folks follow you and your work real quick? Thank you very much. DrCurryMyers.substack.com. DrCurryMyers.substack.com. Curry is C-U-R-R-I-E. Myers is M-Y-E-R-S. I have the opinion pieces and I do a weekly podcast. Make sure you sign up, folks. Breaking Battlegrounds back in just a moment.

Welcome back to Breaking Battlegrounds. We're going to be continuing on here in just a moment. But first, folks, you need to go to investwirefi.com and learn how you can earn up to a 10.25% fixed rate of return on your money. You have total access to your principal, 100%, no penalties, no fees if you need your principal back at any time.

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All right. Continuing on here today, our next guest is Stacey Skanky, staff attorney at the Goldwater Institute, talking about something that I almost can't fathom, Michelle, what's going on with this case. So I'm glad to have Stacey on today to talk about it. The Biden administration is finding the nation's most successful private Christian college, Grand Canyon University, GCU, nearly $40 million in

way out of line with signs that they've levied for other things. And this seems really silly. So I'm glad we have Stacey on. Stacey, can you tell us what is GCU accused of? What are the feds saying they did? Yeah. Well, thank you so much for having me. Yeah. So Grand Canyon University is this very successful private Christian college, as you laid out. And the department

Department of Education, sorry. They rolled out this big press release in October of 23 saying that GCU is basically misleading their

PhD students in reading tuition brochures, which, you know, it's kind of interesting because those are going to be the most highly educated students on campus that kind of just can't read fine print. So it's a little weird. And then not only that, it's $40 million or, you know, about that. It's to be accurate, it's $37 million. And

It just doesn't compute with what they're saying. There's pretty flimsy allegations here. What kind of fines should would be more commensurate with, I guess, a pamphlet issue? Historical precedents. Yeah.

Yeah, so the big comparison we've been drawing, because I think it really speaks to what someone might expect, seeing that this is what they've done before. So there was about a $2.4 million penalty for Penn State relating to the sexual crimes of Jerry Sandusky and $4.1 million.

uh from michigan state with larry nassar's sexual assault allegations so those are those are things that we can look to that we know those were big fines at the time and those have you know the sexual assault i mean that's not something to take lightly those are actual victims there's cover-ups there's a lot going on here so this is a giant departure from what we've seen historically can you walk me through what exactly are they saying um

GCU did? Yeah, so they're saying that there's misleading information with the tuition information for PhD students. Now, GCU flatly refutes that. They say all the information is there. It's just in fine print. So again, it's kind of a little bit of a, you know, was it really misleading? Right. And so it turns on our

Are there actual complainants? Are people actually harmed by this? And who are those people? And we're trying to find that out.

Right. Do we know where were there students that brought this or did this come straight from the Department of Ed? So it comes from the Department of Ed. We don't have a number of complaints. We don't know who's come forward to say this. What we do know is that they believe the Department of Ed believe that this was misleading and confusing.

I will get into this, folks, more in the next segment here. But, Michelle, I have a real problem with this. Seems targeted. These are Ph.D. students. Well, everyone knows you got to read the fine print. I mean, they can't. It seems very suspect, the charge is.

The allegation. Yeah. And I want to get into something else that Stacey brought up in a piece she did about this. But that's the fact that GCU has maintained as one of the most affordable colleges in this country. For 15 years, they have not raised their their rates at all.

Is there any other country or university that can say the same thing? I mean, I don't know. Maybe there might be one, but I really don't know. I mean, GCU is famous for this, right? And they are very proud of that program.

ability to keep the tuition low. They graduate students with very, very low debt ratios. They've done a really good job with their finances historically. So if there is a problem, I just don't know that it's $40 million worth.

Unbelievable. Folks, we're going to learn more about this situation when we're coming back here in just a moment. Be sure to check out our website, BreakingBattlegrounds.vote, and you can get Breaking Battlegrounds and our podcast segment wherever you get your favorite podcasts. Breaking Battlegrounds, back in just a moment.

At Overstock, we know home is a pretty important place, and that's why we believe everyone deserves a home that makes them happy. Whether you're furnishing a new house or apartment or simply looking to update and refresh a few rooms, Overstock has everyday free shipping and amazing deals on the beautiful, high-quality furniture and decor you need to transform any home into the home of your dreams. Overstock, making dream homes come true.

Welcome back to Breaking Battlegrounds with your host, Sam Stone. Joining me in the studio today, Michelle Ugenti-Rita. Michelle, thank you so much. She's stepping in for Chuck today. On the line with us right now, Stacey Skanky. She is a staff attorney at the Goldwater Institute. We're talking about the Biden administration fining the nation's most successful private Christian college almost $40 million for something that seems like

At most, it would deserve a hand slap. I mean, when you're talking about a fine of a couple of million dollars to a university who had someone like Larry Nassar there who abused hundreds of students in his time working for that university, and they covered it up. And then here's a university that discloses everything, maybe part of it in fine print, but they disclose everything, and they're hit with almost $40 million? Yeah.

I really do not understand how this makes sense. Yeah, and that's exactly what we're trying to find out. We, just like anyone else in the public, the Goldwater Institute saw this and said it doesn't add up. This is very...

you know, thin allegations. We don't have people who are complaining and it's a successful school. There doesn't seem to be anything here. And yet they're saying this needs to be, they need to be made an example of, and we're going to do, you know, $37 million for a fine. Is there recourse for GCU? What, what can they do? Is there an appeal process? I think maybe you guys are litigating on their behalf, representing them. I mean, what, what are their options?

So I do know GCU is appealing this. They have a process to do that or, you know, fight back in their way. We don't represent GCU. What we're doing is a FOIA request, which is Freedom of Information Act. So again, just like everyone else, when we read this, we were shocked. And so we're asking for that information underlying this investigation. We want to see

emails of these officials in these agencies what were they talking about related to gcu because it does seem to be that there might be some collaboration here with some of these departments um so we're trying to find that and we're also trying to figure out um how many actual complaints are there we want to see how they are supporting this historic fine have they turned over any information

They have not. Okay. Sorry. Yeah, the Department of Education has not turned over anything. What they've done is basically keep us in the dark. Normally, when you do one of these requests, an agency is going to respond within 20 business days, and they'll tell you whether or not they're going to even comply with your request. We don't.

We don't even have that. What they have done is a very generic letter saying it's going to take about 185 days to get an answer of if they will even look at this and comply. They'll get you something after the November election. They probably don't want any kind of additional scrutiny on the federal government.

And I'm not sure exactly, Stacey, what the Goldwater Institute asked for in terms of the FOIA, but generally, if you're just asking for emails, that's something an administrator at the Department of Education should be able to pull up in a matter of minutes. Right.

Yeah, and we do know. So there was a little bit of back and forth in our process where they were asking us to pay a pretty astronomical fee of about $2,000 for their searching, which we're exempt from that, so we didn't need to pay it. But in that, they said that they had found 7,000 documents. So we know there's a lot going on here, and we want to see exactly what those are. 7,000 documents. Can you guess what do we think is going on here?

Well our hunch is that these department officials, these agency officials at the Department of Education, also the FTC, we think they're talking about GCU and having a targeted attack towards them. And so we want to see proof of that. And if there's nothing there, there's nothing there. But it seems really suspicious and the public deserves transparency.

Well, 7000 emails suggests an awful lot of back and forth between the various bureaucrats on this issue. Why? And I know there's been sort of a target on GCU's back from the Department of Education. Is that because GCU is doing a better job educating than a lot of the state and government tied schools?

It certainly looks that way, right? They are private. So that's at odds with just general public ed. They are keeping tuition costs low. They're graduating successful students. They have successful, you know, after they graduate, they continue in their employment. They've had great, you know, statistical evidence of their success in that way. And they

they help the community out in Arizona. So it's, they've done so much and so much success. They don't do DEI. You know, there's just so much that I could say. And that is in very stark contrast to what you see in most public education, most higher ed. You know, they're just indoctrinating students. They're, you know, struggling. They're not getting good graduates. People are

People are, you know, feeling that they're not getting a quality education. So it seems like this is kind of, you know, in the face of the Biden administration. It's against what they're standing for and trying to prop up. And they're being successful doing it their way.

I once worked for the superintendent in Oklahoma. She had a great word for the education establishment. She called it the blob. It's kind of this nationwide network of state, local school officials with the Department of Ed. And I got to tell you, everything about this strikes me as the kind of thing they would do to put down a rival who was showing that their systems weren't working.

Yeah, I mean, it does. I think it would be it's just hard to get around how they're not targeting GCU. Right. Like this seems very pointed to them. Yeah, it's very strange. Now, are there any other examples like this where they've targeted a university for this type of thing?

You know, not that I am aware of, and probably more importantly for this matter, is certainly not to this degree with this egregious fine. I mean, $40 million is not something to joke about. It is astronomical, and they've done nothing like this before. So they definitely are making an example out of GCU and really trying to, you know, stop them in their tracks. So...

When they're doing this, aren't they required to start with a complainant or somebody coming to them to initiate or can they initiate this type of action without one?

Well, I know they do have authority under the Higher Education Act, so there is some leeway in what they're able to do and how they can do their investigations. But I think one of the things that struck me here is that in whatever investigation they've done, you know, obviously there's a little bit of lack of transparency here because we don't have these emails, but...

They also didn't contact GCU. GCU apparently has invited them and said, please come to our campus. Please come meet with us, talk with us, have a phone call with us. And they didn't do that. So it's really interesting how they kind of took this backseat approach and still levied this giant fine. So GCU was just what they read about in the paper. They just were caught off guard. They had very little heads up that this was coming down.

Well, I don't know exactly what GCU was thinking or if they knew that this was in the pipeline, but I would wager to guess that they did not expect $40 million. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, this is crazy. I...

I'm still sort of trying to make heads or tails out of this thing, because at the end of the day, if the purpose of college is to give someone an education that they can leverage into a successful career and a successful life, GCU appears to be doing as good a job as anybody. And I would also imagine that when this come after like several warnings and then the university, you know, brushing off those warnings, not complying, you know, this this also seems bizarre in the sense that.

It's very significant and out of the blue. And there was no buildup, or at least it doesn't sound like there was any buildup or lead into such a large fine. They had no opportunity to cure.

Yeah, as far as I'm aware, yeah, there was nothing publicly announced about anything going on. Maybe behind closed doors there was a little bit of a tip. But I do know GCU has had some back story with the Department of Ed. They have a history of kind of arguing over their status of nonprofit or for-profit. So, I mean, there's a lot here at play that really sets up targeting Grand Canyon University.

So where right now are you with the Goldwater Institute in this process? Is there some kind of general timeline you think when we'll learn more about

Yeah, so we've filed our complaint in Arizona District Court. And again, this is just for the Freedom of Information Act part of what we're doing because GCU has their own fight. So we're trying to hold the government accountable, have some transparency here, get some answers. And they didn't. And therefore, we've sued over this to compel the documents. Now, they're going to have an opportunity to answer our

our complaint. And so we'll see kind of where we go from there, what they'll say. You know, they'll have their opportunity to kind of present their side and we'll go from there. Interesting. Okay. Well, go ahead, Michelle. No, I'm looking forward to seeing what their justification or response is.

Yeah, we think it'll be. Oh, sorry. Oh, no, go ahead. Go ahead. Yeah, we think it'll be really interesting to see what they say, particularly in response to the emails where we're alleging that there's this, you know, FTC and Department of Ed kind of involvement and talking amongst each other. And we do know that there's 7000 responsive documents. So it'll be really interesting to see what they say about all that. Absolutely. Yeah.

You're going to have a lot of reading coming up if they produce those. Absolutely. And we will be reading all of them. Hopefully not highly redacted. Yeah, that's always a risk. But obviously the public is entitled to answers. So we're going to do our best to get the public the information they deserve.

Stacey, what are some other things that the Goldwater Institute is working on right now? Because I don't know if enough people out there, we're now coast to coast with breaking battlegrounds. If you're not an Arizona resident, you may not be familiar with Goldwater. Can you give us a quick background of the Institute and what your focus is?

Yeah. So, I mean, we are constitutional law. We do both policy, which is the legislative side, and then we do litigation, which is what I do. And we focus on limited government and kind of anytime there's an overreach in education, health care, property rights, free speech, any of those kind of big core issues will be there. And we'll look at it either from the policy side or from the litigation side and seeing what we can do for the public.

Some of the cases that I've worked on are property rights, something local to Arizona. We have it's called a Prop 207 claim for Holbrook, where the city of Holbrook passed an ordinance affecting a motel owner's property rights and did not pay him for that impact to his land.

So we have things like that. I know we've talked about ASU. They are doing DEI indoctrination for their faculty and staff. They're requiring them to take particular DEI courses, which is against Arizona law. So we have those things that I'm working on. I'm mostly focused on Arizona with the exception of this case. And then we have things all over the nation in all topics.

We have just about two minutes left here before we come to the end of the program. How do people follow you and your work and that of the Goldwater Institute?

First place to go is our website. So we have thegoldwaterinstitute.org. We do also have our social medias like everyone else does. And they're kind of fun if anyone wants to check them out. Like I know we have on our YouTube, we have our Vice President Timothy Sandefur. He does some things called Foundations of Freedom. He talks about kind of these ideals, these principles that we're very passionate about. And, you know, a whole sort of other things. And you get to see all of what we do.

Fantastic. Thank you so much, Stacey Skanky with the Goldwater Institute. Really appreciate you having you on here. Michelle, this is a crazy thing they're doing with GCU. This is targeted. I mean, I'm going to say it. Yeah, this is outrageous. And it's not in line with anything else. 7,000 emails. Something's going on. Yeah, that's an awful lot of conniving potential right there. That's a lot of CYA. Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. Folks,

Again, make sure if you're not subscribed to our podcast, you do it because you get an extra episode with every week's show and you don't want to miss it. BreakingBattlegrounds.vote or wherever you get your favorite podcast. Breaking Battlegrounds will be back on the air next week.

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All right, welcome to the podcast segment of Breaking Battlegrounds with your Sam Stone. In studio today, the beautiful and talented Michelle Ugenti-Rita. I should mention you're also running for office. Board of Supervisors. Got to break up the county cartel. Maricopa County Board of Supervisors. The infamous Maricopa County Board of Supervisors. We need you on there to clean up that mess. Oh, I'm going to do it. I'm excited about it. District 2.

You know, folks, Michelle, where's your website? How do people, they should be staying in touch with your work here. Yeah. Helping you get that seat. You know, I bought this domain name years ago, so it's a good one. It's an easy one. Electmichelle.com. Oh, that is good. Yeah, electmichelle.com. I'm kind of jealous. You got in on that at the right time. Right, I know, I know. So, yeah, check me out there, or you can Google my name, Michelle Ugenti-Rita.

Some of it's true, some of it's not, you know. You mean you've been in politics long enough to have enemies? Right. The press doesn't like me, but that's all right. That means you're doing something. That is a badge of honor. That is so true. So true.

Kylie, do we have a Kipper's Corner for today? Of course we do. The crazies are back. It's been a little sane lately, but the crazies are back. And I want to touch on, I talked about Charlotte the stingray last week. She's still pregnant. She has not given birth, so it's still unknown if she gave birth to a shark baby or to a self... A shark ray or a stingray. Yeah, or a stingray. But anyways, yeah, so...

Thursday, so just yesterday, but if you're listening to this on a later day, this Thursday of last week, a University of Georgia student was found murdered just behind the intramural fields on campus. And so basically what happened was she went for a run. She's 22 years old. She was supposed to finish her undergraduate this year and then go on to nursing school.

in the upcoming year. But she went on a run around 9 a.m. and around noon, her roommate called the police and reported her. She had not come back and she couldn't get a hold of her. But for those of you that don't remember or don't know, AT&T and other services had an outage yesterday. So there's a little speculation that maybe she did try to call for help, but there was no service. And I did personally. I had no service as well. So I know that's true.

But so, yeah, the campus is shut down. They don't know who did it and they're still looking for the murderer. So this will be an ongoing conversation that we'll have to keep tabs on. I have to imagine there's some video, right? It happened on campus. Don't you have like a thousand video cameras taping every move? You would think. Yeah. And just so I was on Twitter doing my sleuthing like I usually do. And my favorite reporter, Brian Enten, he actually goes he goes to campus.

the location and starts videoing and trying to figure out what happens. He does really good reporting. He's with News Nation. I'd give them more credit if Cuomo didn't work there. Actually, I gotta say, since Cuomo started there, he's actually done some interesting work. Now, some of it's just his normal leftism. He's had a couple of segments where I'm like,

hmm man this guy's this guy's a lot better now that he doesn't work for the big corporate media yeah but anyways so four days ago he's still full of them yeah but four days ago someone had posted an article about a girl who was on campus who was approached at gunpoint to a guy who tried to rob her and she had actually convinced him somehow to allow her to make a call and was like i can actually get you more money this girl's

really good under pressure I would just crumble but she was like I can get you more money so let me call my roommate and she'll bring it to you and she was actually calling the police and the police had then arrested him and he's still under or he wasn't left on bail or anything so he's still arrested however this just happened like three days prior to this and there hasn't been a murder on campus in 20 years so I don't know if there's some kind of connection or something going on there but

like a little criminal circuit going on. Yeah, yeah. And the Twitter trolls, they're out. They started releasing people that just got released from jail early. So there's been murderers who just were released last week, actually, that were supposed to serve 30 years and they were out at 15 years on good behavior. Well, we just talked about that earlier on in the radio show. Yeah. Well, you know, I actually...

The whole thing, you know, with letting people out, let's be honest, we do a bad job of decriminalizing people in our prisons. The anti-recidivism programs we have are a mixed bag of how well they work. There's a point you just have to keep dangerous people in jail.

I agree. Some people are never changing. But a few, probably like a few months ago, I talked about Ruby Frankie. She was the mom from Utah who was abusing her kids. So she got sentenced for,

Sentencing from four to 60 years in jail. And if you listen to her now, she pled guilty. She took, you know, whatever it was. But if you hear her now and what she's talking about, she's saying all the right things. So this is something to keep an eye on because I have a feeling she's not serving nearly 60 years. I want to know your opinion. Do you think that she...

Is a horrific child abuser. I mean, so I think the woman she had like a therapist. I think that woman is and that Ruby has no backbone and is easily manipulated and did that to her children. It's disgusting. It's horrible. She typed them up. Yes. She had a therapist that suggested doing this. Yeah. Yeah.

A YouTube therapist. So they were both on YouTube. Were they dating? There's some speculation. It's always weird. Yeah. Speculation about that. But yeah. So if there's videos on YouTube of them teaching you how to parent.

And so supposedly she had gone to her because she had a troubled child or troubled children. And these are the tactics. Tape their legs up, lock them in a room, don't feed them for days and they'll be good. You know, like those that's what she was teaching. And these people were on the Internet teaching other parents. She had like millions of followers. Again, we talked about this just with the sheriff, social media and the influence and that, you know, people say they're an expert. They put they...

you know, they say they have a certain resume, their quacks. And I'm totally guilty of what your kids have done. However, I will preference. I'll say, look, I've done no further research, but this is what I heard. Yeah, that's what I get all the time. Mom, I heard this is what I read. I didn't actually read it. I probably did see it on polar bears going extinct. No, don't ask me again.

Yeah, I thought expertise was just a matter of how many followers you have. Honestly, that's what... Right, on social media. Exactly. That's insane. Okay, we want to get to one more thing with you, Kylie, here, the Gilbert Goons, but I'm going to throw a curveball at you. Did you catch this about this serial killer that they just caught in Arizona or this potential serial killer? You can't tell me that. No, I didn't. I haven't seen this. Oh, well, you're missing a good one. So apparently this guy...

had killed two women in New York City. This is the Rachel Mitchell brouhaha, the Maricopa County attorney. And then he came out to Arizona and stabbed two more women in Arizona. Fortunately, both are still alive.

Um, and then was caught by police at Scottsdale fashion square. Oh my gosh. I was going to go there today. I'm always there. Um, no, actually I just heard about this last night from Rachel, but I didn't know what she was talking about. So I kind of, but now I'll need to look into it. So yeah, I think we're going to need details. I got you. Yeah. Okay. Next week. Well, Arizona, you know, the crazies are back. We do have the Gilbert goons and, um,

For those that don't know what the Gilbert Goons is, it's basically a gang of Gilbert kids, majority white,

There are people of color. Middle class up. A lot of their parents, there's been reports that their parents own some large businesses. I'm not going to dox them quite yet until they're guilty. But there's businesses in Gilbert that they own. Responsible journalist. Just trying not to get sued. I'll dox you later. Yeah, I'll dox you once you're guilty. Yeah.

But yeah, so they were reported to have been covering up. So I had been waiting to report on this because it was really hard in the beginning to find information. So kids were releasing names like this person's part of the Gilbert goons, this person, this person. And then when you would go and search their names, the stuff was being removed from Google, from Twitter, from TikTok, Instagram, their names became unsearchable. But when you would go on Google and say this, like this link has 39 million views and then there was nothing on the link.

So their parents were going deep to get this covered up. And they actually ended up arresting around 10 to 12 kids. But there's a dad in Gilbert whose son was beat up and his son now lives in another country because these kids would threaten. If you go to the cops, if you do this, we'll kill you. We'll kill your family.

They would show pictures, Snapchat pictures of guns. They had, they're not the brightest. They had group chats called the Gilbert goons on Snapchat, on text messages. And so this dad is actually really mad now because one of the guys who was videotaped, the video came straight from his phone.

He was seen in the video winding up a punch, but then the video cut off, so he was never seen throwing the punch. This kid has since been released and not being charged. And I believe the son named and identified several of his attackers. So you had...

um, the victim IDing the perpetrator or perpetrators and then the Gilbert police department shelving these cases. And because this has been happening for over a year. Oh yeah. From the cases that we have heard and the reports that, you know, they've told the principals, there's a report that one of the kids is a principal's son. Won't say which one, but, um,

I'm a principal's daughter, so. Okay. But I never did any of this. I was a good kid. We'll dox you later. We'll dox you later. There's no protection as the principal's kid anyways. That's even worse. Yeah, no, my dad was like, if you mess up, this is on me and I'll throw you under the bus. I'm like, ah.

I think I would have been like, yeah, can I go to that school over there on the other side of the town? I tried. I tried. I have very strict parents. But this all coming to a culmination or a point when Preston Lord, a young minor in Queen Creek, was confronted on Halloween night, I believe, by a group of individuals, attacked, and he subsequently died from his injuries. Yeah, so he was the first person to pass away from these injuries, but

So that's ultimately what led to the police actually doing something, regardless of how many accounts there were prior to this happening. Now, there's some controversy, though, right, about them arresting minority children who were part of this before they've arrested the white kids. Yes, they did. That's the Arizona Republic saying that there's a controversy. And that's why I'm asking Kylie, because she's our...

What do you say? I mean, I do personally think that they had less protection because there were wealthier kids that were involved in this. And so I do think there was less cover up for those kids or maybe, you know, these kids thought we throw these guys under the bus. And because at that point, these are like 16 year old boys.

I think they're thinking every man for themselves. So if you're in there in an investigation, you're like, who's going to be the easiest to get arrested? And I don't know if that's true, but I think these kids had less protection. However, the first...

one or two kids arrested it makes a lot of sense that yeah if they don't have the high-powered lawyers that some of these other lawyers yeah you know and parents and you know high places so one of the first two kids arrested admitted to being a gilbert goon told them you know this is told him the information that he had um and his mom actually went on and did an interview and was like my kid is not a part of the gilbert goons he would never do this and so it's like

He already admitted to it and she's trying to backtrack it and say he didn't, he wasn't a part of it. So, you know, I don't feel bad when these are the parents and I feel bad for the victims and obviously in this case, but it's, it's a strange story that keeps evolving. Yeah. It's very strange. I mean, this is, this is going to show up on 48 hours or did, you know, some detective show later on because there's so many people,

moving parts and it keeps unfolding. I mean, there is so many layers to it right when you think you have all the pieces. There's some new component and... Yeah, I just don't understand how it got this out of control. Right. And if people don't know what Gilbert is, Gilbert is perceived as a very safe family community. Very safe.

They brag about it. They talk about it all the time about how safe they are. It's a bedroom. It's a middle class and up bedroom community with almost very little crime compared to the rest of Maricopa County. I don't know, Kylie, we may have to get you a video camera and send you out to do the documentary on this because someone's going to do one. That's what I'm saying. This is prime for a documentary, some Netflix series or something. I'm going to go interview the kiddos.

See what was going through their minds. Or not going through their minds might be more accurate, right? Yeah. Yeah. That's, yeah. I feel like you got to be an idiot to do this stuff in the first place. You have to be. And violent. It's, you know, it starts with the parents. So...

One of the kids' parents, there's some crazy rumors out about them. And they also, I think actually one of the parents' dad was arrested. So there was two sons arrested, two brothers, and their dad was also arrested. Which there's reports of two or three years ago, their house has already been raided by the FBI for drugs and such. So, allegedly, yeah.

And apparently, I did catch that little bit. So apparently when they searched the house for this kid and his belongings or whatever, they discovered the dad had a bunch of drugs and whatnot in there. So he's probably cursing on his kid. Yeah. Well, maybe he should have cursed at his kid a little earlier. Well, he raised him.

Yeah. So, Michelle, before we wrap up today, there's obviously a lot going on. Joe Biden is now threatening executive action on the border, which I think is kind of hilarious because it's a perfect admission that he can stop the flow of illegal immigration. Right.

This bill they had was a joke. It basically legalized the invasion that's coming to this country. It was basically an open borders piece of legislation. And darn James Lankford, who's been a guest on this show, for giving it the imprimatur of bipartisanship. But now the problem obviously is continuing and accelerating, and Biden may actually have to try to do something with authority he has.

Right. So do it, you know, do it. There's just so I mean, this is to me, this is such obvious pandering and, you know, a lot of chest pounding, but very little action. To your point, the federal government, President Joe Biden could absolutely take action, significant action at the invasion happening down at the border. Doesn't want to, you know, it's they're hiding behind this barrier.

big, giant bill. And you don't need that. I mean, either secure it or not. And we're seeing that same fight here in Arizona. So we have the legislature introducing, putting up legislation to secure the border to protect Arizona citizens. And then, you know, it's going to be met with a veto by Katie Hobbs, which is our governor here in Arizona. But simultaneously, she goes to social media and the news outlets and

and says things like we need to control the border and the flow of immigrants can't even say illegal immigrants that's the problem illegal the flow of illegal immigrants Katie Hobbs if you can't say that then I'm concerned that you don't have a understanding of what's actually happening

You know, they talk about the humanitarian crisis. But when push comes to shove, nothing, no action. You'll see nothing. Just throwing dollars at it. That's what the Democrats do. They throw dollars at problems. Education, throw money. And they change work. Yeah.

I mean, we're talking about, as you said, illegal immigrants or as I would even say, illegal aliens. Exactly. But no one who says that is accusing them of being from Mars. Right. Democrats act like that's like some accusation. When you say that, you're like, no, I'm not talking about space aliens. I'm using the English language to define what it is. Right.

Right. So they hide behind kind of this or they use the more flowery, you know, humanitarian crisis. And sure, there's a humanitarian crisis caused by illegal aliens in a porous border because we are overrun. We have limited resources. It needs to be in control. I mean, this is an issue that's not going away. That's been a top three issue for decades.

And you know what gets me, Michelle? One of the primary claims of people coming here and claiming asylum status is they're fleeing violence in their home countries. They're fleeing the breakdown of law and order, right? Yes. Look around this country and what we just talked about with the sheriff. We are experiencing a breakdown of law and order. We're experiencing it at our border. We're experiencing it in our cities. We're experiencing it online.

So I'm not even sure how you make that claim anymore, because as the what was it, Naeem Bukhali, the president of El Salvador, is it? I was just right back yesterday. Right. Talking about this, they've gone from the most dangerous country in the Western Hemisphere to the safest country in the Western Hemisphere in under two years. That's incredible.

And he put people in jail. That's what he did. He built new jails. He put people in them. And he made sure that everyone knew if you committed crimes in that country and violent crimes in particular, you were going to pay the price. Well, right. I mean, this lawlessness. And we talked about the defunding, the defund the police movement. I mean, if our statutes don't matter, if it doesn't matter that you have to be a citizen to vote, if it doesn't matter that you have to be a, you know, a

to come across the border legally through the front door the right way, then what does matter? And it is a breakdown of law and order, but of our societal fabric, and we're seeing the repercussions. I mean, we can overcome it, but not with the Democrats in control. They like the chaos and the breakdown.

Yeah, we're at the point. So about a few months ago, based on the numbers, about six million had come through. That was one in every 50 people in this country. Yeah. Now we're at like one in every 35. Think about that. If you put a bus of any American citizens together right now, you're going to get an illegal who came here under Joe Biden. Right. That's insane. Yeah.

Well, in the story that Chuck just sent us a couple days ago, it says the gang of illegal immigrants target high-end Phoenix homes in burglaries. And this is happening up in Scottsdale as well. Right. Where there was a, I think, a group of immigrants. From like Chile or something? Yes. Burglarized. I've heard of...

I've heard a lot of people online suggesting, without evidence, so this is that whole going back to the kids, right? Allegedly. Allegedly, that all these countries in Africa and Latin America are basically emptying their prisons and sending them north into the United States. Now, I haven't seen any actual proof of that.

But would that be so far-fetched if you're a country, you're spending a lot of money to keep people in jail, and you can just ship them to the U.S. and get rid of your problem? That doesn't sound so bad. Yeah, we've got enough problems on the home front. We don't need to borrow anyone else's problem. We've got our own crazies that I discuss each week on Kylie's Corner. So stay tuned.

Yeah, it's bad. It could be a potential liability for the Democrats coming into the November election if they don't have a better answer than putting up, you know, fluffy bills. It darn well should be. Should be a referendum on them. Yeah, they should be paying the price for this. We'll see. Well, folks, thank you so much for joining us today. Really appreciate everyone who tuned in. Michelle, thank you again, as always. We love having you.

And Kylie, fantastic work as usual. I think we're going to have to dig into that serial killer a little bit. Yep, I got you next week. Don't worry.

Okay, perfect. Well, folks, make sure, again, if you're not already there, I'm just going to keep repeating it. I'm going to repeat it over and over. I'm going to keep saying it. You can go to our website, BreakingBattlegrounds.vote. Sign up. Sign up for the sub stack. You get a lot of pieces from Chuck. You get the occasional piece from me and some guest authors also. And you also get this podcast segment. You don't want to miss any of it. BreakingBattlegrounds.vote or wherever you get your favorite podcasts.