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The Clay Travis and Buck Sexton Show
It's a Numbers Game: The Numbers Behind Minnesota’s Billion-Dollar Welfare Fraud Scandal
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This is an iHeart podcast.
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Hey, this is Sarah. Look, I'm standing out front of a.m. p.m. Right now and well, you're sweet and all, but I found something more fulfilling, even kind of cheesy. But I like it. Sure you met some of my dietary needs, but they've just got it all. So farewell. Oatmeal so long, use strange so break.
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Up with bland breakfast and taste AM PM's bacon, egg and cheese biscuit made with K tree egg, smoked bacon and.
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Melty cheese on a buttery biscuit.
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AM P M. Too much Good stuff.
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Welcome back to a numbers Game with Ryan Garduski. Thank you guys for being here. It is December 8, 2025, just 17 days till Christmas. I hope you are all having a very healthy and happy holiday season and getting prepared for whatever holiday you're celebrating. I have done zero Christmas shopping whatsoever so far, so I'll be in a full blown panic by next week. Anyway, before I get into the topic of the day, I want to talk to the young men who are listening or to parents who have young sons or nephews and they're looking for a job and a place. It is a very rough time in America to sit there and find a job, especially for a young person. I, I talk to young people all the time. I came across a story over my feet and I was flabbergasted by it and I wanted to sit there and share it with you guys. The US Is facing a shortage of Merchant Marines. Now, what is a Merchant Marine? They're civilians who operate commercial ships, transporting cargo and passengers globally, handling navigation, maintenance and providing services crucial for trade and military support. The government is desperate to find new merchant Marines. According to the New York Times, only 810 people graduated coastal Guard qualifications to work on vessels last year. You may say, ryan, I never thought about this. Why would I want this job? Salaries are well into the six figures figures for the Military Seal of Command, which was taken out of regular service last year because the lack of civilians to work on these boats. The salary was $220,000 a year for first officers along with a $71,000 signing bonus and six months of paid leave offshore. Now it is tough work when you're on the boat. It's a lot of long hours, you know, tough days. But six months, you know, paid leave, $200,000 a year. I think for a lot of young men who are sitting there maybe listening to show or you're a mom or dad and you're like what could my kid do? I just think that this might be a good way just to give it a shot. Look at this. Especially if you're young and you know, you want something to start in the economy where you can provide for a family, buy a house one day I thought I would share because I know a lot of people out there are really confused and are looking for something and hey, 200 grand a year, not a bad, not a bad job. So anyway, let's get to politics now. So a story bro. Back on November 19th by City Journal the writers Christopher Rufa and Ryan Thorpe wrote a story about Somalians living in Minnesota. Dozens of Somalians created a billion dollar plus welfare fraud scheme one of the largest in the nation's history. And millions of these dollars ended up in the hands of the terrorist group Al Shabaab back in Somalia. Now if you guys remember your history, Minnesotans in Somalia had one of the largest recruiting groups in the entire country were trying to join ISIS back in 2011-2016. The story got moderate play when it was broken by journal and Manhattan Institute but by the New York Times got a hold of the story it received widespread attention. According to the Times quote over the last five years law enforcement officials say fraud took root in pockets of Minnesota's Somalian dysoria as scores of individuals made fortunes by setting up companies that build state agencies for millions of dollars worth of social services that were never provided. End quote. Now this story comes just a year after turn of the Somalian community in Minnesota had another widespread fraud case back when during COVID where they were receiving funds to feed hungry children and it turned out that none of the children even existed. The money was completely being stolen. One of those ringleaders was a woman named Ayun Akbar who received a quote refugee of the year award from Tim Wolves Governor Tim Waltz, Minnesota Kamala Harris's former running mate. Yes, Minnesota has so many refugees and they need to constantly promote this idea of how wonderful they give a refugee of the year award. Then of course this story not only came out but we had the shooting of the National Guardsmen by the Afghan national in D.C. and what followed was Trump's immigration moratorium for more than it does in countries including Somalia. Trump, being Trump, used some spicy language about Somalians. He said, quote, somalia stinks and we don't want them in our country, end quote. Now this led to governor Tim Waltz saying how wonderful the Somalis were in Minnesota, how they're pillars of the community. You know, one local reporter was weeping on camera, basically reading the statement out loud. The New York Times has published op EDS talking about how, you know, white westerners who multi generational Minnesotans look up to the Somalian communities as real beacons of pride that they are part of their community. Kstp, which is a Minnesota website, Minnesota news website, wrote a piece called Somali Minnesotans generate at least $500 million in income annually and pay about $67 million in state and local taxes. Well, this is why people hate the media. There are 54,000 Somali adults living in Minnesota. That means the average Somali adult makes $9,000 a year, according to what you're, what you're putting out there. Of course that would be true. Only a third of Somalians in Minnesota are not even working. So it's probably close to 20,000 Aussie of those who are actually even in the labor participation force. And that means about per person they're paying $1,250 in taxes per year. Somalian immigrants send $300 million a year back to Somalia. So they are sending five times more money to Somalia than they are to the tax coffers in Minnesota. And that's considered a fair trade to the liberal media. They stole more money from the federal government in the last few years and they will contribute over the next decade in local and state taxes. These people are idiots. I wish. I mean, part of me sits there and says they don't know what they're writing about, but I genuinely think that they write this in a way to make sure that the general public doesn't know how bad certain pop pockets and populations are when it comes to contributing to the overall national wealth and gd, not only just gdp, but GDP per capita, the wealth of the country, the tax dollars, how many per capita join the military. All of these indicators, they're lying. They're completely lying. And the fact that any dysphoria in our country is contributing more to a foreign government than to our own local and state speaks volumes. This is why people hate the media. They gin up the story to build sympathy. When anyone with a brain cell can do a calculation and say, wow, that's Crazy. An impoverished group of people. Why do we import so many of them? And that's what our immigration system does. They regularly imports poverty. So naturally, as it is the case that whenever anyone criticizes anything to do with immigration, any group within immigrants, liberals have to sit there and scream from the rooftops, we are a nation of immigrants. We can't survive without immigrants. Immigrants built this country. And all the slogans from the 70s and 80s that only, only a population that truly incapable of actually thinking about what they're saying would actually utter out loud. They try to make people, especially college educated people, ironically feel that the most patriotic thing that they could do is import millions of third worlders with no link to this country and then insist that they built it over the success of ancestors that have been here for generations. And the worst part of this ritualistic practice were people whose, you know, whose, whose ancestors are responsible for 75% of all the technological and medical advancements in the entire world are, is that, you know, they're, they're comparing them to people who never built a railroad system. I mean, that's the truth. If when you look at most of what Somalia not only has contributed to the world, but Somalia's own interior construction, their own bridges and tunnels and rail stations, the one I think that they have is most of them are built by the Italians in the 90s. Very little was actually contributed. Or the Chinese recently. But aside from the Chinese and the Italians, not much was contributed actually by Somalians to build their own country. And yet they claim they built ours. Of course. Well, here's the thing about immigrants. They are not. Immigrants are not a bag of oranges. Right? You don't have to take them all because you want one or two. Some immigrant groups do incredibly well in this country. They're prosperous, they have low crime rates.
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They.
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They add some into some needed fields like medicine and technology, and then others do not. You know, when so often you sit there and you hear about immigrants founding billion dollar businesses, do you know how few countries those immigrants come from? 25 immigrants from Israel have gone on to found a billion dollar business in the U.S. 21 from China, 18 from Ukraine, 17 from Canada. Anyone want to guess how many immigrants from Somalia founded a billion dollar business in the US what about Mexican immigrants? Let's take a huge population, the largest actually of any immigrant group. How many Mexican immigrants do you think founded a billion dollar business in the us? What about all of Central America, whole region? The answer for that question is actually two. And both of them were Taiwanese immigrants whose Parents moved to Honduras, sorry, Guatemala, before moving to the United States. But they were both Taiwanese ethnics. So despite the US taking in over 15 million people from Mexico and Central America, none aside from Taiwan, those two Taiwanese immigrants have founded a billion dollar business in the U.S. one out of every 6,000 immigrants from Israel has founded a billion dollar business. You have a better chance of getting struck by lightning twice than you do of having Mexican and Central American immigrants in this country founding billion dollar unicorn businesses. And yet we insist that we must take in endless supplies because they could do anything, even though there's no evidence that they will. Going back to Somalians, the average Somali immigrant has a net lifetime fiscal impact of negative $300,000 per immigrant. A Somali refugee, not legal immigrant, but refugee, is negative $400,000 over the course of their lifetime. And even when you get to second generation, the net positive impact is about $100,000. So you need two to three generations to pay for the first generation of immigrants and four generations, three to four generations to pay for the refugee. Does that make any sense? Somali immigrants also have one of the highest crime rates in the United States. According to the American Community Survey, Somali immigrants have a higher incarceration rate than any class of illegal immigrants, legal immigrants, and every race and ethnicity in America, aside from American blacks, who have one of the highest incarceration rates in the entire world. And according to the Minnesota Chamber of Commerce, over the course of two decades from 2000 to 2018, despite intense amount of financial, both private and public resources to help build and grow the the Somali community in Minnesota, Somalian median household income went from $22,000 a year in the year 2000. This is household income, $22,000 a year in 2020 to $25,000 a year in 2018. And that's with an increasing workforce participation. High school graduations went from 54% to 57%, with billions being spent to encourage them to stay in high school, high school, not college, high school. And the poverty rate still looms close to 50%, although it is down from 63% in the year 2000. So once again, why are we not allowed to talk about immigrant groups accurately? Why are we not allowed to lay out the numbers and say, here's where immigrant groups perform on crime, welfare dependency, poverty, education, social mobility, social capital. This is not a net benefit to our country. Even if a few occasionally open up, you know, a decent ethnic restaurant. That does not justify bringing in tens of thousands of people. And by keeping Americans in the dark on the actual statistics lumping all immigrants into the same quote, unquote bag of oranges that I alluded to earlier. It allows the American tax dollar to be ripped taxpayer to be ripped off by these groups that have no reason to be in our country. It loves the most successful immigrants with the least successful and says you must take all of them. There is absolutely no difference. And if you see a difference, it is a racial issue for you. Let's have an honest discussion based on the data. This is not about hating Somalians. I don't hate Somalians. I don't even really, I don't think I know a Somalian. But I love America. And Minnesota was once one of the highest, you know, social trust states in the country. It was a thriving, you know, state. It was the state that, you know, rose from the golden girls, came from where? It was Norwegian. Norwegian. They had a social welfare program that had high levels of trust and enormous people paying into the system that they had done back in Scandinavia back when their parents and grandparents had come to the come to the state. It is being abused and ripped off and that culture that built those systems will fall apart because no one trusts each other. Because you have brought in communities of people with immense low social trust that sit there and use the system to scam Americans. Importing tens of thousands of Somalians was not the smartest move. And only now can we sit there and have a conversation and say, one, how do we deal with those here who shouldn't be here, who probably scammed to even get in the country, and two, like maybe somebody member of Congress who married her own brother? And two, how do we sit there and work to make sure that this does not happen with future immigrant groups? Because there's a lot more of them that have not yet made it to the United States that would love to get here. Up next with me on this podcast is the man who broke that story on the Somalian welfare fraud that's coming up. Stay tuned.
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Ryan Thorpe is an investigative journalist at the Manhattan Institute and the man who helped break the story on the Somalian refugees and the massive welfare fraud. Ryan, thank you for being on.
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It's a pleasure to join.
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So now, Ryan, for those who just read, you know, it's very funny a lot of times in conservative media because we'll break a story and then the New York Times will follow three weeks later and they get more attention. But for those who just follow like the New York Times story, they may not have known exactly how this worked. How did these dozens of Somalian refugees, you know, use a system to steal, you know, a billion dollars? More than a billion dollars?
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Yeah. What I would say about the, the fraud rings that have been exposed to date is they kind of followed a fairly similar script. So they were targeting a range of government welfare programs in the state. These programs almost seem specifically designed in order to facilitate fraud. In some ways, we're talking about very low barriers for reimbursements or to get access to the funds in the first place. They were simply, you know, inflating costs, saying that they were providing services that they had no intention of ever providing. And then what we saw was a real kind of perfect storm of conditions in the state of Minnesota that, that allowed this to go on for so long. So you had a very insular kind of clan based tribal Somali community in the state. You had some of the most generous welfare programs in the country. You had a progressive political class that was kind of terrified, terrified of pointing out what was going on and fearful of being accused of racism. And the Somalis are also a sizable voting block in that state as well. So there are real political calculations at play here that allowed this situation to get so bad.
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I think that's such a key. Well, I mean, that was a really easy and thorough breakdown. But that's such a key thing of a key component of the fear of both political correctness and political retribution that has really enabled. I mean, it's, it's very true in the Somali community, but it's also true in other communities in this country in pockets where small demographics have huge weights and in voting and other things. How much of a role do you think that Tim Waltz personally played in both enabling the situation and really kind of crushing down any kind of dissent against, against the Somalian community.
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Well, what I would point to is that there are whistleblowers within the state government in Minnesota who work at dhs and they've been trying to raise alarm bells both internally and externally for quite some time. And, you know, these are hundreds of employees who have seen from the inside what is going on and have tried to, you know, do what's right and to put a stop to. And they really point to Tim Waltz as the individual who's primarily responsible here. They have signaled that they're fearful of retribution. And we've also seen official reports that have been released that have pointed to a number of failures of the Waltz government. So, I mean, he, look, he's the governor in some sense, the buck stops with him. We're talking about more than $1 billion that has been defrauded from taxpayers under his watch in a, you know, a handful of years here. Responsibility is somewhat inescapable for him.
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And I think it's important to remember it wasn't over a billion over 20 years or a billion over a decade even. It was a billion over a very, very short period of time. And a state that's not, I mean, Minnesota is not a small state, but it's not, it's not Texas, it's not California or Florida or New York. It's not this giant monolith of the state. It is a reasonably small state when it comes to this. What the reaction to this story is interesting because it follows, and I don't know if you have, I'm sure you have heard about it, but the Somalian case with food, food and welfare payments for food for children during COVID Are you aware of that story?
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Absolutely, yeah. I mean, that was kind of, I think, the first large scale fraud ring that we, you know, authorities recognize. Like, this is a huge problem. And then since then, we've seen other fraud rings that have followed a very similar script.
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Yeah. So in that case, they. A bunch of Dozens, I think 59 Somalians was the exact number of set were saying that they were paying for food during COVID With COVID welfare payments towards hungry children. And the children didn't exist, the food program didn't exist. They were just banking on everything. And one of the women who were the lead, I guess, ringleaders, the entire organization actually was a. There's an award in Minnesota called Refugee of the Year awards. Are you aware of that?
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I haven't heard this.
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The woman who got the award that like the year prior was the one who were the ringleader of this program to rob taxpayers. This isn't just a Somalian issue, obviously, where you see rings of this, but it seems like it's an ethnic enclave issue where you have very, very specific groups of people who are not assimilated into a broader culture and really have immense voting power in Somalia. I think it's 56,000 or 58,000 registered to vote that state specifically, and that's immense when it's not. Not a terribly big state. What do you think that this opens the door for further investigations into that specific community, Especially considering we've seen two in one year?
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Certainly. I mean, what prosecutors have made quite clear is like we're scratching the surface in terms of the true scope of this fraud. So I'm quite comfortable saying that, you know, we're talking about billions of dollars here, but in terms of the total dollar figure like that still remains unclear at this point. The U.S. attorney's office has been doing great work in that state, but I think that they were undermanned as well in terms of having enough resources to dedicate to this problem. Given the sheer scope that we're talking about, I think that there's more to learn in terms of the true scope of the fraud. And then I think there are some serious questions about state authorities. What did they do? When did they figure things out? What was the response? What was the lack of the response? So I think that those are two avenues that we need to keep digging into.
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Now. I know, I mean, a lot of people who support a progressive welfare state are well intentioned. You know, it's not like they are. They do believe that they are helping the poorest of the poor. What could they have done different? Was it just political correctness or was it complete malfeasance of a welfare program that wasn't, you know, wasn't capable of possibly working?
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Yeah, I mean, I think that's a great question. Look, we can have a policy debate on, you know, how best do we try to help people in our communities that are struggling. Certainly. And I do think that many of these programs that were defrauded, you know, you can understand the good intentions behind them. We're talking about feeding hungry children. We're talking about trying to get autism therapy for young kids who are autistic. We're talking about trying to get like, the mentally ill and people who are homeless or struggling with addiction into housing so they can try and get back on their feet. Right. But with these programs like they were designed specifically with such a low barrier to Entry such few requirements in terms of reimbursements that when I was looking at it, you know, some of them jumped out at me. It's like, okay, if you were to design a government program to facilitate fraud, it would probably look a lot like this one in Minnesota. I also think that, you know, look, this is a long standing problem. It also ramps up in the pandemic. So Covid hits this thing that's been festering and kind of allowed to grow for a number of years. Well, now we've got more money flying out the door than ever. We've got progressive political establishment saying, like, this is an emergency situation that we're in. We need to get money into the hands of people who need it. We'll figure out the details as we go. So that really allowed this problem to accelerate. I think, you know, the law enforcement sources I've spoken to have said we're playing whack a mole on this side of the fence. Right? We're trying to wrap up these fraud rings, but we really. There isn't a law enforcement solution here. We have to kind of go back to the drawing board from a policy standpoint and try and stem the tide of it. So even for supporters of a progressive welfare state, I think that they are going to have to have those conversations and think, okay, if we want to continue to fund programs of this nature, how can we do it with, you know, a bit more program integrity?
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And the crazy thing, I mean, think about this from. Just think about this sentence, because it was true. They defrauded money for autistic children and it ended up in the hands of a terrorist organization in Somalia that abuses children. It is for a right wing perspective. You could not write that any better in that kind of a headline. How much of this money of American tax dollar money ended up in the hands of terrorists? Do we even know?
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It's very. It's very difficult to say. So a couple of things that I think are really important to highlight on this. There was some confusion about the claim that we made in our article. I thought we were quite clear, but some people seemed confused. So we weren't alleging that these fraud rings had specifically targeted government programs, defrauded them for the express purpose of fundraising for Al Shabaab. It was more inadvertent than that. So we know that millions of dollars have been sent back, have been sent abroad. They've gone through hawala networks, they've landed in Somalia in areas of that country where Al Shabaab is in control. You know, everyone I've spoken to, from FBI to different criminal investigators who have looked at this, you know, serious people who are well placed and have a certain degree of expertise here. They have indicated that absolutely Al Shabaab is getting a cut of this money as it's moving through their territory. So that is the mechanism by which stolen tax dollars have ended up in their coffers in terms of putting a true dollar figure on it. You know, that remains up in the air. And the investigators I speak to say it is incredibly difficult to track this money because it doesn't operate the same way that a traditional kind of western banking sector were. So almost by design, it becomes nearly impossible to try and figure out, okay, just how much are we talking about here. But you know, whether or not it's millions, tens of millions, hundreds of million. Look, the fact that it's happening at all is a serious problem. And we, we need to figure out how to make sure that that stops.
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Well, one, and this is my last question, how, I mean I, when I, when I did the story on the Lincoln project, it was kind of ignored to the New York Times and then all of a sudden was basically destroyed the entire organization. You guys broke the story out and you know, it was you and Chris Rufo and immediately it was right wing, you know, right winger. And then the New York Times said it and then all of a sudden it was serious. What has the, what has the reaction from Democrats been? Because now they're saying it's just about Trump and immigrant and him being anti immigrant. But there, this is a truce. This is a true issue. And has Tim Waltz said he's going to reform all these welfare programs?
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Well, I know that funding for a number of programs has stopped, but I think we've seen high profile Democrats attempt to deflect. So one, yes, people will simply point to Trump, some of the comments that he's made, try and make that the central focus. We've also seen, you know, accusations of racism, you know, essentially directed towards myself and my, my co author Christopher Rufo. I mean, look, people can say what they want. The first question is, is it true? Like we have to follow the facts where they lead and we have to confront them as we, as they are, not how we would like them to be. And the facts in this case are that it is true. It's, it's happening. So I would think among more serious minded Democrats, they realize, hey, we have a, we have a serious problem on our hands and we're going to have to do something about it. But there's Been a lot of deflection to date.
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Yeah. And you know, it's so funny. Have you ever heard of the Killer King Hospital in Los Angeles? Ever hear the story? There's a hospital in LA that was, I mean people would go in for a fender bender and like end up being killed by the hospital staff. They were hiring criminals who were selling, they were selling like peanuts and popcorn in the hallways of the hospital. It was insane. And every time this hospital came up for an investigation and it was reported the intense tense amount feasance, they would, Maxine Waters would say you're all racist for sitting there. And it's claiming that this is a huge problem. They always use racism as a deflection for mass corruption in, in various pockets of this country. But it is so important to say it when it's, when it's there because it destroys social trust. Especially in a state like Minnesota, which historically had huge levels of social trust. Not as much anymore. Ryan, where can people go to read more of your work and what you're doing coming up next? You have a lot of very interesting investigative journalist stuff so you can read.
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My work at City journal, which is city-journal.org that's where, where all my work is published these days. And then you can also follow me on X at RK Underscore Thorpe, your.
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Stuff at City Journal, which is owned, which is run by the Manhattan Institute. So that's why I said Manhattan Institute earlier is fantastic. Really worth reading your stuff. Thank you so much for doing this podcast, Ryan.
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C
It was great joining you.
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Now it's time for Ask Me Anything. If you want to be part of the Ask Me Anything segment, email me ryan@NumbersGame podcast.com that's Ryanumbers game podcast.
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Com.
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I have a bunch of questions to get to before the end of the year, so I'm very excited. This question comes from Derek. He says Ryan loved the show. Two quick questions. The first on whether the border wall is actually being built. I know BBB had funds set aside, but I'm curious what the actual progress is. The second question is the state of politics. I remember reading your article in the American Conservative last year on Giorgia Maloney and how well she's navigating the tightrope of Italian and EU politics moving forward a conservative populous agenda. Is that still the case? And is there momentum across Europe for populous anti migrant leaders ranging from Rupert Lowe and Nigel Farage to Jordan bardella and the AFD? Derek, great questions. First on the border wall, DHS awarded a contract just a few weeks ago for 27 miles of new wall in Arizona. Secretary Gnome has had five waivers signed for border wall construction to try to continue to continue the construction of it. What it seems like to me, based upon reading what's going on in Texas, California and Arizona, is that they're trying to finish the parts of the wall that they had the money for, they were contracted for, that President Biden stopped construction on. So I'm seeing 27 miles over in Arizona, and I'm seeing several, about 100 miles between Texas and California of trying to finish those repairs. That's what I'm see far. Hopefully they continue pushing forward on it, but I'm seeing that's what I'm seeing as far as that goes. When it comes to Georgia Maloney, if those who didn't read the article, Italy has a very strange political system. So because they were part of, you know, Fascist Italy back in the 40s, they created a system where the president is not elected, but he's voted on by both senators and members of certain social class in Italy, but not by the people. And the president has the ability to. To take over the government from the prime minister. So Giorgia Meloni is the prime minister. And if she, if the president feels like she has taken the government into a direction that is not beneficial for Italy for any purposes, he can dismiss her government, take it over and appoint bankers or whoever he wants to fill all the roles. That's why Italy is in part why Italy has never managed to do a lot with their government, a lot with reforms. That is why Georgia Maloney has not been able to do a lot on popular stuff. I will. Border crossings are down substantially. She has increased legal immigration. But Italy's population is falling by unbelievable numbers, both because of Italian citizens leaving the country because it's so poor, but also because of their extraordinarily low birth rates in the country. And they've been unable to do that. Anything about that so far. I know they tried policy, you know, policy proposals, but it hasn't worked. Ultimately, I would sit there and say that Giorgia Maloney is trying to pass this constitutional amendment for several years now which would, would effectively neutralize the role of the president and make it incapable for the president to take out the prime minister on their own will based on, you know, if they're, quote, unquote, beneficial to the EU is what they're really saying when they say beneficial to Italy. If that goes through, then the ball will be in Maloney's court to really go, you know ham and do whatever she wants. Italy's elections are not next year, but I think they're the year after. So she's set to probably grow her more her, her majority. And she's working, working. I think she's working very, very well from a tightrope. As far as other leaders go. Yeah. Next year only has, I think the Portuguese presidential elections and there's the Hungarian parliamentary elections. There's a lot of local ones. But as far as major national ones, unless someone, someone's government collapses, which could always happen, but unless that happens. And those are the only major ones that are happening in throughout Europe. But if you look at the polls in Portugal, the Chega party is polling number one or number two for president, depending on the polls. Over in France, Jordan Bardella is not only winning the first round but the of the presidential elections under the national rally, the populous National Rally AfD is pulling in first and Nigel Farage is pulling in first as well. Although let's see if RER low is able to sit there and take some support away from him with his own party. But yeah, populist parties are still arising all across Europe. Even in Denmark where there is an election coming up next year. The Danish People's Party is increasing substantially. They're pulling, they're running on remitigation. In Sweden, the center right and nationalist government is likely going to lose their majority just because it's very, very tight. I think they have a three seat majority. So it's interesting. But overall the trajectory is very, very clear towards national populism throughout Europe. That's a great question, Derek. I really hope that I, I answered it. Okay, last question on the show. My name is Tristan, I live in Delray, Florida. You're incredibly based on your opinions. Thank you, Tristan. Of course you've been talking a lot about data centers and they're a major issue in Virginia. Living in Florida, our electricity cost is rather seasonal high in the summer and lower in the winter of course because of air conditioning. I was curious how data centers were being handled around here and I am pleasantly surprised to see that the utility companies essentially have pricing structures for new lows of 50 megawatts and larger. Essentially there's no tax breaks and data centers are paying their full price. Would you say that Florida model is the most politically smart in terms of protecting residents? If not, is there another state that's handling it well? So this is a great question. Ron Desantis, who is a really, I mean phenomenal governor, just phenomenal. He really has done a lot. And he has a robust AI regulation bill called the AI Bill of Rights. A big part of it is data center proposals. It says, quote, data center proposals will protect consumers from footing the bill of AI data centers. The proposal will protect rate payers, prohibit utilities from changing in Florida residents more to support hyperscale data center development, protect taxpayers. No taxpayer subsidies for big tech, protect local control, protect Florida water and protect Florida, the natural sites in Florida, I guess the, you know, waterways and the, the national parks and whatever. So from what I could sit there and see, I did a little bit of research. DeSantis probably, I mean, he prohibited utilities from charging customers for more electricity, gas or water to hyperscale data center development. He is the only governor who did this, which is so smart, allowing local governments prohibit data centers from developing construction when it comes to sitting there and jacking up the rates for customers. I mean, I read law after law, law after law, and, and DeSantis is on top of this more than anybody else. As far states go. Legislation has been proposed in California, it is yet to pass. In New York, State has proposed a bill where data centers would be charged for any grid facility upgrades they need because of the increased uses. And in Virginia, there is an energy law firm that is proposing somewhat similar, but it is. They're just proposing studies, basically. They're still at the study phase. So, yeah, you're right. DeSantis. I actually did not know before researching that DeSantis had done so much for consumers on electricity prices, and he's done what seems like a phenomenal job. And he is, as usual with his entire governorship, far and away above every other governor in the country. That's what happens when you elect a very smart person. So, yep, that's, that's what I have. You guys have it the best. I wish I could report. Oh, no. All these other states, they've done just as much, but it is not the truth. DeSantis is far and away ahead on the issue and ahead on the curb, which is why importing for the next, voting for the next governor Florida is. Is very, very, very important to find somebody who can keep up what he is doing. That's the show for today. On Thursday's episode is the very fun episode. I'm having my Gen Z staff come and do pop culture history and news, you know, entries for what happened to Gen Xers and millennials. So it's millennial movies, tv, music, news stories to see how much they know about the world that existed before them. It's going to be a of lot, lot of fun. Tune in, stay tuned, and I will see you guys on Thursday. This is an iHeart podcast. Guaranteed Human.