B (3:22)

You're the boss.

C (3:23)

Well, what I would do, Tell them to pay me. But I'll give 100% of the money to charity. I don't want any of the money.

B (3:28)

You take it out of the system.

C (3:29)

A couple more questions here. No, no, I'm putting it back into the system. Yeah, if I give money to American Cancer Society, I will. I will give 100% of the money away to. I don't want any $30 trillion debt. And we're going to take 10 billion out of the system. Well, I mean, you give it away anyway. They give away a lot of money. Your endorsement. Speaking about that, Minnesota and these other states, we have massive investigations going into fraud. Do you know if we cap.

B (3:57)

So then he goes on to his fraud investigation. Talking points. But what he's saying is he's gonna take $10 billion out of the system and give it away. Give it to charity. American Heart association names one. But you know what charity I think he's gonna give it to? The Donald J. Trump Presidential foundation to build his library. Wouldn't be surprised if this money goes there. He has an outline which charity he wants to give it to. And for the record, you can't just take money out of the federal government and donate it to charity just because you want to. And that's what he's doing here. And well, if you wanna know where it's coming from, it's coming from your money. You pay taxes. At the end of every year during tax season, you pay taxes. This is your hard earned dollars. And Treasury Secretary Scott Bessem confirmed that Today. Take a listen.

C (4:35)

We kind of touched on this earlier. In addition to being Treasury Secretary, you are serving as acting director of the irs. So following up on Senator Kim's questioning. So you are fully aware that the president is suing your agency for $10 billion? We would agree. Would you agree that $10 billion is a good sum of money?

B (4:55)

Yes, sir.

C (4:55)

Where would that be cut from? Let's say for some reason he actually wins that lawsuit. Where would that $10 billion come from? Again, it would come from process wise. Am I asking like your opinion whether it's right or wrong?

B (5:10)

It would come from Treasury.

C (5:11)

It comes from treasury, which comes from the general fund, the treasury general account. So taxpayers.

B (5:18)

Yes, thank you. Part of the 440,000 taxpayers whose returns were leaked.

C (5:23)

If the.

B (5:26)

You guys heard that right, it's coming for taxpayer dollars. They're admitting it. Admitting it. And the crazy part, to me, actually, in all of this, yes, this conflict of interest is pretty crazy. But he says 44,000 taxpayer documents were leaked. So does that mean all 44,000 can sue the federal government for $10 billion like Donald Trump just did? Is there a class action that we're about to see? Well, if you multiply 44,000 times 10 billion, you have trillions and trillions of dollars more than the entire United States gdp. At a point, it's untenable. It's simply untenable. And it's a massive conflict of interest. And yet no one's talking about it. So I will. I also this afternoon spoke with Senator Kirsten Gillibrand from New York about ongoing ICE negotiations. They laid out a 10 point plan for what they want. Remember, ICE funding runs out in now eight days. Take a, I want you to take a listen to what she had to say. She also talks about one of the big wins that happened in Congress that you didn't, that you may not have heard about finding a critical program for 9, 11 heroes. So we're going to talk about that momentarily. But before I do, make sure to like, comment, share and subscribe. Spread the word. Subscribe to my substack. Click the link below to support my work. Here is Senator Kirsten Gillibrand super excited today to be joined by New York Senator Kirsten Gillibrand. Now, Senator, I got to ask you because there's a lot of negative news out in this world, but there's a news story that you released earlier this week that not many people are talking about, and it's regarding the World Trade center health program. Could you talk a little bit more about that and what is the news that people need to know about?

A (6:57)

So I've been working for over a decade on making sure that the 911 first responders and the community members that lived at ground zero, all of whom were exposed to horrific toxins, could have a health program that would medically monitor each family, each individual that would provide the health care to survive if they did get a cancer or other debilitating diseases. And we just actually got it done. We finally got the resources to fully fund this program through 2040. And so it is a huge sigh of relief for these first responders who have been coming to Washington Constantly since 2011, over the last 15 years, every year, making sure that Congress would pay attention and fund this program for them, for them to survive. And every five years, we'd have to renew the program to make sure the funding was there. And just this week, we got the final tranche of funding that will fully fund this program for the life of these 911 first responders.

B (7:57)

Oh, wow. I think that's great news for a lot of people to hear. Now, I do want to shift gears briefly and talk about immigration, because that's obviously top of mind for you all. In the United States Senate right now, you're considering a appropriations package to fund DHS and ice. But something that not many folks are talking about is a recent report came out showing that gun crime cases have actually fallen because agents are shifting from taking guns off the streets and seizing illegal guns to cracking down on immigration. Could you talk a little bit more about that? Because I don't think people understand what's really happening there.

A (8:30)

So, interestingly, this was a bill that I'd worked on for a long time. Gun trafficking is a huge problem in the United States. Most guns used in crimes in New York State come from out of state. Almost all of them are trafficked. And we set up in the bipartisan Safer Guns Communities act, we created resources so that we could monitor how much, how many guns were being trafficked, we could fund law enforcement to go after these gun traffickers across state lines, arrest them, and crack down on gun trafficking. And at the end of two years ago, at the end of the Biden administration, we had confiscated thousands of weapons, and we're prosecuting hundreds of cases. But under the Trump administration, they've basically stopped giving us the data. So we don't know how many guns are being trafficked. We don't know how many cases are being brought. The percentage of cases that are actually going, being investigated has dropped. I think over 90%. Like a ridiculous amount of inaction by this administration. And so we are not prosecuting gun trafficking crimes right now. We are not trying to crack down on traffickers. We are not making our community safer. We are not getting guns out of the hands of criminals. And that's what's really frustrating is that, you know this. Republicans say they're public safety oriented, but they're really not. This is one of the most simple things they could be doing to crack down on gun crime.

B (9:59)

Now, I got to ask you, when you talk about gun crime, you talk about immigration, we have this funding deadline in, what, eight days now? Nine days or so. It's coming up. Where do things stand? Are Democrats prepared to help Republicans potentially fund DHS here? What does it look like right now?

A (10:17)

So it's a bit difficult. The Democrats wrote a letter yesterday to the White House and it laid out the 10 things that we want to do. Things like they can't wear masks, they have to wear body cameras. They have to identify themselves. You can't have the constant presence of. Of these ICE agents all over the streets. They actually have to have warrants and they have to go after specific criminals and have a purpose for arresting someone. And so we've asked for a whole host of requirements. We want them to stop racial profiling, something as basic as that. Uphold the use of force standards, ensure state and local coordination and oversight. Because these local police departments are used to keeping public safety, but these ICE agents are not allowing it. They're creating massive chaos and creating massive risk for everyday people just going about their lives. As I mentioned, the body camera is for accountability. And we don't want paramilitary police. We don't want our police to be becoming a paramilitary operation. And so the equipment that DHA offices are carrying during these enforcement operations are like military equipment. They're acting like they're a paramilitary. So we want that to be back to civil enforcement. We want to protect sensitive locations. So we want to make sure hospitals and schools and places of worship can be protected, that they can't be just sitting outside the daycare waiting for some parent to drop off a child. It is unconscionable what they're doing. So we want to make sure those sensitive places, including polling places and courts, like, we want all the sensitive places to be protected and prohibit funds from being used to conduct enforcement near them. And then we have a whole bunch of ways to build safeguards into the system to make sure that if you do detain someone, you have to follow the law, you have to follow and protect their civil liberties and civil rights and that they have to follow basic detention standards, which they're not doing at all. And we want states to be able to sue DHS for violations of all these requirements. They won't even let members go visit ICE detention centers. So we have to make sure that members can do that. That's our oversight job. So this is just a thumbnail of the things that we've asked for and we're waiting to hear whether they will engage with us on negotiations.

B (12:47)

Well, I guess my question is from you personally, from your perspective, it's a two part question. First, Leader Thune floated the idea of a potential year long CR to temporarily fund ICE and DHS for a year under current funding mechanisms. Is that something you'd support? And second, if they come back and they say we'll give you three out of the 10 or we'll give you four out of the 10, what is kind of where are you in terms of okay at this point? We got three of a 10 all supported. We got five out of 10 all supported. Where do they need to get to?

A (13:17)

Well, I think they need to start negotiating and see how close we can get to getting all 10. There's nothing on that list that I think is asking too much. I don't think there's anything on the list that's radical. I think these are literally basic law enforcement standards that we are asking for ICE to follow. So I don't know what number I'm confident with. I just know we have to start negotiating and get as far as we possibly can because we need to restore people's trust that the federal government isn't there to harm them. And I think for a lot of people, they feel unsafe with ICE agents in their communities. ICE is out of control and these reforms are necessary to bring them back into control. And these reforms are necessary for people to have faith and that the federal government isn't there to destroy them. And I think it's really, it's also, this is very common sense requirements. And so I would be interested to see which ones they wouldn't be willing to support.

B (14:16)

Before I let you go, I do got to ask you, are you prepared to shut down funding for DHS and ICE if they don't come to the table and negotiate?

A (14:23)

Yes. I mean, we've already all voted no on that. So we are absolutely prepared to shut down everything if they won't come to the table.

B (14:31)

Senator Gillibrand, thanks so much for joining me.

A (14:34)

Thank you.

B (14:35)

Hey folks, thanks so much for watching. Feel free to add this podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify or anywhere you watch for the latest breaking news and daily hits throughout the day. Make sure to follow subscribe. See you soon for more.