
Virginia Democrats plead for help from the Virginia Supreme Court and the United States Supreme Court after the Virginia court threw out the redistricting referendum today. Democrats panic as another $72 million is flushed down the drain amid the party's severe debt.
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Some follow the noise. Bloomberg follows the money. Whether it's the funds fueling AI or crypto's trillion dollar swings, there's a money side to every story. Get the money side of the story. Subscribe now@Bloomberg.com Tony Kennett, Tony Kennett. Tony Kennett. Tony Kennett. Tony Kennett. Tony Kennett. Tony Kennos of the Tony Kennett cast. Let's have a show. You're listening to the Tony Kennett cast on 93WibcyTV here on the Daily Signal. Good evening and welcome to the Tony Kennett cast here on the Daily Signal, nationally syndicated and first on 93 WIBC. Well, you probably could have guessed it, but breaking news, the Democrats in Virginia have filed emergency appeals. Emergency appeals galore. Why are they filing emergency appeals? Because the Supreme Court of Virginia in a 4 to 3 decision struck down the constitutional referendum amendment that would do this sort of temporary gerrymander that of course, earlier on Democrats said they weren't going to do. And then they released a very convoluted ballot measure for, well, the Supreme Court of Virginia ruled. Yeah, that was not done correctly or properly or constitutionally. And so instead, now that that law decision has been tossed, you know, right in back in the Democrats faces over in Virginia, there is a full blown panic going on. And so right now, according to some of the reports from Jarvis and the SCOTUS wire, Virginia Democrats indicate that they will be appealing today's ruling invalidating the redistricting referendum to the United States Supreme Court. And they are desperately trying to get the United States Supreme Court to weigh in here because that's the only court feasibly higher that they could go to about this particular thing. There's just one small problem. The Supreme Court of the United States has no authority over the Virginia Supreme Court. None. The Virginia Supreme Court is the ultimate authority on the Virginia Commonwealth Constitution. So let's actually dive into this particular decision because by the way, in case you're wondering right here and now after this particular court ruling, it ain't going nowhere. It ain't going nowhere very fast, very quickly. So first and foremost, you may remember Virginia voters narrowly approved the amendment to the Constitution 52% to 48% on the special election on April 21st to turn Virginia's congressional maps from a rather balanced congressional map, not the best in the world, but not terrible, to one with only one Republican leaning district that being on the western side of the state. Again, a rather bizarre thing, kind of making it look like a lobster with a deformed claw sticking up in the air. And that would make it 10 to 1. And this was proposed by and pushed very, very, very hard by Senator Louise Lucas in the state. The most foul mouthed granny they got out there. Now we'll come back to her because she's having a really bad day for a totally different reason. Um, and of course by a, a really bad day, I mean the FBI raids are, are rather thorough. But alas, while they are trying to appeal this particular ruling, let's actually go through what the ruling is, what's going on. So in the majority opinion by Justice D. Arthur Kelsey, he'll come up in a couple of minutes too. The court held that the process of this constitutional referendum violated Article 12, Section 1 of the Virginia Constitution. It requires a very specific multi step process for constitutional amendments. Why? Well, for common sense purposes. So it's not going to get discussed on the major network news shows by all of the academics with 18 pairs of glasses on their face who don't look as devilishly handsome as yours truly are going to try to tell you. While according actually the constitutional amendments are blunt up the common sense answer up to bat. First, it should be difficult to amend your state's constitution. State law is supposed to be changed, not as quickly as it is in today's day and age by the state legislature for sure. State courts are also supposed to have an impact on that. But your state constitution, the founding document of your state or commonwealth or territory, in the case of like Guam or Puerto Rico, those are supposed to be a solid document that doesn't change every single year. It's certainly not intended for referendums, for little referendums, for temporary measures to sometimes on every third day of June that's worded like a Facebook terms and services agreement flop all over the ground like a dead fish. No, no, no. So that's the common sense answer that you and I understand. Here's the academic brain potato head answer here. So According to Article 12, Section 1 of the Virginia Commonwealth Constitution, amending the Constitution requires the General assembly approving the entire proposal twice with an intervening general election from the House of Delegates in between so that voters can evaluate candidates based on their positions, survey says. Did that entire process happen? No. In fact Governor Abigail Spanberger who ran on not doing this little missed, I was totally going to be moderate. She just took an already in action session for the Virginia State legislature and then tried to turn that into this emergency mini session not titled correctly, not filed correctly, not not advocated correctly, not voted on correctly for this emergency gerrymandering constitutional amendment. So There are a couple of key procedural issues again, and I'm giving you this kind of the boring stuff up front so that when you see all of the meltdown, you know how sad and pathetic this found this is sounds. This is essentially like someone yelling at the cop. I didn't do nothing. After you just saw them throw a beer bottle through a plate glass window. Like, actually, I'm a citizen and you can't talk to me. Ossifer. Yeah, that. Nope, nope, nope. You know how silly that sounds when you see that on Cops? This is the same kind of thing. The actual two rulings from the court said. Number one, the first legislative approval occurred in a 2025 special session which was called for other purposes, like budget matters. Guess what? Congressional districts, that ain't a budget matter, Sam. So early voting in the 2025 elections was also already underway. So wait a minute. If I'm already taking part in early voting in state primaries and the Virginia constitution says that I have the right to have my early vote counted, have I just now voted for someone that whose district I'm no longer in. What's going on here? That's ridiculous. So that's another big part of it. 1.3 million early voters who would have had a meaningful opportunity to consider the amendment when choosing deleg delegates now had their rights taken away. Remember that because you're going to hear this 3 million number here in a couple of moments. So because of this bill that was rushed on through like Grey's anatomy, trying to break the land speed record for rushing a gurney through the hospital, rushed this bill right on through and disenfranchised 1.3 million people on the left, the right, the center, the north, the south, whatever. In their choice of vote. The court also found this intervening election requirement wasn't properly satisfied, irreparably tainting the referendum and nullifying its legal effect. What does that mean? It means they wrote the bill like it was supposed to be a brain teaser. They wrote the bill like a terms and services agreement for a social media application. If you believe in free elections on Tuesdays and you like that, sometimes temporarily, occasionally on the right side of the moon, that Virginia should also be freedom and patriotic and also then, please consider voting for that was what they did. They didn't just say, here's the old map, here's the new map, do you like it? They didn't say, hey, for this temporary period, we would like to do this. Nope, they had to bring in the weirdest essayist in general over to shove this thing through that didn't go over very well. So can they actually appeal? Can they bring it up to the Supreme Court? No. And the reason they can't, as said by the guy who called this initially, former Attorney General of Virginia, Ken Cuccinelli. And this does have some pretty big national implications. You can hear that in his explanation on C span.
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So the commonwealth have any recourse or
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way to appeal the ruling? No, they do not.
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As I mentioned, the Virginia Supreme Court
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is the final authority on Virginia constitutional questions. This is the end, folks. You will have the Same map in
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2026 for the congressional elections that existed in 2024.
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That is now unchangeable and immutable. Now you say, wait a minute here. Hang on a second, Tony. What if they call the legislature back and they do it again? Well, it's too late, guys. It's midterm year now. And if it's midterm year now, that means that the whole primary season. Have you not heard all of the primary shenanigans in the rest of the country? Don't worry, we'll call her that. Well, then I'm afraid that the only true answer here to Virginia Democrats and Democrats who spent $70 million nationally on this campaign, here's what they get. It's all there, black and white, clear as crystal. You get nothing. You lose. Good day, sir. Thank you very much, Gene Wilder. So what does this mean? Well, it's got a couple of problems for the Democrats for a couple of reasons, but there was a lot of good fun to have in the meantime. So first and foremost, you have the state and kind of big state figures. Mark Warner, he's the senator from Virginia who always shakes his jowls angrily in committee hearings. He posted a very endearing double statement, by which I mean he had a statement in the tweet and then he had like a bigger fancy Photoshop statement beneath it. Essentially, he says, quote, more than 3 million Virginians cast their ballots on the amendment and they deserved to have their voices heard. They deserved it. How? How could we just disenfranchise? No word about the constitutional amendment referendum put forward already invalidating and disenfranchising almost 2 million voters just because people voted in this election. He says, well, they get whatever they want because they voted for it. Now, what's really funny. And then we'll send the radio crew off to the commercial. As Jason Miares points out, Mark Werner, Justice Kelsey, the guy who authored the decision that says, no, you can't gerrymander it this way. Democrats you appointed him. You appointed that Supreme Court justice. So a big thank you to Mark Warner. Radio crew will see you on the other side of the commercial break. We're going to continue on the live stream. It's the Tony Knit cast here on the Daily Signal. Now, in case you were wondering, we have heard nothing so far from Abigail Spanberger, the governor of Virginia. Nothing at all. Although she is being mocked ruthlessly and relentlessly. And she has earned every single bit of it. Why? Not only because she ran on not redistricting and then turned around and said she actually wanted to do the redistricting, but because of this ad in particular. I'm Governor Abigail Spanberger, and I'm voting yes on Virginia's redistricting amendment. It's directly in response to what other states decide to do. And a president who says that he's, quote, president entitled to more Republican seats before this year's midterms. Our approach is different. It's temporary. It sure was temporary. Incredible. I mean, just, you know, can't get more temporary than that. So Abigail Spanberger hasn't said a fam. Ding. Chuck Schumer's also been dead silent on this. But I said we were going to kind of work our way up here. There are two classes of people right now. You have the, the kind of influencer class who's very, very angry. So remember all of those insiders that were championed from the Trump administration, that this, for example, like these angry staffer accounts inside the Trump administration bringing you the truth. Well, now we're getting the weird professor stupid logic. So first of all, the, there are a lot of individuals out there that are claiming that, well, if Virginia's redistricting has been struck down, then Tennessee and Florida, who just passed redistricting, that should also be shot down. If not, Virginia should just pull a Tennessee and change the rules to ram it through the legislature. So I've already told you why you can't just ram it through the legislator. Now it's too late. It's too late. You can't. However, here's where things get really fun. I got a little secret to tell you. Tennessee and Florida are not under the Virginia Constitution. Yeah. I don't know why I have to be the one to tell you this, but see, the Virginia Constitution, it's for Virginia. Kind of cool. That works, right? See in the Tennessee Constitution and then the Florida Constitution, See, those are specific to those states. So they spent the entire afternoon yelling and crying and whining. Then we got to Jasmine Crockett. Jasmine Crockett. She was so mad about Tennessee, a state she doesn't live in, and Virginia, a state she doesn't live in, that that woman released three whole pages of statement. I mean, my goodness. And essentially, it's all about her going exactly one week after the Supreme Court gutted section two of the Voting Rights Act, Republicans in Tennessee decided to pass racist congressional maps that, you know, got rid of a seat represented by a white Democrat. That means now there's a Republican black woman about to win in that election. I thought Jasmine Crockett was all about black women. Oh, no, not really. Anyway, since Donald Trump took office, he has been laser focused on suppressing black voters. Let's stop pretending this is about fair maps or election integrity. I love this. I do. Because she was one of the people, one of many who made it quite clear she was fine for gerrymandering if it was California or back in 2022 when this all started. That's right. This current string of gerrymandering can be traced back to 2022, when Kathy Hochul signed an off calendar, not the time of the season that you're supposed to approve. New York's latest round of gerrymandering. Texas ended up coming in later. And then it just became a little tit for tat back and forth. Only there's a problem. Republicans hadn't gerrymandered their states as much as Democrats had accused them of doing, because there were all of these racial gerrymandering lines that Republicans had allowed to be in place in. In interest of fairness. And now, I mean, Illinois. JB Pritzker cannot squeeze any more votes or any more seats out of his congressional map. He's floated the idea. Lawyers from all sides are telling him has got about as much a chance as Virginia does at this point of doing any more gerrymandering. Now, that brings us over to the insane asylum. The insane asylum is wild. So, Hasan Piker, he's a leftist streamer and a formerly fat little rich horse boy who spends his time cosplaying as Fidel Castro or Chairman Mao. This goober has said, quote, the Virginia Supreme Court denied the results of the redistricting referendum, SCOTUS gutted the Voting Rights act, and Tennessee carved up the last Dem district, destroying black voter power in the state. Those who make peaceful revolution impossible make violent revolution inevitable. He got roasted for again, you know, calling for violence. He tried to step away. Didn't quite work. But we've got bigger fish to fry. We got to bring that radio crew back, don't Go anywhere. It's the Tony Kennett cast. I'll be the one. You see. This is the Tony Kennett cast on 93 WIBC. It's gonna be me. Welcome back to the Tony Kennick cast. Guys. It's May. It's here, and it's here with a vengeance. So let's dive in a little bit because the DNC has bigger problems than just this particular race. Now, I could show you clip after clip after clip of all of these people losing their minds and crying. Attorney General Jay Jones. We could talk about Hakeem Jeffries. And we will talk about Hakeem Jeffries. Because Hakeem Jeffries, after releasing his paragraph over the 3 million Virginia citizens casting their votes, blah, blah, blah, he says a couple of things. Number one, quote, our fight is not over. We are just getting started. That's kind of a curious thing for old Hakeem Jeffries to tweet because when CNN is among those dunking on you, it ain't, it ain't looking too good. So first of all, we've already talked about, can they actually just begin. And there's other states of opportunity for them. No, no, there's not. Pennsylvania's not gonna do a bunch of slicing and dicing and carving it up. It ain't gonna pass. The best other chance the Democrats might sort of have is what? Joy Z. That ain't happening either. So what else do they have? Nothing. But that's not the key limit. The key limit. The key issue is that the DNC, which was several millions of dollars in debt, spent $70 million on this campaign. $70 million of aggressive excitement towards this exact thing. So first of all, CNN slapped Hakeem Jeffries with a good old fact check on the possibility this gerrymandering effort would go forward. This aired today. This is a clip sent to us from Western Lensman over on X. Stellar, dude.
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The law is with us in Virginia. The facts are with us in Virginia.
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Survey says, where is the law with us in Virginia. Survey says, were the facts with us in Virginia.
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And the people are with us in Virginia. There's no basis in law or fact for the Virginia Supreme Court under the Constitution that exists, particularly in the aftermath of a people approved referendum to do anything other than to allow it to move forward.
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No, that's not how that works. Again, this mob rule mentality the Democrats constantly bring to the table. You have to do what I want because a lot of people want it. You know what a lot of people want? Free ice cream. That doesn't mean that you have a constitutional right to free ice cream. Just because you get a bunch of people out there and they say, I want this. Just say this. That doesn't mean that you can just snap your fingers and then, hesto, presto, everything's amazing. You see this from, for example, there are viral videos going around of, of protesters, homeless people who are camping out in, like, garbage trucks and semi cabs. And when the driver of the garbage truck or the semi goes and opens the door and finds the homeless person laying there yelling, you know, just smelling like garbage, the person sits upright, holds on to the inside of the vehicle and yells, free Palestine. And they start chanting free Palestine over and over. And not only is that incredibly stupid, that does nothing. And here's the best part. It is the only consistent thing that we see out of every single Democrat. I will chant for this, and therefore you must give it to me. No. But that's not the biggest issue for Hakeem Jeffries. You may remember back in February of this year, Hakeem Jeffries was really, really excited about this Virginia fight on this ballot initiative. And he was so ready for this particular fight. He was ready to drop all the money on it. All of it. In a midterm election year where dollars matter. We saw that, for example, in the Indiana primary. The two reasons that Indiana voters cared about the Indiana primary enough to unseat the most by percentage incumbents in any primary election in the last 50 years is because they cared about redistricting. They do. People in America see it as a national issue, even if some people at the state level don't. And number two, there was enough money spent on those elections that the incumbents piggy banks didn't matter. So in a time when the DNC really needs to save its little coins, Jeffries did this. How much money are you guys willing to spend on Virginia? Now? This is going to go to a ballot referendum in April. Could have a huge impact on the midterms. How much money are you guys willing to put in to get this ballot initiative through?
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Whatever it takes.
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I mean, that's. That sounds like a lot. It could be several multimillion dollar campaign.
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We will spend tens of millions of dollars to make sure that the Republicans do not successfully manipulate voters in Virginia
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and that voters have all of the
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information necessary to make a decision.
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Ah, well, well, well. How the turntables. Well, ladies, gentlemen, and the ugly kids in the corner. It now appears as of the most recent FEC filing that's covering through March 31st of 2026 the Democratic National Committee reported approximately $18.36 million in outstanding debts and loans owed by the committee. That includes a prominent $15 million loan taken out in October 2025 to support operations and state level efforts after 2024 election losses. Here's where things get extra fun. As of March 31, 2026, they only had 13.88 million on hand, which means if you're any good at addition. So everyone but AOC and Ilhan Omar, if there's any Roman numerals involved, this means they're currently in the red on a net basis. They have more debt than they have cash and they have just blown $70 million which was donated to the DNC over the last year that they should have been using to get out of debt. They blew it and they wasted it on an, on a fraudulent ballot presented to the people that then they sent to the Supreme Court and was operated incorrectly, was delivered incorrectly. There were questions on, on how those ballots were collected and reiterated. And then by the time the Supreme Court looked at it, said, you didn't even have the right session to bring this referendum to bear because you didn't read the instructions. The instructions were build an IKEA table and you put together a lamp. And now you're sitting here wondering why the food you balanced on the lamp fell over onto the floor because you didn't build a table. You ignored the instructions. So again, it really is quite incredible to see the Democrats spending procedures going into the midterms now completely destroyed. So what is the opportunity? What's the plan out of this? Because Ken Martin, Minnesota man, head of the dnc, what does he do? Well, he can't really and even take a little bit of time to issue a statement on the infighting in his own state. Ilhan Omar is now on the record. She's freaking out because there's a House Ethics Committee investigation that's beginning into her fraudulent winery from her husband that doesn't exist because you know, in Islam where alcohol is haram, you know, you just open up a winery anyway, little Ms. Oh, I'm only worth $18,000, not $30 million. She's now so upset that she started going after Governor Tim Walls, the lame duck friend of school shooters in Minnesota. So Ken Martin from Minnesota is not issuing any statements on that. Instead he's out there trying to pretend to be Scott Pressler. Here he is in Arizona walking around to random people on the street. I'm not joking. Random people on the street and begging them to sign up to be Democrats. The Head. I'm going to say that one more time. The head of the Democrat Party, the chair, the El presidente, is wandering around like, do you have any spare change? Asking people randomly on the street, hey, will you vote for the Democrats, please? Tony, what are you trying to do here? There are people that are signing up to be Democrats when there are events like this. And again, I'm talking to the guy who's registered more voters in the last couple of years than anyone else in an individual campaign that I know of. If you have to do jump cuts to different locations that you're signing up voters for and there's like one person in the shot, it is not going very well at all. Chief radio crew will send you to the commercial break. Be on the lookout for Ken Martin. He may try to register you for the dnc. I don't know, standing out on some street corner. It's the Tony Kennett cast here on the Daily Signal. All right, well, they're out looking for, you know, the, the streetwalkers by, of course, which I mean the president of the dnc, they have suggested, according to his latest post, because he did make a statement about this today. And here's where things get really interesting. He made a little statement. He said, the Virginia Supreme Court just rejected the will of the voters. Democrats are exploring every legal pathway to protect the integrity of Virginia's elections. Well, no, not, not just the legal pathways. We'll get into that. The biggest threat, though, and the reason this is not going in Democrats favor at all whatsoever, what's coming is the 2030 U.S. census. So this is a meme. Posted by Lee Wolf. He's the producer over at Ruthless. Great guy. Uh, and there's a classic meme, Bart from the Simpsons, looking side. This is the worst day of my life. And Homer says, this is the worst day of your life so far. The Democrats are about to get hit in the kneecaps by the US 2030 census because again, people have been fleeing in boatloads, in semi loads, in bus loads, in planes and trains and automobile loads from California and New York and Illinois and other states that are hell holes to live in for people who work for a living. And if the redistricting is coupled with a loss of a total number of electoral seats, it doesn't matter if California gerrymanders the entire state when they are losing 4, 5, 6 congressional votes, when they're losing the total number of House districts and electoral college votes, because that's the same thing. Because people just aren't sticking around for the state. And by the way, that's why Katie Porter, one of the California gubernatorial candidates, was so panicked, so, so panicked that in the recent gubernatorial debate, she accidentally let it slip that, well, we, we gotta give, you know, illegal immigrants the right to vote. We, we gotta give illegal immigrants a little something because they're, they're the, what did she say? They're the only group of people or they're one of the only sources of growth for the state of California right now, which is truly one of the wildest things that you could say on stage. She also dropped the F bomb on stage and, you know, she got roasted over the coals for being a genuinely terrible person. But that's not as important. Again, I'm trying to keep you on the line of the news this evening because there's so much of it. Additional data has now been released showing, and I'll try to make this picture even a little bigger, even if it covers up my face on the podcast, that there are several states, 11 states plus the District of Columbia, that have more registered voters, you know, set to vote in elections than there are voting age citizens in the state. That is according to the EAC report by the Census Bureau. And so this isn't just some random think tank out there giving you their take on the data. That is, according to the census, Alaska, Colorado, Delaware, D.C. georgia, Kentucky, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, Nevada, New Jersey and South Dakota all have more people that are registered to vote than are eligible to vote in the state. That's a problem. Now, again, you would say, well, Tony, the answer is passing the Save America Act. I agree, but we've already explained on the show why, why that's not happening. You need four Republican senators or three and Fetterman to switch over. That's not happening. As much as I'd even love to blame it on John Th, you would need Mitch McConnell, Susan Collins, Lisa Murkowski, and then Thom Tillis to all flip and get rid of the filibuster, the procedural rule that says we're going to wait on 60 votes as a majority for anything that's not a budgetary bill. So we have a serious issue here. We got to bring the radio crew back in and then we've got way more news to talk about. DOJ stuff, Kamala Harris and the economy. Don't go anywhere. Tony Kenneth Cast. This is the tony kenneth cast on 93 wibc. Welcome back to the Tony Kenneth cast here on the Daily Signal. Plenty more news to dive into. The Department of Justice is expanding its denaturalization Campaign. So we've talked about the threats against those who, well, you know, would be individuals perhaps violating voting laws. We've talked about those who have committed fraud, immigrated to the country, obviously, Luke Rosiak this week we had on and Scott Jennings over from the CNN and the Salem Crews. And I agreed today, definitely the man of the week for all of the work they have done exposing immigrant fraud in this country. The Department of Justice, according to cbs, is doing far, far more investigation into what it would actually take to denaturalize those in the country who immigrated here and have been accused of crimes, fraud and terrorism. Now, this comes in a couple of flavors, I will say for the 45th time so far, Acting Attorney General Todd Blanch did not come to play. This man did not show up to pussyfoot around. He is here to get to work. And right now, according to cbs, individuals inside the Department of Justice are reporting a series of legal analyses that are going into what it would take for those who commit crimes and as immigrants to the United States and then took an oath of citizenship for the State Department to confirm, hey, you have violated the oath you took. And so therefore we are revoking your citizenship. They're looking over a huge, a huge series of cases in the United States where this has been done before. A lot of these records were lost around World War II due to some accusations that in order for Franklin Delano Roosevelt to imprison a lot of Americans unlawfully and unjustly in concentration camps and internment camps, because, oh, we see, you're looking a little Japanese there, man. So we're going to move you up to this camp in Oregon or Washington or NorCal. There are a couple of federal records that are were thought to be lost from the Library of Congress on some of these immigration cases. Who has the right to determine whether when you take an oath of citizenship to the United States, who then holds you to that oath? What does that expungement of those records look like? Because believe it or not, we've talked about this with several other historical society records groups. There are other local archives. For example, Bracken Library at Ball State University in Muncie, Indiana, has a record of several historical societies that have maintained federal court records that, for example, FDR's administration tried to remove in order to get things moved along more quickly. The Supreme Court can't exactly rule on cases. Appellate courts can't exactly rule on cases in a negative way if you get rid of any evidence of precedent. So there are a lot of things currently on that frame. The President of the United States today, speaking with angel families, took a moment to talk about what the US Is doing to combat illegal immigration and drug trafficking by sea. Fentanyl deaths in this country have plummeted. The number of drug and abuse incidents in this country have plummeted. And of course, you know this. As Senator Jim Banks pointed out today, there have been, for 11 straight months, zero cases of individuals crossing the border and being released into this country openly who crossed the border illegally. Here's the President of the United States. In securing our border, we've also made tremendous strides in stopping the flow of illegal drugs into our country. The flood of deadly fentanyl across our border is down by 59%. And the drugs coming in by sea are down by 97%. 97%. And we're trying to figure out who
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the 3% are, because they are the
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bravest people on earth.
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You see how we stop them by sea.
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You know, for years, they'd go and
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catch the boat, bring them to court, they'd go in, they'd go out, out.
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By the time, the evening, they'd be
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back in another boat bringing drugs in.
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So we gave him warning, and we don't do that anymore. We do it much more, much more efficiently. This is, by the way, how a lot of Americans expect these kind of decisions to be made. And we're seeing this in a number of environments. We're seeing this currently with the love taps. I love those. Love tapping the IRGC on the coastline of the Strait to Hormuz. We'll talk about that a little bit later, because the greatest foreign policy mind of our time, of course, I'm talking about Kamala Harris. She's announced her brilliant campaign on why Americans are really angry at, quote, the Iran war, end quote. Uh, sorry, I. I really shouldn't have put the quotes in there because there was a drunk hiccup that I left out. We'll get to that in a minute, though, because there is much bigger news that appears to be not just kind of a momentary fluke in the system. The job gains over the last month, they've been incredible. They have. They have truly been incredible. Please don't take just my word for it. Here's kind of the CNN roundup of these numbers. The jobs report surpassing the expectation this morning.
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New data showing 115,000 jobs were added last month. All right, CNN's Matt Egan joining us. Now.
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Put this into perspective for us. Well, Sarah, look, the job market, it slowed down in April, but. But not nearly as much as feared. This was a big beat for the job market. Look at this. So the US economy adding 115,000 jobs in April, that's almost twice as much as the consensus from economists. Again, it is a slowdown from March, which was actually revised slightly higher. Wait a minute, wait a minute, wait a minute. I will be the first to tell you, the first on the record to tell you. Remember, in March, the jobs report was not bad. And what did I say on the air? I said I am going to wait until there is a revision. And I am here to tell you that in one of the first times I've ever actually seen numbers revised upward. The, the reason that the, the April numbers are not as high is because the March numbers were revised to be even higher. And there's a couple of reasons for that, but we'll let them finish. But this was better than expected. There we go. Thank you. Now, this is, this drove a couple of things today. The S and P closed at its highest level on record. It's now up 17.2% since the March 30th. Bottom that is a $10 trillion gain in market cap in 29 trading days. And there are two key reasons for this. So. Well, let me rephrase that. There are three key reasons for this. I don't, I don't want to cut over to our interview with, with Trent from the Small Business Administration and, and you know, him give me grief over not giving, you know, the full number of reasons. First of all, the American economy is starting to feel the effects of the big beautiful bill. It's kicking in. I told you that we were going to see through the end of the first quarter and the beginning of the second quarter, the economy start to gain momentum. That was needed, it was necessary. It was stymied and kind of messed around with because of the confusion around federal courts and, and tariff threats here and different policies there and how things were going to work, whether things flipped back and forth, which, by the way, so far we've seen that there has been far fewer of the tariff refunds than were expected, meaning that a lot of organizations are just kind of leaving things there because they would then have to take that money and then through the Internal Revenue Service report, what they used that money for. So, for example, let's say Walmart, if they are paying a very large chunk of the tariffs, Walmart did in fact pass a lot of those prices onto consumers. So if they took the tariff refund from the Trump administration, the IRS would then require them to say, hey, cool, you've already gotten some of this money back. Unless you're gonna be passing it out by Walmart greeters to everybody coming into Walmart like Johnny Appleseed. You gotta report what you're doing with this money. You can't just sit in the corporate account, you know, you can't just hire some dude named Dennis for the full price of the amount and send him on a cruise line. Hantavirus, anybody? Anyway, so that's definitely kind of a plus on the stability of the stock market side of things. The second key reason that we are actually seeing a major surge in the stock market. AI is actually doing and delivering what a lot of people had promised. I'm gonna again, I said that I wasn't really quite there on where a lot of AI was going to approach. There are also a lot of people fear mongering and telling you that it's going to come alive and it's going to eat your children and also give you the wrong recipe for banana bread instead. AI development is truly benefiting the economy because it is doing some of the things that a lot of people had suggested would happen but a lot of people weren't expecting. Greatest example, it has put more blue collar tradesmen into active employment than any other economic surgeon that I believe we saw since lead pipes were replaced with copper. So as a little quick aside here, my grandfather Tony Kennett, he was an electrician. He was an electrician for ABB and Westinghouse in Muncie, Indiana. And he didn't work on the line. Like he wasn't putting together TVs for Westinghouse. You know, he wasn't building electrical components for abb, he was an electrician for the plant. And so what that meant is that his job was keeping things in that building running and running well. And he did a lot of the trades. Plumbers, H Vac, electricians and so on and so forth are active in this new era of manufacturing construction. Remember how everyone told you that Trump bringing manufacturing jobs to the United States and these big deals, it wasn't going to matter because these factories were going to take forever to get built. Guess who builds the factories? Those would be Americans. That's a good thing. That's a good thing. You know that I am, I am a little bearish rather than bullish on the economy because I hate the idea of predicting things to you and them being wrong. I would much rather say I wasn't expecting it to be this good and it's great, rather than telling you oh it was going to be amazing all along. And then if it doesn't do so well, you think I'm a liar now, radio crew, I am sending you to the commercial break or the FCC is going to take out my kneecaps. That's the truth. But we shall return. It's the Tony Kinnit cast. We're going to continue over here on the live stream side of things. Oh, there's so much news, so much news tonight and so little time. So with that said, I do want to get a little bit of conversation here on where the economy is going and we have a bit of a treat for you. A member of the Small Business Administration will be joining us here in a couple of minutes to talk about the deregulatory process. You know how every farmer or manufacturer or big rig driver or heck, even guys that just own trucks will tell you that things are wildly expensive because the Obama and the Biden administrations mandated this crazy climate change diesel monitoring tax stuff. And not to mention shutting down the Keystone pipeline project which President Trump just signed a big agreement on, or whether we were talking about all of the emissions controls that were in the entire manufacturing sector. Well, these types of regulations have been taken before the chopping block and held down by the Small Business Administration while Environmental Protection Agency head Lee Zeldin just swung as hard as his arms could carry and beheaded a lot of these regulatory matters. And it's excellent. So we're going to talk about that here in just a minute. There's one final thing I want to point to because you might be asking, Tony, wait a minute, what about the gas prices? You know, you're saying a lot of things are up. Gas prices are still high. Yes, they are. However, there are, there were some initial reports that had suggested, at least I believe the New York Post ran with this story, that gas prices were going to be high through the election and there was nothing anyone could do. There are now two separate reports that have emerged, one from the United States and one from Europe, neither of them from right leaning institutions, just to be clear with you, that have suggested that realistically it could be about two or three weeks after a finality has been drawn on the Iran situation, that oil prices return to normal. And again, because the UAE is leaving, OPEC quite possibly drops through the floor because as capitalism often does when there is a pressure point in one area, new routes, new opportunities are brought forward and innovation occurs. The UAE is going to build the Fujairah pipeline and processing facility to better and bigger than ever before. Saudi Arabia is escalating the amount of pipeline mileage is extending the pipeline very quickly. Sorry, I know I didn't say that quite so cleanly. But to bring oil refined and core crude to the Persian Gulf directly, possibly through Oman with direct deals in that sector and then also over through closer to the Suez Canal. So kind of trying to go up the western side of the country. The United States again, President Trump signing an executive order making oil production and energy production a national defense priority. You are seeing some of the permit request processes get rubber stamped on approval. So it would be one thing if this was again like the Biden administration where an economic decision brought forward really bad economic issues forever, which is that's what people are used to. But what we're seeing is that as soon as this particular point is drawing to a close and it is absolutely beginning its final throws, you're going to see a major rubber banding effect where things do shoot forward. And that brings us over to the Small Business Administration. So the radio crew is about to come back from commercial and it is, it is, it is. It's going to be a really good interview. And I see some of the questions in the comments on the AI side of things. Don't you worry. We'll address those over in the mail time segment of the show. Don't go anywhere. More to come. It's the Tony Knitcast here on the Daily Signal. If I don't fall into the sky. This is the Tony Kennett cast on 93 WYBC. I've been promising you some good news on the economic front front. And so now we're going to pivot over from some job number stuff over to our good friend Trent Staggs. He's over from the Small Business Administration's Office of Advocacy, Region 8. This man eats the Great Plains states for breakfast. And that. Okay, he doesn't. But he does work on a lot of measures that are actually benefiting the economy in some pretty substantial ways. Trent, thanks for joining us.
B
Hey, great to be with you, Tony. Thanks for having me.
A
Ton of stuff that we could talk about. I want to focus on two things. Primarily, I know that you've been talking to a lot of people around the country and in roundtable conversations, a lot of people are concerned on kind of the cattle farming, the beef market, the agriculture industry, and then on how we can actually improve oil production and flow regarding pipelines in the country. Tell us some of the stuff that you're working on.
B
Yeah, well, you know, it's pretty exciting that we have this task force to begin with. Part of the the Office of Advocacy really is tasked by the president, by this administration, to really go out and be the voice of small business across all federal agencies and help identify and eliminate burdensome regulation. And so as our office has done that, you know, we've met with over 12,000 small businesses and stakeholders, conducted scores of roundtables, we put together a red tape hotline for people they don't even need to come to us. We'd love to meet them, businesses where they are, but they can even just phone in and let us know what's troubling them. And boy, we have uncovered quite a bit a good $110 billion worth of compliance costs that we've taken off the backs of small business just in the first year alone here under President Trump's leadership. And really getting out there with his executive orders on deregulation, focusing heavily on this as the top three priority for him. Deregulation, that is nobody better than President Trump and this SBA administrator too, Kelly Lefler, that as business people, they understand the cost of doing business with respect to the regulatory framework that sadly we've been in for some time. I mean, the previous administration put up almost $2 trillion in new regulatory compliance on the backs of business, 300 million paperwork hours. And so we've got a lot of work to do and we're out there doing it. We're meeting small businesses, we're hearing from folks. And to your point, yes, right away, looking at issues like diesel emission systems, like the Food Safety Modernization act, like even victories for fishermen that we are able to work with, on, and, and procure for them. So there's quite a bit there that we're tackling or have tackled in this first year and we continue to do more.
A
So that's some of the stuff you've mentioned there right at the tail end. Those are the kind of regulations that are really burdensome on small businesses. You know that and I know that because you and I steep in the bathwater of this stuff all the ding dong day. But a lot of those who are tuning in, they may not just by the first hearing of it, quite grasp how getting rid of some of these insane diesel regulations were crippling small businesses, especially in the agricultural industry here in the United States. Could you kind of walk us through that, that process of how it works its way down and becomes practical?
B
Yeah, absolutely. I mean, in that it is something that is, that really has a huge impact. And we've, we've been able to see that. I mean, we classified this at some $200 billion. We have a most wanted list of regulations that we're working on right now at our website@advocacy.sba.gov and this has come up, you know, some $13,000 per vehicle is the cost of complying with the Clean air Act regulations.
A
$13,000 per vehicle to comply with previous.
B
Yes. And so Secretary Zeldin, you know, has been fantastic. All the cabinet level folks and agency heads have really taken it to heart. They often come to us and ask, hey, help us identify regulations that we can work on.
A
And so they believe Zelda never sleeps.
B
Amazing partners in this. They really have been. And he just announced just a few weeks ago the diesel emission fluid, or DEF, sensors rescinding that requirement, which was about $13 billion alone and a huge win in savings for farmers and truckers, you know, across this country. And we want to continue working on that. There are Tier 4 requirements coming up where we think it's even much more costly than that. There's other component parts that we need to take a look at.
A
Those are pretty critical measures. This is one of the things that it's easy to campaign against and say, look, these are the things that are hurting Americans while you're running for office as an administration. And in that transitory period, you can say, here are the things we're going to do. But these aren't always day one. The, the dam breaks, the floodwaters rush through the plains and everything changes at once. These are incremental changes. And so it's a lot more difficult to communicate to the American people. This is a small change that it may seem now. This is the only one of this week, even though obviously with diesel emissions that's really huge. Some of these are snowballing effects over time. They allow for a lot of long term freedom for small businesses to invest in money that wasn't like you said previously, going as a $13,000 per vehicle tax in some operations where if you don't have multiple vehicles tasking in the same area at the same time, you're not getting that work done. I mean, the agriculture industry is built on the reliability of those machines.
B
Yeah, no, absolutely. And you know, the end business is really built around certainty. Right? The, the, all these regulations that keep popping up and adding more and more cost. These small businesses in particular that we want to advocate on their behalf because this is something where they may not have the army of accountants and attorneys to be able to comply with this just byzantine regulatory system and framework that we have. And so it's very critical, this role as Advocates that we get out there, we meet businesses where they are, we hear them, and then we work with our team in D.C. that really has a portfolio of every single agency assigned to them, our interagency affairs team. They're fantastic. And we work on really taking what we've heard from businesses, small businesses, directly, and working with those agencies on recommendations on how we can change regulations to make them less burdensome.
A
Trent, one of the things that I often get, I'm thrilled to get to ask, and it's one of the things that Americans don't necessarily get a chance to. To see these kind of questions answered. So here goes nothing. You guys only have a certain size of a tool belt because although you guys have a certain ability to work on regulatory structure, it is Congress, at the end of the day, that sets certain parameters. They decide what's in your tool belt regarding regulations and things that have to be followed for the Great Plains states. Those that you work with, I know out there in Salt Lake City, you're having conversations, dozens of them a week. What is something that Congress could pass if, again, if you had the magic wand, if, you know, you had Thune and Johnson and the whole crew in, what's something they could pass to make your work advocating for smaller businesses ready and better today?
B
That's an excellent question, Tony. That really is. And, you know, I have to look at the REINS act and the Prove it act. To your point.
A
Sorry, could you outline both of those? Those real quick here for me?
B
Yeah, no, absolutely. You know, Senator Lee has been really instrumental in the REINS act, which would effectively require Congress to vote on any regulation that has, I believe, more than $100 million impact on business.
A
Wow.
B
And too often, yeah, unfortunately, Congress has largely abdicated their role and responsibility to a unelected bureaucracy or rulemaking bodies at varying agencies that, you know, in some administrations like this one under President Trump's leadership is fantastic and we're moving the ball, but in others, maybe not so much. And they've, They've really, they. They end up creating these rules and regulations. Case in point. The code of Federal regulation started out at just a few thousand pages back in the 1950s. We're over almost 200,000 pages today. And so there's so much regulation that is just promulgated by these agencies and never voted on by Congress. And that's what the REINS act, essentially, we tried to address the Pruvit act somewhat similarly. You know, really wanted to be able to take a look at the impact of regulations on business, because far too Often, you know, our office was created through the Regulatory Flexibility act, and it requires agencies to certify whether new rules are going to be onerous, particularly on small business. But what we found through our office, we gave testimony before the small Business committees of the House and the Senate recently, where we are seeing a lot of what are called ghost certifications or phantom certifications, where these agencies are just effectively rubber stamping these rules, saying they don't have an impact when they truly do. And that has cost, really hundreds of billions of dollars in impact on small businesses in particular. And so under this president again, and this administrator, this administration, we are going after these regulations. You know, Administrator Leffler indicated that she was standing up a deregulatory strike force. And that's. That's exactly what we do here in the Office of Advocacy is to go identify those regulations, try to scale them back so that they're far less burdensome on businesses. And to the extent we can do that, just working with the regulatory agencies, we will. But to your point, Tony, yes, Congress could take some action. I think the REINS act would be a great step in the right direction, along with the Prove It Act.
A
That's Trent Staggs. He is the Region 8 advocate for the Office of Advocacy for the Small Business Administration. Check out the stuff they're doing over@sba.gov Trent, thank you very much for giving us a couple minutes.
B
Thank you so much for having me.
A
All right, we're going to take a quick second here to dive into some of these Iranian, I mean, some bizarre claims that were just made a couple of minutes ago. And then, of course, a following statement by the President of the United States. But first, May is National Foster Care Month. So I wanted to take a moment to tell you about my friends at the Alliance Defending Freedom and what they're doing to support foster and adoptive families in America. Over 300,000 children are in foster care in the US right now. States desperately need parents to step up and meet that need. But in some states, government officials are turning away Christian foster parents, all because of their biblical beliefs on sex and gender. The Alliance Defending Freedom is standing with these parents against this discrimination. Thankfully, they've helped overturn some of these ridiculous state policies. But some states still discriminate against Christian foster parents. The ADF is standing with a family in Washington, for example, whose foster care renewal was restricted because of their faith. Your gift helps parents stand up for their rights in cases like these and cases represented by the Alliance Defending Freedom all over the country. Please consider going to joinadf.comtony or text Tony to 83848. That's T O N Y to 83848. And a huge thank you to them for sponsoring the show. And I say that with personal experience with the ADF and the excellent work that they do. So that brings us over to the very exciting excitement, the real hoots and or hollers of the situation in the Strait of Hormuz and Iran. So right up front and forward, the United States is in again, kind of a little pseudo standoff with the Iranians over the Strait of Hormuz. Meaning that the Iranians tried this little FedEx faxia form that you're supposed to fill out now to totally not get shot at in the Strait of Hormuz. And the U.S. navy said, no, we're, we're going to be a little bit closer in our blockade. The regime is panicking and we have different officials that are coming out every day. Now. That is not a good sign. And for things that do not happen in one day, this is happening in just a couple of days, quicker than many other operations by far in history. So what's going on at the moment? The United States Navy has made it clear that Love Taps, meaning President Trump's term for the US Navy firing back. That's going to continue. That is absolutely going to continue here. Was the president giving that logic and rationale?
C
What you saw yesterday was US Destroyers moving through international waters being fired upon.
A
Correction, sorry, not the president yet. Secretary of State Marco Rubio making this
C
by the Iranians and the US Responded defensively to protect itself. That's what you saw. I mean that, that's separate and distinct from Operation Epic Fury. The I don't. What if you fire a drone or a missile at our destroyer? What are we supposed to do?
A
Let it hit it.
C
We have to respond to it. We have to knock down the missile and we have to knock out whatever it is that launched that missile.
A
This is a huge change from the Obama, the Biden administration. Even back during the George W. Bush administration after really at the beginning of the end of the Gulf War, when we had destroyed all of the fourth largest army and air force and all the incredible of Saddam Hussein. Instead of then treating any attack on the United States as a case for immediate response, we went back to this sort of flippy Vietnam War era garbage, which is if you are attacked, well, we need to look at social and cultural implications and then talk it over in this committee. And then the president sits down with the Committee on Social affairs and you don't have. You don't even end up hitting back. Instead, you'd have Joe Biden, who would get in front of the country and go. Which roughly translates to, in 48 hours, we're going to do some kind of a strike at this exact location. Get out while you can. And then they would. Instead, the United States Navy is saying, hey, guess what? We've already got guns pointed in your direction. We'll save you the time of packing up. We've arranged a one to one meeting with you and our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. It's Judgment Day.
C
The alternative is to let it sink one of our ships. That's crazy. So of course we responded to it.
A
Well, I guess. But the point is, if. If there's not much seizing in the firing, because we.
C
Well, you should ask that of the Iranians.
A
There's not much seizing in the firing. What is the Navy supposed to do? Go grab the guy on the shore and put him in timeout? Reporters are so sometimes so retarded. And there's a ceasefire. Why are you shooting back at the people shooting at you? Why would you. The only reason that you would carry a gun concealed is if you expected to use it. That's why Kyle Rittenhouse is very, very bad. You know, the middle aged left list women over on Facebook were whining about that crap. You again. The common sense people, often in flyover country who are watching this show know far better than the reporter. You know what rubo is going to say. What does that have to do. What, just shoot back at the guy who just tried to kill you? What's wrong with people?
C
Of course we responded to it.
A
Well, I guess. But the point is, if. If there's not much seizing in the firing because we.
C
Well, you should ask that of the Iranians. Don't ask me. We didn't fire. They fired on us. My point is, if you fire at a US Navy ship, what are we supposed to do? Say, oh, there's a ceasefire. We're not going to shoot down your drone. That's a stupid question. That's a stupid position to take. Of course we fired back at them. They were shooting at us. That's what I would expect to do. Only stupid countries don't shoot back when you're shot at.
A
Correct. This is one of the reasons, again, what Americans are looking for are three things. The first thing they're looking for are results. Americans want results. They don't want to be told something is going to happen and then it not happen. They want Results. Now, sometimes that means you can gamble something and Americans won't really like it while it's uncertain. And then after you succeed, Americans are like, yeah, let's go again. Case in point, the Gulf War. Americans were really nervous when George H.W. sent the coalition and they got on the border. But then after Americans watched the greatest Navy on the face of this freaking earth, the greatest Air force and army on the face of this earth, sends Saddam Hussein a lovely little reminder that he should have stayed with his pet goats. The American people were all over it. So Americans want results. Number two. They want competent leadership that doesn't embarrass them. They do. They want leadership that doesn't embarrass them. When Vance gets up there and he has, you know, he's got some personality, obviously. He's very witty, but he's always right to the point. He doesn't play around, he doesn't goof around. It's good stuff. Last but not least, the thing that Americans want the most. More than a walk on the beach, more than watching the Dallas Cowboys or the New England Patriots get humiliated in a Super bowl, more than watching France surrender. Okay, maybe not more than watching France surrender. What do Americans want the absolute most? They like to see those that they bet on succeed. It's. That's different than just the results. All Americans like it when gas prices go down, except for Gavin Newsom. But more so is Americans saying, I put my bet on this team, on this horse, on this race, and I came away right. Americans, more than just results. They love being right. And Rubio has a very high approval rating because he finishes what he started. He does. In fact, he has the highest approval rating of anyone in the administration. So Rubio is the only guy right now, at least among the popular candidates for 2028, with a net approval rating as net net approval or net favorability. Rubio is at plus 4. JD Vance is at minus 2. Newsom is at minus 8. According to the call she markets, Rubio is the clear favorite to win the 2028 presidency. Rubio at 21%, Vance at 18, Newsom at 17. And again, you can say what you want. There are two reasons for that. First of all, and I hate. I hate to be this guy. I really do. J.D. vance absolutely drew the short end of the stick. He drew the short straw. And the reason he did is he's the vice president. The vice president does nothing. Ever since our very first Vice president, John Adams is like, all right, let's get to work. And then he got in there and he's like, wow, this sucks. That's been a thing for a long time. Even though Trump has made him the fraud czar, he, he doesn't have the authority to do X, Y and Z. There's not a whole lot for him to do. And that's not his fault. Rubio is doing every job in Washington, every single one of them. And that does in fact have a couple of implications. Sorry, that, that's more on the, the analysis side there. What are our boats doing? You may remember the Truxton, the Rafael Peralta and the Mason were supposedly hit by a bargain bin of drones and missiles. And the hoogity boogity by the, the irgc. They said, we got those naval ships, we got them. Haha. It turns out, no you didn't. Here are the Truxton, the Rafael Peralta and the USS Mason operating in the Arabian Sea freely. This is released by centcom. I like this better than the AI crap. I, I'll be, I'll be real with you there. The 250th 4th of July celebration is just going to be incredible. Now to be clear that CENTCOM has corrected an earlier statement now saying that the United States forces, instead of disabling three vessels to prevent them from leaving or entering Iranian ports, it said, sorry, we got that wrong, it's actually four. So again, things are not going very well. And you can tell they're not going very well for a couple of reasons. First and foremost, you have Mazaher, a brand new official who no one's ever heard of before, who has now addressed the international media to say, Mukhtaba Khomeini, the gay one legged or no legged son of Ayatollah Al Khomeini, who is not well at all this point. He's actually very well. You just can't see him. He's, he's here with us when the moon is full. You can still hear him going, you know, it's just. Here you go. On the day of the incident, that would be when Khomeini felt things get a little close and hot and heavy. He said, I was in the office with Dwight and Pam. Anyway, an airstrike hit an area about 30 meters away from us where General Shirazi and his colleagues. Joy, God, we're torn to pieces. Anyway, about 70 or 80 meters away, you know, that's a couple of, you know, a couple of yards for those of you who have, are from a country that's been to the moon. 70 or 80 meters from us they hit the leaders workplace and that incident happened. Always a good start when you're going to the Ilhan Omar school of Some things happened to describe incidents during the bombing and the missile attacks. His Eminence Ayatollah Moktaba Husseini Khomeini Linguini bikini was not in the place where he usually taught. He was not there that day. They raised that place to the ground. They hit his home where his wife was killed. He was on his way there on the stairs going upstairs. Wait a minute, so he, was he on his way there or was he there? Look, I've been on Google maps when they're telling me like ways that I could get to a location. Now if you're here in the United States, your options are walking, taking the train, distance by car, distance by electric scooter. You know, if you're in the Middle east you got like distance by camel, distance by being thrown by a JDAM landing right next to your feet. I don't think I've seen distance by stairs. I don't know if you can say he was on his way home traveling vi I 90 stairs. I don't, I don't think that works. Missile struck there. Ms. Haddad was killed. Now I don't exactly know fully how all of like the last names and stuff in, you know, Arabic and Islamic cultures work, but wouldn't she be Mrs. Khomeini wouldn't. Why is Shedad? I mean I know he's probably got, you know, a bunch of, you know, again, there's a reason they keep the girls schools very close to the military bases. Mr. Meshpa who was downstairs was killed. His eminence was on the stairs again, the stairs. Force of the blast hit him and knocked him to the ground. His kneecap was slightly injured and his back was also slightly injured. So far this just sounds like an average, you know, between the ages of 35 and 55 attempting to do some kind of home repair. My kneecap slightly injured. My back slightly injured, hit by a missile on the stairs. Aren't we all? Thank God his back has healed in recent weeks. I really shouldn't say God. Thank Allah in recent weeks his back is healed. Sources do trust me and Allah willing, Subhanallah, his kneecap will recover very soon. See that, that's why, that's why you haven't heard anything from him because his, his kneecap and his back was injured. I, I, by the way, I truly get this. There are A couple of, a couple of weeks ago I hurt my back. You may have noticed because on the stream I looked like Batman. You know, you're not really doing a whole lot of the turn in the neck in the back there. Um, you may have also noticed I was still on camera because hurting your back or your kneecap doesn't prevent you from addressing the country. So. Yeah, I mean, I'm not looking too good there. Uh, now President Trump has announced that if the Iranians think this is just going to go on forever and ever and ever and ever. Amen. This is actually about 40 minutes ago that he made this statement in front of Marine Force One. So sorry. There's going to be some helicopter noises that maybe we'll just go ahead and send the Navy up there and they'll just landscape the coastline of the Strait of Hormuz permanently. We'll go a different route if everything gets to get signed up and put. You can't really hear that. I know. That's because this is, you know me. This is the thing that sucks about these kind of interviews. What the President is saying, you know, over the. Is we'll restart Project Freedom if we have to. I'm going to. I'm going to make sure here that's. That's what he. That. That was one line of what he said. I'm going to see what the actual full text is. He said, we may go back to Project Freedom if things don't happen. But it'll be Project Freedom plus, meaning Project Freedom plus other things. Project Freedom Plus. It's exciting. It's like a whole new version of Microsoft Office. I'm kind of excited. We'll see what's going on there. So, again, those are kind of your updates. The other Gulf states, not a whole lot of breaking news on that side of things. On the rest of the international side, Secretary of Rubio has made it clear regarding the Cuban government that they're not only going to continue sanctions on, again, the Cuban regime, but also on companies that try to facilitate aid specifically to the Cuban regime. Now, here's the statement by Secretary Rubio
B
on that back to Cuba a little bit.
C
The United States, including yesterday, are ramping
A
up sanctions against Cuba, the regime, with the exchange with the Pope. Did you feel any convergence of views
C
on that and on the US Policy? Let me just clarify something for you. Our sanctions are against a company named Gaisa. Okay? This is a holding company set up by generals in Cuba that has generated billions of dollars of revenue, none of which benefits the Cuban people. Not one cent of it benefits the Cuban people. You understand this, right? I Don't know if you know this. There's the Cuban government and they have a budget, and then there's this private company that has more money than the government does. None of the money in that company goes to build a single road, a single bridge, provide a single grain of rice to a single Cuban other than the people that are part of Geisa. So that's what we're sanctioning, is a company that basically is taking anything that makes money in Cuba and illegally putting it into the pockets of a few regime insiders. So that.
A
Again, correct, Correct. Now, last but not least, the President of the United States is celebrating a three day ceasefire between Russia and Ukraine, May 9th, 10th and 11th. That's the. That's Russia, you know, celebrating victory day in World War II. So the president was excited about that kind of an expected cease fire. That war is winding to a close as well, because the promise of drone warfare changing things forever. Now, it's kind of, it's kind of not, it's annoying, but the countermeasures for drones are far, far more advanced and are advancing more quickly than drones themselves are able to advance, because you can point a lot of different things in a lot of different visible and not visible spectrums and do some fun stuff with drones. And I now legally have to stop talking because I'm redacted now. Not redacted. I've already gotten so many questions. Tony, what do you think about the UFO release? What do you think about the aliens? What. What do you think about the secrets and the pictures and images from the moon and space and the sky? I don't. I have other crap to worry about right now than, than what people are telling you is like, oh, wow, it's incredible. Oh, man, the FBI. This one guy that they later ruled was drunk and his license was later revoked as an agent. He said there were four foot men that were climbing out of vehicles. First of all, that's just any town in France. And then also, number two, if there were aliens, which, I'm sorry, he's a former biology teacher and an avid Baptist. I'm going to tell you no, no and no. But if there were, I am sure that all of you will join me in bullying in the most xenophobic fashion possible. Any other creature in this galaxy who claims to be great that was not, as scripture says, made in the image of God. So I really don't care. I don't know. I think that what a lot of this is, at least in like, the. Oh, gosh, it's crazy. Oh, wow. I, I, I think this is just like, ah, let's go ahead and release. It's fine, whatever. I, I will say that I noticed there were a couple of former pages up by our dear friends over at Lockheed that went down immediately into 404 not found pages. My pals over at the Skunk Works, little, little something something there. But anyway, anyway, I'm sorry, I know you're expecting me to be like, oh, the UFOs, but the moon landing was fake, but UFO is that kind of crap. You knew I wasn't really gonna give a flying wooden nickel about that. The coolest event ever to happen in space is once when we were testing nuclear devices, we had built a little fake town, including a fake sewer system. And because of the blast of the nuke, it because of the pressure and the fire surging underground through the sewer system, shot a manhole cover out faster than any other object has ever been launched. Physically, we believe it may be the very fastest physical object in the universe at the moment. Now the actual term for how fast it's going is like Mach bleep. I mean it's so, I mean we have, we have the capability of launching interstellar destruction devices that make the Holdo maneuver look like a ping pong slap anytime we want. That's the only thing about that that I kind of think is really cool. So there you go. That said, I think that just for time's sake, tonight I'm going to pivot over to a little bit of mail time. So we're going to get a little of that in our system because you guys have asked some really cool questions. And then we'll probably end up showing you the army captain who is doing a huge effort against, well, I should say huge effort on behalf of those whose entire careers were ended because they in uniform chose not to take the COVID vaccine. We'll probably upload that tomorrow just so that we don't keep you here all night. So you have to subscribe to the Daily Signals YouTube channel and catch that one when we upload that tomorrow. So those things all said allow us to get into a little bit of mail time. Mail time.
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Mail.
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Tony Kennett cast. All right, so for mail time, here's kind of our, our rules. We try to take the questions that come in. We try to keep an eye on the, the live chat kind of things, but it's a little difficult because you guys are chatterboxes and we love it. And so over in our Discord Channel, you can find again the link to that in the description, you will find our fantastic crew all hours of the day and night. You can send in stuff, news tips. A lot of you guys have ended up suggesting things that we later discussed on the show. And then there's a little mail time channel and that allows me, in this beautiful organized fashion to read the mail time stuff and I don't have to give my producers vertigo from trying to follow the chat. So that said, there are a couple of fun things I wanted to tackle. So, yeah, sorry, there's Louis Wesser. Please address the UFO news. There's a lot of speculation going on so far. It doesn't impress me what's going on in the uk. From Gretchen Davenport. Yes. So the Reform Party, which is kind of the more populist side of the UK's right, they won an incredible amount of local elections, local county seats. I want to get the actual number here set up. Keir Starmer's Labor Party hemorrhaged really, really badly. According to the preliminary results, Nigel Farage's Reform UK has secured a landslide victory in England, winning 1,014, excuse me, 1,414 seats in local councils. Now that is an increase of 1412 seats in the previous election. That's pretty, that's pretty, pretty, pretty incredible. How many seats did the Labor Party lose in local council seats? They lost 1,358 seats. That is a bloodbath and a bloody good one, isn't it? I mean, really, that is incredible. And by the way, the key reason why, also in Scotland, while the left wing nationalist S and P party retained its lead for the fifth consecutive time with 57 seats, Labour lost three seats, finishing with 17. The Reform Party won 15 seats for the first time in the Welsh Parliament, Labour slumped to third place with just nine seats. The Party of Wales took first place, while the Reform in the UK took second. So 34 seats taken by the Reform Party in the. In the Welsh area in Wales. So why? Because they're tired of like the whole Muslim migrant thing. That's why. That's why the Muslim migrant thing. And there's like this weird kind of, I guess retaliation group happening on what used to be some members of the right, Megyn Kelly, Tucker Carlson, who have spent a lot of time saying, actually, Islam is really good and amazing and wonderful. I'm so sorry I was ever me. Meanwhile, over in Europe, every country that imports Muslims ends up having a really, really, really bad time. People are kind of tired of it. Turns out the rape gangs aren't worth it. Tony, that's really mean. You shouldn't say I don't care. Unlike some people, I don't base my success off of our YouTube numbers alone. And even though we are, what is it right now, tripling Megyn Kelly's numbers on the YouTube, she's so proud of our advertising budget right now, $0. So I don't know, maybe Americans really don't like simping for the Muslims they're currently throwing out of the United Kingdom or Texas because Governor Greg Abbott is getting ready to go after or is currently in the middle of going after the Council on American Islamic Relations, which is a horrible, horrible group. And I know because I've spoken with many of them quite a bit. I've also been to the Middle East a couple of times, so I kind of know what you know, you kind of see it in person. Also, care is going to have to testify before Congress, according to Representative Chip Roy. So that again, it's really, really good stuff. I'm happy to see that. All right, next mailtime question from Steve on the mailtime side of discord, what do you think is Trump's greatest first term achievement? The Supreme Court? Undoubtedly it's the Supreme Court of the United States. It doesn't even come close the second term. It depends. There are some who have said that it's still the Supreme Court from the first administration. Uh, some have said that it's his efforts kind of towards shaping some foreign policy stuff around the world. I think that long term, the greatest success is gonna be the Trump accounts. The Trump account. The Trump accounts are going to be huge because it's the answer to Social Security that sucks. The Ponzi scheme that everyone is forced to pay into and that you're brainwashed by the time that you're in your 60s and 70s to go, I earned this my whole life and it's fine and everyone leave it alone. And again, I agree it's yours should be left alone. But those of us who aren't in your bracket of collection or those of you who are about to start collecting it, you should get to collect it. I should get to turn down participating in that program and do Trump account stuff that'll probably, I think that's like, again, one of the greatest things the president has ever done. Super huge, super great. But there's a lot of stuff in his second term that he's done that's just incredible. From Gretchen kind of advance and Rubio question, don't you think that it will hurt JD Vance due to the fact that Tucker's you Say brother would be Tucker's son. Just barely quit working for him. Too close to comfort. So I know Tucker. So Tucker has a brother, Buckley Carlson, who's nutcase. And then he has a son, Buckley Carlson, who is a really decent dude. And I know that because Buckley Carlson used to be in Jim Banks office. And I've known the son Buckley Carlson for quite a while. And I'm not going to go into too many details here, but Buckley was. I like claimed to be like the source of all of these leaks from the Vice President's office. Yeah, I don't. This is just me. If evidence comes out. I hear you. But knowing what I know about the son, Buckley Carlson, the reason he quit working. Again, I'm not going to try to go too much into detail here about Buckley the son. When you are accused every single day without any evidence for being the leaker. And don't get me wrong, there are absolutely leakers in the Trump administration and in on like the closer to Vice President J.D. vance's side of the. That the wing of that wing of the administration. There are those who are leaking. Absolutely. Is Buckley one of them? I have not yet seen any evidence that suggests that at all. Again, I could be wrong. I know Buckley and I've known him for a while. The son, not the brother, the crazy guy. Um, so I'm going to be conflict of interest there for you. Now, do I think that Vance's record with like the Tucker side of things is going to hurt him? Probably a little. It's a little early to say. It's a little early. I mean, there's a rumor going around on the political world that on June 11th that Governor Ron DeSantis of Florida is going to announce his candidacy for 2028. Guys, it's real early for that. It is all kinds of early for that. So patience, patience, my friends. There will be time for election stuff, I promise. But I'm not as worried about it right now, just that I'm seeing members of the administration gain some popularity for things they're doing. But that does more to the popularity of this administration and then what that has to do for the next couple of years of the country and then how that will factor in. So we're kind of in the first step of the math equation for what will be 2028. But we're just now putting in the first parts of the word problem. It'll. It'll be a little bit. All right, next mail time question. There was one mail time question that I totally said I was Going to address at the beginning of the show. And then I. Absolutely. I've completely forgotten it. I think I asked a producer to write it down. It was during the countdown section. Oh, well. From E. Smith. So hantavirus can really be a side effect to the COVID 19 vaccine? No, the hantavirus is what happens when you get really too close to rat poop. We've known about it for a long time and a couple of things with it, while it's a deadly virus, it spreads. It's really difficult to spread. It is. So as I said to my students right before we all went on our long Covid break, a virus only has so many points to spend in its rna, right? It only has so much that can be coded there. And either a lot of the RNA has to be taken up to make it really deadly or a lot of the RNA has to be taken up for it to, like, improve its transmission. Transmission. Its transmissibility. So this particular virus, unlike Covid, which was really easy to catch but was very unlikely to kill you, this one packs more of a punch. But it's really hard to transmit. Like its incubatory period, which is long, does not have. It has a very small transmission window and you can't really pass it. Like some kinds of the stomach bug where you may not show outward symptoms. The hantavirus. No, no, I'm sorry.
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It's.
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It's not the same. Everyone out there who's making a big deal about this. It's just. I mean, everyone just wants to fear Monger right now. I'm not seeing it. And I've known about hantavirus for a while. Gosh, it's in my college biology textbook, for crying out loud. The real secret, by the way. You want to know the secret to the hantavirus? Don't be near poop. And also don't go on cruise ships. I. That's a secret. Me, I hate cruise ships. I will. I don't want to go on cruises. They're just festering disease pits. Don't go on cruise ships. Sorry. I would much rather go on, like, the Alaskan train trip than an Alaskan cruise. That's me. Because you get like, frequent stops and you're not like, crammed onto the. The isolated boat for ages. Kind of different there. So that's. It's more of a me thing. I don't think it's the same. Who could ever be the Secretary of State after Marco Rubio from CE Will to answer that question. There's always a person to pop up. Always a lot of people that said that Todd Blanche was just going to be, oh, terrible. Remember that one time, the Obama thing? And I said, hang on there. Hold on there, sad sackery. And he's, he's been great. There's always another person. The bench on the right is far deeper and wider than the bench on the left. That's usually because J.B. pritzker is so big, he's taking up the whole bench, you know. Oh, Brandon Peterman. $5 super chat. You are a hero. The F14 Tomcat Preservation Bill, the Maverick Act. Okay, so there is a bill right now that I believe requests three of the F14 Tomcats to be put into a, like a preservation routine and other replacement parts for the F14 Tomcat to be made and kept on standby. I believe is the general summary of the bill. It's great. I love preserving amazing aircraft. I do. Sorry, guilty is charged. I love it. No matter how slow the MQ1C Gray Eagle gets, flying slower than the MQ9 Reaper. I will always love it. I will. And the way that you can cut your hand on the propeller because they hadn't figured that out yet. I've said too much anyway, on older aircraft, when it comes to the A10, I say make a modern version of it for the F14. Again, just a game changer for the, the American service. The F14 Tomcat absolutely should be preserved. And if Elizabeth Warren spikes it in the Senate, I hope they load her into a catapult and launch her as target practice for the F14 Tomcat. With paintballs, of course. You know, just, just, just for fun.
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Be good.
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Be. Be a good thing. Like, like in Duck Hunt, where if you'd shoot the can, it bounce up in the air a little bit. You know what I'm saying? I'm just saying, like, don't let us have F14 tomcats. So that, that thing. What do I think of Melania? I do not care about the first lady of the United States ever. I don't. This is the other secret about me. I don't care. Remember how I didn't ever mention the, like the documentary on Melania? I don't care. I didn't elect the first lady of the United States. She's really nice. She is. She's great. I think she's a nice person. Super. But I didn't elect you. I didn't elect Michelle Obama, didn't elect Barbara bush, didn't elect Dr. Gyllenstein. I, I didn't. Didn't know. I don't care who the first lady of the United States is. I don't care who the spouses of a lot of people are. For the record, you know, on things now, if you get out there and you start like issuing political opinions, well then I'm gonna slack smack down your political opinion. But for example, just because Vice President J.D. vance as the vice president, does that mean I get to go after Usha like Jennifer Welch does? No. That's really disgusting and gross and terrible and wicked and evil in the same way. You don't often hear me going after Michelle as much. Now Michelle, when she gets out there and she gives her own political takes on how awful and terrible and evil and oh, it's so sad being a black woman. I'm just so sad. Then I make fun of that because that's just stupid. But like just by the merits of being the wife of somebody or the husband of somebody, I don't really care about that as much. Much. Again, that's why I also didn't spend a ton of time on Kristi Gnomes husband with the big balloon boobs. I don't care. Your spouse. People who spend a lot of time focusing on the first lady of the United States, no matter who they are. Weird. So we're going to be making a lot of people a little grumpy this evening. Let's see, I've got one, one final oh, on the DNC and the debt. So because the DNC is under a huge ton of debt, should they be banned from operating as a political party? No, that's not how it works. But if the DNC is bankrupt and they are in debt, should those things be called forward and perhaps members of the D like, should there be a bankruptcy notification and offices that are closed? Yeah, you can still run as a Democrat, but yeah, there should be some financial penalties. If you're bankrupt, you're out. And does that mean again, the party's defunct? No, it doesn't quite work like that. But the DNC is not the Democrats, they still have to do things by convention and signatures and everything else. So for example, the Indiana Republican Party can't really stop me as much as they really try. There's a huge debate in Indiana about like if the Republican Party can stop you from running as a Republican, the convention can decide. But really like the state party apparatus can't just boot you out for kicks and giggles. There's like a visual processes. So like the same with financial issues. It doesn't quite work like that. Although I like the spirit. Did Kamala ever pay the DNC back from Irish Baby? No, she didn't. One of the reasons they're in debt because they make really bad financial decisions. Kamala Harris was a huge, huge thing. From Moldegard double plus good to you. To producer Jen, Will I. Will you ask Tony if the Mail time harmony is A major or a dominant seventh? It is a. It is a G seventh chord. So it is G, B, D and then F natural. So it's just a classic G7 and it is simply me doing the barbershop of the blues Clues. Mail time. So Mail time, Mail time. I take it back. Tony. Kenneth Cast. It is a G ninth, G ninth at the end there. I go up and I hit the A above the. The next G. So It's. It's a G9 but it's not a G major 9th then. Then it would have been. Then it would have been an F sharp instead. So sorry, the. The pianist in me wants to go into that, but I don't want to bore everyone else here right now. I need to do another musical episode sometime. Just have the piano out and do some dinner theater for the show. I haven't done that in a very, very long time. I have to bring that one back. There's a couple of other. Well, some of these questions are a little inappropriate. Last one I'll answer from. From David here. In states like Maine that are not compliant with federal requests for voter rolls, can they have their election state or suspended or invalidated due to non compliance with federal laws? This is a Supreme Court case in the making. So no, you can't just ban people from sending people to Congress. No. Now by the way, the real answer to this. So this is the fun thing. State legislatures were supposed to be the ones who sent people to Congress. It was your state legislature that certified elections to send your representative and your state legislature that sent senators to D.C. that was how it's supposed to be. It wasn't supposed to be the federal government watching over every individual election. Same with the Electoral College. That's why states and their electoral members that are the same number as the representative seats are what's supposed to certify the election. Then your congressman, because you know your congressperson is the physical embodiment of that electoral college vote. That's why there's the same number of electoral college votes as there are seats in the House of Representatives. Although I can't really say that because there are non voting members for no reason. Like for D.C. and for Guam and other retarded things. The founders knew what they were doing. We instituted all of these silly, goofy rules that don't make any sense. But can the Fed say, well, you're not giving us voter rolls so therefore your elections don't count? No, they can't do that. Federalism. Now, if Congress passes a law and the Supreme Court confirms it, yes, this is going to be argued here pretty soon and it's probably going to have to do with the 2030 census. It's probably not going to come any sooner. Unless you see people get violent and or stupid around midterm. Then it comes right now. So we'll see. That's kind of the top of the there's a lot of rules regarding elections. Some of those are just a little more, you know, difficult. So all of all of that said and aside. Yeah, that, that's kind of, that's kind of my hot take for, for things for the week. It's been a really Good Friday, May 8th. Hopefully you guys have a wonderful weekend. If any big shenanigans happen over the weekend, we'll come back out live and do it again. Other than that, we'll see you on Monday, 7pm Eastern. To get started with another exciting real hoot of a time here on the Tony Kennett cast. We'll make sure that that interview, and it's a really, really good one with an army veteran who was kicked out of the service for not taking the COVID 19 vaccine. Vaccine. We'll upload that tomorrow. Don't miss it. Subscribe to the Daily Signal channel. It's the Tony Kennett cast here on the Daily Signal, nationally syndicated and first on 93 WIBC. Y' all take care. Ryan Reynolds here from Mint Mobile. I don't know if you knew this, but anyone can get the same Premium Wireless for $15 a month plan that I've been enjoying. It's not just for celebrities. So do like I did and have one of your assistant's assistants switch you to Mid Mobile today. I'm told it's super easy to do@mintmobile.com Switch upfront payment of $45 for 3 month plan equivalent to $15 per month required intro rate first 3 months only, then full price plan options available, taxes and fees, extra default terms@mintmobile.com.
BANKRUPT: Virginia Gerrymander Ruled Unconstitutional, Democrats in Debt After Wasting $70 Million
Date: May 9, 2026
Host: Tony Kinnett, The Daily Signal
This episode centers on the Virginia Supreme Court’s recent decision to strike down a Democrat-led constitutional redistricting amendment, the ensuing legal and political fallout, and the mounting financial troubles facing the Democratic National Committee after spending $70 million on this now-nullified campaign. Tony Kinnett delivers in-depth commentary, colorful criticism, and interviews on the legal, political, and economic implications of these events, branching out into broader topics such as party infighting, census impact, US foreign policy, deregulation, and more.
Virginia’s Gerrymandering Referendum Overturned:
A deep dive into the Virginia Supreme Court’s 4–3 decision to invalidate a Democrat-pushed referendum that sought to gerrymander congressional districts, the failed appeal attempts, and the referendum’s reverberations nationally—especially the waste of $70 million and the DNC's escalating debt.
“She just took an already in action session for the Virginia State legislature and then tried to turn that into this emergency mini session not titled correctly, not filed correctly, not advocated correctly, not voted on correctly…” (05:45)
“The Virginia Supreme Court is the final authority on Virginia constitutional questions. This is the end, folks. You will have the same map in 2026 for the congressional elections that existed in 2024.” (08:32)
“Mark Warner… posted a very endearing double statement, by which I mean he had a statement in the tweet and then he had like a bigger fancy Photoshop statement beneath it… No word about the constitutional amendment referendum put forward already invalidating and disenfranchising almost 2 million voters…” (09:50)
“They have more debt than they have cash and they have just blown $70 million which was donated to the DNC over the last year that they should have been using to get out of debt.” (21:06)
“$13,000 per vehicle to comply with previous [diesel emission regulations] ... Secretary Zeldin ... DEF sensors rescinding that requirement… a huge win in savings for farmers and truckers.” (47:44)
“They wrote the bill like a terms and services agreement for a social media application.” (06:45 – Tony)
“The Virginia Supreme Court is the final authority on Virginia constitutional questions. This is the end, folks.” (08:35 – Ken Cuccinelli)
“You get nothing. You lose. Good day, sir.” (09:22 – Tony, channeling Gene Wilder/Willy Wonka)
“How the turntables… it now appears … the Democratic National Committee reported approximately $18.36 million in outstanding debts and loans … and they just blew $70 million.” (21:06 – Tony)
“It doesn’t matter if California gerrymanders the entire state when they are losing 4, 5, 6 congressional votes, when they’re losing the total number of House districts and electoral college votes…” (28:53 – Tony)
“$13,000 per vehicle to comply with previous [diesel emission regulations] ... Secretary Zeldin ... DEF sensors rescinding that requirement… a huge win in savings for farmers and truckers.” (47:44 – Trent Staggs)
“11 states plus DC have more registered voters than voting-age citizens… That’s a problem.” (29:42 – Tony)
“We’ve arranged a one to one meeting with you and our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. It’s Judgment Day.” (58:08 – Tony, on new naval policy)
“Americans want results. They want competent leadership that doesn’t embarrass them. … And they like to see those that they bet on succeed.” (59:51 – Tony)
“If you have to do jump cuts to different locations that you’re signing up voters for and there’s like one person in the shot, it is not going very well at all, chief.” (25:40 – Tony)
Tony balances irreverence, sarcasm, and populist common sense with in-depth analysis and original interviews. The style is energetic, heavy on analogies and pop culture references, and openly critical of progressive/Democratic legal strategies and financial management, with a “flyover country” voice.
Frequent asides, chat interaction, and extended metaphors (e.g., building IKEA furniture, “love taps,” judge as Facebook ToS author) underscore key points.
For anyone seeking a deep, brash, detailed analysis of the week's political fireworks—and a case study in why process and constitutional rigor still matter—this episode underscores the real-world consequences for parties who cut corners and then find themselves bankrupt, financially and politically.