Alright, Jesus say hell yeah Saints of America and jal for Regius one nation, and you're gone and you're nasality and this is wrong.
This is Columbia's Morning News with Gary David and Christopher Thompson on one O three point five FM and five sixty AM.
W VOC don't forget the umbrella. Good morning. It is fifteen after six and welcome into a Thursday, the thirteenth of February eight. Guys, in the public interest tomorrow is you know Valentine's Day, and.
I'll get it done. If you haven't already, you better.
Yeah.
I mentioned last week while you were out Wednesday of last week, I tried to make restaurant reservo.
Oh yes, you're already too late.
I was already too late. Now, I did get a notification last night.
You want to stand by that.
I was on a stand by and I got I got a space. Unfortunately, we've got the flu running through our house. Oh no, Valentine's Day will not happen for us tomorrow.
So you're off the hook.
Where that's true, I'm off the hook. Do you always see the silver lining?
Oh?
Yeah, oh man, I'm good. Aside from that, so you're staying well. Everybody else's got no flue. But but you far so far? Okay, yeah, all right, well I hope you're doing well. I don't know, a few minutes ago, we just had a torrential downpour following the roof of the radio station.
It sounded like it.
So that's moving on through today, gonna be that. But hey, you know, we warm up to almost seventy a day later on. How about that? But that's a one day thing, just a cloud cover keeping us warm, I guess so. But we're back to the mid fifties by tomorrow. But well, let's look, we hang on Sunday, we'll be up near seventy again, so we continue the roller coaster ride here. All right, it's uh, you know, winter in South Carolina, by the way, some some spots of the upstate I've
just heard mentioned. It's a little bit of snow this morning, just a little bit. But they have a chance a week from now, by a week from Friday, to maybe get some more, not us. Let's hope that stays that way. All right, run down big stories, hot topics. What's happening
here for a Thursday morning? Well, argument's heard again. It seems like every time we turn around, arguments are being heard of the State Supreme Court over the abortion ban, the fetal heartbeat bill, the six week abortion band that's been an effect in our state now for a year and a half, well since August of twenty twenty three. So for the third time, Planned Parenthood of South Carolina
suing the state over the law. Ye, at some point in time, we're going to run out of arguments, I suppose, but this time around they're well, the line of questioning really concerned the viability of a beetle heart, how doctors determine what stage or pregnancy is in, and how language in the bill is being interpreted. Okay, so we're splitting hairs here, more than likely is what's going on. But we don't know when we'll have a ruling from the court.
But as we had Alan Wilson on yesterday and his team was over there defending that long he was feeling pretty good about it. So there you go. It's it's almost not even news anymore when you know the state is having to defend the fetal heartbeat abortion bill at a court. It's pretty much a daily occurrence, it seems. Over the House they have approved state paper headline approves an energy bill that limits environmental oversight of new power plants. Okay, now,
I'm not an environmentalist wacko. Heck, I print out all my prep stuff every day. You know, I'm not. I'm a tree killer man. But I gotta tell you, I mean, I just looking at that headline, I have a little bit of concerned that you know, we're gonna limit any sort of environmental hops. I get it, because you know, typically it's it's it's amazing how environmental oversight can can just could lead to so many things that are positive for us and for our economy, can just leave them
in the dust. I get it. But still, well, we'll work through this a little bit later on meantime, a newly proposed legal settlement posting Curry reports will enable San t Cooper to raise power bills for the second time.
This year, twice in a year. Wow, that's hate to be one of their customers.
The state owned utilities seeking to recover five hundred and fifty million dollars in unexpected costs they incurred during the nearly five year freeze on electric rates. You know why those rates were frozen because the settlement's over the VC summer plant, and this and that. Well now so all all bets are off. They want to raise rates again second time of the year. Over the State House yesterday, a bill that would have allowed direct EV sales in
our state looks like it's not going anywhere. Members voted to adjourned debate on the measure yesterday, so basically, you know there'll be no further discussion on this. This is a bill known as the South caront of Consumer Freedom Act. It may surprise a lot of folks that if you live in South Carolina, by law, you're not allowed to purchase an electric vehicle directly from an out of state
dealer or or whatever. Now, with the Scout Motors plant being built over in Blythwood, there was a lot of thought that this may come to an end, but looks like it won't. And I got to tell you, I'm assigned from maybe the lobby, a powerful lobby, special interest groups. I'm not I'm not sure why there's a problem with this. I'm not going to buy one, but hey whatever. By the shocking news that a former basketball player the University of South Carolina who left here and went to play
I think it was Yukonto, was it? Yes? Eric Christopher Cobb, who I gotta tell you, I don't remember that name.
He wasn't around that long.
No arrested in Jacksonville accused of killing his mother. Wow, I think a second degree manslaughter is the charge that he's facing. Okay, it's on again. It's off again, It's on again. A federal judge restoring Trump's deferred resignation program for federal workers, that decision coming down yesterday. This is the same judge that posited originally a judge in Massachusetts Clinton appointee, making the ruling in favor of the White
House last night. He writes in this decision that plaintiffs in the case are not directly impacted by the directive and denied their case on that basis. The plane is, by the way, were labor unions. So that's been cleared now. And as we mentioned the other day, somewhat sixty five thousand or so federal government employees said, yeah, I'll take that deal. You know, I'll continue to sit at home but do no work at all until September and collect
a collect a taxpayer paycheck. Sure, how many more will? All? Right? We now know who was given up in order for the Trump administration to secure the release of the teacher of Mark Fogel, who had been imprisoned in Russia. Turns out we gave up Alexander Vinnick, a Russian citizen who had been charged in a twenty one count indictment in twenty seventeen. Apparently a bitcoin fraudster, and apparently he had
hack some Democrats. Okay, this pales in comparison to what By did to get what's your name, Grinder, Britney Grinder back. Remember he gave up the Merchant of Death. We gave up a bitcoin hacker. Trump. Did I think that's a win right there? Huh? Yeah. Tulsi Gabra's nomination finally through, and it should have happened really a day earlier, but the snowstorm in DC kept the lawmaker's back well from attending, so that happened yesterday. Tulsi Gabrad now has been confirmed
as the Director of National Intelligence. That was about to be a long shot bid for a long time, but they got that one through RFK Junior as a secured support from a key Republican ahead of the confirmation. Well, if you want to call her that Lisa Rakowski, Alaska, saying she will support his nomination. The Senators expected to hold a final vote what today. I guess it will be right on.
I think they are yeah.
Yeah. Meanwhile, Cash Pttel's nomination lead the FBI is set for a vote today. This is an in committee whether or not to advance him to the full Senate floor. So things are slowly moving along on that front. We got more to talk about today on wasting billions of dollars, in this case FEMA wasting billions of dollars. DHS's report provides another damning insight into the waste that went on
with this emergency agency. By the way, we didn't talk about it yesterday, but how bizarre was it when Elon Musk shared the news of this cave where where federal employee retiree records are held, a cave like at a time warp. Unbelievable. Wow. Pam Bondy hitting the ground running newly minted Attorney General in im media briefing yesterday, saying the Justice Department is filing lawsuits against officials in New York over immigration or coming for you, she said, look
out and inflation. Well it went up, of course, to the media, and the Dems want to pounds on Trump for this. This is something I warned about when Trump first took office. Don't expect this economy to turn around on a dime. It's like trying to turn around the Titanic for it strikes the Iceberg. CPI jumped up unexpectedly by the way. Egg prices Wow, hitting record highs. Do
the bird flu outbreak? But of course that's Donald Trump's fault too, right, And We've got more news to pass along on outfits rolling back diversity, including get a load of this one PBS. Yeah, wow, what a day that More coming up here on this the Thursday morning edition of Columbia's Morning News. We appreciate you being here. Hear about it. We've had multiple Democrats politicians talk about it, running people and incited violence.
One on three point five FM and five sixty eight w VOC. This is Columbia's Morning News with Gary David and Christopher Thompson on one O three point five FM and five sixty AM w VOC.
The six forty two. Good morning to you on a rainy Thursday morning. It's good to have you on board. I am Gary David with Christopher Thompson. Now, Okay, I have no dog in this hunt. Okay, I have electric vehicles, and I have no intention whatsoever ever buying one unless that's all it's available one of these days. If that's
the case, I'll probably long gone by then anyway. But it's curious to me how a state that seems to be all in on this, whether it's manufacturer of batteries for evs or the you know, the the Scout plant being built over in Blythewood. That a bill that was up for debate at least in committee at the state House, a bill called the South Carolina Consumer Freedom Act, looks
like it's not going anywhere here. What would this bill do? Well, it would It would allow automakers without any prior franchise agreements in our state to bypass traditional dealerships and sell directly to customers.
Yes, Scout wants to be like Tesla. They just want to sell directly to you without setting up a brick and mortar store.
On the corner. Right. Well, needless to say, there's some folks going to have an issue with that.
One very important lobby is going to have an issue with them.
One that makes and spends a lot of money in this state.
It spends a lot of money on our on our radio station.
Yes, yes, well so this this bill, well, lawmakers yesterday voted to adjourned debate on it, So this thing may be dead for the year. In addition to allowing people to buy directly from these manufacturers, it would also have permitted manufacturers to operate their own service centers. We talked about this a few months ago. I didn't realize because I'm I have no interest in eb's myself, But is this if you if you own an electric vehicle in this state, you can't even get it worked on in
this state. I mean there's no place to get it. Well, I think that that's the case. Yah will correct me, of course if I'm wrong on that. But so that was the other part of it. They they wanted to allow, you know, like Scout Motors to open up their own service center so you could buy direct from them in Blinthwood and then if you had a problem go back to Blithwood and get it worked on. Well, that's not going to happen either.
You have to wonder at this point what promises were made by the Commerce Department to get Scout Motors to sign on the line. Were they promised they could sell or was it just simply we'll talk to the legislature and we'll try to push your bill through. Yeah, I mean it is Scout fielding jilted at this point, I would.
Think they have to be right. So, yeah, they're they're building this plan, but they won't be able to sell their evs straight to you, all right. And again I find this interesting considering the fact that how much we've invested in this state into this industry, with you know, tax incentives and and you know, building interstate interchanges and everything else. But yeah, the car dealership franchise owners strongly,
as you might imagine, oppose this. They successfully argued and lobby that it would give these EV manufacturers an unfair advantage. And only that they say, these these places like like like Scout knew what the law was before they came here.
I'm sure they knew. The question is did we tell them that law would change?
Yeah? Did we? Chris Wooten, the Republican from Lexington, says that most people in the room voted for Scout Motors to come here, excited about creating four thousand new jobs. He says, but what wasn't discussed. It hasn't been is that there are eighteen thousand jobs that dealers here in our state create, and the concern some of those jobs might go away now in the short term, at least, I'm not convinced it would be a big problem. Let's
face it. I mean, not many people are buying electric vehicles, not now. Down the road, it could be an issue, but at least for now, it looks like this bill is not going anywhere, and it may be reintroduced, but I don't know that it'll It'll meet a different fate if it is, maybe one day, but not today, no time soon. It wouldn't appear Okay, Yeah, I got a dog on this hunt. I don't want to buy one. I could care less personally, but any way, freedom of
a choice. That's that was the argument from supporters of.
This You're listening to Columbia's Morning News on one oh three point five FM and five sixty am WVOC. Once again, here's Gary David and Christopher Thompson.
Man the good morning to you for Thursday, February thirteenth. Thanks for joining us this morning. It's fifteen minutes after seven o'clock. All right, So overwhelming over the state House yesterday a bill passing ninety four to eleven. Now, I'll admit that you headline the state paper this morning, we've got my attention. Sc Howl proves energy bill that limits environmental oversight of new power plants. I got a mixed
reaction to that. I'm like, yeah, I get it. Yeah, you're these environmentalists are holding back progress around here and everywhere else too for that matter. But I'm thinking, okay, wait, no, no oversight. Well that's not really the whole story. Basically, this bill limits the amount of time that these groups would have to try to contest the building of these facilities. We all agree that we need to increase energy production here in South Carolina.
Well not everyone agrees how to make that happen. Well, no, no, that's You've got some legislators out there who are saying, we don't need to be worrying about building new plants, we need to worry about improving our grid. And that's true. Probably a separate fight they're going to have. But we had a couple of editorials in the local paper over the weekend talking about some talking about how it would be great if we restarted VC summer and the others
saying we don't need it. There are other are other priorities we need to have.
There's definitely a differing of opinion on how we need to attack this, but like everybody agrees we need to attack this. Agreed in some shape or form. Yes, so this bill. No, it does not say there's no environmental oversight of new power plans. Just remove some roadblocks, groove some roadblocks, and it tells you, Okay, you've got a certain timeframe here. Okay, We've had situations where energy projects were held up for upwards of a decade because of
lawsuits and this and that, and that's a problem. Gil Gatch Somerville Republican, quoted in the article of saying, what's happening now in our current process is that it has allowed radicals really to weaponize it just a judicial process, to but wrenches in the system, causing the lays of anywhere from six to ten years.
He's using all the words that all resonate with certain members of his constituency.
I'm sure, certainly, But again, look at the vote total here, ninety four to eleven, So that wasn't just all Republicans and voting four and all Democrats voting against. You even had Democrats like Guildacob Hunter who supported this almost makes you nervous. If they're that unified, what do they know that we don't exactly right? What are they planning? Most Democrats back this bill? Apparently there were some, as the article points out some centrist or moderate Democrats and arch
conservative Republicans who voted against. This doesn't point out why some quote unquote arch conservative Republicans voted against it. I'm not sure why that would be.
I'm assuming you're talking about the Freedom Caucus.
Well, let's see here who voted against it. Blah blah blah blah blah blah. April Cromer of Anderson, Republicans were talking about here, Yeah, Thomas Gilreath, Chris Hoff, Stephen Franker Greenville, Rob Harris of Welford. Yeah, those were the Republicans voted against it. I'm not sure what their issue would be with it. I don't know, but regardless, you had, you know, basically again, ninety four eleven was the final vote. Now, yeah,
there will be some oversight, but it's limited. Now. Other parts of this bill allow and encourage and maybe this is where again, maybe this is where the Freedom Caucus comes in allows and encourages Santee Cooper to participate in a natural gas plant with Minion. Okay, that's the Cannady's facility. PSC still needs to approve that and encourages development of a plan to expand nuclear energy. So and nothing else
is really that terribly tantalizing here? Okay, well, we can all agree that something has to be done now meantime. And I think, by the way, as on the nuclear front, did I not see the governor tweet or x what do we call it now that it's no longer twitter, we don't say tweeted? What are we whatever? Again his support for trying to restart that project out there in Jenkinsville. But then there's this. There's a new proposed legal settlement that would allow Santi Cooper to raise power bills for
a second time this year. This as they seek to recover what they say are five hundred and fifty million dollars in unexpected costs. So their unexpected cost to getting ready to be your unexpected cost. Now they had their roads, their rates were frozen for five years. Again, that that comes from the whole of VC summer abandonment. That was part of a class action lawsuit that was filed back in twenty seventeen. So, yeah, their rates were frozen for five years. So the Santa Cuba wants to squeeze a
little more blood out of that tournament right there. Again, not massive amounts of money. Your average household using a thousand kilowatts be about five dollars more a month, but it adds up, but it adds up over time. Yeah, we had the same thing with Dominion. Remember they when Dominion bought out Scanna. Part of that agreement was they couldn't raise rates for a certain amount of time. Remember, and right about the time that they could, well, that's
when COVID hit. And you know, hats off to them for saying, we're not going to raise rates during this this COVID pandemic thing. Here the boy, once all the dust settled there, they couldn't wait to well and what was the trying to remember exactly how how they phrased it was the last year, maybe the year before that. If we don't get if the PSC doesn't approve this rate increase now, it's going to mean much higher rate increases in the future. You know, one of those scare
tactic things. Anyway, So some some movement on the energy front today, and again this bill that would just pass the House. This has nothing to do with restarting a VC summer, but again it's it's pretty much, hey, if you can find somebody wants to come in and do it, go ahead and do it. I mean, it's carte blanche. But again, let's keep watching that thing very very carefully. Let's not getting something crammed into some piece of legislation somewhere that takes us back to the days of the
Baseload Review Act. If it happens, it won't be as obvious. But the before, on a vacation, we talked about this. I don't remember who was saying, but they threw that word partner in there, stay partnering with a private now. I think what they were saying was, listen, we're already on the hook for all this money, so you know we're already your partner anyway.
Anyway, Okay, it's I mean, that's a tough turnaround to make that work for so many different reasons. But everyone suddenly at the State House seems to think it's a great idea. So we'll see that happened fast too, Yeah, a little too fast for comfort.
If you ask me the hottest talk.
The reason I'm calling is I believe that we're all waved here working for the government.
One O three point five FM and five sixty am w VOC. This is Columbia's Morning News with Gary David and Christopher Thompson on one on three point five FM and five sixty am w VOC.
Seven forty two. Now making your way in on a very rainy Thursday morning. Look out, member, it's never you, it's the other person. So keep an eye out of them. Stay stay far away from the well. We may be quickly getting to a point where aside from Costco, everybody else may be doing away with all the DEI junk here and a high time. How about this PBS Public Broadcasting System shutting down his Office of Diversity, Equity and Inclusion. They had to, yeah, because Trump said they had to.
I mean, if you get government money, you better be on the safe side at this point.
That's right.
When you were gone last week, the NCAA jumped just like that. Oh yeah, because they knew, you know, Title nine legislation and Title nine lawsuits would come raining down on them.
Now there's a push to strip all these trophies and awards away from these you know, men posing as women and give them back to the women who should have had them in the first place. So PBS bowing to Trump, shutting it down, firing the two executives that started all this back in twenty twenty one. Now we've seen this in the past, specifically with universities, and it was there were allegations at the University of South here I did the same thing. They shut down their DEI office, but
they just called it something else. So despite eliminating the effort, Paula Kruger, who's the CEO of PBS, so they were still committed to telling the stories of all Americans before we had an office, and we'll continue to do it afterwards. Tell okay, well whatever, uh yeah, And it's because of the federal funding thing. PBS gets somewhere in the neighborhood of close to five hundred and fifty million dollars in
general government support. Now it's not all their budget, it's only about sixteen percent, but it's sixteen percent they can't afford to lose. Okay, So PBS DEI done. I'm serious. What is it with costco Anyway.
I don't know why they're hanging on for dear life, but that's apparently important enough to them that they're willing to sacrifice or at least put in peril profits.
Yes, we'll see how a long that continues. For Goldman Sacks lifting its ban on companies with all white or all male boards from receiving initial public offering services. Uh huh. This makes Goldman Sacks one of the biggest Wall Street firms to do an about face on DEI here we go. This ban has been an effect that Goldman Sacks since twenty twenty. It's said that the investment bank would not take any public any company public in the US or Western Europe, unless that at least one non white board
member or one female board member. Now they're not gonna do it anymore. The heads are spending here man. We are three weeks and a day into the the second Trump administration, and the results are coming in left and right. Not just this Hamas in Israel. Hamas is uh saying that yeah, they'll, they'll, they'll let they'll, they'll let these hostages go. Remember Trump put a put a deadline on this noon Saturday or the ceasefires off and all hell
breaks loose. A Moss is bowing to this pressure, you know, getting getting uh uh, getting people out of out of prisons in Russia, full of the teacher, not able to do it in the Bay administration. Just like that with Trump, he is a man of action, whether you agree with it, right. And that poll we talked about yesterday shows that even people who don't necessarily agree with Trump, what seventy percent said, you know, he's doing what he said he would do.
They see America back in action again.
Yeah.
Yeah, And you just said, you have to be careful, you spend time on the important parts, you know, like yeah, sure. The American voters said the economy and the border, economy, border, and they felt like Democrats paid too much attent, too much attention to abortion and DEI oh absolutely, and in all the company you know, bruhaha. So you know, cut it and leave it alone.
Now this is interesting, And when I first saw this, I thought, wow, uh. Google has removed references to cultural events from their calendar's default settings. So no longer in the default settings on Google calendar, where you see Black History Month, Pride Month, Women's History Month, you also won't see Jewish Heritage, Hispanic Heritage, Indigenous People's Month, and even Holocaust Remembrance Day. Now what is this? Well, Google says
they started these changes last year. Years ago. They started manually adding a broader set of cultural moments and a wide number of countries, and that maintaining it was not sustainable. So that's why they're ditching all of that. Nothing to do with a rollback of you know, any kind of dei thing. But still, you know, we're just kind of resetting the plate here, right, we save the table course correct course, correction and not a moment too soon.
You're listening to Columbia's Morning news on one oh three point five FM on five sixty am WVOC. Once again, here's Gary David and Christopher Thompson.
And approaching sixteen minutes after eight o'clock in the morning, when you may be one of those that's gonna get in a little bit later than usual. But where was that backup? Somebody was something like an hour long backup going on? Right now? Wow? Okay, well, it's that kind of morning, isn't it. It's good to have you with us, regardless of what your current situation is. Thank you so much for being here now, We got the CPI report out yesterday, the inflation gauge, and it, uh, well, let's
surprise some folks. January CPI report went up. Of course, the legacy media and the Democrats quick to call this Trump's problem. Now, wait a minute, when did Trump take office January twentieth. Okay, I think the big mistake Trump made here, and I'll just be real blunt here, I think it was a stupid thing to say, you know, saying that he would you know, tame inflation on day one was something along those lines. You know that's not
gonna happen. And we've talked about this after after the election, that there would be some folks who really, you know, thought, yeah, man, once Trump takes off, as inflation is going away, the economy is gonna rebound, everything's gonna be great. This is this is gonna take time. You don't have to, you know, hold a degree in economics to understand and you do understand of course that Uh, it's this is a lot to turn around here. I mean, Biden and Kamala they
left us holding a bag on this. It's not gonna happen overnight. But the CPI report coming out showing inflation UH ticked up more than anticipated in January, which means that don't expect the Federal Reserve to UH to start cutting interest rates again anytime soon. Excluding the volatile food and energy price sector, the CPI was up a four tenths of a percent on the month, a year over year of three point three percent.
Just throughout the price of eggs alone.
Right, yeah, at egg price is hitting recognized by the way. Now, Yeah, you keep hearing and seeing these stories of eight dollars for a dozen.
I haven't seen that.
I've heard the stories, but I've not seen that. The national average is four dollars, four dollars ninety five cents something like that. That was That was the January national average. Yeah, apparently there are a few spots where you know it say eight bucks, but fort ninety five is the is the national average? Yeah? You know, yeah, if you want to buy the organic or the cage free eggs, you know, okay, you know you're going to pay for that. I don't. I don't know that I've ever eaten a cage free
egg before, have you, mister Thompson? Even why y'all are foodies.
Yeah, I mean we've I haven't bought anything that said cage free. But I've had eggs that came right from the farm, so they were they weren't running around they I mean they were.
Already eggs, eggs were running around freely.
Yeah, no, they weren't in a cage.
I would challenge anybody to eat a caged egg and a cage free egg. Can tell me the difference I would beg to differ. I think you can tell a difference on an egg on an egg? Yeah? Really? Yeah? Oh yeah? Is it the stress thing of being cage is that? Is that the is that the idea here?
I don't know, or or maybe something in the way organic Now I'm talking about the Yeah, no, run run free.
Let the chickens just go wherever they want to.
Then what you want at a farm like our grandparents used to do, just pulling one out. Yeah that's what I'm talking about.
Wait a minute, are we talking about the same thing here?
Well, I've never, like I said, I've never bought a cage free egg before, but.
You're talking we bought eggs from the phone. You don't want to get in the egg just as it pops out. Yeah, okay, that I that I that I get Okay, but this whole you know, range free thing, you know whatever. Anyway, I digress.
We had a story last week. I mean, a lot of people are starting to buy their own you know, to make their own eggs or if you know, to have their own eggs available in the backyard, depending on where you live and their neighbors are really living that right, Well, it depends on where you are and if it's legal or not exactly. But you see a lot of homemade coups going up.
Yeah. Speaking of money, wow, recent report from the DHS Office of Inspector General is showing that FEMA's mismanagement of funds under Dan Chriswell and the Biden administration is worse than we ever imagined. It shows that FEMA mismanaged nearly ten billion dollars worth of COVID nineteen emergency Protective Measures grants from twenty twenty to twenty twenty three. Nearly ten billion dollars. Get a load of this. The report claims that during the pandemic, they didn't even bother with proper
validation when it came to these grants. They relied instead on one sheet of paper with no itemized costs, not prepared by a licensed professional engineer or a cost estimated professional and approved a grant that was valued at over one point one billion dollars. Okay, this is the extreme example, but still they approved a grant worth more than one point one billion dollars and all it took was one sheet of paper, no cost itemization, no professional engineer or
cost estimate professional involved in the process. I'd like to see that one piece of paper. See what it said.
Wow, you doge has a website. Now they don't have everything up yet.
But they're gonna need a couple of websites to do that.
They're starting to list, you know, all the different ways, you know, things they've discovered, and then ways they've already made government more efficient and it's fascinating to look at. And again, this is this is important for all the people who are saying we didn't vote for Elon Musk and he's got complete control of this government. He's running the show, and they're being completely transparent. I mean, you can look and see in real time. Okay, these savings
are being made. Now, here's what you, as a taxpayer, we're spending money on before. Here's what we've cut. It will be really cool. This can't happen, of course, but how cool would be it this could happen. You line up all this stuff, you put it out there, and then you put it to a vote of the American people, the taxpayers. Do you want to keep paying for this? Well, I mean, we don't have anybody lobbying us here. Okay, we don't have anybody contributing to our political campaign. True,
let us decide. But in an abstract way we did in November.
Well true, I mean, is we did.
Trump didn't have that. I don't think he had the name Doze yet, but we knew this was one of the goals, was to set Elon Musk on the federal budget and find the bloat.
So we've already voted exactly, we've already voted on this. Get rid of the waist. By the way. A Fox News reporting today that leezeld of the new administrator of the EPA. So this team is located twenty billion dollars in tax money that the Biden administration purposely wasted, he says.
Uh.
An extremely disturbing video circulated a couple of months ago featuring a Biden EPA political appointee talking about how they were tossing gold bars off the Titanic, rushing to get billions of your tax dollars out the door before Inauguration day. Apparently they took twenty billion dollars and just transferred them into banks. And now Selden said, we're getting that money back from these banks. Well, what the purpose was? Who knows? Maybe I was going to Hunter, I don't know, or.
Maybe they were hoping to catch back up with it in a few years if Democrats changed the tide.
Were these banks in the Caymans? By the way, I was just there last week. I wish I had known the story. I could have looked.
This is Columbia's Morning News with Gary David and Christopher Thompson on one O three point five FM and five sixty AM WVOC.
Final thoughts for a third day morning here at eight forty. Good morning, and good to have you with us. We'll be here till nine. So our time is now limited, so we can get to here. We'll start at home where our state's High court yesterday heard arguments over whether or not the state's abortion ban should be at six weeks or after nine weeks. This is this is where we've gotten to over we're wearing Planned Parenthood down now.
You know, if they had their drothers, then the abortion would be but would be legal it up until birth, of course. But now they're like, well it should be at nine weeks or after. Guys, what it used to be? What twelve weeks at one time before the fetal heartbeat abortion bill? Was that right?
It's hard to remember. We've had so many arguments about you, yes.
But Planned Parenthood not giving it up here. So this is the third time now the Planned Parenthood has sued South Carolina over this law, and we'll probably be back with a fourth if this one is not successful. Well, I don't know when the High Court will issue a ruling, but it may not take too long. And again, if the court sided with the States, expect there they'll come
up with some other reason to see over it. Certainly. Okay, so the list is getting short now, Tulci Gabbard confirmed yesterday it would have happened early the day before, but that snowstorm that hit DC canceled all Senate hearings and such. So Gabbard will in fact serviced the d and I, the the Director of National Intelligence make sure the fourteenth
member to be confirmed. And again this was one that was really considered a long shot because you didn't have just Democrats lining up against the former Democrat, but you had a number of Republicans that weren't happy with her either, not not necessarily because she used to be a Democrat, but you know, I mean, heck, Republicans confirmed Scott Besson from South Carolina and he used to be a George Soros supporter. They had other issues with her, But what
it was all said and done, it got done. Fifty two forty eight. To note, Mitch McConnell voted against her confirmation.
I think you could say everything that you just said about Tulci Gabbard about RFK Junior, And yeah.
His final confirmations at ten thirty this morning, so less than two hours away.
There are plenty of Republicans who have issues with him, but I don't think anyone is prepared other than Mitch McConnell. I don't think anyone's prepared to stand in the way of this title wave right now, the Trump title wave.
Yeah, I don't think so. So the RFK Junior vote comes today after the vote to close down debate and move on was on a party line vote, fifty three to forty seven yesterday. So even Mitch McConnell vote to at least move it on down the road here, I guess, because that's it, that's all you got. It's fifty three right Republicans over there. So yeah, straight party line vote there.
You can only hope that Donald Trump keeps a tight leash on RFK Jr.
Yeah, well, he's RFK Junior is going to have to answer to somebody, and that somebody's name is Donald J. Trump.
And we've seen musk pulled in a couple of times, so you know, Trump's he's got his hand on the wheel at least so far.
Yeah, okay, uh, Cash Betel, now he's a little behind Tulsi in an RFK junior here. Just schedule wise, schedule wise, Yes, the Senate Judiciary Committee is set to vote today on whether or not to advance that. So that vote's coming up here in about fifteen minutes or so. Supposed to schedule to have it about nine o'clock this morning. That's got to have before he has to a full Senate vote. So Cash Betel is head of the FBI. We should we should get that full floor vote. I guess what
maybe tomorrow. I suppose now we wondered yesterday, and they didn't say, initially, at least to the Trump administration, who we gave up in order to get back Mark Fogel, the teacher who had been imprisoned in Russia for the last what four years or so. We knew we gave up something. We didn't think he would be quite to the to the enormity of what the Biden administration gave up to get Britney Grinder back, that of course, being
the so called Merchant of Death. Who did we give up Alexander Vinnick, a Russian citizen, a bitcoin money launderer, who prosecutors connected to the twenty sixteen supposed should interference of our election. This is too rich. That's who we gave up to get Mark fogelback. Now, no doubt this certainly ruffles the feathers of Democrats and maybe some of
the mainstream media. But I mean, come on, we gave up a bitcoin money launderer who hacked some Democrats back in twenty sixteen, versus Joe Biden, who gave up the Merchant of Death. He's probably right back in big business right now somewhere. And who knows how many people are dying as a result, So I call that a win. Matter of fact, Again, he wasn't the only one, and
we've had more Americans released. Donald Trump's getting things done, as we alluded to yesterday and talking about Vogel that you know, there are people talking that the whole Russia Ukraine thing, and we started a lot about that yesterday.
We did both here and overseas because jd Vance is over right now, right.
So the efforts are continuing on many fronts there, and there's so many people are asking and why couldn't Joe Biden get any of this done well? Because nobody respected him and nobody respected this country. Under Democrat leadership. Things have changed. Uh, it's back on again. Federal judge who had paused it now says he's restored it. Trump's deferred resignation program for federal workers. That decision coming down yesterday.
It was the labor unions who had sued over this, and the judge, George O'Toole of Massachusetts said the plaintiffs in the case are not directly impacted by the directive, so he's denied the case on that basis.
Okay, these have been such weird arguments, and you hope you're drawing, you're grabbing, you grasping a straw. So you hope the average voter is paying attention because you know, in a couple of years we're going to vote again. But to say that Donald Trumps the chief executive doesn't have any control over who works for the government and who doesn't, at least in certain spots, you know, these civil service workers for examples.
Like saying the CEO of Ford has no control over.
Who works for Ford, okay, and you know, to suggest that the Treasury Secretary shouldn't have access to Treasury Department records. I mean, it's just it's been one thing after another and the most bizarre, nonsensical arguments.
Oh yeah, And finally, a national coffee company that's popular in the West looking to open up a new shop in Lexington. But they've hit a hurdle, State Paper reports. Apparently the hurdle is when they're design but the hurdle should be there are too many coffee shops. My goodness.
I don't know in your neck of the woods, I don't know what it looks like, but I live in Lexington and if something's going up, is going to be one of probably three things, right, a coffee shop, a storage warehouse place or well a car wash close behind the fourth Chicken another chicken restaurant. That's it. That's that's all we get in Lexington anymore. I don't know what it's like with you know, in Blythewood or Hopkins or
your your your neck of the woods in Hermo. But that's that's that's been it for Lexing.
It was pizza places a few years ago.
Yeah, before that was drug stores and you know now they're shutting down and I don't know, coffee shops are moving into old rug store locations or whatever. It's crazy.