You're listening to Bill Handle on demand from KF. I am six forty and now Handle on the news. Ladies and gentlemen, here's not Bill Handle.
If I am six forty, it's the Bill Handle Show. I'm o Kelly in for Bill. And who in the hell did I piss off to get this job? What happened? What did I do? What did I do wrong? I must have like dated somebody's ex girlfriend or something. I must have done something wrong, because anyone who knows me and Amy King, it's a pleasure to be working with the Queen of news, Amy King once again.
Good morning Amy.
I've missed you.
I missed you as well, and you know as well as anyone.
I'm not a morning person in the least. And the funny thing about this producer and knows this because we had a conversation about this and she was listening to my show we host later with Mo Kelly here on KFI from seven to ten pm. I had just been commenting about how I was not a morning person and how literally I said, you couldn't pay me to do morning show. My news anchor Mark Ronald was saying, like, hey, have you ever filled in for Bill Handle?
Oh yeah. I filled in for him a number of times, and.
It's always hell because it means that I have to get up at around four in the morning, which I did today, and I'm always physically ill when I do got up at four. This is after doing my show last night from seven to ten. I got about three hours sleep, and I did pretty well because I'm a person who's going to go to sleep around midnight or later, and last night was no exception. For as far as I'm concerned, it's the same day, it's still yesterday's it's
late Wednesday night as far as I'm concerned. Come on, but it's nice to be reunited with you, Amy King. And let me say good morning to Will Cole Schreiver and also Kno, we usually do this thing called Earlier with Moe when Bill is in on Thursday. So we're just going to do a three hour version of Earlier with Moe. Love that Bill Handle edition. And I'm not exaggerating. Mornings are difficult for me, even though I've done them
over my professional career. Going back to college, I even scheduled my classes around the idea that I'm not a morning person. I don't even drink coffee, and I had a brief conversation with Jason or news director. I don't drink coffee except for days like these because I just do you have some?
This morning, I had me.
A cold triple shot brew of something something something from the kitchen, okay, and that'll get me through. But I don't do caffeine generally. I don't do coffee. I don't do any type of tea. And it's something that uh, you know, I just haven't ever developed a taste for.
And the birds chirping this morning, odd sensation? What is that noise? It's like, wait, what's going on here? What is that sound?
Well, I'm excited to have you here, and I'm excited to be here, honestly. And you know, I listened to your show at night and because i'll text you when you're talking about certain things, and I did hear you talking about not enjoying getting up early.
So it's kind of funny. Actually, it's almost serendipitous. I think that's the word for it. I was thinking, like, never would I be in this chair again?
Literally, and here I am, like four days later in this share it was almost two days. I have had this long conversation on my show later with Mo Kelly that Oscar Oscar Ramira is our operations manager and assistant program director, reached out to me and said, hey, Mo, I got this idea. I was wondering would you be available to fill in? It sounded like it was William Shatner is doing Captain Kurtzy. Oh Mo, how about this? Do you have any time maybe that you could sit
in for Bill Handel? And I was thinking, uh, no, Oscar, I thought that you knew that I was not a morning person. And yeah, when they ask you, when station management asked you to do something, it's not a request, it's basically saying we need you to do this. We're being polite and if you don't do it, you're probably gonna be fired. So I said, Okay, I'll get up
at four in the morning. But but there are some great things to this, like I've never had the opportunity to work with an I've never been able to work with Cono specifically. I don't know what that hat is he's wearing. I don't know what that hat, What does that hat? What does that say?
The infamous World Series Champions hughs Nastros No no no, no, no, no, no, let's get something straight right now.
This is a Dodger town, and this is a Dodger station, and I'm a Dodger fan, and we don't like the Houston Astros because you're a bunch of cheaters. That was Peter, that was many moons ago.
No no, no, no, no, no cheaters, Dan cheaters all.
Wait, and we won without the trash cans a couple of years later. So what does that have to do with the year that you did cheat and the year that you supposedly beat my beloved Los Angeles Dodgers.
Well, you guys just had to cheat better. Oh you do. Hey, King is at your fans.
We can turn this so off right now, and you don't have misunderstanding in the hallway.
Amy can get him.
Uh well, I get to work with him every day, so you've got a little luck. There are paybacks.
Oh one thing, mouth mm hmm.
I know you hate your commute. So the one redeeming thing about this time?
Right old fast? Did you get here?
Oh?
Put it this way.
I got up at four o'clock. I lived twenty two miles away. I was here by four to forty five. After taking a shower, brushing my teeth feeding the dogs, shout out to Benson and Riley, and I.
Did it all and got here at four forty two.
And during a regular day, how long does it normally take you to get here?
Hour and a half? They know, two hours if it's non daylight saving time.
So you get coffee, you get a short commute, and you get to hang out with us. Quit complaining.
Oh no.
The part is when I get home, I will take a nap, and people say, well, you shouldn't take a nap.
That ruins the rest of your day. I don't care.
There's a nap with my name on it at nine thirty, right around the second segment of Gary and Shetner.
Except it's gonna take an hour and a half to get home. So that's true.
Yeah, that's why I have the triple shop so I can stay awake during my commute home.
But it's okay, it's okay.
I have the best job in the world, no bones about it, best job in the world.
And with that, let's get to it. Handle on the news lead story.
I don't have any money.
I can't buy at the Federal Reserve.
In a closely watched decision yesterday, held the line and held interest rates. But we don't know what's going to happen in the future. And here's the basic rule. If the Fed would have lowered interest rates, it would have sent a signal to the markets that the economy was slowing down. So it's good news news if you're an investor. Good news interest rates are holding depending on how you look at it. But in the future, it's looked at that there will be some interest rate decreases by the
Federal Reserve. Now what's holding up this what I'll say some of the decision points. It has to do with President Trump's teriffs. We don't know how the market's going to respond, we don't know how other countries are genuinely going to respond. We don't know how long President Trump may keep these tariffs in place. And until we start seeing some of the results and some of the effects, then we don't know what direction our economy is going
to be. Let's say in three months or six months, and then maybe in the next quarter, the Federal Reserve will look at this and then come to some other decision about where the economy is. But but you could also say, Okay, maybe our economy is not as bad off as some have said the reason being because interest
rates have not come down. It's kind of an inverse psychology where you bring down the interest rates if the economy is slowing down, and if it's doing well, then interest rates will usually go up to kind of keep the economy under control. But you know, for everyone I would say, oh, who's that?
Who's that?
That would have been will.
Oh oh oh will do you do you disagree? There?
No, he is just clearing his I thought.
He was trying to send me a message like, no, my economy, MO is not exactly all that good right now. So let me just quietly and you know, unmistakably disagree with you.
How about that?
Okay, all right, shut her down. President Trump is set to sign an executive order that seeks to eliminate the US Department of Education. Remember when he appointed his education secretary, said my ultimate goal is to have you be out of a job. Because he want to get rid of the department. He's expected to sign it today at a White House ceremony with several Republican governors and state education
commissioners on hand. He says he's going to direct Linda McMahon to take all necessary steps to facilitate the closure of the Department of Education and return education authority to the States caveat. He can't do it without Congress.
This is a hard pill for me to swallow. It's only because I'm a child of two educators. Both my parents were elementary, middle and high school teachers. I'm always going to be on the side of more education, not less than When you talk about the Department of Education, you're talking about pelgrams, you're talking about federal student aid and also special education among other things. But that's part of the reason why it's hard for me to accept
that we would shudder the Department of Education. Now we can make the argument that maybe we should better spend the money used by the Department of Education, and that's where I would prefer a forensic audit as opposed to just closing the agency all together.
But President Trump is President Trump.
He said that this was something that he was going to do, and if you're a supporter of President Trump, it was a promise made and it's a promise kept by him. That's why you don't lose elections. Then you don't have to worry about these things. Green Peace, well, they may be in the red going forward. You may remember that we had the North Dakota Access pipeline protests
back in twenty sixteen to twenty seventeen thereabouts. Well in North Dakota, jeury has found Greenpeace liable for deformation, ordering it to pay more than six hundred and sixty million dollars in damages to an oil company for the environmental group's role in one of the largest anti fossil fuel
protests in US history. And if you look at this against the backdrop of the larger conversation about what constitutes a legal or an illegal protest, it's getting a bit murky right now as far as how you can protest, whether you are assuming any type of liability for protesting. And the lawsuit, which was filed in state court, had argued that green Peace was behind quote an unlawful and violent scheme to cause financial harm to energy transfer close
quote green Peace. Obviously they're going to appeal, but it also said that it could be forced into bankruptcy because of the case. And we know about green Peace, they've engaged in more than fifty years of activism, but that could all change if this judgment stands. And I remember, I know you remember Emmy King reporting on the protests and how it seems like yesterday, but it really isn't. This is like nine years ago at this point, and
I wonder what protests are going to look like. And I'm not going to confuse that's what's going on with the tesla. That's vandalism, that's violence. That's something completely different. That's not protests. That's the strung hitting.
The streets, hitting going out to a location, protestings thing, we want this, we want this. Yeah, I don't get where they get at six hundred and sixty million dollars.
Well, you know, I don't know either, but clearly, clearly the Energy Transfer was able to demonstrate that they had been harmed and could quantify that amount of damage. It doesn't mean it's going to hold up under appeal, but at least in the meantime, Green Peace is going to have to wonder about its future.
What if you called nine one one and no one answered. That happened yesterday. The nine one one system in La County went down only for about twenty minutes, but it did impact all twenty three stations. Isn't that like your biggest fears that you called for help and there's no one there.
Oh, Amy King, let me tell you about living in the hood. I'm here to tell you does that happen? Does it happen? The question is when does it not happen? And I've lived in mostly suburban communities, but I know the times that I've had to call nine one one. It was hit and miss as to whether anyone would show up. There was a song by Public Enemy called nine one one is a joke, and it talks about the absence of law enforcement and emergency services when it
comes to certain communities. Get up, get get get down. Nine to one one is a joke in your town, that's one of the lyrics. So the idea of first responders not responding to certain communities, that's not new. What is new is the reason behind it. And when you think about LA Sheriff's Department, well, I think twenty three different stations, and to think that nothing would be available to anyone for an extended period of time, that would scare me. But the idea of calling nine one and
no one responding, I can't speak for anyone else. I'm here to tell you that is not unusual. Okay, yeah, true story. I believe you Elon Musk has been using immigration and claims a voter fraud as a way to sell his Social Security administration cuts. And if you didn't know, Musk has this idea that immigration or illegal immigration has
a direct connection to Social Security. He's claimed that undocumented immigrants are fraudulently accessing hundreds of billions of dollars worth of entitlements, including Social Security, Medicaid, and disability programs.
Quote this is what Elon Musk had to say. Quote.
By using entitlements fraud, the Democrats have been able to attract and retain vast numbers of illegal immigrants and by voters basically bring in ten twenty million people who are beholden to the Democrats for government handouts and will vote overwhelmingly Democrat, as has been demonstrated in California clothes.
Quote.
Here is my issue, in a general sense, with what Elon Musk is do. Where all of us, and I think all of us would agree that waste, fraud and abuse has to stop, has to be eliminated, all that has to go. I think we could agree on that. We may not agree on the processes involved. This is not a forensic audit. This is Elon must saying I see this and it's because of that. Well, show us the data, show us the proof, be specific, show us the line items. Give us more examples than anecdotal thoughts
about this incident or that incident. We know that he has had some issues interpreting social security data, and I think all of us are familiar with forensic audits. They don't happen in a day. They happen over a period of time. And as long as he wants us to just take his word for it, then he'll always receive resistance. Remember show and tell, well, it requires both. Don't just tell us, show us.
Penn's losing millions for a swimmer. The Trump administration is frozen one hundred and seventy five million dollars in federal funding to the University of Pennsylvania, citing policies allowing transgender athletes to compete in women's sports. And this all really centers around Leah Thomas, who is the transgender swimmer who has done really well in the women's competition, and it's
spurred some lawsuits and that kind of stuff. Earlier this month, the federal government also suspended four hundred million dollars in funding to Columbia University following months of campus protests and accusations by Jewish students of anti Semitism.
I always say, get the easy ones right. I have these sayings axioms if you will get the easy ones right when it comes to transgender athletes. For me, get the easy ones right. Sports at its best is about making sure you have an even playing field as far as competition. There's a difference between sex and gender. I think people conflate them wrongly. Sex is how you're born, the chromosomal aspect x X and x y. Gender is how we present ourselves or how we choose to live
in the world. It's relatively easy for me, and I don't think it's controversial to say, hey, there are biological men who would then have a physical competitive advantage. When you're talking about sports it, I would say it defeats the purpose of Title nine when you have biologically male athletes competing against biologically female athletes, which is different from how someone wants to present themselves and live in a gender capacity.
Am I wrong, Amy King? I mean, am I thought? I think so?
I think you know I've thought about this a lot because it's been you know, such a point of contention, and it's fine. However you choose to live your life, that's fine. But like you said, level playing field. So if you put somebody, I mean, it's like putting a man and a woman in a pool together, and you put Michael Phelps in a pool with I can't remember Lindsey, some fabulous female swimmer. He's gonna blow her out of the water literally every time.
Hm.
So have a category maybe, and have a transgender category.
I think that's the easiest answer. I think that.
Would be fair for everyone. Then you're competing against people. It's a level playing field. Without you're not discriminating against anybody.
You're not discriminating, and you're not demeaning.
Exactly because yeah, I mean again, if you want to be gender, if that's what you feel, that's okay with me.
I don't care.
There's a way that we can have these conversations and be respectful at acknowledge some unassailable truths without dehumanizing. Yes, yes, And I always say watch your prepositions. Don't just talk about a group of people. Talk with them, don't talk at them, talk together. If we can do better with the debate and dialogue, we can navigate this saying nothing of what's going to happen as far as federal funding and the different universities.
I think that's a different discussion.
But there's a way that we can maneuver this, navigate
this and get the easy ones right. And by the way, Social Security Administration is going to now require in person identity checks beginning March thirty first, the end of this month, people will no longer be able to verify their identity to the Social Security Administration over the phone, and those who cannot properly verify their identity over the agencies quote unquote my Social Security online service, they'll be required to visit an agency field office in person to complete the
verification process. And this change will apply to the new Social Security applicants and existing recipients who want to change direct deposit information.
To me, that's that's a no brainer. Yeah.
If you can say, well, it's inconvenient or I don't understand, it's just a verification identity for benefits.
I don't have a problem with that.
I would liking it to let's say, getting an updated passport. That there's some things you just need to do in person. Some things, yes, you can do online and it shouldn't be all that sophisticated. But this is one thing. This is not something that I think we need to really fight over.
It's just me. You know what do I say, get the easy ones right?
Boots are back, and so are the attacks on and off the battlefield. So, as you've probably heard us talking about, Israel has started airstrikes against the Gods Strip again. They say that they renewed their attacks because Hamas is just refusing to budge when it comes to releasing any more hostages. That breaks the two months cease fire. And now Israel has sent soldiers back into the Gaza Strip, and that's got a lot of people really upset. Protesters are turning
out and protesting outside Israel's parliament. They say he is Netanyahu is prioritizing his political survival over the security of his country, the lives of Israeli hostages and of Palestinians in Gaza.
You know, in this thing we call talk radio, we're always supposed to have these well formed or even not even well formed opinions about everything. And this is one of those times where I'm going to readily admit I have no idea what the answer is. I don't know what the solution is. There is the problem what's going
on in Gaza right now. And whereas I'm sympathetic to those who are supporting Palestine and the two state solution and how I don't want innocent Palestinians killed as collateral damage in this war, I also understand that hey, we're here because of Hamas and what happened on October seventh,
and there's no clean way to get through this. I don't know how the world is going to be able to maneuver this Middle East conflict, and we don't know whether it's going to further conflagrate is that the right.
Word, or expand in the region.
You know, we have the bombings recently by President Trump with the Hutis and how that may expand the conflict in the region.
And last night there were projectiles headed to Israel.
Yeah, Yemen.
Yes, this morning they were coming in from Gaza, but last night from Yemen.
So Amy, I think you make the great points that all this is connected on some level. It's not just Gaza. It's not just Gaza and Yemen. It's not just Gaza, Yemen and Iran. It's not just Gaza Yemen Iran and Israel.
They're all connect on some levels, So we can't look at this in a discrete as an ete separate issue one and the same, And I don't know how when I say we, it's obviously going to be in the United States included, because what Israel does is usually done in consultation with the United States, and there is Unfortunately, as I say on other issues, it's going to get
worse before it gets better. And also as we move on to the next story, there are some implications as far as what may happen in the Ukraine and Russia conflict. Ukraine and Russia have agreed in principle to a limited ceasefire after President Trump spoke with the country's leaders in different conversations this week, and for me, I think everything is going to hinge on whether Russian President Putin is willing to at least have some sort of good faith
approach to the ceasefire. It's one thing to agree in pres but if you're still bombing infrastructure, then you're not exactly showing yourself as someone who's in good faith is trying to move toward a ceasefire. I need to see if I'm in that negotiation. I need to see Russia make some sort of concession. Where you have Ukraine who was invaded, you have to have Russia who is not trying to see the territory that it has taken in
this invasion. I would need to see something from Russia, some sort of good faith gesture for me to believe that the ceasefire or the limited ceasefire of thirty days, is actually going to happen. I am more pessimistic than optimistic that this cease fire is going to hold, and we'll just have, as President Trump will say, we'll see what happens. It's the Bill Handle Show. I'm Okelly and for Bill caf I am six forty. We are live everywhere on the iHeartRadio app.
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