The opinions expressed on this show are those of the host and not of iHeartMedia or its employees. Thank you for listening to NewsRadio 615 KDNI. Amy Zamboski. The show starts now. Our lines are open at 907-522-0650. This is The Morning Drive on NewsRadio 650 KENI. Good morning. It is Wednesday, January 15th, 2025. We are now, how far, Daryl? 13 hours, 53 minutes.
And one second. I'm telling you, until President Trump is sworn in, it is right around the corner. We are very excited about this prospect. I can't wait till Joe Biden's gone. Then he can't screw anything up anymore. You know, it's just time to move on.
Time to move on. I'm very excited about this prospect. Oh, yeah. We're getting closer and closer. I mean, literally, we are inching away. I saw a moving van picture at the White House when they were loading up stuff, and I love the caption beneath it. It said, have they checked? for top secret documents, which I thought was hilarious because they had all the boxes stacked there. Also, so today is hump day, which is your favorite day. Hump day! But do you realize also today is...
The 15th day of the month. We're halfway through the month. What do you call that? What can we call that, the halfway day through the month? Super hump day. I don't know. I don't know. Not the thought popped in my mind because it was the 15th. I'm very excited. Like, I got to tell you, January 20th cannot come fast enough.
you know, just a few more days of insanity, and then we have the adults back in the room. So I'm very excited about this. Very excited. I heard that the National Time people are going to do a thing for the Democrats. They're going to reset time so that it's... got another no wait never mind that was a joke just not real not real i have a joke that i told yesterday and i had okay i i'll have to tell it to you off the air daryl and get your get your feedback
But three out of the four people said, you've got to tell that on the air. And out of all people. people my husband said you can't tell that on the air see that's the funny thing me and ben are the prudes in the group it's just it's crazy man i was like it's hilarious come on eric would appreciate this joke he would appreciate it
I'm just saying, Daryl. All right. Well, let's get into our community announcements before we jump into our show prep. We're going to have a packed show today. We have all kinds of stories to go over. We have an audio clip of Senator Sullivan that we want to play. And then at 7 o'clock...
Representative Kevin McCabe is going to be calling in, and we're going to be talking about Juneau, this legislative session, kind of what to expect, all that kind of stuff. So there's so much good stuff going on right now. All right, but let's get into it. For today, January 15th for the Mat-Su Borough, the Safe Streets for All Comprehensive Safety Plan open house is at... We're starting at 4.30 today at Houston City Hall.
The Agriculture Advisory Board that was scheduled today at 4.30 is canceled. There is a local emergency planning committee meeting today, and that is going to be at Central Matu Fire Department Station 6-5. At 6.30 tonight, the Meadowlakes Community Council has their board meeting. They meet over there at the Meadowlakes Senior Housing. facility located on 1210 North Camp Drive in Wasilla.
And last but not least, the Kinnick Fairview Community Council has their board meeting tonight. They meet over there at Tetler's Bay Lodge. So if you want more information on any of these meetings in the MATSU, just go to matzugov.us.
As far as the city of Palmer goes, the city of Wasilla goes, there's nothing on their calendar today, so we'll skip on over to the municipality of Anchorage. For the municipality of Anchorage, there is a library advisory board meeting today at 5.30. That's going to be in the library. The Lusack Library, which of course is located at 3600 Denali Street. There's also a plotting board meeting tonight at 630. The plotting board meets in the assembly chambers over there at Lusack Library.
And that does it for boards and commissions. Now, the Anchorage Assembly does have a couple of meetings today, starting at 11 o'clock this morning. They have a Housing and Homelessness Committee meeting, Daryl's favorite. You know right up there with the equity committee absolutely in my favorite one You know what I love the most is these are committees that will never end I mean they're just they're gonna be committees into you know 3,000 opportunity. Yeah, yeah, no doubt
Because the problem just seems to keep getting worse. But the Housing and Homelessness Committee meeting for the Enbridge Assembly is at 11 a.m. at City Hall. Conference room 155, so that's downstairs. Then at 1 o'clock today, same place, conference room 155, they have a transportation committee meeting.
So if you want more information on that, just go to Muni's website. Just an FYI, this is, you know, I think they're taking a playbook here from California, and they're actually learning something. We talked about it for 10 years, but I'm glad. Yes, they have a work session tomorrow in the morning about work session wildfire risk mitigation efforts in the municipality at 9.50 tomorrow morning. That's good. I will tell you from experience.
And being in the know, a vast majority of fires that you have in the municipality of Anchorage, especially when they have fires in the woods, they're homeless camps. So it'll be interesting to see how this administration deals with that. because we were super aggressive when I worked with the city about going after, you know, homeless campfires. And even bringing in to the point we brought in, we actually got it passed to by the assembly, an emergency order.
basically criminalizing outdoor fires and giving you opportunities to actually significantly crack down on them. It was an emergency order, and I will tell you, after the dust kind of settled and they started thinking about it, there was a couple of the assembly members who were like, oh, we don't like that. And so it was never made permanent.
But, you know, I think Forrest Dunbar was the one who was leading the charge against it. But, you know, as I recall, it's reality. I mean, you would think he would be for anything that prevented forest fires. Well, and welcome to the world, Dunbar. All right, well, that's it for the Anchorage Assembly. If you want to track what they're doing, including this work session they're having tomorrow on wildfire mitigation, our friends up in Sacaga Heights, Hillside, you guys are...
Valley, Highland, these are areas that really have issues because, number one, they're hard to access. They have limited water supply, and there's usually only one egress from these locations. So, I mean, it's a big deal in the municipality of Anchorage.
I'm glad to see that they're taking this up. But if you want to find more information, just go to muni.org and then click on the Assembly tab, and you'll be able to find it there. Moving down to the Kenai Peninsula Borough, which I have to tell you, they have updated. Updated their website. They launched a new website. It's looking good. I'm loving it.
But today on their calendar for the 15th, the only thing I see is a local emergency planning committee meeting from 9 to 11 this morning, and that will be at the Kenai Peninsula Borough Admin Building in the Assembly Chamber. So, of course, that's at 144. North Binkley Street in Saldatna. If you'd like more information, just go to kpb.us, and you'll be able to find it there. That stands for Kenai Peninsula Borough, so kpb.us, and you'll be able to find it there.
As far as the city of Kenai goes, there's only one thing on their calendar today, and that is their... City Council meeting. That will be tonight. It kicks off at 6 p.m. It will be in the Kenai City Council Chambers, 210 Fidalgo Avenue in Kenai.
If you'd like the agenda or if you want to follow up and get more information, just go to Kenai.city, and you'll be able to find it on the calendar there. Just follow the links through, and you'll be able to find it. There's nothing in the city of cell.net for today. thing that I see in Homer is a planning committee work session, a planning commission work session rather. That's going to be at 530 tonight in the Cal's Council Chamber located at Homer City Hall, 491 East Pioneer Avenue in Homer.
You can attend via Zoom or by phone. If you want the links to be able to do that or their agenda, just go to cityofhomer-ak. That really does it for our public announcements for this morning. If you'd like to call in, if you have an announcement or something fun that you know of that's going on around town, we're always happy to plug it. All you have to do is give us a call, 522-0650. We're going to take our first break of the morning. We will be right back.
Well, I will tell you, the Republican-controlled House is taking no time to get things done. Mustard Alaska has a story up. House passes bill banning males from stealing female trophies. Now... Will the Senate grow some you-know-what? on a vote of two eighteen to two o six the u s house of representatives passed a bill on tuesday that protects women and girls athletic teams and competitions from being invaded by male athletes
who mistakenly believe they're females. Congressman Nick Begich III voted in favor of the bill last year when the bill was attempted. Mary Paltola voted against it, of course, because they don't know what a woman is. Let's be honest. I mean, this really demonstrates a 180-degree turn, you know, from...
From what we had. Yeah, exactly. You know, and look, we've had we've had court rulings now that have stricken down some of the Title IX rules that the Biden administration attempted to force upon school districts again. You know, this is the problem. This is why in parts of the world people just laugh at America because they get to the point where they're like their politicians don't even know the difference between men and women.
Oh, yeah. I mean, it's ridiculous because this is literally the most basic question in the world, which you learn when you're less than a month old. I mean, come on. A baby knows mom, dad, mom. dad you know so well exactly i mean come on he's not gonna try a baby's not gonna try to breastfeed on dad i mean let's be honest but they're literally like oh wait no you're the wrong one intuitively naturally
They know. I mean, it's just common sense. It goes on to say, Congressman Begich said the legislation is not about exclusion. Rather, the bill is focused on upholding the principles of fairness. Here's a quote. All athletes deserve equal opportunities to succeed, but we cannot allow the rights of female athletes to be impeded in the name of political correctness. This bill is a necessary step to ensure that women and girls can continue to compete on equal opportunities.
I mean, this is common sense. I can't even believe we have gotten to a point in society. where we're actually arguing legitimately over what a woman is. Over what a woman is. And I mean, the other day I might go find the clip. AOC literally had a freak out screaming that trans girls are girls. No, they're not. They're boys pretending to be girls. That's what they are. Exactly.
What gets me in this is is a lot of our legislators up here also a certain side of the aisle Keep saying that we're threatening these people that we're causing them harm because we're not letting them then participate in these things Actually, that's not. First of all, there is maybe a slight mental condition. There's something going on that needs to be treated, especially in a young person. A slight mental condition, yes. I would say gender dysphoria is a real thing. Yep.
You know, you're right. You're right. I'm trying to be nice on this and get it out there so it doesn't make people's hackles go up right away. protecting girls who are girls in the sports, that's what this is about. You want to separate it. And when they say, well, well, they're a girl. No, they're not. So, I mean, you're lying to yourself. You're lying to everybody else. And then when you say that we're harming them.
We're not actually harming them. The people who are helping them believe this, those are the people causing the harm. The ones that are helping them get their gender reassigned, that are giving them the drugs to mess with their hormones. Those are people who are harming them, not the people who are saying, yeah, no, you probably should. If you want to start a whole other league, okay. Start a league that has both in it. Okay.
Look, I've played in many intramural leagues where it is, you know, boys and girls basketball. I've played on girls teams. I played baseball when I was in, you know, elementary school and I was... The catcher. And I was one of only two girls on the team. And I was the catcher. Because you know what? I was good.
But I wasn't the best batter. I was a great catcher, not a great batter. I was okay. Was it softball or was it a hardball? It was baseball. Okay. No, it was baseball. See, I played on a softball team that was co-ed mixed. Yeah, sure. And I swear to God, half the women were better at it. than I was. Well, actually, probably more than three quarters than women were. Half the time, I was being intimidated, particularly by one bully.
Well, that's why I say you do have intramural leagues where there's men and women. And softball is a great example because even as adults, you see mixed softball leagues, right? Absolutely. I've seen it in multiple sports, but when you get to some of these sports where they have a boys' team and they have a girls' team, boys need to play on boys' teams, girls need to play on girls' teams. Hear, hear.
I mean, it's really, this isn't complicated. And the fact that they're trying to make it complicated, it's just not. You know, it's... interesting to me as the conversation came up and we really saw it on full display when Ketanji Brown Jackson when she went to get confirmed as a US Supreme Court Justice And they asked her to define what a woman was, and she couldn't. I mean, or she wouldn't. It was worse than that, Amy, though, because she said, I'm not a doctor.
It's the most ludicrous thing I've ever heard of. I mean, it gets to that point where it's just absolutely ludicrous. And I think this election is a sound rejection of so many ridiculous... that we're seeing in in on the left I mean you're seeing a sound rejection in corporate America now on DEI policies why were people instituting a lot of these you know diversity equity and inclusion policies it's because they
had so much pressure from the media and the government, really, to start implementing these types of policies. So when you start to see societal pressure, corporations will respond, and they tend to conform. society most of them tend to not try to you know shirk the trend but now you're seeing over and over again multiple big companies that had implemented DEI policies now they're starting to get rid of them why because they recognize they ain't working
It's hurting the bottom line. When you get away from meritocracy and stop hiring the best qualified people and you start checking quota boxes, what happens? Like, you're not going to get the best of the best. It's going to hurt your bottom line, and it's pretty obvious. Absolutely. I pulled the Quintanji Brown one. Would you like to hear what her actual answer was to what is a woman? Yeah, go for it. Go for it. Yeah, go for it.
Provide a definition for the word woman. Can I provide a definition? Yeah. I can't. You can't? Not in this context. I'm not a biologist. The meaning of the word woman is... I'm not a biologist. I'm not a biologist. I can't. No. What? You know, this is absolutely the craziest thing. You know, we can either talk about chromosomes or we can talk about body parts, but it's not very complicated. Human beings across the globe can tell the difference between a male and a woman.
A man and a woman. I mean, it's not complicated. Well, even though nowadays, which really gets me, you just brought up a sore point with me, they're now fighting the science. XX and XY. Well, you know, there's these little sometimes... No, this is science, but...
You're always telling me climate change, follow the science, look at this. And that isn't even science. That's out there on the edge. It's religion. Yeah, exactly. But this one, well, you know, science is wrong in that one. There is one intention. 10 billion people who have this weird XXYY, you know, it's like don't count that
Well, you know, I mean, there's always an outlier, you know, when you start looking at, you know, this one-off. There's conjoined twins, right? Three-eyed frogs. There's three-eyed frogs. There's people that are born with...
Well, I'm not going to say it. There's people that are born outside of the norm um of course those type of things happen you know but the reality is we all know the difference between a man and a woman it's not complicated and now that we've seen um we've seen the house actually take action on this bill and passed this bill on the national level to protect girls sports. Now the Senate, I'm sure, will take it up. We'll see how Senator Murkowski votes on it.
I'm not going to hold my breath. I was in an exchange earlier this morning with one of my friends about Murkowski's vote on Hegseth. And she was saying, I don't think she's going to vote for him. And I said, you're probably right, but I won't be surprised at all.
Letterman votes for him. And that's my one saving grease. Believe it or not, I was having the same thoughts yesterday. Because he is leaning in. He's starting to get more intelligent. And there's actually, if he does, I think there's a couple of other Democrats who will be like, yeah, you're right. Yeah, I won't be surprised at all if Hagseth actually gets confirmed. He did a great job yesterday. His confirmation hearing, four and a half hours.
Four and a half hours. Go ahead. Yeah, there's always the gotcha questions. You know, you remember when Sarah Palin, and now here's the thing. Hindsight is 20-20. And you remember when Sarah Palin was getting interviewed by Katie Couric, and she asked, like, what is the Bush Doctrine? And I have to tell you, I laughed because the moment that question was asked, my mind went, and look. Like I've had a lot.
education I've had a lot of classes that I've taken and you know I'm pretty much a political wonk and I stopped and I was like what does she mean by that like in my first reaction because I had never heard the term used that way but i believed in deterrence i believed in shock and awe in order to have deterrence right um so intuitively i was like
Are we talking about, you know, striking before we get struck? Are we talking about shock and awe? That's where my mind went. But they crucified Sarah Palin because she didn't know the term, the Bush Doctrine, and I will tell you. 99% of people did not know what the term Bush Doctrine meant. It's like a made-up. It was not in any history book. It was like a made-up term about Bush's type of policy, right?
Well, they tried to get him on, they tried to get Pete Hegseth on a couple of things yesterday. Well, to say that, you know, it's kind of like stuff that is like, they're just gotcha questions to try to make him look stupid. But at the end of the day, I think he did a very good job. And I think he held his own. You know, they tried to make him sound like he was a drunk.
They try to make him sound like he drinks at work all the time. You know, all these anonymous allegations. He sexually assaults people. You know, he cheated on his wife so he doesn't, you know, you know, you know. go through with his oath, see, whatever. Like, I got to be honest with you. Like, you start, look, let's start doing a purity test for members of Congress.
The moment members of Congress can do a purity test on somebody, the moment I will take them seriously when they talk about lying or cheating. Let's be honest. I mean, I want to know, is the person competent? Is the person, you know, did they pass their background check? Are they going to be able to do the job? Do they have the skill set to do the job? That's where I start. I'm not going to start with an anonymous report from NBC that says he drinks on the job.
That's probably not legit, especially when he turned in like 30 statements from people that he worked with, like 30 different references saying, yeah, never seen him drinking on the job. Well, we're back to this anonymous statements to the press. Exactly.
You got an anonymous statement, okay, there's your starting point. Find somebody who's gonna step forward that's not anonymous, okay, now we'll listen. But you're just gonna give me anonymous statements? You know what, I'm gonna quickly send you an anonymous statement in the mail. Are you going to use it? Come on. Yeah, so he did really well, but then the debate this morning between me and one of my friends was, will Lisa Murkowski vote for him? Probably not.
Because if she doesn't, she will solidify her position as a true blue partisan Democrat. Whether she wants to call herself a Democrat or not, that's what she will be. Where she voted for all of Biden's nominees, if she shoots down Pete Hegstaff, you know, a military veteran who served in active duty combat, who clearly... is qualified to do the job. If she shoots him down, it's purely political, and it shows how partisan she's become. And it's really unfortunate.
We'll see. We'll see. But I will tell you, I think you will have a couple of Democrats come over to the Hexa side and vote for him. I think you will. We'll see. All right, we're going to take a quick break. We'll be right back. Reach out to Amy now. 907-522-0650. That's 907-522-0650. It's Amy Demboski on NewsRadio 650 KENI.
Well, yesterday I told you I would play you an audio clip from the Hegstaff hearing, and I wanted to play the clip of Senator Sullivan because, you know, what is our senator saying? He serves on the Armed Services Committee. He gets to, like, vet this candidate. And what is he saying? And, of course, in typical Sullivan, you know, In Sullivan-esque way, he focuses on the military, strategic importance, readiness. He always tries to get nominees to commit to coming to Alaska.
And, you know, Pete Hegstath, that's the lead-up. You know, Sullivan was kind of given a little bit of history, talking about the strategic importance of Alaska, talking about... You know, getting Pete Hegseth to Alaska, who he has trained at Fort Wainwright. You know, he came, so he was up here, obviously, for an exercise up at Wainwright. So he's been to Alaska before. But that's kind of the setup for this clip. And this is the response from Pete Hegseth.
If confirmed, Senator, it would be a pleasure to work alongside you and this entire committee to recognize... The very real threat in the Indo-Pacific. The very real ways, even these past couple of weeks, that Russia has attempted to probe and push.
in and around Alaska, and also the very real strategic significance of Alaska vis-a-vis shipping lanes through the Arctic. There are many, many ways in which Alaska is strategically significant and with a shift toward, a necessary shift toward Indo-PACOM. Alaska, by necessity, will play an important role in that. Thank you, Mr. Hegseth. I very much appreciate your focus on lethality and war fighting. We desperately need it. I want to provide a few examples.
of the Biden woke military, which is not focused on readiness. or lethality and want to get your comments on it. Nobody wants an extremist or racist in our military, but one of the most disgraceful and shameful things I've seen over the past four years as a senator on this committee. And as a Marine Corps reserve officer was on day one, the Biden administration played up a false and insulting narrative that our military was chock full of racist and violent extremists.
This reached a pinnacle in this committee when Biden's undersecretary of policy, Colin Call, the number three guy at the Pentagon, testified that one of his top goals would be to, quote, Ending violent extremism and systemic racism within the ranks. of the military. He had no data on this. The media loved it, fanned the flames, wrote baloney stories on this false narrative. Disappointingly, some of my colleagues on the other side of the aisle here.
Reinforce this ridiculous narrative. One even suggesting that almost 10% of our uniformed military was extremists. 200,000 members. Ridiculous. By the way, from this committee on the other side of the aisle, Mr. Hegseth, unlike Under Secretary Call, You have a lot of experience with our military. Do you believe the military is a systemically racist organization? And if confirmed, will you commit to defend, not denigrate our troops?
Senator, I was also offended by those comments because anyone who's been on active duty in the National Guard, man, woman, in units, understand that is fundamentally false. By the way, there's three studies. To his credit, Secretary Austin put out one of them that said exactly what you just said. Fundamentally false. Senator, they knew it. Anyone who'd been in a unit knew it. One could argue.
That if not the least, one of the least racist institutions in our country is the United States military. Being a racist in our military has. Not been tolerated for a very long time. One of the greatest civil rights organizations in America. Would you agree the U.S. military is one of the most forward-leaning, probably one of the greatest civil rights organizations in American history? No doubt.
Let me turn to another one. Last year at a hearing before this committee, I called on the Biden Secretary of the Navy to resign because he's failing in his ability to build ships. We are being completely outbuilt in terms of ships by the Chinese. And yet this secretary of the Navy has been focused on climate change, not building ships in lethality.
Mr. Hegseth, if your Secretary of the Navy ends up focusing on climate change more than shipbuilding and lethality, will you commit to me to fire him? My secretary of the Navy, should I be confirmed, sir, will not be focused on climate change in the Navy, just like the secretary of the Air Force won't be focused on LG powered fighter jets.
Or the Secretary of the Army will not be focused on electric-powered tanks. We're going to be focused on lethality defeating our enemy. And I appreciate that. The other thing President Biden did, his first executive order as president. was the focus on transgender surgeries for active duty troops. This is all I'm describing the woke military here under Biden over the last four years. If confirmed, and you issued an order.
saying we are going to rip the Biden woke yoke off the neck of our military and focus on lethality and war fighting, how do you think the troops will react? Senator, I know. The troops will rejoice. They will love it. They will love it. And we've already seen it in recruiting numbers. There's already been a surge since President Trump won the election of recruiting. And you think our military will follow that order?
Our military will follow that order, Senator. Gladly because they want to focus on lethality and warfighting and get all the woke political prerogative, politically correct social justice, political stuff out of the military. So that's Pete Hegseth responding to our U.S. Senator, Dan Sullivan. Of course, in typical Sullivan fashion, he focuses on the actual role of the military, right? Lethality and being ready to unleash it. if necessary.
And I think that those questions are really, really important, especially when we talk about our location. How many Chinese-Russian incursions have we had in our airspace in the last three months? Multiple. Multiple. Look at the Arctic. Russia is making a play right now for the Arctic. You know, when we start having massive Russian tankers off of the coast of Alaska, what are we going to do about it? I mean, you have to stake your ground. is if you don't have a military that's focused on
not only readiness, but being able to execute if necessary, you're going to find yourself far behind where the Chinese and the Russian are. Look at how many air bases Russia has developed along their coast in the past 15, 20 years. A lot. So the reality is these people are focused on it. We need to be focused on it. We don't need to be focused on seeing if we can create a fleet of electric tanks.
We don't need to be focused on fighter jets powered by algae. Let's be realistic about this stuff. Come on now. I mean, there comes a point. I mean, look. There was a day if you were transgender in the military, you were deemed mentally unfit for service, and you were not going to be on the front lines. Let's just put it that way. I mean, come on. We have to talk about reality, and the reality is we can treat people with compassion and dignity and respect, but they have mental issues.
And those mental issues need to be treated accordingly instead of trying to remake and sissify the military. What's crazy about this is, so this whole meeting here, if you go out and look at the mainstream media and the left pundits, the only thing they focus on, they say, oh my gosh, the Republicans, and they're focusing also on Sullivan. The only thing they care about is woke.
things they want to know about woke this and woke this because you're ruining the military well they're saying that has nothing to do with the military and they should be focusing on policy and this and that and then you go and listen to all the left And they don't say almost anything about what the military is about. They're focusing on...
Like you said earlier in the show, how many wives have you had? Did you drink too much? All this other stuff. And it's like the one person who did question about it, she was mad because he wanted to restrict roles of women in combat itself. And that was what she was upset about.
It was Gillibrand, right? Like, we heard Senator Gillibrand go on and on and on and on and on and on. And here's the thing. Look, I was a woman who served in the United States Air Force. Now, I never served in combat on the front lines, and I believe... there is a legitimate case to be made about not having certain people on the front lines and i will say this and i've said this on the air before when i was at basic training i made it a point
to make all the male times, right? They actually have different physical standards for men and women. Did you know that? And I totally am against it. I'm totally against it. I think you should have one standard for everybody, period, end of discussion. If women want to serve in the military, women need to be able to hit the same benchmarks as men. That was my opinion when I served in the military.
that was my opinion when I was in basic training and guess what I hit all those benchmarks but you know Daryl I had a flight of 52 girls in my basic training flight that's what they call like the group of you know your group that you go through in the air force out of 52 yeah in the air force out of 52 girls
Only two of us qualified for everything. So, you know, they tried to convince me to be a survival guide instructor, and I was not interested. I went into dentistry. That's what I did in the Air Force, right? I was a dental assistant. um so i i did not go on the front lines i was you know in the medical field but
You know, I thought about it, and I was just like, there's just no way I physically can do this job. It's the same reason I never wanted to be a fireman, because I physically knew there was a point, like, I'm not going to be able to lift a 220-pound man and carry him down a ladder. Like, I can't do that. I'm five foot four. I'm a little girl, you know. I'm strong, but I was little, you know. But I think that shows, again.
We have to have a real conversation about this. If you're going to put women in infantry battalions, they 100% have to meet the same exact physical standards as men. But I'm not one that's convinced women should be in combat roles. And I served in the military. So it's not sexist to have that opinion. It's not.
You tell me I'm sexist. I'm a woman. I was there. I was in the military. I saw some of the women that I served with. And I'm telling you right now, some of them should never be in an infantry division. Now, there are some total bad butts. You know what I mean? Completely ripped, amazing. Some of them. There might be an argument for it, but I got to tell you it's a legitimate conversation and concern to have so there you go until they get rid of a dual standard I think I think
You know, there's a really legitimate conversation to be had about it. But now with Hegseth, we're starting to see some of these senators come around that were on the fence and people were questioning. We're going to take a quick break and we'll get back to it. Now back to the boss. Amy Demboski. Call 907-522-0650 and be a part of the show on News Radio 650. KENI.
Speaking of Pete Hegseth, multiple articles are coming out now saying that Senator Joni Ernst, she's a Republican from Iowa, but tends to be far more like a... middle-of-the-road, if you will, left-leaning Republican has now been telling people that she's going to be supporting Pete Hegstaff for Secretary of Defense.
I hope that's true. Breitbart has the article up here. It says in a video posted by Axa in the Trump war room, Ernst was heard talking about how she would be supporting Hegseth to be confirmed to serve as Secretary of Defense. Ernst's words come as she has previously met with Hegseth. except on several occasions.
According to Ernst, here's a quote, he was adequately able to answer all of my questions. He pointed out all of the woke issues at the Pentagon, and I think we're at a point where now we can start moving forward. So there you have it. So, you know, Joni Ernst is one of the key ones, because remember, there's 53 Republicans in the Senate, and he needs 50. Plus the VP if J.D. Vance needs to be a tiebreaker in order to be confirmed. Right now in the Senate.
They are doing confirmation hearing for Pam Bondi, who is the attorney general nominee. She is the AG out of Florida. So we will see how that goes as well. I also hear that Marco Rubio is going through confirmation right now. I got to tell you, that's the one I cannot wait to watch. Marco Rubio, Secretary of State. Like, I think he's going to be legit awesome. Like, this is going to be a great one. All right, we're going to take a break. Up next, Representative Kevin McCabe. Stay with us.
The opinions expressed on this show are those of the host and not of iHeartMedia or its employees. Thank you for listening to NewsRadio 650, Katie and I. Welcome back to live, local, and insightful Morning Drive Radio on NewsRadio 650 KENI. Welcome back to Hour 2 of the Amy Dobosky Show, broadcasting live and local every weekday morning from 6 to 8 a.m.
Right here from South Central Alaska. I'm in the Mat-Su. Daryl is in Anchorage, but between the two of us, we have a big swath of the state covered. We love listening to local issues and talking about those from our callers, but we also love the opportunity to talk to our locally elected officials that are making their way right now. It's like the pilgrimage to Juneau.
And joining us now is one of the good ones, Representative Kevin McCabe. He represents the Big Lake area. Good morning, sir. Good morning, Amy. How are you? I am good. Are you all ready and packed to go to Juneau? I am something. In process. We call that in process. Yeah, well, you know, I'm an old freight pilot, so I can pack in about five minutes and I can live out of my suitcase for 30 days. Yeah, I was gonna say, you had a little bit of experience doing that, I will say.
Well, you know, I kind of chuckled when I saw the pre-filed bill list come out because you get the honor of having the first pre-filed bill in the House. And it's one we've talked about in the past before. I think it's a good idea. Sure. HB1, that's a great bill. I've carried it in the minority when I was first elected. And it came from a constituent, a guy named John Thomas Nelson, who is a financial guy.
He said, hey, you ought to take a look at this soundmoneydefense.org and gold and silver as a regular... unit of currency. It's been a really interesting bill and a lot of fun actually. It's fun meeting all the people from all over the country that are doing the same thing. There's one running in Texas right now. being run by a friend of mine named Durasio, Mark Durasio, a representative down there. So, yeah, it's a great bill. I'm really interested in...
and seeing if I can get it through this time. There was sort of bipartisan support for it last year. It got hung up in state Senate affairs for a couple months, and then it was too late to get it to finance and get it out of the Senate. Oh, there's always this year, so we will see what happens. Well, this year, the makeup of the legislature is going to look a little bit different than it has in past years.
As you're kind of reading the tea leaves, what are your expectations for this legislative session? Well, yeah, so there's lots of major issues that we're going to talk about in the legislature in an attempt to solve. Of course, one of them is the South Central Energy. Just had a news report on Golden Valley and their inability to buy gas and have issues with electricity. So we certainly need to resolve that.
That issue, one of my friends on MEA told me once, he said, you know, Kevin, if you have a bridge and it's the only way to get from point A to point B and the bridge goes out, you just don't leave point A. But if you have an electrical cord, an extension cord that goes from point A to point B and it gets cut and it's 30 below and point B was where your electric heater was plugged in, you have a problem.
So we have a problem that we have to solve, and I think the legislature is going to have to intervene. Much as I hate the idea of the government getting involved in private industry, we're going to have to do it, I think, whether it be royalty relief for Cook Inlet gas exploration or a myriad of other things that we could do. to help the problem. How do you see the Trump administration coming in potentially helping that problem?
Well, that's a really good question, actually. So there's a number of ways that they've expressed interest. I think that President... Trump is very interested in a gas line, not as much for Alaskans, but as for Indo-Pacific allies. You know, you've heard me say it before, but... And truthfully, Rahm Emanuel is the first one. He spoke at the governor's conference a couple years ago and talked about the difference in sailing between Anchorage.
and Japan, South Korea, Singapore, some of our allies in the far Pacific. And it's seven days from Anchorage. It's nine days from some of the Canadian ports, Vancouver and Prince Rupert. And it's 10 or 12 days from Los Angeles, 14 days from Australia through the tropical convergence zone, which is between political and weather-related issues. It's a problem.
What he was saying was our Indo-Pacific allies might be forced to get gas and coal and some of the minerals that we have here in Alaska from Russia and China, and maybe we don't want that. So Alaska is a key player. You heard Senator Sullivan say it to Pete Hanks yesterday. I think it was Doolittle maybe. One of the generals very early on, pre-World War II, that said... 1935. Right. Yeah. The last year was a pivotal point in...
national and international politics. And I think it's time that we step into our place and see if we can't help the country and at the same time help Alaskans. You know, that's interesting. As we talk about it, you know, I think you bring up a great point. You know, when Senator Sullivan pointed out in 1935, there were people that recognized the strategic importance of Alaska.
Not Greenland, not other places. It was Alaska. And especially as we see the Arctic open up and we see more activity, whether it's through shipping lanes or development, the reality is the whole world is starting to focus on the Arctic.
And Alaska, as the only reason we're an Arctic nation, I think is going to play a pivotal role in that. And I think when we're talking about the strategic importance and the vast amount of minerals that are potentially in Alaska, and in the Arctic, I think you can't undercut how valuable that will be and how other players in the world potentially may try to seize those assets, especially...
staking out land in the Arctic. And I think the legislature and I think on a national level, the federal government really needs to consider the strategic importance and the value in being able to defend basically our homeland and our shores. It'll be an interesting conversation. And I know as the chair of transportation, you have had a lot of discussions about whether it's ports or bridges or strategic importance. You know, let's shift a little from energy.
and talk about transportation. As we think about going into this legislative session, what is on your mind when you start thinking about transportation and Alaska needs? You've heard me say this before on the program, Amy, and it ties right in with what we're talking about with the Arctic and Alaska. being the gateway to the Arctic for the United States. We have one road that goes to the Arctic right now.
And, you know, airplanes and barges in the summertime, sure, but the Dalton is the one road to get to the Arctic. So transportation is key, not only for us as an Arctic nation in helping to develop the trillions of dollars of resources. in the Arctic that are actually accessible to Alaska and America. But transportation is key for all resources development, whether it's the West Sitna Access, even the Parks Highway. You know, you look at the...
The things that have to go up and down the parks highway via truck, and you just have to wonder if it wouldn't be better with Port McKenzie and the rail spur. where some of the goods that are traveling right now through downtown Anchorage and around through the valley, past that bottleneck there at Lowe's and up through the middle of Wasilla to be driven up the Parks Highway.
If it wouldn't be better just to bring them into Port McKenzie, and we could save a little bit on the tariffs. The Fairbanks folks could save some of the tariffs, and we could put it on rail and cut, you know. hours out of the transportation that needs to get to Fairbanks. So same with resources coming out of...
You know, coming out of the interior, whether it be coming from the North Slope, coming from Ambler, coming from any of the myriad mines that are up there, transportation is key to resource development. We have got to get to... Just consider the logging. Consider logging and thinning our forests and proper forest management. If you don't have logging roads, you can't get to it. So we have got to figure out a way to fix...
and to increase our transportation network. We don't want to be the East Coast with roads everywhere, but we do need to have accessible... transportation to our resources. The governor said it, the roads to resources thing that not too many people have heard about lately, but it's certainly been a focus of mine, both on resources and in the transportation committee.
Well, I'm excited to see what comes of not only the Trump administration, but this next legislative session. You know, I have concerns, obviously, the makeup of the legislature, and maybe after the break we can get into that a little bit.
to kind of just functionally tell us, you know, how it's going to work. You know, the minority versus the majority. I'd love to hear what committees you're going to be on this next session. And that will kind of give us an idea of, you know, maybe what we can expect.
manage expectations as we go into this legislative session. We're speaking with Representative Kevin McCabe. He represents District 30. If you have a question for Representative McCabe, you're always welcome to call in, 522-0650. We're going to take a quick break. right back. You're listening to live, local, and always insightful Morning Drive Radio with Amy Demboski on NewsRadio 650 KENI. Get on the show now by calling 907-5220. 650.
Welcome back. We are speaking with Representative Kevin McCabe, who is getting ready to go to Juneau for this legislative session. And one of my friends texted me, so we got the quote right. It was General Billy Mitchell in 1935 that said... Alaska is the most strategic place on Earth.
And that's the one that you were referring to, but I figured I'd put the footnote in there. Representative McCabe, as we kind of prepare to watch the Juno show kick off here in the next... week or so and you know there is a little bit of a makeup that is different in the legislative in the legislature this year how would you characterize it for folks what can we expect
Well, that's a really interesting question. So when I was first elected, I was in the minority. We had a very strong minority, 19 members, and they had a 21-person majority. And frankly... Having been in a minority and a majority, I would rather be in a strong minority than I would in a very weak majority.
You've got to be on your game 100% of the time. Can't ever have anybody that's absent or gone. You know, there's just, it takes a very, very... tightly focused team in a 21-person majority to do what you want to do to get your issues across the finish line. We will be, you know, the minority will be a cohesive 19-person minority, and we are going to try to stop some of the things that we don't want. I mean, you talked a little bit about it this morning with the girls in sports.
bill and that sort of thing. And we have to be lined up and tight together to prevent some of this stuff. We were talking about this a little yesterday, and I've reached out to a few legislators and had some conversations. And two things that I think a lot of people are expecting to come out of this legislative session where the Democrats are in charge because...
In the House, two Republicans are caucusing with the Democrats. That's Chuck Kopp and Louis Stutes, for those who are keeping tally. So you have this majority now where the Democrats are really going to be chairing committees. and they're going to be the ones that are able to probably push legislation or hold legislation back. So two things that are right on the top of people's mind.
is we're hearing rumors of potentially a $1,900 BSA increase. Whether that comes to fruition or not, you know how the sausage is made. It could change dramatically before the end. But then we're also hearing it's likely that a return to a defined benefit pension plan is going to happen. And I've made the case that if both of those things happen effectively, there's no way to pay for that. I mean, you'd have to take that.
the PFD distribution and you'd probably have to incorporate a broad-based tax. I don't really see the discussion on how they're going to pay for it, but do you think either of those things are likely to pass the House, and what do you think would happen then? I think that they have the votes in both houses to do both of those things.
And Alaskans should all be asking, and I will be asking, who pays? Where is it going to come from? Where is the money going to come from? A $1,900 BSA increase inside the formula. will be more than $500 million a year in perpetuity for schools that we have no real idea how they are performing. I mean, we have... And the Matsu aside, the Matsu is doing well. They're doing fabulous. Their outcomes are increasing on the money that they are getting right now.
But the other school districts, I mean, if you look at the DEED website with the report card to Alaskans of the various schools and school districts, Many of them haven't even bothered to get that to DEED, or if they have, then DEED hasn't bothered to put it on the website. So Alaskans have no transparency of how the school districts, which are a business, by the way, are spending the money.
A $1,900 BSA does not necessarily get to the classroom without going through the contract, the collective bargaining agreements, what we call a CBA, with the unions and the teachers. The money goes to the school district to spend however they wish. There is no law like there used to be where a certain percentage of it needs to be spent in the classroom.
So we're just throwing money at the school districts, not at the classrooms. And it's very, very frustrating, especially when you consider as the majority last year, the House put 322... million dollars more into education, which is the most ever that we put into education. We funded the top 15 major maintenance projects on the deeds list.
That's never been done before. We added a bunch of money for school pupil transportation separately. That's never been done before that I know of. We funded the Reeds Act.
And we added a little bit to the BSA outside the formula, yes, but the schools clearly told us they needed some more, so we gave them some more. We just were very directive on how we wanted it spent. We think it needs to be spent on... on the classroom and on teachers, not on brand new expeditions or brand new snow plows necessarily or huge buildings with very, very few students in them.
We are not anti-education just because we oppose bankrupting the state of Alaska. That's a really good way to put it. As I think about the strategic move here, I think...
This session is going to be a session probably where you see the minority work very closely with the governor because where is the stopgap here? It's really in the governor's vetoability, and he needs a strong minority to be able to... uphold those vetoes and my guess is he probably has it going into the session so then the real negotiation I would assume in the house becomes once they start passing these really big spending items they're going to have to come to you guys
a cbr draw a constitutional budget reserve draw because i don't see how i mean even the governor's budget as he put it forward it is not a balanced budget so There's going to have to be movement somewhere, and I guess that's where the power of the minority comes in is the horse trading begins. Am I right?
Well, sure. And, you know, Alaskans need to realize that the money has to come from somewhere. Our government is completely funded by, right now, a little bit of oil revenues, not as much as it used to be, and our permanent fund. the revenue coming off of the permanent funds. So eventually, and I don't even think there's enough people in Alaska to pay an income tax to pay for this huge...
education funding and defined benefits pay out. So where's the money going to come from? Well, the money, they're going to want to get into the corpus of the permanent funds. So now we are spending our seed corn, if you will. So I think we have to be very careful when we put these programs into place that have consequences 10, even 20 years down the line for our children.
When we're in the legislature, when I'm down there, the votes I take, I don't take for myself. We're cathedral builders. We're building for the next generation, and we need to think about that. We're not building for the next two years. We shouldn't be... Funding education just to get votes two years from now or not funding education just to get votes two years from now, we need to be thinking about the future of Alaska and the future of our children. And that's what I do. You're exactly right.
You're exactly right. And one other thing that you said about education that I wish more legislators would think about when they think about education spending is what are we getting for it? What are the results tied to the increase in spending? What are the outcomes? We can't just keep spending money without any sort of metric to say is the money we're spending effective. And I think that's a mindset that, you know, for some reason.
I don't hear a lot coming out of a lot of legislators. I mean, there's a number of them that do talk about it. But as you mentioned, the Matsu, we're actually starting to see results based on their strategy. for where they're putting money and how they're designing that to be effective. And I think the state could learn from the Mat-Su. 100%. 100%. But when you talk to...
some of the four- and five-letter groups that represent the school boards and the school administrators and that sort of stuff, they don't ever want to talk about the Matsu. They don't want to talk about the Matsu, which should be the shining example. Dr. Traney has done a fabulous job, and the school board as well have done a fabulous job of finding a path forward in a difficult financial situation. And truthfully, all school districts, I think, need to be doing that.
considering other people's money as their own money, just like a business does. I mean, in the airline industry, the industry I came from, when revenues and traffic starts decreasing, in a city they they decrease routes in the city you know so when your student population starts shrinking you need to make some hard decisions and i i get that the parents aren't going to like it
I get that the extra transportation that your kids are going to have to go through. You might have to drive. They might have to ride a bus an extra 10 minutes or even a half hour. I get that. You know, if the school is shrinking, how can we afford to continue to heat a building, to continue to fund a school that doesn't have the kids in it? And on the same note, it's dismaying that school districts are making decisions on closing schools for politics rather than pure financial.
reasons so oh i agree yeah i agree in one legislator's district not because it's uh actually shrinking but because they're trying to motivate him and they motivate him because the parents call him or her up And, you know, so it's the old, well, you saw it when you were in the military. It's the old base realignment and closure committee, right, that says, well, Senator so-and-so, we're going to close the military base in your district because you're not funding the military.
Well, it's the same sort of pressure that they're trying to put on the Alaska legislature. The school districts are very, very obvious, and it needs to change. We need to be making decisions on unemotional facts and data. And shifting gears totally, that's exactly why the defined benefits issue is such a problem for me, is because we have no idea why people are leaving.
We have no idea why people won't come to the state. Just saying that defined benefits in a retirement is the reason that we can't keep people hired in the state, how do we know that? Have we ever done exit surveys? The answer is no. There are no exit surveys other than a Department of Public Safety one done five, six years ago that indicate that people are leaving the state employment because of retirement. There's just no data.
So, you know, it's the same with the teachers. Why is it the struggle to keep teachers? Is it because of the defined benefits, because of no retirement? I don't know that we know that 100%. So we need to get the 100% data on the exit surveys that they should, that a good HR department would be doing every time somebody quits or leaves or moves out of state.
Well, exactly. You know, Representative McCabe, it's always interesting talking with you because you're just so candid, and that's why I appreciate it. It gives us a glimpse into kind of your thought process and what you're dealing with in Juneau. We hope as you go to Juneau we get to talk to you a lot this session. And always feel free to call in. We will always have a line open for you, sir. Well, thanks, Amy. I appreciate that.
I was listening to you, so I might not always be calling or commenting, but, well, you get some texts from me occasionally, so you know I'm listening. Absolutely. That's Representative Kevin McCabe. We're going to take a quick break. Thank you, sir, so much for calling in. We'll be right back. Amy Demboski, 6 to 8, mornings on News Radio 650, KENI. Call now, 907-522-0650. Welcome back, Current Time 741. I want to thank Representative Kevin McCabe from District 30.
for calling in this morning and talking to us about the legislative session in Juneau. We have a lot we're expecting to happen. And let the games begin, as they say. Let's go to the phones. And Ken is with us. Good morning, sir. This is Ken Wynn. I was the one that wrote the article on solving a long-term problem in the school district and money. They need a permanent education fund.
Ah, kind of like the PFT to spin off royalties. Yeah, okay. I just retired out of my profession. I had 5,000 patients. Out of that, I saw at least... 200 school teachers of different grades they taught, four principals, three teachers of the year, and one superintendent that taught in the bush for 30 years.
So I got an earful of what's going on. And what you guys said yesterday, I was just getting out of the shower. I couldn't follow the whole thing. So I waited until this morning when I had some time to talk about the issue. There's no long-term thinking in Alaska for to solve any problem. The legislators up here are as dumb as the ones in Congress, I'm telling you. They don't understand anything. No long-term thinking.
But if they had a permanent education fund, I wrote the article 19 years ago on having a permanent education fund, and I got about 50 letters, and a lot of educators called me up and said it was a great idea. Why the governor doesn't entertain something like that? And so when you call a legislature, they go, oh, you can't have dedicated funding. I said, well, how did they get the permanent fund?
Most of them, especially the Democrats, had no idea how we got the permanent fund. They just changed the law in 1977. And it was a really smart governor, Hammond, with Abram Gross. He was the attorney general. At the time, so they can get a permanent education fund. Had they done that 19 years ago or 20 years ago, when I sent the article originally to the Anchorage Daily News, they wouldn't publish it.
But Anchorage Times did. So I re-enhanced the article, you know, about a year ago, and I rewrote the article because I knew more about it. And I've talked to so many teachers. A lot of teachers are very disgruntled about education. About 65% of the country teachers don't want to teach anymore because of the abusive kids that come, the uncontrolled brats that come to school.
and try to dominate the class and take everyone's time. So a lot of teachers are unhappy, but what I heard most of the time was, Going back to what was said this morning, teachers are upset there's no proper retirement. There's no retirement for them. They don't have anything, really.
And what they do have, it's not worth it to come here. They have teachers that come out in New York, the liberals. They come up here, and then they go, we're going to save the kids. And they get off the plane in Kotzebue or someplace. And they look around for 10 minutes and they get back on the plane and go back. These are teachers that took a job up here, but they saw the elements they have to teach in.
And there's no support from the parents anymore for teachers, you know. Yeah, I think you bring up a lot of good points. Yeah, you're bringing up a lot of really good points. And I think an education endowment of sorts. would be an interesting one because I know many years ago legislators were talking about some sort of capital improvement endowment as well where, you know, you have all these roads and bridges built. You're going to have to have a spinoff.
If you had some sort of endowment like that, you could use the earnings to perpetually fund whatever it is. Education is one of them. I think it's an interesting concept. I've always talked about is before we launch into throwing more money at something, we should look at how we do things. Do you realize we have like over 50 school districts in Alaska? I think the number, somebody will correct me.
I want to say 53, but I think I'm wrong. But, you know, on one island in Alaska with, like, around maybe, say, 1,000 kids, they have three different school districts. Three different school districts in one island. And you look at it and you're like, oh, this doesn't make sense. So why do I bring that up? Because rural school district funding is at 100% from the state.
So in Anchorage, to juxtapose for you, in Anchorage, funding for ASD is about half percent property taxes. Half of it is... uh state funding right but if you're in rural alaska they pick up the tab a hundred percent so
Then you say, okay, well, what are we doing, state of Alaska? Legislators, this is your responsibility. Why aren't we looking at consolidating superintendents and school districts? Because then all those administrative costs, rather than being duplicated and triplicated, or times 50, maybe we only need...
six, seven, eight school districts in the state of Alaska, why do we need over 50? We probably don't. And then you can start being more efficient with the money that you're taking from other areas. to fund all these school districts. Again, it's work smarter, not harder. And to your point, if we have long-term thinking about how we're going to fund these things, you know, Representative McCabe made the point, look, if they add 19...
$1,900 to the base student allocation. That's the formula funding for education. That's $500 million a year. Where's that money going to come from? Well, it's a very basic question. Where's that money going to come from? And when we start talking about returning to a defined benefits retirement plan, how are you going to pay for it? The former plan is still $6 billion in the hole. That's with a B.
And that's still in the red. So now we're going to double down and go to it. When teachers, if you go to the DEED website, and Todd pointed this out to us yesterday, there is a study that talks about what teachers want. And the number one thing is not a defined benefit retirement plan, right? It's more control in their classroom. It's classroom working conditions. You know, it's like, again, so like number five or six. Thanks.
he mentioned was a retirements plan but then we have to think about these new teachers that are just coming out of college right these new teachers coming out of school going into the workforce this generation one of the things they value most is portability possibility.
So that means they don't necessarily want to be locked into the same place for 30 years. So if portability is the option, then a 401k style like we have now would be the smartest move because they can roll that over. I had another friend yesterday. me after the show and he made the point to me about social security because there are some professions and public safety is one of them where they don't pay into social security But he made the comment to me, Amy, if I just took the money.
that they took from me for Social Security, if I took that money and just invested it in basically the stock exchange over all these years, I would make way more money than I'll get back in Social Security and I can leave it to myself. again. We have to think about this differently. And to Ken's point, we have to think about this long term. And to Representative McCabe's point, we have to think about this holistically in a much bigger fashion and say, wait a second.
Maybe the old way of doing things is not the way that's going to be most effective for the goal that we're looking for. Is the goal we're looking for better outcomes? Is the goal we're looking for teacher retention? Is the goal we're looking for better delivery of services? more efficient delivery of services. What are those goals?
And, again, we have to have people to think about this. Great comments. Mr. Witten, thank you so much for calling in. I appreciate your comments this morning. I think I would love to see your article. So if you just hang on hold, Daryl will get your e-mail address. from you and i'll send you an email so i can read your article if you don't mind sharing it we're going to take a quick break we'll be right back welcome back to live local and insightful morning drive radio on news radio 650 keni
Welcome back. Current time is 754. Well, I have to get this in because you know how I like to footnote everything. um when we talk about like a potential endowment whether it's for capital improvement projects or education if you were to go that route everything's possible
It's just how much work to get there, right? You would actually have to change the Alaska Constitution. So for those wonks out there that are interested in the endowment type of a model, you would need a change to Article 9, Section 7 of the Alaska Constitution. It begins this way, the proceeds of any state tax or license shall not be dedicated to any special purpose except as provided in section 15 of this article or when required by federal government for state participation.
in federal programs. So that's the section probably that would likely need a change. But again, is anything possible? Sure. It's just how much work in order to get there. But again, it's an interesting concept for sure. All right, let's go to the phones. And Mr. Ken McCarty is with us. Good morning. Good morning, sir. Good morning, Amy. What's on your mind this morning? We have about a minute and a half left. Yes, I want to give a shout-out to Phil Weisen, who just yesterday...
or two days ago, pulled out the initiative to be a team player so that our initiative to repeal ranked choice voting can move forward. So I want to thank Phil. And the team there, as they are giving an assist to the team to make the goal at the basket and get rid of ranked choice voting.
Oh, we are excited to see this become a unified front. You know, this is going to be a big effort. Again, we're going to have to go through and get all the signatures again to repeal ranked choice voting. And in two years, it'll be on the ballot again. And should we get all the signatures? So I'm glad to see one team, one fight, right? That's correct. And I think it's going to be hard to get the signatures because we know that there's over 160,000 people that voted to get rid of it.
that's right well i appreciate it ken i can't wait as you guys gear up and start collecting signatures and starting this uh fight this time i can't wait to have more conversations with you about it thank you so much for jumping in and and and being one of the guys to uh sponsor this and to tackle this topic you're very welcome
All right. That does it for Daryl and I today. Stay tuned on deck. Clay Travis and Buck Sexton, followed by Sean Hannity at 11. And, of course, the great Mike Pacaro and Daryl will be on at 4 o'clock this afternoon from 4 to 6. Daryl and I will be back with you tomorrow morning at 6 a.m. Until then, stay safe. God bless.