Much of the objections to the incoming Trump administration. I guess the objections from the left to the incoming Trump administration are nearly infinite. But one of the weird sort of attitudes that people on the left are adopting is this idea that there are certain kinds of institutions that they own and that they always should own, and that their ownership of those government publicly funded institutions should remain
through time immemorial. This, mostly within the context of the Trump era, has applied to federal government bureaucrats, the career employees of the federal government, many of whom thousands and thousands of whom stay on in their governmental roles regardless of who is president. So someone might have been hired under one president, but he keeps working through the next president and the next president the next president. Not the
political appointees, but the career appointees. And the thing is, the career appointees are overwhelmingly left wing, and many of them have the ability to slow down, stymy, or even directly undermine the efforts of a Republican administration. When you get to the level of the FBI and the CIA
and counterintelligence and intelligence agencies. They can even directly undermine a incoming or sitting president, as we saw with President Trump in the way that very very senior FBI officials tried to genuinely get him impeached and removed from office, conspired to get him removed from office because they politically disagreed with him. Another area where liberals sort of think they should own things, and I think this is relevant to our purposes here in Fresno is public education. And
I'll start by talking about public university education. Certainly, liberals have thought they've owned, have owned public K through twelve education in a lot of places throughout the country, including in very red states that for some reason produce very left wing school districts. But K through twelve education has been worse here. You have, you know, deep red states like Texas, where the University of Texas at Austin is
still a very left wing college. You have deep red states with very left wing colleges that keep pumping out incredibly left wing politicized educational programs that in many cases are so saturated with left wing thinking that they cannot see the forest for the trees. You know, that's one of the things about universities. It's really interesting how insular
they are. How if you're living a kind of academic life as a college student or a grad student or as a professor, your world and your worldview is very much shaped by that institution, by its rhythms in ways that I don't think are true of a normal job, and you sort of lose perspective of what the rest
of the outside world is like. You think that the norm of what people think, since you're at this thinkery, you're at this thinking institution, you think that the way everyone thinks in the thinking place is how the thinkers think.
All of the world, And it's just not true.
I may have lived in South Bend, Indiana for seven years going to college at Notre Dame, but you know, I can guarantee you that the thoughts, views, and opinions of the faculty, students, grad students at Notre Dame was not going to reflect in almost any way that of
the broader South Bend populace. And because university has become so insular that they can't see the outside perspective of Wait a minute, you're teaching a whole semester long class on the anthropology of LGBT Latino artists in twentieth century hip hop. That doesn't seem like it should.
Be a class.
There are problems with the intellectual rigor of such a thing, but especially with the various aspects of left wing ideology that so many within the university system feel they need to bow down to. Otherwise intelligent people at the universities don't feel like they have the standing to say, especially if they're white or men, don't feel like they have the standing to say to.
Maybe a young.
Liberal professor who is from some you know, some kind of diverse group. Hey, that's a dumb class idea. That's a dumb idea for a semester long course. No, the department's not going to approve.
You teaching this. This is ridiculous.
If the department is not going to prove this person teaching this, why did they hire this person to begin with?
They hired this person knowing the kinds of academic research they were into.
Presumably they hired this person because they did academic research on LGBT, Latino twentieth century hip hop, or you know whatever it is for the Anthropology department or the Latino Studies department. The very existence of programs like a lot of the studies programs, women's studies, Latino studies, African American studies have often been hit with criticism that they lack intellectual rigor, lack academic rigor.
But again, because.
These are sort of shibleths of the left, these are things that are untouchable, uncriticizable, immune from all criticism. They just go on and on and on, and they go on and on and on at institutions that are funded with our money, with our taxpayer dollars, including in red states, funded with our taxpayer, funded with the tax. Here these ultra left wing programs who only exist because of the goodwill of the taxpayers of Florida or Texas or Alabama
or whatever. So there's this whining article in the New York Times about this topic. Republicans target social sciences to curb ideas they don't like. Several years ago, to attract more students, Gene Muteba Rayhere spiced up the name of his Introduction to the Anthropology of Religion course. He called it myth Ritual and Mysticism. Now ray Here, a professor at Florida International University in Miami, believes the name was perhaps too provocative for higher education in the Sunshine State.
Rayher's class, which was flagged as having unproven speculative or exploratory content, was one of nearly two dozen courses university trustees voted in September to remove from a course set of classes that students must choose from to graduate. The slashing of core classes across the state, which has often been based on course titles and descriptions, is meant to comply with the state law passed last year that curbed
identity politics in the curriculum. The law also bars classes from the corps that quote distort significant historical events that include theories that quote systemic racism, sexism, oppression, and privilege are inherent in the institutions of the United States. Florida has become a testing ground for a raft of conservative policies meant to limit or expunge what Republicans describe as
quote woke indoctrination in the state schools and colleges. Faculty in student critics, I don't give a crap what the student critics say. They're students, they're dumb, have said. This latest effort infringes on university autonomy, infringes on university autonomy, the autonomy of this.
University that we pay for.
And could reduce students exposure to courses they believe are necessary for a well rounded education. Academic freedom advocates worry it marks a new, more organized approach, more organized approach to what. Rather than trying to regulate what a professor can or cannot say, a legally questionable tactic, the new strategy is taking aim at entire horses. See this attitude that they own it, that they should own it, that this is the divinely ordained. Well, you know, because God
is a woman. All right, we'll we'll say divinely ordained.
As long as God the woman, the divinely ordained, the goddessly ordained order of the universe and the minds of liberals is that a very Republican electorate in Florida that doesn't like all this woke crap must continue paying for with their taxpayer dollars or with their tuition dollars as they send their kids to this place, must continue paying for these people's mickey mouse classes to be taught forever, in perpetuity, with no questioning, no questioning whatsoever, that this
threatens the autonomy of the universities. Oh, the autonomy of this state run university, the autonomy of Florida State University or the University of Florida or Florida International, these state funded colleges and universities that the taxpayers paid for, that they put every brick in place, that they should be autonomous from the democratically elected governor slash state legislature of Florida. That's the attitude that, in no way, shape or form should the university be answerable.
Oh, it's threatening their autonomy.
What is that? It's not an autonomous institution. When Florida International can stand on its own two feet without state funding and just become a private school, okay, then sure talk about that. And because by the way, these kinds of reforms, it's not like the state is mandating this of private schools within Florida.
I think the universe. I think the University of Miami is a private school. I'm not sure. Let me see here, University of Miami. Is that a private school or a public school? Did it up?
Private university? Yeah, University of Miami is not going to be touched by this. But yeah, University of Florida, Florida State Florida International. These are public schools, Yes, they're going to be impacted by this. So just just the arrogance of this is astonishing. And frankly, let's talk about how
this relates to Fresno. Earlier this year, back in March and also back in November of twenty twenty two, a bunch of people in the orbit of Fresno State were pushing Measure E, and the idea behind Measure E was, you know, Fresno State is lagging behind with a number of building and physical improvements that it needs to make
and cannot afford to make. President State's Athletic Department is lagging behind in certain ways of certain ways in which they want to renovate the stadium that they can't they don't have the funding for it. Necessarily, a lot of areas in President of State's life where they don't have the funding. So rather than wait for the state to pay for these things, which the state's never going to
have the money. The state's facing all these budgetary problems, why don't we try to pass a county wide sales tax to help fund Fresno State. Some portion of it will go to stadium renovation and the rest of it will go towards improving physical structures within Fresno State, which will in turn increase the capacity for various Presno State programs to pump out more people in more professions that
are needed throughout the San Joaquin Valley. A lot of the advertising for MEASUREY was saying, hey, we need more nurses, we need to expand the capacity of the nursing program. We need more engineers. Let's expand the capacity of the engineering program. This, that, and the other. Well, I think one of the problems is, look, Presno County is a red county. Clearly this presidential election shows it beyond just
the simple difficulty of raising taxes in any context. I think among a lot of people on the right, there's a thought of, well, Fresno State is still an extremely left wing institution, extremely which we already are forced to pay for with our taxpayer dollars. Look, there's a lot of conservatives in the San Jauquin Valley who have a lot of affection for President of State who went to President State. Our alumni of President State give to certain
select programs within Fresno State. Really like Presno State Sports support President of State Sports.
We broadcast president State sports from here. But let's be real, Fresno State's got a whole.
Swath of different academic departments that are crazy left wing, that are pumping out.
Graduates who are super left wing.
Presno State's student health department, as with the student health departments of every CSU, and you see throughout the state of California doles out the abortion pill, not the morning after pill. The abortion pill, well, they also deal out the morning after pill, but the abortion pill. You know, lyphi PRIs stone, the whole purpose of which is to cause an abortion up the ten weeks into pregnancy. Yeah, you know, I don't necessarily want more of my taxpayer
dollars going to support it. And I think there's a lot of conservatives who feel the same way in this area. And I guess what I'm saying is it doesn't have to be this way. When we return some of the First Amendment related issues that touch on this problem of public schools being super left wing and conservative efforts to curtail that. That is next on the John Girardi Show. Liberals across the country are screaming bloody murder as certain red states are daring to mess with the nice gravy
train they've set up in public universities. So for decades we've had these deep red states like Texas that have for some reason just allowed incredibly left wing universities to just exist and thrive funded by the taxpayer dollar, with no one really saying boo about it. And finally Florida is saying, actually, no, we're going to look at the academic rigor of a lot of these ultra left wing
programs and we're going to cut some of these things. Basically, the curriculum is not something that is untouchable and unaccountable to the voters of Florida, working through their elected representatives, the governor and the state legislature, and we're going to look into this now. A bunch of the objection to this comes from kind of a First Amendment perspective. Professors within a public university, when they say something, can they
be disciplined for it by the public university? Well, some First Amendment issues arise in that context. The university can't. The university is a government institution. The First Amendment, basically, as it's applied and as we accept it today, as we've received it today, basically says the government cannot censor core protected political speech. It cannot say, it cannot be picking winners and losers, has to be kind of content neutral.
So if you had and this has been something that's been a shield to protect the few remaining conservative professors within public universities. Here's some conservative professor says something conservative. It ticks off his faculty or administration at his ultra left wing public university. They take adverse action against him, and he's able to sue in the context of a public university in a way that he can't in the context of a private university, to say, Hey, you're disciplining
me because of my viewpoints. This is a violation of my First Amendment rights. This is the government hindering me in what I can and can't say. Now, how then is that going to suss itself out in the broader context of Look, we're the University of Florida. We don't want to present this government speech. What this is government funded speech advocated, you know, pushing certain kinds of academic programs.
We want to change the curriculum, We want to change the program, the academic program within our publicly funded university, Our publicly funded universities Florida State, University of Florida, Florida International, and all the you know, I'm sure there are lots of other you know, University of Florida and Florida State campuses in different parts of Florida.
So how are we able to do that?
Frankly, it's I think it's kind of an interesting legal question because for the longest time it's been sort of taken that we look at the individual university professor, them saying something, them getting adverse consequences, and the defense as well,
they're protected by the First Amendment. Well, maybe I'm been maybe people have looking at that kind of the wrong way, and I'll, you know, I'll freely admit that maybe I'm taking very conveniently shifting sides here when my side is in a different position now that conservatives are in a position of power in Florida to change the curriculum all of a sudden, I don't really care about these First
Amendment arguments. Okay, maybe I'm I might be hypocritical here, and maybe I was too willing to just accept, you know, the professor has a First Amendment right, I don't know. I mean, when you're talking about a university setting that university professor is a paid employee of the state government.
Is that state speech?
So one of the principles of First Amendment law is yeah, individuals can't be censored by the government for their speech, but the state is allowed to express the viewpoints it favors. I hate the fact that they do this, But California, for example, is allowed to push out messaging that's pro abortion.
They're allowed to do that. That's state speech.
Now they can't force private actors to endorse their speech. California got slapped on the wrist for that when they were trying to force pro life clinics to let people know where they could get abortions, But the state itself could have advertising that they pay for saying this is
where you go to get abortions. In the context of a state university like University of Florida, like President State, is it legitimate for a conservative new university top executive administration to say the speech of these ultraliberal professors we don't like and that's not going to be our state speech.
We're going to fire this person, We're.
Going to get rid of their courses because that's not the speech we wish to promulgate. It's kind of an interesting First Amendment question, and I confess that I may have been inconsistent on this as far as my thinking about it, but I'm really pleased at the very least to see conservatives not lying down and just accepting as if this is the preordained reality that public universities have
to be liberal for the rest of time forever. And it's sort of a sad thing here in California that that is going to be the case, including at Fresno State when we return. It seems to take a stolen House seat for National Republicans to see the insanity of the problems with California elections. What could National Republican funders do about it? Next on The John Girardi Show, the Adam Gray John Duarte race is slipping out of the GOP's fingers as every vote update.
Is more and more and more in favor of Adam Gray.
Duarte was winning by a couple of thousand votes shortly after election night, and here we stand twenty two days after the election. He is now I believe it's one hundred and eighty votes behind per the last update, and Duarte, sorry, Adam Gray was picking up votes with every update and a couple of.
Hundred votes here, a couple hundred votes here, a couple hundred votes closer, here, a couple hundred votes closer here.
Why, well, it's through a system that I've talked about it a couple of times on my show and Trevor's show over the course of this week. But it bears repeating because now we've got like National Republican figures noticing it, and takes a stolen House seat for them to notice it is the ballot curing system in California. It's not on accident or through sheer incompetence that California takes a long time to count its votes.
It's on purpose.
This is deliberately how the system is set up, and it's set up to basically provide an institutionalized, legalized way for Democrats to cheat to win. Here's what happens. You have an election, it's really close. A lot of the people who voted voted by mail, because California does universal automatic you're opted in for vote by mail voting. A bunch of the ballots that are sent in via vote by mail don't follow the instructions or there's something otherwise wrong.
Maybe they didn't put the signature on, maybe the signature doesn't match, et cetera. So in some way or another, that vote by mail ballot gets disqualified. What Democrats are able to do, well, what both parties are able to do. But Democrats obviously have more money in California, more infrastructure in California, more capacity to do this than Republicans will ever have for any close election of any sort of importance.
Is they are able to go to that person who turned in that suspect ballot and have that person cure their ballot, fix whatever the problem was that caused that ballot to be disqualified in the first place. So this has been happening very aggressively. In the John Duarte Adam Gray race. Christine Pelosi, Nancy Pelosi's daughter, is in fact heading up the effort to get as many Democrat votes cured in that race in that district as humanly possible.
And of course this is shady. Of course, this is maximally shady, and it runs contrary to the whole tenor and spirit of American election law. From sea to shining sea, American election law is basically the norm in America, the way we exercise our vote is we vote in person in our local precinct on election day using a secret ballot voting booth. That is how we.
Vote in California. That is how we vote in America.
Rather, everything else is an extension of that is basically a concession from the state to deviate from that ideal, and we hold that up as the ideal because it's obviously the most secure way to do it. You've already registered in advance. We know you're eligible to vote. We know you're a citizen. You present In most states, you present your ID.
Okay, we think.
Driver's licenses are pretty secure things in America, pretty well relied upon system for proving identification. If you don't have an ID, maybe you have a passport. If you don't have a passport, maybe you have some other form of government issued identification.
We trust most of our government issued IDs.
We know that you've registered to vote, we know that you're eligible to vote. We know it's you that's voting, and we have perfect chain of custody over your ballot. And we know because you're voting in a secret voting station, a secret ballot station, we know that your vote hasn't been unfairly unduly influenced by someone else. No one can see who you voted for. No one can double check who you've voted for or how you voted. No one's
intimidating you. No one's threatening you. There's no one going to grandma at the nursing home saying, oh no, no, no, grandma, you don't want.
To vote for Donald Trump. There's no ballot harvester.
Working for a pack or something, some left wing pack who says, oh no, missus mcgillicutt, you don't want to vote for that Donald Trump. It's Kamala Harris is who you want to vote for? Yeah, no, she's the good one.
No.
Remember, Trump was bad. He wanted to do bad things for seniors. You know your hair's a Oh okay, sounds good, honey. There's none of that happening all right now. The various states will grant exceptions to that ideal norm. When I was a college student at Notre Dame, I was still
to California, was still my permanent residence. I still listed my childhood home in Clovis as my permanent residence while I was an undergrad and in law school, so I would send in my absentee ballot back to California to vote in California elections. But to do that, I had to follow the rules. I had to send in my ballot by a certain date, I had to do all the proper signatures, et cetera. Well, California has sort of
changed all that. California has sort of changed the assumptions the basics of what it means to vote and what it means to exercise the right to vote. California's sort of completely shifted reshuffle that entire deck. Because Democrats realized they could have huge strategic advantages through things like ballot harvesting stuff where they could leverage their far greater voting infrastructure. They've changed the whole rules of the game, and certainly
COVID helped contribute to that. Now in California, there's no presumption that the norm is voting in person on election day at a secret ballot.
And California certainly is not going to require anyone to show their ID. God forbid. So everyone's getting a vote by mail ballot.
Everyone's getting one. The heck, there are.
People getting one who are no longer eligible voters.
There are people getting vote by mail ballots who maybe are dead, recently dead. All these vote by mail ballots are coming into the gazillions of people and then not everyone's using them. Okay, my wife and I we got vote by mail ballots mailed to our house. We both opted to vote in person. So what happens with those ballt You know that they tell us, so be sure to destroy that. But is that what's really happening with every single person's ballot?
Yeah, I don't know anyway.
So California has just changed all the assumptions, and the assumptions in most states is again, you have the right to vote. You have the right to vote in this normative fashion. We will grant you an exception to that for some extraordinary circumstance. If you're a college student who's going to college in another state and you can't make
it back to the state to vote. If you're a military service member serving overseas but you want to you know, you're serving in Iraq or Afghanistan, but you want to vote in your local election in Virginia, or in Georgia or in you know, in South Dakota. Okay, we'll send you your absentee ballot, but you gotta do it. You
got to follow the rules to get your vote counted. Okay, you have to fill this out correctly, because we have to have sort of security measures in place for this extension, because we know a vote by mail ballot is just in apparently less secure than an in person, out of secret ballot vote. Now, all of a sudden, a bunch of national sort of new Trump orbit people are noticing how messed up California is, and this race is the
one that's causing them to notice. The Adam Gray John Darte race where now John Darte is losing by about I think almost two hundred votes after he had been winning by I think a couple thousand votes on election night.
Now you've got.
Bruce call her Caitlin, if you know, Bruce having people call him Caitlyn Jenner tweeting about it this is messed up.
You've got Richard Grinnell.
The big Republican gay Republican activists, and now you've got Elon Musk tweeting about it about how messed up this is.
When we return what I want.
To propose for Republican political financiers. That's next on the John Girardi Show. A bunch of national Republican figures kind of in the orbit of Trump world. Have noticed that the John Duarte Adam Gray race is being stolen away by the Democrats, being stolen away by the built in Democrats system for stealing close elections, the ballot curing system. Gavin Newsom used this to great effect earlier this year
when Democrats pass Proposition won something he wanted done. He has this huge war chest of campaign funds from the recall election, so that was done. Here's my proposal to Elon Musk, or to big time California Republican financiers. They're all of a sudden noticing that this happens, that this vote stealing mechan is set up and is happening here in California. Elon Musk, if you think California needs to reform its election processes, why don't you do something about it.
And I say this not just to Elon Musk, but to he's far from the only mega rich Republican political donor who lives or lived in California. I think Elon's primary place of residence now is in Texas, but he's still got homes in California. Tesla was started in California. It's originally a California company. Basically a lot of Republican donors have been just asleep at the wheel with California politics. They've more or less given up. They've taken this prostra
that we're never going to win anything in California. I'm going to focus my money nationally.
Well.
I think this election, and particularly the success of Prop thirty six, shows that conservative policies can potentially be accomplished and affected through the ballot initiative system in California. If you take particular, specific, isolated things, and you fund it well, and you present it well, you can get stuff done.
Prop thirty six just showed that.
Prop thirty six showed the Californians are getting tired of certain aspects of liberal governance. Now, it's not so much that they're getting tired that they're you know, obviously they're still electing Adam Schiff to be our US Senator, you know, sixty to forty over Steve Garvey. But on specific issues, I think you could do it. Elon musk Is now by his own declaration, wants to be the Republican George Soros. He wants to be the one funding Republican efforts all
over the place. Well, Elon, you know, you dropped forty million dollars per month on ad buys for President Trump's campaign.
If you just drop forty million dollars in twenty twenty six on a California ballot initiative to reform California's election processes, just to insist on voter id or get rid of this ballot curing thing mandate that all votes must be counted and accounted for whatever by you know, one week within the election happening, whatever it is, within a day of the election happening.
God knows Florida is able to do it.
Elon Musk could make that happen. He's got the money to make that happen. And I kind of wonder. I mean, the whole throughout the country, there was this massive shift in voter sentiment towards Trump, including in blue states that Harris won.
Harris won New York, but Trump picked up like eleven.
Points over twenty twenty. Harris won California, but Trump picked up a bunch of points. A bunch of counties in California that had gone for Biden and Hillary this year in California went for Trump, including Fresno, County. There is a shift happening here in California. There's a shift in attitude. There were a couple of ballot initiatives that Democrats wanted that didn't that ultra liberals anyway wanted and didn't get passed, and Prop thirty six that they didn't want that did get passed.
So my thought to Elon Musk.
Is, for all manner of things that he doesn't like, California affords him more of a chance to make more of an impact on a bigger population of people than almost than any other state.
I'd say, just as a pro lifer.
By the way, hey Elon, you don't like late term abortions, why don't you pass a ballot initiative in California to ban them? Because, let me tell you, Elon would love to make all the liberals heads explode, and that would do it more than anything.
That'll do it. John Girardi Show, Happy Thanksgiving, See you next time.