Congresswoman Laurel Lee on the Border, Ukraine, and Elections 56:16

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Welcome to another episode of Breaking Battlegrounds with your host, Chuck Warren. I'm Sam Stone. Our first guest up today, Congresswoman Laura Lee, proudly represents the 15th District of Florida. Prior to her election to the U.S. House of Representatives, she served as Florida's 36th Secretary of State under the DeSantis administration from January of 2019 to May of 2022. Congresswoman, welcome to Breaking Battlegrounds. Thank you. It's nice to be here with you today. Thank you.

So, Congresswoman, we have a border crisis in America that just does not affect border states like Texas and Arizona. It affects all states. What should Congress be doing about it?

Well, first off, you're absolutely right. Every community in America is a border community. What Congress should be doing is a couple of things. First, I get to serve on the Homeland Security Committee here in Congress, and we just got back from Israel.

a trip to mcallen texas at our southern border and we conducted a field hearing there that was just so important for shedding light on just the scope and severity of the challenges that we're facing down there uh... we heard from chief ortiz from customs and border patrol

We hear from local sheriffs who are really working to fight this problem down there. And what we heard across the board, you know, first off, is that our border is not secure, that there are significant areas of our border where we lack operational control.

and that the local residents and sheriffs down there really need our assistance and need federal support. So, you know, going back to your question, what should Congress be doing? You know, first off, I think it's exactly that.

getting down there, talking to these stakeholders, identifying the problem and shining a light on it so that the American people understand the Biden administration's immigration policies or border policies have been a complete disaster and are really causing danger to American communities. So, you know, the first thing we need to do is hold them accountable and shine a light on the consequences of those policies.

And then second, we need to start working on solutions and legislation and things that we can do and we can propose as a Republican conference that would make a difference. Congresswoman, do you feel your Democrat colleagues want to solve this problem? I mean, I know you've only been there two and a half months, but do you feel they want to solve this problem or do they want to completely let it continue to fester?

Well, I'll tell you to this point, it sure doesn't seem like it. You know, from just at the outset, none of our Democrat colleagues came with us on this trip down to McAllen, Texas. And, you know, have they done so? There's really no other way to look at it. You can't listen to the story.

of these sheriffs and these ranchers whose lives have been destroyed or in incredible danger every day. Families have had to leave their homes and leave their ranches and move elsewhere because it's no longer safe to occupy their family residence. You can't hear those stories and not acknowledge the gravity of the problem. And to this point, all that we've heard from the Biden administration is basically denial of

you know, claiming the border's secure, claiming there's not a problem. So, you know, I would love to think, and I really would love to see collaboration across the aisle, but that's got to start with a recognition of the problem that exists. It's got to start with a recognition of how serious it is.

And at least to this point in my service in Congress, I haven't heard that yet from our colleagues across the aisle. Congresswoman, yesterday the Biden administration announced that they're close to a deal with Canada to allow the U.S. and Canada each to turn around migrants at our borders on the north. Isn't that essentially an admission that their policies have failed on our southern border? And then aren't they –

I mean, maybe turn this around. Isn't it sort of racist in a way that they are saying, hey, we can do this with people coming back and forth through Canada, but we can't do this with people coming back and forth through our southern border?

Well, it's what we need to be doing both places. And clearly what is not working is just allowing people to flood into our country with hopes that they are going to show up at some later point for immigration proceedings. I mean, that clearly is not working. And what we know is that when we have five out of nine of our sectors where we lack that operational control, if we're not controlling it,

is being controlled by the Mexican drug cartel. You know, and that's what we see coming in. It's not just people. It's not just statistics. You know, we have fentanyl. We have human trafficking. And the people who are coming across in many cases are being exploited, abused, trafficked. They're very dangerous, very just a terrible situation, even for the people who are attempting to cross. So, you know, that's what we should be doing on both sides of our border. We need to be in

forcing our laws. And we, you know, it's not safe for anyone involved for us to be just turning the other way and letting all of these people come into our country. One of the things that, you know, we hear a lot here in Arizona is that when you're letting people through, even if they're coming here for work and we don't know who they are, they're skipping out on these hearings.

There's a lot of secondary, second-level crime that comes along with it in terms of things like identity theft and fraud. You have employers who are then put in a position where they can frankly abuse these workers almost at will because they know they're not legally protected. So there's a lot of downstream consequences to this that it doesn't seem like the left is focused on.

That's exactly right. Because then we have, you know, a whole host of other challenges to deal with. And you're right. It really is a two-way street. On the one hand, we have, you know, criminal consequences and community safety consequences when, you know, we have people coming in. But then for them, too, you know, there are places where they can be exposed.

that they can be taking advantage of. In some cases, they're having to pay these exorbitant sums of money back to the people who are trying to traffic them in. So for so many reasons, one of the questions that I asked during our field hearing down in McAllen was, when I asked one of the witnesses, because some of the rhetoric that we hear from Democrats is that we need to take a more humanitarian approach to the border.

with the implication being that and and so therefore we should allow this you know flood of of unregulated book and i think you would what your perception of the things that period any answer that came back with resounding lead this is not humanitarian letting people flood through our country in an unregulated way of it is contrary to our laws and unfaithful them it is unsafe

It's empowering the drug cartels. There is nothing about these Biden administration policies that in practice is humanitarian. You have a very impressive background, starting being the daughter of a two-star general. You were a judge on the Florida Circuit Court. And I want to refer to that responsibility you had. How do we speed up these amnesty hearings at the border?

Well, you know, for one thing, we need to be looking at, you know, what does our law say? What does it cover? Is it setting a clear standard that people can follow, that the judge can apply? And that really is, you know, from the perspective of a judge, from a perspective of the court, your responsibility always is to neutrally and fairly apply the law as it's written to the facts of the case in front of you.

And so if the standard is vague or if the law needs some refinement, sometimes there are unintended consequences. I actually had experience as a judge where there were a couple of occasions where I had to write an opinion

and in the opinion would drop a footnote and say, this is what the law says. If it was the intention of the legislature to do X, Y, Z, they might want to give this one another look. Because, you know, sometimes even in our best efforts, you know, policymakers to get it right, you know, things need a second look. So, you know, and as far as actually processing this, so number one, we need a clear standard that everyone can understand. The courts,

the applicants, that everybody can see that standard and know what it means and have it applied fairly and evenly. And then number two, we have to look at do we have capacity to be managing the number of claims and if not, do that. So you used to make a great point about putting when you were a judge, you put footnotes in. This is what the legislator, if they met, what it should have written.

Do you think that applies to also lost Congress rights that are so vague to agree it lets regulators and entrenched bureaucrats just to interpret the laws they see fit and just expand the bureaucracy? Did we lose her? I think we did lose the Congresswoman. Apologies, folks. When we get her back, why don't we ask her this? Let's ask, dear listeners, let's ask her about Lacey Cooper's idea that

If you don't come through a port of entry, your amnesty is immediately declined. And then what was... Was it Lacey also that recommended...

that we need to separate the judiciary, the judges for amnesty from the Department of Justice, right? Yeah. Let's talk to her when we get back on it. One thing about Laura Lee here, as we wait for her to reconnect, is she has an impressive background.

Yeah, absolutely. I mean, you know, look, most people who get to Congress have some degree or modicum of success, minus George Santos, obviously. But most of them have or AOC, right? I would say George Santos is one of the most successful liars in U.S. history right now. I mean, you know, I guess that's how you look at it, right? You exclude George Santos, you exclude AOC, some of the squad. But, you know, look, this is a daughter of a two-star general in the United States Air Force.

She's a lawyer. She was a circuit court judge in Florida's 13th Judicial District, appointed by Rick Scott.

And hopefully we get through this technical difficulty because she was also deeply involved with Florida's elections, which I've said before and I think you would agree should be a model for every election system in the country at this point. They don't seem to have many people down there complaining about it, do they? No, and they had results about two hours after the polls closed, an hour and a half. Yeah, they were soundly in bed and ready to start an early morning workout the next day. And no one's throwing a fit or questioning it.

And I keep looking at that going, okay, can we just rubber stamp and copy that throughout the rest of the country? I mean, it worked. It worked. Yeah, we live in this weird environment. If one state does it well, somehow we've got to improve upon it. Right. And let's just take that map and let's start there, right? And instead of delaying it or trying to create a better widget. Right.

No, absolutely. I mean one of the things that I think – I think it goes to what you were trying to ask the congresswoman there about the bureaucratic expansion through vague laws, right? The minute you start messing with success, you give bureaucracy a free pass to go expand itself, right?

Right.

Quickly here, as we have a minute left. Interesting, folks, if you're not following it. So France is having a major protest throughout the country because the president of France has unilaterally increased the retirement age from 62 to 64. Now, realize this is something the Biden administration does all the time. Right.

And what you need to realize is that there's been a million people out protesting and rioting. There's 3,000 police on the streets to try to do this. This is all because they raised it from 62 to 64. And the other element is in America, we call them executive orders. In France, they ain't having any of that. They say that's contrary to democracy. It's so bad that King Charles and Camilla have canceled their trip to France this weekend. And breaking battlegrounds back in just a moment.

Breaking Battlegrounds is back and our technical difficulties are resolved. Back on the line with us right now, Congresswoman Laura Lee of Florida. Congresswoman, thank you again for joining us and sticking with us through this segment. When we had the technical difficulties there and lost you for a moment, Chuck, you were leading into a question about bureaucrats and expansion through law.

Yes. So Congresswoman, based on being a judge and you had to do footnotes and trying to interpret the law, do you see that sort of thing happening in D.C. with the laws written by Congress and then they just sort of give it to a bureaucrat and they let it do what they want to do with it?

Yes. And really, from the big picture level, that is one of the things that I am really committed to working on here. So with my background in law and as a judge, I really care about the structure of government and the separation of powers. And I want to see Congress really acting on its Article I responsibilities. We should be policymaking. We should be making spending decisions. And

all over the place we feed the deep pink keeping into administrative agencies were unelected bureaucrats are naked trying to make policy decisions that really should be coming from congress or overly empowered with funding info you know i am and very interested in trying to find places that we can't restore that power to congress

and really get it back because at the end of the day, we're the ones that are responsible to the people. So if I come up here and do something that the voters in my district don't like or don't think was a good idea, I've got to go home and answer for it. And that's not true when we have these administrative agency bureaucrats who are trying to policy make. So, you know, I was really pleased to be one of the co-sponsors of the RAINS Act early in my first couple of weeks here because one of the things that the RAINS Act does is just ensure

that if one of these agencies is trying to make a new regulation or decision that is going to have a significant fiscal impact, it's going to come back to Congress for us to see that and take a look at it. So steps like that are going to move us back in the right direction where we have each of our branches of government functioning as it is intended to do. Congresswoman, it strikes me based on what you said earlier

Would it be worth it for a future speaker of the House to go ahead and create a committee specifically to review past laws and actions of Congress and how they've turned out and recommend whether they should be changed or modified or scrapped?

kept in place as they are, that strikes me as something that would be really worth Congress's time. Well, I think that is a really interesting idea. And, you know, one of the things that is always important for us also is to try to be sure we understand how

how laws that we're passing, things, policies that we're implementing are going to affect real people out in America. So every time I have a stakeholder group come to my office, one of the things I say to them is none of us come here with all of the answers.

It is vital that we stay in touch with and know who our stakeholders are, what industry, what family, what individual. We take this action. Who is it going to affect and how is it going to affect them? And to be perpetually looking at the real-life effects of everything that we're doing up here. Because it's one thing to see the words on a page. It's another thing to understand how they're affecting you.

people. So, you know, your concept of should we also continue to review that? You know, what have we done? How is it working? You know, absolutely. I think that is an obligation of Congress to be continually reviewing the practical effects and implications of any action that we take.

Let's talk in that same vein. Let's talk about Ukraine from it and separation of powers. How should Congress handle expenditures for Ukraine going forward? Sam and I both believe you can't let Russia take Ukraine. And this is just this is not how we live in a world where there's free trade and so forth. But what should Congress be doing? We've given them a lot of money. Obviously, they're having success on the battlefield, but it's a grind.

How should Congress manage this separation of powers, manage any money going forward to Ukraine? Right. Well, you know, I think the important thing and one thing that, you know, you've probably heard in recent weeks from some members of Congress is the idea of having some level of oversight about, you know, how are the dollars –

are we sending them? Where are we allocating them? And is that happening? You know, is, are we getting information back that they're being spent how we meant them to be spent in some level of oversight on the expenditure of those dollars? And I think that's appropriate. You know, anytime that we are providing foreign aid and support, that we should have a level of

confidence and transparency that it's getting into the hands it's intended to get into and being spent the way that we intended to spend it. So, you know, I think that's probably one thing that you'll be hearing, you know, from Congress as we go forward, that there is a lot of support to be sure that we continue those efforts, but that there also needs to be an attendant level of security for us that continued investments are also being spent in the way that they've been directed.

Congresswoman, I want to shift topics here real quickly because you obviously did a lot for Florida's elections as the secretary of state. And Chuck and I have talked about – and when you were off the line there briefly, we were talking about Florida really should be a model for the rest of the country. The elections were incredibly well run, have been for several years now, and you had results very quickly.

Shouldn't this be something that other states are looking to do? And it's sort of the very different from the approach Democrats in Congress are trying to take with federalizing it. But why isn't every state in Florida right now copying the work you did?

Well, I will tell you that is so I am so delighted to get to chair the election subcommittee in house administration for exactly that reason. Yes. You know, our constitution tells us that states have primary responsibility for administering elections. And that's the way we want to keep it. That being said, we should absolutely learn from one another in Florida. Hey, we can get there overnight. Florida wasn't always leading the nation when it comes to elections.

No, there might have been a little something somewhere in the past. There's some chads somewhere. Some issue hanging out there. That's exactly right. But, you know, we learned from those experiences. And so now if you look at Florida's election code, it contemplates everything. It contemplates recounts. It contemplates pre- and post-election audits. All of those good policies are there. And you touched on one of the things that I think is one of the –

single most important thing, it is so simple. We require ballots to be returned by 7:00 PM on election day. There's a narrow exception for military and overseas voter, but whether you go early by mail or on election day, it's gotta be in by 7:00 PM. So we have results on election night.

even though we're one of the largest states in the country. So we're proof that it can be done. You just have to have the right laws in place and educate your voters. So I absolutely believe that states should learn from one another about what works and what doesn't. So in the subcommittee, we really started out by trying to shine a light on states and showcase the states that got elections right. Our very first hearing, we highlighted Ohio, Florida, and Louisiana.

I each do think a little bit differently but each one is an election success story so that's where we started and we really hope that other states will follow the lead. We have one minute left here. What would you tell these grumpy Gen Z, Gen Y, Gen X people about the future of America? Should we have hope? Should we have optimism? We should absolutely have hope in the future of America and I will tell you when you look at the things we're working on in Congress

an economy that's strong, a nation that's built on freedom, a government that's accountable. There are enough of us who are still here, who are still committed to the idea of America and the greatness of this country. We just have to keep fighting. We have to keep fighting for our communities, for our neighbors, for our families. But absolutely, there's still ample room for hope. Fantastic. Thank you so much.

Representative Laura Lee of Florida, really appreciate you taking the time to join us on the program. Folks, follow her work at Rep. Laura Lee on Twitter. Obviously, you can look up the house.gov email there also. But thank you so much for taking the time to join us. We would love to have you back in the future. And Breaking Battlegrounds will be back in just a moment. Welcome back to Breaking Battlegrounds with your hosts Chuck and Sam.

Our next guest up today is going to be Doug Kelly, CEO of the American Edge Project, a coalition dedicated to the proposition that American innovators are an essential part of U.S. economic health, national security and individual freedoms. But before we get started with that interview, folks, I have to ask, are you concerned with your investments lately? Stock market's been all over the place this week.

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I'm doing great. Thanks for having me. Doug, tell us a little bit about the American Edge Project and what you're accomplishing and what you're trying to accomplish for America. Well, I am indeed calling in from the battleground state of Ohio, so it's a perfectly named program. So the American...

The American Edge Project, what we do is we focus on making sure that America has the leading technology edge in the world so that we are number one in innovation, number one in technology, because technology is not just another sector of our economy. It is the very backbone of our national security, of our economic prosperity, as well as the advancement of our values, both at home and

and abroad. So we have to make sure that we are leading in technology because it's the key to everything going forward. Yeah, absolutely. Doug, when we're looking at this, what are the threats right now to American supremacy in the technological space? Because I think Americans largely take it for granted that we have led the world now for 50 plus years, but we are for the first time seeing real global competitors to that supremacy.

You're exactly right. China by far is the biggest threat to America's tech leadership. You know, I think sometimes people have a 20-year-old view of China. It is not a sleepy place. That country is focused on dethroning America, not just as a technology leader, but also geopolitical leader. And it has a really detailed three-part plan.

to overtake us in technology because they understand technology is the key to doing it. So the three parts of their plan are, first of all, build their technological capacity there. They're investing more than a trillion dollars in building advanced technologies there. So artificial intelligence, 5G and 6G. I understand they're way ahead of us in supercomputing power at the moment.

It's really neck and neck, and they're having some amazing breakthroughs. Like quantum computing is the thing that's going to determine the future. And I would say that the two countries are really tied on that. So part one of their plan is to build stuff. Part two of their plan is to steal stuff, right? What they can't build there, they steal from us, and we lose about $500 billion a year in technology in China. And the third piece of the puzzle there is that they want to make

Western countries more dependent on their technology because it gives them leverage in holding off on sanctions and shutting things on or off. And so that kind of build-steal-dependency thing, that's a triple threat that America has to be on the watch out for.

And they're very different than virtually any other country in the world. I mean, if Americans had been paying attention and seen what China has been doing in terms of essentially a great social experiment on its own citizens using technology to control them, the idea of China controlling the technology of the future should be incredibly worrisome.

Amen, brother. Let me just say there's two very different versions of what the Internet should look like. There's China's version, which is closed, controlling and censoring. And there's the American version of the Internet, which is open, accessible and helps advance ideas and freedom. Like those are the two visions of how do we connect in the world going forward? And China is very aggressively exporting their version of that Internet.

We call it digital authoritarianism. And we need to make sure that we are advancing our version of that Internet, because that is the very best shack against authoritarian ambitions of anything overall. Right. Information less than new ideas. Information helps expose what dictators are trying to do. And so we want to make sure that all of those countries that are not strong democracies yet,

but they're looking at like which lifestyle, which country do we aspire to be more like that? We want to pull them right in the United States camp. And we can do that through our technology and through our ability to share ideas through technology. Doug, we have just about 30 seconds before we go to break here. But when we come back with you, I want to talk more about that. And also I want to touch on your experiences as president and CEO of Make-A-Wish Ohio, Kentucky, and Indiana, because I think that's a fantastic thing also.

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Welcome back to Breaking Battlegrounds with your hosts Sam Stone and Chuck Warren. Online with us right now, Doug Kelly, CEO of the American Edge Project.

Doug, you wrote a great piece, which I was reading this week, called Seven Days, Three Stories on China's Whole-of-Society Effort to Beat the U.S. in Technology. And one of the three parts is a story I missed. Sam missed, too, so it sort of caught us off guard when we read it. It sounded like a plot for a Pixar movie. The Wall Street Journal wrote an article, Chinese port cranes being investigated as a possible spying tool in plain sight.

Tell us what they're doing with cranes. Now, what a lot of people don't understand is that how much of the maritime trade China controls. And so now a surprise probably to many of our listeners is there's a lot of Chinese cranes in our ports. Tell us a little bit about it. Yeah. So China has a very vast economy.

Let's call it espionage network or disavaliance network in the U.S. And as I was reading this Wall Street Journal article, I was like, are you kidding me? I would have never thought of that. And basically, China makes 80 percent of the big ship to shore cranes that offload cargo at U.S. ports.

And the cranes come pre-assembled, right? They operate on Chinese-made software, and they're often supported by Chinese nationals who work here on two-year visas. These are really complex machines. Well, it turns out that these machines can be...

These are complicated pieces of technology, and anywhere China can use technology to spy on us, they're doing it, right?

Bingo. Right. So in 2021, the FBI discovered there was intelligence gathering equipment on board a cargo ship that was delivering some of these same cranes to the Baltimore port.

And so by the end of this year, they've asked a number of different agencies to do an analysis of what is the level of threat that these port cranes present. And so for me, when I saw that story, it was preceded by a story about a spy trial that was in The New York Times. They exposed their wide espionage network in the U.S. There was another story in NPR about how

China was kind of rejiggering its whole government to make sure that they could build even more innovation. And that was just in a week's time, right? So I was like, holy cow, seven days, three stories, their whole of society effort to beat American technology. Doug, I'm going to assume you don't have TikTok on your phone right now, right? I do not. Okay.

Are there other technologies that Americans should be watching out for? I wonder how many other apps the Chinese government has ties to because it's clear they're doing everything they can to spy on every part of the world, whether it's building government buildings in Africa that are riddled with listening devices and cameras or what you just talked about with the cranes or TikTok. They are gathering information on the entire planet right now.

Yeah, I mean, that's built into kind of their business model. Let me be clear. Like, our beef is not with the Chinese people, right? They're amazing, hardworking folks. Our challenge is with the Chinese Communist Party government. Those are the ones calling the shots there. They're setting up all these systems. So let's just be clear about that. I would just say that the level of fine is really, really complex. And when we think about, okay, how does that –

relate to technology, we want to make sure that what we're doing is that we're balancing user safety in America with any access we're allowing to foreign technology in here with safeguards that are protecting America's strategic interests as well. So there's kind of a balance that we have to be able to do on these things overall.

I mean, we still want to be able to trade with the Chinese people, right? I mean, no one's talking about trying to sever relations or anything like that. But how do we put pressure on the Chinese Communist Party to adapt its ways or to be more friendly to us and to the world going forward? Because right now it seems like they're very convinced that their authoritarian path is the right one and that it's us who are off track.

Yeah, I was talking to a friend of mine and he said China thinks in terms of thousand year increments because they've been around so long. It just kind of totally rejiggered my frame of view where we think about two and four year election cycles. So they've got a much longer view of things overall. You were exactly right that trade is important because everybody benefits from free trade. But it's got to be fair trade.

And so one of the things that I think we can do to trade more over there is that the U.S. and its allies can speak with one voice on the importance of getting more activity into China's market and selling more of our equipment there. Because, again, American technology equipment is –

It helps advance our values in that area. It helps put our marker there. And it brings back an enormous economic gain to our country. And so we need to be able to push more in that area. What are some of the things that you and the American Edge Project are working on in terms of U.S. law or policy to increase innovation and help maintain our world leading edge?

Yeah. So we do a number of different things. So first, we kind of raise awareness about this issue of technology. So we do shows like this and we release a whole series of policy proposals on, you know, an economic policy to accelerate technology. Our national security policy framework is centered around strengthening America's digital economy.

and diplomacy. And about the next month or so, we're going to release the values paper about the importance of technology when it comes to values. We share these with lawmakers. We share them with opinion makers because we want people to understand that we can't take our technology edge for granted. China is now beating us in a number of really critical areas. And so

And so the four things that we really want lawmakers to take to heart is, number one, do things that help innovation in America and not hurt it. Such as? Give some examples. Sure. Exactly. So the chips bill that was passed to help create additional microchips here in America, that's critical. Right. Because when we saw in the pandemic with our supply lines,

being stuck many in Asia with many of the high-end microchips being made in Taiwan. That's an enormous strategic vulnerability this country has. We make a fraction of the chips that we need here in the USA. That chips bill is going to help build more high-end chips here. And also, it'll allow us to...

make sure that we have the supplies that we need. The second thing we need to do is to really check China's spread of its digital authoritarianism, right? So that's doing things that slow down their technology development, right? It's helping reshore some of our key production things, either to America or to our allies and have it built there. And the third thing is making sure that we're extending our version of the internet, right?

free, open, accessible to countries around the world. Because, you know, last year alone, there's more than 150 internet shutdowns by governments across the world. That's not acceptable. And those things happen. Small businesses suffer, countries suffer, and authoritarians get the upper hand. We're talking to Doug Kelly, CEO of the American Edge Project. Doug,

One of the things, and Chuck, I'll throw this out there even though it's one of your ideas, but I think it's one of the best ideas you've had. We've talked about it on the show here, is resiliency zones that came up during the pandemic for the manufacture and production of all the things that are essential to our future in this economy, modeled on the opportunity zones that Donald Trump rolled out.

Doug, does that seem like something that maybe policymakers should be pursuing as a way to reshore some of these businesses and encourage American both manufacturing and innovation?

I love that idea. And the reason why I like it is that we have a lot of talent in America, and we're only going to be, we're only as good as a team, depending on how much talent we get on the field. So we want to make sure that we're having bipartisan solutions that last consistently through administrations.

to tap into all the talent that we have in this country. And I'll give President Trump a lot of credit, right? He raised the alarm on China in a way that kind of upset traditional Washington. But it was really important that he did that and put some markers down. President Biden followed through on a lot of those things. Then he passed the CHIPS bill. And now you're seeing with the House Special Committee on China,

They're beginning to explore a lot of different things that my organization has been raising for two plus years about, hey, we are in a fierce competition with China and technology, and we have to act in our country's strategic interest. So it'll be interesting to see what that committee comes up with.

Let me ask you a question, and this may be something you've not thought a lot about. What should the U.S. be doing about immigrant visas for skilled workers? It seems like, you know, part of the thing for innovations to be able to keep people who get skilled workers or people who graduate our universities to keep them here to work to innovate, right?

Should we be pressing more for that to expand those numbers, to make this system simpler so our tech community can have these people and they can stay here? They can become part of our culture instead of going back to China, per se, or India or wherever else?

Right. So America's secret sauce has always been our ability to attract talent and people who want to make a difference from all around the world and incorporate them in our mission here to advance democracy and freedom. So we want to make sure we are the very single best talent magnet in the world. And we're doing things that lower barriers.

to having people stay here who bring these amazing technological skills. I mean, there's so many high tech jobs that have openings that we just can't fill because we're not producing enough engineers each year. We don't have the level of talent that we need in certain areas. We need to make sure that we're saying, hey, globe, we're open for business. Come on in. And at the same time, we're doing things to make sure we build our supply

of those type of engineers as well through increased STEM programs in high schools and colleges so that we're making sure we have an adequate supply of what we need going forward. You know, Doug, that ties to something else that obviously has been in the news a lot lately, you know, talking about the student loan, you know, government stepping in on student loans and all this kind of thing.

Shouldn't we for our future really be focused very narrowly on STEM and technology and those sorts of things? And if there's a role for government, it's in funding those things. We have lots of humanities majors. We don't have enough engineering majors. Shouldn't the government really be looking at how do we ramp up U.S. students' participation in these high-level technologies? Yeah.

Yeah, I think we want to make sure that we have a special focus on that. But again, I think it's also, you know, innovation comes from a lot of different areas, right? It's not just your technocrats who are creating new ideas. It is, in many cases, your creative types who have weird sounding degrees, right? To think of, hey, what if we did something like X, Y, and Z? And it's a breakthrough technology, right?

Right. So it's it's we have to be able to have both on that. But we know we have to have a baseline of certain levels of engineers, certain levels of cybersecurity experts. So we need to be able to put money in that area so that we have we have that threshold.

How much should we – one of the things that kind of has become a maxim in the tech world is that there is a lot of hackers in Eastern Europe. But we had a guest on the program I think about a year and change ago who said, hey, a lot of those folks, they just want jobs. Shouldn't we be trying to reach out to those countries and really recruit as many of those people as we can, especially from the former communist countries that are very dedicated to a free way of life?

Yeah, here's the challenge with that, right, is that just China alone has this thing called the cyber core that is dedicated to hacking and stealing technology. There's 800,000 employees in that cyber core. Some of them are hackers. Some of them are translators, right? Some of them are kind of cultural experts. And they're able right now to steal things that they can't unencrypt just yet.

until they develop quantum computing and then everything's off the table because they're a million times faster than traditional computing and they'll be able to decrypt everything. So we really got to make sure that we're kind of training here first and getting the best of our folks here to protect. But you

But, yeah, I'd be a little cautious on authoritarian governments. They're pulling in a lot of their hackers. That would perhaps make me nervous. But I haven't thought a lot about that. We were talking with Doug Kelly, CEO of the American Edge Project. Doug, we have about 30 seconds before we come to the end of the program here. How do folks follow you and your work and what American Edge Project is doing?

Sure, they can visit us at AmericanEdgeProject.org. And I would urge your audience to pick up the phone, give their members of Congress and senators a call and say, hey, do things that help accelerate American innovation and make sure we're checking China's ambition. That action alone is really going to make a difference.

That is fantastic. Thank you, Doug. Doug Kelly, CEO of the American Edge Project. Really appreciate having you on the program. Look forward to having you back in the future. Breaking Battlegrounds will be back on the air next week. But make sure you go to our website, BreakingBattlegrounds.vote and download the podcast.

Welcome back to Breaking Battlegrounds, podcast-only portion of our show today. Sam, we had two very intelligent guests today. I love it when that happens. Yeah, and I hope people are listening to them and get a voice out there to listen. I think they can give some solutions, which are amazing. But I want to go over on our portion today of the podcast three things. First of all,

News stories out today that Biden is annoyed at Kamala Harris for not rising to the occasion as VP. I don't know why he thought she would ever rise to the occasion. She ran a miserable presidential campaign. She showed no skill set at organizing messaging. And what's amazing is she had the wind behind her back. I mean, I've still to this day... She should have been a top two or three finisher. Yeah, and still to this day, I still have the Time magazine cover story on her that...

Just anointing her the next great best thing since sliced bread, right? The fact is the woman cannot string two sentences together and have it make sense. So, you know, and we're not alone in this opinion. There's a new poll out where it finds Joe Biden's approval is at 41 percent. And they find her approval at 36 percent, why 53 percent disapprove. And the reality is with those 36 percent, that is just ridiculous.

The sure thing number Democrats can always count on a national election. Right. No, it doesn't go lower than that. Yeah. I mean, it never will. It never will. Probably the only way I'd go lower for her. My boy or a dead girl. I'm not even sure that would do it. I probably have to say Trump is a good guy. Give him a break. And then she probably dropped to the 20s with Democrats. But that's anyway, it's it's really interesting. I just don't know what they thought they were going to get out of her.

Well, they're clearly not getting even what they thought. I mean, I don't think she even helped him on his reelection. I don't think she helped him on the election. I think that was a miscalculation. I don't think so either. And I keep wondering how she ever got elected to the U.S. Senate in the first place because she is terrible. Money, money, money. In California, if you're able to raise the money and absolutely carpet bomb the airwaves, you win in California if you're a Democrat. Yeah.

There's no real organizational skill to it. Well, clearly not because she is terrible on the stump. She can't answer questions off the cuff at all. And I don't know. I don't know what the upside is to keeping her on the ticket at this point. And they're clearly planning on it. But I don't get it. No, I don't either. Yeah.

Jeremy, let's play this clip here that was retweeted by Arizona Representative Rachel Jones about one of her Democrat colleagues. We'll talk about this briefly, about the rebate, about the tax on your groceries, which says it cuts $160 million to cities. Democrats aren't having any of it. Cities, of course, never want anything to take any money away from anything. Go ahead, Jeremy, and play that, please. Pro-Tampa, I rise to explain my vote. Please proceed.

Thank you. The arguments that we hear from our constituents in all of our districts is that they want local autonomy. And we need to heed their words. When they ask us to protect their communities with the fire department, the police department, community wealth, parks, libraries, we answer with a yes. No.

Not with a crumb tax cut that doesn't benefit anybody, none, but just a couple of hundred dollars in their pocket. When in return, it's far, far greater. So with that, I vote nay. So who was that first off? Do we have a name? Because I want to call them out for being an idiot. We'll post it on Twitter. They didn't mention it on there. And we'll post it, folks, on our social media page.

She said basically she'd call a couple hundred bucks pocket change. Okay. First of all, 32% of Hispanic families dealt with food insecurity the past 12 months. Right. High 20s for overall for the nation. Let me tell you what $100 buys. $100 buys 17 crates of eggs. That's 204 eggs, 12 eggs. Okay. $100 buys almost 25 gallons of milk. $100 buys...

Forty six loaves of bread. And when you tell about food insecurity, tell those families that extra hundred bucks back in a rebate or not sales tax doesn't mean something. It means a ton. I mean, she's full of it. But let me add to that. She is completely lying. I've been in politics for a long time.

Nobody, no random citizen comes up and tells you that they don't want the state to cut a tax because it will hurt their local government. That's ridiculous. It's the first time they care about the autonomy of a local government. This is special. Those are special interests she's talking about coming up to her. Those are not average everyday citizens.

And she is completely full of it. That was a disgusting argument. People are on the edge. Like you said, recent survey, 24 percent of this country is experiencing food insecurity. And frankly, yes, a few hundred bucks makes a big difference. Democrats claim to be for the little guy, but all they are, the only thing, the only constituency I can identify that Democrats actually serve at this point, Chuck, is the bureaucracy.

It's the government workers. And that's why I think they're so desperate to expand them all the time. That is that is a travesty of a statement. Yeah. Let's do the final topic here. The New York Times wrote a funny fact check story about explaining the ties between Alvin Bragg, who's trying to bring he's not done it yet. He's not indicted Donald Trump on the Stormy Daniels payoff.

and George Soros. This reporter, Linda Q, has gone over, bent over backwards, trying to disassociate the two. Though she does say Soros has backed Democrat candidates and causes for well as democracy and human rights. Of course, she throws that in, right? Around the world. Has years been the boogeyman on the right. But she does say that he gave money to an IE,

That gave money to Mr. Alvin Bragg. Now, folks, let me tell you this. Sam and I have both been recipients of it. If you run an independent expenditure, which is outside the campaign, and if you support the candidate, let's just say candidate Bob, and you have an IE that's separated from the campaign, the press will immediately say you're coordinating. Right. Make no mistake. Sam and I have got those calls. And you can literally have no coordination whatsoever, but they are going to tie you on this.

There is no way George Soros was going to give money to this IE to support Mr. Bragg unless it supported his agenda. Make no mistake about it. It would have never happened. I'll give you a local example of how far they go with this. During Carrie Lake's campaign, the Lake campaign, we were accused of coordinating with a PAC, an independent expenditure here that we had never heard of. We had never heard of them, had no idea who they are. They went and started airing ads online.

It turns out that PAC was funded by Democrats because they thought Kerry would be a more vulnerable candidate, which. And they did this all across the country. They did this all across the country. And they accused us of coordinating with that PAC, which we had never had any contact with, had no idea who they were and who were frankly operatives of the other side. Now, there was zero evidence of that. There is extensive evidence that George Soros is directly involved in getting people like Alvin Bragg elected.

So, you know, George Soros gave $1 million to a progressive criminal justice group that endorsed Alvin Bragg. Okay? It pledged to spend $1 million on direct mailers, on-the-ground campaigning, etc.,

A few days later, May 14th, Soros contributed $1 million to this group. Right. Okay? Now, they said he only spent a half a million dollars. I'm not quite sure I believe that because they don't cover staff. They don't cover some grassroots support. It all gets mixed in. So trust me, the million dollars was used. Of course, yes. Okay? It may still be being used for salaries. And so then it makes the point that this only amounted to 11% of the group's $4.6 million in total spending during the 21-22 cycle. Again, okay?

When you do these IEs, when you have a big whale like Mr. Soros, and again, Mr. Soros is welcome to do what he wants to do. Well, he has a whole group of people who follow his donations. So just think of somebody in your family that if they do something, everybody else sort of follows because they respect that person. So anyway, we just want to say, again, this is the problem with today's people like New York Times. They're not...

It's an omission of facts. It's an omission of logic that they know is there. They know these facts. We have not told you anything that. No, that article was written for a very specific purpose. Exactly. So it was not reporting. We're going to close here this week. Supposedly, Donald Trump was to be indicted. I mean, and he helped spread the news on that. And that has not happened yet.

We want you – we're going to leave you a clip from Political, and this is a conversation Political had with Lanny Davis. Now, for those of you old enough to remember, Lanny Davis was chief defender of Bill Clinton. He is now representing Michael Cohen.

The reason that the Stormy Daniels situation is brought up again, and if you listen to the podcast, we will post it on our social media, Lanny Davis pushed this. I mean, he clearly pushed this, right? That's why it was dropped. That's why they call it the zombie case. Every time it gets dropped by someone, many times it's been dropped because...

People say, well, those trust. For probably the same reason that the jury in New York is hesitating like crazy. Because can we trust Michael Cohen's testimony? Michael Cohen's a proven liar. Lanny Davis made a very good point on this podcast. I just want you to list it. An indictment does not mean you're guilty. And I don't think a lot of people understand that. And newspapers and the media and all of us assume immediately someone's indicted, they're guilty. That's not what it is.

All they have done is taken the evidence to a grand jury that only hears one side, and then you go to a jury where the defense can then rebuke. So just listen to this. We hope you have a great weekend. Please feel free to share our show. Go to BreakingBattlegrounds.vote and have a fantastic weekend.

Lanny Davis long ago established himself as the go-to operative in Washington when you're in the middle of a PR crisis. He was famously the public face defending his good friend Bill Clinton during the Monica Lewinsky scandal in 1998. 25 years later, as Michael Cohen's attorney and spokesman, Lanny is on the other side of another presidential sex scandal. If Trump's indicted, what is the reaction from Republicans?

your camp going to be? So I can't speak for my client, but I can speak for myself. Mr. Trump, if he's indicted, is innocent. Innocent until proven guilty by 12 people who've heard a trial in cross-examination and direct evidence, heard Mr. Trump's defenses, and then vote unanimously beyond a reasonable doubt. As of the moment that indictment is announced, everybody should know indictments are not evidence of anything.

"'They shouldn't be believed.'

There are one sided presentation and a grand jury doesn't get to hear the other side. That's our system. As long as prosecutors remind everyone just because it's an indictment, it only means it's an accusation. Now the other side in our system of justice gets to put on a defense. That would be my best message to the American people. Not to act in any way as if Mr. Trump is guilty or even seems guilty, but say now it's time for the facts and due process to prevail.

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